Nattering Nightmares
“Hermione? What do we do?”
Harry’s voice was a desperate plea, his voice breaking as he gazed hopelessly into her eyes. Spells flashed all around them. There were crisp cracks as they slammed into walls and the stone floor below them, and softer thuds when they landed on their human targets.
The atrium around them was a flurry of bodies and wandlight, the muted green glow of the department of mysteries reflecting off metallic masks and Harry’s glasses.
Hermione stared back at him in horror, her mind swirling a million miles a minute as she desperately searched for a plan to get them out of here.
The death eaters had been waiting for them when they’d arrived, waiting until Harry had claimed his prophecy before they descended on the motley crew of teenagers. She could hear the oily voices of their foes chanting dark spells aimed at her friends, and the frenzied shreiks as the woefully unprepared children desperately tried to defend themselves.
She spotted a broad frame of a man turning in their direction across the room. Acting on instinct Hermione sent a silenco towards him, watching it hit its mark before she cast a strong stunner on the same path. She turned away before she could see that it did not land as successfully as her first spell.
“We need to-” her words were cut off abruptly as a flash of violet surged in their direction in a violent arc. It was heading right for them. Hermione had no time to think, it would be on them before she could cast a protego. It couldn’t hit Harry, he needed to make it out of this, his safety was of the utmost importance.
Without a second thought to the consequences of her actions, Hermione did the only thing she could, she shoved Harry with both hands, sending him tumbling to the ground just before the spell could land its mark on his back.
Unfortunately for her, her wand went tumbling to the ground alongside her friend. And before Hermione could even begin to feel fearful, the violet light was upon her.
She watched in morbid fascination as it sunk into her body; slicing through her clothes and her body like a hot knife might through butter. Someone called her name as pain bled through her.
Frantic hands grasped at her flayed flesh before everything went dark.
–
Hermione sat bolt upright with a strangled scream. Her hands gripped desperately to her chest in an attempt to hold her torso together.
Her heartbeat thundered in her eardrums as reality rushed back. Her hands were not grasping charred and bloodied flesh, but a knit cotton jumper. There was no searing pain, just the flutters of residual panic as she took in her bearings.
She was in her assigned room in Grimmauld place, early sunlight seeping through the window casting dusty shadows around the floorboards. A nightmare, it had only been a nightmare.
Slowly, the memories came back to her. Stories of Harry’s sixth year, of the duel with Draco Malfoy, her blinding rage and Luna’s spell.
As though her thoughts had summoned the fae-like witch, a voice interrupted her racing thoughts.
“I’m so glad you’re awake Hermione.” Luna was seated in a chair off to the side of Hermione’s bed. She sat cross legged with both her own and Hermione’s wand grasped loosely between her clasped hands. “I’m very sorry that I put you to sleep, I realize that it was unkind of me to raise my wand to you.”
Luna looked genuinely contrite, yet before Hermione could deign her with a snarky response, the younger witch raised one of her hands to halt her words, while the other placed the elder witch’s wand onto the bed beside her seated form.
“I promise you I would not have done it if I didn’t believe it was absolutely necessary. I could sense that you were quite enraged, and I did not want to have to bear witness to what would have occurred if you had been permitted to express your feelings in the way you saw fit in that moment.”
They were perhaps the most articulate and rational words Hermione had ever heard the blonde witch utter. Luna did not earn the nickname Loony simply for believing in invisible creatures, but more-so due to the fact that the majority of the time what she spouted came across as utter nonsense.
“I wasn’t going to hurt Harry.” Hermione argued defensively. She would never, could never hurt him.
“Oh I know that.” Luna assured her, smiling serenely as her gaze was drawn over Hermione’s shoulder to a seemingly blank spot on the wall behind her. “But not everyone is so confident in your affections for Harry, and it would have been quite distressing for him if you had hurt anyone else when they attempted to misguidedly try to protect him from you.”
“I still don’t appreciate being knocked out.” She grumbled petulantly, crossing her arms like a child. Hermione did not feel the need to snatch up her wand however; she felt oddly comfortable in the younger witch’s presence, and the compulsion to be on the defensive was notably absent.
