Ch. 13 — Chapter XIII

Chapter XIII

He sat in the middle of nothing, legs crossed, light pooling around him like dust motes in morning sun.

"Are you here to take me?" he asked, head tilting. His voice was soft, curious. "You tried very hard to get here."

"I..." Hermione began, not knowing what to say, this wasn't in the books.

"Did you come here to play?"

"I... I could play..."

"I'd lend you my toys." he said sadly, "but we just broke most of them."

"I'm sorry about that... I didn't mean to..."

"You smacked one of my toys..."

"I did?"

"Yes, you didn't like her sight..."

"Oh... No, I just wanted to get here..." she said, sitting beside him.

"You can't lie in here... Your words have no weight..."

"I wasn't lying... Well... I never liked her very much..."

"I know that... But I like her..."

"I know you did..."

"You think I'm him?" He laughed, small and brittle.

"You aren't?"

"No... And yes..."

"Help me understand..."

"You won't..."

"Why don't we make it a game?"

"A game?"

"You help me understand, and I'll try to learn."

He leaned forward. "What do I get if I win?"

"Well if you win, you'll choose the next game, and if I win, we play hide-and-seek. You can hide first... And maybe I'll find you again."

"Alright." he said. "But if I hide, you'll always find me again."

"How come?"

"You nearly died to get here." he whispered. "Even now, you might be dead."

"How can I be dead if I'm here?"

"A vessel can't house two souls..."

"I'm not fully here... I'm tethered!"

"To nothing!" He laughed again, echoing against the void. "But fine. Let's play your game."

"Why did you say you liked her, your toy I mean..."

"I thought we were playing?"

"We are... I'm trying to learn from you..."

"I like her because she's everything that he isn't..."

"Help me here..."

"All hurt and no will... A broken vessel, and a broken soul..." He looked at her then, eyes ancient in a child's face. "Tell me, Hermione... Which one of us do you think I am?"

"I don't understand..."

"I knew you wouldn't!" The boy chuckled softly.

"That's not helping." Hermione said, half smiling despite herself.

"You're trying to cheat!"

"No I really do want to understand! I nearly died to get here, to you... Remember?"

"And you think there is something of value in that?"

"In dying for something?"

"Yea..."

"Isn't there?"

"What about all the hurt you leave behind?"

"Well that's just-"

"Inevitable? A part of life? The way it is?"

"I... I assume so... There are things worth dying for..."

"Is this one of them?"

"I think so..."

"Are you willing to die for him?"

"You said I already have..."

"I lied... But you will return from here, if you do... To a broken body, and a nearly shattered soul... You might as well stay here and die..."

"Why would you say that?"

"You are strong, that's why he loves you... But you weren't this strong... Your life is nearly spent... Your lover leaves you at your deathbed, your friend mourns you before getting the chance to love you... And your parents... Well at least they won't have to suffer your loss..."

Hermione's chest tightened. Her lip trembled. "You don't know what you're talking about..."

"I know everything he knows." the boy said. "Every heartbeat he's ever held onto. Every time he almost said your name like a confession, burdened by a pack among brothers, and smothered to oblivion..."

"That's... That's just not true..." Her voice faltered. Echoing in the void, like a whiplash that screamed, lie.

"You can't fix what love breaks." the boy said. "You can only choose how much of yourself you'll lose in the process."

"You're... You don't know..."

"Is it any different from the boy you loved? You never loved him, you loved what you could shape him into... While he was... Malleable..."

"That's not who I am!"

"You're not a bad person, don't get me wrong... You're just human..."

"I... You're just trying to get under my skin! Are you trying to scare me?"

He paused, surveying her, tilting his head, and he smirked.

"Didn't it work?" He grinned, small and sharp, with a flicker of mischief in his ancient eyes.

"It almost did..."

"You aren't scared? I thought I had you..."

"I am scared... I'm here because I'm scared..."

"Is it working?"

"Only if you help me..."

"I cannot help you..."

"Tell me why?"

