Chapter Twelve

Hermione Granger & the Really Big, Really Stupid Cauldron

"Oh, you must be joking!"

When his unexpected plummet came to an abrupt halt that did not involve any shattered bones, James opened his eyes to find himself suspended above the ground. Though he couldn't gauge exactly how high up he was, it was clear the witch below him could walk beneath his body unhindered and still have a little room to spare.

He'd been caught so off-guard he'd not had the chance to cast anything to cushion his fall on his own. He assumed he'd look up and see Hermione's wand pointed at him, but she merely stood there, arms folded stubbornly under her breasts and her illuminated wand clenched tight in the fist tucked beneath her elbow so that her Lumos charm's brightness glinted off the ends of her wild hair.

The little black cat on her shoulder, however, was staring at him with an unsettling amount of concentration in its tiny feline face.

"Hermione? What's—?"

"You can let him down, now," she said softly.

The cat's features smoothed and James dropped the last several feet. Groaning, he contemplated that it could've been much worse. Carefully dragging himself to his feet, he dusted off his robes.

"You should thank Bat for not letting you hit the ground."

"Bat?" he echoed, knowing she could only mean the creature perched on her shoulder like a pirate's bloody parrot.

She wasn't looking at him, instead staring off down the nearest of the darkened corridors before turning her attention upward. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she shouted to the others. "He's fine."

"Thank God. I can probably reach those stairs," Harry called back to them. "If I come down, maybe we can meet half-way and I can lead you back up."

"Absolutely not! If you miss the landing you'll fall!" James touched his side and winced. He must've dropped harder than he'd thought that last bit of the way. "Even if you land right, we've no idea where all these corridors lead. You could get just as lost trying to find your way to us and then there'd be three idiots wandering around down here."

Hermione glowered over the implication that falling in here would make Harry an idiot, because it further implied she was an idiot for already have fallen in, but kept silent, since he was also being fair enough to call himself an idiot. She didn't want to intervene between James and Harry after so long of the older Potter wizard finally breaking through his own broodiness.

"As opposed to the three of us standing up here twiddling our thumbs like a bunch of useless idiots?"

James shook his head, sighing. "Not the time for snark, Severus."

"Look, the only way out of here without anyone else getting stuck is for James and me to go find that staircase and come back up to you. That's it, there is no argument."

"She's right," Remus said, his words soft in comparison to the other two hollering down to them, ever the voice of reason.

"We'll try to be quick," Hermione assured them before giving a headshake of her own. "Honestly, four people were up there and you're the one who fell in," she tacked on in an unhappy whisper. "Just bloody perfect."

James' shoulders slumped, a frown gracing his lips. "Look, I know you're upset with me for being so . . . so . . . ."

"Broody," she supplied.

"Broody," he repeated with a resigned sigh.

"Let me stop you. I don't want to have this conversation."

His lips pressed into a thoughtful line. "How do you know what conversation we're going to have if you won't have it?"

Chestnut eyes lit gold by her wand's illumination narrowed in irritation. That's precisely the sort of thing she'd say if she wanted to corner another person into having a conversation they didn't want to have!

He uttered a chuckle at her exasperated expression. The rough exhalation caused him to wince again, pressing a gentle hand against his side.

He must've made a noise and not realized it, because she finally looked at it him then. She visibly struggled to hold onto the bitter look in her eyes as she asked in a tone that failed to pass for casual concern. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

She dropped her arms to her sides. "If Harry were as poor a liar as you are, we'd have lost the Second War long before it even started."

James sighed. "Fine. I think I may have . . . bruised a rib. It's nothing. We can check it when we're out of here."

Oh, well now she felt bad. Not for dropping him, she had no way of knowing Bat was going to pick up on her current negative emotional state, but for the fact that she was being a little . . . ridiculous, even perhaps a bit immature in her reaction to his presence. She supposed it wasn't too far outside the realm of possibility to consider that her behavior was a direct response to the fact that regardless of who she'd discovered him to be, his standoffish manner the past several weeks, or any potential budding thing her friends claimed to notice between he and another wizard, entirely, she still found herself thinking about James Potter far more often than she should.

Far more often than she knew was appropriate. And his 'broody' demeanor had made her feel awful, responsible for his soured expression and the aura of darkness hanging over him since their so-long-ago seeming chat in Andromeda Tonks' kitchen.

Waving dismissively, and speaking against her own better judgment, she said, "Let's have a look."

