The Last Time

Calliope

Story Summary:
When Harry wants to stop the pain he suffers from re-occurring dreams about the death of his parents, it is only the bond he shares with Ron and Hermione that saves his life. The bond proves to be the only thing that saves them all as they face the unimaginable… [written pre-OotP, but partially OotP-compatible]

Chapter 20

Chapter Summary:
When Harry wants to stop the pain he suffers from re-occurring dreams about the death of his parents, it is only the bond he shares with Ron and Hermione that saves his life. The bond proves to be the only thing that saves them all as they face the unimaginable… (Rated PG-13- R/Hr, H/Hr...)
Posted:
03/04/2003
Hits:
3,018
Author's Note:
The Last Time was originally written pre-OotP and then was edited to comply with the new canon. There are still some small things that don’t quite reconcile with OotP but I had to take a bit of artistic license with them, such as the inability of boys to go into the girls’ dormitories, the layout of St. Mungo’s, how people are selected to be Aurors, and a few other small things. I felt that changing them to be totally compatible with OotP would require totally taking the story apart and reworking it.

Chapter 20

"Hermione! Get up!"

Whoever that is yelling at me when I'm obviously trying to sleep must have a death wish, Hermione thought, poking her head out from under the covers.

It was Ginny, in full-blown ready-to-start-the-day-the-Weasley-way mode. "You're going to miss breakfast." She dropped a bag beside the bed - Hermione's book bag, which she'd left outside the portrait hole after her fight with Ron.

My fight with Ron. My fight with Ron that the whole bloody House saw. My fight with Ron that the whole bloody House saw where I made a complete and utter fool out of myself.

"Not going." Hermione pulled the blankets back up over her head. "It's Sunday. I'm having a lie-in."

"If you think you're going to lay here and hide for the rest of the year, think again," said Ginny, tugging on the blankets. "You've laid around enough as it is. Now get up and get moving."

Hermione thought Ginny looked very much like Mrs. Weasley at the moment, with her red hair flying and hands on her hips, looking bossy, and as such was not one to be argued with. She got out of bed and headed for the showers.

"I'll be waiting, so don't think you can disappear on me," called Ginny.

Damn Weasley stubbornness,Hermione thought as she stepped into the shower.

But Ginny wasn't the Weasley she was thinking about at the moment. She couldn't get the picture of Ron and Natalie laughing together, with her arm around his waist, out of her head. What was even more disturbing was that that picture kept alternating with two others - one being a picture of herself and Ron kissing in front of the common room fire, and the other a picture of herself and Harry kissing in an empty classroom.

What does Ron see in Natalie? She's a little girl for Merlin's sake!

She scrubbed her hair furiously, as if she were not only trying to get her hair clean, but to scrub away those nagging images that had kept her up most of the night.

Why did you kiss Harry? What possessed you to do that?

I don't know. It was rather stupid of me, wasn't it?

Good thing he stopped you before it went any further. No more getting involved with friends!

She stood under the warm spray of water and let it beat on her face and head for a few minutes, thinking.

I knew it was a mistake to get involved that way with Ron...look where it's ended. I just want us to all be friends again.

"Are you trying to drown yourself in there?" she heard Ginny yell.

"No!" she called, turning off the water and grabbing her towel. She dried off quickly, threw on her robes, and went back in her room.

Ginny was still there, perched on the end of Hermione's bed. "Can I ask you something?"

"I can't stop you." Hermione began to charm her hair dry.

"What possessed you to attack Ron yesterday?"

She pulled her hair back in a hasty ponytail. "Ginny, I don't know. I sat in the library half the afternoon listening to airhead Hufflepuffs gossip about Harry and me, then came back to see Ron with that girl...I didn't like it a bit. I miss him. But he still won't give me a chance to talk to him."

"Have you tried?"

"Yes! And so has Harry! But he won't have anything to do with us."

Ginny sighed. "I've tried to talk some sense into him too. He gets mad at me whenever I bring it up. But Hermione - I want you to know that just because Ron is mad at you, doesn't mean all the Weasleys are."

