Harry Potter and the Fifth Element

Chapter 42 - Now Or Never

Harry gasped. Everything was black as a pit. He may as well have been transported into the depths of a sealed dungeon - or worse, back to Malfoy Manor with the hood back over his head. A suffocating blackness, more profound than the most starless of nights, surrounded him. He could see neither his hand before his face nor the ground (or whatever) upon which he stood. Was this how it felt to be killed by a Lethifold?

He had no idea what environment he would encounter once Chinese Legilimency cleared the way for his consciousness to enter the fastness of Hermione's mind, but he had expected to find something. That he would confront only an inky gloom - like some never-explored cavern far underground, had never even crossed his mind.

Did this mean that, contrary to his hopes and expectations, she was brain dead after all...? Were all of his efforts futilely and fatally too late...?

"NO!!!" he screamed into the oppressive invisibility engulfing him. Only a hollow, not-quite-echo responded. An intense claustrophobia swept through him. Gripped by fear and anguish, Harry started to run....

He had taken but a few steps when he collided, hard, with something mostly flat that felt like a wall. Harry crashed into it at an oblique angle and lost his balance. Arms flailing as he toppled over, the fingertips of one of his hands found a small hole in the wall. Instinctively grabbing at anything that might break his fall, Harry dislodged something large and solid....

He hit the floor - or what felt like a floor - with a jolt hard enough to cause him see stars. An instant later, whatever he had pulled loose struck him painfully on the ribs, bounced off, and landed beside him with a thud.

Physical pain replaced his panic. The vaguely metallic taste in his mouth made Harry realise he had bitten his tongue. Breathing hard and trying to collect his wits, he just lay there in the stifling black for what seemed like an inordinately long time.

Everything looked the same whether his eyes were open or closed. His vision useless, Harry inventoried his other senses. He could hear nothing, save the faint sound of his own breathing. The silence was as deep as the darkness. He lay on a flat, smooth surface that felt like stone.... He smelt ... a slight mustiness....

Finally! Something he recognised; something he could latch onto; something he could build upon. He associated this same smell with that out-of-the-way nook that was Hermione's favoured studying spot in the far reaches of ... the Hogwarts library.

That was it.

It was so obvious - Harry kicked himself for panicking.

He extended his arm. With his fingertips he felt about his inky surroundings until locating the object that had struck him. He moved it easily. Grabbing it, he flopped it over and, ran his hand across it. He cracked it open and ... turned a page ... and then another.

Harry rolled himself over, gave his right hand a flick, and had his wand where he wanted it. It was not really his wand, of course, but Lao Kung's training had taught him that his disembodied consciousness would seek out familiar forms.

Only gentle magic.

"Lumos."

Harry's wandtip glowed, appearing unnaturally bright in contrast to the utter absence of any other source of illumination. He was in a long low-ceilinged corridor with walls filled to bursting with books. Other, similar, passageways emerged at irregular intervals on both the left and the right. All around were books, books, and more books - as far as (and altogether farther than) the eye could see.

Lao Kung had not thought to tell him, and Harry had not bothered to ask, what the lighting conditions would be within a comatose mind. Maybe the Sefu had not known. It made sense that there would be no light.

Harry looked at the tome he had yanked out of the shelf next to him whilst falling. It was an old, leather-bound edition of Hogwarts: A History - Hermione's favorite book. On its spine was an incomprehensible string of numbers and letters, beginning with "941". He picked the book up and gently slid it back into its place. He noticed that the books in the endless shelves were precisely ordered, by number, and within numbers, by letter.

This was Hermione's mind, all right - but everything was dark and still. He saw only form without function. His quest was just beginning. He still had to find the essence of the girl herself.

* * * *

Although they could not say it - indeed, could not even think it - the congregated Death Eaters were well pleased to take their leave of their Master. A dank odour of decay permeated the air in the half-lit chamber that served as Lord Voldemort's sickroom during his extended recovery from ... whatever it was that had happened. Even the sickeningly sweet incense that had burned constantly in the otherwise shrouded space could not entirely mask it.

Lord Voldemort cursed at how weak he remained from his injuries, but at least his eventual recovery was now a foregone conclusion. His immediate concern was to contemplate the implications of unexpected news that his servants - loyal, or otherwise - Snape and Pettigrew had related. He lay back on the black satin sheets of the large bed.

"Bella, you are to stay," he commanded. Scowling at the others, he ordered, "All the rest are to go ... quickly. You heard me! Be gone!"

Lord Voldemort's remaining followers fled, almost tripping over the hems of one another's robes in their haste, whilst Bellatrix Lestrange, his latest "most loyal servant," remained. Not bothering with his wand, the Dark Lord lazily flicked an Imperturbable Charm into being with a couple of his long fingers.

"Yes, Master?" she asked with lascivious anticipation. She had been waiting for this call ever since that horrible day when she had Side-Along Apparated them both away, only an instant before an inferno would have engulfed them.

"Patience, Bella, for I need to regain more strength," Lord Voldemort cautioned whilst casually tracing with his finger an ivory inlay of a skeleton in one of the elaborately carved ebony wood pillars of his four-posted bedstead. "Soon, but not yet. I know how you regard Severus, but his potions are quite useful...."

Lestrange frowned - both from frustrated desire and from her Lord's mention of the one Death Eater she considered least reliable. "But you'll do it for them...," she sighed.

"You are not to question that again, this is a direct order," the Dark Lord dictated angrily. In the next moment, however, his voice softened. "I know you're jealous, but some things can't be helped. War requires alliances. We are seriously understaffed, and I require more manpower. Unfortunately, Potter saw to that."

"Perhaps, as you yourself have suggested, the boy requires more - consideration - than we supposed," Bella alluded, choosing her words carefully.

"I agree," Lord Voldemort admitted uncharacteristically. "I have underestimated that runt for the last time. It cannot now be denied that he possesses great power ... power he cannot wield effectively, but he is young. It must be - as rumoured...."

"The ... the Fifth Element, my Lord?" Lestrange hinted softly.

"Do not speak of it to the others," Voldemort demanded, "but yes, I suppose precisely that. Nothing else could have wrecked that castle and its environs in such short order. He is indeed a danger. From now on, we must assume the worst about the prophecy involving him - and act accordingly."

"Then you have other plans, My Lord?" Lestrange asked.

"Indeed. My recuperation has provided much-needed time to think," the Dark Lord confirmed. "Tell me - what did you think of the information brought to us tonight by Severus and Wormtail?"

"Potentially quite valuable," was the most Lestrange would allow Snape. "The bodies of Potter's parents would provide the means for a different angle of attack."

"True - but irrelevant," the Dark Lord spat, cutting her off. "You never were a deep thinker, Bella. I assure you that those bodies have been removed and again secreted. In that sense, the information is worse than useless. Dumbledore was the Secret Keeper, after all. Inveterate plotter that he is, he would not have revealed such a secret without being prepared."

"Then you think it was a trap?" Lestrange asked. "Snape is a traitor, I know it."

"Even if Severus is a traitor, he could not have planned this," Voldemort replied lazily, as if addressing a child. "Remember, Wormtail possessed the memory, but it was Dumbledore who released the secret. As devious as Severus undoubtedly is, he could not control that situation. The interesting question is why Dumbledore acted now."

"We should investigate nonetheless," Lestrange suggested. "It is only prudent."

"As soon as I am prepared to vacate these premises, I shall send Wormtail," Lord Voldemort decided. "His ability to transform would be of use. In any event, with the Black inheritance matter concluded - adversely - he is expendable, if it comes to that."

"If not one, then the other," Lestrange commented - appeased, if not necessarily pleased, by her Master's choice.

"The questions raised by this event are probably more significant than the answers," Lord Voldemort went on, thinking aloud. "Why would Dumbledore reveal this now - after all these years? I answer myself.... Potter, and none other."

"What brings you to that conclusion, My Lord?" Lestrange asked.

"There were very few witnesses. It was a very hasty burial. The day after, it appears - just before Wormtail tricked Black. Those who attended ... hmmm.... Wormtail named Dumbledore, McGonagall, the Longbottoms, the werewolf Lupin, himself, and the half-breed Hagrid. None of them have any current need to know."

"Potter, then, by the process of elimination?" Lestrange prompted.

"Precisely," Lord Voldemort answered. "Potter is coming of age, magically and legally. Not having been told about his parents, he wanted answers. Ah ... Potter must have forced the old man's hand. That means Dumbledore's afraid of him."

That surprised Lestrange. "Dumbledore?"

"Correct," the Dark Lord congratulated himself. His evil eyes shone with cold delight as he put the pieces together. "And that means Potter, too, survived our recent confrontation. I rather suspect the boy suffered less from it than I. The boy's power must be barely controllable. Even Dumbledore must feel the need to appease him."

"There must be something we can exploit, then," Lestrange answered.

"Perhaps. I have been thinking along the same lines," the Dark Lord brooded. "But the course will be different, of necessity. Interestingly ... I do not seem to have the power I could use before. Previous, I could penetrate Potter's mind with ease - and he, mine, unfortunately - but since our last meeting, I've been unable to reopen that affinity. I believe I know why."

