Disclaimers: Dark themes, police state ideas, mention of spousal abuse (including rape) on and off-screen, death of minor characters, graphic imagery and violence, frank sex discussion, copious bad language, villainising the Weasleys and Dumbledore, liberties taken with mythical history and the HP real-life timeline.
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Harry's heart was beating so hard that he didn't know what to do with himself. He paced around the private living room that he now shared with Hermione, grinding his jaw hard and looking so fraught that Hermione was concerned that the throbbing vein above his good eye was about to pop at any moment. He was so cross that Hermione wasn't sure how best to subdue him as Harry bristled at Enola, who was sat opposite her on one of the cosy futons.
"You should have come to me with this right away," Harry seethed, his hands on the back of his neck in his anguish. "There's no excuse for you to not have told me about this, and you know it!"
"What? When was she supposed to have done that?" Hermione cried, rising to her friend's defence. "Leave her alone! If anyone should be confessing around here, it's you! What happened to no more secrets? I understand you have loads!"
Harry scowled at her. "I said I wouldn't keep any new ones ... and I did say I have to tell you all the others in my own time."
"Well, time is a luxury that we've just lost, so that plan is moot," Hermione huffed. "Now, apologise to Ennie before I lose my temper with you."
Harry couldn't resist a cheeky grin. "Sorry, En."
"Better," Hermione nodded with a cross little smirk. Then she got up and moved to Harry, taking his tense arms in her hands. "Now ... tell me about Ron. What did he do to me that you wouldn't tell anyone? What could possibly have got you that upset?"
Harry closed his eye and bowed his head until it touched Hermione's. His anger flowed away like a gentle river. Enola watched the whole thing in jaw-dropping astonishment ... Harry never calmed this quickly ... not ever, not when he was that tightly wound. She was in awe of Hermione's ability to make it happen.
Harry took a weighty breath and moved to look out of the window to tell his story.
"Ron tried to make you forget about me ... by using powerful cerebral magic," Harry began, drawing fierce intakes of breath from the ladies. "It was just after the Deathday Party you held on my second anniversary ... the first one after you got married to him."
"After he forced me to get married to him, get it right!" Hermione hissed angrily. She span her new wedding ring to offset her pulsing rage. "Explain, quickly Harry, before I break something in here."
"He thought, after you married him, that you wouldn't bother with me anymore," Harry explained. "He thought that he'd finally beaten me, where you were concerned, because you accepted his marriage proposal. He knows you delayed until after the first anniversary ... just in case I'd come back. I'm sorry, Hermione. I knew ... and I should've come to you then ... I very almost did."
"What stopped you?"
Harry took a heavy sigh. "You'd said yes to Ron the week before ... and seemed quite happy about it. I thought he'd won, too. I took myself off to Germany a few days after Nev told me about that. I thought I'd failed in that part of my destiny, so I threw myself wholly into the other part. But I was so broken inside ... Dietmar still tells stories about the trail of destruction I left in my wake. He tooled me up with training and experience ... but I was so furious at myself for letting you go that I was like a walking natural disaster."
Hermione looked so heartsick at Harry's words that he throbbed with the guilt of causing it.
"It didn't take long for Ron to start abusing you after that, did it? You were putting up too much resistance, complaining too much, making a nuisance of yourself just by reminding people what good looked like. Riddle he ... he began insisting that Ron subjugate you by force. But Ron couldn't do it to start with. He retained a shred of the decency that made us friends, but the more he was exposed to the horrors of the Death Eater creed, the less squeamish he became.
"Ginny helped him along with that. She started a whispering campaign against you, started to really poison Ron's mind where you were concerned. That's a Dark Art in and of itself, and Ginny is an expert at it. Then, after that first slap for you talking back one too many times, the physical abuse became easier ... but I cant talk about that, or I'll break something.
"But physical abuse wasn't enough. He had to try and break your spirit, your very will to resist. He had to remove all your hope, which is why he tried to stop you hosting those anniversary parties on my Deathday. But he couldn't do that, either. He tried, with all the magic he possessed .... but apart from being a joke of a wizard, he couldn't break through some curious internal shield you'd cast on yourself. He didn't know what it was, had never seen magic like it before ... and because he couldn't shift it he ... he ..."
Harry had to steady himself ... the windows were vibrating dangerously with his boiling fury.
"He had Riddle curse you ... in person."
Hermione swore so violently it was she who broke the window.
"Riddle cursed me?" Hermione breathed, angrily.
"Oh yes," Harry nodded, fighting a losing battle for calm in his mind. "You and Tom Riddle have a far more intimate relationship than you have ever been aware of. He finds you fascinating, you know ... he has ever since this episode ... and this spell that you'd cast on yourself was the trigger to his borderline obsession with you."
