Chapter Three: The heart's dark crossroads
Then - November 27th 2001
"They need to be tighter," Hermione said, tugging experimentally at the ropes that bound her to the bed.
"If we do them much tighter you'll lose circulation in your arms," Daphne remarked as she chewed on her lip, tapping her wand against her collarbone and frowning. "I still don't see how -"
"We need to know," Hermione sighed. "You need to see what I - what happens when I have the dreams, and nothing else has been able to hold me."
"Ropes though," Ron said, his voice uneasy. "I still think it's all a little -"
"It serves a purpose," Hermione said sharply, fighting the urge to roll her eyes as Draco snickered from where he was securing her other wrist.
"How unsurprising to find that your tastes run to the quotidian, Weasley," he sneered, as he secured the knot holding Hermione's right arm to the bed frame.
In contrast to their school years, Draco's words held little malice, and rather than rise to the provocation Ron simply murmured "Fuck off, Malfoy," as he tightened the ropes around Hermione's left wrist.
"How much do you know about Legilimency?" Draco had asked, and Hermione had stared wordlessly at him, her mind racing with the possibilities of it. The way that Harry looked at her as the knife was pulled from his chest, as his magic welled and poured from him to seal Voldemort's victory. Could he have been -
"He was trying to tell me something, you think?" she asked Draco, scarcely daring to believe it, even as her blood started to roar in her ears.
"Well," the blond wizard shrugged. "It would be you that he'd tell, wouldn't it?"
Hermione had glanced around the room, had seen Ron's gaze skitter away from her - the old jealousy still there in spite of everything, still with its power to wound them both. And if Harry could haunt them like that, then why couldn't he reach into her dreams? she wondered, why couldn't he -
"But why now?" Ginny asked, direct as ever, her arms folded as she frowned sceptically at Draco, and Hermione felt a rush of guilt as she took in Ginny's stony expression, felt the need to say something, to protest that she and Harry had never, that they would never, because it just hadn't been that way.
Had it?
Before she could say anything, however, another voice spoke up. "The full moon," Luna said, the words quiet, airy, but still shocking in contrast to her usual silence. When no one interrupted her she went on, staring dreamily out of the window. "If Harry had unfinished business when he died -"
"Understatement of the century," Draco muttered, but quieted as Daphne elbowed him in the ribs.
"- then this would be the first time that the Veil was thin enough for him to reach across." Luna murmured.
There was a beat of silence while everyone waited to see if she would continue speaking, but she closed her eyes and sat back in her chair as though exhausted, and it was Anthony - Anthony, who had survived for years alone, whose wits were sharp but whose logic was sharper - who looked at Hermione, quirked a brow, and said, "Well, I think we should listen to what he has to say."
Every night this week they had tried to make sense of Hermione's night-time wanderings, of the messages that she would scribble on pieces of parchment, the books that she would pull from the remaining shelves in the Library to circle passages and tear out pages, to her waking bibliophilic horror.
It had become clear fairly quickly that there was a problem with their plans, as it seemed that whatever it was that was impelling Hermione's sleeping behaviour would wait out the wakefulness of any observer. When, two nights before, Ron and Parvati had taken Wideye Potion and sat up to keep watch, Daphne had found them both stunned and Hermione gone when morning broke over the castle.
So they had had to reconsider.
The use of Incarcerous spells last night had proved ineffective. Hermione had woken up deep in the dungeons, in the old Slytherin Common Room, the traces of messages written in the condensation on the huge glass windows glinting in the greenish sunlight that filtered through the lake waters.
Hermione Hermione Hermione.
Please.
It was that plaintive note, the echo of desperation that settled itself in her bones, deeper than the chill of the dungeons, that had decided her. The ropes were her idea, and she had been surprised when Anthony and Draco, usually wary of one another, agreed readily that it was a good plan.
"We can't hold you here by magic; not by magic that we want to try, anyway," Anthony had said, his eyes sliding to Draco's, who had shaken his head slightly. Hermione knew that there were curses and jinxes that could be used to hold her in place, that if the Muggle ropes didn't work this would be what they tried next, but she couldn't deny the prickle of fear that had danced its way down her spine at the thought of having to perform Dark Magic.
