Chapter 1: The Trouble With Hermione
AUTHOR: Mnemosyne
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter-related people, places and situations are the property of J.K. Rowling and her publishers, as well as Warner Bros. Studios. I make no claim to anything, except the concept of the Night Mare. That bit's all mine! :-D
SUMMARY: The Trio have begun their sixth year at Hogwarts, and something is wrong with Hermione. Where does she go every night, and what does she do when she goes there? Can Ron save her in time?
RATING: PG-13
PAIRING: R/Hr
SPOILERS: Up to and including "Order of the Phoenix"
NOTE:
This idea came to me entirely out of the blue this morning, as I was putting my socks on to go to work. The connection? None whatsoever. It just demonstrates how mundane things can stimulate weird creative impulses. LOL!
I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has reviewed my other "Harry Potter" stories. I'm a horrible person - I don't do individual thank you's with each chapter like other authors, mainly because I usually don't have time to do anything but write, format, upload, and run, thanks to my work schedule. I would like to let EVERYONE know that I am deeply honored by how well-received my other stories have been, and that I've read every response you've written me, and have taken each one to heart. You are all truly wonderful, and I can never thank you enough! All I can do is try to make each new story that much better than the last. Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart - you are the reason I keep writing. :-D I hope you'll all enjoy this story!
I can't feel you there.
I've become so tired,
So much more aware…"
-"Numb" by Linkin Park
Something about this is seriously flawed.
It is dinnertime in the Great Hall. The banners of each house hang from the bewitched ceiling, which shows a brilliantly clear sky pinpricked with a billion stars. The plates of each student and professor are loaded down with the best food imaginable: plump duck stuffed with seasoned breadcrumbs and mushrooms, mashed potatoes drenched in butter, perfectly cooked broccoli that even a finicky first year would be foolish to pass up, and of course, a huge glass of iced pumpkin juice. The Gryffindors have just won their first Quidditch match of the season against Hufflepuff, and tomorrow is a Saturday. It is a good day to be a student at Hogwarts.
It is also dead silent in the Great Hall.
Silverware rattles against dishes. Glasses thump as they are picked up and set down. The house banners flutter in an imperceptible breeze. Shoes shuffle, elbows knock, and school robes rustle.
No one speaks. Unless you listen very closely, you begin to wonder if anyone is even breathing.
This is not the Hogwarts of six years ago. This is not the Hogwarts of one year ago. This is the Hogwarts of today; the Hogwarts of the Second War. Students cast uneasy glances at their neighbors, wondering. Wasn't Rosie Wileybone's father suspected of being a Death Eater during the First War? Doesn't Nigel Cunningham have an uncle in St. Mungo's, a casualty of You-Know-Who's fury? Does Draco Malfoy have reason to notice me?
Is Harry Potter the luckiest boy alive, or the most cursed?
In the end, it always comes back to Harry Potter. By the end of every meal, every Quidditch match, every interminable lesson, all eyes focus with piercing intensity on the Boy Who Lived. Each mind silently ticks the years off on invisible fingers, and amends the title to The Boy Who Lived Six Times. A few choose to look into the murky future, and anoint him anew: The Dead Boy.
Perhaps this hall of silent children is a mirage. Maybe each mute figure is a hollow shell, controlled from afar by an Imperius curse, forced to eat, to sleep, to learn, to function in anxiety-laden quiet. In the Hogwarts of the Second War, it is on everyone's mind; but it isn't the case. These children are children, and their actions are REactions. If you watch them, you will see the fear in every eye; the unspoken terror. No Imperius curse would allow such emotion to seep through. They are humans, not animated corpses.
Besides, only one of them looks like living death; and she, like the rest of them, isn't talking.
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The problem of what was bothering Hermione had been on Ron and Harry's minds since Platform 9 ¾, but no amount of coaxing would tempt her to spill her secrets. Eventually they had given up asking her directly, and had tried hinting around the subject during periodic conversations. But Hermione was still Hermione, and she obviously caught on to what they were doing, because by the fourth week of sixth year, she had retreated into a silent shell. During the day, she barely shared three words in conversation with her two best friends.
Ron was beginning to panic. Harry was still struggling with the aftermath of what had transpired in the Department of Mysteries last year, and there were plenty of times Ron heard the other boy crying softly behind the curtains of his bed late into the night. How could the youngest Weasley son help? Thankfully, he'd never suffered losses as horrific as Harry - parents, a much-loved godfather… - but it also meant he didn't have the foggiest idea how to help his friend recover. He was hamstrung, but the only person who might have been able to help him was even more of a mess than Harry, and Ron didn't have the slightest idea why.