All colour sped from Hermione's face.
"Riddle has an obsession with me?" Hermione whispered in abject sickness. "But why? Because of this enchantment?"
Harry nodded. "Even he couldn't crack it, you see. And he tried on multiple occasions. But you kept repelling him until, during one duel, this spell you'd cast decided enough was enough, and consumed whatever new curse Riddle was trying on you to break through. It ate through part of your heart ... it would have done irreparable damage to you if he'd carried on, rather than give in.
"But he didn't. He wanted to know more about it. This was new magic, and he wanted it for himself. But he couldn't touch it, couldn't beat it. And that just made him even more curious about it ... there was that aspect of it ... but also because the spell was all about me."
The room was heaving in its silence now. It sat dense and heavy in the air as Harry took another breath to continue his confession.
"You don't remember it," Harry went on. "You wiped your own memory ... but you cast a spell on yourself, to stop yourself falling in love with me. But you were already in love with me, and I was already in love with you, but we were both avoiding the topic in our own ways. But we were alchemically destined to be together, and so nature decided it wasn't having any of that us-not-being-in-love nonsense. It wouldn't even let us have any say in it! So it changed your spell ... drew power from my love for you because it was just that potent a force ... to do what you wanted, and protected you from getting hurt by anything to do with me.
"And because the spell was about us, and was charged with my intent and magical force... and I would do anything to stop you being hurt, too ... and because my parents had gone to such extraordinary lengths to make sure that Tom Riddle's magic couldn't hurt me ... in any way ... even by hurting the girl I loved without knowing it ..."
"It protected me from him!" Hermione was crying freely now. Harry just nodded his response.
"It reacted to the threat and stopped it," said Harry. "But you'd been damaged, and I thought that's what the hole was until I detected Dolohov's signature in it. Then I realised that it wasn't your physical heart that Riddle thought he had damaged ... but your metaphysical one. Riddle could never have your unswerving devotion while this enchantment was in place - which he demands in all his followers - and my magic would have stopped you being able to feel at all, rather than allow Riddle to poison you against me.
"But there was still this issue of the hole in your heart. So I checked you again, on a whim and found that the hole was slightly bigger. That confused me, until I realised that Dolohov's Curse might still be affecting you, even after all these years. A quick diagnostic confirmed that. So I took the most powerful potion from my Alchemy stores and healed you ... or so I'd thought."
Hermione was still crying, she sniffed hard and tried to speak.
"This is the point, by the way, where you're supposed to say what really happened was that I filled your broken heart with my massive, massive love!" Harry teased lightly.
"Oh, shut up, you!" Hermione laughed, clobbering Harry with a bone-crunching hug and catching his mouth with her own. She folded into his embrace and didn't really care that Enola could see or how badly she was weeping, herself.
"How do you know about all this?" Hermione breathed into Harry's shoulder.
"I saw it all, in your mind," Harry confessed. "You may have pulled your conscious memory of what you did but the original is still there, buried deep beneath the surface. I didn't ask to see it, didn't want to see Riddle put his magic ... and his filthy hands ... on you. But your mind wanted me to see, to know, despite how hard the viewing of it was. It was simply that important that I did."
"And why didn't you tell me?" Hermione asked firmly. "There's a reason you haven't been honest with me, I know, so drop it and come clean."
Harry looked up but didn't answer, was determined not to. He was so determined not to think about it that, perversely, that was all that was on his mind ... and it was a mind that, at this most inopportune moment, decided to open up to Hermione's.
The thought crossed her mind, too, as much Harry's as one of her own ... and she instantly, innately knew that she was reading his mind, and she scowled at what he was thinking.
"What do you mean ... Horcrux Protector?" Hermione fumed. "And now what do you mean ... that I can finally read your mind! Did you expect this ... whatever it is? Answer all those questions at the same time if you can!"
"Let's start with the easy one," Harry muttered bashfully. "The alchemical marriage has opened us up to each other on every level you can imagine. The more we we get used to it, the sharper the senses will become. We've always been good at unspoken communication, but now we will literally be able to communicate on a telepathic wavelength ... or we will be, if I ever sort my mind out. But, for now, you can read my thoughts if you focus on them enough."
"And you didn't let me in on this tiny detail why?"
"I don't want you reading my mind when I have such little control over it," Harry replied plainly.
"Or you don't want me getting hold of your millions of secrets, you mean!"
"I don't have millions, that's just silly."
"Don't be flippant!" Hermione snapped crossly. "Harry ... you're keeping so much from me. I'm actually hurt by it."
"You'd be hurt more by the knowing, that's my excuse and I'm standing by it," Harry replied quietly.