Now, Hermione flexed her arms, satisfied that she couldn't lift her wrists away from the wooden bedframe. "OK," she said. "Ready as I'll ever be." She closed her eyes as Ginny tipped the Dreamless Sleep potion to her lips, thinking only of his face, of his smile and his green eyes and his voice and his steely determination.
Harry Harry Harry.
Please, Harry.
Hermione opened her eyes to the light of early dawn, pale and insipid. To a ring of ashen faces, their expressions tense and worried. To aching arms and burning wrists where she had clearly strained against the ropes that bound her.
"What?" she asked. "What is it?"
She had been so close to him this time, almost close enough to touch, to reach out a hand and grab his arm, cup his cheek. She'd called his name, she knew, could feel her throat was raw with it. Could feel the stinging tightness of dried tears on her cheeks.
"Riddle," Ginny said, laying a trembling hand on Hermione's arm. "You kept yelling for Harry and then you - you -"
"You stopped," Ron continued, "And we thought that was it, except that then you started trying to scratch something into the bedframe and you were saying his - You-Know-Who's name -"
Hermione felt the familiar, sickening rush of anger at the continued taboo on his name. Voldemort, she wanted to spit. Murderer. Madman. But her tongue would lock before she could even think to say it; they had placed themselves under a tightly-wrought Fidelius charm long ago to prevent accidental slips.
"Death to any he that utters them," Hermione had muttered grimly once she had cast the spell. Luna had given her one of her rare, direct looks, and smiled oddly as the golden tendrils of the charm faded over her pale hair.
"I can't have," she frowned, "The Fidelius -"
"You said 'Riddle'," Draco said flatly. "'Riddle remembers.'" He was watching her with an intent look on his face, and Hermione felt a sudden rush of understanding for the greenish tinge that Ginny's skin had taken on, for the particular horror that the name held for her.
"Riddle remembers," Hermione repeated softly, trying to catch hold of the errant threads of the dream, recalling, suddenly, Harry's mouth against her ear, his soft words.
Find me, he'd said, and she'd trembled at the quietness of his voice, barely a whisper but enough to send a shiver of - of something through her - but it was Harry, Harry whom she had loved like a brother, and never like - like -
She felt a flush climbing her neck as the words crept back into her mind. Riddle knows where. He'd been behind her, and she had turned to try and catch a glimpse, but he had just laughed, always behind her, and then his lips had moved against her hair, the ghost of a hand gliding down her arm. Riddle remembers. Find me.
"I think," Hermione swallowed, horror and fear and the memory of something terribly close to desire mingling to snatch her words for a moment. "I think that You-Know-Who has the answers."
No one said anything for what seemed, to Hermione, an interminable length of time, and then incredibly, maybe inevitably, Draco started to laugh.
Before - 16th September 1999
"Someone's triggered the wards," Neville said breathlessly, his head poking up through the trapdoor into the attic of The Burrow, where they had set up a makeshift potions lab. Hermione glanced up to see her own shock reflected on Ginny's face, and then scrambled to follow Neville down the ladder, through the fire-ravaged structure that remained standing due to a combination of magic and what seemed to be simple obstinacy on the part of the house, to the yard, where the others were gathering, eyes and wands trained on the bend in the road.
It had been six weeks, long enough for them to think that they were safe, to regroup at the pre-agreed point, the only one that Luna wouldn't be able to give up. Neville and Ron had laid the wards, drawing on the melange of old bloodlines that flowed through them, keying the spells to their own magic.
Hermione chanced a look at Ron, taking in his tight jaw and the tension that made his extended wand-arm shake. A year ago she would have laid a hand on his arm, would have pressed her lips to his cheek, but it hadn't worked then, and it wouldn't work now. There was a chasm of grief between them, and filling it with something...else…wasn't the answer.
Besides, he had lost far more than just Harry. They all had. And try as Hermione might she could not turn her mind from the flight from The Burrow the winter before - of Arthur and George cut down by Bellatrix in the front yard. Of Molly's shout of anguish, of her Killing Curse hitting the Lestrange witch. Of Ron's howl and Ginny's scream as Molly was engulfed in the Fiendfyre that spewed from Voldemort's wand and they were ripped away as the others apparated them out.
