Part 2, Chapter 10: Hope Springs Eternal
30th December, 2010, 6:20 p.m.
Hermione fell on the chair with a sigh. "The orchard's gone," she said. "They burnt it all down. Got through all our protective spells, everything. Nothing left." No one said a word. "So much for great big well-trained Auror man."
"Still within the plan," Ron offered weakly.
"No, it isn't. It's been twenty-four hours. They've been in the orchard at least ten hours ago. I'd say twelve. That was the last resort. If he had to give them the orchard twelve hours ago and we still haven't heard anything..." she shot a glance at the stone on the table. It was completely red.
They had used the Gemini curse on the Azkaban stone, and bound them together. It was the same process that the Ministry used, and Hermione had no problem at all figuring out the spells. When Harry had activated the Azkaban stone with his wand, the copied stone on the desk turned blue. Once the stone could no longer allow them to Apparate, the stone on the table turned red again.
They took turns, watching the stone. It had not turned blue once.
"I don't think he made it," she said quietly. "I'm sorry."
The man in front of her, the one who wasn't Ron, picked up the stone and stared at it. "We can't give up," he said, more to the stone than to her.
"There's nothing else we can do."
"Harry went there so that - "
"Oh, don't give me that! He went there for one reason only, Ron. So that the two of you could leave and go back to your - to your - " To your paradise, she almost said. "It wasn't because of us."
"But if he succeeded, you would have got so much from it," he said.
"But he didn't succeed." Neville had joined the conversation. In his calm, measured way, he sat down next to Ron. "Look, Ron, there's nothing I would like to do more in the world than march in there and get rid of Malfoy and get Harry back. It's not going to happen. If we go there like that, without him activating the stone first - that's suicide. That's not some million-to-one chance mission that's going to succeed against all odds, some romantic fairytale where the good guys win. That's not going to happen. There's no chance of success if we walk in there like that. It would be suicide. Clear and simple. Might as well get your wand out and ask one of us to cast the Killing Curse on you, it'd be faster and much less painful."
"So now what? You're giving up?" Ron's voice was full of disgust.
"We're not giving up," Neville said, his voice now gentle. "We never give up. We'll lie low, another five, six months, let Malfoy think we've given up... then we start all over again."
"You mean you'll fail again."
"Perhaps," Neville was much too reasonable and patient to Hermione's mind, but she didn't interfere. "Perhaps finally we'll find the way to beat him. The one thing we can't do is give up."
"You are giving up, though. You're giving up on Harry."
"He knew the risks," Hermione said flatly. "And he's already dead."
Ron looked at the stone again. "Imagine... you remember the battle?"
Hermione and Neville exchanged looks. Then she nodded, and Ron continued. "There's fighting everywhere, and people are dying, and Fred's already dead, and Remus and Tonks and Colin Creevey..."
"I remember," Hermione said, her voice choking. Why was he talking about this? Why did he feel the need to remind them of that cursed day now? Just to make them feel as bad as he was feeling?
"Imagine him showing up all of a sudden, all the Death Eaters behind him." She didn't need to imagine. She remembered that day, a dozen years ago, as if it were yesterday. The anger on Voldemort's face, how terrifying he looked! And the jeering Death Eaters behind him.
"He's terrifying," she said.
Ron nodded. "You see him, those red eyes, that snake face, and he's walking there, he's not even afraid of any curse, he's not afraid someone will get him, he knows he won." Ron considered his words for a moment, then continued. "And Hagrid's with them, they've got Hagrid, they got him tied up, and in his arms he's carrying a body."
Hermione shuddered now. That, she did not remember. That did not happen in her world.
"And he says, 'Harry Potter is dead!'." Now Ron took the stone, threw it once in the air, then caught it. "And then we all... we all started fighting again. He tried to stop us from fighting, and then Neville killed the snake and he couldn't touch him and we fought, we knew we were going to die, we knew it was over, but we still fought."
"We fought, too," she whispered. "We really did."