Hermione felt a rush of affection for the younger girl. "Ginny, that's a sweet thing to say."

The tips of Ginny's ears turned red, just as Ron's did when he was embarrassed. "Well, you know..." She cleared her throat. "Let's go."

Somehow, yesterday's events seemed to clear the air a bit with the rest of the Gryffindors; while they weren't back to their normal friendliness, they no longer treated Harry and Hermione as if they had the plague. Hermione suspected that had something to do with the fact that Ginny made an obvious effort to include them in the conversations and threw menacing looks at anyone who dared whisper or stare. That damn Weasley stubbornness in action again.

While Harry, Hermione, and Ginny sat at the end of the table with the sixth and seventh years, Ron sat farther down the table with Natalie and the other fourth years. Hermione tried not to look in Ron's direction, but she found her eyes straying that way several times.

They made a cute couple; she had to admit it to herself. Natalie was vibrant and funny, as she had Ron laughing constantly; they had the same enthusiasm for Quidditch, which Hermione never managed to muster; she could hold her own in an argument with Ron, as evidenced in the first Quidditch game of the year; and she was pretty. Not drop dead gorgeous, but pretty in a way that Hermione knew she'd never be, with shiny dark brown hair that curled slightly at the ends, perfectly even teeth, and long eyelashes framing deep blue eyes.

Yeah, but her nose is just a shade too big, and her ears are a bit large, and she's rather flat chested,Hermione thought cattily.

Boy, don't we sound like a bitch today! Since when did you get to be so picky about what other girls look like?

Since Ron started looking at her, that's when!

The way Ron looked at Natalie made Hermione's heart sink. He looked happy, really happy, in a way that she hadn't seen him look before, even when they'd been together. She couldn't help but wonder if he was truly happy, or just enjoying making her miserable.

Or are you just being bitchy, Hermione?

Hermione picked at the food on her plate, appetite gone.

Harry eyed her across the table. "Not hungry?"

"Not really."

"You should eat something," said Ginny.

"Don't tell me what to do, Ginny Weasley!" she snapped, slamming her fork down on her plate with a bang, sending crumbs flying across the table to land on the front of Harry's robes. "Haven't you bossed me around enough for one morning?" The look on Ginny's face made her feel horrible the minute she'd said it. "Ginny, I didn't mean that...I'm sorry..." She pushed her plate away and got up from the table, ignoring Ginny's frown and Harry's unreadable expression.

*****

It was a busy week. Every teacher piled more work on them than Hermione thought possible; the N.E.W.T.s were coming up in a few months and everyone was frantic. Neville was extremely worried about his Potions mark, especially since they had a test at the end of the week, and came to Hermione for help; so she spent most of the week tutoring him in her free time. She didn't mind, since explaining things to Neville increased her understanding of the material as well.

"Now, Neville, every time you complete a step, cross it off the list, so you can keep track of where you are in the process; that way you won't add an ingredient twice or leave something out." said Hermione as they walked to class. "Are you sure you don't want me to be your partner today?"

Neville shook his head. "No...thank you, but if I get it right - "

"When you get it right," she corrected.

He smiled nervously and held the classroom door open for her. "Okay, when I get it right - he'll just yell at you for helping me. I better sit with Ron or Seamus."

"You'll be fine, Neville." She patted his arm, trying to be reassuring. Hopefully, he would keep his wits about him during the test. Without Snape breathing down his neck, Neville had actually managed to brew several moderately difficult potions correctly during their study sessions this week.

He blushed and sat down beside Ron, who didn't even look up as Hermione walked past. He obviously noticed her, though, as his ears were bright red.

Hermione took a seat in front of Neville, beside Harry, began setting up her cauldron and potions ingredients, watching Harry out of the corner of her eye. She'd avoided him since leaving the table at on Sunday. They were supposed to have worked on some new spells last night in the Transfiguration classroom, but she'd pleaded tiredness from so much studying and gone to bed early. She felt so stupid for throwing herself at him after her fight with Ron, and it was easier not to be around him.

