Chapter 2
The two girls continued their walk around the outside of the Burrow. By this point in Hermione's story, the sun had fallen below the horizon, and the last light of the day was slowly draining through the red of dusk. Hermione still seemed oblivious to the cold that was setting in fully now, and Ginny remembered how Hermione had once told her that after their time spent in the Forest of Dean the previous winter, she no longer really felt the cold.
"Hermione," Ginny said, confused at the direction her story had taken. "All of this is fascinating, but it's not actually answering anything. All these stories about what you and Harry were doing during your free time at Hogwarts, it doesn't have anything to do with soul bonds. All you've been talking about is studying in secret, and making a spellbook, not - not true love, and romance, and secret rendezvous-es, or anything. What happened between you two, really? How did you get from friends to soul bonded?"
"Ginny," Hermione said, exasperated at last. "It's not like what you're thinking of, not at all."
"Really," the younger girl said, sarcasm laced heavily through her tone. "And why not?"
"Because!" Hermione exclaimed, the single word seeming to serve as an entire explanation by itself. She paused for a moment before voicing the reason. "It's not something that just happened to us. We did it to ourselves."
“After Ron left, we were devastated,” Hermione said, slowly gathering steam after her previous outburst. “Neither of us wanted to do ... well, anything really. I sat and just cried for an entire day. I don't know, had things gone differently, if Ron and I would be together right now, or whether even if we were together now, if we would have lasted forever. But his leaving was ruinous, and not just for any chance of our fledgling relationship. I don't know exactly how to explain it to you. At the time, it felt like we could do anything. With the three of us, we were invincible. When one of us faltered, the other two would pick them up. There was always a backup, a fail safe, in case something went wrong, the others would pick up the slack.”
“But without Ron, it felt as if we lost our margin of safety. Despite the difference being only one person being gone, it felt as if were something to happen to one of us, it would be the end of everything. I guess the best way to explain that sense of despair is as if we suddenly felt that all our eggs had wound up in one basket. The last few months, I've spent a lot of time working on finding names for obscure emotions, I have had to, but I can tell you that there are so many that just don't have a name, no matter how obscure, in any language, because they are things that most people never need to communicate to one another. I've had to resort to describing things in metaphors. Harry's solution is just to make up new words. But that loss we felt when Ron left us – it was a crippling blow.”
“I cried for a full day,” Hermione repeated, getting herself back on track. “That evening that he left, and the entire next day, I was useless, completely. But the morning after that, I made a decision. I needed to get up, do something, find a way for us to still win the war, or I would just wallow in my grief forever. And since I already felt like I had nothing left to lose, I broke out my grimoire at last.”
“Up until then, we had been using a number of different books I had packed in my bag, but I had never needed to really break it out, since we had most of the relevant books on hand, from Dumbledore or from our personal collections. I started by flipping through the high magic sections, looking for every ward and defensive spell I could find. The very first thing I cast from it was the Prismatic Ward, which is a defensive spell rarely used, due to its indiscriminate nature towards any who touch it, and how its conspicuous light pattern is almost hypnotic in its appeal. We split our time then, Harry and I, between the grimoire and the rest of the reference books we had. One of us would read through the grimoire, while the other worked on whatever else was available.”
Hermione was sitting at the table in the tent, three separate reference books open in front of her. She wasn't reading them, exactly, so much as scanning for relevant sections and cross referencing material between them. Across from her sat Harry, her grimoire open in front of her. She always felt a bit silly referring to it as that, when it was just a book, but the effort she had put into crafting the magic on it, the time it had taken her to assemble the information to store within it, made it take on more significance, and she had started to call it that in her mind during the construction and she had found that it just ... stuck.
He seemed to be having much less luck than her, however, judging by the way that he was flipping through the pages, frustrated, barely pausing to read anything. Harry had always learned better from practicing rather than studying, so while he was still able to learn some of the combat spells she had placed in there, many of them required practice targets - either living individuals you didn't mind testing curses on, or large open areas for the more expansive spells - that they didn't have access to. Even if they were willing to test those curses on each other, it would require both of them, and therefore slow down their research. And though the tent itself and the immediate outside had been warded to a fare-thee-well by Hermione when she first cracked her grimoire open, and they could practice magic inside safely, they couldn't do so outside the ward boundaries, which meant the area effect spells were also off limits.
