Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me, it all belongs to JK.
Warnings: Violence, dark magic, minor character death
On the twenty-fourth day of the war, Ron and Hermione begin following Harry around.
It's not that they haven't been keeping a close eye on him before. It isn't hard now that the three of them are living at 12 Grimmauld Place, holding Order of the Phoenix meetings and researching horcruxes and generally living in a state of terrified boredom (or is it bored terror?) together, but still, they've been sticking to Harry so closely that Harry once complained that he hadn't seen his shadow in a month and would Ron please move, he'd like to get reaquainted with it. Ron simply grinned and said that Harry's shadow had tipped him extra to take its place for a little while.
But on the twenty-third day of the war, Professor McGonagall receives a call from the Ministry of Magic, and that afternoon Harry, Ron, and Hermione go to Privet Drive to see Tonk's body unceremoniously dumped on the Dursley's front step. Her throat is brutally mauled, muscle and tendon torn through, but her face remains untouched, her eyebrows only raised in an expression of mild surprise. Harry stands there, expressionless, then kneels down to touch the curve of her cheekbone, the spikes of lavender-colored hair.
"They knew--" he pauses, swallows. "They knew I'd come, if they left her here." A few moments later, he stands up and walks out the door so fast that even Ron has to scramble to keep up with him. Hermione risks a look back, sees through the window that Professor McGonagall is talking to the Dursleys, who are cowering in the corner.
Harry keeps walking, almost running, and Ron and Hermione don't ask any questions. They don't say anything at all, just try to keep up. They're nearly at the end of the street when Harry finally slows, then stops. Hermione's out of breath, but Harry sounds perfectly composed and only a little curious when he says, "I wonder if that's her real hair color, after all." And then with a silent pop, he disapparates.
Hermione catches Ron's eye, and he looks at her gravely before disapparating too. Hermione allows herself to feel a brief blossoming of grief for Tonks, for this chameleon sprite of a woman not too much older than Hermione herself. Then she pulls out her wand and follows.
The next day, Ron and Hermione work out a system for following Harry. At night, Ron only sleeps a breath away from Harry-- literally. They all sleep in the room anyways, but Harry and Ron's beds are pushed together against the wall, and when Harry wakes in the middle of the night and has to go to the loo or get a glass of water or even just stare at the ceiling, it's Ron who wakes up and watches the crack under the bathroom door until the light goes out; it's Ron who somehow always needs a glass of water at the same time Harry does; it's Ron who always wakes when Harry does, no matter how quietly Harry's breathing changes or how silently Harry's eyes open.
Once, when it was Hermione who had to use the loo in the middle of the night, she came back and stood in the doorway, just watching. They were sleeping side by side, Ron turned towards Harry so that every snore ruffled the hair on Harry's head. Hermione imagines Harry waking up, and reaching over to trace the curve of Ron's shoulder, then lower. It's not very difficult to picture, and Hermione knows intuitively that Ron would wake up, and smile only a little hesitantly (just because Ron would be so bloody happy that Harry still wants anything now--), and the morning would find Ron and Harry sharing a warmth even the house can't take away.
The house may belong to Harry now, but that doesn't stop it from being cold—literally—towards its new inhabitants. Without somebody of the Black bloodline (even a renegade like Sirius) to control the domestic magics of the place, the temperature often plunges well below freezing. Dobby, who decided to follow Harry after the three of them left Hogwarts, does what he can, but he doesn't know this house like Kreacher did. Hermione sees her breath form little clouds when she exhales, and imagines ice crystals forming mid-air.
During the day, Hermione's the one who shadows Harry, during all the Order of the Phoenix meetings, during all of his meals and meetings and research. She's the one who discovers that he's become so thin that she can see his shoulder blades through his shirt, sometimes even when he's wearing a Weasley sweater. She's the one who discovers that these days, Harry won't eat properly unless she makes conversation during mealtime so awkward and painful and tactless that he'll eat just so he doesn't have to listen to her anymore. She's the one who discovers that Harry's picked up the habit of drumming his fingers against the nape of his neck when he's thinking, and she wonders where he learned it when Ron points out one day that Harry picked it up from her.
They may be new explorers to this strange territory they call the war, but they are beginning to discover each other too, in ways that Hermione's not sure that even best friends should. She is beginning to realize that after all this is over, even the voices left in her head may not be her own.
