I know it's been a while, but this story is not abandoned. There is no set update schedule, and the last few years have been incredibly difficult for me, but I am committed to finishing this story and have plotted it to completion. Also, as a bit of a housekeeping note, I am aware that there are typos and other small errors throughout the story. This was my first big Harry Potter story, and it's not beta-read. I am working my way through the 400+ pages of the Google doc, correcting those errors, and will update the existing chapters at some point.
Thank you all for continuing to read and comment on this story. I've not been able to respond to all of your comments, but I do read them, and I appreciate your patience and your support.
Cheers,
Elle
46: After the War: Part 2
She smiled before leaning in to press a kiss to his cheek. "You're a good man, Lucius Malfoy."
He chuckled softly before turning to capture her lips with his.
"No, pet, I'm not, but I am going to do everything reasonably within my power to prevent the rise of another Dark Lord like this one, and to make the world safe for us and for Draco."
"I believe you. I know you're a good man. But you can't help anyone if you're so exhausted you collapse. You should rest," Hermione chided gently.
"And so should you."
She frowned at his quick retort. "I've done nothing but sleep for days! I need to check on Harry."
"Have you not listened to a word I've said?"
"What… what do you mean?"
"I mean that it's not safe! Many fled the battlefield when the Dark Lord fell, and they've yet to be captured! And YOU are a prime target! Perhaps THE biggest target out there!"
She paused to stare at him. "Excuse me?"
"Potter is ill or injured and remains under secure guard at St. Mungo's. Your Weasley friend is missing. The famed 'Golden Trio' hunted by the Dark Lord and the cronies he had installed at the Ministry is decimated. You alone are the only one potentially within reach."
She swallowed hard. It was not something she'd considered, and yet, it made sense.
"Voldemort is dead," she whispered.
"He may be defeated, but his supporters are not. Not all of them anyway. Nor is the ideology that pushed him into power. Surely you did not think the world would magically become a safe, happy place the moment he died."
Truthfully, she'd not given much thought to what would happen in the immediate aftermath of a victory over Voldemort. She'd been far too concerned with actually winning the war and ensuring that she, Lucius, and Harry all survived. When she'd thought about the future, she'd thought of some vague, distant point in time where everything was lovely and pleasant and she and Lucius could be together and happy. It all seemed terribly naive that she'd not considered the immediate future, and even though she'd not devoured the papers or been kept abreast of the latest news of the last few days, she knew that Lucius spoke only the truth. Anyone daring enough to willingly participate in a violent overthrow of the government would not simply lay down his wand and peacefully give up and walk away when faced with the defeat of his lord and master. She had a sneaking suspicion there were Death Eaters who would rather go down in a blaze of glory than be captured and sent to Azkaban.
Still, she stubbornly refused to admit that perhaps Lucius was correct about the state of their world.
"I think I can handle myself!" she snapped as she stood. Her wand had to be around here somewhere, she thought to herself as she looked around the room.
"Like you handled Bellatrix?"
His question caught her off-guard, and she froze. Unbidden, the memory of the dark witch's attack assaulted her mind and her senses. She could hear Bellatrix Lestrange's cackling laugh and the sound of her own blood pounding in her ears as spells had flown during the duel. Most of all though, she was assaulted by the memory of pain. Endless, unrelenting, horrific pain.
She didn't realise she'd begun to hyperventilate until she felt Lucius's hands caressing her face. He spoke in a low voice, telling her to breathe slowly and deeply. Her mind jerked back to the present, to a warm, elegantly cosy bedroom and a crackling fire and a handsome wizard who'd saved her life.
"Are you alright?" he asked, worry clear in his voice.
She shrugged away from him, embarrassed that she'd been so quickly and easily affected by the memory of the duel that could have easily killed her.
"I'm fine. Where is my wand?"
"Clearly, you are not fine. And your wand is on the bedside table," he said with a sigh.
She felt the familiar rush of magic as her fingers gratefully closed around the vine wood of her wand. It was a relief to have it in her hand again, even though she knew she was safe behind the wards of the lodge. She tucked it carefully into her pocket.
