Note: this is an AU, set in sixth year and disregarding completely the HBP summer and events during the school year. Irrational reality—I think I like that phrase.
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"You have to go and save everybody again, don't you? Didn't have enough of it the first time around, when Hermione died. No, now we're not even coming with you."
The sun shines in a halo around Ron's red hair.
"D'you want to, then? Because I don't see anybody else volunteering. You see what's wrong, Ron? The teachers are gone, just—vanished. It… it feels wrong in the castle. Displeased. Angry."
Ron snorts, his face getting progressively redder, and he faces Harry with his legs spread as if he was readying for a fight. "And so you're just going to waltz out of Hogwarts to go find out what's wrong, are you? Just going to visit the Ministry, tell them that McGonagall's office is empty, that Slughorn apparently left the room in the middle of a lesson and didn't come back? And then the Ministry'll come and fix everything. Of course, I should have seen it."
Ron doesn't make much sense to her, his words clouded by anger. Harry seems smaller now and turns to face the window. She sees that his hands are clasped, fingers twisted behind his back. The light dances on his shoulders and his hair seems coal black against the brightness.
"Fine, then." His voice is calm, though there is an undertone in it Hermione can hear but doesn't understand. "Hermione, you know who can be trusted. Get some people together to help Gryffindor. Try Ginny, Seamus…" He slowly lists names to her and she realizes that it's true, that he's really going to leave and he thinks he might not come back. He ends without naming Ron and she sees him tense, his fury held in a tenuous check.
"I'll be back within the day if I can, with some Aurors or something. Take good care of the House… try not to strap anyone if you can help it."
The fireplace is crackling before them and Harry pulls out a small packet of Floo powder, managing a weak smile. She doesn't think that the fire is connected to the Network, and then he throws the powder in and the flames blaze green. He steps in, his jeans surrounded by tendrils of eerie light, and then he whispers.
"Ministry of Magic, main atrium."
He is gone, then, and both Hermione and Ron watch where he stood for a long time without talking.
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The Fat Lady closes behind her, just as it did earlier in the morning, though now Hermione is alone and without the company of Ginny. It suddenly seems, after her heated words in the Common Room, that she must continue with what she has started, and if she knew that before it has only become apparent now. She will make a fool of herself, Hermione Granger, called the entire intelligentsia of Gryffindor House, if she doesn't take a step forward, farther alone, farther into the darkness.
She walks forward, shoes clapping on the stone in a heavy funeral dance. Past the doors and rooms filled with desks, in neat lines, with a thick layer of dust; past knights that refused, or had forgotten how, to talk; under archways that stretch high over her head, into the dizzying heights, all cloaked in the webs of crawling spiders. And then she comes to the East Barricade, one of the two ways out of Gryffindor House that isn't totally blocked off by warded doors. There is a small candle burning above her, the only candle in the worn chandelier hung from a hook in the ceiling. Its light is steady, somewhat reassuring, and it lights the Barricade ahead.
There is a Fourth Year boy sitting in a desk he had dragged out from a classroom. It is dirty, and though he has wiped clean a great swath she can see the fine dirt sitting upon the rest. He is asleep, or almost, with his head on his arm, brown curls spilling onto his sweater. Hermione cannot see his face, for it is hidden against the desk, and thinks how pointless it is to have a 'guard' that fails to do any guarding. She walks over and taps him on the shoulder with a steady finger.
The boy jerks awake, his eyes opening wide in fear, and then he slumps back against the chair when he recognizes her as a member of the Circle. The tips of his ears turn red in embarrassment, and she is reminded of Ron. "I'm… I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be sleeping, but it's…"
Hermione nods. "I understand."
The boy shakes his head and his ring of curls flies in the air. The hair settles when he stops and he looks back up at her, considerably more refreshed. "So you're…going through? To Ravenclaw or somewhere else?"
One of his hairs had somehow found its way to her sleeve and she brushes it off. "Hufflepuff." She can see he wants to know more but decides it is better if he doesn't. "I should be back in a few hours. If I'm not, go and tell Seamus or some other Circle member."
