Official Fine Print: Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling. Just playing with them. Honest.
AN: Following is the "All Better Now" chapter. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Monday's chapter gets back to the serious business of a visit to Hogwarts, a talk with Prof. McGonagall and Dumbledore's portrait and the reforming meeting of the Order. This one is why it's good NOT to be JKR sometimes. Read on at your own risk. *grins*
Magic Never Dies
Chapter 7
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In the end, Hermione noticed that Fawkes seemed to be a comfort to Harry rather than just a constant reminder of all he had to live up to. Their natures suited each other; Harry instinctively treated Fawkes with deference and respect, as if he were another person rather than a magical creature. Fawkes seemed quite pleased with this arrangement and in return spent a certain amount of companionable time alone with Harry that Hermione mildly envied. Stupid to be jealous of a bird, but there it was. It was clearly Harry with which the phoenix wished to communicate and he made his wishes unequivocal.
"Bloody bird practically chased me out of his room yesterday," Ron agreed with her. "We were looking at Fred and George's new personal defense catalogue, they've thought of some really useful stuff, actually, and Fawkes just flew in and started squawking away. Wouldn't let up until he took it upstairs. I swear to Merlin Harry'll speak phoenix and burst into flames once a month by the time they're through up there."
After his initial depression Harry rebounded, as he always seemed to do, and threw himself into things with renewed determination. The drawing room had become a sort of central planning point and Hermione came across a great deal of scratch parchment filled with tried and discarded ideas about their direction. He was simultaneously attempting to reach a decision about how to find the other horcruxes, how to destroy the one they had and how best to finally confront Voldemort. He had marked the month of October for their journey to Godric's Hollow, telling them both he wanted to be there before All Hallows. Hermione noticed also that he had taken to marking any known or probable activity by the Death Eaters on the calendar as well, as if attempting to discern a pattern or reason amidst the sporadic destruction they wrought.
Hermione spent most of her birthday with her parents. She realized that day how very much she loved them, yet how utterly divorced she felt from their world now that they had moved from her childhood home. She was relieved about the seeming ease of their relocation; they seemed happy and should be safe enough, as safe as they could be with a Muggleborn witch for a daughter and Voldemort at large, anyway. She enjoyed being with them, enjoyed the respite of being their little girl for the afternoon but by the time she apparated back to Grimmauld Place she was more than ready to resume the challenges of life with Harry and Ron.
There was a pile of parcels and cards on the kitchen table; the parcels mostly Weasley in origin, the cards far wider flung. She recognized Viktor Krum's hand writing on one on top of the stack and Hagrid's on another.
"We missed you today," she heard, and turned to find Harry in the doorway. She couldn't help the smile that found its way to her lips; he'd been gone already when she left in the morning and she'd been looking forward to seeing him all day. He wore jeans and a soft old sweatshirt and stood in his sock feet with an empty mug in his hands, the picture of domestic tranquility. No missing limbs, no smoking spell burns, just Harry, the way she liked him best.
"Ruddy owls had us running up and downstairs every five minutes," he continued, nodding at the pile of cards. She could see the twin to her smile already twitching to break out on his face as well. "Then Ron burnt his fingers on the tea kettle trying to steam open the one from Viktor…"
"He didn't!" she said, outrage and humor wrestling each other in her voice.
Harry nodded, grinning. "Goes on and on about us thinking like Muggles, the silly prat."
"Did he succeed?"
"I took it away from him after that."
"Did you succeed?" she asked pointedly.
"He wasn't suggesting anything I couldn't do at least twice as well, so I put it back," he teased. Somehow she knew he hadn't opened it; whether out of sheer obliviousness or true confidence he'd never seemed to be nearly as jealous as Ron. Or else he hid it better.
"I've told you both a million times…" she started
"I know. It doesn't matter," he said quickly. "Do you want your birthday present now, or do you want to wait `til Ron gets back from the Burrow?"
She grinned at him. "Are you better yet?"
"If I'd known that's all you wanted…" he said, making it quite obvious he was now hiding something behind his back.
Suddenly it wasn't quite as funny; she realized it really was all she wanted and quite badly at that. She looked, really looked, at him standing before her. She saw the same unruly black hair, the same too-long fringe falling into clear green eyes, same owlish glasses, the same wiry, surprisingly resilient body she had known and relied on for the last six years and realized anew that she wasn't succumbing to some new awareness of his physical presence but to something that had been there all along. It had just taken the events of that awful last year to break down the blinders that caution, practicality and logic had built around her heart.
"Now, please." Her voice sounded strange even to her own ears. His eyes flickered, she could see him trying to work it out, wanting to please her. He always had. Suddenly it seemed such a crime, such an enormous waste of whatever was to come of his life to have played this game for so long. Hermione reached out and took his hand, heading for the stairs. He followed without a word of protest up the stairs… and then up more stairs.
