Harry Potter Live and Uncut

PROLOGUE: THE SPIDER

Looking in the mirror I fail to recognise myself. The familiar pointy face, sallow at the best of times, has been dissected by swooping, elongated cheekbones. The hair, once short and untamed, falls sleek and ebony down the nape of my neck. The scar has faded. And the eyes - once haunted and protected from the world by rims of glass - are clear, free...and they say eyes never lie.

But I do.

She turns from the window silently, suddenly, like a panther inhaling the scent of its prey. The torchlight kindles on her tresses of hair, alighting it with shades of black, blue, red, gold. She is colourless yet colour itself. She is mirth, yet she does not laugh. She is soulful, earthly, even human. But she has no soul. And she will never die. Her voice is jarred, tormented music when she speaks.

"Do you want me to do it, Harry?"

Harry lies on her bed, naked and covered with a linen bed sheet, his fists knotting together. He laughs tonelessly.

"Make me like you? I think not."

She shudders, drinking in this moment, as Harry's gaze basks upon her silhouetted form. She strides purposely toward him, silver talons unknotting the tie of her black silk robe. She is like a spider in her beauty and deformity, she is a paradox of the darkness and the light, of the real and tangible and the dead. Harry's heart does not quicken. He lies still, as if in a trance. She likes it that way.

"We could be together. Forever."

"So you could suck me dry like your other victims?" he states dryly.

She falls silent, the robe slipping to the floor. Underneath her skin is bleached like curdling milk, her limbs long and fluid. She takes him silently, as is her way, like the eternal she-spider who mates while devouring her lover. And in that clandestine, wordless coupling, Harry finds peace - for a moment, for a solitary stitch in time.

Only after, as he rises to take his leave, sweeping past the walls of books, scrolls and yellowed parchments, does he address her of his own accord. "Thank you," he mutters.

The vampire bares her fangs in response, slowly running her tongue along their smoothness, flushing the taste of Harry from her mouth. Silence ensues. If this were a muggle room, the incessant ticking of a clock would mark the seconds and the light years between them. "One moment," she says, stopping Harry from flinging the door open and slamming it shut with finality, as had become customary. "How is Ron? And Ginny?"

"Fine. If this is a subtle way of inquiring whether they ask for you, the answer is no. Any more pointless questions? I do, after all, have classes to attend." His voice is sardonic.

"One more. Why do you keep coming back?"

He looks at her as if the answer were written across his forehead, the walls, on all the billboards of the world. "Because my love," he drawls precociously, "No one else will."

If she could only taste tears once more.

He holds the door open, and as if some sliver of the person he was invades his body, he turns to her gently. "Goodnight, Hermione."

CHAPTER ONE: DRACO MALFOY IN BALLET SLIPPERS

The Great Hall's enchanted ceiling today rained snow, pearly translucent snow, pelting from the heavens in thick sheets. The candles that hovered above the food-laden tables waltzed together, a few particularly ambitious ones bellowing out the notes to the Floo Danube at the tops of their waxy little voices. Nearly Headless Nick rolled his eyes as he floated by, muttering something moodily about bloody multipurpose kitchenware and what a racket and can't a ghost get a decent sleep. Then he remembered that he couldn't sleep anyhow, which abruptly altered his mood.

"Glorious morning, Miss Brown! What's that you say is in your hair, Longbottom? New kind of hair grease is it? Right, Suddenly Stickable Chewing Gum. Good show, what, you look particularly dashing this morning."

Nick gave Neville a friendly wink, which, if you hadn't been at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for six years previously, could be mistaken for a "I-just-sucked-ten-cumquats" grimace or perhaps some sort of ancient Zulu warrior signal, meaning "Let's make war" or "Let's make cumquat pie", depending on your dialect. Neville turned into the Gryffindor table and plopped himself next to Ginny Weasley.

"Nice hair, Neville," she said, eyeing the brown clumps soaring at lightning angles with the aid of a hard, nasty looking orange substance.

Ginny Weasley went to flick her own long, golden-red strands off her shoulder, as she had seen once in a Muggle film and was rather taken by. She employed this action regularly - on the way to Arithmancy, when Cho Chang used to strut around the corridors like a right little tart (well, what could you expect from a Hufflepuff?), when Snape leaned over her shoulder to look into her bubbling cauldron...the latter not terribly pleasant for either party, Snape with a mouthful of surprisingly chewy hair, Ginny left with greenish saliva-coated strands covering half her head. As her hand swept past her shoulder and touched nothing but air, Ginny remembered that she'd hacked off the long lengths months ago, when undergoing her self-styled Hasty But Long-time Coming Image Change.

