Disclaimers: I really own nothing. The credit belongs to JKR and Christina Dodd. I just like to mix and match. I am just continuing this story, because I am motivated by my reviewers.
Title: Deception
Author: SoniJanu54
Previously in Chapter 5:
His fingers grasped hers. "I really need you."
Surely there could be no harm in promising such a simple thing, so she said, "I won't leave."
On that assurance, he was asleep. Really asleep this time. But even in deep slumber, he clung to her.
Sighing, she looked her foot around the straight-backed chair, and brought it around so she could sit. "I want you to understand something," she told the sleeping man. "I am not promising forever."
End of Chapter 5.
Chapter 6
Weasley opened his eyes to the sunshine filling his room. He knew where he was immediately. In Hogwarts, his body torn in a duel, his mind blank and still – and the woman who called herself his wife hovering close to him like a restless spirit. "What is wrong, woman?" He snapped.
Hermione straightened and backed up a long slow step, her spine stiff with displeasure. "You have slept long. Fourteen hours since yesterday. We were afraid that you wouldn't wake again."
"You will not be so lucky again." Weasley said. His leg hurt, his butt ached. He groped for another pillow to put under his shoulder.
Hermione sprang to his assistance. "You, sir, are more pleasant when you are unconscious."
The elf he had met yesterday – Hickey – stood at the foot of the bed. She voiced her unwanted opinion. "Most men are. And most babes, too."
Hermione smiled suddenly, "I suppose there's a lesson to be learned there."
For all that he wanted to nip at her for her insolence, he was stricken by the dimple in her chin, the lilt in her voice, the sparkle of her teeth, that he could do no more than stare. Merlin, when she was happy, everything about her shouted her joy.
She hadn't smiled at him before. Not once. Not ever.
He couldn't have forgotten her.
Damn it. Damn it! His name. His home. His mother, father, his kin. What had this duel done to him? He had forgotten all. Oppressed by lucid despair, he pressed his hands to his forehead.
Gently, Hermione pushed them away, and looked into his eyes. "Do you have a headache?"
She wasn't staring at him with romantic interest; she was watching his pupils, checking to see if the were normal. His wife. She had claimed to be his wife, yet – how had his wife become this woman of cool blue eyes and a steady voice? She said they were estranged; did she cherish no sweet memories of their marriage?
Hickey handed her a steaming cup, and the rich scent smelled of parsley and beef. His moth watered, and he found himself reaching out.
Hermione steadied the mug.
He swallowed so quickly that it burned the roof of his mouth, and the broth tasted salty and rich on his tongue.
"Do you have a headache?" Hermione asked again.
He glanced at Hickey. She stood across the room, folding linens at the table, too far to hear him speak, so in a low tone he admitted, "More of a heartache. I don't know who I am." Then he cursed himself for showing Hermione his soft underbelly. Most women scorned weak men.
But Hermione didn't show her contempt. She answered just as softly, "I'll take care of you until you know who you are."
She still wore the forest green dress, a little more wrinkled than before, with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. The sunlight caressed her, but tiredness ringed her eyes and curling wisps of hair straggled from the snood that bound her locks. He caught her hand. "And after." He demanded rather than asked.
"If you want me." Her tone made it clear that she doubted that.
Again a memory slipped from the mists of his mind. Hermione, leaning over him, her wrap loose about her shoulders, golden candlelight gleaming on the upper swells of her breasts.
Why couldn't he remember what happened after? Just that wisp of memory brought his member stirring to life, and he needed to remember everything about her more than he needed to remember all the rest of his life.
He wanted to press a kiss on her fingers, slip an arm around her waist, carry her off to some private place and love her until that tight expression of concern and control slipped and became tender passion.
He wanted to do all those things, but he gazed on their intertwined hands, and the difference jolted him. Her fingers were strong, her nails short, her skin pink and healthy. His hands were skeletal, pasty white, the hands of an invalid. He hadn't the strength to take her, but more important, no woman would want him like this.
