Chapter 1: Echoes in the room
Chapter Text
Three years after the war
The Burrow hadn’t changed.
Its walls still leaned a little too far to the left, the kitchen still smelled like fresh bread and dragon-hide polish, and the garden was alive with wildflowers and gnomes that had grown bold in Arthur’s retirement. Children shrieked in the distance—nieces, nephews, and borrowed cousins. Somewhere, Celestina Warbeck played softly from a wireless.
And yet, Hermione Granger had never felt more out of place.
She adjusted the neckline of her dress for the third time and forced a smile as Molly Weasley pressed a warm hand to her cheek. “You look thin, dear. Have you been eating?”
Hermione nodded, lying through her teeth. “Of course.”
“Arthur!” Molly called, bright as ever. “Come see Hermione—doesn’t she look lovely?”
Arthur appeared with a delighted grin, eyes crinkling behind his glasses. “Always lovely,” he said, and Hermione felt something in her chest unclench. Molly and Arthur were the only constants these days—especially after the war, after Australia, after the long walk back to being herself again.
It had taken her nearly two years to reverse the memory charm on her parents.
Molly had sent her a jumper every month.
Arthur had written letters, even when she didn’t respond.
“You’ve been working too hard,” Molly said now, patting her hand. “But we’re so glad you came. It means the world to Ginny and Harry.”
Hermione swallowed. Ginny and Harry.
She glanced toward the back garden where the crowd had gathered. A gold banner stretched across two crooked poles: CONGRATULATIONS GINNY & HARRY! Bright, fluttering, perfect.
Ginny stood at the center of it all, her hair caught up in a twisted braid, red and brilliant like flame. Harry stood beside her in crisp robes that didn’t quite suit him. His smile was small, polite. Safe. When he caught Hermione looking, his expression faltered—just slightly—and then smoothed back into practiced ease.
She looked away first.
“Still not speaking?” Ron’s voice came from beside her, warm with teasing and not a hint of judgment.
She turned, grateful. “It’s not like we’re not speaking,” she muttered. “We just… don’t.”
He laughed softly and offered her a butterbeer, already uncapped. “Same thing, Hermione.”
She took it, her fingers brushing his. It was still easy with Ron—somehow. Their short-lived engagement had burned fast and bright, then quietly extinguished after the war like so many things that were only meant to last under pressure. She loved him. She always would. Just… not like that.
He’d started dating Luna a few months later. Now, they were a year and a half into marriage, and somehow the most grounded of anyone.
“I missed you,” Ron said simply. “Even if you show up late and disappear halfway through dessert.”
She smirked. “I’m not disappearing.”
“You always disappear when Ginny gets tipsy enough to talk wedding dresses.”
Hermione’s smirk faltered. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s not wrong.”
They stood in silence for a moment, watching the party unfold. George levitated cupcakes into guests' hands. Bill and Fleur wrangled their toddlers near the pond. Percy had already spilled wine on himself and tried to vanish the evidence before Molly noticed.
And Harry—Harry was watching her again. She felt it, even without looking. That pull. That ache she didn’t understand.
“You and Harry used to be—” Ron began, then hesitated.
“What?”
“Close.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what happened, but... something did, didn’t it?”
Hermione took a long sip of butterbeer and said nothing.
Because she didn’t know.
Not really.
Not in the way she trusted.
After the war, there’d been exhaustion. Then distance. Then this... polite silence she couldn’t explain. Their friendship hadn’t broken. It had simply stopped existing. Piece by invisible piece.
Ginny was different too. Warmer now, but only on the surface. Their conversations had grown formal, laced with something tight underneath. Ginny had once been her closest friend. Now, everything felt rehearsed—every compliment, every question, every smile.
And Hermione couldn’t remember when that change began. Or why.
All she knew was that something was missing.
And today, beneath the banner and the sunshine and the laughter—
The absence was deafening.
“Dance with me.”
She raised a brow. “Is Luna not fulfilling her marital obligations?”
He grinned. “Luna says she’s officially too pregnant to risk being flung about like a ragdoll by my, quote, ‘delightfully chaotic’ rhythm.”
Hermione smirked. “I told you years ago—you don’t dance. You flail.”
“It’s charming flailing,” he said. “Come on, for old time’s sake?”
She rolled her eyes, but set down her tart. “Fine. But if I lose a toe, I’m hexing you.”
He led her onto the makeshift dance floor—really just an open patch of grass—and pulled her into a clumsy waltz that made her laugh before the first spin was over. His steps were uneven, his shoulders stiff, but his smile was bright and real. Hermione relaxed into it, letting herself laugh, letting the familiar comfort of Ron be just that—familiar.
“See?” he said. “Charming.”
“Charming is generous,” she muttered, dodging his heel.
The music picked up and others joined—Bill and Fleur, George and Angelina, even Arthur with a blushing Molly. The enchanted instruments shifted into a swinging rhythm, and couples began to trade partners in a blur of laughter and movement.
Hermione spun, released from Ron’s grip—and turned straight into Harry.
Their hands touched automatically—muscle memory, instinct—and for a heartbeat, everything else fell away. His green eyes met hers, hesitant, unreadable. She could feel the tension in his arm, the way his fingers hovered just short of fully closing around hers.
“Hi,” he said, voice low. The music swelled.
“Hi.”
They stepped into the dance. One-two-three. One-two-three. Awkward. Measured. Silent.
“How’s work?” he asked eventually.
She didn’t look at him. “Fine. I start cataloging a new artifact soon. Some experimental memory-mapping object that came in from Romania.”
Harry nodded, eyes darting past her shoulder as if searching for a safe place to look. “Sounds like something you’d love.”
“I suppose.”
Another beat. A shift in the music. Their hands touched again, palm to palm. Hermione’s breath hitched.
Before either could speak again, Ginny swept between them like a gust of wind, hand on Harry’s arm, smile far too bright.
“Mind if I cut in?” she asked sweetly, eyes on Hermione but tone directed toward Harry.
He hesitated. “Actually, I—”
“Don’t be silly,” she said, voice a shade too sharp under the syrup. She kissed his cheek and turned him with practiced ease, facing Hermione as she did. “You two looked like you were having such a civil time.”
Harry gave Hermione a brief, unreadable glance, then excused himself with a muttered, “I’ll go check on Teddy.”
Ginny didn’t watch him leave. Her eyes were on Hermione now—tight, scrutinizing.
“I’m so glad you came,” Ginny said, voice as crisp as her pressed robes. “It means a lot to Harry. To both of us.”
Hermione gave a polite nod, trying not to feel the frost beneath the words. “Of course. Molly invited me personally.”
“She’d invite a Hungarian Horntail if it brought a casserole,” Ginny replied lightly, but her eyes didn’t crinkle when she smiled.
Hermione opened her mouth, then closed it. The weight between them had grown thick and invisible over the last year, threaded into every interaction. And Hermione couldn’t place when Ginny had stopped sounding like her friend and started sounding like… this.
Ginny stepped a little closer, still smiling. “We’re really happy, you know.”
Hermione blinked. “I didn’t say you weren’t.”
“I know. I just thought… maybe you should hear it. From me.” She shrugged, tone lilting. “Some things are better said out loud.”
Hermione’s stomach twisted.
It wasn’t what Ginny said.
It was the way she said it—like a warning wrapped in sugar.
Like she needed Hermione to remember her place, even if Hermione couldn’t quite remember why she’d ever stepped out of it.
She forced a smile. “I’m glad you’re happy, Ginny.”
Ginny tilted her head. “Of course you are.”
Hermione watched as Ginny strode away—head high, smile polished, movements clipped with that same unspoken sharpness that had haunted every conversation between them lately.
She exhaled slowly, forcing the knot in her throat back down where it belonged.
“You look like you could use rescuing,” came a warm, familiar voice.
Hermione turned to find Neville Longbottom, slightly flushed from dancing, his tie crooked and boutonnière half-wilted. He offered a sheepish grin and an outstretched hand.
“Oh, Merlin, yes,” she breathed, taking it.
Neville twirled her with all the grace of a well-meaning kneazle, but his sincerity made up for what he lacked in rhythm. “You alright?” he asked softly as they swayed in place.
Hermione hesitated. “Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“Ginny?” he guessed.
“Always,” she muttered.
Neville gave a sympathetic hum. “She’s been... different lately.”
Hermione nodded, grateful for the validation she hadn’t realized she needed.
As the song ended, another voice floated toward them.
“You two look like plants who forgot they’re meant to bloom together.”
Hermione turned with a small laugh. “Hello, Luna.”
Luna, barefoot and glowing in a pale blue dress that looked like it was stitched from moonlight and fog, smiled dreamily at her and Neville. Her eyes fixed on Hermione, then flicked toward the dance floor, where Harry now stood with Andromeda and little Teddy.
“I read your aura earlier,” Luna said serenely. “It was flickering.”
Hermione arched an eyebrow. “Flickering?”
“Like a candle trying to decide whether it’s meant to burn or be blown out.” She looked over at Harry again. “His does the same when you’re near.”
Hermione’s breath caught.
Neville coughed awkwardly. “Right. Well, I’m going to find more punch.”
He fled, leaving Hermione face-to-face with Luna’s starlit certainty.
“I think you were meant to choose each other,” Luna added softly. “Once. Maybe even more than once. But something got in the way.”
Hermione opened her mouth, ready to laugh it off—but the words wouldn’t come.
Because Luna’s gaze wasn’t playful. It was knowing.
And Hermione felt it again—that hollow space inside her, that unshakable sense that some part of her life had been written in invisible ink.
The music faded. Arthur clinked his glass with a fork, summoning the crowd’s attention as the fairy lights brightened above the garden. Harry stood beside him, adjusting his sleeves, looking just a bit too solemn for a celebration.
“Everyone,” Arthur called, “a few words from the groom-to-be.”
There was applause, cheers. Hermione didn’t join in.
Harry stepped forward. His hand brushed against the lectern like he wasn’t entirely sure it was real.
“Thanks, Mr. Weasley,” he said. “And thanks, everyone—for being here. It means more than I can say.”
His eyes scanned the crowd. And then—they found hers.
It hit like a blow.
He faltered. Just a blink. But Hermione felt it.
“I’ve been asked a lot lately what love looks like,” Harry continued, gaze still locked on hers. “And I’ve been thinking… maybe love isn’t the big things. Maybe it’s the quiet ones. The ones that live in memory more than action. The moments that shape you, even if you don’t realize they did until years later.”
Hermione couldn’t breathe.
Something behind her ribs pulled tight, like a violin string on the verge of snapping.
Harry’s voice dropped.
“Sometimes love is something you remember before you understand. Or something you feel before you can name it.”
Hermione’s chest went tight.
It wasn’t the words themselves. It was the way he said them—low and hesitant, like he was trying to speak through fog, or memory, or both. Like he was reaching for something he couldn’t quite see.
And it hit her—not as recognition, but as panic.
A sharp, aching lurch somewhere behind her ribs.
A sudden wrongness she couldn’t explain.
She turned before he finished, boots crunching against gravel as she walked. Fast. Past the crowd, past the lights and music and Ginny’s laughter trailing behind her like a hook.
She didn’t stop until the air was quiet again, until she reached the edge of the garden and stood alone beneath the willow tree, her breath catching in the stillness.
Because something in her had stirred awake.
And she didn’t understand it.
She didn’t want to.
Not love. Not longing.
Just… something ancient.
Something forgotten.
A pull in her bones. A whisper in her blood.
Like she’d left something behind in a memory she no longer had.
She pressed her fingers to her temple, trying to steady her breathing, trying to make sense of the sudden heat rising in her chest.
There was nothing between her and Harry. Not anymore. Not ever, really.
But as she stood there, trembling under the sway of the branches, Hermione Granger had the sinking, terrifying feeling that something in her story had been rewritten without her permission.
And whatever it was—
It had started to bleed back through.
Harry cleared his throat as he reached the final lines of his speech, but the words felt distant now—hollow, like echoes spoken in a room already emptied.
“…so here’s to love,” he said, voice quieter than before. “In all its strange, quiet forms. And to the people who help us find our way back to it.”
He raised his glass. The crowd clapped. Someone cheered. Molly dabbed at her eyes with a lace-edged handkerchief.
But his eyes were still on the path Hermione had taken, the one that disappeared behind the hedgerows and wildflowers at the edge of the garden.
She hadn’t stayed to hear the end.
She hadn’t looked back.
And for some reason, it hurt more than he expected.
Not because he wanted her attention. Not like that.
He missed her. That’s all. Her friendship. Her steadiness. The way she used to look at him like she knew what he was thinking before he said it.
They used to be inseparable. Then… they just weren’t.
And he couldn’t quite remember when that had started. Only that it had felt wrong ever since.
“Harry,” Ginny said, appearing at his side, fingers slipping around his arm. Her smile was bright for the crowd, but her grip was too tight.
He turned toward her, blinking back whatever strange fog had crept in. “Hey.”
“You were brilliant,” she said. “The speech. People loved it.”
“Thanks,” he said, offering a smile. “I kind of improvised.”
“I noticed,” she replied lightly, then leaned in and kissed him.
It wasn’t a bad kiss. It was practiced. Familiar.
And yet—his chest went hollow the moment her lips touched his.
There was no spark. No jolt. Just a sense of dissonance, like he was performing something rather than feeling it. Like the choreography of a dance he’d learned too quickly and too young.
Ginny pulled back, brows furrowing. “You didn’t kiss me back.”
“I did,” he said too quickly.
“No,” she said, eyes narrowing slightly. “You stood there.”
“I was thinking.”
“About Hermione?”
That caught him off guard. “What? No.”
Ginny crossed her arms. “You watched her the entire speech, Harry.”
“I was just surprised she left.”
“She barely talks to either of us anymore,” she said, voice tight. “Why do you care?”
“I don’t,” he replied—but it sounded weak, even to him.
Ginny shook her head and stepped back. “I’m not doing this tonight.”
“Doing what?” he asked, confused.
“This,” she snapped, gesturing vaguely between them. “Whatever this awkward, half-spoken thing is. I’m going to mingle. Smile. Pretend this is the happiest night of my life.”
She turned and walked off before he could respond.
Harry stood in place, heart thudding, face hot beneath the garden lights. Guests passed by, clapping him on the shoulder, raising glasses, offering congratulations. He nodded, smiled, thanked them.
But his gaze kept drifting—back to the trees.
Back to where Hermione had vanished.
And he couldn’t help the thought that slid in—quiet, traitorous:
It wasn’t always this hard with her.
Hermione Apparated just outside the wards of her flat, the pop of magic quickly swallowed by the hum of the city around her. The night was cool, quiet, the faint scent of rain lingering in the air as she stepped up the stairs to her door.
Inside, the space was just as she’d left it.
Orderly. Immaculate. Lifeless.
She shed her dress robes with a practiced motion, hanging them neatly in the small closet by the door before moving into the kitchen. She filled the kettle, set it on the stove, and stared at it without lighting the flame.
There was a low buzzing in her ears.
A weight she couldn’t quite shake.
She went through the motions—tea, pajamas, brushing her teeth, locking the windows—all on autopilot. Her mind should’ve been running through tomorrow’s work schedule. Meetings. Research. Her newest assignment: an artifact transferred from the Romanian Ministry. A relic of magical emotional theory—something with threads of memory tied into its framework.
It was her dream work.
And yet, she felt nothing but… hollow.
Her tea sat untouched on the nightstand as she slid into bed and pulled the quilt over her shoulders. The silence of the room was oppressive in a way it hadn’t been before. She shifted, stared up at the ceiling, her eyes tracing familiar cracks in the plaster.
She told herself it was just the party. The tension. Ginny. The weight of being reminded—again—that everything had moved on.
But that wasn’t it.
It was him.
The speech. The look. The way his words had struck some thread inside her and plucked it like a violin.
Her hand clenched around the edge of the blanket.
She’d pass his department tomorrow. As she always did.
Level Two, Magical Law Enforcement, on the way to Level Nine.
Every day, they passed like ghosts—her with a nod, him with a brief, polite smile, if that. No more coffee breaks. No debates in the Atrium. No shared glances over stacks of parchment.
It had become routine. Predictable.
Safe.
But tonight, the idea of walking past his door made her stomach twist.
Something had shifted.
She didn’t know what it was—only that it had teeth.
Hermione closed her eyes and willed herself to sleep, but the quiet pressed in around her like fog.
Chapter 2: Remembering
Chapter Text
Hermione arrived at the Ministry earlier than usual.
Not because she had pressing work. Not because she couldn’t sleep—which was true enough—but because she wanted to avoid him.
Avoid the weight of what had happened the night before. The echo of his voice still chasing her through her dreams. Love is something you remember before you understand. The line had looped over and over in her mind like a spell refusing to fade.
She stepped into the lift and pressed the glowing button for Level Nine. The Department of Mysteries. Her sanctuary. Her domain.
As the lift jolted and hummed downward, Hermione smoothed the front of her robes and tried not to think about how ridiculous it was—how someone she barely spoke to anymore could still twist her insides into something she didn’t have a name for.
The doors opened.
She stepped out—and immediately wished she hadn’t.
Across the polished corridor, Harry was turning to enter his office. His head lifted at the sound of the lift, and their eyes locked.
It lasted only a second. A heartbeat.
But it landed like a blow.
His mouth parted slightly—like he might say something—but he didn’t. He held her gaze, then gave a brief nod and turned into his office, the door clicking shut behind him.
Hermione stood frozen, pulse fluttering like a trapped bird.
That echo again.
Not a memory. Not quite.
Just… something shifting beneath the surface.
Like the floor of her world had tilted, just a little.
She turned on her heel and walked quickly toward the secure corridor of the Department of Mysteries, hoping her heart would calm down by the time she reached the archway.