Hermione had always been the level-headed member of their trio. Whenever there was a question that required clear, analytical thinking, she was there with the answer in a heartbeat. Yet she was also able to dissect the actions of emotional, overwrought individuals; actions that left Ron and Harry flustered and scratching their heads. No spell yet had been created that Hermione couldn't do, and she knew the history of the wizarding world better than Ron himself, despite being Muggle-born. SHE would know how to help Harry; SHE would know what to say, what to do, what to avoid.
If only she'd TALK to him.
The level-headed girl Ron had come to admire - and envy - had been replaced with a vacant husk. Her sparkling brown eyes were dull and sunken, underscored with bruised-looking circles that made her face look like a Muggle child's Halloween mask. Her bushy hair was limp and brittle, and her normally rosy skin was waxy and yellow. Her pale lips were thin and chapped, and the pounds were dropping off her already thin frame at an alarming rate.
It was time to do something, that was certain. What that something was, Ron wasn't sure, but he knew he had to be the one to do it. Harry was too preoccupied with little things like saving the world and not dying in the process; but at least he was eating, and playing Quidditch, and TALKING. Hermione was by far the more serious problem, and she was the one Ron was most afraid to confront. An unspoken tension had existed between him and the bushy-haired prodigy for years, but it was still little more than an intangible taste on the air at this point. Ron didn't know what it was, exactly, but he knew that being alone in a room with Hermione was uncomfortable. The time always seemed… fraught with unrequited possibilities.
But he had to do it, because Hermione was his friend, and she would have done the same for him. Hell, she'd do MORE. She'd have sat him down the first day of school and FORCED him to tell her what the problem was. And he would have told her, because that was what you did when Hermione turned all her penetrating intensity on you. Ron knew he'd have to copy that steely-eyed focus if he was ever going to get his friend to tell him what was going on.
Which was how he found himself sitting up in the Common Room at almost midnight on a Friday night, practicing grim faces. It was a lost cause, and he knew it. Hermione would take one look at him and bust out laughing; but at least that would be progress. Perhaps if he got her laughing, he could get her talking as well.
A chicken, a mongoose and a mole walk into a bar, he mused silently. "Ouch," said the mongoose. "That hurt."
"Well, if she doesn't laugh, maybe she'll slap me," he muttered. "If she doesn't, I'll have to do it myself. It's the least I'd deserve."
He must have drifted off to sleep, because the next thing he knew, his head was snapping up, the clock on the wall read 1am, and the portrait hole was just swishing shut. Since he didn't see anyone, and there were no footsteps hurrying up the stairs, he assumed that someone had just left.
Who in the world could be leaving the dormitory at one in the morning?
Perhaps someone who had been acting out of character all term?
Shaking off his drowsiness, Ron forced himself up from the Common Room sofa and stumbled to the portrait hole. Pushing it open, he slipped out into the corridor.
"Wassat?" the Fat Lady sputtered as Ron closed the portrait behind him. "Who'sere?"
"No one. Just me," he reassured her. "Go back to sleep." Pausing for a moment, he asked, "Did you see anyone else just come through here?"
"Wassat? Oh." The Fat Lady gave a huge yawn. "A girl. Big hair."
He'd been right. "Did you see which way she went?"
"Down the shtairs, o'course. Now shoo, lemme sleep." The Fat Lady waved him off with a torpid hand, then closed her eyes and hunched over again. Within seconds, she was snoring.
Ron turned away from the portrait and trotted down the stairs, trying to keep his footsteps as quiet as possible to prevent arousing attention. He hadn't bothered to change out of his day clothes before his late night brainstorming session, and his wand was tucked into the pocket of his jeans. He didn't dare take it out and conjure a light to guide his path, in case it brought him unwanted attention.
Ron's feet brought him to the school's courtyard, which seemed eerily skeletal in the washed out moonlight. The mighty pendulum swinging beneath the clock tower ticked on with an air of morbid finality. The sound of falling water coming from the fountain in the center of the courtyard was oddly terrifying, like a million tiny footsteps of the imps of Hell-
His imagination was getting carried away. Time to move on.
Movement on the bridge caught his eye, and he saw a familiar head of bushy hair hurrying down the covered span. Ron almost called out to her, but bit his tongue just in time. Instead, he jogged after her, keeping far enough back that she wouldn't notice his presence.
Hermione led him to the Whomping Willow. That was unexpected, he thought nervously, and debated calling out to her again. Before he could decide, however, Hermione had pulled a wand out of her sleeve and was pointing it at the tree.