Hazel eyes widened in the dim lighting. "What?"

"We should at least check if it's really just bruised. If it's broken, we need to wrap your middle before we get moving or you could make it worse."

James frowned, reluctantly opening his robes—just enough that she could get examine the area where his ribcage met his abdomen. "Wrap it with what, exactly?"

The witch rolled her eyes as she knelt down for a better angle, bringing her wand close to the injury. "I have first aid supplies." The comment was more off-handed than she'd intended, but she was so used to Harry and Ron, who had come to rather expect as much of her.

He refrained from giving her a once-over. Those jeans she was wearing seemed a little too snug to be secretly toting about a kit of some sort. But then he spied that little bag of hers—the one he recalled her pulling a fresh change of clothes from in the caverns beneath Gringotts.

"Right, your magic bag. Forgot about that."

Her gaze flicked up to catch his for just a moment before she warned, "Okay, this might hurt a bit."

His breath caught in his throat at the feel of her fingertips running along his ribs. It wasn't pain, not yet. It was just her touch. Gentle and warm, he sort of hated it . . . because he knew he liked it. And he knew how terrible and how complicated that was.

He jerked to one side, inhaling sharply through his teeth.

"There," she said in a low tumble of sound. "There's no bruising yet and it doesn't seem to be swelling, but . . . . Does it hurt when you breathe?"

"Only if I unexpectedly breathe too deep," he answered thoughtfully.

"Did you feel or hear a crack when you fell?"

"No."

She sat back on her heels, letting out a sigh of relief as she nodded. "Okay, it's probably not broken, but I'd feel better binding it just in case I'm wrong."

"You don't have to . . . ." James pursed his lips, letting his words fall off as he noticed she was already rummaging about in her bag.

"Stop being a baby," she nearly snapped as she climbed to her feet, bandage in hand.

In a carefully controlled tone, he spoke as he—just as reluctantly as before—peeled back the shoulders of his robes and let the fabric fall around him. "I'm not being a baby." Thank Merlin for belts, at least he could remain partially clothed for this adventure.

"You're fussy like a baby." She guided him to raise his arms and then started unwinding the spooled bandage around him, binding the lower portion of his ribcage. Hermione was completely ignoring many things right now. That dusting of dark hair on his chest that she'd noted back during the night of the ball. That he seemed to shiver a little each time she leaned close wrap the bandage around his back. That his skin actually smelled quite nice. That he was annoyingly fit.

"Hermione?"

She didn't answer, finishing tying off the bandage and then turning away to start toward the nearest of the mystery doors. If James didn't know any better, he'd swear that cat on her shoulder was flicking its tail in an irritation directed solely at him.

His shoulders slumped while he trailed after her. "Hermione?"

"What?" She kept her attention straight ahead as he fell into step beside her.

"I'm sorry I made you feel so terrible," he blurted out the words, clearly thinking she might cut him off.

Chewing at her lower lip, she halted. She pivoted on her heel to face him, only to cast her gaze upward just as fast, her cheeks flooding pink. "Could you please close your robes?"

"Hmm?" He looked down at himself to realize he'd not bothered righting them, having ignored his state of partial-undress to chase after her. Clearing his throat awkwardly, he did as asked. "Sorry. All good, now."

The way she lowered her eyes was slow, cautious, nearly as though she considered that he might be lying. Perhaps that wasn't fair to him, but she was still angry with his mopey antics. And maybe still just a little annoyed with herself that she couldn't seem to help being attracted to him.

Finding him fully covered, she let herself relax a bit. Bat curled into a ball against her neck, rubbing her cheek with its own.

"Look, it's not how you made me feel that upset me."

His brows shot upward in doubt.

She snorted a short, derisive laugh. "Did that upset me? Okay, yeah. But that's not the important thing. My feelings are . . . they're whatever. But you almost pushed Harry away with how you were acting."

James closed his eyes, heaving a weighted sigh.

Hermione could feel her throat threatening to close up on her, but she powered on. "Do you even understand how hard that was to watch? There wasn't anyone in the world who ever had a happier moment than when Harry found you standing before him for the first time. There were so many times over the years that he wished you could've been part of his life and now you are! Now you're here and you're cocking things up!"

She was right. He knew she was, but hearing it aloud—hearing it from her—was a gut punch. Sniffling, he nodded. "I know."

