Macbeth: Act Five, Scene One
Disclaimer:
Thrice the Potter I hath borrow'd
Thrice and once the lawyers glared,
Cyropi cries, 'Not mine, not mine!'
(Yeah, I used the same disclaimer as last time. Give me a break. I want to get some sleep!)
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A/N: The review count broke 1000! THANK YOU to everyone who's read, reviewed and enjoyed. You lot keep me going. Seriously. Thanks especially for all the jokes (whether dire or amusing) and stories you suggested last week; they kept me cheerful!
For those of you who don't read Fallen; I have two new one shots on my profile: Euthanasia and Sunlight. I also have forum news both good and bad. The bad news is that I'm not starting my own forum any more. The good news is that this is because I'm Head of Ravenclaw and co-runner at the Fiction Net forum. Info on my profile, and I hope some of you join (and become Ravenclaws!)
Oh, and as you've all been asking: yes, you will get to see the play being performed. Most definitely. Insert insane maniac cackle here.
Onto the chapter, enjoy!
The Gryffindor common room was mercifully quiet; abandoned but for a few clustered groups of friends. None of them were people she knew well, which was another small mercy, because the last thing Hermione wanted was to talk to anyone. Not now, not after… after what had just happened. And she didn't want to spend time making excuses, trying to get people to leave her in peace to think.
And she needed to think, needed to sort this whole tangled mess of a situation out into some semblance of order before she went as mad as Draco. She needed to find a dark corner of the warm, familiar common room and try to make some sense of everything.
Settling into a well-worn, homely armchair, she curled her knees up to her chest and closed her eyes briefly. The memory of the touch of those lips, his lips on hers came back to her like an echo. The way he'd been careful, almost tentative. Whether that stemmed from some desire not to scare her, or whether it was because his twisted sense of humanity was screaming at him not to touch her, Hermione didn't know. And his hands, his hands on her skin…
She forced her eyes open, suddenly shivering. She shouldn't be thinking of that. It had been a mistake. It had been wrong and it had hurt him. Hermione remembered the horrified look in his eyes all too well; he thought that Muggleborns were subhuman, like animals, or worse than animals, and to kiss one… to kiss her… She tried to ignore the twinge of pain that passed through her at that thought. It was only because she hated prejudice that it hurt. It was only the prejudice there that upset her, not because she wanted him to like her. It was.
Hermione closed her eyes again, twisting her hands together, trying not to think of the kiss. What had she been thinking? She took a deep breath, realising with some dismay that she needed to gather her courage just to think the next thought.
Did she like him?
She couldn't. He was… he was Malfoy. A Death Eater, and prejudiced, and they'd hated each other for years. Even if the guilt was sending him insane, even if his prejudices were cracking and breaking, leaving his sure and firm set-earth suddenly frail, shattering beneath him. Even if he needed her, even if he could be nice, when he wanted to be. And intelligent, and witty, and to be honest, a really good actor. And not, in any way, unattractive.
Even if, she realised, resigning herself to what she'd known since her lips met his, even if she didn't hate him all that much anymore.
Quite the opposite, really.
She let herself sigh, rubbing her hands together nervously and leaning back into the soft cushions. Hermione changed her mind about what she'd thought earlier: she wouldn't mind someone coming down and asking her what was wrong. She couldn't tell them, but she could talk to them about other things. Trivial things, like homework and the excitement over the stage being erected in the Great Hall. Things that could take her mind off kisses with Draco Malfoy.
But she was being selfish, or perhaps running from something she didn't want to consider. Draco was her priority at that moment; Draco and the kiss, and what she ought to do about him.
Things would be so much easier, she thought, if there were none of these complications. If only she could live in a world where Draco wasn't a Death Eater or half-mad, where Voldemort had never even risen to power once, let alone twice; where all of them were just normal people and could live out their lives without politics or prejudice or insanity. There the only issue would be whether he liked her and whether she liked him; there the problem would be simple.
But it wasn't simple, and wishing that it would be wouldn't change the problem now in front of her. And if she wanted to help Draco – and she did – she had to figure out what to do.
Draco liked her, in that way – she couldn't bring herself to use anything more descriptive; that was too frightening – and she liked him too. But when that combined with Draco's prejudice against Muggleborns, and with his fragile sanity breaking already from the murder of Muggles and Muggleborns in his service as a Death Eater…
It all came down to prejudice, in the end. He still felt that killing Muggles was the right thing to do, or ought to be the right thing; that it was something he should enjoy. Except his conscience told him otherwise. If she could break the prejudice, he'd still be guilty for the murders, yes, but at the least he'd know what right and wrong were again. And he… and he wouldn't feel guilty for liking her. She didn't know what to think about that. It would be a good thing, she supposed, if she could somehow break his prejudices. But how?
