Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
The Red Notebook
The coffee finished brewing after only a few minutes. It was only enough to fill one of those oversized mugs that Hermione preferred drinking from. The coffee maker had really been set up for her. Harry found the taste of coffee to be too bitter for his liking and rarely ever consumed the beverage. On this morning, however, it was necessary. He poured the dark, steaming liquid into a mug before adding a generous amount of milk and sugar to make it taste better. He took a sip and instantly felt more awake.
After washing out the pot and setting up the coffee maker for Hermione's morning cup, Harry left the kitchen and headed towards his study. The study was at the front of the house, just to the left of the front door. Harry placed the tip of his wand on the door handle and muttered "Alohomora" and the lock clicked. He kept the door locked for good reason. Unlike the other rooms of his house, his study was decidedly un-Muggle. It was the closest thing to the wizarding world that he allowed in this house. The walls were lined with a dark finished oak paneling. A seldom used drinks cabinet containing several glasses, an ice bucket, firewhiskey, and several other more adult beverages, lined the wall next to the door. The center of the room was highlighted by a rather large, overstuffed leather couch with small coffee table, that matched the decor of room, sitting directly in front of it. In front of the coffee table, was an intricately woven Persian rug, flanked on either side by two overstuffed leather chairs that matched the couch. The couch faced a stone fireplace that was placed along the wall of the on the left side of the room. The fireplace was decorated with an intricate carved mantle made of heavy oak. Several framed photographs, whose occupants moved around as though they were alive, sat in a line on top of the mantle. In the center of this line of photographs was the picture of the original Order of Phoenix that Mad-Eye had once shown Harry. He and Hermione had spent many nights snuggled up on the couch together, in front of a roaring fire, reading work-related papers or doing certain other things that sometimes came to mind.
A large, ornate wooden bookcase dominated the right side of the room. The bookcase was set into the wall, stretched from the floor to the ceiling, and ran almost the entire length of the wall. The bookcase was filled with a wide variety of spell, potion, and other wizarding books; more framed photographs; and a variety of other knick-knacks. The bookcase itself was also used to conceal the large picture window that would normally would have been its place, but anyone who looked in this room would never have known that it was there. All they would be able to see was a large bookcase set into the wall. Should anyone decide to peer into the window from outside of the house, a charm had been cast so that Muggles would see what looked to be a normal study.
Harry's desk sat at the far side of the room, facing the door. It was an antique, made of cherry with an inlay of mahogany on the surface, and designed to look as beautiful as it was functional. Behind the desk sat a large, leather bound office chair, and behind that, directly in front of the window, was the credenza that, while being a bit more modern, looked as though it matched the desk perfectly.
One other thing was kept in this room. Concealed in the wall just to the left of Harry's desk, next to the fireplace, was a small storage closet. The closet was originally built as part of the room, but now, only Harry and Hermione knew that it was there. Inside of the rarely opened closet was a large, goblin made safe. The safe contained the usual things one might expect to find: a small stash of galleons for emergencies, a few important papers, and the entire collection of dark magic books Hermione had summoned from Dumbledore's office at the end of their sixth year. They were stored here to keep them out of the hands of people who might use them for dark purposes. McGonagall was aware that Harry was in possession of these books and agreed that he should keep them. While McGonagall would never put them back into student library, there was no guarantee that some future Hogwarts headmaster or headmistress would not make them available for the students to use, and no one seemed too inclined to give some future version of Tom Riddle access to the information he or she would need to become the next great dark wizard.
Initially, Harry and Hermione had tried to destroy them all, but they appeared to be immune to every form of destruction they tried, including burning them in the very same fireplace they were stored next to. Fiendfyre would probably have done the trick, but as unstable as fiendfyre was, it was an option they dared never try. He had thought of storing them in his vault at Gringott's, but ironically, after he, Ron, and Hermione had successfully broken into one of their vaults and escaped, Harry never fully trusted Gringott's security again. So, instead, Harry chose to keep them here, behind a magically concealed door, locked in an indestructible safe that only he had the key for.
Harry crossed over to his desk, tapped the desk lamp with his wand turning it on, and after setting his coffee cup on the desk, he settled into his comfortable leather chair. His attaché case was already sitting on top of the desk, waiting for him. He stared at it a few seconds, thinking about all of the files he had to read over. Being an Auror had not been quite what Harry had expected it would be. He loved his job, but Kingsley and "Mad Eye" had never mentioned all of the paperwork that was involved. Much of Harry's time was now spent reading reports, most of which were either filled with old or useless leads. Then there were the reports that he had to file. These easily outnumbered the reports he had read by at least two to one. There were arrest reports, investigation status reports, and even reports on the reports that he had to read. Harry quickly learned that government bureaucracy was the same, no matter what kind of government it was. At least the Dictaquill that Percy Weasley had given him, for his eighteenth birthday, made the paperwork considerably faster.