Hermione shuddered, shaking her head to force the memory away, holding her own wand out and straining her eyes to catch movement coming round the corner.
When a figure finally appeared she squinted, trying to make sense of the stumbling, lop-sided shape.
"Who's there?!" Neville shouted. "Show your face!"
The figure seemed to stagger, then collapse on one side, before throwing back the hood of its cloak to reveal -
"You fucking bastard, Malfoy!" Ron surged forward, his wand lifting, and Hermione felt the magic gathering, glanced back to see the desperate set of Daphne's face, the way that Draco sagged next to her, his face covered in blood, the way that Luna fell away from Daphne's other arm as the Slytherin girl raised her empty hand, opening her mouth -
"No!" Hermione yelled, leaping forward to pull at Ron's arm, so that the curse flew off to the side, exploding harmlessly against a tree.
"What the fuck, Hermione?" Ginny shouted, her own wand raised and ready to cast.
"They've got Luna," Hermione called over her shoulder as she set off at a run down the road. "And Malfoy's hurt."
"It could be a trap," Neville said quietly as he jogged beside her.
"It could," Hermione nodded. But her eyes were on Daphne's and all she could see in the other girl's face was exhausted relief.
"Please," Daphne whispered, as Hermione and Neville reached them. "Please, I brought her back to you but you have to - you have to -"
Hermione couldn't stifle her gasp as Daphne lifted the bloodied bandages away from Draco's face to reveal the vicious slash that cut across his eye. "He's been beaten too," Daphne sobbed. "I think his arm's broken, and some ribs, he was bleeding -"
"Theo," Luna whispered, her eyelids fluttering where Neville had pulled her to a sitting position, and Hermione looked back up to Daphne.
"Nott's with you as well?" she asked.
"No," Daphne whimpered. "No, he, he got us out, he covered - triggered the wards and made it look like - he had to stay, to make it look real, to cover for us."
"Why?" Hermione whispered, unable to help herself as she palpated Draco's chest, moving her fingers to his abdomen and eliciting a scream of pain.
"Draco refused to kill her," Daphne said. "He refused, and he - the Dark Lord - he was going to kill him, and kill Lovegood, and I couldn't let him - Theo couldn't let him -"
"Shit," Hermione said, as her tapping fingers found a hard lump and Draco promptly retched blood. "We need to get him inside."
"Over my dead fucking body," Ron growled from behind her, and Hermione whipped round to face him.
"If you want," she said evenly, "but I think we've all seen enough dead bodies for now."
Ron held her gaze for a moment, and she saw him consider arguing before he sighed, his shoulders drooping with resignation. "Your funeral," he said. "Though Godric knows we've seen enough of those too."
Now - June 24th 2002
"This looks bad," Ginny murmured, as she dabbed at the blood that still wept from Hermione's wrists.
"Cursed manacles," Hermione replied, wincing as Ginny sprinkled the bruised and torn flesh with another liberal application of Dittany.
"I'm sorry," Theo said with a grimace. "I could have removed the spell if I'd been there earlier but -"
"It was better that you didn't," Hermione tried to smile reassuringly at him, but ruined the effect by hissing with pain as Ginny moved her attention to the peppering of small burns that crawled their way up the side of her neck. "We had a plan and we stuck to it, and I'm fine."
"Forgive me if it seems I'm stating the obvious, Granger," Draco said, crossing his arms and eyeing her from where he stood next to Theo, "But you don't exactly look fine."
"She looks better than you, Draco," Ginny said blithely, though Hermione was close enough to see her friend hold her breath, waiting for Draco's reaction to the tease.
"She wishes," came his smirking reply, and Ginny's shoulders relaxed as she shot Hermione a small smile. Though Draco maintained that he was just glad to be alive, it had been a long time before he had been able to be good-humoured about the scar, and sometimes the others could play a little too fast and loose with his patience.
"Look, I'm sorry if you lot want to snark at each other all day," Ron grumbled, "But I for one would quite like to know where the world's most ridiculous plan has got us?"
"You got the pleasure of my company on a permanent basis, Weasley," Theo grinned, but he, along with the rest of the small band that had gathered in the former DADA classroom, turned his eyes to Hermione expectantly.
