A/N: So. It's been a while. We left Harry, Hermione, and (almost) everyone they know and love standing on a patch of highly magical moorland, and the unknown menace who's been threatening the wizarding world has just revealed themselves to be Neville Longbottom...onwards!
Chapter 21: Strategy Space
The Black Riding, Levisham, North Yorkshire
21st December 2009, 4:22pm
She could have blamed the magic in the air, or the bitter cold that lay just beneath it for her sudden breathlessness, but really Hermione knew it was nothing more than pure disbelief.
Neville.
Neville, who she had chatted with at the Ministry party less than a week before. Neville, who had been her friend since they were all children; who had pulled the Sword of Gryffindor from the Sorting Hat, and shielded her body with his in the Department of Mysteries after she had been cursed by Dolohov.
"No," she said again, softly, the word escaping in a puff of frosted air that shone silver in the deeping twilight. Harry shifted at her side, and when Hermione looked at him he turned his eyes from where Neville stood, flanked by Ron and Pansy, to meet her gaze. She could see her own disbelief reflected back at her, but beneath it something else: a grim certainty of purpose that she had not seen on his face in over a decade.
It was the truth of loving him, Hermione knew, to live with the fact that Harry was the person who would always run towards rather than away, would throw himself in front of curses and lay down his wand and walk straight into the flames. She hoped he could see it in her face as she squeezed his hand, that this was what she chose - that he, Harry, was what she chose - even knowing just how easily he could break her heart. Even knowing what he was about to do, and knowing that she would love him for it all the more.
Harry swallowed, hard, then nodded. For a moment, he squeezed Hermione's fingers tightly between his, and then he dropped her hand, and stepped forward.
"Neville," Harry said, trying to keep his voice even as he took first one slow step, and then another, towards where Neville stood. Harry carefully raised his empty hands to chest level, and glanced first at Ron, whose face was fixed in an expression of deep dismay, and then at Pansy, who didn't look much better.
Where's Dudley? Harry wondered, and felt the dread settle even heavier in his stomach with the realisation that his cousin wouldn't have let Pansy leave without a fight. "Nev?" he said again, unable to keep a slight questioning tone out of the word, and he saw a flash of something like satisfaction across his friend's face.
Around them the hundred or so witches and wizards who had been invited for the Yule celebration stood frozen; spouses clasping one another's hands and parents clutching their children tightly to themselves; breath rising on clouds into the wintry dusk as they watched, eyes wide with horror. Catching movement from the corner of his eye, Harry noted that Theo's hand was moving slowly to his wand, and gave a minute shake of his head. Not yet. Nott's eyes flashed but he - and the handful of other seasoned fighters who were at the front of the crowd - went still. Percy Weasley was still down, and apparently no one else was as willing as Harry to risk getting cursed.
His eyes lit briefly on Teddy, pale and mousy-haired with fear. As he met his godfather's gaze Teddy assumed an expression so defiantly outraged that it would have been funny under most other circumstances, and his hair darkened into unruly black waves, eyes transforming from their customary grey to a very familiar green. Harry swallowed against his suddenly tight throat, and glanced up to Draco, whose hand tightened on Teddy's shoulder as he gave Harry the briefest of nods.
"Harry," Neville answered finally, recalling Harry's attention from his godson. He'd been looking past Harry until then, at the Trilithon, the longing on his face almost lascivious, but now his tone was conversational, his mouth lifting on one side as he tracked Harry's progress towards him, spinning his wand between his fingers all the while.
"Far enough I think," he remarked casually, when Harry was standing about ten feet away, and Ron moved, quick as a flash, to blast a curse into the ground at Harry's feet. From the corner of his eye he saw several people jump, but Harry managed only to flinch, though he had clenched his teeth so tightly it was making his jaw hurt.
He glanced at Ron, whose face was tight and miserable even as he held his wand steadily pointed at Harry's chest. Ron's eyes were turned away from him, and Harry knew he must be looking at Callie, out there in the crowd, and was abruptly glad that Hugo was too young to have joined the Yule festivities and was instead at home with Molly and several of his cousins.
Seeing the longing in Ron's expression, Harry fought the temptation to look back at Hermione behind him. The firm certainty of knowing she was there warred with the regret of walking away from her, and abruptly his fear and confusion rolled away, and all he could feel was utter fury as he looked back at Neville.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he managed to grind out, and was rewarded by a flash of shock and something that might have been approval on Neville's face before he seemed to wrestle it into a frown.
