ethrosdemon ||| Harry Potter

War: Triangle, Bisector
by ethrosdemon
naturallycalm@yahoo.com

Their very first victory wasn't discovered for years. Their, as in all three of them together. Not individual victories like all children have against monsters in the wardrobe, against the kind of dark that is simply a lack of illumination at night. Not Harry's personal victory, the one that came with the scar. The victory of the diary, Tom Riddle's diary, and what it meant in the long run.

The three of them call him Tom now. Or Mr. Riddle. The name he was given, not the one he chose. That naming they achieved together, back at school, and they're still convincing others to use it now. The truth of it only came to them on the heels of gallows humor, an attempt at levelling, humanizing that which is hardly human anymore. The power is very real, as old as words, and a win for their side.

Rumor has it, he doesn't like their impertinence. Not one bit, thank you very much!

He doesn't fight them directly anymore. The Dark Lord is a spiralling maw of magic now. Gorgeous in his horror. Fully in the height of his powers, no longer shrunken or diminished in appearance, his beauty frightens as much as his wand.

So many fell in the early days of his recaptured youth. He converted with smiles, soft caresses and promises of a bed shared. Hermione knows of four children, suspects there must be more hidden.

His desires are capricious and impossible to presage. They've tried. Sought out that which they coveted in their own blackest, secret wishings. Hoarded objects of power, books of darkest magic, people of dithering allegiance. When they win, they have no way of knowing it. Their side marks out assumed victories in almost smiles and slightly lessened tension.

Harry always seeks her out on anniversaries that have meaning to him alone. The pattern only formed after years of his odd appearances. Her memory works like that, by days and months and markers she designates to keep herself sane. April the 14th, all day she knew Harry would find her. In Cork, sitting out the back of the Finnegan cottage reading postings from London and Cardiff.

His shadow blocks out the lengthening light from the setting sun, and somehow the boisterous noise from the people around the property and in the house. She doesn't have to see him to know who it is; no one approaches her so silently from behind but Harry.

"Dean wants to know if you'd like a beer." A bottle surrounded by very familiar fingers swoops in from her right. A body follows and presses in until she relinquishes half her seat. His hips find enough purchase to slip just enough under her to tilt her slightly, and his torso presses her forward so that her back no longer touches the chair but rests instead on his chest.

"There are plenty of seats, you know." But she settles against him, his left arm coming around, the hand brushing the hair from her forehead and then settling on her papers.

"It's too dark to read." It is when he settles his bottle between his legs and covers her eyes with his hand.

"Feeling neglected, are we?" The condensation from her bottle drips on her arm, cool droplets melding and meeting at her elbow.

"You wouldn't ever neglect me! Don't you know who I am?" There's humor in his tone, almost a facsimile of his old, joking voice. But there's a discordant thread, and instead of feeling cheered, Hermione feels weary.

"An annoying prat who eats the stems of broccoli off everyone's plate?" He smiles; she can feel it in the loose muscles of his arms, the settling back into the chair and drawing her in closer, fingers dropped from her face.

His lips brush her ear as he shifts down to meet her height. "I'm Harry Potter, do you fancy a shag?" They both draw up their bottles for long drags on their beer; Harry knocks Hermione's papers to the flag-stoned ground, but she doesn't reach for them as they fall. When she blocks a kiss, he adds "How about this one, then? I was at school with *Ron* Weasley!"

As the almost-safe feeling encases her, the marginalized memories take hold.

A field not far from this spot. Verdant and achingly perfect, except not. Clover and unmown grass, meadow flowers nodding in a sweet summer breeze. Bodies lolling, splayed out in pre-rigor, bloodless death. Her hair rippled and wafted into her eyes, but she didn't push it away. Didn't move or speak or cross to kneel at the side of lost friends. She stood and waited to die.

"Don't you ever get tired of this?" His wand hung carelessly in his right hand, dipping towards the ground, and Hermione longed for the strength to scream Expelliarmus! To have it work for even a quick second before he laughed with perfect pitch and sent her beyond.

"You know this is all pointless, don't you? You're intelligent enough, brilliant enough. You have to know. I'm going to win." Hermione knew she was going to die. It was a calm, crystalline realization, and it was safe. Easy. This was the End. No more striving, no more pain. No more wishing with all her might to wake up in another time, or to be a real Muggle instead of an unfortunately birthed Mudblood.

