Shadow Walker

Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time.

-Bonnie Tyler, "Total Eclipse of the Heart"

Between the lines of fear and blame, you begin to wonder why you came.

-The Fray, "How to Save a Life"

Chapter Ten:

Hermione had the sensation of a lurching movement, though whether she was the object in motion, or her very environment was shifting around her, she could not tell. There were streaks of light and blurs of activity around her, but she found herself unable to distinguish or differentiate between them in any way, before the dizzying speed would whip her onward. Her foray into the study of physics was spotty at best, but if she were accurate in comparing her situation as being like a stone skipped off the surface of a lake, she should be slowing down, as she gradually lost energy.

At least she thought so.

And then, all analytical thought was quite forcefully driven from her mind, as the building closest to her suddenly "grew" a raised front porch in one of the universes through which she careened. The unyielding stone lip collided with the side of her head hard enough to knock her to the ground and make her eyes stream. She could feel the grit between the lumpy cobblestones beneath the pads of her fingers, and she struggled to rise to her feet before something else changed, and she ended up with her extended legs merged into a fence or garbage bin or something.

She wobbled gracelessly into a standing position, trying to ignore the furious throbbing in her temple. A ginger touch discovered a sizable knot, and her fingers came away reddened. At the same time, her breakneck journey seemed to come to an end, the world around her see-sawing back and forth a couple of times, before finally subsiding into stillness. She felt like someone who had lost her sea-legs, and tried to mentally tamp down her rising nausea. Blinking her eyes hard, in an effort to focus her attention on her surroundings, she took a first look at this particular version of Godric's Hollow.

It seemed less like an adorable, kitschy-cute tourist town, and more like a run-of-the-mill English village. Hermione took a couple of experimental steps to make sure she wasn't going to fall, and risked the most basic of painkilling charms to take the edge off her head injury. She had become decent at field healing, out of necessity, but still did not feel that casting spells on herself when she felt like she was either going to vomit or pass out – or possibly both – was the best of ideas. As almost an afterthought, she pulled the crystal necklace out of her shirt, and murmured the incantation that would deactivate it, something she had uncharacteristically neglected earlier. The thought of spinning through any more universes was enough to make her stomach pretzel in on itself.

She managed to turn herself back in the direction from which she had originally come, as the wrought iron street lamps begin to light themselves in the deepening twilight. Down this road had been the memorial park for Harry's mother; down this road had been the boarded up, abandoned Potter home that she had lived in for so long.

Truthfully, she had no idea what to expect this time.

She had to stop twice and allow her swimming head to clear, leaning on the low wall that bordered each side of the rutted lane. It took much longer than she would have thought, and the remnants of the sunset had disappeared completely by the time the house came into view.

It was obvious at one glance that somebody lived in the house. Lights streamed from various windows, and the lawn was meticulously maintained. A mounted lamp by the front door displayed its shiny coat of fresh, forest green paint. A white gate bridged the gap in the low stone wall that continued bordering the road, but Hermione eschewed that to clamber clumsily over the wall, making for the kitchen window at the side of the house, rather than the front door. She tensed as she felt a thrum vibrate her very bones, a warm rush of magic coating her skin that meant she had passed through wards – fairly hefty ones too, she surmised. Her skull pounded in protest, as she dropped to a crouch, waiting for the residents to come spilling out into the garden, wands blazing.

Nothing happened, and, when it became clear after several heartbeats that nothing was going to happen, Hermione resumed her stealthy progress around the house. She murmured heartfelt thanks under her breath when she saw the long sweeping arms of a willow adjacent to a brightly lit kitchen window. She cast a Disillusionment charm on herself, and crept under the sheltering branches to peer inside the house.

Gingham curtains jauntily bordered the window over the sink, and their hems flapped lazily in the four-inch gap between the sash and sill. Hermione could hear the indistinct babble of casual conversation, amid the clinks and rattles of dinnerware. She sidled through the flowing willow fronds, and cautiously peered inside.

There he was. Sitting casually at the table, elbows spread, dark green shirt sleeves rolled up over his forearms, raven-wing hair as disheveled as ever, he quirked a self-deprecating half-smile at his companion, as the overhead light reflected off the metallic frames of his glasses. He answered something in a low murmur that she could not quite catch, and she moved her attention to the woman with whom he ate.