"Immobilus," she said huskily, and the sound of her voice was such a shock to Ron's system, he gaped. It surprised him to realize he'd forgotten the sound of her voice. It shocked him even further to discover that the voice he DID remember was smoother than the hoarse rasp he'd just heard. Perhaps lack of use had had more of an effect on Hermione's voice than he'd anticipated. Or perhaps she gargled with lye before bedtime.
Shaking himself out of his reverie, he was just in time to see the girl disappearing down the same hole Padfoot had dragged him down three years earlier. "What are you doing, Hermione?" Ron wondered aloud, then carefully crept towards the paralyzed tree and followed her down the tunnel.
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When Ron reached the end of the tunnel and set foot inside the Shrieking Shack for the first time in three years, he stopped. Memories washed over him, and he felt an intense pang of regret as he thought of Sirius, and Lupin, and Wormtail, and Harry. Especially Harry. Perhaps if Ron hadn't been so attached to his rat, Harry would never have lost Sirius. None of the events from three years earlier would have happened, and Sirius would have eventually gotten his hands - or jaws - on Pettigrew, and the truth would have come out all on its own. Sirius wouldn't have spent two years in hiding - he would have spent them actively fighting He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Harry would have been able to talk about his godfather with pride, rather than whisper about him in private. And the original Marauder wouldn't have died; that most of all dominated Ron's thoughts. If only Sirius hadn't died, perhaps Ron wouldn't be here alone trying to confront Hermione. Harry would be with him. Perhaps they wouldn't be here at all. Perhaps the war would be over and You-Know-Who defeated and everyone would be living happily ever after.
But Sirius was dead, and there was no changing the past. All he could do was forge ahead with the future. With that in mind, he began to move, following the trail of Hermione's footprints through the dust on the floor. There were lots of footprints, actually - all of them Hermione's. She must have been coming here for a long time. How long? Since the start of the year? Since LAST year? His worry growing with every step, Ron slowly climbed the stairs, careful to tread lightly on the creaky floorboards.
Of course he knew which room she would be in; it was the same room they'd all clustered in three years ago. The room where they'd learned of Peter Pettigrew's treachery. Flickering firelight filtered through the door, dancing against the dark paneling of the hallway as Ron crept towards the room. Pressing himself against the wall, he craned his neck to peer around the door jamb. It was all he could do to resist cursing in disbelief.
The room was clean - virtually sparkling - and looked like a laboratory. Smoking cauldrons stood shoulder to shoulder with glass beakers filled to the brim with potions of every color and viscosity. Something thick and blue bubbled in a pot over a fire that roared in the hearth, releasing invisible smoke up through the chimney; she must have magicked the kindling. All the old furniture had been removed (or perhaps transfigured), to be replaced with a long table that filled one side of the room, and a rumpled bed that dominated the other half.
Hermione was nowhere to be seen.
"Cor," Ron breathed, stepping through the door and staring in shock at the paraphernalia that covered every surface. "Hermione, what have you been doing?"
"Ron!"
The voice came from behind him, and was followed by a crash of breaking pottery. Ron spun around and found Hermione staring at him with wide eyes from the doorway. The floor around her feet was covered with shards of ceramic and something that looked like wet seaweed, but which he recognized as Sleep Creeper, a strangling weed. A highly illegal strangling weed.
"What are you doing here?" she finally choked out, her hoarse voice a stark contrast to the disbelief in her eyes. "You shouldn't be here! Go away!" She stooped down and began gathering the slimy vines into what remained of the bowl she'd been carrying them in. "You should never have seen any of this!"
Ron stared, watching her bony hands scoop up the slippery greenery. "Hermione, what are you DOING here?" he managed to demand, finally recovering his voice. "What is all this!"
She never looked up at him. "Nothing I can't manage. Thank you and goodnight."
Suddenly, it dawned on him. He began to back away, towards the fire. "Oh God," he whispered, feeling behind him until he felt the comforting masonry of the fireplace. "You're working for him, aren't you?" He swallowed, but found his mouth was bone dry. "You're working for You-Know-Who…"
Hermione paused in her clean up, and slowly raised her head. Sunken eyes glared at him from beneath shaggy bangs. "You should never have followed me," she whispered, though it came out as a hiss. "Now you know too much!"
To Be Continued….
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I've got chapter 2 of this written already, but I'll admit it - I'm lazy. LOL! I won't beg for reviews, because I think that's rather selfish, but reviews would certainly motivate me to get chapter 3 in the bag! So please, if you liked the story so far, I hope you'll let me know! Thank you! :-D