Chapter 6: To entice the dead

Then - June 13th 2002

"You're sure you want to do this?" Draco's expression was grim, a pulse clearly visible in the tight set of his jaw.

"Bit late if she isn't," Ron scoffed, but Hermione could hear the worry in his voice, and when she glanced towards him it was to find his gaze fixed on the other side of the clearing, as though he couldn't quite make himself look at her.

"The answer's in his head," she said. "Whatever it is - whatever this thing is that Harry's been trying to tell me, Vo-" her breath caught, the familiar stumble as the spell closed her throat, and stilled her tongue, and Hermione closed her eyes, stamping down upon the rush of impatience that had led to the slip.

"You-Know-Who's got the answer," she said finally, "and we need it. There's no other way." She tried to make her voice sound determined but worried that she was falling short; succeeding only in sounding petulant.

"We've come this far now," Daphne said. "Theo has everything set." She placed her hand on Hermione's arm in a silent show of support. "Besides," a smile ghosted over her mouth as she looked towards Draco, "You don't want all those Occlumency lessons to go to waste."

Draco exhaled through his nose, his mouth twisting to pull the scar tight across his cheek, though Hermione was fairly sure the expression hid a faint smirk. "Endless manipulation," he huffed. "It seems I'm destined to relive my parents' marriage after all."

Daphne's smile froze, her eyes narrowing, and Hermione glanced up to finally catch Ron's eye - his look of resignation.

"We're not married," Daphne said tartly, after a tight pause. "You picked the wrong sister if that's what you wanted."

"You know it isn't," Draco's voice had dropped, softened already into an apology, and Hermione jerked her head at Ron, wanting to give the pair some privacy to go over the familiar argument.

Wizarding betrothals, as it turned out, were hard to break, even if one party had absconded with a band of wanted outlaws.

"She's loyal to Voldemort," Daphne had said quietly, blue eyes following the handle of the spoon as it stirred the stew. "My sister. She was supposed to be the one who - who - she and Draco, but…"

Hermione waited, patience learned the hard way, and finally Daphne looked up at her. "He chose me, but we can't even be handfast unless she lets the contract break, which she won't, because…" She gave a shaky sigh, and Hermione pretended not to see the tear that Daphne swiped from her cheek. "We were sisters, once, but I don't think that counts for much any more. Not to Astoria, anyway."

"Their timing's terrible, as usual," Ron said quietly, now. "Still," he frowned slightly, eyes on the pair of blondes as he and Hermione stood waiting a discreet distance away. "It must be pretty rubbish."

"What?" Hermione asked, eyebrows drawing together in spite of herself.

"Well," Ron said, scuffing his foot through the underbrush as a red flush climbed his neck to stain his ears. "Knowing what you want, but not being able to…" his voice trailed away, and Hermione felt herself blushing to match him.

"Is that…" Ron said eventually, "Is that how…?"

"I don't think any of us really knew what we wanted, do you?" Hermione said, trying to sound amused, but hearing the wistful sadness in her voice. "Except to defeat You-Know-Who, and look how that turned out."

Ron was silent for a moment before he met her eye again, and to her surprise Hermione saw a shadow of the mischievous Weasley smile fitting itself over his mouth. "Where's your Gryffindor spirit?" he murmured, nudging her elbow. "It's a work in progress, that's all. Now," he nodded to where Draco and Daphne were picking their way towards them. "Are you ready to get yourself caught by some Snatchers?"

Now - July 19th 2002

"Go!" Blaise yelled, and the urgency in his voice made any questions die in her throat. With the silver box that he'd passed her gripped in one fist, Hermione pushed herself from the ground, sprinting for the railing and barely skidding out of the way as another body materialised in a flurry of dark robes and glinting mask.

Hermione heard Parvati shout from behind her, and spun to see the other girl duelling with the new arrival. Blaise and the man who had followed him through - who must, Hermione realised, have been another Death Eater - were grappling with one another, wands seemingly forgotten. As she watched, frozen, Blaise wrenched a fist free and socked his opponent solidly on the jaw, sending him reeling back.

Blaise turned towards her, frowning in apparent exasperation when he saw Hermione still there.

"What the fuck, Granger?" He started towards her and then growled as the other wizard grabbed his ankle. "Warrington stay fucking down!" He looked back at Hermione, and she saw panic dancing in his green-gold eyes. "You have to go, before any more of them arrive -" he stamped on Warrington's fingers, making the other man yelp with pain.

"Hermione!" Blaise's voice was tight, sharp, snapping her back to herself. "Take the portkey and bloody go - it's -" he flicked his wand and Warrington fell still and silent. "Run," Blaise growled. "You have to find Potter, bring him back so we can - can end this. We'll hold them off - you -"

There was a pop from behind her and Hermione cried out as a hand grabbed her hair roughly. She barely had time to recognise Corban Yaxley's leering features before Parvati was aiming her wand.