This morning, Harry had to finish some paperwork on some old reports for the Walden Macnair case. One of Harry's first assignments, when he entered the Auror Department, was to the task force formed to hunt down ten remaining Death Eaters that had thus far eluded capture. After three years of less than stellar results (only two of them had been brought into custody up to that point) a few changes were made. Despite only being twenty years old at the time, Harry was put in charge of the task force. In the two years since he had taken over, seven of the Death Eaters had been captured and were now serving out life sentences in Azkaban. Harry's success was largely due to the fact that he was willing to use resources that his predecessor was not. Namely, he was willing to use Lucius Malfoy, whose intimate knowledge of the Death Eater organization made him perfect source of information. Lucius, it turned out, was quite willing to provide the information on the backgrounds of all the escaped Death Eaters, possible places they might be hiding, and to even testify against them in the Wizengamot. He did all of this in exchange for the protection of his family. For Harry, this was a small price to pay to capture Voldemort's followers.
With nine of the ten Death Eaters now in prison, the task force had recently been disbanded, and the Aurors involved, including Harry, were assigned to other cases. The Macnair case did still remain in Harry's hands, however. He devoted a couple of hours a week working on it. The last time anyone recalled seeing Macnair was when Hagrid threw him against the wall during the Battle of Hogwarts. At some point, he had obviously regained consciousness and made his escape during the confusion of the battle. Now, he was proving to be surprisingly difficult to catch. On more than one occasion, Harry had been certain of his whereabouts, only to find that Macnair had fled the scene just before the Aurors arrived to arrest him. After Macnair's most recent escape, Harry dashed off a memo to Head of the Auror department. Shortly thereafter, a quiet little investigation was begun into possible leaks within the department. So far, nothing had come from this investigation.
Harry pulled several file folders from his attaché case. He had read these reports already, and every single one of the contained leads that had already been investigated and discarded. Unfortunately, the investigation had gotten to the point where new leads were few and far between. The latest intelligence had put Macnair somewhere in Poland or Lithuania, but this didn't stop people from passing on every little rumor that they heard. Harry was glad that so many people were willing to pass on information. The problem was that most of their information was already old news, and he still had to file a report on it all. Sadly, now that they case was on the back burner, Harry tended to let his written reports slide. Now, he had roughly two weeks worth of reports to file on the Macnair case, and this seemed like as good a time as any to get them finished.
He grabbed the file folder on the top of the stack, opened it, and began scanning over it just to refresh his memory of its contents. After a few minutes, he opened one of the drawers on his desk and pulled out a few sheets of parchemnt before pulling out his Dictaquill and a bottle of ink. The ink bottle was nearly empty, but he had enough to get this first report done. Harry put his wand tip to the Dictaquill and it jumped to life. It dipped itself into the now opened bottle of ink and immediately began writing. As long as Harry kept his wand pointed at the self-writing quill, it would write whatever he was thinking. Five minutes later, the first report was complete, and Harry moved onto the next one in the stack, wishing that he would just take Hermione's advice and not put these off anymore.
He shuffled through the next report just as quickly as the third, still having enough ink to finish the job, but by the time he had finished filing his third report, the ink bottle was empty. Certain that he had a fresh bottle of ink somewhere in his desk, he began rifling through the different drawers. However, the search was proving to be fruitless, and now he was at the bottom left drawer, the last drawer to be searched. His search ended there, not because he finally found a bottle of ink, but because of what he found underneath a stack of bills and other papers. It was something he had forgotten was even in there. He pulled the object out and stared at it for several seconds, contemplating its contents. The object in question was a thick, well-used red colored notebook, just like the kind Muggle school children used for keeping notes or doing homework. He had purchased it from a Muggle store more than five years ago, and this notebook had become, for lack of a better word, Harry's memoirs. At least that's how it had started.
It was never something Harry had meant for anyone else to read and was certainly not meant for publication. Hermione did not even know about it. Started on parchment, Harry began writing the memoir shortly after the Battle of Hogwarts. It was a brief period in his life when he was alone and on his own when he had suddenly felt the urge to write down his life's story. At first, Harry thought of it as a way for him to preserve the memories of those he had lost while he could still remember them clearly, before the passage of time dulled and blurred them. The more he wrote, the more his memior began catching up to his present day life. At that point the notebook became something more like a journal where Harry recorded his thoughts on various things from his personal life to current events in the wizarding world. Over time, his journal entries became less and less often. The last entry had been made almost a year before, and Harry could not recall having seen the notebook for several months. The benefit Harry discovered soon after starting the memoirs was that putting his life's story down on paper, especially those memories pertaining to Ron and Ginny, turned out to be theraputic. This notebook helped him get through a very difficult time in his life.
