Unlike a Sister (Harmione)

Chapter 33: The Brightest Witch of Her Age

Confessions are odd things.

You confess crimes. You confess sins. But you also confess love. Why was love lumped in with the others? Like it was hidden and wrong?

But perhaps, for them, it was.

Because Harry knew she did not mean it like all the other times-above her name on letters, in notes attached to Christmas gifts, in hospital rooms with a newborn in his arms.

She meant it like he meant it.

She loved him. She loved him.

How strange that after his weeks of torment, she would be the one to say it first.

And in the heady euphoria of returned love, the knowledge that had once felt like compacted, unexploded ordinance in his chest transformed into something else. Something massive and effervescent and warm, like a sea that spreads in all directions and so far down that one senses the fathoms beneath their feet.

As he drew breath, he felt as though the words had lived in the corners of his lips for years and years, waiting in the darkness.

"I love you."

And her eyes had that brightness, that limitless quality he now knew was just for him. She leaned forward and kissed him, her lips soft and gentle. And he kissed her back, lost to the warm wonder of her. After some time they broke apart, foreheads touching, and listened to the rain. A happiness, a wholeness filled him then that he had never known.

But, at the edges of his mind, like gulls crying out ahead of a storm:

What now? What now?

Harry left in the grey hours of the morning and Mrs. Granger found her daughter sitting up in bed, reading. When Hermione smiled weakly and asked if some files might be brought from her office at the Ministry, Elaine Granger's eyes filled with tears.

She began her exercises the next day and a Healer started coming in the mornings to lead her through range of motion and strengthening circuits. After tea, she'd lean on Ron or Harry or her father or George and take hesitant steps around the library like a newborn foal. She laughed at herself throughout-and they laughed with her-but, in her squinted eyes, Harry was amused to see something of the eleven-year-old girl whose broom wouldn't quite obey her commands.

A few days later, she asked to meet with one of the professionals Healer Holbrooke had recommended. Ron had been surprised, but Harry thought he understood. She still had nightmares and the thoughts still came. One conversation does not heal a person. And no matter how much he loved her, there were things he could not tell her about the dark chemistry of the mind.

If Ron, Mrs. Granger, or the others ever wondered what had brought about the change in Hermione's disposition, they never asked him. They only seemed grateful that it had happened, like a butterfly alighting on their finger that they were afraid of scaring away.

So as Hermione improved, and a damp March transitioned to the frail sunshine of April, Harry and the others focused their considerable attentions on two great projects: the Camerons' treatment and the Callahan trial, which was set to resume in early June after the Auror Chief called in a few favors.

Since Hermione was not yet well enough to return to the Ministry, Lakey and Emi set up camp in Ron and Hermione's home. During his visits, Harry most commonly found the three counselors shouting at one another in the library-Emi from the floor surrounded by scrolls, Lakey at the desk with crumbs in his beard from some treat Mrs. Granger had brought him, and Hermione lurching from chair to ottoman to table as she made slow circuits around the room.

The counselors knew the outcome of the trial was all but certain now. Yet, as Hermione told them crossly one afternoon, they should not rely on the public mood for a conviction. The evidence they assembled against Callahan would set a precedent for blood supremacist trials in the future. As such, there was much to sort through.