Soul Searching/End Game
SS Chapter 25 - Destruction; Revelations
By Chem Prof
Chapter 25, Destruction; Revelations
Thursday, August 28
The Room of Requirement had transformed itself into a form Harry had never seen before. There were three separate sections, separated by what looked to be impervious barriers. In each of the sections resided one of the horcruxes, along with the materials Hermione had gathered for their destruction.
Harry would have preferred to do this without an audience, but realized that too many people had a stake in the outcome for that. Not to mention that it would be good to have backup in case something went wrong. His mind drifted back to the destruction of the first horcrux. That had been so simple, just him and the diary and the basilisk fang. Not to mention the rather annoying spectre of the teenaged Tom Riddle about to kill him. No pressure that time, he thought wryly.
McGonagall, Flitwick, Remus, and Tonks were here of course, as was Moody. Bill, as the one with the most curse breaking experience among them, was overseeing the backup crew. He, Flitwick, and Remus were ready with the soul destruction spell Dumbledore had used to blast one if Harry’s attempt failed. Harry had objected strenuously to this plan, since it might end up killing one of them, but to no avail. Each of them was ready to give their life to make sure he succeeded. No pressure this time either!
Of course it would have been impossible to keep Ron and Ginny away, despite all of Molly’s objections, and somehow Fred and George managed to inveigle their way into the mix. Finally, Krum had insisted on being there as well.
And of course, Hermione. It was her show, after all. Harry was the performer but she was the director. And she had rehearsed him again and again until he knew exactly what he needed to do and when he needed to do it. She would be assisting him to make sure the acromantula venom was applied at the instant that the physical destruction of the horcruxes occurred. His protestations that it was too dangerous for her had been met simply with ‘the look’ as he had come to call it. The look that told him again and again that she was with him all the way on this and he had just better get used to it.
Just as they all finished entering there was a flash and Fawkes appeared, gliding to rest atop a perch that the Room instantly provided for him. Harry nodded gratefully to the phoenix, feeling some of the pressure drain away. Fawkes had been present for the destruction of the diary so perhaps this was a good omen.
They all moved into the first section. On the table sat Hufflepuff’s cup, along with two bottles of liquid and a syringe. The onlookers were standing twenty feet away across the table from Harry, watching anxiously while Bill, Remus, and Flitwick were off to the side, closer to the table. Hermione stood next to him.
“Wait a minute.” Hermione touched Harry’s arm to get his attention and as he turned to her she waved her wand at him. His robes were transfigured into a long white coat. Another flick of her wand and his glasses changed into a pair of clear plastic goggles. Then she did the same to herself and they were clad in matching lab coats and safety goggles.
“You,” he grinned at her, “have been watching too many movies.” She responded with a sheepish grin of her own and shrugged her shoulders. The tension broken, he turned back to the table to begin.
Hermione took a vile of the precious venom out of her pocket and picked up the syringe, carefully withdrawing one cc of the venom. The syringe had a narrow bore needle, and when the plunger was pushed in quickly the venom would squirt out in a fine spray. Harry picked up the two bottles of liquid as ‘Professor’ Granger began to explain the procedure to their audience.
“The two bottles both contain acids, hydrochloric acid and nitric acid. By themselves neither of them will dissolve the silver cup, but together the two create a powerful solvent called aqua regia. Harry will pour them into the cup, and as they begin to eat into it, destroying it, he will spray the outside of the cup with the venom.”
Harry finished pouring the two acids into the cup and stepped back to wait. Hermione silently handed him the syringe. At first nothing seemed to happen, then the liquid began to turn red. Soon it began to bubble and a brown gas started to emerge from the cup. Harry glanced nervously at Hermione but she held up her hand. “Not yet, that’s what it’s supposed to be doing.”
The liquid was bubbling vigorously and the brown gas was pouring out and onto the table. All at once a thin crack appeared near the bottom of the cup.
“Now!” shouted Hermione. Harry immediately pushed in the plunger and a mist of acromantula venom enveloped the cup, coating the outer surface in a thin film. Just as this happened the crack widened and the cup started to shake as red foam began to seep from the crack. A dreadful, piercing scream filled the room, causing the onlookers to jump back as Remus and Bill raised their wands, about to cast the spell. The cup collapsed as more cracks formed and the red liquid flowed out and onto the table, but the screaming ceased. The pieces of the cup fell into the puddle, still fizzing and giving off more brown gas, but the room was now quiet.
