Chapter 5
Nausea and Necrophilia
Once a friend had told me that it was only when I was drunk that I seemed to know exactly what I wanted. And so, two months later, in the midst of the farewell party in my growing wildness - dancing, balancing a wine glass on my forehead and falling to the floor twisting round and getting up without letting the glass tip, a trick which seemed only possible when drunk and relaxed—I knew I was already running.
—Running in the Family, Michael Ondaatje
At first, it was like falling through an eternity of black glitter, but there must have been a moment in between in which she hung, suspended, before beginning to swim to the surface. As she approached it, the roaring in her ears lessened, and her head pounded more furiously than before; soon, her study was visible, but she had to break through a filmy, rippling surface to see it clearly.
"Are you all right?" Ginny's face appeared directly above hers, blotchy but otherwise dry.
She tried to blink away the light streaming into her, feeding her headache; when that failed, she groaned and flung her forearm over her eyes.
"Turn off the lights," Ginny said, and footsteps that sounded familiar enough to be Harry's obeyed.
With only slivers of grey winter light slipping in around the curtains, Hermione felt safe peering out at the people who had clustered around her. Harry and Ginny must have been called for after she had collapsed, which, judging by the way Theo had their copied necromancy book spread around him and Pansy was clutching a cup of tea, had been quite some time ago.
Someone had also had the foresight to roll her onto her back, prop her head up with cushions, and tie something cold to the lump that was forming on her temple.
"What happened?" she asked, struggling to sit up and failing.
Theo gestured to the index he was skimming through without glancing up. "We're trying to work that out."
"Professor Snape isn't rotting away anymore, though, so good show whatever you did," said Pansy.
She raised her eyebrows at Harry, who nodded in confirmation, then rotated her head back so she could see Snape. He didn't appear to have moved from his armchair, but there was a distinct lack of pillows surrounding him. Pansy was right: his skin was once again sitting normally, no longer bloated or sunken, and had lost its green tinge.
The smell in the room still made her throat burn whenever she inhaled, but she suspected it would take days of airing it out before it returned to normal.
"Did you know that would happen?"
"Yes, and I planned it all out, because I've spent so much time as the living dead."
She giggled, earning a derisive look from Snape, and a worried look from everyone else. "I thought you might have. So glad you didn't disappoint."
"It doesn't make sense," Pansy said, shifting onto her knees, so she could read over Theo's shoulder. "I hugged him, and nothing happened."
"He also wasn't falling to pieces at the time," Theo said. "He could have taken the small amount of magic he needed without you noticing."
"I somehow doubt that."
The two exchanged twin poisonous glares, and Hermione giggled again. Ginny, who was nearest to her, rested a hand on her forehead.
"I told you we'd need to take him to Hopkins—if anyone knows anything…"
"She isn't running a fever," Ginny said, pulling back her hand. "And she's still got a pulse, so she hasn't been turned into… whatever he is."
"You're just as charming as I remember you being in your sixth year," Snape said, "which is probably fresher in my memory than yours."
Ginny grinned up at him. "Thank you—I do try. Growing up is so depressing, isn't it?"
"According to the infantile of mind," Pansy said. "The rest of us manage it well enough."
"Hopkins," Hermione said, raising her voice to the heights of bossiness. "We need to Floo her and explain the situation, and then either get Professor Snape to Mysteries and have her examine him, or convince Hopkins to come here. I'd prefer her to come to us, as I have some questions about the autopsy report, and feel a bit like jelly with some vodka still mixed in."
"You convinced her to have a drink before dinner?" Ginny whistled. "Well done."
Pansy lowered her eyes modestly. "There was very little actual persuasion involved—all subtlety, my dear."
"I promise you can all get me as drunk as you like later," Hermione snapped, "as long as we please focus now."
*
One of the first things that Hermione had learned upon entering the Department of Mysteries was that owls and magical paper aeroplanes were for amateurs, and the other, lowly, less top-secret departments; the Floo network was the only reliable and relatively secretive method of communication. It was also the only method of communication that relied on a fine green powder that closely resembled the highly addictive Mermaid Scales—something she had suspected the high-ranking members of the department took full advantage of.
