The Longest Time

The Longest Time

Chapter Two - Another Perfect Day

So I might try to leave it all behind
I know tomorrow's not so bright now
I'll say goodbye cause nothing good can last
(you wear and figured no where fast)
and today I don't know how too keep it all inside
but I guess I'll let it slide

I still believe it when you say
it's another perfect day
another perfect day

-American Hi-Fi "Another Perfect Day"

The Leaving Feast was an even more somber event than it had been in the past few years. The Great Hall was again clad in somber black draperies as it had been for the past few years to honor the students and alumnae who had given their lives in the war against Voldemort. This year's feast was especially sad, as more students than ever had died or been wounded in the last battle. The seats of the student casualties were empty, but at each of their places on the table was a black hat. The Gryffindor table had more empty places than most and many students were trying to catch a glimpse of Hermione.

She was seated at her usual spot towards the middle of the table with Ron on her left and Ginny across from her. Ron had his hand on her shoulder as she tried to look brave. To her right was a black hat in the seat where Harry had normally sat.

When the students finally stopped filing in, Dumbledore tapped his goblet and the Hall was silent.

"Students, teachers, friends. We are gathered again to say goodbye to another year. Even though the war has ended, we have suffered much, and have not yet begun to heal." He took a breath and started again. "The reason that this war happened is because there are people in the world who do not wish to see the goodness in others. Each of us here, pureblood or Muggle-born, has qualities that make us unique and special. To make sure that something like this tragedy never happens again, I ask you to start to learn about each other now." Dumbledore stepped away from the high table and began to walk towards the house tables. The faces of everyone in the hall bore the same expression of shock and amazement. "I want each of you to sit at another table and talk to people who you don't know or that you may not like. People who know each other and are friends have a harder time trying to kill each other during a war. When you've found your seats, we will begin the feast." And with this, Dumbledore took a place at the Hufflepuff table and patted a scared-looking student good-naturedly on the back.

There was an awkward silence for a moment, and then the sounds of benches scraping on the floor echoed all the way up to the magical ceiling.

As they stood up to move, Ron looked at Hermione. "Do you want me to sit with you?" he said, with a look asking whether she needed him.

Hermione waved him off. "No, you go on. I know you're dying to take Dumbledore's chair," with this they both had to laugh, "And I'm sure that Ginny will sit with me. Right?" Hermione looked over at Ginny who was still waiting across the table.

Ginny smiled a little bit, "It's just what I had in mind." Ron gave Hermione's hand a quick squeeze and then he ran up to the professors' table, where he took Dumbledore's chair and started to chat with Professor Flitwick. When Hermione reached the other side of the table, Ginny grabbed her arm and started to drag her across the room. "I know just where we should sit," she said as she pulled Hermione over towards the Slytherin table. There sat Draco Malfoy, alone, and looking quite ashamed of himself. He looked up at the girls and gave a curt nod, and they sat down.

After another moment of noise, everyone was finally seated at the mixed tables. Dumbledore's voice could be heard from the middle of the room to say, "Let the feast begin," and dozens of dishes appeared at every table with the usual savory foods. Hermione took one of the dishes and started to spoon potatoes on to her plate, and looked up, expecting Ginny or Draco to start a conversation. They had both already taken their food and were staring down at their plates, seemingly ignoring each other. Hermione took another dish and this time, while serving herself, banged the serving spoons on her plate. Both Ginny and Draco gave Hermione funny looks that she returned, imploring them to say something. In response to their questioning stares, Hermione shook her head, mumbled "Er...it slipped" and went back to eating her food. Questions continued to race through her mind. Obviously, Ginny had wanted to sit near Draco, but why was she suddenly clamming up? Though Ginny was never that quiet in the Gryffindor common room, Draco had always been demeaning to her family and quite nasty to her and Ron in particular. But now the silence was finally getting to her. While still looking down at her food, Hermione said, "So, Draco, what are your plans for after Hogwarts?"

