Chapter 53: Wednesday, November 12, 1980
"I am sick of haunting myself from within like an old house."
-Erica Jong, "Bitter Herb"
Autumn was rapidly fading into winter and the moment November hit, the trees became barren and the sky grey and gloomy. Hermione sat at the table, sipping her steaming tea and staring out the window, lamenting the loss of her flowers and lush greenery in place of frigid looking stalks of dry, browning plants and the oak tree that was now freed of its leaves.
Hermione always appreciated the morning hours when the world was still and quiet. That was really the only thing she liked about winter, the peacefulness it seemed to bring. The cold she hated, she would live forever in warm spring air if she could, but that was due more to her knowledge of what it was to be frozen solid from icy windstorms while living between the makeshift walls of canvas for the better part of a year. The kind of cold that chilled to your bones, and barred a person from getting warm no matter how close they sat to the fire or how many layers they wore.
It was something she really loved about Remus. He always ran hot, compared to the average witch or wizard. His resting body temperature was almost a full three degrees higher than hers, and the closer to the moon it got, the more it rose. It was astounding that she could curl into his side and feel warm and comfortable and safe. Feelings that were so hard to find for so long, so rare to come by over the years, and it just happened to be bundled up in the form of one man.
"Good morning," Remus said, his voice still thick with sleep as he entered the kitchen. He was wearing only pajama bottoms, his chest and feet bare, as he scratched at the back of his head and yawned. "You're up early. We went to bed rather late, I thought you'd lie in."
Hermione gave a small shrug, sipping at her tea. "Guess I didn't need the extra."
Remus looked up from the mug he was filling, his eyebrow tugged up as he smirked. "I'll have to work harder at it next time."
Hermione chuckled, shaking her head as she pulled her attention back to the window. She watched as a little chipmunk raced through the shrubs, its cheeks fat with seeds as it reached its destination, and disappeared. Truthfully, it hadn't been that she didn't need the sleep. Remus had certainly made it his life's mission the night before to ensure she would be exhausted by the time they had finally collapsed in a heap of sweat soaked limbs on the bed. It was her own mind, as always, that roused her before the break of dawn and brought her to this contemplative spot for the last two hours.
Absentmindedly, she fiddled with the ring on her finger, a habit she had formed rather quickly and found it almost grounding in the way it rubbed against her skin. She sighed and took another sip of her tea. No, it hadn't been that she didn't need the sleep, it had been the memories that continued to seep into her head.
The high pitched shrill of Voldemort's voice died in her head and quickly they made their way from the boat house to the Great Hall, passing limp bodies of friend and foe scattered amongst the courtyard. Ron was sprinting, the closer they got, he needed to see his family. Hermione understood that, her chest felt heavy with the loss of Fred, the wall that had been blown up behind him gave him no chance as it rained down crushing bits of stone and centuries of magic.
And then there was Snape, of course. She had never really liked the man, he was always cruel and unfair, which she thought was frustrating considering he was actually a good teacher. He was amazing at his craft and he taught them well… When he wasn't going out of his way to bully them. But the look in his eyes as his mouth filled with blood and he gargled his last breath.. She was certain that would haunt them all for the rest of their lives. And now the memories he had given Harry, swirling in the phial that he shoved into his pocket, she wondered what they contained and knew Harry meant to find out as soon as they reached the castle.
Harry took her hand, his own still sticky and wet with Snape's blood. He was filthy in every sense of the word, but then again, she supposed she probably was too. Idly, she wondered when the last time she had given her hair a proper wash, she was certain it had been far too long. With so many of them staying at shell cottage and there being only one bathroom, showers were limited and quick and her hair alone took more time to wash then the five minutes allotted.
They entered the castle and Hermione watched as Professors and Order members alike brought body after body into the hall, lining them up on the floor for loved ones to claim— to mourn. She stopped walking, stood in the center of the entrance and stared around. She saw a clan of redheads sobbing over a body in the corner and decided she would give them space to grieve as a family. Her eyes scanned the floor nearest her, as the injured and the survived found their friends and loved ones and held them close, crying into their unmoving chests.
"Wotcher, Hermione," Tonks' voice rang behind her.
Hermione jumped out of the way as she and Charlie brought in a stretcher with the small frame of Colin Creevy resting on it, his eyes closed, chest still. It was only after they had moved past her and gotten lost amongst the throng of people in the center of the hall, did Hermione realize that Harry had let go of her hand and slipped away. She had just made up her mind that she would go let Ron know that she was going to find Harry, even though she was certain he was in the Headmaster's office, when a set of shabby brown robes caught her eye.