A thought occurred to him, and panic abruptly escaped from behind its prison bars. "How old am I?"
"Let me think." Her eyebrows wrinkled, and she counted on her fingers. "You are twenty-seven."
Relief swept him. "Not an old man then."
"Not at all." Hermione said.
"Just contrary as the devil." Hickey said.
He smirked at her. "Do you recognize your master?"
Hickey went about her work, not at all offended. "Ah, you're a wicked one, Mr. Weasley."
Hermione brought him a hand mirror.
The scars struck him first. Pale lines crisscrossed one side of his face. "I look like a Frankenstein's monster."
She didn't answer.
Glancing at her still, set face, he asked, "What?"
"You've read Frankenstein?"
"Yes."
"Who wrote it?"
"Mary Shelley." He understood Hermione now, and he said, "I don't know why I know that, I just do. I can quote a hundred history facts about the wizard kind, and just as many about the muggle history. I can do the Hamlet soliloquy." He gestured grandly and proclaimed, "To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles –"
"– And by opposing end them." Hermione interrupted. "I do believe you when you say you remember your Hamlet."
He continued, 'I can tell you how to trap a rabbit and clean it, and how to make at least a dozen knots. But I don't remember who I am, and that's what I want to know."
"All right."
He didn't believe that she had accepted his explanation, and silently demanded she do so.
"All right!" She spread her hands wide. "I don't understand who this works, I admit it. You'll allow me my moments of doubt."
"You can doubt anything you want, but don't doubt me. I am the only man here who is telling you all the truth."
"How do you know that?"
"I have an instinct." Let her make of that what she would.
Lifting the mirror again, he touched the scars lightly with his fingertips. They explained why his cheek felt still and sore when he spoke. He widened his eyes, flexed his jaw, and tilted his head. The man in the mirror made the motions, too, but he didn't recognize him. Nothing about the juxtaposition of harsh lines, pale scars and beard looked familiar to him.
Yet Hermione seemed to find nothing unusual in his features. "Do you know yourself?"
"Nothing at all."
"You're a man quite in your prime." Hickey said as she moved back and forth in the room, putting the linens away.
He teased, "If you have to wipe a bottom, you're glad it was mine, eh?"
Hermione gasped. "Weasley!"
But Hickey positively cackled. "I am not going interspecies, sir, but I got a quite a pleasant eyeful."
"Hickey!" Hermione sounded even more shocked by the older woman than by Weasley himself.
Handing Hermione the mirror, he said, "For a moment I wondered if I'd slept my life away."
"Gambling it away would be more your style."
He frowned. He didn't understand. "I don't gamble."
"It is your vice."
He didn't understand that either. He knew about cards, he knew men who spent days and nights in smoke-filled rooms betting their livelihood on a single toss of the dice, but that wasn't him. He resented her insinuation that he was a weakling like…the thought slipped away almost as soon as he had formed it. Like who? Whose face did he see, garnish with agitation, as he wagered everything on an illusion?
Weasley's excitement subsided before it had a chance to develop. Faces paraded across his mind in no more context than they would in a dream, and until he could bring the memories up from the depths, he would be helpless to understand them.
Helpless…he was helpless, damn it! Extending the mug he said, "I want some more broth, and this time, put some real food into it."
She mimicked his deep voice, "Please, Hermione, may I have some more broth?"
"If I don't beg, will you starve me?"
"I don't want you to beg, I want you to treat me politely, but I forgot!" She snapped her fingers. "You don't act nice, unless you benefit from it."
The trouble was, he rather thought that she was right. Demanding things felt right to him. Patience was never his virtue. Words like 'please' and 'thank you' felt alien. In a mocking tone, he said, "Please, Hermione, may I have some more broth?"
"I would love to give you more broth." Hermione said, taking the cup.
"And this time, put some real food in it." He said, mostly to spite her.
The flames in her burned vibrant and restless, yet contained by her strength of her will, and smile blazed with arrogance. She tossed her head. A few more errant curls drifted form the snood and settled around her shoulders. Her skirts swished as she moved towards the table.
