Chapter 10: The Part with Lions, Tigers, and Bellatrix, Oh My!
Bellatrix Lestrange stood before them, in all her 'mad' glory, cackling as only she could do, her eyes never quite focusing on any of them, her wand swishing back and forth in front of her.
"Who are you?" Draco asked, pushing Hermione behind him. The wicked witch of the east was dead, the wicked witch of the west was Umbridge, and so who could this evil woman represent, apart from Hermione and Draco's worst nightmare?
"Why, I'm your worst nightmare, come true, my dear nephew," she said as a response, as if reading his mind.
Draco reached behind him for Hermione's hand and said quietly to her, "I don't think we're in Luna's little movie world anymore, Hermione."
"Neither do I, Draco," Hermione whispered back.
Harry rushed before them all and pulled out his wand. Hermione wasn't even aware that Harry had his wand with him, but she was glad that he did. She would be happier still if she had the ability to perform magic, even if this wasn't the real Bellatrix.
"Malfoy, get Hermione out of here," Harry said with a frown, his eyes staring intently at the dead woman's double.
"Itty bitty Potter wants to protect his itty bitty friends," the woman laughed.
"No, we won't leave you, Harry," Hermione shouted above the woman's maniacal laugh. Ron quickly pulled out his wand as well, and then changed all of their clothing back to what they were wearing at the time the 'nightmare' began, when they were last at the Ministry.
Draco looked down at his black suit and said, "Much obliged, Weaslebee."
"Well, I didn't much think we wanted to face evil personified dressed as movie characters," Ron concluded.
"Oh, look, Harry Potter and his little friends, the blood traitor and the Mudblood, are here with my dear nephew," Bellatrix tormented. She threw her head back and laughed louder.
Ron asked, "What does Luna mean by reproducing Bellatrix, Harry?"
"Haven't a clue, Ron, haven't a clue," Harry admitted, his eyes never leaving the woman.
"Draco, come say hello to your aunt Bella, boy. I haven't seen you in such a long time. Give me a kiss. The Dark Lord will be so happy that you've delivered Harry Potter and his friends to us, nephew," Bellatrix said, smiling.
Harry looked around. Before he could ask what that meant, Draco asked, "Do you mean to say that the Dark Lord is here?" He looked all around the forest, as did the other three.
"Of course he's here. Where else would he be, boy?" Bellatrix asked with her arms out wide. "You know we've been using your father's house as a temporary headquarters for a while now."
Draco looked back at Harry and the others, confused. He looked back toward his 'aunt' and said, "We're in the woods, you wacky, old bint."
As soon as he said it, the woods faded away. Hermione felt disoriented and queasy. She reached out her hand, toward Draco, to steady herself. When her hand hit something solid, it wasn't Draco's arm, or chest. It was a solid wall. She gasped, and then immediately noticed Harry and Ron were separated from her by bars. They were inside a small, dank, dingy cell.
She didn't see Draco anywhere. She ran up to the cell and started to speak to her friends, when she realized something was terribly, terribly wrong.
For one thing, Harry and Ron looked years younger. For another, they looked just as they had the year they searched for Horcruxes…tired, gaunt, thin, dirty, and old beyond their tender years. No. This could not be happening.
Then she heard an awful scream - a gut wrenching, heart-piercing, knife welding scream in which she recognized immediately. It was her. She was the one screaming, yet she was standing silently, passively, staring at the scene before her.
Again, she thought one awful thought. Don't let this be real. She couldn't live this time over again.
She turned to look at Harry, who had a hand on Ron's shoulder. Ron's face was twisted in agony. Every time a scream was heard from the upper part of the Manor, Ron's face would twist in deeper agony, as if he too could feel Hermione's pain, until finally he began to scream as well. He pushed at Harry. He cursed. He screamed for Hermione. Then he began to cry.
Hermione never knew that happened. To be truthful, she wasn't aware of a great deal that happened after her persecution and torture that day. In a way, to this day, she even forgot about the pain. It was the way her mind worked to protect itself, to help her to cope, and help her forget. Still, neither Harry nor Ron had ever told her how her tortured by Bellatrix at Malfoy Manor during the war had distressed them at the time. Now she knew. Now she felt ashamed that she had ever doubted Ron's love, faithfulness, and friendship. She had been a fool.