There is some silence for a few seconds, both looking at each other, and then Hermione turns to face the barrier. It was, many weeks ago, the first place to be warded in protection, as it was closest to the dungeons, and was finished two days before the wands stopped working, or at least most of them. There is strong magic on the great wall in front of her, with dark red bricks rising up and looking out of place among the darker stone of the castle walls. The barrier itself, though Hermione remembers when it was empty bookcases, was transfigured into this wall, and she can remember the long, tedious hours spent here in late December trying to coach Seamus and Dean on the fine points of Transfiguration. Ginny, also in attendance, had pushed for some style to it, and so there is a door in the middle, salvaged from some classroom and painted gold and red, and it has a small window in it. She peers through the window, through the almost visible strands of magic woven around it, and can see nothing beyond it.
"Here."
The boy had gotten up from his desk while she was thinking with his candle. "I'll go back and get another one for me. I don't think there's any light…" He shrugs, in a kind of sad way, and hands the small, lit stub to her in its brass holder. "Good luck, I suppose."
Hermione is surprised that the boy isn't jumping around with excitement to go tell his friends that she had left as soon as she goes through the door. Perhaps, when she returns, the boy could sit in on some Circle meetings…
Her hand closes on the handle of the painted door and it is cool beneath her touch. The Fourth Year only watches her, as though it is some sort of religious ceremony. The metal of the handle is cool beneath her skin and she thinks that she can feel the pricks of flowing, layered magic. She turns the handle to the right, and the door opens, swinging outwards. The hallway beyond is relatively well lit, with muted light pouring in from large windows down a ways, by the stairs that go to the Defense classroom, but she holds the candle out before her and sees with relief that its glow can illuminate the dark corners.
She looks back, over her shoulder, while still in the doorway, and sees the retreating back of the Fourth Year, and then she closes then door and through its small window she can only make out blurry shapes of tinted light.
Turning, her feet scraping the floor covered in a thin layer of dust with no sign of footprints, she begins to walk the paths she knows by heart but has not seen for weeks. Everything is different now than then. Silence blankets the stones, seeping into the mortar between them. Slanting shadows fall drunkenly across the floor, both crisp and blurry at the same time as the light shifts through the windows. Hermione is walking close to the wall and she stretches out a hand to a window to touch the cold glass. She can see her reflection, lit by the candle, in the streaked panes, a shattered whole of little parts in bright colors, and then when she backs away the moment is lost.
She soon reaches the stairs to the Defense classroom and looks up them into the blackness. It is almost completely dark up there, past the two statues of the howling maidens, their contorted heads peeking out of a veil of dimness in the shadows above. She can remember many things from that room, when the days were like they should be and not terrible, and when Harry walked side by side with her and Ron down right past where she is standing.
It is easier for her to keep walking and not think about anything, and so she briskly starts towards the statue of the barrel-chested woman that guards the Hufflepuff Common Room in a tower far away, hoping beyond farthest hope that there wouldn't be a Slytherin lurking behind the next corner.
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Hermione arrives there eventually, after around ten minutes of feeling naked without her wand in the silent halls. Once she thought she saw the tail end of a ghost pass through a wall in front of her and then when a rat or mouse scurried out from a dark hole between two stones, feet scrabbling on the floor, she didn't look anymore and only walked, not thinking or paying attention.
She thinks it is strange that the Hufflepuffs haven't set up any type of guard outside their common room, and then it suddenly strikes her how ludicrous her coming here was. She supposes that she had expected someone to be guarding a door, like at Gryffindor, or at least the corridors to be populated, but they seem empty.
The layer of thin particles of dirt and dust decorating the deep carven features of the Hufflepuff statue do not go unnoticed, and Hermione's hands clench in a cold sweat, all the possible what ifs going through her mind. She sees her candle, its holder clutched in her right hand between white fingers, is very low, almost a pool of wax. She sees the way her dark robe has caught on the outstretched foot of the statue somehow, when she hadn't been watching, and when she pulls it away it makes no noise. She sees how, above her, as she cranes her neck backwards and hears it crack, the large candelabra mounted above the statue is empty, ghostly strands of dried wax dripping off its edges.
Hermione wishes very hard that something would happen, and nothing does, and she is alone in the silence of the hall in front of an unmoving magical statue with, she notices, an abnormally long nose.
