Several quotes in this chapter.

The title belongs to a fantastic story of a friend of mine.

See if you identify the phrase of "Wuthering Heights" I used.

See you at the end.

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Hunger and the beast

The know-it-all raised her hand as her partner-to-be stared at her, amused. Advanced alchemy was much less interesting that it sounded, so by interrupting the professor's endless speech, she was doing everyone a favour. Even the lecturer, who, having worked as an auror for most of his life, didn't remember nearly as much alchemy as he was supposed to.

"Miss Granger" Auror Albert called, lowering the book he had been reading aloud, as he did in every class. "Our female celebrity. Another question, I assume?"

Apparently, the incident with the philosopher's stone was well known among alchemists. The comment was made without malice, and she just ignored it.

"If I follow you correctly" Harry snorted: of course she did, she had read the same book in advance, "alchemy can create gold and prolong life. How come it can't get rid of hunger? Lust? Sorrow?"

The professor blinked, white eyelids covering pink irises only for a moment. The man's albinism was kind of hypnotizing, especially when he walked beside his own partner, Isabel, a spectacular woman who had only one white thing in her whole anatomy: her teeth. But Isabel was their training auror, so both war heroes were used to the contrast.

"Potions can numb those instincts" was the Auror Albert's reply.

"They can't make them disappear."

The professor left the book aside and sat on a corner of his desk, playing reflexively with his short beard.

"And why would we want them to disappear?"

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Faint light had glittered on the portkey as it turned, hanging from Harry's hand.

"Ron's" he had muttered while extending his arm towards her.

And with a mental sigh, Hermione had realized they were not following procedure, again. Honestly, what was so bad about rules?

"Now you'll want to go there and save some other people" she had summarized.

"Go back" he had confirmed. "Take the merchandise, make sure it gets to the right hands"

That's why they have their own cold war going on as they crawl back to battle. They already did all the talking, all the "you are a single parent to three" and "Ron'll kill me if something happens to you", but both of them have the means to save friends, and none of them leaves without the other; they were still arguing as Hermione spelled the retrieved objects to disappear straight back to Ron's hands, that was the end of the open argument.

And frankly it isn't as if they could draw more attention to them as they sneak between enemies' constantly moving feet, going from corpse to corpse to see if there's someone still to save.

Max has a hole were his stomach was supposed to be. She puts him to hibernate, but his body is dying faster than she can move him. She knows that according to triage, he's black: he must be left behind; but those she has reached were beyond even this amount of hope.

Beatrice's skull is open, dripping blood and cerebrospinal fluid. Harry finds her half sitting on a corner, twitching as a shortcut robot. He holds her hand. She might have felt him, after all, or maybe that smile was just another reflex of her broken body. The urge to go, to find someone alive, to find hope, to stop looking at her dying eyes, grows with the passing minutes. Memories of this dying woman he has barely known, mix with more familiar ones, of another woman, another soldier, no less brave than this one, whose death would mean his. Strange, how the experience of death brings life forth. In the edge of his consciousness, what transpired between them in the secured room.

Something holds Hermione's leg. The lioness shakes it violently, swallowing the scream as she withdraws from the threat. It's a stranger, a girl; the wand in her hand lacks the better half. This enemy is in much better shape than the aurors, but Hermione can't hold it against her: she's dying anyway. The auror barely hesitates before taking her near Max.

Harry deviates the spell when it's about to hit Melody, and is nearly caught because of it, but he moves fast enough. Then, a scream. A female one. He looks for Hermione, biting his urge to cry out her name; then he remembers their empathy, and learns through it she's OK, if shaken. He can only hope the screamer was none of his friends. He finds his partner anyway; she's performing a magical CPR on another lost cause. A look, and he learns not to tell her so; she knows it anyway.

