Chapter Two: Seven Years Gone
A lot can happen in seven years. It's enough time for a group of timid eleven year old witches and wizards to progress through their education at Hogwarts, morphing into young adults who think they know everything and are ready to take on the world. In the seven years following my death, life continued much as it always had. People fell in love, got married, and had adorable babies that they saddled with dreadful names.
Just look at Harry and Ginny's second boy. I mean, Albus Severus? Really?
Still, aside from more Weasleys entering the world, nothing really interesting happened while I was gone. How could it, without me there to spice things up?
After finishing her final year at Hogwarts, Hermione got a job at the Ministry. Everyone expected her to join the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures and start campaigning for house elf pensions and a dog house for every werewolf and other such things, but she surprised the lot of them by joining Percy in his new profession.
It makes sense that two of the cleverest people I've ever known would want to work as Unspeakables. I can see how delving into the mysteries of magic and the hidden knowledge of the Ministry would appeal to their curious, intellectual natures.
Me, I'd probably end up getting sacked the first day for trying to play Quidditch in the Hall of Prophecy or selling a book full of fabricated secrets about the Ministry to schoolchildren or something, but never mind.
Being unable to discuss their work with anyone outside the Department of Mysteries, Percy and Hermione took to eating lunch together in his office. There, they could babble to their hearts' content about whatever experimental spells or ancient books were making their skirts fly up that week. To this day, I'm still not privy to the majority of what their work entailed. Hermione, damn her, was trained to resist the effects of Veritaserum.
Yeah, you know I tried.
What I do know is that during those seven years, they each carved out a niche for themselves in their department. Hermione gravitated towards the Death Chamber, studying the Veil and the enigmatic whispers that floated through its tattered black fabric. Percy, on the other hand, attempted to work out the puzzles surrounding the most powerful force on earth — something that transcends the boundaries between the magical and the mundane, something far, far greater than death.
He was assigned to the Ever-Locked Room, also known as the Love Chamber.
Merlin knows what Perce's supervisor was smoking when she took a long look at my older brother and thought, "Hmm, yes. Percy Weasley has just what it takes to examine the intricacies of love. His attitude and appearance don't scream, 'Virgin' at all!"
Not that I think Percy spent much time lounging by an Amortentia fountain and focusing on romantic love when he was sequestered in the Ever-Locked Room. I can't know for certain (damned confidentiality), but if my hunches are correct, he devoted the majority of his work to the study of familial love.
On the day that Hermione and I were reunited, her morning started out as usual. She fed Crookshanks, wrestled with him a bit to get him to eat the pill she'd hidden in his food, showered, and then rushed to the Ministry without breakfast of her own, eager to start working on her current project. Her stomach grumbled in protest as she pored through book after book in the Department of Mysteries' library, but her growing hunger was easily ignored in favour of important research. By the time her lunch break rolled around, she felt ready for her first try at the spell she'd been formulating for months. As she wolfed her way through two sandwiches and listened to Percy chatter about his morning, she felt a swell of anticipatory nerves, but she had no idea that anything extraordinary was about to take place.
"Are you still keeping quiet about your latest project?" Percy asked, his lower lip turning into an indignant pout as he stared at her over his steaming mug of tea, his eyes wide and pleading.
I don't have any special insight into the twisted workings of my brother's mind, but I bet he was wondering why she was withholding precious knowledge from him and wondering if being a prat would make her cave.
Hermione smiled. "Afraid so. But, if all goes well today, not only will I tell you what I've been up to, I'll show you. Well, assuming I can get clearance, of course."
"Oh, well, in that case, we should get back to work immediately." Leaning over his desk, he brushed a quick kiss against her forehead and gave one of her rebellious curls a gentle tug. Somehow, this had become his traditional method of saying goodbye to her over the course of their deepening friendship. "Good luck."
"Thanks," she said, grinning as she reached up to tousle his immaculate ginger hair. "I don't expect a huge breakthrough right away, but you never know."
She was wrong, of course. What happened next would change everything.