"Diffindo!" she yelled, and Yaxley screamed as his hand fell away, soaking Hermione's shoulder in blood.

She recoiled in horror, feeling behind her for the gap in the wards. The air was twisting, coming alive with the odd, staticky feel of impending apparition.

Hermione shot one last hopeless look at Parvati, saw her mouth open -

And she was falling, her foot stepping back to land in empty air as the world lurched away from her, the squeeze and pull of travel seizing her stomach and wrenching it up to somewhere near her collarbone.

She landed hard, pitching forwards and scraping her palm on the rough scree of the hillside, her other hand hugging the portkey and her wand to her chest.

The silence was abrupt, almost oppressive, broken only by the light twitter of evening birdsong and a faint rushing sound that she realised belatedly was her own heartbeat.

How had they known?

How could they have known?

She heard her heartbeat pick up speed with her desperate, quavering breaths.

Betrayed.

They'd been betrayed, they had to have been; why else would the Death Eaters have come - how else would they have known?

Unless - and the thought sent another, horrible curl of fear through her stomach - unless they'd tracked her or Theo, and had just been waiting -

Her fingers clenched around her wand and then dropped both it and the portkey as though she'd been burned, bile rising up her throat as she fought to control the rising wave of panic. What if she'd led them there, and now she had run, but she still had her wand, they could still track it, still follow her -

Hermione forced herself to take a deep, steadying breath. She hadn't had her wand on her when she'd been taken - had made out to the Snatchers that she didn't have one; that she had never replaced the Vinewood wand that had been taken from her at Malfoy Manor.

And it was true that the whole group been forced to share wands for months, until one rainy afternoon not long after they'd returned to Hogwarts, when Hermione, cursing the fact that she hadn't spent more time practicing wandless transfiguration, found herself being jabbed in the hip by a drawer in the Head's desk that had apparently thrown itself open of its own volition.

Just as the rooms had shaped themselves to their occupants, so it seemed the Castle had taken it upon itself to offer her the solution to her problems. Whatever had happened, when she'd picked up the elegant length of pale wood that had rolled its way across the base of the drawer, she had felt the familiar, sympathetic hum of rightness tingle through her fingers.

Draco's eyes had narrowed when she'd shown him. "Rowan's rare," was all he'd said, and she hadn't questioned it then, though remembering now she wondered again at his expression.

Not the time, Hermione thought determinedly. "Focus," she muttered aloud as she knelt down, feeling blindly in the rapidly darkening evening. Her hasty apparition had taken her to the mouth of the cave where Sirius and Buckbeak had hidden out, years before, and she didn't want to risk a Lumos this close to Hogwarts.

Not if there were Death Eaters nearby.

"Come on," she whispered, ignoring the sob that tried to break the words as she patted her hands in a widening circle. When her fingers finally closed around the familiar, smooth wood she released a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding. "Accio portkey," she murmured, catching the silver box as it flew up from the ground nearby.

Hermione wasted no time in stashing the thing in her beaded bag, for once thankful for the paranoia that meant that she was never without it as she reached her arm in up to the shoulder and drew out her cloak. Dusk was rapidly becoming full dark, and though the day had been warm the stony landscape retained little of the heat.

When she went to throw the cloak over her shoulders Hermione's hand grazed her hair, which was still sticky with blood, and her stomach gave another, more violent lurch. She was barely quick enough to stumble away from the cave entrance before she was retching into one of the scrubby bushes.

She could still hear Yaxley's scream echoing in her ears, still see the fierce desperation on Parvati's face as her wand sliced through the air. And Hermione had left - had run - had abandoned them - she inhaled sharply, stumbling backwards and raising a shaking hand to her mouth. She had to go back - she had to -

Run, Blaise had told her, his eyes desperate, his voice raw. You have to find Potter.

Bring him back, so we can end this.

She cast a shaky Tergeo on her hair, though it did nothing to dispel the awful feeling of wrongness as she retreated back into the cave. A listless flick of her wand laid a cushioning charm on the narrow ledge at the back, and Hermione sank down, closing her eyes and seeing the faces of those she had left behind.

Parvati. Ginny. Draco. Daphne. Ron. Anthony. Theo. Luna. Blaise.

And one of them - one of them had -

No, it had to be something else, something they'd overlooked. None of them could have betrayed the others; they'd been too careful.

Obviously not careful enough.

Hermione scrunched her eyes tighter, enough to make spots of light and dark dance behind her lids, like the empty sockets and naked grin of the skulls on Parvati's cards.

Death.

