my heart lingers in your hands
Chapter 2
You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Hermione was restless; she couldn't sleep. It was well past her bedtime and even Mama and Papa were asleep in their bed. (She'd checked.)
Her eyes kept flitting to the window and the long line of shadows beyond. The ash trees.
Could those be the very same trees in Nana's story? Could that be where she lost her grandpa, where Harry lost his parents?
Her heart beat erratically in her chest at the thought. She thought about the fae prince's wand and how it had felt in her hand: right.
Her fingers twitched against her lavender (because pink was for little girls and she was big now) sheets. Oh, how she wished to feel it in her hand again, the smooth wood catching on the lines of her palm, the slightly curved handle bumping against her wrist.
Her hands fisted. Hermione knew where the wand was kept, and Nana was sleeping. She could just go down to the shed and feel it for a few minutes, no one would have to know.
Hermione shook her head vehemently. No no, she couldn't, she wasn't a bad girl.
No one would know.
No…
No one—
Hermione swung her legs down. Her feet were moving over her dark brown floors before she'd finished the thought.
Her hand grasped the cool, silver doorknob and stayed still. She shouldn't do this, she should get back into bed and close her eyes and count sheep and—
She turned her wrist.
The trek to the shed had been cold. She'd forgotten a jacket so the only thing protecting her from the elements was a thin, cotton sleeping shirt with pandas on it. The imagery fur of the pandas did nothing for the wind making goosebumps appear on her arms.
The shed door was unlocked, like always. The room was dark but for a sliver of moonlight streaming through the only window. It was enough.
Hermione dragged the chair she'd sat on only that afternoon under the shelf opposite the door. She climbed on and stood on her tip toes, hand outstretched and feeling around blindly.
There was the cauldron, so the case was more to the left, yes – no, that was the gas lamp, okay more to the right and yes, there!
Her hands trembled ever so slightly as she tried to unhook the catch on the glass case. It wasn't heavy at all, perhaps Nana had put a charm on it.
Thinking about Nana reminded her that she should not be doing this, and her cheeks grew warm.
Click.
Too late now.
Hermione set the case down and lifted the wand out with both hands. A rush of something jolted through her from her fingertips to the tips of her toes.
She swished the wand and giggled when it gave off the faintest blue sparks.
She'd ask for the wand for her next birthday. Surely Nana would give it to her. It wasn't like anyone else was using it. She nodded to herself. Yes, that's what she'd do, she'd—
Come to me.
Hermione whirled around, eyes frantically searching for whoever had spoken. There was no one there.
"Hello?" her voice was small and wobbly.
Come to me.
"Nana?" Hermione called out, desperate, scared.
Come to me, little Granger.
Hermione's gasp broke on the beginnings of a sob. She was standing so still she could have been mistaken for a wax sculpture. The wand buzzed in her hand.
Now!
Startled and absolutely terrified, Hermione sprang into action. She hurtled through the shed door and made a mad dash for the house, her only thought on getting inside and curling up between her parents and apologizing to Nana and never, ever going to the shed alone.
She was almost to the back door when the voice came again, and it didn't come alone. A fog descended on her mind. Wrong way, little one. Come to me, to the trees.
Hermione stopped running immediately and turned. The voice was so beautiful, so calming. She should listen. Her feet moved forward and her body followed.
Yes, bring it to me, the beautiful voice lulled. Bring me Basilisk.
Hermione's brows furrowed. Basilisk?
The wand, brat, the voice snapped impatiently.
The fog lifted slightly. Hermione's pace stuttered to a stop. What was she doing, why was she following such a rude voice?
Apologies, the voice crooned, I didn't mean that. Darling child, bring me the wand and you can go back to bed.
Back to bed, yes, she was feeling sleepy. She should listen, then she could go back to bed. Eyes glazed and thoughts complacent, Hermione lifted her feet and started walking again.
The trees were in sight. She was almost there. She could go back to bed, soon. Curl up under her warm covers and sleep.
A shout came from behind her, or was it the wind?
The voice came again, rushed, Quickly!
She started running, a stone caught under her sole and dug into her feet with every step, but she was forced to ignore it. She was so close. Her hair brushed low hanging branches and then – she was in.
The fog lifted immediately and Hermione was left to take in her surroundings, body trembling, heart racing, feet sore.
Her eyes adjusted to the new darkness. It was a clearing, empty and lit sparsely by what little moonlight could get through the tall trees.
