Chapter VI
Comfort / The Decision
Disclaimer: I've made absolutely no progress on acquiring sole ownership of Harry Potter since the last update. Drat. Foiled again.
Author's Note: Thanks for the birthday wishes and the positive reviews everyone! Apologies for throwing you a curveball with that last one, but hopefully it should be starting to make more sense... All will be revealed, in the next chapter especially.
Heh, so by now it should be obvious that Dumbledore was a red-herring. Sorry, folks! It's all for the best, though—it's much more dramatic, this way, and frankly I take the same stance on Manipulative Dumbledore as I do on Weasley Bashing. In hindsight, that should be relatively obvious—just look at my pen name, it's obvious I adore the man.
On with the fic!
Soundtrack Note: Farewell Aragog from the Half Blood Prince soundtrack, and The Invisibility Cloak and The Library Scene from the Sorcerer's Stone soundtrack.
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."
-Albus Dumbledore
The girl ran down the empty hallway, her face red, her breath coming in quick gasps that had nothing to do with exertion. She reached the first door she could find and flung it open with a flick of her wand, pulling the door shut behind her.
Seconds later the portrait swung open and out emerged the boy, looking wildly every which way. There was not a soul in sight, no one there but the portraits on the wall and her, hidden beneath the cloak.
He didn't waste time looking around for long; he started for the nearest door, and sure enough, within he found the girl. She followed him into the room, careful to keep herself concealed.
"Hermione?"
He was staring at the girl. She was sitting on the teacher's desk, alone except for a small ring of twittering yellow birds circling her head, which she had clearly just conjured out of midair. He could not help admiring her spellwork at a time like this.
"Oh, hello, Harry," said the girl, her voice brittle. "I was just practicing."
"Yeah… they're—er—really good…" he replied. He seemed to be at a loss for words.
She rather doubted that there would have been anything he could have said. Certainly nothing that would have made the girl feel better.
The boy was the last person the girl wanted talking to her right now.
Unable to sit there with him in silence, the girl spoke, her voice unnaturally high-pitched. "Ron seems to be enjoying the celebrations."
"Er… does he?"
"Don't pretend you didn't see him," said the girl. "He wasn't exactly hiding it, was—?"
At that exact moment, the door swung open, and the boy stared at it in abject horror as his redheaded friend dragged the slut in by the hand, laughing all the way.
"Oh," said the newcomer, his eyes wide as saucers, his voice like that of a child caught with his hand in the biscuit jar.
"Oops!" giggled the slut, backing out of the room, the door swinging shut behind her.
The silence was excruciating.
She began to regret choosing this particular moment. But it was like watching a train wreck; now that she was already here, her eyes were riveted to the scene…
"Hi, Harry! Wondered where you'd got to!" said the redhead, his voice full of false cheeriness, much too loud in the sudden quiet of the room.
The girl slid off the desk. Her eyes were narrowed dangerously, the tiny golden birds still flying in perfect circles around her head.
"You shouldn't leave Lavender waiting outside," she said quietly. "She'll wonder where you've gone."
Slowly, the girl made her way to the doorway, her movements stiff and formal. The redhead looked relieved to have been let off so lightly.
"Oppugno!" shrieked the girl.
The boy stared in shock as the flock of golden birds rocketed at his friend impossibly fast, screeching at him with tiny, avian fury. The redhead yelped and covered his face with his hands, but the birds attacked, pecking and clawing at every bit of flesh they could reach.
Despite the gravity of the situation, despite knowing the way that everything would turn out, the corners of her mouth twisted up into a vengeful little smile. He really did have it coming, she thought.
"Gerremoffme!" cried the boy, swatting desperately at the cloud of darting yellow missiles, cringing in pain and fear. The girl wrenched the door open, and with a sob, slammed it after herself as she fled the scene.
Still stunned, the boy stared from his friend to the door and back again. With a flick of his wand and a muttering of "Finite Incantatum", he vanished the birds. "Oh, thank you!" moaned his friend, his relief palpable, but the boy was already racing out the door, in hot pursuit of the girl. She followed closely after him.
There was no sign of her. The boy skidded to a halt, then jammed his hand into his pocket, withdrawing a large piece of parchment. Touching his wand to it, he murmured, "I solemnly swear I am up to no good."
