Chapter 3
“You … you died?” Ginny asked, her voice quaking slightly.
Night had fallen fully now, the only light illuminating them the stars and the moon. Ginny had considered pulling out her wand to light their way, but something of Hermione's story seemed to be easier to hear, easier for her to tell in the dark. Ginny shivered, the terror at her friends' apparent deaths combining with the cold summer night.
“I got better,” Hermione said, her lips turning up in that slight quirk that Ginny had learned to recognize as the older girl making a joke that required knowledge of the Muggle world.
Hermione felt the breath knocked back into her.
All of her aches and assorted injuries from the battle were wearing on her, the pain letting her know that she was once again truly alive. An unnatural stillness still spread through her body though, and she knew that she could remain there, as motionless as if she were still dead, if she so desired. However, one thought instantly passed through her mind, and she sprung up, sitting up fully in an instant.
"Harry!" she exclaimed, and above her, Ron and Neville were stunned into silence from the argument they had been having. Both boys looked stunned at her sudden revivification, unmoving. Hermione started to scramble up to her feet, but was slowed by the pain coursing through her body. Though it had only been a few moments since she had died, the pain seemed much worse, the reprieve she had been granted from it forcing her to catalog it all. It wasn't until she looked up at Ron, and reached her hand up towards him, that he was able to start moving again, grasping her hand and helping her stand up.
"Hermione, Bu-, Wha-," Neville stammered out, pale, as if he was seeing a ghost.
"Quickly, we need to get out to the Forest, Harry's alive again, but he's outnumbered drastically, and he ... will ... need," Hermione slowly trailed off as she started to filter through what Harry was feeling. Nervousness, the tension of being ready to act, fading into relief and patience. "Nevermind, he's fine. He - he's safe? He's playing possum. They think he's still dead, for some reason."
The emotional channel between them was not precise, but a surprising amount could still be communicated through it, even if it took a few attempts sometimes. Ron just nodded, used to their use of it by now, but Neville looked skeptical, still adjusting to their entwined self. As she worked through what was happening outside the boundary of the castle, she sensed Harry slowly begin to move towards her.
"They're coming back here. They're ... carrying him. To show us his body, try to demoralize us when the fighting starts again."
"Come on then," Ron said, and started them walking back towards the Great Hall. "We need to let the others know the fight isn't lost yet, the battle's just beginning."
"So what's the plan then?" Neville asked, as he hurried to catch up with the other two.
"The plan hasn't changed," Hermione said. "We need to kill Nagini, then we can kill Riddle."
"I'll do it," Hermione finished, sending a blast of resolve over to Harry, along with her idea.
"Umm, Hermione," Neville began hesitantly. "I don't know what happened just now, or how you're back, but I'm guessing it's not something you can repeat? If something happens to you, then you're dead for good?"
"It needs to be done," Hermione said sharply. "And who better to do it than me? This is our job, Harry's and mine. And he'll be too busy dealing with Riddle himself."
"Except, if you go down, then won't Harry be dead too? Shouldn't it be one of us, then? Besides," Neville continued, building up steam. "V-Voldemort knows all the spells we do. He can block or shield against any of them. The only way to hit him will be for someone he isn't expecting to attack him. He won't let his guard down against any of us - but if they're bringing Harry back with them, then he'll be able to connect through. It'll be the one thing that Vol-Voldemort isn't expecting. But Harry can't if the two of you are dead, if he kills you for attacking Nagini. It's a suicide job."
Neville darted forward from them a few steps, planting himself squarely in the corridor ahead of Hermione and Ron. "I'll do it. I'll take care of the snake. Right before you d-died, you said this was my job now. I'll kill the snake ... and then you and Harry can kill Voldemort."
Hermione froze. Ever since they had come back to life, Harry had had to mute himself, to avoid giving away any sign that he was still alive, lest the Death Eaters realize and allow Riddle to finish the job. As a result, Hermione had been forced to bear the brunt of both their emotions, feeling double. Combined with the shock that the vividness of sensation from the world around them after not feeling anything had left her in, she was barely able to function enough to do what needed doing. Neville's declaration, the first time he had ever said the name without stuttering, left her bowled over, frozen in place.
"You -" she started to say, punctuating each word by pounding her finger into his chest. "You - bloody - idiotic - suicidal - reckless - brave - Gryffindor!"
With the final word, her tears burst forth in a flood, and she wrapped him in a massive hug. Both herself and Harry were stunned at the loyalty and bravery of their longtime friend, who they had once dismissed as the most timid of all of them. "Why can you only ever stand up for yourself when you're standing against your friends?"
Neville stood stunned, unsure what to do at her display of emotion. He gently patted her on the back, looking towards Ron for help. Ron could only chuckle weakly.
