I combined Chapters 6 and 7, which makes this the 24th Chapter. E is my co-conspirator, yet again. Happy Reading, everyone.
Ghosts
I was sick of the sea. Sick of hearing its steady crooning outside the old shack, sick of smelling its stench ooze from the cracks in the walls, and sick of the sensation of its currents rocking me whilst its waves garble their nonsense lullaby over the rocks outside. I was seasick, sicker than a castaway with a weak stomach retching over the side of a dinghy he built himself. I could feel it, sitting in my throat. The irony of an empty stomach is that it only wanted to empty itself out even more.
"Merlin…" I mumbled, a hand pressed to my mouth just in case there really was something coming up besides gastric acid and the saltwater I managed to swallow by accident. That's right, the blasted sea was in me too. In me and around me, sputtering unintelligible songs of shanties and shipwrecks, or maybe just making noise for the sake of it. How could I tell the difference? Why would I want to?
I was in the sea for so long that echoes of its currents were still on my skin. The threat of making the place stink worse than it already did had me gulping back bile.
If I hadn't known any better, I'd think that I'd been sitting on the rickety table since I hauled her body onto that couch. But I hadn't. I knew because she wasn't pale and sweaty and shaking her head back and forth, with words between her teeth that I couldn't quite make out above the ringing in my own ears. She was just lying there on her side, arms stretched out and encased with red polka dotted wrapping paper. Perverse little presents only missing their perverse little bows. They were prime return-to-sender material but the fact that I didn't want them didn't mean much in the grand scheme of things. When the day caught up with me and my eyelids finally dipped closed, I saw her shredding the wrappings on her own and squealing in terrified delight, eyes shining with glee. There was a frantic frenzy to see what was inside, even though doing so meant ripping the paper, and herself, to shreds.
I couldn't sleep after that.
—
Letters.
Letters, everywhere.
They were spilling over the mouldy stairs, teetering on table tops, and falling like sand on the couch cushions, infinite and impossible to dust off. The kitchen counter wobbled and wailed from their weight, and Uncle Vernon wobbled and wailed all on his own from the absurdity of being followed by ink and parchment and a large half-giant in a large brown coat, holding the same letter that had overflowed on the Privet Drive floorboards like the tide came in and didn't plan on going back out again.
I didn't know what the Dursleys' did with all those letters after I left with Hagrid, but I haven't seen one since.
"...Gangs of rogue vampires are turning wizards and muggles at alarming rates, the Prophet reports, more on that with..." an antique radio crackled. The way it looked reminded me of the last one we had, but the difference was that it didn't play a single note of music no matter how many channels I tried. Believe me, I tried. I guess there was nothing to sing about lately.
I turned it on ages ago to drown out the ocean outside, but I think bewitching it to pick up magical signals was a mistake. An even bigger one was letting its haunting string of bad news enchant me enough to not cut it short.
"Hermione, what's the last letter you remember getting?"
She stopped rummaging about in the cupboards and her pause was marked by an even longer pause in which everything else stopped with her, including, it seemed, time itself. I hadn't the slightest idea why the universe thought what I said was so important. Either it was conspiring with someone who surely couldn't have been me, or I had upset her yet again.
"Does it matter?" She asked, crushing any anxious excitement coming from the strange build up. I smiled despite myself. Option number two it was.
"I guess not." I replied. Honestly, I didn't see how it would. Not to her, anyway. Still, I wondered. Was it a note from a friend, sending best wishes for a safe summer? Was it something from Flourish and Blotts, advertising their latest releases or telling her to pick up the massive order that no owl would dare carry for fear of falling out of the sky? Was it from me?
What was the last letter I ever sent?
"...clouds of poison unleashed on Little Whinging late last night. Officials are still unable to remove the Dark Mark hanging over the city..."
"There's hardly anything left." Hermione said. Her dejected tone made it seem as if she was reporting on the status of Little Whinging, so it took me a bit to realize that she was talking about the state of this mostly-empty shack. The sentiment would've been right both ways.