Forgetting about his work, Harry began thumbing through the pages, quickly scanning the chapters he had reserved for Ron and Ginny. He lingered over the chapter he had written about Hermione for a much longer time, taking in every word he had written about her. It now seemed empty to him. There was now so much more to write about her now. He considered writing it all down at this very moment but soon thought better of the notion. That was something for another day when he had a better idea of where things were going to end up. Besides, he didn't have any ink.
Harry found himself reading about events of his life that occurred just following the Battle. The more he read, the more his memories began venturing into his thoughts. His life had been forever changed that day, and Harry had been set about on a new journey, one that had brought him to this very moment.
In the hours that followed his defeat of Lord Voldemort, the Great Hall had become the center of a celebration that had spread across all of Britain. Harry knew he should have felt some kind of relief and even a small amount of happiness that the war was now over, but none of that was there. The only thing that Harry felt was exhaustion, both physically and mentally. The price for his victory had been a much higher one than Harry had wanted to pay, leaving him in no mood for a party. All he really wanted to do was to find some quiet place where he and Hermione could talk, someplace where he might finally be able to let out everything that he had been holding in.
As much as he wanted nothing to do with the celebration, Harry also knew that it was necessary, and that he was the most important reason for that celebration. So, he put on a strong front and pushed all of his emotions back down for just a little while longer. He endured the seemingly endless amount handshakes and offers of congratulations from people he both knew or had never met before in his life. There was also an endless array of questions, mostly having to do with how he had survived the killing curse a second time around. As easy as it was for him to understand the reasons why, it was concept considerably more difficult for others to grasp the concept. The magic involved was unusual and was not an area of normal study by even the most noted wizards.
If some had difficulty understanding Harry's explanation for why Voldemort could not kill him, others seemed to think that there was entirely something different behind his resurrection. A small group of people had come to believe that Hermione had some kind of special magical power to restore life. To their eyes, they had seen Harry lying dead on the ground, they had watched her kiss him on the forehead, and then he was alive again. Much to their disappointment, Harry assured those few people that he had not dead at the time. He had been quite alive and fully aware that Hermione had kissed him. Years later, Harry and Hermione both found considerable amusement in this theory.
Those who did not ask him any questions, instead seemed to want to discuss the final duel between Harry and the Dark Lord. Most everyone, it seemed, was quite surprised by how quickly it was all over. Only one spell cast by each of the duelers and it was suddenly finished. Some had been expecting an epic duel between two great wizards, one that might even have rivaled the now legendary confrontation between Dumbledore and Grindewald. Others had not known what to expect, but it was obvious that no one had expected to see Lord Voldemort dispatched by his own killing curse, especially a killing curse that rebounded off of such a mundane spell as the disarming jinx.
Harry, on the other hand, felt quite the opposite. Lord Voldemort was a victim of his own ineptitudes. It was true he had been a very powerful and intelligent wizard capable doing magic that most people could not even dream of, but it was his lack of knowledge that had been his downfall. Voldemort failed to try to understand even the most basic tenants of things like loyalty, friendship, and most of all, love, because to him, they were subjects unworthy of a wizard with his vast abilities. Yet, it was all of those things that had brought about his ultimate demise. If it had not been for his mother's love, Harry would not have survived not only one killing curse, but two; if Snape had not loved Lily Evans, he might never have betrayed Lord Voldemort; if it had not for Kreacher's loyalty to Regulus, and later to Harry, the horcrux contained in Slytherin's locket might never have been found and destroyed; and if it had not been for Ron and Hermione and their friendship, Harry would never have come close to succeeding. The duel ended in the only possible way that it could have, and Harry thought that it was more than fitting that the darkest wizard of all time went out with a whimper rather than a roar.
Harry made the rounds for almost two hours, talking to anyone and everyone who came up to him. The only people he did not talk to were the Weasley's. Eventually he would have to talk to them, of course. There were so many things that he needed to say, but now was not the time or the place for that. What needed to be said was something for a more private setting. At least that was the excuse Harry preferred using. In fact, he was actually afraid to face them. Apart from Sirius, they were the only real family he had ever known. Mrs. Weasley had once said that he was "as good as" her son, and his dead body had been with every one of the other Weasley children when she confronted that boggart years before at Number Twelve, Grimmald Place. Harry could not help but feel that if it had not been for him, two of their children would still be alive at this moment. So, he avoided them, which was not really all that difficult. Apart from the Malfoy family, who huddled together looking around nervously, the Weasley family seemed to be the only ones not enjoying the festivities, choosing instead to sit together quietly. Only Charlie Weasley had come forward to shake Harry's hand and congratulate him.
