Chapter Two: Her dream was my domain
Then - 19th November 2001
Hermione had tried to hide what was happening, going so far as to dose herself with Dreamless Sleep, locking the door from the outside and rolling her wand out of reach under the jamb, but she still found herself waking that morning in the library, her cheek pressed against the pages of a book and another scrap of parchment clenched between her fingers.
Hermione, it said in her own handwriting, the same as all the others, except this time the word was repeated over and over, covering the paper entirely, and when Hermione held it up, staring at it in horror, she could see that the parchment was torn in places, as though her quill had ripped through the paper.
As though the voice of her madness, of whatever it was that had called her from her bed on Halloween, was growing impatient, ever more insistent.
She closed her eyes and let a vicious shudder tear through her as she resolved to place the parchment with the other notes that formed a growing pile in the drawer beside her bed in Dumbledore's former office. The notes that said I'm waiting, or Come and find me, or Where are you -
Or, worst of all, Please.
The dreams themselves had gone from confused memories, impossible to hold on to, to bursts of almost bewildering clarity: the dazzle of light in late autumn as she rounded the corner of the stairs up to the Owlery; the sound of the library silent but for the scratch of quills in exam term; the coolness of the stone walls in the dungeons as she approached the Potions classroom.
And everywhere, everywhere, the hint of a presence just ahead or just behind - the whisper of a spell fading on the air, the gentle stirring of breath on her neck. She would wake, every time now, with Harry's name on her lips, with another message waiting in the palm of her hand.
Hermione crumpled the parchment covered in her name into a ball, and made to push herself away from the desk at which she was sat. Her hand fell on the book that her head had been resting on, her eyes catching on the pages open in front of her, and it took all of her ragged energy not to scream.
It was Parvati who found her, seemingly hours later, sat trembling in the chair with her arms wrapped tightly around herself, unable to move her gaze from the book.
"Hermione?" the other girl whispered, her blue-black hair reminding Hermione, just for a moment, of the way that Harry's shone when he ran ahead of her through her nightmares. Parvati's eyes widened when she looked down at the open book, at the mess of ink across it, and Hermione followed the movement of sunlight on metal as Patvati raised her shining hand to her mouth. "What on earth is going on?"
Before - 3rd August 1998
Dean had come running back to the camp in the New Forest two days before, breathless and ashen-faced, holding a ragged copy of the Prophet. The three girls' faces were splashed across the front page, wide-eyed with terror and wincing in pain as they tried to wrench themselves away from the hands that held them tightly in place for the mugshots.
TRAITORS CAUGHT TRYING TO EVADE MINISTRY! the headline screamed, and Hermione had looked up, disbelieving, as she read the accompanying article.
"They were caught in Godric's Hollow," she'd said, glancing from one worried face to another in their small group. "Why the hell would they go there?"
Neville had shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck. "Maybe they thought they might find some of the rest of us there?"
Hermione had sighed deeply, realising the truth of what Neville said, though she still couldn't believe the girls had been stupid enough to go somewhere so obvious. The survivors of the Battle of Hogwarts had scattered to the winds trying to evade the squads of Snatchers that roamed the country trying to round them up, and though their little group had heard rumours of people being caught, being tortured and executed, this was the first evidence that they had seen to back it up.
"'The Patil twins and Brown are known blood-traitors, with Brown's blood status in question after she was mauled by a werewolf during the Battle of Hogwarts,'" Hermione read on aloud, before she had paused to look up at Ron. "I didn't know that she'd -"
He'd shaken his head, his expression grim. "Me neither."
Hermione had scanned the rest of the page quickly, feeling her heart sink in her chest. "They're due to be executed in two days' time," she'd said quietly. "At the new - the new Tyburn Tree in Hyde Park."
"For fuck's sake," Ginny had sworn, turning away.
"He's making an example of them," Hermione had said quietly. "Something this public, this showy - he wants it to be a warning."
"So what are we going to do?" Justin Finch-Fletchley had asked, his earnest faced creased with anxiety, and for a moment Hermione had been tempted to laugh, to ask what he thought he was talking about because what could they do - what could they possibly do when Voldemort had won, when everything had gone to shit - when the world was all -
And Neville had caught her eye, and she had let out her breath in a deep sigh. "We're going to try and rescue them."
Now, she stood with Ron by the fence at the edge of Hyde Park. They could see the three girls about two hundred metres away, lined up on the scaffold that had been erected in the corner of the busy park, but whose presence attracted no attention from the muggles who walked and cycled past, unaware of the horror in their midst.
Hermione was too far away to tell the twins apart, though she could see the puckered scarring on the side of Lavender's neck revealed as her curls blew freely in the wind. All three were dressed in dark grey robes, and though the morning was already growing warm Hermione couldn't help the shiver that danced across her skin as she watched them.
She chanced a look at Ron where he stood beside her. In his polyjuiced form his face was harder to read than usual, but the middle-aged businessman's sagging jaw was clenched tight, his red-knuckled hands balled into fists at his sides.