"Hickey, there is no more broth here. Can you make sure that he doesn't harm himself, while I get the broth from the kitchens."
"I can do it for you, miss." Hickey offered.
"No, thank you. I need to get away for a few minutes, if you don't mind." Hermione looked at Fred as she said this."
"You are an arrogant bear of a man." Hickey said after several seconds of silence. "But you're scared to death, aren't you, sir?"
He flinched, and the movement shot pain through his whole body. "What do you mean?"
"Everyone one wonders if you're playing a game, saying you don't remember. I know that you aren't, for if you did, you'd not be shouting and nasty to hide your terror."
"I am not terrified." He wasn't!
"Of course you aren't. I have seen over fifteen generations of students pass through Hogwarts, at least half of them male, and I don't know a thing about men." Hickey placed a stack of towels on the table besides his bed. "They are for your bath tomorrow."
"I am not taking a bath."
"We've already discussed it, Mrs. Weasley and I. We are going to give you a sponge bath, just like we do every other day."
"The hell you are." He refused to expose this while, emaciated body to anyone, certainly not to a female who had once fawned over his strength and masculinity. Fawned enough to marry him, if he was to believe her.
"See there it is again. You're so terrified, you're snapping at about every little thing."
"It's not a little thing." He clenched his teeth."
"My point is, I am very fond of miss Hermione. I've watched her bring you from the brink of death, talk to you when I thought her addled to do so, turn you big, limp body so you wouldn't get bedsores when she is just a slip of a thing who shouldn't even have to lift her own teacup. Now I understand a man having his fears, and I understand you're a man used to command, but when I hear you being nasty to Mrs. Weasley, I think to myself that I ought to explain her how frightened you are so she'll not take any offense."
He stared at Hickey, seeing the iron, behind the kindness. She threatened to tattle to Hermione that beneath his gruff exterior lay a scared little boy. Hermione would be nice to him, of course, but he knew that beneath her courtesy would be the lash of condescension of all women felt for puny men.
He wasn't weak; he wasn't scared of the great, gaping hole in mind, or that he would never find himself again. It wasn't true – but it didn't matter. Hickey would say it was, and his denials would fall on deaf ears.
'Of course, I am just an elf. My place is to keep my mouth shut." Hickey's face showed her determination. "And I can keep mum if you could find it in your heart to be a little bit more civil to out dear Mrs. Weasley."
"All right, but you will get me out of taking a bath." It sounded like a good deal.
"You smell." Hickey said bluntly.
"Females are too fussy about cleanliness."
"You haven't had a real bath for at least seven weeks. The creatures in the Forbidden Forest are complaining of the stench."
"I am not having her bath me."
"Ah. It's her you object to. You don't want her to bath you. Now, that I can arrange."
Before either one of them could say anything, Hermione opened the door and entered. She moved towards the bed, and handed him the cup full of chicken broth. It was the same cup as before.
He wouldn't take it. "No more broth."
"It's thickened with gruel." She assured him.
Excellent! To him, gruel sounded like a feast. She let him take the mug, balancing it as if he were a child who might slop all over himself. As well as he might, he admitted. His hands trembled with weakness, and he wanted to swallow every bit at once. She wouldn't let him. She removed the mug after each swallow, and gave him water instead. And his stomack filled rapidly. He couldn't believe half a mug of broth and thin gruel satisfied him. Hermione understood him without him saying a word. Hickey hovered in background, watching him with an anxious faze that belied her previous curtness. Hermione handed her the mug. "Don't take it too far."
"You will want some more soon." Hickey told him. "Your stomach is shrunk. And that gruel is more than you've had in weeks."
He looked at his hands again. He stretched out his arms before him, the to the side, then back to meet in the middle. His muscles trembled form the effort, but muscles could be trained again, he decided. It was the other he didn't know about. "Will my memories return to me?"
"When you strength has returned to you." Hermione reassured him.
"Is that what the healer says?"
