Damnation of Memory

Title: Damnation of Memory
Author: ianthe_waiting
Rating: MA/NC-17
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter books and their characters are the property of JK Rowling. This is a work of fan-fiction. No infringement is intended, and no money is being made from this story. I am just borrowing the puppets, but this is my stage.
Genre: Suspense, romance, angst
Warnings: Character Death, Violence, Adult Situations
Summary: DH-EWE: With every generation, a Dark Wizard rises. Hermione Granger has survived one. However, after nearly thirteen years, a dead man returns to inform her that she must fight again, and this time, Harry Potter will not be the one to save the world from madness.
Author's Notes: This is my 1st full length SS/HG fic and my second 1st person POV fic. Please note that not every detail is canon, including the canon floor plan of Grimmauld Place. This chapter is also unbeta’d, so please, pardon the mistakes!




Damnation of Memory - XX








The phrase ‘hallowed ground’ had always confused me, even as an adult. I supposed it had to do with religion, like priests consecrating water or relics or the earth. I never could figure out what the big ado was. I realized that were places on the earth that had power, just as Hogwarts was a well of magical energy or Glastonbury Tor was a convergence of ley lines, these places were special. There were various bodily reactions to such places, but to me, I felt only a hum around me of ancient power and magic. It was like stepping into a room that you only knew from a dream, a sense of déjà vu sweeping over you. Alternatively, it was like returning home after years away. The feeling was fleeting and quickly forgotten.

As Ronald Weasley pulled me from the punt as it stopped just short of dry land, the first thing I felt when my boots set upon the soil was fear. I did not know if Ron felt it as he jerked my numb left arm to force me to move, but the fear made it hard for me to walk.

There was no path up the hill, and it was quite steep. I whimpered and whinged at the pain, like grinding shards of glass in my shoulder. I was nauseous and very tired, but still I moved as Ron picked a route up.

I could smell the apples and the salty air, and it made me dizzy. I was walking in my dream.

My heart screamed for Severus with every beat, anyone who might help me break the dullness that had settled over me. I was withdrawing into my mind due to the agony I felt in my body, and if I retreated too far, I would never return.

I stumbled and fell many times only to have Ron swear at me and jerk me to my feet. It seemed like hours before we came to the top of the hill. I fell again, but for the first time, I was left alone.

“No…no…” I mumbled, surprised that I had begun to vocalize my distress.

I lay near a great stone monolith, a post and lintel stone structure reminiscent of Stonehenge. In fact, as my bleary eyes moved about the hill stop, a large stone circle ran along the perimeter. However, in the very centre was the thing I feared the most.

The tree was otherworldly, enormous, and definitely wrought of magic. The trunk was perhaps eighty feet in circumference and stood as high was the tallest tower at Hogwarts. The sheer size alone was mortifying. The branches nearly reached the perimeter of the flattened hilltop and upon the leaf-loaded branches were perfect, glowing golden apples.

Ron seemed to have forgotten about me as he began walking under the darkness of the branches toward the trunk of the tree. While I felt fearful awe, he felt dangerous wonderment.

I considered running back down the hill to the punt and escaping, but as I lay on my stomach, my chin boring into the grass, I could only watch Ron. His eyes scanned the branches and the apples. I could see the greed.

How did it come to this?

I tried to lift myself up, and with a concerted effort, I managed to sit up, dragging my legs under my body. I had to pull myself together. I had to do something, but what that something was eluded me.

Crawling toward the nearest upright stone, I leaned my right shoulder into cool rock. I had to somehow put the left shoulder back in place. My wide eyes moved to Ron again who was staring up through the limbs to an absent source of light.

I had to lift my numb arm with my right hand, so the shoulder was perpendicular to the ground. I tried to sit up as straight as possible against the megalithic stone. I lifted my left forearm up so my numb fingers brushed against my upper arm. The strain forced a loud gasp, but I contained it behind tight lips. I began moving my arm, turning the shoulder with my elbow bent. Red haze blinded me, the pain worse than the last time I had dislocated the shoulder.

A sickening jolt of bone colliding against bone nearly made me faint, but the shoulder was relocated after a series of three turns and twists of my arm. I was gasping for breath, sweating. I flexed the fingers of my left hand, and the tiny shocks of traumatized nerves burnt the numbness away. Without a wand, there was no way to Charm the discomfort away and begin to heal the strained muscle.

I had to breathe through the lingering pain, taking even, steady breaths even though my internal organs seemed to jump and twitch involuntarily. The lack of control was infuriating.

I rested against the stone for a long while, it seemed, as Ron’s wonderment continued. He was only halfway between me and the trunk of the tree. I could not imagine what he believed he saw or felt, but I was beginning to feel a heightened sense of danger.