Harry released the breath he had been holding and suddenly was aware of the choking brown gas. Hermione waved her wand and a breeze came up, dissipating the gas and the air was clear once more. Another flick and the puddle of acid vanished.
They looked at each other grinning in triumph and relief as Ron and Ginny broke away from the onlookers and ran up to congratulate them. It worked! The first horcrux was destroyed! One down, two to go.
After everyone settled down, they moved into the second section where Ravenclaw’s golden dagger was lying on a table. This time there was a jar of a dark reddish orange power beside it and a small strip of metal. The onlookers once again took up their positions and Harry handed the syringe back to Hermione.
Hermione resumed her chemistry lecture as Harry began pouring some of the powder on the blade. “The other two horcruxes are made of gold, not silver, so the aqua regia wouldn’t work fast enough on them under these conditions. Gold, however, has a lower melting point so we are going to try to destroy it by melting the blade. The acromantula venom is not stable at high temperatures, though, so we have to melt a small spot on the blade. That way it won’t damage the venom on the other parts of the dagger.” Harry put the short strip of metal into the pile so an inch or so was sticking out. “This powder is called thermite, and will reach a very high temperature very quickly, melting a hole in the blade without affecting the rest of the knife.” Harry stepped back and raised his wand, awaiting her signal.
“This time,” Hermione concluded, “it will happen so fast that we will have to light the powder and spray the venom together.” She drew another cc of venom from the vial into the syringe, took a deep breath, and nodded to Harry.
With a silent spell Harry lit the end of his wand, then touched it to the metal strip. As soon as it caught it gave off a brilliant white light, then burned down to the pile. There was a blinding flash and a cloud of smoke billowed up from the powder, leaving a glowing lump of molten iron. Hermione immediately pressed on the plunger and like before, the mist of venom coated the dagger. As it was doing so the molten glob of iron slowly ate its way into the golden knife blade and an agonizing scream emitted from the horcrux.
Then, for a brief moment, a white shape emerged from the hole created by the molten iron. The soul fragment was attempting to escape! Harry grabbed Hermione and pulled her away from the table as Bill, Flitwick, and Remus raised their wands with Dumbledore’s curse on their lips. But the shape was pulled back into the hole as the venom took effect and the screaming faded away.
The congratulations were more subdued this time, as everyone realized that they had survived a close call. With trepidation, they moved into the last section. This was going to be the toughest one. The aqua regia wouldn’t work quickly enough, and it was too small for a repeat of the thermite method.
This time, the locket lay on a table alongside a tongs, an open beaker of a silvery metallic liquid substance and a heavy flask containing a clear, steaming fluid. After conferring with Bill, Hermione returned to Harry with a worried expression on her face.
“I’m not sure this is going to work,” she said nervously. “If we don’t get all of the pieces with the venom, the soul fragment might escape.”
“Then we can’t do it with all these people here. It’s too risky.”
There was a lot of resistance, but in the end, Harry mostly prevailed. McGonagall insisted that she would stay, as did Remus, pointing out that as a werewolf he had the strongest constitution of any of them. He would be the one to cast Dumbledore’s soul destruction spell if the soul fragment escaped. Harry desperately hoped that they would succeed. He could not bear to be the one responsible for the death of his father’s last remaining friend. The others retreated to the other side of the impervious barrier, which Flitwick managed to charm into transparency. A trill from Fawkes eased their anxiety as the phoenix song calmed their frayed nerves.
Once more Hermione began her explanation of what they were doing. “We are going to attempt to shatter the locket, using cold this time.” She glanced at Harry and they exchanged brief smiles, recalling his Terminator comment. “Harry will first dip it into mercury, also known as quicksilver. The mercury will soak into the gold, weakening its molecular structure and making it more brittle. The other flask contains liquid nitrogen, which is extremely cold. We hope to freeze the locket, then drop it onto the table and shatter it, while spraying the Acromantula venom on it.” For a third time she filled the syringe with the venom.
“Wait,” Harry interrupted. “Let’s change positions. I have quicker reflexes than you do. I’m more likely to be able to spray all the pieces before the soul fragment escapes.” Hermione realized he was correct and agreed, handing him the syringe and picking up the tongs.
Nothing happened as she dipped the locket into the mercury. When she pulled it out, the once golden locket now had a silvery coating. As they watched, the silvery liquid gradually soaked into the locket. Next she dipped it into the liquid nitrogen, which boiled furiously, with clouds of steam pouring out over the table top. Finally she pulled it out, and looked with apprehension at Harry. He readied the syringe and nodded.