"I…"
She doesn't know why she talks then, but her voice wakes something inside of her. All of her desire to find out what's wrong has evaporated, like the water in the damp room after the showers, and only leaves its impression like the memory of waterfalls echoing in the air.
She stretches out her left hand and hits the statute hard, hard enough so that when she draws her hand back it is red and has little bits of stone clinging to it. Hermione wants the statue to say something, to move, to open, like it should.
There is another minute of quiet, unbearably long, and then Hermione rubs her hand convulsively on her robe and turns around to walk back. The candle goes out after she has taken a few steps, and she sets the empty holder down on the floor. Things are more grey now, not tinted with warm tones, and she sees clearly that she needs to return. Kicking the candle holder across the floor produces a ringing sound, bright and loud to her ears, and she leaves it overturned at the base of the statue of the woman with the long nose.
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The Common Room falls silent upon her return, as it had when she had left. Somehow she had managed to stay out for a long time, long enough that there was lunch on the long line of tables, and although she doesn't know how that happened the fact that there are more than a hundred faces staring at her, a hundred live students, makes her feel real again, protected by the roaring fire and warded doors, talking portraits and vestiges of civilization.
Ginny runs over to her, pushing her way past a small girl who falls onto a sofa. She arrives before Hermione in a split second, hair mussed, eyes bright. "What?"
The entire room, she can tell, shares the same sentiments as Ginny, and even the bright red hair of Ron, slumped on a footstool against the wall, is turned towards her. She feels as though it is a sort of a hero's welcome from a fairy tale; that they all have awoken from some deep sleep to hear the possible words of their salvation.
"Where is Seamus?" Her voice is quiet but heard by all, and Ginny takes her by the arm, the warmth of her hand felt even through her robe and sweater. Neither of them say anything, and none of the people they pass in their hurried walk towards the dormitory stairs say anything. Hermione even sees one boy with his mouth half-full of a bite of sandwich, simply staring at her in what she feels to be a mixture of hope and fear.
Seamus is in his room, like she had thought, and when they enter together, Ginny and Hermione, squeezing in through the doorway together, he jumps up from lying on his bed. His face is pale and drawn, though a bit of color has risen to his cheeks when he had seen them enter. "How were they? You took a long time, we almost thought to send out people for you—some First Years came up to me and asked it you were going to be dead." His voice is high and brittle, not forced but somewhat relieved and scared.
"They're—" Hermione breaks off and rubs her hands against herself again, to feel something. "The Hufflepuffs aren't—"
She is sure that Seamus and Ginny know what she is going to say because they both straighten up, ramrod straight.
The room is warm and Hermione closes her eyes, pressing her eyelids down as far as they will go. She sees spots and patterns of light against the darkness, small orbs that move hypnotically, and she suddenly feels tired. "They're not there."
She has said it now.
"You're sure—not there? How—why? Why do you know—oh, the rest of Circle should be here—go, run, go get Neville and Dean and Colin."
Hermione hears Ginny flying out the door, hears it slam behind her, hears Seamus' heavy breathing as though he has just run a race and is searching for water. She opens her eyes and after the seconds of blurriness she makes her way to one of the three chairs in a rough triangle before the windows and sits down in one, pulling her robe around her tighter and tighter. She knows that she shouldn't be acting like this, because it's irresponsible on her part and it's not what she's known for.
It's too hard, and she gives in and feels a hot tear running down her cheek for reasons she doesn't know.
The door opens again, breaking the loud chorus in her ears of the silence in the room, and she looks over after surreptitiously wiping away the tear with her finger. Dean, Colin, and Neville stand in a tight bunch by the door; Ginny's hair is visible between Dean and Neville's shoulders despite the fact she is as tall as them.
Dean speaks first. "Ginny told us."
She doesn't think she needs to be told that and blinks away the pricks at the corners of her eyes.
"So they're just not there? How d'you know?"
Colin seems relatively calm and she fixes her gaze on his face, lit by a beam of sunlight from the window like an angel. "It was dark. And quiet. And dirty, not clean. There weren't any guards or people."
She doesn't want to talk anymore and she closes her eyes again, hearing the Circle sit down on various pieces of furniture. It is warm, sitting in the chair, and somewhat relaxing, and she only listens to what is being said by those with calmer minds.