For now, Hermione realises, she couldn't do anything about it. Anything she tried would only strengthen the conflict between what he wanted and what he thought he should want; strengthen it to the point where his sanity shattered again, and she didn't want to think about what would happen if his sanity were damaged permanently. He could recover from his current state of mind, she knew, because most of the time he was as sane as anyone else. But if things got worse…
She shifted in her armchair, nervously rubbing her hands together. What was she going to do, then, if she couldn't take the offensive against his prejudices? It was probably a good thing she'd told Snape, because Hermione doubted she'd be much good for Draco. It'd be hard enough to get through rehearsals and practices, with what must be going through his mind when he saw her, thought of her…
Her eyes were caught by the flicker of motion as the portrait hole opened, and she glanced towards it, not expecting anyone in particular. To her surprise, it was Harry who stepped through; his cheeks noticeably pink even in the crimson common room, where any shade of red tended to pale into insignificance.
He caught her eye, smiled a fraction too briefly, and hastened over. Hermione found she didn't mind the intrusion – she wanted a distraction – though she was surprised that Ron and Ginny weren't with him.
'Hey,' she called, as soon as he came close enough to hear her. 'You look tired. Quidditch practice?'
'What?' he asked, sinking onto one end of a sofa. 'Oh, no. I was… ah…' Harry paused for a moment, fumbling the edge of his sleeve between his fingers. He gave a quick glance around the common room and leaned forward slightly before continuing, and when he spoke, his voice was low and confidential. 'You remember the… the vision?'
Hermione nodded; she could hardly forget it. Harry gave the common room another suspicious look before continuing. 'Dumbledore persuaded Snape to start teaching me Occlumency again.'
'That's where you were?' Hermione asked, a sudden sense of fear filling her. Snape hated Harry still, and she doubted that the vision and rescue would have changed anything. Almost by reflex she scanned Harry's face, looking for signs of something being wrong. The distant firelight picked out the faint lines across his forehead, a slight curl to his lip… 'Are you okay?'
'Fine,' he assured her. 'He was… well, surprisingly all right. He didn't say anything about what happened with the vision or when I looked in… or anything else in the past,' he finished quickly. Hermione didn't notice.
'Are you sure?' she asked. 'You look like something's wrong. I won't tell anyone anything, you know.'
'I know,' he assured her, staring vaguely in the direction of the wall. 'It's nothing, really. Just that I'm not getting any better at Occlumency, so I'm going through all the memories again. I feel like I've been a few rounds with a Dementor, except I can't scare Snape away with a Patronus.' He gave her a rather weak smile as he said that, and despite the attempt at a joke, Hermione shivered.
'Are you okay?' she asked, feeling ridiculous for saying it even as she spoke. 'I… I mean… did you remember…?'
'Sirius,' Harry said, his voice a pained sigh. He nodded. 'Yeah. And all the other usual ones. I hate having to remember. Normally I can just push them all to the back of my mind and I'm fine, but then I remember them and it's almost like going through them all over again.'
She didn't know what to do. It was almost as hard as trying to work out how to help Draco. Tentatively, Hermione reached out over the gap between their chairs and gave her friend's hand a gentle squeeze. He looked up, smiled. 'Thanks. I'll be okay in a bit. It helps… it helps that I want to do Occlumency now.'
'You do?' Hermione asked.
He nodded, a short gesture. 'Yes. Because…' Harry paused for a second, staring fiercely at nothing, his hand curling on the arm of the chair. 'Because if I'd learnt it earlier, Sirius would… he wouldn't have died. So I've got to learn it now, I want to learn it. It's like a punishment, in a way. If I hadn't gone running off…'
'Don't blame yourself so much,' Hermione told him firmly. Harry simply shrugged, but then she knew he'd heard that piece of advice a thousand times before. There was simply nothing else to say.
'So I'm kind of glad it's happening, really,' Harry finished, as though she'd never interrupted. A flicker of something passed over his face. 'Though I do feel a bit guilty… I wanted…'
He broke off, and Hermione allowed him a few seconds before prompting him to continue. His face was paler now than when he came in, though the firelight still gave it a reddish tint. 'Go on,' Hermione said gently.