Hermione twirled the locket once and flung it at the table top. It hit the table and slid several feet. It didn’t break. With a panicked look on her face, Hermione reached for the locket again with the tongs, intending to throw it harder this time.
“Stop!” She froze, and looked questioningly back at Harry. “Take this,” he ordered, thrusting the syringe toward her. Puzzled, she obeyed. Without a word Harry held out his hand, and instantly the Sword of Gryffindor appeared before him and he caught it smoothly.
“Spray the blade.” Now realizing what he was doing, Hermione coated the end of the sword with the venom, then stepped back.
In one sweeping motion, Harry swung the sword back and brought it down on the still frozen locket, shattering it into pieces. For the final time that day the dreadful scream signaled the end of yet another soul fragment, this one showing no sign of escaping. The killing stroke had been delivered, as with the basilisk fang, with the physical breach of the horcrux and the toxin together.
Harry’s shoulders slumped in relief as he felt a pair of trembling arms embrace him from behind and a bushy head lean against his back. Remus raced up to him and added a bone-crushing hug that would have done Molly Weasley proud. The joyful cry of the phoenix filled the air as Fawkes took flight, circling once and then disappearing with a flash. ‘He sure seems to turn up at just the right time,’ Harry thought briefly just before his attention was diverted by a swarm of redheads.
“Harry! You did it!” Ginny and her brothers came running into the room, the barrier disappearing now that the need was past. He caught her in one arm as her brothers pounded him on the back and soon everyone was hugging and slapping backs and they made their way back down to the Gryffindor common room to celebrate. Hermione had refused to let go of him the whole time and Harry realized now how scared she had been, worrying about him like she always did. He held back as the others entered the portrait hole, then stopped before entering the common room and pulled her into a proper hug.
“Hermione, you were fantastic today. Everything you did was just brilliant. You know I can never thank you enough for what you do for me.” Hermione just hugged him back with tears in her eyes, so overcome by the emotions generated by what they had just done that she couldn’t respond. As far as he was concerned she didn’t need to. Eventually they pulled apart and he led her into the common room.
Later, after Dobby had brought them all butterbeers and Harry stood surrounded by his excited friends, Ron spoke up. “Now all you need to do is take out that ugly snake. What do you think?”
Harry smiled and raised the Sword of Gryffindor, turning it back and forth, letting it glisten in the light. “I think,” he said slowly. “That if this can stop a forty foot basilisk, an overgrown snake should be no problem.”
-xox-XOX-XOX-xox-
Interruption from the author: When I began this story this was going to be the final scene. But as the story progressed it became clear that it couldn’t end here, that it would have a different ending. Those of you who want things simple and uncomplicated may want to stop here. Those who realize that things don’t always turn out the way they’re supposed to, keep reading.
-xox-XOX-XOX-xox-
August 31
“Hermione?”
Hermione looked up from her final packing to see Harry standing hesitantly in her doorway. He was holding a potions book. The potions book. Her chest tightened. This was the one unresolved issue that remained between them, the one bone of contention that she had hoped would stay buried. It had been a futile hope, she knew, reluctant though she was to admit it. If this was not addressed it would continue to fester at their relationship.
“I want you to have this. There is some really useful stuff in here that you might be able to use in Potions this year.” By putting it like that he was ignoring all the unpleasantness from the preceding year, focusing on the positive, trying to make something good come out of it. It was quintessential Harry Potter. She knew what he was trying to do. He knew that she knew.
“Harry …” She stopped, seeing the pleading look in his eyes. He needed her to accept this, to accept him and what he had done. To let him know that it was all right. She reached out and took the book. “OK, I’ll take a look at it. Thanks.” She bent down to add the book to her trunk, relieved that it was over, hoping they could put it behind them.
“Hermione?” She looked up at him again, seeing this time the anguish in his eyes. It wasn’t going to be that easy. She had taught him too well this summer about expressing his feelings.
“This is the one thing that hurt more than anything else that happened between us last year. Your reaction to this just killed me. When you kept saying I was cheating, it just …” There was moisture in Harry’s eyes and Hermione was ashamed. One of the bedrock foundations of Harry Potter’s character was his integrity, his desperate desire to do the right thing. By attacking that she had attacked his very being. She looked down, her own tears beginning to form. He had been in enough pain last year as it was. Instead of helping him deal with it she had contributed to it.
