Stuck in Place

by KemAjiana


A/n: Enjoy! Thanks again to Insert Clever Potter Name Here for the assistance! Mucho love-o! I'm a special shout out to my reviewers who are keeping me going! You guys make my heart super happy.

So, when winding down to the finale. Sad to say. It's looking like, depending on how I want to split the breaking of the curse, we'll only have another three to four chapters left, tallying this up to eleven or twelve chapters. I don't want to run the risk of losing interest in this, so I'm going to keep it pretty short. Everything is lined out, and falling into place perfectly, and I hope you guys enjoy the last couple chapters!

Thanks for sticking with me.


Chapter Eight

The bank was quiet, with only the rapid click click clicking of shoes on marble, the scribbling of quills on parchment, and the jingling of galleons as they were sorted. Bill's office was set near the entrance to Gringotts, in a hallway off to the right; the goblins apparently thought it best if the human workers were close at hand if they should be in need of assistance.

Fred carried Hermione in a tote, which he had slung over his shoulder, and she curled up to be as small as possible, though the urge to peek out was nearly overwhelming.

"Fred? George?" Bill called as he approached them quickly. "What are you doing here?"

"We need your expertise," Fred murmured. "Curse breaker stuff."

Hermione, even from her curled position in the tote, could practically see the curiosity that would have lit Bill's face. He'd been missing his old job as a Curse Breaker, having given it up entirely once he'd found his wife was expecting their first child. It was nearing the end of September, now, meaning Fleur could only have been about two months along, but Bill was a family man, and a bit of a worrier when it came to his Veela wife.

He ushered them into his office, throwing up a Muffliato charm with a wave of his hand, and Hermione felt the tote gently set upon a desk. As the cloth fell away around her, she uncurled herself, poking her head out and grinning at Bill happily as she stood. He looked confused.

"You brought me a fox..."

George shook his head. "Not a fox, you dunce. Hermione."

"Hermione is a.. fox?"

Fred laughed a little. "Did you forget?"

Bill rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I figured that'd all been sorted. I haven't been keeping up with her and Harry as closely as I should have been. With Fleur, I've been a bit distracted."

With a roll of his eyes, Fred leaned back in his seat. "Yes, well. We talked to Charlie last night -"

"- quite interrupted his morning, too -"

"- and he sent us to you. Said he'd place his bet on you to be able to right this whole thing."

"See," George continued, "we've hit a wee bit of a snag. Hermione is reverting, as Charlie put it."

Bill's eyes shot wide at that, leaning forward eagerly as he rolled his silvery wand between his fingers. "Reverting. Well, that is interesting." He stood, then, clearing his desk quickly. "Well, let's see what I can do, then, yeah?"

Fred and George stepped aside, leaning back against the far wall, out of the way of any rebounding curses or jinxes.

With a wave of his wand, and Hermione went rigid, and Bill furrowed his brows in intense concentration. When another wave of his wand and nonverbal spell did nothing, he stepped forward, taking her left leg in his broad palm and examining the words carved into the skin there, covered by fine purple-red fur. She turned his head away from him, ignoring his silent question, and he touched the tip of his wand to the scarring, a blue light emanating from the tip.

She gave a yelp of pain and he broke the connection immediately. "This is...complicated," he said after a long second, while Fred gathered Hermione into his arms, cradling her to his chest, as if he could protect her from his older brother.

"So, you can't fix it," George monotoned in exasperation.

Bill held up a hand. "I didn't say that."

"So," Fred said excitedly. "You can fix it!"

A grimace twisted Bill's lips. "I didn't say that, either."

George ran a brisk hand hand through his tussle hair. "Which is it?"

"I need to see this spell." He paused for a second. "Hermione, I need to see your memories. I need to perform legilimency...if you don't mind. I'm not skilled enough, really, to see what you don't want me to see, so you don't have to worry about that, at all."

Hermione sat stock-still, her ears straining forward, as if she had not heard him correctly.

"Hermione, this may be the key to breaking the curse."

Finally, after a long minute, she gave a short nod of her head, and trained her eyes on Bill as he brought his wand up. "Legilimens."


The world was a blur around Bill as he found himself sifting through a hundred memories. He could feel Hermione guiding him along, directing him like a gentle hand to the point he would truly need to examine, but a sharp, heart-rending pain held him fixated on three particular memories.

The first left Bill stunned at the witch's bravery as he witnessed her erase herself from her parent's memories.

The second left him angry. Ron, the git, had left them in the middle of the forest in a fit of anger. He'd always known his brother to be a hotheaded prat at times, but abandonment went against the very Weasley nature. His family had turned their backs on Percy for it, and, if they'd known Ron had done the same thing, they likely would have shunned him as well.

The third memory, however, left him feeling as if a rock had sunk down in the middle of his belly.

Agony of the most emotional sort, as Hermione stepped back from kissing Ronald, her heart beating wildly against her ribs as he grinned down at her, and Harry giving them a stern look."Oi! There's a war going on here!"

"I know mate," Ron said with a somewhat stunned look on his face, "so, it's now or never, isn't it?"

The realization then that Ron had never really had feelings for her washed over Bill. It had been an illusion of proximity; they'd spent so many years close together, she had taken any hint of feelings and moulded it into the idea that he had loved her.

Rejection.

And then the memory was swirling away, and he was standing at Hermione's side as a shouted curse struck her cheek in a flash of red. She was flying backwards, colliding with Fred and throwing them both clear of the shower of debris, a large portion of wall just narrowly missing Fred's head, which would have surely killed him. She crumpled on the ground, crying out, and her body was suddenly no longer that of a human.


Bill jerked back from her memories then, his face white. The curse had saved Fred's life. "That explains why it's such a tricky spell."

Fred looked confused as he stroked Hermione's back lovingly. "What?"

"It's all tangled up. The curse isn't so much a curse as a transfiguration spell feeding off the curse on her arm -"

"- we knew that, though. That's what St. Mungo's told us -"

Bill cut him off. "- but the curse is surviving off her fear. It's draining her human emotions until, eventually, there will be nothing of her humanity left. It's all...twisted up inside." He stared straight at Hermione. "Your own subconscious is working against you, Hermione, and you're the only one that can fix it."