Lonelier, but easier.

Harry looked tired, like he hadn't slept well, and he seemed to be moving more slowly than usual, almost as if he were still half asleep. Had he had another nightmare?

He caught her looking and elbowed her before going back to setting up his own materials. She shook her head for being silly and finished arranging her things; book, parchment, quill, inkbottle, small glass jars of various ingredients, slender glass phials, all lined up neatly, as she liked them. Professor Snape was late; almost ten minutes by her watch. Not like him. He must be thinking up something very nasty for our quiz today, she thought.

The door creaked open and she turned, expecting a string of vitriol to be hurled their way; somehow she was sure Snape would find a way to pin his lateness on Gryffindor and dock points.

But it wasn't Snape.

It was Professor Dumbledore.

"Professor Snape will not be joining you today," he said as he made his way to the front of the room. "I'm afraid you're stuck with me." His mouth curled up in a smile, but that smile didn't reach his eyes.

A great deal of chatter broke out at this statement, most of it from the Gryffindor side of the room. The Slytherin side of the room was unusually quiet; Hermione looked over to gauge their reaction to Snape's absence.

Malfoy wasn't there.

Professor Dumbledore's lesson was fairly interesting, but Hermione couldn't concentrate. She pulled a scrap of parchment from her bag and scribbled: Look who else is missing, and pushed the paper over to Harry. She heard the scratch of Harry's quill, and felt the paper at her elbow again.

Malfoy, read Harry's messy scrawl.

Are you okay? You look tired. Nightmare? She pushed the paper back.

Sort of. Scar hurt. Bad for a while. Ok now.

Think it's related?

Don't know.

Hermione stuffed the parchment in her pocket with a sick feeling in her stomach. Snape was never absent from class - and the one day he was, his pet student was absent as well - and Harry's scar was bothering him.

Not a good combination.

They really needed Ron right now. Harry needed Ron right now.

She pulled out another scrap piece of parchment and wrote: We need to talk to you. It's important. Meet us in the Transfiguration classroom tonight at 8. Please. H.G.

After elbowing Harry and showing him what she'd written, (she mouthed for Ron and he nodded), she folded the parchment into a tiny square and wrote Ron on the outside. Then she dropped her quill on the floor, and as she turned around to pick it up, hissed at Neville behind her, "Give this to Ron." She slid the little square across the floor to Neville's foot and then straightened in her chair, looking innocently at Professor Dumbledore, who was eyeing her over the tops of his half-moon spectacles. She felt guilty about passing notes in his class, but it couldn't be helped.

She heard a rustle behind her as Neville bent to pick up the note, the quiet crackle of paper as Ron unfolded it, and then a soft grunt.

Dumbledore dismissed them early, to everyone's great pleasure. As they packed their things away, he came over to Harry and Hermione's table and looked at Harry gravely.

"Sir? What's going on?" Harry asked bluntly.

"I can't tell you that, Harry," he said.

"I know it's got something to do with Voldemort. My scar hurt last night."

Dumbledore shook his head. "Harry, you will find out in time what is happening. Right now, I feel the less you know about what is going on, the better off you are." Then he looked at Hermione.

"And Miss Granger...please refrain from passing notes during class."

*****

By dinner that evening, the rumours on the whereabouts of the Slytherin Quidditch Captain and the school's most feared professor had grown to proportions that would make Rita Skeeter envious. They were all utterly ridiculous, (most of them having come from Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, the school's most gossipy Houses) and normally, Hermione couldn't be bothered with the whereabouts and habits of any of these three; but their unexplained absence combined with the pain in Harry's scar and Dumbledore's reluctance to explain made her extremely uneasy. She picked at her food, not eating much. After dinner, she went to the library with Ginny, to help her with a Herbology essay, and then went to meet Harry and Ron.