"Taking what's mine," he spat. "Or did you think -"
"And what is it, precisely, that you think is yours?" Narcissa Malfoy's voice surprised them both, ringing out from behind Harry, icier than the wind that swept across the moor. For a moment he almost did look back, but he managed to hold himself still, watching as Neville's face crumpled into an expression of utter loathing. Pansy and Ron swung their wands to point to Harry's right and left, and he imagined the Black sisters standing straight and tall, flanking -
"What you seem so desperate to squander," Neville sneered. "The Yule gift is -"
"Is not for one alone to take." It was Andromeda who spoke now, her words cutting across the question in Harry's head of what precisely the fuck a Yule gift was. There was more kindness in Andy's voice than in Narcissa's, but not much, and her tone grew more imperious as she continued, "Is this what it has all been for? Something you cannot possibly hope to harness alone?"
"Do not presume to tell me what I can and cannot do, blood traitor," Neville snarled.
Harry swallowed hard. Neville had thrown the insult with feeling, so different from Kreacher, who seemed to use the term towards Ron almost affectionately these days. It was so at odds with Neville's usual mild-mannered tone that it was this almost more than anything else that made Harry look closer, watching the way the expressions moved like oil across Neville's face, hatred writhing across his usually open features even as his eyes stayed fixed and glassy.
Something - not quite hope, but something - uncoiled at the edges of Harry's dread.
"And what would you do with the gift?"
Now it was Hermione who spoke, and Harry remembered Draco's words - Widow, wife and warrior - as he felt a flush of warmth at the thought of her standing there, so heartbreakingly beautiful; so wonderfully brave.
"Wouldn't you rather it be a surprise?" Neville asked. He smiled, broad and nasty, then reached into his pocket, pulling out what looked like a handful of glittering gems, until he tossed one each to Ron and Pansy, the gems growing into jewelled circlets in midair. Both Ron and Pansy caught them without looking - without their wands so much as wavering - and placed them on their heads as Neville raised the third to his.
There was a lash of powerful magic when he set it on his hair, like accidentally trying to step across a raised ward, and Harry felt the Trilithon's strange power pulse through the ground beneath his feet. From the faint cries of alarm that came from the surrounding crowd, he couldn't have been the only one.
It was the circlets, clearly, and looking at them, glittering red and green, Harry remembered Andromeda had spoken about diadems - something about holly - so clearly these were important to whatever it was that Neville was trying to do. Harry's mind began to race as things finally started to make some sort of sense. Selwyn, Fawley … Parkinson? Harry made the connection as his eyes lit on where Pansy's left hand was still resting on the circlet, her fingers stroking one of the emeralds, her expression stricken. Andromeda had said the Black diadems were goblin-made, and if these were what Neville had been after then could that explain why that goblin had turned up tortured in Haringey? Could it be for these that Antioch Selwyn and Emilius Ogden had been killed?
But then why wait? Harry wondered. There had been almost two years between Ogden's death and Goyle's murder - which still didn't seem to fit - and then there had been the break-in at Gringotts - the Ministry Ball - things seeming to move at speed - so why -
"Do you really mean to stand in my way, Harry?"
Neville's question snapped Harry back to the moment at hand. He realised abruptly that he was starting to get cold. Something of the Trilithon's magic must have been keeping him warm, but whatever had changed in the moment that they'd put the circlets on had drawn the power away, and Harry struggled not to shiver as he set his jaw mulishly.
"Sorry for the inconvenience," he managed to bite out. "But I won't let you do this."
Neville barked a nasty laugh. "Potter, you don't even know what I'm doing, so I'd like to see you try to stop me."
Something indefinable stirred in the air, and Harry felt another terrible pulse of power.
"Happy to oblige," he said, going for his wand at the same time that Narcissa's voice rang out once again, sharp and imperative -
"No."
Neville's face twisted with an unfamiliar rage, and he, Ron and Pansy raised their wands together, but Harry, seizing his moment, threw himself forward, hearing Hermione shout something behind him even as he barrelled into Neville's torso.
"Pass the salt, Hermione."