She swallowed, her chest feeling tight again as her feet moved forward. They felt heavy as lead and her stomach felt sick, possibly from the lack of sleep, lack of food, and the amount of physical exertion in the last few days.. But she doubted it. The closer she got to the shabby brown robes, she noticed the many patches and the toe of the shoe that was wrapped in spell-o-tape to hold it together. As she approached, she realized it was the only person who didn't have someone to mourn over them.
One of her favorite Professors, her mentor, her friend, had no one to claim him. Remus Lupin laid unmoving on the floor, a body in the same state on either side of him. She could see his eyes staring up at the ceiling, unmoving. The usual brilliant jade bright with amusement and ribboned with swirls and flecks of gold dulled to a dusty shade of forest green that knew no humor. His scarred face was slack, incredibly pale and his slightly parted lips were a strange shade of blue. She knelt next to him, her knees pressing into his side as she slowly reached up, her hand hovering over his face a moment. Her nose twitched as her eyes filled with tears and she sniffled, finally pressing her fingertips to his eyelids and pulling them down, closing his eyes for the last time.
Her hand slid to his forehead and she shoved his greying sandy hair from his face, bending low to press a kiss on his forehead. His skin still felt warm to the touch and she thought that he mustn't have been killed long before. Most of the bodies laying in broken heaps side by side were probably still warm. The thought made her stomach flip and she swallowed back the acrid taste that crept into her throat.
"No one should have to die on their own," she whispered. "And I know Harry will be devastated, but he's not here right now. I hope I can make for a proper stand in for him. You finally get to rest now," Hermione swallowed, her hands leaving his face to rest on the tops of her thighs as she took a shaking breath. "Say hi to Sirius for me, would you? And I promise I'll keep your books organized."
She gave his hand a squeeze, the tears finally spilling over her eyes and tracing down her face. To face a life full of so much pain only to die fighting for the freedoms of people who would rather see you miserable or dead than on their side. She sniffled again, and finally pulled her hand away from his, pushing up to her feet. She felt a sharp prickle on the back of her neck and she rubbed the pain out, another ache of sleeping on camp beds for a year. She offered Remus Lupin one last look before turning to find Ron and his family.
When she woke up this morning, after having this particular memory push its way into her head for the third time this week, she checked to make sure Remus was alive. When she had been thoroughly appeased by the sounds of his soft snores and the rapid beat of his heart against her ear, she decided to carefully untangle herself from him and make a cuppa. She realized that as these memories surfaced, rarely did she try to process them. Instead, she shoved them to side once she filtered through them for any prevalent information that could help her or the Order without completely breaking her Vow.
This morning had not only come with the heavy memory of the death of the man she loved, but she had trouble summoning the coffee press. It was wedged into the back of the cabinet and instead of climbing on the counter to get it out, she used a summoning charm. The same charm she had been using for years, a charm that had never once failed her, yet—she couldn't get it to work. She had even checked to make sure she grabbed her wand and not Remus'!
Hermione decided that it had been a little over a week since she had checked her levels and as she decided on tea instead, putting the kettle on the hob and moving to her current spot by the window, she performed the spell to check her levels and a different type of heaviness pulled deep into her belly.
The runes that hovered in a gold light were translated to numbers which then translated to a percentage. It was a complicated formula that took them weeks to figure out, but she had been thankful when they finally had. Magic was rarely at one hundred percent; Hermione speculated that maybe a young child exhibiting magic for the first time up into their first year of Hogwarts would be the only people that had a level of one hundred. Most adult wizards that she knew lingered around the eighty-five percent mark, daily wear and tear, years of magical battle… It wasn't unheard of for these levels to be that low.
However there were exceptions, of course. For instance, her own core usually remained around ninety-two percent. Until she took in the curse, and her magic had dropped a few points with each passing month. It had yet to dip below that eighty-five percent mark…
Until today.
When she brought the runes up and calculated them quickly in her head, she had ended up finding a piece of spare parchment to actually scratch down the formula and make sure she was right. Her core was sitting at eighty percent, and she had trouble with a simple summoning charm.
She had spent the next thirty minutes performing different feats of small and mundane spells to things a little more intricate. She tried another summoning spell, and it had worked just fine. Perhaps it was just stress, and while her magic had dipped quite a bit since the last time she had checked her levels, she felt fine. And it was working fine now, so she was probably just overreacting.
"You're starting to smoke at your ears," Remus said, pulling the chair out next to her and sitting down, leaving one foot planted on the seat so he could use his knee as an armrest.
"I'm fine," she said, pulling her eyes from the window and giving him a small smile. "Just tired."
"So you did need the lie in?"
Hermione laughed, "Yeah, I suppose I did."
Remus' foot fell to the floor, his hand reaching out to grab hers. His eyebrows pulled together, a crease of concern carving into the space between them. "Are you sure you're quite all right?"
"I'm-
"Don't tell me you're fine, please. I can tell you aren't. Was it another nightmare?"