Inside, the halls were dim, lined with shelves of enchanted objects and scrolls so ancient they breathed when touched. A tall man with tawny hair and ink-stained cuffs stood waiting near her workbench.
“You’re early,” said Thatcher Willoughby, one of the more tolerable Unspeakables and her partner on several recent magical theory reconstructions. He carried a floating case orbited by a faintly humming brass device.
“I needed the distraction,” Hermione replied, breath still slightly uneven.
“Perfect, then. The artifact arrived from Romania last night.” He gestured toward the case. “This is the Orrery of Echoes.”
The name alone sent a tingle down her spine.
It was beautiful in a strange, eerie way—an armillary sphere made of tarnished brass, its rings slowly rotating around a crystal core that glowed faintly blue. Small runes shimmered along the bands, constantly rearranging themselves. The air around it felt... charged.
“Tell me everything,” Hermione said, stepping closer.
Thatcher nodded, clearing his throat.
“Invented by Cyra Noxwell, a reclusive magical theorist from the 1600s. Obsessed with the metaphysical weight of emotional magic.”
he began, tone shifting into the cadence of someone reciting lore they find both unnerving and impressive. “Her theory was that emotion is the true source of magical power—and that particularly strong emotions could imprint themselves onto time and space, like magical fossils. The Orrery was her answer to that. A way to preserve and reveal emotionally charged events, even after the magic fades. It was used in both the Goblin Rebellions and the First Wizarding War by field teams trying to document magical trauma. But it was shelved after several reports of... unexpected consequences.”
Hermione tilted her head, eyes scanning the faint pulses of light within the device. “What kind of consequences?”
“Unstable projections. Emotional bleed. Users reliving moments they never personally experienced. One man claimed he fell in love with a witch who died a hundred years before he was born, just from witnessing the memory of her grief.”
Hermione arched a brow. “So it’s less a record, more... a resurrection.”
Thatcher gave a tight smile. “Exactly.”
She reached out slowly, fingers brushing just close enough to feel the energy humming off the rings. Her heart fluttered.
Emotion that lingers.
Magic that remembers.
And if strong enough... echoes that refuse to fade.
“Well,” she murmured, “let’s see what it has to say.”
The secure chamber hummed with low, ambient magic—the kind that made the hairs on Hermione’s arms rise just from stepping over the threshold. The air here was thick with the weight of memory, of magic too old to name and too dangerous to trust.
She placed the Orrery of Echoes on the central examination table, its concentric rings glinting faintly in the dim lighting. Even dormant, the device pulsed with quiet energy. As if waiting.
Hermione adjusted her gloves, steadied her breath, and began to speak.
“Cataloging Log 216-B,” she said aloud, activating the dictation charm. “Artifact designation: Orrery of Echoes. Source: Romanian Ministry of Magical Artifacts. Current status: stable, dormant rotation pattern observed.”
Her voice echoed softly in the chamber, even and clinical. Detached. She clung to the objectivity—it was safer that way.
As she began measuring the magical output and ring alignment, her eyes caught a slight misalignment in one of the rune clusters along the base—just barely out of place. A hair’s width, no more. But it was enough to itch at her curiosity.
She brought her wand forward and muttered a gentle correction charm, nudging the cluster into alignment.
That was her mistake.
The Orrery stilled.
Completely.
Then, like a breath inhaled too deeply, the rings began to spin. Slowly, then faster. A low thrumming filled the chamber. The core flared to life, glowing a deep amber-gold. Hermione stumbled back a step as a sudden chill passed over her.
Then—a pull.
A tug behind her navel, not unlike a Portkey, but softer. Deeper. Emotional.
The world around her blurred. The chamber faded into shadow. The hum of magic narrowed to a single heartbeat.
And then—
A hand.
Harry’s hand.
Reaching for her face. His palm cupping her cheek.
Her breath caught in her throat.
She could feel the rough calluses of his fingers. The hesitant way his thumb brushed against her skin, as if he didn’t know whether he had the right to touch her like that.
And the emotion—
It crashed into her like a tidal wave.
Grief. Fear. Devotion so strong it bordered on pain.
A quiet ache. A held breath. A moment suspended in the silence before a fall.
She gasped, staggered back—
And the Orrery went still.
The rings froze mid-rotation. The glow faded. The cold lifted.
Hermione stood motionless, one hand pressed to her cheek, the other gripping the edge of the table for balance. Her legs felt weak. Her heart thundered in her chest, impossibly loud in the return of silence.
Just a hand.
Just that impossible, gentle touch—
And the weight of everything that had come with it.
Her lips parted, but no words came. She swallowed hard.
That hadn’t been a dream.
A memory?
No. Impossible.
She would have remembered that. She would have known.
And it hadn’t been a hallucination.
It was him.
It was real.
She looked down at her parchment, but her notes swam before her eyes as her tears gathered, ready to spill over at any moment..
She reached for her quill with shaking hands.
Emotional imprint detected. Artifact triggered by minor rune correction. Projection incomplete. Emotional reaction: unstable.
She didn’t record the touch. Not yet.
Her heart was still racing.
Because if what the Orrery showed her was real—
Then something in her life had been taken.
And it had started to come back.
Harry’s office was warm and bright, the midmorning sun slanting in through the tall windows and casting soft gold across the stacks of parchment and case files scattered over his desk.
Ron sat casually in one of the visitor chairs, flipping through a Quidditch magazine and chewing on the end of a sugar quill he’d swiped from reception.
“You’re stalling,” Ron said.
Harry, standing behind his desk, glanced up from the report he’d been reading. “I’m finishing the report.”
“You’re rereading the same paragraph for the fourth time,” Ron replied, smirking. “Come on. You promised lunch. And I’m starving. Luna says if I eat one more bowl of pickled clabberts, she’s hexing me.”
Harry chuckled under his breath, rubbing the back of his neck. “Give me one minute.”
He moved around the desk, half-listening as Ron launched into a story about Luna’s latest pregnancy craving—something involving radish crisps and vinegar—but then—
It hit.
A sharp, invisible force seized Harry mid-step.
His foot caught the edge of the rug, and he staggered violently, one hand shooting out to brace himself on the desk. The other—clutched his chest.
The pain wasn’t sharp. It was heavy. Crushing.
Like something inside him had collapsed in on itself.
“Harry?” Ron’s voice cut through the haze.
Harry couldn’t answer. His knees buckled, and he dropped hard to the floor.
His breath came in shallow gasps. His pulse thundered in his ears. The pressure in his chest wasn’t just physical—it was emotional, so massive it felt like it was breaking something inside him.
Then the image came.
Blinding. Raw.
His hand—on her cheek.
Hermione.
He could feel it. The curve of her cheek in his palm.
The softness of her skin.
The tremble in her breath.
And the emotion—Gods, the emotion.
Not desire. Not fear.
Something deeper. Something final.
His hand slid from the desk as he crumpled fully to the floor.
Ron was on his knees beside him now, voice cracking with panic. “Harry? Oi—HARRY! Someone help! We need a Healer!”
But Harry didn’t hear him. Not really.
He was still there, wherever there was. Stuck in a feeling he didn’t understand, drowning in a memory he didn’t know he’d lost.
The scratch of Hermione’s quill echoed in the silent chamber, her notes growing more fragmented the longer she stared at the dormant Orrery. The device hadn’t stirred again. It sat motionless on the table, its rings still and harmless—as if it hadn’t just reached into her chest and pulled something raw and impossible to the surface.
She didn’t know how long she’d been frozen there, writing but not reading, breathing but not moving.
The air shifted.
A sudden spark of magic filled the room—urgent, familiar.
A streak of silver light burst through the stone wall and materialized into Ron’s Patronus—a lumbering, concerned terrier with wide eyes and a voice that cracked with panic:
“Hermione—it’s Harry. He collapsed. We’re at St. Mungo’s. Please—come now.”
The message ended before she could process it. The terrier vanished in a shimmer of light, leaving her staring at the empty space it had occupied as a cold wave of dread crashed over her.
Collapsed.
Her hands trembled violently as she shoved back from the workbench, the stool scraping against the floor. The protective wards around the Orrery flared briefly as she moved, but she ignored them—nearly tripping over her own feet in her rush toward the corridor.
She didn’t stop to grab her bag.
She didn’t think.
She only knew that Harry—Harry—was in trouble. And her chest still ached from the ghost of his hand on her cheek.
The crack of Apparition outside the emergency wing of St. Mungo’s was sharp, and Hermione’s heart pounded so violently she could barely hear her own breath. She pushed through the entrance, scanning the corridor with wild eyes.
She spotted Ron near the reception desk—pale, shaken, pacing like a man barely holding himself together.
“Ron!” she called, already rushing toward him.
His head snapped up. Relief crossed his face, flickering like a match—and then extinguished by the heavy cloud of fear hanging over him. “Thank Merlin,” he muttered. “He’s in evaluation—spell damage ward. They—they don’t know what happened.”
Before she could answer, a sharp voice cut across the space.
“What are you doing here?”
Hermione turned.
Ginny.
She stood a few feet away, arms crossed, jaw clenched, red hair pinned up, though several strands had come loose. Her eyes—bloodshot, hard—were locked on Hermione like she was an intruder.
Hermione hesitated. “Ron sent for me.”
Ginny scoffed. “You’ve barely spoken to me. Or Harry. In years. Now suddenly you show up the second he gets hurt?”
“I’m here because he’s my friend,” Hermione said carefully, but her voice wavered. “And because I care.”
Ginny stepped forward. “You’ve made it perfectly clear you don’t want to be part of his life anymore. So why now? Why pretend?”
“That’s enough,” Ron said, stepping between them. “She has every right to be here.”
Ginny’s nostrils flared. “He’s my fiancé, Ron.”
“And she’s his best friend,” Ron snapped. “Or she was, before everything went sideways. Don’t do this right now. Not when he’s—”
He broke off, raking a hand through his hair.
Hermione took a trembling breath. “What happened, Ron? Just… tell me everything.”
He nodded, grounding himself again. “One second we were talking about lunch—just normal stuff—and then… he crumpled. Clutched his chest. Like something invisible hit him. Hard.”
Hermione’s blood ran cold.
Ron went on, eyes locked on hers. “He dropped like a rock. I thought it was a heart attack or a curse, I didn’t know. He couldn't speak. But when I got to him, he whispered your name.”
Ginny stilled.
Hermione’s breath hitched. “What?”
“He said your name,” Ron repeated, softer now. “Just once. Hermione. Then he passed out.”
Ginny’s face had gone still, her expression unreadable—but her arms tightened across her chest. Her jaw twitched.
Hermione didn’t know what to say. She only knew the thundering in her chest matched the shaking in her hands.
He felt it too.
Whatever the Orrery had shown her—Harry had felt it too.
Before the silence could stretch too long, a nurse pushed through the double doors of the evaluation wing.
“Ron Weasley? Hermione Granger?”
They both turned at once.
“He’s awake,” the nurse said kindly. “You can see him now.”
Hermione stepped forward, but Ginny moved quickly, placing herself between her and the door.
“I’ll go first,” she said tightly, not waiting for permission.
She disappeared into the ward before either of them could speak.
Ron glanced at Hermione. “You okay?”
She nodded—though it was a lie. “No. But I need to see him.”
The hospital room was dim, warded for privacy, with muted lighting and the quiet hum of monitoring charms in the air. Harry sat propped up against crisp white pillows, his skin pale against the green of the bed linens, the edges of his hair damp with sweat.
He looked tired. Disoriented.
But alive.
The door creaked open, and Ginny stepped in, closing it softly behind her.
“Hey,” she said gently, a bouquet of daisies clutched awkwardly in her hands. “Thought you might want some color in here.”
Harry blinked at her, his expression unreadable. “Thanks.”
She crossed the room and placed the flowers on the side table. “You scared the hell out of us,” she said lightly. “One second I’m trying on wedding gowns with Mum and the next Ron is summoning me screaming like you’d been hit by a bludger.”
“I don’t really remember collapsing,” Harry said, voice hoarse. “It’s all kind of fuzzy.”
Ginny sat on the edge of the bed, her hand reaching for his.
He didn’t pull away—but he didn’t close his fingers around hers either.
“They said there’s no sign of a current curse or hex. No poisons. Maybe some magical interference from some old spells or things you came in contact with at the ministry. Nothing physically wrong.” She smiled a little too hard. “Just you being dramatic, I guess.”
Harry didn’t smile back.
There was a long pause. Then:
“Where’s Hermione?”
Ginny froze.
Her hand stiffened on the blanket.
“She’s here?” he added, more quietly. “I thought I heard someone say—”
“She showed up not long after you were brought in,” Ginny interrupted, her voice tight. “Ron summoned her.”
Harry’s brow furrowed. “Good.”
That single word—good—landed like a stone between them.
Ginny stood abruptly, walking a few paces toward the end of the bed, arms crossing. “Funny, isn’t it? How she never visits. Never writes. But the second something happens to you—suddenly she’s here.”
Harry blinked, confused. “She’s still one of my closest friends.”
Ginny turned to face him, something brittle behind her eyes. “Is she? Because it certainly hasn’t felt like that these last few years. You barely talk.”
He hesitated. “That’s not entirely true.”
“Isn’t it?” she said sharply. “You barely spoke to me last night—until you were looking at her. Giving that speech like—like it was for someone else entirely.”
The room pulsed with silence.
Harry sat back against the pillows, rubbing a hand over his face. “Ginny, I didn’t mean—”
“She left before you even finished,” she snapped. “She always leaves.”
“I don’t know why you’re so angry,” he said tiredly. “Nothing happened.”
Ginny’s laugh was humorless. “That’s the problem, Harry. Something always almost does.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
“You say nothing’s happened, but you’ve looked at her like that since we were teenagers.”
Harry flinched. “Gin—”
She straightened, chin high. “Get some rest. I’ll give you some space.”
And without another word, she turned and walked out.
Hermione sat rigid in one of the plastic chairs lining the corridor outside the spell damage ward, hands folded tightly in her lap. Her foot tapped an unconscious rhythm against the tile, heart still pounding from the moment Ron’s Patronus had reached her.
She didn’t know how long Ginny had been in there.
Only that the longer it dragged on, the tighter her chest felt.
Then the door opened.
Ginny stepped out, her expression unreadable but her eyes storm-bright. She spotted Hermione instantly, and whatever brittle calm she’d managed inside shattered.
“What, still here?” she snapped, voice low and vicious. “Haven’t you done enough?”
Hermione rose, pulse spiking. “I’m here because I care. Whether you like it or not.”
Ginny scoffed. “You care? That’s rich, coming from someone who’s barely spoken to him in three years. You disappear, and then show up the second he ends up in a hospital bed like you’ve got some kind of claim—”
“I never said I had a claim,” Hermione cut in, heat rising in her voice. “But I didn’t need permission to come when a friend collapsed.”
“You’re not just a friend, and we both know it,” Ginny hissed. “Even if you pretend not to.”
Hermione’s breath caught, fury and confusion tightening her throat. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ron stepped between them, again. “Enough! Both of you.”
He looked at Ginny first. “This isn’t helping anyone—least of all Harry.”
Ginny’s lips pressed into a thin line. She stared at Hermione for a beat longer, jaw trembling, and then turned on her heel without another word, stalking down the corridor and out of sight.
The silence she left behind was suffocating.
Ron looked back at Hermione, his voice softer now. “Go in. He asked for you.”
Hermione swallowed hard and nodded, her hands suddenly clammy. She pushed open the door and stepped inside.
The lights were low. The room smelled faintly of potions and lavender antiseptic. Harry lay propped up against the pillows, his face drawn, but his eyes alert.
He looked at her the moment she stepped in.
Hermione stopped just inside the door, careful to keep her distance.
“I can come back,” she offered, voice barely above a whisper. “If you’d rather rest.”
Harry shook his head slowly. “No. Stay. Just for a minute.”
She nodded, stepping no further.
Neither of them spoke for a long beat.
Then—softly, uncertainly—he asked, “Did you feel anything?”
Hermione’s heart skipped, but her expression stayed still.
“No,” she lied. “Just concern. When Ron said you’d collapsed.”
Harry looked down at his hands. “I’ve been feeling… off. For a while. But today was different. It hit like a wave. Not pain exactly. More like—something I was supposed to remember, but couldn’t.”
Hermione didn’t breathe.
“And then,” he continued, voice barely above a whisper, “I asked for you. I don’t even know why. It just felt… important.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
The space between them felt like a chasm.
“Well,” she managed at last, folding her hands together. “I’m glad you’re alright. That’s what matters.”
Harry nodded, watching her closely, like he was trying to read something that wasn’t written on her face.
She took a step back toward the door. “Get some rest, Harry.”
“Thanks for coming,” he said.
She hesitated, hand on the doorframe, then forced a polite smile. “Of course. Get well soon.”
And then she left—before the truth in her chest could rise and betray her.
The door clicked softly shut behind Hermione, and the room fell still again.
Harry exhaled, leaning back into the pillows. His chest felt tight—but not from the earlier collapse. This was different. Like something old and familiar was pressing just beneath his ribs, waiting to be acknowledged.
There was a knock, followed by the door creaking open again. Ron stepped inside, carrying two coffees and a half-eaten pumpkin pasty in a paper wrapper.
He took one look at Harry and frowned. “She been in already?”
Harry nodded.
Ron offered him the coffee and slid into the chair beside the bed with a grunt. “Didn’t go great, huh?”
“No,” Harry said quietly.
Ron didn’t push. He sipped his coffee and let the silence settle.
After a while, Harry broke it. “She’s hiding something.”
Ron blinked. “Hermione?”
Harry nodded slowly. “I know that look. She kept her distance. Was too careful with her words. Polite. Controlled. She’s scared—and not just because I collapsed.”
