All right, you guys, we're nearing the end—one more chapter left! Inara, Lee, thank you so much for reviewing, and I'm glad that both of you are enjoying the story; I hope you both enjoy this chapter as well!
At first, the urge to simply march up to Voldemort's door and scream at them to give Ron back is nearly unbearable; at nights, the burning in her blood is all that keeps Hermione from getting up and apparating to the nearest Death Eater hideout. As it is, she merely grits her teeth, and tries to go to sleep.
After one particularly difficult night, Harry slides into the chair next to her, looks at her, and asks, "Hermione, what happens if you break a Blood Promise?"
"Depends on what you swear by," Hermione says, concentrating fiercely on buttering her toast. "We swore by our magic, so if either of us went back on our word," her hands are shaking, now, "We'd both lose our magic." The silence stretches out, then Hermione gives up and puts the knife down, resists the urge to bury her head in her hands.
"We didn't swear an Unbreakable Vow," She says after a moment, "because you need three people to cast it. And the only person we could think of was you, but you never would have let us swear in the first place." They both sit there, and the emptiness of the third seat at the kitchen table is an almost tangible presence.
"Come on," Harry stands up abruptly, the chair nearly falling as it skids backwards. "We've got work to do."
They both manage to carry on, for a little while. Hermione throws herself into research and Harry learns more war magic than Hermione knew existed. He also learns to throw knives, from Moody, and often Hermione hears the distinctive tinny whistle of steel slicing through air, then the solid thunk as it hits the target. One day, Harry comes in with a box tucked under his arm. He sets it on the table and opens it to reveal four shining knives, although the blades have been coated with some strange substance.
"I've been trying to spell these so that they'll penetrate shield charms, resist transfiguration, that sort of thing." Harry says. "But I'm not sure I've got the enchantment right. Could you check them for me?" Hermione sets down her book.
"Sure."
It's only later, when she's trying to work out how the underlying enchantment is imbalanced that the tiny words engraved on the hilt of each knife catches her eye. She looks more carefully, and sees the first knife engraved with the name Lily Evans. The second—Cedric Diggory. She sets the knife down for a moment, knows before looking what's etched on the third one: Sirius Black. Hermione thinks about marching up to Harry and telling him that if he really wants to have a knife for every person who's died for his sake, he's going to need an armory—Moody refuses to allow Harry to see the casualty list, but Hermione knows the numbers, if not the names or faces of the people who have died for Harry, albeit indirectly.
Hermione thinks about it, then picks up the fourth knife, wonders if she'll see Ron's name there. If she does, she isn't sure that she'll be able to stop herself from hurling the blade straight at Harry's head. But no—the hilt of the fourth knife is blessedly blank.
Hermione sighs, and respells the knives. The next day she gives them back to Harry, and neither of them say anything about it.
And so the days pass, and Harry and Hermione manage to act almost normally, manage to continue doing research and holding meetings and holding weapons and war magic training. Hermione still forces Harry to eat, and Harry still disappears from time to time, although by now both of them know it's merely a matter of form. Just looking at Harry, Hermione thinks as she watches him reading an intelligence report, you'd never guess that he was missing half his heart.
But after the tasks and chores of day are done, night comes, and with it the full force of sorrow. Hermione sometimes dreams of Ron's body, lying cold and mangled somewhere, in a pool of blood. She sees his body torn and wounded and beaten and burned in a thousand different ways, but those aren't even the worst.
The worst are the times when she dreams that he is alive and whole, laughing with his arm wrapped around some woman (the woman's face is never clear), watching a pack of red-headed children play in the yard, and Hermione realizes with a jolt that this is the life Ron could have had someday, if he wasn't dea—
It's at this point that she always wakes up screaming.
After the eighth night in a row, Hermione gives up and simply lies awake, staring at the ceiling. The same question keep turning over and over in her head: If you had to choose between saving Harry or Ron, who would you choose? But she made that choice the moment she signed her name on that promise, and now the question burning in her chest is whether she can live with that answer.
The research on the Horcruxes begins to yield fruit, and even though Harry and Hermione are followed by a host of Aurors wherever they go, after a few weeks they find Helga Hufflepuff's cup, the metal stained and grimy with bloodstains that refuse to disappear. Even after the cup is blasted to dust, Hermione can still feel the texture of dried blood beneath her fingers. Slowly, one by one, each of the Horcruxes appears, and again and again, the Order of the Phoenix sacrifices nearly everything in order to destroy them.
But it's not until the hunt for Rowena Ravenclaw's watch rolls around that all the rage and sorrow and guilt and remorse and fear merges together and attacks Harry and Hermione full force, and it comes at them in the shape of Ginny Weasley.