Hermione recognized her. Her hair was blonder that she remembered, and her face had lost any girlish roundness, but there was no mistaking who it was. And no mistaking the look on her face. Even as Hermione assessed her, she looked across at Harry, and there was transparent, affectionate joy in her sparkling eyes.

Hermione knew her heart hadn't actually stopped beating, if only because she could feel her pulse throbbing painfully in her head. Still, the odd agonized pang of seeing Harry with Susan Bones could not be ignored, even as the churning in her stomach ramped up to a new level. She had lost the ability to even attempt rational thinking about the whole situation, as the window before her blurred, divided, and merged back together.

And then several things happened at once.

Somewhere in the depths of the house, a small child cried. It immediately arrested Harry and Susan's attention. Harry paused with a forkful of vegetables en route to his mouth, but Susan laid a hand on Harry's arm and offered to retrieve "her". Hermione saw both wedding bands then, glinting in the kitchen light the way Harry's glasses had. The nausea came over her so quickly that it was almost overwhelming. She staggered backwards, stepping heavily on a fallen branch that cracked like a flicked whip. She vaguely registered Harry's startled gaze flashing up at the open window, as she fell to her knees and retched. Her vision had tunneled; she could feel the grass beneath her fingers and her hair clinging to her cheeks and neck, but she could barely see. The pain in her head had ratcheted up to an untenable frequency, and when she heard the front door open and close, it sounded as if it did so from a very great distance.

Hermione was first aware of the smell and texture of buttery soft leather. She blinked sandy eyes cautiously, and waited for more pain or nausea. Some of the tension ebbed out of her body when they did not come. Even as the ceiling came into focus from the sofa on which she lay prone, she recognized the layout of the house, differences in the decor and furniture notwithstanding.

He's found me. He's brought me inside, and healed me. Does he even know who I am?

She turned her neck and saw him, standing in a stiff and vaguely dazed way, as if she had caught him frozen in the very moment between the blunt force trauma and the toppling over. His eyes were suspiciously wet and reddened; that fact, along with the wary and almost unwelcoming way Susan was looking at her, answered her own mental question.

"Who are you?" Harry's voice was rough, and in it, she could hear the echoes of her own accusing questions, when the other Harry had set off her wards in Godric's Hollow. His wand was in his hand, but was angled toward the shiny, hardwood floor, rather than at her. Still, she felt at a distinct disadvantage lying down, and strove to push herself upright, while trying to disguise how the room began to spin and sway around her. He made an involuntary movement toward her, instinctively desiring to offer aid, which he checked. She lifted her chin to meet his tortured gaze with her own.

"You know who I am."

"That's not possible."

She realized that they must have checked her for Polyjuice and other conventional methods used for impersonation, while she was unconscious. Her appearance could not be explained by any means they had, and so they were waiting to see if she could give an accounting of herself.

"That's what I thought at first too," she responded cryptically, a bitterly amused smirk twisting her lips. For the first time, she took full notice of the toddler cradled in Susan's arms, slumped over her shoulder, clearly asleep.

"Her – Hermione Granger has been dead for two years." What it took out of him to say those words was quite apparent in his face. A shadow flickered in Susan's eyes, and she shifted the child to her other side, brushing the rumpled brown curls away from her face.

"I'll just go put Jeannie back in her cot." She spoke to Harry only, emphatically ignoring the interloper in their lounge, as she glided toward the foot of the stairs, trying not to jostle the child.

"I was there, you see, when she – when she passed on, so I'm – I'm asking you to explain – to – " he trailed off into heavy silence. Hermione was not listening; she had instead tracked Susan's progress across the room and out of sight. The quiet footfalls faded up the staircase.

Something in the little girl's posture, in the cascade of tumbled hair…

"Jeannie?" She arched an eyebrow at him, even while her heart pounded furiously against her breastbone. She thought she might have achieved nonchalance if she weren't the color of waxed parchment and struggling to sit upright.

Harry's face paled as though he had been hit with a singularly effective Bleaching Charm. She could see several emotions parade across his face in sequence: pain, grief, chagrin, wistfulness.

