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How long was it, between the time when you were happy, and the time when you wanted to kill him?
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
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Harry Potter watched the man who would kill his family hang a familiar locket around his best friend's neck. Hermione was standing at the window in that strange and interesting apartment he had. Harry had seen a lot of it over the past weeks. He'd seen Tom Riddle eating heartily at the table. He'd watched him leave for work. Heard about his day. He'd seen his irritation when he couldn't find a sock and he'd seen his wild elation when he found the owner of the locket he'd sought for so long. He'd seen them fight and debate and argue. He'd seen Tom supportive and Tom antagonistic.
At first, Harry had watched the years Hermione had spent with Tom with disquiet, but then he had been too pulled into the story in her memories to care why she was showing them to him. She did not show him everything, of course. After that first year she showed him what she called the highlights. She spent a great deal of time travelling and often skipped over that but she showed him political meetings and dinners and dances and festivals he'd never heard of and magic, magic, magic. It made him as hungry and full of wonder as he had been when he'd first learned it was real.
I want you to know who I have become she told him. But the memories showed so much more than that. They showed him who Tom Riddle had been, before he had been a monster. They showed him what the world was in a way he had not understood. The world Albus Dumbledore had tried to build was at odds with the glimpses Hermione gave him of another world where magic was king, a world somehow more untamed and unconstrained.
Harry wondered if he was being manipulated. He thought he probably was. He wasn't sure it mattered.
The last time he had felt so seduced was staring into the Mirror of Erised, and just like then he wanted to keep looking. So, he stood and watched as Hermione's hand came up to the locket.
"What's this?" she asked smiling as her fingers came up to touch it and then again, "What's this?" but with her voice breaking because of course she knew, she knew, she knew.
Tom said nothing, but turned her around and tried to kiss away her protests.
Hermione pulled away from him, her brown eyes shining with tears. She pulled the locket into her sightline and then summoned a newspaper with a flick of her wrist. She didn't need to read the headline, but she did anyway.
"What have you done?" she hissed at him.
Tom looked slightly dumbfounded for a moment. Harry wondered how he had expected her to react. Hermione began to pull the gold chain over her head.
"You're always so fucking clever aren't you? If you take it off," Tom said nastily, "You can take yourself home."
"Why would you think I would want this?" she asked, but she'd stilled. "You idiot. Didn't you listen to me? I told you over and over again: three is a stronger number than seven, there are lines even you should not cross."
He sneered at her, plainly furious.
"Give it back then and get out."
Hermione's left hand was on the locket, her right held out her wand. She looked as beautiful as she did unsure, Harry thought, with her long hair unbound down her back, the tears in her eyes.
"I thought I – I am such a fool," she gasped. "Did this feel different? Did you have any compunctions?"
"She was an awful, lecherous old woman who tried to pressure me into – into a full seduction. She was grasping and greedy and selfish. What do you care of her death?"
"I care because you can't just - just choose like that! You can't play at being a god. You aren't better! You don't get to make that choice, to decide your wants are worth more than someone else's life."
Hermione's voice was shrill through her tears, her wand out but shaking.
"I've seen you kill a man, Hermione. Don't be so fucking hypocritical."
She deflated.
"You're right, I have, though I never sought him out. And maybe I am a hypocrite, but if you cannot see the difference… then. I don't know. I should take it off. I thought this was the line I couldn't cross. I've forgiven you so much –"
"You could leave," he interrupted, stepping forward and pulling her tight against him, "but you would dishonour this. It would be a lie to leave, Hermione, because you don't care about that old woman. Not really. You care because you think you should but you know she was worthless. She was no saint, this woman that I killed. She was an ordinary, grasping thing too proud of something that should never have belonged to her. I offered to buy it, to win it, but there was no price high enough - so I took it. It is rightfully mine after all."
"You can't think like that," she persisted. "You can't just decide that what you want is more important. It doesn't matter if you're extraordinary and they're not."
"Why doesn't it matter? What makes her life as important as – for the sake of this argument – your godfather's?"
