"I still love you. And sometimes, my friend, the love that I have, and can't give to you, crushes the breath from my chest. Sometimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep."
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram
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Hermione had spent many grim nights in odd places over the years. She thought, as she sat in her dark cell, that the five days she'd spent in a Muggle prison in what the muggles now called Mali had been the worst.
She had been caught off-guard in a sudden crackdown on magic. She had been capable of escaping both the raid and the prison itself (having had the presence of mind to shove her wand in her hair like an ornament), but in doing so she'd have confirmed she was a witch and that would have cemented the death of the witchdoctor she'd been staying with, so she had stayed, crammed into a cage with ten other women. One had been pregnant, in the early stages. The stench of vomit had been a permanent feature. So had the heat and the smell of unwashed bodies, including her own. And the rats. The mind could not remember pain, but it could remember rats. Eventually she'd slipped off during a rather conveniently timed attack by rebels from the north.
That had been her full experience of jails up unto the point her best friend flung her into a holding cell in Azkaban, with the wind not so much whistling in off the North Sea as trying to flay off her skin, and told her, still icy with shock and rage, to stay put.
She estimated she'd been in the cell for about seventeen minutes when the wall revealed a door, and then the door opened to reveal Harry (the ice had melted and been boiled to apoplectic in the short interim) and the Senior Undersecretary for the Minister for Magic.
"Archchancellor Granger Dearborn," this august personage said with very specific emphasis, "the Ministry apologises for this unfortunate mix-up. Please, accept its - my - humblest of apologies."
"That's quite alright, Percy."
Hermione rose from where she'd been sitting on the hard board that passed as a bed. Percy, having known Harry from childhood, tended to see him as his younger brother's impetuous friend, rather than a senior and trustworthy Auror and his condescending glance at Harry only fanned the flames of his anger.
"We are not in the practice of arresting heads of state," he assured her. "Especially one that has been so pivotal to the rebuilding of our country and who is so decorated. There will be no record of this."
From this, Hermione understood that the Ministry was not prepared to have its loans from the Bank of Idunna called in, nor face the public outcry and challenge to its authority that would come if news got out that Tom Riddle was back. She rather thought it would come out one way or another anyway, but staying in Azkaban would do no good.
She nodded, exhausted from the magic she'd performed only hours before. She needed to sleep, and to think. She suspected she would have no space to do either, and her mind was already racing back over all the safeguards she'd put in place before carrying out this atrociously risky plan. Getting away with it seemed tantalisingly possible, and yet - how could that be so?
"However I can help with this… situation," Hermione told him, doing her best to swallow her hatred of the place and the situation, and his relief took her by surprise. Perhaps Kingsley was angrier with Harry than she'd expected.
Percy and a silent, glowering Harry escorted her off the island and back to the Ministry by portkey. She followed them though the silent halls of the night-emptied building. It was eerie in the late hours in the way of all buildings used to bustling with people: it must have been nearly midnight, and the only beings they saw were the Squibs and creatures it employed as janitorial staff overnight.
Percy was about to knock on the door to the Minister's office but before he could it swung open and Kingsley, looking tired and irritated, ushered them in.
"Right," he said in the deep voice that had won over a country in the messy aftermath of war, "sit down. Someone had better start talking."
Hermione sat, and examined the other people waiting: Madam Scaevola, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot was there already, one of her curlers left in her hair but looking no less fierce for it. Sat next to her was the recently-appointed Head of Magical Law Enforcement, Jasper Brown. Lavender's great-uncle, Hermione remembered and someone she'd known for many years.
"She's brought back Voldemort," Harry growled, his voice shaking with fury, knuckles white where he gripped the edge of Kingsley's desk. "She loved him and she's brought him back and you're just setting her free."
"There is absolutely no proof of that," Brown said tightly. "What we have is a teenage boy screaming his head off in some sort of unimaginable pain that you say you believe is Tom Riddle. In the modern era of the Ministry of Magic we no longer throw people into Azkaban on anyone's word, Auror Potter, not even yours."
"And who prompted that law?" Harry shouted.
"An independent body of experts! A policy you supported."
This was all true, though Hermione had certainly had a hand both the creation and appointment of that body. However, Brown had successfully silenced Harry, who slumped down in his chair, scowling.
"What we know is this," Madam Scaevola began. "It is part of our law that it is impossible to bring back the dead. Lord Voldemort has been declared dead. Therefore, legally, Hermione Granger Dearborn cannot have brought him back. Not only is that enshrined in our laws, but in the highest teachings of magic. You cannot bring back the dead. I don't know who or what that boy is, but I refuse to believe the Archchancellor has done what you say. There must be another explanation and I am very curious to hear it."
Kingsley nodded at Hermione. There was little warmth in the gesture.
"I think Harry might be right," she said, prompting gasps from around the room, "though I am not exactly sure how such a thing might be possible. I didn't see him up close but it did look like Tom Riddle. If you saw him, Jasper... It's him, I think. I can't be sure though."
Harry's eyes darted between them at this unexpected familiarity. He did not know they'd been peers and she saw further suspicion cross his face. Harry had both a deep-rooted belief in her genius and an uncomfortably good grasp of just how well she thought ahead. He was the most dangerous person in the room to her, the one she was least likely to convince, and the one she most wanted to understand.