Ron paused, then put down the stone on the table and looked at her. "And then you hear it, this familiar voice casting a Shield charm to stop Bellatrix from killing my mother. And it's Harry. And he's alive. Despite everything. And the next thing you know, Voldemort's dead." There was wonder in his voice, amazement in his eyes, as he said those words. She closed her eyes and willed herself to imagine, imagine it was her Ron, so full of hope and happiness and so whole and that what he told her had really happened.
She couldn't do it.
She opened her eyes again and shook her head. "That's your fairytale," she said. "This kind of thing doesn't happen in this world. In this world there are no last minute miracles, Ron. I'm sorry." She got up. "He's dead," she said again and left the room.
Neville moved to sit next to Ron. He hesitated for a moment, then put his hand on Ron's shoulder. Someone else sat next to him - Harry. the other Harry.
"You called it," Ron said bitterly. "You told him not to do it. You were the only one."
"I wish I was wrong," Harry said.
"You think he's dead, too," Ron said, as if it was Harry's fault. Harry didn't seem to mind, though. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded.
"I hope he's dead," he said.
"Hope he's dead? Hope?"
"We have no way to get in there," Harry said. "Hermione wasn't wrong, not about that. And he... he said it too before he left. Don't you remember? That was the only way any of us had of getting into the Ministry. We can't go after him."
"And you think he's better be dead than alive in there," Ron said bitterly.
"You don't know what it's like in there," Harry whispered. Ron averted his gaze, sought Neville instead. He couldn't quite look at this Harry, not now. "I should have stopped him from going."
"Fat chance," Ron said. "Once Harry convinces himself to do something, nothing you could say will change his mind. Stubborn git."
"Sounds familiar," Neville said and smiled weakly.
But Ron wasn't amused by the joke. "I can't stay here," he said, his voice full of despair. "I can't stay here. And without Harry..."
"I know," said Neville quietly. "I know. I'm sorry."
Harry didn't say a thing.
Upstairs, Hermione found her own Ron. The door to their room was open, and he was sitting on one of the beds, staring at the door - listening in on the conversation below, she thought.
"Hey," she said quietly and went to sit by him.
It was the same room they used to have in this old house - years ago, before they were forced to abandon it. The signs of the Death Eaters and time showed all over the place. The blue paint on the wall was peeling. She had spent hours painting this room just the way she wanted it to be, just that shade of blue. Ron didn't understand then why she insisted on painting it the hard way, instead of using magic, but he joined her efforts anyway. The small bedside table was gone. Broken, she thought, when the room was searched. Their photographs, too, were gone. They had found them on the floor when they returned to the house, their frames shattered and the photographs themselves torn and dirty. She offered to fix them by magic, but Ron just threw them away.
It was a part of the old life, he said. She didn't see much of a difference, but he did. Perhaps there was a difference. They had left that house a day after Voldemort had died. After they had killed Voldemort, they came back to this place as victors. They were sure everything was going to be alright. When they had left, not twelve hours later, they were already running for their lives again.
Maybe he had a point, after all.
"You don't want to go downstairs?" she asked now.
"He's too - weird. Well, no, he isn't. But it's weird. Seeing him."
"Is it that much worse than seeing Dumbledore again? And Sirius, and Remus..."
"You have no idea. Yes. Yes, it is. It's..." he shook his head, as if trying to shake off the feeling. "It's just completely bizarre. He looks just like me. He is me."
"No, he isn't," she said quietly. She thought of the other Ron's words. "Not in the way that really matters."
"I'm sorry. About yesterday. I was being a prat."
"It's okay," she said quietly.
"It's just... I can't help thinking - we came back here for this?"
"I know," she said.
"In that other world, right now, my mum's making dinner for everyone. And George probably got out of bed, Ginny said he was getting better. And maybe Dumbledore didn't tell her we were gone. She's probably looking right now at the door, or at the fireplace, waiting for me to show up." He put his arm around her shoulder. "They must have celebrated when Voldemort died," he said softly.
"Yes," she said.
"What do you think they did?"
"Ron - don't."
"Probably had a day off for everyone. Celebrating. Everything closed, maybe except for the Leaky Cauldron or the Three Broomsticks - or you think the Hog's Head? I bet people didn't even mind going into Ab Dumbledore's pub for this." His arm was pressing into her shoulder, squashing it. He didn't realise he was doing it, she could see it in his eyes. He was miles away.