"She's hers, isn't she? Your Hermione's, I mean."

Harry's dark brows lowered stormily over his brilliant eyes. "What the hell does that even mean?"

She took a deep breath to begin explaining, but Jeannie's overtired sobs drifted down the stairs, along with Susan's sing-song voice of frustration.

"Harry, she wants you."

He moved toward the stairway immediately, though it was several heartbeats before he broke away from her gaze. He swiveled back toward her, with one foot on the lowest stair, gripping the finial in one tense hand.

"We're not done," he reminded her, and though his voice carried a definite tone of assertive authority, there was something so Harry in his eyes that she felt the corners of her mouth uptilt in the slightest of smiles.

His heavier tread dwindled to the upper floor of the house, and she could hear Jeannie's discontent fade into silence. As she eyed the cheery stone fireplace opposite the sofa on which she said, she gingerly reached up to feel the knot at her temple. It was still tender, but no longer throbbing or raw, and seemed to have been reduced in size as well. Deft work, she thought, a Healer's work, and she wondered which of them had performed the spells. She let her gaze drift around the room, taking in the simple, tasteful decor and the pictures of Jeannie in various stages of development that were sprinkled around the room, and utterly missed the lighter steps descending until Susan was standing before her.

The other woman regarded her somewhat helplessly for a moment, as if she were trying to reconcile what she knew with what she saw before her. Hermione twisted her hands together tightly in her lap, as the silence drew out interminably.

"What are you?" Susan finally asked, a pleading note leaking through. Explain this away, she did not say. Give me any kind of reason that would make you someone other than Hermione Granger… please.

"My name is Hermione Granger. I finished Hogwarts in 1998. I was in Gryffindor House. Most likely, all the things you knew about Hermione when you met her in school are true about me." She began her narrative quietly, speaking in a manner meant to engender calm discourse. It took some effort on her part; she had grown used to being blunt-edged and confrontational for survival's sake.

"When I met her? As opposed to you?"

"I am Hermione Granger. But I am not the Hermione Granger that you knew." She breathed in and out, once, deeply, and plunged ahead. " When did Harry defeat Voldemort?"

"Our fourth year," Susan replied almost mechanically. "There was a tournament. Harry was kidnapped. There was a magical ritual that was supposed to use Harry's blood to give Voldemort a new body, but something went wrong… Why don't you know that?" Suspicion reappeared, fringing the edges of her voice.

"I fought in a Final Battle against Voldemort in 2001. Harry Potter was killed just seconds after he dealt Voldemort a death blow." Hermione had forced herself to speak placidly, but drew in a painful, shuddering breath that made her feelings apparent. "In the universe I'm from, the Order members, my schoolmates, everyone I loved is dead. Lucius Malfoy is the Minister, and I'm a wanted criminal."

"Your universe…" Susan echoed faintly. She had a distant stare, as though she were groping for the shreds of a dream or a lost idea. "Sweet Merlin – the Unspeakables…they have a room – it's so highly classified that not even my boss at the MLE knows much about it. But it's – it's something like that… I heard them talking about it. They said, 'There's more than one of everything.'"

"The Multiverse Room," Hermione nodded. "I've seen it – in my universe, that is. I met with another Harry, who was searching the universes for his Hermione, who was lost. I – I realized that I had nothing – nothing left in my universe to stay for, and so… so I decided to leave it – "

"To what end?" Harry's voice carried over to them, as he descended the final three stairs and reentered the room. Hermione flushed, and her gaze danced over Harry, then Susan, and then away from them both.

"To – to find – " Hermione stammered, but wasn't sure how to proceed.

"To find you," Susan finished flatly, directing her response to him. The color in her cheeks was heightened, and she pressed her lips together firmly, as if that would head off any rising emotion.

"Susan, I certainly don't – "

"I'm sure the two of you have a lot to talk about. I'm going to check on Jeannie." She carried herself almost regally, something in her last sentence holding a subtle reminder of her place in this house, in this family. Even so, there was a faint shadow in her eyes as she darted one last look at Hermione. You could take him from me…if you so chose. Please don't take him from me.