“And for that I am sorry, it was the only outcome I saw in which you and everyone else remained unscathed.” There was an odd infliction in Luna’s voice over the word saw , one that gave Hermione pause, but before she could press the witch on it, she continued on. “If I’d known you’d be so deeply plagued by nightmares as a result of sleeping I might have considered another path, unfortunately even my insight is not without limit.”
Ah, right. Hermione had briefly forgotten she’d awoken screaming. It had been so long since she’d had a true nightmare, the ability to dream -good or bad- had not been something she’d retained for long in the walls of her prison.
“It wasn’t a nightmare so much as it was a memory.” She really truly did not know why she felt the need to confess as such to the relative stranger sitting next to her, the words tumbled from her lips traitorously before she could even process them.
“Its seems to me sometimes that our reality is a worse nightmare than any our minds could possibly conjure.” The words were so solemn coming from the young witch, they landed between the two women without ceremony.
A response was unnecessary.
It was only when Hermione really truly looked at Luna that she saw the same marks of war on her that she saw on everyone else, maybe even more. Luna’s eyes were swirling grey pools of despair, like she’d seen more horrors than any one person possibly could have in a thousand lifetimes, let alone the one short one this young woman had lived so far.
Whatever words might have been said next were lost as Hermione’s stomach grumbled loudly. She was starving, her last meal being the biscuits Kreacher had provided before her row with Harry in the library.
“I’ll go fetch you something to eat, it's still quite a while before breakfast and I imagine you won’t want to join the rest of us in the kitchen quite so soon after the events of last night.” With that Luna swept from the room in a swirl of pale blonde, the door closing shut behind her with a crisp click.
–
It was some time later that Harry came to see her, the tray of food Luna had brought her long since picked over and abandoned to the side as Hermione lost herself in her thoughts.
She was broken from her musings by a knock on the door and the appearance of a head of messy black hair. Harry made his way into her room without ceremony, settling himself on the foot of her bed as he watched her apprehensively.
“I realize I should probably apologize for my outburst,” Hermione was first to break the tense silence between him, unnerved by the way he was watching her with an unreadable look in his eyes.
“That’s really unnecessary Hermione…” Harry started, his words trailing off as she fixed him with a stern look that communicated she was not done speaking yet.
“ However, ” she continued. “I am not even remotely sorry, and I did nothing wrong so any illusions you have of my remorse might as well be abandoned right now Harry Potter.” She raised a single eyebrow in his direction, silently indicating that now she was finished.
“I’m not here for an apology ‘Mione, truly.” The way he called her ‘Mione tugged on her atrophied heartstrings, her nickname from so long ago it felt like another life.
“Why are you here then Harry?”
“Ron pointed out that your ‘outburst’ as you called it was likely because we keep dropping these bombs of information on you. Don’t forget I was there your first night back when you laid into Dumbledore about how he only carded out information when it suited him.”
How could she possibly forgotten he was there, his presence had been suffocating on her that first night, the heat in his glare a sensation she wouldn’t soon forget no matter how much she might’ve wanted to.
Harry continued on, evidently unaware of her internal thought process.
“I don’t want to be like Dumbledore, selfish as it may be I really don’t feel like carrying the burden of all the information on my own. So, ask me anything you want about the time you were away. I’ll tell you everything I know.”
It was a monumental offer, to place the entirety of the valuable information of the war at her feet for Hermione to use as she saw fit. She recognized it for the olive branch it was and seized the opportunity with both hands.
“What is it like out there?” She gestured to the window to the outside world, through which bright late morning sunlight filtered through.
“It’s bad, worse than bad really. Voldemort has full control of the ministry and has implemented all kinds of draconian laws. Umbridge headed up a muggleborn registration not long after we lost Hogwarts, they dragged in hundreds of witches and wizards and accused them of stealing magic and wands from purebloods. Anyone who resisted or spoke out went missing shortly after they made noise, and virtually anyone less than a half-blood is either dead, in hiding, or imprisoned at this point. Yours truly” he gestured to himself “has been deemed undesirable number one and I can’t so much as step foot outside this bloody house without unforgiveables aimed at my back, which you got to witness firsthand the other day.”
Hermione took advantage of his pause to process all the information he’d provided so far. It was horrifying -yet incredibly impressive- how wholly the death eaters had managed to shackle wizarding Britain in so little time.