The sound of footfalls near to where I sat had me pressing my body tighter into the rock. I was not sure if the sound was real or not. The sound of distant lapping waves distorted the air and my perception. There was a whispering and dripping noise accompanying the footfalls, and then a faint shadow fell over me.

My eyes were not focusing fast enough for kneeling before me was a blot of golden light. When my sight settled upon a face, I knew I must have fainted, blacked out and I was truly dreaming.

“Hermione?” a soft voice asked, a hand reaching out to grasp my left shoulder.

Immediately the pain was gone and replaced by a sharp clarity. My mother knelt before me, and standing near the front face of the monolith was the man I had prayed for—Severus.

“Mummy?”

The childish endearment came in a tiny voice, but soon I had launched myself forward. I wrapped my arms about the woman as her arms wrapped about me. I could smell apples in her curly chestnut coloured hair and feel the silky softness of her golden robes and skin.

“There is not much time, Hermione. The intruder is distracted now, but not for long…”

I pulled away to stare into my mother’s face. It was my mother and it was not. In her golden eyes, there were tears, and her voice was wracked with a combination of happiness and fear.

“The intruder cannot see Severus, or me, but he will see the goal soon enough,” she continued, her tears trickling down her golden toned cheeks.

She was ageless, beautiful. I stared wide-eyed at the mother of all my mothers, a woman who had lived for thousands of years on the hilltop, a lovely sentinel, trapped forever.

Nimue.

I then glanced to Severus who seemed to be soaking wet, water dripping from his lank hair and off his clothing. The wounds I had noticed were still open, but the blood had stopped. His broken nose had been set at some point, and bruises were rising upon his face. However, as he gazed down at me, his eyes blazed with an internal fire.

“Stop him anyway you can…” she whispered, helping me to my feet. Her soft fingers skimmed over my arms to grasp my hands. “The intruder cannot touch the tree.”

She then helped me out of the straps of my bag, pulling my cloak away.

“I don’t…” I began, my pleading eyes moving to Severus. “My wand…”

“You won’t need it,” Severus said finally, his voice barely containing his anxiety.

“I cannot help you, either. If your father escapes, only then can I do anything to end this,” my mother whispered gravely.

My father… It sounded so terrible and so wrong. I was just Hermione Jean Granger, a Muggle-born witch. There should not have been a secret or a plot surrounding my heritage.

My mother stepped away from me to stand next to Severus.

“Traditional magic is useless here,” Severus began, glancing to my mother. “Wands are merely twigs,” he sighed. “Weasley, so far, has not realized this, but do not assume that it makes him any more dangerous.”

My mother nodded. “This a place of pure magic. The Morgens never needed wands to use their powers.”

I licked my lips. Ron could still use magic, perhaps, in the meantime, however, he still had to believe that he could threaten me with his chestnut wand.

“Deceive him, woo him, and destroy him.”

Her voice had taken on an icy tone, all the warmth draining from her face. In her keen eyes, I could see much. I could see how she had imprisoned Merlin.

“Now go, end this for the sake of us all!”



My heart ached when I looked upon Ron Weasley. I had loved him so completely once upon a time. However, I realized that there were parts to him that I did not know existed.

The miscarriage had forced all my attention in on myself. It had skewed my perspective. When I looked upon Ron during the days and weeks after the miscarriage, all I could see was his cool disappointment and his detachment. He had been the one to propose marriage, and he had been the one to withdraw it. I could not see his pain, and on that point, I had been the selfish one. I was too wrapped in my grief that I did not care if he existed at all. I did not blame him for anything; I put it all upon myself. That had been a fatal mistake.

As I walked under the loaded branches, the golden apples gleaming with their own light, I did not think about anything except Ron. There was delight in his face, just as there was voracity. I tried to recall if I had ever seen him so lost in the beauty that was the tree, but I could not think of a moment all through the years we had been together. The subtle pinch of jealousy had always marked his face, even when he was happy.

How could I have been so blind?

I was nearly within arm’s reach before Ron realized I was so close. His wand lifted and pointed between my eyes. He did not cast, however, but started down his arm to my face, a sneer marring his features.

I frowned, my fingers twitching, missing the weight of my wand.

“What is this place?” he snarled, taking a step forward, to press the wand tip into the already rising bruised bump where he had jabbed me before.

“You don’t know?” I asked softly, sure to keep my voice even, emotionless.

“It is the Isle of Avalon, the Isle of Apples,” Ron mocked, his eyes moving to the apples hanging just above our heads. “But what is this tree? Is it Merlin’s prison?”

I licked my lips. “Yes.”

Ron jabbed my forehead again, causing my chin to lift. “Tell me everything.”

I blinked even as a flash of darkness moved under the shadow of branches behind Ron.

Severus.

“You know the tales?”