Ron looked away, chewing his bottom lip. “Yeah. I noticed it too. She was pale when she got here. Jumpier than usual.”
Harry ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “I can’t shake it, Ron. It feels like something’s off. Between us. Like something happened and I just… missed it. Or forgot it.”
Ron was quiet for a long beat. Then, softly: “You think it’s just you?”
Harry looked over.
“I’ve felt it too,” Ron admitted. “For years. Like one day everything between you two just… frayed. And none of us noticed it until it had already unraveled.”
Harry stared at the wall, jaw tight. “Do you know what it was? What drove the wedge between us?”
Ron didn’t answer immediately. He shifted, sat forward, elbows on his knees.
“I wish I did,” he said. “You and Hermione—you were always in sync. Even when things were rough. But after the war… something changed. She got quiet. Guarded. Around you.”
Harry’s brow furrowed. “I thought maybe I said something. Or didn’t say something.”
“I don’t think it was that,” Ron said carefully. “If anything, I think it was something she was trying not to say.”
Harry let that sink in.
He remembered the way Hermione had looked at him just now. The sadness in her eyes. The way her voice trembled when she lied.
Because it was a lie. He knew it. He could feel it.
“She said she didn’t feel anything,” he murmured. “When I collapsed.”
Ron glanced at him. “Do you believe her?”
Harry met his eyes. “No.”
Chapter 3: The Fractures Between
Chapter Text
The quiet in the Department of Mysteries wasn’t peace—it was pressure. A constant, pulsing hum of magic and half-formed thoughts that clung to the air like mist. Hermione barely noticed anymore. It had become background noise, the same way exhaustion had.
She hadn’t spoken to Harry since the hospital.
It had been four days. Long enough for the Healers to discharge him. Long enough for the gossip to start in the Ministry halls. Long enough for her to dive headfirst into her work and pretend none of it was unraveling.
But the pretending was getting harder.
The Orrery of Echoes sat inert on the center table of her workroom, rings still, crystal core dulled to an opalescent sheen. She’d catalogued every rune, cross-referenced three centuries of magical theory, traced Cyra Noxwell’s writings back through obscure Eastern European archives—but none of it explained what she’d seen. What she’d felt.
Worse—it hadn’t stopped there.
The cracks were growing.
Tiny fissures in her mind.
Flashes.
A hand brushing hers.
Her own voice saying something she didn’t remember ever saying: "Don’t go yet."
The scent of pine and firelight.
A pressure in her chest that bloomed whenever she walked past Level Two and felt Harry’s presence on the other side of the corridor.
She’d taken to leaving early or staying late to avoid him.
Today, she hadn’t left her workroom in nearly ten hours.
A gentle tap at the door startled her. A folded piece of parchment slid underneath.
Hermione picked it up, brow furrowed.
The handwriting was familiar—looped and sharp.
Ginny.
She opened it with careful fingers.
Hermione,
I hope you're well. I'm writing with an update about the wedding. After careful consideration, we’ve decided to scale back the guest list to immediate family only. A more intimate affair felt right for us.
Regretfully, this means your invitation has been withdrawn.
Thank you for understanding.
All the best,
Ginny
Hermione stared at the letter for a long time.
Not angry. Not surprised. Just… numb.
The phrasing was polite. Formal. Clinical.
But the message was sharp enough to cut.
“Emphasis on family,” Hermione muttered, the words bitter on her tongue.
She folded the letter once, twice, and set it aside without tearing it. She wouldn’t give Ginny the satisfaction.
But as she turned back to the Orrery, something in her chest cracked again—deeper this time. A cold ache, like loss wrapped in fog.
Because even if she didn’t remember what was missing, she could feel it now.
Like a phantom limb.
Harry sat at his desk in his flat, the remains of dinner pushed aside, untouched. The flat was quiet—too quiet. Even the London street noise felt distant, like the world outside had muffled itself just enough for him to notice the silence inside.
He stared down at a piece of parchment in his hands, his own handwriting blurred at the edges.
A note he’d written an hour ago—and had no memory of writing.
Her voice. I can’t place the words, but the sound of it—like wind across water. She was crying. Or I was. Or both.
He swallowed and dropped the parchment on the growing pile in his drawer, then opened the small, leather-bound journal he kept hidden in the back corner.
It had started two nights ago.
Cracks.
Flashes of things he didn’t remember living—but knew, somehow, as intimately as the inside of his own mind. The scent of Hermione’s hair. The curve of her cheek under his palm. The way her voice softened when she said his name.
They weren’t dreams.
Not really.
They were too sharp. Too emotional. Like echoes of something real—but buried.
He pressed his pen to the paper and wrote:
June 15th — Fragment during sleep. Her hand in mine. Cold. Night air. Tent? Firelight? Felt like goodbye.
He exhaled and leaned back just as the front door clicked open.
Ginny stepped inside, arms full of parchments, her cheeks still flushed from Apparating.
Harry closed the journal quickly, slipped it into the bottom drawer of his desk, and locked it with a flick of his wand.
“Hey,” she said, trying for breezy, but there was a sharpness under her voice. “Sorry I’m late. Mum had me redoing the seating chart again.”
Harry nodded absently, rubbing the back of his neck.
Ginny dropped her bag onto the armchair. “Actually, I was thinking... maybe we shouldn’t do a seating chart.”
Harry looked up. “What?”
“For the wedding,” she said, walking into the kitchen. “I mean—why bother? If we’re scaling it down.”
“Scaling it down?” he repeated.
She returned with a glass of water. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking a lot, and I just... I want something simple. Private. Close family. Nothing overwhelming.”
Harry blinked, confused. “That’s not what we talked about.”
“Well, it’s what I want now,” Ginny snapped. Then quickly added, “And I think you’ll feel better with something quieter too, given what happened.”
He frowned. “What does that mean?”
She shrugged. “You collapsed, Harry. Something’s clearly off with you. The last thing you need is stress.”
He studied her carefully. “Is this about Hermione?”
Ginny stilled.
Her silence was answer enough.
Harry leaned forward, bracing his forearms against his knees. “You took her off the guest list, didn’t you?”
Ginny’s jaw clenched. “She’s not family.”
“She was,” he said softly. “She still is, in every way that matters.”
“Well, I don’t want her there.”
“Why?” he asked.
When she didn’t answer, his voice sharpened. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“I’m not doing this with you again,” Ginny snapped, grabbing her bag. “I’m moving the date up. And we’re scaling the guest list back. It’s done.”
She turned and strode to the door.
Harry stood. “You can’t just cut people out of our lives because they make you uncomfortable.”
Ginny paused, hand on the doorknob. “I’m cutting her out because she doesn’t belong in this part of your life anymore. Whether you admit it or not, she hasn’t for a long time.”
And with that, she slammed the door behind her.
Harry stood still for a long moment, then turned and walked back to his desk. His hand hovered over the locked drawer, heart pounding.
She hasn’t belonged in this part of your life for a long time.
But the fragments said otherwise.
He unlocked the drawer, opened the journal, and wrote:
June 15th (evening) — Ginny lied. She knows more than she’s saying.
Hermione’s name pulls at something in my chest. Like I’ve forgotten how to breathe.
He closed the book and stared at the swirling night sky beyond the window.
Something was missing.
And he was going to find it.
The lamps in the Department of Mysteries flickered low, casting long shadows across the parchment-strewn workbench. The Orrery sat in its protective case at the center of the room—quiet, unassuming. As if it hadn’t reached into Hermione’s chest and unraveled something she couldn’t name.
Hermione’s eyes burned as she turned another page in the brittle, leather-bound journal she’d borrowed from the restricted archives. Cyra Noxwell’s notes. Erratic. Obsessive. But brilliant.
She traced her finger under a line that sent a shiver down her spine.
“Emotional resonance may be heightened when the subject interacts with a personal anchor—an object bound to a fragmented memory through sensory familiarity. If the Orrery is exposed to the object, it may trace and reconstruct the echo.”
Hermione’s breath caught.
Anchors.
Not just locations.
Objects.
She flipped back a few pages, scanning for more. Cyra had been experimenting with wand cores, love letters, hair combs, broken jewelry—anything that had once been saturated in feeling. The echoes were more vivid, more complete when tied to something real. Tangible. Something held at the moment the memory was imprinted.
Hermione stood abruptly, moving to the cabinet where she kept the smaller magical analysis tools. Her hands trembled slightly as she set up the resonance reader, fingers moving on autopilot.
Because she had objects.
Not many, but a few.
All of them touched by memory.
All of them possible keys.
And if she could anchor the Orrery to one of them…
Maybe it could show her the full truth.
Her fingers hovered above the page as she reread Cyra’s last scrawl:
“What is hidden in the heart will always find its way back to the surface—if you offer it something to hold onto.”
Hermione exhaled, the air shaking in her lungs.
Tomorrow. She would try it tomorrow.
Because the fragments were getting louder. And if she didn’t piece them together soon, she was
afraid they would start breaking her apart.
Chapter 4: The things we don't say
Chapter Text
Ron and Luna’s cottage was cozy in the way only a place full of magic and love could be. The walls were uneven, the shelves crowded with strange artifacts—plants that glowed, charms that hummed—but it was warm, glowing from within, and smelled faintly of cinnamon, roasted vegetables, and something floral that might have been enchanted tea.
Hermione stood near the dining table, carefully arranging the wine glasses as Luna floated the bread basket into place. She felt calm enough—on the surface.
But the second Ginny and Harry stepped through the door, the tension settled into Hermione’s shoulders like a second skin.
Ginny’s smile was tight. Harry’s was polite.
And Hermione’s, as always, was practiced.
“Looks amazing, Luna,” Ginny said as she removed her coat and barely spared Hermione a glance.
“Thank you. I used mugwort instead of basil. It was whispering to me this morning.” Luna beamed, hands folded neatly over her stomach, now visibly rounded with her pregnancy.
Ron clapped Harry on the shoulder. “Come on, mate, save me from talking to the furniture again.”
They all settled around the table—flickering candlelight, clinking silverware, and a silence that cracked just beneath the surface.
Hermione tried not to notice the way Ginny kept one hand on Harry’s arm, as though to tether him physically, or the way Harry’s eyes kept drifting to his plate.
Halfway through the meal, Harry cleared his throat, glancing toward Hermione. “Hey, I, uh…” He looked uncomfortable. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry. About the wedding.”
Hermione looked up.
“We—Ginny and I—we had to scale it down. She wanted to keep it family only.”
Ginny didn’t look up as she added flatly, “It’s nothing personal. Just family.”
Ron gave a sharp little laugh and raised his glass. “Since when is Cho Chang’s second cousin family?”
Ginny shot him a glare that could’ve peeled paint.
Hermione smiled, even as something inside her twisted.
“It’s all right,” she said, voice soft and even. Then she turned to Harry, her eyes meeting his. “I understand. I haven’t been family for a long time.”
The words landed like a dropped glass. The entire table fell silent.
Even Luna paused, her fork halfway to her mouth.
Harry’s throat bobbed. Ginny said nothing.
Ron looked like he wanted to kick himself under the table.
Hermione just took a sip of wine and asked Luna about the chamomile flowers blooming in the back garden.
Later, after dessert, Ginny stayed practically glued to Harry’s side while he helped Ron put away leftovers. Hermione slipped into the kitchen to assist Luna, grateful for the quiet.
She passed dishes to Luna, who charmed them into the sink with a flick of her wand.
“I’m sorry for tonight,” Hermione murmured after a pause. “That got... heavier than I meant.”
Luna didn’t respond immediately. She dried a cup with a dishtowel shaped like a hedgehog and placed it gently in the cupboard.
Then she said, in that same airy, distant voice, “Are you dreaming in echoes again?”
Hermione froze.
“Luna…”
“I can always tell,” Luna said, as if commenting on the weather. “You carry it around your eyes. Like you’re living in a memory that won’t settle.”
Hermione turned away. “It’s just… work stress.”
“I don’t think so,” Luna replied gently. “I remember the night before the battle. When we were all camped outside the forest line. I went looking for Neville. But I saw you and Harry instead.”
Hermione’s stomach dropped.
“You didn’t see me,” Luna continued, her voice barely above a whisper. “But I saw you. The way you held him. The way he touched your face.” She paused, then added, “I always wondered if you both decided to forget it.”
Hermione didn’t breathe.
Luna looked over and smiled softly, too wise for her age. “But magic remembers. Even if we don’t.”
It hit him like a lurch.
One moment Harry was setting down his glass, laughing weakly at something Ron said—trying, trying to pretend that everything was normal.
The next, the floor tilted beneath him.
His chest tightened.
His breath caught.
A flash behind his eyes—sharp and immediate.
Snow.
A tent flap shifting in the wind.
Hermione’s voice—choked, soft—saying, “Don’t go.”
His hand on her face.
His lips just inches away from hers.
He staggered back a step, eyes unfocused, heart racing like he’d been yanked through time.
“Harry?” Ginny’s voice cut through the fog, sharp with panic. “Harry, what is it? What’s wrong?”
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t.
She reached for his arm, but the moment her fingers touched his sleeve, he recoiled—visibly, violently.
“Don’t touch me.”
The room went still.
Ginny’s hand dropped as though burned, her eyes wide. “Harry—what the hell—?”
He was breathing hard now, like he’d just sprinted miles. His eyes darted to the doorway—
—and landed on her.
Hermione.
Frozen in the front entrance. Her coat was half-on, her scarf hanging loose around her shoulders. She must have been on her way out.
But now… now she stood still as stone.
Their eyes locked.
She didn’t move. But he saw it—the tremble in her hands as she clenched them at her sides. The same look from the hospital. The same weight in her eyes.
She felt it too.
Neither of them said a word.
The others spoke in background noise—Ginny snapping Harry’s name, Ron asking what was going on, Luna calling for a glass of water—but Harry heard none of it.
Because in that single glance, something passed between him and Hermione.
Something silent. Heavy. Known.
And it felt like the beginning of the truth breaking open.
Hermione didn’t remember half the Apparition back to the Ministry.
Her hands were shaking so hard she nearly splinched herself.
She arrived just outside the Department’s warded entrance, breath visible in the cool, magically-sealed corridor. It was well past midnight. The torches lining the hall burned low and blue, casting long shadows over the stone floor. Most of the Ministry was asleep.
But the Department of Mysteries never truly slept.
She pressed her hand to the seal and murmured the password under her breath. The doors unlocked with a low click, and she pushed through them like a woman possessed.
The echo of her boots against the floor followed her down the corridor. She didn’t slow. Her heart was pounding so loudly in her ears it was hard to think. Her fingers trembled with adrenaline as she threw open the door to her workroom.
The chamber greeted her in silence.
Cool, dark, waiting.
She rushed inside and went straight to the secured compartment beneath the main table. Her wand trembled as she released the locking wards. A faint pulse of magic shimmered as the protective stasis broke.
The Orrery of Echoes sat inside, still and beautiful, its brass rings dull in the low light.
She lifted it with both hands and set it onto the table’s center disc. The metal was cold beneath her fingers.
Then she turned to her desk.
Her breath hitched as she opened the lowest drawer and pulled out a small, worn box—no larger than a shoebox, wrapped in an old Gryffindor scarf faded with age.
Inside was a small silver button, tarnished at the edges. Plain. Ordinary.
Except it wasn’t.
It had come off Harry’s cloak the night before the Battle of Hogwarts—when he’d thrown it around her shoulders by the fire because she wouldn’t stop shivering. She had charmed it to shrink and keep it in her pocket for luck, though she’d never admitted that to anyone. She’d meant to give it back.
She never had.
It was stupid. Sentimental.
But her fingers curled around it like it was sacred.
Her voice wavered as she spoke the activation incantation, setting the Orrery’s rings into motion.
"Resonare Cordis… fragmentum anchora."
The rings hummed. The crystal glowed faint gold.
Hermione placed the button at the center.
The Orrery reacted immediately.
The air grew cold.
The rings spun faster, aligning around the anchor like it had found its mark.
The crystal flared.
And Hermione’s heart lodged in her throat as the room began to change.
The smell of fire. The distant sound of wind through canvas. The soft thrum of breath and a heartbeat that wasn’t hers.
She wasn’t alone.
The past was waking up.
The room disappeared around her.
The Orrery’s crystal glowed brighter—not just light, but memory, spilling across the chamber like golden mist. The rings rotated with purpose, steady and rhythmic like a heartbeat. Hermione felt her feet leave the floor—not literally, but in that strange, disembodied way the Pensieve sometimes made her feel, like drifting into a moment instead of watching it.
The cold air hit her first.
The scene took shape around her—a clearing in the woods, deep in the shadows just outside the Forbidden Forest. The night before the final battle.
A campfire burned low, its embers pulsing weakly in the dark. She sat near it—her younger self, hunched in a too-large cloak, rubbing her hands together. Harry stood just behind her, pacing. He looked drawn, his face pale and jaw tight.
Hermione felt the echo’s weight in her chest before the memory even began to move.
This was real.
This had happened.
The younger Hermione spoke first.
“You don’t have to do this alone.”
Her voice was soft, barely audible. She didn’t look at him. Just stared into the fire.
Harry stopped pacing, watching her. The tension in his shoulders unraveled—not completely, but enough.
“I don’t know how to ask you to stay,” he said, voice raw. “I think if I do, I’ll break.”
Hermione stood slowly. Turned toward him.
“I was never going to leave,” she said. “Not really.”
He stepped closer. Close enough to touch.
He lifted his hand and brushed her cheek, thumb grazing just under her eye. She didn’t flinch. She leaned into it. Their foreheads nearly touched. The firelight danced along the sharp planes of his face.
The intimacy of the moment bloomed—love and grief and the aching knowledge that it could all end tomorrow.
The memory shimmered—edges unstable, flickering like candlelight in a breeze.
And then, it cut out.