"To be fair to Nev, you're a lot scarier than old Voldemort," Ron joked weakly. Hermione hiccuped a wet laugh through her tears, and reached out blindly, grabbing Ron and pulling him into the hug as well. The three remained there for a minute, before Hermione finally released the two boys.
"Alright Neville," she said. "You win. You kill the snake. Then Harry and I will finish the job."
"Wait," Ginny said, her righteous indignation building within her once again. "So Neville knows as well as Ron. Who else knows? Luna?"
Hermione had to quell the retort she had already been preparing to voice at the mention of the name, and winced. "Neither of us has told Luna anything, but ... Well, it's Luna. Based on the things she's said, and how she's acted around us since we saw each other again ... we think she knows already. Somehow."
"Really?" Ginny asked, the anger beginning to boil over. "Am I seriously the last one to be told?"
"Yes," Hermione's instant answer, delivered calmly and with certainty, knocked a hole in the cauldron of Ginny's rage.
"Wha-" Ginny began to speak. "What does that mean?! Is that how little you think of me, that you told everyone else before me?"
Hermione hmmed to herself, and took a moment to gather her thoughts. "That's certainly one way to look at it. But it's not how we see it."
Her continued use of the plural pronoun was driving Ginny up the wall. Before she could voice her anger, Hermione continued speaking.
"You may be the last of our friends to find out, but that's not because of how little regard we have for you. Ron needed to know, being out there with us, and he's been with us the longest of any of you. He deserved to know first. After him, Neville only found out because I died right in front of him. And we still don't technically know if Luna knows, since we've never asked her outright - and if she does, it's not because we told her, but because she figured it out, the same as you did tonight. All that aside, however?"
"What I said before, I meant literally. You are the last one to be told. Well, depending on how you count Luna. We're not telling anyone else. We love your family - Molly and Arthur have been like another set of parents to both of us, and all your brothers are amazing. The rest of the Order fought and bled more than anyone else, our other friends from school went above and beyond what should ever be expected of children. All of them, we care for. But none of them have been there for us, through everything, the way the four of you have. When we went to the Ministry, to the Department of Mysteries, it was you, Ron, Neville, and Luna. You were the four who came with us. You're the only ones we're telling, none of the rest."
"And if someone like Rita Skeeter were to figure it out, the way you did, the way Luna might have?" Hermione continued to speak. "We wouldn't tell her anything. The rest of the Wizarding World - we have done so much, sacrificed so much of ourselves for them. To stop Riddle, to save them all. And we did it gladly. But this one thing? It's private, personal. It's none of their business."
The two girls had stopped walking, standing near the edge of the orchard behind the house, having walked all the way around the edge of the property several times over during the course of their discussion. Hermione faced Ginny, the intense look on her face barely visible in the moon and star light.
"The way we see it? We are only telling the people we trust, who we think deserve to know the truth. And to us, the order they are told in, isn't as important as the fact that we trust them enough to tell them at all. I understand why you might be angry now. If I thought someone was keeping secrets from us, I would be upset too. But at the end of the day, you're our friend. One of our best friends. We want nothing more than for you to be happy – and happy for us. And though it was a terrible choice we made, it was our choice. And we're happy with it now. We both are."
Hermione's speech flushed the rest of the anger from Ginny's system, leaving her feeling hollow, and a little ashamed instead.
"If you need proof, you can see it in our eyes," Hermione finished her speech, turning away from Ginny at last to face towards the porch behind the kitchen. Ginny's eyes began tracking where hers were looking, and at the moment they both had turned their heads in that direction, a faint light came on on the porch. Harry stood there, arm held aloft, a lumos lighting the tip of his wand and their path back towards the house, his other arm down by his side, holding Hermione's jacket. As they walked up, Ginny didn't have any option but to see the look of sheer contentment on his face at Hermione's approach.
When they reached the house, Ginny quickly shrugged out of her jacket and ran up the stairs to her room for some time alone to think. It had been a whirlwind of an evening. She had known that Harry and Hermione had always been close, and that after the end of the war they had been closer than ever. But whatever she had been expecting the older girl to say, Hermione had been right (she had an aggravating habit of always being right) that it was completely different than what had actually happened. She quickly fell asleep, the conversation they had had leaving her so emotionally drained it tired her out physically.
Meanwhile, downstairs, Hermione shrugged her coat on, and stopped by the living room to speak to Ron in soft tones for a few minutes, while Harry made the rounds of the house, saying goodbye to the rest of the Weasleys, and gathering his own jacket. Then the two left, together, as in everything they did now.
They walked in companionable silence up the path towards the ward line, where they could apparate back to the flat in Muggle London that Harry had rented and they had been sharing over the summer. Finally, Harry broke the silence.
"So, you told her everything?" he asked.
A burst of mirth and mischievousness flashed across their bond from Hermione. Despite their lack of speech, they had, as always, been in constant communication.
"Well," she said, those same emotions in the grin toying with her face. "Not quite everything."