Watching the younger Harry and Ron cry for the younger Hermione, she began to cry, and then she closed her eyes.
When she opened them, she was no longer in the dungeons with Harry and Ron. She was still in the Manor, that she was certain, but now she was standing next to a younger Draco Malfoy. This was the Draco she remembered, and disliked, from school. Tall and lanky, blonde bangs hanging slightly longer in the front, dressed all in black…well, that part was the same. He was standing beside his father, aunt, mother and other Death Eaters. On the other side of the room was a bedraggled looking group. It was Harry, Hermione and Ron, as they appeared right after they had been picked up by the snatchers.
Harry's face was swollen and unrecognizable, due to a spell Hermione had inflicted on him so that the snatchers wouldn't know it was him. Lucius and Bellatrix were arguing, trying to decide if the three people before them were indeed Harry Potter and his friends. They weren't sure. Neither wanted to call Voldemort until they were 100 percent accurate.
"You should know, Draco," Draco's aunt said to her nephew. "Tell me; are those three Harry Potter, the blood traitor Weasley, and the Mudblood?"
Hermione had forgotten all about this. All she remembered from that day was extreme fear. She also recalled that Draco had confirmed their identities to his family, but watching it over now, she knew her memory of this incident was faulty, too, because Draco refused to look up at them, opting instead to look at the floor. He answered, "I don't know, Aunt Bellatrix. It might be and it might not be."
"What do you mean, you don't know, Draco?" his father asked, appalled. "You went to school with them. Surely you must know. Take a closer look. This looks like the Mudblood at least, and the ginger hair on that one…that's a Weasley," his father said.
"Maybe, Father," he said quietly, looking up quickly, fleetingly, then back down to the ground. "It could be. I'm not sure. It doesn't really look that much like them."
"Take a closer look, boy! Don't be so indecisive!" Bellatrix insisted. "We have to know for sure before I call the Dark Lord."
"Do not presume to tell my boy what to do, Bellatrix, and who's to say you'll call him? It's my house," Lucius said. The two began to argue between themselves. Hermione observed Draco as he looked up once more. He looked over at the other Hermione and her friends. Then he looked back down. His father finally turned back to him and said, "Tell me now, Son, can you tell if that is Harry Potter or not?"
Hermione finally realized something, watching the young Draco. He was just a boy. Just as they were young at that time, so was he. He looked scared. It had to have been scary, living in a house with the Dark Lord, and this evil, crazy woman, and to have a Death Eater for a father, not to mention the fact that they were all practiced at Legilimency. He couldn't have lied if he had wanted, and Hermione could tell that he actually did want to lie, but since he couldn't lie, he did the next best thing. He tried to evade their questions, by giving incomplete answers.
Hermione felt scenes changing again. This time, she wasn't sure where she was, but then she knew she was in the Manor still, in the same room where Bellatrix had used the Cruciatus curse on her that day. It was going on at that very moment. A younger Hermione was withering on the floor, tears streaming down her face.
However, Hermione didn't hear a sound this time. Everything was silent, as if the sound was turned down. Her eyes weren't watching the younger Hermione or Bellatrix anyway. She was watching Draco…who was watching the younger Hermione. He flinched, closed his eyes, opened them, and recoiled some more. Hermione looked over at her younger self, then back at Draco. She recognized that every time Draco cringed correlated with a 'scream' from the younger Hermione.
Then, the young Draco slipped out of the room, unnoticed. Hermione followed. He ran down the hallway. She ran after him. He ran up the stairs. She followed. He ran down two more long corridors. She had trouble catching up with him. She skidding to a halt inside a room she assumed was his childhood bedroom.
She stopped as Draco stopped. He bent over and threw up on the floor. Then he collapsed on his knees, hung his head, and cried.
She had no clue that he had, had this sort of gut-wrenching reaction to watching her torture. Why was he so upset? Why did he care? He hated all of them back then, didn't he?