"Maybe it isn't but that still doesn't give you the right just to go around killing people for a trinket," she snapped and pulled away and he let her go, the memory swirling into a new one as she slammed the door shut.
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The second memory was in the same wood-paneled room, but the light was different. Tom's hair had grown longer. He sat at the table in the mullioned window, reading a book and eating a pear. The light poured onto his face showing it to be slightly waxen, his beauty beginning to fade. When he turned to look around the room, Harry saw a girl was tied up by the fire, eyes unblinking, frozen, naked, obscene.
His stomach lurched in fear for the strange girl. The fire behind her turned green and Hermione stepped out, her long blue cloak swirling up behind her in the draught.
"Who," she said immediately and acidly, "is this?"
"That is the Mudblood who blew up Barnaby Hicks's shop with three children in it last week," Tom said, not looking round. But Harry could see the wicked glitter in his eyes, the wolfish smile dancing at the corners of his perfect mouth.
"Take her to the Aurors then."
"Alas, my dear, I have another use for her," he replied, voice low and precise and taunting, "Unless of course, you want to save her life."
Hermione pulled off the cloak, tossing it over the back of a chair. There were signs of her all over the room but she no longer looked as comfortable in it as she had before. She was thinner, paler, her eyes bitter.
"What do you want from me?" she asked tiredly. Tom stood and walked over to her, one arm slipping around her waist from behind, the other sliding her robe up, fingers searching underneath.
"I want you to take her back to the Mudblood gang and infiltrate them. I want you to drive them to greater acts of violence, to whip them into a frenzy."
"You have already done that," she gasped. She was letting him manipulate her body; it was an unbearably erotic scene. The naked bound girl knelt before them, only her eyes moving. Tom kicked Hermione's legs apart and pushed her against the sideboard. Harry's stomach lurched in fear and excitement and shame as he watched the other man press into her. This was the most graphic act he'd witnessed between them, despite all the scenes of domesticity he'd witnessed.
"I'm going away," he said as he pushed so deep she cried out in pain. "I need you to be my lieutenant."
Fire was dancing at Hermione's fingertips as she cried out again, this time in pleasure. Harry felt sick.
"No," she said, gasping for breath as she spoke, her nails scrabbling against the wood, "I won't do it. I don't believe in this war you're trying to start and I never will."
"I thought you'd say that," Tom said, grabbing her hair and winding it around his wrist, forcing her to look at the girl kneeling next to them. His other hand began to dance between her legs. "Avada Kedavra," he hissed as Hermione came apart, crying out in ecstasy.
She slumped forward for a moment, then lurched away from him. Tom laughed, a high, wicked laugh that Harry remembered from his own memories. He wanted to cry, too, for the look on Hermione's face. Despair. Resignation.
"I will never forgive you for this," she said at last. "You want me to be your creature but you destroyed any chance of that ever happening when you destroyed your own soul."
Tom wasn't smiling now, but he dropped onto the sofa, licking his fingers ostentatiously.
"Is this who you meant to become?" Hermione taunted. The despair was gone, just like that, and she stood over the body like a lioness, the great mane of her hair swirling out, crackling with rage. "How mighty you are! The great Lord Voldemort – vanquishing unarmed girls hardly out of school. How they will all quiver before you."
"Be careful," he hissed. "You could have saved her, could have told me you'd take her back and lied and released her. But you were too stubborn. Her death is on your hands too, my dear."
"Is this who you meant to become?" she asked again. An apple appeared in her hands and he watched greedily as she bit into it. "Do you remember how it tastes? Do you remember when touching my skin was falling up into the night sky? Do you remember when kissing me felt like magic, like you were coming home and starting a new adventure all at the same time?"
For a moment, Harry thought Tom - or was he truly Voldemort by now? - would kill Hermione. Then, to his surprise, a flicker of regret crossed the older man's face.
"Yes," he said, "I remember. But you made me weak with your soft skin and your soft lips and your fire and your dreams and hopes - "
"I made you more than you will ever be alone," she snapped. "You stupid fool – to give up being alive because you're scared of death! Did you know that was the price? You didn't, did you? And now you don't feel enough to remember why it mattered. I don't fear you or even love you, Tom. I pity you."