"You-Know-Who got clever, when he created hiding spots for his later Horcruxes," Moody says, rolling out a map on the table so everyone can see. "He hid Ravenclaw's watch behind a gate he created that only opens at midnight on the night of a blue moon. But he wasn't clever enough, because it just so happens that tomorrow night is a blue moon."
"Where is the gate?" Shacklebolt asks. Moody taps a blue dot on the map.
"Tamar Woods. It's not very far away, should be easy to apparate to."
"Good. Have a squad scout out the place today and gather as much information on it as possible; tomorrow night we'll have a strike team ready at 11:00." Harry gets up out of his seat, clearly ready to leave.
"Hold on, Harry—there's some other intelligence that you should probably know about." Moody nods towards Farleigh, a nervous-looking man with floppy brown hair and a reedy voice. Farleigh coughed, hesitated a moment, and Hermione could already feel her stomach sinking.
"There have been some reports—unconfirmed, as of yet—that Ron Weasley is being held at a werewolf den in Romania. But it's dated information, and the source warned us that he's probably going to be moved, possibly within a day or two."
At that, Ginny bursts out, "Well, then, we have to go after him while we can! If we go right now—"
"No." Harry says curtly. "The Horcrux takes higher priority, and we can't spare the people."
"Well, we don't need a full strike team to go after Ron, I'll go with half a squad, it'll be fine—catch them when they're not expecting us," She argues hotly. The entire Weasley family—with the exception of Percy—was admitted into the full confidence of the Order of the Phoenix after the war started, but sometimes—like now—Hermione finds herself questioning the wisdom of allowing Ginny in, even though she's well aware the hypocrisy.
"Gin—Harry's right. Blue moons don't come every day, we've got to make sure we can get the Horcrux on this one otherwise the war will drag out for another year," Charlie says. The other Weasleys around the table nod in silent agreement, although Mrs. Weasley is so pale that she looks paper-white.
"I'll go alone then—I can—"
"You would walk into a den of werewolves on the night of a full moon?" Harry asks quietly. He doesn't turn to face her.
"Oh, so you're just going to let Ron die? Is that it? How can you call yourself his friend? All you can do all day is throw your useless knives at stupid targets, reading stupid war spells that you're never going to use because you're too cowardly to go after my brother! You actually think you're doing any good hiding inside while the rest of us fight and bleed and die for you? You think you're so high and mighty and special? Well, big surprise, you're really just the Boy Who Sat Around All Day While—"
"Ginny, if you have something to say to Harry, please say it in private." Hermione cuts in sharply. Everybody around the table looks intensely uncomfortable, and desperate for a reason to leave. They don't have to wait long for one.
"Fine!" Ginny doesn't even pause as she drew out her wand. "Fine! Everybody clear out, you hear me? Everybody who's not Harry bloody Potter get the hell out of here otherwise I'll hex you all until you can't sit on your fat arses and let my brother die! So just get out!" Everybody leaves, some scrambling out, others at a more measured pace. Charlie's the last one out, casts one last look at his furious sister, then closes the door behind him.
All the while, Harry just sits there, looking at her neutrally, not saying anything. Ginny's rant is by turns so bitter and malicious that Hermione has never wanted to slap anybody so much in her life, but when Ginny finally winds down, she looks at Harry, trembling.
He hasn't moved a muscle, and looks back at her composedly, his expression even a little bored. Ginny draws herself up, and says coldly, "You know, people always whispered that Ron was only friends with you because you were Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived. I wonder what they would say if they knew that Ron's always been a better friend to you than you've ever been to him. One day, when all this is over, I am going to tell the whole world what you did, and you know what they're going to call you then?" Ginny rocks back on her heels, her face utterly calm.
"They're going to call you the Boy Who Let Ron Weasley Die." At that, Ginny turns sharply and leaves. The door swings in beats as sharp as heartbreak behind her, and only after it stills does Hermione dare to look at Harry. For a long moment, his features remain as smooth and composed as ever, and then the calm begins to crack. A small hitching breath, and suddenly the corner of his mouth quirks upwards.
"Did you hear that, Hermione?" The smile begins to spread. "She right, and she thinks I don't know." Harry gets up, walks a few paces, comes back and starts fiddling with the map. "She's right, dead right, O for Outstanding." He starts laughing, insanely, madly, his hands falling away from the table as he starts to shake. "And she thinks I don't know." By now he's laughing so hard that the breath catches in his throat and chokes him, bringing him down to his knees, on the floor. Hermione remains paralyzed in her seat as she watches Harry go slowly insane. And suddenly he's upright, standing at the table, head bowed.
"She thinks," he murmurs quietly, to the table, "that I DON'T KNOW!" On the last words, Harry brings up his hands and slams them back down as fists on the table, and the resulting crash causes more than paper and pens to go flying. Hermione can feel the reverberations resound in the magic in her bones, in all the magic around them. This is what propels her to her feet, towards the person she now fears most and loves second-best in the world, because she can imagine all too easily the entire world's worth of magic collapsing in and then expanding out into a mushroom cloud that will destroy the wizarding world far faster than Voldemort ever could, all because of this grief and guilt and utter fury that will not stay locked up inside this one terribly, pathetically, fucked-up boy.
