TOUCH AND GO

This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and situations elaborated herein.

Thanks to my reviewers and especially to my previewers, Bellegeste and Cecelle.

WARNING This fic contains HBP Spoilers. Enter at own risk if you haven't read HBP.

Hermione listlessly stirred her lukewarm porridge and brooded. It was silly, she knew she shouldn't let herself think about it, but the closer it got to Ron's birthday, the more she remembered happier times. Last summer, she'd let herself daydream that this year would be the one when he finally noticed her as a girl. She'd spent many happy hours thinking about what presents she'd buy him for Xmas and his seventeenth birthday once they were officially boyfriend and girlfriend.

She knew the boys hadn't appreciated the homework planners she'd bought them in fifth year so she'd planned for Ron's presents this year to be fun rather than just useful. That meant catering to his particular interests, chess and Quidditch. Muggles and wizards played chess by the same rules, but Muggle players and publications so outnumbered their wizard equivalents that she'd chosen to get him Muggle chess books for Xmas. She was confident he'd never have seen anything like them.

Art of the Middle Game and Capablanca's Best Chess Endings still lay bundled away in the furthest corner of her trunk. She didn't know what to do with them. She didn't have other chess-playing friends and she wasn't much of a player herself. She doubted if she'd have kept them even if she did play, simply because of the memories. On the other hand, she couldn't bring herself to throw brand new books away. Or any books, for that matter. Perhaps one day she'd find someone to dump them on.

Since she'd covered Chess for Xmas, she'd decided on Quidditch supplies for his birthday. For months, she'd dithered over an acceleration upgrade, to boost his Cleansweep 11's ten second acceleration rate from 70 to 95 mph, or a self-activated Quaffle for solitary Keeper's practice. With his brothers grown up and moving away from the family home, he'd soon have only Ginny to play against. She'd even thought of buying both since it was a very special birthday - not that she could afford it, but you only came of age as a wizard once. But the quarrel had ended all those plans.

"At least I didn't waste my money on someone who doesn't want anything from me," she told herself fiercely. It didn't help. The day she'd dreamed about so often was only days away. She'd have found him alone. She'd have handed him the package and their hands would have touched. He'd have opened it and their eyes would have met and he'd have leaned closer, looking at her and then –

She shook her head roughly. Stop it; stop it! That had not happened, was not happening, was never going to happen. A steady rhythm beat like a drum in her head, morning, noon and night, "Ron's turning seventeen and we're still not talking. Ron's turning seventeen and lost to me forever."

The Daily Prophet post-owl had no sympathy with her abstraction. Keeping a safe distance from her hair – obviously it hadn't forgotten getting tangled there last year when she'd been too busy studying Arithmancy to notice its arrival – it pecked her on the arm. She startled awake and took her paper, fumbling in her pocket for a Knut.

She unrolled it gingerly.When Harry sat near her, he always asked if anyone they knew had died. There hadn't been anyone since Hannah Abbot's mother back in mid-September. They'd known about that one before it was printed though, because the news had come during a Herbology lesson and they'd seen Hannah taken out of class.

She stared at the headline in sick recognition. Chorley – that was the family of the Ravenclaw brother and sister in second year that she'd bought pumpkin pasties for on the Hogwarts Express her first trip as a prefect, to cheer them up after a run-in with Malfoy. And Puckle – that was the father of a fourth year Hufflepuff, Muggle-born like herself. She looked across at the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw tables but the affected students weren't there and the others were clustered in quiet tearful knots. With trembling lips, she turned back to her paper.

Their parents weren't dead, they'd disappeared. That was worse, much worse. The newspaper sombrely reminded readers of the disappearances in the previous war with Voldemort. Very few of the bodies had ever been found but those that did turn up were horribly mutilated and looked as if they'd died in great pain.

Stuffing the paper into her book-bag, she jumped up suddenly and hurried out of the Hall for the nearest bathroom, where she was promptly and thoroughly sick. Not for the first time and probably not the last; sensitivity to nausea was a side-effect of taking Dreamless Sleep Potion too regularly.

What if it were her parents next? It was a familiar nightmare. She pictured them trapped in the kitchen at dinner or dragged from their beds in the middle of the night, still wittering on about calling the police, writing to their MP, complaining to the papers.