"You are even more perceptive than I had previously thought possible," Lestrange simpered.

"Or perhaps not sufficiently perceptive before. I trust you recall the importance of Horcruxes, then," Lord Voldemort prompted.

"Surely," Lestrange replied. "I could never forget. You honoured me above all others by revealing that to me - and then helping me create my own after I dispatched my dear cousin."

"October 31, 1981, the date of my first fateful encounter with young Potter, I had created two Horcruxes - my last - in anticipation of his death, and that of his father.... The site of the Potters' hideaway was propitious," the Dark Lord explained. "Thus, I completed one, but as for the other.... My mission failed before I could finish that task. Whatever power he had ... forced my spell back into my wand, causing a backfire. I always believed that the incomplete Horcrux had been destroyed, or had dissipated, in the aftermath, but now I think not...."

"You mean - your link to Potter...?" Lestrange was dumbfounded. She had no idea.

"Very good," Lord Voldemort replied. "That was unusually perceptive. Yes. Horcruxes being fractionated souls, storing them within inanimate objects is quite difficult - a most prized ability of mine. Also, excellent camouflage.... But left to their own devices, as happened after I decomposed, Horcruxes gravitate to the living. It's where souls belong after all. A living environment is far less stable, due to the inconvenient possibility of death. But I digress. I now believe that the second Horcrux lodged itself in Potter's mind, unbeknownst to either of us."

Lestrange thought she knew. "Then the recent failure of the link...."

"...Was due to the destruction of my rogue Horcrux by Potter's uncontrolled magical emission," Voldemort confirmed. "At least that's the most reasonable supposition. That would make at least two terminated by his actions, the first being my initial effort, hidden in an old diary of mine."

He paused as his thoughts turned inward. "Or perhaps not...."

"My Lord?" Lestrange asked after him.

The Dark Lord's thoughtful moment passed. "Bella, I trust you above all others, thus I need you to conduct an inventory of those remaining. My imperviousness to death depends on them. I shall tell you where I believe them to be. But first I need additional resources."

"I am ready, My Lord," Lestrange declared.

"You are an existing resource," Voldemort replied. "I require something new and different for a task that I am still devising. When we are finished - which is not quite yet - I shall need you to send Lucius in. He and I, we have some unfinished business."

"As you wish, so shall it be, My Lord," Lestrange affirmed.

"Which brings me to my second topic...."

The witch's dark involuntarily eyes went wide. The Dark Lord did not often share confidences, and this was her second of the day. "You honour me too much, Master."

"Perhaps," he said. "This matter requires discussion, not because of its complexity, but because my Pensieve is lost and for now I have no replacement. Thus, I lack optimal access to my own memory."

"From one who forgets as little as you, I suspect you are having me on," Lestrange replied.

"I never engage in low humour," Voldemort hissed. Without further warning, he struck, shouting "Crucio!"

He withdrew the spell after only a few seconds. "Remember that," the evil wizard grimly directed.

"I ... I shall, Master," Lestrange responded whilst catching her breath. Her ebony hair was wildly disheveled - but not so nearly as wild as the almost feral look in her eyes. "And thank you, I needed that."

"Your attitude towards pain is indeed ... refreshing," Lord Voldemort remarked wryly. Noticing that her lascivious look had returned, he responded, "When I am stronger. What matters now is the original prophecy I was studying when the latest unpleasantness occurred. Whilst it was certainly lost in the castle's destruction, I still have my souvenir from the Hall of Prophecy, as well as these to explain - or to obscure, as the case may be - what it means."

The Dark Lord wandlessly summoned an object the size of a box of Floo powder. A flick of his hand magically removed its tightly wrapped black velvet covering. He handed the contents to Bellatrix. "Do you remember what these symbolise?" he asked the stunned witch. "Keep them in order," he directed.

She examined them. "Y-y-yes - of course," Lestrange stammered, not sure what hidden meaning he might be driving at. "The final seven.... It's in all the histories of the time. They are same as the Grindelwald Reading."

"Recite for me your knowledge of the reading," Voldemort ordered.

"What I know is - common knowledge from History of Magic," Lestrange stumbled on. "Herr Grindelwald gave a reading to that foolish Muggle who started their Second World War. From the cards, Hitler took it that a union of Jews and Communists would overthrow his country unless he put a stop to it. But he was wrong. What it really meant was that the Americans and the Russians would come together to destroy him, personally, and with that all his works. And through his ignorant miscalculations, that's precisely what they did."

"Well, well ... quite good," Lord Voldemort praised, "only these - these eight cards - they were drawn for me a decade after the Grindelwald Reading. And, indeed, I have interpreted them in much the same way as that stupid Muggle."

Bellatrix felt a hitch in her throat. "This is why you - you believe that there is a threat to pure-blood magic?" she asked breathlessly.

"That Muggle-loving wizards and Mudbloods will bring about the downfall of pure-blood power, yes," the Dark Lord hissed. "Thus I am determined to drive out or exterminate both. But I fear I may be making the same mistake as the Muggle pretender Hitler in interpreting matters too broadly and impersonally. Delusions of grandeur are best avoided."

"I'm afraid I don't follow," Lestrange admitted

Voldemort's eyes became slits. "You notice the Four of Pentacles - the Exile?"

"Yes, Master, I do," she replied, still not following.

"Well, consider the implications if, instead of denoting Muggle-loving wizards generally - it were to refer to the Potter boy personally...."

* * * *

Harry had no idea how long he had searched through the gloomy maze of Hermione's mind for some sign of life - seeking whatever produced the activity that Hlr. Huxley's Muggle (if not magical) equipment detected. Time lost its meaning. The only way Harry knew considerable time had passed was physical. He was getting hungry and worse, thirsty, despite all he had eaten and drunk in anticipation of his journey. Even though he was in someone else's mind, his body was alerting him to its needs.

It would only get worse.

The lifeline he carried only slowed him down, perhaps fatally. It took time - time he did not have - to unravel. More precious time was lost reeling it in when, as had just happened for the half-dozenth time, he found he had somehow tracked the equivalent of a circle and crossed his own path.

He tried moving as fast as he comfortably could without breaking the lifeline. Otherwise, Harry pressed on, stopping only to reshelve any loose books he might come across. He found minor untidiness fairly often, although never any large pile in any one place. No matter what else he wanted to do, he always replaced the books - very carefully in their exact numerical and alphabetical order. He fervently hoped that, by attending to any disarray he encountered, in some small way he could help Hermione heal.

Nevertheless, his frustration grew. Harry did everything he knew how to do. He employed the directional spell just as Lao Kung said he should. It was supposed to show him the direction of Hermione's magic. But it did not work. He guessed that the same problem had thwarted Hlr. Huxley's magical equipment. Hermione's magic was too well hidden. She was hiding it - she had to be. As a result, the Four-Point Spell could not fix upon anything, and was yielding random results.

With nothing else to guide him in this labyrinth of nameless and essentially identical passageways, Harry relied upon the only thing unquestionably available - the numbers that appeared on the spine of each and every one of the books. They differed, and he could tell that the never-ending shelves were organised according to those numbers. Having entered Hermione's mind in the nine hundreds; he decided to work his way down. But it was taking too bloody long.

What good was a lifeline if it did not lead to life? If he failed now, and used it to escape, what awaited him? His answer: A life that would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and above all, short. Harry remembered how he felt in the immediate aftermath of Eliza's death. He had hoped for his own death, then. In his grief, he had wished only that Voldemort took him quickly when he came.

And he had not even been in love with Eliza. She had loved him, but he had finally grasped the truth about his feelings. He had been about to break that relationship off when, instead, his life had fallen apart. Learning Cho's secret had left him in such a tizzy about Ron's situation that he had tried to force Hermione to help him do something - what, he was never quite sure. He had driven her past her breaking point.

So many ways to count the tears.

He was in love with Hermione - he knew that now. Why else was he here? Now Harry was face to face with the prospect that maybe, just maybe, she was irretrievably broken.

He could not live with that, and he could not live with himself if it came to that. If she were broken, he had caused it. After she had risked everything to come for him, his horrible, uncontrollable power had left her like this.

She was the only one left alive whom he truly loved - like that - but alive and living were two very different things. If she stayed like this, sooner or later Hermione's mother would find out that she had been tricked, and would come to take her away.

He would never see her again - and worse, never communicate with her again. Even if she stayed in a state like this ... she would almost be better off dead, actually.

And he, not Voldemort, had done this to her.

What would his life be without her? Merely a drawn-out prelude to death, Harry supposed. The prophecy fated him to face Voldemort in a kill-or-be-killed struggle. For him to have any chance of winning, at the very least he had to want to live.

The trouble was, he realised, with what he had done to Hermione on his head, his will to do just that was sapped - perhaps fatally. There was too much guilt. Voldemort would surely kill him, and then take over the wizarding world.