The bang from across the table was sharpened by the disgusted sigh that followed it. Hermione looked up to find Draco glaring at her. "As much as you'd like for us all to be happy little friends after I did something noble and good won over evil, the fact still remains that my father is dead and you're still moping over your dead boyfriend. As long as that's happened, I don't think that we can ever be closer roosters and basilisks." He then looked over at Ginny for a moment, as if to size her up. "You, on the other hand, didn't lose anyone yesterday, so I can't sympathize with you at all, and if I can't sympathize with you, you don't interest me. Besides, I'm not in the mood to play 'What do you want to be when you grow up?'" With this, he pulled a magazine out of his bag and began to read.

Hermione and Ginny looked at each other, dumbfounded. After a few moments, Hermione finally cleared her throat loudly. The magazine did not move, so she finally pulled it down and snatched it away from him. "You are being very rude, but that's typical. Yes, we had thought that since you did something relatively nice yesterday that you might turn out to be a good person-" She was cut off before she could continue.

"Well, well, well. Hermione Granger, the top of our class, Little Miss Perfect Head Girl, was wrong. Get used to disappointment." Draco's smug grin was quickly wiped away as Hermione swatted him across the head with his own magazine.

"I was saying that we thought that you might turn out to be a vaguely nice person, but I guess we were wrong. You're never going to make friends with an attitude like that." Hermione stood up and was about to walk away when Ginny grabbed the sleeves of her robe. She pulled Hermione down so she could whisper something in her ear.

"Listen," she said hoarsely in the lowest voice she could manage, "I think that he's just trying to be alone. But I also think that he's hurting. Did you hear the way he talked about his father dying? That's just not healthy, even for a Malfoy. Let's give him another chance, please?"

Draco snorted, "I don't need your sympathy, Weasley. You're nearly as bad as your brothers, always trying to label things so that you can tidily ignore the bad parts. Well, I'm not sorry that I'm acting this way. I don't particularly care a great deal for either of you, and I think that this evening would be better for all of us if you just left me alone." He sneered once more in their direction and then grabbed his magazine back and went to another end of the table. He buried himself in his reading material, and didn't move, not even to eat. Hermione and Ginny didn't say anything for the next few minutes as they ate, and finally, Hermione stood up and began to gather her things to go. When she had everything, she looked down at Ginny.

Ginny was staring down the table at Malfoy, who still had not moved. After a moment, her pleading eyes looked up at Hermione. Hermione sighed. "Fine, you can go talk to him if you want, but I'm not coming. I still think he's horrible, and if you want to try and find the good in him, I wish you luck, but it's going to be a long search."

Ginny stood up, hugged Hermione and ran down to the other end, where she began to argue with Draco over something that Hermione couldn't hear. Hermione was passing the head table, when Ron noticed her leaving. He excused himself from his conversation with Professor Flitwick, and called to Hermione. "Where are you going? The feast isn't nearly over yet." He was making his way along the back of the long table, but was having trouble maneuvering the chairs and people who also sat up front.

"You know Ron, I'm just tired. I didn't get much of a chance to pack, so I think I'm going to go to my room and finish up there." She was just getting to the entrance hall, when she heard a door slam and heavy footsteps on the slate floor. She looked to her right, and there was Ron, panting and out of breath. He ran towards her, and then stopped, hands on his knees, and wheezing. Hermione couldn't help but laugh, because his face was as red as his hair from the lack of oxygen. "Are you all right?" she said, restraining a laugh.

"I'm...fine...I'm fine," he said, standing up. "Just ran through a bunch of halls to get out here. Never knew there were so many rooms behind the Great Hall." Hermione smiled at him again. "But the reason I'm out here, I was wondering if I might help you pack?" Hermione thought about it, but this must have appeared as a frown to Ron, because he immediately added, "Or...I could just walk you to your room?"

"I'd like that." She smiled, and slipped her arm through his, and together, they set off towards Gryffindor Tower.

***

Harry opened his eyes slowly and knew immediately that he was in a room in which he'd never been. This waking up in strange places was getting to be too much, and the next time he fell asleep, he wanted it to be in a location he'd at least seen beforehand. He tried to lift his head, but as he raised his neck, a throbbing pain blurred his vision. His head fell down with a thunk on a thin mattress, and he groaned aloud.

