Harry Potter and the Thunder of Thor

Chapter 2

"Who the bloody hell are you?"

"My name's Stacie Augeburn. Pleased to meet you, umm..."

"Ron. Ron Weasley."

"Some of the more dignified ones amongst us call him Ronald."

"Actually they do that just to spite me."

"Obviously it works."

"Yeah, well..."

A few minutes pass, with only the sound of Ron and Hermione's voices rising over the pitter-patter of rain.

Then He spoke.

"Um, guys, I think she's in pain."

The girl is lying on the ground, unconscious.

"Ron! Get a stretcher!"

Ron mutters something, and a cloth sheet held at the ends by two steel poles is conjured beside the girl. Hermione busily tends to the girls wounds with a salve of some herbs - I can't tell what. At the same time, He put's his arm around the girl.

"Don't worry, Stacie. It'll be okay. I'll look out for you."

A hole opens in my heart. He has betrayed be - betrayed me for a girl who He barely knows. How can He forget me? I have not forgot Him! Even though I experience long periods in which I cannot remember what I do, I still remember Him.

He cannot betray me.

I love him.

* * *

Stacie sipped from a golden goblet of Pinot Grigio.

"So... d'you think you could identify your kidnapper?" asked Ron in his most official voice. He reminded Harry of Arthur.

"Oh, definitely. He was an abnormally huge man. Long, curly red hair - and I mean orange, but more red than your hair. And he had a very shaggy beard. His clothes were pretty run of the mill, but his body was definitely not." She said this in a fast voice that reminded Harry of Hermione when she was discussing academic related topics.

Hermione reached over her and poured more wine into her glass. "Drink up," she encouraged the young girl. Stacie nodded gratefully and sipped more of the intoxicating liquid.

Harry watched as her eyelids began to droop, and the sleeping potion began to take effect.

She fought it well. For all of five minutes she yawned, stretched, blinked, rubbed her eyes, and otherwise attempted to stay awake. But she could not fight this potent magic for long. With a final, "Gee, sorry. I must not have gotten enough sleep last..." Her voice drifted off and so did she. Ron picked her up, and moved her to a bed in the guest room.

Harry had mixed feelings about the whole affair. Sure, he loved to help others in need. Since he could not help the one who he loved, helping others helped Harry get over his guilt at not being able to save Ginny. But for some reason he felt uncomfortable every time Stacie was near him. But why? he wondered. Was it typical to feel uncomfortable confronting assault victims? Or perhaps...

It hit him.

Stacie looked exactly like Ginny.

Harry tried his best not to break into tears right there at the table. It didn't work. His eyes began flowing like a river current, water-falling from his lids to the table below, crashing, cleansing his mind of the mental block he had erected around his memories of Ginny.

A girlish giggle spewed from her mouth, as well as butterbeer, as she and Harry shared a laugh at Ron's expense. Ron sat a stool away, his face crimson, butterbeer down his front. His little joke with Madam Rosmerta had gone less well that hoped...

Ginny stood with wand in en garde position, hovering above Malfoy's painfully conscious, bat-and-booger infested body, grinning tightly. Crabbe and Goyle lay otherwise mutilated. The cabin on the Hogwarts express had been, once again, defended safely from the marauding Malfoy and his cronies...

Ginny, younger than she was now, much younger, and yet still she looked the same: that is to say, she was unconscious and pale on the floor. Harry was kneeling over her, a fang in his had, poised to strike with a vengeance at a seemingly innocuous diary...

The fang was no longer in his hand, and instead of a fang Harry held his wand. He cast his gaze upwards, and saw an insidious, serpentine man laughing in the corner. Rage reddened Harry's view of the scene. His already clenched fist threatened to snap his wand.

He screamed.

Words spewed out with the primal noise. But they could not be distinguished from the vocalized rage and the ambient noise of the fountain tinkling in the lobby just outside.

Still, Harry's wand recognized the words.

A green bolt hit the serpent-man in the chest...

The memories hit Harry like a class 5 hurricane, suffocating him, assaulting him, and yet suffusing him, giving him power, giving him rage. His eyes opened and he saw, again, Voldemort, laughing in the corner. His wand rose from his pocket, and he gave a howl that rocked the foundations of the rustic cottage in which he and Ron resided.

Hermione rushed to him, placing her hand on his shoulder, bringing him back to reality, leaving his chest heaving and his mind numbing.

Harry collapsed into a wicker chair.

Hermione pulled a goblet out of a cabinet and poured him a glass of Pinot. Ron trembled in the corner. The killing curse had missed him by inches.

