Accidents of Circumstance

Chapter 23: In Good Faith

The teenagers noticed the change right away. Draco had warned them all not to mention it in a fit of generosity. If he knew Snape at all, there would have been some kind of retribution to the student foolhardy enough to make a comment. Ron looked tempted to say something, but decided not to chance it. Snape may have looked almost cheerful, but he was sure it wasn't a good sign, just as Draco had said.

Later, Ron sought out Regina. Hermione and Draco were going over their notes from the day's marathon lessons, seeing if there was anything they missed. They were practicing with Harry, whose notes had improved over the past few days but were still fairly terrible compared to Hermione's or Draco's. Ron didn't like the look of the three of them studying together, and had to quickly run. The only other people around were Regina and Snape, and scarily enough he found their company preferable.

They were in the den, watching one of her movies. Snape was sitting on the couch, looking at the TV screen with an incredulous look. Regina was lying across the couch, her head in his lap. She was laughing, proclaiming that the character on screen could never fly in the book the movie had been based on. Snape was playing with the ends of her shorn hair, shaking his head. "I don't care what that Muggle wrote, vampires don't fly."

"Heh. You should know, right?"

"It's a common fact you learn in school. There's too much nonsense in that... moving."

"Movie. Moo-vee."

"It hardly matters; you couldn't have one of those contraptions at Hogwarts."

"Of course I do." Regina's tone was matter of fact. "Sel and I blew up a lot of machines, but the theory is the same whether it's an eight track, CD player or VCR. I mean, you should see my car, Sev. It's a magical nightmare. Now anyway, enjoy the movie..."

"I can't. One of your students is looking anxious."

Regina finally turned her head and caught Ron standing in the doorway. "Oh, hey. Wanna see the movie with us?"

Ron almost laughed at the expression on Snape's face. Snape most certainly hadn't wanted Ron to join them, and he was tempted to say yes just to see what Snape would do. But he hadn't really wanted to see a movie. He hadn't really wanted to do much of anything, to be honest. He was catching the drift of mermaid magic, but really didn't enjoy it much. Ron was feeling incredibly useless and lost, and didn't know what he was really doing there. True, he was best friends with Harry. Harry obviously needed to learn this, and Hermione enjoyed the challenge of it, but Ron was just superfluous. But how to say this without Snape laughing at him?

Regina was sitting up with a small sigh. "Come on, Ron. Just watch the movie. It won't bite, I promise." She sniggered and Snape rolled his eyes.

It was too bizarre. Ron accepted, sitting on the other side of Regina. She quickly caught him up with the movie, saying he hadn't missed much.

Ron felt himself getting pulled into the story despite himself. There was someone else feeling apathetic about his fate. There was someone else railing against their nature. There was someone else too arrogant for words.

When there was a fire scene towards the end of the movie, Ron turned to Regina. "There isn't any other way, is there?"

"What do you mean? To destroy the theater?"

"Not the movie. I mean... Mermaid magic. There's no other way to beat Voldemort."

There. He'd even managed to say the name without a shudder.

"You don't like it, do you?"

"Not really, no. It doesn't feel right to me."

Regina didn't take her eyes from the screen. She was giving him a way to save face, Ron understood. If she didn't see the uncertainty in his face, this could be an intellectual exercise, a conversation that could be forgotten. Snape had no such compunction, and was watching him with narrowed eyes.

"What about it feels wrong?"

"I dunno... How it sounds. How it feels coming out of me. I can feel magic, that's good. I know what you're talking about then. But I don't like how these spells feel. I don't like what they do to me after..."

Regina had turned to face him. "They're doing something to you?"

"Feels like it," Ron said with a gulp. He didn't like the serious look on her face.

"How does it feel?"

"Like something's ripping in my chest." Ron frowned suddenly. "No, not ripping. Not anything so painful. But like something's leaving me."

Regina chewed on her lip and turned to face the screen again. "Leaving, and not coming back into you?"

