“Hello? Harry? I found this key in the bottom of my dresser, can you believe—? Oh, there you are. Come here and give me a hug.”
*steps from the kitchen*
“Hermione. It’s good to see you.”
“I was worried about you. You’ve been so—and anyway, I knew you’d visited Draco Malfoy now and then, and when he was Kissed yesterday—I thought you might need a friend.”
“I’m all right… Do you know if porridge is nourishing?”
“Sorry? Oh, Harry, you’re cooking! That’s good, you’re so thin… You look even thinner than you did a week ago. You’ve got dark circles under your eyes and—oh, Harry, have you been sick…? You look—terrible.”
“Thanks.”
“No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. It’s good to see you smiling and—hey, with that dishtowel over your arm, you look awfully domestic. I’m really hap—Oh Jesus Christ!”
*jump back against the door*
“Hermione. I’m sorry he startled you, I know you weren’t expecting—”
“God, what is it doing here?”
“He’s sitting on a chair. We’re about to have breakfast. Well, Hermione, he had nowhere else to go after… He’s staying here.”
“It’s grotesque!”
“Hermione! He doesn’t… he doesn’t look all that different.”
“Harry, you can’t keep it in here. That’s morbid, Harry, it will give you nightmares. Give it back to the authorities, I know you must feel—you’re so decent—obliged to it or something—”
*snarled* “He’s not going anywhere.”
“Harry, look at it! Look at its eyes. They’re so—oh God, it’s horrible, that blank leeching emptiness. You can’t feel sorry enough for it to keep it here. You’re already not well. It wouldn’t be good for you.”
*coldly* “It’s none of your business, Hermione. Let anybody try to take him away from me.”
“I… God, Harry, are those your clothes on that thing?”
“Hm? Oh, yes. I washed him this morning and found him some clothes. The black jumper goes well with his hair, doesn’t it?”
*high voice* “Harry, what are you doing?”
“How do you mean?”
“Stop touching that thing!”
“Sorry, I didn’t realise.”
“Harry, please get your hand off its hair.”
“Sorry. Do you want some porridge?”
“No, I think I’m going to be sick! Harry, please, I can’t stand looking at it for much longer. You have to realise, this isn’t like—like someone who’s handicapped. Tending it doesn’t matter, it’s a body. It’s a shell. Its soul is gone forever, do you understand that? It’s not human!”
“Hermione, don’t shout. Loud noises upset him.”
*voice wobbling* “Harry, look at it.”
“In a moment. I have to spoon out the porridge.”
*sound of porridge being poured into a bowl*
“Harry, aren’t you going to have any—?”
“Oh, no, I’m not very hungry. He needs to eat, though. Come on, Draco. It’s all right. You see, Hermione? I’m looking at him. He’s eating his porridge. Everything—will be all right.”
“Harry, you can’t do this.”
*tranquil* “Hermione, you don’t understand.”
“Harry, no, I do. I visited Azkaban yesterday. I know all about it, but Harry, you mustn’t blame yourself. You mustn’t feel any kind of duty towards it. He was a savage killer—he was a traitor, and even he doesn’t exist anymore. He—oh, Harry, if anyone deserves this he did, and you can’t let yourself be trapped in this nightmare just because he thought he was in love with you!”
*pause*
*blankly* “What?”
“Whatever weird, perverse fascination he had with you—Harry, don’t feel guilty, it was just a part of his twisted psyche. It wasn’t—ugh, Harry, it wasn’t normal—”
*bitterly* “Hermione, I think you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick here. He wasn’t—”
“Harry, I’ve read his diary!”
*pause*
*voice trembling* “What?”
“They—they were clearing out his cell, and I took it, and I read some parts, and—”
“Where is it?”
“I have it here—Harry!” *sharp cry* “Give it—”
*ruffle of pages*
*desolate voice* “I can’t—I can’t see to read it. I—I’ll do it later. Draco has to have his food.” *shove back of papers* “I’m sorry, Draco. I’m sorry. Here. Oh, it’s all right, it’s all perfectly all right, you’re with me…”
“Harry, don’t touch its face! I don’t like it—Oh, Harry, are you crying?”
*viciously* “No!”
“I—I’ll read it to you, if you like. Is that what you want?”
“All right.”
”‘September 21st—Today I was told that they were going to administer the Dementor’s Kiss—‘”
“What? No, Hermione—you’ve got that wrong—I talked to him on the 23rd, and he didn’t—he told me he’d probably just get a slap on the wrist—”
“Harry, exactly! He was lying to you. He may have had good motives, but he was deceiving you, you don’t owe him a thing—”
*voice fraying* “What are you talking about?”
“I’ll read out the rest of the entry! ‘I’ve noticed that there are a few things sheer selfishness can’t save you from—which is a shame, since then I’d be buckled in triple armour. They’re going to administer the Kiss after this whole lonely pointless struggle, and there’s the paralysing terror and panic that came upon me sometimes in the war… that chill which wraps around you like a nightmare lover. I didn’t even know about that creeping chill during the war—it’s only in the dreams that I realise I felt it. Because back in the war, there was always something you could be strong for. My parents, my friends, my men, Pansy…
The need for a beloved talisman against nightmares. God, humans are pathetic creatures sometimes.
