Show Me Your Soul

Her eyes were lit up and her cheeks rosy as she laughed and ducked beneath Ron's hand, narrowly missing getting covered with the handful of snow he attempted to dump on her. Ron was laughing as well, reaching one hand out to grab Hermione by the waist and draw her near, their noses bumping together when he finally became successful. They had been so happy that Christmas. Thinking back on things, Harry didn't know why he hadn't figured out sooner that they had become a couple. Over and over the little scene played out in the wizarding photo. And over and over it played and something died inside of Harry every time he caught Ron clutching its cedar frame in his hand and staring so hard at the photograph that his eyes nearly burnt holes right through it.

Just over the threshold separating the den from the corridor leading to their bedrooms, Harry leaned against the wall and watched Ron silently for a few minutes. He had that photograph in one hand, fingers curled over the smooth wood of the frame, pressing the pad of a finger from his free hand to the image. His head was bowed almost reverently, a shock of ginger hair that he had long ago given up cutting falling into his eyes. She used to keep after the both of them - Ron in particular - about the tidiness of their hair. Ron would always roll his eyes when she would start up, saying that she had spent far too much time with Molly Weasley during her visits to the Burrow over the years. She would huff, roll her eyes, and say "Oh honestly, Ron" with a bit of annoyance but both boys always knew she secretly enjoyed bantering with Ron and would react that way to keep up appearances.

His throat constricted terribly when Ron raised the fingertip that had been pressed against the photograph to his lips and placed a kiss on it. Harry knew he had been touching Hermione's image and suddenly everything was too much, much more than he could possibly bear.

"Hey," Harry said in a low voice, wanting to alert Ron to his presence but not wanting to take him totally off-guard.

Despite Harry's effort to do otherwise, Ron was startled and jumped, the picture frame slipping out of his hands and falling to the floor with a clatter.

"Bloody hell," Ron swore, falling to his knees on the floor and picking the frame up again, clutching it to his chest as he glanced up at Harry. "How long were you there?"

"Long enough," returned Harry slowly, taking a few steps into the room.

Getting to his feet, Ron carefully placed the photograph back on the mantle beside a photograph of the three of them taken at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place sometime during the summer before their fifth year. Harry's eyes darted from image to image and then settled back on Ron.

"How--" Ron started to ask and then gave up, pivoting swiftly on his heel and crossing to the window to stare blankly out it.

"She took her tea," Harry returned hoarsely, feeling his eyes prickle. "Even held the cuppa by herself this time."

He could see Ron's shoulders jerk at this news.

"She did?" Ron's voice was thick and sounded off, as though his mind hadn't worked out if he should be happy or hurt by the news and he was trying to compensate for his own uncertainty by sounding neutral. Sounding neutral he did not and Harry himself didn't blame Ron for not knowing how or what to feel first. He didn't blame him at all.

"Yeah," Harry nodded, sinking down onto the nearest chair, his hands gripping the armrests. "She did."

"She did it on her own? Without you telling her to?" Ron's voice and face were so full of hope and Harry couldn't bear to look at him one minute more.

Fiddling with a nonexistent bit of fuzz on the right armrest, Harry shook his head slowly. He shook his head slowly and Ron choked. There was a sudden breeze on his left side as Ron rushed past him, heading for the coat rack.

"Where are you going?" Harry asked carefully, afraid to meet Ron's eyes for fear that he would see his own deep disappointment mirrored there. His own disappointment he could handle. Ron's disappointment he could not.

"Out," Ron said in a strangled voice, shoving his arms in the sleeves of his coat.

"Ron--" Harry began to protest, not thinking it a good idea that Ron went wandering off somewhere when his emotions were running high like they were.

"Stop it, Harry," Ron interrupted savagely, jerking the door of their flat open. "Just stop it. I can't do this. I can't. I just need--I need air. A walk. Time to think. A fucking lot of Firewhiskey. I just have to go, all right?"

The door shut with a slam so forceful that the photographs on the mantle wobbled.

"All right," Harry whispered, staring at the door Ron had exited through for a long while before sighing resignedly and getting up. Balling his hand into a fist, digging his nails against the palm, he walked aimlessly around the den, replaying the events of the last few minutes in his mind. Where ever Ron went off to, Harry hoped like hell that he was all right.

