Harry swallowed twice, and began his recounting.
"James Potter shouted for Lily to run away with me, that he would hold off You-Know-Who."
"You-Know-Who said -" Harry stopped, the chills going all over his own skin, his own muscles tightening as if in preparing for a seizure. The memory was returning strongly, now, accompanied by cold and darkness in association. "He used... the Killing Curse... and then he came upstairs somehow, I think he must have flown, I don't remember any footsteps on stairs or anything like that... and then my mother said, 'No, not Harry, please not Harry!' or something like that. And the Dark Lord - his voice was so high, like water whistling out of a teakettle only cold - the Dark Lord said -"
Stand aside, woman! For you I am not come, only the boy.
The words were very clear in Harry's memory.
"- he told my mother to get out of his way, that he was only there for me, and my mother begged him to have mercy, and the Dark Lord said -"
I give you this rare chance to flee.
"- that he was being generous and giving her a chance to run, but he wouldn't bother fighting her, and even if she died, she couldn't save me -" Harry's voice was unsteady, "- and so she ought to get out of his way. And that was when my mother begged the Dark Lord to take her life instead of mine - and the Dark Lord - the Dark Lord said to her - and his voice was lower this time, like he was dropping a pose -"
Very well, I accept the bargain.
"- he said that he accepted her offer, and that she should drop her wand so he could kill her. And then the Dark Lord waited, just waited. I, I don't know what Lily Potter was thinking, it hadn't even made sense in the first place, what she said, it wasn't like the Dark Lord would kill her and then just leave, when he'd come there for me. Lily Potter didn't say anything, and then the Dark Lord started laughing at her and it was horrible and - and she finally tried the only thing left that wasn't abandoning me or just giving up and dying. I don't know if she even could've, if the spell would've worked for her, but when you think about, she had to try. The last thing my mother said was 'Avada Ke-' but the Dark Lord started his own curse as soon as she said 'Av' and he said it in less than half a second and there was a flash of green light and then - and then - and then -"
"That's enough."
Slowly, like a body floating to the surface of water, Harry returned from wherever he'd been.
"That's enough," the Potions Master said hoarsely. "She died... Lily died without pain, then? The Dark Lord... did not do anything to her, before she died?"
She died thinking that she'd failed, and that the Dark Lord was going to kill her baby next. That's pain.
"He - the Dark Lord didn't torture her -" Harry said. "If that's what you're asking."
Behind Harry, the door unlocked itself and swung open.
Harry left.
It was Friday, April 10th, of 1992.
Chapter 87: Hedonic Awareness
Thursday, April 16th, 1992.
The school was almost deserted now, nine-tenths of the students having gone home for the Easter holiday, just about everyone she knew missing. Susan had stayed behind, her grand-aunt being quite busy, as had Ron for reasons she didn't know - maybe the Weasley family was poor enough that feeding all the children for an extra week would've been a noticeable strain? It all worked out well enough, since Ron and Susan were just about the only ones left who'd still talk to her. (At least that she wanted to talk back to. Lavender was still nice to her, and Tracey was, um, Tracey, but neither of them were quite relaxing to spend a free hour around; and in any case, neither of those two had stayed over for the Easter hols.)
If she couldn't go home - and she wasn't allowed to go home, her parents had been lied-to and told she'd had Glowpox - then an almost-empty Hogwarts was the next best thing.
She could even visit the library without people staring at her, since there were no lessons and nobody was trying to do schoolwork.
It would be a mistake to think that Hermione drooped about the corridors weeping all day long. Oh, she'd cried a lot the first two days, of course, but two days had been enough. There were parts of Harry's borrowed books about that, how even people who were paralyzed in car accidents weren't nearly as unhappy as they'd expected to be, six months later, just like lottery winners weren't nearly as happy as they'd expected. People adjusted, their happiness levels went back to their happiness set point, life went on.
A shadow fell over where Hermione was reading her current book and she whirled around, the wand hidden on her lap coming up to point directly at the surprised face of -
"Sorry!" Harry Potter said, hastily holding up his palms to show his left hand empty, and his right hand holding a small red-velvet pouch. "Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you."
There was an awful silence, her heartbeat increasing and her palms starting to sweat as Harry Potter just looked at her. She'd almost talked to him, on the first morning of the rest of her life; but when she'd come down to breakfast Harry Potter had looked so awful - so she hadn't sat down beside him at the breakfast-table, just quietly eaten in her own little bubble of nobody else sitting next to her, and it had been horrible, but Harry hadn't come to her, and... she just hadn't talked to him, since then. (It wasn't hard to avoid everyone, if you stayed out of the Ravenclaw common room, and ran out of classes before anyone could talk to you.)
And ever since she'd been wondering what Harry thought of her now - if he hated her for having lost all his money - or if he really was in love with her and that's why he'd done it - or if he'd given up on her keeping pace with him because she couldn't frighten Dementors - she couldn't face him now, she just couldn't, she spent sleepless nights worrying what Harry thought of her now, and she was afraid, and she'd been avoiding the boy who'd spent all his money to save her, and she was a horrible ungrateful wretch, and a terrible person and -
Then her eyes glanced down to see that Harry was reaching into the red-velvet pouch and taking out a heart-shaped red-foil-wrapped sweet, and her brain melted down like chocolate left out in the sun.
"I was going to give you more space," said Harry Potter, "only I was reading up on Critch's theories about hedonics and how to train your inner pigeon and how small immediate positive and negative feedbacks secretly control most of what we actually do, and it occurred to me that you might be avoiding me because seeing me made you think of things that felt like negative associations, and I really didn't want to let that run any longer without doing something about it, so I got ahold of a bag of chocolates from the Weasley twins and I'm just going to give you one every time you see me as a positive reinforcement if that's all right with you -"
"Breathe, Harry," Hermione said without thinking about it.
It was the first word she'd spoken to him since the day of the trial.
The two of them stared at each other.
The books stared at them from the surrounding shelves.
They stared some more at each other.
"You're supposed to eat the chocolate," Harry said, holding out the heart-shaped sweet like a Valentine. "Unless just being given a chocolate feels good enough to count as a positive reinforcement, in which case you probably need to put it in your pocket or something."
She knew that if she tried speaking again she'd fail, so she didn't try.