A/N: Oops - big formatting issues with this chapter - sorry about that. Hopefully this is fixed! Once again, this was a repost to catch the FFNet version up to the one on Ao3. In good news, I've written 27k out of the remaining 35k words left in this fic, so expect an update soon. Massive shout out to Syzygy_Spirit who beta'd this chapter – when you're done here, I strongly recommend checking them out too!
Suggested listening – Rain (Mai Yamane / Female Vocal Version) from the Cowboy Bebop OST.
The multitudinous eyes of Europe's best and brightest gawked at him trying to pull himself together. It was oddly embarrassing to stand there in front of people who combined had more degrees, honours, and accolades than most people had hot dinners. Powerfully scouring to be scrutinised by people who'd had biographies written about them, people who had been published themselves enough times to keep even Hermione busy. People who had actually fought against evil, not just lucked out as a baby.
Pulling himself upright, his back and knees protesting in a way they never would have done during his youthful adventures, he carefully avoided the smashed remainder of a fallen champagne flute. The expensive liquid gleamed in the low party lighting, the bubbles floating on the surface like pond scum on fetid water. Idly he felt guilt about the waste, but the people here barely seemed to notice it. He guessed they could afford it, and then felt bad again because they were probably decent people more concerned about the man fitting on the floor. It took a second for him to remember that man was him.
They stood, muttering, and spoke to each other quietly out of the corners of their mouths, hands covering their moving lips or turning their heads in a poor attempt at concealment. It felt like being back at school, when the other kids would look at him picking himself up after Dudley or his cronies had knocked him down.
Someone from the International Cooperation department was busy shooing the closest onlookers away. Inside of him warring emotions clashed – one side hating the onlookers for their wry, piteous, curious, or scornful glances and the other side irrationally angry at the man trying to move them on. Stupid, but he hated to feel like he ever needed anyone's help. He had never been good at accepting it from anyone other than her.
Speaking of Hermione, he couldn't see her. She was more than capable of looking after herself, but that didn't stop him feeling a low level of background anxiety. That Cooper and his attendants were absent wasn't helping – it was easy for his imagination to run away with any number of exaggerated misfortunes that may have befallen her, even though he knew it was more likely she had sensibly retreated to safety. At least someone needed to get out of here and make sense of whatever ritual or spell they had been perfecting downstairs. She was likely trusting in his ability to look after himself, and if it turned out he needed rescuing after all, he was sure she'd come back for him every time 70% of the time.
Which segued nicely back to his current predicament – he needed to leave, sharpish. What he didn't need was to make much of a show of feigning illness as an excuse to leave, on the contrary the feeling was quite genuine. He wished he'd brought along some of the chocolate from the cell downstairs, his gut churning as it often did after dementor exposure. Still feeling weak, with a lingering chill permeating his bones, he waved off the few people charitable enough to offer him any assistance and staggered towards the exit. The probing looks and whispered judgements followed him despite the music picking back up.
He paused in the hall long enough to retrieve his transfigured coat from the doorman. He would be dammed if he had to requisition another one – aside from the paperwork, this coat had seen him through more cases than he could count. It wasn't a lucky coat, he wasn't particularly superstitious, it was just a bloody good coat. It was warm, and familiar, and loyal. And it had good pockets. Pulling his arms through, he could feel the lingering chill kick up in intensity, and he braced himself. He almost felt drunk, twisting his neck from one side to the other in an attempt to wake himself up, to not submit to the cold and the darkness and the memories that pressed on the edges of his mind.
Cooper strode through the door, a torrent of rain crashed in behind him, with Crouch's bodyguard in his wake. Blonde, as he had christened her, always kept a perfect distance behind him, clearly well trained but for some inexplicable reason she allowed him to enter ahead of her. What bodyguard, for she seemed to have switched from protecting Crouch to Cooper, would allow her principal to lead like that? Every trained instinct in her, if she was even as half as good as she looked, must have been screaming at her to check the room for threats before her charge entered it.
The cold intensified again and the little, whispered screams picked up around him. Swallowing hard, and now with some idea of what was happening, he screwed his willpower up and stood tall, as if defying despair itself. Miserable and wallowing in the past was his usual state, so he could surely tough this out for five minutes. He only had to last long enough to leave.
"Leaving us, are you? So early in the evening?" Cooper inquired, handing his own coat off to the doorman, who for his part was not nearly so affected by the cold. His breath had misted up but did not give the impression of being anywhere near as frozen as Harry felt.
Cooper reached out his hand again, and Harry took a sharp step back. He risked a look around, after all he had no desire to repeat his fainting fit, but he still couldn't see the dementor and all Cooper did was laugh. "And leaving without your companion? I must admit to being surprised; she was not at all what I was expecting."
Harry wasn't sure what he meant by that, but it certainly increased his anxiety. Finding Hermione was definitely top priority now. He should be running to Dawlish or Tonks, for backup and to arrange the rendezvous with Crouch, but why stop letting his personal life interfere with his professional one now?
Once again, he felt that slight pressure against his mental barriers, a subtle feint, just the lightest touch. In his weakened and exhausted state this kind of insidious, skilful manoeuvre was not something he was well prepared for. He slammed the emergency brakes on his brain as soon as he felt it, battening down his mental hatches and securing all those stray thoughts a head accumulates, but he couldn't be sure if Cooper had managed to scoop anything from his skull or not. If he was half as skilled as reputation suggested, Harry would have been surprised if he hadn't managed to pilfer something.
"Nothing to say? I had expected you to be a little more talkative. No pithy comments? No expletives? Not even a cool 'goodnight' as you stalk out into the rain?" His tone was openly mocking, and though it was hardly the worst verbal abuse he had ever been exposed to it was oddly disquieting. He couldn't fathom any reason why Cooper, a man he had never met before this week, should take such an antagonistic stance toward him. There was something of a swagger, some cock-sure manner, that said Cooper wasn't directing his remarks at Dumier, the man Harry was impersonating, but directly at him. Was he that good of a Legilimens that he'd plucked the fact from his mind, without setting off any alarms? And if so, what kind of axe did he have to grind with Harry?
They had never crossed paths professionally or personally, and they were ostensibly on the same side ideologically. Cooper worked for the Ministry and wasn't known to favour any anti-Muggle agenda. Though he had only been young during the war, he had made a name for himself trying to untangle the web of lies surrounding the Death Eaters claiming Imperious curse or other coercive defences. While he could hardly claim any major prosecutorial success, he had quietly campaigned behind the scenes to stop people like Malfoy from getting back into government.
