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Author's Note:Thanks to everyone who has read so far in and especially those of you who have taken the time to leave me feedback! I hope you enjoy this chapter.
Summary: "If we were alive today, we would never have met."
When the Order Of The Phoenix learn of Voldemort's latest plan to use the Veil to experiment with immortality, they embark on a mission to destroy it once and for all. Hermione Granger is nineteen, and in charge of finding the spell that will succeed in this task. But when the mission goes wrong and Hermione is pulled in, who can she possibly turn to for help now she's….well..dead?
Five
The Brightest Star In Leo
When I was alive, I believed- as you do - that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so.
I said 'one o'clock' as though I could see it, and 'Monday' as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another.
Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year's Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door.
Now I know that I could have walked through the walls.
-
Hermione stood up and pushed him away; difficult as she only came up to his shoulder. She began to pace in silence up and down the small space of the cave. Her companion watched her in silence, his grey eyes occasionally drifting over to the cave entrance ostensibly to make sure the fire wasn't burning low, but aside from that, he simply sat there, waiting as if, if he gave her enough time, she'd accept the facts.
Hermione liked facts. They made her feel secure. She thought of herself as somebody who refused to be dissuaded from her own opinions, and established ways of doing things. She fixed her eyes upon her shoes as she paced, and attempted to reason with the a world that was suddenly not the one she knew.
"It's not possible," she said, more to thin air than to him. "It's not possible or logical. You don't…I mean….when you die, you don't come here and walk and talk, and I….I….."
She put her hands over her eyes and rubbed the palms hard into her eye sockets as though, if she rubbed away the sleep, this wouldn't be real.
He propped his head on one hand, and spoke through his fingers, seeming oddly nervous all of a sudden.
"If it helps anything, I've been wandering this place for a lot longer than you. But I only managed to get somewhere when you turned up." he said quietly. "I didn't live long enough, anyway, to make sense of any of this stuff the way I expect some people could, but now you're here, maybe we can find some answers."
"Answers for what, though? " Hermione said, sitting down abruptly on the cave floor and covering her face with her hands again. "I don't know why I'm here, or what happened to me. All I want is to get out."
"We both do." came the reply, so soft she might not have heard it at all.
-
The next day, incredibly, the sun, or at least a sun, Hermione thought, was in the sky, climbing over the tops of the mountains that they were leaving behind and for once, Hermione was able to take off the thick travelling cloak of her companion. He put it back on at once, clearly liking the effect of the 'swishy' fabric, indeed, as the passed by a small stream, she actually saw him stop and admire his reflection, smoothing his long hair a little in a way that was so reminiscent of Gilderoy Lockhart that she giggled in spite of herself.
"What's funny?" he asked, turning those wide boyish eyes upon her again. Even if he was dead, as he told her he was, her companion certainly didn't look like a ghost. She could hardly believe it of herself, either, for she felt as solid as he did when she'd squeezed his arm and leg in a effort to see that he wouldn't just melt away. He let her do it, in fact, for the first time since they met, she noticed colour high on his prominent cheekbones, as if he'd rather enjoyed her experiment, and then, without warning, he did the same to her, only he lifted her right up off of her feet and swung her around on the spot until she laughed so hard she almost forgot that they were dead, and surely being dead was no laughing matter.
But hysteria was not Hermione's style. It was in her nature to be patient. Besides, it could have been worse. In some small way, her companion reminded her a little of Ron, who would have liked to be a hero but it always seemed to elude him. Ron was, of course, never as obviously vain as this boy was, but the inherent sense of safety she felt whenever she was with him was the same, as well as the sudden wide-eyed looks he gave her, though his eyes were not the keen , honest blue that Ron's were, but hooded, darker than that, full of something slightly less innocent that Hermione realised that she was trying not to think about, though her mind kept coming back to it.
Even so, she took to staying up through the night with him, liking the fact that she could now do this without fear of failing class or being too tired to answer each and every Professor's questions in class. He seemed to be pleased with this arrangement as well, and didn't seem to object when she moved closer to him as the night wore on, occasionally closing her eyes, and resting on his arm for a brief nap, for it was now all she needed.