Not that Ron would ever be truly all right, considering....

Glancing down the corridor toward Hermione's room, it occurred to Harry that he had not cleared away the tea service that he had taken into her room earlier. He would have to take care of it. Even though she wouldn't take notice of such things anymore, Harry felt as though he ought to clear it up as quickly as possible...for the old Hermione. The old Hermione would have scolded him for leaving cups and saucers and sugar bowls about and not cleaning up after himself. The Hermione lying in that bedroom right now no longer had the capacity to take notice or care to scold Harry for anything at all.

The walk to her room seemed to take a lifetime. It seemed to take a lifetime and that was likely because he would stop after a few steps and press his forehead against the wall, breathing in and out through his nose as his mind flipped through memories much like one does pages of a book, memories of how things had been and why they had been forever changed.

If only.... Harry could play the 'if only' game for hours, even days at a time. If only.... If only he hadn't told Ron and Hermione to take the wider path through the gnarled forest and instead told them to follow him down the narrow path cutting through a myriad of debris, it wouldn't have happened. If only he had told them to go through that path and had gone through the forest instead, it wouldn't have happened. Hell, if only he had killed Voldemort during one of the numerous other opportunities he had before, it wouldn't have happened.

But he hadn't done any of those things.

He hadn't done any of those things and Ron and Hermione had gotten into trouble in the forest. There had been more Death Eaters in the forest than there had been out in the open fields, something Harry hadn't been aware of at the time but should have known. More Death Eaters in the forest. More Death Eaters and their horrifying creatures were all lying in wait for a signal to come out en mass and take Harry, the Order, various Aurors and other Ministry officials, and innocent witches and wizards by surprise.

Ron and Hermione had been taken by surprise much earlier than the rest of them.

Inhaling deeply, taking in so much oxygen at once that his lungs filled to capacity and he felt a stinging in his chest, Harry slowly lifted his forehead from the wall. Reaching one hand out, his fingertips grazed the paint and plaster. White. The wall was so very white. That's how things were, though. Weren't they? Things were either white or black or black or white and there wasn't anything in between to give a bloke some bloody hope.

White. The door to her room was white as well. Harry stood there in front of that white door staring so long that his eyes began to cross and a ringing sounded in his ears. Swallowing against the sour taste rising in his throat, Harry reached one calloused hand to the doorknob and slowly twisted it to the right, the locking mechanism making an audible pop when the door became ajar from the frame. Steeling himself for what he knew he would find inside, Harry squared his shoulders, put a small smile on his face, and entered the tidy little room.

And there she was, just as he had left her earlier that morning.

If he hadn't known any better, he likely would have found the scene before him to be touching, something worthy of a photograph. Hermione, all bundled up in her blue bathrobe, was sitting in the rocking chair that he and Ron had built for her (held together by magic more than their carpentry skills) staring out the window with her face tipped slightly up to catch some sun on her face. To those who did not know any better, it would have been a beautiful vision. But Harry, who knew better, found it heartbreaking. He found it heartbreaking because he had told her to tilt her face up for some sun just before leaving her room the first time that morning. And how long ago had that been? At least an hour had past since then, he figured. Her face was still tilted up just like he had suggested and her eyes still held that vacant look.

It had been too long since he had seen anything other than vacancy in those striking brown eyes.

He hadn't since that fateful moment when he had told Ron and her to take that path through the forest. That was the last time he had seen the real Hermione, not this shell of a Hermione before him. That was the last time he had seen her before she had become victim to a Dementor's Kiss. Dementors had been just one of the number of creatures laying in wait in the forest with the Death Eaters. To this day he didn't know how Ron had evaded the Dementors or had managed to get himself and Hermione out of there. Yes, Harry could have asked him but, quite frankly, he didn't want to know. He had seen the blood and bruises on Ron. He had seen the look of utter despair in his best mate's eyes. He had seen Hermione's nearly-lifeless body limp in Ron's arms. Harry had seen more than he ever had wanted that day.

