An Interlude Before War

An Interlude Before War
Author: fireworkfiasco
Requestor: averita
Claim: Ron and Hermione in the Chamber of Secrets.
Rating: PG.13
Pairing: Ron/Hermione
Summary: Their silence is filled with the sounds of their breathing catching in each other's, the rhythms matching and then falling apart. "I'm going to destroy the cup."
Warnings: None.
Author's Notes: None.

- - -

He's sitting like a bag of bones on an armchair shoved too close to a fireplace with Hermione across the way, lip between her teeth as she studies the floor. Around them, the room is filled with the buzz of students and soldiers; the air feels hot and heavy and impossible.

He glances at her and finds her watching him, and there's something in her eyes that scares him.

She looks like she's ready to die.

The realization that she might makes him feel angry and lost, all at once, and he stands without thinking, pushing through the press of students until he's past them, out in the hallway. He pauses with his hands against the wall, the stones cool against his hot palms.

"Ron?" He turns to find her waiting for him, a burning look in her eyes. "Are you – are you okay?"

"We have to do something," he says vehemently, voice breaking. "Anything; I can't just stand around and wait – for – I can't." He cuts himself off, a fist against the wall before he spins away with a curse.

She doesn't say anything for another long moment, mouth set as she looks up at him. "What can we do?" The curve of her throat seems to glow in the torchlight and he closes his eyes for a moment.

His mind spins and then he's turning, sprinting down the hall. "Come on, then!" shouted over his shoulder, and then she's hurrying after him. When she catches up to him, he reaches for her hand automatically, and their fingers twine together and hold.

He flies down familiar hallways, ignoring the press of memory, of what was in place of what is. Around them, the castle seems to loom, eyes following their progress. Everything feels sinister and wrong; Hogwarts has never felt more evil.

They skid to a stop in front of Myrtle's bathroom and she lets out a breathy, confused giggle. "Ron?"

He turns towards her, framing her face with his hands, smoothing back the stray curls clinging to her cheeks. "You trust me, yes?" he asks her and his voice slides along her spine, making her arch towards him.

She shivers. "Of course."

Their silence is filled with the sounds of their breathing catching in each other's, the rhythms matching and then falling apart. "I'm going to destroy the cup."

"No." Her eyes are wide. "Not without me. I – I – I know, what happens. When you try to kill one. What it – it does and - and it lies, Ron, and you can't – not by yourself - not without me."

The look in her eye is stubborn and set; he knows not to argue. Instead, he nods, once, and lets his hands linger before he steps away. "Okay. We're – we're going down, into the Chamber; we'll need – we'll need a broom."

She's already digging through her bag, lip between her teeth, and Ron can't stop himself from beaming.

"Brilliant," he tells her as she pulls out a rather battered looking broom.

Her cheeks tinge rose and she hurries past him, into the bathroom without waiting for him. He presses in after her and crosses immediately to the tap with the snake etched into the pipe.

"See here?" he asks, running a finger along the metal. "I just have to tell it to open." A pause, and then, "In Parseltongue."

Hermione makes a sort of surprised noise in the back of her throat. "How are you - ?"

He cuts her off with a tangled hiss. The sound reverberates around the ceramic room and she shudders next to him. The tap, however, stays in place.

"Oh, that was – that was – "

"Strange? Yeah." As he clears his throat, her hand finds his. He glances at her, surprised, before looking back towards the tap, fingers tightening. "Harry sounds completely mental; you should hear him."

Down the hall, they can hear shouting; she leans against him, tone urgent. "Go on – try again."

Again, the tangled gasping hiss and he takes a breath, waiting. Nothing happens.

"You can do it Ron; I know you can."

He stares for a moment at the little snake, eyes narrow, lips moving soundlessly. Finally, he hisses – the sound seems to waver after he's through, twisting through the air before the pipe gives a shuddering jerk and slides open. It gapes like a waiting mouth.

Together, they stare down the dark, dank tunnel. "You did it," she murmurs, and there's almost a laugh caught in her voice. "You did it!"