"Let me" he says, not losing a hearbeat between her leaving the nearly corpse, and his taking her place. One… Two… Three… She watches him for a moment, silent tears dripping from her eyes. "There's another one 'round the corner" he suggests. Only when she's several meters away, he slows down, lets the auror rest. Another auror meets his eyes, identical resignation in his expression. 'There's nothing else you could do.'

The first signs of collapse aren't exactly missed –and it was to be expected, with all those spells hitting walls underground- but everything happens so fast, they don't even have time to gather. Through fleeing soldiers of both sides and cracking pillars, she stares at him, he stares at her, and she nods. Four injured aurors are on his side of the growing wall of rock, and she might not have strength or magic enough to safely transport all of them to the nursery, anyway. As they start losing sight of each other, the words she said shortly after, echo in his mind: "I love you", she said. "I want you". It's love, and it's guilt, and it's hunger. His last look to her is openly haunted. He activates the portkey a second before his place is taken by the biggest rock.

So she turns, and goes to find more corpses, even more corpses than she found earlier. She cries silently as the dying ones cry much more loudly. Memories are her haven. In her mind, she's solving a puzzle with Harry –seven bottles-. She's flying on a hippogriff. She's in the Ministry of Magic, and Harry is fussing all over her. She's standing by Harry's side in a graveyard. She's flying on a dragon, and seeing Harry resurrect in Hagrid's arms.

But she's also in a nightmare of falling rocks and blood, so much like the one that was Hogwarts, those many years ago. And she's protecting something she holds dear, something inside of her, but she can't remember.

Nor has she time to do so.

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"Stay still!" Hermione ordered, frowning. Harry straightened his back, and with it, the upper half of his body; nowadays there were three people in the world that had that effect on him: McGonagall, Auror Isabel and Hermione, and despite her age, the latter was the one who bore the strongest effect when furious. The girl rubbed the bruise of his neck with hands that were still fairly gentle in comparison with the lecture. "Honestly... This is so unprofessional... Even if you're married ... Can't you be more cautious?"

Was she really upset? Harry sought her gaze, but the witch forced him to regain the posture. He fixated his eyes instead on the multi-coloured lights of the TV while wondering if she had inadvertently glamoured his neck since this morning. If someone else in the department had noticed, they certainly wouldn't have left him alone for the rest of the year or so. But maybe the bruise wasn't that scandalous and Hermione was simply overreacting. He shuddered at her touch and looked away. Having her working on his neck felt strange. Anyway, she was his best friend, wasn't she? So he gathered enough courage to mutter an excuse:

"We were just saying goodbye!" Hermione snorted, but after a while, he went on: "These mother-daughter trips are disturbing. Mrs Weasley has to stop being so possessive."

The improvised nurse hushed him angrily.

At the time, they were in Hermione's bachelor home, a sort of living room plus kitchen plus bedroom, all in one, which she insisted was enough for her needs at the moment. It was certainly practical to be able to summon everything from the bed. There were bookshelves from floor to ceiling all around, Harry found funny not to see the colour of the walls. Anyway, the most important thing in the room today, was the TV set. Ron found it extremely boring ("So you can watch it only from that side" he had concluded in a disappointed tone of voice as he circled the black box), but for Harry, watching TV had been a forbidden pleasure during his childhood, and now, married to a witch, he didn't have electricity; he found in the muggle magical box an attraction comparable to the one Ron felt for food.

"It'll have to do" the girl sighed heavily.

"Thank you" he muttered.

"No lights off" she answered with a severity her childish pajamas belied. "I still have lots of paperwork to work on."

Her writing desk was in fact covered with files that reached well over her head, though she had built the pile leaving a window-like space right between the level of her eyes, and the TV. Harry wondered if she had used magic to do so. Now he just sat cheerfully beside her, not doubting for a second of her capability of following whatever emission they chose. The bright witch was as good at multitasking as she was at everything else. Despite her nose being stuck in paper, she even managed to explain to him, between dialogues, the teen series that was on air. She herself had apparently been following it when off duty.