Hermione seemed to be talking in a frantic, worried voice. Harry heard nothing. He was focused entirely on his memory. The vision he had seen was false. Never had Harry even attempted Avada Kedavra until today. The rage, the pain he felt from memories was worse than the event itself, creating a vacuum into which his conscience and his morals were sucked, letting him do anything and feel no guilt.

The rage made feel guilt for what he didn't do. The rage belittled, insulted, and taunted him for not having the courage to strike that killing blow.

The rage pressured him to strike out at the world around him, telling him it is everybody's fault that she is gone, that his best friends had betrayed him, as Peter Pettigrew had done to Harry's father; telling him to kill, to rape, do destroy.

Logic meant nothing against the rage. It dismissed such arguments as weak, not deserving of it's time. The rage was sated only by chaos. Only houses burning, assaulted corpses littering the ground, would make it happy.

Hermione shook him in the shoulder. His eyes had glazed over, as though he had overdosed. His breathing had slowed to a crawl. "Harry?" she half cried, half screamed.

Harry grabbed the vial of sleeping potion still lying on the table, uncorked it, and gulped it down.

He surrendered to the tide of sleep, taking him away from the memories.

* * *

"Harry's asleep next to Ginny," said Hermione in that voice that people adopt when they are trying to pretend that nothing has gone terribly wrong, even though it has.

"Good," said Ron, though he did not look at all like his voice suggested he looked. His voice was relieved, but his posture cried save me!

"Are you okay, Ron?"

"Yeah, I'm okay. My best friend just attempted to kill me, and appears to be psychotic; and my sister is in a permanent vegetative state, and..." he trailed off, unable to admit to Hermione how he felt about her just yet. "But other than that, yeah, I'm just fine." His body wanted to shout, to release a primal scream that somehow would let the whole world know that he was in agony, that his mind was being tugged on by opposing forces and ripped to shreds by a tide of brackish anger.

His mouth, however, refused to comply with his body. His mouth forced him to spout garbage, always blocking the truth from leaving his lips, like a child who screams of her brother hitting her to disguise the fact that she stole cookies when her mother specifically told her not to. Ron was like a child, unable to express himself, feeling wronged by the world.

Ron noticed that Hermione was talking, and seemed to expect a response. He nodded eagerly, unsure of what he was agreeing to and at the same time uncaring.

He marched to the bathroom, in need of an aspirin.

* * *

"I still feel slightly guilty leaving Harry and Stacie under Ron's care. I mean, I know he's capable, and all, but it seems wrong to leave a psychotic 20 year old and a previously assaulted fast food worker under the care of a person I already fear is emotionally disturbed. Do you know what I mean?"

"Mmhmm," said Blaise, slightly distant. He had never before realized how beautiful Hermione was. It was almost as if he was falling...

No. Not possible. The mission must be put ahead of petty things such as love.

"Blaise!" pouted Hermione, "Are you paying any attention?"

Blaise was snapped back to reality. He had to make something up, quick.

"Uh, yes."

Hermione gave one of her 'Impossible!' gazes, but Blaise had already though up something else. "Okay, no. I just get so distracted when I look at you, you're so beautiful."

Hermione smiled, an honest, loving smile. "But I want more than just flattery. Not that I don't appreciate flattery, but can't you just stop being shallow for a moment?" Blaise could tell she did not actually think of him as shallow, that she was complaining for the sake of show, but he resolved to pay more attention in the future.

His mission could not fail. And if they broke up, it would.

A waiter arrived with a rack of lamb, and a bottle of Bourbon.

Blaise settled back and enjoyed the view.

* * *

Ron gazed upon his most recent bit of poetry, which he knew was better that the rest of his work.

Burning: the fires of jealousy are fueled by the bill left in the trash.

3^rd Degree: animosity, death to the serpent.

Question: the ultimate answer is an oxymoron.

Death: impossible to kill a zombie.

Wine: the intoxication barely suffices; the grapes are wrathful.

Music: it cannot drown out my screams; it screams in tandem.

* * *

Thor looked down, another unconscious redhead at his feet. The frail thing's breath was finally back to normal, after he had removed the burlap bag from her head. He gazed back up to the DNA analysis readout, praying to... well, himself, that the test was wrong, but he knew that his prayer was futile. The girl was, once again, the wrong girl. He hit her in the face in disgust. She awoke, rubbed her face, and screamed.

"Quiet!" shouted Thor. The girl came to her feet and ran away, as fast as her puny legs could carry her. Thor sighed. It was probably better to let her go.

* * *

The doorbell rang. Ron answered.

Another redhead fell through the doorway.

"Harry!"