Harry finally catches on, and during the day begins spending more and more time in the bathroom with the door locked. One day, Hermione starts to wonder if it's constipation that's going to kill the Boy Who Lived instead of You-Know-Who, so she alohomora's the door only to find that the chicken's flown and Harry's disapparated away. When Hermione goes to tell Ron, he doesn't laugh and tell her to lay off Harry, like he would have done a year ago. He doesn't get heatedly defensive and argue that Harry's got to have privacy like everybody else, like he would have done a few months ago. He doesn't even sigh and promise to help keep a closer eye on Harry during the day, like he would have done a week ago. Instead, he swears very creatively and the two of them start checking around until they find out from McGonagall that he's at Hogwarts, talking to Professor Flitwick about new Warding charms.
They breath a sigh of relief, then make McGonagall promise to personally ensure that Harry comes back to Grimmauld Place when he's done talking to Flitwick. After they're done talking to McGonagall, Ron looks at her thoughtfully (Hermione can count the dark rings around his eyes, and she knows that Ron spends at least as much time watching Harry as sleeping during these long nights), and goes away for a little while. When he comes back, he's holding a dark leather book, dusty and falling apart at the seams. Hermione can barely make out the lettering on the cover: Bynding Magicks and Enchantements.
"Did you--" Hermione begins.
"Don't worry, I only brought it down because I saw it the other day when Harry and I were making sure all the other rooms were safe. It's safe-- or, it is now, anyways." Ron sets the book down on the table. "But I was flipping through it the other day, and here, look at this." He slides the book over, and Hermione looks to see a picture of two rings threaded together with a ribbon of blood. Hermione begins to read, but after she's finished she has to sit back. She presses the back of her hand to her mouth for a long moment, then looks up.
"Well, now we know what how the House of Black thought men should treat their wives," Hermione tries to smile. Ron's not looking at her, but poring over the pages himself.
"It doesn't look like it was just meant for wives, though. I think it was originally meant to keep track of slaves," Ron says absent-mindedly. Hermione closes her eyes, and knows that even two weeks ago she would have slapped Ron for saying that and hexed the book so whoever opened it would develop a severe case of genital warts. Suddenly she feels a hand on her cheek, and she opens her eyes to see Ron's looking steadily at her.
"I can do it by myself, if you want. It's only meant for two people, anyways," he says softly.
And it nearly kills her, nearly breaks her heart that he would take on this burden from her. But she knows she already has what is necessary to do this; perhaps Ron does too, by now, but she will keep him from finding out for as long as she possibly can. With an effort, she shakes her head.
"No—I'd better do it. By myself, Ron—" She says sharply, when it looks like he'll protest. "It'll minimize the risk if I'm the one summoning the—the succubus, since I'm a girl and all, I won't be suitable prey, whereas she'd be jumping all over you. It'll be Fleur Delacour times a thousand, you know." She smiles weakly. Ron smiles back at her.
"Perhaps, except for the part that Fleur isn't an evil seductress who uses her charms to trap unwary men," He says drily. Hermione snorts.
"You'll remember your family had its doubts, before." She presses her fingers to her mouth, thinking furiously. "All right—I'm sure that there are candles made with deadly nightshade in this house somewhere, but I'm going to have to go to Diagon Alley to get holy water and ground unicorn horn. If I start now—" she does a few quick calculations— "It should be ready by tonight." Ron looks at her.
"All right." He says. Hermione takes a deep breath, and gets ready to disapparate to the apothecary's shop.
"All right."
Dinner that night is meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and kippers laced with draught of living death. Harry's scarcely taken more than one bite before he falls face-first in his mashed potatoes, and Ron wipes it off before the two of them haul Harry up the stairs to the bedroom. It may be Hermione who's raising hell tonight—literally—but it's Ron who takes the silver dagger Hermione offers him silently, who takes off Harry's shirt and oh-so-very gently cuts a thin line on the skin over Harry's heart, who collects a vial of blood, stoppers it, and hands it to Hermione. It's Ron who casts the healing spell, who watches the skin close up and form no more than a thin white line.
"Do you need anything else?" Ron says calmly, but he isn't looking at her. He's looking at Harry—Harry, who's lying on the bed, breathing peacefully. Hermione swallows.
"No." She takes a step towards the bed. "You can leave now. Close the door on your way out." She doesn't watch him leave, but instead rolls up her sleeves, and starts.