"You can't reach him." the child said, looking up at her with his emerald eyes, "He is the box. I am what's inside. And you... You are the crowbar trying to pry the lid open. You will break the box, and then I will spill out, and there will be nothing left to hold him together."

"You care about him... Just as I do..."

"One keeps their house tidy..."

"Did you want me to get here?"

"I don't want things... Wanting breaks things... Like him," he pointed at a place Hermione hadn't seen before, a young boy, handsome, with cold grey eyes, laying dead and rigid.

"Who is that?"

"It's him"

"Tom Riddle?"

"It's just tom, no riddle, the riddle was solved"

"Why is he here?"

"The vessel is intact, he cannot go..."

"Did you play with him too?"

"I don't share my toys..."

"But you offered to share them with me..."

"Call it hospitality..."

"Did he try to take your toys?"

"He did sometimes..."

"So this is your house, and the toys? Like the one I smacked?"

"The faces he gives to the pain. The memories. The people who left, who died, who hurt him. I make them into toys, so he can look at them without being cut. The one you smacked... She was a very sharp toy. Full of betrayal and a different kind of love. It hurt him to look at her, so I made her safe to hold. And you broke her." There was no accusation in his tone, only a profound, weary sadness.

"I didn't mean to break her. I meant to reach him."

"Don't lie Hermione, it doesn't suit you..."

"What are our choices then?"

"You have none! Leave him be ... Leave him in my care..."

"You're not his soul are you?"

"Harry would be safe. He would be quiet. The war is over. He's earned his quiet, hasn't he?

"No." Hermione said, her voice firming with a conviction that was all hers. "He hasn't. And neither have we. Quiet isn't peace. Hiding isn't living."

The child's face shifted, the ancient look giving way to a flash of raw, childish fear. "You'll break him. You'll break us."

"But he is broken! He is falling into himself! Don't you see?"

The child backed away frantically, feeling his game fail with Hermione. "You will ruin everything!"

"Maybe." Hermione admitted, reaching out a hand, not to grab, but to offer. "Or maybe we'll help you put the pieces back together in a new way. A way that doesn't hurt so much. The game is over. I understand now. And I choose to stay in the game. Not hide-and-seek. The real game. The one where we all get to go home."

"This is home this is safe he is safe! We are safe! You will break him, and leave him broken! The hurt is strong! He won't be contained... He would need to hurt, where it hurt him, it took us years to build this construct, and if it wasn't for him," He pointed at the dead tom riddle "He would have never known! And now you're here... trying to meddle with things you don't understand... Leave us! Leave us!"

"You're a guardian." she stated, her tone shifting from emotional plea to clinical observation. "A custodian. The blood ritual showed me the pathways, but you are the one maintaining the... The order in here. You're not the damage; you're the response to it." Hermione finally understood.

The child stopped backing away "The hurt had to go somewhere. It was too loud. It was breaking the vessel."

"So you compartmentalized." Hermione murmured, more to herself than to him. She looked around at the glittering shards, the faces and memories. "You didn't occlude the memories, you... catalogued them. You turned traumatic energy into static data. 'Toys' to be analysed, not felt." It was a brutal, brilliant, and terrifyingly fragile form of self-preservation.

"This is what keeps him sane! This is the love that old spider talked about! Me!" pause "He can't hold it all." the child whispered, and for the first time, he sounded small, and scared. "If I open the archives, the data will become experience again. The pain will be real. The vessel will crack."

Hermione's mind, now fully re-oriented, worked with lightning speed. This wasn't a sickness to cure; it was a negotiation with a sentient security system. A system that loved its host so fiercely it had walled him off from the world, and from himself.

"You're right." she said, her voice soft with awe and horror. "You are the love Dumbledore spoke of. The deepest, most desperate form of it. A love that built a prison to keep him safe."

The child watched her, wary, but listening.

"But a vessel that doesn't feel." she continued, "is just a pot. It can't grow. It can't change. It can only contain. Is that the legacy of The-Boy-Who-Lived? To become The-Man-Who-Contains?"

"He's safe." the child insisted, but his voice was weaker.