Harry frowned, then glanced up to meet her eyes. She saw something very like guilt pass across his face before he confessed, 'I was thinking how I had visions of both of them – Snape and Sirius. And I wanted… I wished things had been the other way round. That Sirius lived and Snape…' He broke off, turning his head away, and his voice was unreadable. 'Pretty horrible thing to want, really.'
Hermione didn't know what to say; didn't think thee was anything she could say. Wordlessly, she reached out her hand again to give his a friendly squeeze. He glanced up at that, looking almost nervous.
'But it's normal, too,' she replied, finally finding her voice. 'I mean, Sirius… he was your godfather. And you never liked Snape. And people always want those they loved to come back, after they…' She didn't want to say died.
'It's not like I want Snape to die,' Harry continued, almost as if she had responded with disgust and he was trying to justify himself. 'It's just that… if I could have chosen which one to save…'
'Don't worry about it,' Hermione said, trying to reassure him. 'I think it's… I think it's just human. That doesn't mean it's good, of course, but it's… it's not necessarily wrong.'
He nodded at that, expression slightly dazed for a few moments before he looked up at her, giving Hermione a real smile. 'Thanks,' he said. 'I think I needed to hear that.'
'But I still don't see why… bloody hell.' Ron stared in a distinctly impressed amazement at the Great Hall in front of him. 'That's going to be huge!'
The rapidly-approaching play had been one of the major topics of school gossip ever since it was announced, and even more so now that the performance dates were set and looming ever closer. Last night's big discussions had centred around the stage. Only the actors had seen a model of it, and since the rumour that the directors were beginning construction had started to spread, very little else had been talked about.
The stage, as Ron had said, was going to be huge, and the three of them paused at the door to take it in It was fortunate that the Great Hall was a big room, because the stage alone – along with backstage areas for prop storage, changing and so forth – was taking up almost a third of the space.
The rest of the hall, where the audience would be seated, was still occupied by breakfasting students and house tables. Except that each of the single, long house tables had been split into two, so each house now had twin ranks of students eyeing the growing stage and discussing the coming play in excited whispers. The staff table was just at the base of where the stage ended; Hermione could see Dumbledore cheerfully spreading marmalade on a pile of pancakes, and Professor Snape glowering thoughtfully at his plate.
'I think I'm getting stage fright,' Harry said gloomily as they walked over to one of the Gryffindor tables, 'and it isn't even finished yet.'
'You make a great Macduff, though,' Hermione said, her eyes straying back to the stage.
'Until I forget my lines, or fall over, or miss a cue…' Harry said, almost jokingly as he slid into an empty space and reached for the sausages.
Ron shook his head in distaste. 'Makes me glad I didn't audition,' he remarked.
Harry and Ron continued to chatter as they filled their plates hungrily and cheerfully tucking in to what looked like a full English breakfast each. Hermione was pleased to note that Harry seemed fine. That wasn't always an indication that he was fine, of course, but it did suggest that he was reasonably in control.
Her glance slipped towards the stage again as she took a piece of toast. The sight of it, and the reminder that time was growing short, was both unsettling and exciting. To think that in a few short weeks she'd be standing on the completed stage, acting Lady Macbeth to a packed audience… The mixture of anticipation and nerves coiled uneasily in her stomach, and she found that her appetite was completely gone.
Knowing that if she didn't eat she'd be starving by lunchtime, Hermione nibbled on her toast and – before she could even think about it – her eyes flicked curiously to the Slytherin tables, looking for Draco.
She spotted him almost instantly; sitting with his back to the Gryffindor tables, head bent so that she could see only a glimmer of the hair at the base of his neck. That was unusual, surely? He normally sat facing the room and the other house tables, Slytherin's table being right on the edge of the Hall. In fact, she couldn't remember him ever sitting to face the wall, with his back to the world. And – Hermione tore a piece of her toast glumly – it wasn't hard to guess what, or rather who, he didn't want to be looking at. What he didn't want to think about and remember…
She could hardly blame him, really.
There had to be something she could do. Was there anyone else she could tell about Draco? Snape was the obvious person, really, and she knew that he'd have passed the information on to Dumbledore. Who else? None of the other teachers, she concluded after a quick glance through them. None of them would really-
A hoot suddenly sounded directly above her head and she jumped, glancing up to see the post owls swooping through the air above her. She must have been so preoccupied she hadn't heard them arriving. Most mornings she didn't pay them much attention; Ron was the only one of the three of them who usually got letters. Hermione tended to limit her letters home to once a fortnight, knowing that the visiting owls would be rather difficult for her parents to explain if they happened too often. Harry, of course, never wrote to the Dursleys unless he absolutely had to, and they did the same.