Harry, who rather felt like throwing up, couldn't much see the point in responding. The longer he allowed the conversation to go, the more likely it was the Cooper would find a way past his defences, if he hadn't already. And the more likely he might collapse again. What good was a 'you'll never get away with it' when he didn't know a) what it was or b) if there was in fact anything he could do to stop it. So far all had had done was steal some incriminating paperwork and potentially deprive them of a carved rock. It did not feel like much of a victory to him.
Cooper held the front door open for him, the persistent storm continuing to rage outside blew in a deluge of fat, bulbous rain drops that quickly coalesced into a puddle on the chequered marble floor, "Don't let me keep you. I'm sure you have all manner of important things to attend to tonight."
He hurried through the door careful not to touch Cooper as he went, feeling like a coward until that supressed but easy rage tempted him, gathered him up in its familiar arms. He was angry at himself, which was old news, and angry at the world, which was even older, and angry that nothing was making sense to him. Angry that he was being antagonised, wasn't sure why, and that there was nothing to do about it.
The warm light of the party made his shadow cast a long silhouette on the ground for just a moment, before the door was slammed shut, subsuming it back into the darkness of the night.
The rain lashed at him, as he shielded his eyes behind an upraised arm, leaning into the wind the entire way up the gravel path toward the observatory. It would not be the first time that he had left a party alone after arriving with a woman. Most of the time he'd made a mess of it himself, or more truthfully had unconsciously self-sabotaged, but even for him this was a new one – none of his previous reluctantly agreed to dates had involved him collapsing to the floor.
The rain thudded down into the soil, making a strange slapping noise, the forceful impact of water on the already sodden soil. It could have been a calming, beautiful noise if it weren't for the howl of the wind. He took shelter under the rusted observatory dome, unable to stop himself feeling a self-indulgent sympathy for the decrepit folly, a sort of miserable companionship for the sad old building, purposeless without telescope.
The two whose identities they had stolen for the night were still unconscious on the floor, about the only thing that had gone right so far this evening. He stopped long enough to re-apply the warming charms and to conjure an empty champagne bottle and a pair of flutes. He admitted to himself that the headache hex was probably petty and unnecessary, especially as he'd seemingly blown his cover down at the house, but it made sense to give the pair of them no reason to look further into this evening's events. Hermione's memory charm, his little set dressing, and the headache should be enough to convince them they had overindulged. It might even help explain away why Dumier had collapsed and departed early, something that the party guests would no doubt remember.
Satisfied that Hermione was not waiting for him here, he left the pair of them behind and headed for the church. If she wasn't there he'd try the hotel, and if she wasn't there…well, he wasn't sure yet. Cross that bridge when he came to it. Now dragging one foot after the other, the bell tower in the distance barely seemed to get any closer no matter how he plodded away. It was periodically lit up by a flash of lightning, which cracked and crazed the sky into ever increasing pieces.
Such was the ferocity of the wind that he had to be within a stone's throw of the building before he could hear the dirge of the church's old organ over its violent howling, and even then it snatched the ends off of each note.
He hesitated outside the great church doors, one bolted shut and the other moving in the wind, slamming occasionally into the wall as the wind raced through the missing slates in the roof and screamed out through the archway. He stood, buffeted, swaying on his feet, and strained to identify the music.
The bars he could hear were clearly performed with great skill and confidence but all of them were overdone, played with an extremely heavy hand. The organist must have been slamming the keys into the frame with serious force. The pipes screamed and cried as the bellows were abused, too much air pushed through all at once. Perhaps it was the wind forcing its way through every crevice of the building, but he thought the overzealous musician must have played a part too.
The organ was straining against decades of mistreatment and disrepair. Something was seriously wrong with the pipe work somewhere, as there was a conspicuous absence of notes in the third octave. Harry didn't have perfect pitch, but he had a surprisingly good ear and thought it was missing the ability to produce C, D and E, or some close alternative. Instead, it spluttered and groaned and cut the music into strange ribbons.
The piece finished unidentified and the musician launched straight into another one. This one he did know. Mozart. The one he'd thought of as his own requiem, the one he wrote as he lay dying. He couldn't cling on long enough to finish it, and so Sussmayr did it for him. Harry could never hear it and not think of Mozart's sister-in-law, who later had supposedly written 'the last thing he did was to try to mouth the sound of the timpani in his Requiem; I can hear it even now'. Harry, a man of impressive, if fatalistic, dedication himself couldn't think of a way he'd rather go – doing something he believed in, against impossible odds. Especially not when the alternative was to go lonely.
It should have been played with care, a tender lament whose grief rose and fell. Instead, they attacked it with an indiscriminate fury. It was not difficult to sense their strength of feeling.
He crossed the threshold now with purpose but he didn't even make it more than three steps inside before Hermione shouted him to stop. The music inside was deafeningly loud as it reflected off the thick stone walls. She was hunched over the organ's keyboard, every muscle in her body straining, her shoulders heaving as her fingers crashed down on the keys.
The music stopped, the last chord cut off harshly, "Don't come any closer," she said, not turning to look at him, her shoulders dropping even further over her instrument. She hadn't even changed out of the transfigured clothing, soaked though it was from the rain. Droplets glistened, running down the smooth skin of her back, reflecting the dim candlelight which did not reach to illuminate the great ceiling.
He stopped, slowly, finishing his last step as the thin dust scraped under his feet. "What's wrong? Was it Cooper? Did he follow you?" He frowned, Cooper certainly had the upper hand when it came to sneaking about in other people's minds, but he very much doubted that he was anywhere near Hermione's equal when it came to physicality. He certainly wouldn't rule her out in a stand-up duel either – what she likely lacked in effective combat training she would almost certainly make up for in variety of spellwork and raw speed.
"Hah," she spat, still refusing to look at him, "Cooper's another problem entirely. He followed me outside right after you collapsed, and he was so fast – supernaturally fast. I'm not sure he's human. Whatever he is though, he wasn't expecting me to be just as quick. I lost him in the darkness, but now he knows I'm not sure it would be so easy next time. So, no, not him. My issue is the basement." She gestured toward a tatty bunched up rug, thick with mould, that he had barely noticed the previous times he had been in here, that had now been pulled back to reveal an open trapdoor and a darkened hole.