"And yet you stay," he taunted, walking towards her, vicious and smiling and arrogant. "I killed a girl and you watched and you came anyway. Whatever I am, you stay here and what does that make you?"
"Avada Kedavra!" she screamed, the wand neither man had noticed appear in her hand slashing down. But no venomous green light came out. Tom stood, frozen for a second in shock, but unfelled, unhurt - unkilled.
Then, he started to laugh again. It was lower than before and some of the colour had come back into his face. He looked younger and more beautiful all of a sudden.
"Oh my darling, you really meant that," he said, kissing her tearstained mouth, arms slipping around her, pressing kisses down her neck until she shuddered and stilled.
"I remember," he whispered. "I remember the magic of your skin. I have been haunted by its absence but I remember, Hermione. I remember it all. Can you feel it now?"
"Yes," she said, "but it's not enough. Forcing me to live with the memory of you is the cruelest thing you have ever done and I won't do it any more."
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When Harry came back to himself after watching the terrible fight Hermione was watching him carefully.
"Why didn't it work?" he asked. "Why couldn't you kill him?"
It would have changed everything.
"I don't know. Perhaps because I made a vow not to stand against him. I gave him fifty years, do you remember? It was an accident, a throwaway comment by the lake but a binding vow nonetheless. But possibly just because I couldn't change time - like I told you all in the court. I couldn't stop him, couldn't save anyone I knew to be dead. I just had to watch."
The agony of this stopped Harry asking what he had been going to ask next: how could you have stayed after the locket?
He wondered if she knew how arousing it had been before it had been horrifying. Wondered who he was to be so fascinated. Wondered what magic lay in her skin to dazzle such a man. Like coming home and starting a new adventure all at once. Like falling up into the stars.
"I would have left him after the locket but Albus asked me not to," she answered the question he had not been able to ask. "And after that – after I tried to kill him - it made him trust me you see. If I couldn't kill him and I couldn't stand in his way what threat was I, however powerful I was? But that was the end of any romantic relationship - though he never made me bow to him like a follower. I never took the Mark."
A fear Harry had not known he had slipped away. She had not been his soldier, had not stood by his side as he had slaughtered Muggles. He walked over to where she was sitting, pacing slightly, his body thrumming as the adrenaline of watching that horrific scene faded.
They were in Hermione's London flat again, though it now bore signs of residence it had not the first time he'd visited back in September. A discarded winter cloak draped over a chair. Stacks of books on the side tables. Some strange ornaments that reminded him of Dumbledore. Amongst it all, Hermione was curled up on the sofa, a Muggle book she'd been reading while he'd viewed her memories propped open next to her.
"What did you mean about him not being really alive?" he asked, gulping the remains of a glass of firewhisky she'd poured him before he'd gone into the Pensieve.
"Well," she said thoughtfully after a moment, "there's a funny thing about humanity that I've learned over the years. It's a hard habit for a human body to give up… Hitler liked dogs. Serial killers have a favourite type of tea or get annoyed by a badly cut lawn or never forget to send their niece a birthday card. But that was the price Tom paid – all magic like that has a price. It's too much, too permanent. I realised when he did it that cost of being deathless was to give up being truly alive. It went away slowly… and I didn't notice. But then after the locket and the cup it sped up; I suppose he'd given away too much."
She took a deep breath, pushing her long hair back over one shoulder.
"That stupid fool put his heart in a necklace for me and ran down a path you can't turn back from," Hermione continued. "Food turned to ash in his mouth. The sun didn't feel warm on his skin. He stopped caring. The world just... faded. I think when I tried to kill him - you see I really meant it – and… well you know this as well as anyone else. We are never more alive than when we're close to death are we? It brought back some of all that. Perhaps that's why he never could kill you - year after year. Maybe you made him feel alive again. Made him remember being human, just for a second."
"Why did you really stay after he gave you the locket? Surely Dumbledore would have understood if you had said no."
She laughed bitterly.