"Let's see if I understood," Harry summarized, frowning as if it was a particularly tricky Transfiguration homework: "Joey has known the blond… Dawson? for like… forever, she sleeps in his room, they communicate with their eyes and all the romantic stuff, and that's why she's with everyone except him?"

"Chip" the girl asked; he made three of those levitate to her mouth, and she bit them without as much as a delay in her writing. It was a habit they had picked during training. Pragmatic and effective.

"I don't get it"

Hermione didn't answer until way after the series was over. Folder closed, lights off, she sat beside him, the remote in the hand whose elbow lied on her raised knee.

"I don't get it either". Having forgotten the question, he just stared at her as she clarified: "Apparently, Joey's afraid, Harry. Afraid of her feelings. She's not sure she knows how to be an individual anymore, how to live without him. There are people trying to find that kind of closeness, without fully appreciating how dangerous it might be. She's on the other side of it: she's paralysed by fear."

A noise made them both turn around suddenly, wands at the ready; but it was only Ron, crawling through the window and straight to the bed.

"I didn't know he was staying here," Harry commented, removing one of his mate's shoes as Hermione removed the other one. He ignored the tightening of his chest at the idea.

"Only when he gets drunk at the bar next door," she replied.

Harry chuckled, and from the glow in the girl's gaze, he knew she wasn't remotely as angry as she wanted him to believe. The TV's multi-coloured lights highlighted Ron's open mouth and huge feet.

"Have you discussed it with her?"

"Sorry?" Harry asked, turning to Hermione's profile, cut against the window, a vague shadow with a remote control in her hand.

"About being partners..."

"Come on, Hermione..." he laughed, running his hand through his hair. "It's more or less taken for granted, ever since we entered the Academy..."

"Did you explained it to her?" Hermione insisted.

Harry shifted uncomfortably.

"She has to know, Harry. Her decision must count."

She heard him mutter something that sounded suspiciously like "… find the information by herself…"

"I don't think you understand it fully. Being partners is a professional relationship, but the magic at its base... Are you even listening?"

Actually, he was more or less distracted. Memories of the night before crammed into his mind, and when he came back to reality, he was sure that Hermione had seen the stupid smile on his face, and that she had not liked it. And he was even surer once the girl hit him on the head with the remote.

"I don't think you're understanding the importance of this," she reprimanded. "It's not just the ÉmPathós, nor is it just the circle, or the alchemy, or the bracelet. It's a combo of diverse magic that interact..."

"Ok, fine," Harry protested, raising his hands, "but Ginny is already not fancying that three–days–long ceremony; if she learns that it used to be for marriage... Do we really have to tell her? Most people don't know."

Hermione was silent for a moment, opened her mouth, closed it again, and finally decided to speak.

"Harry," she sighed; Harry's skin tickled when she said his name like that – this will use everything we feel, and it will make it permanent. It's going to…

"Yes, but it does not interfere with our will... It will not force us to anything..."

"The suggestion will always be there," the sorceress insisted quietly. "This type of magic is designed to... well... be consummated..."

Despite the darkness and the distortion of colours provided by the television, Harry saw her blush, and mirrored it. He almost growls in frustration.

"There are lots of family members who become partners" the wizard pointed out.

"It's not the same, Harry. And you know it."

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The doors hit the wall; Harry is already turning around. He felt her coming. But he's also giving his report, and Luna is not alone to receive it. Hermione pants as she looks at him from the other side of the room.

"Thank Merlin" Ron breathes out.

"We were about to incarcerate him… both of them" the other politician comments, sitting back as he contemplates the scene, intensely amused. Hermione would be strongly reminded of Slughorn, if she was in the mood.

But she isn't. The electricity in Harry's eyes is unmistakable, and the tapestry starts waving with the magic they emanate together.

Luna is the one who breaks the silence.

"Our healers are having problems to control all those new Shinigami."

