Chapter II

Petrified / Trouble in Paradise

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, or any of the characters found in this fic. I did own Luna Lovegood, briefly, but lost her in a game of Gobstones to a charming British woman. I hope she treats her well.

Author's Note: We're getting there, folks, slowly but surely… it won't be too much longer now until you know exactly what's going on.

To all of my reviewers, thank you SO MUCH for your support and thoughts! I appreciate your comments immensely, and I'm doing my best to give you something worth all the encouragement.

To those who've read but haven't reviewed yet… it would only take a moment of your time, really! Your feedback helps, it really does. Writers are finicky creatures, always in need of a morale boost. Your comments not only lift my spirits, they give me ideas and show me what's important to you all out there.

Soundtrack Note: Loved Ones and Leaving, from the Order of the Phoenix soundtrack.


Dost thou love life? then do not squander time; for that is the stuff life is made of.

-Benjamin Franklin

The girl lay in the bed, motionless. The loud fall of approaching footsteps did not cause her to stir. They stopped momentarily, as the Matron paused to look in on her. She let out a noise somewhere in between a cough and a choked sob, but the girl still did not stir.

The footsteps continued as the Matron continued on down the hospital wing. So many of her students…

Beside the girl, in the next bed over, lay the Ravenclaw prefect. She, too, did not stir.

None of them stirred.

The girl's eyes were still open, staring upward, glassy and unseeing. Were it not for the unnatural rigidity of her arms, still held out from her small frame, one would think her dead. Corpses grew stiff with rigor mortis, but the girl was literally a statue.

There came a clattering as the Matron let herself out of the ward and the door closed behind her.

She stood at the foot of the bed, staring down at her. The girl's mouth was frozen open, a tight little 'o' of surprise, revealing her too-large front teeth. Her hair still a bushy mess, though the strands were now as solid as stone.

She had gone further ahead already, witnessed the boy's defeat of the Horcrux in the Chamber. She had thought perhaps that he might have chosen that moment to make his move, in that place he would have believed only he and the boy could enter. He had not come, though, and so she had returned to this place in this time. She still wore the cloak; though the Matron had left for the night and the Petrified could not perceive her, she knew that she would not be alone for long.

Indeed, only moments passed before the door loudly creaked in that way that doors only seem to be able to do when someone is trying to ease them open silently. The sound paused, and then a second creak came as the newcomer tried to ease the door closed again.

She drew back from bed, no longer bothering to tip-toe quietly; she had learned after a few nights' surveillance that a quick Silencing Charm cast on her shoes was a far more effective way of remaining undetected, anyway. Beneath the cloak, she looked around. Though someone else had indeed entered the room, there was no sign of them. It was only when she closed her eyes and listened that she could hear the slight pattering of tiny feet as the late-night visitor approached the girl's bed.

Evidently it had been decided that with no one conscious in the vicinity, stealth was no longer necessary, because there was a ripple in the air besides the girl, and then the boy appeared, emerging from his own invisibility cloak.

"Hermione?" he asked, quietly.

There came no reply, of course.

The boy pulled a chair up to the side of her bed and sat.

He began to speak, in whispers, and she drew closer to him and the girl, wanting to hear him. Never before had she known what was said this night.

"They say that they can't hear me," he told her in a small voice. "But I thought—I thought of what you would want… and I thought that, maybe you would want me to come sit with you for a while, even, even if you can't hear me."

There came a long silence. He tried to hold her hand, but in its Petrified position it was too awkward for him to fit his fingers in, so he clasped both hands around it. His face was pained.

She felt for him, deeply. His world was falling apart; his best friend Petrified, the groundskeeper taken to Azkaban, all the talk of the school he considered more a home to him than any place he'd ever been in his entire life being closed down…

"Madam Pomfrey wouldn't let us come see you," he told her. "She says she doesn't want to take any more chances, that the Heir of Slytherin might come here to finish you all off…"

More silence. It was too dark, and he was too emotional, and clasping the wrong hand, for him to discover the slip of paper she concealed. No, that would all happen later. It was for the best that he not learn her discovery until he was ready, she knew…

"They arrested Hagrid," he told her. "Took him to Azkaban. That's the wizards' prison, I'm not sure if there's anything about that in Hogwarts, A History… And worst of all they've removed Dumbledore as Headmaster, that prat Lucius Malfoy convinced the school governors to kick him out."

