The Price of Love

It doesn't take much to find a person if you know what their "essence" is like, she thought, hiding in the empty broom cupboard on the fifth floor. And the "essence" I'm out to find mustn't be very challenging, since I've felt it before...

She thought back to when she'd been possessed, albeit briefly, by the man she was seeking, and knew intimately the "essence" she was seeking. It was an interesting one-one she'd never forget. Smell of darkness, taste of screaming, sound of saltiness... his "essence" was strange, almost scrambled, but it made him easier to find.

She concentrated for a moment, then dropped a double fistful of Floo powder on the logs before her. They burst into emerald green flames, and she stepped into them, latching onto him. She had only the time to think, I wonder if he'll be surprised, before she was engulfed in the flames.

Upon her arrival, she brushed away the worst of the soot, and stepped out of the overlarge fireplace. Shocked, she looked around, not completely sure that she'd come to the right place. The hallways, large and filled with strange objects... the moth-eaten curtains hanging closed on the wall...

Why were they keeping him in Grimmauld Place?

Never mind that, she scolded herself. Just find him, and... tell him how you feel. Maybe... maybe that'll mean something...

She hurried down the hallway, climbing up the stairs in silence, until she came to what had to be his room. She'd have thought so, even without seeing the rough carving of his name in the wood of the door. She thought that he must have done it himself, because no one that she knew would do something like this for him.

Knocking on the door, she pulled her cloak closer around her, trying to keep the chill away from her skin. She was nervous, now that she was here; nervous, and afraid, too, but also eager to see him again.

But what if he doesn't want to see me...nagged a nasty little voice in the back of her brain. What if I'm not good enough?

She shook the thought away, doing her best to ignore the chills that it sent up her spine as she stood there. She'd come so far to see him; done so much to free him...

And then the door opened, and she entered the room. Firelight flickered on the walls from the small fire that burned in the hearth, and the damp, musky room was empty except for the "table", where the corpse of his former foe was laid out, and a chair, which was pulled close to the fire. She knew that he sat in it, and could feel her hands, which were strangely cold, start to tremble, though they were clenched around her wand.

She slowly crossed the room, letting her hood slip off her head, her breathing fast and unsure. Almost, she wanted to turn and walk away, but she couldn't. She couldn't go back, even though it seemed that this room went on for a million miles.

And finally she was there, beside the chair; she could see his arm resting on the armrest, his dark hair highlighted by the firelight...

She took his cold, pale hand, and felt the scars on her soul, the ones left from when he first possessed her, burst open. She stood there, beside him, and thought of their meetings, their first actual words-or thoughts-toe each other...

She remembered the first time his sixteen-year-old self, the one from Ginny's diary, had whispered into her head, in the night: the first dreams he'd given her, designed to make her succumb to his will. She'd resisted, but in the end he'd won. And he'd seen everything, in her memories-her life with her family, her memories of the Burrow, with Ron and Harry, the trials of school...

And there'd been something that he'd seen, something like what he'd lived through, that had made him like her, a little.

He'd possessed her for all of three months before he just vanished, though it seemed that he hadn't actively possessed her more than six or seven times. And she remembered, most, what he'd said last to her.

He stood before her in her dream, his pale face framed by his midnight black hair, his bright scarlet eyes gazing as dispassionately as they could at her; though if she'd had to name the little emotion on his face, she'd have had to call it longing. In his hand he held a rose, heedless of the thorns that pricked his fingers, and of the crimson blood that slowly dripped down the stem.

"I'll wait for you, after the war is over. I'll wait for you in a home that will be blacker than my heart could get." He'd handed her the rose, and she'd felt tears welling up in her eyes, but he stopped them stillborn when he kissed her, and the sweet tang of blood bloomed in her mouth-his blood, she realized muzzily- and then he pulled away. She hid her head in his robes, and she felt his breath on her neck as he whispered his last words in her ear.

"Never forget." Then he pulled gently away from her, smiling slightly, with a bit of sadness.

Then he turned and walked away, never looking back...

She'd woken in the morning, feeling less than herself-he was gone.

She'd kept him alive in her mind, the way she'd known him- cold and heartless at first, which, ever so gradually, changed into something that could have, in time, been warmth and caring.

I hope I'm not too late, she thought. I hope he remembers me. I hope... I hope that the right part of him's in there.

Then his eyes met hers, and she was spellbound as he drew her down to his level. He looked at her, and she instantly thought of her dream, his promise. She knew he was a Legilimens, but would this memory be enough to draw out the man in him that she'd loved?

His eyes glazed over, and she could hear his soft footsteps in her mind as she remembered everything about him that he'd told her, every dream he'd given her, every last breath that she'd shared with him...

She was concentrating so hard on what she had to share with him that she never heard his last words, the last words that he spoke to her before he murmured the spell that ended her life.

"Never forget, Hermione..."