Harry suddenly sat upright, stopping his rapid churn through the book to read a specific page intently. A few moments later he looked up at her and spoke, the first time they had broken their silence in hours.
"Hermione," he said with excitement, and she looked up. "I found something in here, something useful. This ritual-"
With that final word, she quickly reached across the table and pulled the grimoire in front of her. She had put a number of rituals in there, and all of them were both extremely powerful and extremely dangerous. Quickly scanning the page he was on, she paled.
"Harry, did you read this all the way through? I never intended for us to use this, I only put it in here for reference, because it was soul related magic, and could help us with the Horcruces. The consequences of this are ... dire."
"Yeah, I read it all the way through, twice. I might not have understood all the words, exactly, but I got the gist of it. This lets us bond our souls, it's right in the name. And it could do so much for us! It says it lets us 'fight as one', it would help us if we ever got separated, and those are just the two 'most well defined benefits' to it."
His flippant attitude towards the ritual was beginning to scare Hermione. Clearly, he hadn't thought through what would happen were they to perform it, he couldn't have with that attitude
"But if we aren't in close enough alignment to begin with, we could just die outright during the ritual!"
"But it covers that!” Harry spun the grimoire back around to his side of the table, gesturing to a paragraph halfway down the page. “The participants back then, in Egypt, had to spend years training with each other to determine if they were compatible. And though that may not have been our intention, we certainly have spent years training with each other. After all this time, do you really think we aren't compatible enough to make this work?"
Hermione frowned as he shot down her first argument. However, she had plenty of other objections she could raise.
"Fine, I'll grant you that we could pull it off, but the benefits don't outweigh the risks! Yes, the list of advantages it would give us quite enticing, but the disadvantages ... you said you read it all the way through. Don't you get that if one of us dies, the other will drop dead instantly?"
"Is this about the prophecy? I've turned the words over and over in my head since I first learned them, and you're far more brilliant than I am. If I could figure out that it might mean that both 'the Dark Lord' and 'the one with the power to vanquish him' might both die in the end to fulfill it, 'neither of us living', surely you must have too. Is that what you're worried about? That I'll die fulfilling it, and you'll die with me?"
Harry looked defeated then, and though it would win her the argument, Hermione couldn't let him think that, not when he had finally given voice to the silent fear that had haunted them both for over a year.
"No!" She shouted, before her voice turned quieter to repeat the negation. "No. Quite the opposite, actually. I'm worried something will happen to me, that I'll be too slow, that I won't be smart enough, that I will fail you when it counts, and I will take you down with me."
She could only reward his honesty with her own, speaking aloud the fear she had held within her since she first got her friends in that girls' bathroom above a troll all those years ago, the fear she had faced in their third year Defense final that she had not been able to overcome then. But Harry responded to her fear with his own reassurance.
"I wouldn't last a day without you. And not just because you're the most brilliant person I know, and the best hope we have of getting through this is with your mind. It's because you're the only one I have left. No, it's not that you're the only one left, its that you're the only one who never left. Ron is a good friend, but every time, he hasn't been there with me. It wasn't just now when he left us. Back during the Tournament, he abandoned me because he was jealous. You though, you have always been by my side, you are the only one who's never left me. Without you ... I wouldn't be strong enough to get through this."
"Besides, Hermione, be honest," Harry said, his voice turning somber. "We're already in too deep. It's just the two of us now, and I think we both know that if something were to happen to one of us, the only thing that would stop the other one from rescuing them, from helping them would be death. And if one of us died, the other would be right where we always are – a half step behind each other."
"You shouldn't talk like that, Harry," Hermione chided gently, her heart not really in it. "This mission is more important than either of us, we have to find a way to stop him."
She then grew serious again. "But even if this risk is acceptable, which I'm still not sold on, that's overlooking the most serious concern."
It was Hermione's turn to tap her finger on a paragraph in the grimoire, as she quoted the section that had her most worried.