None of them blink. They all know what that creature (literally existent or not) stands for. How many lives lost, how many more waiting to be saved, and she would help –as she assists in so many matters not belonging to her work description-. However, she needs another second, he needs another second to be sure she's fine, and she'll just stand here, hoping that time cost no extra life.

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"Isn't it enough study for one day?"

"Ron," Hermione scolded, looking up from the thick book she was drilling into Harry's head, "for the last time: if you want to leave, just leave."

"You don't even have an exam..."

Hermione rolled her eyes, but she explained patiently. Again.

"There are reasons for the aurors to be updated. At least by reading the circulars. It's our lives we're betting..."

"Herbology," Ron interrupted jokingly.

Hermione slammed the book.

"Let's see where you two would be if I hadn't learned about the Devil's Snare by the time we faced it in first year."

"Maybe we should leave the rest for tomorrow," Harry suggested, standing up while masking his reluctance; he didn't like studying, but it was much easier with Hermione than without her.

"You stay here," Hermione demanded, turning dragon eyes to him.

Harry sat down at once. Ron looked from one to the other and crossed his arms before pointing out:

"It's one o'clock in the morning..."

"Well, if we can't start studying until James falls asleep, this delay is the logical result," Hermione concluded.

"And you are in no condition to face this kind of schedule," Ron completed.

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Screams fill the infirmary. Not the cries of the wounded, nor of the dying, no. Harry winces, deafened, while holding his mentor in what is more a key than a hug. And the woman struggles. She fights as what she is: the most experienced auror remaining in the department (except for the ghosts, of course). Harry feels as if he were holding McGonagall; it's pathetic and uncomfortable, not dignified at all. Desperate. Harry remembers this same woman's first rule: "a cold mind is the best of weapons"; and it's just the one she has lost.

Over the stretchers, he looks at Hermione, who in turn looks up from the dying man she just sedated. Harry doesn't dare ask her to paralyze their mentor. Isabel deserves more than the coldness and helplessness of an "Incarcerous". Nevertheless, his eardrums seem about to explode, so he closes his eyes and breathe. Despite the volume, he doesn't understand the woman's words, beyond the demands, the anguish, the denial, the simple and visceral need to go with her partner, wherever he might go.

It's Hermione who stands directly in front of her and, looking into her eyes, says quietly:

"Albert is dead, Isabel."

Funny, how those words resound despite the background noise. And now the screams are more agonizing if possible. Harry thinks he caught a vehement and desperate protest. The fervour drives him to believe. The despair... not so much.

"You must calm down, Professor," Hermione compels, perhaps using magic, Harry couldn't say. "We can't understand you like this."

"He can't be dead!" the auror exclaims, more coherent now. "I would know! I'd feel it here!" her fist forcefully hits her own chest between heart and stomach. "He's alive! And you have left him there! I don't need any backup, just give me my wand and let me go…"

Sobs choke the rest of the sentence while Harry holds her up once the woman's knees don't take her weight. He crosses a glance with his own partner. They understood. If their mentors violated the rules, if they became intimate, the depth of their bond in theory would be enough to feel the other one's life force. How to withhold her, then? How to follow protocol? Twenty years before they would have helped her, been her backup. On the other hand, despair itself could be driving her to confess a disciplinary transgression that would surely cost her career.

"If you're right," says Hermione, slowly, "a rescue squad will be arranged..."

"I am right…"

"... but for now, we need your strength here..."

"I'm not here!" the auror protests categorically; Hermione's mouth remains open, not knowing what to say anymore.

Harry's state of mind must be worse than that of his partner, because a moment later he's on the floor, holding his groin, breathless, as his mentor disappears with someone's wand. In a haze of pain, he sees Hermione nearly grab the woman, follow her out. Silence remains behind, deafening. He knows Hermione failed even before managing to stand up, without real conviction.

"Let her go," the occupant of the first bed pleads; Harry turns to him, finding another of his elders; under the sheet, there's a void where the legs should be. "I hadn't go to Hogwarts when Albert and Isabel had already exchanged bracelets. Let her go."