"Yeah. Like I'm using up my magic doing these spells."

"Then stop."

Ron blinked at Regina's abrupt tone. "Huh?"

"You shouldn't be feeling as though your magic's getting used up. If you do, it's a weird side effect. Sel and I talked about it once. Not everyone could do Gera magic. You just don't have the knack for it, so you're putting too much force into making it work. So you can do it in a jam, but don't rely on it, since it'll leave you too weak."

"So I'm still going to lessons?"

"Sure. But you don't need to practice actually doing it as much as the others."

Ron seemed suspicious. "How will you know I'm actually practicing, then? How will you know I've learned anything?"

"I'll take it on faith. After all, you need to protect Harry. You will need to keep the Death Eaters away from him long enough so he can kill Voldemort. If it comes down to a Gera spell being the answer, you'll do it. I trust you."

Snape seemed oddly silent, still staring at Ron. Ron felt as though he were being weighed, measured and judged. He wasn't sure how he was faring, either.

"I'm worried."

"It's all right to be, you know. There's no guarantees about this."

"What if we're not good enough?" Ron said suddenly. He hadn't meant to ask that.

"Oh come on now... the fate of the world in the hands of four teenagers? Don't worry, there are battle plans to get rid of Death Eaters. All the teachers will be there to defend the castle. Without the other students, they can focus better."

"You really think it'll work?"

"It'll have to. There's no other chance left."

"It'll work," Snape suddenly said. He had no mockery in his tone. "Selphine would never have sent us here if it didn't work."

"Sel wouldn't tell me a lot about it."

"What did she say, though?" Ron insisted.

"There will be casualties, Ron. Don't mistake that. This is war. A covert war, but war nonetheless. War is never pretty, and people will get hurt. Knowing how or why won't matter, it'll happen anyway."

"So you don't know."

"No. But I trust Sel. I can't die, but she'd give me warning about those close to me."

"What do you mean, you can't die?" Ron asked, forehead crinkling in confusion.

"I mean I can't. The Fates intervened in my life at one point, and they shifted around what would have been my death. In doing so, they made me pretty much immortal. I can't die now, not even if I tried. Not until they reshape me back."

"And will they ever do that?"

"Oh hell no," Regina said with a self-deprecating laugh. "I'm too useful a pawn."

"What do you mean?"

"They don't manifest well in this realm. If they want to influence anything, they have to use humans to do it. They can't do anything directly."

"And what would Fate want to change?"

"Right now, I'm teaching all sorts of illegal things to you kids at Hogwarts. If they hadn't told me to go to a certain conference years ago, I never would have met Dumbledore or Minerva McGonagall. If I never became friends with them, they would never have brought me in to teach magicks that may be useful. So they do their influencing in small ways."

"And what do they want?"

"Right now, Voldemort dead. He's too unstable an anomaly for them to handle. Luckily, it dovetails nicely with my own agenda."

Ron finally noticed that Snape had been subtly caressing Regina's shoulder. A surreal conversation just got even more surreal. "So you really think he'll die for good this time?"

"He's taken on flesh, Ron. It's only a matter of time. He used the ancient magic to bring himself back, and it's a tricky spell to do right. But what it also does is make him susceptible to other ancient magicks. Which is where my knowledge comes in. I know Pictish, Neo-Pictish, Gera, Tiamar and some Native stuff in America. It's a weird mish-mosh, but it works and it's all older than the hills. It's always the older magic that can undo the new, since its foundations are deeper and stronger. The lines are usually more well-fed. But I know the old stuff, too, so it's only a matter of time before we get him."

"Fate pushed you here," Ron said, realization dawning on his face. How many others could have possibly held the key to Voldemort's return and his mounting terror campaign?

"Maybe so, but it was where I wanted to go. I needed to do this, too."

"And now you will need to let her rest," Snape interrupted. "This is enough for one day."