She grabs him by the nape of the neck, hard, and raises his head so she is staring him straight in the eyes.
"But you do," she says, gently. Then she shakes him not so gently, until his eyes stop looking so glassy. "You know."
Harry blinks a few times. His breath stutters alarmingly for a moment, then evens out, and the muscles beneath her fingers go slack. She lets go, and steps back, watches as he drops his head again. Hermione remains still and silent, watches carefully the motion of his chest beneath his ratty old shirt, the slow rise and slow fall. A few minutes later, Harry raises his head, turns, and walks out of the room. "Tell Moody you're part of the scouting squad, and report back to me any research you come up with on Tamar Woods." He says before the door swings shut. Hermione sighs, and begins picking up paper and pencils off the floor. When Dobby comes and begins fussing, she stands up and leaves the mess behind her.
They get Ravenclaw's watch, no problem. Hermione wonders what Ginny thinks about the fact that once Harry's brought it back out from the gate he drops it like a hot potato into Moody's hand and immediately apparates to the den in Romania.
When Hermione and the rest of the Order catch up to him, they find Harry in the middle of an ambush, Death Eaters casting spells from behind rocks, behind trees, anywhere and everywhere. After a bout of sharp, heavy fighting, the Order eventually forces them to retreat.
While the rest of them tend to the wounded and keep watch for any further attacks, Bill ventures into the now empty cave and casts a Searching Spell. He comes back, his face drawn and weary. "There's no trace of Ron, they never took him here." Harry's silent for a moment.
"All right, then." He says briskly. "Come on, we need to find out how to destroy that watch." In a blink, he's disapparated back to England.
And that's that.
A few months and a grand total of six destroyed Horcruxes later, which is still much later than Hermione had hoped and far earlier than she could have expected, she finds herself in a hive of activity, as the Order of the Phoenix and all its assorted allies gather at Hogwarts, to prepare for the final battle. And if all goes well, it really will be the final battle, as hard as it is to believe, for Voldemort is truly mortal now, although he doesn't know it yet.
"Hermione, are you all right?" Neville touches her arm, briefly, and Hermione shakes her head to clear it.
"Yes, I'm fine." She attempts a smile. "Don't worry about me. Are the new warding charms on the walls already put up?" She risks a quick glance towards Harry, alone in the midst of all the bustle of preparation; nobody dares to go near him, but she knows he is not thinking about the battle to come. He is thinking about the battles fought long ago, the battles they have lost.
The final battle is blood and dust and grime and heat and screaming and a thousand Unforgivables flying in the air at once. Even though she tries to keep an eye on Harry, Hermione finds herself just struggling to stay alive, casting spells at anything not wearing the red and gold robes of the Order.
Then, suddenly, all over the battlefield, the Death Eaters begin to collapse to their knees, one by one. It takes a moment to understand what this means, but then Hermione shoves her ring two turns to the right, just in time to come up a few steps behind Harry as he sends another knife whistling through the air into Voldemort's chest. Voldemort drops his wand, staggers back a few paces.
"No…" He hisses, blood starting to trickle from his mouth. "This can't be happening…" Harry starts to advance, throwing more and more knives into this suddenly very weak and vulnerable body.
"Yes, it can." Harry says, coming to a stop right in front of Voldemort. He's holding another knife in his hand, and almost casually, Harry brings it up, forward, and slashes sideways, and now Voldemort is on the ground, his throat cut, the last dregs of his bitter life oozing slowly out. He is nothing more than a dying animal now—even less. For a dying animal, there would be pity.
Harry stands there and watches for a few moments, then turns and walks away. The entire battlefield is still, for these moments, but Hermione sees the quaking in his shoulders, the shivering of his body, and she darts forward and catches him as he collapses.
Suddenly, the battle starts to rage again, except this time the Death Eaters and Dark Creatures are fighting desperately to escape. Hermione takes the time to cast a quick shield charm around them before she gently lowers herself to the ground, Harry dead weight in her arms. His skin is cold and clammy, and she realizes distantly he's going into shock. She blinks a moment, processing, then rips open his robes. The blood which was disguised against the scarlet of the robes now shows a startling crimson against his shirt.
"Hermione—I can't—I—Ron—Ron—" Harry mutters incoherently, trying to get up.
"Hush, just hush," Hermione says, frantically trying to remember a healing spell, any healing spell. "It'll be all right, Harry, everything will be all right."
But at this moment, she's not sure that anything ever will be, because somehow this victory tastes like ashes in her mouth.
Only one chapter left to go—anyways, please review! Any and all feedback welcomed.