The Orrery let out a low whine as the rings jerked, then slowed.
The projection collapsed.
The golden light faded.
Hermione stood alone again in the dark, chest heaving, hand still trembling from where she’d reached out during the vision.
Her knees nearly gave out.
It was real.
It had always been real.
They had stood in that clearing and almost said the things they were never allowed to say.
She didn’t remember it happening.
But her heart did.
Harry shot upright in bed, sweat slicking his skin, breath coming in sharp gasps.
The room was dark, the sheets twisted around him, the air too warm. Ginny still and asleep curled on her side, facing away from him.
His hand was still stretched out in front of him, fingers curled as if reaching for something—someone.
The firelight still danced behind his eyelids.
Her voice still echoed in his mind.
“I was never going to leave.”
His heart pounded against his ribs.
He’d seen it.
He’d lived it.
The chill. The fire. Her breath fogging in the cold.
His hand against her cheek.
He dragged in a shaky breath, pressed both hands to his face, and let out a broken whisper.
“What the hell is happening to me?”
But deep down, beneath the confusion and the fear—
He already knew the answer.
Chapter 5: The missing hours
Chapter Text
The midday sun streamed through the tall windows of the little bistro Luna liked just off Diagon Alley. Its charm was undeniable—floating flower petals in the water pitchers, sugar cubes that rearranged themselves into runes when dropped into tea, and chairs that subtly shifted to improve posture without making a fuss of it.
Hermione sat across from Ron and Luna, her spoon barely skimming the surface of her soup. The scent of rosemary and leek rose from the bowl, but she hadn’t taken more than two bites.
Ron noticed.
“You look knackered,” he said bluntly, tearing a chunk of bread in half. “Have you even slept?”
Hermione stirred her soup and gave him a tired smile. “Some.”
“Some?” Ron snorted. “That’s code for no.”
“She’s been flickering,” Luna added gently, peering at Hermione through narrowed eyes. “Like candlelight when there’s a storm coming.”
Hermione blinked. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means you’re not shielding yourself well,” Luna said, brushing her hand over her rounded belly. “You’re leaking something. Something old.”
Hermione exhaled, setting her spoon down. “I didn’t plan on saying anything, but…”
She looked between them—at Ron, still half-covered in crumbs and concern, and at Luna, calm and steady in her peculiar, unnerving way.
“I think there are parts of my memory that are missing.”
Ron stopped chewing. “What?”
“Not big gaps. Just… slivers. Moments I can’t place. Emotions that come out of nowhere. Dreams that feel more like memories.”
She leaned forward, voice low. “And it started getting worse after I activated the artifact.”
“The Orrery?” Luna asked quietly.
Hermione nodded.
“I anchored it to something last night,” she said. “A button. From Harry’s cloak—the night before the Battle of Hogwarts.”
Ron’s eyes widened slightly, but he didn’t interrupt.
“I saw us,” Hermione continued. “Not here. Then. A fire. A clearing. He touched my face. We… we were about to kiss. And it wasn’t a vision, it wasn’t fantasy—it was a memory. One I don’t remember ever having.”
Luna’s expression didn’t change. If anything, it softened.
Ron sat back in his chair, clearly rattled. “Bloody hell.”
“I think it was taken,” Hermione said softly. “Not forgotten. Not repressed. Erased. And the Orrery’s bringing it back.”
For a long time, no one spoke.
Then Ron cleared his throat. “So… does Harry know?”
Hermione hesitated. “Not exactly. But… I think he’s feeling it too.”
Luna sipped her tea, then said, “Maybe it’s time you stop trying to carry the truth alone.”
Hermione stared into her untouched soup, heart thudding.
Because she wasn’t sure what frightened her more—what she was remembering…
Or what Harry might remember next.
The late afternoon sun slanted across the shelves in Harry’s office, casting golden shadows over parchment stacks and a neglected pile of interdepartmental memos. The Ministry hummed faintly beyond the glass, but inside, the world was still.
Harry sat at his desk, brow furrowed, pen in hand.
His journal lay open, filled with chaotic, scribbled notes from the past few nights. He kept returning to the same dream—the campfire, the cold, Hermione’s voice in the dark. He’d written it down three times now, and it never changed.
He knew a dream when he had one.
This wasn’t that.
Across the desk, a stack of parchment sat untouched. Ginny’s wedding lists, neatly organized in her tidy, determined hand. Seating charts. Charm options for floating lanterns. Scripted vows she wanted his opinion on.
He hadn’t read a single one.
A soft knock rapped at the door.
Before he could answer, it opened—Ron stepped in, Luna floating quietly behind him, her hair catching the light like a net of starlight.
“Thought we’d check on you,” Ron said, holding up a takeaway cup. “Brought coffee. You look like you’ve been dueling with your own thoughts.”
Harry offered a tired half-smile. “Something like that.”
Luna drifted toward the nearest shelf, fingers trailing along a stack of dusty files like she could hear them whisper.
Ron took a seat. “You missed lunch.”
“I figured,” Harry said. “How was Hermione?”
Ron glanced at Luna. “Tense. Quiet.”
“She’s flickering,” Luna murmured.
Harry turned to her. “You said that before. What does it mean?”
Luna tilted her head. “When someone walks through memories they don’t know they’re carrying, it makes their light tremble. Like the past is trying to push through the skin.”
Harry blinked, trying to translate it into something more concrete.
Ron sighed. “Don’t try too hard to make sense of it, mate. She’s usually right. Even when she sounds like a wind chime having a breakdown.”
Luna smiled serenely. “It’s not just her, you know. You’re flickering too.”
Harry stared at her.
“I see it,” Luna said softly, her fingers drifting through the air near his shoulder as though tracing something invisible. “Right here. Like something’s clinging to you.”
He swallowed hard, his heartbeat ticking louder in his ears.
“I’ve been…” He paused, searching for the right word. “Remembering things. Or—thinking I am.”
Ron leaned forward, brow furrowed. “Voldemort?”
Harry shook his head. “No. Nothing like that. At least, I don’t think so.” He glanced down at the open pages of his journal. “They don’t feel like dreams. They feel real. Like memories I should have. But there’s nothing solid—just… gaps. Like something’s missing.”
Neither Ron nor Luna replied. They didn’t need to.
A few minutes later, they made their goodbyes, Luna with her usual floaty calm, Ron with a lingering glance that held more concern than words.
The door clicked shut behind them.
Harry sat back down at his desk.
The room was quiet again—just him, his journal, and the unopened pile of Ginny’s wedding plans.
He stared at the parchment, the elegant swirls of ink, the meticulous detail of it all.
He should’ve felt excited. Grateful. Happy.
But instead, something twisted in his stomach, tight and hollow.
The more he thought about the wedding, the more it felt like a weight on his chest.
And the less he understood why.
Chapter 6: Between Heartbeats
Chapter Text
It started with a knock on his office door.
Harry barely looked up from the parchment he was pretending to read.
“Sorry to interrupt, sir,” said a young Ministry clerk—he looked barely out of training robes, voice slightly too loud. “You’re needed in the Department of Mysteries.”
Harry blinked. “Sorry… what?”
“The Department of Mysteries. They’ve requested you personally.”
Before Harry could ask why, the clerk had already turned and disappeared down the corridor, leaving behind a quiet that felt loaded.
He stood slowly.
Whatever this was—it wasn’t standard protocol.
He took the lifts down to Level Nine, nerves thrumming in his chest like a warning.
The corridors were dimmer here, unnaturally quiet, the polished stone reflecting only what it wanted you to see. The black doors of the Department loomed ahead, runes shifting faintly across their surface.
He was met by a thin, awkward-looking man with hair like windblown straw and a quill behind one ear.
Thatcher Willoughby, Hermione’s assistant.
“Mr. Potter,” Thatcher said, his voice higher than expected. “She’s waiting for you.”
Without another word, Thatcher turned and led him down the long corridor, past rooms Harry had only ever seen from the outside—Hall of Prophecy, the Veil, Time—and finally into a small, circular chamber with brass fixtures and no windows.
Hermione stood at the center, hunched slightly over a low table, surrounded by books, scattered notes, and something delicate and strange perched like a mechanical star.
She looked up when he entered.
“Hi,” she said, a little breathless. Her hands smoothed the front of her robes automatically. “Thanks for coming.”
Harry tried to smile. “Didn’t know I had a choice.”
Thatcher lingered for a moment too long before Hermione nodded at him. “Thank you. That’ll be all.”
The door closed behind him with a soft click.
They were alone.
The silence that followed wasn’t cold—but it was careful.
Hermione took a slow breath and moved around the table, fiddling with the object at its center. Her fingers moved with the precision of habit, but her posture betrayed nerves.
“I appreciate you coming down on short notice,” she said. “There’s something I’ve been working on—something I’ve… needed help verifying.”
Harry stepped closer. “What kind of something?”
She glanced at him, then gestured to the object on the table. “This is the Orrery of Echoes. It’s an emotional resonance device, originally designed in the seventeenth century to preserve magical imprints tied to high-emotion events. It doesn’t just show memories—it reveals what’s been emotionally anchored to a moment. Even if that moment’s been… compromised.”
“Compromised,” he repeated slowly.
She nodded. “Tampered with. Altered. Or even… removed.”
Harry went very still.
“And you think…” he started.
“I think it’s happening to us,” Hermione said, quietly but firmly. “I used it with something linked to you—to us.”
She turned to her desk and pulled out a small, tarnished button, placing it gently at the center of the Orrery.
Harry stared at it.
“I never gave this back,” she said, voice softer now. “It came off your cloak. The night before the final battle.”
He took a slow step forward, his chest tightening.
Hermione looked up at him.
“Will you stand with me?”
The chamber was cold, deep within the Department of Mysteries—quiet, but not silent. The stillness had weight, as if the room itself was holding its breath.
At the center, the Orrery of Echoes hovered in midair. Its polished rings spun in concentric circles, glinting under the low light. Threads of starlight-like magic drifted between its moving parts—pulsing, alive, almost sentient. Waiting.
Hermione stood in front of it, wand in hand, her breath coming in shallow, careful pulls. She didn’t look back, but she could feel him behind her—Harry, unmoving, arms crossed tight over his chest like a barrier he didn’t quite trust.
His gaze hadn’t left the device since he stepped into the room. He looked as though it might break him.
Hermione whispered the incantation.
“Resonare Cordis… fragmentum anchora.”
The Orrery trembled.
A metallic sound whispered through the air as its rings began to spin faster, aligning with unnatural precision. The gears clicked, threads of glowing magic weaving tighter. The hum deepened to a low, haunting resonance that vibrated through the floor and into their bones.
The lights dimmed.
And then—the projection began.
It wasn’t an image at first, not exactly.
It was a feeling.
A pulse of magic, raw and aching, tore through the room like a wound reopening.
The walls shimmered like heatwaves. The air thickened.
And then—
The memory bloomed.
Golden-blue light unfurled like the echo of a star dying, soft at the edges, unbearably bright at the core. They were pulled into it, not physically, but wholly. As though memory had weight—and they were sinking into it.
A campsite. Flickering firelight. The scent of smoke and cold earth.
Hermione sat on a log, wrapped in a cloak too large for her shoulders. Her hands trembled in her lap. Her eyes were on the fire, but her thoughts were somewhere far darker.
Harry crouched beside her, face drawn, voice quiet—inaudible beneath the hum of the Orrery, but the emotion was palpable.
Fear.
Grief.
Love, buried beneath everything unsaid.
She turned to him.
He reached up, his hand trembling as it touched her cheek.
His thumb brushed gently under her eye—soft, reverent. She leaned into him, not with urgency, but with knowing.
The kiss came slowly.
Heavy. Devastating. Final.
It wasn’t passion—it was promise. A goodbye laced in unspoken love. A stolen moment before the end.
A truth neither of them ever had the chance to live.
And then—
The memory fractured.
The Orrery sputtered. The rings jerked violently, light flashing, warping—then collapsing in a burst of static and golden sparks.
The projection vanished.
The chamber fell silent.
The only sound was Hermione’s breath, broken and shallow.
She stood still, hand at her chest as if she could hold the pain in place.
Harry didn’t move.
He stared at the space where the vision had been, as if staring long enough might bring it back. His voice, when it came, was hollow.
“Did that…” His throat caught. “Did that really happen?”
Hermione didn’t answer.
Because she couldn’t.
She was already crying.
Tears slipped silently down her cheeks as she wrapped her arms around herself, like she could hold together what was breaking open inside her.
The weight of the forgotten moment pressed down on both of them.
The heartbreak wasn’t in the kiss.
It was in everything that came after.
The years lost. The silence.
The fact that neither of them had ever remembered it—until now.
Hermione staggered back from the table, the last tendrils of golden light vanishing like breath in winter.
Her body moved before thought could catch up. She turned toward the door, her limbs stiff with panic, breath shallow and ragged. Her wand slipped from her hand and hit the stone floor with a sharp clack.
Behind her, Harry’s voice broke the silence.
“Don’t.”
She froze.
“Please,” he said again, softer now. “Hermione—don’t leave. Not after that.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. Her shoulders rose and fell in one trembling breath.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered.
“Yes, you can,” he said, stepping toward her. “We have to.”
She turned, not all the way, just enough to see him out of the corner of her eye.
“That memory,” Harry said, his voice raw, “we didn’t make it up. That was real. You felt it too.”
She nodded once—just barely.
He came closer.
“So why the hell don’t we remember it?”
Her eyes lifted to meet his, wide and hollow. “I don’t know.”
Harry’s jaw tightened. “Was it you?”
Hermione recoiled slightly. “What?”
“Did you erase it?” he asked, not accusatory—pleading. “Was it too much? Too complicated?”
She stepped back, shaking her head. “No. I didn’t. I would never—”
“Then was it me?” he asked, voice cracking. “Did I bury it because I didn’t want to hurt Ginny? Because I couldn’t face what it meant?”
“I don’t know, Harry!” she snapped, the pain bursting through her composure. “It could’ve been either of us. Or someone else entirely. But the truth is, it’s gone. We both lost it. And now it’s back and I don’t know what to do with it.”
Her voice faltered, chest heaving with the effort to stay upright.
Harry stepped forward, desperation bleeding from every word. “I’m getting married in two weeks, Hermione.”
She flinched.
“And I don’t know how I’m supposed to say those vows,” he whispered, “when this is hanging over me.”
She wrapped her arms around herself like she was trying to hold everything inside. “Then don’t let it. Forget it.”
Harry stared. “What?”
“Forget what you saw,” she said, voice cracking. “Pretend it never happened. We did for years, didn’t we?”
His expression shattered.
“How am I supposed to do that?” he asked, quiet but sharp. “How am I supposed to go back to pretending I never loved you?”
She inhaled sharply—like the words had cut through skin.
And then he kissed her.
Hard. Breathless. Terrifying.
The kind of kiss that unravels every wall you spent years building.
The kind of kiss that says I remember everything now and I am ruined by it.
Hermione pushed him back with trembling hands, eyes wide and shimmering with unshed tears.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
She turned and fled—her footsteps echoing across the stone like breaking glass.
The door slammed behind her, and Harry stood alone, reeling in the silence.
The ghost of her mouth still lingered on his.
And he had never felt so hollow.
Chapter 7: What can't be undone
Chapter Text
Hermione’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
She stumbled into her flat, the door clicking shut behind her like the seal on a tomb. She didn’t bother turning on the lights. The shadows suited her.
Her bag slid off her shoulder and hit the floor. She pressed her palms to the counter, breath coming in shallow, uneven bursts.
She had remembered.
Harry had remembered.
And he had kissed her like it had been killing him not to.
Her heart pounded so loudly it drowned out the sound of the knock—until it came again. Louder. Firmer.
She flinched.
Another knock.
Then his voice, low and rough on the other side.
“I’m not leaving.”
Hermione stayed silent, her body locked in place.
“I know you can hear me,” he said. “And I know you want to shut it out. But I’m not leaving until we talk.”
A pause.
“Please, Hermione.”
Her eyes fluttered closed. The word please nearly undid her.
She crossed the room on unsteady legs and opened the door.
Harry stood there, disheveled, eyes dark with emotion. His breath caught the second he saw her. She looked like she hadn’t breathed properly since she ran.
He didn’t move.
Neither did she.
Then, after a beat, she stepped aside. Wordlessly.
He walked in. The door closed behind him like a final decision.
For a moment, they didn’t speak.
Then—
“Why did you come?” Hermione asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.
“Because I can’t pretend this didn’t happen,” Harry said, stepping toward her. “I’ve tried. Every second since you left me standing there. Every fractured moment since this began. I haven’t been able to think about anything else.”
She folded her arms, though it did nothing to protect her. “We don’t even know what it means.”
“It meant everything.” His voice cracked. “You felt that.”
“Of course I did,” she snapped. “That’s the problem.”
They stood in silence, both breathing hard.
Hermione looked away first. “Why would one of us erase it?”
Harry’s jaw flexed. “I don’t know. I’ve been asking myself that again and again. If it was me… I can’t imagine doing it unless I thought it would protect you.”
Her throat tightened.
“Or,” she said slowly, “maybe it wasn’t either of us.”
That stopped him.
She turned toward him, her eyes shining. “What if someone took it from us?”
Neither of them said it, but the silence that followed was heavy with possibility.
Then Harry stepped forward—too close—and Hermione couldn’t move.
His hand came up.
Soft.
Slow.
Fingers brushing her cheek. His thumb skimmed gently across her bottom lip.
Her breath hitched.
His eyes burned into hers.
And then—they broke.
The kiss came hard, furious with need. She grabbed his collar as he cupped the back of her neck. He walked her backward until her spine met the wall with a thud—but she didn’t care.
She moaned into his mouth, and that was all it took.
Harry lifted her effortlessly, her legs wrapping around his waist as he pressed into her like he could finally breathe again.
