InsaneJournal

Last Minute Fic - R/Hr - PG
Title: Last Minute Fic
Author: shocfix
Pairing: Ron/Hermione
Words: 1700
Rating: PG

What time do I call this to post a story?

I know, but the bunny bit, and it’s a sort of, well, a couple of missing moments from DH, because I sincerely doubt they’ll actually happen, but they sort of could. ish.

I woke up at 3am thinking about them, anyway, so I had to write them down!

So.

To anyone still reading fic at this late date, here is a small offering; I hope everyone who ships R/Hr gets everything they want from Deathly Hallows, and I hope Ron beats Malfoy to death with his bare hands.


Last Minute Fic
****
I was feeling ridiculously pleased with myself on the first day of our Quest.

It was the day after the wedding and I’d been such a good boy and hadn’t said anything when Hermione danced with Viktor and asked her to dance and had held her and kissed her and ended up snogging in my room for an hour while Harry said goodbye to Ginny and couldn’t bear to let go of her hand for as long as it took to Apparate to Godric’s Hollow.

I reached for her as soon as we got there and she tutted, but entwined her fingers with mine and I decided I was gonna have to learn to use my wand left-handed.

Harry was a few yards ahead of us and I tugged Hermione after him and watched his shoulders square as the weight of our Quest settled on him.

“Well,” I said bracingly. “Where to?”

“Where to what?” he asked.

“Where’s the house?”

He gestured around us.

“What d’you mean ‘where’s the house’?” he said, frowning at me.

“Well,” I said. “We’ve found the village, how de we find your house?”

“What d’you think this is?” he asked, waving his had at the grass.

“Grass,” I said.

“Grass?” he echoed. “Look, I know you only have eyes for Hermione, but this is the house.”

“Is there nothing left at all?” I asked.

“What?” he snapped, reaching out and patting mid air. “What d’you call this?”

“Harry,” Hermione said gently, “there’s nothing there. You’re… oh! Oh, my goodness. You… oh!”

“Nice of you to clear matters up,” Harry muttered.

She opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by a nearby hedge rustling and creaking and flattening as a man appeared in the middle of it.

A man who threw his arm up to shield his face as we all drew our wands on him.

“Don’t hurt me,” he whimpered, behind his gleaming silver hand. “Harry, please; Master, kind Master, don’t let him hurt me.”

“How dare you set foot here,” Harry hissed. “How dare you follow us.”

“Not follow,” Wormtail whined. “I’ve come here every day, waiting. Waiting to help.”

“Help?” I shouted, taking a step in front of Harry, who clasped my wrist and held me back. “There’s nothing you can do to help us!”

“Yes, Master, yes there is,” he said quickly. “I can tell you.”

“Tell us what?” Harry asked coldly. “Tell us what you did here?”

“Not you,” Wormtail said. “Not tell you, Harry. Tell the clever girl, tell my Master.”

I shuddered.

“You Know Who is your Master,” I spat angrily.

He hung his head.

“I know,” he said. “But there is this one thing I can do.”

“Then say it,” Hermione said quietly and I half turned to frown at her.

“Say what?” Harry asked.

“3, Eden Lane is the home of James, Lily and Harry Potter,” he said, and I jumped as a stone cottage erupted out of the grass around me, its windows broken, weeds clogging the front path and doorway, and ivy smothering the walls.

I looked back at the hedge, but Wormtail had vanished.

“What was that about?” Harry asked.

“We couldn’t see it,” Hermione breathed. “He is still the Secret Keeper, Harry, and we couldn’t see it.”

“Not see it?” he echoed.

“I told you, mate,” I said, still gazing up at Harry’s house. “Just grass.”

“He must have told you when you were a baby,” Hermione said. “And he came here to tell Ron and me.”

“Why would he do that?” I asked.

Hermione shrugged. “He must feel he owes Harry that much,” she said.

Harry kicked at the low stone front step.

“So,” he said. “I own two houses. One where the Secret Keeper is dead, and only the Order can see it, and that includes Snape, and one by one we’ll die, and then no one’ll ever see it again…”

“Um,” Hermione said.

“And one that only us three and Wormtail can see, but he can tell all the Death Eaters he likes and bring them down on our heads.”

“I don’t think he will,” Hermione said. “I think he just wanted us to be able to help you.”

Harry grunted and we all looked up at the old house.

Harry looked shaken and I felt lost.

“Right,” Hermione said bracingly. “Well, this is good news.”

We both gaped at her.

“How?” Harry snapped.

“We were worried the Aurors would have taken everything away,” she said. “But they couldn’t see the house, so anything Voldemort dropped as he fled will still be in the ruins. Coming?”

And she stepped over the overgrown doorstep and I couldn’t help but follow, because she was still holding my hand.

****

Nothing.

There was nothing there.

Well, there were all sorts of horribly weathered and rotted things that had belonged to baby Harry and his parents; things left to the mercy of the elements for sixteen years.

But nothing that You Know Who could have dropped in the ruins.

Harry seemed to shrug this off as just another in an infinite list of disappointments, but Hermione took it almost personally.