For a moment Hermione toyed with the idea of taking his hand in her own, but she dismissed it. It would probably look odd, anyway, for the teenage girl whose appearance she had taken on to be holding hands with a man old enough to be her father.
They'd decided it would be easier to get close if they looked liked muggles - edging their way right up to the edge of the repelling charms, and then fixing their gazes obliquely on the scene of Voldemort's sickening theatre.
A not-inconsiderable crowd of witches and wizards had gathered to watch the executions, and Hermione felt the sting of helpless fury as she recognised faces here and there. Michael Corner, frowning at the ground, his mouth held in an unhappy line; Zacharias Smith, his head tilted so that half of his sneering face was visible as he stared at the three girls lined up before him. And over there, Malfoy's silver-blond, his face angled slightly away, his lips pursed as though in distaste. Astoria Greengrass hung on his arm, her eyes fixed eagerly on the spectacle.
Feeling Ron tense beside her, Hermione looked back at the stage to see that Voldemort himself had stepped out, followed as ever by Bellatrix Lestrange.
Voldemort's black hood was thrown back to reveal his smooth, pale head and his face was lit with a smile that even at this distance made Hermione feel sick to her stomach. From where she and Ron stood outside the Muffliato they couldn't hear what Voldemort said, but they saw when he raised a hand, showing the cursed knife off to the crowd. Hermione's blood ran cold as she remembered the glint of light on it, the way that he had plunged it into Harry's chest.
"No!" she said, clutching Ron's arm and not caring for how it looked. "No - he can't - this isn't how -"
"That sick bastard," Ron growled, and without another word he had pulled his wand from inside his jacket and sent the red sparks of the signal into the sky. Almost instantly there was an explosion from the right-hand side of the stage, where Seamus had planted a bomb as he snuck past earlier on, and the crowd erupted into chaos. Ron took off at a run towards the scaffold, and Hermione, after a moment's indecision, chased after him.
The moment she crossed the warding the shouts and screams of the crowd became deafening, and she had to push and fight to get towards the front. Ahead of her she could see Ron cursing bodies out of his way with grim determination, and Hermione started to do the same, hoping against hope that Neville had been able to make it to the scaffold under the invisibility cloak, that Dean and Seamus had managed to get away before their polyjuice wore off.
She heard a shout to her right, saw Justin running towards her, a trickle of red on his forehead, and opened her mouth to yell a warning, only it was too late, as Yaxley's curse had found its mark and Justin crumpled in a flash of green.
Hermione bit down on her cry, and instead focussed on pushing her way towards the scaffold, where she could see Voldemort stood stock-still, staring into the crowd with narrowed eyes. Beside him Bellatrix had her wand out and was throwing curses seemingly at random into the melee. Hermione had to leap aside to dodge one, and as she did so she heard a little shriek, and raised her eyes to the stage.
Parvati appeared to be frozen in the motion of falling backwards - no, she was being pulled backwards by someone invisible, and Hermione watched as Voldemort's head whipped towards the girl, towards Neville, invisible behind her. And Voldemort was lifting his wand and opening his mouth and -
"Stupefy!" Ron yelled, having clambered onto the stage. His spell went wide of its mark, managing to hit Bellatrix, but Voldemort just laughed, grabbing Lavender and Padma by their arms and yanking both towards him.
Over the noise of the crowd Hermione didn't hear Voldemort speak, but she saw Ron's snarl, saw Voldemort's arm move, quick, snake-like, and then blood was pouring down Lavender's front as her throat opened, a river of red staining the front of her robes.
"NO!" Parvati was screaming, and then she had broken away from Neville, the invisibility cloak half-falling as she did so.
Hermione saw Neville trip, sent a shield charm flying at him to block the curse that Travers aimed, and meanwhile Parvati had grabbed Padma's hand and was trying to pull her from Voldemort's grasp - and Voldemort had dropped Lavender's lifeless form as Ron gave a shout of rage and surged forward, wrapping an arm around Parvati's waist, and Padma was screaming too, was fighting desperately to free herself from Voldemort's grasp -
- and Hermione tried to aim her wand at Voldemort but she was jostled by someone in the crowd -
- and she heard a terrible wail - heard Ron yell "I've got her, I've got her, go!" -
- and she heard the sharp cracks of his and Neville's disapparitions before she looked up at the scaffold, just in time to see Voldemort slash the knife across Padma's throat, viciously slicing through hair and skin and sinew - and the blood - the blood was everywhere - and Padma's grip relaxed as she went limp -
Hermione felt bile rising in her throat: the image of Parvati's severed hand falling from Padma's searing itself onto her memory as she disapparated.
Then - 19th November 2001
"We knew something was wrong," Parvati said, worrying at the end of her braid, one hand smooth bronze skin, the other just smooth bronze, chased with an intricate, henna-like design of feathers and claws. "You've looked awful for nearly a month."
Hermione couldn't deny it - she knew that the shadows beneath her eyes were almost bruise-like, that the skin of her hands was raw where she scrubbed ink from them every morning. Instead she just nodded, dropping her head into her hands to avoid looking at the notes that were spread across the desk in the old headmaster's office.