She sighed, patted Ginny's hand to stop her fussing, and then straightened her spine as she looked from face to face.
"I was right," she said quietly. "The snatches of what I'd seen - they were from his - You-Know-Who's - past."
The rush of water, and the glitter of ice all around, and everywhere the soft echo of whispering voices -
"So what does that mean?" Ron pressed, as Hermione frowned to herself. "Do you still think that -"
"Yes," she nodded, snapping back to attention. "There was something we didn't know, something that Harry was trying to tell me. I don't know how he knew - I guess Dumbledore must have shown him." She saw Ron purse his lips, and decided to ignore his continued scepticism. "But the point is that You-Know-Who did do something, I saw it in his head. There was a book that talked about something called The Well of Souls, and he went there - to Iceland - and -"
"You can't be serious." Theo's customary pallor had faded even further, his hazel eyes wide and disbelieving.
"What?" Hermione asked, startled by the sudden change in his demeanour.
There was silence for a long moment as Theo shook his head slowly, his mouth half open as though he was trying to think how to answer her question.
"It's an old story." Luna had sidled out from where she had stood just behind Theo. Her eyes fixed on something slightly above and to the left of Hermione's face, her expression the usual faraway one, but then she gave a little twitch and looked Hermione directly in the eye.
"A gateway between the quick and the dead," Luna said softly, tipping her head. "If you bathe in the waters you can hear their voices, and if you call their name as a spell you can sing them back to the light." She hummed, soft and off-key, and Hermione watched, entranced, as the other girl reached a fine-boned hand up to trace something invisible on the air. "'That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies'," Luna whispered, and her voice had a strange timbre to it, as though it contained its own echo. Hermione shivered, recognising the phrase as one of the ones that she had circled in the old Bible.
Abruptly Luna's hand dropped, and her thin frame was wracked by a shudder. "Something to that effect, anyway," she murmured, finally looking away from Hermione and up to Theo. "I'm tired now," she said. "Too many Nargles."
He wrapped a gentle arm around her, his face pinched with worry as he drew her into his side. "Like Luna says," Draco said, after a few moments had passed. "It's an old story, but one that I'd never have thought much of."
"A bit like the Deathly Hallows, you mean," Hermione said, her eyes raising to Ron's. He grimaced, and looked away.
"Most legends have their roots in fact," Anthony nodded. "But a gateway between Life and Death?"
"There was one in the Department of Mysteries." Ron had turned back, face still set in a frown. "Remember Harry saying?"
"You-know-who had the whole place destroyed," Theo said, one hand smoothing absently over Luna's hair. "I always thought that was a bit odd, he was so - so vehement about it, I thought it was about the prophecies but maybe -"
"Speaking with the dead, Luna?" Hermione asked, trying to make her voice as gentle as possible. The Ravenclaw witch had retreated ever further into her own strangeness since she had been captured by Snatchers years ago, and now seemed only to come out of herself rarely, and around Theo. Now, she blinked owlishly at Hermione, her eyes huge and almost glowingly pale.
"He had questions to which he wanted answers," Luna said softly. "And he got them." She closed her eyes, frowning gently as though she were in pain. "But you saw it," she sighed, her voice barely louder than a breath. "And he's spoken to you. He's waiting for you to find him."
"Harry," Hermione breathed, feeling, as she had for months now, the thrill of his name, the sense of nervous possibility that surrounded her memories of him. "To call a name as a spell..." from the corner of her eye she saw Luna nod slightly. Hermione turned to Ginny, tried to draw a smile onto her face. "Do we know anyone who can get me to Iceland?"
The red-haired witch exhaled loudly through her nose. "He won't do it for free," she said.
"Why do you think Granger's asking you?" Draco smirked. "We all know Blaise is a sucker for a redhead."
A/N: Merry Christmas to all of you! If you want something a little more cheery for Christmas, head over to my/olivieblake's tumblr pages, where you will find a recording of our collaborative fic, Epistles. On the subject of olivie, she and littlechmura have collaborated on a graphic novel called Alpha which I URGE YOU to purchase - www dot enter-alpha dot com. You won't regret! Happy holidays xxx