Hermione Granger and The Kiss of Time
by Lousy Poet Automaton
xxx Chapter 3: The Tower
He was so close. He was going to catch it! He needed to catch it.
Wind scraping his skin, blasting his hair back. A tiny speck of gold flitting.
Why must you catch it?
Why? Because!
His stomach pushed up against his lungs as he threw himself into a dive. His hands were clammy in the uniform's gloves. And despite how hard he clamped his legs together, how hard he held on with one hand, it felt like he was sliding off. But he needed to stretch! It was just there, it was right there in front of him.
His fingertips brushed against the wings. And then his broom jerked to a halt so suddenly he was flung off.
You'll never catch it, celebrity. Freak. Spoiled. Nobody will notice you now.
Harry was screaming. Screaming. He was falling. Headfirst. His flailing limbs did nothing to change his orientation.
Save me. Hermione! Ron! Somebody save -
Meeting the ground did not hurt as much as he thought it would. It felt like all the beatings Dudley and his friends had ever put on him. He thought it would be worse. This was okay. They'd fix him up and -
Pomfrey's worried face. "Move your fingers, Mr. Potter. Your toes?"
"Ah, what a disappointment. Nothing like his father after all. Who gets paralyzed in his first game like that?"
He wanted to scream. Why couldn't they hear him? It wasn't his fault. Somebody. Somebody jinxed his broom!
Fat hands, fat fingers glided by his eyes. He felt himself moving. But nothing in his body, just in his ears, just in the way his head flopped back on his neck.
"What rubbish! Now this freak will be a burden on us our whole lives!"
No, they couldn't just take him back! He was a wizard! He was special!
They crammed him into the cupboard under the stairs. Closed the door. He heard the click of the lock, the latches sliding home.
It was dark. And he could do nothing but weep. God! He should have listened to Hermione, why the hell did he want to do stupid fucking Quidditch? Now he was nothing, worthless, they'd just leave him in there, forget him.
Each minute felt like a year. He could not feel his heart beating. There was a machine to breathe for him. There was the drip, drip, dripping of his tears, in time with the fluids in the line going to his wrist.
The Dursleys did not even open the door to feed him. They changed his IV bottles from the outside, joked about the liquefied garbage they were giving him through his feeding tube straight into his distended, diseased belly. It was rank in his room. Awful. His excretions plopped down through a hole in the wooden slats under his body.
He started to wail. Like a child. Like an animal kicked and broken. And alone.
Hmm. Is it that time already?
Who was that? Sounded familiar, somehow.
"Let me out," he croaked. "Please! Please, please, please..."
Hmm.
The knob twitched.
Dear one, the locks are on your side of the door. You have to be the one to open the way.
How could he? He couldn't do anything for himself anymore, he was fucked! He was cracked and shattered and tossed aside like one of Dudley's toys! He couldn't even wipe the shit crusted on his -
The Harry I know does not waste time feeling sorry for himself. Now, open the door. How long have you been here? You're a wizard. Magic finds a way. If your body is broken, your spirit can still move.
What a crock of dung! What a -
That's a little better anyway. Get madder, you little boy! Come on! When you fall, the thing to do is get up.
The locks and latches rattled over the deathless sound of the ventilator's regular, puffing movement. Did he do that?
That's it. You're not worthless Harry. I will always believe in you.
The voice was soft. It was filled with everything he had ever wanted to hear in a voice that addressed him. It was the rain washing everything away. It was the sun against his cold flesh. It was the humanizing comfort and dignity of clean clothes. It was the steel in his spine
Steps, going away. Getting fainter.
"Don't leave me!"
The door opened.
"Come down, Harry. Have some tea."
He stood and stepped through. Not that what was on the outside seemed much better than his cupboard. It was all stone. Damp, dark rock. Very old smell to the air. And the only light was this phosphorescent moss on the ceiling.
"Watch your step. The staircase is quite narrow."
It was. It was one of those spiraling stone stairways in very old castles, steep and sharp-angled.