Through all of this, Hermione remained at Harry's side, never letting him to get more than five feet away from her. Harry thought this was mostly because at one point during this terrible night, Hermione believed that she had lost her two closest friends. Now that Harry was alive and well, she was not going to allow him to venture very far away out of fear that she might lose him again. Harry understood the sentiment. As much as she needed him at this moment, he needed her at his side just as much. After all that he had lost on this day, he did not want to lose her, as well.
After a while, the crowd of people wanting to offer their congratulations began to thin out to a mere trickle. Most everyone now seemed to be enjoying themselves, talking animatedly about the battle. This was the moment that Harry and Hermione finally found their chance to escape. "Do you want to go somewhere and talk?" Harry whispered into her ear.
"Yes, I think should," Hermione responded without looking at Harry. While Luna distracted a nearby crowd of students and parents, Harry and Hermione again slipped under the invisibility cloak and made their way out of the Great Hall. They walked passed the Weasley family, now trying to console each other; passed Neville who was regaling a crowd of students with the story of how Gryffindor's sword appeared to him right out the Sorting Hat, and how he had used it to chop off the head of Voldemort's snake; and finally past Peeves who was floating up and down the halls singing his song about Harry's victory.
When they finally reached a vacant hallway far enough from the party, Hermione suddenly said, "Harry, hold on for a second." Harry stopped, and pulled the invisibility cloak off of the both of them. He looked down at Hermione. Tears were welling up in her eyes again, but what Harry noticed the most was the look on her face. He had seen this particular look only once before. It was the same look she had given Ron when he returned to them in Forest of Dean. Harry knew what was coming next. He barely had enough time to brace himself before he felt the open palm of Hermione's hand violently impact the side of his face. "YOU ARE A SON OF A BITCH, HARRY POTTER!" Hermione yelled. "YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT WAS LIKE SEEING YOU LYING THERE! YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I WAS GOING THROUGH! I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD! YOU COULD HAVE LET ME KNOW THAT YOU WERE ALRIGHT, BUT YOU DIDN'T! YOU…SHOULD…HAVE…TOLD…ME…HARRY!" She punctuated each word of her last sentence with particularly hard punches to Harry's abdomen. Before she had a chance to throw another, Harry grabbed hold of Hermione's arm and pulled her close, wrapping her in a tight embrace. She kept hitting his shoulder with the side of her fist, even as she buried her head against his chest. "You should have told me…" Hermione sobbed once more. Almost as suddenly as it had begun, her surge of anger had passed. She wrapped her arms around Harry and began crying very hard. Harry felt Hermione's knees begin to buckle. He kept his arms tightly wrapped around her, easing her to the hard stone floor at their feet.
"It's alright Hermione, I'm here now and I'm not going anywhere," Harry said as he began gently stroking the side of her head. He wished that he would have said something a little better at that moment, something more reassuring, but it was the best he could come up with.
Harry listened to Hermione cry for more than a minute before her sobs began to subside. She finally spoke, "When I saw you lying there, I thought I'd lost everything. First Ron, then you. I just wanted to die, Harry."
I just wanted to die, Harry. The words reverberated through Harry's mind. It was as though she had slapped him again, only this hurt worse than all the others. Disturbing thoughts began to pass through his mind, thoughts that he did not wish to think might have been true. He squeezed her even tighter wondering how he could have put her through something like that. She was right, he should have told her.
"I'm sorry, Hermione. I'm so, so, sorry…" Harry managed to finally choke the words out. Feeling so bad for what he had done to Hermione was setting something in motion now. Everything that he had forced back was now beginning to surge up inside of him. He closed his eyes, hoping to hold back the tears that were already forming. Harry tried to push everything back down because he did not want to let it out here, not in the corridor of all places, but there was so much more to this than he had ever imagined. What he was feeling now was not just because of the friends he had lost or because he had frightened Hermione so much. This was seventeen years worth of anguish that Harry had been keeping bottled up and was now trying to get out. He was mourning not only for Ron and Ginny now, he was mourning for his parents, Sirius, Lupin, and Tonks. It was simply far too much for Harry to hold back for any longer.
There, I've gotten the really emotional stuff out of the way. I have to admit that I had a bit of writer's block with this chapter. Coming next, find out what I mean by the "Forbidden Chalice".