She had been quickly silenced when she tried to point out that Kingsley Shacklebolt, in a frantic attempt to thwart riots and total anarchy, was releasing information about the department more quickly than they could produce it. He was an Auror at heart, a fact of which the Unspeakables most certainly did not approve, and he was destroying the age-old traditions and turning them into little more than a more highly specialised and experimental branch of the Aurors.
The Floo network was one of the few traditions not banned in the upheaval, and they clung to it even when Hermione tried to convince them to perform a test run of magically modified mobile phones. Invisible airwaves sounded suspiciously like paper aeroplanes.
The fact that no one had been sold on her magical mobile idea (when she cracked the case and became head of the department, that would be her first act of kindness) meant that she had to be lowered down the stairs into the drawing room, and laid down on the sofa as Harry stoked the fire. Theo slumped onto the floor in front of her, and rested his head near hers, as Snape settled into a chair on the far side of the room with the day's paper.
"Do I have to talk to her?"
"Theo, I can barely sit up. Do you want me to shout at her from the sofa?"
"It would be preferable."
She swatted his ear. "Oh, shut up."
"If you have the energy to beat me, you have the energy to deal with Hopkins."
"Not if she's the monster you make her out to be."
Across the room, Snape coughed and raised the newspaper so that it was hiding his expression, but not before Hermione saw the smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
*
The rest of the afternoon blurred together in a fuzzy chain of events. Hermione dozed as Theo used his full arsenal of persuasion tactics to convince Hopkins to pay them a visit after hours, waking up in time to hear him drop the final bomb of bribery—that they would let her flip through their rare and recently acquired collection of necromancy texts, if only she would agree to perform an autopsy on their pet zombie.
Hermione tried to fill the next two hours with reading—if she was going to be incapacitated, she at least ought to be useful about it—but gave up when she woke up for the third time with the book lying open on her face. Instead of giving it a fourth go, she set it aside and settled for staring blankly at the ceiling.
Ron came home, and Pansy dragged him upstairs so that she could 'explain the situation to him'—which made Hermione snort with suppressed laughter—as Harry and Ginny left to continue their earlier conversation over coffee.
When Theo grew tired of reorganising their victim files, he announced that he was going to use the time to do some much needed shopping, leaving Hermione alone with Snape in absolute silence.
In her half-awake, listless state, it lost the comfort of the night before. Her inability to focus on anything practical, meant that she was focused on him—wondering if he was only putting up with her presence because the thought of climbing the stairs to the sounds of his former students shagging made him feel ill, or if he even noticed her presence. Since claiming the chair, he had barely glanced up, first from his newspaper and then yet another one of her books, and a part of her mind doubted that anyone, even Severus Snape could maintain that level of concentration. Even at her best, she had to pause every few minutes to take a sip of tea, or stare off into the distance to collect her thoughts.
She must have sighed as she rolled onto her side in order to see him clearly, because his eyes shot up and met hers before he straightened and shifted his weight in the chair.
"Bored?" he asked.
She nodded; his response was to stand up. For a moment, she felt the embarrassing urge to cry at the thought that he was going to leave her to her own devices until Theo returned and Hopkins arrived, but, instead of leaving the room, he walked towards her and bent over to pick up her book. Even as a corpse, he had a fluid sort of grace that she envied—he was by no means tall, but had learnt how to hold himself to create the illusion of height, and kept his movements contained.
"Are you just beginning the chapter?"
"A couple of paragraphs down, but I doubt I absorbed anything before that."
He nodded once and began to read.
It was, she knew, like an apology for the part he had played in draining her energy than something more direct would have been: unspoken, but nevertheless embedded in the care he took to keep the meaning crisp and ringing out in the otherwise silent room.
It was better than an apology, really, because she knew that he meant it.
Snape spoke in the same manner that he walked: measured, as though each syllable had been planned ahead of time, but never with anything like trepidation. The words flowed together, unlike the breathy, unsteady way in which she had always read aloud when called on in class, and she found that she didn't have to try to retain information—it slipped into her head and clung to her unconscious, even as her mind began to drift forward, searching for ways to apply the concepts that the book outlined.