“I just couldn’t understand it and I still can’t,” he went on. “You’re the one who always wants to learn as much as she can about anything we do. You’re the one who will go to the library and look up extra stuff about what we’re learning so you know even more than what’s in our textbook. Why wouldn’t you do the same thing with this book? What if you had found it in the library instead of me being given it by Slughorn? There were a lot of useful things in here, things that made the potions easier to make, things that made them better. Even something that saved Ron’s life.”
This was killing her now, it hurt so bad. The worst part was that everything he said was true. He was right and she was wrong about the cheating thing. Worse than that, it was the exact opposite. He hadn’t cheated and worse, she had! She had cheated by helping Ron win the keeper’s position on the quidditch team. She had no excuse for it. She had doubted her friend’s ability. And Harry hadn’t cheated when he helped Ron by pretending to use the Felix Felicitas. He had trusted his friend’s ability and figured out a way to allow him to use it by boosting his confidence, without using magic or a potion.
Hermione tried to respond but couldn’t. So Harry continued – and it got worse.
“I never wanted to use this without you. I tried to share it with you the first time I found something different in it. I wanted it to be something we used together, but you kept pushing me away and didn’t want anything to do with it – or me.”
If she thought what he said before had hurt it was nothing compared to what she was feeling now. Her heart felt like it was tearing in two it was in such pain. She had taken something that could have brought the two, or even the three, of them closer together and used it to push him away. The best friend she had ever had. But he had refused to let her. The nastier she was to him the nicer he was to her, as much as she would let him. He had tried to comfort her when Ron made her cry. He tried to keep her from making a complete fool of herself with McClaggen. He had kept coming back to her all year pleading for her understanding, for her help with Malfoy. And she had ignored him, had scolded him, had belittled him. What she hadn’t done was believe him or trust him. Until it was too late.
Hermione collapsed, sobbing, onto the floor. In an instant Harry was down beside her, hugging her, trying to make it better. Trying to stammer out an apology to her. To her. After all the pain she had caused him he was trying to apologize to her. She couldn’t let him.
“Oh god, Harry! I am so sorry! I can’t believe I did that. I … I don’t know what I was doing.” She clung to him desperately, wishing that all the pain would go away. “How can you ever forgive me?”
“Of course I forgive you Hermione. I love you.” She stopped breathing when she heard these words. “I mean … you know what I mean.” She started breathing again.
“Yes Harry, I know what you mean. I love you too.” The words seemed so inadequate. She couldn’t stop the tears, or the guilt. She needed to say more. “You were right. I was wrong to act that way. And I should have trusted you more. I promise you it won’t happen ever again.”
They continued to hug each other, both willing the other’s pain away, both vowing to never again let things like that get between them. Eventually Harry pulled away and looked her once more in the eyes, and she could see that he was still troubled.
“Hermione, I don’t want it to seem like I don’t appreciate this, and I’m so relieved to hear you say that, but can you tell me what happened? Why did you change?”
This time it was Hermione’s turn for some soul searching, and like Ron, what she saw did not make her proud of herself. Deep down she knew what had happened. She had been afraid. Like Ron, afraid that she was going to lose Harry. And so she pushed him away, in a foolish effort to protect herself if she did lose him, and in the process making it even likelier that she would.
“Harry, I was so scared. After you told us the prophecy all I could think of was that we were going to lose you; that I was going to lose my best friend. And when you told us you were going to have special lessons with Dumbledore, I felt left out. Like you didn’t need me anymore. And then with that book it looked even more like you didn’t need me. With Slughorn treating you like you were better than anyone else it seemed to prove that you really didn’t need me. All you needed was that book. I hated that book because I blamed it for taking you away from me. But I realize now that it was really my own fear that was pushing you away.”
She was crying again, but it felt better now that she had admitted it, to him and to herself. He pulled her once more into a comforting hug. “Hermione, don’t ever think that. Don’t ever think that I don’t need you. I couldn’t possibly do this without you. I was stupid if I ever thought I could.”
They had twisted around so that he was sitting on the floor with his back to her bed, and she was now sitting across his lap being comforted, with her head against his chest. She just sat there thinking about what had been said, and thinking that she needed him as much as he needed her.
Finally, he kissed her on top of the head and they disentangled and slowly got up. As he left her room to let her finish packing he turned one last time from the doorway. “Thanks Hermione. Thanks for coming back to me.”
She looked at the empty doorway for awhile before returning to her trunk. And I’ll be with you to the end, Harry Potter, whatever it takes. I’m never leaving you again.
-ooOoo-
September 1
“You almost ready?”
“Yes. Just doing one more last check around. That’s usually Dad’s job but …”
Harry had moved up behind her and she felt his arms come around her as he drew her into a hug. She relaxed into him and closed her eyes.