The hair was the first to go. Then it was the knee-length skirts. Then the pretty barrettes, pink knickers, and sparkling lipsticks. And the end result was that Ginny now looked as she felt inside, and this was the best way, she reasoned, to Express Herself. Raising a glass of pumpkin juice to her lips, she blinked her heavily kohled eyes, the black smudginess emphasising the blueness of the orbs within. Her hair was jaw-length and charmed to appear permanently dishevelled, and gold jewellery glittered from her nose, eyebrow, the lobes of both ears, and bellybutton. The Ravenclaw Quidditch team were currently busy spreading rumours that Ginny had another hidden piercing You Know Where, which Terry Boot had apparently seen with his own two eyes.

"You think so?" Neville squeaked.

"Well," sniggered Ginny, "If you go for Tower of Babel look. With fluorescent nuclear waste oozing from the windows. Which," she added kindly, "I'm sure some people do."

"Who's a nuclear waste of space?" a voice interrupted. "If you were going to say Draco Malfoy, then I would agree. One hundred and ten percent. Stupid swaggering prat, swanning around the school like he's God's gift to--"

"Good night's sleep, Ron?" Ginny hastily enquired, not especially wanting to hear this morning's edition of Malfoy The Whopping Great Twat, which was now a much-loved Gryffindor breakfast ritual.

"Ginny, when are you going to take those things out of your face?" was his response.

"Sorry for asking, Mum," Ginny hissed under her breath, shoving a spoon of porridge into her mouth with vigour.

"Because," Ron continued pompously, "You are far to pretty to pepper your face with holes. It detracts from you natural looks, I'm telling you. Seamus Finnegan mentioned the other day that he used to quite fancy you, but now he feels you resemble a giant red hedgehog, although quite fluffy despite the barbs. Didn't you, Seamus?"

Seamus, a few seats away, turned a becoming shade of puce and muttered something about a stranded skrewt and a floral tutu and rescuing right away.

Ron, clearly enjoying himself, continued. "It's not as if it's only my opinion. Fred and George are appalled, let me tell you, but can see the bright side after your new look scared away all the garden gnomes last summer. And," he added gleefully, "Not one's been spotted since."

Ginny couldn't decide whether it was worth postponing the Malfoy the Whopping Great Twat live chat session for this. And postponed is the correct word indeed, for Gryffindor seemed to come alive as Draco Malfoy entered the Hall.

The heavy oak doors, swung open for dramatic effect by his brain-for-rent goons, Crabbe and Goyle, crashed shut again as Draco sauntered to his table, his back straight like a tin soldier. He nodded curtly to a select group of particularly sly-looking Slytherins, his half-smile not quite reaching the feline eyes, and spent the next few moments engaging in giving Ron the third finger, mooning the remaining Gryffindors (although Parvarti Patil, Lavender Brown and Colin Creevey did not appear at all furious, and preferred to engage in hushed whispers and hysterical giggling), and glaring at the place usually occupied by Harry Potter.

"Insufferable git," Ron muttered, watching Goyle unfurl a serviette to place on Draco's lap with the finesse of a Parisian garcon, and Crabbe summon a 12-piece firefly orchestra to play the third movement of Draco's favourite and aptly-titled symphony, The Nutcracker. "Obnoxious, a sodding liar, and a scrawly little wimp at that. Wouldn't you agree, Harry?"

Harry drew out the seat next to Ron's and plunked himself down in it. Covering his face with his pale hands, he willed the fatigue away, and bravely reached out for toast.

"Couldn't sleep again, huh?" Ron murmured, noting the mauve shadows under Harry's eyes, and the way the knife trembled in his hand has he stroked the bread with butter. Ever since That Day, that hazy, nightmarish day, he had watched Harry transform from the branded, old-eyed boy to an emotionless, brooding something. His physical appearance was a mere side effect of what went on within. Ron remembered the gawky, bespectacled and permanently crumpled Boy Who Lived, and now regarded the smooth marble-like flawlessness of the Boy Who Should Have Died (Several Times).