"Those bonded become as one, in all aspects; action, thought, and emotion. They become entwined, and what one feels, both experience," Hermione recited, before turning her eyes back on Harry. "This would rule out any chance either of us would have at having a romantic relationship with anyone else, ever. This is a massive commitment. This can't be undone, Harry. Marriage bonds can be broken. This? Can't."
"Hermione," Harry said, sadly. "You said it yourself. The mission is more important. None of that matters if we don't win this war. If we don't win, then neither of us will be alive to have any relationships anyway."
"I liked Ginny," he said, averting his eyes from hers, sitting down on the couch behind him, in order to confess his feelings. "I may have loved her, I'm not sure. I've definitely never thought of you that way; I haven't let myself. I needed you too much to ever risk thinking like that. Not just your mind, but that you always stuck with me, no matter what."
Hermione debated speaking up then, letting him know that this ritual wasn't needed to get her to stick with him, but the words got caught in her throat as she choked up, tears starting to run down her face at his confession.
"I can't promise you I ever will love you," Harry said, his voice turning stronger, as he met her eyes once more. "But I can promise you that ..." He trailed off, searching for the right words.
"When we had career counseling back in fifth year, I said I wanted to be an Auror because I couldn't see beyond this fighting. Last year, I just wanted to be normal. I dated Ginny because it was the normal thing to do, and I wanted to not have to think about being the Chosen One for once. But when I thought about having a future with her, I just couldn't imagine it. I couldn't imagine any future at all."
He took a deep breath, bracing himself for what he had to say next. "It's like this whole war is this wall, and I can't see past it. I know I'm supposed to know what I want to do with my life, that I should at least know that, but I just can't imagine any future for myself beyond the fighting. I don't know what I want. But spending the rest of my life with you by my side? That doesn't sound so bad."
Hermione's heart broke a little, hearing his confession. Between his sheltered and abusive upbringing, the alternating idolatry and contempt the rest of the Wizarding World held him in, and that never to be sufficiently cursed prophecy, Harry couldn't even realize just how normal he actually was in his uncertainty, that it wasn't a failing. He couldn't realize that what he was describing was love, not necessarily the romantic kind, but deep and lasting.
"No, it doesn't," Hermione said, and as the words came out of her mouth, she realized she was actually considering this insane suggestion. She moved around the table to sit next to him on the couch and take his hand.
"Are you sure about this, Harry? If we're going to do this, you have to be positive. I know you like keeping things buttoned up in here," she said, tapping his forehead. "But if we go through with this ... there won't be any secrets you can keep from me. I'll be inside your head, and you inside mine. Are you really sure you want that?"
As she spoke, he shyly tilted his head up to look at her. "Does that mean you're actually considering it?" he asked her, his voice soft.
"Help me, I am," she said, humorous exasperation coloring her voice, succeeding in getting Harry to crack a smile for the first time in the conversation. "It's still a terrible idea, for anyone to do. A terrible choice to make. But if you're sure this is what you want, you've convinced me it could be worth it. So? Are you sure?"
"I'm positive, Hermione," he said. "I know it sounds crazy, but I just have this ... feeling. Like this is the right choice to make. We've been sitting here in this tent, not getting anywhere, and none of the things we have considered, about how to destroy the Horcruces, how to find them, none of the ideas we've had has felt right . And not just since Ron left, we've been stuck for months now, not making progress on any front. But this, this feels like the right path."
Hermione squeezed his hand, and started to think about the necessary preparation for the ritual, when, all of a sudden, a memory of something she had overheard at a wedding when she was a little girl sprung into her mind that seemed appropriate to the situation.
"Wherever you go, I'll go with you."
"So there you have it," Hermione explained, to Ginny's stunned look. Hermione herself was focusing on the path ahead of them, only daring to look at the redhead through her peripheral vision. Everything she had explained until then had been the easy part, setting the background for what happened in the tent. That final piece of the puzzle was the one that revealed everything, what they had done. She looked vulnerable at having revealed such an intimate - not romantic, not as such, but certainly private - moment.
"The soul bond isn't - I don't know what you think a soul bond is, but whatever you do, it almost assuredly isn't that,” Hermione seemed to sense Ginny's unease, and her processing of the situation, and filled the awkward silence with more details, waiting for her to react. “Bond was the word they chose when they first translated the concept into English, all those generations ago, but nowadays, if I were to do so, it's not the word I would choose. Blending might be the word I choose; it's more accurate. A melding together, perhaps? A fusion?"
