Moving Forward

Hi! I'm back. I know it's taken me forever to get this story out. But between the holiday season and catching a head cold, writing was the last thing on my mind.

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Chapter One


Hermione sat quietly watching the proceedings, as were many of the others there. It was hard not to yell and call many of the death eaters liars when they claimed innocence. It wasn’t until she saw Lucius Malfoy get on the stand that she felt something in her knot up. He too was claiming innocence. He too was saying he was under the effect of the Unspeakable that they all claimed to be under. He was repeating word and verse exactly what the others there were saying. And yet his words made her all the angrier than the others.


She looked down into her palm at the Time Stopper that she had created. Hermione had tested it and had even considered putting a on the market. But no, she told herself. People would pervert the use of it and besides, bad things happened to those who did mess with time. The longest she had stopped time was a minute. It was all she needed, she thought as she looked over to Malfoy as he continued to droll on and on about the “horrors of war”. She activated the Time Stopper and stood up.


He blinked at the group of them and then looked over to Miss Hermione Granger. The mudblood was glaring at him as she walked over to the witness stand.


“What do you know of the true horror of war, Mr. Malfoy? Getting your wand broken by a madman isn’t the worst you could have received. If anything you got off light.” She slapped his face hard. “You want to know what true horror is?”


“What are you about, Miss Granger?”


“I am about to teach you a lesson you will soon not forget,” she hissed, yanking the receiver for the Time Stopper off of him so that he too now was affected by the time stop. “Your money will save you from the Wizmogot, but it shan’t save you from me. Learn your lesson well, Mr. Malfoy, for this is the last chance you get.” She pulled out a potion vial and poured it over his head. It vanished almost immediately. Hermione leaned in close to him and tapped her wand against his head as she whispered, “Live the lives of the others you have harmed.”


She walked out of the courtroom, starting time again and missing Lucius’s scream of abject horror.


***


Lucius was taken straight over to St. Mungo’s from the courtroom. They didn’t know what to do for him, as it wasn’t clear what had happened to him in the first place. He went in and out of consciousness. There were moments that it appeared that he was being cursed by invisible tormentors and the next he was begging for his life as he was apparently being raped.


All the healers could do was clean him up and heal him. His body reflected every injury he received. Welts and cuts came from nowhere and they covered his body. His anus would bleed as if he had been violated multiple times. He would weep uncontrollably, his mind dealing with what only he could see and hear.


Finally at the end of the week, everything stopped. He lay blinking around the room he was in as if seeing it for the first time. The last he remembered was being in the courtroom. Draco was finally able to visit him. But when he tried to hug his father, the older wizard pulled away. He didn’t want to be touched, not by anyone.


“Father, I have news,” Draco told him as he sat down. “Mother, she managed to get the annulment she wanted passed while you were still…” He waved his hand. “Going through your difficulty.”


“She did?” he asked hoarsely. “How?”


“Money,” he answered as if that answered everything.


Squeezing his eyes shut. “Tell me what else has been happening since I’ve been indisposed?”


“Hermione Granger has stopped appearing in the papers,” he murmured. “But not before breaking off her relationship with that blood traitor Weasley.”


“Do not call him that,” Lucius whispered. “The war is over. We lost. We must move on. If only for the sake of your future children.”


Draco blinked at his father in shock. “Father…”


“I mean it, Draco,” he said in a hard voice. “Enough is enough! We move on or we die.” Taking a deep breath as he sat up with a wince. “I do not know about you, but a holiday sounds lovely.”


“You cannot until your verdict is read,” he reminded him.


“So we shall wait and then I will go to France or Italy. Somewhere with sun and no tourists,” he whispered, looking towards the cloud covered sky. “With much sun indeed.”


***


Hermione was packing her bags as Harry and Ginny tried as they might to convince her to stay. She needed away from everything that was going on.


“You can’t go!” Ginny exclaimed. “What about Ron?”


“What about him?” she asked, as she kept on packing. “We broke up, remember?”


“What did Ron do?” Harry asked.