Three hours later, Hermione's kneeling in front of the toilet with her head bowed over bowl, fighting the bile rising in her throat. Ron's knocking on the door frantically.
"Hermione! Are you all right? Hermione!" Hermione swallows, pushes the hair away from her face, wonders if it's possible to be all right after a soul-sucking demon's effectively invaded and explored every corner of your soul. The holy water and unicorn horn did its work, but the succubus was impossibly beautiful, and Hermione knew that it wouldn't have been possible not to feel the siren pull of temptation.
And Hermione had known what it would take for her to get the succubus to bend to her will, what it would take to complete the enchantment. But it didn't prepare her for how it would feel to be trapped in the succubus' thrall as it searched out every scrap of her anger, her jealousy, her possessiveness, control—oh, above all, her need for control—and turned it into the four simple rings sitting in her pocket.
She hadn't allowed herself to think about the consequences of failure. That doesn't mean she'd thought about the consequences of success either, about what it would mean if the succubus really did find enough darkness in Hermione's soul to complete the spell, more than enough to hiss approvingly and curl around Hermione's shoulders and whisper in her ear that yes, yes, the boy would now be properly enslaved for eternity.
Hermione throws up.
The door bursts open and Ron's kneeling there besides her, holding her hair back until the heaves turn into dry-retching, and the dry-retching turn into no more than shuddering gasps. He doesn't say anything, just holds her head and her hand, and eventually Hermione's calmed down enough that she can dig around in her pocket and turn to face him.
"Here," she says, dropping a ring into Ron's hand. "There are two sets—two rings linking you and Harry, and two rings linking me and Harry." Ron turns the rings thoughtfully over in his hands.
"So if we wear these, we'll both be able to know where he is at all times?" Hermione nods.
"If you turn it twice to the right, you'll apparate directly to where he is. Twice to the left, and you pull him to you. The enchantment stops anybody else from knowing about the link, since I guess the Blacks liked to keep it a secret that they kept their wives enslaved like a poodles on a leash," Hermione spits out bitterly, "But at least it means that if we fall into enemy hands, we won't—they can't use it to get at Harry." She finishes quietly. Ron stops turning the ring around in his hands, looks at her.
"We're going to have to find some way to get Harry to wear his rings, aren't we?" Hermione nods.
"Getting them on is the tricky part—he has to put them on of his own free will, but once he's wearing them, he can't ever take them off. But he doesn't have to know what they are, and we can—we can transfigure them so they look different." Hermione says, thinking about the stories the succubus told her, how other Blacks have used this enchantment.
One had transfigured the ring into a necklace, to adorn the graceful milky-white neck of his wife. When he'd seen her wife making eyes at another man the necklace had constricted until it had cut off her head. Another had thought his wife's long golden hair had the color and scent of spring, and so had transfigured the ring to a circlet to glitter on her head. When she'd failed to produce an heir, the circlet had contracted so sharply that it scalped her, ripping hair and skin straight off her head. She lay there bleeding to death while her husband picked up her golden mane, and put it on top of the mantle, as a decoration.
Hermione shakes herself from her thoughts, and looks up to see Ron holding out his hand.
"Here. Give them to me, I'll take care of it."
Hermione drops the rings into his hand, and watches Ron as he walks out of the bathroom towards the bedroom. She leans her head back against the wall, and thinks about what she's done this night.
She knows that both she and Ron would give up their lives for Harry in a heartbeat—there was never any doubt about that. But Hermione's realized by now that their lives would be far from the ultimate sacrifice for him, merely the last.
The next morning, she nearly drops her bowl of oatmeal when she sees Harry wearing two silver wristbands, one on his right and the other on his left. He catches her looking at them, and says, "So I suppose Ron's given you yours too?" Her mouth is very dry, but she manages to speak.
"Yes—I—did he tell you how they work?" She asks. He shrugs.
"He said that they were charmed so we could keep tabs on each other if we had to—family heirlooms or something, I think. Are you wearing yours?" Hermione hastily puts out her right hand.
"Yes, I'm wearing mine as a ring. I suppose you've transfigured yours so they're less girly." She attempts a smile.
"Well, Ron's wearing his as a ring too, so I don't know." He smiles at her. "It's almost like we're all married to each other now, isn't it?" Hermione feels sick, waits a moment for the bile to stop climbing up her throat.
"Yes, I suppose it is."
There's more to come, I just have to find some time to write it up. Please review!