Shadow Walks |h.p/h.g|

ch. 20

"I've come to take you home, Hermione."

She could remember the look in his eyes, the promise that had glinted there as they said their farewells in the Great Hall, the last time she'd ever seen him. She'd known what he had not said, what he had not needed to say, and she had contented herself with waiting only a little longer.

When this is all over, she'd thought... if only she'd known how it would all end.

Even when she was phased into a new universe, it was uncomfortable, even unpleasant, having to re-explain everything to family and friends who had thought her dead, to crush the light that suddenly sprang to life in their eyes. And there had been one universe where she had apparently never existed at all - it had been horrible, facing Harry and Ron while they glanced at her with the indifferent eyes of disinterested strangers. After a while, she'd tried to avoid deliberately seeking anyone out, but she could not abandon her quest for knowledge, for a solution to what had happened to her, for a way out, a way home.

She revisited the same places when she moved into a new reality, not knowing what the researchers of the day might have discovered or neglected. She browsed through the Ministry, the Hogwarts Library, and had recently discovered - with no small amount of jealousy - that the Ravenclaw common room was quite well-stocked with reading material on its own merits. She had taken to searching there as well, though it was considerably more difficult when one had to place one's head inside the book, unable to actually pick it up and open it. It always gave her a headache - or she felt like it did - trying to jot notes from a closed tome.

Now, she felt listless, ill at ease, vaguely depressed. It had been years - how many, she wasn't sure - but she wondered if she had been cursed to wander through the millions of alternate realities for the rest of her life. She had visited Godric's Hollow early that morning, seen with a kind of disbelieving amusement that she was actually married to Ron, and had left again quickly, with a clinging heaviness of heart.

There were crystals that one could use, but she had yet to discover a way to identify her own universe. The one promising time that she had been able to have an illuminating lunch with Luna in the Ministry cafeteria, she had 'changed' right in the middle of their conversation.

She had been phased out for four changes now, and despaired of ever again being in control of her own fate.

She sat down on the floor, wrapping her arms around her knees. There was no fire in the hearth since the summer holidays meant that there were no students present to desire the warmth, but she wouldn't have been able to feel the heat anyway.

What's the point anymore? She wondered glumly. Whatever scheme Bellatrix Lestrange had been trying to perpetrate had obviously succeeded.

Nobody knows what happened to me.

There was a sudden noise from faraway, clamor and shouting in a distant corridor. Hermione listened without interest; none of this would affect her in the slightest. Nobody could see her; nobody could hear her.

A voice again, clearer now, hoarse and frantic. She sat up, every sense tingling with alertness.

The voice was calling her name.

Harry stood at the top of the stairs, breathing heavily, Sir Nicholas wafting at his heels. He appeared at a loss, glancing first in one direction down the corridor, then the other. He didn't seem to know which way to proceed.

"You're sure you haven't seen her?" he questioned.

"I'm quite positive, Harry," Sir Nick replied. "I told you already that Mrs. Weasley had tea with Professor McGonagall last month, but there has been no Hermione Granger floating through walls here. I assure you the ghosts would have noticed something like..."