Covet by Verity

Chapter One: However Far Away

Standard disclaimers apply.

.o.o.o.

Now that she was back she didn't know what to think about things any more.

"I can't talk about it," she told Headmistress McGonagall that first morning, when she'd stumbled into the Great Hall as dawn was breaking. Harry and Ron were gone now, off in search of Horcruxes who knew where. The girl she had been would have left that same day in search of them. Now she didn't know what to do. So she went to classes and slept alone in the room that she had once shared with Lavender and Parvati, now sent off to Beauxbatons for safety like so many other students. Sometimes she noticed the younger students staring at her, returned home inexplicably after a long absence that had consumed much of the first term, but she resolved to ignore them and eventually the attention lessened.

Sometimes Ginny came up and they talked a little about courses and the weather. The long silences in their conversations spoke for them. Once, Ginny had come to her crying in the night, saying, "Harry, Harry -" and she had held her tight without speaking, the tears welling up in her throat. She thought of him and then tried not to.

What was there to do? She helped Madame Pomfrey keep the stores in the infirmary up, brewing potions in her free time. The new Potions instructor, Professor Malarkey, wasn't qualified to teach Advanced Potions and had little enough time anyway, given that he was trying to cover some of Defense Against the Dark Arts course work as well. That position had become a bit of a joke. She practiced by herself, at night; after all, she barely slept anymore. Going to sleep meant admitting defeat, stopping moving, thinking, writing, stirring, cursing, anything that distracted her from the memory of -

Well, she wouldn't think about that just now, would she?

She wore her hair up always, brushing it hastily, tucking it under a scarf. She tried to pretend that it was no longer part of her body, it was a secret that she was locking away, keeping safe from something, or for something, she didn't know which.

Sometimes she woke in the middle of the night, looking for something that wasn't there.

.o.o.o.

Then the boys found out she'd come back, and they returned home at Christmastide, if only briefly.

"'Mione!" Ron shouted, and ran to her, clasping his arms around her. She paled and froze, and he stepped back, looking confused. Then Harry, bless him, came to her and took her hand, saying, "Oh, Hermione!" And somehow that was easier. She took Ron's hand, too, and squeezed it firmly, hoping that somehow he'd understand eventually.

He took it well, for Ron. The long months they'd spent apart had changed him, made him quieter and sharper, somehow. She spent an afternoon with him, lying next to the fire in the Gryffindor, talking of the war outside the castle.

"Tonks lost a leg, but she's doing well for all that," Ron told her. "Remus took it harder than her, to tell the truth. She's managed to transfigure her stump into some right incredible things, too."

"Please give them my best," she said, and meant it. "Is there anything I can do for you, now?"

"Well," he started, and she knew what was coming, "There's something missing, with it just being me and Harry, now. It's you, Hermione. We miss you. I - miss you. I don't know what went wrong when you were gone, but I promise, it doesn't matter a bit to me, or Harry, either."

"I miss you, too." She looked away, toward the fire. "But I can't. Not now. I would have come at once-"

"I know." Ron reached out to push an tendril of hair away from her face. She suppressed a shudder, and instead allowed herself, finally, to cry.

She barely saw Harry - or Ginny, for that matter, the whole holiday, but that, she thought, was as it should be. One morning she met him in the Astronomy Tower, and sat there quietly with him, watching the sun rise.

"What was it like?" Harry asked, at last. The back lighting of the sun washed out most of his face as he turned towards her.

"You can't imagine."

"Did they hurt you?"

"I don't know," she said truthfully, looking at her folded hands in her lap.

.o.o.o.

With the start of the new term, Harry and Ron left, and she returned to her studies. On the third day of classes, McGonagall summoned her to her office.

"Glenfiddich," she said, and the entrance opened to her. It was the first time she had been in it since she had returned, and the first time she had given much attention to its decor since Dumbledore died. Neither Fawkes nor the many magical objects that had once lined the walls were in evidence; instead, a number of comfy chairs and a quite considerable extension of the already bountiful library were in evidence. The requisite scotch was, however, not in evidence.

"I must beg you for assistance, Miss Granger." She near jumped, startled, before realizing that the voice which had emanated from the most plush and squishy-looking of the chairs near the fire was, in fact, McGonagall.

"Yes, Headmistress?" she said, clasping her hands behind her back nervously.

"It is not on school business that I have called you here, my dear," her former professor said, looking at her with some sad tenderness. "I speak with you at the behest of the Order."

"You spent some time amongst... them." It was not a question, but it was close enough to the one she dreaded.

She wondered if she was going to faint. "Yes, I did."

"We have no one now among them, since Severus..." McGonagall was quiet for a long moment, then sighed. "Well, things are as they are. I do not know anything about the circumstances... but I hoped, have prayed, that you know of someone - things are, you see, growing dire..."

She listened to her heart beat for some time. It thudded in her ears. Before answering, she counted to twenty-seven and was rewarded by the gradual feeling of calm reasserting itself in her body. When she answered, her voice was steady. "I will do it myself."

"Oh, Hermione, that makes no sense, how on earth are you going to-"

She crossed to McGonagall's armchair and stood before her, looking her evenly in the eye. "I will do it myself. Please trust me."

In the end, she hoped, this would be enough.