Ron sighed, his heart a rock settling into the pit of his stomach. That day. Like any other day - a number on a calendar, twenty-four hours (if one was not in possession of a Time-Turner), a period of time with Muggle-made names (honestly, Wednesday sounds ridiculous and is practically impossible to spell correctly on the first try). The day Voldemort's reign was brought to a halt, the day the Dark Lord's black star fell from the sky, the day Harry refused to speak of, the mention of it pushing all expression from his face and leaving him empty as a corpse and dry as bones.

The long jet hair was hiding his face now, as Harry wolfed down his breakfast, ignoring and hoping to be ignored in return. Ginny was chatting amiably with Dean Thomas about an upcoming Transfiguration exam.

"No, the most difficult last year was the flowerpot into hippogriff," she stated.

"Rubbish," said Dean. "I mastered it in a flash."

"What? So you turned the flowerpot into an hippogriff, the examination room into a stable to hold the hippogriff, quill into cage to stop it munching on Hufflepuffs, then your robe into Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans to keep it quiet, all in a matter of seconds?"

"Well...almost..."

"What a load of twaddle," mocked Ginny. "If I remember correctly, the only person who scored any marks with that problem at all was Hermione Granger..."

With a crash, the entire array of food and platters at the Gryffindor table fell to the floor in a single sweep. Ginny jumped to her feet, alarmed, as did a number of other highly-strung students. The less rattled ones merely glared at Ginny's end of the table, shrugged their shoulders, and began summoning their breakfasts back. The candles continued to waltz overhead as if such calamity was the most natural thing in the world.

"Harry!" Ginny shrieked, looking to him for a hasty explanation.

But Harry merely glared at her with empty stranger's eyes. A chill ran down her spine as she registered for the one thousandth time how much he'd changed - from the scar he'd charmed away to his posture, his nonchalant slouch.

"What?" demanded Ginny.

In response, Harry slowly dragged his eyes from the top of her flame-coloured head, down the counters of her waist, to where an old tartan skirt started at her hips and ended at her thighs. His gaze ran over the old dirty combat boots she wore daily (Arthur Weasley had in fact found them in raid of an abandoned army base - "Would you look at these dallywhoppers!" was his delighted response), and back to her perplexed expression. He thawed. "I'm sorry..."he mumbled, before stumbling blindly from the room.

"What the hell is his problem now?" moaned Ginny, sitting back down. She stared at Harry's shadow that began do a lone Congo around the hall, before realising that its master had left, and exited the room in a rather embarrassed fashion, as all the other shadows were laughing at it.

Ron gave her an exasperated look. "You mentioned Hermione."

"So what?"

"Well, it doesn't help, that's what."

"It should."

"Look Ginny," Ron lowered his gaze to meet his sister's. "It doesn't. It won't bring her back from the dead."

+++

What came over me? Why do I do the things I do? Why can't I just end this misery, this life?

I looked at Ginny, I looked through Ginny, and all I could see was her. She who waits for me at night, she who feeds on the substance running through my veins. She who wants to make me her kind.

She loves me.

But I don't love her. I need her. What she offers me, that insatiable appetite for what she could not even taste when human, beckons to me. It's all I can think about. It is my peace and my restlessness.

Sometimes, late at night when I glimpse Ron sleeping through the curtains, I wonder how I could do this thing to her. When I enter the Common Room I see the bushy tail of her hair flung over the back of a lounge, and hear her voice reading potions ingredients aloud. It is high, lilting, a child's voice. Then Crookshanks caresses his body against my legs, and quietly, he moans, thinking I understand, but I don't.

You would think I'd mourn for her too. I don't. Because she is alive, because she is well. But she isn't Hermione. The eyes, the smile, and half-crescents of her fingernails, all Hermione. But the music in her body that replaced her soul is Vampire. And the fangs in her little mouth are Death. And the pain of her unrequited love is Eternal.

Those that did that to her will pay. Voldemort paid - with his life, while I slashed his second-hand body into lean, symmetrical slabs. Some Muggle forms of death and torture, as I learned from Dudley, are far more effective than the magical. Did you know he did not even bleed? Not one drop. But then, I didn't expect him too.

But there are two alive that will surely die. Two that turned Hermione, my Hermione, into this disgusting, dark creature. One is protected, the other waiting for me. One by the name of Professor Metikulus is the first. The other...

Wait.

I hear footsteps.

+++

Ginny tapped her foot impatiently. "I know it won't. But it could make him normal again!"