A heavy silence draped over the room, broken only by the crackle-click of the flames in the grate. Harry glanced at her, and jerked his head in the direction of the kitchen. She trailed behind him, and watched from the doorway, as he began to clear the table and set the dishes to washing.

"What happened to her?" Hermione's voice was barely audible over the rattle of plates and the rush of running water.

"There've been isolated skirmishes between Aurors and Death Eaters ever since Voldemort was killed. There were usually no casualties, and it was more of a nuisance involving destruction of property than anything else." Harry was staying carefully clinical, choosing his phrasing with great deliberation. "During one of them, my – my wife took a curse to the back. She fell, struck her head… caused a severe subdural hematoma. The increase in intracranial pressure caused irreversible brain damage." He heaved a deep breath, keeping his back to her as he stood at the sink. "She was three weeks pregnant – we weren't trying; she didn't know – she wouldn't have been ordered to the firefight otherwise. We – I kept her on LSP until she – until she had Jeannie. She never regained consciousness or any kind of independent brain function."

LSP – Hermione dredged the acronym from somewhere in the depths of her prodigious memory, life-sustaining potions.

"You're a Healer?" She cocked her head to one side contemplatively, trying to imagine a world where Harry was the Healer and she the Auror.

"Not good enough of one." His bitterness was palpable, with the weariness of chronic regret. "I was still finishing my training. The Healers wouldn't have let me work on my wife in any case. Still I wonder what should've have been done differently – if anything would have made a difference. Should I have recognized the signs that she was expecting? Wouldn't that have kept her from being on the raid at all? Was I selfish to keep her alive – just to be able to keep a piece of her with me?"

Hermione approached him tentatively, the compassionate nature that she thought long ago suffocated and trampled out of existence rising back to the forefront. She tried to imagine herself killed in the line of duty, and then Harry living with the realization that his training, his job hadn't been able to save her. To discover the pregnancy on top of everything else was most likely another level of pain altogether.

"I am sure that – that she would have wanted her baby – your baby – to live, no matter what it took. And now you have Jeannie – you have an expression, an embodiment of your love for her. In my universe, Harry and I weren't – we had just begun to realize that we had feelings for each other. And then the Final Battle came. Voldemort killed Harry, even as he was dying at Harry's hand. For one perfect moment, we thought it was over and we had all the time in the world. And then he was taken from me… I was sure it was forever. But with the Multiverse Room, I thought – I thought there would be someone – another Harry somewhere – who had lost me, who needed me like I needed him." She lifted dark lashes to gaze at him with wet eyes. She took his hand, and felt it tremble in her grasp. "This would appear to be a tailor-made situation, almost exactly what I was hoping for."

"Almost?"

"If not for Susan. She loves you very much. I can see it on her face. How long have you been married?"

"Four months." Harry sighed and gently disengaged his hand. "I love her too. She was there at a time when I was barely functioning. She helped me when I was a grieving new father who had no idea what he was doing. And she did it all selflessly – knowing that there was a possibility that I might never feel the same way about her." An ethereal smile drifted across his face. "And then one day, I discovered that I did. But seeing you again – "

"I'm not her," she quietly reminded him. "Maybe I was like her… once. But I – I've lived as an outlaw, I've committed terrorist acts, I've killed people. I look back at the girl who finished Hogwarts at the top of her class, and I don't even recognize her anymore."

"I can still see her. She's there – in the deepest part of your eyes." His eyebrows crinkled, as he quirked the half-smile that had always made her heart melt. "Don't give up on her." Before Hermione could truly process what she was doing, she had flung herself into Harry's startled arms, squeezing him for all he was worth. The last day she'd seen him alive was so vividly seared into her memory, along with those fledgling feelings, that she had forgotten this Harry, the Harry she had first loved, the one who had come after her to warn her about a troll, her best friend.

Harry's arms flailed for purchase briefly, but then relaxed and encircled her. Hermione felt as if all of her perception was dialed up to eleven: the wiry-strong way his arms held her, the familiar, outdoorsy smell of him – albeit with a new undertone of medicinal potions, the feel of his hair against her cheek.

"I've missed him so much," she breathed softly, and felt his arms tighten in a wordless response. After a moment, he extricated himself from her embrace, and held her by her upper arms, looking into her eyes with a recognizable green intensity.