She opened her eyes with a start, realised that she must have nodded off, and felt her cheeks flame with embarrassment. The room was warm, the electric light familiar and comforting. The scents of Christmas wound themselves around her, warm as cats: the sweet smell of slightly burned parsnips from the kitchen; the oily richness of the pine tree that her dad always placed a little too close to the radiator; and close at hand, the expensive Chanel perfume that her mum only wore on special occasions. Any moment now her dad would come banging through the tinsel-framed doorway proudly holding up a turkey that might be anything from lightly singed to borderline cremated, and here was Hermione, half-asleep at the table.
"Sorry, Mum," she started to say, and then paused. Her hands were pressed to the tartan tablecloth, as though anchoring her in place. A crystal salt shaker sat just the other side of the dining table, the only thing on there. Hermione frowned at it, confused, then turned to look at Helen. Her mum was sitting in her usual place at the top of the table, hands clasped tightly in front of her, shoulders rigidly straight. "What did you say?" Hermione asked slowly.
"Pass the salt," Helen repeated quietly, meeting Hermione's gaze. Above them, the pendant light flickered, the loose connection that her dad was always meaning to fix casting odd shadows on her mum's face. Salt. Hermione thought. Her parents were nearly as nuts about salt as they were about sugar. Bad for your heart, her Dad always said.
As though reacting to the remembered admonition, Hermione's heart gave a strange, flip-flopping stutter in her chest. "We never have salt."
Helen made a little humming noise, her eyes straying to the shaker. It looked odd, the heavy cut crystal and glittering, engraved silver out of place in her parents' tastefully dated Laura Ashley-dominated dining room. "Do we not?"
"Mum," Hermione said quietly. "Mum, you're scaring me."
Helen tipped her head to the side, and her dark brows drew into a frown of concern. "Where do you think you are?"
"Home." Hermione almost choked on the word, because this wasn't her home anymore; hadn't been for over a decade, and her mum and dad couldn't be here because Helen and John Granger were now Monica and Wendell Wilkins, residents of Shellharbour, New South Wales.
She wasn't supposed to be here, she knew with sudden certainty. She had been somewhere - somewhere else, and there was something important she had been doing, something that really mattered, and -
A panicked thought gripped her and Hermione blurted, "Am I dead?" She could feel the urge to grab her wand and run, but her mum seemed calm, and besides, Hermione suddenly wasn't sure that she could have wrenched her hands from the tabletop, even if she'd tried.
Helen smiled slightly, and gave a little shake of her head. "Pass the salt," she said again. But she wasn't Helen anymore. The dark curls had turned iron-grey, her voice had lilted, and it was Professor McGonagall who peered at Hermione over the top of her glasses.
"What?" Hermione demanded, glancing in confusion from Minerva's face to the scarred wood of what she now recognised as the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall at Hogwarts, her hands turning white knuckled as they gripped it. "How am I -"
"Pass the salt, Miss Granger."
"Enough about the bloody salt," Hermione huffed under her breath, then shot Minerva a guilty look. She was smiling slightly, just as Helen had done. "Sorry," Hermione said, then paused, suddenly wondering who, or rather what, she was apologising to. "Where am I?"
Minerva's eyes left hers, and she seemed to take in their surroundings for a moment before returning her gaze to Hermione's face. "Where do you think you are?"
It was the same question that Helen had asked her, and the repetition sent a thrill of understanding up Hermione's spine. She had been at home, and now she was in the Great Hall, both places where she felt safe, comfortable.
Protected.
"Pass the salt."
Hermione blinked as Minerva spoke, only belatedly noticing that she had been frowning at her hands where they still rested on the tabletop. The fingernails were turning blue, their colour almost ghostly in contrast to the warm candlelight.
But if the candlelight wasn't real, then -
Looking up, she spotted the salt shaker, once again sat just on the other side of the table, to the left of the scorch mark left by Teddy's accidental magic when he'd been two years old, because she wasn't at Hogwarts any more, but in the kitchen at Grimmauld Place, and when she raised her eyes to the person sitting across from her, it wasn't Minerva's gaze that met hers.
"Pass the salt," Harry said, smiling lazily at her. He was leaning back in his chair, easy and golden, wearing one of his tattiest Weasley jumpers. Molly's neat knitting was beginning to unravel around his neck, and as Hermione's eyes went to his throat she felt herself filled with the longing to press her lips to it.