“What about The Order? Why didn’t they stop him before things got so bad?” She asked finally.
“The Order was virtually decimated after the first attack at Hogwarts. So many people died, so many more were badly hurt. Not long after, known members’ homes were attacked. There was so much bloodshed in the early months Hermione, pretty much the only living members of the Original Order left are Sirius, Remus, and the Weasleys. Everyone who’s still alive at this point is living in Grimmauld now, it’s the only place thats really truly safe now with the Fidelius on it.”
There was so much pain in Harry’s voice as he spoke about what happened, yet his expression remained shuttered. So much so that Hermione wondered if he’d finally managed to improve his occlumency skills over the years, she didn’t know how else he could’ve possibly managed to keep the emotions at bay.
“Tell me about the Horcruxes Harry.” She pressed, hoping to learn as much as she could while he was still willing to tell her.
“We figured it out in sixth year, or well I suspect Dumbledore knew a lot sooner but that’s when he told me about them. We know of three, but we suspect he’s actually got six, seven if you count him.”
Hermione remembered an aritmancy lesson she attended once about the significance of the number seven. The most powerful magical number. It made sense, in a horribly fucked up way.
“Remember the diary from second year?” Hermione nodded in response to his question, not wanting to interrupt.
“We’re pretty certain that was one, we’ve figured out that the whole situation with Ginny and the Basilisk was one of his attempts to regain a corporeal form. It’s destroyed though, was when I stabbed it with the fang.”
She barely suppressed her shutter as the memories from her second year flooded though her brain. Blood dripping from walls, frozen cats, scales slithering on stones. Petrification was not an experience Hermione was eager to relive.
“Dumbledore got the second one on his own, a ring that belonged to Riddle's mother’s family or something. He destroyed it but got himself cursed in the process, it’s one of the reasons we were unable to really put up a fight when everything went down; the curse weakened him a lot, it was killing him slowly.”
She remembered vaguely that one of Dumbledore’s arms had seemed odd to her, she’d sensed the sheer number of glamour charms he’d had cast on the limb, but hadn’t thought much of it at the time.
“The last one we figured out was a locket that apparently belonged to Slytherin himself. Dumbledore and I retrieved it together the night death eaters broke into the castle, almost bloody died in the process.” He laughed bitterly at his own words, memories clearly flashing behind his eyes. “The whole thing turned out to be a bust anyways, seems Rab beat us to it. The blasted thing was a fake.”
“Rab?” She questioned, not recognizing the name. Perhaps it was another fragment of her memory she’d lost, but subconsciously Hermione doubted it.
“Yeah, tosser left a note in his fake locket, got the damn thing memorized I've read it so many times. To the Dark Lord, I know I will be dead long before you read this but I want you to know that it was I who discovered your secret. I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can. I face death in the hope that when you meet your match, you will be mortal once more. Signed it RAB. We’ve been trying for years to figure out who it might be, but there was nobody in the original order with a name that could have in anyway been shortened to such a nickname, and nobody remembers any Rab except for Rabastan Lestrange, who it definitely wasn’t.”
Hermione agreed with that sentiment, the gears in her mind already turning over thoughts and ideas.
“Dumbledore thought the other three might be founders items like the locket, but so far we haven’t come up with much. Most of the order doesn’t even know about the Horcrux hunt except for me, Ron, and now you. The Headmaster wanted it kept pretty hush-hush, like everything else.
Her brain was reeling with the information, sorting and cataloguing it into the depths of her mind. Her fingers itched for a quill to jot down her theories.
“Thank you for telling me all this Harry, the amount of trust you’ve placed in me means a great deal.” She meant it, it was not lost on Hermione that Harry had just shared with her information he’d kept from his friends and family for years.
“‘Course ‘Mione” he flashed her a lopsided grin that tugged on her heartstrings all over again. “If you’re gonna be the one to save us all, you might as well do it while playing with a full deck.” He said it warmly, but Hermione could not help but slouch as some of the weight Harry had mentioned earlier settled on her shoulders.
It did not deter her though. They broke her out of Azkaban to help, and as much as Hermione might not have cared if the wizarding world burned down around her, she would do everything in her power to make sure Harry did not burn down with it.
She would save him, and if she happened to save everyone else in the process, then so be it.