She heaved out another breath, her hands twitching and curling into fists, before she laid back into the keyboard, starting up again on Mozart, presumably concentrating with all her heart on trying to stay human. To resist the Beast, and whatever dark desires it was demanding she fulfil.
He carefully walked across to the trap door; his wand drawn. A rotten stepladder reached down into the gloom. He dropped down the opening, largely confident that if there was a problem that fighting could solve she would have almost certainly seen to it already. Whatever was distressing her down here was more an existential issue. A mental or emotional problem. If anything, that was more intimidating for him. Harry was used to being an emotional or mental problem, not solving them.
The flicking candlelight didn't reach down here, and so he levelled his wand, ready to imitate that first act of creation so worshipped above in days gone by. Let there be light, he thought, and hoped that he would see that it was good. Knowing his luck, however …
The beam spilt from the tip of his wand and at first he thought the spell was wrong. He blinked at the dusty basement, lit not brightly as expected in white but dimly in red. Like a photographic dark room. It took him that first second to understand there was nothing wrong with the spell at all, and everything wrong with the room. In that second his perspective flipped. It wasn't red light illuminating a normal room, but normal light reflecting that every surface was covered in a red patina of blood.
He stood dumbfounded and sickened. He cast his vision around and tried to make sense of the sight, taking in every detail, treating it like he might a scene on a case.
Item 1. Blood. A lot of blood, much of it well on its way to drying. The smell was strong enough to make him retch, though fortunately he had a reasonably strong stomach. It had probably been here for several hours, as it had fully dried in the areas where it was most shallow and, in his experience, blood typically dries in about an hour or so. Someone had daubed "you are what you eat" onto the wall in red. Thin, red trails dripped down from the bottom of the letters.
Item 2. The blood didn't look like typical, crime scene splatter. It reminded him of a painting he had once seen in a gallery. The artists technique had almost entirely been to throw a bucket of paint at a canvas until she satisfied some esoteric criteria. At the time he had failed to grasp what the artist had meant by it, but anger was the clear emotion on display here.
Item 3. A small cot bed in the corner of the room had been overturned. It looked deeply uncomfortable. The sheets on it seemed to be absent of the mould that had taken root in the plaster, so it was unlikely to have been left over from when the church had been in operation.
Item 4. A number of plastic medical packets were left scattered across the floor, torn open and smeared with blood. More still were stuffed, empty, back into an open cool box at the foot of the cot. The ice inside was still solid and cold, with no sign of melting, suggesting someone had conjured never melting ice. It glinted in his wand light, like diamonds. Appropriate given they were spoilt by spilt, congealed blood.
His conclusions were hardly the stuff of inspired insight. Hermione had been living down here, hiding from the sun during the day. The packets had presumably contained the animal blood that she had been consuming in lieu of human, and someone had emptied the contents across the entire room. A spiteful act.
Distressing for sure, for someone who had trouble controlling themselves around blood. Considering few people would have sufficient motive or the stomach to wipe this much blood over every surface, and the written taunt, that left a small list of the accused. Hermione herself was an unlikely culprit. Harry himself had an alibi (he had been with himself all evening). Leandra was unaccounted for, and as such was chief suspect. No one else knew she was even on the island.
Except, of course, for their mysterious pen pal, who had so far remained anonymous.
Little wonder Hermione was distressed. This much blood was clearly provocative. A visceral reaction, a rousing of the Beast, strong enough that she'd needed to retreat upstairs and try to dissolve herself in the music, one of the things he remembered from her list of things that helped to keep her human.
On the occasions he had been inside her family home, one of the few times on which Hermione's mother hadn't thrown him out in short order, his eye had always been drawn to the piano in the living room. It was nothing special, at least in terms of its pedigree or its construction, beyond the fact it was clearly well loved. The piano was an upright, an old school hall type, and it stood with the stool carefully pushed in and the fallboard closed. It was worn and aged in brown wood, but well-polished and meticulously dusted. There were always fresh flowers in a vase on the lid, but he had lifted the board once to find the dust thick on the keys. He had depressed one, curious, but the note was wrong and flat. It must have been a long time since it had last been tuned.
It was easy to imagine a young Hermione on the keys, her little hands barely able to stretch far enough to play the chords. Her parents must have been delighted and proud.
Now, he knew, her mother hated it. Her father, Clive, told him once she had tried to burn the sheet music, but that he had rescued most of it when she wasn't looking. Hid them in the garden shed, stuffed inside the carefully modelled green hill on the train set that Emilia detested.
From the sounds above, her hammering on the ivory keys, whatever battle she was waging against her inner demons was not going well. The anger he had heard earlier was not abating. It was only the work of a moment to vanish the blood and then to climb back up the rough wooden stairs. The soft wood sagged under his feet slightly, but it at least managed to hold his weight. His head emerged from the cellar, and he rested his crossed arms on the floor, still half in the basement.
She remained hunched over the keys, tensed and powerful, in barely restrained rage. For all that, her timing was perfect, not a note out of place. The old organ was doing its best, but it simply couldn't keep up with her.
Mozart rang around the chapel, and he felt as if he were right in the centre of it, at its confluence. She played for herself, and yet he couldn't help but feel that right in the centre of it was exactly where he was meant to be.
The music paused as she left Confutatis in the third section and approached the most famous part – Lacrimosa. He drew in a breath, and at the right moment joined his voice to her performance. He knew the tenor part from his choir. A group of muggles all, except him, and nothing but amateurs. It had been a surprisingly cathartic experience to pick up a hobby in the muggle world, far from the spotlight of celebrity. The tenor part of Lacrimosa was hardly as impressive as the solo soprano, which always sent a shiver up his spine whenever he heard it. His part was a supporting voice rather than the main event, which felt appropriate. She, and her Beast, were in the spotlight here. A few worthless chords were all he could do to help from the sidelines.
If she was surprised, she didn't show it, only kept playing as if her life depended on it. Now his voice echoed, a little rusty but serviceable, the perfect accompaniment to go with the shonky organ. He persevered, though he had no warmup, prepared to sing himself hoarse if it could help her. The bars came and went, until eventually, and to his great relief, her hands softened on the keys. The harsh notes mellowed into the more gentle, tranquil sound that was supposed to be. His voice hitched, just for a moment, as he considered that the worst had passed. Soon enough the strain had left her shoulders, though she remained fixed to the keys.