With a start, she reached for the Time-Turner, and rolled back the hours. It would be no good for him to see her name upon the map. She made her way to where she knew the girl would be, where he would eventually find her, and outside of time as she was, she knew that the boy would never see her on the parchment.
As she flipped the hourglass back the other way, the girl zipped into the bathroom and into the stall, slamming the door shut behind her with impossible speed. She stilled the Time-Turner immediately; it would be only moments before the boy arrived.
Alone with the girl, she could hear nothing but the sounds of her sobs.
She pitied her. The girl had been put in an impossible position, really. Despite having made it clear to the boy that she refused to hold him responsible for her injuries the year before, he had still pushed her away. Worst of all was the way he stared after the redheaded boy's sister…
The girl wasn't yet sure whether or not the boy realized the way he felt about his best friend's little sister, but she had. And it absolutely devastated her.
Especially when the only other boy who she really cared about, the only other boy she stood a chance with, was such a prat…
She watched as the door swung open and the boy entered, indifferent to who saw him barge into a girl's toilet. The girl abruptly began holding in her sobs, but the boy was not fooled in the slightest. His face was very, very serious, a look on him she normally associated with dueling Dark Lords or outwitting Hungarian Horntails.
"I know you're in there, Hermione!"
"How did you find me?" the girl asked faintly.
"The Marauder's Map. Are you going to come out of there so we can talk?"
"I do not want to talk about Ron right now," snapped the girl.
At the mention of his friend's name, the boy looked briefly as if he wanted to punch the wooden frame of the stalls, but quickly composed himself. "We don't have to. We can talk about Quidditch, or—" he began.
"And I do NOT want to talk about Quidditch, either!"
"—or Arithmancy, or Ancient Runes, or the latest issue of Witch Weekly—"
"I would never read such a dreadful periodical!"
"Look, the point is, we're going to talk about something, at least until I know that you're ok, alright?" The boy looked up the ceiling, exasperated.
"I'm perfectly ok, why wouldn't I be?" asked the girl. The awkwardness of the ensuing silence suggested that even she didn't believe she'd get away with that one.
"Yeah. Right." With a role of his eyes, the boy opened the door to the adjoining stall and closed it behind him, taking a seat.
He waited for her, patiently. That's the one thing the girl hated—and loved—the most about the entire situation: the boy would always wait for her. He endured, and wore her down, and she found she couldn't give him the silent treatment, she just didn't have it in her.
Finally, the girl spoke. "So, what do you want to talk about?"
"Er—I kind of had been hoping you would want to talk about Quidditch—I don't know bollocks about Arithmancy or Ancient Runes…"
The girl laughed, then, despite herself, a bitter sounding thing that did not encourage the boy one bit.
After a moment, he asked her in a soft voice, "How are you really doing?"
"I'm fine, Harry," said the girl. She was not particularly convincing.
"Are you sure you don't want to talk about—"
"Actually, there is something I want to discuss with you."
"Yes?" asked the boy, grateful that he'd gotten her to open up.
"Let's talk about Ginny," she said firmly.
"W-what?" sputtered the boy, all traces of gratefulness gone.
"Does she know how you feel about her yet?"
"Er—if I had feelings for her, other than the completely brotherly affection I do have for her—"
The girl snorted.
"…she's, er, with Dean, anyway. So…"
"She'd drop him in a heartbeat if you made your feelings known. Even if you don't, it's only a matter of time until they're broken up anyway. They're not right for one another."
The awkwardness was particularly excruciating, for all three of them.
"Er—right. Hey, hang on now! If you get to talk to me about Ginny—which, I don't get why you'd want to talk about that, there's nothing there, you're nuts—" said the boy a little too quickly, "then I get to talk to you about Ron. What's going on with you two?"
"There's nothing going on with us. He's with Lavender now, obviously, and that's perfectly fine because we're both allowed to be with whoever we want, it's not like the two of us are together or anything," she sniffed.
But the longing in her voice made it clear that the girl wished otherwise.
The boy didn't know what to say to that. He just sat with her a while, hoping it would be enough to just be there for her. He didn't think she should be alone right now, despite her protestations to the contrary.
"Why are you so upset about him?" he asked after a long while, his voice slow and subdued. "Do you really fancy him that much? Because you're brilliant, Hermione. I'm not just talking about your mind. You're incredible. You could have any guy you want in the entire school—well, maybe not in Slytherin, but any sane guy you want—a bloke would have to be crazy not to fall head right over heels for you."