"Speaking of wands, I have something for you."
She turned around, looking quizzically at Lucius.
"Oh?"
A black robe she'd not noticed before was draped over the back of a chair, and she watched, curious, as he reached into the pocket and withdrew something.
"Here. For you," he said solemnly, holding out what looked like two sticks.
Her heart felt as if it was caught in her throat as she realised the two sticks were the broken remnants of Bellatrix Lestrange's wand.
"You took her wand? Why?" she asked in a whisper. Was it some morbid souvenir? A trophy of a kill?
"To be quite honest, I am not certain what possessed me to take it. I broke it because I didn't want someone else to stumble upon it and gain a weapon. My primary concern was your well-being, of course, so I shoved it in my pocket and forgot about it," he admitted as he looked down at the broken wand.
"But then, long after the battle, I found it, and rather than toss it out, I decided you might want it."
She recoiled as if he were holding a live snake. "Why would you think I'd want it?"
He placed the broken wand in her hand and curled her fingers around it, forcing her to hold it. The crooked wood no longer buzzed with magic, and it felt inherently wrong in her hand.
"As a reminder. That the tide can turn far more quickly than you think. That letting your guard down in a dangerous situation can mean the difference between life and death. That despite your brilliance and your formidable skill, you, my precious witch, are not infallible."
She looked down at the wand and his hand still clasped around hers before looking up at him. She felt as if she could scarcely breathe.
"And as a reminder that I will always do everything I can to keep you safe. I know you are worried about your friend, but the idea of you wandering about in the midst of all of this chaos troubles me greatly."
She looked down again at the broken bits of wand and suddenly saw them in a new light. He was right about how quickly one's fortunes could turn in battle, and how close she'd come to death, but she'd survived. At the end of the day, she'd held up under torture from the most formidable dark witch of their time. She'd remained unbroken. Bellatrix Lestrange was dead and gone, and she, Hermione Granger, muggle-born witch, Lucius Malfoy's secret lover, was alive to tell the tale. She was strong, and she was even stronger with him by her side.
A hint of a smile graced her lips then as she gently withdrew her hand from his grasp to pocket the broken wand.
"I understand why you gave this to me. It is a reminder. One I won't soon forget."
~oOo~
Despite the gravity of her near-panic attack and the rather compelling argument he made about the need for her to stay out of sight for her own safety, Hermione was determined to see Harry for herself, and she was not about to let Lucius stop her. Despite his concerns - which she had to admit were valid - she was adamant that she had to see Harry.
She was, however, willing to compromise and floo directly there rather than apparate to Diagon Alley and walk. The witch manning the reception area had been unwilling to divulge Harry's room number, and in Hermione's impatience, she'd cast a discreet avis oppungo, sending magical birds careening into the waiting area and creating enough of a distraction that she'd been able to quickly locate Harry's room number herself.
She'd had less success with the burly Auror stationed outside Harry's room, a dour-looking wizard who refused to let her pass no matter how much she insisted that Harry would want to see her. She hadn't even realised how her voice had elevated as she argued with him until the door behind him opened, revealing Sirius Black.
Sirius looked as if he'd aged a decade in the last week. His face was lined with worry, and he had dark circles under his bloodshot eyes. His hair was a mess, and it looked as if he'd slept in his clothes.
"Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in," he said in a bitter voice. "So nice of you to bother to grace us with your presence."
Hermione felt his words as if he'd slapped her.
"I got here as soon as I could."
Sirius folded his arms. "Prove you're Hermione Granger."
"What do you want to know?"
"Tell me what we were discussing that night at Grimmauld when you slapped me."
Her breath caught in her throat at the sudden memory of Sirius catching her sneaking back into Grimmauld Place after visiting Lucius.
"I...I had left the safe house to meet with my...boyfriend. You were angry that no one knew where I was," she whispered.
He glanced at the Auror. "Why don't you go get a cuppa. You've been here for ages already."
"You sure?" the wizard asked.
"Yeah, I'll stay here until you get back." Sirius palmed his wand, and Hermione was reminded that despite the years he'd spent in Azkaban, he'd once been a promising young Auror, along with Harry's father.