"Is he?" Hermione pressed gently. She gestured to the dead Tom Riddle. "You contained that. The ultimate hurt. You are powerful. But you're using all your power to maintain the walls. What about the power to heal? That power lies in integration, not isolation."

"The world is safe from him..."

"To hell with the world!" Hermione snapped "The world betrayed us, the world used us, they let kids fight their wars..."

"So you will wage war on them through him?"

"No! I would never do that! I could never do that to him! There is an evil, and evil that we again, have to stand up to!"

"Him or the being?"

"Both!"

"You will fail... We felt the being, we felt his voice from a thousand years ago, and a thousand years after, and the present... It cannot die..."

"You leave that to us! We've got good at destruction."

"I... I cannot let go..."

"Why not? Trust me like he does!"

"There is still time... He isn't aware of this... You can go back... Tell him that you've examined his soul, and that he's fine..."

"But I haven't, you are preventing me from getting there... And my magic is all but spent..."

"I saved you Hermione... For him... You would die instantly the second you reached his soul, and so would anyone who is tethered to you, except for him..."

"That's not true... I've read everything about it..."

"Not everything..."

"Phineas would have told me about it!"

"Maybe he wanted you to fail, so that he, is unleashed!"

What?

"Unleashed through your death and his friend! A monster! Unstoppable! Worse than him, worse than that relic of the past. Worse than... So that's why he did it! I see now... I was so busy keeping him sane... With you two being idiots and the red girl, zooming in his mind like a cancer... I couldn't see..."

"What are you talking about?"

"The painting understands the magic at play..."

"You think he wanted to get us killed?"

"Absolutely!"

"But why?"

"To create a monster, strong enough to face the being! Its... Understandable..."

"Harry would never be that person?"

"You think its normal that he could withstand the force of the being? Is it normal that you can summon the ancient rites of black in his name? To serve you for a petty ritual you learned from a painting?"

"It was just for effect!"

"No..."

"This is besides the point!"

"This is all the point Hermione, you haven't seen what I have seen..." The child stared at her, his ancient eyes wide with a terror that was entirely human. "You don't understand. You think you're offering him life. You're offering him a battlefield. An open wound where every sting, every betrayal, every loss will feel new again. The love will be a torment because he will know, with absolute certainty, that it will be taken away. The hurt will be a bottomless pit. Is that your mercy? To replace my quiet order with his screaming chaos?"

"This is not him! The Harry we knew wasn't like this! We've been wondering why he's so silent, why he wouldn't talk to us, why he poured over books in the basement for months before he told us that he feels there is something wrong! It's his life, and you're denying him that!" Hermione's voice broke, the clinical facade shattering completely. "This 'quiet' you've built, it's a tomb! You haven't saved him from pain, you've saved him from existing. You've buried him alive in his own mind because you were too scared to let him live!"

"I AM HIM!" the child screamed, the void trembling with the force of it. The small body seemed to swell with an agony so vast it threatened to swallow the surrounding nothingness. "I am the part of him that was left on the doorstep! I am the part that learned to stop crying because no one came! I am the part that decided if he couldn't have love, he would have order! And it works! He is safe!"

"He is gone then!" Hermione shouted back, tears finally streaming down her face, hot and real in this place of abstractions. "Gone is the Harry I know, the one who feels, so deeply it leaks out of him in blunders and stupid, noble sacrifices... That's my Harry! Not this... This curated peace! You are a ghost, living in a museum of his pain, dusting the exhibits and calling it a life!"

"Your Harry?"

"So what if he is?"

"What about me?"

"You are him... You said that yourself..."

"I am the hurt that took shape over the years..."

Hermione extended her hand again, slower this time. The boy hesitated, then took it. His hand was light made solid. His eyes, green like wet jade, flickered with the shimmer of souls passing through memory.

"You won't leave him? Stranded in a desert of pain...?"

"Never..."

"But you will cause hurt... The boy outside... The red hair girl... They will all hurt"

"Won't you make toys out of them?"

"I'm tired of making them..." the boy confessed "It's a lot of work..."