They'd have no paradigm for what was happening to them. Nothing in their quiet existence and busy dental practice would have prepared them for being Apparated away, shoved to the ground, perhaps, in a field already splashed red with blood. They'd still be talking if they hadn't been Silencioed. They'd be attempting to reason with their captors, blustering on about jail and law enforcement and truncheons, or, in more rational mood perhaps, asking how much ransom their kidnappers planned to demand.

They wouldn't even know what it was about till the Crucios started and then only that it had something to do with her. She hadn't told them about facing off a crazed genocidal megalomaniac almost every year, hadn't told them much of anything she and her friends got up to, really. She'd been too afraid that they'd pull her out of school.

It had been touch and go in second year, when she'd spent three weeks Petrified. She'd missed two consecutive fortnightly letters home.Her parents had been frantic with anxiety and resentment, at her for her silence and at the wizarding world for dragging her so far from their reach. It had taken almost the entire summer for her to persuade them to let her come back for third year.

After that, she'd been more than ever resolved to secrecy. Harry needed her and, since he was such an icon of the wizarding world, that meant everyone in her new life needed her, whether they knew it or not. Even the teachers, McGonagall, Dumbledore, Snape - though perhaps not the Slytherins. Were the Snake-house kids all supporters of Voldemort, she wondered, or only most of them? They'd certainly been eager to join up with Umbridge as Inquisitors last year, though she supposed doubtfully that they might not all have understood that a blow against the headmaster was a blow for the Death Eaters.

She Evanescoed the mess and stared at the empty sink. Vanity, she told herself, vanity and pride and self-importance. Is that what I've been risking my parents' lives for? The smug, self-righteous hugging to myself of the knowledge that I'm needed?

But it was worse than that, even. She knew it. It wasn't only about saving the world or even receiving the accolades of a grateful populace.As if she didn't know by now from Harry's experience that the one didn't necessarily follow the other. It was about staying in this world, at this school, with her first-ever friends. It was about Ron and the bright Weasley-filled future she'd daydreamed of. It was about becoming a witch, the cleverest witch of her age, of any age. It was about selfishness.

Her nails dug into her palms and her teeth set tight. Her chest was empty and her stomach was heavy with self-loathing. She knew she should tell them. They should at least have the choice to stay or to flee, they should at least know they were in danger. But she couldn't. Because as much as it was self-importance and selfishness, the other part was true too. She was needed. Now more than ever. And she couldn't let them take her away.

This was her fight. This had always been her fight. She couldn't give up magic any more than she could give up breathing, it was in her and through her and from her. She'd been a witch before she knew magic was real and she'd be a witch forever, even if Death Eaters broke her wand and her hand and her mind. Voldemort needed no reason to destroy her but the fact of her existence and he needed no cause to attack her parents, or any other Muggles, but the fact of theirs. If she ran away and hid cowering at the other end of the world, still he'd reach out to obliterate her when he could spare the attention; whether last or first, she would always be on his list.

The old familiar arguments churned within her all day till she found herself in Snape's office, facing him across the desk. She would talk to him about it; after all, who else was there? Professor McGonagall had never seemed to welcome confidences. Neither had Snape, of course, but this issue affected him now.

"What should I tell them? I have to tell them something!" She leaned forward in her uncomfortable chair, her hands twisting around her wand. She'd begun to hang on to it during their sessions as he no longer warned her before attacking. He never used any but the simplest jinxes; it was more a test of her vigilance than her skill.

He glanced up indifferently from his marking. There was a tense tight set to his shoulders as if he was holding himself in. His eyes were as dark and dull against his gaunt grim face as twin lumps of coal in the snow.

"As little as possible. Never say any more than you have to, you know that."

She knew he didn't only mean to her parents. That had been the rule of his life, what had kept him alive.

"Yes, sir. But how much is that?"

He remained bent over his parchments. At his temples, she could see a couple of silver hairs amongst the black.

"What have you told them already?" he asked.

Nothing. Well, almost nothing. She shook her head, sighing.

"They don't even know that V – that You-Know-Who is back!" she said.

"Do they know he exists?"

She had to think about that.

"They should. When I got my Hogwarts letter, the first thing I did was rush to Flourish and Blotts and buy books about Hogwarts and wizards and recent history. I got Modern Magical History, Great Wizarding Events –"

"Spare me a list of your reading material from six years ago. I remember you as a bucktoothed big-mouthed eleven-year-old far too clearly. No doubt, you babbled endlessly about your discoveries. The question is whether they bothered to listen."

