Disclaimer: Nothing but the plot is mine.
A/N: My adoration and gratitude to my betas - my wonderful Jenn, who's been with me for a while now and Danijo, who cannot resist a challenge. ;)
WARNING! This fic is a companion piece to my completed, novel-length H/Hr darkfic The Darkness Within. It's gen, and can be read seperately. However, it will spoil the ending of TDW. You have been warned. Now, on with the show, enjoy!
Whispers in the Night
Everything started with a cliché. The lights went out.
Her book dropped to the floor with a bang, the pages fluttering helplessly as they tried to rearrange themselves. Rapid breaths pounded in her ears as she listened, frozen to the spot. Crisp footsteps, a staccato of heels walking confidently across the library. Where were they? Why didn't the librarian appear at her side the moment the thump of a book hitting the floor echoed in the cavernous room?
She waited in her unmoving, soundless position. Nothing.
She fumbled in the folds of her robes for her wand; her fingers found only loose expanses of heavy cloth, not a touch of reassuringly hard wood. Puzzled, she looked onto the desk she was sitting behind. Slanting beams of moonlight flickered across the smooth surface, illuminating a blank sheet of curling parchment and a half-empty inkpot. A quill lay near it, its tip covered in thick black ink. A droplet formed and fell to the desk. It turned from round to flat, slowly forming a splotch of glittering darkness.
She reached out her hand to utter a cleaning spell before the librarian came and saw. There was no wand in her hand, and with a confused frown, she let it drop.
Leaving the book where it lay, the quill in its place, the ink stain marring the polished wood, she stood up. Something creaked in the distance, and she repressed a shiver.
Her right hand balled into a nervous fist, and she forced it to relax, rubbing the fingers together.
The room was too quiet. It was too dark, and there was no one there. She was alone with the books. But that couldn't be right, could it? Was it nighttime? Had she fallen asleep behind her desk and her empty parchment?
Her brow furrowed; she couldn't remember.
As she moved between the looming bookshelves, sinister and tall, moving towards the librarian's desk, she couldn't remember.
There. There it was, a single candle burning with a merry flame. It cast specks of light into the darkness of the library as Madam Pince leaned over an old, yellowing piece of parchment. Strands of hair had escaped her strict bun, and she looked more relaxed than ever. It was her time, and there were no students in the library. The girl glanced at her watch; these were the midnight hours.
Hesitantly, she walked closer to the desk, suddenly nervous. Had she fallen asleep in the library? She didn't want to anger the librarian. So, she walked softly, pausing near the older woman. "Excuse me," she said quietly.
No reaction.
A little more confident, she repeated, louder, "Excuse me, Madam Pince."
The librarian's long fingers moved swiftly across the parchment as she traced a line, mumbling some words aloud to herself. No reaction.
She bit her lip and reached out to touch her shoulder
The black robes were almost invisible in the dim light, and she moved her hand slowly, not wanting to hit her. She made contact with the cloth. Only … she didn't.
With a gnawing terror in the pit of her stomach, she watched as her fingers disappeared into the solid material. She jerked away, eyes wide open, passing through the corner of the librarian's desk.
The Fat Lady ignored her.
No matter how loud she spoke, no matter how madly she waved her transparent arms in front of the large portrait, no matter how she pleaded in her desperate voice, cracking with exhaustion and fear.
She wasn't transparent; she was invisible. As she finally lowered her voice, hair a wild mess of tangles and locks around her face, a fat tear escaped her eye. She could feel it travelling down her cheek, slowly dragging across her jaw line, then escaping her skin in a run for freedom. She looked down; it disappeared before ever reaching the nose of her sensible shoes. A sad, invisible, vanishing thing; like herself.
The light was bright in the hospital wing. Voices drifted out to the corridor. Wizards in bedraggled robes, smelling of blood and sweat rushed by her. She pressed herself against the wall as not to be trampled by running feet, or get in the way of the wounded being levitated into the infirmary. However, a brush of a sleeve against her side, an arm passing through her robes, her body, without resistance, reminded her of her situation.
She moved closer, her silent footsteps pounded loudly in her ears. Surely, someone would notice? But no one did; every sound she made was as invisible as her form, creeping through the doorway of the hospital wing.
So many people, adult wizards and witches lying unconscious, awake, voicelessly screaming in the after effects of Cruciatus or some other unnamed, unknown curse. There was a young witch, barely older than she, dressed in the blue robes of an Auror. Her left hand clenched the side of the mattress, her right lay unmoving, hidden in the cloth of her robes, but it was so immobile, so eerily calm while her other hand clenched the mattress, rumpled the sheets. There was blood oozing from under her fingernails, it left spattered lines of red on the white of the beddings. She whimpered and writhed, and her right arm never moved.
Suddenly, she stopped, lying so very still. Her eyes flew wide open, wild, unseeing, or perhaps seeing too much, her body jerked up to a half sitting position. She opened her mouth and screamed. There was no sound.