"Then let me help" she knelt in front of him, to be at his level

"If you help without breaking things, we might sustain him, alive and feeling, and..."

"That's what we will do..."

"But if I ever have to make a toy out of you... I'll make sure he hurts you!" He paused, eyes serious and unblinking "Pain beyond imagination"

"I won't hurt him!"

"Shield him from the girl, and from the hurt she will bring through her kin..."

"I will"

"Do you understand that what you feel for him now, has always been there? A pact among brothers and another among sisters..."

She paused trying to understand him, and when she finally did "I never considered that..."

"Consider this, that you began to feel for him once you started to focus on your soul, you started to hear its yearning, and you heard only two words... Harry... Death..."

"How..."

"I know everything there is to know... That's why you were 'stretched', because you had to face your inner darkness, before you could learn to channel it to reach another's"

"All I see is death... Whenever I close my eyes, whenever I'm living life, making tea, reading a book, or having a bath... They will always be dead... In 10 years time they'll still be dead... When I'm living with it, dealing with it, when a few days pass when I don't even think of it, they'll still be dead. All my friends... Lupin, Thonks, Mad-eye... Fred, even Snape..."

The boy began to speak again, but now his voice fractured into a chorus, countless voices, countless griefs, each one a shard of her own reflection.

"There is only wrath and what it lays waste to in its wake!"

"There is no justice, no law and no right or wrong, except for the one that replaces them!"

"All can change and most will ..."

"There is only power and those who seek it!"

"There is only power and those who wield it!"

"There is only pain and those who inflict it!"

"There is only pain and those who learn to inflict it!"

"There is only love, love under will"

"And there is only love, and the world it ruins in its passing.""

Each phrase struck like a note, strummed or plucked by a massive hand on the inside of her skull. The void pulsed with every word, its thread becoming undone, until it was nothing but vibration and light. Hermione's heart sank and her knees gave in. She reached for the boy as the air began to shimmer, every edge of reality unravelling.

He smiled faintly, the kind of smile that knew too much. Then he stepped into her arms, small and burning. The contact was unbearable, weightless and crushing all at once.

"You wanted to reach him..." he murmured, voice already fading. "Now you have..."

Then he dissolved, light breaking apart into a thousand motes, scattering through her chest like falling stars.

Hermione screamed. It wasn't sound, not really, it was every memory she'd ever held shattering at once.

And then, silence.

The void folded in on itself.

The drawing groom waited. Mr. Weasley observed them all with anxious shifting eyes. He was twisting his fingers and rocking back and forth on his toes, sensing something had gone wrong, they were in there for a very long time.

And as suddenly as it had stopped, chaos unfurled, magnificent, incandescent, impossible, and terrifying. The stillness shattered like glass by a soprano. Everything broke apart around her. Thought, memory, and soul rose in a tornado of light and sound, devouring shape and silence alike until her form was no more. There was no up, no down, only spirals, each turn collapsing inward, her own heartbeat echoing through the falling geometry. Every boundary she had ever drawn began to blur. Every rule she had lived by melted beneath the raw pressure of what she had touched.

She saw herself, mirrored a thousand times in the spiral of broken crystal shards. Each reflection fractured, then rejoined, then dissolved again. She melted into herself and into a new self, flowing like boiling mercury, neither solid nor liquid, only becoming. She was a child in a library, her fingers trembling over runes she didn't yet understand. She was a girl petrified and frozen in the hospital wing, Harry caressing her stiff hand. She was a woman in the tent, whispering to the dark and crying alone, as Harry stood watch in the cold. She was a witch, tearing apart at the sight of Harry's dead body in Hagrid's arms.

The mirrors spun faster. Images collided and rewrote themselves, laughter and loss, tears and happiness, folding into each other until she couldn't tell which came first.

And all the while, she felt him.

Harry ran through it all, a pulse threaded through the chaos. His presence beat against her like a second heart, faint but insistent. The hurricane of selves bent around that rhythm, as if the storm itself recognized its centre.