He stopped speaking again, and he realized that he was pausing each time he told her something to give her a chance to reply, though whether he was actually imagining her responses or only hoping for her to say something she knew not.

"Ron says there isn't any point in talking to a Petrified person." He leaned forward, to look at her, to see if there was any sign of movement, any gleam of recognition in her eyes.

All he found was glassy oblivion.

"I'm beginning to think he's right," the boy admitted. "But, I didn't want you to be here all… alone…"

He sniffled then, just a bit, though he gave a grin for the girl's benefit. "I wouldn't want to be stuck in a hospital bed for weeks with no one but Colin Creevey and Nearly Headless Nick for company, either…" he said, trying to keep his tone light, though he did not quite manage it.

He brushed the girl's hair with the back of his fingers, softly, and was visibly disturbed at its unnatural solidity, the strands not separating at his touch. He sat there for several minutes in silence, not moving at all except to alternate between holding her hand with both of his or to stroke her hair.

"Professor Sprout says the Mandrakes are almost mature," he whispered after a while. "Just a few more weeks, and Madam Pomfrey will have that potion ready for you, and you'll be back just the way you were, you'll see…"

He leaned in close and murmured something into the girl's ear that she couldn't overhear. Such was her curiosity, her need to know, that she actually gave the Time-Turner a partial tilt back, so that only one grain passed through the tunnel into the next chamber, and walked slowly around him so that she would be better positioned when he said it again.

"Just a few more weeks, and Madam Pomfrey will have that potion ready for you, and you'll be back just the way you were, you'll see…"

He leaned in close, and murmured, "And I'll never let anything like this happen to you ever again, I swear."

He stood up and, after a moment's hesitation, gave the girl a kiss on the forehead, a quick, chaste thing that made her heart melt.

"I miss you, Hermione," he whispered. And after checking carefully that things were as he had found them, he disappeared beneath his cloak again.

After a few more moments, she heard the door creak open and shut, and he was gone. Beneath her own cloak, a hand reached up to brush the tears from her cheeks.

Forward and forward she turned the Time-Turner, until the sun suddenly began to rise earnestly and her eyes hurt from the sudden exposure to the light. The doors flew open as the Matron zipped through the ward, stopping at each bed for an instant or two of examination, her head and hands twitching unnaturally fast like the movements of a hummingbird. She zipped out of the ward again, gone to treat students with more mundane injuries in the rest of the hospital wing, only to return a few seconds later. Back and forth she zipped, and the old Transfiguration professor sped into the room, too, for an animated discussion that lasted only seconds. Already the sun was sinking beneath the horizon, and the room darkening again…

Faster and faster twirled the hourglass between her fingers, until she could no longer see individuals, just the blurs they left behind them. Only the Petrified remained visible, as immobile as the walls of the castle around them or the beds they lay in. The sun rose high up into the sky and immediately began to sink, over and over and over again until there was merely a constant strobing effect to see by. Abruptly the girl in the bed vanished, as did her companions, and she knew she had gone too far.

Winding back the Time-Turner, she arrived just as the Matron, assisted by the dumpy Herbologist, began to apply the potions to the afflicted. Briefly she debated remaining, curious to see how they would ever be able to give a potion to the incorporeal Nearly Headless Nick, but decided against it. She had just enough time to reach the feast in the Great Hall.

It was there that she stood over the boy's shoulders as he ate his steak and kidney pudding and jacket potatoes; evidently destroying the memory of the Dark Lord and freeing the noble elf from slavery had caused him to work up an appetite. But all thoughts of food were forgotten when the doors opened wide and admitted the girl. Silence fell for a moment, and then the hall erupted into a cacophony of wild cheers, whoops and applause as the Matron ushered the formerly Petrified into the feast.

The girl ran to her friends. "You solved it! You solved it!" she screamed. She flung herself around the boy's neck, and he received her eagerly, overjoyed to have her return to him. Only she, from her vantage point beneath the cloak, saw the boy's eyes close and his lips move in a silent Thank You that even the girl missed. Though she had never known him to be particularly religious, she thought perhaps that he might be speaking to God.

She remained to witness the girl shake the red-headed boy's hand in a professional, business-like manner, to witness the Hufflepuff boy come over to apologize profusely, to witness the groundskeeper's triumphant return, cuffing the boy and his red-headed friend so hard on the shoulders that they were knocked into their plates of trifle.