Both she and Harry, therefore, were rather surprised when two tawny owls dropped out of the multitude to perch by their plates, holding out identical-looking letters to both of them.
Harry frowned at the roll of parchment as she took it. 'Who'd be writing to me?' he asked.
'It's someone from school, at any rate,' Ron remarked. 'See, they both have school tags on their legs.' He stared bemusedly up at the mass of soaring, swirling birds, some of which were already flying back to the Owlery or their owners. 'There's more owls than usual today, too.'
'Only one way to find out,' Hermione said, and unrolled her letter. The mystery became clear as soon as she recognised Megan's handwriting.
As I'm sure you're all aware, the play had been scheduled for the weekend before the end of term, with one performance on each night. The Saturday night performance will be attended by the Muggle Studies NEWT examiners to complete their assessment of our direction of the play.
Obviously, time is of the essence. Rehearsals have been scheduled for the final few weeks, including full run-throughs of the play, costume fittings and dress rehearsals. Please not that all these rehearsals are VITAL and take precedence over any other extracurricular activities. You are also encouraged to arrange extra rehearsals in your spare time.
There followed a neat list of all Hermione's rehearsals. She glanced through the list, noting that her costume fitting was scheduled for the following evening, and looked up at Harry.
'Well, that explains it,' he said, giving the owl a titbit of bacon from his plate and stroking its feathers before allowing it to fly away. 'Do you know what the costumes are going to be like?'
Hermione gave him a reproachful look. 'If you'd been listening at that meeting we had…' She let the sentence trail off uncompleted; he ducked his head and grinned sheepishly, which made Hermione suppress a smile. The little owl that had delivered Megan's letter tugged on her sleeve beseechingly, asking permission to leave.
She was about to steal a sausage from the big plates of food in front of her and give it a piece when a thought struck her, and her eyes slipped from the owl to the Slytherin table.
'Wait a moment,' she asked the owl, her eyes still fixed on Draco. 'Will you take someone a letter for me? I'll give you a sausage. A whole one.'
The owl hooted enthusiastically, and Hermione ducked her head under the table, pulling out quill, ink and parchment from her schoolbag. Finding a space free of plates on the table, she composed a quick note.
Draco,
Do you want to meet sometime? To practice? Usual place, usual time, if that's alright with you.
She paused before adding her name, hesitated, then scribbled in another line.
We don't have to talk about it. We can pretend it never happened.
Hermione.
She quickly folded the letter in half and then in quarters, before Harry or Ron could see, or before the twinge in her stomach that cried about at the very idea of pretending it never happened could make itself more strongly known. She passed the letter to the bird and fed it a sausage, which it gulped down greedily, reminding her strangely of Ron.
'Take it to Draco Malfoy, please,' she asked the owl. 'He's over there at the Slytherin table.'
The owl nodded, grasped the letter firmly and flew off. Ron frowned.
'What are you writing to him for?' he asked bemusedly before realising. 'Oh. Play stuff.'
'Practices,' Hermione agreed, watching the tawny owl perch by Draco's side, watching him take the letter and read it – oh, she wished she could see his face. He made no indication of what he thought, but slipped the parchment in his pocket and nodded to the owl, which flew off in an almost huffy manner. Draco hadn't given it a titbit. Was that a bad sign?
'So what's your costume like, Hermione?' Harry suddenly asked, drawing her attention back to the Gryffindors. 'Apparently I have to tear part of mine off when… you know. When Macduff's family get killed. What about everyone else's?'
Hermione, who had been listening at the meeting, forced herself to forget about Draco for a while and began to explain.
AN: Okay, okay, no need to threaten. There will be a Draco-Hermione scene next week. Promise!
This week's review topic has a slightly more serious bent, mainly because I started debating this with various friends online and got four different answers from four different people.
Do you think Harry could torture a Death Eater to get information in the War? Would it depend on the situation – if he knew the person or not, how far the torture had to go… Would he do it to spare a friend from doing it? Would someone else do it?
Yeah, we are ignoring the existence of Veritaserum for this question, because getting into the difficult characterisation, psychology and morality issues is more fun.
Review!