"Traits that we both had before it happened were amplified by their shared nature. Traits that only one of us had ... became weaker, or disappeared. Usually. Especially if the other had a trait that was diametrically opposed. But sometimes, they became shared between us instead. All told, our personalities merged together, becoming the next best thing to indistinguishable - we still have some individualism, but overall, ... we are much more similar people than we were before. If you present us both with a choice, we will choose the same thing now, every time."
"For example, we were both sorted into Gryffindor for our courage - which has only reinforced itself between us. Harry was always somewhat studious - not as much as me, no, but more than Ron ever was on his best days. Now, he's willing and able to spend hours researching and working without pause. He's been learning and retaining information faster and better too - after the bond, as we went studied and researched in the tent, he started picking up spells faster, and was able to recall information more readily. On the other hand, my fear of heights didn't diminish his love of flying even a little - but was in turn completely obliterated. I can get on brooms now, without a second thought."
"We don't share each others' thoughts though - we're not telepathic. We are empathic however - I know exactly what Harry's feeling, and he, I. Between that empathic sense, and the way our personalities have blurred together, we sometimes can appear like we can read each others' minds. We can also sense each other, as if we are extensions of our body - proprioception, as the Muggles call it. Even if we hadn't just left him in your house, I could tell you he's right there," Hermione said, pointing with her finger at a specific corner of the house. "Based on what I know about the layout of your living room, and what I can feel of his emotions, he's playing chess against Ron still. Losing too, despite genuinely trying to win. That's one of the traits that's stronger in Harry now - between both our competitive urges, and my concentration and reasoning, he's gotten a lot better at chess since the bond, and cares more about winning too. Ron's loving it, since it means stiffer competition, but we're catching up to his ability. Slowly, but still."
"That kinesthetic awareness of each other means that we can move more smoothly around each other. That's what you saw at dinner. The emotional channel between us let Harry know I didn't like the taste of my food, and that I was looking for pepper, specifically. The kinesthesis is how he was able to pass it over without either of us looking at each other - we just knew where the others' hands were, at that distance."
"It's only a useful party trick now, but that was one of the main reasons we went through with the bond in the first place. When we were fighting during the war, it meant that we could move around each in a way that other pairs take years, decades to develop, that we could shield and attack around each other with ease. No miscommunication, sometimes not even a need for verbal communication what with the emotional resonance. The proprioception also means that the two of us can always apparate to the other's location, blind. No matter the distance or how cramped the space is, we can always target each other."
"On the other hand, there is one big disadvantage. Well, aside from – I don't know what your philosophy is, Ginny. But I believed that a person is not this,” Hermione waved her hand over her body, before tapping on her forehead. “But this. Changing a person's mind, rewriting their personality like we did – to me, to who I was before, that ritual was the equivalent of killing us both and replacing us with two mostly similar people. But the real downside? It doesn't matter what word you want to use to describe it - bond, blend, merger, fusion. A rose by any other name, after all. Before, we were two separate people; two bodies, two souls. Now, now we only have the one soul, shared between us. Bigger, and brighter than either of ours was before, but still singular. If one of us were to die ... the other would as well."
"What happened when Ron got back," Ginny finally found herself asking, her voice flat, starting to find herself capable of reasoning again.
"We told him, of course," Hermione said, once again looking at Ginny. "We wouldn't have been able to keep it a secret; not in such close quarters, not from him. But we didn't want to. He had left us, and we both felt betrayed by that - he left us - but despite that, he has been our best friend since we were eleven, since we first began at Hogwarts. It was ... tense, when we first told him. He didn't take it very well. But eventually he came to terms with it, and was okay with it."
"Have you told anyone else?" Ginny asked, expecting the answer to be in the negative. She hadn't heard any hint, any rumor from any of their other friends since the two of them and Ron had resurfaced for the final battle.
"Well, we told Neville," Hermione admitted.
"What?" Ginny asked, shocked. "Why?"
"We had to," Hermione said, sounding somewhat embarrassed. "He was there when I died."