Ron sniggered. "Malfoy in ballet slippers pirouetting to Flight of the Thestrals couldn't make him normal again."

"Look Ron, we're talking cure here, not sodding permanent damage."

But Ron wasn't listening. His pupils were swollen, and he gazed into the distance, and expression on his face like a hash-smoking Horklump. "Malfoy, centre stage, about to take his final bow when whoosh! A herd of thestrals glide through the air, soaking up the applause of the audience (those who have seen death and all that anyway) and poop on his head. He is covered with stinking sludge from head to toe, his glittery purple wings now a lovely shade of khaki..."

"Ron!" snapped Ginny. "Do you realise you were speaking aloud?"

"Ahem," said Ron.

"I worry about your fantasies sometimes."

"Mmph," said Ron.

"ANYWAY," said Ginny, very firmly this time, "As I was saying before being rudely interrupted by the Vice-President of the S.P.A.M movement..."

"Gah," interrupted Ron, "It's the S.A.M.M movement.

"And what's that again?" demanded Ginny.

"Er, Suffragettes Against Malfoy's Manliness movement." Ron ducked his head sheepishly.

"What?"

"It's not what it sounds like. It really means we think Malfoy's a girl. Sometimes I feel obliged to bitch-slap him and pull his hair rather than kicking him up the buttocks and snarling those eternally chilling words: Bugger off, pineapple head."

Ginny blanched. "Chilling words indeed. Fruit salads alarm me so. So which girls are in this movement?"

Ron shuddered. "Who said anything about girls?"

"You know what suffragette means don't y--oh, never mind then," Ginny smirked to herself. "Remind me to pop in to your weekly meetings sometime."

Ron grinned at her. "Smashing idea. But visitors must bring one teacake each..."

"Ron..."

"...I do prefer cinnamon..."

"RON!" barked Ginny. "What about Harry?"

"Oh, he's a vanilla malt boy, through and through - oh, right, Harry... don't mention Hermione around him again, Gin. And," he added, a sombre scowl shadowing his features, "Do not mention That Day. Not You-Know-Who, Professor Metikulus, nothing."

"But that's like she never existed, like they never existed at all!"

"Precisely. It's what Harry needs right now. But you would think he'd have dealt with Hermione's death, after all, we all had to..."

"But," interrupted Ginny, with a Girl Who Knows All expression, "He was in love with her."

"No," said Ron. "He wasn't."

Ginny bristled and her face turned as bright as her hair. Ron was pleasantly reminded of Seamus Finnigan's hedgehog comment. "He was. I could tell."

"I'm his best friend," Ron said, "And I say, he wasn't."

"Did he say he wasn't?"

"Well. No," confessed Ron.

Ginny sniffed with satisfaction.

"But," added Ron thoughtfully, "He never said he was."

Ginny's face fell. "That doesn't mean anything anyway," she said hastily. "What I don't understand is, say Harry was in love with Hermione, why not one single part of him begun to understand, or even accept that she's gone."

Ron turned and gazed at his sister. Suddenly, his face seemed longer and narrower than ever before, his mouth drooping down at the corners, his freckles fading until his face was a sheet of opaque cream. "Because," he said simply, "It really isn't that easy."

"Oh. Ron. I'm so sorry." Ginny dropped her gaze, not wanting to look at him. She felt terrible, and so guilty, for even thinking about bringing that up again.

"It's okay. It's just so hard. Whenever I think about how..."

A passing mound of a brown straw-like substance and fluorescent orange sheen distracted Ron's attention.

"Neville! Have you any idea how extraordinarily dashing you look today?" demanded Ron.

Neville, who had been hoping to scoot past unnoticed with Trevor the toad on his shoulder and a certain stuffed buzzard dress hat in his hand, rolled his eyes. "Let me guess. It's the hair?"

Ron appraised Neville with an expert eye. "Now that you mention it," he stated, "Yes! Yes, it's the hair. Absolutely bloody brilliant, mate! Is that new hair grease I spy?"

Poor Neville began to edge away from Ron, who had the starved look of a metrosexual madman in a Witchtian Dior sale. "Yep," he managed to squeak, turning on his heel and half-running, half-skipping away.

"Oi, Neville!" called Ron, immediately jogging after him, "Wait up!"