He wondered if she would launch straight into the fourth section but was relieved when she stopped. He didn't know the vocals to the rest of the mass. They had never practiced any more than Lacrimosa.
As the last of the music died in the organ's pipes, she left her hands fall to her sides, "Sorry I left you back there. I was pretty sure you could manage by yourself, and I was keen to draw Cooper away from you."
She straightened her back, and looked up at the ceiling, "I never knew you could sing. You have a beautiful voice."
Their voices echoed in the suddenly empty hall, "That's giving me too much credit." He paused, before confiding in her, "Aunt Petunia used to drag me along to her choirs when I was a boy. I hated it, of course, because she was making me do it… but then sometimes I could lose myself in it. Probably the only time in my childhood when I felt part of something. Gave it up after I came to Hogwarts… picked it up again later in life. Made a good distraction." Distraction from the bottle, though he didn't want to admit that to her. Not yet anyway.
Uncomfortable talking about himself, he asked "What about you? You never mentioned the piano at Hogwarts."
"No, it didn't seem ... I don't know. I didn't need to stand out any more than I already did, and there was something nice about having this separation between my two lives. An exciting adventure, where I was learning to bend the world to my will, where I ran at night through corridors with my best friends in secret, and a warm, cozy life I could retreat to if it got too much. I suppose I wanted to keep my parents all to myself, too. But you don't seem all that surprised."
"No. Half of the stories your dad tells revolve around you and that piano. You played that beautifully." It felt weirdly shameful to admit to her that he had been in the same room as her childhood piano after she had gone. Like it was an invasion of privacy. Silly, maybe, but he was already embarrassed anyway at how much he had pinned his life around the wreckage of hers.
"Hah. Thanks, but the piece isn't the same without the strings." She turned to look at him, halfway between the two rooms, "I don't suppose you're hiding a talent for the violin from me too?" Her smile was dazzling, despite the redness of her eyes.
He chuckled, "That's almost enough to make me wish I had, but no, I never learned. Tried one, once. It was Dudley's. Vernon broke the bow when he found me trying to play it. I never touched it again, and Dudley certainly didn't miss it."
"That's a shame," she said, coyly, "You have the right hands for it. Strong, but dextrous." He nearly choked on his laughter, not quite sure how to respond to a statement like that. "Thank you … the singing helped. The music wasn't quite enough on its own, but… I had forgotten what it's like to make music with someone."
She gracefully got to her feet and came to join him, with him suspended halfway between the floors and her sat in the dust, her legs dangling over the edge of the trapdoor, "So what else can you sing?" Her voice nearly purred, as she looked at him with wholly human eyes that seemed to devour him. He held his ground against her vision, wanting to be devoured by her. Did she find talent attractive? That would seem, to him, to be very in character for her. He might only be a modestly talented singer at best, but he didn't care so long as it held her interest.
"I did sing the solo tenor for Nessun Dorma in our charity concert last year," he had been quite proud of that one. Managing the final note to loud applause left him feeling more triumphant than winning most quidditch games, and they had managed to raise a respectable amount of money for a local hospital.
She pushed his shoulder lightly and her peal of laughter was like a tonic to him, "Nessun Dorma? From Turandot? A bit on the nose that one, isn't it? Where beautiful Turandot has her suitors executed?"
His face coloured, he hadn't thought about that. The parallel was uncomfortable for sure – reluctant Turandot, pursued by a suitor who she threatened to have killed if he made even the slightest mistake. It hadn't really occurred to him because they hadn't staged the entire opera, just the one song. "Sorry, I wasn't thinking…"
"No, no, it's fine." She smiled, and her playful demeanour softened, "You've got to poke fun at yourself, haven't you? Still, at least Calaf never had to worry about Turandot eating him. He only had to fear the headsman."
He smiled, and said nothing for a moment, "No, but I understand now all too well why Calaf risks it all anyway."
She sighs, and looks away, "No one could ever dissuade you once you made up your mind, could they? You always were such a stubborn man." She sat, in silence, with him. Neither of them quite sure how to move on from here.
Eventually, he found the words, not the right ones but wrong words were better than none. "Downstairs… someone emptied your lunchbox, huh?"
She nodded sadly, "Found it when I came back. It was a bit more than I was ready to handle. Guess I'll have to go without. I suppose I could try the butchers in town…"
"You don't have to go without, you know…" He said quietly, trying his best to keep that infernal beat steady. It was forever giving him away. Too much heart.
Shaking her head, she leaned toward him and her forehead touched his gently as his eyes feathered closed. Fingers gently caressed the side of his head, brushing along the grain of his short hair. Her quiet words echoed against the dilapidated, vaunted ceiling of the church, tender but exasperated. "You can't solve all my problems just by opening a vein."
"I can try though." He said quietly and only partially in jest.
She made a disapproving sound, one he remembered so clearly from when they were kids, and he let his stupid mouth run away before thinking, "Well, why not? You need it, and I'm offering."
"We've already talked about this," she said, a weary note of rebuke entering into her voice, "It's not good for you long term and that's … it's not the kind of person I want to be."
"What if I don't care that it's bad for me?" He pushed back, now firm in his belief that things couldn't go back to the way they had been before. He knew he couldn't leave this island without her and go back to his normal, everyday life. His inner watchman might be appalled that he could accept her vampire side might one day hold him in sway, but it seemed that to him that knowing and choosing this anyway was very different to being coerced. Different enough that he could live with it if he had to. And if he could trust anyone to hold power over him, then it would be her.
"I care! And you're not the only person this affects! I don't want to put you in an early grave because I … I don't know, used you up." He had expected her to pull away from him, but she didn't. Though she protested, her words somehow had a soft edge to them, more pleading with him than angry. Her hands still caressed the sides of his head, the sensation tingled and filled his head.
"What if we're careful?" He asked, "What if you only do it sometimes? Enough to give you what you need, but not so much it starts to do any damage?" He ploughed on, trying not to stop and think too much about what he was asking. His conscious mind should rebel against the idea – he wasn't dinner. But now he had voiced it, it was hard not to acknowledge he wanted it, and it was easier not to think about how that scared him.
He was uncomfortable too, about how much it felt like manipulation. He felt a powerful shame for a moment – if they were both addicts of different sorts, then he couldn't claim any moral high ground by using her addiction to tempt her to satisfy his. The feeling was muddied by his understanding of how the bite and her glamour worked – it was hard to say who was manipulating who. At least in her defence it was done unconsciously, unwillingly.