It was messy. Desperate. Years of longing exploding in one impossible moment.
Their hands were frantic, gripping, pulling—trying to memorize the other like they’d been lost and just found their way home.
She didn’t care that she was crying.
He didn’t care that his mouth trembled against hers.
Because this—whatever it was, couldn’t be stopped.
Hermione’s fingers fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, her hands desperate to feel skin—something real to ground her as the world spun wildly off its axis.
Harry's breath stuttered against her mouth as he helped her, tugging her cardigan off her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor like something that no longer mattered. He kissed her again—slower this time, but deeper, aching—and Hermione gasped into it, her hands already tracing the planes of his chest as if to prove he was real.
He lifted her once more, her legs tight around him, and carried her toward the living room.
The feel of his hands on her—their history and everything they’d lost burning in every touch—made her dizzy.
He knelt with her on the couch, lowering her gently onto the cushions like she was something sacred. His gaze swept over her—open, reverent, undone.
“Hermione,” he breathed, his voice ragged.
She touched his jaw. “Don’t stop.”
He didn’t.
He kissed her jaw, soft and slow.
Then lower, to the place just beneath her ear that made her tremble.
His hands worked at the fabric of her blouse, sliding it from her shoulders, kissing the newly exposed skin with aching tenderness. Her skin burned under his mouth, her breath hitching as he moved down, kissing along the hollow of her throat, then across her collarbone like he’d dreamt of doing it for years.
She arched beneath him as he kissed the curve of her breast, her ribs, her stomach—each kiss a confession.
They weren’t in a hurry.
They didn’t need to be.
It wasn’t just heat—it was heartbreak. History. Home.
Each piece of clothing discarded was another wall crumbling between them.
They met again in a kiss, half-dressed, bare in more ways than one.
And for a while, there was nothing but the sound of their breathing, the tremble of their hands, and the way they whispered each other’s names like a prayer neither of them had ever stopped saying.
Their kisses turned quieter. Slower. Like the weight of what they were doing was beginning to sink in.
Clothing fell away piece by piece—shirts, trousers, underthings—until there was nothing left between them but skin and history and the ache of all the years they’d lost.
Hermione lay beneath him, breathless, her hand tracing the line of his spine, anchoring herself to this moment. His forehead rested against hers, both of them trembling—not from nerves, but from the magnitude of it all.
Harry’s hand came to her cheek again, his thumb brushing a tear she didn’t realize had fallen.
His voice, when he spoke, was hoarse and low—barely more than a whisper against her lips.
“If you don’t want this… I need you to tell me to stop.”
Hermione didn’t answer—not with words.
She reached up and kissed him.
Softly. Slowly. Then deeper.
A yes wrapped in silence.
That was all he needed.
He exhaled shakily and pressed into her with a gentleness that bordered on reverent.
She gasped into his mouth, her hands clutching at his shoulders, her legs drawing him closer. It wasn’t rushed. It wasn’t wild. It was desperate in the quietest way possible—the kind of desperation that only exists when something thought lost is finally returned.
Their bodies moved together in sync, a rhythm not born of passion alone, but of something older—something buried and rediscovered. Every breath, every whisper, every shiver of skin against skin was a reclamation of something stolen.
And when they finally stilled, tangled in the warmth of each other, neither spoke.
Because nothing needed to be said.
Not yet.
Chapter 8: The next morning
Chapter Text
The sunlight bleeding through the curtains was too soft to be comforting.
Harry stirred on Hermione’s couch, the throw blanket half-tangled around his legs, the warmth beside him already gone. He blinked up at the ceiling, momentarily disoriented—until the scent of her shampoo on the pillow next to him brought it all back in a crashing wave.
Her body beneath his.
Her mouth whispering his name like a promise.
Her silence as she slipped away before dawn.
He sat up slowly, rubbing a hand over his face. His chest ached, and it wasn’t from the couch.
The flat was quiet.
Hermione was gone.
He didn’t know what he’d expected. But the hollow space where she’d been… hurt more than he was prepared for.
By the time Harry walked through the front door of the house he shared with Ginny, it was late morning. He moved quietly, like he might go unnoticed if he didn’t disturb the air too much.
But Ginny was already standing in the kitchen.
Her eyes were red-rimmed. Her arms crossed.
She didn’t speak for a moment. Just looked at him.
“You didn’t come home,” she said finally.
Harry hesitated, setting his keys down with exaggerated care. “I… stayed at work late. Something came up.”
“Right.” Her voice was brittle. “Stayed at work. All night.”
He nodded, but he couldn’t quite meet her eyes.
Ginny stared at him. Her lips pressed into a thin line. “You didn’t answer your wand. You didn’t reply to my owl.”
“I—” Harry opened his mouth, but the lie withered before it could form. He looked down.
The silence stretched.
Finally, Ginny inhaled slowly, a tremble in her breath. “We’re getting married in under two weeks.”
“I know,” he said, barely audible.
“You say that,” she said, stepping closer, “but you don’t look like someone who’s sure.”
Harry looked up.
And for a fleeting moment, he saw it in her eyes—she knew.
Maybe not all of it. Not yet.
But something had cracked. And she felt it.
She turned away before he could answer, wiping at her cheek with the heel of her hand.
Harry stood in the kitchen, the weight of guilt pressing hard against his ribs, the echo of Hermione’s kiss still warm on his mouth.
And for the first time, he wondered if he was too late to undo everything—
Or if he was just now seeing things clearly for the first time.
The trees closed in like old ghosts.
Hermione pushed forward, her boots crunching against underbrush still damp with morning dew. Brambles caught at her trousers. Low branches scraped her arms, but she didn’t stop.
The panic clawed at her throat. The guilt churned in her stomach. The aftershocks of last night still sang through her veins—soft and shattering.
She didn’t know what she was looking for.
Only that she had to find it.
The memory.
The truth.
The campsite.
The Forbidden Forest had changed in the years since the war. But parts of it remained untouched—still ancient, still shadowed by the weight of what had happened here.
She remembered the firelight in the Orrery’s projection. The shape of the clearing. The log she’d been sitting on. It had to be real. Had to exist somewhere. She needed it to.
She needed something real.
Because what happened last night—what they’d done—was real too.
Harry’s hands on her hips.
His breath in her ear.
The way he’d whispered her name like it was a tether and a plea.
The way his fingers had threaded with hers—held her like a vow.
And still, she had left.
She had fled like a coward because staying had felt too dangerous. Because she didn’t know what to say. Because the truth of it had pressed too hard against the walls of her carefully constructed life and threatened to break everything.
So now she ran.
Through trees and memory.
Looking for a place lost to time.
Her heart pounded harder with every step. Every flash of gold through the trees. Every flicker of light that reminded her of that night—not just the one she had remembered, but the one she had lived again.
Harry, above her, beneath her, wrapped around her.
His kiss a balm and a curse.
The way he had looked at her after, like he couldn’t believe she was real.
Hermione stumbled into a small clearing and froze.
The air shifted.
Something about the shape of the space—the slope of the trees, the scattered stones, the remains of charred wood in a half-moon near the center—felt right.
This was it.
It had to be.
She walked forward, slowly now, her breath catching as her boots sank slightly into the mossy earth.
The log was still there.
So was the stone where she must have set her wand that night. Covered in years of lichen and silence.
And in that moment, standing in the ruins of her own forgotten memory, Hermione felt the weight of it all settle onto her shoulders.
The kiss.
The war.
The loss.
The ache.
Harry.
She sank to her knees beside the log, her fingers brushing the bark like it might whisper something back, and cried. The kind of cry that pulls from deep within ones heart. She sobbed.
Hermione wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve, forcing herself to breathe.
She had come for answers—not to fall apart.
Her fingers, still trembling, reached into her satchel and pulled out her wand. She pointed it toward the clearing.
“Revelare vestigia.”
The clearing responded—not with light, but with a shift. A ripple in the air, like wind across water. The hair on her arms rose. The moss beneath her knees trembled slightly.
Magic lingered here.
But not recent magic. Not something as straightforward as an Obliviate. And definitely not Ministry-standard spellwork.
Hermione rose slowly, sweeping her wand in a circle. A faint pulse responded—like the echo of something long buried, still breathing beneath the surface.
She narrowed her eyes. “Finite incantatem.”
Nothing.
“Priori locus.”
Still nothing.
Her pulse quickened.
Not because of the absence of result—but because she recognized what the absence meant.
This wasn’t the work of a traditional memory charm.
Something twisted in her gut.
Hermione began moving through the space with renewed purpose, wand scanning the trees, stones, even the earth itself. Bits of her hair clung to her damp cheeks, and her heart thundered with a need for truth so fierce it bordered on obsession.
She sank to her knees again, pressing her hand to the soil.
“I’ll find it,” she whispered.
Even if it shattered her.
Even if it meant unraveling everything.
Because someone had taken something from her.
Four days.
Four days since the kiss that shattered her.
Since the night they gave into something too big to name and too old to deny.
Four days since she ran—from Harry, from the weight of what they’d remembered, from the truth still hiding behind locked corners of their minds.
They hadn’t spoken. Not once. Not a letter. Not a Patronus. Not even a glance in the Ministry corridors where she normally caught the flicker of his silhouette through frosted glass.
And now…
Now, his wedding was in a few days.
The thought made her nauseous.
But there wasn’t time for heartbreak.
Not when something had been taken from them.
Hermione hunched over a stack of worn books, her eyes raw from days without proper sleep, ink staining the side of her hand. Her flat was a mess—scrolls, grimoires, magical theory texts scattered across every surface. A half-drunk cup of tea had gone cold beside her, untouched.
Memory magic.
Not just erasure, but binding.
She had found whispers of it in three separate texts—one in Russian, one in Latin, and one barely held together with spell stitching.
All referenced the same principle: Emotion-rooted memory binding—not to erase a moment, but to sink it so deep in the subconscious it couldn’t surface without being called.
The method was dangerous. Illegal. And ancient.
And someone had used it on her. On Harry.
That thought pulsed in her chest like a curse.
She needed more.
The texts were fragmented. Incomplete.
So she went to the only place she knew that might still hold forgotten corners of magical theory:
Hogwarts.
The train hadn’t been running, so Hermione Apparated just beyond the gates, hiking up the familiar path with her coat clutched tightly around her. The sky hung low over the Scottish hills, heavy with clouds, and the wind bit at her skin.
Hogwarts rose through the mist like a memory—unchanged, eternal.
Her breath caught in her throat as she stepped through the front doors. The echo of her footsteps followed her across the Entrance Hall, past portraits that whispered greetings and suits of armor that tilted their heads in recognition.
She climbed the stone steps to the Headmistress’s office, her heart thudding harder with each level, her thoughts a storm.
The griffin statue stepped aside for her without needing a password.
As if it knew.
McGonagall looked up as Hermione entered, a stack of parchment floating beside her desk. Her expression softened as she removed her glasses and gestured for Hermione to sit.
“To what do I owe the pleasure, Miss Granger?” she asked, not unkindly—though the question held weight.
Hermione didn’t sit.
Instead, she stood stiffly in front of the desk, clutching the strap of her satchel like it might anchor her to something.
“I’m looking for information,” she said quietly. “On a memory charm. An old one. Possibly unclassified.”
McGonagall tilted her head. “Memory work? That’s hardly light reading. I assume this isn’t for casual study.”
Hermione hesitated, then—because she didn’t have time for caution anymore—she spoke:
“There’s a memory. One that Harry and I shared, just before the end of the war. I didn’t know it was missing until recently.”
McGonagall’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Missing?”
Hermione nodded. “Not Obliviated. Not exactly. We remembered it—together—through an artifact I’m researching at the Ministry. It’s called the Orrery of Echoes. It responds to emotional resonance tied to magic. It… it showed us a memory we both forgot.”
She swallowed, hard.
“We kissed,” she admitted. “The night before the Battle of Hogwarts. It wasn’t just a kiss. It was something… real. And somehow, we both forgot. Until now.”
McGonagall didn’t speak for a long time.
Then she rose, slowly, walking to the tall bookshelf behind her desk.
“When did you recover this memory?”
“Four days ago.”
“And how long had it been missing?”
Hermione exhaled shakily. “Three years.”
McGonagall ran her hand over the spines of the books, thoughtful.
“I’ve only known one other time someone mentioned a spell like that,” she said quietly. “Not erasure, but burial. It was decades ago—Regulus Black asked about it during a private lesson. He was sharp, curious about deeper theory. Asked if it was possible to lock a memory beneath magical layers. Not to remove it. Just… to hide it. To protect someone.”
“Do you remember the spell?” Hermione asked.
“I’m afraid not,” McGonagall said, turning back. “But I do remember the unease I felt when he described it. He called it emotional magic. Said it responded more to intent than incantation.”
Hermione’s heart pounded. “Do you think someone used it on us?”
“I think someone went to great lengths to take something from you,” McGonagall said, meeting her eyes. “And I don’t believe it was for a simple reason.”
She stepped closer, voice lower.
“I’ll grant you access to the Restricted Section. And if I were you, Miss Granger… I’d start with the books no one ever checks out.”
Chapter 9: Threadbare Truths
Chapter Text
The tailor’s shop was quiet, the afternoon sun slanting through the wide-paned windows and catching dust motes in the air. Layers of fabric hung from mannequins charmed to shift shades with the light. A measuring tape hovered near Harry’s collar, twitching in small adjustments as he stood stiffly in front of the mirror.
Ron lounged in a chair off to the side, his robes already sorted, one leg crossed over the other, picking lint from his sleeve.
“You look like you’re walking to your own funeral,” Ron said casually.
Harry didn’t answer.
Ron glanced up, eyes narrowing. “All right. Out with it. You’ve been off for weeks—scratch that—years, but these past few days you look like your soul’s trying to crawl out of your skin.”
The tailor waved her wand and vanished into the back room, giving them privacy.
Harry’s fingers curled into fists at his sides.
He met Ron’s eyes in the mirror. “I remembered something.”
Ron arched a brow. “Right. Going to need more than that.”
Harry took a breath, then turned from the mirror.
“Hermione and I… we found a memory. One we’d forgotten. From before the final battle.”
Ron stilled.
Harry swallowed. “We kissed. The night before. It wasn’t a spur of the moment thing—it was… real. But it was buried. Neither of us remembered until now.”
Silence fell between them like snowfall—light, but suffocating.
“I was with Ginny,” Harry said quietly. “And you were with Hermione. I shouldn’t have—”
Ron waved a hand. “Stop.”
Harry blinked. “What?”
“I said stop,” Ron repeated, sitting up. “Look, yeah, you two kissed. But it’s not like you slept together behind our backs. It was the bloody end of the world, Harry. People said goodbye in all sorts of ways.”
“But we forgot,” Harry insisted, voice low. “Someone made us forget. That kind of magic doesn’t just happen. That night—it changed something. I felt it. She felt it. And now we’re standing here pretending none of it matters while I’m about to marry Ginny and she’s unraveling alone.”
Ron was quiet for a long moment.
Then, with a sigh, he stood and adjusted the cuffs of his robes. “I’m not surprised, you know.”
Harry looked at him sharply.
“I mean it,” Ron said. “I always knew… there was something under the surface with you two. I used to see it when you thought no one was watching. The way your eyes would find hers in a room, the way your voice softened when you said her name. I just thought you didn’t know it yet.”
Harry’s throat tightened. “Ron…”
Ron shrugged. “Look, I love Luna. We were never meant to last, Hermione and me. I think, deep down, we both knew that.”
They stood in silence, the only sound the whisper of fabric shifting behind the curtain.
Then Ron spoke again, more softly this time. “Are you sure you want to marry Ginny?”
The question lingered in the air like smoke.
Harry didn’t answer.
Because he wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
The Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library was quiet, save for the low, frantic whisper of turning pages.
Hermione sat cross-legged on the floor between two sagging shelves, a constellation of ancient tomes and scrolls spread around her like a battlefield. Her fingers were ink-stained, her eyes dry and raw from hours of reading by wandlight. Dust clung to her jumper. Her hair was a mess, and she couldn’t remember the last time she ate.
She was close. She could feel it. The answer was somewhere in these pages—she just hadn’t caught it yet.
“Come on,” she muttered, scanning a brittle index filled with archaic runes and faded notations. “Come on, come on—there—”
Her breath caught.
Not the spell.
But something else.
A brief passage, scribbled in the margins of a barely legible volume on magical repression, under a chapter titled Legacy Binding:
“For further clarification on soul-linked memory interference and blood-bound concealment, see the Black Family Grimoire. Note: Contains accounts of experimental emotional occlusion rituals—potentially volatile.”
Hermione’s heart skipped a beat.
The Black Family Grimoire.
It made sense. Of course it would be in their records. If Regulus had been researching memory burial magic—and Sirius had inherited Grimmauld Place—then the Grimoire could still be there.
Hermione bolted upright, the book clutched to her chest.
She Apparated to the Burrow in a flash, not even bothering to knock before stumbling inside.
Luna looked up from the kitchen table where she was knitting something violet and vaguely ferret-shaped. “You’re buzzing.”
Hermione dropped her bag and grabbed parchment. “I need to borrow an owl.”
Ron entered the kitchen mid-sentence, holding a mug of tea. “Everything all right?”
“I found something,” Hermione said breathlessly, scribbling furiously. “Not the spell. But a reference. The Black Family Grimoire—it's at Grimmauld Place. I need Harry.”
Ron frowned. “Grimmauld Place? That’s been sealed since the war—”
“Harry still has the key,” Hermione interrupted. “He’s the only one who can get us in.”
She rolled the parchment and tied it, her fingers shaking. “This is it, Ron. I know it. Whatever was done to us—it’s tied to this.”
Luna gave her an unreadable look. “It’s brave, chasing shadows like this.”