Harry made a decision. Between a painful, violent death on some lonely battlefield at the hands of the most evil of wizards, and a painless, peaceful death within the mind of his best friend in the world, he would - for once - choose peace. It would be success or nothing.

He doubted the prophecy promised immortality if Voldemort did not kill him. The lifeline he held in his hands did not lead to life, but only to a more prolonged form of death. Harry cast the lifeless lifeline away, throwing it as far as he could. Then he pulled out his wand and banished the vermilion thread altogether. If he could not find Hermione, there was no place better in the world for him to die than surrounded by her earthly remains.

* * * *

The goblin emissary had just let loose with a stream of very fast and rather angry sounding Gobbledegook. Before a tired and haggard looking Dumbledore could even translate for the rest of his guests, who did not speak the language, Mad-Eye Moody muttered, "Whatever he said, I agree with it. The more painful the better."

"Oh, I rather doubt that," Dumbledore replied, both to Mad-Eye and to Banzaf, the goblin who had just finished speaking. Mad-Eye had not been far off. The goblin had, in fact, recited a number of rather unpleasant punishments that could be visited upon on anyone guilty of abducting, or otherwise committing crimes against the person of, a member of the goblin royal family - or a goblin royal consort.

"Whilst that may indeed be their status under goblin law, surely you understand that the situation is highly unusual in that neither Mister Potter nor Miss Granger is actually of goblin birth," Dumbledore tried to explain, addressing Banzaf. "Her mother, after all, is a Muggle, and I am sure the Muggle authorities would frown upon one of theirs being drawn, quartered, and fed to a dragon - not to mention some of your more unpleasant punishments."

"They wouldn't hafta know," Mad-Eye grudgingly grumbled. "Potter's my ward now, and I'm not about ta have that blasted Muggle kill him because she can't comprehend what forces she'd be disturbing. She can't have the girl now, parent or no, as long as Potter's still in there. Muggle law be damned, even if she has the right ta do in her own daughter, I'll curse her myself before I'll let any more harm come ta him."

"Would everyone kindly remain calm?" Professor McGonagall tutted. "I am, after all, the only one named in the summons, and you don't see me getting all bothered by the letter. Doctor Granger is only one Muggle, after all, and even with that solicitor she's facing an entire castle full of witches and wizards, any one of whom could Transfigure her into something quite loathsome, should the need arise."

McGonagall left unspoken her own position as Professor of Transfiguration at Hogwarts - that she was probably be the most skilled of them all, should it come to carrying out that implied threat.

The goblin Banzaf unleashed another verbal barrage - this time consisting of highly uncomplimentary remarks about lawyers, both wizard and Muggle.

This meeting in the Headmaster's office had been occasioned by the arrival, not two hours earlier, of a recorded delivery owl bearing a letter and summons addressed to Professor McGonagall as Hermione's Head of House. Just as the Deputy Headmistress and Dumbledore had expected, Hermione's mother had learnt that her daughter's advance medical directive - conferring authority over Hermione's medical care upon Harry - was void and of no effect because she had signed it before the age of seventeen.

The missive contained an ex parte cease and desist order directed against Professor McGonagall (Dumbledore, as Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot being immune from such process), demanding that she release Hermione to Eva Granger's custody as parent and legal guardian. The accompanying letter, signed by another City lawyer with a "cross over" practice, stated that he would be accompanying Dr. Granger to the Castle to assume custody "forthwith" - but gave no precise date.

The conversation went around and around, with no clear resolution. Dumbledore was speaking, "I agree with Minerva that there is no reason to be hasty and overreact. Mister Potter could well be back by then. But it does behove us to be prepared. I believe I shall ask...."

"ALBUS DUMBADOH!" rang a loud voice from the Headmaster's fireplace.

"There must be news from Sefu Kung," the subject of the Floo summons declared. Everyone rushed to the fireplace where the aged wizard's head shown amongst the flames.

"Are they back?" Dumbledore asked hopefully.

"No," Lao Kung answered. "But there is a development. Hahli has expelled the provided lifeline. You know what that means."

At this news the Headmaster's demeanour deflated. He lifted his good hand to massage his furrowed brow. "I do, indeed," he sighed. "It means that both of them return, or neither. Mister Potter cannot possibly find his way out alone. It is truly now or never."

Professor McGonagall threw up her hands in frustration, "Oh, blast the two of them. Young, powerful, Gryffindor - and in love - it's such a dangerous combination. If I believed in that sort of thing, I would be praying right now that their penchant for grand gestures doesn't kill them both, and lose the war in the process."

"You should have let nature run its course," Phineas Nigellus' portrait second-guessed.

"Shut up!" Professor McGonagall retorted.

Not everyone was depressed by the latest development. To the surprise of the others Banzaf cackled. Seeing the humans' questioning looks, he commented in Gobbledegook.

"Yes, it does parallel the Hsemaglig," Dumbledore answered. "Rakazag did much the same thing. May Mister Potter be so lucky."

* * * *

'Damn,' Harry thought, smacking himself in the forehead. 'Not again.' He had gotten as low as the mid 400's this time before taking what was now revealed as yet another drastically wrong turn. He found himself back in the 780's again, in a distinctive place he had passed through three times before.

He knew he was rapidly running out of time left for fruitless meandering. Harry suspected that the body he had left behind was on its last legs. The sensations of hunger and thirst had largely faded away. He must now be consuming his own internal stores of energy now. When the shortages of water and protein began affecting his brain, he would become as she was. According to the Sefu, he would lapse into a coma and eventually die.

Harry ran his hands through his hair. Frustrated, and worried that he was staring failure - and not incidentally death - in the face, he began pacing the unusual enclosure. He needed, really needed, to get his next attempt right. He was running out of chances.

This bit of Hermione's mind was so different that Harry had to believe it was somehow important. Almost all the maze of dark passageways he had traversed were an orderly arrangement of right angles and perpendicular junctions. This space most emphatically was not. He was in a large semicircular room, like a half moon, with no fewer than six passageways punctuating the curved wall. That wall was, like all the rest, festooned with books from floor almost to the ceiling.

'Think, Harry, think,' he berated himself. 'If I were Hermione, where would I go when all seemed lost? And how would I get there?'

The wall opposite the passageways was more typically flat, but it was singularly different in its own right. Instead of being covered with books, it was bare except for a large painting of someone furiously playing a violin. It might have been a self portrait - the hair was close enough - but Harry could not tell due to the odd perspective. The vantage point of the image was from behind, over the artist's right shoulder. None of the woman's face was visible.

The image seemed apt. Because of his own stupidity, Hermione had turned away from him. Giving up his pacing after a third pass in front of (or behind) the portrait, Harry slumped against the wall beneath it. He need to gather what little strength he had left before beginning what might be his final assault.

"Please, Hermione," he mumbled, barely making any audible sound. "For both or our sakes, if you're still in here at all ... give me some sign - anything.... I need you more than I've ever needed anything."

That appeal seemed to disappear into the void, like so many similar pleas before it. Harry sighed, and put his hands against the wainscoting to push himself back to standing. Then he heard it.

There was a creak - the first sound he had heard in this place that he had not made. Before Harry could even turn to face the source of the noise, a lurch followed. That sensation was even more unexpected. Startled, Harry fumbled his wand, which clattered to the floor. The Lumos spell was extinguished, leaving him once again in total darkness.

Harry felt himself moving, being shoved across the smooth floor by what must be the motion of the wall behind him. Mentally and physically exhausted, he lacked the strength even to try getting out of the way. He had no better idea, so he let this wall in Hermione's mind do with him what it would.

Whilst being pushed along, Harry saw something bouncing and emitting blue sparks as it rolled. His wand was right beside him, being pushed by his knee, which was splayed out by the motion. He grabbed it, but cast no spell.

He kept sliding in pitch darkness. Finally, with another creak and a thump, the movement stopped. Breathing hard, Harry waited to make sure nothing else was going to happen. Then he illuminated his wand.

For a brief moment, it seemed that nothing had changed. He was still in a hemispheric room, leaning against a flat wall, and staring across at a round wall covered with books - but he saw a critical difference.

Instead of six passageways leading away from the room, there was but one. That was the only way out - and, except for what had just happened, the only way in.

Newly invigorated, Harry clambered to his feet. A few long steps and he was inches from the volumes shelved beside the corner of the single connecting corridor. Examining the white numbers on their spines in the uncertain wandlight, Harry saw they began with "326." He was staring at some book concerning that Muggle named Wilberforce about whom Hermione had once been so enthusiastic.

He was closer to the beginning than ever before - by over 100 numerals!

Harry trained his wand down the corridor in front of him. It seemed straight and quite narrow - only half the width of anything he had yet encountered - little more than a metre wide. Unlike every other hallway in the endless maze, this passageway did not consist of jam-packed bookshelves. Instead its walls were knobby, covered with what appeared to be eggbox cartons painted grey.

This spare and unusual décor seemed to go on forever ... or at least past the limit of Harry's wandlight to pierce the tenebrous gloom. Harry was just about to charge down the corridor when he heard something different, but familiar.