“Yeah, I know. It’ll be OK.” He waited until he was sure she was feeling all right. Finally she pulled away and turned and nodded to him, wiping her eye.
“All right, see you at the station.” Harry turned and left the room, and she heard the barely audible pop of his disapparation, just as she felt his presence vanish from the house. Dobby would take their trunks to the castle later so they only had to get themselves and a few things they needed for the train ride to the station. They were going to arrive at Kings Cross a few minutes apart and greet each other as though they had not just come from the same place, one last act in the charade that had dominated their lives in this house for the past two months. They had told a few of the neighbors that Harry had been given a long term project in Edinburgh, and that they would be gone for an undetermined amount of time.
That’s not the only act that’s been going on at this house lately, Hermione thought as she looked around one last time and thought back over the summer now officially over. It was hard to believe that so much had happened in such a short period of time. They had both grown into people she would barely have recognized three months ago. She had lost track of the number of times she had nearly been killed, or how many people she and Harry had killed.
But their fighting skills hadn’t been the only things that had developed this summer. For in addition to being the most dangerous, most terrifying two months she had ever experienced, it had also been the happiest. She couldn’t ever remember a time in her life that she had enjoyed as much, laughed as much, been as unbelievably happy, as she had been this summer. And there was one reason for it.
Harry Potter. A spur of the moment decision made on the train ride home had led to the two of them becoming closer than she ever thought possible. They had laughed together, cried together, and comforted each other. They had spent countless hours talking with each other, reading and discussing books and watching movies, sharing their likes and their dislikes, their hopes and their fears, their joys and their sorrows, and just taking pleasure in each other’s company, never tiring of being together.
She had thought long and hard last night after he had left her room and had kept coming to the same inescapable conclusion. She could no longer keep fooling herself, keep denying what had been growing more obvious to her ever since that day when they had concocted the fake boyfriend/girlfriend scheme. A scheme that at the same time delighted her and terrified her. She had no idea if she would be able to pull it off.
For what her mother had hoped for,
what the goblins had sensed,
what Mrs. Longbottom had perceived,
what Mrs. Weasley had suspected,
what Viktor had guessed,
what Fleur had seen,
It was all true. She had fallen deeply, hopelessly in love with her best friend.
And she must never let him know.
He belonged with Ginny.
It was a far, far, better thing.
Finite
-xox-XOX-XOX-xox-
-xox-XOX-XOX-xox-
Afterword
Well, there it is, my vision of the summer after HBP. At the beginning of the story one of the stated goals was to revisit the question from the movie ‘When Harry met Sally’ — how close friends can a man and a woman become without the romance thing getting in the way? (BTW, in the movie they ended up in bed together.) We had mixed results in this story. Hermione has fallen for Harry but so far Harry’s managed to keep it as just really good friends. This reflects my personal opinion is that it is easier to be close friends with a member of the opposite sex without falling in love with them if you are in a committed relationship with someone else. Harry’s attitude about a relationship with Hermione has changed, however. He had never considered the possibility before the summer, but by the end it seems like a perfectly reasonable idea, except that he’s interested in Ginny right now.
The characters have all grown and changed during the summer. Their fighting ability has improved dramatically. (It had to!) Each member of the trio has self-esteem issues of one sort or another, and each has made progress in dealing with them. Harry has much more confidence in his abilities, and is more willing to assume leadership and accept and use his fame. Hermione has started to overcome her self image as an unattractive ‘bucktoothed, bushyhaired bookworm’, regained her sense of humor, and is able to relax and be herself around Harry. Ron has also begun to recognize and get over his inferiority complex.
The sequel, titled ‘End Game’ will continue this tale into the trio’s last year at Hogwarts. Part of the story will be a waiting game while preparing for the final confrontation with Voldemort, but a larger part will still be about relationships. Harry is going to have to deal with the problem of having two girls in love with him. The pretend relationships may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but might be difficult to maintain. There will be some unexpected twists and turns for all three members of the trio as couples form and break up on a regular basis. But, as my kids say, "Hey, that’s high school!"
Chem Prof
P.S. All of the chemistry used in the destruction of the horcruxes was real. (More than one chemist has ruined a wedding ring while handling mercury.) Since Kinsfire brought it up in his review, I should point out that aqua regia will dissolve gold, but not as easily as it will silver. There was also the problem of how to spray the acromantula venom on the dagger or locket if they were submerged in a flask of aqua regia. Besides, it was more fun to use a different method for each horcrux.