Watching her there, guilt welled up and he wondered if he and Ron were doing the right thing. Maybe they should have given in to her parents and arranged for Hermione to stay at St Mungo's. She would get better care there, wouldn't she? Harry wasn't sure. Some days he would feel as though she would be better off at the hospital with professional Healers and other days he wouldn't dream of sending her someplace where strangers would look after her. And every day he felt like he wasn't doing enough. He wasn't doing enough for Hermione. He wasn't doing enough for Ron. Seeing the both of them like they were-Hermione devoid of who she once was and Ron so broken-hearted by it all--was slowly killing him. He was sure of it.

"Hermione."

Harry stood behind her, resting his hands on the back of her chair. Twisting his torso just a bit, he looked down at her and studied the way the sunlight glinted off of her thin eyelashes. She had looked so different the first time he had seen her sit in the chair. Her mouth had been curved in a broad, surprised sort of smile, eyes full of love and appreciation for them both. They had built it for her in secret in Arthur's shed at the Burrow, wanting her to have something special for her birthday. She had often mentioned to them through the years how she had always loved watching her mother rocking in her chair reading a book. It had touched something deep within her, she had said, watching her mother lose herself in a novel and gently rock back and forth. Her mother was so tranquil and it, in turn, had a relaxing effect on Hermione. Harry and Ron figured that Hermione needed to feel calm and relax more than anyone else they knew and that having her very own rocking chair would be a good thing. Not that she needed the rocking chair anymore to feel calm or relaxed. It wasn't as though she could feel much of anything anymore.

She didn't turn toward him when he said her name. She didn't blink. She didn't acknowledge him in any way.

Harry had to look away from her. He focused his attention on the tea service set resting on her bedside table. It was just as he left it. He had kept the lid off of the sugar bowl in secret hopes that she would have replaced it. The old Hermione would have. She absolutely could not stomach things being out of their proper place. But the Hermione sitting in that rocking chair paid things like that no mind. She paid everything no mind. She paid everything no mind, that is, until someone requested she does otherwise.

A tell-tale tingle flared up in his jaw and he clamped down hard, refusing to let his emotion get the better of him. He certainly wasn't going to lose face in front of her. It didn't matter if she could actually process his emotion or not; it was the principle of the thing. Inhaling sharply, he lifted one hand off of the chair back and gently placed it the curve of her shoulder.

"Hermione," he implored softly. "Look at me."

Although she likely would have been content having her face turned up to catch the warmth of the sun's rays for hours on end, she did indeed lower her chin a bit and turned toward Harry when he requested that she do so.

"That's a girl," he murmured, reaching down and brushing a lock of hair out of her eyes and smoothing it off of her forehead. His eyes met hers and, as expected, he saw nothing there. There was no sense of recognition, no sense of awareness of self. Although he should be quite used to this dull sort of look in her eyes by now, it still gave him a jolt. She had used to be so vibrant, so full of life...and now there was nothing. She was nothing. She was nothing more than an empty vessel and were it not for the fact that her mouth was parted ever-so-slightly and he could both see and hear her shallow breathing he would have thought her made of wax.

She said nothing when his hands smoothed over her hair time and time again. This was not surprising, for he had not heard her speak in all this time. In fact, the only sounds he ever heard her make were the sounds of her breathing. What he wouldn't give to hear her voice again, even if it was nothing more than a sigh. He was starting to forget what she sounded like and it frightened him. He could remember his mum's voice in his mind because he had heard her screaming in his nightmares for so very long but the voice of the girl who had been his best friend for half his life was becoming lost to him forever.

Withdrawing his hand, he stepped back and took a good look at her again, wanting to distract himself from that sense of guilt that was threatening to overtake him again. Her eyes followed him, vacant as always. Harry's own eyes were stinging and it annoyed him.

No. Not now. I won't. I won't.

I'm going to focus on her now. Just her. She doesn't need me hanging about her wearing my guilt like she did her Head Girl badge - pinned right on her chest for everyone to see. Her. Just her.

Clearing his throat, he extended a hand to her. "Take my hand, Hermione. I'm going to set you down. You've been in this chair too long. A lie in might be nice."