The burly wizard ambled off, looking grateful for a temporary reprieve. Sirius folded his arms and leaned against the hospital room door.
"So what took you so long to show up? Busy fucking your Death Eater boyfriend?"
She understood now why Lucius was quick to sneer at Gryffindors for their lack of subtlety, although in her mind there was something to be said for not wasting anyone's time.
He continued before she could respond. "It's all over the papers by the way - the tale of star-crossed lovers. The Death Eater and the Muggle-born. School rivals turned spies and lovers."
Hermione grimaced. Lucius had shown her the article about Harry, but she'd not looked at anything else. She supposed she should have expected that his show of offering her the protection of his house would spawn gossip, but she hadn't realised news would travel quite so quickly.
"It's in the papers already?"
"Too busy fucking to read, huh? I bet that's a first for you. Never thought I'd see the day a Malfoy would take up with a muggle-born."
Perhaps it was Lucius's influence, coupled with her concern for Harry that had her at the end of her patience.
"For starters, YOU left without me! YOU took Harry, and YOU chose to let Ginny come along, leaving me behind, so don't you dare BLAME me for not being here straight away!" she hissed. "I was by Harry's side when NO ONE ELSE was there! When YOU were too busy with other Order missions to help Harry take down Voldemort! When even Ron left, and it was just Harry and me in a tent in the woods, losing hope, it was the Malfoys who got us food and supplies and information."
She could feel her anger and frustration rising and words spilled from her mouth without thought or caution.
"And then you LEFT the battle with Harry. Do you have any idea what kind of mess you left behind? The place was in ruins, people were injured and dying, and the Aurors and the Order were trying to round up Death Eaters."
"Ah yes, well, I'm sure you just HAD to make sure your Death Eater lover was safe." Sarcasm dripped from his voice.
"I don't believe in letting the people I care about rot in prison, especially for crimes they didn't commit or when they risked their lives to save me."
She was hitting below the belt a bit, as she knew Sirius's incarceration was a sore subject, but she no longer cared.
"Lucius Malfoy deserves to rot in prison. It'll be a cold day in hell when I believe that pompous bastard did anything more than save his own skin," Sirius spat.
Her blood boiled at the attack on Lucius, and she'd long lost any ability to speak objectively about the man she loved.
"Don't you dare lecture me when you know nothing about what happened! He saved my life!"
Sirius scoffed.
"He killed Bellatrix Lestrange. For me. For a mudblood."
That wiped the smirk off Sirius's face.
"Bellatrix is dead?"
"Yes."
"Malfoy killed her? You're sure?"
"She caught me with my defences down," Hermione admitted. "She used the cruciatus curse, and I was convinced I was going to die. Lucius found us and killed her. He's the only reason I'm still alive."
"She used the cruciatus?"
"It was horrible. Lucius gave me a bunch of potions, things he said Snape had made, to keep me going. He tried to get me out there, but I didn't want to leave until the battle was over. He warned me that I'd crash when they wore off. I've been somewhere between asleep and unconscious for the last few days," she admitted.
Sirius was momentarily speechless before stammering, "That all seems very hard to believe."
Hermione put her hand in her robe pocket and withdrew the broken pieces of Bellatrix's crooked wand, holding them out as proof of her story.
"Maybe you don't know Lucius Malfoy like you thought you did."
Sirius swallowed hard at the sight of his cousin's broken wand. "Perhaps not."
He looked away then, unable or unwilling to hold her gaze.
"The papers said Narcissa is dead."
Hermione put the broken pieces of wand back in her pocket. "She is. Voldemort himself killed her, in retaliation. Apparently she lied and told him Harry was dead before they carried him back to Hogwarts."
Sirius looked surprised at that.
"Cissy wasn't a bad sort, as far as Slytherins go. Might have even been tolerable had it not been for Malfoy and Voldemort. I wouldn't have pegged her as brave though."
Hermione bit her bottom lip. "I didn't know her well. Just that she loved her son very much, and she wanted to get to the castle to find him."
Sirius shrugged. "I wouldn't know. She wasn't exactly forgiving when people were blasted off the family tree."