She'd kissed him that afternoon, when he'd arrived at the Trilithon, and the magic had danced around them like nothing she'd ever felt before - before -
"It was Neville," she whispered, remembering all of it: the heady joy of the afternoon, the feeling of Harry's hands on her skin and then the flip of her stomach as she spotted Ron and Pansy giving way to hollow disbelief as Neville - Neville - her friend, everyone's friend, had stepped forward, and smiled, and rolled up his sleeves and said -
"Pass the salt."
Harry's voice broke through the memory: firm, urgent, and when Hermione glared at him in frustration he returned her stare with such a serious expression that she bit down on her smart retort and considered the request.
"The salt," she said slowly. Harry nodded, and Hermione bit her lip, sifting through her memories. What had Professor Snape said? One of the basic alchemical components - salt for purity, salt as a barrier to enchantment, salt for - "Protection," Hermione breathed, and Harry smiled slightly. She glanced around the kitchen, the place where she felt more at home than anywhere else in the world, exactly where she might imagine she were if she needed to feel - "I'm safe," she whispered, then - "but this isn't real."
Harry leaned forward, extending a hand so that his fingertips were inches from hers. "Where do you think you are?"
Behind her, she could hear the wind; on her shoulders, the snow settled. In front of her she could see the wood of the kitchen table, but she felt the aching throb of ancient stone against her palms.
"You stepped forward to face him," she whispered, remembering. "And then Narcissa pulled me away and you - you -" Harry smiled sadly. "You're out there," Hermione finished. "This isn't real, it's happening inside my head."
The edge of Harry's mouth curled upwards a little more, and Hermione remembered what he'd told her, years ago. Why on earth should that mean that it is not real?
She felt a nudge against her finger, and looked down to see that he had pushed the salt cellar towards her. A moment ago she would have said her hands were glued to the table, but now she knew all it would take was the slightest movement and she would be free.
"Pass the salt," Hermione whispered, taking one last, long look at Harry's sad, green stare, before she closed her eyes and peeled her right hand from the tabletop to grasp the crystal shaker.
"There you are," Narcissa sighed from somewhere to Hermione's right. Hermione jumped at the sound of her voice, peering through the twilight to where Narcissa stood around the edge of the Trilithon. The older woman's shoulders were drooping with exhaustion, her hair whipped by the wind into a pale tangle about her holly crown. Feeling as though she were moving through thick liquid, Hermione raised her right hand away from the cold stone and opened it, marvelling at the delicate web of crystals across her palm.
"I don't think she'll be long," Narcissa continued softly, and when Hermione looked at her, the older woman nodded in the other direction. Looking to her other side, Hermione saw Andromeda, eyes closed and face set in a frown, both hands pressed firmly to the stone of the Trilithon, clearly still under its spell.
As the wind bit her skin Hermione felt herself coming back to her senses, and she gasped as she remembered all over again, taking - or trying to take - a step backwards, only to find her left hand still anchored to the stone.
"What happened?" she demanded of Narcissa. "Harry - he was talking to him but after - I don't remember -"
"Longbottom wanted the Trilithon," Narcissa said. She sounded tired, and in the soft light Hermione could see faint lines in the older woman's face that she hadn't noticed before. "We could not let that happen."
"Where is he then?" Hermione tried again, with no more success, to wrench herself away. "He said we'd be held here until morning so -"
Andromeda gave a soft moan from her other side, and Hermione looked away from Narcissa's drawn expression to see the other witch slumped forward, her forehead resting on the stone as she held her right hand curled at her chest. As Hermione watched, Andromeda opened her eyes, and looked at Narcissa. "It's done?"
Narcissa nodded, and Hermione felt herself scrambling to keep up.
"It held us," she whispered. "You made sure that it held us, so Neville couldn't - but where -" The pale radiance that crept across the stone wasn't moonlight, Hermione realised, but dawn.
"Where's Harry?" she asked desperately, but Narcissa only shook her head.
"Gone," she said softly.
A/N: I learned a long time ago not to make promises, but I will say this: there isn't much of this story left, and after a few years of ... a few years (I'm sure you all get it) I've found myself back here again, and eager to see how the story ends. So it will be finished. And if you're back here, reading it, then thank you from the bottom of my heart.