She eyed him resentfully. That was a bit rough, after he'd made her give him a list of all her reading material only a few short weeks ago! And did he always have to slip in the personal insults? If she hadn't been so desperate to talk to someone she'd have spelled the door open and flounced out; she was closer this time and could get there before him.

"Of course they listened! The question is -"

"There's no 'of course' about it. Your mouth never stops flapping. No doubt they cultivated, early in your life, the ability to tune you out without your noticing."

"I believe they listened to me, sir," she said stiffly, "but they may not remember. It wasn't something they ever expected to need to know."

"It still isn't." There were deep lines in his forehead. His knuckles gleamed whitely.

"But -" She wanted to ask him how he could even say that, but she caught herself. If he'd ever lived in a shiny black and white world of moral certainty, he must have long abandoned it. As a spy, he'd always have had to judge according to the unforgiving measure of cost-benefit analysis. Morality meant little in the face of expedience.

"I can't do that, sir," she continued, her shoulders slumped and her voice low. "I've done it for too long already. They need to know at least that they're in danger." But not that I am.

"Vainglorious child to imagine yourself important enough to be a particular target."

Did he mean that or was he sneering out of habit? She couldn't place it, but somehow he seemed – edgy, uneasy.

"Aren't I? I'm supposed to be your link with Harry when the headmaster's not available. How will you keep in contact if I fall?"

"Think, girl! If the Dark Lord doesn't know of our meetings, then, as far as he's concerned, your importance hasn't changed and your family is in no more danger than they were before we started. If he does, then he would have called me to account."

His eyes remained steady on the parchment under his quill but his hands were still. They were strong hands with long competent fingers. She had a momentary thought that they could probably break necks, if necessary, with the same unhurried efficiency they displayed in brewing Potions or casting hexes. He spoke again.

"If he had, I'd either be dead or I'd have convinced him that you're merely a tool I'm grooming to betray Potter. In which case, it wouldn't make sense for him to take you out of the picture."

She felt as if she'd been dipped in ice. The last few words barely penetrated.

"Am I?" Her voice trembled almost as much as the rest of her. "Are you just grooming me to betray all my friends?"

"Really, Miss Granger, would I tell you if I was?" He sounded bored. No, he sounded as if he wanted to sound bored.

Her eyes prickled. Her hands fisted tightly.

"Look at me and tell me whether you are using me for that," she insisted.

"Gullible Gryffindor child!" he scoffed, his eyes aglow with malicious mockery as they met hers. "Do you think you can tell whether I'm lying? When even my master cannot?"

He didn't say which master. She knew it was no use asking.

"You're playing with me again. Is everything a game to you?"

"I'm not a Gryffindor," he snarled. "I don't play games!"

He'd told her in the headmaster's office that this wasn't a game. But how could she believe, when he claimed to care for nothing and no one, that the outcome mattered as much to him as it did to her? He had only his life and his job to worry about and if he didn't care about the former – as he'd hinted the other day - why would he care about the other?

"You just play at living!" she accused. "Hiding away in your dungeons and pushing everyone away before they can get close to you!"

The quill snapped. He was out of his chair, leaning over the desk at her.

"Fifty points from Gryffindor!" he spat at her. "Go waste your compassion on someone who wants it, like that red-headed dunderhead you've been mooning over all term!"

She raised her hand and wiped her face. Heart thumping, she glowered up at him. She burned to speak but she dared not. The only time she'd ever seen him this angry was after she and Harry had helped Sirius escape from the Dementors. And it wasn't her he'd been angry with then.

Slowly, the fire died out of his eyes, replaced by a nasty smirk. He sat down again, waving her a brusque dismissal.

"I forgot," he drawled as he reached into a drawer for a new quill. "He doesn't want you either. Pity. Still, there's probably someone desperate enough to be interested. Try Longbottom."

A/N Ch 18 of HBP, "Birthday Surprises", mentions "further disappearances… including several relatives of students at Hogwarts", but I made up the names. Puckle is a nod to the name JK originally gave Hermione.

Quidditch-related presents and side effects of Dreamless Sleep are not canon. Chess books are real.

Hermione's background reading list is mentioned in Book 1, ch 6, "The Journey from Platform Nine and Three Quarters".