"We can't Harry, we just can't," she said, sounding sadly desperate and afraid.
"Why not?" He cajoled, "We can both get what we want. From what you told me earlier it's clear you can't keep going on like this forever, and if we're careful and keep doing things that make you feel human, then why not?"
"Because now I want to!" She cried, grabbing his shirt in great fistfuls, "Not the Beast, me! I want to. I keep looking at your neck, hearing the beat of your heart and I ache to bite you. To taste you. Don't you understand what you're doing to me? Yes, you help me drive the Beast away but then all that's left is for me to confront my own hunger for you."
"You think I don't know that?" He snapped back, "You think I can't see it in your eyes when you look at me? I just – I'm yours anyway. I always have been – I don't even know any other way to be! Without you I'm just some machine– get up, go to work, try not to hurt. So, I can carry on that way for another few decades before my time is up, and you can go your way, to an equally unhappy eternity … or, we can try to make each other happy. Make the best of what we can have."
He paused, drawing back from her, taking in a deep breath, "If I thought for a moment that you didn't want me, I wouldn't be here. It's not fair to lay responsibility for my happiness on you, to look to you to solve my emotional problems, but you've got that power anyway. I think that when you were bitten it fucked me up too, in ways that I can't even begin to untangle, in ways that I can't fix on my own. But I think we can – I don't know, help each other. Help each other learn to be proper humans again. Even if only for some of the time."
She said nothing, avoiding his gaze, but her silence wasn't a rejection. Nor was it enough for him, "If you really and truly don't love me, if you want me to go, then say it and I'll drop it. I won't bring it up again. But if you do then I'm begging you to tell me. Because I love you, Hermione, and I think I will forever, no matter what."
She looked up at him, a longing in her eyes that was all her, with no input from her demons, "We can't do this, because if we start down this road I don't know if I can stop." She clasped her hand in his, her body language at odds with her words. There was a tension in her, one that spoke of poorly held repression.
"Merlin, Hermione," he whispered, her eyes dropped to the floor again, as if trying to hide from him how she felt and then he understood, in his heart and not just his brain, how much she still wanted to be with him. Washing away the rest of his doubts, he was suddenly desperate to make her understand how he needed her in return, "I've missed you so much."
And that, it seemed, was the final push it took to break her resolve. "I missed you too. There wasn't a day that went by where I didn't think about you." Her other arm wrapped around him, she rested her head against his chest and quietly said, "I still love you. I never stopped."
He closed his eyes and embraced her, tenderly. It didn't feel real. Perhaps it wouldn't until they had gotten away from here (and, a traitorous thought chimed in, she didn't run away as soon as that was possible). Pushing the thoughts aside he focused on her, committing to memory the texture of her clothes, the smell of her soap, and how it felt to look forward to tomorrow again. Oblique thoughts filled him, like how he would need to buy thicker curtains, or how he would need to change shifts maybe. Sleeping at night seemed like it would be a thing of the past, after all.
After a few minutes, he asked "Are you … do you need to…?" He wasn't sure how to handle it yet, but he was confident that they'd find a way. He was already sure that offering, at least retaining the autonomy of when, was better than the alternative.
They separated, her dabbing at her eyes slightly, and she laughed slightly. "This feels weird," she said, though she smiled as she said it, "Would … would it be alright with you?"
He nodded, and she nervously said, "Okay. Um. Thanks."
There was an awkward second, with neither of them sure how to proceed, and then she just shook her head self-depreciatingly, "I think I know a way to make it a bit less awkward."
She reached up with one hand again, and his breath hitched as their eyes locked. The hand that had been caressing the side of his head before now ran its fingers through his hair in an entirely different manner. In a lightening flash, she closed her eyes, and her mouth came crashing down on his, her hand in his hair demanding and pulling him into her embrace. His hands found her waist while she moved to put her legs around him, her perched on the edge of the trapdoor and he on the ladder. His perception of that faded into the background as has tongue gently grazed at the underside of his upper lip, something she knew drove him insane from a long time ago.
His body was drawn towards hers, as if magnetised, one of her legs came up and locked around his waist, stretching the fabric of her transfigured dress at the hip nearly to ripping. His hand wandered across her back as their lips met and broke apart, gently nipping at the corners of their mouths until the waiting was unbearable and their kiss became more demanding.
Her skin was so soft beneath his hands, her lips so inviting and playful, he could almost forget she was a vampire. She wasn't cold exactly, but nor was she quite so warm as he remembered. It was like kissing someone who had just come indoors from a blizzard, chilled but with the promise of heat to come.
His overcoat was ditched, lost down the trapdoor and at some point, her hands had started to undo the buttons of his shirt, his had pulled one the straps of the dress from her shoulder, exposing an expanse of skin that made his heart race. It was a good job he wasn't the vampire here, because he was having an impossible time controlling himself looking at her neck as it was. His lips moved from her mouth to her jaw, as he revelled in the feel of her responding to him, kissing down her neck and into the crook of her throat.
She let out a little exhalation of breath as he moved across her shoulder, knowing exactly, as if it was only yesterday they had last done this, where she wanted to be kissed. Her hands finished with his shirt buttons and began peeling the fabric away from him, down his back. There was a moment of frustration where she wanted to keep removing the shirt, but his arms were otherwise occupied and she eventually gave up and left it half hanging off his frame, restricting the arc of his movement, but was satisfactorily distracted once he angled his shoulder to give her mouth access to his skin.
He was suffused with lightness again, as her mouth closed on him, her teeth digging into his shoulder in a way that felt natural now. Thrilling, almost. She had bitten him and he could feel her sucking gently on his skin, as she moaned in the back of her mouth, but she been capable of the restraint he could not have mustered and had bitten him away from the powerful arteries in his neck.
Worldly cares dropped away – Robards, the other Auror's who couldn't stand him, the curious public who wanted to know intrusive and personal details about his life, his cases back at work, the murders here, their anonymous correspondent, and even the whole damn island itself stopped mattering. They didn't go away, as such, but his perspective shifted in a way that made them irrelevant as long as she held him like this, cradling his head in one hand, her burning mouth on his skin, her body pressed up against him, making those noises …
His hands dropped from her waist, down her thighs, lifting the hem of her dress enough to slide them underneath the fabric and back up to her hips, the contact with her skin was electric as the dress bunched up around his hands, settling high at the tops of her legs. She pulled him in even closer to her, her lips and teeth not abating from their work. Breath came in short bursts and his head grew light, the tips of his fingers just grazing the top of her thighs, promising much.