At the end, there was a table in a tiny room. On the table was a pot of tea, two cups, and two lit candles. Someone sat on the other side. He could not see her face, under her hood. But the outline of her jaw and neck drew his eyes. And thick, silver curls spilled out onto her shoulders. Behind her, there were shelves on the wall, endless shelves, with crystal bottles all of the same shape. To the left, there was a small well. To the right, a pedestal with a reddish crystal caught the flickering yellow rays from the candles. When he looked over his shoulder, the corridor he had come in through was gone - there was instead a massive door, all bronze and stone, with clocks covering its face, ticking.
"Please. Sit."
He did so. A sip of the tea was fire in his mouth and filled him up with the sun. "Thanks," Harry whispered. "I couldn't get out." He wiped his face, ashamed of his earlier helplessness.
"Sometimes, a person just needs to hear the right thing."
"Y-yeah," his breath shuddered out.
"You know what kept you in there, right?"
He supposed he did. He could get it, a bit.
"It could have happened like that," Harry whispered, clenching his fists.
"But it didn't."
"It could have."
She shrugged. She picked up her cup and took a sip herself. "On any given day, a man or woman can trip down a flight of steps. People die of diseases, of old age, of broken hearts, of foolish, youthful daring. But it's not death you fear."
He pulled his arms in tight around himself, clutched at his shoulders. He could feel his hands. When he pressed his feet against the floor, his toes bumped into the leather of his shoes. It figured that even in his dreams, he gave himself shoes that did not quite fit right.
"No, it's not death I fear."
"It's not what I fear either."
She stood and walked close. She was tall. When he put his arms around her and pressed his face against her side, he felt tiny. Felt like a child. She was warm and soft and smelled like snow, like autumn sunsets, summer showers, spring floodwaters.
"You are a child. For a little while longer, anyway. Everyone is afraid, sometimes."
He cried again, but it felt good this time. Clean. "Who are you?"
"Hmm. It would do you no good to know. Not yet."
"Will I be seeing you again?"
"I'm always with you, Harry. Always."
He took another deep breath. Her hand in his hair was better than any glimpse in the mirror could have been. Better than half-formed imaginings of his parents.
"Can't I call you something?" If he had no name for her, he'd forget. He could tell. He did not want to forget her when he woke. He could not.
"Oh, dearest. I shouldn't tell you. Well. I suppose I can give you a name that won't make too much difference either way."
"But it's not your name?"
"It is my name too."
She knelt down and put her face right next to his. He could feel her breath against his cheeks. Those curling locks brushed against his forehead. But he could see nothing of what she looked like. Lips pressed against his brow. Fever hot. Shivering.
The quiet between them stretched to forever.
Finally, she whispered into his ear, "If you called me Rowena Ravenclaw, it would not be entirely inaccurate."
Harry tried to swallow past the sticky, painful shard of something in his throat. "And if I call, will you come for me? When I need you?"
"Don't look too hard for me, Harry. I am already at your side."
When he blinked the crust out of his eyes, the light of dawn pierced a gap in the thick scarlet and gold curtains. He tried to hold on to everything. Tried not to forget.
"Merlin, Potter. You got to see Ma'am Pomfrey, yeah? You were moaning and stuff all night!"
Harry shut them out. It was sliding out. The tighter he held on, the faster it went away.
"Rowena Ravenclaw," he muttered. He pressed his knuckles agains his forehead. He would not forget everything. He would not.
I am already at your side.
"Boys? You decent in there?"
"Why don't you come in and see, Granger!" The boys laughed. "What are you lot doing up here?"
A procession of girls' faces poked in through the door. There was the smell of eggs. Bacon. Ham. Fresh baked bread. "Men of Gryffindor, your ladies have prepared breakfast for you! Don't get used to it now."
The giggling, the laughter, sliced free the last shadows holding him.
A hand tugged his blanket off his face. "Harry?"
"Hermione," he got out. "I, ah. I had this dream..." he shook his head. "Can't... quite... remember."
When he sat up and looked at her, with the sun on her face, for just a moment Harry thought he saw someone else.
"I like the pajamas, Harry. Very cute."
He coughed, smiled sheepishly back at her.
"Come on. Let's eat." When she offered her hand, he took it, and he thought he smelled something over the scent of breakfast. Something far away, and yet very, very familiar.
xxxend chapter