Deciding that it was easier to just say that she had had another nightmare rather than admit to the nightmare being his death or the fact that her magic had dropped significantly for no conceivable reason, she nodded. "Yeah, just another nightmare."
"Can you tell me about it?"
Hermione swirled the remainder of the tea in the cup and then swallowed it down. "It was a memory."
His face fell, knowing she wouldn't be able to talk much about it. His head bobbed in understanding and his hand engulfed hers again, the pad of his thumb tracing circles into the back of her hand.
Thursday, November 20, 1980
Hermione entered her home alone after the meeting. Remus had been whisked away by Dumbledore, once again, and apparently it was urgent he meet with the werewolves in Poland before the New Year began. Dumbledore and Moody seemed to be under the impression that the infiltration of the Ministry had now moved past just securing different departments to gain control of the MLE, but it was believed that the Death Eaters that were undercover were now using the Imperius curse to influence the Minister's personal staff. Tensions were growing ever tighter and it was a game of hurry up and wait that Hermione had become extremely familiar with over the years.
Remus had caught up with Hermione before she left, gave her a long kiss and promised he'd be back shortly after the full moon, in one piece. She nodded, trying to push down the sour feeling in her stomach and watched as he Flooed back to Hogwarts with Dumbledore to collect his portkey to get him there and back.
She rummaged through her night stand, pulling out the necklace and blade and sat on the edge of her bed. She stared down at the items, wondering, as she did every month, if she shouldn't just leave well enough alone and let herself slip back to her own time. She sighed, shaking her head. No, she couldn't disappear without saying goodbye to Remus. That was cruel and she wouldn't just leave him behind like that. She pressed the blade to her palm, dragging it over the skin and then clutched onto the golden stone, whispering the incantation of the ritual and steadying her breath of the strange feeling that overtook her, the stone glowed in her hand and her body felt warm, her head dizzy for a moment as the air left her lungs.
When the buzzing in her ears faded, she closed the blade and the stone back into the drawer and changed out of her clothes and into one of Remus' worn jumpers and a pair of fluffy socks. She stepped into the spare room to grab the dittany she kept in her medical bag to heal her hand. As the liquid sizzled against her skin, pulling a sharp wince from between her teeth as it always did, she moved into the living room and curled up in her chair with a throw blanket and Antonin Dolohov's journal.
She pulled her pen from between the pages of the last curse she was looking over and unfolded the parchment she had been scribbling notes and formulas on. She had decided that a potion antidote was clearly not going to happen anytime soon. Hermione had asked Sirius and James what they knew about the Fountain of Fair Fortune and much like Remus, it was nothing but folklore and children's tales.
So instead, she began doing what she did best—she broke it down to logic. She had started taking the curses and deconstructing them to see how they worked, what the equations were to build the spell in the first place, what formulas were used to give the wand motions and exactly how much of the spell relied on intent versus skill.
So far she had come up with a formula for three of the curses, and she was confident if she kept at it, she may be able to dismantle the intricacies of the more complex curses and eventually figure out a counter curse. At this point, it was the only practical thing she could do that made sense. She and Draco had been so sure when they found the journal that the potions would work as antidotes and the more she researched the ingredients and tested a few fair of them, she discovered that while some of them offered antidotes, most of the potions were just the properties of the curses in the form of a potion.
Just one more thing to add to the list of monumental blunders thanks to lack of foresight and planning and research for this little trip to the past. She rolled her shoulders and began breaking down the latin on a particularly nasty curse that seemed to cause a severe bout of hypothermia. It was easy enough, use a combined theory of numerology from arithmancy and convert the letters to their numerological integer and once that was done she could input them into a formula and reverse the flow of numbers. It was really just the magical communities version of advanced algebra, and she had become incredibly grateful over the years that her mum had insisted that she learn muggle maths and science in her time spent at home. She knew that the Hogwarts curriculum would not have gone as deep as she needed it for something like this.
The idea here was simple—figure out the smaller, less complex curses and move her way up to the more complicated ones. With any luck, she would be able to deconstruct the one that was currently attempting to drain her magic.
Hermione was frustrated. It had been a year and she had hardly any issues and now, all of the sudden, she had issues with spells randomly. Just the other day it took her twice to light the fireplace with a simple incendio, the spells always worked, but it seemed that at random intervals she could feel her magic slip. With it now, officially less than a year before she would have to depart back to 2001, Hermione had decided to utilize the time she had while Remus was on assignments instead of moping about the house. She had to figure this out. She needed to have something of use to take back with her. A transformation felt inevitable at this point, but if she were able to have a start, a lead to explain to Draco and Harry upon her return, perhaps they could figure it out.
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a/n: Hey everyone! I hope you liked this chapter! Please leave behind a review and let me know! 3
xo