And just like that, she took hold of his hand. Hers were small and clammy and ashen. She hadn't always been ashen. There had been a time when her skin was smooth and pink and lovely and he'd caught Ron staring at any bit of it his eyes could feast upon more than once.

Not now.

Pulling her to her feet, Harry slowly escorted her over to her four-poster. Her feet shuffled against the hardwood floor and Harry didn't dare glance down. He already knew what he would see. He didn't actually have to see it. It would just pain him that much more. He knew without looking that her feet barely left the floor as she walked and that her toes were curled slightly under and scuffed along the wood, making that odd sound that was just as grating as nails on a slate.

"Wait," he said quietly, releasing her hand. As expected, Hermione complied, staring straight ahead and breathing through her mouth. Harry busied himself with fluffing up her pillow and flattening the wrinkles in her duvet, gritting his teeth as he shoved the guilt away again.

Straightening, he offered her a small smile that she would not take notice of and helped her to lay on the bed. Once he had her situated, he sat beside her, the mattress sagging beneath his weight. Her eyes were focused on the white gossamer fabric of the canopy overhead and a surge of annoyance welled up. He wanted her to look at him. He didn't care if she would really take notice of him or not. If she had her eyes trained on him, at least he could pretend that everything was normal.

Harry shifted his weight just so and rose up slightly over her, placing one hand on the opposite side of her, settling it in between her side and her elbow, resting it flat on the duvet. As he had brought his hand over her, his fingers had skimmed on top of her bathrobe. He had felt the fabric against his flesh but hadn't paid it any mind. He hadn't paid it any mind, that is, until he heard a noise that had clearly come from her.

She had sighed.

"Hermione?" he questioned, his inflection raising on the last syllable.

A sigh. She had sighed. It wasn't much but it was enough to make his heart rate increase.

A sigh. Merlin, he wished Ron would have been there to hear it. She took her cuppa that morning without having needed to have Harry help her guide it to her mouth and she sighed. It was nearly mind-boggling to Harry how much progress that was.

"Do it again," he implored, leaning closer to her in his eagerness. "C'mon, Hermione. I know you can."

She blinked in response, staring up at him as though she were peering directly through his head to watch that canopy again.

"No," whispered Harry to himself, shaking his head. "No."

She sighed. I know she can do it again. I just have to figure out why she did it--

Thinking back to his earlier movements, Harry then decided that the best course of action to take would be to perform a little experiment. Carefully getting up from the bed, he waited a beat before settling back onto the mattress next to her again. Another beat. Mentally reviewing his previous actions, he rearranged himself to hover over her and made a motion to move his hand across her torso so that he could settle it beside her arm. The tips of his digits skimmed the material of her robe and then he was going to manouevre so that--

And there it was again.

That sigh.

More than a little intrigued, Harry slid his hand across her torso in the opposite direction, wondering if the contact of his hand had done that.

She inhaled and then exhaled on a sigh, a sigh that sounded to Harry more brilliant than anything he'd ever heard before in his life.

He had to make her do it again. And again and again and again.

Taking both hands, he splayed his fingers out and glided them along the soft bathrobe. Her skin was warm just beneath the layer of fabric. He could feel it and it comforted him. Wax wasn't warm. Wax was cool. It was always kept cool so that it wouldn't melt. She was warm. Warm and not made of wax.

Up, up his hands went and that sigh sounded again and again.

"Yes," Harry breathed, stopping suddenly when he found that the tips of his fingers were just below the curve of her breasts.

He didn't dare. That would be so incredibly invasive and wrong and sick--

But he didn't take his hands away. He kept them right there while his eyes screwed shut. He could feel her chest rising and falling beneath his hands and in his mind a picture from now what seemed eons ago played.

He had first learnt that Ron and Hermione had become a couple because he had accidentally walked in on them. It had been in this very room, in fact, that the discovery had occurred. Apparating back from Diagon Alley, he had arrived home to a seemingly empty house. This hadn't bothered him; the three of them had such opposite schedules that it was completely commonplace for this sort of thing to happen. Harry hadn't thought anything of returning to an empty home. After hanging up his cloak, he put the things away that he had purchased for himself, stopped by Ron's room to drop off the special statistics edition of Quidditch Weekly on his bed, and headed to Hermione's room to place the bag of potions ingredients he had picked up for her on her desk. Her door had been ajar. That in itself should have raised alarm or, at the very least, his suspicions but it did not. He was preoccupied, thinking over a conversation he had with Ernie Macmillan in the middle of Flourish and Blotts, barely paying attention as he pushed her door open.

