Fatal Flaws

Chapter 2

The air was filled with the tangy smell of lemons and grapefruit mingled with the bitter aftertaste of smoke and burnt leaves. The tiny tendrils of smoke snaked itself through the house from the open windows.

Mrs Peterson's son must be playing with fire again, he thought nonchalantly as he walked into his room to escape the fumes.

He stopped when he stood at his door and saw her standing there, in her simple white shirt and short blue skirt. A smudge of dirt smeared across her nose made him think of her brother.

"Hello, Harry," she said, looking sheepish.

Harry continued to stare, taking in her very short skirt adorning a body that had developed quite a bit over the summer. She was no longer the little girl who had so often tagged along, staring at him with wide, awestruck eyes. She had the shapely body of a woman and when she walked up to him, her hips slightly swaying, Harry saw that she was seductively innocent, unaware of her new attributes.

She gave him a baffled look, pulled him into the room and closed the door quietly. Then she sat down on his bed as though it were the most natural thing to do and patted the spot beside her. He didn't sit, but continued to look at her, puzzled.

"What are you doing here? Is Ron ok? Has something happened?"

She didn't say anything, just shook her head. He didn't know why she was here...in his room. He didn't really feel the need to know. Part of him felt indignant and resentful that she could just come waltzing into his life and assume that he would welcome her with open arms. The other part of him wanted to wipe the frown from her face and smooth out the tension in her lips.

"I'm sorry, I probably shouldn't have come...." She said turning away from him to face the door.

For reasons unknown to himself, he pulled her back and kissed her.

Long tendrils of smoke crept through the window and circled lazily around them. The air smelt of roses and the promise of rain.

~*****~

Hermione had spent the entire morning searching for the two of them. She had barged into almost every boy's dormitories (causing indignant cries and an assortment of boxers to come flying at her from all directions) and had swept through the Great Hall several times in case they had already gone to breakfast. She even braved the cold and ran out onto the Quidditch pitch wondering if they were stupid enough to be flying in this weather. The icy wind had crept into the openings of her robe, pinching, biting and nipping at her skin. But they were nowhere in sight.

In the end, she found them where she had least expected them to be: in the library. When she snuck up behind them, she saw that they were completely engaged in....

"Plotting your own murders?" she asked dryly.

They spun around rather quickly, their heads narrowly missing each other.

"Oh, hi Hermione," Ron said, rather breezily "you've seen us working on Divination before...."

"Which is probably why I'm not surprised..." She rolled her eyes and pointed at his untidy scrawl. "Don't you think you've become a little repetitive? You've been falling off the Astronomy tower since Third Year."

Harry snorted but Ron just shrugged. "As long as she doesn't notice. She should be the one praised for her consistency." He put on a high-pitched misty voice, "'oh you boys are so brave! So many misfortunes and not a blink of an eye!'"

Hermione, despite her mood, could not help but burst out laughing at Ron's horrendous impersonation. Honestly!

By the time she'd sobered up, she had remembered why she needed them so urgently in the first place.

"Harry...Harry I need to ask you about Ginny. I need to know what happened over the summer."

Harry, who was still spluttering with mirth, did not allow her words to sink in.

"What? Ron that was good!" He laughed again, but stopped immediately when he caught Hermione's tense expression. "Hermione? What's wrong?"

"Harry...." She hesitated. Is this the right place to tell him? Is this the right time to tell him? Hermione, who had been brought up to favour truth above all other virtues, decided that if she didn't tell him now - she never would. And it was a matter of urgency. "Harry...I don't think those letters you received over the summer holidays were from Ginny."

This caught his attention.

"Hermione? What are you talking about?"

She felt dizzy with apprehension. How could she explain it to him? How could she explain the feeling she had, ever since Ron told her about those letters, that it didn't seem like something Ginny would do? How could she explain her intuition upon seeing Harry and Ginny together for the first time, that something was wrong? How could she explain it without seeming like the jealous friend who was bitter about her own static relationship?

"Ginny never wrote those letters. When I asked her, she had no idea what I was talking about. She never wrote those letters!"