Neither of them was there yet; she lit the lamps with her wand and sat on a desk to wait.

Ron arrived first.

Hermione's heart caught in her throat as he hesitated in the door.

"Er - " he said, hands jammed deep in his pockets. He shut the door behind him, and looked around nervously, then sat down about four desks away from Hermione. He looked at her as if he half-expected her to pounce on him like she'd done outside the portrait hole.

"Ron - we need to talk."

He shifted uncomfortably, looking at the floor. "About you and Harry?"

"There's nothing to talk about with me and Harry - "

"Why don't you just admit it, Hermione?" Surprisingly, he didn't sound angry. Just hurt.

"Because there's nothing to admit! Why don't you listen? Never mind, you're not going to believe me anyway, I'm wasting my breath," she snapped.

He slid off the desk and headed for the door - "Waste of time even coming, don't know why I bothered - " and ran smack into Harry.

"If this is your idea of trying to get me to listen to some whacked-off explanation about why you two were in bed together, then I don't want to hear it," Ron said hotly, trying to shove past Harry and out the door.

"Fine, be that way then," said Harry, stepping out of the way, leaving the door wide open for Ron to pass by. "I don't need your help anyway."

"Who said I was going to help you with anything?" said Ron, and then muttered something that Hermione couldn't make out.

Harry apparently heard it just fine, because his face screwed up in rage and he punched Ron in the jaw. Ron staggered backwards, almost knocking Hermione over. She grabbed Ron's arm to keep him from retaliating, but he shook her off furiously; his fist connected with Harry's nose with a sickening crunch. Ron punched him again, and Harry's glasses flew off his face, snapped at the bridge.

"What the fuck is your problem?" Ron yelled, rubbing his jaw.

"You!" Harry's voice was muffled by his hands, which were clutching his nose; blood was seeping out from between his fingers.

"Then what did you two call me down here for!"

"Because something very bad is going on, and Harry needs your help, that's why!" yelled Hermione, getting impatient.

Ron took a step back and frowned. "What is it?"

"Forget it, Ron," said Harry. "I don't want your help." He picked up the remnants of his glasses and left, clutching a handful of his robes to his dripping nose.

Hermione made to go after him, but Ron put a hand on her shoulder. "What's going on, Hermione?"

"Weren't you wondering where Snape was today? And Malfoy? And did you even notice that Harry's scar hurt last night?" Hermione snapped, more harshly than she meant. Part of her sorely missed Ron, missed talking to him and laughing with him and just being with him, but another, louder, more obstinate part was furious with his stubbornness and refusal to believe, and that was the part that was taking over at the moment.

Ron shook his head. "I didn't...I mean...I wasn't in the dorms last night." He looked down at the floor; Hermione couldn't see his face but knew it was deep red.

"Hmph," she snorted. "Isn't that a little hypocritical, Ron? For you to be out with her, doing Merlin knows what - "

"You - were - in - Harry's - bed!" Ron spat, his blue eyes blazing.

"I told you - nothing happened. If you don't want to believe it, fine. I've been moping about over you for two months, waiting for you to come to your senses, and I'm sick of it. If you want to trash six years of friendship over nothing, then I can't stop you. Do whatever you want, with whomever you want. I don't care."

Slamming the classroom door in his face was a small, but hollow, satisfaction.

She stormed back up to Gryffindor Tower and headed straight for the seventh year boys' dormitory. The door was charm-locked; she whipped out her wand, removed the charms, and pushed open the door.

Harry was sitting on his bed. He'd taken off his robes, which had been splashed with blood and were lying in a pile on the floor, and his shirt, which he'd wadded up and held to his nose to stanch the bleeding for lack of anything else to use.

"That door was locked for a reason," he said, not looking at her.

"If you really didn't want me coming in, you would have used a stronger charm," she said, sitting down beside him.

He made a half-hearted attempt at a laugh, and winced at the pain in his nose.

