Content Harry Potter Miscellaneous

Author Notes:

This has just gone to four chapters--Harry needs one of his own, it seems. I'm sure you're all terribly disappointed.

Hermione Granger stepped hesitantly closer to the boy kneeling on the riverbank, seven years of insults and threats running through her head.

But he looks like he really needs help, and I know he won’t take it from Harry or Ron. Stupid boys and their pride.

So that leaves me. "Mudblood" or not.

Strangely, the insult had never bothered her as it did Ron, or even Harry. She thought it was probably because she had been raised Muggle, and no one in the Muggle world would have understood the term even if they’d heard it used.

Funny, really, how most of the people who’re called that won’t even know it’s insulting at first...

She sat down beside Draco Malfoy, who had his head bowed and his arms resting on his upthrust knee. "Anything I can do?" she asked quietly.

"I don’t know." The voice which usually sounded so bored was now thick with suppressed emotion, fear or anger or desperation or all three. "Think you can solve an unsolvable problem?"

"You never know." Hermione kept her hands in her lap, though her need to help his pain made her tremble. "Tell me what it is?"

"Oh, nothing important," Malfoy said with an attempt at his usual tones. "Just the question of whether I should destroy myself or wait for that black stuff to do it."

"What?"

Malfoy jerked a thumb at the sign in front of him. "Read that."

"‘Pay me with the points of your pride,’" Hermione read as directed. "So you have to give up something you’re proud of?"

"Not just one thing. Three." Malfoy smiled, though it looked more as if someone were forcing the corners of his mouth back. "My House, my name, and my blood. Only problem is, take those away..." One hand jerked abortively up and down, as though he wanted to sum himself up but found too little there to do so. "What’s left?"

Hermione closed her eyes and invoked a few of Ron’s favorite swearwords.

I don’t believe I’m going to do this.

Of course, I’ve done it before, but for a different reason...

Banishing memory, she opened her eyes, leaned forward, and slapped Malfoy smartly across the face.

Malfoy’s hand flew to his cheek as he stared open-mouthed at her. "What the—"

"You are unbelievable," Hermione snapped as she might have to Ron in one of his sullen moods. "Are you actually saying that you think being a Slytherin and a Malfoy and having pure blood are the only things that matter about you? The things that define your existence?"

"Last time I looked, that’s how it worked," Malfoy snapped back. "You think something else?"

"Yes, I do!" Hermione tightened her fingers around two handfuls of her robes, trying to keep her temper from running away with her entirely. "I think there’s a lot more to you, you’ve just never bothered to look for it, because those were the easiest things to define yourself as! But guess what? The world where any of those made a difference is gone!" Not trusting her hands, she pointed out the way they’d come with an elbow. "And I don’t think it’s coming back!"

And that ought to bother me a lot more than it does. All of this ought to bother me more than it does. Harry poisoning us, that woman saying our world had ended but our friends were all right, these challenges like something out of a bard’s tale... why doesn’t any of it frighten me?

Maybe because I know I don’t have the luxury of being frightened—if I can’t hold my end up, we’ll all die, for good this time...

"Well, guess what?" Malfoy countered, mocking the tone she’d used to him. "I don’t know how to go looking for other parts of me, and there isn’t time even if I did know how! And I’m not about to give up everything I know just to pass some stupid test!" He glanced the way she’d pointed, and his face flickered for just an instant into a child’s mask of fear. "Except... if I don’t, that black stuff..."

"You don’t have a choice, Draco," Hermione said softly, a certainty locking into place in the back of her mind. "This isn’t just a test for the sake of having a test. It’s something you have to do, you have to learn, before we can leave here. Just like Ron had to learn he could trust you, and he could still trust Harry." A thread of a giggle escaped her. "Even though he did poison us all."

"Should’ve known better than to take what he offered me," Malfoy—Draco—grumbled, watching her from the corner of his eye.

"And I..." Hermione felt her cheeks warm, but kept talking. "I had to learn, I have to keep learning, that looking silly isn’t the end of the world. That I need to have fun sometimes. And that there’s nothing wrong with Ron liking to look at me."

"All right, more than I needed to know." Draco pressed his hands to his ears. "Do you have a point here?"

"My point is, the things you named—your House, your name, your blood—you needed them back where we came from. But here, and wherever we’re going after this, you don’t. They might actually hurt you, if you keep holding onto them."

Draco gave her a skeptical look.

