AN UNFORTUNATE HABIT

This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and situations elaborated herein.

A/N: Spoilers. Thanks to all my reviewers.Snape wasn't suicidal at the end of ch 10; he was merely bowing to the inevitable.

Hermione glared at Draco as he leaned gracefully against a bookshelf. The Malfoy library was magnificent.

"You were a prat in school," she said. Snape had always favoured him; why hadn't he bothered to return the favour now that the man was back?

"Yes, and you were a bossy little suck-up. I hope we've both changed since then."

"And what was I, Malfoy?" Ginny asked coolly.

His mouth twitched.

"An untried fledgeling, with a temper as hot as your hair. And if I'd told you that, you'd have hexed me so badly I'd still be in St Mungo's."

Were they flirting? Hermione quickly turned the conversation to the enchanted diary. Was Riddle's ghost still somehow bound to its pages?

"No," Draco said with flat finality. "It's not Riddle's shade. Potter destroyed that connection."

Hermione's eyes narrowed.

"How can you be sure?"

"Because I helped the Aurors tear this place apart after the war, looking for Dark Artefacts. I remember the diary well. It was inert."

"Then why do I have these dreams?" Ginny demanded.

"There could be several reasons. It may not be a curse at all. Maybe you've kept him because you weren't ready to let him go."

"Malfoy! Of course, I want to let him go!"

"Do you? Dream-lovers are so much easier than the real kind. They never say all the wrong things or get huffy when you want to be alone. Maybe you just don't want to decide between me and Potter."

"Is that what you think?" Her eyes blazed.

He ranged around the room, half-pulling out books and re-shelving them.

"No. My father had an unfortunate habit of cursing enemies and associates alike. I suspect he used the diary to open an independent link for a dream-sending, piggybacking on its power but not actually part of it," he said at last. "That would explain why it showed no trace. But I'm not sure how to break it. I think we should take it back to where Riddle made it and burn it there. The original magic might re-awaken just enough to – to repossess it, as it were, and sever the link."

"And where would that be?" Ginny asked.

"Probably the Chamber of Secrets," Draco admitted reluctantly. They'd need Potter to open it.

Hermione fidgeted. For a week, she'd managed not to think about her patient except when she tended him. Ginny's dream-visitor had been a welcome distraction, but now her attention kept wandering instead to the man they'd left behind.

'There's something I've missed,' she told herself. "Something he didn't tell me." As a teacher he'd demanded and imposed, but in his personal life he took self-sufficiency almost to the point of self-abnegation. If there were something he needed, he wouldn't ask; she'd have to guess.

She watched in memory that hollow weary face, more white than sallow now, and those black reproachful eyes. How could she have been so hateful, picking fights with him when he must be in so much pain? Something about the stiff way he'd held himself, the tense set of his shoulders, niggled at her.

Abruptly she changed the subject.

"What do you know about curse couplets?"

"Why?"

Snape said one on Monday as he woke -"

Draco swung round to interrogate her, his grey eyes alarmed.

"Monday? What time Monday?"

"About lunchtime."

"And he was revived about 2 p.m. Saturday?"

"Yes, does it matter?"

His forehead wrinkled into deep vertical clefts.

"Did you touch Ginny in that time? Or did she give you anything?"

"No, I don't think -"

"Yes," Ginny cut in. "I gave you a Holyhead rosette from the game, remember?"

"What's wrong?" Hermione faltered.

"Tell me the couplet," he ordered.

She told him. His breath rushed out in a heavy sough of wind.

"That's why he sent you here. Getting you out of the way so he could leave."

The same sneaky way he got the boys out of the way. But -

"Leave? Why would he wan-?"

"He probably thinks Hogwarts has enough statues," he told her pityingly.

"I don't understand."

"Gryffindors! Give me strength! Look, it's simple. The first stanza sets up the second with two command words; 'time' means it's a reversal curse to re-petrify him. Though the second stanza suggests he'll keep his shape this time -"

"Why didn't he say? We could have tried -"

"Because the other command is 'hearts'! It's a True Love curse, it can't be broken unless he loves someone – which is absurd, let's face it, probably why Lucius chose it – and she has to love him back. Which is even more unlikely."

Hermione stood white-lipped, her eyes darting from Ginny to the door. Draco gave a sudden shout of laughter.

"Oh, you don't, do you?" He shook his head, biting his lips. "And he? Priceless! No accounting for tastes. Go on then. You've not much time."

"But Ginny -"

"I'll sort out Ginny! Off with you! He'd have tried to Apparate, I expect. Try the spot in the Forbidden Forest, it's more likely than the main gates, I'd say. He wouldn't want to be seen."

"But -" She couldn't breathe for the thrumming in her ears.

"Hurry up, Granger! Do you want to get there in time or don't you?"

She was going to be sick. Her legs were boneless and her chest hollow. In the end, he pushed her out the door and ordered her to Apparate.

"You can have hysterics later. He's probably turning even as we speak, now go!"

She went.

He wasn't at the Main Gates. She still couldn't quite believe it. He could barely walk. He must be up in the ward still, resting in bed. But she tried a Point Me spell and he wasn't there. He wasn't anywhere.

She took a sobbing ragged breath. The Forbidden Forest. Draco had said he'd have gone that way. If he'd apparated already she wouldn't know where to go. She had no way of following. Her eyes darted back and forth as she ran, seeking, searching. Was he fallen on the way? Where was he?

And then she saw him. Under a tree, outstretched, silent, sprawled where he'd fallen. Speckled grey like granite. She ran to him and fell to her knees at his side. Cold, rough, grey granite.

Hot tears fell on cold stone cheeks and slid down. She pressed a kiss, the first and last, on the lifeless stone lips and collapsed weeping on his rocky chest.

A/N One more chapter and it's a long one. As it may be a while before I get a chance to post it, I'm leaving you with a teaser:

How long Hermione lay there grieving she didn't know, nor did she notice when she first felt a heart thudding under her cheek and arms reaching to hold her, tightening like steel bands. Then a familiar voice said the unthinkable...