Why had she come here?
A shadow stepped away from its place against a tree. As it stepped towards her, its outline became clearer. It was a boy who looked barely older than her.
He was beautiful. A head of thick dark hair partially covered two black stubs growing out the top of his forehead and his sharp cheekbones fit his youthful face perfectly.
"Hello, brat," he greeted.
Hermione stumbled back and landed roughly on the ground. That voice! It was the one that led her here.
Her breaths puffed out in sporadic bursts. Her heart was thumping so loudly she was sure the boy could hear it.
He crouched in front of her, lips curled to the side in a sinister smirk, and held his hand out. "Give it," he demanded.
Hermione stared at the pale, pale hand in confusion. Give what?
The hand shot forward and Hermione squeezed her eyes shut. There was no pain, only a tugging on the fingers that clutched the wand. The wand, she realised.
Hermione looked down at her hand, looked down at the pale wand and the pale hand that was trying to pull it away from her.
She panicked. "No!"
The boy stilled, lifted his head. "No?" he echoed incredulously.
Hermione gulped. This was what he wanted? Well, he couldn't have it. Her grandfather had died for this wand, it was hers.
"No," she repeated with more resolve, clenching her fingers tighter and pulling herself away from him.
"No?" he growled, dark eyes narrowing into near slits.
"Y-you can't have it," she said, a tremor in her voice.
A sneer made its way onto his beautiful face. "And why not?"
"It's," she began only to choke back a sob. "It's mine."
His eyes widened and his cheeks tinted a dark, angry red. "I assure you, brat, it most certainly is not," he snapped at her, teeth clacking together. He made to take it again and her magic responded.
First it swirled inside her, just under her sternum, then it rushed through her like a whirlwind and when it manifested outside of her body, it sent the boy skidding across the dirt and ten feet away from her.
She stared in shock at the tracks he'd left as he was pushed away by an invisible force.
She'd…she'd never done something like that before. There had been a mean little boy at school who'd grabbed her hair and pulled so hard he yanked some strands out, and her magic had given him a severe stomachache. But this – pushing away a being that was clearly magical so far without touching them and without an incantation – was not something she'd hoped to achieve for many years yet.
The boy got to his feet with a load snarl, beautiful face transformed into that of a creature's. He bent his legs and Hermione detachedly watched him as he clearly prepared to lunge at her. The fog came back and she felt odd, like there was no need to move away.
The boy leaped, nails extended into deadly talons. The sharp points were a breath away from her throat when a boom rocked through the air and threw him off course. His talons missed her throat, but they slid right through her thin, cotton t-shirt and the vulnerable flesh over her heart.
Hermione screamed.
The pain was like nothing she'd experienced before. The broken arm she'd had when she'd jumped off the diving board and hit cement instead of water couldn't even begin to compare to the way every inch of her cried out in agony.
She tried to bring her arms up to clutch at the pain, but they felt too heavy and would not respond. Tears leaked from her eyes in a constant stream, her nose ran and mingled with the salty downpour and dripped into her mouth and she did not care.
There was movement above her. Blearily, she gazed up at familiar brown eyes.
"Hermione! Oh, my child, my sweet child. It's going to be okay, you're going to be fine."
"N-nana," Hermione tried to croak out, but the word caught in her clogged throat.
"Shh, shh, don't speak. You're going to be fine." Hands fluttered gently over her chest and the pain lessened an inch.
Tears that were not her own dripped onto Hermione's face. The brown in Nana's eyes were dulled by the water pooling in them.
Leaves crunched off to the side. Hermione slanted her eyes as much as she could, only to see the boy rise to his feet gracefully and dust his tunic.
His hands made their way into pockets and he adopted a casual stance. Hermione hated it.
"Well, I was aiming for her throat, but I guess now you can say your goodbyes," he said nonchalantly.
Nana's body was draped over Hermione's in the next second. "You monster!" she shouted, voice full of loathing and anger.
The boy cocked his head. "Come now, crone, you can do better than calling me out on what I am."
"How?" Nana screamed. How did you find her, went unasked.
Don't cry, Nana, Hermione wanted to say but her voice wasn't working and her heart still hurt and oh god was she going to die?
"Blood of my blood," he sneered. "My wand will forever know the touch of a Granger, thanks to your husband."
Nana reared back and brought a hand up to her mouth to contain her gasp.