"If I'm in danger, I want to know!"
"You didn't want your parents to know when you wiped their memories, and I don't want you to know about this," Harry went on, stubbornly.
"I did that because I was a scared little girl!" Hermione cried back. "Now I'm a grown woman who has come through hell and is still fighting! You owe me more respect, Harry!"
Harry ducked his head in his shame, suitably chastised. "You're right ... I'm sorry. I'm just trying to protect you."
Hermione took a rasping breath and drew Harry to her, whispering into his hair. "I know ... but we don't face our problems by ignoring them or running from them anymore. So ... tell me why you were thinking about Horcrux protections."
"I think you know," Harry muttered back. "And I think you've known for a while."
Hermione felt an icy shiver tickle across her neck. "I have a theory yes, but I want to hear it from you. We'll call it a test of you not hiding things from me anymore."
Harry puffed out a breath and moved away from Hermione sit on the windowsill again.
"Well, let's consider what we know Riddle's lost Horcrux," Harry began, heavily "We know that it's Gryffindor's Seal ... a sigil medallion that Godric used to lock in his power to the foundations of Hogwarts. And we also know that Riddle has placed it around the neck of a reanimated Dumbledore."
"Not just Dumbledore, but the vision of Dumbledore that Riddle was so afraid of, made flesh," Enola pointed out.
"Yes, and that," Harry frowned at the interruption. Enola looked back sheepishly and held her lips shut. "Anyway, in my duel with Dumbledore I could feel that the Horcrux, Riddle's last one, is being powered by four other sources of protection, as if were at the centre of a spider's web of interconnecting energies. And therein lies our biggest challenge ... identifying the protective energies and removing them, reducing Dumbledore to a much more beatable foe in the process. One thing I know for certain is that they are living energies ... life forces from other people. The question is ... who are they, and also where do we find them?
"Tom Riddle knew that I was still alive, so he must have expected that, at some stage, I would come back to resume the fight against him. And he also likes themes, such as using Hogwarts founder's items as Horcruxes. He knew that we'd been successfully hunting his other ones, destroyed most of them, even. He knew that we knew his weakness, so ... what I think ... is that in order to protect his last one, he designed its defences with the only real threat against it in mind."
"You!" Enola cried in horror.
Harry nodded. "I don't think it's a coincidence that Riddle chose Dumbledore as the physical protector of his Horcrux. Not just because of his power, but also because of his connection to me. We had a personal relationship, one that went way beyond Headmaster and student, no matter the way it ended. We loved each other ... I still do love Dumbledore in a way, even if I can never forgive him for how he acted towards me in his life."
"I can't forgive him either, and I actually hate Dumbledore for what he did to you, Harry," Hermione scythed. "But I never had that close personal link to Dumbledore, not like you did, so he can burn in the afterlife for all I care. But I think I get it now. You think that Riddle chose Dumbledore because you wouldn't fight him properly, Harry, because of your love for him? Riddle was banking on you not having the heart to totally destroy Dumbledore, even in a zombie form?"
Harry nodded. "And it worked. I could feel a sort of reluctance on my part to truly commit to the fight ... and it was a mix of not wanting to and actually being in awe of Dumbledore a bit. I so need to get over that before I face him again."
"So ... you think the other protections will be the same?" asked Enola. "Four living links to you ... ones you are unlikely to ever fight or kill."
Harry nodded ... and flicked a glance at Hermione. Enola squealed in her horror as comprehension slammed into her mind, before she snapped her eyes to Mrs Potter, too.
"You! You think you're one of the protections?"
"I've thought it was likely, ever since Harry mentioned this mysterious link I had to Riddle through my Marriage Bond to Ron," Hermione confirmed calmly. "It made sense that I might have been involved somehow, but I had no clue how. But now, after Harry said Ron had Riddle curse me in person, I assume that's when he did it. He would have had ample opportunity to redirect my power to his Horcrux once Ron had given me over to Riddle, which I bet he did gladly."
"More than likely," Harry nodded, bitterly. "It helps Dumbledore against me, too, as not only is your own immense power flowing into him, there's also a trace of your essence there, too. My magic can detect that and is resisting going to my full potency in case it damages you. It's a bit like brother wands going up against each other ... our magics dont want to fight, so they repel each other like opposing magnets."
"No, no, no!" Enola howled, banging her knees with her fists as sudden tears streamed down her face. "No, Min ... just no! You're saying that you've been cursed, turned into a Horcrux Protector and that the only way to cut the power, as it were, would be to kill you! Tell me that isn't what you're saying?"
"Have you suddenly become telepathic, too?" Hermione quirked.