Ron nodded, his eyes narrowing. “Nimue imprisoned Merlin, in a tree, in this case. I thought it was supposed to be an oak tree.”

I tried to shake my head, but the wand tip was burying too painfully into my skull.

“A misconception,” I whispered.

“And the apples?”

I had to keep myself from licking my lips again, nervously.

Deceive him, woo him, and destroy him, Nimue had said.

Tales and myths spun through my brain, and then I spoke a lie.

“The golden apples of the Hesperides, some call them—” I began, but Ron’s voice cut my words off.

“Immortality?”

I said nothing.

“Power?”

Silence.

“Wisdom?”

I took a breath and nodded, ignoring the bruising on my forehead. Ron’s face contorted into a smile, and then he laughed. Slowly, he lowered his wand from my face and gazed up at the nearest apple.

“Wisdom enough to obtain the power within the tree,” he murmured to himself.

Plucking a perfect apple from the branch, I shivered. The analogy of Eden struck me, and I hoped that Ron would be too greedy to realize what a lie I had spun.

The golden skin of the apple transfixed him as he twisted it in his hand. His blue eyes were almost green by the light of the fruit, and slowly he brought the apple to his mouth. Ron sniffed the fruit first and then smiled. There was a childish delight in his face, one that I had seen many times—the delight of gluttony.

I could not breathe as his mouth opened, his jaw moving to bite into the fruit. I was not sure what would happen, for all I knew was what had been said in my dreams. The fruit would make a man insane. Would insanity be a boon?

The crunch of teeth tearing into the ripe flesh of the apple was deafening. The scent was overwhelming. Ron’s jaw moved, as he tasted, his eyes shutting.

I took an instinctive step away, waiting. Ron made a noise, of pleasure, and swallowed. He took another bite, then another. My eyes scanned the shadows under the tree, I saw no one.

Had I been wrong?

“What have you done?”

Ron’s voice brought my attention back to his face. His eyes gazed down his long, straight nose to me. The wand and the apple fell from his hands, and with a quick movement, he grabbed his middle, crumpling. The half eaten apple rolled to rest against the toe of my boot, and inside I saw the white flesh inside, and the black seeds.

“Lying…” was all Ron could manage before falling to his knees, his face twisting in pain. I took another step back as he reached for his dropped wand.

“Crucio!” he gasped from his knees, his wand pointed at my face.

Nothing happened. No matter how much bile and venom was in Ron’s voice, no magic came.

The effort overtaxed Ron, it seemed, and even as he began to realize his wand was useless, he began to fall face first into the ground. The expression on his face was one of betrayal and soon it was obscured in the grass under my feet.

“’She gave me of the tree, and I did eat…’” a voice said from behind me.

Severus walked to my side, no longer dripping, but smelling heavily of seawater. He gazed down at Ron distastefully.

“And so he did fall,” he whispered.

“Is he dead?” I asked in a strangled voice.

Severus moved to kneel next to Ron, his fingers wrapping about his throat. “No, death would be too good for the likes of him.”

I swallowed and kicked the half eaten apple away from me.

“Well, then, my devious Eve, you still have a task to perform.”

Severus smiled. It was a sad smile, but a smile nonetheless, and in the shadow of the tree, he was handsome. He was the Severus in my dream. As he rose, I rushed to him, feeling weak and silly.

He lifted me off my feet, embracing me, but the tender moment did not last long. Severus sat me on my feet as we faced the trunk of the great tree.

There was a shift in the air, a cold blow of wind that rustled the branches and leaves over our heads. It was like the change of air pressure as a cold front rolled in, but it was more than that. There was magic on the wind, like ice, and I could feel it against my face and hands.

Something was stirring, and I wondered if it had been because Ron had eaten the apple, or because we were so near to the trunk of the tree. The wind rose and the branches swayed and cracked, apples falling off to the ground.

“Fools…”

The voice came from the sound of the wind in the limbs, but I knew it was not just some inarticulate sound, it was distinct and malevolent.

I began to run.

I think I heard Severus call my name and felt his fingers grasping toward me, but I ran, not away, but toward the tree. Dread compelled me, and dread prepared me.

The girth of the tree was impossible to understand, but I stood before it just as the bark cracked apart and seemed to move as if sentient. Golden light streamed from the crack which was high enough to allow a person to pass, but was still only a crack and not wide enough to let anyone slip out.

Standing before the glowing crack, the mother of all my mothers stood, a lyre in her arms, her long curls floating upon an unfelt wind emanating from the tree. Despite the warm golden glow, the air was frigid.

“Fools…” the voice said again.

Nimue began strumming the lyre, her fingers moving deftly over the six strings. The melody was slow, and familiar. I had heard it in my dreams.

“The invocation for earth,” Nimue whispered and the melody shifted, as did the trunk of the tree.