"Perhaps he would have. I'm not sure. But… I told myself I'd always known what Tom was and I'd been a fool to think any differently and Albus needed me by Tom's side. I could only help indirectly of course. I could explain what he was reading or who he saw or where he went and Albus could work out what that meant. But I couldn't say 'he has hidden Horcruxes here and here and here'."
She shifted, drumming her nails on the discarded book before adding, "Maybe I just wasn't ready to give it all up, give up hope I could still change him - give up hope that my being there had a greater purpose. Maybe I was really needed. I still don't know. Do you understand?"
"Yeah. Yeah I do see. I'm sorry, Hermione."
There was a wistful lilt in Harry's voice as he slid onto the sofa next to her and patted her hand. It was an innocent gesture, meant to comfort.
"It's alright if you feel the allure a little bit, Harry," she whispered, catching it, after a moment. "Everyone loved him. Even Hagrid loved Tom you know. He helped him feed that spider - what was it called?"
"Aragog," he replied, surprised before he realised how long ago that must seem to her.
"That was it. Well Tom didn't see anything wrong with Hagrid having that pet, of course, so he let him keep it... In his eyes, I suppose it was a fair enough to frame him. Hagrid told me once, oh years ago, after an early Order meeting. When Tom still looked a little more like the boy he had been. Hagrid saw him and remembered who he was – he was very drunk, and he told me about the Prefect who'd helped him hide his pet and then turned him in. Hagrid knew him better than you might think."
"Yeah Hagrid always knew he wasn't dead," Harry agreed thoughtfully. "He told me when I was just a kid - he said 'there wasn't enough left of him to die'. I always remembered that."
Hermione stiffened slightly, but Harry didn't notice. Her robe had risen up where she was curled into the corner of the sofa, baring her thigh.
"Did he?" she asked idly, following his gaze. "How clever of him."
"I don't think I can see anything more," he admitted. "It's… it's too much. Can you just tell me?"
"Yes, if you like."
"Where did he go? Dumbledore said he vanished for years after getting the cup and the locket. I suppose it was after that conversation?"
"Yes, quite soon after that. I went home to Wales and then to Russia for a while and Tom went… well he went all over the place. I don't know all of it. He wrote to me sometimes but he didn't share things with me like he had before."
"Do you think he could love?"
"Not like we can," she said after a moment. "I think – perhaps it sounds mad but I've always wondered if his magic stopped him. I don't know, it's just a theory, but… his mother died before she could even feed him, Harry. She saw him for a moment and named him and then she was gone. He was never held, never loved, never taught comfort and I think his magic took root somehow there to protect him and made him not need it. Muggles have done studies into what happens if you withhold all touch and affection from little monkeys. It was horrible. They grew up all wrong. Maybe that's why he was so powerful but… broken somehow."
They sat quietly for a while as Harry thought about that and what it might mean.
"It's getting late, Harry. Ginny will be expecting you. And I must get some rest."
Harry stood regretfully. He'd grown accustomed to these late nights at Hermione's flat in London, drinking firewhisky and hearing about her past. She'd often been away on business for days at a time – business she was yet to confide in him about - over the months since her birthday but when she was in London he was often there after work. Perhaps too much: Ginny still lived at the Burrow but spent more nights at Grimmauld Place, which Harry shared with Ron, than her mother knew about. Unlike her brother, she'd never been jealous of Hermione and Harry's relationship. But even her tolerance would have a limit.
"You could watch the memories of your parents now," Hermione added as he stood up to apparate home. "There's not much to say about the intervening years that I can't just tell you. Oh - also - why don't you bring Ginny and come to dinner in Wales next weekend? Ron, too, if you like. If he's ready."
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If Harry had expected the four of them to be alone at Hermione's dinner party, he was disappointed. They tumbled out of the Floo into a cavernous hall. The stone flagstones were covered by an enormous carpet that looked Middle Eastern though he was no expert to identify it better than that. Soft lights floated around, reflected in the gleaming paneling, the gilt edges of the paintings on the wall, the silk tapestry at one end that rippled with movement as the riders on their winged horses chased a glittering firebird.
The lights also gleamed off the white-blond of Draco Malfoy's hair. He was standing next to Hermione, a glass of some sparkling, golden-greenish wine in his hand.