"No, I suppose not. But the fact remains that she did lie to Voldemort, and Lucius passed information to us, and the Malfoys gave Harry and me food and supplies. We could not have won without their help."
"I wouldn't exactly call it a 'win' when my godson is lying in a hospital bed, unconscious!"
Hermione's heart twisted at the anguish on Sirius's face.
"Can I… can I see him?"
Sirius sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. "Yes, I suppose it can't hurt."
He moved aside and opened the door for Hermione.
The room was larger than she expected and felt very empty. She suspected a second bed had been in there at some point before being moved to create a more private space for the saviour of the wizarding world. Harry was unconscious in the remaining bed, looking pale against the white sheets. The blue glow of a monitoring spell hovered over the head of the bed, showing his vital signs. His glasses had been removed and were folded on the bedside table, as if he'd merely taken them off for a nap.
Her eyes filled with tears at the sight of her best friend in such a state.
"Is he… what do the healers say about his condition?" she asked quietly.
Sirius pushed out a hard breath. "They don't know. He's a damned mystery to everyone. The only person known to survive the killing curse - twice! By all accounts, he should be dead."
She swallowed back the sob that was building in the back of her throat and explained everything she knew about how Harry had been a horcrux, and how it was the bit of his own soul Voldemort struck down in the Forbidden Forest that night. Sirius stopped her to get a healer, and she had to repeat the whole story again, explaining what precious little she knew about horcruxes and how it contributed to Harry surviving the killing curse in the forest. Despite having slept for several days, she felt emotionally exhausted by the time she finished explaining everything she knew about how Harry had carried a piece of Voldemort's soul in his mind for most of his life.
"So does this information help at all? Does it help you cure him?" she asked hopefully.
The lead healer on Harry's case was an older wizard with grey hair and brown eyes that looked on her with kindness and pity.
"It explains how he survived - there's no way to prove for certain, but it appears that the second killing curse destroyed the horcrux in him. That's the only reasonable explanation for how he's still alive. As best we can tell though, it appears that his magic is, well, fractured for lack of a better word."
Hermione could not help the audible gasp that slipped from her lips.
"Is that even possible?"
The healer sighed.
"Theoretically, yes, although we've never seen anything like this. You are muggle-born, are you not?"
"Yes, although I don't see what that has to do with anything," she said, automatically bristling.
"I mean no harm by that - it's just that muggle-borns are more likely to have seen the images that muggles can take of bones inside the body."
"X-rays."
"Yes."
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"Magic isn't a single organ or a single bone inside the body. To the best of our knowledge, it's not contained within a single system like the nervous system or the circulatory system. It's never been identified as a specific part of a cell either. Yet it is unquestionably present in a wizard or a witch."
She frowned, trying to remember everything she could from her parents' science textbooks and lectures and the muggle science courses she took before going to Hogwarts.
"And we know that it's possible to damage the magic inside of us," the healer continued. You can magically exhaust yourself, for example, from repeated apparition over long distances over a short period of time. There have been cases where significant injury resulted in a person temporarily losing their ability to do all but the simplest of magic until their body fully healed.
"We refer to magic inside a person as the body's magical core, as a physical thing because we know it exists and we know it can be damaged."
"But you can't fully see it to know for certain? Because 'core' would seem to imply something…intact inside of you. Like your heart."
"Yes, something like that. Core is perhaps not the most accurate of words, but…" he waved his hand dismissively as if to say, 'it is what it is.' "When a patient is magically exhausted, we can't see a clear diagnostic image, like you'd see a broken bone on an x-ray at a muggle hospital. But what we can see is systemic damage at the cellular level."
"That's…that's what you see with Harry?"
The healer nodded.
"It's… well, we've seen magical exhaustion before, but this is to a far greater degree and at a much higher level of damage."
"So is he… if his magic is broken, what does that mean? Does that… will he be a squib?" she asked hoarsely. Magic meant so much to Harry, after the awful upbringing he'd had in the muggle world, and surviving but never again feeling his magic bloom within him would devastate him.