Hermione is back, panting, and in her eyes he sees she heard. "He's more myself than I am". The sorcerer gazes from her to the entrance of the infirmary. His mind tells him he'll not see Isabel again, but it is not as if he had digested it already.

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"This rune... I know I saw it somewhere!" Young Hermione frowned and bit her lip.

Harry looked at the door nervously; It wouldn't be long before the examiners found them. And they would be expelled from training. Obstacle races were no joke.

"What does it seem to you?"

"I don't know, Hermione, a horse?" he muttered, on edge.

"The minister has a pack of unicorns," Luna commented out of the blue. "That's how he avoids being poisoned."

That made sense.

"Hunger," Hermione whispered, opening her eyes. "Yes, I'm sure. Beasts need food."

From the spell the apprentice began to whisper, Harry wouldn't remember half a word. Just on the last syllable, he pushed her away from the line of sight while a lumos passed right over their disillusioned heads. The rest of the team remained in the corner, except for Luna, who always seemed protected by the alternative dimension in which she lived all the time; Harry didn't even wonder how the trainer didn't hear her humming. The green-eyed wizard himself stopped breathing until the senior passed by.

"Beast. What does a beast need?"

"Food?" Harry whispered, thinking about Ron's plate.

"And females. And territory" Hermione suggested, and began to recite another spell.

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Harry walks through the shadows, taking refuge in the infinity of corners of the house. Even since having finished the most urgent paperwork and being able to set foot in the ministry hall, he has been out there, rambling through a very well supplied street of brothels that reeked of sweat and alcohol, where invitations and laughter came from everywhere, tempting him with the promise of oblivion. He didn't go into any of them. Something told him all the girls in this street wouldn't satiate this rabid hunger he -now more than ever- felt growing into him. But oh how he wanted to try. Starving eyes slid down countless faces, countless bodies, seeking fruitlessly those curves he's certain would fit perfectly in his hands, curves he has felt so many times against him during training, though often covered with much more modesty than the ones he saw today. He didn't put it in words, no. He'd rather think he just misses Ginny, her docile lush body, the discretion and the veil of respectability that marriage provides to cover with an appearance of decency the satisfaction of desire. The auror does not admit even to himself how convenient it was to forget that the object of such desire was forbidden. He flatly refuses to remember what the illusion showed him, or his reactions. It's not as if he didn't care for Ginny, anyway.

The shadows are much scarcer in his partner's home than they were in his. Hermione's presence is balsam and obsession, a drug. He couldn't sleep in his own house, and he certainly won't sleep here.

It seems to him as if the air thickened around him. This place brings forth so many memories, as if one evaded him, making his mind wander through the others as it sought clues. Harry has never liked unsolved mysteries.

A soft crack of old wood made his eyes find its source.

Hermione walks down the stairs slowly. An old tunic effectively shields her body from the sharp cold, but not so much from your eyes. Still hidden in the shadows, he watches her descent, the gentle rocking of her hips, the movements of her graceful legs and the cloth drawing the space between her thighs. Suddenly he cannot breathe, in pure rage. Impulsively, he walks forward and awaits for her to notice him. She'd have perceived his presence anyway, had she been as alert as she demanded their apprentices to be.

She does meet his eyes, and deviates her gaze at once. Harry doesn't lower his. His temper subsides as he askes softly:

"Are you all right?"

She is his partner, after all.

The witch sighs.

"We took it for a memory charm," she said; the frustration in her voice would make him smile, but he also hears the tremor, and it's hard to control the urge to climb the stairs and narrow the space between them until... he doesn't know. "It's been a while since we made such a stupid mistake."

"It was dark magic," the auror concludes. "They are masters of disguise"

She nods, unconvinced. Her hands are restless and wringing, like when she's nervous. She takes another step downstairs.

"Are you all right?"

Now she's staring into his eyes.