"Ron - "
"And mum told me once that the first time Voldemort was gone, when he came to Harry's house, Dedalus Diggle had cast a spell of shooting star. It should be pretty complicated, but I bet he did it again. Shooting stars, all over England."
"Ron."
"That must be nice to see."
"Don't."
He blinked, then looked at her. He must have sensed the pressure now from his hand, as he withdrew it from her shoulder and instead held her hand. "I wish we could see it," he said. "They must be so happy."
"Yeah."
"What about him?" he didn't have to explain who he was talking about. Hermione shook her head.
"No sign," she said. "And he told them about the orchard."
"Well, that's why we left the orchard," he said, and sounded so much like the Ron she had left below that she wanted to scream.
She didn't scream, of course. She said her words levelly and calmly. "He's dead, Ron."
"You said that to the other Ron. Downstairs. I heard you." He took a lock of hair and moved it behind her ear. "Why is it so important to you that he gives up?"
"He shouldn't have hope that he's alive," she answered. "He'll just die faster. It's awkward to have the both of you here, it's awkward for me as well, but I don't want him... he shouldn't die because of it."
His hand stopped playing with her hair. Instead, he fully turned to her and studied her in silence for a moment before he spoke again. "What's happened to you?" he asked.
"What do you mean?"
"You're different," he said. "Something about you... you're not the same."
"Don't be ridiculous," she snapped at him. "Of course I'm the same. I haven't come from any... alternate universe - or whatever it is you want to call it. I'm the same Hermione as always."
"No," he shook his head. His fingers traced her face, from her ear to her lip, then to her chin. "Something's different."
"Ron, we don't have time for that," she said shortly. "This place isn't safe. Malfoy's not thinking about it now, but he's going to think about it sooner or later, and by then we should be gone. We need to come up with some plan, somewhere to go, I was thinking maybe Manchester, there's this - "
"What happened, Hermione?" he asked again. He wasn't listening to her at all. "What's happened to you?"
She considered his words. If he insisted something had happened to her - well, Ron of all people would know. He was the one who relied most on her, he was the one who needed her the most, the others saw Neville as their undeclared leader, but for Ron, it was always her, and she - Oh. Now she understood.
"I finally realised you were right," she said. Ron's hand, that had been caressing her cheek, stopped moving. "About everything."
"Hermione..."
"We should have stayed there. What did we come back here for? Parvati's dead, we just sent someone else to his death, and for what?"
"Hermione, don't."
"I'm never going to see my parents again. Even if we do get Malfoy, someone else will take his place. I bet his own Death Eaters are planning his assassination right now. What good is it going to be to us? They probably already found my parents. Or there's no way to reverse the memory charm. And it's been twelve years, hasn't it? They wouldn't know me anymore, anyway."
"Don't. Please, don't."
"And this place," she laughed now, and her laughter sounded so much like Ron's, too much like Ron's. "What are we doing here? What for? The last time anyone cared enough to do something about the Death Eaters, to fight, that was twelve years ago. They won't fight again. We can't do it alone and we're not going to get any help."
"You don't know that," he whispered.
"No, you were right. Didn't you tell me that a thousand times? We're fighting for nothing. We're fighting because we have no idea what else to do. Because we don't want to admit we've lost. We have lost, though. Things are never going to be the same again. Just more dead bodies." Her voice was now loud and clear. She got on her feet at some point, she wasn't sure when, she just knew Ron's hand was frozen halfway into thin air and he was shaking his head slowly, a terrified expression on his face.
"Who's going to die first, Ron? Or rather, I should ask, who's going to die next? We've already had two deaths - we've already had way more than two deaths, Hannah died and Seamus died and now Parvati's dead. And Harry. Who's next? You? Me? Neville? Our Harry? Well, he probably won't mind that much, his entire life's been one big nightmare -"
"Hermione!"
It was Ron, but it wasn't Ron. Ron was still staring at her, his eyes open wide, his mouth opened in shock. It was the other one. And if the Ron in front of her looked shocked, the other one looked nothing short of stunned.