Ron nodded slowly. "There's always tomorrow," he said, getting up.

"The movie's not done yet," Regina protested.

"It's okay. I've seen the important parts already."

Regina settled into Snape's arms to watch the last ten minutes of the movie. Ron turned back once he was through the den doors. She looked at peace, finally. She had been improving as she had taught blood magic, reclaiming it for her own. Now she looked whole, as though her foundations had been fixed and nothing could bring them down again.

He had been right when he had told Hermione that they fit together. No one else could possibly understand the draw between them, the ties that bound them across an ocean and sixteen years apart. Snape had healed the last of her wounds, believe it or not, and he somehow seemed less intimidating for that fact.

Ron left them alone, and went back to the living room. He had enough to think about for a while, and needed to relax with Hermione. Maybe they could cuddle the same way in the bedroom upstairs. A few snogs, some nice discussion, maybe something more. It was a great way to get his mind off of how the other relationships in the house kept shifting and changing. It was too much for him, all at once. He had been brought up in a certain way, and his thinking had always been in absolutes. His family had always been that way, and it had always worked before.

But times were different now, more dangerous. Times have changed, and so would he.

***

Harry was standing at the threshold to the basement. It would have been midnight; some strange internal clock was telling him the time. Perhaps that was one of the spells cast on the house? Regina hadn't really explained what kept the house in limbo, what kept everything suspended out of time. She had gone over the refrigerator spells, the stove spells, the dish washer spells, the washing machine spells, all of the domestics. She never went over the basic foundations that kept the magic in motion.

He could almost feel the lines that kept the magic moving, but wasn't quite so clear. He had a great handle on magic in motion, that much Regina made clear. He could handle magic in the field, all practicality and use. He could alter spells as he was casting them, something Regina had been delighted to find out while they were all practicing in the backyard. The book learning had gone slow, mostly because he was too impatient to learn them. They had already spent what seemed like an eternity when you wanted to go out and defeat evil now, just to get it over with. It was an odd anticipation, knowing that Voldemort was in real time, advancing on Hogwarts but frozen in place. Yet Harry was still moving, still in motion and still able to think and learn and train. He had tried levitating himself just a half hour ago, and had finally seen over the fence. He was careful not to fall over it, to pitch himself back into real time, since he didn't know how to get back into the timeless space.

The neighbors were in the backyard. Frozen. The mother was in the garden, apparently weeding. The elder son was watering the bushes. The daughter and younger son were chasing the dog. The father wasn't home yet. They were all caught in midstep, midaction, midbreath. The water didn't even fall from the hose. It remained a full arc, still and sparkling in the sunlight of late afternoon. It was perhaps three thirty in their time, three thirty frozen forever.

Chastened, Harry touched the ground again. The rose petals had long ago been spelled away, but he found them in odd corners of the house. Regina had called it potpourri, scenting the air that would never get stale. It took time for air to get stale, after all, and there was no time here, no time at all.

And now he was poised to step down into the basement. He had never gone there, never had any reason to. The laundry did itself, after all, he didn't need to use the laundry room. He had no impulse to exercise much, or hit a bag for the fun of it. Harry used to spend his sleepless evenings practicing his wand draws, various spells, his pronunciation. He had to be good at that part, and if he wasn't sleeping, he might as well practice.

He had long since stopped feeling the need to scream at everyone. It was something that he was sorry for in retrospect. It wasn't everyone else's fault that things were falling apart. It wasn't. At least, he reminded himself of this. And yelling at them would only alienate them, and he had felt it too keenly at the end of fifth year. He had spent the better part of the first term of sixth year reining in his temper. He had been doing a fairly good job of it, too, feeling almost normal again in a month or two. Of course he wasn't, but he put on a good show. And really, no one really wanted to hear the Boy Who Lived whine and complain about how unfair life was. Of course it was. He had no parents, no family left that cared for him. He had money and a reputation, sure, but what was it if there was no one to share it with?