And she never knew it, but he' d begun to watch her when she had her eyes closed, thinking about all the things his mother used to say. This girl had told him she was Muggle-born as if she had expected revulsion and prejudice from him, and, he admitted to himself, once she probably would have got it. But this close, he couldn't help noticing that he liked the kink of her hair around her jaw, and the way her eyelashes looked, closed peacefully on pale cheeks, and he wondered in his own turn whether she would judge him when she found out what he was. And how long it would be before she stopped being satisfied with his vague statements about his past and wanted more answers. He sensed that it would not be long.
-
Both of them welcomed the sudden change in the place, from a grey, menacing sky to one that was an almost benign blue. The nights were still abrupt and treacherous, but while the daylight lasted, they travelled side by side, now across more fields, having left the mountains behind the day before. Hermione was a little worried, no mountains meant no caves, but her companion seemed to know where he was going, occasionally referring to the same piece of torn and dirty parchment he'd been looking at before.
"What is that thing you keep looking at?" Hermione asked him that afternoon just as they were about to start walking again.
"Directions." he said shortly, refolding it and shoving it back inside his trouser pocket.
"Can I see it?"
He pulled it back out and tossed it over to her.
"You won't be able to read it," he told her. "It's written in some language I don't understand. I'm only going by the drawings the fellow's done,"
"What fellow?"
He suddenly looked very awkward, and paused, as if he didn't really want to answer.
"The fellow I got it from,"
"The fellow you got it from? Well, if he drew it, why did you not ask him to write it in proper English?"
Another awkward pause as he prodded some sort of tatty mauve wildflower with the toe of his boot.
"I sort of, couldn't really ask him." he said eventually, winding black hair around his wrists and letting it go free so that it slid off of his thin white wrist like liquid.
Hermione looked impatient.
"What do you mean you 'sort of couldn't ask him'? she demanded.
"He couldn't have told me," her companion answered, "Because he was the person I saw the Malevolents get. I went to him after they'd gone. To try to help him," he said frowning when he saw her look of disapproval.
"So you decided you'd turn out his pockets? Very honourable."
A petulant expression settled upon his fine features, sucking in his hollow cheeks.
"It was in his hand, actually. It was no use to him, anyway. And before you ask, which I know you are about to," Hermione had opened her mouth, and closed it again abruptly, looking a little embarrassed that he had pre-empted her. "...I have no idea where he got it. That's also where I got the sword, in case you were wondering. It was useful. Nothing more. I don't believe in wasteful sentimentality. It's everyone for themselves here."
"But you saved me, twice,." Hermione looked up at him. He looked away.
"So I did."
Hermione studied the paper.
"It's in Runic," she said, after a moment. "didn't you ever do Ancient Runes?"
"I did Divination," he said.
Hermione gave a long irritated sigh. "Brilliant."
"I failed," he supplied helpfully. Hermione grinned in spite of herself.
"I won't hold it against you," she muttered.
-
That night's camping spot was far from comfortable, though they were lucky to have found anywhere at all. A large tree had rotted away, leaving a hollow that was just big enough for two people to sit comfortably. The fire burned just outside, kept low so the dry wood wouldn't catch, and thankfully, the night was still.
Hermione had never quite become used to the empty black sky in this place, devoid of lights from airplanes, the peaceful, glowing presence of the moon and mysterious glitter of stars. She laid on her back just outside the tree, not liking to go in too far as it had a distinct musty, animal smell. Her companion was poking the fire with a stick close by.
Hermione thought of the telescope her father had bought her when she was nine years old, after she'd expressed a childish wish to fly, so that she could be closer to the stars. She'd learned their names, and how to recognize the Big Dipper and the constellations of the Zodiac. Virgo, her own starsign, and all those in between, and then she'd moved on to other things, got bored as children do but the telescope had stayed, gathering dust in the spare bedroom. It had still been there when she'd left for Hogwarts when she was three weeks short of her twelfth birthday.
"I miss my parents," she said suddenly, aloud.
Her companion gave a small start that she'd spoken and looked surprised.