Eventually though, she realized that this evening would not be the moment, either. It had been a good guess, but she would have to journey onward. Tearing herself away from the sight of the girl's distress at the notice that exams had been canceled, she reached for the Time-Turner. She would watch over the boy, tonight, just in case, but she no longer believed that he would come here.

At least, she now knew, that whenever he had made his move, it was indeed in the future, relative to this night.

For she had seen the boy slay the Basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets tonight, and she had seen the movement of his lips when he lay there on the cold stone, venom flowing through his veins, seen the name he uttered soundlessly with what he had thought to be his dying breath...

"Hermione…"


Hermione threw herself into her work, reviewing case files and forward recommendations to prosecutors, grateful for the distraction it provided her with. Things with Harry had only grown worse. He hadn't spoken a word to her in nearly a month, and was avoiding her as if she had Spattergroit. The few times she'd actually seen him, he always excused himself—to the others, never directly to her—and either left for the office or locked himself in his study. And he never, ever looked at her.

He hadn't acted this strangely since after the war ended. That summer after he'd defeated Voldemort, back when they'd all been trying to figure out how to bring their lives back to normal, he'd avoided her and Ron both, barely speaking to either of them. He hadn't been able to look at her then, either, and at the time she had girlishly wondered whether he was steering clear of her because she was his best mate's girlfriend and he was jealous. But then he had spent all his time with Ginny that summer, practically to the exclusion of anyone else, and she had realized the depths of his passion for the redheaded girl. She and Ginny had both gone back to Hogwarts to complete their last year together, and when they'd returned over Christmas holiday Harry again seemed fine and ready to let them in again, and she'd eagerly reconnected with her friend, never knowing what had driven away the man who would later be best man at her wedding, herself the maid of honor at his and Ginny's.

She wasn't the only one affected by his recent behavior. Ron and Ginny were suffering to, she knew; Ron was with him nearly constantly at the office, and he'd told her that Harry too was burying himself in work, the only interactions between the two of them being strictly business. As for Ginny… despite having completely missed the events of the night Harry had last spoken to Hermione, it hadn't taken her long to figure out something was terribly wrong with her husband. He was having night terrors, she said, and was hardly ever home anymore. Even poor Lily had been crying, her father having ceased coming in at night to tuck her in anymore.

Hermione knew that something had to be done, but hadn't the slightest idea what the proper course of action might be. She felt so miserable about it all; in all the time that she'd been a member of the Weasley-Potter extended family, she'd never gone more than a week or two without a visit from Harry, or catching a working lunch with him, and now he had severed all ties with her as if he wanted to completely cut her out of his life, without even the slightest explanation. Harry was… if Ronald was her rock, her foundation, then Harry was like her sky, always there to watch over her. And now that sky was beginning to fall, and they were all getting crushed by it in the process.

Her mobile rang, a neat little device that allowed her to communicate with Muggle or enchanted phones or through fireplaces hooked up to the Floo Network, and she answered it, suddenly no longer interested in filing reports.

"Hermione?"

"Ginny? What's wrong, you sound awful!"

"It-it's Harry", exclaimed her friend, sounding as though she'd been crying. "Thing's have been getting worse."

"Oh, love," Hermione said sadly, trying to comfort her friend as best she could.

"He-he won't even sleep in the same bed as me anymore!" her sister-in-law sobbed.

"Has he told you anything about what's wrong yet?" Hermione asked her. After it had become clear that things were getting worse she'd filled the red-head in on the night that Harry had first started acting oddly, and about what Ron had heard at the office, but none of them had found out anything more since.

"No! He's barely speaking to me at all! I don't know what's wrong with him!" her friend wailed, beginning to cry again in earnest.

"Oh, Gin, I'm so sorry for you…" Hermione said softly, her heart breaking for the woman on the other end of the phone. She stayed on the line with her while she blubbered, offering her reassurances and soothing words until she'd regained some of her composure.

"He's been assigning himself to stakeouts and raids, did Ron tell you that? He's the head of the department, why does every case suddenly need his own personal oversight? He's looking for excuses to not come home at night, that's what it is!" Ginny told her, no longer crying but her voice having an awful, defeated tone to it.

"Gin, I'm sure that things'll—"

"He's been drinking every night," the redhead said matter-of-factly.

"Ha-has he been… hitting you?" Hermione asked, scarcely believing she was asking the question.