"Hermione," he let out a little laugh, "is that all? I thought it was something big."

She could not believe what she was hearing. Did he just brush it off?

"Harry, are you listening to me? Do you know what this could mean? Someone impersonated Ginny. If you can't smell Dark magic in this -"

"Dark magic! Hermione, relax will you?" He still seemed at ease, laughing at her. Ron's eyes darted between them uneasily. "Ginny and I promised not to tell anyone. That's probably why she lied to you. I guess I had already breached that promise by telling you without her permission. But she didn't know that. I'll tell her you're trustworthy." He smiled reassuringly, as though that was that: an explanation worth a thousand misgivings.

Hermione was not convinced. She saw the expression on Ginny's face. She saw that dreadful look of distraught confusion in her eyes when she had made herself relive the moments of that 'first date'. It was not possible that Ginny; sweet, innocent, honest Ginny could have faked that. The world's best con artist could not have faked that moment of pure emotion. But Harry hadn't seen it. This was worst than she had thought. How could she make Harry see what was so blatantly obvious?

"Harry...listen to me," She tugged at his arms urgently. "I know dark magic...I can feel it. It's all over you. Someone's done something to you! You have to see through the façade!"

"It's all over me? Then why didn't you tell me when you saw me on the train? Why didn't you tell me when we met in Hogsmeade? Why didn't tell me until now if you're so goddamn intuitive Hermione?" She had never seen him so angry. It was so sudden, the torrents of rage that streamed from his beet red face.

"Because I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure, Harry. You have to believe me. But now...." Yes. Now she could feel it stronger than ever. Especially when he was so angry. She felt it radiating off him, a growing shadow, like black crows encircling with claws like tendrils of smoke.

She looked back up at him and was startled to see the hurt and pain in his eyes.

He feels betrayed....

" I never knew you to be nasty Hermione. I never knew you to use other people's relationships against them just because your own is not going well. I never knew you to be bitter...but I guess I do now." With that, he retracted his claws and walked away.

She closed her eyes and felt them stinging against her eyelids. I knew this would happen. This was what she had feared it would come down to. She knew, yet she could not stop herself. A hand touched her shoulder lightly.

"Hermione," She kept her eyes tightly shut, to keep the tears from spilling and sliding down her cheeks. "I'll talk to him." Ron's gentle caressing tone was all that she could bear. Only when she heard his footsteps fade away, did she let herself melt into the waves of her despair.

Because she knew Harry was in trouble. Because she knew she could not help him.

Because she knew, in some ways, that he was right.

~*****~

He didn't know what Harry was doing.

In fact, he didn't know what he was doing either, stalking his best friend like this. Somewhere in the Laws of friendship there must be a rule against following friends without their awareness - despite it being done with the best of intentions. What he was doing must scream betrayal. But he didn't care.

Ron Weasley was not particularly demonstrative when it came to emotions. That did not mean however, as Hermione had charmingly put it, that he had the 'emotional range of a teaspoon'. There were times when he would feel particularly sensitive and every harsh word would leave a wound.

Perhaps today was one of those days, or perhaps Harry had been uncharacteristically unfair and bluntly close-minded. In matters of love (of which Ron knew he needed much drastic coaching), people tended to act rather rashly. But that did not excuse those words that had lashed out so cruelly, causing Hermione to collapse onto the Library floor and shrivel up like an age-old wrinkle, worn and defeated. Before he had walked out of the library and away from her, he had turned back hesitantly, wondering whether she should be left alone. The girl he had seen in her place, however, was sobbing into her hands as though she desperately wanted to stop but could not find the strength to do so. He had wondered about human frailty then, wondering how a few words could make you feel so cold inside. No...love could not, and should not, excuse the abuse of such power.

He saw Harry walk out of the castle and frowned. Harry knew better than to be outside the protections of the Castle alone. After what Dumbledore had said....