Hermione met her eyes. “They’re not shadows. Not anymore.”
With a flick of her wrist, she sent the owl soaring out the open kitchen window—her heart hammering, her hope tangled with fear.
She whispered into the empty space as the owl disappeared into the sky.
“Please come, Harry. I need you.”
***
The kitchen at Shell Cottage was filled with late afternoon light, warm and golden, pooling on the tile floors like spilled honey. The scent of fresh rosemary and baked bread clung to the air—something Fleur had put in the oven hours ago.
Harry stood by the window, arms folded, jaw tight.
The owl tapped at the glass, wings flaring against the pane.
Ginny appeared behind him, drying her hands on a dish towel. “Another work owl?”
Harry opened the window. The bird dropped the parchment into his hands and flew off before Ginny could get a proper look at it.
She stepped closer. “Who’s it from?”
He hesitated, fingers still wrapped around the rolled message. “Ron,” he said finally, voice even.
Ginny nodded, but her eyes lingered on him too long. “He’s been around a lot lately.”
Harry didn’t answer. He unfurled the parchment with deliberate slowness, reading Hermione’s words, scrawled in a hurried hand:
I found something. The Black Family Grimoire. Grimmauld Place. Please come. I need you.
– Hermione
His heart skipped. Then thudded too hard. Then stopped altogether for one dizzying moment.
He folded the note, tucking it into his pocket.
“Everything all right?” Ginny asked, watching him.
“Yeah,” he said too quickly. “Just something about… old records. Might pop in and help him sort through them later.”
Ginny’s eyes narrowed. “You mean now.”
“No. I’m not sure.” Harry moved toward the sink, avoiding her gaze. “Maybe.”
A beat passed. She set the towel down on the counter with more force than necessary. “You’ve been somewhere else for weeks, Harry. If there’s something going on, I’d rather you just—”
“There’s nothing going on,” he lied again. “I just need some air.”
He stepped outside before she could stop him.
He stood at the edge of the bluff, staring out over the ocean, the wind tugging at his hair and collar. The sky was deepening, clouds hanging heavy with the promise of rain.
He wanted to go.
He shouldn’t go.
The wedding was in four days.
But all he could think of was her voice. Her face. Her eyes when the memory unfolded. The ache he’d felt in his chest since.
He looked down at the note again, Hermione’s handwriting blurred from where his thumb had clenched it too tightly.
Please come. I need you.
He exhaled.
And Apparated.
The cracked pavement outside Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place was slick with rain. Twilight bathed the square in dusky blue, and the flicker of streetlamps cast long shadows along the empty row of houses.
Harry Apparated with a soft pop, landing just beside the wrought-iron fence.
Hermione was already there, sitting on the stone steps of the Black family home. Her coat was too thin for the weather, and her hair had begun to curl from the damp. She stood as he appeared, tension visibly tightening her frame, but she didn’t look away.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” she said softly.
Harry’s voice came quieter than he expected. “I wasn’t sure I would.”
They stood like that for a moment, the silence stretching between them like an old scar. Then, without another word, Harry stepped past her and tapped the door with his wand. The ancient enchantments groaned and unraveled, hinges creaking as the door opened inward.
They stepped inside.
Grimmauld Place was exactly as it had been the last time he’d been there—musty and dark, lined with dust-draped portraits and furniture cloaked in white sheets. The magic here always felt stale, half-asleep.
Hermione led the way toward the sitting room. She didn’t sit, only stood by the hearth, staring into the dark grate as though the answers might be hiding there.
“What are we looking for?” Harry asked after a beat.
She turned to him. Her eyes were tired, shadowed with too many sleepless nights and too many pages read by candlelight.
“I left that morning because I needed to know,” she said. “After everything… after that night—we can’t keep stumbling through fragments. I went back to the forest, to where it happened. And I found something.”
“What kind of something?”
“A trace,” she said. “Residual spell work. Very faint, old magic. Not Obliviate, not exactly. Something deeper. I did some digging. Traced a reference to a charm that didn’t erase but buried memories. I couldn’t find the spell itself, but I found a citation. It led me here. The Black Family Grimoire. Apparently, Regulus asked about the spell during school.”
Harry looked around the room slowly, as if the Grimoire might be watching them from the shadows.
“If we find the spell,” he said, “we can find out who did it?”
“Possibly.” Her voice was low. “The nature of emotional magic leaves fingerprints. If I can uncover the incantation, there might be a way to trace the caster. We could know who stole the memory. Why.”
Harry was quiet.
Then, “Do you want to know?”
Hermione blinked. “Of course I do.”
“What if it was one of us? Can you live with that?”
“What do you mean?” She asked softly.
“I mean…” He hesitated. “What if we find it, and it changes everything again? What if we make it worse?”
“Are you saying we should just let it go?” she asked, something hollow blooming behind her words.
“I don’t know what I’m saying,” Harry admitted. He ran a hand through his hair, his voice cracking just slightly. “Maybe…All I know is I haven’t stopped thinking about you since that night. And it’s wrong. I know it’s wrong. But every time I look at Ginny, I feel like I’m lying to her. And every time I think about walking away… I feel like I’m losing a part of myself.”
Hermione looked away, her fingers tightening at her sides. “So, what do we do?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said again. “But I know we can’t go back to pretending.”
Hermione met his eyes.
“No,” she said. “We can’t.”
The house was silent but not still.
Grimmauld Place breathed with the kind of magic that remembered everything—resentments, secrets, pain. Every footstep echoed through rooms that had seen too much. The lamps flickered as they passed, casting shadows that stretched and curled along the faded wallpaper.
Hermione led them into the old study on the second floor, where the shelves were cluttered with moldy books, cracked ink pots, and long-forgotten artifacts buried beneath time.
They began to search.
Neither of them spoke much, the silence broken only by the occasional creak of floorboards or the brush of parchment as Hermione sorted through brittle pages. Harry ran a hand along the spines of the books, pulling them out one by one, scanning for anything that might resemble the Grimoire.
The air between them was thick with what went unsaid.
After nearly half an hour, Hermione stood from where she’d been kneeling beside an old chest. She wiped her palms on her jeans and leaned against the desk, her face tired and pale in the low light.
Harry looked up from the far shelf. Their eyes met.
Something flickered.
Neither of them looked away.
He crossed the room slowly, stopping just a breath away from her.
“Hermione,” he said quietly.
She closed her eyes. “Don’t.”
“I need to.”
And then he kissed her.
It was slow. Gentle. Full of ache. The kind of kiss that tasted like almost, like what if, like too many years pressed into a single breath.
Hermione’s hand clutched the front of his shirt. She kissed him back—but when they pulled apart, there were tears in her eyes.
“Why does it feel like you’re saying goodbye?” she whispered.
Harry’s voice cracked as he answered, “Because I very well could be.”
She didn’t speak.
Just turned and moved to another shelf, fingers trembling as they traced the edge of a worn leather cover.
And so they continued their search—side by side but miles apart—each chasing a truth that might break them.
The study was too quiet.
Dust motes floated like ghosts in the slant of moonlight through the grimy windows. Piles of discarded books lay scattered across the floor—leather-bound volumes and cursed diaries, none of them the one they needed.
Harry exhaled sharply and shoved a stack aside. A loose parchment fluttered to the ground.
“What are we doing, Mione?” he snapped, his voice louder than he meant it to be. “We’ve been over every goddamned room in this place. There’s nothing here. Maybe there’s nothing to find.”
Hermione froze where she was kneeling by the hearth, her shoulders stiff.
Harry saw the tremble start in her fingers before he heard the quiet catch in her breath.
And then she started to cry.
Not dramatic sobs—but silent, shattering tears that clung to her lashes before falling, one by one, onto the page in her lap.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, curling in on herself. “This is all my fault.”
Harry’s frustration ebbed, replaced instantly by regret.
“If I hadn’t started with the Orrery,” she went on, voice thin, “none of this would’ve come back. You would’ve stayed happy. With Ginny. The way it was supposed to be.”
“Hermione—”
“I can fix it,” she said quickly, as if rushing before she lost her nerve. Her eyes lifted to meet his—wet, wide, haunted. “I can take it away. Obliviate. I can make it all disappear. The kiss, the forest, the night we— I can take it away, once and for all. I can take me away. Like I was never there to begin with.”
Harry stared at her, stunned.
For a long moment, he said nothing.
Then he moved toward her—slowly, deliberately—until he was right in front of her again. His voice dropped, hoarse with disbelief.
“You think I want that?”
She didn’t answer. Her chin trembled.
His hand rose, thumb brushing gently along the corner of her mouth, trembling slightly as it passed over her bottom lip.
“You think I want to forget,” he whispered, “forever… the taste of you, what you feel like in my hands, the way your hair smells, the sound of your moans—how you shatter when you come apart for me?”
Hermione's breath hitched, a quiet sob caught in her throat.
He was barely a breath away now, his forehead nearly resting against hers.
And she whispered, brokenly:
“You can’t miss what you can’t remember.”
His thumb lingered, trembling. The silence between them cracked open like glass.
Hermione stepped back from his touch, her lips trembling.
Tears slipped soundlessly down her cheeks, her wand clutched in a white-knuckled grip at her side.
Harry’s breath caught.
She lifted it.
Pointed it straight at him.
His heart stuttered. “Hermione…” he warned.
Her voice cracked. “It’s what’s best.”
“No,” Harry said, stepping back instinctively, raising his own wand in alarm. “Don’t you dare.”
Tears kept falling. Her mouth trembled. “I can’t live with this, Harry. Not if it means watching you walk down the aisle in four days pretending this—we—never mattered. I’d rather be obliviated.”
A tear slipped down Harry’s cheek now, too. He didn’t wipe it away.
Their breathing filled the room, harsh and fractured.
“I was trying to protect you,” she said, her wand still poised. “To give you a way back.”
“I don’t want a way back,” he snapped. “I want the truth.”
They stood frozen—wands drawn, hearts bared, neither willing to move first.
And then—
Hermione flicked her wrist sharply and shouted, “Accio Grimoire!”
Harry jumped back, nearly toppling a chair as a thick, heavy book launched from somewhere behind the cabinet and flew straight into Hermione’s hand with a thud.
“Bloody hell, Hermione!” Harry gasped, lowering his wand. “I thought you were going to Obliviate me!”
Her breath hitched as she clutched the book to her chest. “I was…” she whispered. “I will. If you want me to.”
Harry stared at her.
And for a moment, all he could see was the girl who’d stood beside him through hell. The woman who kissed him like it meant something. Who had shattered in his arms. Who now looked ready to shatter again.
He stepped forward slowly, aching to hold her.
But something in her eyes stopped him—something raw and breaking, like a door slamming shut from the inside.
His hands hovered uselessly at his sides.
And for the first time since he was seventeen,
Harry Potter didn’t know how to save her.
So he stood there, inches away,
drowning in everything he wanted to say—
and said nothing at all.
Chapter 10: Waiting on the truth
Chapter Text
The front door clicked shut behind him with a softness that belied the storm raging beneath his skin.
Harry dropped his keys into the bowl by the door, kicked off his boots with more force than necessary, and raked a hand through his already-messy hair.
It was just past midnight. The house was dim, quiet—except for the low hum of the kitchen lights.
Ginny was sitting at the table.
Waiting.
Her arms were crossed, her wand lying beside a half-drunk mug of tea gone cold. She didn’t look up at first, just stared at the table like she’d memorized every knot in the wood.
“You didn’t come home,” she said at last, voice deceptively calm.
Harry stood there for a beat too long. “I lost track of time.”
She looked up. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her expression carefully blank. “You weren’t with Ron.”
He hesitated. “No.”
“Where were you?”
Harry swallowed. “Grimmauld Place.”
“Why?”
“I needed to clear my head.”
“Clear it from what?” she asked, sharp now, brittle. “From me?”
He didn’t answer.
She stood, slowly. “Harry, if there’s something you need to tell me—if there’s someone else—”
“There’s not,” he said quickly, the lie like ash in his mouth. “There’s just… a lot in my head right now.”
Ginny stared at him like she was trying to see beneath his skin. “We’re getting married in three days. Are you sure this is what you want?”
He flinched. “Are you?”
That caught her off guard. She blinked. “Of course I am. You’re—” Her voice faltered. “You’re all I’ve ever known.”
Harry’s jaw clenched. “Exactly.”
The silence that followed was loud and dangerous.
She crossed the room and kissed him suddenly—urgent, trembling, desperate.
He didn’t know what to do, so he kissed her back.
But his hands didn’t roam. His heart didn’t race.
Because all he could think about was how wrong it felt.
How she didn’t taste like cinnamon and firewhiskey.
How she wasn’t Hermione.
Ginny pulled him toward the couch, her fingers tugging at his jumper, trying to coax him into something more. “We need this,” she whispered. “You need this. You need me.”
But his hands stayed stiff at her waist.
She froze. Pulled back. Stared at him.
And saw it.
The truth written in the quiet of his body. In the way he wouldn’t look at her.
“Unbelievable,” she whispered, voice shaking with fury and something that sounded like heartbreak. “I don’t know when I lost you, Harry. But I did. And you’re too much of a coward to admit it.”
He opened his mouth—but no excuse would come.
She stepped away, chin high. “I’m going to shower. And then I’m going to bed.”
Her voice dropped, flat and cutting.
“You’ll be very comfortable on the couch.”
She didn’t look back as she left the room.
And Harry just stood there, staring at the space she’d vacated,
wondering when everything had begun to fall apart—
and if he’d ever be brave enough to let it.
Her flat was silent, almost deafeningly so.
The Grimoire sat unopened on her table.
Hermione was sobbing—deep, ugly sobs that wracked her entire body. Her fists clenched in her lap, her breath stuttering as tears spilled freely down her cheeks.
She couldn’t do this.
She couldn’t feel like this.
Not again.
She stumbled to the fireplace, her hands shaking as she grabbed the jar of Floo powder. She didn’t think. Didn’t plan. She just collapsed to her knees and shouted, voice raw:
“Ron! Are you there?”
The green flames surged—and seconds later, Ron tumbled out, barefoot in striped pajama bottoms, a jumper half-tugged over his head, and his hair sticking in six different directions.
His face shifted from bleary to alarmed in an instant.
“Hermione?”
She was curled near the hearth, her face blotchy and wet, eyes wild. The Grimoire sat on the table behind her.
“Obliviate me,” she whispered through her tears. “Please, Ron. Please take it all away. Take him away. All of it.”
Ron froze.
Then he crossed the room in three long strides and dropped to his knees in front of her, pulling her into his arms without hesitation.
She collapsed against him, sobbing uncontrollably into his shoulder. “I can’t breathe, Ron. I can’t think. Every time I close my eyes, I see him. I feel it. The kiss, the forest, the way he touched me—everything.”
“I know,” Ron said softly, running his hand through her hair. “I know.”
“Make it stop,” she begged. “I don’t want it anymore. Just—just make it go away.”
He didn’t speak for a moment. Just held her as she broke apart in his arms.
And then, gently: “You don’t mean that, Hermione. You’d regret it.”
She pulled back, her eyes wide and red and full of broken fire. “No, I won’t. I won’t remember it to regret it.”
Ron’s jaw tightened. His eyes softened.
“I’m not doing that to you,” he said, voice low. “You don’t need someone to take the pain. You need someone to stand in it with you.”
Hermione shook her head, more tears falling. “I’m not strong enough for this, Ron.”
But he just pulled her back into his chest.
“You are,” he whispered. “You always were.”
And together, on her sitting room floor, with the Grimoire humming quietly behind them,
Hermione Granger wept for everything she remembered—
and everything she was terrified she’d never forget.
Soft light filtered through the curtains of Hermione’s flat, casting pale gold across the floorboards. The fire had long since gone out, but a faint warmth still lingered in the room—partly from the flames, partly from the two people tangled quietly on the rug.
Ron sat propped against the wall, neck tilted at an uncomfortable angle, one arm loosely draped across Hermione’s back. She was curled against him, her head resting on his thigh, tear tracks dried against her cheeks.
His eyes fluttered open first.
He blinked blearily at the unfamiliar ceiling, then down at the woman sleeping beside him. For a moment, he just sat there—one hand gently brushing her curls from her face, his heart tugging painfully with a kind of protective ache he hadn’t felt in a long time.
Hermione stirred, her brows twitching as she came to.
She blinked up at him, groggy, confused. “Ron…”
“Morning,” he said, voice scratchy.
Hermione sat up quickly, horror dawning as the memory of the night returned. “Oh, Merlin, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—I shouldn’t have pulled you away from Luna, and it’s so late—or early—and you didn’t even get to sleep properly and—”
“Hermione,” Ron interrupted with a soft huff, reaching out to still her flailing hands. “You were a wreck. You needed someone. I’m glad you called me.”
She looked down, ashamed.
He nudged her knee with his. “Besides, I think Luna knew. Said something about heartbreak having loud auras.”
Hermione’s laugh was watery, her lips wobbling.
Ron’s gaze slid to the table across the room. The Grimoire sat closed, its leather cover dark and ancient, as though it had waited years to be opened.
He nodded toward it. “Is that what this is all about?”
Hermione followed his gaze, then sighed, pulling her knees to her chest.
“I found trace magic,” she said quietly. “In the forest, near the place from the Orrery’s projection. It’s not the standard Obliviate.”
His eyes widened slightly.
She reached for the book, dragging it into her lap. Her fingers brushed reverently over the cover. “Something in here… someone used something from this. Either me. Harry. Or—someone else.”
Ron leaned in, brow furrowed. “You think that’s what took the memory?”
She nodded. “If I can find the spell—if I can isolate the signature—I can trace who cast it.”
Ron was quiet a moment, watching her.
And then, softly: “Do you want to find it?”
Hermione’s eyes flicked up to his, surprised.