It was a proper teaching voice, she thought—not one that would be able to control a classroom, but perfect for people willing to keep still long enough to appreciate it and let it roll over them.
And maybe it was an effect of being technically dead, but he didn't have to pause to clear his throat or take a sip of water—it was the sort of stamina that she had only experienced when she had slipped into lectures at various universities around the cities, and even then only rarely.
The reading lasted until Theo returned, bearing plastic bags full of food to bring to his mother, and, even when Harry returned without Ginny, and Ron and Pansy trickled back down the stairs with hair damp from the shower, filling the house up with noise once again, Hermione couldn't shake the feeling that they had shared something as intimate, in its way, as sex—perhaps even more so, because sex didn't require any sort of real understanding of someone other than oneself.
If she could have frozen the mental pictures that suddenly rushed through her head and erased them, she would have. Severus Snape was dead. This was an important fact that she needed to keep in the foreground of her mind.
Or, maybe not. If she thought about it too closely, her stomach began to churn.
The only comfort she took from the situation was that her unfortunate encounter with the undead had probably left her delusional. Any second, the boys would flit through the room in ballet shoes and pink tutus, which was and even more horrifying possibility than the previous thought.
She would never be able to tell Theo about this train of thought; first he would laugh until he cried, and then he would begin to spread the word that they had a miniature Hopkins on their hands, right down to the necrophilia.
It definitely didn't help that the book from which he was reading was a nineteenth century philosopher's tract on the dark arts in general, necromancy in particular.
As people filtered back into the room, he set the book down and asked, "Are you sure this is really relevant?"
She shrugged, which wasn't a gesture well suited to lying prone. "I know almost nothing about necromancy, except for what I read about the Resurrection Stone and how to deal with Inferi. At the moment, everything is helpful."
"Are they talking about magical theory?" Ron wrinkled his nose, and turned around on his heel, grabbing Pansy by the wrist. "We definitely don't want to be here when it gets technical."
Ginny patted Hermione on the forehead. "I'm going back to the Burrow for the moment—Mum always gets a little frantic when I'm gone for any extended period of time—but we should meet up. Loads to tell you."
Hermione tried to smile encouragingly, but she felt her stomach twist at the words: being caught up in the middle of Harry and Ginny's disastrous romance was not something that was conducive to leading a long, happy, and fulfilling life.
"Oh, and some people from school are going to be gathering together tomorrow night for an impromptu reunion at The Spinning Wand tomorrow night—you should come."
"Because everything about me screams how much I love to dance—if, by dance, we refer to sloppy, drunken gyrations with people I hoped I would never see again."
"I think Pansy and Theo are bringing some of their friends along, so it should be fun."
"Yes, that will make it so much better," Hermione shot back, but Ginny was already halfway out of the room, tossing a wave over her shoulder.
"You do realise that I'm standing right here?" said Theo. "And, for once, you're the weakened one unable to defend herself, so you ought to watch the words that come out of your mouth."
"I wasn't commenting on you, just the poor life choices of your friends."
Theo hesitated, as though considering her words. "I suppose that's all right then."
"And you used to be so bright," Snape said, with a sigh. "I see now our hopes that he would distinguish himself were misplaced."
"You haven't been around for the last seven years," Theo said, scowling. "I have become a very distinguished member of society."
"Distinguished for his sexual exploits," Hermione replied, sotto. "The papers like to hold him up as a shining example of the degenerative nature of pureblood culture."
"Only because most of Malfoy's have been so depraved that they aren't fit to print anywhere, even the tabloids. Anyway, all of that was right after the war, and I was young, desperate, and locked in a losing battle of self-hatred with myself—I've matured into a kind, caring, sensitive soul willing to experiment, and with enough experience to keep any willing man satisfied "
"Which is why you turn into a stuttering wreck whenever you're in the same room as the object of your affections."
Harry chose that moment to return, and Theo was too busy stuttering to come up with an appropriately witty response. Instead, he mouthed, "I hate you."
Hermione smirked.
Snape looked torn between utter mortification and amusement.