"What's he doing here?" Ron muttered as he staggered out of the fireplace behind Harry. Persuading him to come hadn't been hard. Though Harry didn't know exactly what Hermione had said when she'd gone to visit him the day after her disappearance and sudden, extraordinary, return on her birthday, it had left him sullen but resigned for weeks. Now, he seemed to have recovered enough to be curious about who she'd become, as they all were. Still, he hadn't been pleased when Ginny had told him to wear robes.
"Look at this place," Ginny whispered. "Blimey."
Harry was grateful he'd listened to Ginny about the robes: Hermione was in blue again but it was the changing blue of the night sky, studded with softly glowing constellations.
"Hello," she said, kissing them all one by one. "And welcome! What are you drinking? Elfwine? Newtgin and tonic?"
As she spoke a tray of empty glasses drifted over.
"Firewhisky," Ron said rather boldly, hiding his discomfort, and one of the glasses obediently shrank into a tumbler, filling up with the dark amber liquid.
"Thanks," he told the tray stupidly, and Harry wondered for the first time why some simple-seeming magic seemed to surprise the Weasley children. He'd seen so much casual magic in Hermione's memories. Indeed, everything in this room seemed to glimmer with it somehow. The tapestry with its changing scene, the carpet's pattern that flowed gently, changing as he watched, the fire that burned too brightly, the lights that clustered where they were needed and cast long shadows in the unused corners, the flow of stars on Hermione's robes, the soft music that came from nowhere.
"Malfoy," he greeted with an awkward nod as he took a glass of wine. "How - er - how is your grandmother?"
Draco's tension melted into amusement for a split-second before relaxing into what might, for him, pass as a friendly smile.
"She's well thanks Potter. Gone back to France for a bit. Did you see the Magpies game last week?"
Olive branch thus issued and accepted, he made small talk with his old nemesis and avoided Ron's eye while he did it. If Hermione thought it was important he made peace with this man, he'd try and do it. For now.
"You flew brilliantly last week," Draco said rather surprisingly to Ginny. "I can't imagine you'll be a substitute for long now."
"Thanks ferret," she said with a surprised, glowing smile that belied her words.
Harry left them to it and turned to his hostess and Ron.
"So this is home is it?" he asked her. He'd seen the castle in memories; it was jarring to be there for the first time in his own body. The room was warmer in reality, with a thrum of magic in it that hadn't come across in that strange, displaced, other world.
"This is home," she agreed, smiling softly and looking more like the girl he'd grown up with than she had before. "What do you think?"
Harry took that as a tacit agreement not to acknowledge he had been there before in her memories.
"It's mental," Ron cut in. "Don't you feel weird playing at all that pureblood stuff? And what's Malfoy doing here?"
Hermione cocked her head, her eyes glittering dangerously for a moment, but when she spoke it was kind.
"This has been my home for more than fifty years, Ronald." She paused for a moment before adding, "And Draco is part of my life now. I hope we can all leave the prejudices stirred up for the war behind us as we forge a new and peaceful future for our world."
"You really have changed," the red-head snapped.
"Yes," Hermione agreed readily, surprising him. "I have. I have become part of a world I was only ever shown the edges of as a child. I am older than you, older than your parents, however little I may look it. I can't change my past: it is your choice whether you want our friendship to be part of my future."
Ron frowned significantly at Harry as Hermione moved to the door, some secret signal warning her of the arrival of a completely unfamiliar group of people. They were chattering loudly as they came in through the door, merry greetings exchanged with Hermione.
"Draco," Hermione said, drawing him to her, "You must remember Alu? Harry, Ron, Ginny, these are some of my young friends."
A laughing girl kissed Draco's cheek merrily before turning to Hermione. She was as tall as Harry and magnificently beautiful, with a cloud of black hair that defied gravity. A leopard sidled on a gold necklace around her neck, embroidered birds soared from tree to tree on her brightly-coloured robes, her dark skin glittered with shimmering golden dust like stars against a summer sky. "Hermione it's good to see you! But tell me, why is this castle always further away than I remember?"