“He must have taken something with him that night,” she muttered, kicking at a fallen beam. “And he must have dropped it.”

“Well, someone who could see the house collected me from the ruins,” Harry said. “They must have picked up the Horcrux.”

We gawped at him.

“Who collected you?”

“Dumbledore? Hagrid? Hagrid brought me to Dumbledore the following night. I dunno,” he said.

Hermione snorted. “Well, we have to find out! Someone else must have been there, that night!”

“Well, someone was,” I said. “Someone obviously pocketed You Know Who’s wand and gave it back to him in the graveyard.”

“Wormtail,” Harry muttered.

Hermione glared at me.

“Well, he didn’t rescue you,” she said firmly. “And you said Dumbledore left you on the doorstep the following night, so he must have been up to something that day.”

“I think he’d have told me if he had anything he’d rescued from the house,” Harry said. “If he had the Cup, or something, he’d have told me! Wormtail must have taken it.”

“Well, be that as it may,” Hermione said. “I think we should go and pay a visit to his portrait, and ask who visited the house that night.”

****

Professor McGonagall let us in to Dumbledore’s office and we spent the rest of the day looking through his bewildering belongings for something he could have held onto for sixteen years, without realising it was a Horcrux.

“It won’t be a Horcrux,” Hermione said sternly. “Because he didn’t kill Harry - the curse rebounded on him.”

“Well, what if he made one from Harry’s mum or dad?” I whispered, casting an awkward glance over my shoulder at Harry, but he was too preoccupied to hear me.

Too preoccupied glaring at the Sorting Hat.

Hermione frowned at him.

“The Hat,” she said slowly, “belonged to Gryffindor.”

“There’s no way we’ve all been putting a bloody great Horcrux on our heads!” I scoffed. “Although it did Sort Malfoy bloody quickly, so it recognises Slytherins.”

“It wanted to put me in Slytherin,” Harry mused.

Hermione and I looked at each other.

“Harry?” she said carefully. “You… um, you never said.”

He shrugged. “Not the sort of thing I’d be likely to tell anyone,” he said. “It said I’d do well in Slytherin.”

“But it changed its mind,” I pointed out.

“Only because I asked it to,” Harry said, turning to look at us. “I asked it to put me in Gryffindor.”

“Well, there you are then,” Hermione said firmly.

Harry snorted and reached for the Hat.

“Harry,” I said. “What are you…”

He put it on his head, where it fitted perfectly, unlike at his Sorting, where it had covered half his face.

I gave Harry a pointed look, but he ignored me, and then the Hat spoke, and I was surprised to be able to hear it.

"Bee in your bonnet, Harry Potter?" it said.

Hermione whimpered.

"Er, yes," Harry muttered. "Er - sorry to bother you - I wanted to ask -"

"You're still wondering whether I put you in the right House," said the Hat smartly. "Yes ... you were particularly difficult to place.”

Harry scowled and reached for its tattered brim.

“But it seems I was wrong, after all,” the Hat said calmly.

Harry’s eyes widened. “You said… you thought… I’d do well in Slytherin,” he said.

The Hat seemed to shrug. “Even Haberdashery can be wrong,” it said. “There’s nothing Slytherin in your make up anymore. It seems we made the correct choice.”

Harry took the Hat off and gaped at it.

“Maybe you… well, you always stuck to your Gryffindor colours, didn’t you?” I said comfortingly.

“Well, yes, this is a Good Thing,” Hermione said.

Harry frowned at us. “Nothing?” he said.

“You can’t want to be part Slytherin,” I said.

“But where did it go?” Harry asked.

Hermione’s eyes narrowed and I watched her, admiringly.

“Hermione?” I prompted.

“What if…” She bit her lip. “What if Voldemort left part of himself inside you that night?”

“Hermione!” I said, not really thinking this was helping.

She hushed me.

“What if the part of his soul that was supposed to make a Horcrux went into you?”

“Leaving me sufficiently Slytherin to confuse the Hat?” Harry asked.

“And able to speak Parseltongue,” I pointed out, seeing as Harry wasn’t freaking out.

“Dumbledore said he’d transferred some of his powers to me, that night,” Harry admitted. “Maybe there were enough of them to muddle my Sorting.”

“Well, where did they go?” I demanded. “Bits of a person’s soul don’t just leak out, Hermione.”

She tutted.

“No, Ron’s right,” Harry said. “I never felt anything inside me, I never…”

“Yes, you did,” Hermione said. “You felt him trying to strike at Dumbledore all through Fifth Year.”

“Well, I felt something,” Harry admitted. “But if that was Voldemort, where did he go?”

“Ever cough up an evil looking furball?” I suggested.

Hermione glared at me.

“Ever been possessed by Voldemort and felt total agony as he ripped himself out of you?” she asked pointedly.

Harry blinked.

“He…”

“Took it back,” Hermione said. “At the Ministry.”

Harry looked down at the Hat.

“Took it back,” he echoed.

His smile lit up the room.

“One less Horcrux to worry about,” he said firmly.