The melody was Tchaikovsky violin concerto in D, probably Harry's favorite piece from Hermione's CD. He had listened to its melancholy-but-uplifting refrain many times since his return to Hogwarts.

He turned towards the sound. It came, as suspected, from the painting behind him. But that portrait, like the wall upon which it hung, had turned around. It indeed portrayed Hermione playing the violin. Her face wore that same look of intense concentration that he remembered from her playing the same piece for him such a long - but such a short - time ago. Then, they had been in her room, in her house, on the occasion of his single, disastrous visit.

Only this time, Harry could not be sure if that intense concentration was the product of a violin mæstro at work. The Hermione in the portrait seemed to look straight at him - maybe even straight through him.

Harry wanted to say something, anything.... But everything that came to mind sounded unspeakably banal, given why he (and, he thought, she) was here. It was just a portrait,. So he simply repeated what had become something of a mantra to him - when she was the subject.

"The one who is true shall come for you."

Gathering his wits, Harry squared his shoulders, turned, and set out down the narrow, strangely decorated corridor at a swift trot. It was as fast as he could move without outrunning his wand's illumination, which - as before - provided the only light within the gloomy, deserted environment that was Hermione's mind.

The claustrophobic tunnel seemed to go on forever, but Harry suppressed his fears and banged on. His mind harkened back to his running with Dudley. "Pick a steady pace and keep to it," his cousin had instructed when he first started. He followed that advice here.

Finally, just as abruptly as the tunnel had begun, it ended. The walls that surrounded and hemmed him in fell away, leaving him in a massive round chamber, again with the walls covered with books. Those walls curved away into the gloom on either side and above him. Directly in front loomed something different - a second circular wall, nested within the first.

Briefly, Harry examined a nearby book. It was a Muggle encyclopædia and not numbered. He crossed the eight or so metres to the wall in front of him. It seemed made of polished black stone lacking any markings or other distinctive characteristics. Apprehensively, he reached out and touched its surface. It felt smooth - polished to an almost slippery sheen - and not nearly as cold to the touch as he had expected.

After a few seconds, Harry noticed something else - the entire massive stone wall vibrated. Because it was not been immediately obvious, he checked it a second time. He sensed a barely perceptible, but constant resonance.

Worried that his physical exhaustion might be causing his mind to play tricks on him, Harry waved his lit wand around. It cast the expected array of eerie shadows. He pressed the lighted wand against the wall. He did not seem to be hallucinating. He could see the illuminated wandtip flutter ever so slightly. The vibration was apparently real, at least as real as the rest of his surroundings.

Harry pressed his ear to the wall. The vibration seemed accompanied by a low, steady hum. Harry had a premonition that what he wanted - what he needed right now more than anything else in life - was somewhere close, on the other side of this wall.

But the wall was a formidable obstruction. Harry had never given a thought to the possibility of such an impediment. He simply had not considered the possibility. One thing he knew - Lao Kung had warned him against any resort to powerful magic whilst inside Hermione's mind.

He tried light Legilimency. In the outside world - before his impetuosity had ruined everything and driven her away - he had learned to communicate with Hermione telepathically. He screwed up his concentration and focussed on a simple message. 'Hermione, it's me, Harry. I've come for you,' he broadcast.

The message did not go through. Instead it reflected back at him loudly and clearly, like an echo bouncing off a sheer cliff.

Resistance.

The same phenomenon had frustrated Hlr. Huxley's magical machinery. The same phenomenon had repulsed the American Healers' best efforts. Hermione had raised barriers against the outside world - and that world included him.

Harry tried again. He extinguished his wand to put everything he had left into the effort. The telepathic echo only reflected back at him that much more powerfully. His ears rang with the sound of his own silent shouts. His throat became parched. His knees began to give way, as he started to feel faint from the exertion. Eventually, he stopped.

After resting, he came back for more. He tried pounding and kicking - no luck, only bruises.

He could not climb the wall. It was too slick, even using a Sticking Charm.

Having no way to grasp anything, Harry tried a Traction Charm, hoping he could push his way in. Nothing happened, at least not at the level of magic he was willing to use. The Feather Light Charm, used with such great effect at the Ashrak, likewise had no apparent effect. Even his Vannoportus Charm was futile. The unyielding stone remained as black and solid as ever.

Finally, Harry simply turned his back to the wall and slid slowly down until he sat on the floor. He seemed to have met an immovable obstacle. Hermione had walled herself off. To penetrate her defenses at minimum would require resort to very powerful magic he had been instructed in no uncertain terms not to use.

To save her, he would have to destroy her. Seemingly he could not do the former. He would not do the latter - he would die first. Never in his life had he felt more hopeless.

It seemed like the end - the end of the Boy Who Lived. He wondered why he was still trying to hold back tears.

He had closed his eyes whilst concentrating and had never bothered to reopen them, since with no light it made no difference. In despair, he opened his eyes again and blankly stared into the darkness - darkness that mirrored his soul.

But all was not quite dark.

To his surprise, with his eyes now fully acclimatised to the gloom, Harry discovered he could just barely discern the outline of the entrance through which he had come. That should not happen. Without his wand lighting his way, the blackness should be absolute - but it was not; not quite.

Again worried about hallucinations, Harry re-illuminated his wandtip. Making note of some of the more distinctive patterns of the books on the opposite wall, he extinguished it again and waited once more for his eyes to readjust.

They did, and Harry found that he could, if he used averted vision, still make out some of the patterns.

That could only mean one thing. Somewhere in the large, ring-shaped enclosure in which he found himself, was another light source. It would be the first he encountered since his mental journey had begun so many - he had no idea how many - hours before.

Harry quickly roused himself and went looking for the light.

On the opposite side of the ring he found it. At floor level, about a metre long and at best a millimetre high, was a crack illuminated by white light. The light was quite faint. Harry's lit wandtip washed it out almost completely.

Harry extinguished his wand again, and once again let his eyes readjust. He stood there, contemplating this pale chink in the armour that the solid polished stone wall represented. Behind him, he cast a weak, but noticeable, shadow.

This sliver of light seemed familiar. It triggered something atavistic inside him. Somewhere, deep in his past, he had seen this sort of light before. It was as if he were a small child again, locked in the cupboard under the stairs, staring at the faint bit of light that shone through....

...the crack under the....

DOOR!!

Harry relit his wand and rushed to the location of the crack. Holding the wand between his teeth, he desperately examined the surface visually as he felt it with both hands.

It was a door all right - a dark, featureless door, with no visible handles, hinges, or hasps. It reminded him strongly of those he found at the Department of Mysteries a few months previous. Except for one thing.

This door was firmly and utterly locked.

There was no give to it at all. Harry pushed it, kicked it, tried Alohomora, and even used a gentle Traction Charm on it. It did not move in the slightest - not even a bolt rattled.

Harry put his ear to the door. For a bit, he heard nothing, not even the hum he had sensed earlier. But then, as his ear acclimated, he began to make it out. There was music, violin music, coming from inside.

On the other side there was something - something alive - alive and wonderful. It could only be Hermione, or (if he thought about it) her consciousness, which was essentially the same thing.

Harry started pounding on the door with his fists and shouting at the top of his lungs, "HERMIONE!! LET ME IN!!! IT'S ME, HARRY!!! I'VE COME FOR YOU ... TO BRING YOU BACK!!! PLEASE, LET ME IN!!! PLEASE!!! ... I LOVE YOU!!!...

Nothing happened - nothing save an odd lot of noisy echoes that reverberated throughout the ring-like space between the outer circle of books and the inner concentric wall of shiny black stone.

Harry kept it up until he had shouted himself hoarse, and his bruised hands started to ache from the effort.

Chest heaving, breathing heavily, Harry stopped, his adrenaline running out. This approach was also a failure. All his banging had neither moved the door one iota nor prompted Hermione to open it for him.

He put his ear to the door again. For what seemed like a long time, he could hear only the sound of his own lungs gasping for air, but as his own exhalations returned to normal, he heard the music again. If anything, the music seemed louder.

Harry slumped to the floor in exhausted despair again. She was not letting him in. Did she even know he was there?

'Please, Hermione,' he tried telepathically. 'Where you are, let me be.'

Nothing.

How could he get through to her?

He seemed to have no means of communicating with her consciousness on the other side. Shouting had not helped. Pounding had not helped. Even telepathy had not helped. Nothing seemed to get through.

Nothing but music.

Music. Something Dumbledore had said long ago came back to him - "Music! A magic beyond all we do here."

But Harry was a musical illiterate. The Dursleys had never allowed him so much as a kazoo. Nor was music a subject on the Hogwarts curriculum. Never had he been as acutely aware of his complete lack of musical skills as right now.

But Harry did, at least, know some music. He had listened to Hermione's CD - a lot. He had also listened to Dudley's CDs - some of them quite a bit, too.