Her declaration about the stuff, or lack thereof, was not groundbreaking. It didn't take Moody's Mad Eye to see that there was nothing to see. No food, no books, hardly any clothing. The mantle was free of even the desperate family portraits Aunt Petunia put up in a meager attempt to make the place seem more like home.
Holidays to the South of France, Dudley holding his first fish catch, a shot of Petunia's petunias that she swore up and down she planted with her own hands whenever anyone asked. All gone.
"We ought to get going." And soon.
That's all she'd been saying since she woke up. Well, I guess I couldn't say that for certain. I wasn't too sure of how much, or if, she actually slept. Rather, that's all she'd been saying since she sat up. I'd been watching her since then, intently looking for signs of another manic episode. Signs that she would lose it again and tear into her skin like a kid on Christmas morning. Her arms must not be bothering her too much, or else I would've been hearing about it. Loudly. Over and over and over and 'It itches! It itches!' and — bloody hell she worried me then, and she worried me now. The way she rubbed at the new bandages I had put on and darted her eyes about looking for dark shadows and hollow, soul-sucking mouths wasn't helping me worry any less. She was high-strung. She was tense. She could snap at any moment.
She glanced at me and I glanced away, only slightly guilty about keeping an eye on her in the first place.
"...developing of a magical creature exhibition interrupted by violent wand fight..."
She got to the shelf first and turned the little volume dial on the radio as loud as it could go. Unable to believe my own ears, I tried turning it up even more.
"...Curators were eventually able to get the creatures under control..."
The stale air felt thick.
"...A significant amount of spectators sustained critical injuries..."
I could hardly get enough of it.
"...Ministry officials were found bound, stripped, and murdered in an alleyway not far from the event..."
Fuck. I couldn't breathe.
"...Though initial reports suggest that they were the ones responsible for this heinous crime, polyjuice use is suspected..."
When Hermione turned around, her eyes were wide open, and her shaking hands were pressed to her mouth so that I couldn't see if it was opened or not, like mine was. The gasping sounds gave her away.
"...Citizens are urged to come forward with any information leading to the arrest of those responsible...Breaking overnight, reports of random werewolf maulings are flooding in. Residents of Dirchester are warned to remain indoors at all costs after nightfall..."
The announcer went on. And on and on. Droning as if what he said was nothing more than the musings of a fiction novel. Like it wasn't actually happening.
He was right.
It wasn't actually happening.
It couldn't be.
I hugged her close without needing the prompting, because I'd be a liar if I said that my knees weren't about to give out too.
"We killed them, Harry."
My heart flip-flopped and tripped, skipping a beat or two on the way down.
Killers. She said we were killers.
Shock shook my bones and had my knees knocking even more than they already were. It was a whisper, but I heard her loud and clear.
I remembered. I remembered being in that disgusting hole in the wall, rifling in their pockets and yanking out their hair. I remembered taking their clothes and their shoes and their money like they were my own clothes and shoes and money, money that still sat heavy in my pockets. I even remembered casting the full body binds and the Disillusionment Charms better than I probably remembered them on the day of my O.W.L.'s, and I remembered leaving them there as we walked down the street as their crude impostors.
But I didn't remember killing them.
"We didn't do it." I told her. I didn't remember doing it, so it didn't happen. That made sense, right? We didn't do it, right?
"Yes we did."
Why was she saying that? Their eyes were still blinking when we left.
"That's not true." I said that last sentence. But who was I talking to? Her? Myself? Was I lying to myself?
Who could bloody answer that but me? Is there someone else here?
I didn't remember.
"Yes it is."
Yes what is?
"It wasn't us, Hermione."
Who was I trying to convince?
"We did it."
Who was she trying to convince?
"Stop saying that."
"But it's true."
I wanted to shake her. I didn't remember.
"No."
No.
"We might as well have." Her voice was choked. My shoulder was getting wet with saltwater. The sea was inside her too.