"Do you?" he asked. "I don't miss mine,"
"You must miss them sometimes," Hermione said, still looking at the sky. "If I am really dead," she continued. "Perhaps they are crying over me now. Maybe there's been a funeral, poems, readings, a headstone. There might be a grave that's actually my grave, and all the while I'm here with you," She laughed unexpectedly.
"Maybe……maybe this happens all the time. Why is it we don't see anyone else, though, here?"
Her companion, who had been dangling the stick in the fire absently, apparently deep in thought, dropped it as it caught fire.
"I think," he began uncertainly. " I think that not everyone comes here. My father, for example. He died before I did, and I never saw him. And my friends, some of them died too. But I only ever saw a handful of others come through here, and none I ever knew. I believe.." he paused, as if searching for the right combination if words , "that maybe you come here if you still have to make something right.Like me. And maybe like you."
"I wasn't evil in my life, if that's what you mean!" Hermione said. " Not like a murderer. Or Voldemort. Or a Death Eater."
She spoke to the air, more thinking aloud than expecting him to understand about Voldemort and the way things had been., because after all, why would he? It was only after a few minutes she felt the unignorable weight of his gaze upon her and the incessant tap of one of his fingers on the dry earth.
"What's the matter? She asked, a little nervously. "Your friends…..must have been quite young, right? They….weren't er…..Death Eaters, were they?"
The pause that followed could have spanned years as far as Hermione was concerned.
"No," he said at last. "My friends weren't Death Eaters."
Hermione sat up.
"Well, that's good news, at least." she said, trying to make light of the conversation and giving him a faint smile that he didn't return.
What he said next made her blood run cold.
"I was the Death Eater."
-
"No."
Denial as flat and unyielding as the hard floor of earth that they sat upon. Hermione got to her feet.
"All this time, and you never thought to tell me this? Oh, I'd guessed by now that you had come straight from Slytherin, if you'd been to Hogwarts, even if it was years ago. But I thought you were one of the rare ones. The ones that aren't all bad. And now you tell me that not only that, you joined him as well?"
He covered his face with his hands. "I never meant to…….I made a mistake."
"I'll say!"
Hermione was pacing furiously.
"Your name isn't Mr Smith either. I want the truth!"
Her companion moved his hands away and looked narrowly at her through the firelight.
"No," he said, very quietly. "No, of course it's not, and I don't think you believed me for one moment in the first place that it was."
Hermione pressed her lips together and tried to stop her throat feeling like it was closing up on her enough to ask
"What is it then?"
He got to his feet, walked a little way away towards the dead trunk of the tree before he finally turned around to face her. He gave an ironic, sweeping bow and flung back his hair so she could see his face, white and wide-eyed in the fireglow.
"Regulus Black," he said bitterly, spitting out the words as if he was choking on the taste. "Favourite son and heir, Slytherin, Death Eater and little idiot, as my dear brother would say. At your service."
"Regulus?" Hermione said, when the shock had worn off a little. "Regulus? No, it can't be Regulus."
"It's an unusual name, but not as peculiar as all that, surely?"
"Regulus Black, though? Sirius' little brother?"
"Sirius' little brother," he mimicked to himself. "Oh, please. Not you as well. All my life long…..and then some. Please, for gods sakes don't tell me you fancied him as well. I can't die twice, but I will certainly try." He looked like he really meant it, too.
"I don't think you understand," Hermione said. " I'm sorry…er…..Regulus," the name sounded odd and alien on her tongue after so long thinking of him as simply 'him'.
"I'm really sorry, you know, but your brother is dead, too. He died three years ago. I was sixteen, by the way. He was thirty-six."
"Oh," Regulus said. "I never saw him. He didn't come here either."
Looking at him now, in this new light, Hermione could see exactly why she had found him familiar. The same pointed, upturned nose, eyes a little paler, a slightly narrower jaw, but there was definitely something of Sirius in his brother's mannerisms, and Hermione thought, they would both have the same long, graceful neck if he'd take off that ragged scarf once in a while.
"How did Sirius die?" he asked.
-
Regulus barely said a word as she retold the tale beginning from her third year. He had pursed his lips in a most Sirius-like manner when Hermione repeated the reason for his brother's incarceration in Azkaban, and said, " That's not Sirius. There's no way he'd have betrayed James Potter. He loved him far more than he ever loved me."