The parcel of ingredients he had been carrying dropped to the floor and his mouth gaped open at the sight which greeted him in her room. There she had been, laying on her bed with her blouse half off and Ron straddling her. His large hands were dancing up over her ribcage, stopping only momentarily before snaking under the confining fabric of her bra to tease her. Her eyes were closed and her mouth opened in an 'o' of surprise and obvious pleasure while Ron's hands roamed all over her. Although he was horrified by having walked in on his best mates doing that, he couldn't look away. And even if he had wanted to, when he heard that little whimpering sound she made as Ron's hands moved beneath the lace of her bra, he couldn't have. Call him a dirty voyeur, but he couldn't have looked away.

He never did have much willpower when it came to thinks like that.

That was precisely why he couldn't move his hands away from her breasts now. If he touched her, would she sigh again? Would she just breathe shallowly through her mouth like always, the sigh having been some sort of fluke? Or would she react in a different way altogether?

Her breasts fit neatly into the palms of his hands, he found. They weren't too big nor were they too small. They were just right. They were just right and soft and his breath hissed through his teeth when he finally worked up enough courage to knead them gently.

I'm a bastard. I'm such a bastard. The words reverberated in his mind and he felt bile rise up in his throat.

Sick. Bloody fucking sick. Who am I kidding? Just touching her isn't going to fix anything. I was imagining things. I was imagining things and now I've violated my best mate's girl cos I'm fucking MAD--

She sighed again, deeper and almost mournful this time.

And then Harry lost all sense of rationality.

A gamut of emotions too numerous to list began to whirl wilding with him, clashing and melting and jarring against and with and over and under the thoughts and desires nearly gutting him from the inside out.

Ron had been so full of hope that morning before Harry had to dash them. That alone had nearly done him in, but now... Now he might have found a way to make it up to Ron. He was reaching Hermione in a way that she hadn't been ever since she had received the Dementor's kiss. She was actually reacting and Harry was dizzy and drunk on the euphoria of that. He was saving her. He owed it to her. He was saving her and Ron in the process and he owed it to them. How could he possibly stop now when she was responding to his touch? The more stimuli, the quicker she would be able to start to come back to herself.

If Harry had kept his wits about him, he would have known that Hermione would never be able to come back to herself. It was impossible as the Dementor who had kissed her had taken her essence away.

But Harry's wits had vanished, at least for the moment.

She was sighing and his hands were moving over her clothing and he could feel her nipples rise in a hard peak, even through the fabric. In the back of his mind he wondered how this was possible, why her sexuality was still so obviously there when nothing else of her was. He wondered but he didn't dwell on it because the most important thing to him right then and there was to get her to make more noises. More noises would mean she was feeling things MORE and that meant that Ron would have hope and Harry would feel that much less guilty about it all.

Hands crept up over her breasts and to the lapels of her robe, pulling them aside to reveal a thin blue shift. In the next instant his hands had pulled her shift up over her hips and slid beneath the fabric, hands moving steadily up her bare skin. Unlike her hands, her skin was warm and silky and her breasts felt that much better in his bare hands.

He had to get closer to her. Swinging one leg over her side, he straddled her and felt a stab of betrayal to Ron when he felt himself harden. It's not wrong, he tried to tell himself. She's a fit girl and so close and--

And she's whimpering.

"Again," he said hoarsely to her, rolling his hips against her and gritting his teeth.

Just as he requested, she whimpered. She whimpered and Harry cried out, his voice breaking. He withdrew his hands from underneath her shift and cupped her face, leaning down and pressing his forehead against hers. Brown, expressionless eyes stared right up at him and Harry choked, increasing the pressure of his fingers against her cheeks. She didn't make a sound and it snapped something inside of Harry.