"I did." He sounds rather shocked himself, but his mouth is set. "Now, we just have to go down there, find the basilisk, destroy the cup and find Harry. Easy."

"Easy," Hermione repeats, swallowing hard, eyes still locked on the depths of the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.

After a moment, he stands and pulls out his wand. "I'll go first; the landing's rather rough. Wait for my call." He glances over at her, and then offers a shaky smile. "Just – it'll be okay."

He throws himself into the pipe; when he finally hits bottom, he lands with a squelching crash that bounces right through him. Almost immediately, there's a soft shriek and then Hermione's splayed out on top of him, an elbow in his kidney.

"Ugh," he says, fighting for breath. "I thought I told you to wait."

"I wasn't about to let you go off and try to destroy that cup all by yourself." She's struggling to sit up; her knee manages to catch his jaw and he groans.

When they're finally righted, he glares at her, arms crossed. "I don't even have the bloody cup, Hermione. I wanted you to wait so I could get out of the way."

She opens her mouth to respond, but seems to think better of it, adjusting her hold on her clutch. "Right, well. I didn't know that."

There's no time to be angry with her, not that he really could be more than annoyed if he tried. He takes her hand again and drags his thumb over her knuckles as he leads her down towards the Chamber. The corridor is still almost entirely blocked from the collapse so many years ago, and she pauses for a moment, turning to look at him with a strange look on her face.

He shrugs at her expression and then follows her up the piles of rubble, careful to steady her when she loses her footing, hands spanning her waist, bracing her back. The contact nearly sends him tumbling back down the incline, and he has to fight to keep his breathing steady.

They slide down the other side hand in hand, tripping and stumbling and tugging each other off balance. Somehow, they're nearly laughing by the time they reach the bottom.

Their mirth dies the moment they see what waits for them; sitting just inside the huge door further down the chamber is a skeleton the size of – well, the size of a rather excessive snake, coiling around itself, the bones like trees in a forest made of death.

It seems to watch them as they approach, the gore-stained skull smiling wickedly in their direction. Ron can barely look at it. Hermione seems equally fascinated and disgusted. Neither can let go of the other.

The head of the snake looms like some unforgiving boulder, filthy eye sockets gaping huge and black above a mouth full of grinning fangs, long as daggers.

"What do we – what do we do?" He pauses, voice low. "To destroy the cup; what do we have to do?"

"A basilisk's venom will destroy a Horcrux." She sounds distant, her voice formal and sure like she's reciting it from memory, like she stored it away just for this moment.

"Right. So. Venom, which is in the fangs." He steps forward and wraps a hand around one of the teeth; tugging and twisting it out of its bone socket. It snaps like a dry branch, the sound ricocheting around the Chamber.

"Be careful!" she snaps, at his side in an instant. "Just – be careful." The concern in her voice is stark against the fear, and her hand is tight around his arm.

He nods without looking at her. "I will. Can you get the cup?"

In the distance is the sound of thunder, or war, or something, and the ceiling above them seems to reverberate. She fumbles her clasp twice and then reaches deep into the bag, emerging with the cup caught between white-knuckled fingers.

"Wait – Ron?" Her voice breaks, and she has to swallow. "Ron – I want to."

"What?"

"I want to do it. I want to destroy it."

There's a hard look in her eyes that he knows he could never cross, so he bites his lip and nods. She holds out her hand for the basilisk fang, and he hands it to her without a word, hand catching her wrist before she can turn away.

"Hermione – please, remember: it's going to lie to you. It'll tell you things that aren't true. I – I destroyed the locket, yeah? It showed me things, Hermione -- don't believe anything it shows you, okay? Nothing."

She pauses, for a moment, and he can see in her eyes that she's not certain about anything. The urge hits him to kiss her, to prove to her once and for all that she's something more to him than the bookish friend. But it passes, and she nods, turning away.

The cup is humming, a low throb that seems hostile as she sets it on the floor. She kneels over it, and he hurries to her side, watching the goblet convulse as Hermione adjusts her hold on the tooth.