"What are you treating this so lightly!?" Enola cried.
"Because, why would I let anyone kill me?" Hermione replied. "Why on Earth would I let anyone do that? I've just married my soul mate ... do you honestly think that I'd let anyone take that away from me ... or that he would?"
Enola looked up in hope, her eyes puffy and watery. "Then ... there might be another way?"
"There had better be, because I have no intention of dying anytime soon," Hermione soothed. "So ... Harry?"
Harry shrugged in his frustration. It was no good lying now, Hermione would see right through it. "I'm still working on that one."
"Well, now we can work on it together," Hermione told him, firmly. "As well as having a think about who else might be protecting the lost Horcrux. That's going to require a bit of thought. But, while we're getting truths off our chests, how about another one from you ... have you ever stolen memories from Enola regarding Neville?"
Whatever Harry had been expecting, it wasn't that. He looked up in deep surprise, an expression matched only by Enola, who blushed at Hermione's brassiness.
"What?"
"You heard me," Hermione repeated, unmoved. "Have you ever stolen knowledge from Enola, and remember, I'll know if you try and conceal this."
Harry took a tired breath and closed his eye. Hermione's interrogation was wearying him. He slowly opened his eye and looked at Enola with a sad expression.
"No ... I've never stolen memories from her," Harry stated plainly.
"Well, that's the truth, at least," Hermione frowned. "But I can hear in your tone that there's more to it. So, tell us."
"Ennie wont want to hear, trust me," Harry told her, warningly. "I'll tell you if you force me, but on your heads be it."
Enola shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "Why wont I want to hear?"
Harry sighed deeply again. "Because, even though I've never stolen memories from you ... you have given them up willingly ... to forget the horrors you once knew. Trust me, you asked me to take the memories ... and you really don't want them back."
"I ... I asked you to take them?" Enola stuttered. "I wouldn't have done that unless they were really bad, would I?"
"No, and short of killing Neville in front of your in-laws, this will pretty much be the worst thing you could imagine," Harry told her, darkly. "Enola, listen to me ... if you've ever been my friend or trusted me on anything, trust me on this. Don't make me tell you what it took magic to make you forget."
Enola swallowed, hard. "O-okay, Harry. I don't want to know. I can live without the knowing. But answer me just one thing ... was Neville hit with a Dark Magic spell that stopped him being sexually intimate with me?"
Harry looked at her sadly. "Yes. But he doesn't know about that, either."
"Because you took his memories, too?" Hermione asked, getting cross again.
"No, Hermione," Harry replied, turning to her wearily. "Because Enola took those ones."
Both girls saw mirrored expressions of shock as they looked at each other. Then Hermione drew a weighty breath.
"I want to know ... I need to know," she whispered. "If you don't want to hear, En, leave us to it. Harry can tell me alone."
"Alright, I ... I'm going to go," Enola hushed, getting up quickly. Then she turned to Harry. "Thank you ... for whatever you've done. I know how much of a burden it must be for you to carry. At least you have someone to share it with now."
And, with a weak smile at Hermione, she shuffled out of the room and left Harry and Hermione to it.
"You're mad with me," Harry queried, his voice flat and leaden.
"I'm trying not to be," Hermione replied. "But you've kept so much from me. I wonder how much more there is to come."
He retuned her stare dolefully. "You wont ever hate me, will you?"
"Of course not."
"Good. This is will probably be as close as you come, though."
Hermione looked over at him suspiciously. "What did you do, Harry? What happened to Neville?"
Harry sighed. There was deep guilt embedded in it, and Harry took a moment before continuing. "I had to assume that Neville would be captured at some point during this conflict," he began, lowly. "He's good, but few are good enough against the enemies out there. Especially alone. If Nev got captured, he wouldn't endure a proper interrogation for long. Not if someone like Malfoy had gotten hold of him, or that bitch Lestrange. His mental defences are pretty flimsy.
"So I took Neville into ritual ... hit him with a Celtic runic spell straight from the Potter dialect archives. It was a spell so powerful that it makes the Imperius Curse look like a gentle suggestion charm. I implanted the idea in his mind that there were weak crossing points to the international wards. Implanted it so deeply, so perfectly, that it would seem like a legitimate piece of his own world knowledge, just as if he'd read it in a textbook."
"Okay," said Hermione. She assessed it in one breath, and accepted it in the next. "That's a violation, but I've heard of worse. I'm assuming you had good reason?"
Harry nodded. "The location I told him is actually where the ward is the strongest. French wizards are employed full time on the other side, to reinforce them daily. Good work on subduing them, by the way, when you took that trip to Europe. They are generally quite accomplished wizards.