The Death Chamber was empty and silent, save for the ghostly murmurs of the souls beyond the Veil and Hermione's hollow, echoing footsteps on the cold stone floor. Obviously, I was one of those unseen whisperers, but I don't remember it. Almost everyone I meet who knows the basics of my story asks me what it was like to be dead, but I have no recollection of the experience. This response is usually met with frustration, as if they think I'll say, "Well, I've been lying to everyone else, but since it's you, I'll tell the truth. Beyond the Veil, it's just one huge orgy. Nothing but sex, sex, and more sex. And the stars of the show were me and your mum."
Okay, so maybe they don't expect that last bit, but seriously. Just because they want me to remember something, it doesn't mean I will.
Opening her beaded bag, Hermione withdrew her supplies. In a gold cauldron, she combined the ingredients needed for her spell: armadillo bile, crushed rose thorn, Thestral hair, and salamander blood. The volatile mixture swirled and bubbled, heating itself without the need for a flame. This was the sort of dangerous, unpredictable magic that Luna Lovegood's mother was experimenting with when she died. It was neither Dark nor Light; it existed in erratic, ever-changing winds and shades of grey.
When the potion glowed with an Avada Kedavra green colour, Hermione dipped her fingers into the viscous, warm liquid. It tingled and burned like venom, numbing her hand as she scrawled ancient symbols on the floor. She fought to keep her arm steady and her fears at bay as she sat in the centre of her scribbles and drew Ansuz — the rune that signified communication — on her own forehead.
Drawing in a deep, cleansing breath, she drew her wand, cleared her mind of everything that wasn't me, and started chanting in a low, tense voice.
Percy didn't realise it, but he was the inspiration behind this spell. It was his gnawing, consuming guilt over my death that prompted her to consider the very risky prospect of attempting to communicate with someone behind the Veil. Out of fear of getting his hopes up for nothing, she'd refused to tell him anything about her plans. Other Unspeakables had attempted it in the past, of course, but she still refuses to tell me how successful any of them were.
Leave it to Hermione to risk her life just so Percy and I could have a little chat and he could get some closure.
Sweat ran down her face and neck in rivulets as her chanting grew more intense. Barely intelligible words fell from her lips in rapid succession. Lapsing into a state that existed somewhere between waking and sleeping, she felt herself being pulled in two directions at once. One part of her remained anchored to the physical plane, to the hard, real sensation of the frigid stone pressing against her skin and the acrid stench of the potion she'd brewed. The other part soared free, tethered to her flesh by a long, golden cord. It flitted about the chamber, delighted and unencumbered by the leaden weight of a body.
The plan was for Hermione's spirit to venture past the Veil, speak to me, and then find its way back to the safety of her body along the golden cord. This is not what happened.
As her spirit neared the Veil, still concentrating on finding me, she realised she could make out my voice among the frantic, indecipherable mutterings. She heard me say her name, over and over, asking if it was really her. Loss and elation overwhelmed her in an unexpected wave, setting her vision wobbling. The world seemed to hang off-balance, and the circle of carefully drawn symbols became unstable, leaping off of the floor and whirling around her like a cyclone. Brushing her transparent fingers against the rough Veil, she felt the cool firmness of my hand on the other side for a split-second before the spell exploded with a blinding flash.
The flash is the first thing I remember seeing after the Battle of Hogwarts. At first, I thought I was still there. I tried to shout to my family, Harry, and Hermione, to ask if they were okay, but my mouth wouldn't obey my orders. To my dismay, neither would any of my limbs. I was convinced I'd been paralysed by that bloody wall until I heard a distinctly feminine voice in my head, grumbling about a botched spell. My head turned down without my permission, and my eyes took stock of my body.
Fred? a familiar, alarmed female voice echoed through my head as I tried to discern why the hell I'd sprouted a pair of breasts.
"Hermione?" I replied, though the word never left the confines of my mind.
"Oh, God," she said. My mouth moved, but it was her voice that came through my lips.
It was then that I realised it wasn't my body that refused to move the way I wanted it to; it was hers. I could feel the stiffness of her limbs and the sore spot on her head where she'd hit it against the floor after the spell threw her down, but I couldn't control any of her movements.
Okay, she thought. Maybe that spell wasn't such a failure after all.