Harry had never begrudged Ron his family or the budding relationship with Hermione. He had taken Ron aside two months before Christmas break to tell him to go after Hermione. Ron had awkwardly asked Hermione to the Yule Ball, and it had been a disaster. Ron couldn't dance at all. But he made the effort, which seemed to please Hermione. Harry had shown up, but left early. There was no one there he fancied, no one he felt he could talk to. All he did was sit in his dorm in the dark, holding a mirror that would never talk back to him.

And this was his life, the reality of being the Boy Who Lived.

Harry wasn't afraid of basements. He couldn't be, after growing up in a cupboard under the stairs. He was intimately aware of what crept in the dark within houses. Ordinary houses, at least. Magic houses were bound to be different.

What bothered Harry was that this was a basement Draco found refuge in. This and the den and the office, if he put his mind to it. Harry had already explored the den and the office, finding nothing there he wanted to really dig into. He suspected Draco had gone there for the silence it offered, a place to think. Did he really want to invade the last haven Draco had?

Yes. Yes, he did. He wanted to see what was so special about it. Harry wanted to be able to sleep again. He missed sleep. He missed darkness.

Half light filtered in through the basement windows. It was a perfectly ordinary basement, nothing creepy about it at all. There was nothing here that could captivate him, nothing to calm him. The gym equipment held no fascination for him.

"I was wondering when you'd get down here," Draco's voice called out from the dark.

Harry spun around, hand on the rail and foot raised onto the first step. "Malfoy?"

"I thought we were supposed to use first names. Gina's rules."

"We're not in lessons now," Harry said guardedly, stepping away from the stairs. "Where are you?"

"In the dark, of course. All of us evil Slytherins love it, you know."

"Knock it off, Malfoy." The overhead light suddenly snapped on, and Harry blinked madly to adjust his vision. Draco was still sitting across the room, hands open and empty in his lap. He had been sitting in the dark, thinking. "What were you doing down here in the dark?"

"It's not really dark, you know. After a while, you can see in shades of gray."

Why did Harry get the feeling that he was missing something important?

"I couldn't see too well down here," Harry said, getting the feeling that they weren't talking about physical light or darkness.

"Of course not. You have to be willing. You only ever see dark and light. There are no such things as shadows for you."

Nope. Definitely not physical light and dark.

"And you can?" Harry challenged. He felt silly as soon as the words left his mouth.

"Of course I can. I'm Slytherin. We're pragmatic. We see everything and weigh our options carefully. We don't rush headlong into things."

"And all that rage you had for me in the beginning of the year? The pranks and shouts and the name calling?"

"You challenged my honor," Draco said calmly. "You began to ruin my family."

"So what's changed that you can talk to me this way, without yelling?"

"I don't have time for you anymore. I have other things to worry about."

"Like what?"

Draco looked at him in disdain. "I'm a Malfoy. My problems are not yours."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Good grief, Malfoy, you're not that special."

Draco's eyes flashed, but he remained silent. "No. We can't all be the Boy Who Lived, now can we?"

Harry felt himself flush. Just five minutes ago he had been mentally bemoaning his status. But to hear someone else use the name with derision... "Don't you take anything seriously at all, Malfoy? People are going to die when we get back to Hogwarts!"

"I know." Draco's tone was low and emotionless. "People always die. It's the way of it."

"I don't want it to happen."

"Well, those precious students won't die. They've been moved. They would've been hostages otherwise. She took away your weakness."

"Weakness? She says I'm great at battle magic."

"You don't understand, do you, Potter? You're flawed because you're too good. You would never be able to sacrifice someone for the greater good. You could never choose between lives. And so she's making it so you don't have to. That's how she's helping you. Not just by teaching you the spells you need to defeat the Dark Lord, but by eliminating your weakness. You would never beat him otherwise. You would've sacrificed yourself rather than let anyone else get hurt, and then he would win and we would die."

