Charming
Chapter Three – Harry Has A Pensieve?
Disclaimer: I don't own the copyrights to Harry Potter. The plot to this fanfic, though, is mine! :)
~oOo~
"Is something up, Hermione?" asked Ginny a fortnight later. They were walking through the aisles of books in the Library while Harry and Ron played a game of wizard's chess in their corner instead of working. "You've been acting a bit different lately."
Hermione looked up at Ginny and smiled. "You're perceptive, Ginny. More than people give you credit for." Then she sighed and looked away. "I'm bored, that's all."
"What, really? I guess school just doesn't compare to hunting down Horcruxes, eh?" Ginny grinned. "I bet there's nothing left to learn in Defence Against the Dark Arts."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Yes, Defence Against the Dark Arts can be a bit dull at times, but it's not as bad as History of Magic."
In response to that, Ginny reminded Hermione forcefully of Ron, giving her the 'DUH' look. "Um, newsflash? Everyone gets bored in History of Magic." Then she did a passable imitation of Professor Binns' droning voice. "It has always been thus..." She switched back to her normal voice. "...since, like, the dawn of time."
"Very funny. The thing is, I've already read the textbook."
"All of it?"
"Cover to cover, about three or four times. I had a lot of time on my hands when we were hiding in our tent last year. I normally take notes, but now I have trouble just staying awake listening to Professor Binns just talk. Hey, stop laughing!"
Ginny was leaning against a bookcase, shaking with silent laughter. She gathered herself and managed, "You do know that everyone but you has always felt like that in Professor Binns' classes, don't you?"
"Thanks for that gem of advice, Ginny, but that doesn't solve a thing. If I have to sit through Professor Binns preaching about the Third Goblin Revolution one more time I might have to pitch myself off the Astronomy Tower, or... or something."
"Oh, relax, Hermione. There's no need to take everything so seriously. There is, believe it or not, a solution. It comes in a box."
Hermione looked sceptical. "Really? Go on then."
But at this Ginny laughed. "No, you'll have to wait and see. I'll have some sent up." When Hermione only looked annoyed, she added, "Oh, lighten up. A few more History of Magic lessons won't kill you – I'll let you know when the owl arrives." And with that she skipped off, presumably to write a letter to whomever she was ordering the 'solution' from.
Sighing, Hermione thought she'd ask Harry and Ron what they did to keep from dying of boredom in History of Magic. She made her way over to where they had been playing chess, but they'd already left. Deciding they'd probably gone back to the eighth-years' common room, she walked off to find them.
~oOo~
A few minutes later, she was knocking on Ron's door, having ascertained that her friends weren't in the common room. There was no answer from inside Ron's room, but she tried the doorknob anyway.
It was locked.
Assuming there was no-one in there, she continued on to Harry's room and knocked on his door. There was no answer that time either, so she tried the doorknob, expecting it to be locked like Ron's. She was surprised, therefore, when it gave easily – sending her lurching into the empty room, off-balance. She stumbled forward a few steps to restore her equilibrium, and there was a splash as her foot landed in a bowl of something wet.
She looked down and caught a fleeting glimpse of a rough stone basin with runes along the edges before the world dissolved around her and she was falling, falling, falling through darkness...
And then she was standing in a corridor in an entirely different part of the castle, next to Harry, who was poring over the Marauder's Map and walking away from her.
"Harry!" she exclaimed, stepping in front of him – only for Harry to walk straight through her. "What –" she started, and suddenly he crashed into a suit of armour. It clattered to the floor with an almighty racket – not before passing through Hermione first, though.
Harry looked around, alarmed, before continuing quickly along the corridor with his eyes glued firmly to the map.
And then it clicked. The basin with the runes on it that she'd stepped in – it must have been a Pensieve. And that meant that she was in one of Harry's memories. "Harry has a Pensieve?" she said aloud. Well, apparently so. But why keep it on his floor, of all places?
The memory-Harry had almost reached the end of the corridor, and she hurried to catch up with him. She didn't know how to get out of the memory – it was one of the few things that she'd never read about – so she decided just to follow Harry and hope for the best. Maybe she'd be transported back once the memory ended.
Harry paused outside the door to a boys' bathroom for a moment before softly pushing it open. Looking inside, both he and Hermione were met with an unusual sight.
Draco Malfoy stood with his back to them, bent over the sink, sobbing and shaking. Moaning Myrtle's voice came from one of the cubicles behind him. "Don't... Don't... tell me what's wrong... I can help you..."
"No one can help me," Malfoy replied, and Hermione realised with a shock of pity that he was crying, copious tears rolling down his pale face and into the basin. He spoke in between his sobs. "I can't do it... I can't... it won't work... and unless I do it soon... he says he'll kill me..."
Hermione's heart went out to him. She knew it was all in the past, but hadn't she almost caught him crying just a few weeks ago? She'd thought she was imagining things, but now she saw that he was capable of expressing raw emotions – just not to anyone else.
At that moment he looked up into the cracked mirror and saw Harry (and Hermione) staring at him. The next second, both boys had pulled out their wands and started flinging hexes at each other, tearing the bathroom apart with each one that missed. A lamp shattered, a bin exploded, a toilet smashed, and water spilled all over the floor. Moaning Myrtle was screaming, "No! No! Stop it! Stop! Stop!"
Then Malfoy began to cry the incantation for the Cruciatus curse, but was cut off by Harry's bellowed, "SECTUMSEMPERA!"
Hermione gasped. Blood spurted wildly from Malfoy's face and chest, and it looked to Hermione as though Harry had somehow slashed him with an invisible blade. Malfoy staggered backwards and fell limply to the saturated floor, his hands clawing at his blood-soaked chest.
"No –" said Harry and Hermione together, and they both ran over to Malfoy's stricken form. He was shaking uncontrollably and looked unhealthily pale underneath all that blood. He had lost a lot of it already. His eyes rolled back in their sockets as the red just kept pulsing out of his body.
Myrtle screeched, "MURDER! MURDER IN THE BATHROOM! MURDER!" and a second later Snape burst in, looking ready to commit it. Pushing Harry roughly aside, he drew his wand and traced it over the deep gashes that the curse had created, while muttering a long and complicated spell under his breath several times over.
Once Malfoy's wounds appeared to have been healed – though there were still huge, bloodstained tears in his once-white shirt – Snape pulled him into a standing position. "You need the hospital wing," Snape said, and the memory faded around Hermione...
Only to be replaced by another.
This time she was standing next to a very ill-looking Dumbledore at the top of the Astronomy Tower. "Oh no," she mouthed. If her guess was correct and this was another of Harry's discarded memories from his sixth year, she knew what came next.
And it wasn't something she wanted to see.
~oOo~
Author's Note: I used the scene from pages 488 to 489 of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, (UK children's version) in the writing of this chapter, so if some phrases seem uncannily similar to what is in the book, that's why. No copyright infringement intended – I did try to rewrite as much of it as I possibly could, but JK clearly wrote it the way she did for a reason – no rewording of what the book says sounds quite as good as the original. :)
That said, please read and review, as always!