They were dazzling and assured and brilliant and the evening passed in an enchanted haze of food more varied and delicious than Harry could remember, of endlessly full wine glasses and at the centre of it all was Hermione with her dark hair escaping its binds, enticing her guests into various anecdotes: Alu the potioneer into mishaps and explosions, Gavin the Arithmancer into a debate about the use of a Muggle mathematics, Harry into stories of the Auror department.
After dinner, Hermione's adoptive-father appeared; a man with plums in his mouth and rich golden wine in his laugh, a man who was young and old together, who these people treated like a kind and merry king amongst them, and Harry fell in love with it all, like he had discovered the world of magic all over again.
After they had eaten, Hermione stood up from her chair and the table fell silent, expectant. A group of courtiers before their queen. "I have," she told them, "something to show you all.
"First of all - thank you all for coming," she said, with a lovely smile. "This world around the table - bright and young, with all its cultures and brilliance coming together - is the one I hope to see reflected throughout the Magical world in the future. In your own ways you are all extraordinary magicians, who have done extraordinary things. But not every child born with magic is given a chance to use it well. We have all made bad choices. We have all been lucky."
The plates and empty glasses faded away, and golden strands rose out of it, twisting together until the image of a beautiful house rose up from the shining wood.
"I want to give every child born with magic the chance to be something more - to know and love and appreciate the full extent of this gift we share. And so, I present to you Riddle House."
"Riddle House?" Ginny interrupted, shocked.
"Yes. A school for magical children - of all backgrounds - and, perhaps even more importantly, a refuge for those whose families fear their gift. For those with no families at all. A haven so that no more boys will be sent to Hogwarts, alone and lost, to make the wrong choices."
The red-head nodded but she was frowning.
"An orphanage?" Harry asked, breaking the beat of silence that followed.
"No, although orphans will always find a home there if they need it. I have never understood why we were excluded from our world until the age of eleven. It makes no sense. There are children who die every year because they don't understand their magic and lose control of it, or are killed for it. There are Muggleborns who never assimilate, who feel caught between two worlds that can never be merged. There are adult witches and wizards who can't do basic maths, who struggle to read and write properly - Riddle House is the start of a new dawn in our world that prizes education, but also a more integrated society.
Hermione flicked her wand at the structure on the table and it began to animate, revealing classrooms, a library, small figurines of children playing and learning.
"We have," she said in a low and tense voice, "been kept deliberately ignorant. A society of secrets from the Muggle world beyond - but also so many secrets from each other. Imagine, Harry and Draco, if you had known each other before Hogwarts. If you had had the chance to learn and play together as children."
"But we've always been taught at home," Ron interjected. "That's how it's done."
"Yeah but not everyone has a mum as clever as ours," Ginny said thoughtfully. "Maybe - think of Luna, Ron. She was all alone with her mad dad in that house for years. Maybe this would be better.."
"What will you do with Muggleborns?" Harry asked. "Or kids like - like me."
Like me, whose families believe them freaks. The unwanted children. He didn't have to say it, not to Hermione.
"We'll approach their parents and try and teach them about our world as soon as the children show enough magic to register on our records. If they refuse to let them attend, it'll be put forward to the board and they'll decide what to do. Narcissa Malfoy," Hermione nodded at Draco, "has agreed to be the head of this project. In certain extreme circumstances we will try and find a magical home for the child."
Harry looked at the translucent model building with its little desks and dormitories and glistening greenhouses, at the Quidditch pitch, the playgrounds and woods.
"Where is it?"
"It's Albus's old house. In Devon. He left it to me and this is what I've created with it. The first students have already received their letters of invitation to begin in September. I hope you will all come and visit and see what we are creating."
Alu gave a whoop and raised her glass to Hermione.
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I don't she told him later, whispering by the fire as the others examined the magical model, want any more unloved magical children growing up like Tom. It's too dangerous. And I am angry that I thought I was alone for so many years before my letter - aren't you?
Harry hadn't realised it, but perhaps he was.
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When everyone else had left, and they sat around the fire, two red heads, one brown, and one black, Hermione asked her elf (and what a revelation that had been - setting Ron smirking for hours) to bring a box from her room.
