The River of Lathe

Nepenthes

Her arm was bruising. By tomorrow there would be finger shaped marks staining her flesh if she did not get a chance to heal them soon. Assuming she would be alive tomorrow. No real hope in healing then anytime soon either.

The Death Eaters who held her were moving fast. Technically, they were ministry guards, but mask or no mask their men would always be Death Eaters. They were betrayed by something in the way they moved and a look in their eyes; Voldemort's thugs. Why didn't they just kill here? Surely she had served her purpose by betraying the last hope of rebellion in Britain. They had not even disarmed her. True, both arms were held so tightly that she could not reach the wand in her pocket, but still they must know it was there. Why this charade of legality?

She had rushed out of her house the moment Voldemort's last letter sunk in. He knew. She had been nothing but a witless pawn and worse she had sent Paul to his death. It stung, but worse, underneath her hurt pride was a feeling that was dangerously close to disappointed heartbreak. Did she really care about his opinion? She arrived in London with the dawn.

She never made it to Paul's camp. Walking down the deserted alley that held the secret entrance to the rebel camp, she was reminded of just why Muggles avoided such places. They were creepy, full of shadows, and who know what might be hiding just out of sight. When the hand fastened itself around her arm she shrieked.

"Hush girl," a rough voice hissed in her ear. Another figure appeared at her other side, claiming the right arm as well. "You need to come with us. We know that your friend is hiding in that building there and if you don't want to see the whole thing go up in flames you'll come easy. This way there is always the chance that he will chicken out and live to fight tomorrow."

The laughter which followed that statement chilled Hermione almost as much as the feeling of a wand pressed discretely against her back. Silently, she turned and allowed herself to be led away, but not before dropping one of her business cards onto the damp stones. It was a thin hope but maybe Paul would see it and suspect something was wrong.

Yet, as her captors kept walking whatever hope she had died. Her mind rose up in rebellion and she saw Paul lying in a clump of flowers. As his blood soaked into the soil she cursed so that the garden would never bloom again. Just off to her right she watched a small redheaded figure crumple to the ground in grief.

But no, that was not Paul at all, it was Fred Weasley who died in a Muggle flower garden, miles away from this London Street. She shook her head, trying to clear it of the past.

Mistaking her movement for fight, the man on her left gave her arm a violent shake. "Be still." The wand at her back pressed harder as Hermione walked on with her ghosts. In her mind she saw Luna and Lavender cut down. She again watched Seamus, weighting the options and choosing to stand with Voldemort, but not before poisoning Cormac McLaggen and Colin Creevey. Stepping out of the early morning fog, she watched Mad-Eye Moody take his final insane charge into a line of Death Eaters. Everywhere she looked faces from her past rose up but whether to warn or condemn her, she did not know.

After what seemed like a lifetime but which could not have been longer than an hour, they stopped in a doorway. It looked like any empty store front in this rundown part of town, except for the lack of dust on the door handle. Clearly, this door saw regular use.

Muttering what sounded suspiciously like "Alohomora", one of her guards pushed open the door and led her in. The inside looked like nothing so much as a hallway in a Muggle luxury hotel. Warm peach light filtered down onto cream colored walls, walls broken every so often by silent shut doors. Tucked into empty corners, elegant tables stood, backs to the wall, proudly displaying vases of flowers or an antique lamp. The only things missing were the numbers from the doors. Counting in her head, she noticed that they stopped before the thirteenth door, but turning back to look down the hall she could not distinguish the door they had entered from. She did not trust herself to find it again.

After giving three sharp raps, her guard turned the knob and held the door just open enough for her to pass through. As soon as she cleared the threshold, it swung shut leaving her alone. Cautiously, she pulled out her wand before turning to inspect the room.

If the outside resembled a Muggle hotel, this room looked like how she imagined what Galileo's quarters must have. It was made of stone, circular, and rather small. There was a large window cut into the ceiling looking up into the sky. The furnishings were Spartan but well made. Books and stacks of papers were everywhere. A fireplace near where she stood had burned down giving off a minimal glow. If the window was opened she was sure the room would be flooded with light, but the dark shutters were pulled resolutely shut.

At first she assumed the room to be empty. Robed and hooded, the figure blended into the shadows so well that, had he not moved, she might never have seen him.

"Hermione, we are well acquainted strangers, are we not?" he asked with a slight ironic bow, although his features remained hidden in the darkness of his hood.

"What are you doing here? Why... hum.... I mean... shouldn't you be out crushing a harmless rebellion?" Her face, which had drained of its color with the shock of his voice, now flushed a deep pink as she struggled to make her posture perfectly straight and defiant.

"No, I came only for you."

"Me, but...I thought..."