Ginny shook her head, alone in the empty corridor, and looked up at a portrait of a merman holding a fierce, lethal looking trident. "Men!" the merman simpered, tossing his golden locks. "Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em!" The saucy creature waved impertinantly at Ginny, and swam away, his gleaming tail flickering in a very un-masculine fashion.

Ginny sighed as the echoes of Ron and Neville's conversation drifted through the Hall.

"What did you say that stuff was called?"

"Suddenly Sticky Chewing Gum."

"Odd name for hair grease, I say."

"It's a new product. From the...uh... Muggle-lovers Makeup for Magical Men's Mugs range." (This was stated a little too gleefully.)

A squeal from Ron.

"Might I try some?"

"Sure, I've got tonnes in my dorm. Let's put some on right now! You'll love it." (Stated very gleefully.)

Ginny shook her head and ventured off in search of Harry.

+++

"Harry."

Harry looked up from his couch in the common room. His legs were drawn up to his chin, with both his hands clasping the knuckles until they burned white-hot. His black hair tumbled over one eye, the other cynically resting on Ginny's concerned face. He blinked, just once, like a docile iguana disturbed from its siesta in the sun.

Ginny arranged herself on the floor, legs sprawled out, her back against the feet of an aged red and gilt chaise lounge. She blinked back at him. Just once.

Harry grinned at her, a split second smile, that slitted that narrow, pale face in two and reminded Ginny of a boy who once was, who wore glasses askew and whose hair could never be tamed. The boy who would do nothing but grin.

If only you knew Ginny, how you look to me now...

"Talk to me, Harry," she beseeched.

"What about?" The question had that long, drawn-out quality that Harry's tone had adapted as of late.

"Look, I know I'm not Ron. And I admit I don't know much about teenage boys - well, that is, I know all the stuff a girl should know, I mean the really important stuff, but not," she gushed, "about the way they act and feel and are, but if you just let me in, at least I could try." She looked at Harry now, solid and unmoving. "So just let me in."

The room brewed with silence like chamomile tea in an old kettle. Ginny considered just running out of the room, back to the outside world, to a time when Harry and Hermione and Draco Malfoy never existed at all. She could escape to Muggle-land, turn on lights by a flick of a switch, drive those horrible, ugly looking creatures...or not. She knew what he would say, if he chose to speak at all. And when she looked at Harry in dread and anticipation, he appeared more beautiful than he'd ever been before. The scar that was once so prominent had faded to a barely noticeable pink streak, the absence of glasses made the emerald in his eyes that tad more brilliant, and oh, the line of his mouth, those lips, how on earth could such lips ever...

Harry interrupted her vivid lust-fest with one word.

"Okay."

+++

I grew up with Ginny Weasley, and she means the world to me.

I mean, she means nothing to me.

I mean, I don't know what she means to me.

The things I tell myself are all lies. I don't know what is true. I don't know what is real, or what is a game. Sometimes, in my mind, I fantasise that on that first train ride to Hogwarts, I took Draco Malfoy's hand.

Then twisted it off.

I'm not that delusional.

I know I should be in class right now, Potions I believe, with that insidious cretin Snape looking down his oily nose at me. But why do I need classes for now? To brew a poison potion for Voldemort to drink under the guise of wine, or blood, or whatever took his fancy?

Dumbledore said life would go on for me after I defeated the Dark Lord. He told me it would take some time to get used to the fact that I'm no longer Supreme Saviour of the Universe, and that every day, something new and usually pretty ugly will try and kill me. But if my mission is over, what else is there to live for?

To hell with Potions. I need a fix.

That girl is like a drug to me.

+++

The corridors twist and writhe in a never-ending labyrinth, but Harry knew his way too well. The incessant rhythm of water dripping and the echoes of his footsteps combined into a clashing, unbearable crescendo, and Harry flinched. His stomach in knots, he consoled himself by muttering under his breath, "It's her doing, not mine. She wants it this way. I'm not using her. We're using each other. She can't kill me, she loves me too much. Even if she were starving to death, she would not touch me."

He finally comes to a door, a brass and gold door with locks from the top arch down to the stone floor. Harry does not knock, instead, aims his wand and whispers, "Alohomora".

He enters cautiously, knowing she'd be waiting, expecting him. She always knew when he needed his fix. The door slams shut behind him. The room is pitch black, an oozing, greasy, foul-smelling darkness.

"Lumos."

Harry took one cautious step forward.

"Oh, my God," he whispered.