Harry heard hurried footsteps outside the door, and an older woman's voice saying "I'm coming, don't move a muscle." The door was pushed open by the large rear end of a tiny old woman who reminded Harry very much of Dumbledore. The woman turned around and Harry was greeted with a kind smile and a small pudgy face, as well as hands carrying cool damp rags and a bowl of soup. Her skin was quite fair, but high in her cheeks there was a pale color that was the first that Harry had seen since coming to this new world. The pink was so light, and yet, Harry began to miss the colors of the world around him. "Here, let me help you up. You took a nasty fall earlier." She smiled and put down her provisions, and used strong wrinkled hands to support his head and back as he sat up.

"Thanks...um...I don't know who you are. I don't know where I am, and I don't know why I'm here." Harry seemed to blurt out all of this at once, and the old woman ignored him. She pushed the bowl of soup towards him, and motioned for him to begin drinking it. In the same motion, she picked up the rags and started to wipe off Harry's forehead. The rags were a great relief to his aching head and the old woman seemed to be able to wipe away the pain as she cleaned the sweat from his brow. Every once in a while as he ate his soup, he would look up, waiting for her to say something, but her eyes would grow wide, as if to ask him why he had stopped eating. He drank soup more quickly and, when the bowl was drained, he dropped the spoon with a clatter and put the dish on the floor. "Right, I'm Harry Potter, and I have a few questions for you."

The old woman smiled and put down her rags. "I knew who you were. Seamus told me after you fainted. That was a fairly nasty fall you took. My name is Celia, and I am the keeper of the Damesgoh house of Linwrael. Everyone in this area who comes to Linwrael must first pass through my home, and my job is to help them find themselves." She put her hand on her chin and began to study Harry. "You on the other hand do not look like any of the lost ones, or like a Keeper, you're much too young to be a Keeper, and you still have all of yourself, so you can't be lost."

Harry sat, eyes wide, confused. Lost? A Keeper? Still have all of himself? This woman was stranger than anyone he had ever met, and, even though he was slowly learning about this strange world, it seemed to grow more and more confusing as she brought up these things of which he had never heard. "Excuse me, Miss Celia, but I don't seem to understand you. You see, yesterday, or at least I think it was yesterday, I fought a battle with an evil wizard. I killed him, but I must have been knocked unconscious, and when I woke up, I was here. What is this place, Linwrael, what is it exactly? And what's Seamus doing here? The last I saw him was before the battle." He bit his lip as he looked at her. Her hand was still on her chin, but she finally sighed, and started to stand up.

"I think you're finally ready to hear everything. Come with me, and I'll introduce you around." She reached out her hand to take his, and even though she had been so vague and had explained so little, Harry took her hand and they left the room together. The room that they entered was quite bare, except for a few sparse pieces of furniture covered in sheets. On a gray-sheeted sofa sat Seamus Finnigan, but not the Seamus that Harry remembered. Upon seeing Harry and Celia enter, Seamus stood up and walked over. Smiling broadly, his colorless skin seemed to glow in the soft white candlelight that lit the room. Seamus embraced Harry tightly, and, although he felt slightly uncomfortable, Harry said nothing. When Seamus finally pulled back, Harry gave him a strange look, and then turned to Celia, but she was already leaving through another door into what looked like a small kitchen.

"Harry, what's wrong?" Seamus returned to the couch and continued to question Harry with his eyes.

"I...well...how did you get here? The battle, and what happened?" Harry sputtered and looked for a chair.

"Well, I couldn't leave Lavender alone, could I? And, well, after what happened, I ended up here. But I can still feel her, and I hope she can feel me."

Harry was now more than slightly frightened. "Seamus, what do you mean, 'after what happened?'"

Harry's panicked green eyes were met by a sad stare from Seamus. "Harry, I died out there, and now I'm here. And since you're here, my best guess is you're dead too." Harry had been just about to sit down when Seamus said this, but he missed the chair and ended up on the floor. Seamus stood to give him a hand and Harry accepted it, standing up. He rubbed his bum, which was in quite a lot of pain after hitting the hard wooden floor. "So you didn't know? I thought that's what she told you while you were sitting in there." Seamus frowned and went back to the sofa.

Celia had just re-entered the room and she found Harry now sitting in the chair, completely shocked, quiet, mouth hanging open. She walked over and handed him a cup of steaming liquid, which, at first glance, appeared to be tea. Harry took a sip, and nearly spat it out. The drink she had just handed him tasted like pond water. "Why didn't you tell me that this is where dead people come? I would have been a lot less shocked seeing Seamus for the second time, and I wouldn't have been so surprised."