"I think your friend is here," Harry said, adjusting his glasses with wide eyes. "I tried to take her coat, and she threatened to impale me on the hanger if I didn't cease my misogynist attitude at once."
"We don't like your use of the word friend," Theo replied. "Personally, I prefer investigative ally."
"Then that makes two of us." Anne Hopkins swept into the room, looking even more intimidating than she did in the office, possibly because her lips had a touch of blood red lipstick, her hair was razor straight and tossed over one shoulder, and she was wearing pointy boots of black leather. When she left, Hermione knew that Theo would start making cracks about how she had been hoping to score with their undead specimen.
"Did you enjoy your Christmas?" Hermione asked, shooting a death glare at Theo.
"Very much, thank you. We visited my husband's family in Exeter—I'm actually going to apparate back this evening."
Theo's face went pale, and he nearly doubled over, like a soldier struck with shrapnel. "Husband?"
Hermione was faintly surprised, but at least she didn't sound as though the idea gave her physical pain."
"Yes, Nott, my husband." Hermione could have sworn that she saw the flash of a wink and a wicked grin before Hopkins added, "We also have two children."
"How old?" Hermione asked, wanting to make up for Theo's complete failure at exercising anything resembling decorum.
"Geoffrey is fifteen, and Evelina twelve."
Theo looked ready to faint. Hermione decided to have mercy.
"Theo, why don't you and Harry make us some tea?"
Harry's eyebrows hit his hairline. "Why do I have to…?"
But before Hermione could open her mouth to utter persuasive words, Theo had him by the arm and was pulling him into the kitchen.
"Right," she said, clapping her hands together and struggling onto her elbows. "Many apologies about Theo's inability to behave himself without involving a muzzle. Anne Hopkins, this is Severus Snape, formerly deceased and now only partially. Professor Snape, Anne Hopkins."
Hopkins took half a step forward, as thought she wanted to shake his hand, and he crossed his arms.
"You may not want to do that," he said, gesturing at the couch Hermione was draped over. "The last time someone touched me, there were some unfortunate side effects."
Hermione waved weakly, and Snape smirked, although she didn't miss the way his gaze drifted down to rest on the book laying facedown on the coffee table.
*
Whether or not Theo's speculations were correct, Hopkins certainly knew her way around a corpse. She started by having Snape lie on his back and stretch out his limbs, and then keep perfectly still whilst she examined him.
Handling him wouldn't be a problem; she had a pair of rubber gloves, and a deep dislike of touching dead things without some form of protection. Hermione supposed it was the sort of insight one only gleaned when one had spent a significant amount of time handling dead people.
As Hopkins worked, taking readings on the activity of micro-organisms and running three times as many tests as Hermione had known existed, she pulled herself up into a sitting position and leaned forward. Some, if not all of the diagnostics, would come in useful in her line of work.
When Theo came in, balancing a tray with a teapot, milk, and sugar, he scowled at her and said, "I thought you were too weak to do anything."
"I'm sitting up," she replied, "not conquering the world."
"Plenty of evil masterminds have done the very same from their armchairs."
"And Hermione is the only one in the house capable of evil masterminding," Harry said, arriving with cups and saucers.
"I resent that." Pansy barrelled into the room, bearing a book, and looking more tousled than before. "I think we've found the spell that the mystery necromancer used—well, Ron did. He's quite useful for the brunt work, as long as you give him extensive instructions."
And, Hermione wanted to add, if one promised him sexual favours, described in explicit terms, if he came back with useful information. There was no way that anyone's hair could be that mussed from a bit of light research.
Ron followed Pansy into the room a moment later, in a different pair of trousers. It seemed that her suspicions were confirmed.
"Let me see it," Hermione and Theo said in unison.
Pansy held out the book, and Theo snatched it up.
"I think I get it first—I'm the incapacitated one."
Theo rolled his eyes. "I was going to offer to share. I still will, if you promise to be nice to me."
Hermione made room for him, and patted the piece of cushion next to her. "Am I ever anything but?"
As Theo settled next to her, and sat the book across their laps, Hermione heard Snape mutter in an undertone to Hopkins, "Are they always this productive?"