Hermione felt so confused. Every preconceived notion she ever had was evaporating, as if they were mere smoke, and she no longer knew what was real and what wasn't.
She closed her eyes, held her head in her hands, and begged for it to end.
When she opened her eyes she was back in the woods, but she was alone. She called out to Harry and Ron, when she heard Ron calling back to her. Finally, someone else was nearby. She began to run toward his voice.
"Ron? Where are you, Ron?" She ran blindingly toward his voice.
She saw him in the dense woods. He was still calling her name. How could he not see her? How could he not hear her? "I'm over here, Ron!" she cried.
"HERMIONE! HARRY! PLEASE! Where are you?" Ron shouted. Tears made a path down his face.
Hermione ran up to him then stopped. She started crying anew. This was Ron from the year they searched for the Horcruxes. This was right after he left them. He had told her once that he regretted leaving, and that he searched for them right after he left them, hours and hours on end, but he became lost in the woods, and he could never relocate them. He didn't find them again until that day he finally came upon Harry as he was drowning in the lake.
He didn't lie about that. He had told her the truth. She had always assumed that was a 'convenient truth' or even, 'an inconvenient lie', but no, it was plain and simple, and it was the truth. She watched as the eighteen year old Ron sank to the ground, screaming her name once more. He yelled, "HERMIONE! I'm so sorry! Please, forgive me for leaving you! Where are you?"
She turned from that Ron and started to run. She ran and ran. She tripped over a tree root and when she looked up she saw Harry sitting by the front of the familiar tent flap, holding her wand. It was dusk. He was on watch. That must have meant that 'Hermione' was inside. Since he had her wand, it had to have been right after their battle with Nagini. If he was on watch with her wand that meant his wand had already been destroyed. She recalled her extreme guilt about that, and how Harry had been so angry with her. He didn't even thank her for saving his life that day. Instead, he mourned the loss of his wand. She remembered feeling sorry for herself because of that, because Harry was feeling sorry for himself.
She watched as the younger Hermione walked out of the tent. She said, "Harry, I cooked some mushrooms and wild onions. Do you want some?"
Harry sat stony-face, staring out at the forest, and he answered her in clipped tones. "No, Hermione. I don't want a thing."
"Do you want me to stand watch for a while?" she asked with a small voice.
"No," he said quickly.
"I can bring you some food and water out here if you'd rather, or an extra blanket. It's cold." She turned around to start back inside.
Harry retorted, "Just go inside, get some sleep, and leave me alone for a while. Don't come back out here; don't talk to me for a while. Leave me alone, please."
"I'm so sorry, Harry." Hermione began to cry. He turned his face away from her, angrier still. "Harry?" she persisted. "I know you're upset about your wand."
He turned to her quickly and said, "GO INSIDE THE TENT!"
She nodded. "I really am sorry, Harry," she whispered again. She continued to cry and went inside. Hermione could hear her younger self crying from outside the tent, which meant that Harry would have been able to hear, too.
This scene evoked how terrible she felt that Harry's wand had been destroyed. She felt like a failure, because she felt she should have known it was a trap, and she should have protected Harry better. She knew he had every right to be angry with her, but that didn't mean it hurt any less. That was the darkest time during that year, having Harry angry with her, even darker then when Ron left them.
She started to back away from this sad memory when she saw Harry wipe a tear away. She wanted to tell him to get a grip…it was just a wand, when she heard him say in an undertone, "When will this be over? She doesn't deserve this. She did nothing to deserve this. She shouldn't be a part of this. She should have left when Ron left. I should have protected her better. She might have been killed. If anything had happened to her today, I would never have forgiven myself. I should be saving her, not the other way around. I should have known this was a trick." He wiped away another tear.
He looked back at the tent flap, closed his eyes, and willed her to stop crying. "Please, please, Hermione," he said with the softest of voices, because he was saying it to himself, "don't cry anymore. I can't stand for you to cry. I'm such a failure. I hope someday you'll be able to forgive me."
Hermione gasped. Again…this was a revelation. She never once knew Harry felt the same things she had felt. His anger was directed at himself that day, not at her. She had been such a fool.