"Think about it like this." Hermione pointed at the wall she’d climbed. "Suppose you had to get over that like I did, to escape enemies who wanted to kill you. And suppose you had money with you, a lot of money, because you knew that once you got over that wall, you could never come back. What you took with you was all you could keep."

A slow nod answered this.

"Could you have done what I did, if your pockets were full of Galleons?" Hermione tossed the question lightly into the air and waited.

"I don’t think I could’ve done what you did without my pockets full of Galleons," Draco said honestly. "Somehow I never imagined the Gryffindor Wondergirl could climb like a demiguise."

"Thank you." Hermione pressed her hands to her cheeks, trying to cool her blush. "But my question stands, Draco. Could you have climbed over that wall weighed down like that?"

"No." The answer was prompt and firm. "And I wouldn’t try, either. Gold’s no good to a dead man."

"And neither will your name and your blood help you any if that stuff catches you," Hermione said, feeling horribly guilty for invoking his obvious fear—but if it gets him moving... "None of it changes you, Draco. Not the real you. Not the only person who noticed us leaving the Great Hall."

"That’s just because Potter bumped into me," Draco objected.

"Or the person who was willing to help Ron get that key."

"Because I don’t want to die!"

"Or..." Hermione hid her smile and made her voice completely neutral. "...the person who’s been talking to me for five solid minutes and not insulted me once. Who actually complimented me a moment ago."

Draco’s face went brilliant pink.

"I know what this seems like to you—" Hermione began.

"Do you?" Draco interrupted, glaring at her. "Do you really? How would you feel if it happened to you? If you had to give up your precious Muggle parents, and leave your lion’s den, and have some of that magical blood you think is so worthless running in your body? How would you like it?"

"If that was the only way I could keep living, I’d do it!" Hermione shouted, her temper breaking its bounds at last. "I could have been a Ravenclaw anyway, it’s not like my House really matters except that it let me meet the two best friends I’ve ever had, and no one’s asking you to give up your parents, just your name! And for your information, I do not think magical blood is worthless, only that it’s not the most important thing about a person—or even an important thing at all! Who cares what your parents were? What matters is who you are!"

"You think so?"

"I know so!"

"Fine!" Draco was on his feet, his hand on the Slytherin crest sewn to his robes. "Prove it!"

With a violent tug, he ripped the serpent free and flung it at her feet.

Hermione tore the lion from her own robes and dropped it atop the snake without an instant’s hesitation. "I rather like being Hermione," she said. "I don’t suppose you’d let me keep that part of it, and just drop the Granger?"

"Well, if you must," Draco drawled. "I, being who I am, don’t intend to settle for half-measures." His lips twitched. "Weasley won’t care for it. One less thing for him to twit me on."

"Ron will leave you alone about this," Hermione said firmly. "Trust me."

"Oh, I do." Draco drew his wand and took it in his left hand, bringing it down awkwardly across his right palm. A line of red appeared there, and he hissed but made no other sound. Hermione made a neat incision on the palm of her own right hand, wondering a little, in the back of her mind, at the ease and sureness of her movements, as though she were treading the measures of a dance she’d learned long since.

"Oi, Potter, Weasley!" Draco shouted over her shoulder. "Either of you know how to Bond a Vow?"

Harry and Ron turned away from their quiet conversation. Ron looked astounded, Harry surprised and pleased, as though one of his new Quidditch players had done better than he expected. "I think we both can," he said. "Are you ready, then?"

"No, but I’m not likely to get readier by waiting," Draco retorted. "Which of you wants to do it?"

"Why are you making a Vow at all?" Ron asked, coming over to them. "Something to do with getting us out of here?"

"You could say that." Draco shook his hair back and went to one knee.

Hermione did the same. "Scared, Malfoy?" she inquired, holding out her hand.

Draco looked at the hand, then back up at her face. She saw his throat work, but his voice when he spoke was perfectly level.

"You wish," he said, and clasped his hand around hers. The unfamiliar blood stung her cut, but she did not flinch, and neither did he.

Harry and Ron had a silent conversation consisting mostly of nods and shrugs. Finally, Ron drew his wand and placed it against their two hands. "Go on, then," he said. "What’re you Vowing?"

Hermione spoke first. "Will you, Draco, ever be a member of Slytherin House again?"

"I will not," Draco said steadily. "And will you, Hermione, ever be a Gryffindor after today?"

"I will not."

The first thread of flame slid from Ron’s wand in conjunction with his shocked hiss.