Hopkins's reply was masked by a gasp, accompanied by a jolt of recognition. "The diagram has even got the runes."
*
Finding the resurrection spell was less helpful than Hermione had hoped it would be. There was nothing on the page to indicate its name, nothing to suggest that it had ever actually been successfully tested (which, admittedly, meant little), and, when compared to one of Theo's photographs from the scene, they found that the runes used were different. By the time Hopkins left, neither of them were able to muster even the smallest amount of excitement
"Well, at least it's something," Hermione said, folding over the corner of the offending page and slamming the book shut. "We know that he had the means to perform the spell."
"You were the one saying it was nothing but circumstantial twenty minutes ago."
She rested her head on his shoulder and sighed. "At the moment, circumstantial is better than the world of nothing that we have from every other angle. It gives us an idea of where to look, anyway."
"Maybe we're overlooking something," Theo said, glancing down at Snape, who was still lying prone on the floor, now with his eyes closed. "Something really obvious. Lucius said his wards were down the night of the murder, and he spent the entire evening trying to reactivate them."
"You neglected to mention that."
"I thought I said over drinks… Oh, didn't I? Sorry, I must have forgotten."
"That changes everything," Hermione said, straightening. "My next suggestion was going to be to check the records on everyone who has crossed the wards in the last week, but if they were down…"
"Curiouser and curiouser."
"Much too tidy for comfort."
"It's far too well planned to be Lucius," Snape interrupted, startling both of them. He hadn't moved since Hopkins had finished her examination. "Think of his past attempts at thwarting people."
"The diary in second year," said Hermione, softly.
"And the battle in the Department of Mysteries," said Snape. "Both times, he was bested by children. If he is your serial killer, you would have caught him ages ago, before it came to this."
"I've always thought Narcissa had the brains in that family." Theo sighed. "Silly of me to overlook the fact that Lucius can't even manage minionhood without it backfiring on him. Besides, who would he want to raise from the dead?"
Hermione let her head loll back onto Theo's shoulder, perhaps with a little more force than was necessary. "Lovely. Then we're back at square one."
There was a pause as the three of them pondered the implications of having to start from the very beginning.
"I know!" said Theo. "It was Kingsley Shacklebolt in the library with the candlestick!"
"Have I mentioned lately that you are forever banned from board game nights with my parents?" To Snape, she added, by way of explanation, "He attempted to rob the bank in a game of Monopoly."
"I was just trying to get into the spirit of the thing—it's set in the wild Americas, after all."
"I'm pleased to see that your time among the Gryffindors hasn't dulled your competitive edge, at the very least. Are you quite certain that the two of you aren't married? Because your bickering suggests otherwise."
"Oh, ew," said Theo.
Hermione was rather inclined to agree; attractiveness aside, she knew too many personal details to want to sleep with him. Ever. Nevertheless, she felt the need to put all of her weight into shoving him from the couch.
*
Hermione awoke the next morning, well rested and unnaturally perky. She had insisted on staying on the couch for the night, which meant that her neck felt permanently bent to one side, but a few minutes of massaging the knots righted it.
All but bounding into the kitchen, she put the kettle on, rescued her book from the coffee table, and ate a handful of cereal from the box—all with a cheery tune whistling from her lips. It was probably fortunate that no one had woken up yet; they probably would have murdered her without a second thought.
When her tea was finished, she laid the Daily Prophet and her book out on the table, side by side, and alternated pages until the pot was empty and she had reached the last section of the newspaper. The clock told her that there was still an hour before Theo would be awake, never mind in the office; she tidied away her mess and took the stairs two at a time, feeling the distinct call of her laptop and the information it could give her.
"You sound like an overweight hippogriff," Snape said by way of greeting. "Potter had a late night—if you wake him up now, I won't get my full eight hours of freedom from the menace."
"Now I understand why there was always at least three feet between you and the other staff members in the mornings—I had always put it down to your unwashed odour, but your biting wit is just too much for us mere mortals who haven't had time to imbibe caffeine."
"How very clever of you."
"You were the one making weight jokes first thing in the morning. The only reason I haven't hexed you into oblivion is because I have self-esteem."
"I promise not to make a similar remark to Mr Weasley, then."