"Do you?" God, she hadn't realized she'd been keeping all this in. The fingers of her free hand trembled as he pressed them to her face in an attempt to steady herself. Days would pass where she wouldn't shed a tear for the dead no matter how the loss hit her, because she was so focused on Harry. On the way he tried to hide how it hurt him to know that the truth his of childhood pained his father so. "You were so wrapped up in how angry you were at the Dursleys that you shut him out! You couldn't see your own son's face as his heart was breaking right in front of you."

A silent moment flickered between them as his features closed down.

She shook her head. "So . . . yeah, I'm angry that you made me feel like shit over telling you about them before Harry was ready, but I'm what really, really, makes me just want to hex you ten ways from Sunday is how you hurt Harry."

James opened his eyes, meeting her gaze. To his credit, her wand's light glittered off a damp gleam in them. "I'm going to make it up to him. I'm over that now. He deserves for me to be here for him, and that's what I mean to do."

"Well . . . good." Turning on her heel, she started toward the door again.

"Hermione?" he said again, and again she didn't answer.

"Hermione," he tried once more. "You're crying."

"So what?" Her words were garbled. "I cry a lot I'll have you know! I hate it, but it's true."

"Oh, God," he exhaled the words. Against his better judgment—as seemed a theme whenever they were together, he supposed—he slipped a hand around her elbow. Tugging her to a halt, he turned her to face him. The motion jostled the unhappy Bat from her shoulder and the creature hovered in the air, its little face glowering at James.

"I don't need a—"

Her words were cut off by his arms circling her in a firm, gentle hug. "Stubborn woman." His voice was no more than a whisper against her hair.

She hated that she was returning his embrace before she even realized it. She hated that he felt so warm and solid and safe. She especially hated that there was something in his closeness she found soothing.

She hated that she was so easily comforted by him!

Hermione pressed her face against his chest and let herself sob. Fat, ugly, tears full of anger and sorrow drenched his robes beneath her cheeks.

He closed his eyes, letting his chin rest atop her hair. Maybe this was all they could ever have—closeness in the guise of comfort. Maybe this could be enough. Maybe that was for the best, as he hated that she felt so perfect in his arms. He had no idea it was possible to in the same moment want so much to push someone away and to never let them go.

After she'd quieted a bit, he uttered a warm, hushed laugh and he shook his head over the top of hers. "Didn't need a hug, she says."

"Shut up."

A half-grin curving his lips, he slid his arms away, enough to slip his fingers around her upper arms. He pulled her back to look at her.

"What?" she asked, sniffling.

"You're a fright."

She laughed in spite of herself as she tugged out of his grasp. She would pretend she wasn't a little melted by the look in his eyes as he wiped at her cheeks with his thumbs. Something . . . protective there.

"We should hurry," she said, nodding, pushing away the regretfully comfortable moment. "We don't know how long this could take."

James stepped in front of her. "I feel like I should go first. We have no idea what might be waiting behind any of these doors."

Hermione was perfectly aware that normally, she'd be a bit put off by that sort of thing. Now, however, she gave a sideways nod and frowned thoughtfully. "Well, if there's ever a time a woman appreciates a man being chivalrous . . . ."

He snickered, shaking his head. They each braced, his open hand and her wand trained on the door. Bat hovered behind her shoulder, peering out.

James yanked open the door. Silence and darkness greeted them.

His shoulders drooped. "Huh. Well, that was rather anticlimactic." He conjured a Lumos of his own in the palm of his hand.

They each crossed the threshold cautiously, finding a winding tunnel unfurling before them.

"Not thrilled with this, but we have to see where it leads."

Hermione uttered an affirmative sound, yet as he started walking, he only heard his own footfalls.

He turned his head to look at her over his shoulder. "Hermione?

She blinked hard a few times, giving her head a shake. "James, I . . . ." Another shake, her gaze darting about. "How long have we been down here?"

Her voice was soft, vaguely confused in a way that alarmed him as much as her question had. Facing her completely, he placed a hand on her shoulder—the shoulder opposite where the standoffish Bat had reclaimed its perch.

"Maybe twenty minutes?"

"Twenty . . . ."

"What's wrong?" he demanded, tipping his head to catch her gaze.

"I just . . . . I can't tell. It feels like we just got here, but like we've been here forever. I don't know what's wrong with me."

He swallowed hard, slipping his hand around hers. "C'mon, we've just got to find our way out of here."

He started walking through the tunnel, guiding her along behind him. He didn't want to think on what kind of ward might be causing her to lose sense of time, nor did he want to consider that whatever it was might start affecting him soon, too.