Celia sighed and pushed the teacup back to him, urging him silently to drink. She said, "I thought you knew. But perhaps your shock at seeing Seamus here should have been my first clue." She paused and looked at Harry, who had not yet taken another sip from the cup. "Go on, drink it. I didn't poison it, and though it may taste like I did, it's the only thing here that will sustain the two of us." Reluctantly he sipped, and soon he began to feel warmer than he had felt all day. "I don't know how you came here, but usually when live people come, it's because they are meant to, and they come knowing everything about Linwrael, having learnt it from their parents or grandparents."

Harry interrupted. "How did you know that I wasn't dead?" he felt himself tremble as he said this, secretly scared that he was in fact dead.

Celia smiled. "I almost didn't at first. You were so pale, I thought you might be dead. But it was your eyes. This world has very little color except for the living, but once you opened your eyes, there was no question. There isn't anything that color here." She looked wistful for a moment, and then continued. "I am a gatekeeper to the world of the not-quite dead. Those who have some sort of unfinished business come here to finish what they must. They have left behind some part of their soul, and cannot pass on completely without it. Here, they are able to look in on those they left when they died and finish whatever their dying wish was in order to find that piece of their soul. My job is to acclimate the new arrivals and to help them learn how to take care of what they need to do. Seamus, for example, wants to make sure that his girlfriend Lavender is happy before he passes on fully. So from time to time, he will be able to visit and make sure that she is improving. She won't be able to see him, but he will be able to see her and maybe to influence her life a little."

Celia slowed for a moment and sipped at her tea. Harry seized the opportunity to talk and leaned in. "But what happens if Lavender never gets to be happy again? Does that mean Seamus will stay here forever? What about ghosts? I've heard about ghosts being spirits with unfinished business, so are the Hogwarts ghosts here?"

Looking up from her teacup, Celia glanced towards Seamus and said, "You're probably right, he'll be here for a very long time, but that has happened before. The Hogwarts ghosts are indeed people who died and stayed here in Linwrael for a period of time, but they were not able to complete their tasks for those who their dying wish involved. When the ones left behind in the living world pass on completely, they take the piece of the dead person's soul with them. When that happens, they become fixed in the world of the living, and are seen by the people there as ghosts. Since the people that they loved have passed on by that point, nobody from the living world remembers them as they were when they were living. It's very sad."

Harry began to sip his drink again and started to wonder how he had ended up in this very strange world.

***

Hermione picked up a bunch of flowers, smelled them, and then reached into her pocketbook to pay the vendor. Pulling out her list, she aimlessly wandered towards Mim's Grocer. The covered market was usually crowded on Saturday afternoons, but Hermione had grown used to that. As she entered the shop, she waved to Arthur, the stockboy, and subtly pulled out her wand and headed towards a row of shelves in the back. Tapping a few ancient cans of vegetables, a small wooden door appeared. Hermione ducked through and re-emerged on the other side in the Wizarding section of Oxford's covered market.

It was comprised of only an apothecary, a small café, an odds and ends shop, an owl post office, and a few small shops selling spellbooks and used robes. The selection and quality was nowhere near that of Diagon Alley, but Hermione enjoyed doing her few errands here because of the privacy. Too often that she would be minding her own business in London when one of her old school friends would appear and treat her like someone had died. No, this was much nicer. She walked into the apothecary and pulled out a list of the few potions ingredients that she and Ron had run out of.

Since they had moved into their shared flat, they had both been very busy. Ron often had a set of experimental mixtures going for Fred and George. Hermione had just begun her second fall term and was taking a course on magi-molecular structures of potions ingredients. She had been fascinated to discover what the parts of the ingredients were in the potions that made them go and made them work, so she generally had her own cauldron going whenever she had a chance between classes to do her own private research. She and Ron were rarely there at the same time during the day, and only had time together in the evenings, but both led such stressful lives that many evenings were spent in their teensy living room reading for work or school and watching Crookshanks play with whatever toy Hermione had most recently bought for him.

After selecting the necessary potions ingredients, Hermione moved into the used spellbook store. The wizard who ran it was ancient, but very knowledgeable, and he and Hermione had become fast friends.