"I don't believe so, no. We know his magic is still there - we can tell from the way his wand reacts if it's placed in his hand. His magic is just not responding to our treatments. Not healing him the way your own magic contributes to your healing when you're injured."
"So how do you fix it?" she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper.
The healer looked down at Harry.
"I must admit that I truly do not know."
The words hit Hermione like a bludger. She glanced over at Sirius, and she could tell from the look on his face that he'd already heard this news.
"So… what are you doing about it?"
"Everything we possibly can. We're keeping him stable. He's malnourished, and we've been addressing that through potions. We've treated other minor injuries he had when he was brought in. We're reaching out to colleagues around the world for information on treatment options. For low levels of magical exhaustion, you can treat with pepper up potions and the like, but for high levels… well, at the end of the day, the cure for magical exhaustion is ultimately rest. The body, to some extent, must heal itself. Our hope is that if we can heal his body, his magic will eventually heal itself."
~oOo~
By the time the healers finished speaking with them and Sirius left to get something to eat, Hermione had been reduced to tears of frustration over the lack of clarity regarding Harry's condition. She liked definitive answers, and this was anything but. She wrung her fingers as she approached his bedside and sat gingerly on a nearby chair.
"Hey you," she said softly as she wiped her eyes with the back of her hands. "It wasn't supposed to be like this. You know that, of course. You were supposed to win, and we would all get to live happily ever after, right? That's how it works in stories. You did win. You know that, right? You saw him fall. You severed his head even. I like to think that if Ron was watching, he said something like 'wicked!' or 'bloody hell!' because that sounds like something Ron would say."
His hand rested gently on the bed, and she reached out to touch it, giving it a gentle squeeze. He was warm to the touch, and it contributed to the illusion that he'd simply laid down for a much-deserved rest.
"I don't know if you can hear me, but in the muggle world, when someone is in a coma, they say those patients can hear people talking to them. So I'm going to keep talking. You know, you've always had to be the standout," she said in a soft, teasing voice. "Youngest seeker in years. Defeated Voldemort twice. Survived the killing curse. Tri-Wizard Tournament champion. I suppose I'm not surprised that when you're injured, you'd of course have some crazy injury no one has heard of before. But we're going to figure this out, Harry. I promise."
She paused, letting her fingers brush softly over the back of his hand.
"Sirius looks like he's scarcely left your side. He's alive and well, and well, you know what he's like. He's stubborn enough he won't give up until every possible option has been considered and tried to bring you back to us. The healers are looking for information and ways to treat you. I've no doubt they'll be owling every magical hospital in the world trying to find a way to fix this. I've got access now too to one of the best libraries in all of England, at Malfoy Manor, and I'm going to go through it from top to bottom to see if there's anything at all that can help."
It was a bold statement, and she was uncertain just how truthful it was. Draco obviously didn't want her around, but surely Lucius would provide whatever resources he could to help her and Harry both.
"I'm so sorry I couldn't be here sooner," she said softly. "I don't know if you could hear me arguing with Sirius, but I was attacked by Bellatrix Lestrange during the battle. Lucius Malfoy killed her to save me. He gave me potions to help me manage the after-effects of the cruciatus curse, and that got me through the battle, but once it wore off, I slept for days. I'm better now, but I feel like I've missed so much. I'm still trying to wrap my head around everything that happened, the people we lost. After you were taken to St. Mungo's, Lucius offered me the protection of his house. I know it sounds crazy, but he's…he's been very kind to me. He helped us so much during the war, and he's made sure I have a place to stay and am safe, even though he and Draco are grieving Narcissa's death."
That, Hermione thought, was honest enough for now. She wasn't certain whether Harry could hear her, but she wasn't inclined to fully come clean with her relationship with Lucius yet either. There was still too much up in the air with the Ministry and whether Lucius would face charges for being a Death Eater.
"Everything is such a mess right now," she whispered, both to herself and to Harry. "Remus is gone. I don't know if anyone has told Tonks yet. And Ron is… I heard a rumour, that night at Hogwarts. Someone said they saw him. I saw red hair in the crowd, and I tried to find him, but I couldn't. I don't know where he is or if he's been located since the battle. And you're here, when you should be…"
She paused for a moment. What would Harry be doing right now were he alive and well?