"What can we do to help you?"

It was such a comforting question, so direct, cutting to the chase, that Hermione felt the burning tears tickle her nose anew. How long had it been since she had been offered assistance – not to further an agenda or cause, or to facilitate revenge, but simply because she had needed it? She coughed out a semi-hysterical laugh as she realized that it was probably Harry that had done it – the one searching for his Lost Hermione.

Her eyes flicked over Harry's shoulder, instinctively following Susan's movement into the room. Hermione felt the blush paint her cheeks with heat, and she opened her mouth to … she wasn't sure… point out the platonic nature of the hug?

"It's all right, Hermione," Susan said carefully. There was something new in her eyes, a warming – pity, perhaps? Or was she seeing the flashes of her stepdaughter in Hermione's face? The latter couldn't be sure. Disdain wanted to rise within her; contempt she was used to – pity was somewhat harder to stomach. With an absent-mindedness born of familiarity and comfort, Harry scooped his wife around her waist, and pulled her to his side. Hermione couldn't stop a pang of envy as Susan leaned her head into the crook of Harry's shoulder, not necessarily for the man himself (maybe a bit, she admitted inwardly), but for the familiarity of the closeness. "I know it's been a long time…since you've seen him."

Hermione stammered an inarticulate thank you, and squared her shoulders, struggling to don a more businesslike exterior. She picked up her tale with the loss of Ron and Ginny, the slow, subtle oppression by the Ministry, the death of Draco Malfoy at her hand, Harry's appearance, Luna's murder (Harry and Susan exchanged aghast looks)… and finally, the day where Lucius Malfoy came after her – Undesirable Number One.

"He – he told me – the other Harry – " she clarified hastily, her voice only semisolid from unshed tears. "He had told me to get out of there, to go anywhere else – and I just couldn't face abandoning my Harry, giving the victory to everything he died fighting against. I took too long – I almost didn't make it out – and now I guess – I'm … adrift in the multiverse. I can't go back, but I'm not sure I can stay either."

At Harry's quizzical look, she gave a brief rundown of the Constant, and what it meant in one's magical signature, how her attempts to alter hers had failed, quite painfully.

"You know, I – I lunch with Luna a couple of times a month," Harry ventured. "She's an Unspeakable, on the very cutting edge of healing research… pretty good with Runes too. We've bounced ideas off each other more times than I can count. Maybe she could help you. Susan might be able to get you down there – Merlin knows, I don't have any clearance."

Susan rolled her eyes good-naturedly, which Hermione took to mean: Oh please, like anyone at the Ministry wouldn't roll out the red carpet for you, no matter which restricted area you wanted to see.

"Wouldn't the fact that I'm dead here cause some problems?" Hermione spoke the significant word rather gingerly, not wanting to trample over Harry's feelings.

"For the Department of Mysteries?" Susan's tone was incredulous. "This is only 'mildly outlandish' on their scale."

"It might be a good idea not to broadcast your presence to the … regular… Ministry employees," Harry interposed casually. "Not everyone is as open-minded as Luna is. We can go first thing in the morning – I've got second shift in Spell Damage tomorrow."

Hermione suddenly felt as though fatigue had snuck up behind her and quietly leached away every last scrap of energy. She realized that she'd had no idea what time it was, and she vaguely wondered when she'd last slept. There was a strange energy in the room, between the three of them. It was as if the shock of her presence had worn off, and the implications and possibilities were making themselves ever more apparent. Harry was looking anywhere but at her.

"We've… there's a guest bedroom." Susan gestured absently toward where the stairs spilled into the living area. "If – if you'd like to…" Her cadence was odd, and Hermione couldn't help but take note of the way Susan's attitude toward her had been fluctuating throughout the evening. She was trying, Hermione realized, but this situation was probably beyond difficult: knowing that your husband's first wife, tragically lost, was his soul mate; taking care of a little girl that, while you loved her dearly, looked just like said first wife; finding an alternate version of that wife on your doorstep, looking for your husband. The truth was clear: Susan was trying to be polite, but Susan did not feel comfortable having her sleeping upstairs in the guest bedroom.

