Hermione Granger and the Theft of Magic

Chapter 26: No Force on Earth

[A/N: Thank you to Calamity Owl for beta-reading this chapter!]

Harry staggered out of the floo into Hermione's waiting embrace. He thought about asking how she could possibly have known when he'd arrive but decided he simply didn't care. He just stood there, held her, and tried to focus on her breaths, her skin, her presence.

Her sobbing.

"Dobby told me he felt you back in Britain," Hermione said between sobs. "I've been waiting on the chesterfield here ever since."

"You didn't have to," he said, "and now you're all sooty."

"Of course I did," she replied, her tone gradually firming up as he held her. Without looking, she raised her wand and Scourgify'd each of them in turn. "Now sit down and let me hold you."

He dropped his backpack on the floor and allowed himself to be led over to the chesterfield. As soon as he took a seat, Hermione curled up in his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. "Luna told me it was awful," she said. "How are you holding up?"

"Wait...Luna?" Harry asked.

"She floo'd the house yesterday, guessed the password, tricked and disarmed me, curled up in my lap while she tried to process the horrors you all saw, told me her father found the lost tomb of Genghis Khan while hiding from a tribe of Russian sasquatch, and left," Hermione said.

Harry sat there for a moment.

"Um...Harry?"

"I'm sorry," he said, "but I can't process all of that right now. I made it up to the part about curling up in your lap after disarming you and my brain gave up. Can you tell me that story again in a few days?"

"Of course I can," Hermione said. "I had to have a shot of tequila afterward."

"You drank?" Harry asked.

"It was necessary," she said. "I'll explain why when you're ready."

"Thank you," Harry said. "I just...can't right now. It's too much." He shook his head. "Can you get me some of that tequila?"

"Please don't," Hermione said.

"I don't want to remember this," Harry said. "I didn't sleep well before, and it's now so bad that I've needed Sue to put Silencing Charms on my bed for the last week."

"If you want tequila, you know I can't stop you," Hermione said. "I'm begging you not to, though. That won't really help you. It just deadens the pain for awhile and you end up needing more and more until it kills you."

"I just need a break," Harry said. "I need sleep, but I can't face my dreams. Sue and I have been casting Cheering Charms on each other to get to sleep, but they wear off after half an hour or so."

"You can do this without alcohol," Hermione told him. "You've done it before. How did you deal with the basilisk incident or the wendigo incident? Did the school have a counsellor to speak with?"

"You mean a solicitor?" Harry asked. "I didn't want to sue Hogwarts. I loved it there—most of the time—and besides, they needed as much money for their security budget as they could get."

Hermione took a deep breath. "You once told me the Wizarding World is one to two hundred years behind the rest of the world in a lot of ways, right?"

"Yes."

"So it hasn't caught up to mental health professionals, has it?" Hermione asked resignedly.

"What are those?" Harry said.

Hermione sighed and hugged him tighter. "I should have guessed, shouldn't I? Of course you would have a stack of traumatic incidents thick enough to write a whole series of books about and nobody at any point would suggest you see someone to talk through all of that trauma. No, that would be too simple. I'm surprised wizards even have vaccines."