"I like to think that you'd be celebrating with Sirius and the Weasleys right now. Maybe even having a pickup quidditch match somewhere, despite the cold weather. But I know you too well for that. You've always had such a strong desire to help others, to fight the good fight. You'd probably still be at Hogwarts, helping Professor McGonagall secure the castle, talking to the younger students still there, visiting with Hagrid."
She smiled wistfully, for she could easily picture it.
"You should be there. I'd be there with you. I don't know how this all went wrong."
This last sentence, this admission that she did not know was overwhelming. For years she'd been the smart one, the studious one, the one with all the answers. She'd been the one to help Harry track down Voldemort's horcruxes. She'd been the one to help them escape Grimmauld Place, to get supplies for them when they were reduced to camping in a tent in the middle of nowhere. And now, perhaps for the first time in her life, she had no answers when it really mattered.
A tear slipped down her cheek, and then another. It splashed onto Harry's hand, and then slid down onto the stark white blanket of his hospital bed. It was like water breaking through a dam then, and two tears became three, then four, and before she knew it, Hermione was sobbing brokenly.
She'd held it together for so very long. She'd been strong for so long, and now… now when it was supposed to be all over, when Voldemort was dead and gone, her best friend was reduced to a helpless state, and the best medical minds in magical Britain had no idea how to cure him. Ron was missing. So many of their friends and loved ones had met violent ends. Hogwarts - a place she'd thought of as her home - was in ruins.
And so she cried. She cried for Harry. For Ron and for Fred, for Lavender and for Remus, for all of the lives snuffed out too soon and all of the lost potential and the horror of war. She cried for James and Lily Potter, who'd given their lives to save Harry, only to have him end up in this state. She cried for herself, for her parents who were somewhere in Australia with no memory they'd ever had a daughter, for all of the ways she'd had to grow up too fast, and for the uncertainty of her future now that she was essentially orphaned and homeless.
It was the first time in a very long time she'd genuinely let go of the tight rein she held on her emotions, and once she let go, she found it hard to stop.
She wasn't sure how long she cried, but when she finally ran out of tears, her eyes felt swollen, her face felt blotchy, and her throat hurt. She rested her forehead on Harry's hospital bed until she got her breathing under control. She used one of Lucius's handkerchiefs that she'd found in her robe pocket to clean up her face and blow her nose as she tried to pull herself together. She scourgified the soft cloth as guilt sunk into the pit of her stomach. Here she was, sobbing over everyone and everything when so many people had it worse. So many had died, and Harry was ill, and she was…weak.
Hermione ran her fingers through her frizzing curls and sighed heavily. Yes, she was definitely weak, she thought bitterly. Now was not the time to fall apart. She needed to pull herself back together, for Harry, for Lucius, for… well, everyone, she thought. Crying would not help Harry.
She slipped the handkerchief back in her pocket and squeezed Harry's hand again.
"I'll be back soon - I promise. I've got libraries of information to search, but I'm not going to stop until we find a way to help you," she said softly to him.
She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead before she left his room, quietly closing the door behind her.
~oOo~
When Hermione left Harry's room, the burly Auror had returned and was standing guard. He gave her a sympathetic nod. Past him, down the hall, she could see Sirius and two healers in St. Mungo's distinctive lime green robes, talking quietly.
She had no doubt that Harry's godfather and the healers would do everything they could to help him, but the killing curse was dark magic, and no one knew more about dark magic than Lucius. She didn't care how much Draco hated her - if saving Harry depended on information in their library, then she was going to find it.
With a renewed sense of determination, she headed down the hall, eager to get to an apparition point or a floo and get back to the lodge. As she turned the corner, however, she nearly collided with Ginny Weasley.
"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to - Ginny?"
The younger witch looked her up and down.
"Hermione, where have you been?!" she demanded, hands on her hips in a manner that reminded Hermione distinctly of Molly Weasley.
Hermione ran her fingers through her hair and tried to give the shortest possible explanation she thought would satisfy Ginny as to what had happened after the battle and where she'd been.