As if coming up for air, she released him and drew her head back with her eyes closed, taking in a great breath and exhaling, "Well, we've crossed the Rubicon now, haven't we? I always knew you'd be bad for me." Her tone was playful and he laughed against her neck, before he too pulled back to look at her.
She was grinning widely, "What? Don't look at me like that, I can't help it. It's like … like touching your tongue to a battery. It's shocking but kind of addicting, and there's just so much energy in you, so much that it's almost too much. After drinking you I feel like I could run marathons." Her eyes widened in surprise for a second, "And the little voice is gone. I'm sure it'll be back later but …" she stretched her arms above her head, "This is the first time in years it's been quiet inside my own head."
She only spoiled it slightly, just for a moment, as she became deadly serious "No wonder the others don't bother holding back. I don't … I don't know where we go from here, but I promise you, Harry, that I will never hurt you. Not again. I'll bend every ounce of willpower that I put into resisting feeding on a person for a decade into making sure I don't abuse this." She reached up to caress his cheek gently, in a very different manner to how they had touched only moments before.
And for a second, he was content.
"Crap," he said, rudely remembering their predicament and reluctantly checking his watch, "I've got to go and find Dawlish. Crouch is expecting to meet him soon."
With a devilish gleam in her eyes, she laid back against the floor and raised one leg even higher around his waist, "What a shame. I suppose you'll have to go. Just when it was getting good. I've suddenly got all this restless energy…"
He growled back at her in frustration, something he previously would have said was only the preserve of bad fiction, which caused another burst of her laughter that kindled a soppy joy in him. She let him go, pulling her dress down modestly. "Go on Harry. I guess … I guess neither of us are going anywhere anymore. There'll be time for all of this once we're safe. Merlin, I can't believe I let you persuade me… the work of a decade and here he comes, and I'm giving it all up in less than a week."
Regretfully, he climbed the rest of the way up the ladder, pulling his shirt back into place and doing up the buttons, before summoning the overcoat that had been discarded down the trap door. "What will you do while I'm gone?"
"I'll stay in the cellar, looking at the notes we stole from that lab. I think if I start from scratch and trace the entire ritual through, I might be able to figure out exactly what they're up to."
She climbed to her feet, and for a second seemed to be entranced as she twisted an arm this way and that, as if newly discovering herself. "I used up so much of what you gave me in the cave just healing my injuries that I never even had chance to see how it felt. It's ridiculous. I feel like I could leap up a mountain or stop a speeding freight train. Imagine waking up one morning to find you've gotten a decade younger, and all those accumulated aches and pains and weaknesses are just gone."
He pulled his overcoat back into place, smiled at her and turned to leave. "Wait," she said, and stepped towards him, turning her face up towards his. Practically balanced on the tip of her toes she kissed him lightly, "be careful."
She took one look at his beaming smile and suddenly grew embarrassed, her hair swished in front of her face as she quickly looked at the floor, "Alright, alright, get out of here already."
Back out into the night again, but this time Harry felt armoured against it. The rains and the winds could lash and scour him all they wanted but now he was protected. As much as the ice rain might invade the back of his collar, it didn't matter, it couldn't touch the little flame within him anymore. What would have made him furious and uncomfortable half an hour ago was nothing to him now. This trial was only temporary, and when it was over, she would be waiting for him. A lighthouse against the night. He even managed to ignore that traitorous voice that asked, 'what would happen if she wasn't?'
The problem for him now was how to contact Dawlish. He hadn't exactly left him any instructions. He briefly thought about going into to town to find Tonks instead, but Crouch had been specific about his desire to speak to Dawlish … and what's more, their dalliance on the floor of the church had left him with barely enough time to go straight to the last place he'd seen him and come back.
He mulled the problem over in his head on the way there, but nothing particularly smart occurred to him by the time he got there. A glance at his watch showed the time pressure had not miraculously abated, so he decided to simply take the direct approach. The roar of water at the bottom of the cliff gave the shrieking of the winds a run for its money in the volume department.
With no clever ideas it was back to just making a scene and hoping for the best. He pointed his wand out to sea and conjured a great gout of silver sparks which bathed the cliffside in harsh light, like a white phosphorous flare.
He didn't have to wait long, as Dawlish came striding out of the gloom, seemingly from nowhere. With the wards still in place he couldn't have apparated, and Harry puzzled over how he managed to do it.
"Cute stunt, Potter. They probably saw that all the way over in the town," gruff and straight to the point as always, Dawlish gave the impression of a man who thought his pressed suit would disguise the bags under his eyes.
"Well, you didn't exactly leave me with any way of contacting you," Harry scoffed.
"I expected you to work it out if you had to." One eyebrow rose, almost imperceptibly. Taciturn as ever, Dawlish stood stock still despite the weather. Harry waited a moment, but John had clearly decided that he was done saying things and was quite content to just wait, getting soaked by the rain, for as long as it took for Harry to explain himself.
"I'll explain on the way. We'll be cutting it fine as it is," he motioned to Dawlish and set off, expecting him to follow. Fortunately, Dawlish appeared to be in a cooperative mood and he quickly fell into step with him. That could be a good sign that Dawlish was reasonably willing to trust him, or perhaps Dawlish simply had nowhere better to be and a desire to not hang around near the site of a suspicious flare.
"I made contact with Crouch," he explained, handing the note over, trying to balance being heard above the storm while not shouting the details of a secret rendezvous for anyone to hear. The chances of there being anyone out here were slim, but Dawlish seemed to be able to appear from nowhere at his leisure, so why not others too? "He wants to meet you tonight."
Dawlish quickly digested the note and then immediately burnt it. "Where did you get this?"
"He gave it to me himself. Saw him at the big house on the cliff. Cocktail party for the international conference going on there. He looked kind of unwell, to tell you the truth, and I strongly suspect that he's not really in charge. Claimed never to have heard of you but passed me that note, and then his bodyguard or babysitter looked like they were about to intervene before he damn near ran away. That was a few hours ago now," Harry checked his rain slicked watch, the water uncomfortably running down his arm, "There's about half an hour until the meet."
"And what are you going to do while I meet him?" Dawlish continually scanned the horizon, not so much as looking at Harry even once while he talked. He was used to it, having worked with Dawlish for years when he was his junior, but it never stopped being odd.