She must've ripped her wounds open again with how tight she was holding on to me. My wounds were also open, though they were the kind you couldn't see.
I still didn't remember killing anybody but she was right, we might as well have.
"...Hundreds feared dead after the Wizarding towns of Eindenburg and Stoneborough were consumed by fiendfyre after a vicious Death Eater attack…"
"Those creatures, they're still trapped." She sobbed. "It was for nothing. They died for nothing."
The Reeds died because we snatched them off the streets to be pawns in our game.
So yeah, they died for nothing.
I couldn't imagine the Killing Curse leaving my lips in that dank little hovel, but for a moment, one small moment, I wish it did. A pulse of alarm swept over me at the thought but it would've been so quick that they wouldn't have even known it was happening, you see. It would've been painless too, or as painless as I could made it. Instead they laid there in that filthy alley for how only Merlin knew how long. Hours perhaps. They were frozen in more ways than one, too stiff to even shiver from the cold. Scared. Defenceless. Alone. Waiting for someone to come along and end their misery.
How long were they dead whilst we wore their skins?
"That wasn't us. We didn't kill them."
I didn't believe myself anymore, but I said the words all the same.
The weight on my shoulders was getting heavier.
Why them? I tried to think through it as best as I could, but there really wasn't a good reason. Wrong place, wrong time. That's it. A few seconds later and they would've walked passed us, unscathed and in one piece, whole and alive and on to the Cirque du Bullshit to do whatever it was they were supposed to do. Maybe they could've done a better job freeing the creatures (and by better job, I meant they could've actually done it), and then no one had to get hurt.
Had their luck always been so shitty? What had they done in their past lives to have come across the worst "Savior" the Wizarding World had ever seen?
Would I have done the deed with his own wand?
Why was I still thinking about the light leaving their eyes?
What's wrong with me?
"They died for nothing." She repeated. I was about to agree with her, but her next words threw me for a loop. "It should've been us."
What—
"—the hell did they do to you?"
I held her at arm's length. I couldn't explain how relieved I was to see the right face looking back at me, and I also couldn't explain the queasiness rising higher and higher as I checked her features just to make sure they were okay, that she was herself. Nothing changed, nothing warped. Nothing jumped out to bite me. I may have been an amateur at disguise but I was an expert on her mouth, her nose, and her shiny brown eyes. It was her. As far as I could tell, it was her.
"Who?"
"The Dementors. What did they do?"
"I don't know what you mean, Harry."
I knew she could make a Patronus, and I was waiting for that otter to come out and play tag with the monsters swimming above our heads. She was smart, she was powerful, and she could take care of herself. Or at least that's what I thought before I had to yank her back down when my lungs felt like bursting and I couldn't wait anymore. Maths was never my strong suit but it could have been dozens of them, all gliding and swooping and being too excited to be there. I had never felt so cold in my life. Since when could they fly over water? If they couldn't do it before, they were doing it then, and what was stopping them from chasing us down the chasm towards the grinning merserpents? A Patronus later and Hermione was sinking like a stone for no apparent reason besides that she had given up all hope.
Her face was slippery with tears but I checked her eyes, pulling her lids this way and that. She still had a soul, I thought. But hey, how was I supposed to know? She just seemed alive enough to me.
I gripped her face a little tighter, just enough so that it didn't hurt.
"What's the only tea we have left in that bag of yours?" I started. She blinked owlishly. Her hands pulled at my wrists.
"Why are you—"
"Answer the question."
It was a test, one she had better hoped she passed. Her eyes hardened.
"Earl Grey. You take it with three sugars."
I relaxed my fingers as she added the extra bit at the end.
"Good, that's good." I muttered. Dark circles aside, she looked as fine as she could be. Besides the scowl, but I didn't reckon she'd appreciate being asked about tea right about then anyway. I rubbed my thumb at a smudge on her cheek, as if that would help. "Don't ever say something like that again."
We would keep fighting against Voldemort no matter what, and she knew that as well as I did. And if anything, it should've been me. Not us, me.