"But anyway," Harry continued. "I implanted the idea, made him forget all about the ritual with a few Memory Charms and went from there. I knew, if he was captured, the Death Eaters or Section Seven would extract that information easily. But, no matter how deep they drilled into his mind, to try and see if it was an attempt at deception, they would see it as the truth.
"And they'd believe it because I told him it. I crossed at that location purposely ... so he'd see me crossing it. The Death Eaters would extract those memories, show them to Riddle, who in turn would make them forget the part about me. Or just kill them. Which is no loss to anyone. Then he'd direct his curse-breakers to those points."
"Utterly wasting their time," Hermione considered, thoughtfully. "Or otherwise distracting them from whatever else you might be up to."
Harry nodded. "That was the idea."
"So ... like with your Mum and Dad ... you took a situation you knew was likely to happen, and manipulated it to your advantage?"
Harry sighed again. "That was where I got the idea from. I wasn't powerful enough, or well-equipped enough, to go straight after Riddle when I came back. You've seen an inkling of my fractured mental state ... it was a hundred times worse when this all started. I was in no shape for anything, really.
"But I couldn't stand to be idle. And Nev, well, he got the taste for resistance fighting battling the Carrows at Hogwarts. He's badass, I don't know if you've noticed. There was no way, once we'd reunited, that he'd leave my side or duck out of a fight. And he had the advantage of not being very well known. He could go places I couldn't, set up things for us ... while I darted around the world getting myself tooled up to lead this war.
"We both knew the risks ... he took them willingly."
"So, Neville has been captured, I assume?" Hermione asked quietly.
Harry sucked in a sharp, bitter breath ... then nodded again. "A few times."
Hermione gasped in shock, then narrowed her eyes at him. "But he was let go?"
Yes," Harry replied. "The Death Eaters have tried to use him to find this place, to find me, every time they've caught him. They've hit him with tracking charms and sent him on his way, hoping he'll lead them here; they've infected him with diseases, hoping he'll return home and spread them to everyone; they even gave him a suitcase nuke once. Imperius Cursed him, made him think he was a Muggle returning from a business trip. I was actually quite impressed with that one."
"But you foiled those plans?"
"Of course," said Harry blithely. "Fan and Ann were always his handlers, screened him every time he came back. Nothing gets past those witches. And we recruited Ernie MacMillan and others. They gave us a heads up whenever Neville fell into unfriendly hands, delivered him to us if they could. Poor Nev, he became an unwitting pawn in an unspoken duel between me and the Death Eaters."
Hermione pierced Harry with a penetrating stare. "And he doesn't know, you say? Doesn't know he's been captured ... any of it?"
Harry shook his head.
"But Enola did?"
Harry nodded. "She's the one who took the memories from him. She keeps them in her own special mind plain for safe keeping, one that she never goes to. The guilt, you see ... it eats away at her. It eats at me, too. Neville's loss ..."
"What did he lose?"
"They castrated him the last time," Harry seethed, bitterly.
His anger flared violently, shattering the teapot on the table. Hermione ignored it, letting the spilling liquid flow out and drip to the floor.
"They pulled his memories," Harry continued angrily. "It wasn't that long ago, actually. The last conversation he had, before he left on that mission, was with Ennie. They were discussing how they'd like to give Alison a brother or a sister as soon as they could. They both want a really big brood, you see. And Nev was so excited when he learned that they shared that wish ... he was practically floating when he told me about it ... and it was the last thing on his mind when he was captured.
"The Death Eaters used it against him ... as they tortured him. Sliced off his penis with Dark Magic, denied him his greatest desire ... all because he refused to give me up."
A single tear spilled from Harry's good eye socket. Hermione knew there would be another from the ruined side, but Harry's shawl would absorb it. She wished her own streaming eyes could have had the same protection.
"They sent me his severed cock in a little box ... along with his family tattoo ... where they'd flayed the skin off from his wrist. Ennie pulled his memory of it when Angharad brought Neville home, so we knew what had happened. Ann's always been close to him, she wasn't going to leave him to his fate ... so she went after him alone.
"The Death Eaters had decided that they were done with Neville after that last time. He was my brother, through and through. They had no chance of turning him. They chose to string him up from a gallows they'd erected in Godric's Hollow ... from the very monument to my own demise, in fact. Poetic in a way, it would have been quite the message to send me ...
"But Angharad found Nev just in time ... and brutally butchered all six of the Death Eaters that she found there, and hung what remained of their bodies in Neville's place ... rigging them to explode with Fiendfyre if anyone tried to take them down.
"But Enola ... she ... she went wild when she found out what had happened. She completely lost her mind when Ann brought Nev's broken body home. I had to spell Alison's room ... so Enola wouldn't hurt her."