She curled into a ball, trying to bury her sobs in her arms as she remembered the rest of the reading, turning over the identical cards one by one. All seventy-five of them; humming with the Castle's magic as though Hogwarts itself had wanted to deliver this dreadful warning.

Feeling herself drifting on the edge of exhaustion, Hermione's sobs subsided into hiccoughing gasps as her mind turned to the last three cards.

The High Priestess tilted her head and smiled her opaque smile, her hand reaching up to pluck one of the pomegranates that hung behind her.

The Hanged Man twirled endlessly at the end of the rope, his dark hair gleaming in the sunlight.

The Lovers reached for one another, hands outstretched, their palms bloody -

His hand on her skin, his grip insistent, the dance of his tongue with hers tasting sweet, and terrible - of longing and denial and of temptation.

"Wake up Hermione", he whispered against her lips, and she felt his smile, felt his mouth press back when she moaned against him, his kiss soft and lingering and then -

"You need to wake up now. I'll see you soon."

She shot upright, her heart beating wildly as she gasped for breath, her fingers raising to touch her mouth, his name forming soundlessly.

Harry.

In all the months of dreaming; of strange, nameless emotions following her out of sleep and into reality. Through all of it, he had never once kissed her. Because he never had before he'd - before he'd died - that hadn't been what they were. He had had Ginny, and she - she'd had whatever it was that she'd had with Ron. It had never been like that between them.

She remembered the look in his eyes as he'd died, as Voldemort had killed him. The way that her heart had clenched with sorrow.

It had never been like that, had it?

Hermione gave herself a shake, swinging her legs to the floor of the cave and then stilling as she heard a noise from outside, remembering with sudden, chilling clarity what he'd said to her.

You need to wake up now.

She pressed herself back against the wall of the cave, casting a silent Disillusionment Charm just as Antonin Dolohov's cruel, handsome face appeared at the entranceway.

The scar that crawled across Hermione's ribs twinged at the sight of him, and she held her breath as his nose twitched, as though he could smell her -

With a prickle of dread she hoped that Greyback wasn't there - but no, no, she'd seen him die, seen him torn from Lavender before he could get his teeth too deeply into her throat, his body hurled into a collapsing section of wall by the force of Remus's spell before Dolohov -

Before Dolohov murdered Remus, she remembered, her fear and horror hardening into something cold and resolute as she watched the Death Eater take a tentative step towards her. Hermione began, slowly, to raise her wand, running through a series of spells in her mind and trying to fix on one that would be appropriate, that would be fitting; would be enough; when Dolohov paused, frowning, and looked directly at her.

Hermione froze, praying her Disillusionment would hold. Time seemed to slow to a standstill as Dolohov blinked, squinting into the gloomy interior of the cave, and then gave his head a shake, turning away.

"Nothing here!" Hermione heard him call; but it wasn't until the sound of his footsteps had faded down the mountainside that she slumped against the wall, gulping at the air as she waited for her hands to stop trembling.

She spent the day in the cave, afraid to stray too far from it for fear that she would run into the Death Eaters who were still, if the faint shouts and occasional sparks in the air were anything to go by, combing the surrounding area for her.

For anyone else who had escaped.

Don't think about that.

Hermione busied herself by making an inventory of everything in the beaded bag, which had been how she had planned to spend the day before -

Don't think about it, she told herself, polishing the lens of her telescope with the edge of her jumper before returning it to its place in what Harry had affectionately referred to as her 'Mary Poppins bag,' the shared joke making them grin at one another, and Ron crinkle his forehead in confusion.

Don't think about it. She retied the long drawstrings of the bag around her waist, before pulling her jumper back down.

On the ground beside her knees the Marauder's Map lay folded, its edges fluttering innocuously in the low breeze.

Don't look, Hermione had told herself when her fingers first closed around it that morning.

Don't look, she'd repeated, as she chewed slowly on almonds and dried apricots, the midday sun streaming through the cave entrance.

"Don't look," she whispered now, as her hand crept towards the tatty parchment. The sky was reddening with the approach of evening, and the swirling dread that had sat low in the pit of her stomach all day was rising up, threatening to choke her.

Her fingers touched the parchment, and in her other hand the portkey glowed bright blue, and the world twisted away from her once more.

Hermione's feet slipped against wet stone, making her stumble, though this time she kept her balance.

At first when she opened her eyes she thought that what she was seeing was the after-image of the Portus charm, but then she realised that the glowing blue light was the icy ceiling of another cave.

Casting aside the useless thought that she was apparently destined to lead a troglodytic existence from here onwards, Hermione turned, squinting into the brightness just outside. Probably an hour before sunset, but looking upwards she could see Polaris already out, a few degrees higher than at Hogwarts, and in the distance the wide, pale sky was cut off abruptly by the blunt shape of a mountain.

