Understanding

Part 2


"What is this?" the brown-haired woman asked as she searched through the mess that lay at the bottom of the trunk. She had been looking through the attic for a book to give to her daughter now that she was entering Hogwarts the next month.

She rifled through it, startled at the sight of Harry's sloppy writing. It had been more than a decade since she had seen this book - the book that he was always writing in, the book that he refused to let anyone look in, saying that he needed it to keep sane during the war. She and Ron had always respected that, and had figured that he had filled it when they no longer saw him writing in it.

She could still see that day, when he and Voldemort (she was still rather proud of herself for being able to say that name, even after seeing just how terrible his presence and power was) were fighting the the Chamber of Death. The two were locked in battle, the Order and Death Eaters unable to approach them because of the power radiating off of them.

Harry had sent the most powerful burst of magic Hermione had ever felt towards Voldemort, obliterating his existance. She had always figured that it was a combination of all three Unforgivable Curses, no matter that he had never liked using them. He had stood there, panting, on the dias in front of the archway, his head tilted as if he were listening to someone no one else could hear.

He had said just three words - "I'm coming, Sirius" - when he was hit from the side by Draco Malfoy in his last attempt to revenge his father and thrown into the veil just as Sirius had been two years ago. To Hermione, it had seemed like it had taken Harry a year to fall through the empty archway, through which Luna had always insisted held a large veil, even after all these years. The red light of that spell had illuminated Harry's face for the briefest of moments. She was still sure that happiness and joy had been radiating from her friend's face as he fell backwards into nothingness.

She had forgotten about having Harry's trunk - it had been years since she had been up in the attic, since she couldn't stand the ghoul drool. When she had moved into The Burrow, Hermione had stuffed Harry's trunk up here, unable to withstand the emotions that came from looking at it.

And now she held some of his deepest thoughts when he had been sixteen and seventeen.

Hermione refused the feel guilty as she opened the book.


She felt guilty - Very Guilty - as she closed the back cover.

How was it that she had never seen the things that had been between Sirius and Harry all those years ago when they celebrated Christmas.

She had been too preoccupied by Harry's admission of his kiss with Cho to think that he could have been kissing someone else as well. And his own godfather, who had never gotten the chance to be a godfather. Each of them had been alone for so many years, it was understandable that each of them had gravitated towards each other. And Harry had never tried to be with anyone else after Sirius' death.

It had brought tears to her eyes when she read about Harry's confusion about that kiss he had shared with Sirius at Christmas. They had been talking about his first kiss, Harry had written, that he had asked if all kisses were like that.

Then Sirius went through the veil, and Harry retreated.

But what if what Harry wrote was true? That Sirius had been stuck behind that veil that actually does exist? That he had been there two years, neither living nor dead, and that Harry had been right that he could have been rescued when he'd suggested it at the end of their sixth year? When Lupin had fallen through it and Tonks lay dying in front of the archway?

"Hermione?"

She turned to find her husband standing in the doorway, the only light illuminating the attic, other than that from her "lumos" spell, through the red-haired man in shadow.

"What did you find?"

Hermione looked up. "Just some memories, Fred. Some memories that should have been much happier than they turned out to be."