"Yes, I am afraid your friend's little rebellion was not really enough of a challenge to warrant my actual presence. Lucius will handle it, I am sure." Holding out his hand, he slowly moved towards her.

She stared at the hand, its long fingers, its pale skin, and swallowed hard. He was waiting. She had the feeling that they would stand there, frozen by her indecision, until the building crumbled around them. Slowly she raised her own hand and placed it in his.

As soon as her skin touched his he changed position, allowing his fingers to twine shockingly, intimately with her own. Gently, he pulled her towards him, positioning them under the window.

"I thought we had a date on the battlefield?" she asked hoping to cover how flustered she felt.

"I grew impatient, besides, wars have uncertain outcomes and even a 'Do not harm' order does not forgo all accidents."

"You would not have enjoyed the risk?"

"Only if I had stacked the outcome."

His eyes were dark and deeply red, absently she thought of blood settling into Muggle test tubes, and they bore into her, demanding that she look, refusing to let her look away, not even when she heard the door open again. Not even when he spoke.

"Wormtail, bring it here." He turned then, breaking eye contact and all of her fears and doubts came crashing in. He held her hand firm yet she twisted enough to catch a glimpse through the shutters on the window. Surely that could not be twilight already. No, she had seen a sky like this before. It was smoke. The battle. Harry was falling. He hit the ground hard and his head bounced back up, an unnatural angle for a neck to assume. A voice she only barely realized was her own was screaming his name. She tasted vomit. Unthinkingly, she raised her head and met red eyes, deeply red eyes. The screaming stopped. Molly Weasley was trying to shove something into her arms but she could not look away. She was caught in red eyes.

"Hermione," he said with slight warning tone in his voice. Firmly, he pulled her back towards him. With a gasp, she felt her hip painfully bump against the corner of the table. In a way she was glad for it; the pain cleared her head a little and brought her back to reality.

He must have seen something of this inner struggle in her eyes, for her put his other hand on her shoulder, steadying her for a moment before speaking.

"You have heard of the poet Homer, I assume?"

Mutely, she nodded.

"Did you know he was a wizard? Not a very great one, although he has been very useful. His books, mere poetry and history to Muggles, hold the secrets for some of the strongest potions and charms known to the ancients. Do you know of Nepenthes?"

"No," she whispered.

"Ah, it is one of the finest potions: 'a drug to dull all pain and anger, and bring forgetfulness of every sorrow. Who so should drink a draught thereof, when it is mingled in the bowl, on that day he would let no tear fall down his cheeks, not thought his mother and his father died, not thought men slew his brother or dear son with the sword before his face, and his own eyes beheld it.' According to legend, it was this potion Helen of Troy would offer her guests, a great gift, don't you think? And some say, this was what Paris gave to her to make her his. It is a potion which allows one to forget their burden of memory and to escape from their ghosts. It is a potion to make you free."

Despite herself, Hermione was letting his voice ensnare her. It wrapped around her mind and drew her to him, even as the words intrigued her intellect. How easy the voice seemed to hiss to her unconsciousness, how easy it would be to just stop fighting, just to give in. Let him take care of everything.

The rush of cold air on her hand surprised her. She stared at it as if it was a strangers hand somehow grafted onto her own arm while she was not paying attention. Of course he had just dropped her hand to pour a glass of dark liquid from the flask Wormtail had brought, but she felt truly lost without that contact.

Turning back to her, Voldemort carefully placed the simple wooden cup into her hands, but he left his own cupped around hers. "You said to me once," he murmured his voice low and insidious, "that you could not hold the memories you carry inside you and give a passing thought to my offer. Well, I am stacking the outcome. Drink deep, child, come to me."

His eyes had caught her again, yet even how he was not quite close enough for her to make out more than a shadow of his features under the hood. She lifted the cup to her lips, his hands following her gesture, but she stopped just before tasting.

"Paul?"

"He is dead," the voice was soft not, caressing even as it spoke tragedy. "The battle has already been fought and lost."

A strange emotion flickered in Hermione's eyes, regret and resignation but also relief. Slowly, she took a sip if the potion.

The sound of her wand hitting the stone floor startled Wormtail. He had been standing at the doorway, not wanting to stay but not yet released from his master's presence. As the noise he glanced at the pair. Voldemort gently took the cup from her hands and seemed to consider something he read in her eyes. Throwing back his hood and smiling in a way that caused Wormtail to cringe, he looped his arm around Hermione's waist and lowered his head to claim her mouth.

Wormtail decided he need not wait to be formally released and scampered through the door. As he was leaving he turned and cast one last, troubled look over his shoulder at the embracing couple silhouetted in the dying firelight. He paused only long enough to hear the door click closed behind him before he made his way back out onto the London street.