Just as she had seen in Voldemort's memory.

She turned slowly, peering back into the cave. There was a glimmer of something at the far end, and when she listened she could hear the trickling sound of water, and then, in the silence between breath and heartbeat, something that sounded just like -

Hermione.

"Harry," she whispered, and then she was walking quickly, not quite running, back into the cave, towards the milky blue pool that cast its strange light onto the frozen walls.

When her toes hit the very lip of the pool Hermione stopped herself, trying to remember what Luna had said.

If you call their name as a spell you can sing them back to the light.

Her skin prickled with goosebumps as she quickly stripped out of her jumper and jeans, untying the beaded bag and setting it and her wand down with her clothes and shoes so that she stood, shivering, in just her underwear. Not for the first time, Hermione wished that she had grown up with magic, with ritual. That she could find it all a little less…ridiculous at times like this.

"Come on," she told herself quietly. "Focus."

I'll see you soon, he'd whispered in her dream.

She picked up one of the black, jagged rocks from the floor, and sliced it across her palm.

"For what I offer," she murmured, then squeezed her fingers tight, letting a few drops of blood fall into the strange, blue water. Opening her eyes, she watched the red dispersing like ink.

"For whom I seek to find," Hermione breathed, before she leaned forwards and slid into the water. The shock of the cold pulled her breath from her in a gasp, and she fought for a moment to keep her head above water, before remembering what she had to do.

Harry, she thought desperately. I need you - we need you.

She remembered his laugh; his voice whispering her name. She thought of the flash of his eyes and the way that he'd tilted his head as he looked at her in her dream.

She remembered the feel of his lips against hers -

There was a rushing sound; the noise of many voices whispering; and then the water seemed to surge upwards, closing over Hermione's head and screaming into her lungs as she felt herself yanked down into the depths.

Afterwards, there would be days on end when she could remember nothing between the terrible pain of that first lungful of water, and the awful relief of coughing herself awake at the mouth of the cave.

Then all at once the memories would batter her, violent as a maelstrom; voices calling, hands grabbing, and there, shining through all of it, his smile, the hope and disbelief on his face, the words that he'd whispered as he touched her cheek, her hair, her mouth.

You're here. You came.

It had seemed mere moments, but of course it was far, far longer. Time didn't work properly in the in-between places; in the still pools of the universe where souls could be trapped in the eddies.

She'd pressed her lips against his, tasting him as an echo, but also as a certainty.

Of course. Of course I came.

Now - July 31st 2002

Hermione coughed, feeling the spasm of it through her whole body as she vomited water onto the ground next to her head.

"Ugh," she groaned, rolling onto her back. Her head swam and her mouth tasted salty and dry, her limbs weak and heavy. She was still wearing only her black cotton underwear, but the afternoon sun was pleasantly warm on her chilled flesh, and finally she pulled herself upright.

Everything was still, and quiet, and her heart clenched, hope withering as she realised that it hadn't worked.

But then how was she -

Something moved in the corner of her eye, and Hermione's head whipped round to see a grey-robed figure stirring a few feet away, his messy head of wet, dark hair gleaming as he pushed himself upright.

"Harry?" she whispered, feeling a strange, giddy feeling of not quite daring, of barely hoping to believe that she'd done it - that she'd done it. "Is it really -"

He turned his face towards her, the sun catching on his profile, and Hermione's mind went blank, her ears filling with a low buzz of horror as she met his eyes - a deep, glittering blue.

"Hermione," he breathed, and it was the voice from her dreams, the voice that filled her with longing, with hope; the voice that she had thought - but it couldn't -

"You came," he breathed, and she reached her hand up to glide her fingers along the arch of his cheekbone, marvelling at the unspoilt beauty of his face.

"Of course," she whispered. "Of course I came."

"No!" she choked out, scrambling backwards and away from him, feeling desperately for her wand before she realised that she had left it inside the cave.

And all the while he watched her, his blue eyes - sapphire to Harry's emerald, and how could she not have known? - dark and patient and knowing and Hermione wanted to scream, wanted to be sick, and wanted, somewhere deep and dark inside herself -

"I came here for Harry," Hermione croaked desperately. "I asked for Harry, because I - we need him, he's the only one who can stop You-Know - can stop you -"

"Interesting," Tom interrupted her softly, holding up a hand that he turned slowly back and forth, examining it under the golden light before he looked back at her. "You went looking for a saviour, and instead you got me."

His mouth widened into a smile that was heartbreakingly lovely; achingly cruel. "How very inconvenient for you."

A/N: uh-oh. Thank you for reviewing and following, if I could beg a favour - please don't leave spoilers if you do review. Feel free to PM me instead!