Disclaimer: Anything you recognize, unless it's an original from one of my other stories, does not belong to me.

A/N: Tons of thanks to Gillyweedrules (who wanted to be mentioned) for giving me my very first review on this fic! And I'm so grateful to everyone who reviewed... I was stunned; I've never received 24 great reviews (or at all) in just over a day for my very first chapter. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I really appreciate feedback, and feel free to criticise constructively too. Oh, and rest assured... all questions will eventually be answered!

Summary: "Hello, Hermione," he said from the shadows. He watched the colour drain from her face. "No…" she whispered. He was a living nightmare… And that broke his heart.

Kiss of the Traitor

Chapter Two: The Nightmare Returns

"May I turn on a light?" he asked, his voice a little hoarse.

Hermione stared at him as if she thought he was mad, or she was; possibly he was, Harry reflected, because it was simply not a normal question to ask someone you haven't seen in four years whether you can turn on a light in there bedroom (after having broken into their house using magic and snuck up on them, to boot!).

Taking her silence for permission granted, he reached for the light switch near the door and turned on the pleasant yellow main light of the room. He blinked, momentarily blinded after having spent so much time in the darkness, and stepped further into the room. He could hardly bear to look at her. He suddenly didn't know what to do, or say. After all, what could he say? Too much had happened; they had both hurt each other irrevocably, and he didn't know if either one of them could take it back. They had been best friends, they had loved each other… and now, suddenly, they were like strangers in a room. And every time he looked at her, he saw the pallor of her face – the fear, the shock, the pain.

"I'm sorry if I frightened you," he said lamely, "I just thought you might be asleep and didn't want to wake you by ringing the doorbell or knocking on the door."

For the first time, she seemed to recover herself, and her expression changed. It was as if a mask slid over her features, hiding the fear and the pain and leaving only weariness and a spark of anger. "Oh," she said coldly, not moving from the bed, "So I suppose your alleged gentlemanly motives make it okay for you to break in?"

He felt a moment's strange amusement ease the pain inside him. She sounded almost like the girl he had once known. "I didn't think it would matter," he explained apologetically, "I came here for far more important things than breaking and entering."

The hand that had fallen to her side raised itself and went for the drawer of the beside table. He watched in silence, not reacting but merely keeping his wand in his hand by his side, as she jerked open the drawer and pulled out her own wand. The drawer slid shut with a thud, and she pointed her wand at him with a shaking hand, her eyes full of such a dangerous threat that he took half a step back. He had not forgotten how dangerous Hermione was with a wand. He was just surprised, and a little relieved, that she hadn't gotten out of bed to murder him.

"Get out," she said, her voice quiet but intense. He thought he saw a gleam of tears in her eyes. "Get out of my house and leave me alone."

"Hermione – "

"Don't call me that," she cried, her voice shaking now as much as her hand. "My name is Rianna Wilson. Hermione is dead." She looked him straight in the eye. "And so is Harry."

He swallowed, looking at her, and bravely walked a few steps forward, closer to her. The wand trembled even more, but he was heartened by the fact that no curse came his way. Instead, she merely lowered the wand, resting it and her hand on her quilt-covered lap and turned her head against the pillows, away from him.

"Please leave, Harry," she said in that voice of icy dignity she had always used when she wanted to hide what she was really feeling. "I don't want to curse you. But I want to see you even less, so please just leave me alone."

"I can't do that," he said slowly, trying to keep his voice steady. He cleared his throat slightly to keep the croakiness from creeping through.

Her chest heaved slightly as if she was choking back a sob, and, still without looking at him, she said: "Then kill me and be done with it. I assume that's why you came… to finish what you nearly did four years ago. Traitors are dangerous and shouldn't be allowed to live. I'm the equivalent of a Death Eater, aren't I, only worse to you? Wasn't that what you said long ago? So kill me now, Harry, and end it… I'm tired of everything anyway."

He didn't know what it was in her voice that frightened and hurt him so much. It might have been her words, for they were horrible, anguishing words that he knew he deserved. It might have been the quiet, intense pain in her voice. It might have been the dull exhaustion, that was almost as awful to hear as the pain. It might have been the sight of the small hand clenching and unclenching painfully over the wand on her lap. It might have been a combination of them all. He didn't know, and he didn't care. All he knew was that he had never felt so awful in his life, that he had never known such anguish. He felt like a young boy again, helpless and futile in the face of something far beyond him.

Harry didn't realise it, but his legs wouldn't hold him any longer. He slowly sank to his knees on the floor, and let his wand slide from his fingers. Its clattering sound as it rolled on the floor drew her attention, and Hermione slowly turned her head back towards him. He stared at her, fighting back his own tears, tears that burned in his eyes.

"I would die before I killed you," he said brokenly.

She looked at him from the bed, her eyes filled with tears, a single one trickling down her cheek. "Oh, Harry," she said bleakly, and her voice was almost kind, "You already did."