"I threw the healer out."
"So you know what you are talking about."
"No."
They remained silent for a while. After a couple of minutes, Hermione said, "We are going to give you a bath."
He shot a glance at Hickey, who nodded at him. Hermione saw this exchange, but remained silent.
"I am not getting naked in front of you, lass." Weasley whined.
Hermione's eyebrows shot up. "I don't see why not."
"You're not the brightest, and you're not bathing me."
"I am not the brightest?" Her eyes narrowed. "At least I know when I stink."
He did feel filthy, and since Hickey had mentioned it, he had noticed a bit of odor about him, but he wasn't about to admit it. "It's a good manly smell."
"If men smell something out of the rubbish heap. Maybe you can't smell yourself, but tell me the truth," her voice took a coaxing note – "doesn't your skin feel crusty?"
He wouldn't have some young female handling him as if he were a piece of meat. Especially not Hermione, who had already proved she could bring him to aching readiness with a feeble bit of a kiss. Hermione, a female who claimed to be his wife, who he had suspected of lying while hoping she told the truth so on some future date, he'd have the right to tumble her beneath him on a bed. "A bit of a wash won't do any good. If you are going to embarrass me, then give me a real bath in a tub."
"We can't. You can't walk. You're thinner, but you're still yoo bif for us to lift, and that's what it will take to get you into a tub."
"Are a witch or a not, woman? Just levitate me into a tub."
"What if I hurt you leg?" Hermione said.
"Oh, you won't be there. Hickey can supervise."
Obviously tempted, Hermione resisted.
"He is right, miss Hermione." Smoothly, Hickey took her cue. "We can enlarge the tub for Mr. Weasley, so he will be comfortable. I can levitate him."
"But why Hickey? Why not me?" Hermione asked Weasley.
He exchanged an exasperated glance with Hickey.
"Because he will not be pointing anything at me." Hickey said.
"Oh, for Heaven's sake! It's not as it I – " Hermione bit her lip.
"It's not if you what…?" He asked. It's not as if she hadn't seen it before. He could almost hear her speaking the words. But she didn't finish the thought. He detected a faint blush on her cheeks.
"Oh, all right. Hickey can give you a bath in the tub." Hermione summed up the topic, so she wouldn't have to talk about it anymore. "Since we are not going to bath him, let's exercise him." Hickey nodded and got around to the opposite side of the bed as Hermione.
They picked up his arms, and brought it over his head. Like a spectator, he watched as they turned his forearm. The muscles stretched and ached. His gut twisted at his helplessness and even though they made the effort for him, he found himself gasping for air.
"Let's give him some water," Hermione said.
"Yes, let's." He said sarcastically.
They glanced at him as if surprised to hear him speak, and he swore to himself this ould never happen again. Starting tomorrow, he would exercise himself. He would push himself to the limits of his endurance. He would stop worrying about the working of his mind and concentrate on the workings of his body until each joint and muscle moved with the strength and dexterity of a well-oiled steel. He accepted the water from Hermione, and asked, "Will I ever be able to stand on that leg?" He looked at the leg with the compound fracture.
"Yes!" The question surprised Enid. "Unless there is some damage I can't see, you will be able to stand and walk.
"I'll hold you to that promise, lass."
"You do that, sir, you do that." Hermione smoothed the covers over him.
A/N: I am extremely sorry that I didn't post up this chapter yesterday as promised, but I made it extra long, so if you guys will forgive me. Wow, I got nine review. Thank you so much. You guys are the best. One of my reviewers was surprised that I thought you guys might not like this story. I guess that's because I know I am not a great writer, I am just combining two things. I obviously like the story, but I need to know if you guys like it just as much. I am not used to getting such a good feedback. Keep it coming. Another one of my reviewers wants to know the story behind Snape and Lupin, and their significance to the story. I won't have their background in the story, but I will include a conversation between Snape, Lupin and Dumbledore in the next chapter. The next chapter should be up sometime next week, so check in then. Review please. I need to know what you guys think.