Hermione's jaw dropped as she listened. "What? Ennie tried to hurt baby Alison?"
Harry shuddered as he recalled the memory. "Enola was delirious with the anger ... and she started hallucinating ... really badly. She thought we were all Riddle's minions sent to spy on her ... and that her daughter was the worst one for trying to get between her and Neville. I had to erect a special Ward on the nursery, one that increased in power the more violent Enola became. She became so mindlessly enraged that, in the end, I even had to channel my own power from the Resonator Stone under the Palace, just to reinforce the Ward enough to keep her out ... and then sit in the nursery with Alison myself, to protect her from Enola in person ...
"She only stopped when we were forced to revive Neville just long enough to bring Ennie down to a level that Fan and Ann could combine their power and finally sedate her."
Hermione gasped and clutched at her racing heart. But Harry wasn't done.
"You have to know, Hermione ... Enola is a trained, rabid killer. A Hit Witch of the highest power grade. But she cant control her rage when she loses it. She hurt Fan and Ann so many times by accident, when she was part of a triumvirate with them, that in the end the Order banned her from any sort of combat work. She's better than both the other girls, but she's too high risk.
"After she was kicked out, she was so ashamed of herself that she just focused on her mind magic, developing a whole range of control spells and charms, so she could stop indiscriminately killing people who crossed our Order. Narcissa had to subdue her so many times that eventually we were reduced to implanting a notion in Enola's mind to be rather terrified of Cissa whenever they are together. She agreed to it as a control measure. It's one of the few things that keeps her calm."
"And that's how she developed her mind plains," Hermione whispered. "And she did the same for you after your ... resurrection?"
Harry nodded. "She understands ... she knows what it's like to not have full control of your mind and rage ... how terrifying it can be. Especially when your magic is so intense it can lash out and hurt the ones around you. Interestingly, it was because of Neville that we learned the only way to really subdue Ennie, to control her intense rage, is through love."
"How?"
"She fell for Neville instantly, I mean, pretty much from the first time they met," said Harry fondly. "It was love at first sight for her. It was disgustingly sickening. She became like a soppy little puppy around him, and I teased her chronically about it at first. I liked her feistiness, maybe because I was the only one powerful enough to control her at her worst, and I sort of missed it when she became all girly. But Nev made her calm, knocked her into neutral. So I had to get them together for both their benefits. As soon as I convinced Neville about her interest, and that I wasn't taking the piss ... I mean Ennie is stunning ..."
"She is," Hermione agreed. "I'd do her."
Harry laughed nervously. He wasn't sure how to take that. Hermione kept her expression delightfully neutral.
"Yeah. Well." Harry stumbled on his words. "I got them together, and Ennie didn't have another outbreak of fury again. She even closed down almost all of her mind plains."
"But you said she went crazy ... when Nev got ..."
Hermione made a callous, scissor-cutting action with her fingers that no woman should ever make to a man, especially not to her husband, when his penis is part of the conversation.
"Yeah," Harry winced. "But I also told you that love is the most terrifying force in existence. Enola is deeply in love with Neville. It breaks through even her most stringent control measures. If you genuinely hurt Neville, Enola will hurt you back ten fold."
"I hurt Neville, said Hermione, thoughtfully. "I broke his arm. When you were having one of your meltdowns. Ennie didn't hurt me back."
Harry looked at her with great patience. "Honey ... she couldn't hurt you ... you are much more powerful than Enola. Your innate defences would have deflected anything malicious that she might have tried. Merlin, Hermione ... you're probably more powerful than me."
"Don't be dumb," she breathed eventually. "I can't do half the stuff that you can. You realise that your magic literally takes my breath away these days, don't you?"
"And long may it continue," Harry replied. "But I've had years of training and instruction. I've used my Time-Turner so much I'm surprised I didn't wear it out. Once you've had a comparable level of experience and exposure, you'll be the dominant force in this family."
Hermione scoffed, before saying, almost pityingly, "Sweetie, I'm already the dominant force in this family! So what happened with Enola? Why did she ask you to take her memories?"
"We were able to reattach Neville's severed appendage eventually, but it had been sliced off with Dark Magic," Harry explained. "It didn't work as it should have when we got it back on. Ennie was so upset about that, obviously, as it meant she'd never give Ally the brother or sister she so desperately wanted to. But she held out hope, even tried to pretend that something had just happened to kill Neville's libido. I think she was actually able to convince herself that was what had happened, in the end, to cope with everything. Eventually, we decided to make him think that, too ... as it was easier than the truth ... for them both.