"I can't get rid of the... frustration..." he whispers through clenched teeth.

Something primary shines in the green eyes; Hermione is fascinated, as if vampire pheromones were involved.

Not that she hasn't imagined that the effect over him would be similar or worse than what she experienced, but to hear him say it makes her skin tickle in a strange way. She bits her lower lip. His eyes automatically deviate to the gesture. He's unwilling to stop himself from commenting:

"I see you yourself have found a way."

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Hermione slid quietly from Ron's arms and stood beside the bed. He was smiling in his sleep, for once not only satiated but also confident. She closed her eyes, feeling like the worst of traitors. From the moment she had spotted him, she had virtually thrown herself to his arms –something she wasn't sure she had ever done before–, kissing him with all there was in her. Which was enormously messed up. He had welcomed her and matched her enthusiasm, carrying her to the bed and making sweet love to her with all the experience of almost twenty years of marriage, using his magic both figuratively and literally. And yet, only when he had turned her around, when his caresses could be mistaken for anyone's, when the memory of the illusion she had been in today had washed over her, and before she could push it away, only then she had screamed her pleasure to the room.

She sat on the stairs, her face between her hands, hoping she could, once again, ignore what it meant.

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The moonlight suddenly seeps through the curtains. The glow in the green eyes is there, again. Hermione wouldn't be surprised to see him become a wolf. It's nothing if not territorial.

Harry sees her blush to her neck (a graceful neck, by all means adorable; a neck he'd die for), knows that he has caused it, and the idea is intoxicating. He's about to confess that he'd love to erase from that neck, and the rest, the very memory of the last hour.

"No, I haven't" the witch wants to answer; and it would be true. She has only proven to herself what she had known all along: that it wouldn't work; that the thirst she feels isn't to be quenched, ever. But she can't really tell him this, could she? On the more material, physical side of the question, he's right. And yet, she ponders denying it –after all, the heads of several babies have come down the same channel, there's no way simple sex can change her pace that much–, but she decides it's ridiculous.

A part of him –a part that isn't mad with rage - thinks, intoxicated, that she's always lovely when she blushes like that.

"You can tell" she answers.

The confession mutates the auror's expression. He looks even wilder, if that's possible. His answer is measured anyway,.

"I can always tell."

Hermione nods, but swallows hard. Even though the magic in bonding has been altered to limit it to danger, so that every intimate detail of the life of an auror does not put his partner in embarrassing situations, it doesn't matter. Mix intensive auror training with being paired up with someone for twenty years, and you have a depth of intimacy very much like that of twins. No need for empathy.

"I knew it too. Every time."

And the silence is electric and dangerous. What they have hangs by a thread. One more admission, and the reasons why loyalty demands them to be split apart will be evident. And it'll feel like being mutilated.

Hermione descends. The tunic draws the space between her legs. She tries to walk past her partner and into the dining room, where the fire would surely crack and dance as joyfully as ever; but as she passes by him, the sorcerer grabs her hand, or rather, closes it over her closed fist. Their bracelets tinkle softly as they collide. None of them turns around. They just stand there, breathing in each other's scent. The wizard suddenly hungers for treacle pie. He refuses to acknowledge the fantasy of pouring syrup on a certain graceful neck and licking it sloppily, giving it time to dribble to that space between her breasts –that place that deepened with breastfeeding, and yes, he noticed, and remembers- so his tongue would have to track it there… And he draws a very cracked breath, still fighting back the image that he has just decided he'll ignore. And longing with all his might, to be under some kind of dark magic, to have an excuse.

The woman slowly opens her fist. Her short nails draw tickling lines in the palm of his hand, and then, between his fingers. For a moment Harry hopes she would intertwine hers with his. Then he hates himself for it.

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The Spanish version is shorter. I hope the hungering effect remains. I adored that imagen of the saving others, but of course my favorite remains being that last scene. And what do you think of her return? The waving of the tapestry and all?