"Some of the things I collected for you all," she said, "just little things that reminded me of you. They helped me believe I would get to be here again."
The gifts were a cluttered mix of magical and muggle knicknacks; art, jewellery, and artifacts from all over the world; and she presented them with anecdotes -
"And this one… I bought this in Russia in 1956 - you can't imagine what a strange land it was then. Anything magical like this was dangerous, so people were selling off all their family antiques."
"Oh that's from Colombia! It was a gift actually, but I thought the emeralds would go with your hair, Gin."
"Yes, well I bought that painting before anyone knew he'd be famous, Harry."
"Oh these t-shirts are from a concert I went to with Sirius and James and Lily and Remus during the war. We snuck out to Muggle London and had the most hilarious night."
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"Show us some magic," Ron said eventually, unconsciously echoing the words he'd said to her so many years ago. "Something you learned that no one here knows."
Hermione gave a rather roguish smile.
"Would you like to see the essence of your magic?"
"Yes!" they clamoured together.
"Oh go on, do me first," Ginny begged. "That sounds amazing."
"Well alright but I warn you - not everyone likes what they see. Now, whoever does this draws it out in a different way. The woman - an old witch in the Amazon - who showed me brought it out as trees. It was amazing, like it grew out of your heart. But when I do it it's fire… I hope I can remember, I haven't done this in ages."
Hermione moved to sit next to Ginny, knees touching, as she held her wand hand over the other girl's heart.
"Right, Ginny, take my hand and close your eyes. I need you to feel it brimming up inside you, like you're pulling it out of a well. No no don't use your wand. Just you."
She shifted forward, pressing their joined hands on Ginny's chest.
"Like when you were a child and you were angry or sad or happy and you felt it," she whispered. "There it is."
Ginny's magic floated out around their hands and at first it looked like a wild thing. Dazzling red flames fought with gold, purple, green, blue - like a phoenix's tail, leaping and spitting. Angry, confident magic.
"You really are quite powerful," Hermione told her. "But look - you see this gold bit? That's your softer side. Domestic, if you like."
Ron was next; still mostly red and gold but less wild. The fire was smaller and tamer than Ginny's. It resonated warmly, like a welcome home at the end of a long winter day, like the humour in a dark moment.
When she came to Harry, all he felt was his own heart drumming as she pressed their entwined fingers against his chest.
"You need to call it out," she whispered. "Close your eyes and just reach for it - with anger or joy."
He remembered the biting frustration of his aunt and uncle's neglect. Remembered feeling helpless. Remembered not understanding this force instead him.
It burst out of his chest with a rush of adrenaline and power, bright white at first as it dazzled his eyes. But then as they adjusted he saw green and gold and red and even black flames tangled up in a great blaze around their hands. Some wild and reckless, some softer, kinder.
"Look at that," Hermione mused thoughtfully, "You see these little ones - that's all the magical potential you're not using."
"Why is there black?"
"It's not - it doesn't mean it's what you'd think of as dark magic. It's like - like day and night. Ginny and Ron had them too, but not as many. You've spent more time in the dark. That's not a bad thing. Not just suffering. Black can be like the night, when we rest, or like roots spreading out under the soil. It can be healing. But you're so powerful, Harry."
She smiled at him and he lost the force of it, feeling a strange sense of loss as it faded back inside him.
"Do yours then," Ron muttered, rather piqued at this exchange. But then he still forgot that what made him special was not power or brains or beauty but his loyalty, humour and kindness.
Hermione's fire was all blue: the bright turquoise of a summer sky or the sun on the ocean to the deepest, saddest midnight blue. Blues that remembered shining with golden light. The purple-blue of bruises in the dark. It wasn't wild, like Harry's or battling with itself like Ginny's, but swirling together in some unseen purpose and yet - there was such melancholy in that deep blue. It burned up and up out of her, far bigger than Harry had expected. He'd always thought, somewhere, unconsciously, that he was the more powerful. Now, he wondered. There were no small flames here - they were tended, grown, pushed up into a great being.