"Ah, I see you've figured it out. Your wards might be able to keep my physical body away but I'm much too powerful to be completely hindered. And what a shame your heir hasn't learned to ward herself against mental attacks yet."
"Why her? Why not me? I was there that day, too!" Nana cried, clutching one of Hermione's hands so hard the young witch would have cried out if she hadn't been too focused on other hurts.
The boy smiled condescendingly. "You might be a Granger, but she is a direct descendent and you know how finicky the duel rules are: to reclaim a wand, defeat the holder or the heir and such." He rolled his eyes in annoyance.
Nana looked back at Hermione's ashen face and stroked her cheek with a trembling finger.
"I should have never—this is all my fault…"
"Yes, yes, you should have never brought your precious heir anywhere near Basilisk. Now, hand over my wand and you can be on your way," he demanded impatiently, taking a step toward them.
Even through all the pain, Hermione heard his words and flexed her fingers to check that she still had the wand in her grip. She would have breathed a sigh of relief if her lungs weren't on fire.
Seeing the protective movement, Nana placed a comforting hand over the one that held Basilisk. "You'll never have the wand if she dies, Voldemort."
The boy – Voldemort – flinched as if struck when Nana said his name, but he recovered quickly, face like a storm. "I sincerely doubt that, crone," he jeered.
"She has bonded with it, I've felt it," Nana informed quietly, pressing a hand lightly over her granddaughter's chest. Hermione's wound was bleeding sluggishly now, the flow having been slowed by one of Nana's charms, but that did nothing for the heart wrenching pain she still felt.
Voldemort's face took on a look of utter disgust. "Of all the witches to…" he trailed off. After a moment's consideration, Voldemort smoothed his tunic and gave an elegant shrug of his shoulders. "I've gone this long without a wand, I'm sure I can manage until the next heir. Besides, her death will be worth it. That'll be two Grangers now, and both in less than a decade. Happy deaths." He saluted mockingly, sneer still in place.
He made to turn and walk away when Nana called out to him, "Wait!"
He stopped but did not turn.
"This is your doing, you can reverse it." There was a note of desperation in the woman's voice.
Voldemort fixed Nana with a smile full of mockery. "Why ever would I do that?"
Nana took a deep breath. "Save her heart—save her heart…and it's yours." She sounded so sad. Why? Didn't she want Hermione to be saved? And her heart, it hurt so much, Hermione would give it away without a second thought if only it would take this horrible feeling with it.
"You would give up your heir so easily? What if I decide I want to kill her, after all?" His brows were drawn together in puzzlement.
"Fae don't damage their possessions." Nana cringed as the words left her mouth.
"Oh, but I'm only half fae," he smiled wide, showing blunt teeth, showing that part of him that was human. "And you would be surprised how much the mortal part of me enjoys destruction."
"You will honour this. You will save her," Nana said in the firm voice Hermione recognized as her grandmother voice.
Voldemort's nostrils flared. "Will I?" he challenged.
"Or you won't get Basilisk back. Ever. The wand has bonded with her and it will follow her into death."
Voldemort loosed a loud snarl that made Hermione's weakening heart thumb once in fear. He stood stock still as he thought the crone's words over. He knew she was telling the truth, he'd learned the history of wands from his uncle. He knew, as all fae and witch did, that once a wand bonded with a magical being, it either needed to be claimed by another through a duel, or given willingly, otherwise the wand's powers would dissipate when its bondmate died.
Voldemort didn't need the wand, he was the most powerful fae since Gellert himself. But the wand had absorbed magic from a long line of fae and even some witches over the centuries, and he could only imagine how powerful he'd be when he possessed it. He could not let such a powerful and useful artefact be lost just because of a little girl.
He waved his hand and golden light shot forth from his fingers and dissolved into Hermione's chest. The pain ebbed away instantly. She felt an itch over her heart and her skin began knitting itself back together. Nana sighed in relief and pressed a damp kiss to Hermione's temple.
Another wave of Voldemort's hand had Hermione levitating through the air toward him.
"Nana!" Hermione cried out, finally able to use her voice.
"You can't take her now," Nana protested, frantic.
Hermione hovered in the air between the fae and the witch. "When?"
"When she's of age."
"And when is that?" He was growing impatient, both Nana and Hermione could hear it in the rising octave of his beautiful voice.
"Ten years."
"Ten human years," Voldemort clarified, narrowing his eyes as if to suss out any schemes the witch was planning.
Nana nodded her head stiffly, fighting the urge to grab Hermione and make a run for it.