Then she saw it, a single drop of blood suspended in the light. It danced through the wreckage, unafraid, dodging shards and memories with the grace of something alive. It pulsed in time with that heartbeat she'd been hearing, defying gravity and destruction.

She reached for it, though she had no hands left to reach with. The blood glowed brighter, almost playful, like it was playing hide-and-seek with her. When she touched it, it split, and inside, she saw his face. Not the face he wore in life, but something older, something arcane. A boy carved out of grief and a flash of green light, looking back at her from within the drop like a reflection in molten glass.

The blood shimmered, then burst outward, flooding everything in a fast and frantic wave, It filled the air, the void, the space where her body had been, until there was nothing left but red, and she was drowning. A final, instinctual gasp for air catching in a throat that was no longer there.

Every nerve in her unravelling form screamed at once, then softened into a quiet, profound awe. She could breathe it.

She filled her lungs, or what used to be lungs, and she felt an ecstasy beyond anything she had ever experienced. Every ounce of her being was joy and pleasure, and the world turned weightless, every breath pulled her deeper into him, until she was no longer falling or rising, but suspended in a sublime equilibrium. What were directions, what was aim, in the face of such unity? Such oneness? To drown was to fly, to die was to dance. It was all the same, all perfectly, divinely acceptable.

The drop had not been a fragment. It was the nucleus. The last, untouched part of Harry's soul, the ember that had refused to die, the flame that burnt bright in the darkest of nights.

And now it was looking at her.

Not with eyes, but with a sense of invitation. In that gaze, she felt the entirety of his lonely walk from the cupboard under the stairs to the Forbidden Forest. She felt the weight of the fate he never wanted, the echo of the names of the dead he carried like stones in his pocket, the fierce, clumsy love that had been his only true magic. It was all here, held in this single, conscious point of light, and it was offering itself to her not as a burden, but as a truth.

It was as though he was saying "Let whosoever availeth at this be known as friend".

The crimson tide, once a torrent, now resolved into a rhythm, the slow, sure beat of a heart that was both his and, impossibly, theirs. The spiralling chaos, which had been a maelstrom of her own undoing, began to re-knit itself around this new, steady pulse. The shattered mirrors of her memory did not piece themselves back into their original, solitary forms. Instead, they melted, their silvered backs and reflective surfaces flowing together like liquid ore in a crucible. Where there had been a thousand fractured Hermiones, there was now a single, vast tapestry woven from two distinct threads. Her relentless, analytical gold and his brave, sacrificial scarlet.

A new understanding bloomed within her, not as a thought, but as a fundamental law of the universe. A whole soul cannot be truly destroyed. It can only be forgotten, scattered, or, re-homed.

This was what Tom had never understood, this was the reason behind his inability to possess Harry.

She had not come here to explore or to retrieve a corpse or, resurrect a ghost. She had plunged into the abyss to gather the pieces of a shattered star, and in doing so, had built a new constellation. The joy did not vanish, but it deepened, tempering into something solid and enduring, a purpose. The ecstatic surrender was replaced by a quiet, unshakable resolve. They were not one, not in a way that erased either of them, but in the way that a lock and key are one, in the way that a wand and a wizard are one.

"Harry..."

Harry felt her before he knew her.

At first, it was just warmth moving through the dark, not touch, but the memory of touch, familiar and terrifying. It spread through him like spring thawing ice, and for a second he thought he was dying all over again. Then he realized he wasn't alone in the dark. Someone was breathing inside him.

The void that had been his refuge began to shudder. Every quiet thing started to wake. He saw her, not as Hermione the body but Hermione, as everything that she represented. Her mind, even in this turmoil, burning through light, fierce and unafraid. She was trying to reach him, pull him out of the architecture he'd built to keep himself safe.

He reached back. And for the first time since dying, he felt, and from the core of the light, from the very ember of him, came the reply, a feeling of warmth, of recognition, of homecoming.

"Hermione."

"Won't you come with me Harry? You promised you would..."

"Say where..."