"Not the roof," he groaned teasingly, pretending to slow and drag against her hand. "I'm not going to be able to walk tomorrow after…"
She turned to him, wrapped her arms around him and felt their lips meet just as she apparated them both. The squeezed-through-a-bottle sensation of apparition ejected them into the dim velvet night of the roof; for a second she thought she'd splinched them both together somehow, leaving nothing behind but reassembling them out of pieces of each other. She could feel every inch of him against her, the warmth of him in the cooling air, the hardness of muscles moving under the soft stretch of skin. She wondered vaguely if she'd apparated her hands under his shirt or if they'd just moved there of their own accord. She honestly didn't remember but she had no desire to remove them and Harry appeared not to mind in the least. He seemed utterly content in his rediscovery of her lower lip; until she opened her mouth to him and he moved on with a happy little growl.
Hermione backed them toward the corner where she knew he often liked to come and sit, blocked from the doorway by the slope of the roof itself. She wrestled her wand from her pocket and transfigured a loose roofing slate into a mattress (she'd known that skill would come in handy sooner or later. She wasn't entirely sure if Professor McGonagall would be proud of her resourcefulness or shocked by her behavior. She expected a bit of both.) She loved that when she toppled their entwined bodies backward onto it his gave way entirely trustingly, never questioning for a moment that she had a plan in mind. She arranged herself so that they fell onto their sides beside each other; despite his assurances that he was fully healed she wasn't taking any chances now that they were finally this close.
He propped himself up over her for a moment, his face shadowed.
She whispered, "Lumos Minima" and a soft light glowed from her wand, just enough to see him clearly by. He blinked.
"Hermione," he said hesitantly, "you're sure this is what…"
"Yes," she cut him off. `Completely, utterly, entirely, blissfully…' her minded provided, but she knew he didn't need to hear any of those, because he had already returned to kissing her as if his very life depended on it.
And yet… it was interesting how easy it was to distract him. He'd been fumbling with the buttons of her shirt for quite some time now, and intrigued as he seemed by attaining that goal all she had to do was turn her head to open up a new stretch of neck to explore or shift the position of her hips against his and he was lost in the new sensation. It came to her that Harry's stunted upbringing had more or less resulted in a one-emotion-at-a-time comfort level and he was approaching overload. And much as she regretted every minute he'd spent in the Dursleys' closet, she knew that she much preferred the innocence of his response to Lavender and Parvati's revelations about their more… pointed forays with boys at Hogwarts. Hermione had never considered herself broom closet material and at the moment she was deeply, almost tearfully grateful. She wouldn't have traded this for anything.
By the time they had both managed to lose their clothing she had entirely forgotten about how long it had taken them; every nerve ending she possessed felt over stimulated by the touch of skin on skin.
"Now," she said as softly as she could manage, "Harry, please."
His head came up and he shifted against her; she could feel him scrabbling in the piles of their clothing for something and she realized he was looking for his wand. "Use mine."
She heard him whisper "Nox" and then the charm that would prevent her from conceiving. A wave of warmth ran through her, whether from the thought of his remembering for her despite his own state of distraction or the spell itself she wasn't sure.
"Harry, put the light back. I want to… see you," she asked.
His "Lumos Minima," sounded unfamiliar, his voice deeper and huskier than she had ever heard it. Her eyes made him out in the relit glow of her wand before he propped it against her discarded shoe and settled back to her again. He seemed distracted; she felt him shift his weight in a move that almost took her breath away but she got the sense he had something left to say before they took the final step forward and was struggling with the words.
"Hermione? I know that this changes everything, but I wanted to tell you… I wanted you to know before, so you didn't think that I was just saying… whatever happens to us next, I … I think that I've loved you for a very long time and I just never understood what that meant. And I'm glad it's worked out this way." His voice grew stronger as he spoke, as though telling her eased some internal struggle. "No matter what happens it'll be okay. I just needed to tell you, at least the once. It's the only thing left that could keep me from… going on."
She realized in a rush he meant going on in the sense that Dumbledore had, not making love to her.
His eyes met hers and for the first time she felt their roles truly reversed; she had no words for what she felt in response to what he had struggled so hard to say. She thought at that moment that there could be other ways of making a horcrux; her soul was so torn between wanting him, loving him and fearing for him that it seemed more than possible that it would be rent forever. There was only one thing that could stop it; to be torn another way. Her hand slipped down between them and found him; she felt him jerk back in surprise and then move willing into her palm. She drew him gently to her, stroking softly and encouragingly as she guided him home. She could feel the muscles low in his abdomen poised and clenched with the effort to be still.
"It's okay, Harry. I know," was all she had to say to make him move. And never in the years that she had known him, even lately when she had thought of him in ways she had told herself later she really shouldn't, had she come close to the ways Harry could actually move her. That was the confounding thing about Harry; he'd go on being quite ordinary until something extraordinary happened and he always managed to find some instinct, some magic buried within him that held the answer. He answered questions about herself then that Hermione never even knew she'd had.