And there he had come to the crux of the matter. The only one the girl had ever really wanted to be with was sitting right next to her in the next stall over, and she knew that he would never, ever feel that way for her. He was in love with the redheaded girl, and even if he weren't he thought of her as too much of a sister to ever want to be with her like that. Hell, even the prat had decided that snogging with the slut was preferable to being with her, and she'd hoped that her chances with him at least would be better than zero...
Worst of all, she had brought this all upon herself. It was the girl, after all, who had told the redhead's sister that if she wanted the boy, she should date a little, develop her self-confidence, learn to be herself around him… Boy, did she ever regret that decision. Even more so not than not thinking to check that she was adding human hair to her Polyjuice Potion second year…
"So the Quaffle then, that's the big red ball, supposed to get thrown through the hoops?" asked the girl.
The boy laughed. It was clear to him that the girl didn't want to discuss the matter any more, and though he didn't like it very much, he'd respect her wishes.
"Are you ready to go back to the common room now?"
"Yes," came the girl's soft reply.
Together the two friends exited the stalls, avoiding each other's eyes, and trudged towards the door and down the hallway.
She trailed after them, observing. She couldn't help but think that they were both so bloody stupid.
If only one of them had dared to confess the way they truly felt…
So much for that Gryffindor courage.
The three made their way up to the seventh floor, not a word being spoken from the time they left the girl's toilet. When they passed through the portrait entrance, the boy and the girl uttered quick goodbyes and disappeared through the still-raging party to their respective dormitories. Things would be weird between them for the next few days, and then so perfectly normal that privately the girl would wish things had gone back to being weird.
And then the boy would start dating her, and the girl would be inconsolable…
As she had every night after a new moment, she followed the boy up to his four-poster bed to watch over him until morning. She told herself that she was just being thorough—after all, he would hardly assault the boy in the middle of conversing with the boy, right?—but a part of her knew that it was more than that.
Truth be told, she'd come to enjoy watching him sleep.
Except tonight, sleep didn't appear to be on the agenda, at least not right away.
He'd drawn the curtains closed around him with an angry sigh, but hadn't bothered to put up any Silencing Charms. His best mate was nowhere to be seen, probably off snogging the slut, and his other roommates were still down in the common room celebrating. As far as he was concerned, he was alone.
Beneath the cloak, she blushed furiously.
Oh. Oh my. Well, he is a healthy teenage boy, it's perfectly natural…
That was it, then.
She lingered in the room until morning, but the time passed much too swiftly for her liking. She'd run out of excuses, out of chances to delay the inevitable.
There was only one moment left, and she knew he would be there.
And though she knew what she must do, she could admit to herself that she was afraid. Not so much of failing, but of the confrontation. She was afraid of facing him. Afraid of what he would say or do, of seeing how twisted he had become, that he would do such a thing to the boy.
As the early dawn light began to filter in through the windows, she heaved a sigh. It was time to move on. Time to finish it.
Time to set it all right.
She reached for the Time-Turner, started it spinning, and was gone.
Hermione's eyes adjusted to the darkness, and inwardly she wished that she would have remained sightless.
The tip of Ginny's wand was still aimed directly at her, but that was nothing compared to the look the other woman had on her face, her brown eyes filling with tears, staring at her in pain and anguish…
She knew that her sister-in-laws eyes would forever haunt her, and that she would never again be able to close her own without finding herself staring into them.
"Ginny—" she whimpered.
"No." Ginny said starkly. "No apologies. I need to hear the truth from you."
"I didn't know, I swear I never knew…"
For a moment she thought, she hoped, that Ginny might curse her. But instead the redhead just lowered her wand, and somehow it was even worse after that, seeing her wracked with sobs of grief and betrayal, unable to do a damned thing to comfort her.
She was responsible for the other woman's pain.
In time, Ginny sank into the chair across from Hermione's desk, and the two cried together, sharing each other's sorrow.
When finally the last tears had spilled down their cheeks, Ginny looked directly at her and said, with labored breath, "Tell me what you're going to do. Tell me how you're going to make this all better."
"I can't," wailed Hermione, burying her face in her hands. "There's no way out of it. I can't think straight, can't even breathe, it's all just such a mess…" Ginny only waited for her, forcing her to continue rambling on. "…the way he just lay there, traumatized, and there's nothing I can do about it…"
Quietly, the redhead asked, "Do you love him?"