He shrugged, voice quieter now. “Sometimes the truth just… hurts more.”
Hermione’s eyes glistened, but her voice held steady.
“I’d rather hurt with the truth than live a lie I didn’t choose.”
Ron smiled, soft and a little sad. “There’s the Hermione I know.”
She returned the smile—tentative, tired, but real. A flicker of who she used to be.
Ron stood with a grunt, stretching until his spine popped. “I better get back before Luna starts to think I’ve run off to join a dragon circus or something.”
Hermione gave a small laugh, then stood with him. She hesitated, then pulled him into a tight hug. He wrapped his arms around her without hesitation, holding her like something precious.
“Thank you for coming last night,” she whispered against his chest.
Ron rubbed her back gently. “Hermione,” he said, pulling back just enough to look at her, “I’ll always be there when you need me. No questions asked.”
Her eyes shimmered again, but this time with something warmer.
As he stepped back toward the Floo, he paused in the doorway, glancing back at her.
“You’re not alone in this,” he said. “Even when it feels like it.”
Then, with a swirl of green flame, he was gone.
And Hermione stood in the quiet,
the Grimoire cradled in her arms—
and the truth just waiting to be found.
Chapter 11: The Spell that shouldn't exist.
Chapter Text
Two days.
Forty-seven hours.
Seven cups of tea gone cold beside untouched meals.
Hermione hadn’t left her flat since Ron disappeared in the firelight.
The Grimoire spread out before her like a living, breathing thing—its spine groaning each time she turned a page, the ink shifting subtly in the light. The pages were delicate, some in Latin, others in Runic script, some in a language she’d never seen before. Each one felt like a secret she wasn’t meant to hold.
She had translation parchments scattered across her desk, scribbled notes in the margins, a dozen half-cracked cipher keys open at once. Her fingers were ink-stained and shaking from lack of sleep, and her head pounded from too many spells cast without rest.
But she kept going.
She had to.
Because every second brought her closer to the truth—
and every second brought Harry closer to saying “I do” to someone else.
The Grimoire resisted her.
It whispered and shifted, ancient and temperamental, as though it didn’t want to give up what it knew.
But then—
Late, just past two in the morning, something shifted.
A page near the back of the Grimoire curled inward of its own volition, revealing a strange watermark—a symbol shaped like a heart wrapped in thorns, with a fracture through its center.
Hermione’s breath caught in her throat.
There it was.
Exmemorare Cordis
To un-remember the heart.
Her eyes scanned the faded heading, and a chill ran through her.
Magic Class: Forbidden Emotional Severance
Origin: Circulated among Eastern European covens in the 12th century. Designed to remove emotional bonds at their root—especially those deemed dangerous, illicit, or consuming. Later absorbed into the Black family’s restricted collection.
Status: Almost entirely forgotten—intentionally.
Hermione’s blood ran cold as she read further.
A spell of terrifying precision. Exmemorare Cordis targets not the surface memory, but the emotional resonance of a moment—extracting not only the memory of an event, but the tether between two souls. It leaves no trace on the conscious mind. Only a phantom ache where something once lived.
She covered her mouth, blinking back tears.
It wasn’t just Obliviate.
It was something far worse.
Someone hadn’t just wanted them to forget.
They had wanted to sever them.
She dropped into the chair, heart hammering. Her hand hovered over the spell’s incantation.
The room was too quiet.
The clock ticked past two-thirty.
In less than eight hours, Harry Potter would marry Ginny Weasley.
And Hermione now held the name of the spell that had torn them apart.
But not yet the name of who had cast it.
Her gaze locked onto the incantation again.
And she whispered, “Why would anyone do this to us?”
The morning sun filtered weakly through the curtains, golden and soft, as if it didn’t dare shine too brightly on a day so wrong.
Harry Potter sat curled in the far corner of his closet, knees pulled to his chest, his dress robes forgotten in a pile beside him. His head was in his hands, fingers gripping his messy hair, breathing shallow and uneven.
He felt sick.
Hollow.
Like someone had carved him open from the inside out and left everything that mattered on the floor.
The flat was silent. Ginny hadn’t come looking for him. Maybe she’d known not to.
He didn’t even hear the knock. Just the quiet creak of the wardrobe door.
“Mate?”
Harry looked up slowly.
Ron stood in the doorway, his face pale, his tie slung around his neck like he’d forgotten how to tie it. He took one look at Harry and sighed, stepping in and crouching beside him.
“You alright?” he asked gently.
Harry shook his head. “No.”
Ron sat down fully, folding his legs in front of him.
For a long moment, they just sat there in the stillness.
Then Harry spoke, voice raw and barely above a whisper.
“I slept with her.”
Ron didn’t move.
“Five days ago. At her flat.” Harry’s throat bobbed. “We didn’t mean to. We didn’t plan it. It just… happened. And ever since, I can’t—” he broke off, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. “I can’t stop thinking about her. I feel like I’ve been drowning since the war ended and I didn’t even realize it until I could breathe again. With her.”
Ron exhaled slowly.
Harry dropped his hands, looked at him, guilt written in every line of his face. “I’m sorry, Ron. I know you two—back then—and I never meant—”
But Ron just held up a hand. “Stop. Don’t apologize.”
Harry blinked.
Ron leaned back against the wardrobe wall. “She called me, you know. Couple nights ago. Middle of the night. Sobbing. Begging me to Obliviate her.”
Harry’s heart stopped. “What?”
“She said she couldn’t bear it. The remembering. You. The grief of something she didn’t know she’d lost until it came back.” Ron looked over at him. “She asked me to take it all away.”
Harry felt cold all over.
“I told her no,” Ron added softly. “Because I knew she’d regret it. Maybe not right away, but eventually.”
A heavy silence settled over them.
Then Ron shifted, turning to face him more fully.
“But I need to ask you something now. And I need you to be honest.”
Harry met his eyes.
“Do you want that?” Ron asked. “Do either of you really want that? To forget again? To bury it so deep you never feel it? Because if you do… if you both decide that’s what’s best… I’ll do it. I’ll cast the spell.”
Harry’s breath hitched.
Ron’s voice dropped to a whisper. “But if even a part of you still wants to remember her—if even a single piece of you still loves her—then don’t let this be the end.”
Harry’s throat worked.
He couldn’t speak.
Couldn’t lie.
Because the truth was sitting like a stone in his chest.
And her name was carved into it.
Harry let his head fall back against the wall of the closet, his eyes squeezed shut.
“I’m sorry, Ron,” he whispered again, voice raw. “I’m supposed to be marrying your sister. And instead I’m—bloody hell, I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore.”
Ron didn’t speak right away. He just studied him, quiet and steady, before finally asking, “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
Harry opened his eyes but couldn’t meet Ron’s. “It’s not that simple.”
“Isn’t it?”
“I don’t want to hurt her,” Harry said, barely audible. “She’s been planning this wedding for months. She’s waited years. She loves me.”
“But do you love her?” Ron asked softly.
Silence.
It stretched too long. Too loud.
Harry rubbed his palms down his face. “I don’t know.”
“You do,” Ron said gently. “You just don’t want to say it out loud.”
Harry’s shoulders sagged.
Ron’s tone remained calm, but there was steel beneath it. “Look. If you go up there today and marry her while thinking of someone else—of Hermione—it’ll crush her. Maybe not right away. Maybe not for months. But it will. And it’ll eat at you too.”
Harry swallowed hard.
Ron leaned forward. “So ask yourself, Harry. Which pain is easier to live with? Calling it off now and letting Ginny heal, or standing there in front of everyone and making vows you already know you can’t keep?”
That hit like a punch to the gut.
Harry turned his face toward the sunlight filtering in through the crack in the closet door. Outside, the world was waking up.
And somewhere—maybe in her flat, maybe in the Forbidden Forest, maybe in the middle of a sentence in an old spellbook—Hermione Granger was still fighting for the truth.
He couldn’t breathe.
Not without her.
Ron watched him quietly. “You don’t have to decide this second. But don’t wait too long, mate. The clock’s ticking.”
And with that, Ron rose to his feet, walked out, and gently shut the door behind him.
Harry sat there, alone with the echo of his own heart.
And the sound of a wedding that should never happen, getting closer with every breath.
Chapter 12: The signature in the soil
Chapter Text
The trees loomed like sentinels overhead, their limbs gnarled and heavy with shadow as dawn broke in fractured gold across the Forbidden Forest.
Hermione stood at the edge of the old campsite, her wand clenched tight in her trembling hand. The place looked so small now. The fire pit was still scattered with blackened stones. The log she once sat on—where Harry had cupped her jaw, where he had kissed her like she was the only truth in a crumbling world—was still there, blanketed with moss.
The memory lived here.
So did the magic.
Hermione’s heart pounded in her chest.
Less than three hours.
Three hours until Harry stood beside Ginny.
Three hours until she lost him—maybe forever.
She knelt in the dirt, swallowing hard, and whispered, “Revelo vestigium.”
A pulse of blue-white light rippled from the tip of her wand, sinking into the forest floor. It spread like water, crawling through the underbrush, climbing up stones and roots and curling around the old campsite like fingers reaching through time.
The moment stretched taut.
Then—
A flicker.
Right there, by the log. A cluster of shimmering tendrils burst from the earth, swirling upward in soft, golden threads. They twisted in the air, coalescing around the spot where Harry had stood that night—where he had touched her.
Hermione stood slowly, her breath hitching.
The magic glowed brighter, and then—like a signature appearing on parchment—the spell imprint flared to life.
She gasped.
It was a magical signature.
And it was familiar.
She stumbled back a step, nearly tripping over a root, her breath caught between panic and disbelief. She knew this signature. Knew the edges of it, the way it moved. Magic was personal—no two witches or wizards left the same trace.
Her heart thundered.
It wasn’t hers.
And it wasn’t Harry’s.
But it belonged to someone she knew.
She clutched her wand to her chest, staring at the gleaming mark as it slowly began to fade back into the earth.
Oh Merlin...
Hermione spun, cloak snapping behind her as she ran for the forest’s edge.
There was only one place to go now.
Only one name on her lips as she whispered, “Please, let me get to him in time.”
Harry stood in front of the mirror, hands trembling slightly as he fastened the last button of his dress shirt. His reflection looked composed. Almost regal.
But his mind was chaos.
Behind him, Ron tugged awkwardly at his tie, watching him through the mirror. “You look like you’re about to be executed, not married.”
Harry let out a short, humorless laugh. “Feels about the same.”
Ron frowned. “Have you made a decision?”
There was a pause.
Harry looked down at the ring box on the dresser. Closed. Heavy.
“Maybe… maybe I go through with it,” he said hollowly. “And then you Obliviate me. Take it all away. Then I don’t hurt anyone. Not Ginny. Not Hermione.”
Ron stared at him. “And what about you?”
“I’ll be fine,” Harry said, but the lie was weak in his throat. “Better to forget than live in between.”
Ron sighed, shaking his head. “Or maybe you stop trying to be the hero and just be honest. You’re still allowed to choose what makes you happy.”
Before Harry could respond, a knock sounded on the door.
It creaked open—and there stood Ginny, already in her dress robes, a deep shade of crimson that shimmered like blood in candlelight.
“I thought I wasn’t supposed to see you before the wedding,” Harry said.
Ginny shrugged as she stepped in. “That’s a pathetic Muggle custom. I needed to talk to you.”
She glanced at Ron, and he took the hint. With a reluctant sigh, he grabbed his jacket and exited, leaving them alone.
Ginny turned to face Harry. “I love you, Harry. I always have. Since I was a girl.” Her voice trembled. “Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve given up—it’s been for you.”
Harry looked away, shame creeping up his spine. “Ginny…”
But before he could finish, the door burst open again.
Hermione.
Wild-eyed. Breathless. Still in her travel cloak.
Ginny’s entire face hardened. “You’re not supposed to be here. Your invitation was revoked.”
“I don’t care,” Hermione said, striding into the room. Her voice shook with urgency. “Harry, I need to talk to you. Now.”
Ginny stepped in front of her, blocking the way. “No. We’re about to get married. You don’t get to waltz in here like you matter.”
“I do matter,” Hermione snapped. “To him. And I’m not here for you—I’m here for the truth.”
“I’ve had enough of your truth,” Ginny hissed.
“No,” Hermione said sharply. “You’ve had enough of mine. Now it’s time for yours.”
She reached out, grabbed Ginny’s arm, and yanked her out into the corridor, slamming the door behind them before Harry could follow.
Ginny pulled away, furious. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Hermione’s chest heaved, her heart a drumbeat in her ears. Her voice was quieter now—but colder. Sharper.
“I know it was you, Ginny,” she said. “I know you’re the one who cast the spell.”
Ginny’s entire body went rigid.
“You used Exmemorare Cordis,” Hermione continued. “You tore a memory out of both of us. You knew. You knew about the kiss. You stole it.”
Ginny’s lips curled. Her voice cracked with a sound between fury and desperation.
“You think you’re the noble one?” she spat. “You think I was just going to stand there and watch it happen? I saw the way you looked at him. I saw the kiss. You’d never take him from me—not if you didn’t remember you could.”
Hermione’s breath caught.
Ginny’s eyes glistened with tears, but her expression was venomous. “He was mine. He’s always been mine. I was supposed to be the one.”
“And you forced him into that?” Hermione whispered. “By rewriting his memory? By taking away his choice?”
“I did what I had to do,” Ginny said. “You wouldn’t have walked away. And he would’ve followed you.”
The silence that followed was deafening.
Hermione’s voice trembled with devastation. “You don’t win love by erasing it, Ginny. You bury it. But it doesn’t stay dead.”
Inside the room, Harry stood frozen, his ear against the door.
Harry hadn’t meant to listen.
But the second he heard Hermione’s voice—sharp, splintered with urgency—he couldn’t pull himself away from the door.
The words hit like stones.
You’re the one who cast the spell.
You saw the kiss.
You wouldn’t have walked away. And he would’ve followed you.
The air in the room turned leaden.
Harry’s hand slipped from the doorknob.
He stood for a beat—breathless, stunned—before he opened it slowly.
The door creaked.
Both women turned.
Ginny’s face drained of color.
Hermione stepped back instinctively, guilt and devastation etched into every line of her face. But it wasn’t her Harry looked at.
It was Ginny.
“You cast the spell?” he asked quietly, his voice low and dangerous, like thunder before the break.
Ginny froze. “Harry—”
“Tell me the truth.” His words cracked like a whip. “Did you take that memory from me? From us?”
Ginny’s lip trembled. “I didn’t—It wasn’t meant to hurt you. I just—I had to.”
“You had to?” he repeated, stunned. “You practically obliviated me, Ginny. You stole part of my life. Of me.”
“You were mine!” she snapped suddenly, voice shrill and shaking. “I was supposed to be the one! Not her. You were supposed to love me.”
He staggered back a step, like she’d physically struck him.
“You had no right,” he whispered. “No right to decide that for me. To rewrite my past.”
Tears streamed down Ginny’s cheeks, mascara streaking in black trails. “You don’t understand. I had to. I couldn’t lose you.”
“You never had me,” Harry said hollowly. “Not really. You were holding onto a version of me that didn’t exist. And you made sure I couldn’t remember the version that did.”
Hermione stood frozen, silent, her hands clenched at her sides.
“I loved you,” Ginny whispered. “I still do.”
Harry’s voice was quieter now, but no softer. “Then you should’ve let me choose.”
There was nothing more to say.
Ginny looked between them—at Harry, at Hermione—and something in her broke. She turned on her heel and fled down the corridor, the soft sound of her heels echoing behind her like the final notes of a funeral march.
Harry stood there, unmoving, as the silence swallowed them.
And then—
“I didn’t want you to find out like that,” Hermione said softly, her voice raw.
Harry turned to her slowly. His eyes were bright—not with anger, not anymore—but with something deeper. Ache. Disappointment. Longing. “But I already knew,” he said. “Not the who. But I knew someone did something to us. And I knew you were trying to find out who.”
Hermione’s breath caught.
Harry stepped closer, quietly. “What I didn’t know was what you wanted once you found the answer.”
She didn’t speak.
“So I need to ask,” he said, voice hushed. “That night… when you asked Ron to Obliviate you. Do you still want that?”
Hermione’s lip trembled. She looked up at him, eyes shining. “Do you?”
Harry shook his head. “No. I might not know what comes next. But I know I don’t want to forget you again.”
Hermione exhaled sharply, a sound like breaking.
“I thought it would be easier,” she whispered. “To forget. To let you go. To let you be happy.”
Harry’s expression cracked. “You really think I’ve been happy?”
She looked away.
“I’ve felt half-alive for three years, Hermione,” he said. “And now I know why. I didn’t want to remember this because I was afraid. Of what it meant. Of what I’d done. But now… I can’t imagine not knowing.”
She looked up at him again, trembling. “What do we do now?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
A silence settled between them. Heavy. Grieving.
Hermione stood in the doorway, her hand trembling against the frame. Her eyes met Harry’s one final time—soft, breaking, full of everything she couldn’t say.
“I’m sorry for ruining your wedding,” she whispered.
Harry stepped forward, but she held up a hand to stop him.
“I mean it,” she said, voice cracking. “I hope you find happiness, Harry. I hope it finds you and doesn’t let go.”
And then she turned and left, the train of her cloak vanishing down the hall, leaving nothing behind but silence.
Harry found Ron pacing outside the dressing room, hands shoved deep into his pockets. The second Ron saw him, he stopped.
“Well?” he asked.
Harry’s face said enough.
Ron sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Are you going to go through with it?”
“I don’t know,” Harry muttered. “I don’t know what to do. She just… she walked away.”
“You think she didn’t want to stay?” Ron asked gently. “She walked away because she thought she had to.”