When I tried to wipe her face with my sleeve (which admittedly might not have been the cleanest thing), she dodged me like the heel of my hand was a bludger careening right for her nose.
"Why did you ask me that?" she asked, frowning. I waited for her to launch into her own interrogation, but she just scanned my features, much like I had done hers.
"I had to be sure."
She kept staring. I thought she wouldn't just nod and let me off like I thought she would. I wasn't certain but perhaps she was thinking that I wasn't who I said I was and that I ought to be questioned too because maybe I take my tea with four sugars instead of three. That look she gave me was enough to ponder the details of my own life but instead of reaching for the wand laying against the length of her forearm, she finally did nod.
Her forehead felt cool against my lips. I hoped the kiss I placed there lingered.
Months ago I wouldn't have pictured this, us standing in this shack, holding each other like lifelines. We were so different from when we began. Tests or no tests, we were both doppelgangers of ourselves.
How long had we been wearing these skins?
"If it wasn't you, who killed them?" she asked.
Another skipped beat.
Dragging two conspicuously dressed people into our misadventures?
Mistake.
Not letting them go after realizing what they were?
Mistake.
Not thinking clearly enough to save those creatures?
Mistake.
Being so useless that I had to go in a bloody bag like a bloody prop?
Mistake.
Not working out the chest faster than Hermione?
Mistake.
Not getting her away from the Dementors faster than I had?
Mistake.
Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes, everywhere. Mis—
"Harry?"
"You thought it was me the whole time?"
Her brow furrowed.
"No, us. I said if it wasn't us. Merlin, are you feeling alright?" She raked a hand over my forehead, pushing back my hair and letting the cool air hit my scar, which I didn't realize was burning until then.
"Bloody good question."
Of course that's what she said. Of course.
I was sweating, I realized. A cold, prickly sweat.
To be honest, I didn't know what I heard from what I hadn't.
"They were alive when we left." I insisted, sure of that, if not anything else.
"They were." she affirmed. She was still regarding me curiously but I could still see them blinking, pleading for answers I didn't have. Pleading for mercy. I left them there to rot.
"The goblins took the kids and left changelings in their place." a distraught woman sobbed on the radio. "I just want Duncan back. My son. My only son..."
"You believed everything." She picked up the radio that I'd been staring at for only Merlin knew how long.
"Why wouldn't I?" I asked. She believed it too, didn't see? She was crying, wasn't she? Or was that me? Was I the one crying?
She inspected it, all whilst it obliviously went on about countless, senseless acts of violence. Maybe she hadn't heard about Duncan, that woman's only son. I was an only son once too. Duncan was gone, I wanted to tell her. He was gone, and it was my fault. Mistakes, everywhere.
She seemed to be realizing something whilst she spoke, because her words sped up in that way that meant she couldn't wait to finish her sentence. "It said they were dead, but not who killed them, or how. It said the creatures were contained, but why would aurors perpetuate blatant trafficking?"
"I don't kn—"
"Listen. Listen to what you just said. You don't know. "
The 'I don't know either' was implicit, hanging between us in the air, as if to say that if she didn't know, then it was okay for me not to, too.
As usual she had not one point, but several.
If—no, since—it wasn't me, who actually did it, and why? I bite back the guilt rising in my throat and the incessant voice in my head chanting 'Killer, Killer,' as airwaves filled with more tales of suffering happening because the only thing Wonder about me was the wonder of why I was Chosen in the first place.
Did they torture them first? Did the Reeds, or whoever they were, give us up?
Couldn't we tell the difference between aurors and Death Eaters? Was there a difference anymore?
What did we know?
'Killer'.
I used my own sleeve to wipe my own face.
"...Dark artefacts were stolen in Knockturn Alley last night after a looting that left three dead and—"
Hermione flicked it off.
"We ought to get going."
And soon.
I was sick of the sea anyway.