Voldemort considered this before snorting. "A measly about of time. Take her," he dismissed.
Nana released a stuttering breath. She ran to Hermione, clutched the girl to her chest and started toward the tree line.
Voldemort's voice stopped her, "She is not to be touched until then." His voice was firm, his demand unnegotiable. Nana's shoulder hunched towards her ears as she tensed. She pursed her lips but did not respond.
Just before they broke through the tree line, Voldemort's parting words were for Hermione's ears only, "Goodbye, brat. For now."
She'd been playing outside, being sure to never stray more than a few feet away from the house, when she saw him.
"Nana!" Hermione shouted, instantly fearful that he had come to take her away, come to collect the price he'd been promised for saving her heart.
Nana rushed out of the kitchen door, hands caked in flour and greying hair falling out of its bun. When she saw what had frightened her granddaughter so, she pushed the young witch behind her and created a physical barrier between the fae prince and Hermione.
The fae prince calmly weaved through the low hanging branches, surrounded by figures in dark clothing and masks depicting tortured animal faces.
The fae prince stepped forward out of the copse of trees he had claim over, arms laden with jewels and cloths of vibrant colours – colours that matched his robes and the circlet he wore in his raven tresses, a large, glittering emerald positioned between his small black horns.
"Nana, what is he doing?" Hermione asked fearfully, clutching the skirts of her grandmother's dress. Hermione's small fingers twitched with the desire to snatch those jewels away and clutch them to her chest.
(She looked at her hands in horror. What was this feeling? Why was she thinking such thoughts? What was wrong with her?!)
"He's courting you," Nana said in a strangled voice.
Voldemort laid the treasures where the wards began – where he could not cross – and left without a word. The tall men in horrific masks silently followed after him.
Hermione was forbidden to play outside for the rest of the summer. But the gifts still found their way on her window sill. She never told Nana or her parents or any of her friends about them, scared that the adults would take her things away. Because that's what they were, hers – and they would remain so.
Hermione knew that these types of thoughts were accompanied by a frisson of that wretched fog, so she hid the treasures under a floorboard and pulled her bright rug over it.
Sometimes, in her weakest moments, she would pass her fingers over the trinkets and wonder how beautiful the faelands must be if they could produce such wondrous treasures.
Sometimes, in her weakest moments, she thought about asking the fae prince to take her there.
Fae are stranger creatures, they latch onto things so quickly.
And no matter how he loathed to be compared to the simple, plebian fae that he ruled over, the fae prince cannot escape what he is. Specifically, he cannot escape his fascination with this splendent slip of a girl that literally has a piece of him inside her.
When he saved the young Granger's heart, he could only reverse the damage his talons had dealt by binding her waning life force to his immortal one. That kind of magic leaves a mark. And for one as powerful as the fae prince, the mark left behind took the form of a soul bond.
He'd captured a centaur afterward, to tell him of his future now that there was this new development. He hadn't cared for the answer and, in a fit of rage, had severed the insolent centaur's head from the rest of his body.
Tom did not at all need any type of distraction, not when he'd barely cemented his place as the first ever crown-less ruler of the fae. He did not at all need a soulmate to balance him. He certainly did not at all need to wait ten years – human years it might have been, but it was still more time than he'd ever have liked to wait – to reclaim Basilisk, which was rightfully his.
At first, he started watching the young witch so that he could learn her weaknesses and devise a plan to incapacitate her without killing her in the future.
Then he started leaving her little gifts because there was this very annoying voice in his head that sighed in dejection over the lack of finery his soulmate had. The fae prince could not fathom why the young witch was so content in her life when she had nary a jewel and kept wearing the same clothes every few days. Was she poor, or just tasteless?
But after the crone died, and he was left speechless for hours as the power transfer took place, Tom could not restrain himself from approaching her anymore. The biggest obstacle in his path had just been buried and he soon found that the wards around the ash trees could be overpowered by the new magic he shared with his soulmate.
He'd gone to her window in the form he'd assumed when they'd met in the clearing.
He'd wanted to say more, stay longer, but the little chit had been deathly scared of him, even going so far as to hide under her covers. He'd left with an ache in his chest that had been harder to ignore than he would ever admit.
He realised after that encounter that sometime during his two years of vigil she'd become the singular most important speck of anything in his life.
He had no intention of ever telling her that, though.
(And therein lied the problem, unbeknownst to him.)