"I was assuming we'd go together."
"No." Typical John, never saying ten words if one would do.
Reigning in his annoyance, he forced an unconvincing fake smile and drew the out syllables in his one-word response, "…because?"
"Crouch said come alone. This is the closest I've got to a lead since I started the case and I don't want him scared off."
Harry briefly considered keeping his gathered evidence to himself, especially because he wasn't sure what Dawlish would think of the legality of its seizure, but quickly discarded it. He was working in the dark, with only one ally he could count on. If sharing meant doubling the number of people he could call for help that would be worth Dawlish's potential displeasure.
"Not quite true. I managed to take a look behind the curtain while I was there," careful to use the singular. Dawlish didn't know about Hermione, and he suspected nothing good would come of him learning she was here. "There was a hidden room in the basement, halfway between a laboratory and a prison cell. I made copies of their research notes, and I retrieved what I'm almost certain are going to turn out to be transfigured bodies."
Dawlish let out a short bark of a laugh, proving his worries about any reaction seemingly unfounded. Harry supposed finding potential murder victims was more than probable cause to search and seize in anyone's book. "Buried the lede on that one, didn't you? What were they doing down there?
"Not sure yet, this wasn't very long ago. Ran into Albert Cooper on my way out of the party."
"Good. We could use him."
He paused momentarily, unsure of what relationship, if any, Dawlish might have with Cooper. "Cooper didn't seem to be in much of a mood to help. If anything, I think he might be actively hostile, though I can't understand how he gains from that. It seemed like he was the one pulling Crouch's strings. I, ah. I think they might have a dementor hidden somewhere in the building."
"And Moreau?" Dawlish asked, without so much of a hint of surprise, taking Cooper's apparent betrayal and secret dementor in his stride with no reaction whatsoever.
He shook his head, sadly, "If he isn't one of the transfigured bodies I'll be very much surprised." They were silent for a few minutes, as he let Dawlish digest this new information. "I also managed to steal a big rock," he said flippantly, "I'm sure they're devastated."
This, almost for the first time, seemed to catch Dawlish's interest. "A rock? What kind of rock?"
"Oh, about so big," he mimed a box about one foot by two, "sort of wedge shaped. It seemed to be resistant to magic, nothing I tried seemed to have any effect on it."
Somehow Dawlish was even more grim than usual, but this news seemed to earn Harry more information than anything else he'd provided so far, "That's what he stole from the Department of Mysteries before he disappeared. They wouldn't tell me what it was for. Just kept calling it 'The Capstone'. Good job Potter, that's even better news than contacting Crouch. I got the impression the spooks in the DoM don't really care much about getting Moreau back so long as they retrieve the Capstone."
"This would have been useful information earlier, John," he rolled his eyes exasperatedly, "What if I'd just dismissed it as random masonry and left it before?"
"Still didn't know if I could trust you." At least Dawlish didn't mince his words.
"And now you do, right? So, I can come with you to meet Crouch."
"No." Harry gestured in anger, and Dawlish elaborated, "If it's a trap one of us will need to be free to ride to the rescue. You do think it's a trap, don't you?"
"Probably," he grudgingly admitted.
"I do too." Dawlish turned to study him for a moment, "Did you know Crouch's son was a Death Eater?"
"I'd heard that, yeah. Died just after he was imprisoned, and then Crouch's wife followed not long after."
"Yes," Dawlish was as impassive as ever, no trace of emotion showed itself on his face, "I think that double tragedy, and his previous good record, were the only reasons they let him stay in government, even if they did move him out of law enforcement. Can you imagine anyone else with close ties to a Death Eater staying so overtly in power?"
"So, what, you're suggesting Crouch is in on this too? I don't buy it."
"I'm not suggesting anything just yet. But I think we need to be careful, and so I meet Crouch and you wait, and if I don't return by dawn, either come looking for me or better yet get yourself and the Capstone off the island and beyond their reach."
"Fine. Oh, and when you get to the observatory there'll be a couple asleep in there. Best make sure they're hidden and still unconscious before Crouch arrives."
"What did they do? Or should I be asking what you did?" His words had a harder edge to them than usual, and Harry was pleased he could truthfully (even if it was technically lying by omission, as it was Hermione who had ambushed them) say he hadn't harmed them.
"Nothing! I swear, they're perfectly fine and I didn't lay so much as s finger on them. Just didn't want you to be surprised by them, that's all."
They walked the rest of the way in silence, splitting with little more than a nod once they reached the old church. He slipped in between the oak doors to find the nave empty so he uncovered the trap door, knocked on the hatch and opened it up.
Soft candlelight filled the basement. Hermione was already lowering her wand, which had previously been pointed at the opening.
"How'd it go?" She asked, setting her wand (his old wand, technically) down.
"Fine. He's gone to meet Crouch. In a minute I'm going to go up to the bell tower and keep a watch while I look over the paperwork we took. Dawlish smells a trap, so I want to make sure I see if he tries to send a signal up."
She nodded, "I think you should look at this. I've been looking over the notes I got from the laboratory, and I'm more convinced than ever that there were two things they were working on down there. Similar in some ways, but very different in others."
He carefully climbed down the stairs, mindful that one of these times the soft wood was probably going to give way under his feet, and joined her in front of her notes. She had paper pinned to the walls, papers fanned out in front of her on the floor, and a conjured board that she was carefully building her own notes on.
"They were definitely working on rituals, both of them to do with energy transference. The one I've made the most progress with is this one," she pointed to a diagram that looked very much like the arrangement of the standing stones from the island ruins, "I was right before, about these. I'm certain that the ritual as it was meant to be performed here took the energy from a sacrifice on these stone blocks inside the circle and then caused it to flow out through the stones and into the environment around it."
He rubbed his chin, "Gruesome, but why?"
She shrugged, "Typical pagan ritual, I suppose. Fertility, an end to winter maybe, or a good harvest or catch. There's nothing directing the energy up to the heavens, so I doubt they were trying to ensure the sun still came up. In a way that's not very important, what matters more is how they've adapted it."