Hermione slid into her chair and beamed at him over the top of her laptop. "Quite."
He looked back down at his book, but, yet again, not in time to hide the amusement spreading across his face, and she had to hide a giggle of her own behind a hand.
After running a search for any new evidence in the Muggle papers, which was a useless endeavour, she clicked the top shut and tucked her files under her arm.
"Well, I'm off to work, darling. I might be late—don't wait up."
The look he shot her would have felt more scathing if she didn't have the image of his half-hidden grin in the back of her mind. "Aren't you going to change out of your pyjamas?"
She shrugged. "Theo will be the only other person in the department until after New Year's, unless Kingsley drops by, and both have seen me in much more shocking states of dishabille. Besides, I'm working under protest—this is supposed to be my holiday."
The door swung shut behind her, and she hurried down the stairs and out the door, pausing only to pull on a scarf and coat. If Snape wanted to bury his eyebrow in his hairline as he pondered why Kingsley had seen her in minimal clothing, he could do it on his own—she had a feeling that the truth would be significantly less racy than whatever he managed to come up with.
She dawdled on her way, Apparating to the gates of the Ministry, then turning her back on them and wandering along the Thames with a latté in hand until she felt certain that Theo had to at least be on his way.
He wasn't in the office, nor by the water cooler—which, he insisted, was the ideal place for an Unspeakable to hover and pick up scraps of office gossip—so, with a sigh, she resigned herself to the possibility of having to Floo to his flat and drag him out of bed. She would give him half an hour, before subjecting herself to his mother's tired annoyance: she had given up explaining years ago that it was hardly her fault Theo couldn't wake up with an alarm to save his life.
To pass the time, she began a list of the people they still had to interview—all those who had been raised from the dead, the people who had seen them, the neo-druidess cult leader, and any other magical families living around Stonehenge—if the excessive and centuries old wards around Malfoy Manor had been overpowered by the resurrection spell, then it was almost a certainty that all the other wards in the area had also been lowered.
Theo arrived as she finished putting the finishing flourishes on her list, looking every inch the professional Muggle in black trousers and a tie—which, she decided, meant that he would get Jennifer Bartleby, whilst she tackled Nymphadora Tonks, Fred Weasley, Cedric Diggory, and Colin Creevey and hoped that they proved more informative than Snape. It seemed a fair trade-off: he had the job of interrogating a woman being held in a Muggle prison who possibly knew nothing about magic, and she had the joy of dealing with parents freshly reminded of their war losses and their undead children.
"You'd do anything to get out of interrogation," Theo said, throwing the scrap of parchment back at her. It fluttered mid-air, and swayed from side to side until it touched the top of her desk.
"I wouldn't make you do it all the time, except that you actually like it."
"You forget how quickly I tire of things," he said. "Be careful, or I'll never willingly question anyone ever again."
"Next time, your options will be interrogation or reorganising the filing cabinet." She stood and pulled her coat back over her shoulders. "Choose your next words carefully."
He held his hands up at the level of his head in a gesture of defeat. "You drive a hard bargain, woman."
Handing him a folder, she replied, "Of course I do—it's all part of my charm. In that folder, is all of the information I could find on Jennifer Bartleby who, with the exception of her neo-druid tendencies, is quite possibly the most boring human being in existence."
*
Standing on the kerb in front of Andromeda's house, Hermione found herself wishing she was anywhere but there. The wind tore through her coat, ignoring layers of down and fleece, and sending a shiver through her that seemed to run through the marrow of her bones. It was a visit she hadn't let herself so much as contemplate—the idea of seeing Tonks, alive or something like, after seven years filled her with dread. Tonks had been something of a mentor that first summer after Voldemort's return; in a house filled with boys, men, and middle-aged women, she had been the only regular presence Hermione could look up to.
Hermione was older, now, than Tonks had been when she died—unless the subject became the afterlife, instead of boys and makeup, there wasn't much Tonks could tell her that she hadn't already experienced for herself.