"I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE," he bellowed, not moving away from her one bit. She didn't even blink. "I KNOW YOU ARE, HERMIONE, NOW STOP FUCKING AROUND AND COME BACK!"

There was a loud crash all of a sudden off to Harry's right and he tilted his face enough so that he could look in that general direction.

And in that general direction was Ron. A very red, wide-eyed Ron.

"What in the bloody hell is going on in here?!" Ron demanded, rushing to the bed and grabbing Harry by the collar. Yanking him off of Hermione, Ron didn't turn around to face Harry. Instead, he took a moment to look Hermione over, calmly pulled her shift back down over her hips and closed her bathrobe up properly.

"Ron," Harry panted, getting to his feet again.

"Don't," Ron returned roughly, finally facing Harry.

"I wanted to-- I was trying--You should have been here!"

Ron clenched his jaw. As though he were choosing his words very carefully, Ron spoke slowly and never took his eyes off of Harry. "What were you trying to do, Harry?"

Harry swallowed and thought it was a little dodgy when Ron closed his eyes and pinched his temple. He would have thought that Ron would be screeching his head off at him. This calmness was unexpected. It was like he was resigned to what had happened already.

"I was--she made a noise! She made a sound! She made a sound and I thought she did cos I touched her and I wanted to see if I could get her to do it again because I can't take her not talking. I can't take it and you can't and I need to help you both. It's my fault she's like this and I have to fix her."

Cursing under his breath, Ron stooped to pick up the small vase of forget-me-nots that he had brought for Hermione. Taking his time to set them on the bedside table next to the tea service, he then looked upon Harry wearing an utterly defeated expression.

"No," he said quietly, "not again."

Harry's brow furrowed. Something about Ron's words pulled at him but he couldn't figure it out. Ron's words and the fact that he just felt up and Hermione because he lost his senses for a bit and thought it would bring her back to them were making it practically unbearable for him to even breathe.

"I can't- oh hells, Ron," Harry said miserably, sinking to the floor and burying his face in his hands. "I'm sorry. I--I'm a right bastard."

"No," Ron retorted, sitting next to Harry on the floor, "you're not. You're just a bloke with a saviour complex."

"No!" Harry protested, spying the hilt of Ron's wand peeking out of his robe pocket. "I--I'm a right bastard and I can't do this anymore, Ron. I can't cope. It's all my fault that she's like this and you're like this and I just want to--"

"Don't you fucking DARE!" Ron roared, scooting back. "Don't you DARE!"

"You don't even know what I'm going to say," Harry shot back, making a face as an acidic taste flared up in his mouth.

Ron didn't respond. He merely shook his had and stood up, drawing the canopy shut on Hermione's bed, blocking her from their view.

"Ron?"

"No."

"Don't," said Harry weakly. "Just listen. I want you to do something for me. I--I won't be able to forgive myself for what's happened...that day and today and every day in between. And it's not right but I can't function. I can't be there for you as a mate cos I'm so buggered up by all of this. And I-- I don't want to remember. I don't want to remember today."

"Not again," Ron said again, his voice breaking.

"Again?" Harry questioned, a niggling feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"Again," Ron repeated firmly, slowly withdrawing his wand from his pocket.

"What--"

"Four times now," Ron said dully. "I keep thinking things will change but they don't. Every time I think I'll be strong and tell you that I won't do it but I always do cos you're my best mate and I hate seeing you like this."

Harry's jaw dropped and he though he might keel over. Four times? Four times--

"How--how far did I go before?" he asked, not wanting to know the answer but needing to at the same time.

Ignoring him, Ron said in a quiet, pained voice, " I know you want to help me, Harry, and I appreciate that. But sometimes you just have to let that hero complex go and accept Fate. That's how she is now. She can't be the same again."

"How FAR?" Harry demanded, beginning to shake. His knees trembled and he figured that he was as ashen as Hermione by now. Any moment he was going to have to use that tea service to retch in; he could feel the contents of his stomach slowly rising up his throat.

Harry hadn't seen Ron look that broken before, ever. Not even when he'd seen him come out of that forest carrying Hermione.

"Last time, I caught you shagging her," Ron rasped, brandishing his wand with one hand and wiping at his eyes with the back of the other. "Obliviate."