"If the Hufflepuffs aren't even there, it'd be easy to go get food or get out to the Library."
Hermione imagines Neville nodding slowly in response to Dean.
"And Hermione didn't even meet anyone in the halls. Maybe the Slytherins aren't out now."
She hears someone throwing a cushion on the floor. It hits with a subdued thump.
"We don't know that." Seamus sounds tired again, as though his emotions had only flared up when she had arrived. "They could be, they could not. Hufflepuff's far from the dungeons."
She can tell that they are avoiding the question of why the House wasn't there at all.
"So, Ginny. Tomorrow, before the party, would you like to go with some people—Dean, Neville, you have wands, maybe bring Colin too—to the kitchens to see if there's anything there? If we could tell the House tomorrow that rationing's off it'd really be a party."
Seamus seems overly optimistic to her only in words.
"We're not rushing into this, are we?" Neville speaks up timidly, voicing the only opposition so far. There is a small breeze, as though the window is open, and it cools her face.
"You could go now and check. Go walk the halls for a bit."
Someone sighs, and there is a long pause. She is comfortable in the chair and feels as though she could sleep at any moment.
"I'm going down to lunch." Colin breaks the quiet after a while and she imagines the group getting up from their various positions. "Hermione?"
Opening her eyes, she sees at first a blurry figure standing over her; after blinking she finds it to be Ginny. "Coming? It's sandwiches with two slices of some meat."
She hoists herself up out of the chair, feeling the momentary tiredness disappear. The rest of the Circle leaves the room in a kind of line, Neville in front, and Hermione takes up the back. She can tell that Ginny wants to talk with her about her venture and after a while her repressed curiosity evidently overcomes her. Ginny turns and stops and Hermione barely misses bumping into her. With an innocent look Ginny faces her and speaks in a whisper.
"You're sure?" Ginny repeats the same thing as Seamus and Hermione is annoyed at their inability to understand the simple answer.
"Yes. I'm sure." The words come out rather harshly and she knows Ginny is taken aback although she doesn't show it. "It was dusty, and dirty, and it didn't look like anyone had been there in a long time. You're welcome, you know, to check for yourself."
"Um." They both stand there, Ginny tensely leaning against the wall. "Coming for lunch?"
It's the same words as before and Ginny begins to walk again. Hermione has suddenly lost her appetite, what little she had of it, some moments ago, and decides against following her.
"I'll be in my room."
Hermione ducks away down the nearest corridor which, by chance, is the one where the passageway to her tower is. She pushes aside the hanging wooden shield and the door opens with a low groan. Although it only takes her a minute until she emerges from the other side she feels as though a spider had fallen in her hair and she shakes her hair. It flies around in front of her until she can see only patches of the hallway in front of her; the door to the left half-hidden by her bushy hair is open already and she closes it behind her before lying on her bed.
She wants to think about something, all the things she always tries to do but never does.
The bed, it turns out, is far too comfortable, even in the middle of the day, to simply lie there and coherently think, and she quickly closes her eyes again, first succumbing to daydreams about perfect things and then to sleep filled by memories.
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Hermione wakes to the retreating drone of swarms of bees echoing in the empty room. Raising her head, she finds that the window, although half-covered by the drapes, shows the night sky, a flat black against the grey silhouettes of the forest beneath. She had stared out the window the day after the wards came down, in late November, for a long time, at the thin blanket of snow on the ground visible past the old glass. There hadn't been any movement then to hide the bright reflection of the sun on the snow or to break the sameness of black trees, and now, even though she cannot see it, she presumes the moon sits full in the sky over the castle.
She doesn't know why she had fallen asleep, or what she had dreamed about. It has been a long time, though, and when she gets up her clothes are wrinkled and all her efforts to smooth them are in vain: when she goes into the little bathroom adjoining the dormitory, the silent mirror only shows a bedraggled girl with tangled hair in an unflattering black robe. It is not a surprise, however, and she leaves after futilely trying to comb out some of the worse matted parts.