"You don't know what it was like when Enola calmed ... and remembered what she tried to do to Ally. She had actually been rabid enough to want to slaughter her own little girl. I had to perform a very intimate mind ritual with her just so she could get through the first few days after it without self-harming, that's how senseless she became in her guilt and grief. The ritual took twenty hours, required my Welsh Celtic magic ... the most ancient form I know ... and she begged me to wipe the memory of it all from her. I would have done that in the end, anyway, because Enola might never have forgiven herself otherwise.
"But I also had to make the ritual so powerful that everyone else around here would think that I was the reason for that ... that the ward on Ally's room was to stop me in one of my rages, not Enola."
Hermione gasped sharply. "I remember now! Neville told me about that ... said that Ally was the most protected person in the Palace. You pretend it's because of you ... to protect Enola's memory?"
Harry gave yet another brief nod. "It was easier that way. The Ward I had to erect was stupendously powerful ... it had to be, just in case Enola had a relapse when neither Nev nor I were here to reign her in. But that had to be explained, and it was easier to shift blame onto me, because my own instances of losing control ... when I started learning about was happening to you ... were legendary by that time already."
Hermione felt her heart break a little for Harry, her anger against him completely thawed away now.
"When I went mental, after Nev told me that Ron was regularly hurting you, I ...I totally lost control," Harry mumbled. "I lost my mind wholly. I only remember what happened because Narcissa reconnected my recollections of it. I'd actually sliced the memory away from my own conscious mind. But I had to know ... know what my worst looked like, so that I might learn how to control it. Or, at least, recognise the signs, so I could take myself away from anyone I might hurt.
"Anyway," Harry ploughed on, ignoring Hermione's expression of soul-deep shock. "Nev had no chance of reining me in that night. I had lost it completely. I was beyond stopping by any idea of control or pacification -"
"Yeah, you brought a whole tower down on yourself, you silly boy!" Hermione cut across teasingly, but Harry's expression stayed dark. This wasn't a time for lightness. "Sorry."
"It's alright," said Harry. "Well, it's not, really. But anyway, Nev didn't know what to do. I don't blame him, I was wild ... and when I get like that, I'm uncontrollable. Easier to just get out of my path and to try and sedate me. But Enola came to me, to see if she could help. She's fearless, and she knew she had to try and stop me because she'd not long found out that she was pregnant ... and nothing was going to put her baby at risk ... not even me. And that bore an idea for us, to try and create a control measure for me.
"You see, when her mind is intact, threats to Alison dwarf Ennie's response to threats against Nev. A mother's love, Hermione, the power of it is unrivalled by almost anything else, I should know, after all ..."
Harry looked away, tears were threatening his cheeks again suddenly.
"But, until that night, we didn't know how powerfully that force could manifest in Ennie," Harry went on. "Not until I ... I ..."
"You ... what?"
"I told her to ... I said ... I asked her to ... to kill me!" Harry breathed through stuttering words. "I threw down my wand and begged her to do it. When I learned that my negligence had led to your suffering, I lost all power over my magical controls. I went wild and ... I couldn't stop. I did so much damage, to so many things, to so many people ... and I couldn't bring my power back under control. I needed Ennie to take me down, by force, before I hurt anyone else ... she was the only one who might have been powerful enough to do it."
Hermione threw her hands up to her mouth, a sharp ache stabbing at her heart. Her poor Harry! How much horror had he been through?
"And?" Hermione whispered.
"She tried," said Harry. "She threw her best spells at me, but my natural defensive magic and my rage became like a shield that deflected them all. It was a hell of a fight. The result was that she stopped attacking me directly ... and cast a spell that ripped the tower in two. The roof crushed my legs and I passed out from the pain, but not before I had a moment of clarity ... and forced an Apparition on Enola wandlessly ... to get her out of there before she was hurt. I didn't know I'd already undermined the tower's foundations, or maybe my wandless burst finished the job. The rest came down on top of me, but the roof shelf ended up saving my life."
Hermione was weeping freely again. Harry was looking everywhere but at her.
"After that, I knew she was capable of it," said Harry. "Of taking the toughest decisions. She just needed motivation. When Ally was finally born, we knew she was definitely it. Ennie was insanely protective of her from the first moment she held Ally in her arms. So, every time I got really mad ... and the more I learned about Ron's abuses of you, the more frequent that sort of stuff got ... we got into the habit of sending me right to the nursery.
"And Enola would defend her daughter ... violently. She was able to repel me, and I developed a sort of conditioning to it, I suppose. I always calmed around the baby, almost instantly, knowing that Enola would hurt me if I didn't. This just became a total neutraliser once we conducted a ritual to make me Ally's godfather. I don't know why. I love the girl fiercely ... she's the closest thing I have to kryptonite. No matter how enraged I get, put me in the same room as Alison Longbottom and I become as docile as a yoghurt."