"You're wrong," Harry said, voice shaking. "I'm not that selfless."

"Maybe not a Slytherin. You think we're all scum. What about your Gryffindorks? One of them on a chopping block, and it was either turn over yourself to be killed or watch them die? You would never let that happen."

"I'm the only one that has to make a choice like that."

"Yeah. And sorry, none of us who knows the way life works would ever trust you with that. You'd never let an innocent die." Draco's lip was curling with derision. "You couldn't make those kinds of decisions. So she took it out of your hands."

Harry let the silence stretch out. "We could've been friends once."

"You said you knew the wrong sort. Still do?"

"You've changed."

"And it's so sad. You really haven't, have you? You're still the same as you were. You haven't been tested yet, have you? Have you ever had to choose? Have you ever really lost something you cared about?"

Harry's face hardened, and Draco thought it was an interesting reaction. Perhaps there was more to the Boy Who Lived than he had thought. "You don't know me, Draco. Just like I don't know you."

Draco shrugged. "Doesn't matter, now does it? Once this is done we'll go our separate ways and we won't have to speak."

"We will if you're dating Ginny."

"Ah well. Our paths will cross. But we don't need to be friends. You'll have plenty by the time this is over."

He's jealous. It's always ever been about jealousy, Harry thought. Maybe now he was beginning to understand, in spite of himself. He had wanted to cling to the thought that Draco was an evil git. It had been the only real constant in his entire life at Hogwarts. Too much had changed in the past few months.

"You think we'll win, then? The Death Eaters will be defeated?"

"You're the Boy Who Lived, aren't you? Of course you'll live. You always do. You always catch the snitch, you always live, you always catch the bad guy. It's what you do best. The rest of us can only sit and watch."

"You're playing a part now."

"You deal the death strike. The rest of us only sit and watch."

"You'll have your own demons to deal with," Harry said suddenly, sure of himself. Draco looked at him with a wordless questioning expression on his face. "Selphie wouldn't have made you that ring otherwise," he said, pointing to Draco's hand. "If you weren't important in some way, you'd never get a ring."

"It's just a consolation prize," Draco said, voice dull. "She wrote us all letters, you know."

Harry thought of his letter: You are important, and you will see many things you will wish you hadn't. This is for the aftermath, so that you aren't bogged down by questions. It will give you time to think, to assess and reassess. This is because some things take time, and you may need all the time in the world.

What had Draco's said?

Draco fished the slip of paper out of his pocket and wordlessly held it out. Harry pulled his own letter out of his pocket and offered it in trade.

Draco's letter said: I offer you this ring in good faith. You will live and you will love and you will learn. You will test yourself in many ways. You may think you're lacking, but you do have the courage to go on. I have faith in you.

Harry looked up. "It's a good letter."

"More than my own Mum would ever tell me," Draco muttered, snatching it back. Then he suddenly grimaced, as though he wished he hadn't admitted it aloud.

Harry watched as Draco refolded his letter and placed it in his pocket. "I never knew my Mum. What's having one like?"

It was on the tip of Draco's tongue to say something snarky. But Harry's tone had been open and honest, and his head was cocked just so. He always had that expression when Regina was talking about a particularly interesting spell.

No one had ever looked at him that way before other than Regina and Ginny. They liked him. Did that mean Harry was starting to?

"Sit, then. I'll see if this makes any sense..."

***

Hermione was sitting in the bedroom she had chosen, Ron beside her lying awake. She had just told him to stop touching her, and she was shivering. Not in fear, or pain, or any kind of negative emotion. In fact, that was the only thing she was sure of. She wasn't sure of herself at all right then, and she looked downright scared. She had told Ron to go to sleep, but he was still lying there, awake, staring at the ceiling. He was no doubt trying to figure out what went wrong, where he had crossed the line.

It was sad, that. There had never been any lines between them before.