If music could get through, was there something Harry could conjure up from the recesses of his own mind that would alert her to his presence? More importantly, given his conviction that she thought he was dead, was there something he could transmit that would let her know he was alive, or at least that she should entertain that possibility?

There was one song that would undoubtedly let her know that he was on the other side of the door - Billy Don't Be A Hero - the song she had recorded to send him a message. But that message was 'please don't get yourself killed.' Now, he knew that she thought he had done precisely the opposite and died as a result. That was hardly the message he wanted, and needed, to send to her at this moment.

He needed a melody not only meaningful to both of them, but also a celebration of life.

There was one other song - that Beatles song that he had played over and over again whilst he was running with Dudley. It had always reminded him strongly of how he felt for her, before he even understood (or admitted to himself) what those emotions had actually been.

He had been on the verge of telling Hermione about that song that night they had talked in her bedroom. He thought back to that conversation:

"What? The only Yellow Submarine I know about is a Beatles album - one that has my favorite song on it, actually."

"It's a Beatles movie, as well.... Oh, really Harry - mine too! Let me get it out...."

The next moment, they had been interrupted by Hermione's father's fateful call to dinner. Still, he thought they had both been talking about the same song - although neither of them had mentioned it by name. Then again, maybe he was fooling himself - maybe he had just wanted so badly for the two of them to be compatible.

Harry shuddered. He realised that this one song was the only cut on that album he knew well enough to be able to recall its details with sufficient accuracy even to attempt to conjure it. If he were wrong, there was no fall back. What if she really liked 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds'?

Worse, what if she really meant 'Eleanor Rigby' - or 'Nowhere Man'?

Still, he had to try - to play his last hunch. There seemed to be no downside, if only because he had run out of other ideas.

Harry put both hands on the door, palms cupped to focus the magic. This was how the Unspeakables had taught him how to combat the Cruciatus Curse. He pressed on the unyielding door, concentrating intensively on the song....

Faintly he began to hear it - not just in his head, but in the air around him as well. His fingertips felt odd. His own musical efforts were causing the locked door to vibrate distinctly.

"To your m...." A high-pitched guitar riff almost immediately drowned out the first words. It quickly devolved into pulsating, much lower pitched feedback. Then the electronic organ chords kicked in....

It's all too much.... It's all too much....

Cheery, upbeat music filled the air around Harry now. He felt himself vibrating.

When I look into your eyes, your love is there for me.

And the more I go inside, the more there is to see....

He kept it up, leaning hard into the unyielding door as he willed the music to flow through and beyond him. He closed his eyes, creating and listening to his creation at the same time. All the while he knew that he might not get another chance. His body was teetering on the edge of collapse. His muscles were aching, and his mind was blank except for the music he was striving to amplify as much as his rapidly draining strength would allow.

Floating down the stream of time, throughout your life with me.

Makes no difference where you are, or where you'd like to be.

It's all too much for me to take,

The love that's shining all around here.

All the world's a birthday cake,

So take a piece....

Suddenly, he heard a "click." It sounded identical to the click he had felt in his mind just before he had unleashed those elemental forces against Voldemort - the forces that had all but killed Hermione. For an instant, his blood ran cold, and he feared he had concentrated too hard.

Harry's concentration disrupted, the music stopped abruptly.

But then, as if by magic, all of the resistance he had been struggling against disappeared in a flash - a literal flash. In the next instant, Harry was blinded by an outburst of dazzling, white light. Unable to see anything, he did not realise that he had lost his balance until his face hit ... something - something firm but not hard and as brilliantly white as the starburst that had just bedazzled him.

Half senseless from his fall, Harry looked up at the undeniably female silhouette that, from his prone position, seemed to tower over him. "Hermione...," he rasped as he rolled over onto his back to look at her.

"H-H-Harry?" The silhouette stuttered, shaking her head. She shifted position slightly, and Harry finally saw her face. It was unmistakably Hermione's. Her eyes were wide and bloodshot, with dark rings around them. Behind her, in the background, Harry saw a violin seemingly hovering in space.

The girl, however, was not at all happy to see him. Rather, she was crying and telling herself, through her tears, "No, it can't be Harry ... Harry's dead.... Dead, dammit...."

"Hermione...?" Harry forced her name out of his mouth again.

It was if she never heard him. "Harry won...," she repeated lifelessly. "Harry defeated Voldemort.... Harry shouldn't be here...."

Throughout, the white light was shading into violet - and throbbing, as if unsure which primary colour to become: blue - or red.

"Hermione ... please...." Harry choked out as he tried to move - to turn over as a prelude to standing. Almost cowering, Hermione started sliding away from him.

"Are - are you a ghost? Have you come to haunt me?" she asked meekly. Then her wide eyes went even wider with sudden realisation. Red became the predominate colour. "No, no, no...," she repeated. "You can't be. You won. You won.... You're fulfilled...."

Intense red light blazed. Hermione screamed - a scream of despair and remorse, rather than fear.

"HARRY'S DEAD! YOU'RE NOT HIM! NOT A GHOST ... PLEASE, NOT A GHOST! PLEASE...!"

"Hermione...."

The surroundings of wherever they were continued burning bright red, but her voice dropped precipitously in volume. "I ... not this, please, not this.... Please, don't do this to me...."

She approached him again, and in a dead whisper, told him, "I'll be joining you soon Harry, don' t worry... please, just let me be.... Let me be...."

In her bout of anguish and mourning, Hermione was becoming less and less coherent. Finally, she broke down altogether and began weeping. As she wept, she struggled to close the door and push Harry's fallen form back outside into the darkness.

All but exhausted from his effort, Harry found that he lacked the strength to stop her.

"Hermione," he pleaded feebly, trying to make himself heard. "I'm - I'm not dead. Really.... Please.... Listen to me...."

Half mad with heartbreak at her thoughts of what Harry had become - because of her - Hermione had almost closed the door to her sanctuary again. But his final plea struck home with a spiritual force that shattered her resolve.

She was doing it all over again.

Despite everything she had promised herself - over and over again - she was not hearing him out. Again. Heedlessly, she was acting without listening. That was precisely what caused her misery in the first place.

She stopped pushing on the door, and let it swing wide open again. Ghost or no ghost, she owed him that much. She had been ready and willing to die for him - and he for her.

If he were not dead, that meant she was not the one who had killed him.

It would mean that, instead of dying for him, she needed the courage to live for him - again.

Almost as quickly as before, the ruddy glow paled and regained its previous whiteness.

"Come ... come in, Harry," she hesitantly invited, trying to regain her composure.

From where he lay - astride some bizarre boundary between outer darkness and inner light, Harry struggled to his feet and staggered inside, towards Hermione. Not at all sure what he was walking on, he stumbled.

Hermione reached to steady him - and her hand passed clear through his arm without her feeling anything.

Blinking at the abrupt transition, from utter black to the flood of bright white light that now shown upon him from all sides, Harry missed the expression of horror that marred her face.

But not for long.

The white light that surrounded them both took on a distinct bluish cast.

Regaining his balance, Harry turned and faced her - his first time face-to-face with a conscious Hermione in over a month. She wore a gossamer white ankle-length dress and, incongruously, her Prefect badge.

He was starting the most important conversation of his life - a plea for both of their lives.

His breath choked up, as he saw her staring at him, wide eyed, pale faced, and open mouthed, with her hand still extended in front of her, as if it had something revolting on it.

"Er ... Hermione? Before I say anything else, I have to tell you.... I love you - I really love you - more than anything ... and everything that means...."

Harry's confession was not been particularly articulate, but at least he spoke the most important thing he needed to say, before he lost his nerve.

He quickly added, "...And I'm not dead."

The light around them started to resemble a sunset. The light blue began shading to turquoise and mingling with pink.

Hermione buried her head in her hands and started sobbing again. Harry reached out to comfort her - to touch her for the first time in over a month - but his hand disappeared into her shoulder. His fingertips felt nothing. He gasped and removed his hand, as quickly as if he had been burnt.

"Oh, Harry," Hermione moaned through her tears. "I-I-I wanted ... so much ... so much to hear that ... when you were ... alive. I would have done anything ... anything. But now, after you've died. It's too late - for both of us...."

The pink light was fading away, as their indistinct surroundings becoming navy blue.

Harry focussed. Hermione's halting, devastated speech accomplished one thing - forcing him to find his mental footing. "I'm not dead, Hermione," he repeated, this time with more conviction. "I've - I've come for you. To bring you back."

"Harry ... whether you know it or not ... you're a ghost," Hermione repeated. "My hand...," she held it out again as if disgusted by it, "it passed right through you when you stumbled. And - and you shouldn't be a ghost - a pale imitation of your former self."

"My hand just went through your shoulder," Harry countered. "I didn't feel a thing. I think we're both just seeing each other's ... er ... I guess, consciousness the way we remember one another."

Hermione continued her soliloquy as if not hearing him. The wheels in her mind were turning again, and they reached a horrific conclusion. "...and if anyone should be fulfilled, it's you - after what you did to die. OH, NO!!! It's me, isn't it? Even though you accomplished the prophecy and got rid of Voldemort. You felt unfulfilled and became a ghost because of me. I CAN'T STAND IT!! I'M NOT WORTH THAT!!"