—
It wasn't snowing but the dirt was frozen under our feet as we stepped over and on the weeds that somehow decided that they would grow where they grew, winter and common sense be damned. They crunched and snapped when we passed, since the same ice water in their veins that made them stand so straight was the very thing that made them so fragile. The hard-packed earth contrasted so oddly with the silt and sand and easy give of water that I noticed how weird it was to actually be walking after swimming for so long. We managed, despite the stubborn holes in the ground that figured we'd look much better flat on our faces.
We were in field in the middle of nowhere, which is where these sorts of things tend to happen, if memory served me right. There was nothing for miles but scavengers and giant bits of yellowing sky that casted everything in this sickly pale morning light that should've made me feel awake, but didn't. What I felt was the material of my trousers, stiffened with salt that Scourgify after Scourgify couldn't get rid of, rubbing against the sore spot on the ankle that I knocked against a particularly solid part of the ship whilst escaping its guts. What I felt, was the gnawing hole in my stomach from having hardly anything for over a day and the resulting jelly-like sensation in my legs when the soles of my boots met the ground.
What Hermione felt, I couldn't say, but she didn't look much better off. What I could tell was that she was eyeing an odd little house coming up ahead, with an odd little look on her face that meant she thought it odd how odd it looked sitting out here on its lonesome. The rough patchwork of stone bricks overarching on the awkwardly sloping foundation must be rubbing her the wrong way somehow, because it was noticeably the work of someone building by hand and 'why would a perfectly capable wizard not use magic?', I could imagine her asking. Or at least that's what I was wondering. Light peeked from behind the windows even though the curtains were drawn so tight. I could tell that she was trying her best to see beyond the fabric and into the place we might soon be sitting.
The wood of the door scrapped against my knuckles like sandpaper. I stopped rapping on it just because it shook so much when I did that I feared it would fall off its creaky hinges with one more knock.
When it didn't open immediately, Hermione and I gave each other a sideways glance that said that if no one was home we ought to get going again. But, neither of us moved and not because we didn't have anywhere else to be, but because none of them would give us as many answers as this one.
I raised my hand to knock again, knuckles bracing for the rough impact of skin on oak, but it never came.
"Harry Potter?"
A voice rasped in astonishment.
"Yes." No glamour, no gimmicks, no polyjuice, no charms.
An odd little man appeared through a tiny sliver of an opening, gripping onto the door so tightly that the pinks of his unclipped fingernails bleached white. He was hunched over and peeking across the threshold as if whatever he was imagining zooming above my head would sneak in through the crack. I thought perhaps a password was in order (one that I definitely did not know, mind you) but the door groaned at the strain of being opened just a bit more.
"Ms. Granger, too? Good, good. Ah, where is Ronald?" He peered over her shoulder, this way and that, perhaps figuring that the tall, gangly redhead could somehow be accidently hidden by Hermione, who was shorter than me, let alone Ron.
"Not here." She said, giving the obvious answer.
She pulled at the ends of her coat, trying to ward off the persistent chill that was cutting through the air. I stepped nearer almost without thinking. Almost, because instead of putting an arm around her shoulders like I wanted to, I settled on just letting the back of my hand touch the back of hers and trusting that the tiny bit of warmth made a difference.
The less people that knew about us being an 'Us', the better.
"I see, I see." The straggly blonde locks spilling over his weary, lined face were unwashed and unkempt, and I only noticed because they were hanging about his glossy, flitting eyes. Again, he made no move to open the door any wider. By then we had been standing on his steps for far too long, listening to his fingers drum incessantly on the side of the door he still held onto for dear life.
"Sir, some food. If you can spare it…"
"Yes. Yes, of course." He looked over our shoulders one last time. I didn't bother looking too because the space behind me was as empty as the one above my head he was fixating on earlier. "Watch your step."
Xenophilius Lovegood ushered us into his house so fast we didn't have time to wipe our feet on the crooked welcome mat. He shut the door with a quiet thud, and the next thing I heard was the scrape of the deadlock sliding into place.