But Harry had already disappeared and Ron, who would not leave him alone now, could only follow. He saw Harry walk toward Hagrid's hut...and past it, heading towards the Forbidden Forest. His heart stopped. What in the blazes does he think he's doing, walking into the Forest like this? And without his Invisibility Cloak! He shuffled around hesitantly wondering what to do. Wondering what Hermione would do. Stupid git! With a shaky breath, he followed, just as he had always done ever since he was eleven; following Harry into the depths of danger, watching him seduce Death so innocently.

When he reached Hagrid's hut, he broke into a run, hoping he could catch up with Harry before they met the big and hairy...again.

Stupid git!

~*****~

She waited as she did every week. In her soot-black cloak, she was almost completely covered; save the curved tips of her ruby-tinged fingernails and the emerald glint off the pendant that lay serenely in the curve of her throat.

She was waiting for someone, as she did every week, to make her weekly assessments. Be proud, her parents had said, you have been chosen. And she had been. She had been proud. But that was back when everything had all been so much simpler, pure black and white, clear-cut and distinct. Back then, she knew the difference between love and hate; knew the difference between happiness and contentment. She loved chocolate. She loved her mother's dresses and her father's gifts. She loved popularity, boys and makeup. She loved discovering the powers she had, as a young seventeen-year-old beauty exploring the realms of her sexuality. But she hated her mother's critical eyes, and her father's disappointment. She hated the fact that she was a girl when they wanted a boy, an heir. She hated the Gryffindors for all their 'nobleness' and 'honour'. And she hated Harry Potter.

Then things started to go awry and her world came apart. She could no longer see the world with wide schoolgirl eyes and see its innocence in bright technicolour. The world was no longer innocent; it was never that. She began to love and hate at the same time, feeling contentment in her sufferings, yet hating the pain. It gnawed at her and squeezed at her throat until she could no longer feel her own fingermarks on her neck and no longer felt the tears on her lashes.

But she had been happy...and that was the worst of it.

Now, as she looked up from her daze, she saw a flicker of movement and a hooded figure rose from the forest floor.

She opened her mouth to greet him, but was immediately silenced by the look on his face. With an intense predatory gaze, he looked past her. His lips curved into a malicious grin and he slinked past her, his footsteps charmed to silence. She followed his gaze, bewildered, and what she saw when she turned, made her face freeze into a mask of indifference.

She saw a flash of black hair and a plunging depthless green from behind dark rimmed glasses. She saw a flurry of movement and felt the pendant burning painfully on her skin. She looked down and was startled to see it alight with a pale green fiendish glow. It is in use...but doing what? She took in his glassy, feverish gaze, and the hooded man's triumphant glee. She took in his tangled stumbling limbs and the man's lazy movements. Suddenly, she knew. She saw the pale redheaded boy rushing through the trees, reaching for his wand and wondered why he even bothered. But then, heroes never learn.

"Stupefy"

~*****~

From afar, the centaurs watched the scene take place with a remorseless disinterest. Only one seemed remotely uneasy.

"We probably should have helped," said Bane with a twinge of guilt. "He'll need our help."

"The Boy Who Lived will survive for now for he is strong," the leader, Sophos, responded as he gazed up at the stars. "The other we do not know. The stars are rather secretive about him. Perhaps he is not important."

"No, I think he is." Bane could not shake the nagging feeling that the answers were not in the stars tonight. However, he was but a boy, and the others regarded him with as much, if not more, contempt as they did a mortal man. "It is he, the Weasley offspring, that I fear for the most. There is something powerful brewing in the boy. Perhaps the stars are secretive for a reason. Remember Adonis? We did not know about him till it was too late."

As expected, they laughed at him. "What do you know about Adonis? He was before your time, little one. Go home, perhaps your mother is worrying"

So he turned away, his shoulders hunched irritably. They did not know everything. They did not know, for example, that he had The Gift. They did not know, that the stars told him things that others could not decipher. One thing, however, was for sure.

The end was coming...soon. Whether it ends in the triumph of good or evil, even the stars could not know. Perhaps that is why that night, the darkness quivered so, and the air filled itself with the scent of ashes and tears.

~*****~