He was standing at the doorway, and he wasn't alone - together with him were Neville, Anthony, Luna and Harry. Padma and Dean were nowhere in sight, but Hermione knew they couldn't be too far off, and they too had probably heard every word.
"Your friend died for nothing," she said to the other Ron now. "There was never any hope. We need to make sure not to follow him."
"No," he straightened up in front of her.
Like his friend, this Ron seemed taller than the Ron she knew, the Ron who was sitting on the bed. He looked life right in the face. Like they did, once, long ago. He'll learn.
His face, though, his face was set in stone and full of cold fury - fury at her, she knew. Her Ron had reasons to be angry with her. She was the reason he came back here, to this hell. This Ron? Nothing that upset him was her fault. Even his friend went to his death by his own accord.
She stared back at him unflinching. "Fine," she said. "Go to the Ministry. Try to save someone who's already dead and get yourself killed in the process. Do as you like."
She turned to leave, but fingers as unyielding as steel grabbed her wrist. He shouldn't have so much strength, she thought. He was still weak, weak from the spell that had almost killed him. "Let go of me," she said and drew her wand. "Or I'll curse you."
"Hermione." Ron again, but this time it was her Ron.
"Stay out of it," she said.
The other Ron let go of her hand. She went to sit back on the bed, next to her Ron - but now Ron stood up and went up to the other Ron.
They stood there, looking at each other. Unlike Harry and his counterpart, it was much harder to tell these two apart. Especially now, as the other Ron was flushed and angry. There was the same fire in their eyes as they stared at each other. She could have let herself forget, she could have made herself mistake one for the other. Red hair and freckles, tall and wiry, even if she could see one of them was more heavyset, one of them had Molly's wonderful food every time he wanted it, while the other had lived on scraps and rumours and false hope for so long it became a second nature.
She wasn't sure what unspoken understanding passed between the two Rons, but when the other Ron spoke, he didn't speak to her Ron, but to her, even though he was looking at Ron that entire time. "I don't presume to understand what you've been through all this time. I don't know what I would have done in your place. And if you've lost hope, then so be it. But I'm not going to. I'm not going to hide in Manchester when what we need is right here in London. I'm not going to run away when my best friend counts on me to go after him. I'm just not going to do it."
"You can barely stand as it is," she said irritably.
"Then brew me up a pepper-up potion, should keep me standing for up to twenty-four hours."
"It's twenty-two hours, you were never very good at potions."
"Yeah, I didn't have to, I had you to copy from."
She snorted despite herself. He finally tore his eyes away from Ron - from her Ron - and walked to her. He sat on the bed next to her and hugged her tight, despite her hostility. In his arms, with her eyes closed, she could just about believe it was her Ron. "Don't do this to me," she murmured in his ear, so that her Ron won't hear. "Please don't do this to me. Don't give me someone to lean on."
"Is it really such a terrible thing?" he whispered back to her.
"Yes."
He would have held her there for as long as she wanted, she knew. She could stay in his arms forever. Except she couldn't. She detached herself from his embraced. He looked surprised for a moment, almost lost. He didn't expect her to turn him down.
"No," she shook her head. "I'm not doing this again. I'm not getting my hopes up again. Not ever again. There is nothing that can happen right now that would make me believe. Ever again."
"I wouldn't be so sure about that."
They all jumped. Ron - the other Ron, who was still weak from the curse - jump up to stand, then swayed and had to grab the wall for support. Her own Ron's mouth opened in shock. Neville looked wildly around. And that voice, she knew that voice, but she never thought she'd hear it again.
Behind Sirius Black, Albus Dumbledore walked into the room. "As Molly is so fond of saying, don't count your dragons before they hatched, Ms Granger." The blue eyes behind the half-moon glasses twinkled.
30th December, 2010, 7 p.m.
They all made it there. All the people Hermione had refused to say goodbye to. Sirius and Dumbledore, but also Remus and Lily, James and Snape, and Ginny, Ginny Weasley, she came there too.
"George wanted to come," she said, "but of course he couldn't. And Fred wanted to come but he didn't want to leave George behind."