Hermione laughed and dried her tears. Though she wasn't sure the seriousness had passed yet.
"Ennie's reactions were stunning," Harry continued fondly. "She's smashed me out of windows, down the main staircase ... developed the only Stunner powerful enough to slow me down. Slow me, mind you, not stop. But it's usually enough to make me regain my mind sufficiently to calm down."
"Usually?" Hermione queried. Then she huffed. "Don't tell me ... the night when Malfoy came to get me."
Harry nodded briefly. "Nothing could have stopped me that night. You could have lined up Riddle, that Dumbledore Zombie, Merlin himself ... I was an out of control, indestructible juggernaut. Ennie took Alison away, somewhere far from me, I was that bad. Then, instead of acting like a pussy and trying to stop me, like everyone else was, she summoned Lily ... commanded her to take me to you ... and Lily obeyed. It's the only time that Lily has ever gone to or obeyed anyone but me. And it's all because it was for you."
Harry took another breath, crossed the room and took Hermione's hands, before looking deeply into her eyes.
"I'm sorry that there are so many things that I've not told you. I don't keep these things secret to be deceptive, but some things are easier for you not to know. Like with Ennie and Neville. They are happier in their ignorance, and if Neville is fixed now then the reasons for his issue in the first place aren't important ... and they'll just lead to unnecessary heartache if the memories are re-awoken.
"It's the same with you. If I could have cured you of this Dolohov Curse without you knowing, you'd never have had cause for alarm about it. And I didn't tell you about maybe being a Horcrux Protector, because I don't know how to undo it yet and I don't want you worrying about what it might do to you. But I will solve these problems, and any others we might have, and when I'm sure the knowledge wont needlessly hurt or upset you I'll tell you about things ... I just don't want to be any cause of pain for you.
"What I'm trying to say, in case I'm not getting this message across clearly enough ... is that you are everything to me ... you are my entire world and everything in it. Please ... if you understand nothing else ever about me, please understand this. And just know that, however it seems, I'm just trying to do my best for you."
Hermione understood. Oh how she understood! The words were throbbing through her with such undeniable truth and the power of Harry's love for her was so absurdly intense it was in danger of making her explode. She was sobbing and she didn't even know why. She was the safest, most protected, most loved witch, woman, female of any species, in the entire history of the whole world.
Being the luckiest witch didn't even scratch the surface of what being Harry Potter's wife and soul mate truly meant.
But he was still Harry ... silly and dense and so worried about saving her that he was forgetting the easiest ways to do that.
"I'm sorry, Harry, I didn't mean to be cross," Hermione whispered soothingly, running her fingers through Harry's hair. "I suppose I'm still getting used to this, too ... having someone caring for me, taking risks for me, even keeping secrets from me if they think it's for my own good. This is all new and I'm still getting used to trusting again. We still have so much work on with each other, don't we?"
"We really do!" Harry chuckled, weakly. "But I'm sorry, too. I only know one way to take care of you ... and I have to learn that there are better ways."
"But the other ways still have value, too," Hermione told him, pulling away and fixing Harry with her granite stare. "And I need the Harry that is an expert at them to come out now."
Harry steeled in a Dark second. "What do you want me to do?"
"We can get all lovey-dovey, all mushy, once we've crushed our enemies," Hermione told him, firmly. "But we need to send them a message or two first, in a language I know you speak fluently."
"I'm listening."
"Angharad needs us, and my cure is tied in with hers," Hermione continued. "But we need to be able to repair the damage to her body first. So I want you to create the Elixir of Life. Today. Can you do it?"
Harry flicked his eyes at his calendar. "No, not today. It has to be done under a full moon ... but we can try tomorrow night."
"Fine, that'll have to do. But, in the meantime, I want you to go out and kill Antonin Dolohov for me, right now. Show him what a dueller really looks like."
"I can do that," Harry grinned, malevolently. "And you?"
"I'm going to go and speak to Neville's parents, see if they fancy a trip out with me," Hermione replied, her eyes flashing.
"And where might you be going?"
"Ethel Hallow's Academy for Witches," Hermione growled. "There's a little girl who attends there called Delphini ... and I'm going to kidnap her. Then, when her mother turns up to rescue her, Frank and Alice and I are going to have a little chat with her about her life choices ... politely explain how spectacularly dumb she's been in torturing all three of us, and little Celesca, too ... then you are going to use her murder to open up your new Veil of the Dead, Harry, because ... and I hope you'll agree ... murdering Bellatrix Lestrange, as a prelude to murdering Tom Riddle, is poetic enough for a Deathday funeral march!"
***
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