Just as suddenly, she slumped back on the bed, blissfully unconscious.
There were wizards and witches lying unconscious in the hospital beds everywhere in the infirmary; no one noticed another.
She drew her eyes away from the young Auror, she was only one of many in that room. Whimpers and pleas, and the smell of blood and vomit filled the air. What had happened? She could not remember.
She closed her eyes and everything went black, the noise died away to the distance. And she breathed in slowly, taking a deep breath, ignoring the nausea stirring in her stomach. The smells vanished too. And just for a moment, she could imagine that everything had been a dream, a nightmare, and soon she would open her eyes in her own bed, resting under the warm blanket. She would meet Harry and Ron in the Great Hall for breakfast and everything would be all right.
Harry.
Her eyes flew open. The chaos around her assaulted her senses once more, but she didn't even notice. Harry. She had to find him. Somehow, she knew with certainty that everything, all of this madness, was connected to him. There was an ache in her heart that longed for knowledge, needed to remember, to understand. But somewhere on the borderline of her consciousness, she knew that the ache was for Harry, her heart's longing for him.
She blinked back the tears that threatened to escape her eyes for no apparent reason. Yes, her heart remembered, but she did not. Thus, she squared her shoulders, swallowed the tears and decided to find her boys. This was not the time to linger on sentimental, self-pitying nonsense; that made no sense at all. It was time to take action, find out what had happened, why she couldn't remember any details of the year, why everything was fuzzy and unfocused in her mind. She didn't like unfocused.
She turned resolutely to walk out of the overpopulated infirmary in her quest for answers.
She managed to take only one step towards the door, when running footsteps accompanied by two heads full of thick red hair followed a levitated body into the room.
Ron.
He was unconscious but seemed unharmed. While one of the twins tried to locate either Madam Pomfrey or an unoccupied bed – she wasn't sure – she approached Ron's body, gently floating in the air, supported by his brother's wand.
He looked surprised, there was a frown on his face that she remembered from the times when someone had beat him in Wizards Chess, or that time in fourth year when Harry's name was spit out by the Goblet of Fire. It was a look that said, I don't believe this is happening; I don't want this to happen.
She resisted the temptation to touch his face, try to smooth that expression off his forehead. After all, it wouldn't do any good, would it? As gravity made his black school robes pool under his body – the only clean one's in the room, she noticed – Fred, maybe George, returned with Madam Pomfrey in tow.
The nurse made a clucking sound with her tongue, and directed the redheads towards a chair by the wall. With a wave of her wand, she Transfigured it into a common hospital bed.
Ron lay on the white sheets, his hair bright red, robes pitch black against the pureness of his bed. With an inappropriate snicker she was reminded of the fairy tale of Snow White: an enchanted dream where you can be awakened with a kiss.
As she thought that, his face twitched, and suddenly blue eyes that she remembered so well, looked straight into hers. Hope blossomed in her chest and she smiled.
She gasped as the sensation of someone passing through her body overwhelmed her. A shaggy red head leaned out of her chest. "Ron, can you hear me? Are you all right?"
The younger boy nodded slowly, his eyes flickering lower to meet the gaze of his brother.
"All –" His voice cracked and he coughed. "All right," he confirmed.
"What happened to you?" Fred, maybe George, asked.
Ron closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his brow was furrowed in puzzlement. He stared straight ahead. "I don't … remember," he whispered.
She let out the breath she'd been holding and smiled sadly, nothing was ever easy.
Ron stretched in the bed in an attempt to get more comfortable, his long legs dangled over the side. He froze in movement. Scared, little boy eyes locked on one of his brothers. "Is … is everybody else all right?"
"Our family is fine." He touched Ron's hand in a gesture of reassurance.
Ron relaxed back into the comforting softness of his bed, but as his brother tried to pull his hand away, Ron grabbed hold, not letting go. "What about Harry and Hermione?"
The twins exchanged a hesitant glance. "Um, Harry's fine, Ron. We'll track him down and ask him to come and see you. Is that okay?"
Ron didn't seem to notice them not even mentioning Hermione. He relaxed. "Yes, find Harry." And then he closed his eyes, as one of the twins gently pulled a blanket over his head, soft snores reached her ears.
The twins left the room. Presumably to find Harry, she thought. And she sat by the bedside of one of her best friends, not daring to touch, and waiting for Harry to come.
His face was white, colourless. Dark hair hung in limp tufts around it. Brownish red covered his face and neck in a scattering of spots. Blood, she thought. Perhaps it went even lower, covering his robes, trenching his hands in the dried liquid, but that was all hidden. His black robes, a cloak thrown carelessly around his shoulders were covered in a thick caking of brown mud. He, himself, was hidden. There was only white and black, and earthly brown, and a lingering sent of old blood and fresh tears. He was a stranger.