"Such a waste. All that knowledge, all that beauty. You could be a Queen instead of an Also-was. I could give you that." And a tiny splinter crept into her mind. This wasn't a prelude to dying. This was the Temptation. He didn't want her dead; he wanted *her *. And hope rode that thought. Belief that who she was and what she did was something that at least drew his attention, and she came back to herself.

But her struggle and passing through the peril of her soul didn't matter in the end, because she didn't have her stand, didn't have her lacerating refusal, her speech against the Dark. Because Ron was there in a fury. A ginger whirlwind of righteousness and curses, and Thomas Riddle took his leave in a swirl of laughter that echoes in her dreams.

Harry's solid weight doesn't ground her. His lips and fingers and caught breath don't soothe her. Hers is a striving mind. Harry's presence ushers in too many thoughts to ever calm her. She has never shared her temptation with him. When he breathes against her neck, whispers to her about loneliness and drifting fears, she wonders about his visitations, if he dreams about black, black hair and long, lithe limbs offering up oblivion.

**

The human mind seeks patterns. Fitting disjointed images and sensory input into an orderly, known conjunction is an intrinsic activity of humankind. Our brains long for similarity, repetition, recognition. People will superimpose a simplistic system even when one doesn't exist.

"Aren't you going to eat?" The fly-away ends of her hair snap and stand on end with a buoyancy born of too much magic over the last several hours. She ignores Ron and continues encrypting messages, her place setting shoved aside and parchment resting directly before her.

"Non oculos conicere in…" She's not really concentrating on her work, chanting well-worn words. Instead she watches Ron's body tighten from her lack of attention.

"I said, maybe you should eat something, keep up your energy," his voice lowers, not raises. Used to being obeyed, sometimes he forgets to drop the act with Harry and her. Behind her, at the sink, Ginny and Violet break off their washing-up banter.

"Celario!" She taps the upper-most sheaf and shuffles it to the bottom. Starting over with the next. "Non oculos…" Crockery ceases to rattle at the sink, there's a pause and then footsteps, away from them. The other women could see Ron's face from where they stood, and retreat was their solution to his mood.

She knows this exchange will be relayed. All that's important about their lives is too sacred to fall to gossip; people die when the wrong conversations are repeated. So instead, domestic scenes are transmitted through the network like a Muggle serial. Verbatim, blow-by-blow, sometimes with holographic playback if the teller has the skill. Sometimes it's invented and holographed in the case of Fred or George.

Tomorrow, Harry will be mimicking Ron, either to him or to her. The imitation will be dead accurate. His Hermione is just as good, but he likes to do Ron-voice for reasons linked to Ron's blushing and husky, embarrassed voice.

This picture of Harry, face screwed up, magicked freckles across his checks, turns over her slumbering sense of humor, and she laughs out "Celario!" to finish with the second paper, the once-bold quill marks disappearing. She shuffles her work, and her diary that rests under it, off the table.

"I AM starved, what are we having?" Ron's gaze drops to the side of the table. He's in full-glower, eyebrows drawn down, one corner of his mouth pointed up in a grimace.

"Calerio!" He taps his wand against a crock and sends it sliding over to her.

"You'd be having coagulated lamb stew if not for me." She ladles a portion into her bowl and stirs it to cool it slightly. "I thought we agreed you would get rid of that blighted book."

For a minute or two, she eats watching him watch her. He actually expects a reply, so she gives him one. "You agreed with yourself. I told you to sod off and stick your condescending tone up your arse."

She waits for him to give up his posturing and reach for his own stack of papers resting beside his leg on the bench. "Oh right. I remember that part now. Did you also say I was a 'self-important bastard who needs to mind his own fucking business'?" The clouds on his face vanish so suddenly that he's another person entirely. Just Ron now, not a general worried about an invaluable asset who might be losing her grip on sanity.

"I don't speak in that manner. That must have been some other woman you angered past her level of toleration." His papers rustle, but she leaves hers be, watches him reading while she finishes her dinner.

There is definitely a pattern here. But not the one people contort them into. Not when one facet of their configuration is perpetually absent when two of them meet.



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