"I'll just kip down here," Hermione offered. "It's not that much longer until morning anyway, right? Oh!" She jumped as remembrance hit her. "I – I had a bag…"

"It's just there." Harry pointed toward the far end of the sofa, where Hermione could see a loop of the black canvas strap peeking out.

"Thanks," she murmured, almost swallowing the word. Flames crackled in the grate, and the silence grew awkward.

"The loo is just through there," Susan pointed toward a door just down a stubby corridor. Hermione refrained from indicating that she already knew where every room in the house was, and just nodded in response. "Good night, Hermione."

She stood at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for Harry to finish twiddling with the bronze sconce at the end of the fireplace mantel, disconnecting the Floo for the night.

"You're not on call?" Susan asked.

"Not until Friday. Good night, Hermione." Harry managed a smile, but actually spoke his words to the picture frame on the wall just beyond her right shoulder. The couple drifted up the stairs together, and just before they had disappeared from her view – in fact, Harry probably already thought they were out of her sight – she saw Harry press a tender kiss to the tips of his wife's fingers.

The longing threatened to rise up and crush her. She let out a wobbly sigh that seemed to rebound off of all the shadowy corners, as she propped a square cushion against one end of the sofa, and pulled down the throw that lay across the back. She kicked off her shoes, and pulled the blanket up to her chin, pointing her wand at the fire to lower it. Her eyelids had already begun sliding closed, when she was startled by a figure standing at the other end of the sofa.

"I brought you a better pillow," Harry said, almost apologetically, proffering a larger pillow made for a bed.

"Thank you, Harry," she replied automatically, taking note of the way his eyes glowed in the low firelight, the way the banked coals shot streaks of dark copper into his hair. He was holding himself rigidly, almost as if some outside party were exerting Imperius over him, like he'd rather be anywhere else, and yet he did not leave.

"Harry?" she queried in confusion, at the same time that he blurted,

"I'm so sorry, Hermione."

"Whatever for?" She managed to lace her tone with light bewilderment.

And then she knew. He missed her. He wanted her. And he could sense – or perhaps see written all over her face – how much she yearned for him. But there were bridges that had been traversed and then burned; there were doors that had been shut and locked. He was married. He was married. And in that moment, Hermione knew that they could not – that even if they had been presented with the perfect opportunity, they would not – act upon it. "…loved I not honor more," she thought with wry admiration.

"I just wanted to look at you – " he spoke clumsily, almost stammering. "To remember her. Again." He scrunched his shoulders up awkwardly, suddenly seeming much younger. "I'm sorry if that makes me a bit creepy."

She laughed a little, but grew sober quickly.

"No, I understand. Believe me, I do."

"Jeannie's so much like you. There's not much of me in her at all. It's – it's wonderful and horrible all at the same time…"

"You're a good father, Harry."

He dipped his head in acknowledgment of her compliment, and his hair swept across his forehead in disarray.

"I just wish…" There were a thousand things that he could have spoken into the trailing silence. I just wish you would stay. I wish you had appeared six months ago. I wish my Hermione was here. I wish you had never come. I wish I loved Susan as much as she deserved. Hermione wondered which ending he would have chosen, had he completed the sentence.

"I know," she soothed. "Harry, tomorrow I'll be gone. She wouldn't have wanted to see you this way. And – and Susan doesn't deserve it. You were starting to let go, weren't you? You were starting to love her – and then I had to muck it all up by coming here." Harry opened his mouth to defend her from herself, but she rushed onward. "Don't push her away, Harry. Don't let this ruin what you were building together. Promise me." He tried to protest again, but she forestalled him, spearing him with her own dark, firelit gaze. "Promise me."

There was a helpless look in his eyes, as he acquiesced to her request.

"I promise."

"Thank you. Harry – ?" She spoke quickly, as he was turning away from her, then waited for him to complete his revolution and face her again. "Why didn't – why didn't the wards alert you when I came onto the property?"

A ghost of a smile flitted across his face, something feather-light caught in a spring zephyr.

"Because you're Hermione Granger," he said simply. "Good night." He swiveled up the stairs, using the finial as a pivot, in what must have been a habitual movement for him. She drank him in one last time, arranged the new pillow behind her head, and made herself close her eyes.

I am Hermione Granger.

She fell asleep with a smile on her face.