“Nothing,” she answered, but stopped what she was doing. “He didn’t do a thing wrong.”


“Then why leave?” Ginny pressed.


She looked to her and said, “Did you know he asked me to marry him?”


Ginny’s face bloomed with happiness.


“I told him no,” she said quietly. “He wants to get married right away and start having kids.” Hermione shook her head no. “There are so many things I need to do before I start a family, Ginny. I’m not ready for it and Ron deserves better than to have to wait around for me.”


Anger lit Ginny’s face in a heartbeat of time. “You bitch!”


“Why?” Hermione asked her. “Why am I the bitch for not wanting to get married and getting pregnant a month in? I’m eighteen years old and I haven’t finished my education. I need to take my NEWTs! Ron thinks that because he is a war hero that he doesn’t need them. But if anything we need them all the more thanks to the fact that we now have something to prove.” She sat down on the bed, looking towards her friends. “It would have been so simple to have said yes. I couldn’t do it. He deserved better and I did as well.”


“He would have done anything to make you happy!” Ginny screamed.


“Yes, but tell me something honestly, Ginny. Stop yelling and screaming and just think about this for a moment. Do you think you can give up your dream of playing on a professional quidditch team in order to get married and start to have kids at eighteen? And you know what that means, don’t you? That means your life is at the house all the time, because that’s your job. Could you do it?”


“Yes!”


“Then you are either a better person than I or just trying as you might to support your brother that you’re willing to tell untruths,” she whispered and then looked over to Harry. “I need to do this, Harry.” She got up and went over to him, giving him a hug. “I’m sorry, but I need to go.” Pulling back she looked into his eyes. “Watch out for Ron, please?”


“You know I will,” Harry murmured. “When are you going to leave?”


“I’m staying for the finishing of the trials and take my NEWTs before I leave. Mr. Snape needs a traveling companion and he hired me to help him out,” she told them. “He is paying for the travel and I will be getting to take care of one of the grumpiest beings on earth to pay for it.”


This had Harry chuckling at her dry comments. His laughter dried up at Ginny’s hard glare. He cleared his throat and looked over to Hermione.


“Ginny, could you please excuse us?”


“Whatever you have to say to Harry, you can say with me here as well,” she told her tightly.


“If you wish,” Hermione replied looking over to Harry. “Whatever happens remember that you shouldn’t let Ginny run you over. Stand up for what you want and need.”


“I…” Hermione flicked her wand straight at Ginny silencing her.


“Promise me, Harry,” she said. “That you will go for what you want and need before thinking about if it makes anyone else happy.” She took his hands within her own. “This is the first time since forever that you don’t have to worry about some madman trying to kill you or destroy the wizarding world. If you want to become an auror, great, do it! But if you don’t, if you want to be something else, do that.”


Harry smiled at her. “I promise, Hermione. I’ll do what makes me happy.”


“Good,” she murmured, pulling back from him and flicked her wand at Ginny.


The younger witch tried to grab Harry’s hand and yank him out of the room. Hermione kept on packing as Harry snapped at Ginny that if she wanted to leave she was free to go.


“Harry, you’re my boyfriend!” Ginny hissed at him. “Support me!”


Hermione looked at him and simply waited.


Taking a deep breath he said, “No, Ginny, I’m your friend, but I am in no way your boyfriend.”


She looked over to Hermione and snapped, “This is your fault!”


“No, it’s not,” Harry told her. “Ginny, I should have told you this before, but I’m gay.” All the color in the redhead’s face left as he spoke to her. “I’ve been involved with Blaise Zabini for just over a year.”


“Why didn’t you tell me?” she breathed.


“If I did tell you, Ginny, would you have heard me? Because I tried to tell you,” he murmured. “So many times and every time you talked right over me.”


Ginny ran out of the room sobbing as she went. Hermione went over to Harry, rubbing his back. He looked into her eyes.


“You knew this day was coming,” she whispered. “It’s for the best.”


“I know,” he told her. “But it doesn’t make it any easier.”


***

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