The crack shrank, the light pulling back into the wood. I glanced from Nimue to the tree, wondering if somehow the sound of the plucked strings were weaving a spell lost to the modern age.

“The invocation of wa-“

Nimue’s voice was cut short as the stings of the lyre snapped and suddenly she fell against me, the instrument crashing to the ground. I caught her in my arms even as hot blood splashed over my hands. I grunted at the weight of her, and gently, we both slid to the grass.

“Fools!”

I ground my teeth as the voice sounded stronger, closer than ever before. I glanced down to Nimue, whose golden eyes were wide with shock. My hands clasped over a gaping wound in her chest, staining the golden fabric of her robes.

“No!” she rasped. “No time to worry about me!”

I blinked. “But…”

“I have lived for over a millennia, such a wound will not easily kill me…”

A smooth hand pressed my own to the beating of her heart under her wound. Nimue smiled.

“He will try to escape, he will try to frighten you, but hold fast. I cannot continue the invocation; I cannot seal the tree again. He has been waiting for a moment to try to leave the enchantments.

You must…” Nimue trailed, her eyes widening as Severus appeared at her feet, his eyes revealing his shock.

“You. The child of the chieftess, you must help!”

Severus scowled, kneeling down, his useless wand dangling from his fingers. He dropped his oak wand into the grass and reached toward the wound. Nimue made a sound in her throat and shook her head.

“One destroys a tree at the root,” Nimue whispered.

I did not understand, but it seemed that Severus did. He whirled away, moving to the base of the tree, just right of the crack, and fell to his knees.

I watched him, even as a bloody hand reached up to touch my cheek.

“Severus knows what it is to be imprisoned,” the mother of all my mothers, whispered. “He knows how to invoke the power of earth and water, just as the mother of his mothers knew. As we all knew…”

I bit my lower lip.

“And you, my beautiful daughter, you have ‘his’ power.”

I sighed shakily as Nimue’s bloody fingers moved to my lips.

“You have his tenacity, something I so loved before it turned to obsession.”

Nimue’s lips quivered, and she blinked slowly. A strange smile twisted her mouth, an expression that I knew as well as my own face.

Sarcasm.

“Killing one’s father was seen as a rite of passage in the days that I was able to walk the earth. So it shall be again, for the last time, so mote it be.”

Severus called my name and it was little more than a whisper.

“Go now and forever, my daughter. The time has come, the dream must end.”



Severus’ fist bore into the earth, fingers searching. Again and again, he buried his fist into black soil until his dirty fingers found a root. It was a small root, but in Severus’ hands, it wriggled like a flobberworm. The scent that accompanied the disturbance of earth was putrid. Combined with the scent of apples, it was the stench of rotting flesh.

Severus pulled, his crooked teeth grinding together at the strength he exerted. His very touch seemed to make the roots unearth themselves under my feet and under Nimue’s prone form and Ron’s near petrified body in the distance.

The invocation of the earth.

The wriggling roots ranged from small to enormous, some as thick as my body. The tree, despite the sudden exposure of its roots, was stolid and unmoving. The voice from the tree had silenced, and I wondered if it was because it knew what was coming, or if it was in shock.

Severus entire right arm disappeared into the ground, damp soil staining his pale arm blacker than the bruises he had bore. So many times Severus had dug into the earth during out journey that the black earth that stained the cracks of his hands and the space under his fingernails would surely never come clean any time soon.

I stepped closer to Severus as his face sneered, unable to reach what he was searching for. The rumble under my feet alerted me to the shift of the roots still buried, the earth moving. Holes formed all about us, the earth sinking to replace the loss of the root, and I felt the grass under my own feet sink slightly.

“There!” Severus hissed, his body rising up, his muddy arm pulling with every bit of his wiry strength.

In his hand was the heart of the tree, the seed in which Nimue grew the prison for Merlin. It was a golden apple, petrified. It was cut in cross section and from the middle of the five seeds, forming an organic design that I had seen on all the markers leading along the labyrinth, was a thin golden thread of hair.

Merlin’s hair.

I opened my mouth to speak, to tell Severus to break the hair, but my throat was caught, a vice closing around my neck.

“Foolish girl!”

I choked, my hands flying to my neck, nails digging into living flesh. My eyes felt as if they were bulging as they swiveled about to see a pale arm sticking from the crack in the tree.

It was like one of my dreams, only worse, only real.

Severus’ voice rang out in shock, shouting my name, but it was so distant despite him being so near.

“You cannot kill what is immortal!”

I gagged and gasped, my mouth moving uselessly as the grip tightened.

I was dying, again. The first time had led me to the very place I stood, but I doubted that the next realm would be so wonderful.

I had a choice before me. Fight or die.

If life was hard, dying was the easy part, I remembered someone saying to me once, but the voice and associated face eluded me.

So, I fought.


tbc...