"Will you ever use the name Granger again?"

"I will not. And will you ever use either the name Draco or that of Malfoy after this day?"

"I will not."

A second, thicker flame intertwined with the first. Harry was watching intently, Ron in what looked like shock.

Hermione looked straight into the gray eyes across from her. "Will you agree that by this sign of joined blood between our two hands, our bloods are truly joined, and from this day on we are neither Muggleborn nor pureblood but half-bloods alike?"

"I will." The pale fingers contracted around hers. "Will you?"

"I will."

The third flame burst from Ron’s wand, wound itself around their hands, and sank into their flesh without burning, and Hermione felt the bonds of her Vow settle onto her, light as love and heavy as duty all at once. She and the nameless blond boy rose at the same moment, hands still clasped. For a long moment, they held one another’s gaze.

Then Hermione jerked her hand away and shoved the boy into the river.

He came up spluttering and spitting water. "OI! What the hell, Gr—Hermione?"

"You looked like you could use a bath," Hermione said airily, grinning. Her pensive, worried mood had vanished, replaced with a feeling that all was right with the world, that nothing could go wrong now.

Rather like I felt when Harry turned up alive. Only stronger, if that’s possible.

The boy growled as he climbed out of the river but did not comment further. Halfway through standing up, he froze. "Whoa," he said, softly but with great intensity. "So that’s why..." He straightened his back and looked at Harry. "Was it like that for you, too?" he asked. "Like opening a door, or turning on a light?"

"Not quite," Harry answered. "Mine’s still happening. Bit by bit, slow but sure."

"Just so you know, you’re neither of you making any sense," said Ron.

"He the final trigger?" the boy asked, glancing at Ron.

"You and him together. Like usual." Harry grinned. "Some things never change."

Hermione’s eyes roamed past Harry, and she gasped. "Whatever this trigger is, I suggest you do it now," she said shakily.

Everyone turned to follow her line of sight.

The black wall had just overtaken the ivy-covered stone and was sweeping towards them, annihilating reality as it came.

"So, Weasley," said the nameless boy in a light tone, drawing all eyes back to him. He might have been at a cocktail party, or in the Great Hall at Hogwarts, for all the notice he took of the approaching darkness. "What’s this I hear about you and my sister?"

Ron had barely time to gape at him before the world tore apart like a scroll, the ground splitting beneath their feet and dropping them all into darkness. Hermione screamed as she fell, and fell, and fell—

And bolted upright, her hair damp with sweat. She was dressed in plain day robes and sitting on a bed in a small and dimly lit bedroom, with another bed across from hers. Judging by the lanky silhouette she could half-see sitting up on it and the muttered curse she’d just heard, Ron was still with her.  

But where’s Harry? And Malfoy, or whatever he’s going to call himself now? For that matter, where are we, and how did we get here?

A knock sounded on the door, scaring her nearly out of her wits. Ron swore again, adding a flourish or two she’d never heard from him before.

"You’d better not say that where Mum can hear you," said a well-known voice as the door creaked open.

"Ginny!" Hermione was off the bed before she knew what she was doing, but Ron’s outflung hand stopped her where she stood. With his other, he drew his wand from within his robes.

And it is his wand. The one he lost at Malfoy Manor. Why didn’t I notice that before?

"Prove you are who you look like," Ron said coldly, training his wand on his sister.

Ginny flicked the light on, looking singularly unimpressed. "Can I come over there to do it?" she asked. "Or will you hex me if I come any closer?"

"Hermione?" said Ron without moving. "Cover her?"

Hermione sighed. "You’re being paranoid, Ron."

"Better paranoid than dead."

He had a point. Hermione found her own wand and aimed it at Ginny.

My wand, not Bellatrix Lestrange’s. I was sure the Death Eaters would have snapped them by now...

Ginny crossed the room to Ron’s side, took one of his hands in her own, and pressed it against the side of her neck. "Feel that?" she said. "That’s the scar I still have from where you bit me when I was five, because Fred and George had convinced you that getting a bad sunburn and not liking garlic bread meant you were a vampire."

Ron turned a red so deep it looked painful. Hermione carefully did not laugh, instead putting away her wand and hurrying to Ginny’s side to hug her friend.

To her surprise, Ginny nearly squeezed the breath out of her, and there were tears in the Weasley girl’s eyes when she let go. "We’ve all been so worried," she said, holding Hermione at arm’s length. "But you’re going to be all right now, aren’t you?" She turned to include Ron in this. "Everyone’s going to be all right now."