Why had he never told her? As soon as she asked herself that question, she answered it in her mind. Because he was proud. Ron was proud, Draco was proud, and Harry was proud. And she was proud. She thought of the old Proverb: 'Pride goes before the fall.'
'Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Better it is to be of a humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoils with the proud.'
Perhaps they should all ask the Wizard for some humility, if they ever got to see him. She turned away from the younger Harry, continued to cry profuse amount of tears, her head down, walking aimlessly in the phantom woods, not even knowing where she was heading, and no longer caring.
She walked directly into Draco Malfoy's arms. She looked up, surprised, saw that it was the real Draco, and practically collapsed in his embrace. He stroked her hair, her back, her face. He was relieved to see her. He said, "I've been looking for you everywhere. You wouldn't believe the things I've just seen."
"If they're anything like what I've just seen, I would," she said, sniffling.
Soon, Harry ran toward them. He didn't care if Malfoy was embracing Hermione; he embraced her too, so that his arms were around them both. He said, "You two wouldn't believe the things I've had to relive, and the things I didn't know happened the first time."
Ron ran toward them, and said, "Hey mates, I hate to get all mushy, but I've never been happier to see the lot of you in my life. I've just lived through some pretty terrible moments all over again, and all I can say is, gee, Hermione, no wonder you hated me when I left you back in the day. You and Harry had it really bad. I saw you two battle that large snake, and I saw how much you cried over my leaving. I even saw the stupid git, Malfoy, here, tossing his lunch on his expensive carpet over the fact that you were being tortured by his evil auntie."
"I never," Draco denied, pushing Harry and Ron away, while pulling Hermione closer with one hand.
"I saw that, too, and I thought it was one of the most endearing things I ever saw," Hermione admitted.
"You thought the fact that I vomited was endearing?" Draco said with a snarl. Then he thought about it and said, "Well, okay then." Hermione placed her hand on his cheek and smiled at him.
Harry revealed, "I saw Hermione go inside the tent after our fight with Voldemort's snake, and I realized that she thought I held her responsible for my wand being destroyed. I did, for a split second, but Hermione," he pulled her out of Draco's arms and into his own, "for the most part I was scared and sad that I had failed to protect you."
"I know, I saw that," Hermione revealed. She reached over for Ron with a blind hand. He took her hand and she pulled him toward her and Harry. "Ron, I'm so sorry that I've been unable to forgive you for leaving us all those years ago. I know you said that you tried to find us, but I never really believed you. Now, I saw it for myself. I'm sorry. I'll forgive you, if you forgive me."
He kissed her hand. "There's nothing to forgive, love. Hermione, you're my best friend, along with Harry, and I think we both know that's all we'll ever really be, right? I think you're in love with that heartless tin man over there, who must have some sort of heart after all, and I suspect he's in love with you in return, and if this loony episode showed us nothing else than that, then it was worth it."
"Hear, hear," Harry said. "Spoken like a very brave soul, Ron. You don't need the Wizard after all."
Hermione smiled at Harry and said, "And you've spoken like a very smart man, Harry." He winked at her.
"Accordingly is it agreed that none of us need the service of the bloody wizard now?" Draco asked. "Can we just go home and forget this nightmare?"
Harry pointed toward a high gate and said, "Whether we can go home or not is probably up to Hermione, because that's what she has to ask of the Wizard, and look, we seem to be right next to the Ruby City's gate suddenly."
"Thank heavens. Ron, you pick up Crookshanks. Harry, you get our basket. Draco, please take my hand," Hermione instructed.
"Do you need encouragement to knock on the gate?" Draco asked, bringing her hand up to his mouth to place a kiss on her wrist.
"No, I just want you to hold my hand," she revealed. She knocked on the gate with her other hand.
A small grate at the top of the gate slid open to reveal a man's face. He asked, "What the hell do you lot want?"
"OH NO!" Hermione shouted. She turned to the others and said, "If he's the wizard, we had all better find another way home right now!"
A/N: I wonder who the Wizard is? Really. I do. I still haven't decided.