He swallowed the terrible lump in his throat, trying to ignore the constricting pain in his chest, and he shook his head, trying to find the words with which he could tell her how wrong he had been. "I'm so sorry," he finally croaked. "I never meant to – I never wanted to. I needed to hurt you… like I had been hurt. I needed you to hurt like I did. But not like this, I never wanted this. I made a mistake – the worst mistake possible – "

"And mistake that saved your life, and saved the magical and Muggle worlds," she said softly, her eyes watching him as if through a veil of tears. She didn't sob; she just stared at him, with the tears sliding silently down her face. "It was a mistake made for the best."

"I couldn't bear losing you… I won't do it again."

She was silent for some time, and finally said in a tired, dead voice: "My family, my friends, everything I held dear… everything that meant anything to me… rejected me and cast me out. You cast me out, Harry, and I loved you, oh, how I loved you. I followed you to help destroy those Horcruxes, I held you when you wept after fighting the Inferi of your parents' bodies… and yet, even after all that, you didn't love me enough, you didn't trust me enough to believe the best of me instead of the worst. And now you're here, because guilt won't let you live your life until you try to find some closure to this mess…"

"Guilt?" he nearly shouted, stumbling to his feet. "Do you think this is guilt? You think guilt brought me here tonight?"

He tried not to think about the truth of her words, about the pain. Hermione shook her head as if she didn't want explanations. She simply rearranged the quilts around her, smoothing them down almost absently. He realized how cold she probably was. In the long silence that followed, he wanted nothing more than to put his arms around her and hold her like she had held him so many times, and take the cold and the pain away.

-FLASHBACK-

"Tell me why," he nearly screamed, glad for the rain, because it hid the tears streaming down his face – probably hid hers, too, if she had it in her to cry. "Tell me why you did this to me! Was everything you ever said a lie? Do you even care that you've destroyed me?"

She looked at him, only at him and not the other horrified, accusing faces around, and said softly: "Please understand, Harry…"

"Understand? I'll never understand! You, with your brilliant mind and your newly fledged body, found a far better master to command them, a far better choice to do you justice – that's what I understand! You betrayed me, Hermione, and you know it. You sold me to Voldemort – worse, you sold yourself to Voldemort, knowing it would destroy me." He felt sick, he felt like he was going to throw up… it hurt too much. "And you kissed me and promised me you would die before you let me fall. What was that kiss for? Pity?"

"Harry, please – "

"Nothing but a traitor's kiss. The worst betrayal imaginable. Get away from me, Hermione."

"No, Harry, please, just listen – " She was on her knees in the mud, the dirt and the rain splashing against her. She looked like she was dying, like a desperate woman searching for water, and he wouldn't give it to her. It was just another act.

Neville stepped in; neither Ginny nor Ron nor the others seemed able to speak. Neville, his voice shaking, said: "Go, Hermione. None of us want to hurt you, but we'll have to."

"Neville, don't – Hagrid, please – Ginny – oh, Ron, Ron, don't do this – "

"You're the enemy now, Hermione," Ron choked, sounding like his world had just ended, "You'd better go quickly."

Lightning flashed across the sky. The Death Eaters were fighting members of the Order of the Phoenix nearby. Where was Voldemort? They didn't know, but it wouldn't be long before he turned up, now that Hermione was here as well…

Screams filled the air. People were fighting brutally. People were fighting for this war. Harry owed to them to fight his part.

She looked at him again, her pleading, desperate gaze fixing on Harry once more. He hated that she was begging. Her act must really be desperate if she was going to such lengths to get them to believe her or listen to her. The hand holding his wand shook as he pointed it at her, a warning of what he would have to do if she didn't leave. "Harry," she begged, "Harry, I'm so cold, I'm so frightened… help me, please…"

His wand wavered; he nearly broke down at the plea in her voice. She sobbed. "Hold me, Harry, please. Hold me and take the cold and the pain away."

"Don't push me, Hermione," he said, raising the wand once more, "I'll kill you, I swear I will. Traitors are dangerous to us, to every one of us. Say another word and I swear I'll say the fatal ones. I swear to you, I'm beyond nothing now. You've taken everything from me. You've stripped my heart and my faith away, and killing will be nothing to me now."

Her eyes were fixed on him. For a brief instant, he thought he saw a hint of triumph in her eyes at his words, but it was gone almost instantly, replaced with an abject despair and a sudden sense that she had lost, that everything she had ever known was gone because she had betrayed it all. He saw the realization sink into her, saw the ensuing pain, and wished she could feel it forever because he knew he would feel his forever. He almost wanted to die. Almost. First he wanted to kill Voldemort. Kill her.

"What are you going to do, Harry?" she asked.

He wanted to say the words. He wanted to kill her, to destroy the very thing that had destroyed him. But he couldn't He knew he would never have been able to.

He lowered his wand. "Go," he said, and his voice sounded dead.

"Someday, Harry, I hope you'll understand," she whispered into the rain.

"Go, and never come back."