"Wow," Ginny said reverently. "It's so beautiful - look how they're all moving together. It's like they're dancing to some music we can't hear."
Hermione smiled.
"Well, I have been training my magic for a lifetime," she replied and despite the smile there was a sadness in her voice Harry didn't quite understand.
The enchanted balls of flame faded away.
"It's just a parlour trick really but… it's an interesting way to see someone's essence, if you like. I know that sounds a bit New Age."
"I think it's cool," Ginny said. "You should show George! I bet he could turn it into something."
Hermione just shook her head, smiling faintly.
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The next morning Harry finally poured the first memory of his parents into the Pensieve Hermione had lent him. She had gone away again, to oversee some new project of hers.
I will create the world in my image, she had told Tom Riddle, and they will love me for it. Harry thought she had been right if the evening before was anything to go by.
The memory was a simple one but it shook him more deeply even than he had imagined it might.
There was his mother, blazingly lovely despite the worry in her eyes. His father, handsome, more serious than the boy he'd been at Hogwarts. Harry didn't recognise the location but he knew some of the people gathered in the room - faces from old photographs, faces he knew. It was an Order meeting.
"They're just out of Hogwarts!" a woman he didn't know was arguing with Albus and - there she was - Hermione stood next to him.
"They are ready," Hermione told the woman. "I promise you."
"Well if you're sure… though how you'd know when you're always off abroad leaving us to fight this damn phantom without you I don't know."
"Emmeline," Albus said warningly. "Now is not the time for this old grudge. Hermione has her role and you must trust that I know what is best."
A familiar, barking laugh cut through the room and as Harry turned, heart aching, to see his own godfather, he caught the echoed flicker of anguish on Hermione's face. It warmed him; despite everything she had been through in what must have now been more than three and a half decades stranded in the past she hadn't lost who she had been.
"Who're you?" Sirius was impossibly handsome, all dancing grey eyes and gleaming white teeth, as he padded over to Hermione.
James, following, elbowed him.
"Have some manners, Padfoot. I'm James Potter, and this is my girlfriend Lily Evans. This, I'm afraid, is Sirius Black."
"Hermione Dearborn," she said with a mischievous smile, "although we have met already. You wouldn't have recognised me… I was the hag you always thought was spying on you in the Hog's Head I'm afraid."
Lily burst out laughing, her hand entwined with James's and Harry's heart began to sing. Suddenly, all at once, joy shot through him. His mother really had loved his father and not Snape. He'd carried a sick fear with him since the end of the war but now... It shone out of Lily's brilliant green eyes as she glanced up at James and their son's heart sang to see it.
"I told you!" James grinned at her. "You said I was being - what was it - 'egotistical' and that not everyone cared about my conversations but now you see!"
"You can spy on me anytime," Sirius said unrepentantly to Hermione, his grey eyes trailing over her.
To Harry's surprise, she giggled.
"I'm a bit old for you, Sirius Black," she replied with a laugh. "But welcome to the Order of the Phoenix."
Unlike Hermione and James, Sirius was in jeans and a black leather jacket. It seemed a more deliberate statement than he'd realised before. Harry wondered how much it had cost her to be so lighthearted.
He swirled up out of the memory as it ended with the start of an order meeting and immediately lent back into the Pensieve to watch it again. One a week, he had promised himself, for these were infinitely more precious than any gift he had ever been given before.
"Harry?" Ginny called from downstairs as he stumbled back out after watching it again, his heart full of that look between his parents. His parents. His heart sang, full of the joy and loss of it altogether.
"I'm coming down," he shouted back, pulling a sheet over the Pensieve and wiping unspilled tears from his eyes. He wasn't ready to share this with her, not yet. Not until he understood why he had been given it.
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A special shout out to my darling SallyJAvery. Despite being both busy with real life and busy with her own (wonderful) writing she always has time to help me polish this into something presentable.
Thank you all for your kind words last chapter - and also for those of you who were worried Hermione would have to suffer an abusive relationship with Tom. This is the worst of it, and the end, for now, of any real romance between them.
Let me know what you think of this - I'm rather more nervous about it that I have been about any of them for ages!