Hermione felt it too, the light answering hers, the impossible recognition that she wasn't walking through a mind but through a soul that wanted her there. The space between them vanished. For a moment they were both suspended in something vast and tender, the echo of all their years together compressed into one impossible heartbeat.

"Outside..." She murmured.

Her hand brushed his light and the drawing room filled with radiance, a flare so pure that the walls themselves seemed to breathe. The runes on their robes burned white, vibrating with soundless music. The vials vibrated violently, turning a deep eerie purple. A tunnel of light was established between them. A light so bright, that even Phineas had to squint.

"Impossible!" He mouthed from his frame.

Ron flinched.

He had been holding the connection with all his might, his palms open, the magic at work trembling through his very fiber. He was acting like a relay, or a t-shaped pipe in a building that had long expelled him. Hermione's magic was all but spent, she was quiet for a very long time, he thought she had lost herself in there. They were both standing where they were, bodies slightly leaned towards each other, eyes white-hot and gleaming in the shadow that covered their faces, unblinking. He felt the warmth crawl through his fingers, then rise like a tide through his arm and into his chest. It wasn't just magic. It was them! Intertwined, alive, oblivious.

And something in him broke.

It began as distance, the old, familiar ache of being excluded. The recognition that whatever was happening between them didn't belong to him, that she would never give him that kind of closeness, not even by accident. The envy came slow at first, then fast, boiling through his veins until it felt like poison.

He told himself he just needed to ground the spell, to taper it safely before it burned out. He clenched his fists. But the current rebelled, wild and alive, fighting his control. The harder he tried to steady it, the more it resisted, like an animal shaking off its leash.

"You have to wrap it up! You've been there for far too long!" He shouted through the bond, but no answer came.

He reached for Hermione, she had told him to pull her out if anything went wrong. So he did. "Hermione! Come out! You have to stop!"

"Let go of me, Ron!" she snapped, her voice sharp with strain. She was still within Harry's consciousness, reluctant to cut herself free. The surrounding light was too beautiful, too full of meaning. She wasn't ready to be parted from this haze of joy and revelation. The Harry inside, molten into her very being, could feel the tug but could not respond, the bond was shared with her consciousness, not his.

"Listen to me for once and stop arguing!" Ron shouted.

"Stop it! You'll ruin everything!" She hissed back.

"Why don't you ever LISTEN!" He bellowed and pulled on Hermione with all his might, nearly plucking her out of the deepest layer of Harry's soul. Hermione jerked, her physical body twitching mid-stance, attracting Mr. Weasley's careful watch.

"What is happening?" He asked panic shaking his voice.

Ron clawed at the bond, but she was too far in, too entwined with Harry to be torn free. Slowly, she rose, gliding upward, willing yet reluctant, the orb in her hand blazing like a guiding star, pulling her from the depths. Harry was fully open now; her work was nearly done. She lingered a heartbeat longer, savouring the tether, before letting herself be drawn out, there would be time for more later.

As she broke the surface of Harry's consciousness, awareness flooded back into him like cold water. He gasped, blinking hard, his eyes dry, his body aching as he came back into himself. The bond was still shimmered, but it felt different, like a familiar street that one day, without any notice had been rerouted. As he laid eyes on Hermione, relief and panic collided in him, she was there, but something was wrong. Her eyes wide in shock, her lips parted as though she suppressed a gasp, her knuckles white around the orb, and her form rigid and strained.

Ron's hand shot through the bond like a predator's claw. Before Harry could react, Ron latched onto Hermione's essence, dragging her magic, her life force, her very soul toward himself. The warmth that had filled Harry moments before turned jagged and cold, twisting into a sharp pull that made his chest ache. He could feel Hermione's light bending, stretching unnaturally as Ron siphoned it, the tether between them straining against the intrusion.

Hermione's light twisted, dragged out of her like smoke in reverse.

Ron felt it, the hollow inside him, the endless hunger, and instinct took over. He drank from her. Magic, life, soul. All of it.

Hermione convulsed. Light exploded from her skin in violent arcs, her hair lifting as if underwater. The orb fell from her hand and shattered against the floor, the sound like breaking glass underwater. A shriek tore from her throat, the sound of it inhuman,layered with agony and horror, as if her soul was being ripped from her nerve at once. Her scream reverberated through the house, piercing the very air.