Again, the light veered rapidly towards indigo.

"No. No! NO. NO! NOOOOOO....!!

He thought she would disintegrate into tears again, but what happened was worse. She felt the irony. She was certain that because she had so cruelly ordered him away, he had chosen the miserable, feeble existence of a ghost, despite having carried out that prophecy and destroyed Voldemort ... along with himself. She started sniggering, then giggling ... and then fell to all fours laughing unstoppably.

Harry was afraid she was going mad - right there in front of him.

Nothing he could say seemed to shake Hermione's conviction that he was dead and had returned to haunt her. He had to do something - anything - to shake some sense into her. With both hands he reached out to her. He stopped, because he knew what would happen if he tried to touch her.

But something told him to continue, so Harry took a giant step towards the heaving girl and put both arms around her until they disappeared in her back. Again he felt nothing.

But nothing could be a good thing.

"Hermione, look at me," Harry asked his miserably unhinged friend. "Please look at me."

Slowly, Hermione raised her very red and puffy eyes out of her hands. She saw Harry very close to her - his arms vanishing inside of her.

"Hermione, do I feel cold to you?" he asked.

"...N-N-No...," she answered slowly. "You don't...."

"Then I'm not a ghost, am I?" Harry observed. "Think, Hermione. Please think logically. Ghosts feel cold, don't they?"

"No ... yes, you're right, they don't ... rather, they do," Hermione agreed, allowing a shard of hope to pierce the inner darkness in which she dwelt ever since she had felt the pain of Harry's death during his confrontation with Voldemort.

The deep blue that surrounded them - the colour of the sky at 8,000 metres on a day Harry had once saved Hermione's life - lightened just a bit.

"Ghosts ... they always wear the clothes they died in, don't they?" Harry asked. He did not know this for a fact, but on the spur of the moment - it seemed right. That had to be why the Bloody Baron was bloody.

"Yes ... I think so," Hermione responded more brightly and coherently.

"You see me in my Hogwarts robes ... don't you?" Harry asked. He knew that was how he saw himself. Halfway through the question, he had the disconcerting thought that maybe she was seeing him only in his Speedo costume - which was how his physical body was at this moment back in Hogwarts - but at that point it was too late to rephrase.

"Yes," replied Hermione, picking up on the cue now, "and you certainly couldn't have been wearing those when you encountered Voldemort."

"One more," Harry added, gaining confidence. He thought he had devised a way to banish the spectre of him as a ghost once and for all. He held up his right hand. "What am I wearing?"

The glint of gold told her all she needed to know. He was wearing an Auror partner's ring - but.... She looked down, at her own hand, with his ring snugly on her finger. "You're wearing ... my ring!!"

There was no doubt about it. Harry had survived the encounter with Voldemort.

White light - almost pink - flared.

All at once deliriously happy, Hermione hurled herself at him - just like she had when she first saw him after returning from Hong Kong - only this time she passed clean through him. Hermione landed awkwardly behind Harry in the blank landscape and flopped through a most inelegant somersault.

Before Harry could even turn around, he heard the torrent of words that began pouring from the bottom of Hermione's tortured soul.

"Oh, Harry! I'm so sorry - so, so sorry - you have no idea. I still can't believe what I did. What got into me? I was frightfully, horribly wrong. You must find me so foul after how awful I was. I know I hurt you terribly. I was so stupid. Why you're even here, I have no idea. I don't deserve you. I don't even deserve to be alive...."

Their surroundings were starting to resemble the sky again.

"Hermione, please stop," Harry asked her softly. "It doesn't become you. None of that's necessary. If I felt any of those things, I wouldn't be here."

"Not necessary...? Why I...," she looked at him, and saw him smiling. It was the saddest smile she had ever seen.

"Because I had no right to force those vile photos on you like that. I had no right to manhandle you the way I did. You would have been well within your rights to curse me into oblivion," Harry said. "You have nothing - I mean nothing - to apologise for. You came for me when I...," Harry looked down. "...when I didn't deserve to be the dirt on the bottom of your shoes."

Hermione was wide-eyed in shock, "I don't believe you, Harry, how could you possibly think...?"

"I incinerated you," he said flatly. "Burnt you to a crisp. Dumbledore said you had burns over your entire body. It's a miracle that you survived. I did that horrible thing to you, so don't tell me I shouldn't apologise."

"Harry, I said in my note...," she stopped. "You did read the note I left, didn't you?"

"Yeah," Harry answered, "and after that, your testimony. It's what convinced me I had to do this. I don't deserve you or what you did."

She practically screamed at him, "Then you know I told you not to feel guilty, because everything I did, I did of my own free will!"

The surrounding light, which had reverted to white, was now burning orange - the colour of flame.

"But when you wrote that you didn't know I would burn you alive," Harry replied softly. "You didn't know what I was capable of."

"Harry, I hit you; I hurt you; and I drove you into the Death Eaters' trap," Hermione replied hotly. "That means I'm responsible for incinerating half of London, and your girlfriend, and for everything horrible that's happened to you since. Compared to that, you have nothing - I repeat nothing - to feel guilty...."

"This isn't right," Harry broke in. "Truce?"

"Truce?" Hermione echoed questioningly.

"Yeah, truce," Harry repeated. "Let's stop the competitive guilt. What's over is over. Can't we just let go, and go on?"

"Oh..., Harry!" Hermione looked at him with a rather shocked expression on her face. "When did you get so wise?"

"I've had a lot of time to think," Harry replied sadly. "All the time that I've spent sitting next to you in the Hospital Wing, with you lying there unmoving, looking an inch away from death."

The orange glow disappeared from their environment, and white light shown once more.

Hermione could just imagine what Harry had gone through. "I'm so, so sorry that you had to see that. It wasn't...."

"Please, Hermione," Harry reminded. "Truce, remember."

"Okay," she replied in a small voice, stopping herself from again saying she was sorry. Hermione took a deep breath, and had that look in her face that Harry knew meant she was nervous. "Harry, you said you read my note - and my testimony. Then I guess you know. It's true. I really do...."

"You - You don't have to say it, Hermione," Harry said, putting up his hand. "I know."

"I do have to say it. I want to say it," Hermione insisted. "You don't know how many nights I cried myself to sleep whilst the Death Eaters had you - worrying that I might never get the chance to say this to your face. I love you Harry. I have for years, really. I love you more than anything, anything in this world. That's why I did what I did. After I'd bollixed things up so badly, I had to try to set them right. I love you more than is probably wise. That's why I'm here, hiding out. I thought you were...."

Their environment was taking on a pinkish hue.

"Dead," Harry finished her sentence for her. "I know. I figured that out." If he could have rushed to her and held her, he would have, but Harry knew what would happen if he tried.

Tears welled up in her eyes again, "Harry, I can't stand you dying - or even the thought of it. I've believed I felt you die twice, now. And I just can't take it. I went to pieces the first time - until I sensed that you were still alive. The second time, I wound up here...."

"Where? Where is here?" Harry asked, looking around. There was - nothing - around them. At the moment, everything was a featureless white glow, with no up, down, or sideways apparent. They were both standing on apparently nothing. Whilst Harry felt a surface of some sort under his feet, he could see nothing. It was something like being in a cloud.

"I'm not entirely sure," Hermione answered. "All I remember was brilliant pink fire, intense, screaming pain - all over. I guess that was when I was being burnt. I heard a roaring sound. I felt like I was moving away at tremendous speed. The pink went black - then it felt like something hit me, hard. After that, the black went white ... and here I was. I think it's magic."

"It had to be magic," Harry affirmed. "Dumbledore's magic. Otherwise, you would have...." He paused. He wanted to talk about life, not death.

"No, I mean.... I think I'm with my magic," Hermione corrected. "Wherever the seat of it is - in the mind, or soul, or limbic system, or whatever. This is where this is. It's pretty much just been constant, although there was a brief period, not too long ago, when the light in here did start to flicker. I did think, at that moment, that maybe my time had come."

'Bloody Yank Healers,' Harry thought, but all he said was, "I think one of our wonkier attempts to rouse you caused that."

"Well, the light returned to normal soon enough," she remarked. "Remember our truce. About the light - I can control it to some extent. Watch!"

Hermione screwed up her face in intense concentration - amber and scarlet fountains of light erupted all around them - startling Harry and making him jump. He landed on a somewhat different plane and had to adjust himself to look at the girl again.

"I can also do this," she said, summoning the violin that had been suspended in the background since Harry arrived. She started to play, and violin music - one of the Beethoven sonatas on the CD - flooded around them. It started softly, but the more Hermione concentrated, the louder it became. When it rose to just this side of deafening, she shut it off.

"Anytime I want, I can summon a violin, at least the image of one, and I can play any song I've ever learnt. I can conjure any book I've ever read and re-read it," Hermione explained. "But - I can't do anything new. I think I'm limited to what I've already done, what I've already experienced.... At least I was until you got here."