He'd laughed when she'd told him about the Hippogriff ride "Bet he loved that, the prat," and to Hermione's surprise, nodded when she mentioned Sirius had been an Animagus.
"You knew?" she questioned. Regulus nodded again. "Yes, but he swore me to secrecy. He used to try and get out of family dinners when Uncle Cygnus came with our cousins. He'd only talk to Andie…Andromeda, that is, and one day I followed her down to the river at the end of our garden. I saw her stroking a dog, a black dog, and I realised what he'd been up to all that time locked up in his room. He was more angry, really, about what else I saw him doing with Andromeda when he changed back. But he ran away a little while after that, and Andie married someone else."
"I know." Hermione said. " I saw the holes on your family tapestry."
Regulus narrowed his eyes.
"How come you know about the tapestry?" he said. "You're Muggle born, right? So how is it you saw it?"
"Harry lives there. James' son." Hermione said, a little heavily. "Sirius left it all to him when he died. The house, that is. And Kreacher."
Regulus looked round sharply "Kreacher's still alive?" he asked.
Hermione nodded. "They think he's a bit mad, actually, but yes, he's still alive."
"And has Harry, Harry Potter…has he ever, by any chance, to your knowledge, asked Kreacher anything about me?"
Hermione wondered why he was suddenly sounding so concerned. "No," she said. "Harry only ever asked Kreacher about Sirius."
Regulus pushed his hair back and rolled his sleeve up absently, examining a set of small scars along his right forearm.
"Figures," he said sullenly, reminding Hermione suddenly of Sirius when he was shut up in the hated family home. "It was always all about Sirius. Even after he left home. Now after he died. Even when he wasn't there, he was all they talked about. I sometimes used to wish the bloody hat had stuck me in Hufflepuff, just so they'd talk about Regulus for a change, without comparing me to him in some sort of light."
He spoke bitterly, but Hermione could hear the sadness underlying the self-deprecatory tone.
When Hermione did finally close her eyes after a night of so much talking and so many questions,, she was woken again by an odd noise.
It took her a moment to realise where she was, and when she did, the first rush of fright at the unfamiliar sound dissipitated as she realised what it was.
Regulus Black was crying quietly, his shoulders shaking almost inperceptibly as the fire burned low, making his pale skin look luminescent against the dark curtain of his hair.
Hermione didn't ask what the matter was. She didn't need to, because she'd seen enough of the Weasley family to know that no matter how much you argued with a brother, there was still that unbreakable bond. She had the feeling there was more to the story between the two brothers, as well, but tonight wasn't the time for that. Maybe he'd tell her, someday. After all, who knew how long they would be here…it could be forever as far as she knew.
Silently, she got to her feet, and crawled out of the hollow. Her feet caught a twig, which snapped, and Regulus looked up abruptly, dark shadows even more evident under his tear-streaked eyes. He opened his mouth to say something to her, but she simply put her arms around him and held him close.
To her surprise, he didn't move away, but seemed grateful for the contact. She stared into the darkness as he rested his head on her breast, but he didn't cry any more.
"He was still my brother," he choked out, at last, raising his head finally.
His eyes met hers as they held each other in the firelight. Hermione's stomach did a backflip as she realised she was able to look down at him, nose to nose, so close she could see the tears making dewdrops on his long lashes, the fabric of his cloak soft under her hands, but thin enough to let her feel the well-defined shoulders underneath it.. She had been caressing his arm absently, stroking his back in the hope of comforting him but now thoughts of comfort had changed, the atmosphere between the two of them steeped in anticipation, his eyes dark and hooded as ever. He really did look like his brother, she thought, in that moment, only like a sort of reverse Sirius. Sirius made sinister, with his hollow cheeks and eyes full of shadows and guilty secrets.
Hermione leaned towards him, and brushed a kiss on his cheek.
"I know," she said quietly. "I know."
-
Later, in the quiet of the night, Hermione found herself looking up at the sky again; blank and starless.
If she were still at home, she would be able to see Sirius, the Dog star, the constellations of the Big Dipper, Virgo, and Regulus, the little King , the brightest star in Leo.
Quoted: The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle.
Comments very welcome.