"I love Ron, you know that…"
"Do. You. Love. Him?"
"I DON'T KNOW!" she roared, but the passion belying her words gave both women the answer they needed.
"There isn't any way to fix it, Ginny…" she said miserably.
"There is a way," said Harry's wife darkly. "I know it's crossed your mind, you're too bright for it not to have occurred to you right away."
Hermione just stared at her, eyes bulging. "No!"
"You don't have any choice!" snarled Ginny.
"Please… please… don't ask me to do this…" Hermione begged, her eyes pleading. "You do it, I can't…"
"And you think I can? You really think I could go back, erase it all, make it so none of it ever happened? I'm not able, I don't have it in me. I wouldn't be able to go through with it. It has to be you. You owe me this."
She heard the truth in the redhead's voice, the finality of it, but refused to accept it, backpedaling desperately.
"I'd never even make it, it's impossible, I'd be stopped…"
Without ceremony, Ginny dumped her husband's invisibility cloak on the desk between them. Hermione had never even seen it, clutched under the other woman's arm.
She stared at it, for a long time, and then forced herself to meet the other woman's eyes.
"But… Ron… and the children… Rose, and Hugo… Your own children… How can you ask me to do this? How can you ask me to destroy the lives we've created?"
"Do you think I want this life? Now? Knowing that it's all been a lie? That none of it was ever real?" snapped the redhead. "Do you think I will ever be able to look at him, or our children, the same way ever again? It has to be done."
"There are rules," Hermione said weakly, her last, feeble line of defense against the other woman's furious determination.
"And he broke them first, remember?" She stood. "Don't do it for me, Hermione. Do it for him. You saw what he was like. What it did to him." She moved to the door, opening it, and looked back. "You can save him." And just like that, she was gone.
Hermione couldn't bear to move for a long time after that. All she could do was think about Hugo, and how scared he must be, kept over at his grandparents' without any explanation, any word from her…
How Rose was most likely oblivious to anything being wrong, warm and happy tucked beneath her sheets in Gryffindor Tower…
How Ron was possibly already home, wondering why his wife hadn't yet arrived home from work, or else sitting at Harry's side at St. Mungo's, his face twisted up in worry while he tried to figure out where Ginny and she had disappeared to…
If she hadn't already emptied her stomach, she'd have thrown up again.
Ginny was asking too much of her. She was asking her to give up everything, to erase not only herself, but Ron and Rose and Hugo and everything they'd accomplished together, the home that they'd made together…
She couldn't do it. She couldn't give it all up.
But Ginny's last words kept repeating over and over in her mind, taunting her.
You can save him…
Abruptly she thought of him, not the man she'd seen less than an hour ago, lying comatose in bed, but the boy she'd had a schoolgirl crush on, the boy who'd already suffered so much, endured so many wounds…
What would he have to ultimately look forward to? A life that was a lie, a few years' happy existence until it all came crashing down, utterly ruined, unsalvageable?
Her rage bubbled up within her, and all she could see was red. She was furious with him, furious for what he had done to the boy. A Memory Charm might not be one of the three Unforgivable Curses, but in her book, it was most certainly unforgivable. He might have well have used the Imperius Curse. To violate a child's mind like that, to steal something so precious from him, erase his feelings like that, doom him to a such a miserable fate…
But it wasn't enough. Couldn't be enough. Nothing could be enough, could drive her to lose her children and her husband, the man she loved, yes loved, for she'd meant it when she told Ginny she loved Ron… They'd spent their entire adult lives together, and despite all these old feelings for Harry that had been dug up, she would never willingly give up the life she had built with him…
She didn't feel that way about Harry anymore, she really didn't…
She rose, dully, woodenly. She grabbed the cloak, and shoved it under her arm.
She knew how to resolve this. How to make her decision.
She needed to see what he had seen.
A part of her mind screamed at her as she opened the door and strolled down the hallway, knowing what would come of it, knowing it would be her undoing. You've already made your decision, don't do this…
She realized with a curious sort of apathetic interest that she wasn't entirely conscious of the journey there. She suddenly found herself in a large, darkened room full of empty desks, and started making her way across it. The Auror's Office. She realized as she passed by the few remaining on-duty Aurors working the late shift that she'd already slipped beneath the cloak. Against the far corner was a tinted blue window, the shades drawn, a solid-looking wooden door barring entry into the head's private office…
She knew the wards on it were extensive, and would backfire quite nastily on anyone who tried to enter the room uninvited. But she also knew Harry, knew whom he had admired more than any other man in the world and to whom he would pay homage to in his private defenses.