"It sounds like you're more of a ghost than I am," Harry observed. "How come you want to stay like this?"

"My magic protects me," Hermione declared. "It won't let me be hurt any more. When you - I guess - started pounding on the door, it reacted. It started producing music, trying to drown you out. But then I heard other music ... that I hadn't summoned. And I realised that it was that song.... I had to find out what was out there. It was the first time I'd even considered opening up since I got here. I wasn't even sure there was a door. It just ... happened."

Harry interrupted her monologue. "Hermione, it doesn't matter how you got here, or how I got here for that matter. What's important is that I know how you feel about me and you know how I feel about you. Will you come out - with me - so we can start over, and be together?"

Harry had hoped, with reason, that her answer to that question would be an enthusiastic 'yes.' He was disappointed. A haunting look - one of fear and of sadness - came to her brown eyes. No longer bright, they seemed muddy.

The white light began fading back into blue the moment Harry finished his question - perhaps even a split second before.

Looking at her feet rather than at him, she replied in a low tone. "I suppose, if you're still alive ... that means that - Voldemort - is still alive, too."

"Er ... yes...." Harry replied, realising he still had some explaining to do. "That's what the Order thinks anyway. Nobody's seen him, as far as we know, but there's been none of the Death Eater panic like there was the - the first time I defeated him."

Hermione was biting her lower lip hard by the time Harry finished his answer. Her jaw trembling, she stumbled into a little speech she had obviously spent a great deal of time considering, "Harry ... this is ... the hardest thing I've ever had to say.... But I've thought about it a lot, both before and since I got here. Because I'd like nothing better in this world than to come and live 'happily ever after' with you. I've wanted nothing else for - for months, if not years...."

She choked up, stopped, regathered her wits, and continued. "But I can't.... I can't be that selfish. I realised it just ... when the lights in here started flickering.... I have to stay here - and you have to go and do - do what you have to do. I'd only get in the way...."

Hermione shook like a leaf all through her statement. The light that surrounded them became bluer and bluer as she spoke. When she got to the end of what she had to say, she burst into wretched tears and, unable to stand any longer, she dropped into a cross legged sitting position, her head in her hands and wailing pathetically.

For a moment, Harry just gawked - stunned by the development. He had not expected this, not in the slightest. Given what he knew about her feelings, and encouraged by his own, he had always thought that the hard bits of this rescue would be over once he found her and convinced her he was not dead. He was wrong ... possibly dead wrong.

He knelt beside her. He wanted so much to touch her - to hold her - to comfort her.... But again, his hand passed clean through her, and she hardly noticed anything.

All he had were words - and words had never been Harry Potter's forté. Hermione ghostwrote his best speeches.

Still, he had to try. He had not gotten this far - at tremendous cost - to give up now. "Hermione, listen to me. You'd never be in the way. That's so untrue. It's the opposite. There's no way ... no way in the world ... that I can possibly defeat Voldemort without you. Whatever power I'm supposed to use, if it's this Fifth Element rubbish, I can't control it. I haven't been able to kill him with it anyway. I need you Hermione ... to keep me under control. It's hopeless otherwise."

Hermione's tears diminished in quantity, and her sobs in volume, whilst Harry was speaking. But still she refused to look at him, even though he was right beside her. When he said things were "hopeless," he finally got a response, "It's - it's not hopeless, Harry. You're much stronger than you think. And you're so much stronger than I am that it's not even worth talking about."

Brilliant cerulean light illuminated the cloudscape around them.

"I-I-I can't do it alone, Hermione," Harry insisted. "So many people want me to ... to carry the world. But I need you - to carry me."

"Harry," she said, still not looking at him, "they don't want you to carry the world - they want you to save it. And you have to. It's your bloody fate, I guess. You're doomed to greatness.... That's exactly why I can't go with you. It would be too selfish of me. I know that if I went with you, it would be worse than my just getting in the way. For my own personal happiness I'd try to stop you from ... doing what you have to do. And to lose the whole world, just to save myself. That would be wrong. You need to go, Harry."

The luminescent blue that surrounded them deepened towards royal.

"NO!" Harry exclaimed as frustration and worry welled within him. "To Hell with the world, then. I can't let you die in here all alone! Let's run away then. To Hell with prophecies and Voldemort both! I can choose free will as much as you! Let somebody else save the bloody world!"

"Harry, what on Earth are you saying?" Hermione gasped.

There was a feral look to Harry's face now, that of a caged animal. "I'm saying, let's chuck it all, Hermione - forget about the prophecy, Voldemort, death, and all those horrible things! Let's run away to that South Seas island you told me about once. We'll hide out in some cave, and survive on our own magic. We can be together! We have to be. I-I-I care too much about you to ever leave you again."

The navy blue light quivered, and notched a shade in the direction of lavender. Hermione looked up at Harry's flushed face with her own blotchy, tear-streaked complexion. "No," she said, softly but firmly. "You. Have. To. Save. The. World. Harry. You have to. Not me - you. We can't run away, because Voldemort will hunt you down, wherever we run. That's how he is. The prophecy - it asks for your life. Don't let it strip you of your pride, too."

"But I don't want the world, Hermione," Harry protested. "All I want is ... is ... you. Please, Hermione!"

"Believe me, Harry, I feel the same way! I've ... I went though Hell just to get you back, and ... and for the same reasons." Hermione declared, her voice quavering. "But you and I - we can't always get what we want. You're a Gryffindor, Harry - the truest Gryffindor I've ever known. Now go. Leave me here, and I'll ... I'll see you in the next world, whatever that is. I promise. I'll come for you there, but I can't come with you here."

She had started out strongly, but what she had to say took so much out of her emotionally that she broke down again at the end of it. Once again forlorn tears echoed across the featureless, cobalt-hued landscape.

Harry did not know what more he could say to her. He had nothing left. He was feeling faint, as if his last reserves of energy were running out. Instead of persuasion, he simply told her the truth. Without her, he did not know where to go.

"Hermione, I can't. Even if I wanted to, I can't leave. I don't know how to get out. I threw away the lifeline that Lao Kung gave me - a long time ago - and I have no idea where to go. I decided that ... if it came to that ... I'd rather die in here, with you, than out there, with Voldemort."

Hermione looked up and fixed him with a furious stare. The almost indigo light around them lightened and shifted several shades towards violet. She was aghast at what he had done. "You - You used Chinese Legilimency to find me here? That's suicide. Your Lao Kung told me when we met, that I had to prevent you from doing any such thing on your own ... for any reason. That without years of practice, you'd never come out alive if you tried it. And now he sends you in ... on a one way trip to me?"

"Yes, he did," Harry declared, a bit defensively at her implied criticism of the Sefu. "And after I told Dumbledore that I was going to do it myself, if I had to, Dumbledore sent for him, and Lao Kung travelled half-way around the world just to give me a little more training. It's a measure of how seriously you're missed, by everyone, not just me. Besides, it's no more suicidal than me facing Voldemort without you in my life. I need you that much, Hermione. Please come back ... otherwise I'm staying here and you can watch me die peacefully - by your side - the way it should be."

That moved Hermione. What Harry described doing sounded so much like her own behavior towards the Headmaster that it was déjà vu just thinking about it. "Harry, you're putting me in an impossible position," she said sadly.

"Join the club," Harry quickly replied. "I've been in an impossible position since you.... No - I won't go there - we've got a truce on that."

"Harry, I'm only doing what I'm doing because I can't stand you dying. I've told you that. I've thought I've felt you die twice, and if I ever feel that again I know I'll kill myself. There's nothing more suicidal than you going after Voldemort. The prophecy says that you're going to kill one another, and I know that you'll...."

"The prophecy doesn't say that," Harry said softly. "Not at all."

"It doesn't?" Hermione shrieked, her voice instantly going up an octave and quite a few decibels. The light in their indeterminate environment abruptly shifted to a pale shade of green.

"No, it doesn't, and Dumbledore told me before I started this that he feared you had misinterpreted things. I hadn't believed him until now. He said I could tell you if I thought...."

"Harry, I don't know that it's wise," Hermione quickly cautioned. "If you're planning to tell me...."

"Actually, the two of us slowly dying in here isn't exactly the brightest thing in the world, either," Harry immediately countered. "You need to know the whole truth, Hermione. Even Dumbledore thinks I should tell you. No more bloody lies!"

"Lies?" Hermione repeated in a questioning voice. "You've been having everyone on that you didn't know the prophecy for how long, exactly?"

"Er ... since the night of the Ministry and Sirius' death," Harry confessed. "Dumbledore told me, and he told me not to tell a soul," he quickly added.

"Oh Merlin, you've no idea the trouble that could have been avoided," Hermione began. Then she stopped. It was useless to be cross with Harry about that - not now, after all that had happened - and especially if the prophecy was other than what she thought. The green light all around them was getting paler and more yellow by the second as the girl allowed herself a little hope about Harry's fate for the first time in ages. "All right, Harry, tell me then."