Like, no, it didn't hurt that much the first time. If she'd been looking for a pain to wash away the feeling his words had evoked this wasn't going to be it; it was momentary and fleeting at best. And she could make sounds like that? And she, Hermione Granger, could actually let go, fall free of herself so completely? She could please him, bring him to that point of gasping, grasping pleasure, just by doing this? She was glad she had asked him for the light, loved seeing his expression as they sought to please each other, the intensity he brought to edging her closer and closer to losing herself. She had no doubt that she was the still point of his world at that moment and the knowledge consumed her. The sound of his ragged breathing, some wordless pleading noises and an abrupt change of rhythm caused something buried inside her to answer back; she pushed herself up into him, clamping her legs around his driving hips and felt his next thrust unlock a shuddering wave within her. Her pleasure was his undoing as well and she felt her body doing what it had been divinely designed to do, drawing every last measure of release from his.
As Hermione's heart finally slowed and her breathing returned to normal she realized that Harry was unnaturally still against her; she'd heard about boys falling asleep unflattering minutes afterward but he still felt far from relaxed in her arms, the muscles beneath her hands clenched painfully tight. She was sure that he'd… she thought he had. It had certainly felt… his weight was still consciously braced against his forearms, his fingers twined in her hair but his head was buried in her shoulder. She rolled them both to their sides and pulled back slightly. His face was drawnwith pain, his eyes shut and watering; he'd bitten down on his lower lip hard enough to draw blood. After a moments' blank terror Hermione felt for his scar; it was searing hot and pulsed angrily under her fingers.
He'd always said he could feel when Voldemort was victoriously happy or enraged; it didn't take a lot to extrapolate Voldemort could quite probably sense equally strong emotions in him as well. Harry was being punished for his pleasure as only Voldemort could.
It was the first sign of their connection she'd seen in months; the scar had hardly bothered him at all sixth year. It infuriated her that there was nothing she could do to help him, no way to break Voldemort's foul grasp from where she watched, helpless.
"Let him go," she hissed, sitting up and rocking him gently in her arms. "Let him go, or I swear that I'll kill you myself." It seemed to last hours although it couldn't have been; they were certainly some of the longest minutes of her life. Her determination to free him from his hellish connection, no matter what that proved to be, redoubled. He started to shudder and suddenly contorted with the abruptness of a relinquished cruciatus; the moment when pain-wracked muscles are released but can not yet shed the immediacy of the agony that held them. His eyes opened slowly and blinked, still watering, searching until they found her. She could read his sorrow and the apology in them and swiftly leaned in to kiss him and stop the words from following. She couldn't bear it if he apologized for Voldemort's intrusion on that particular moment in their lives; refused to give it any more power or reality than she had to.
"Don't" she whispered, softly kissing each still-quivering eyelid. "Don't say a word. Don't give him any more than he's already taken. I love you, Harry James Potter. It was perfect."
He was still a few more moments, catching his breath, then hauled himself up into a sitting position and leaned against the sloped of the rood beside her, wiping the trail of blood from his lip. She shivered, half in cold and half in the unfamiliarity of her nakedness before him. He transformed her sweater into a blanket, wrapping it around her shoulders and she crawled gratefully into his lap.
"Happy Birthday just seems inadequate under the circumstances," he said shakily, gathering her against him. "But you never got your present."
"Don't be so hard on yourself," she joked gently. "I don't think you could have missed it."
He grinned, a shadow of itself but a grin nonetheless and her heart leaped to see it. "Good thing about the wards on this house, or nobody for blocks around could have missed it. But I meant the other one."
She was too happy to see him smiling to swat him the way she probably should have if she were to keep him in his place. He scrabbled around amidst their clothes and produced a small box wrapped in deep blue paper scattered with crescent moons and stars.
She accepted it and unwrapped it carefully, smoothing the paper beneath her hands.
"No tearing apart the paper for our Hermione," he teased.
"if you're feeling well enough to tease me, you're well enough to be hexed," she told him.
"Fair warning."
She opened the box and found a tiny silver goblet attached with a link onto a silver chain.
"Sirius' cup!" she recognized, her eyes shining, remembering the last time he'd given it to her.
He murmured a spell and the cup enlarged to life size, the chain now dangling, dwarfed. The Black Family coat of arms was indeed engraved on the front, but his fingers joined hers on the stem and tipped it so that she could read another line of engraving beneath the base.
AEB ~The Cup of Love is Never Empty~ APWBD
Hermione looked up in surprise. "Dumbledore?"
"I thought it must be, but I have no idea who AEB is or was. Burnt off the Black family tree if they were ever there, I couldn't find a trace. I saw the inscription that night when I took the cup back from Mundungus. That's why I didn't want to lose it. So I shrunk it down…
"And tried to swallow it?"
"No, I put it in the pocket of my robes. But then the fighting started and the spells started flying. I got hit by something that flipped me right over and it fell out. I just had time to grab it before Lupin and Kingsley showed. Good thing, too, nasty spell went right over my head when I leaned down to get it."
"More than I wanted to know, thanks," Hermione told him, shuddering.
"Anyway, it just seemed…" he leaned forward and rubbed the back of his neck ruefully; she could see he was stalling for time, searching for words.
"It's perfect," she said sincerely, saying the spell to shrink it back down in size. "Would you?" She handed it back and reached up to lift her hair from her neck for him. He secured the chain and nuzzled into her neck, drawing her to him.
"Whatever he was up to," Harry said, "I sincerely hope that Dumbledore was right."
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