Hermione raced down the corridors, flying back towards the rest of the students and teachers in the Great Hall, tears flowing down her face. The damage the castle had sustained so far over the course of the night had knocked out the direct route, forcing her to weave her way back and forth, up and down staircases, to wend her way through the ruined sections through the only passable route.
At the same time, she felt Harry move away from where the two of them had been in Dumbledore's office, travelling in the opposite direction - outside, across the grounds, into the Forest. But where Hermione's route took her towards safety, his carried him to doom.
Suddenly, she heard footsteps from up ahead, right as she approached a corner. She raised her wand, starting to trace through an offensive spell, as the people she heard came into view, and she relaxed at seeing Ron and Neville.
"Oh thank god," she said, flinging herself forward and hugging them both. "we were worried I wouldn't make it back in time - we're running so very short."
"For V-Voldemort's ultimatum?" Ron asked. "We should make it back to the Hall easily before his time runs out."
"Wait," Neville interrupted. "What do you mean we? Wasn't Harry with you? Where did he go?"
At his questions, Ron's eyes focused back on Hermione, searching for something there that he evidently found.
"He didn't," Ron said, and his tone made it clear that it wasn't a question, that he already knew what Harry had done. "That'll kill you both!"
"He did," Hermione said, and the lack of sadness but resolve in her tone stunned both boys slightly. "It was the only way - Snape left some memories behind, as he died, for us. We went up to Dumbledore's office to see them in the Pensieve, and - it confirmed what we had suspicions about for a while. That night, that Halloween - when Riddle tried to kill Harry, he was planning to make a Horcrux from it, and it ... rebounded somehow, anchoring in Harry himself."
"Horcrux?" Neville asked, confusion plain on his face.
"There's no time to explain them properly, Neville, they're ... soul anchors. They keep Riddle from dying, truly. And one is in Harry. That's what we've been doing all year," Hermione gestured to Ron as she frantically spoke. "All three of us. We destroyed the rest, we thought there was only one left – it's Nagini, his pet snake. But there are two, one in Harry also. It's up to you now, the two of you - you have to kill the snake. And then Riddle. But the snake comes first or this nightmare will never end."
As she got the most critical information across to another soul, someone else who could be trusted to finish the job, she sent a flare of relief and accomplishment across to Harry, and was surprised to feel a similar emotion in response. Both relief and accomplishment, but not in echo of hers, an entirely different situation. It was ... the sensation of solving a puzzle? The feeling of eureka?
She didn't have time to dwell on it though, as Neville finally processed the information she had rapidly given him.
"What do you mean it's up to us now - where will you be? Wait, what did Ron mean when he said that Harry's going out there would kill you both?" Neville asked her, seeming to suspect the general shape of the answer, even if he wasn't sure what it was exactly. "Hermione?"
"We bound ourselves, Neville," Hermione stated. She reached out towards Ron, grabbing his arm for support, not physical but emotional, as she told one of their closest friends what she and Harry had inflicted upon themselves. "Our souls. It was an ancient ritual - not one anyone should be using, but we didn't think we had many options at the time. The situation was dire, and anything that could gives us an advantage, we had to take. And the advantages are great - even now, I can tell you that Harry is already inside the Forest, that he's closing in on their camp. That he's tired and hurt, but still able to fight. Without it, we probably wouldn't have made it this far. But the downside - oh, the downside. We're tied together - where one of us goes, we both go. Harry dies - I die."
As her explanation struck home, Neville flinched, before lunging forward and engulfing her in a hug himself. Hermione found herself hugging him back, the gratitude towards their friend echoing both from herself and from Harry. Finally, he released her, mostly, still holding her arm.
"That's why we needed to find you. To let someone know why Harry had gone into the forest. The others, they might think that without Harry, the battle is lost. But it's just the opposite. Without us, you have a chance to win. This is it, the prophecy will finally be complete after we're done, and Riddle will be vulnerable. You just have to kill the snake."
And, then, before she could say anything else, she felt Harry's emotions flare up in a scramble pattern, and she knew her time was up. She quickly clenched down with her fists on both of her boys' arms, to let them know nonverbally what she no longer had time to say.
Hermione felt the breath knocked out of her.