Before Harry could respond, the click of heels on stone cut through the corridor. Ginny appeared, red-rimmed eyes fixed on him. She looked like she’d been crying for hours, though her jaw was still set in that familiar stubborn angle.
“Is it done?” she asked quietly.
Harry didn’t respond.
Ginny’s voice shook as she continued, “Are you going to marry me, or are you going to chase her again?”
“Ginny—”
“I don’t want the answer if it’s pity, Harry,” she said. “If I have to beg you to be here.”
She took a breath. “I want you to Obliviate me.”
Harry’s stomach twisted. “What?”
“Make me forget,” she said, stepping closer. Her voice broke. “Take it all. The proposal. The planning. The years I waited for you to look at me the way you look at her. I don’t want to feel like this anymore. I can’t.”
Harry’s fists clenched at his sides. “Don’t say that.”
“Why not?” she cried. “You were going to do it too, weren’t you? You thought about it. Don’t lie to me.”
He didn’t deny it.
“I don’t want to live with this ache, Harry. Not knowing how much of your heart I ever had. Not knowing when you stopped loving me—or if you ever really did.”
Ron shifted awkwardly beside them, eyes cast down.
Harry looked at Ginny—this girl he’d once thought was everything. She was shaking, unraveling in front of him, and he hated himself for being the one to do this to her.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
She laughed through her tears. “You’re always sorry.”
There was a long silence.
Finally, Harry took a breath, the weight of the moment heavy on his chest. “I can’t marry you, Ginny.”
Ginny shattered.
She didn’t scream. She didn’t throw anything. She just broke—a sharp exhale, a sob catching in her throat as she turned away from both of them, hands pressed over her face like she could keep herself from falling apart.
“I’m sorry,” Harry said again, quieter this time. “But I won’t lie to you. Not for the sake of comfort. Not anymore.”
He looked to Ron, who nodded once, silently supportive.
Behind them, Ginny slid down the corridor wall, knees pulled to her chest, her quiet sobs echoing like bells in a church that no longer held faith.
Chapter 13: The aftermath
Chapter Text
The flat was silent.
Too silent.
Hermione closed the door behind her, the click of the lock sounding final—like the echo of a decision she couldn’t take back. The world outside might still be spinning, still be dressed in flowers and gold for a wedding she would never attend, but in here…it was just her.
And the ache.
She moved like a ghost through the space. Her shoes came off by the door. Her cloak slid from her shoulders onto the floor, forgotten. The air inside felt thick, heavy with everything left unsaid. Her limbs trembled as she entered the bathroom and turned the water on as hot as she could stand.
The mirror fogged instantly.
She undressed without ceremony, without thought—just wanting to feel something else. The heat of the water hit her skin like a punishment, but she didn’t flinch. She stepped beneath it, tilting her head back and letting it scald her throat, her chest, her eyes.
Her mind spun with a thousand images she couldn’t escape.
Was he watching Ginny walk down the aisle now?
Was he slipping a ring on her finger?
Was he kissing her like he meant it?
Hermione pressed her back to the shower wall and slowly slid down, curling in on herself as the water poured over her like rain in a storm she couldn’t stop.
She didn’t cry at first.
But the second she breathed in—shallow, shaking—she broke.
It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t violent. It was quiet, the kind of sorrow that steals all sound and replaces it with shudders. Her fingers clutched at her chest like she could dig the ache out by force.
She thought about the Grimoire.
About Exmemorare Cordis.
About Ron’s hand on her back the night she begged him to do it.
"Take him away. Please. I can't keep remembering this."
And for a single, fractured second… she thought about trying again.
About whispering the spell herself, wand in hand, erasing every golden thread he’d ever woven into her soul.
"You can’t miss what you can’t remember."
But then she saw his face again.
The way he looked at her when the Orrery revealed the kiss.
The way he held her like she was something lost and finally found.
The way his voice shook when he said, “You were going to let me forget. Again.”
And Hermione realized—she didn’t want to forget.
Even if it hurt.
Even if it wrecked her.
Because love—real love—wasn’t meant to be erased.
It was meant to endure.
Even when it broke you.
The water began to cool, and her body began to ache with chill, but she stayed there, clinging to that thought.
Because it was all she had.
Hermione wrapped the towel tighter around herself as she stepped out of the bathroom, steam curling behind her like ghosts. Her hair clung damply to her cheeks, her body chilled now that the water no longer shielded her from the ache she carried. She moved on autopilot—crossing to the living room, flicking off lights, ignoring the couch like it might burn her if she looked too long.
She passed it anyway. Her chest clenched.
The air was too quiet, the silence pressing in. She reached for the last lock on the door when—
A knock.
She froze.
It was soft, but firm. Not a neighbor, not a delivery.
Her fingers hovered above the bolt.
Another knock. This one louder. More impatient. Almost desperate.
Her pulse spiked. She hesitated, then reached for the handle, her breath tight in her throat. The door creaked open—
And there he was.
Harry.
Hair wild from running his hands through it. Tie gone, shirt half-untucked, the collar open and crooked like he'd yanked at it. His eyes—Merlin, his eyes—were red-rimmed and stormy, but steady as they locked onto hers.
Hermione opened her mouth to speak, but he beat her to it.
“I didn’t do it.”
She blinked.
He stepped forward, voice shaking but firm. “I didn’t marry her.”
Silence fell like thunder between them.
He swallowed. “I couldn’t. I stood there—listening to her tell me how much she loved me, how long she’s waited—and I just… I couldn’t lie anymore.”
Hermione’s lips parted, but he pushed on, words unraveling fast and fractured:
“I thought I was broken. For three years, I thought I’d lost something in the war I’d never get back. That maybe it was just what life after all of it felt like. Hollow. Numb. I thought it was normal.”
His voice cracked.
“But it wasn’t. It wasn’t normal, Hermione. It was absence. It was you—missing. This…hole in my chest I didn’t have words for until I saw it. Until I felt it. Until you.”
Tears blurred her vision, her breath catching on something sharp and fragile.
Harry’s fists trembled at his sides. “You were never supposed to be a secret I forgot. And I’m so sorry—so sorry—that I didn’t know sooner. That I let Ginny keep me from you, even if she thought she was doing the right thing. I should’ve fought harder. I should’ve—”
He broke off, breathing hard. “I don’t even know if this means anything to you now. I don’t know if it’s too late. But I needed you to know…I think I fell in love with you twice… once before the war, and again every time I got lost in a fragment of memory. Even with the spell, I don't think I ever stopped."
He didn’t give her time to respond—not with words.
His hands cupped her face as he kissed her—full of grief, of longing, of everything he hadn’t known how to feel for three empty years.
She melted into him with a soft, broken sound, her fingers tangling in his shirt as if he were the only thing tethering her to the earth.
The towel around her loosened and slipped unnoticed to the floor, and neither of them reached for it.
Not when his arms wrapped around her and pulled her against him.
Not when she buried her face in his neck, breath shuddering with a fresh sob.
Not when he whispered, “I’m here,” like a vow and a prayer all at once.
They didn’t rush.
There was no desperation now—only reckoning.
Every kiss tasted like a memory recovered.
Every touch felt like truth laid bare.
He held her like a man starved of warmth.
She touched him like he was something lost, finally returned.
And for the first time in years, they felt whole again.
The light through the curtains was soft—gentle, like the world itself was holding its breath.
Hermione woke slowly, blinking against the pale morning glow, her cheek pressed to the warm skin of Harry’s chest. For a moment, she stayed still, letting herself simply feel it—his steady heartbeat beneath her ear, the rise and fall of his breath, the quiet that filled her flat, no longer lonely.
She tilted her head, watching him sleep.
His face was peaceful, the lines of worry and ache softened in sleep. She let her eyes trace the curve of his jaw, the faint stubble along his chin, the lashes that dusted his cheeks.
He looked so young like this. So human.
So Harry.
Her heart swelled painfully, full of things she didn’t know how to say.
He stirred then, brow twitching before his eyes fluttered open. Green met brown, sleepy and unguarded.
He blinked once. Then again.
And in a voice barely above a whisper, he said, “You’re still here.”
A soft smile curved her lips. “So are you.”
His eyes closed briefly, as if something inside him exhaled for the first time in years. He reached for her, fingers brushing her cheek, then slipping into her curls.
And then he kissed her.
It was slower this time. No panic, no heartbreak, no memory trying to escape them. Just him. Just her.
Just the moment they chose to stay.
His hand found her waist as she moved closer, arms around his shoulders, their bodies tangled in the hush of morning light. He kissed her again—deeper this time—a silent question, and a promise all at once.
And when she pulled him to her, it wasn’t with urgency—it was with knowing. With years of ache and almosts and a love that had never truly died.
Harry exhaled like her touch was the only thing tethering him to this world.
They moved together slowly, reverently, like rediscovering a language they used to speak fluently in another lifetime. Every kiss was a memory returned. Every touch was a promise rewritten.
There was no forgetting this time.
No borrowed moment.
No spell to unravel what they had found again.
Just her. Just him.
And the quiet, sacred truth that—finally—they had chosen each other.
Chapter 14: Epilogue
Chapter Text
Harry folded the last of his sweaters and slid the drawer shut, the quiet thunk oddly satisfying. Hermione was in the kitchen, humming under her breath as she unpacked tea tins into neat rows, her hair pinned haphazardly on top of her head. The flat smelled like lemon and parchment. Like home.
It had only been a week since he moved in. Since they'd finally stopped holding their breath.
There were still ghosts, of course—memories they were learning how to live with, the ache of what they lost, the weight of what they found again—but for the first time in years, Harry felt right in his own skin. Like the world wasn’t slipping sideways beneath his feet.
An owl tapped at the window, wings flapping impatiently. Hermione looked up from the tea tins just as Harry crossed the room to open it.
The parchment was scrawled in Ron’s hurried, looping script:
She’s had the babies. St. Mungo’s. Now. Twins, mate. Bloody twins.
Harry read it twice before passing it to Hermione, who gasped and immediately vanished into the bedroom, already calling out for her shoes.
They arrived at St. Mungo’s less than twenty minutes later, breathless and buzzing with anticipation. Ron met them in the corridor, his eyes wide and glowing. “Two boys,” he said, like he still couldn’t believe it. “They’ve both got Luna’s eyes. Merlin help me.”
Harry clapped him on the back, and Hermione wrapped him in a tight hug, all of them laughing through tears.
They were ushered into the room moments later. Luna looked luminous—sweaty, exhausted, radiant. She held one swaddled bundle in her arms while the healer adjusted the second in a bassinet nearby.
Then the door opened.
And Ginny walked in.
The air shifted. Like the room itself held its breath.
She was smiling—brightly, easily. Her hair was neatly plaited down her back, her robes a soft shade of blue that made her eyes glow. She looked composed. Radiant. Serene.
Like someone reborn.
She glanced first at Luna, still propped against her pillows, cradling one of the babies. Then at Ron, who froze mid-sentence, his arm halfway outstretched as if to stop something—though even he didn’t know what. Then her gaze landed on Harry. On Hermione.
Her eyes lingered.
But there was no flicker of recognition.
“Hi,” Ginny said brightly, as though they were all strangers in a waiting room. “I’m Ginny.” She extended her hand, cheerful and clear. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
Hermione stiffened.
Her entire body locked tight, like her bones had turned to stone.
Harry felt her tremble beside him.
It took her a beat to respond—just one—but it was long enough for the room to crack down the middle.
Hermione forced a breath, then slowly reached forward, her hand unsteady as it slid into Ginny’s. “Hermione,” she said softly, barely above a whisper.
Ginny smiled wider, her grip firm but warm, and then released her. She turned to Harry.
His heart was beating in his throat.
His limbs felt hollow.
She extended her hand again.
He took it.
“Harry,” he said hoarsely, the word burning on his tongue.
Her brow lifted slightly. “Harry? Harry Potter?”
A little gasp, then a delighted laugh.
“Wow. Can I see the scar?”
He blinked.
Before he could answer, she waved it off, laughing again. “I’m sorry, you probably get that a lot. That must be so annoying.”
Harry nodded numbly, unable to find his voice. “It’s… it’s okay.”
Ginny turned then, peering over to where Luna held one twin and a nurse gently adjusted the other in the crib nearby.
“Oh,” she breathed, walking over to the bassinets. “They’re beautiful Luna. Twins, right? How lucky.”
Ron hadn’t moved. He stared after her, his expression a cocktail of grief and disbelief.
Hermione didn’t speak.
She couldn’t.
She reached blindly for Harry’s hand, needing something—anything—to anchor her to the floor.
He caught her hand in his without looking, his fingers wrapping around hers like a lifeline.
The weight of it all pressed down on them—three years of silence, one forbidden spell, and the girl who had once loved him so fiercely she carved herself into his history.
Gone.
And smiling like she’d never bled for him at all.
No one said a word.
But Harry didn’t let go.
Ginny hugged Ron tightly, her arms looping around his middle like they had when they were kids. Then she kissed Luna’s cheek gently, murmured congratulations, and gave the sleeping twins one last lingering look.
“I should get back to the Burrow,” she said with a bright, breezy smile. “Mum will want help with dinner.”
Harry’s heart clenched.
Ron nodded, his voice rough. “Yeah… yeah, of course. Safe travels, Gin.”
She turned to Harry and Hermione with a soft smile. “It was lovely meeting you both.”
And then she was gone—out the door, into the corridor, her light footsteps echoing down the hall until there was nothing left but silence.
Hermione sat heavily in the nearest chair, one hand over her mouth.
Harry didn’t move, his fingers curled at his sides like he was still holding on to something that had already slipped through.
“She… she doesn’t remember any of it,” Hermione said at last, her voice hollow.
Ron rubbed the back of his neck, staring at the door as if he half-expected her to come back. “No. And maybe that’s for the best.”
Hermione turned toward him sharply. “How can you say that?”
“Because,” he said gently, “she was never going to let you two be happy. Not really. Not after what happened. And now… now she doesn’t have to live with the pain. She looked happy, didn’t she? Free. Like she’s been given a fresh start.”
Harry sat down next to Hermione. “But at what cost?” he murmured.
Luna, still cradling one of the twins against her chest, looked up with that faraway gleam in her eye. “Some memories are like old ghosts. They rattle chains through your ribs when you try to forget them. But Ginny’s aura was different today. Lighter. Not haunted anymore. She’s unmoored, yes—but sometimes drifting is kinder than drowning.”
The room fell quiet again.
Ron sat down, blowing out a slow breath. “I should probably let Mum know.”
He mumbles, “poor Gin she doesn’t even know what she lost.”
“No,” Hermione said softly, staring at her hands. “But I do, years of friendship.”
Harry looked over at her, eyes full of ache and apology.
Luna hummed faintly, her gaze drifting toward the doorway long after Ginny had gone. “Her leaving shifted the air. Like when Nargles get bored of hanging around a crowded mistletoe and drift off to find a quieter branch.”
Hermione blinked, trying to keep up. “I’m… not sure I follow.”
Luna smiled softly, her fingers tracing idle circles on the baby’s back. “Nargles are terribly sensitive to energy. They only leave when something’s changed. When something new wants to grow.”
Harry frowned. “Luna, what are you—?”
But Luna’s gaze had already shifted—sharpening despite the faraway gleam in her eyes—landing gently, unmistakably, on Hermione’s midsection.
“There’s a golden shimmer in your aura,” she said, voice like wind through leaves. “Faint… but pulsing. Like a heartbeat waiting to be heard.”
Hermione stilled.
Harry sat up straighter, his chest tightening.
Ron’s brows rose, mouth parting. “Luna… are you saying—?”
“I’m saying,” she said simply, “that something is taking root. Something small. But it’s powerful. It’s why the Nargles left. They don’t like crowding a bloom.”
Hermione’s breath hitched, her hand hovering over her stomach like she couldn’t quite believe it.
Harry didn’t ask. He just reached for her hand.
When they returned home, the flat was quiet.
Hermione slipped off her shoes by the door, moving on instinct. Harry followed, his keys forgotten in his hand. Neither of them turned on the lights.
Only the soft glow from the hallway spilled across the floor, casting long, tired shadows as they stood in the living room—adrift.
“She didn’t know me,” Hermione finally whispered, breaking the silence like a ripple across still water. “Not even a flicker of recognition.”
Harry sank onto the edge of the couch, elbows on his knees, his fingers laced. “She didn’t know me either. Said my name like she read it printed in a textbook.”
Hermione didn’t sit. She moved to the window, pressing her palm against the cool glass. “Do you think she did it herself? Or asked someone else to do it?”
“I don’t know,” Harry admitted. “But she looked… peaceful. Like she’d finally found a version of life she could live with.”
Hermione nodded slowly. “Maybe Ron was right. Maybe it is for the best.”
He didn’t answer that. Not right away. Instead, he looked up at her—silhouetted against the soft spill of lamplight from the street—and said, “Luna saw something in you.”
That stilled her. Her hand curled just slightly against the glass.
“A golden shimmer,” Harry said, his voice quiet but steady. “A bloom.”
Hermione turned to him. “You think she meant—?”
“I don’t know what I think,” he said, standing now. “Except that when she said it, it didn’t scare me. It felt… right. Like a piece of something falling back into place.”
She stared at him, eyes wide. “It’s too soon to know anything.”
“I know,” he said gently, stepping closer. “But if it’s true—if there’s even the smallest chance—I want this. I want you. I want all of it.”
Her breath hitched.
“I mean it, Hermione.” He reached for her hand, warm and steady. “We’ve already lost too much time. Whatever comes next—we face it together.”
She nodded, her eyes glistening. “Together.”
He pulled her into his arms then, and this time, there was no desperation. Just the quiet strength of something chosen. Something earned.
They stood like that for a long while, the city humming just beyond their window, as a new beginning stirred between them—uncertain, yes.
But finally, undeniably, theirs.
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