"Hullo, Edgar. Anything new?" she asked before wandering off to look at the rest of the store.

"Yep," he said, "But it's a whole load of Lockhart books and people don't want that sort of nonsense anymore. You wouldn't want any, would you?" Hermione thanked her lucky stars that she was standing in the back of the store as she flushed slightly at the thought of her schoolgirl crush on the former Hogwarts professor. When her face wasn't so hot, she peeked around a shelf and shook her head. "Had to buy it all back in my second year at Hogwarts. I think I'm just looking today, Edgar, and taking in the old book smell."

Edgar laughed deeply and said, "S'all right. I should charge you for smelling the books, but it wouldn't seem right. Anyway, I don't rightly understand why anyone would need to smell old books so many times a week." Hermione pulled out an old spellbook from the top shelf, blew off the dust, and then leafed through it before putting it back. She went up to the cash register and pecked Edgar on the cheek before she left. "It's not just the old book smell I come for, Edgar. See you later."

Hermione took her time as she walked back down St. Aldates to her flat. It was still quite early in the evening and the light had barely faded. A young girl with red hair got onto the X3 and made Hermione think of Ginny, and how much she had missed having a girl friend around.

Just a few short months after Voldemort's defeat at Hogwarts, the Daily Prophet decided to get a more human perspective of how people had felt about what had happened. A small box had appeared in the Prophet one day asking for people to write short pieces about how they found out about what had happened that fateful day. Ginny's piece had been chosen as a representative of the students' point of view. So many people had written in and said what a beautiful and moving piece it was that the Daily Prophet offered her a job when she graduated from school.

Her assignment was fairly simple. She was to travel around to wizarding areas and get different perspectives on how things had changed. Ginny had spent the previous year in the Americas getting that perspective. She had stayed at hostels with magic-friendly suites and would spend a week or two in each area trying to get as many points of view as possible, which was sometimes difficult. Ginny was still very youthful, and there would be many people who would scoff when she mentioned that it would appear in a major European wizarding newspaper. But those who were kind enough to grant interviews would all get the distinct pleasure of receiving copies of the newspaper for free, because Ginny knew how exciting it was for so many people to see their names in print.

Hermione would receive owl postcards every week or so, and Ginny would tell her all about what was happening, though it had been nearly two weeks since last she and Ron had heard from her. She had sent a letter from Chile saying that she was ready to be back in Europe, and that she was heading for Spain. So now all Hermione could do was wait for the next postcard.

Slowly, her flat came into view. It wasn't really a flat, but an apartment over a law office. The building was curiously constructed and the flat had its own set of stairs at the back, which Hermione was sure their landlord appreciated, because his practice was a respectable one, and having people traipsing about was not the sort of thing he would allow.

Hermione passed the rest of the afternoon studying, and occasionally her mind wandered and something made her think of Harry. It had been more than a year and no one had heard anything or found anything out that might lead them to where he was. Thinking of him and missing him was difficult, so Hermione had put it completely out of her mind. But days like these were hard, because she would feel so happy and want to share all the happenings of her day with Harry, but he wouldn't be there.

Hermione's reminiscing soon came to an end as Ron slammed the door and stormed into the room. The book fell out of Hermione's lap, and she jumped as he threw his bag across the floor. "Ron, really, we just tidied up the other night, and whatever it is can't be that bad."

Ron fell in to the other chair and sighed. "Except it is." He shook his head again and kicked the air. "I don't know how Fred and George expect me to do everything. They keep saying that I'm the business part and that they're the invention part and that business and invention don't mix. But I don't have any business experience and they refuse to help me, so it's all going to hell, and I'm going with it. I just wish that they could hire somebody else, but until we get out the new line of products, we don't have enough money to pay anyone." He gave Hermione a pitiful look and stood up. Hermione stood up too and held out her arms.

The two stood there embracing for a while. Finally, Ron pulled away, looked Hermione in the eye and said, "You're so good to me. I don't deserve to have a friend like you." He paused a moment longer, and before she could do anything else, Ron was kissing her. Not a friendly kiss on the cheek, nor a passionate snog, but a soft full kiss on the mouth. After a few seconds, Ron pulled away and said, "Thanks for being here for me." With that, he left the room, and Hermione fell to her chair, lips still tingling with shock.