"How could such a thing have happened?" Madam Scaevola interrupted, more curious than horrified.
"I haven't had much time to think about it, and I'll need to go back over my notes, but the only explanation I have is that he wasn't really dead, that he was trapped in limbo and when I broke the connection between Hogwarts and the founders' heirs he was thrown back somehow."
Silence fell over the room as they contemplated this. No one seemed to want to speak over Madam Scaevola. Hermione met Kingsley's sceptical gaze. This was not his field, but she knew never to underestimate him. However, he was more pragmatic as a politician than he had been as an Auror. Power, she knew from experience, had that effect.
"Yes," Scaevola, said eventually. She had once been an Unspeakable, Hermione remembered. "I can see how those unique conditions could perhaps have... There are cases, not of living bodies returning, never that, but the connection between the soul and the body is a curious one... You say he was a founder's heir?"
"Tom Riddle was the last descendent of Salazar Slytherin. The research I've done focussed on Helena Ravenclaw, the ghost known as the Grey Lady, and why she'd been trapped in Hogwarts with her murderer. We concluded she was held there to give the castle a weak connection to an old bond. Most of the ghosts have chosen to be there, drawn by the magic, but she couldn't leave. As she passed on tonight I believe my hypothesis was correct. But, I had not accounted for…" Hermione let herself trail off.
Don't say too much, she though. Babbling was a sure-fire sign of guilt.
"How is he human?" Jasper Brown asked Hermione. "If indeed this is who you say it is, which I remain highly sceptical about. I wasn't there when the Healers examined him after he was moved from Azkaban to St Mungo's but they say there's no possibility he's a ghost or inferi and there's no sign of dark magic."
He spread his hands at the Minister to indicate the legal scope of this problem.
"When we defeated Voldemort," Hermione addressed Harry now, not Brown, "we destroyed all the parts of his soul, one by one, but… I don't know if that's dying. I don't know. I would say the immense pain could be a symptom of a newly healed soul in the throes of remorse. But I'm just speculating. Of course I've studied this but from the point of view of sending a ghost on."
"He was dead," Harry said, clearly struggling to keep his temper in check. "We all saw his body. It was just a body. Dead from his own rebounded curse."
"Yes, Harry, but that wasn't the body he was born with was it? That was a magically-created body?" She heard the condescension in her own voice and winced. A misstep.
"And how long have you been thinking about that?" he hissed.
A very long time, she thought, and wondered if she'd lost him forever.
"So you are clear on that?" Kingsley asked, brushing the bitter exchange aside. "This was not deliberate?"
Hermione mustered all her not-insignificant fierceness as she gazed back at her old friend.
"I loved him once, and I walked away. I helped defeat him in two different wars. I am Albus Dumbledore's heir. What possible motive could I have for bringing back a dark wizard of his calibre?"
"You've never loved anyone since," Harry interjected. "Maybe you missed him."
"I have. I have missed the man I wanted him to be every single day for over forty years. But he became a man who would have let his followers commit genocide against my kind for power. I have not missed that man. I have not forgotten what he became, Harry, nor have I forgotten the atrocities."
His green eyes had never had cause to blaze at her like that before and her heart sank as she realised it was rooted in his sense of betrayal. He had forgiven many people many things, but if there was hope of salvaging their relationship there was no sign of it in his wrath.
"So is this Voldemort or what?" interjected Brown. "And what in Merlin's cave are we going to do if it is?"
From that, Hermione took that she had convinced at least one person in the room, and perhaps the most important. Jasper Brown was Harry's direct boss, and unless Kingsley overruled him it would be he who decided if there was enough of a case to put her on trial. Of all of them, she'd thought he would be the hardest to convince: he had known her only as Tom Riddle's girlfriend, all those years ago. Perhaps he hadn't taken much notice of the school gossip, or perhaps the years had dulled his memory.
"I think," Kingsley said, "we will have to wait until Riddle or whoever else it may be is conscious. Don't think you're completely off the hook, Hermione, but for now… we simply don't have enough information." A thrill of relief and something she was self-aware enough to fear ran through her. She was another step closer to pulling off the impossible, to realising the dream of a life she'd never had to see look back at her from the Mirror of Erised but that had haunted her for years.
"Brown, I want a thorough investigation of what happened. Top secret. Madam Scaevola, we'll need all the precedent examined. Potter, work with Brown and don't go off on your own mission. I know you're angry, but first of all we need to contain this. All those students who saw him, make sure they didn't."
"You're going to cover it up?" Harry asked, shocked out of his anger for a moment.
"Harry," Kingsley said wearily, "imagine how the public would react if they found out we might have a teenage version of Voldemort in St Mungos but we're not sure and we don't know if he's liable for anything the actual Voldemort did anyway. Half of them would riot because of the threat and demand we have him killed or kissed, and the other half would say we're holding an under-age wizard prisoner with no proof of crime."
He let that sink in.
"Can I see him?" Hermione asked. "You can escort me, I just want to know… I want to see what I've done."
"Absolutely not," Harry said as Kingsley said, "That's up to the Healers."
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Thank you for your delightful reaction to the last chapter! This is dedicated to Kitsmits who won't get to read this for a few days but is reviewing every chapter as they read, and therefore making my week.