Then, he closed his eyes for a second and turned his head. His eyes met hers and moved away again. But they were familiar. Tortured green eyes. She smiled. The sun peeked into the room, even finding them in this concealed little corner. It was morning, and Harry was here.
She smiled.
Madam Pomfrey stepped closer to Ron's bed. She frowned as her wand touched his forehead. "Still not awake?" she asked Harry, who sat with his one hand resting on the edge of Ron's mattress. He shook his head.
The nurse sighed. "Very well, call me if anything changes." She started to move away and then turned to look back. "Rest for a moment, Harry," she said. "Go find something to eat; you've been sitting here all day."
Harry shook his head again and turned his eyes back to Ron.
Madam Pomfrey smiled under her nose and fingered her wand; a warm blanket wrapped itself around Harry, who stiffened in surprise, then pulled it closer around his body.
It was early evening, and the last lone sunbeams and the flickering torches on the walls cast a soft, reddish light. Harry leaned closer to the bed and his head drooped. It fell to his shoulder at first, then as his posture relaxed, he was resting with his torso on Ron's hospital bed, the woollen blanked generously covering his uncomfortably folded body. A quiet snore escaped his mouth.
She longed for a warm blanket of her own, as she at there, on the cold floor, looking at her boys.
She longed for her memory.
She wished she were herself again.
She woke to screams.
Was it that young Auror crying, calling out as though the very essence of life were sucked out, drop by drop, one scream at a time? No. It was just another body lying somewhere among all the others.
She closed her eyes again, and the world faded to black.
The next time she looked around, Madam Pomfrey was pulling a crisp white sheet over a green robed wizard.
Ron's hand was hanging, limp, over the side of the bed. His eyes were still closed and he was breathing slowly and deeply. Harry hadn't moved.
All around them people slept, walked, moaned, nursed the injured, ate, whimpered. Someone stifled a quiet laugh behind a screen, and someone snorted in response.
Madam Pomfrey floated the body of the green robed wizard – Order member, friend, child, father, brother? – out of room.
She followed them with her eyes as they moved along; there, present, yet invisible.
She closed her eyes and looked away. When you vanish from the world, would someone notice?
"What happened?" Harry was sitting next to Ron, staring intensely at the redhead.
He shifted uncomfortably and bit his lip. "The meeting … I was sitting at the Order meeting and –"
"And?"
She saw how Harry's jaw had clenched and how his right hand stayed in his robes as he leaned forward to hear the answer to his question.
"And nothing," Ron said slowly.
Harry looked away quickly, but Ron could see relief flickering in his eyes before it disappeared under iron self-control. She frowned.
"Harry …" Ron hesitated. "What did happen? I mean all these people here." He made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the room. "I just … don't remember."
"The final battle, Ron. We had the final battle."
"What?" He sat up. "How did – What about Voldemort?"
"We won." He kept the response simple, short, emotionless, but she noticed a sadness and anger in Harry's voice that he wasn't able to disguise. "Voldemort is dead."
Silence.
"Harry! We won! We won and it's over." Ron grabbed him in a hug, laughing loudly. "You-Know-Who is really gone, it's over," he repeated, quieter.
Harry nodded against his shoulder.
Ron pushed him away and held him at arms length. His eyes searched Harry's. "Then why –" His hands lowered and he looked around, asking slowly, "Where is –"
"She's dead."
Hermione closed her eyes and stifled a hysterical laugh, threatening to escape her lips.
She followed Harry out of the hospital wing, through the corridors, up to Gryffindor Tower.
The boys' dormitory was empty; Ron was still in the infirmary, the other boys … she didn't know. Sitting with injured relatives, friends; mourning the dead; out, celebrating the victory.
Harry sat on his four-poster bed. His posture slumped and he rested his head on his hands. His shoulders shook.
He stayed so for some time; she couldn't tell. When he straightened, he took off the ragged robes and let them fall to the floor unceremoniously. He pulled off his boots.
The sweater came over his head as he sat on the bed. And as he laid down and pulled the covers up to his shoulders, the Dark Mark gleamed in the moonlight.
She smiled at the quiet snores escaping his mouth, and stepped closer. Her eyes didn't leave the mark on his forearm. As she moved to touch it, a shiver of pain travelled down her arm, and she could see Harry's face as he held the tip of his wand against her skin.
She had longed to remember; now, she did.
Her fingers, the palest of white, passed though his hair. He stirred, and she pulled away.
"Why did you choose this?" Her voice trembled only a little. "Why did you become this?" She bit her lip and looked with sadness at the sleeping man. Her hand rested on his cheek. "Why, my friend?"
His deep green eyes blinked open.
The room was empty and dark; there was nothing there. Yet, he felt a coldness cocoon his skin, a sent of vanilla hovered in the air.
And if he listened just carefully enough, he could hear them. The whispers in the night.
You all know that reviews are the sustenance of fanfic writers, so be wonderful and let me hear your opinions!