When she enters the Common Room she finds it almost empty and the fire let to burn down and she presumes it must be late. There is the customary group crowded around Neville and she walks over there in absence of anyone else to talk to. His voice is soft, though not quiet, and as she approaches she hears some words in a language she thinks is from somewhere in Scandinavia, dotted with names of familiar Norse gods. It appears that he has forgone his usual stories of Harry and his exploits and turned to Nordic mythology for some unknown reason.
Neville sees Hermione and smiles to her in the midst of a sentence concerning the breaking of Valhalla's walls and she sits down on the floor at the back of the small crowd. A few weeks ago Neville had been asked about Harry and the Sorcerer's Stone, back in first year, and he had obliged in his kind way to take the astounded First Year on a two-hour trip through Harry's first year at Hogwarts that culminated in Quirrell's unmasking. There had been, Neville had said later, around fifty people gathered in a circle, listening silently, by the trip by Harry into the Third Floor forbidden corridor, and ever since then it was generally accepted that Neville would get asked for some anecdote about Harry and spend a large chunk of the night talking about before.
Tonight's conversation seems to be stretching later into the night than usual, though this hasn't persuaded Neville's most loyal followers to fight to stay awake while leaning against the sides of squishy chairs. Hermione relaxes, her head against the arm of an overstuffed recliner, and listens.
"After Valhalla's walls fell, there really isn't any hope left for the gods. Of course, they knew that they were going to die, because Mimir at his well had told them all at the beginning of time, and after the Fimbulwinter Odin realized that the time had come. But that didn't stop them from fighting on. The siege of Valhalla pretty much ends with the walls coming down, because all of Hel's army of the dead could enter then."
Neville's face is animated with the story, caught up in the most wonderful destruction of all time, and it is a pleasant surprise to find that he has expanded his story repertoire from just Harry-centric tales.
"There's a lot of fighting, then, the big kind of fights that people've been waiting for eternity to happen. Thor dies after killing his mortal enemy, the big snake—oh, what's his name, and strong Odin gets eaten by the wolf Fenrir. The giants burn up the nine worlds and almost everything ends aside from a few gods and two people who were saved in the top branches of the world-tree."
Hermione gets up and hears her back crack to the accompaniment of Neville finishing his story. She is comfortably warm now and the anger from before has left. For some reason she feels like she wants to talk to Ron, and then get some food, although not necessarily in that order, and so she heads over to the long tables still set up at the far end of the Common Room where a few sandwiches are left piled on top of one another for those who didn't get dinner. Hermione grabs one and, frowning at its thinness and paucity of meat inside, takes it to her favorite chair in front of the low fire.
The chair is soft, wonderfully soft, and big enough to curl up in sometimes if there aren't any couches to lie down on. Sometimes it has its matching pillows, all three of them, lined up in a little row along its back, but tonight only one was there. She puts her head on it and sits, leaning sideways, to take a bite of the sandwich. The bread is, as she thought it would be, dry, and it tastes of must, despite the fact that must doesn't taste of anything. It has some hard grains in it, presumably included to add some healthiness to it, but now they are unbreakable and grind unpleasantly against her teeth. The meat itself, although Hermione can't tell what it actually is, has a relatively pleasant taste when combined with the bread and she thinks of the trip to the kitchen tomorrow.
She finishes her sandwich quickly, feeling like Ron in engulfing it in only a few bites, and pulls her legs up on the chair with her. She isn't tired anymore, like previous nights when she sits here, and with nobody to talk to she looks at the fire. There are small dark-red embers, crackling brightly among the pile of half-burnt wooden desk legs. It is soothing to watch the changing patterns of heat in the burnt blackness in the hearth and how little curling wisps of smoke rise up the great chimney, blackened with soot ever since the elves had stopped cleaning. She wishes, just at that moment, that she has some Floo powder with her, one of the commodities formerly taken for granted and now sorely missed. If she had some, and knew it would work, she would throw it into the fire, and even if she didn't want to go anywhere, which she surely would, she would only watch the green flames dancing in the light.
Hermione sits there for a long time, and when the Common Room is totally emptied of people she goes back up to her room, cold from the lack of warming charms, and underneath the cocoon of covers she sleeps between the darkness of her pillow and the filtered light of the moon that barely shines into the silence of the night.
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