"Well, as all right as Ronniekins ever is," said another familiar voice from the open door.

"I’ve often wondered about that," seconded an almost-identical voice. "How can someone so smart as our dear brother..."

"Possibly fall for as many of our tricks as he so often does?"

"I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not smarts he’s lacking."

"Not in the least. Rather, a certain... worldliness, would you say, George?"

"I might call it cynicism, myself, Fred."

Framed in the doorway, the Weasley twins—both, as far as Hermione’s disbelieving eyes could tell, very much alive, and with four freckled ears among them—turned their famous grins on their beaming sister and their stunned brother.

"Can’t even say hello, Ron?" said Fred after a moment.

"You died." It was a hoarse whisper that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in a graveyard. "I saw it. I was there."

Fred sighed, the laughter going out of his face. "Ron, you’ve just been through a hell of a time," he said without a hint of teasing in his tone. "You’re going to be confused about some things for a while. I know you think you saw me die, but it wasn’t real, understand?"

"No, be fair," George said, nudging his twin in the shoulder. "It was real to him. It just wasn’t real for you."

"For which I’m grateful." Fred sighed theatrically. "Being dead is so bad for business."

"I wouldn’t like it much either," George put in. "You running off and leaving me all by my poor little lonesome self."

"All by yourself, eh? What happened to that little Muggle bit you were eyeing down in the card shop in the village?"

George flushed. "I thought we agreed we weren’t going to mention that."

"You two can stop it now," said Ginny in a bored tone, and turned to Ron. "I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like for you," she said quietly, taking his hands in hers. "But I swear to you, Ron, Weasley honor on it, Fred is alive." She favored the mentioned brother with a glare. "And just as much a prat as he ever was."

Moving like a sleepwalker, Ron rose from the bed and went to his brothers, reaching a hand tentatively towards them as if afraid his touch would melt them away. The twins stayed where they were, Fred moving only to extend his own hand to Ron, then draw his younger brother into an embrace more tender than anything Hermione had ever seen from either twin. George hugged them both from the side, and Ginny added herself to the back of the hug.

Hermione’s vision blurred, and she shut her eyes and leaned against the wall. It’s like a miracle all over again—more even than Harry, because we knew that Fred had died, we saw his body and touched it, we were sure there hadn’t been any mistake...

Her mind seized on this, and on several strange things the twins and Ginny had said, and began to bat them around, tumbling them from side to side as though it could make them make sense that way.

Fred said his death wasn’t real, and then George said it was real to Ron but not to him, not to Fred... how is that possible? Real is real.

And Ginny said she couldn’t imagine what it was like for Ron, but she was there. She fought just like the rest of us, she cried over Fred’s body...

And earlier, she said everyone had been worried about us. Why? I mean, yes, we broke into Gringotts, but then they saw us again at Hogwarts that same night, and we were all fine.

What is going on here?

"Ah, Harry!" said Fred as Hermione opened her eyes. "Just the man I wanted to see. They’re both awake, they seem a bit confused, but that’s to be expected; we’re going to take Ron downstairs and let Mum and Dad try their hands."

"If Mum can be spared from crying over him," George added. "I don’t think there’s a dry handkerchief left in the house."

"As if you haven’t been doing your fair share," said Ginny. "Budge up, let him in."

The knot of Weasleys in the doorway moved aside, revealing Harry with a large bag slung on his shoulder. It was full of books, Hermione saw as he entered the room, books with bright covers and thick spines. Her fingers itched to get at them.

"So shall we send..." George trailed off, invisible in the hallway, and Hermione had the strangest feeling he’d mouthed something that only Harry could see. "...up here to wait until you’re done?"

"If you don’t mind. And he doesn’t."

Weasleys snickered. "Mind?" chortled Fred. "Him? Not likely!"

"See you downstairs," said Ginny, popping into view for a moment to smile at Hermione and blow a kiss to Harry. He blew one back, then drew his wand and shut the door as Ginny followed her brothers down the hall.

"Please say you’ve come to explain what’s going on," said Hermione feelingly as Harry turned to face her.

"I’ve come to explain what’s going on."

"Thank you!" Hermione raised her hands to the ceiling. "If I had to wonder for one more minute, I was going to bite something!"

Harry grinned, then sobered. "I have to explain sort of roundabout," he said. "Try not to get too mad at me? It’s really the only way you’re going to understand."

Hermione nodded and composed herself to listen.

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