"Sherbet lemon," she whispered, and the door unlocked with a click and swung open, admitting her.
There it stood in the back corner of the room, next to and behind Harry's desk. It was covered with a sheet, though its shape was so distinct that she realized what it was immediately.
Through the darkness, she made her way to it, tugging the sheet off of it and down, fluttering to the ground, seeing her eyes reflected at her like daggers.
It was the Mirror of Erised.
She had never before seen the artifact, her sole knowledge of it coming from Harry's and Ron's experiences with it in their first year at Hogwarts. But there was no doubt in her mind that this was it as she ran her hand over the ornate frame, squinting in the shadows to make out the inscription that jumped out at her fingers atop the hallowed object.
Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi...
It was broken. Spider-webs of cracks ran across the glass, and the epicenter was all smashed in, as if someone had struck it with their fist.
His hand, she thought, and closed her eyes in understanding. He'd been excited when he'd first heard of the transfer, Ron had told her, taking it over himself, probably remembering what he'd first seen in it as a boy. Only it hadn't shown him what he'd expected, when he'd finally gotten the chance to sneak a glance at it.
He had seen her. The two of them, together, and their children, beaming up at him in the mirror. The life he'd been living had been abruptly exposed as a lie. He'd managed to convince himself, delude himself, into thinking that all was exactly as it should be, and what he had seen had torn that all away from him…
And then, and only then, he had begun to fight the Memory Charm that had been placed upon him, and all had been shot straight to hell.
She saw only her reflection in the glass, multiple facets of her eyes and grim-set mouth in the broken mirror. Harry had really done a number on it.
She held her wand up and tapped it against the glass. "Reparo," she murmured. The cracks changed position, the spider-web pattern shifting the damage all around, but the cracks refused to seal, the mirror refused to mend.
Hermione hadn't really expected it to work, of course. Harry had obsessed over fixing it for weeks, it was hardly as if he'd have neglected to cast a simple repairing spell…
She ran her fingers along the shattered glass again, remembering what Harry had said about how Dumbledore had hidden the Stone, how it would only be revealed to the person who wanted to find it, not use it.
Intuitively, she understood then, knew how to make it work. Harry had tried to fix it, but had of course failed, because he hadn't wanted to succeed, not really. His true desire had been for the thing to remain forever smashed, to try and ignore it and go back to living under his delusions…
Realizing this, she closed her eyes tightly. For her, it was different. She thought of what she wanted, truly wanted to see, and whispered, "Show me…"
There came the crunching sound of fusing glass and a rush of air, and when she opened her eyes she no longer saw the shattered image of herself. Whole, and unblemished, an eleven year old Harry Potter stood looking up at her, smiling…
Hermione's deepest, most desperate heart's desire was not to be with Ron, Rose and Hugo. It wasn't even to be with Harry, not in that way.
It was to see him happy, and healthy, and safe. In the mirror, there was no Dark Lord out for his blood, no nasty propaganda drive by the Ministry to smear his name, no Hogwarts High Inquisitor doing her best to destroy his spirit, no cruel son-of-a-bitch daring to perform Memory Charms upon him…
He was safe, and as happy as she had ever seen him. Her eyes began to sting, and she forced herself to look away from it, knowing that all was lost.
Now that she had seen him, like that, she knew that she would do anything, give anything, to make it come true, give anything to protect him…
"Forgive me," she breathed, then turned around and exited the office, slipping through the department unseen as she made her way to the lift, her movements slow, deliberate, silent.
Hermione thought one last time of Ron, and Rose, and Hugo. Her life with them… it was the way things were meant to be, she told herself. She had to have faith that she would see them again, that it would all turn out that way again.
To the Department of Mysteries, then. She could delay no more. And as she made her way through the level's labyrinthine entrance, the doors revolved all around her, making it impossible for her to turn back even if she had wanted to.
She had to be careful, she thought, as she set out on the first leg of her journey. She mustn't be seen, mustn't be stopped. She couldn't afford to lose this, her one opportunity to make it all right.
Stealth.
Stealth was key.