Her hand trembles, and Ron lays a hand on her shoulder, steady, waiting.

Just as she begins to raise the poisoned fang, the cup gives a piercing moan and shreds itself down the middle. Blood spills over the sides and stains the flagstones below it, rolling and curling over itself as it spreads.

"I know all there is to know about you, Hermione Granger," a voice calls, coming from every corner all at once and tearing through the room. "And you could never defeat me."

Ron leans into her, mouth against her ear. "Don't listen to it; it's just trying to scare you, Hermione," he whispers, again and again and again. She doesn't listen, unable to tear her eyes from what's unfolding in front of them.

The cup is still overflowing, but the blood is smoking and blackening, shapes twisting in its surface. There are scenes of war and death, bodies tumbling into one another, and then, clearly, rising up from the rolling surface are the distinct faces of her mother and father, smooth and hard.

Ron's fingers tighten on her shoulder.

"We're better off now," the blood-faces say. "Now that you're gone. We're happy, for once; we don't have to worry about lying about where you are and why you're so strange. We're happier without you."

There's a twist in her chest that tells her she needs to stop listening, but then the faces are rolling back, transforming, and then it's Harry staring up at her from the bloody pool and she can't look away.

"I've always wondered when you'd fail me," the blood-Harry spits. "I always thought it'd be right at the end; wand failing you, leaving you screaming for mercy, crying and babbling and weeping and dying, leaving me to die, leaving Ron to die. But look at you now. You're really nothing that spectacular are you now, Hermione?"

She has to bite her tongue to hold in the sob that's threatening to escape. The voice is Harry's, darker and stranger, but it's still familiar, and her ears seem to burn as it screams at her. Then it, too, begins to change and she's looking at Ron's face spilling from the cup.

Ron is shaking his head and shouting something but she can't hear him. The blood-Ron opens his mouth, and the real-Ron is still shouting, and the two voices overlap and sound eerily alike.

"You're pathetic, really, clinging to me like some foolish girl. Don't you get it? I'm never going to want you – you were useful for a while, but now you're worthless. You're nothing special. Dull, dull, dull Hermione with her books and her spells and her bad looks. You'll die, you know, and then I'll finally be able to be through with you."

There are tears rolling down her face now, fast and heavy as she stares down at the strange face floating in blood, glaring, staring. Ron's hand tightens further, his thumb digging into her neck and things seem to snap into focus for just a second – Ron beside her, his voice, his hand – and then all she can hear are those horrible voices again, clawing at her ears and her heart and her mind.

She fights to lift her arms, the fang long and curved and cool in her hands. It seems to take forever to get it raised, and then it holds there for another forever, waiting.

"You're just another filthy Mudblood," it hisses, and she closes her eyes.

"No." And then the fang is falling, falling, plunging and tearing into the cup and it screams – it screams – as it dies, shrieking and groaning and keening until she can barely stand it. Ron's hand is tugging on her shoulder and she turns into him, gratefully falling against his chest instead of trying to stay upright.

He's panting, hard, and she is, too, and slowly, things begin to feel normal. His hands are locked around her, and her hands are fisted in the front of his sweater and, for a while, they're content to forgetting about Horcruxes and wars and things.

"Are you okay?" he finally asks.

She pulls away, opening her mouth to answer. It's the sight of the cup, twisted and deformed and defeated that makes her shut her mouth and nod before she turns and begins tearing out the basilisk fangs one by one.

Ron waits until she's pulled out a dozen or so before he stands and stops her, catching her wrist. "I don't – I don't think you're worthless, Hermione," he mutters, voice low, fingers fluttering over her pulse. "And I don't think you're dull or foolish or any of those things. You're – You're really not; you're smart and clever and – and b – and beautiful and amazing. And I – I could never be through with you."

He turns to retrieve the broom, swinging onto it without waiting for her response. She stands, still and silent, before hastily wiping her eyes. After gathering the fangs and the cup, she climbs onto the back of the broom and wraps an arm around him from behind.

His hand grazes hers and she buries her blush in the back of his shoulder.