"But - how?" was all Hermione could get out of her mouth.
"It took about two hours for Sirius to realise you were gone," Dumbledore said cheerfully. "I'm afraid he was rather displeased with me."
"I think I might have shouted at him for half an hour," Sirius said, and didn't look guilty at all. Hermione laughed.
"I believe it was closer to forty minutes," Dumbledore answered. "And after Sirius had finished shouting himself hoarse, he started talking. To make a long story short, he rather impressed on me how vital it was that we should... return the favour, shall we say. Pay the debt we owe you. We would have come sooner, but I'm afraid it's taken us that long to get the Muggle device to work again. But I see you had some... interesting events to deal with," he shot a glance at Ron - the other Ron, the one who was leaning on the wall, slightly far from everyone else.
They all rejoiced at the arrival of these friends from the past, but Ron's smile had been short-lived. He stared at them in shock - Sirius, and Remus, and when he saw Snape and Lily and James, he almost had to pick up his jaw from the floor. Dumbledore he treated with a mixture of reverence and suspicion. But she knew him, even if he wasn't the same Ron she had known all that time. He was wary and ill and shocked, but Hermione knew he was happy. She could see it from the way he looked at them hungrily, the way he followed their every move, the way he opened his mouth and closed it and wasn't sure what to say but wanted to say something nonetheless.
"And now, we had better find a way into that Ministry of yours, or we're stuck here too," Remus said.
"I wish you'd have come twenty four hours earlier," Ron said quietly.
"Oh, yeah, care to explain how come you ended up having two Rons?" James scratched his ear. "Not to sound odd or anything, but it's greedy of you to have two while we don't have any at all."
Ron - her Ron - started laughing. The other Ron gaped at James. "Is he always like that?" he asked.
"Pretty much, yeah," Remus said lightly.
"They're here from an alternate universe," Hermione explained. "Another alternate universe. I think... from what they said... their end started this. Something happened on their world, and then it affected this one, as well."
Dumbledore nodded. "That would make sense, Ms Granger. Although I wonder - they?"
"Harry."
Dumbledore looked at him sharply, then at Harry. "Where is he?" he asked urgently.
"We tried... it was so useless!" Ron now started pacing up and down the room. "It was so stupid. We should never have let him go. I should never have let him go."
"Where is he, Ron?"
"In the Ministry. If he's - it's been a whole day. If he's still alive."
Sirius shot a glance, not at Ron, but at Harry. Hermione was reminded of Harry, in front of that other Harry, and his words. 'Look at me,' he told him - warned him, more like it. She knew the same thing was going through Sirius's mind.
Dumbledore got on his feet. "In that case, I believe we have no time to waste," he said.
"How are we going to break into the Ministry, though?" Ron asked. "We don't have any way in, not without the stone."
Dumbledore smiled. "Mr Weasley," he said lightly, "when you have me, you don't need anything else."
"He's got a point, you know," Sirius said. Hermione just laughed in amazement. Her laughter was light and free.
"Come on, let's get out of here," Remus said, and they all grabbed their coats.
Hermione stopped for a moment in front of Padma. "Are you up for this?" she asked.
"More than I've been in a long time." There was a defiant expression on Padma's face. Not towards Hermione - towards the world.
Hermione smiled softly. "We're going to win," she said.
"We've got Dumbledore now," Padma agreed.
"We're going to win," Hermione repeated.
"For Parvati..."
"Yeah."
They left the old house with their wands raised, but the explosions that greeted them in the street, in Diagon Alley, were not of their doing. Hermione looked for the source of the noise - and she saw them. Wizards and witches, marching up and down the streets, blasting signs with their wands.
Death Eaters was her first thought - but it wasn't, she knew, it couldn't be. Death Eaters wouldn't march down Diagon Alley to terrorise the people. They had other methods of achieving that. She looked at the wizards and witches with growing confusion, until she recognised the one who marched at the front. She had known the woman through all her time at Hogwarts.
"Madam Pomfrey," Ron breathed next to her. And behind Madam Pomfrey, so many people. "The cavalry's here."
The wizards and witches of Britain were revolting against the Ministry at last.