And then there were Andromeda and Teddy to bring into the equation. Andromeda's grief at the simultaneous loss of husband and daughter had only been held at bay by her grandson's presence—surely she must know that she was soon going to lose her daughter for the second time. Teddy was old enough, now, to understand what had happened to his parents, old enough to feel loss even if the depth of it was lost until later.
There was no getting past it. Hermione had assigned herself the job, and, if she were honest with herself, she knew she wouldn't be able to walk away from the house, even if she weren't assigned to the case.
She wanted the truth; with any luck, this visit would take her one step closer.
Andromeda answered the door in a flannel bathrobe, looking as though she had aged a decade in the last two days. Hermione had her suspicions as to the cause, which were confirmed when she saw Tonks at the kitchen table, looking pale but otherwise much as Hermione remembered her. Teddy sat opposite her, picking the crust off of his toast, and barely glancing up when Hermione announced her presence by clearing her throat.
"Hi," she said. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"
Tonks smiled, but there was no more of her old personality bubbling to the surface than a feeble attempt at imitation could produce. "You've grown up, haven't you?"
Which Hermione was sure that she had meant kindly, but she didn't think she looked much different now than she had at seventeen: diminutive—practically undernourished—and still with hair that frizzed and tangled regardless of the amount of time she spent trying to tame it.
"How are you?" Hermione asked; once the words were out, it occurred to her how silly they sounded.
"As well as can be expected, I suppose."
Hermione did her best to paste on an apologetic smile, but knew from the stiffness in her jaw that it was as convincing as Tonks's attempt at vivacity. "I didn't want this to be our first conversation, but I'm part of the investigation into the Stonehenge murder, which means I have some questions I need to ask you."
If she could keep this conversation strictly professional, then maybe it would be bearable. Too polite to be anything but painful, but it didn't have to twist and shred her insides.
Like it was doing right now.
"Of course—shall we take a walk?"
She had barely begun to thaw from the twenty minutes she had spent staring at the house, but she nodded. "Sounds perfect."
*
Later, she would try to glaze over the conversation in her memory, only remembering the facts, which she had carefully filtered away from Tonks's voice as she related her story. She didn't need to write down the details; the story was similar enough to Snape's in structure that the similarities felt like a repetition, and differences so glaringly obvious that she knew she didn't need to worry about forgetting them.
Which was, in a way, unfortunate: it gave her that much more attention to focus on the sharp stabs driving into her abdomen. As the conversation drew to a halt, they increased their force and frequency, until her breath was being forced from her in gasps, and she only had time to swallow small gulps of air in between.
"I knew, you know," Tonks said, after a moment. "I didn't think that I—either of us—would survive the battle, but I still went—I didn't want him to be alone at the end."
Hermione thought she understood. There were always an abundance of people willing to look after babies, but no one else would have looked after Harry and Ron in the same way she had. Even after Ron had walked away from them, she had been utterly incapable of returning the favour.
"If that's why you're angry with me."
Another stab. Hermione studied a crack in the pavement to hide the tears that were threatening to spill over, and only spoke when she had finished swallowing back the lump in the back of her throat.
"I'm not angry with you—I'm…"
Emotion threatened to choke her again, and she trailed off.
She wasn't angry with Tonks, but she was nevertheless furious. When they caught the killer, she would try the resurrection spell just for the pleasure of repeatedly strangling someone who would give a seven-year-old boy his dead mother and take her away again—someone who would tease her with the possibility of raising the dead and righting the injustices of the war.
"What about you?" Hermione asked. "How are you holding up?"
Tonks shook her head and clapped Hermione on the shoulder in a gesture that was at once familiar and unexpected. "This—this spell isn't permanent," she said, voice trembling, "and I can feel myself decomposing. Mum has been feeding me with her magic, but I don't want to take everything she has."
One of the tears Hermione had been sniffling back escaped and clung to her eyelashes until she blinked it away.
"I can't really talk to my son, because I don't want him to get too attached if I only have to leave again. I'm dead. I didn't ask to come back, and I'm not sure I want to stay. It was over—I thought I was done."
Even though the previous day's experience told her it was the worst idea she'd had in months, Hermione patted Tonks's shoulder, and let it rest there for a moment. If the contact affected her, she didn't notice; she had already felt nauseated.