Hermione gently pried his hands and the bloodstained shirt away from his face and flinched at the sight. Ron's fist had landed squarely; Harry's nose was badly broken. Dark circles were blooming under Harry's eyes, and blood continued to drip slowly from his nose, which was very swollen.

"I think your nose is broken," Hermione said. "You need to get it taken care of, or it will heal crooked. Do you want to go to Madam Pomfrey, or..."

He didn't respond.

"Will you let me do it?" she asked, knowing his reluctance to ask anyone for help. That reluctance was probably what caused him to punch Ron in the face; he was basically admitting he needed Ron's help, and had it thrown right back at him.

After a pause, he nodded and closed his eyes. She touched her fingers very lightly to his nose, not wanting to hurt him any more than necessary, but he still flinched. It felt weirdly soft, with little chips of bone grating beneath her fingers - it didn't even feel like a nose anymore.

"Sorry," she mumbled, as she continued to assess the damage.

"Don't keep apologizing," he said. "Makes it worse."

Prodding gently, she began to concentrate on what everything should feel like. When Master Raymond had helped her realize her healing gift, he'd somehow unlocked a vault of knowledge of the way things were supposed to be. While her fingers told her what Harry's nose felt like, her brain told her where every chip of bone, bit of cartilage, and every blood vessel should be, and that strange energy flowed from her fingertips, straightening and healing. Harry let out a soft hiss of breath through his clenched teeth at one point, but didn't make a sound otherwise, whether it hurt or not.

When she'd healed Ron's hand earlier in the year - which felt like ages ago - she'd had her eyes closed, too nervous to watch, in case she made a horrible mess of it; but this time she watched in fascination as the blood disappeared, the swelling went down, and the little pieces of bone reassembled themselves.

Harry's nose was almost back to normal, though there was still a slight crookedness right at the bridge that she couldn't seem to get entirely straight. He got up and went to the mirror, leaning in very close and squinting since he wasn't wearing his glasses; they were lying on the bedside table, still broken.

Hermione felt strangely tired. Using the healing magic left her feeling drained, but in a good way. Harry was still looking in the mirror, wiggling his nose experimentally and looking like a rabbit. Was he disappointed in what she'd done?

"Sorry, I couldn't get it just right," she said, going over to him. "It's still a little crooked, just there..." She touched it gently. "It will be right under your glasses, so no one should notice."

"You think I really care about a little old bump like that?" he said with a smile. "I don't even know what my nose used to look like - I never paid it any attention. Dudley used to punch me all the time. Ron's a lot stronger. I just know it was a mess a few minutes ago, and now it isn't. It doesn't even hurt."

She realized she was still touching his nose, and she dropped her hand to her side. He looked quite different without his glasses; much younger and very vulnerable. His eyes seemed greener without them, if that was possible.

They were standing much too close together.

"Er - your glasses?" she said, grateful for the excuse to turn away. She went over and picked his glasses up off the table and set to repairing them. "You know, you really should learn how to fix these yourself, you know, they're always getting smashed, and I keep having to fix them for you...it's a simple spell, really, you could do it with no problem...."

"Thanks," he said, when she handed him the repaired glasses. He put them on and went to his trunk to dig out a clean shirt. His glasses caught in the shirt as he pulled it over his head, and without thinking, Hermione reached out to straighten them, then brushed his hair back off his forehead. Her fingertips skimmed lightly over his scar, which made him shiver a bit, and she remembered why they'd wanted to talk to Ron in the first place.

"You said your scar hurt last night," she said, stepping back.

Harry sat down on the edge of his bed. "Yeah, it did."

"Any dreams?"

"No. Just the scar. I wonder if...do you think it has to do with Snape and Malfoy? Could they be with Voldemort right now?"

"I don't know, Harry."

"I wish...."

He didn't finish, but Hermione was pretty sure he would have ended that statement with "I could talk to Ron." Hermione was doing everything she could for him; but Harry and Ron had been friends before she entered the picture, and she knew the loss of Ron's friendship was gnawing at him.

"Me too," she said.