To avoid looking at any of the others who had gathered in her bedroom to pore over the evidence that she was losing her mind.
"What do all these mean, Granger?" Draco asked, curiosity evident in his usually bored voice as he sifted through three weeks' worth of nocturnal messages.
"I don't know," Hermione whispered, not bothering to raise her head. She didn't want to see the concern on their faces, didn't want to have to look at the book open in the middle of the desk. Ron shifted next to her, placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed in what Hermione thought was probably supposed to be a reassuring manner.
"You said you've been dreaming about Harry..." he said, trailing off uncertainly, and obviously expecting Hermione to elaborate further. She sighed, and finally lifted her head to stare over her fingertips at the others.
Ron, Parvati, Draco, Daphne. Luna, Ginny and Anthony. All that's left, Hermione thought bleakly, before her gaze fell back onto the parchment, onto the book.
She hadn't even known that there was a Bible in the library, and Hermione felt a moment of the old frustration at the discovery of a gap in her knowledge, dismissing it quickly as she read the circled words again.
Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, here a dark scribble across a few words, and then: for the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable and we will be changed.
Another shudder tore its way across Hermione's skin, and she felt goosebumps rise across the back of her neck and all the way down her arms. Her eyes moved across the rest of the page, across her name spelled over and over - Hermione Hermione Hermione - and she wanted to retch, wanted to curl up and pull a pillow over her head and deny that this, whatever it was, was happening, but she couldn't, because sleeping - when she slept -
"I dream of the day he died," she said quietly. "I dream of the way that he looked at me, and then I dream that I'm chasing him, or maybe being chased, I'm not sure, through Hogwarts, and I know that he says something but I can never quite hear, or remember, once I wake up."
There was a long moment while no one spoke, and then Anthony said, his voice quiet, "And this started on Halloween?"
Hermione nodded miserably at him, "At the full moon."
The pause this time was more tense, the whole group seeming to consider the implications of Hermione's words, before Draco cleared his throat. "You say that Potter looked at you," he said slowly, rubbing his scar as he met Hermione's gaze. "That he was looking at you as he died."
"Yes," Hermione said, "But I don't see what that has to do with -"
"Granger," Draco said, cutting her off. "How much do you know about Legilimency?"
Now - June 24th 2002
She was whirling - whirling through space - untethered and unmoored and still reeling from the pain, the terrible horror of having Voldemort's mind probing her own as she felt herself yanked down and down and -
Hermione crashed into water, tried to take a breath but there was no air, and she panicked, thrashing arms and legs in the cold, unsure of which way was up, which way meant surface, and air, and light, and she could feel herself fading, feel herself -
Strong arms closed around her, legs kicked behind her back, and then her head broke free of the water and she was gulping greedily at the freshness of the morning, her heart hammering in her chest, and Ron was asking "Are you ok? Are you ok?" over and over, and she could only nod, couldn't even gasp an answer as she let Ron pull her with him as he swam to the shore of the lake where Parvati waited.
Ron pushed Hermione forward and then Parvati's hands went under her arms, dragging her out of the water and onto the muddy bank. Next to her Ron hauled himself out, flopping onto his back and closing his eyes as he turned his face up towards the clear expanse of blue sky.
Hermione coughed, heaving the water from her lungs as she heard shouts, and running feet approaching. She dug her fingers into the soft mud and sobbed with relief that it had worked - it had worked.
"Did it work?" Draco yelled breathlessly as he came skidding to a halt by the lakeside, and Hermione raised her head to look at him, to nod weakly and let her mouth shape itself into the ghost of a smile.
"Thank fucking Mer-" the blond wizard started to say, but he was interrupted as Luna arrived, closely followed by Theo, who strode forward to kneel by Hermione, pulling her up by her shoulders.
"Are you alright?" he asked abruptly, and Hermione sighed, squeezing his wrists gently.
"I'm fine," she said. "Just misjudged it a little."
"When you weren't there when I arrived," Theo said, "When you - I thought he might have, that I'd timed it wrong, or that you'd -"
"I'm fine," Hermione repeated, shoving him away. "Stop fussing, for Godric's sake."
Theo blew out a sigh as he stepped back, running a hand through his hair as Luna leaned into his side. When Hermione met her grey gaze Luna smiled. "So?" she asked simply.
Hermione blinked, thinking of the blunt shape of the mountains, the pink-toned sky, blue water, and the words that she had seen inside Voldemort's mind.
- stories are told of The Well of Souls, believed by many to be nothing more than legend, though its location has been posited by some wizarding historians as being in Skaftafell, on the island of Iceland -
"Yes," she nodded, sitting back on her heels and feeling the absurd desire to laugh. It had worked, and she had escaped and she was alive alive alive. But all that she said before she collapsed, exhausted, onto the grass was, "I know where we need to go."
A/N: Because time jumps around a bit in this story, different characters will appear at different points - it might be a little confusing right now but I promise all will be explained! The Bible passage is from 1 Corinthians 15:51-2 (KJV)