She pointed to two sets of complicated runes, which were largely similar except in what he assumed were key places. It was just gibberish to him, so thank Merlin she was a runes expert, "They've mostly made changes to do with the energy flow direction – instead of channelling the energy inside the circle outwards, it's sucking energy in. It needs some kind of sacrifice to kick start the reaction, but once it starts gathering energy it's not quite clear where it goes after that – it directs it into the centre of the inner circle, but I can't make sense of the rest. The runes are mostly to do with the void, or doorways, your basic liminal spaces. This one here translates in context as 'vessel', but what it's supposed to be filled with I'm not sure."
"So, where is this energy coming from then? What sort of energy?"
"Well …" she said slowly, "Theoretically everywhere. It extends a field outward from the inner circle, inside which should be a safe zone, and absorbs the energy from things as it expands. The arithmancy for how far the field goes is incredibly complicated. It would take days at least, probably weeks, to calculate, and then even more time to check I'd got it right. If the field strength is above the Frisch–Peierls limit then in theory it could just expand forever."
"Can't you just check their numbers?"
"They haven't done any." She worried at her bottom lip with her teeth, "And that frightens me. You can tell from the notes that they know that's a possibility, they just don't seem to care. What sort of person would be willing to risk that?"
With great trepidation, and convinced he already knew the answer, he asked again, "What sort of energy are they absorbing."
The biting of the lip intensified, "Magic definitely. I think … I think lifeforce as well. If the field expands over you then you'll be made a muggle at the very least, but I think there's a good chance it'll just kill you outright."
He stood in silence for a minute, his eyes tracing over the runes he still didn't understand, "So they're going to set off a reaction that could steal the life force of every living thing on the planet?"
"Yes," she said quietly, he could hear the horror in her voice which mirrored his feelings, "provided it can absorb enough lifeforce to keep the reaction going it could consume … well, everyone. If not, it'll peter out somewhere, but who knows how much damage it could do before then? If the field works at all it will certainly kill everyone on the island, but after that, who knows? Will it be strong enough to destroy Britain? If so, could it make it to mainland Europe? If it gets that far then that it's probably goodbye world." She shrugged, "and I don't have time to do the maths to figure it out."
A weapon that could wipe out the entire population of a planet? It was almost too big to comprehend. He knew he should feel stronger about it, be more offended or angry or scared, but it was too big of an idea. That someone could stand in a circle on this little island and kill everyone? It was ridiculous. And why? What motive could they have?
He tried to whet his tongue and speak, but his dry mouth seemed unwilling to work with him, "Do you think that's what they're trying to do? Wipe everyone out? Save their … I don't know, chosen few and start again?"
She considered it for a moment, before shaking her head, "No … it would kill animal and plant life too. They might hang around a little longer, but it would be over for the planet. Complete ecosystem collapse. No, they're directing this energy somewhere for a purpose, and whatever it is that's their goal. It's just … they know it could end the world if they get it wrong. They just don't care."
He ran his fingers through his hair, "Do we know when they want to do it? Do they need to wait for, like a solstice or something? That's when they usually do these kinds of fertility rituals and such, right?"
"I don't think so," she mused, "I think all the harvest and fertility rituals would work whenever you do them. They believed they were most effective at the turning points but there's nothing in the runes that should be affected by that, so … no idea. I suppose they could do it whenever they wanted."
"How do we stop it?"
"Once it's going? You don't. Get out of the way, stop it stealing energy and let it burn itself out. Beyond that … destroy the stones, perhaps? They hold the runes that guides the energy flows, so disrupting the arthimancial grid would make the field diffuse and inefficient … that will cause it run out on its own much faster."
He sat down heavily on the cot, letting out a long breath, "Any other awful news then?"
She gracefully joined him, resting her hands on one of his thighs. A few hours ago this would have been enough to send him to the rapture, but after that bombshell it was somewhat underwhelming. It was still a comfort, but what could really be an effective comfort against a planet killing weapon?
"I've looked at the second project too, though it's not quite as apocalyptic. They were trying to transfer something – there's a lot of runes to do with souls, but frankly I don't understand most of it."
He thought for a moment, laying his hand over hers, "I guess that's why they needed Moreau then. If Hermione Granger is confused by it then it must need a world class expert."
"What was his specialty, again?" She asked, looking back at the board filled with her notes.
"Dementors, according to Dawlish. I assume they must have one somewhere on the island, considering what I felt back at the party. Did you get the same?"
"Yeah," she said, distracted by the notes, "Not as bad, obviously, but … hmm. I think I've had an idea, but I'll need to check the notes before I can sure…"
"Is that my cue to let you work?" He smiled, as she nodded, still absorbed by whatever brain wave she'd had. "I'll go up to the bell tower and keep a watch for John then." He leant in to kiss her cheek, and she smiled and pushed him away gently.
Laughing, he left her to her work, secure in the knowledge that if anyone could figure out what they were up to, it was her. He closed the trapdoor behind him, covering it with the ruined rug, for when Dawlish returned. He didn't want him stumbling into her by accident.
The bell tower staircase was dark and oppressive, the lightning outside occasionally revealing the dilapidated condition of the stairs as he craned his neck to see up. The stairs wrapped around the outside of the wall, a gap in the middle in which presumably the bell ropes used to hang. They groaned and creaked beneath his weight, and he gingerly skipped the occasional one which he did not trust to support him.
He opened the door to the belfry, paused, and then closed and opened it a few more times. No squeak or grumble from the ancient hinges. A quick inspection showed that they had been oiled recently. With his wand now out, he entered the room to find it disappointingly empty.
Whatever great bell had once hung here was long gone. There was only a dark gap and a long drop to the stone floor several stories below. The wind raged through the glassless windows up here, as he paced around, checking the rafters just in case.
Nothing, fortunately. The only unusual thing was a stone shaft, a cylinder about a foot long and an inch in diameter, perfectly smooth as if conjured, sticking out of the wooden floorboards, which had splintered and parted to admit it. It stuck out at an angle and was perfectly nonsensical. Since it was a mystery that didn't seem likely to cause him any physical danger in the near term, he decided it was a puzzle for another day.
He took shelter behind the thick stone walls, propping himself up so that he could look out towards the observatory, hoping if something went wrong Dawlish would send up a signal. From this vantage point, he could see a soft glow rising from the below the cliff to one side, presumably light pollution from Greer, and the bright pin pricks of light from Crouch's manor, which squatted on the cliff top, the lights calling to mind some lazy predator of the depths with too many evil eyes. The observatory itself was lost in the darkness somewhere between here and there.
He rolled up his collar against the night and settled in to wait, and to worry.
Thanks for reading!