"What? Oh, no, Merlin no! He would never—but… it's been bad, the last few nights. He'll speak two words to me all night, and when I confront him about it he just gets absolutely narked and retreats to his study. And now he's been sleeping on the couch, completely pissed on gin or pumpkin brandy or Firewhisky, whatever bottle he can get his hands on."

Hermione sat in dull silence while her friend filled her in on what Harry had been like the past few nights.

"And Lily?"

Harry's wife let out an exhausted sigh. "She's absolutely devastated. At first he was fine, whenever he was around her, like he was the one thing that made him feel alright. But lately he's gone all stroppy on her, too, he doesn't even kiss her goodbye before leaving like he always used to. She's ten years old, Hermione! How am I supposed to explain to her why her daddy's acting all wrong?"

"Have her come stay with us," Hermione said suddenly. "Just until this all gets sorted out. Ron and I would be happy to have her, and Hugo'll be thrilled. She can sleep in Rose's room."

"That… might be for the best." Ginny sighed again. "Maybe then it'll finally sink into him that what he's doing is tearing this family apart."

Hermione didn't know what to say to that.

"I've got to go," Ginny said wearily. "I'm going out with Lily today, to try and cheer her up. I'll ask her what she thinks about going to see Aunty Hermione and Uncle Ron for a few—I don't know, days? Weeks?"

"It won't be for that long," Hermione told her firmly. "We'll get to the bottom of this, make things right again. Together."

"Thank you so much, Hermione," her sister-in-law said gratefully. "You're such an angel, I don't know what I'd do without you to talk to."

"You'll never have to worry about that, dear. Give Lily my love."

"Bye, 'Mione."

Hermione sat behind her desk for a long time after that, staring blankly at the papers on her desk. There was no way she'd be able to get any more work done today.

What could they do? She debated having Ron, Ginny and her, maybe George too, hold an intervention for him. Cast an Anti-Disapparition Jinx on the house, put Imperturbable Charms on the doors and fireplace, and hold him at wandpoint until he told them what was wrong. She dismissed the idea, but was entirely convinced that Ron's advice to let him come to them on his own was no longer cutting it.

She just couldn't understand why he was acting so horribly. Could he have been cursed? It seemed likely enough given his profession. Perhaps that enchanted artifact he'd cut his hand on had been full of Dark magic? Should they take him to St. Mungo's? He would never go willingly, she knew that.

She left work early that evening, and headed straight home, waiting for her husband to get in. Ron arrived back late, as usual, but stayed up to talk to her about her conversation with his sister and what she'd learned.

"The fucking prat," he growled, his eyes flashing angrily. One of the many things Hermione loved about Ron was his protective streak, and no one, not even Harry, got away with mistreating his sister.

"Yes, well, what are we going to do about it?" she asked him.

"Besides beating some sense into that skull of his?"

"Yes, besides that!"

Ron sighed. He didn't have seem to have any better a clue than she did.

They lay there in bed, both worried for their friend. "There has to be a reason he's been acting so beastly lately," she interjected. It was the not knowing why that was killing her.

"It's that artifact," Ron told her. "Whatever it is, he's only been all barmy since he saw it."

"Have you found out anything else about it?" she asked him.

He shook his head. "Not a word. But Demeter's been worried about him too. She told me today that he's had something delivered to his office, something he's keeping under wraps. She says that whatever he's locked himself in there with, it was delivered under armed guard."

Hermione's eyes widened. "You don't think he'd have…"

"Of course he would! Murkins and Flitney think he's trying to fix it, even if they heard about the thing from me first, 'cause no one told them it was being moved again. Whatever's causing this whole mess, it's got him obsessed over it, and it's in his bloody office."

"Then we'll have to sneak into his office and have a look at it, then, won't I?" Hermione said, determinedly.

"You're damn right we will," her husband agreed.

She looked at him, her expression grim. "It has to be dark magic, Ron," she told him. "Nothing else could affect Harry so. Something that slowly drives you mad, or isolates you from loved ones so that you're more suggestible to its powers, or any of a thousand other foul things."

"The thought had crossed my mind," he told her. "It has to be destroyed, fully destroyed, once and for all." He scowled. She knew he was thinking of Voldemort's locket.

"Then we're in agreement," she replied, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath.

Soon, she told herself. Soon all of this will be over, and our lives will all go back to normal…

She almost believed it to be true.