-END FLASHBACK-

His mind was spinning. He had once dreamed of amnesia, because he wanted to forget that night and never have to think about it again. He felt that sickness once more, that feeling that he would surely throw up. Only this time, it was for different reasons. And now, he wanted to remember every little detail, because it was his own personal form of self-Cruciatus.

"How did you find me?" she finally asked, breaking the hollow, bleak silence, sounding only faintly curious about it.

He reached into the pocket of the long black overcoat he had chosen to wear so that he could blend into the darkness when he wasn't wearing his cloak. He pulled out the parcel Snape had given him, only the wrapping holding it together was already torn as he approached her and laid it down on her lap.

She looked at each of the items in silence. The piece of parchment had writing on it, Snape's neat handwriting, with the address and precise location of her house out on the moors. The photograph was of her – Harry could see that it startled her, because it was one of her from about a year and a half ago, a photograph taken by a journalist taking random pictures at the grocery store not far from the house, and Hermione had accidentally been captured in it. The old letter had been found among Hermione's things when Mr. and Mrs. Granger had left all her things behind when they had moved to America. It was from Dumbledore to Hermione, explaining to her that in the event of an emergency, if she ever needed to find a place of safety for Harry, to go to a Muggle house he had protected on the Scottish moors. The protection from the house had died when Dumbledore had died, but when the letter had been found, it didn't take much to guess that Hermione would choose that desolate spot anyway.

Finally, she looked at the box. He could tell from the way her hands trembled slightly that she knew exactly what would happen when you cast the special charm to open it. His birthday had been three days ago, and he had spent the two days after opening the box locked in his room, opening it over and over and sometimes crying as if his heart would break. It had been the final tool that had pushed him, at last, to coming here. Even the desperate urgings of the others had not been enough.

"They've been searching for you for the past three and a half years," Harry said softly. "I tried for the first few months after we found out, but I stopped because I told myself if you wanted to be found, we would find you… and that we didn't deserve to know you after what happened. It was Snape, oddly enough, who searched the Muggle newspapers every day. Eventually, he found the photograph and enlarged it to determine for sure that it was you. He and McGonagall put the picture and the letter from Dumbledore together to figure out your exact location, and then Snape came out here to find the right house. He did."

"Why would he do that?" Hermione asked in a mainly flat voice, without looking at him. "He's never cared much for me."

"I saved his life. He said he appreciates all that I did. Not to mention the fact that maybe he felt he owed to Dumbledore to try and find you. But I think, most of all, he knew more than any of the others did how you felt. He did almost exactly the same thing, remember? You, Sirius, Snape… believed by your friends and family that you had betrayed those who trusted you most."

Hermione put the parcel down on the bed beside her, and shook her head. "That was a long time ago. What's done is done," she said dully. "You've found me, you've seen me. I'm alive, thank you very much. You can go back to London and the others now and tell them that neither they nor you need feel any guilt anymore, because I've gone past the point where I care anymore. If it's my forgiveness you want, if that'll help all of you live your lives better, then you have it. I don't have the time or will anymore to hate any of you. I never could hate any of you, really."

"I didn't come here to assuage my guilt," Harry said quietly, standing over her and trying to fight the urge to wrap his arms around her. "I came here because we want you back. I want to take you back home, to London. You can stay with me."

"Go back?" Hermione uttered a short, bitter laugh. "Go back to the place, to the people that rejected me? You must be mad!"

Harry swallowed. "Hermione, please… you have to understand… every one of us wants you back. They need you. I need you."

She said nothing, only threw off the quilts and slowly swung her legs over the edge of the bed, as if using a great of effort to get up and out of bed. Harry took a step back in horror. For the first time, in the bright light, he was really looking at her. She had lost so much weight she was nearly unrecognizable. Her face was slightly sunken, her eyes marked by dark shadows, and her hair limper than he had ever seen it. The pyjamas she was wearing practically swam around her. She looked, he realized in horror, like he felt inside: wasted away.

"Hermione!" he couldn't stifle the exclamation. "You look –oh, my– when was the last time you ate?"

Suddenly aware of how she must look to his eyes, the fight went out of her and she sank back down on her bed and looked down at the small hands, knotted together on her lap. "The grocery store owner has become friendly with me," she said quietly. "He brings me food occasionally, because I can't go out into the cold regularly. Special parcels for dear Rianna. I go downstairs and eat when I get hungry enough."

Harry began to feel that something was seriously wrong. He looked down at her, and sat down on the bed beside her. He reached out and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. She didn't protest, but he saw her eyes fill with tears at the tender touch.

"What's happened to you?" he asked softly, unable to stand seeing her like this.

She continued knotting and studying her hands. "Why do you care?"

"I care," he answered simply, "That's all that matters."

"No," her voice choked on a sob. "Don't. Please don't. You can't care about what happens to me."

He was startled. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, Harry," she said quietly, finally looking up at him, and her face and eyes were completely dry. "Don't you understand? I'm dying."

…