"You're afraid of me, or this thing between us?" Ron said finally.

Hermione shook her head. "I'd never be afraid of you. I love you." It was amazing how much easier it got to say it. Three little important words: I-love-you. But they weren't enough somehow, something still made her afraid.

"So you're afraid of yourself, then."

Why did he have to suddenly start understanding?

Ron took her silence as assent. "You don't have to, you know. You're not really losing control." Oh, really? His mind was mocking him. And where do you think her hands were going next, if she didn't stop herself?

"Ron, I'm sorry. I don't know what to do."

"You love me, right?"

"Y-yes." Please let it not be one of those things...

"You trust me, right?"

"With everything."

"Then trust me when I say I'd never push you, never hurt you. I'm not someone to do that." He wasn't looking at her, didn't want to see any pity on her face. "I know I'm not all that great. I'm not the smartest or the bravest. I'm not the most handsome, I'm not the greatest at Quidditch, I barely have a knut in my pocket now. All I have is loyalty and honor and faith. All I have is myself. If it's not good enough, let me know."

Where did these words come from? He had never been this serious before in his life.

Hermione blinked back tears, and collapsed on top of him, crying into his chest. "But you are! Are so smart you know what's wrong with me if I can't say. Brave enough to say so. Plenty handsome to me, plenty good at Quidditch to me! I don't care what you think the others say about you, you're always good to me. You've always been there for me. I just... I'm afraid. I don't know what to do."

Ron blinked. "Didn't you ever read about it in a book somewhere?"

Hermione blushed furiously. "But this isn't the same. Reading and doing are so different, and what am I supposed to do?"

"Is that it? That's why you stopped me?" Ron was incredulous. Hermione, the brilliant and wise and beautiful, unsure of herself?

And there she was, nodding and biting her lip and looking miserable.

"Hermione, there's another girl in the house. Who obviously enjoys it. Why don't you ask her? I'm just a boy, I don't know what to say. Just ask her."

Hermione brightened and kissed Ron on the lips. "Now why didn't I think of that?"

"You don't think of yourself as a girl," Ron said promptly. "You're just one of us all the time, you don't think of yourself as separate much."

Hermione smiled at him. "See? Sometimes you can be truly brilliant."

"I have moments." Ron grinned at her. "Okay? Sleep now?"

"Sleep now," Hermione agreed. She settled into his arms, liking the feel of them around her. She felt safe and protected somehow, as though Ron could fix everything. "Thank you for understanding, Ron."

"Anytime, Mione. You can tell me anything, you know."

"I know. I love you."

"I love you, too."

***

In the morning, Hermione was embarrassed. Regina had looked rather happy, and Hermione couldn't bring herself to ask such personal questions. She instead went to the den during the break, trying to look up information or spells or something that would make her feel just a little bit braver. She had heard from Lavender and Parvati (terrible gossips, terrible!) that the first time was always painful, and always hurt. They would always giggle and laugh, and make faces at Hermione, as though she would never feel that in her life, ever. Some small part of her shriveled inside whenever they looked at her that way.

Regina knocked on the door, and Hermione was startled. She nearly ripped the page with prophylactic potions listed on it. "Ron mentioned you wanted to talk to me?"

Her face flushed so red, she could feel it. Hermione found herself stammering incoherently about Ron and fears of pain and blood. Regina took pity on her and shut the door. She began giving advice in a matter of fact tone, never once making fun of Hermione for the irrational fear she was having. When she grew braver, Hermione began asking more questions. She wanted to know details, she wanted to know how everything was positioned, how it felt. Regina was patient, and answered everything. When Hermione was satisfied, Regina stood. "Okay, break time over. I'm glad I could help." Regina paused at the doorway after she opened the door. "By the way, use the third potion. You have to brew it more often, but it tastes much better. Plus, if he drinks it, he tastes much better."

And then she was gone, leaving an open-mouthed Hermione in her wake.

***

***