Harry staggered back as the bond ruptured. He slammed into the geode behind him, shattering it into glittering shards. A shock wave of energy rippled outward, shattering every window in the house. The remaining geodes trembled dangerously, their resonance spiralling out of control.

"Bombardo!" Shouted Mr. Weasley, aiming at the geode behind Hermione and then Ron's.

A violet ripple tore through the room, hurling furniture aside. Hermione floated in the centre of it all, her eyes rolled back, her spine arched, her scream unending. The runes on her robe burned red, and the vials above them exploded in bursts of light and smoke. Each heartbeat of hers was being consumed, fed into Ron, whose skin shimmered with sick, greedy heat.

Phineas shouted, voice cutting through the chaos, but his words were swallowed by the screaming currents of energy.

Ron's mind split between horror and hunger. He wanted to stop, but another voice in him whispered otherwise, cold, old, jealous. If he couldn't have her, no one would.

And then Harry moved.

His wand, forgotten on the floor, rose into the air of its own accord, drawn by his half-conscious will. His voice came out hoarse and raw, cut through the chaos,

"Altum dormiendum!"

The spell hit Ron squarely. He fell like a marionette with its strings cut, body folding gently into silence.

Hermione's light flickered, her scream broke into ragged gasps, then silence. Her body seized once, then fell limp, gravity remembering her all at once. Mr. Weasley reacted instantly, wand snapping upward.

"Molliare!" And a cushion appeared beneath her. She landed hard but safe, motionless, hair fanned across the shimmering air.

Harry scrambled to her side, reaching for her hand. Her skin was cold and bloodless, she was colder than ice. He checked her pulse and felt it faintly beneath his fingers.

Mr. Weasley rushed to her side as well. "Get away from her Harry!"

He cast several quick, unspoken spells. Hermione's body jerked in response to one of them.

"Arthur..." Phineas's voice cut through the heavy air from his frame.

"She's alive." Arthur said, panting slightly, his eyes wet and wide. "Drained to the bone, but alive. She'll need an invigoration draught, something strong." He turned to Harry. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine..." Harry said quietly, still clutching Hermione's hand.

Arthur glanced toward Ron's still body. "What happened? What did you hit him with?" He crouched, casting a diagnostic charm over the boy.

"He was... He was trying to..."

"Snuff her!" Barked Phineas.

Harry nodded faintly. "I hit him with a sleeping hex. I had to. He wasn't himself, he was killing her."

Phineas sniffed, eyes narrowing. "An immediate coma curse, Arthur. He's perfectly well, only out cold. Though, frankly, he deserves far worse."

"That's my son!"

"Quite irrelevant considering..." Said Phineas. "I say we let him sleep for now..."

"She needs a healer, I know someone who might be able to help us..." Said Mr. Weasley, ignoring Phineas.

"Who? No one can learn about this!" Said Harry, looking up at him. "She'll end up in Azkaban along with the rest of us!"

"She can be trusted, and she owes me a favour!" He turned on the heel and walked to the door. "Harry, stay by her side and try to get your hand on an invigoration draught. I'll be back in less than an hour..."

The door closed behind him with a click, followed by the sharp crack of his disapparition.

Harry brushed a strand of hair from Hermione's face. Her skin was bloodless, her lips bluish, her body still and cold beneath his hand. She looked almost carved, as if life itself had stepped away for a moment. He stroked her fingers gently. He wanted to say something, to whisper to her, to scream her name or to shake her, but he knew that his words would be hollow, ineffective and empty.

He stared at her, tears dried black, on the corners of her eyes and on her cheeks, her breathing weak and faint, and her bloody hand laid uselessly beside her.

He felt an unimaginable anger towards Ron, he wanted to hex him as he lay there, unconscious.

"She will live..." said Phineas quietly from his frame.

Harry didn't look up. "I hope so." he said, his voice low and dangerous. "For everyone's sake."