Harry can’t know yet.
I warned him. I tried to warn him, and if he keeps hanging onto those images he has, onto his belief that—something could be saved from all of this wreckage…
It’s much like an amputation. It’s cruel, but it will save him—and I’ve always been talented at cruelty. And after all, it doesn’t take anything real from him, even if it takes away that stupid warmth, that one last thing I’ve been hanging onto so tenaciously through the nights…
I can’t question it, I don’t want to explore the full depths of all this hopelessness. I don’t want to think about what I want or those idiotic beautiful dreams. I don’t want to end without dignity, in a screaming clinging ball of terror.
And I won’t see him destroyed. He has to be cut cleanly away.
In the end, it’s always nightmares and one image to hold against them. He does understand that.
He’ll be the talisman, and saving him will keep me from this humiliating horror and loss. And it’ll be all for the best, and he’ll forget, and I’ll won’t have the chance to disgrace myself in those last few minutes.
Oh, but I do love him. God help me, God damn him, but I do.’“
*small, terrible sound*
“Harry—Harry, please, don’t. I know you must feel dreadful, I know you never meant to hurt even someone like him, but you have to remember that he was evil, utterly utterly—”
*savagely* “Shut the fuck up, Hermione! If he was evil, what was I? You sat in your research rooms with your books, your books, and I drowned in blood. You would never believe that about me. Harry doesn’t want to kill anyone, do you, Harry? Yes I did. Yes I do. Didn’t you ever wonder what happened after we captured Millicent Bulstrode and I sent you out of the room? You never asked, but you have such perfect faith in me, you must believe I did the right thing. Do you want to know what I did to her?”
“No! Harry!”
“What do you want me to do to you? You’re lying. This isn’t real.”
*swift steps, shove of a body against a wall*
“I don’t believe you. It’s not true. He never loved me, he—” *shouting* “Why the hell did you have to tell me that, you lying bitch!”
*terrified* “Harry—”
*sound of someone standing up*
*step back, voice soft* “Draco, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. Hush. There. Sit back down.”
*brush hand against hand, shoulder, cheek* *deep breath* *pause*
“There. Shhh… I’m sorry, Hermione, I didn’t mean to scare you. Of course he wrote it.” *voice lower* “It sounds like him. He’s funny, did you know?” *soft laugh* “In a really infuriating way. I never really realised how funny when I was with him, it was usually when I got back home and had one of those nightmares, and then I’d sit up and think about what he’d said, and it would—he could make me smile.”
*voice trembling* “Harry, I’m begging you. Can’t you—what’s the matter with you, that you keep hovering around that thing and touching it and staring at it—can’t you stop?”
“What?”
“Harry, please stop touching it!”
“I told you not to raise your voice.”
*faintly* “I—Harry, are you trying to tell me that—that you had feelings for—that thing?”
*pause* *sudden sharp laugh*
“Feelings?”
“Don’t look like that—”
“I love him.”
“Oh God. Harry.”
“I love him. He’s—oh God, he’s everything in the world to me, do you understand that? I’m so ridiculously, painfully obsessed with him that I can recognise his heartbeat, I’d sell my soul for him, I’d sell anything for him, for one more second, just to hear his voice and I’m in hell, oh Christ, Hermione. It was nothing but bleakness before him and then he was the whole world and I can’t even get back to bleakness and it hurts so much I can’t think, I don’t want to do anything but scream and even when I’m lying right beside him he’s not there, he’s never going to be anywhere ever again—”
*faint, sick* “Lying beside him?”
*raw* “I can’t bear it. I love him so much it hurts to breathe.”
“Harry, what have you done?”
”… I don’t know. Oh, God, Draco, how could you think that I’d forget you, how could you pretend—oh God, Draco, please, you can’t have loved me, you can’t have been trying to save me when I—”
“Harry, it can’t hear you!”
“You bastard, you can’t have thrown away those last weeks—oh God, the last weeks. Tell me you didn’t do it, are you insane to think that I’d stop loving you if you did or said anything… anything at all… You destroy me even when you’re trying to save me, and God damn you, you have to talk to me! I hope you’re burning in hell, I hope you’re in fucking agony, how could you love me and—oh Draco, Draco, please…”
*fall to hands and knees, violent vomiting*
“Harry—Harry, you’re scaring me!”
*tenderly, almost secretively* “I can’t bear it.” *leaning against him* “You see why you have to be all right, you absolutely have to. I’ll kill you if you don’t speak to me, please, darling, you never even said—” *soft kiss on the neck* “I can’t have… I can’t live like this.”
“Harry, get up, get away from it, you have to listen to me—”
*voice muffled against the jumper* “Draco, I can’t have—Oh God, please, oh God, I love you so much.”
*strained to the point of tears* “I don’t understand anything, Harry, oh, you have to tell me, you have to get help…”
*exhausted tones* “I’ll kill anyone who tries to take you away from me. You’ll come back, Draco, you have to—”
*crying* “Harry… please, I’m so scared.”
“Draco.” *raw, choked sobbing against the wool* “I love you. Oh, I love you so much…”
“Harry! Oh, Harry, don’t do this to me, don’t leave me all alone, please look at me, please try… Harry, stop making that sound, I can’t bear it. Harry, for God’s sake talk to me!”