The boy swallowed hard and began, "Here's what it says, 'The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. Born to those who have thrice defied him...,' those were my parents, who fought Voldemort in the First War. That's why they were killed."

"All because of a few words," Hermione mumbled sadly.

"And by Trelawney, of all people," Harry muttered.

"You're sure this is real, then?" Hermione asked, as scepticism filled her voice. It was hardly a secret that Hermione considered the long-time Divination professor a fraud. Saffron jets of light spurted around them.

"Very much so," Harry answered. "She spoke it to Dumbledore, and he showed the entire memory to me in his own office on his own Pensieve just after I got back from the Ministry last term. He's kept her on staff all these years because of it - probably to protect her from Voldemort."

"Well that explains a generation's worth of worthless Divination," Hermione remarked bitterly.

"So, that's the first bit. The second, what told Voldemort it was me, is this, 'born as the seventh month dies' - that's 31, July - my birthday."

"Harry," Hermione said as she instinctively reached out for his arm, only to have her hand pass right through it, "it - it could be - Neville, couldn't it? He pretty much shares your birthday, and his parents were Aurors and Order members. They defied Voldemort all the time."

"I once thought the same thing," Harry admitted, "but it's not Neville - not any more anyway. That's because of the next part, which Dumbledore doesn't think Voldemort knows about."

"How does Voldemort know any of it?" Hermione asked. It was a logical question.

"According to Dumbledore, some Death Eater overheard the first two lines, before being caught," Harry explained. "You see, the prophecy happened at the Hog's Head Inn, where Trelawney had been staying. It's not exactly the most private place in the world. The berk was caught lurking about, and tossed out. If Dumbledore knows who it was, he hasn't told me."

Hermione pursed her lips. "I'm sure he knows," she said. "He knows too much not to know that. I'd wager he hasn't told you because he doesn't want you seeking revenge."

"I would, too," Harry admitted, "for everything. Anyway, that's all Voldemort knows. The rest of the prophecy goes like this: 'The Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not. And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live whilst the other survives.' Then she repeated the bits about 'vanquish' and the date of my birth. That's it. That's what killed my parents and has Voldemort after me. That's what the Death Eaters were trying to get from us in the Department of Mysteries."

The light around them was back to bright white as Hermione shook with relief. "You're right! It only means one of you has to die - not that both of you must! Oh, Harry, I've been such a fool! Such a bloody fool! All because...."

Hermione stopped talking momentarily and was obviously thinking hard. "...I misunderstood because I thought - Lesson 128. Harry, the reason why I thought the prophecy foretold that you both had to die was because the Aurors were determined to teach you all those close-order, short-range killing curses in Lesson 128. That, and they wouldn't teach me. I thought for sure that you needed to learn them because you weren't fated to survive. Oh, damn it all! I've put you through Hell ... all because I read too bloody much into my own stupid exclusion."

The lighting started veering towards sapphire once again.

To Hell with the truce.

"Hermione!" Harry said sharply to interrupt her latest descent into self-reproach. When she turned to him, he confessed. "I allowed you to believe a lie, Hermione. It's my fault. That's not what I was being taught at all. It was a ruse - a cover story - and the Unspeakables told me I needed to keep it secret. So I did. Blame me, not yourself."

"The Unspeakables!?!" Hermione asked in a shocked voice. "What happened, Harry? I thought you were with the Aurors."

"They dropped me off at the Department of Mysteries," he explained. "To learn some new, just-developed magic that even the Aurors didn't know about yet. They wanted it to be kept secret because they said the element of surprise might save my life. I let myself believe them, so I let you believe something that wasn't true. That lie almost killed you. I'm sorry, Hermione."

"Oh, Harry," she sighed. "Truce, remember?"

"Yeah, right, truce," he muttered, leaving little doubt that he still blamed himself. "Anyway, what they taught me was...."

"Harry, if the Unspeakables said it should be a secret, leave it as one," Hermione directed. "Anything that might save your life."

"No," Harry declared. "No more lies. Besides, it might save your life too. They taught me a way to defeat the Cruciatus Curse. They're going to teach it to you too, if I have anything to say about it. I never want you to experience that. It would - drive me insane, or worse, to explode again. I-I care about you so much. I really do love you."

Had she finally crossed her own burning emotional desert? Maybe, just maybe, she could see the Promised Land. The wasteland behind her, she sought the broad sunlit uplands - well-watered places where she could quench her passion - could satisfy this overwhelming thirst that tortured her. She reached for Harry, not even caring that she could not actually touch him.

Burying her arms elbow deep in his image, she responded fervently, "I - I love you too, Harry, more than I can put into words. I love you so much that I didn't want to live anymore once I thought you were dead, so much that the thought of a world without you paralyses me. Tonks - you really do need to thank her.... She dragged me away, when I was ready to let myself go and die in the fire on the night you were taken.... Oh, Harry! After all this, you have to destroy him. I can't live with things this way any more than you can."

The white light all around them had vanished, going intensely fuchsia as first Harry, and then Hermione made their declarations.

"Will you come back with me, then?" Harry softly asked the critical question again, now that Hermione finally knew the truth. "Please - return with me to where we both can really live?"

"Yes, Harry!" Hermione affirmed, her eyes sparkling with vitality. "Yes to that ... yes to life ... and yes to everything. I want to be with you - I think more than anything I've ever wanted! And I never thought I'd have that chance."

In the roseate glow that surrounded them both, Hermione saw Harry regarding her expectantly. His look sent shivers down her spine. But neither of them could do anything about those types of urges - yet.

"Harry, why are you looking at me that way?" she asked. "We can't be doing anything in here anyway. You've seen what happens."

Harry gave a big start as he stuttered out his response. "Oh! No, Hermione! It's ... it's ... it's not like that...."

He saw her frowning at him.

"...Well, all right, it is - some - can I help it after what's just happened?" he added defensively. "But you're right about first things first. I'm - I'm just waiting for you to show me the way out of here, the way to go home."

"But ... I don't know the way out," Hermione admitted, the pink radiance going purple as azure infiltrated it. She looked miserable. "I was just sort of swept in here when I was very weak and near death. I thought you'd have some idea. After all, you got yourself here much more recently than I did."

Harry tried not to panic. He had gotten so far. He had found Hermione, proven to her that he still lived, confirmed her feelings for him, and convinced her to return. Surely, he would not fail at this final step - not when Lao Kung had insisted all along that Hermione would be able to help him return.

"Well, we can start - I think - by at least going outside and taking a look around," Harry suggested.

Hermione agreed. Simply by will power - without any effort to move anywhere - she extended her arm and there was the door. Her hand grasped a handle. Then, with some effort, this time, she pulled on the handle, and a gaping black void appeared in the otherwise featureless white.

Harry went first. Acting more boldly than he felt, his consciousness purposefully exited Hermione's refuge. He was back in the outer ring. Once his eyes readjusted, this place looked no different than it had when he had been there before.

"Hermione, nothing's changed. You can come out with no problem," he called to her.

Gingerly, Hermione's consciousness followed - leaving her refuge for the first time since being involuntarily deposited there almost two weeks prior.

The moment she crossed the threshold, however, amazing things began to happen. White light poured from the open door. Almost instantaneously the entire area was illuminated, until it appeared as bright as day.

Before Harry's eyes, Hermione's image - with whom he had conversed for all this time - began expanding. She reoccupied her own mind. As she did, her likeness first became translucent, and then increasingly transparent. The girl's consciousness permeated and enlightened the entire structure through which Harry had travelled for days in such profound darkness.

As she diffused, Hermione's conscious left Harry's with one final message, "Harry, it's time for you to go back where you belong - for both of us to go. Come. You know I won't hurt you...."

Harry felt the brush of wind on his face. The air in this place started blowing about. Harry sensed himself start spinning - slowly at first but inexorably gaining momentum. Something, he was not sure exactly what, was pushing, leading him away from the centre of this labyrinth.

As the spinning ratcheted upwards, he heard a distinct whirring noise - like something revving up. It increased in pitch, like a huge, finely tuned turbine had switched on and was starting to operate.

Whilst he could still see - before he started spinning too fast to focus - Harry noticed a wondrous phenomenon.

The thick wall of polished stone that once seemed so impenetrable was vaporising before his eyes, being replaced by a gauzy, pellucid membrane. The books that had inertly occupied their places in the almost infinite shelving of Hermione's mind stirred once more. Guided by Hermione's consciousness, which now suffused everything he could see, the various books began leaving their shelves and floating purposefully from place to place.

But Harry could only view the workings of Hermione's mind for an instant. The spinning accelerated. And everything became a complete blur. Harry felt that he might also be moving through space, but the sense of rotation became so strong that he could not be sure what was happening to him.

In his weakened state - needing both water and food - the vertigo soon overwhelmed him. He senses ceased to register any connexion to Hermione's mind. When that happened, and the whirring noise was all he could hear, Harry's own consciousness finally gave out.

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C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\HP & The Fifth Element.ch42 now or never.doc 02/26/06

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