"Malfoy? Really? Malfoy?" Her nose wrinkled in distaste, as if she thought Hermione had lost her mind.
"Yes, and we owe them a great deal - we never would have been able to destroy Voldemort without their help."
Ginny looked unconvinced and still vaguely disgusted, not that Hermione could blame her - she didn't particularly like the idea of picturing herself with Draco either.
Hermione took a moment to take in her former classmate's appearance. Like Sirius, Ginny looked as if she'd barely slept since the battle's conclusion. There were dark shadows beneath her bloodshot eyes, and her clothes were rumpled as if she'd slept in them.
"Have you been here this whole time?" she asked gently.
Ginny looked down and then away.
"Not the whole time. Mum's having a rough go of it and wants us all at home."
The reminder of what their family had lost twisted at her heart.
"I'm so sorry about Fred," she said softly.
Tears filled Ginny's eyes, but she stubbornly blinked them back.
"I know. George is… not well."
"No, I wouldn't think so. I've never known anyone as close as Fred and George."
"Yeah."
"Well, and then Ron…"
"What about Ron? Did he come back? Did you find him?" Hermione asked.
Ginny shook her head and wiped at her eyes.
"He's still missing."
"There was a rumour - Fred and George said he was there at Hogwarts, during the battle. Neville said he'd heard it too, that Ron was there!" Hermione said insistently.
Ginny shook her head again.
"They've not… found anything. At Hogwarts. One of the Aurors dad spoke to was a right arse and said that in all of the confusion of battle, someone probably saw red hair and assumed it was him."
Hermione bit her bottom lip as she considered this. Nearly everyone in the Weasley family had been there that night, and the battle itself had been chaos at best. It had never occurred to her before to think that perhaps Ron hadn't been there after all, that perhaps amidst the spells and the fire and the crumbling bits of castle and people running to and fro that someone had seen a member of the Weasley family in a crowd and assumed it was Ron.
"So what are they saying? If he wasn't there, then where could he be?"
Ginny's expression darkened and her brow furrowed.
"No one knows where he is. We know he came back to the Burrow, after he left you and Harry in the woods, and he was in contact with some members of the Order whilst he was there. Mum said he was upset and was going to try to find you and Harry. He left. And that's all anyone knows. The Aurors think that maybe he was snatched or killed after he left home."
"Do you believe that?"
"That he could have been captured? It seems likely. Otherwise why wouldn't he have been there?"
"I'm sure that if Ron was able to get to Hogwarts, he would have," Hermione said softly.
"You don't believe that he's dead, do you?" Ginny demanded, reaching out to grip Hermione's forearm.
Hermione swallowed hard. She didn't know what to believe, and she felt woefully unprepared to have this conversation when so much had happened over the last few days and she had only the barest tidbits of information as to what she'd missed.
"I don't want to believe it. If he wasn't at Hogwarts, and he hasn't contacted anyone that you know of, then surely it's because he can't. He had to have been captured."
"He's not dead. He's NOT. Not after Fred…" Ginny's voice broke off as she released Hermione's arm and looked away.
Though she and Ginny had never been exceptionally close, Hermione leaned in and offered her a hug. Ginny returned it, sniffling as she tried to hold back tears. As an only child, Hermione didn't know what it was like to have a sibling, and she could only imagine the pain that would come with losing one. Losing two, at the same time, was a blow that could break anyone.
She paused then and stepped back. "What about your mum's clock? What does it say?"
Ginny laughed bitterly. "It's broken, I think. Fred's spoon is stopped. Mum is clearly alive and at home, but hers is spinning from place to place, and mine is stuck at 'in mortal peril,' even though I'm clearly not. Dad took the whole thing down and swore he was going to fix it."
"Oh. That's unfortunate. I'd thought maybe it could help guide a search. But even so, they'll find him. They will," she said. "I know everything is a bit precarious right now, but he's surely not the only person to go missing, and there will be searches." "
"Between Fred dying and Harry being in this state, and Ron missing…everything is just falling apart. It wasn't supposed to be like this," Ginny said softly.
Hermione knew exactly what she meant.