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So you’re standing on the ledge

It looks like you might fall

So far down

Or maybe you were thinking about jumping

Now you could have it all

If you learned a little patience

For though I cannot fly

I’m not content to crawl

--Nine Days, “If I Am”

It’s a very depressing thing to experience, lacking control of your own body. Mentally chained to the walls of your brain, unable to move, unable to speak aloud, but still capable of experiencing pain as you looked out the eyes that you could no longer move and watch as some demon in control of your body unleashed powers you never knew you had…

Very depressing, indeed.

Merinah Gattes would have cried, if she’d had control of her tears. But she didn’t. She would have screamed, if she’d had control of her vocals. But she didn’t.

If she tried hard enough, maybe she could twitch an eye or something. But she couldn’t dispel whatever was inside her body. She didn’t know what it was. It’s difficult, even impossible, to fight what you can’t see or know. It was like shooting a gun in complete darkness by following the sounds of the silent footfalls. Impossible to do.

Her body, whatever was controlling it, was in a deep meditative state, trying to listen to the sounds of its master’s voice.

If there was a Hell, this was it.

The man she hated, the man she despised, the only soul on earth lower than Satan…and she was waiting for his call. Waiting to hear his command, to carry it out and kill the two people who trusted her with all their lives…

She wanted to cry.

But what good is crying?

Besides…she couldn’t…

“Erina…” a voice suddenly hissed.

She would have jumped. She would have screamed. She could do neither.

“What, Daddy dearest?” a voice asked tiredly, sarcastically…a voice coming from her mouth.

This creature, the one who had imprisoned her in her own body, who’d taken her memories, her life, was her father?

She mentally sank down, tried to close her eyes, wanted to die.

The voice continued. “Lead them to their dooms.”

“Vague today, aren’t we? Where’s their ‘dooms’?” her body asked.

A cold suddenly settled over her, an angry cold. “You are not to question me or speak to me in that tone.”

Her eyes rolled on their own accord. “Uh-huh. Where do I go, Daddy?”

An angry pause. Then… “Godric’s Hollow.”

And he was gone again. She didn’t breathe a sigh of relief. What was there to be relieved about? He’d be back…

“So dramatic, aren’t we, little voice in my head?”

She was startled by the fact that her body was speaking to her.

“It’s funny how stupid you are. You don’t know who I am? I’m hurt…”

What? she wanted to ask. She was dreadfully confused.

“Honey, baby…” her voice whispered. “I’m you.”

Merinah was a quiet girl, shy, good in school. Her mother had told her when they’d moved to America never to remember England. So she had forgotten it. All those horrible memories. She forgot them because Mommy told her to. She forgot them because she didn’t want to remember.

Mommy told her Daddy had died. Told her not to remember Daddy.

So she didn’t remember Daddy either.

Merinah seemed to be the perfect child. The teachers loved her. She was their pet. Nice, gentle. Never got in trouble.

But Merinah had a secret. Merinah had this voice in her head. A deep, scary voice that spoke evil words. It was her voice, only older, more modulated. It told her to do evil things. She didn’t want to, so she fought it. That’s why she was quiet. She had to stay quiet in order to control the voice.

She’d succeeded at this until one day.

One day Mrs. Saddler had called on her to read the book. Merinah had started to read it, no problems, but then her voice changed. Sounded older, mature, deeper…and frightening. The students turned around to look at her. But she looked the same. Curly black hair pinned back on both sides, giving her a babyish look, eyes trained on the page.

Mrs. Saddler glanced up, noticing the change in her student’s voice. “Merinah?”

Merinah looked up. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Are you all right?”

Her face changed. Her eyes lost their innocent questioning and somehow clouded, her lips molded into a frown, her eyebrows pulled together, and ice seemed to spray from her very being. Mrs. Saddler stepped back.

“What makes you think I’m not okay?” Merinah snapped. She stood and the chair went flying back. “Are you suggesting I’m not?”

“Well, no, of course not…”

“Don’t lie,” she hissed. “I can see right through all of you. Hide from me? Hell no. No one can.” Merinah’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Daddy’ll kill you. Daddy’ll rule the world. See what you get for accusing me. For looking at me like that.” She gestured around the room at the student’s wide eyes. And suddenly the lights blew out. The whole class screamed.

“Yeah, see you look at me like that again. I have more power in my pinky than you have in your entire bodies…” Her chair flew back and her desk flew forward, spilling all its contents out on the floor. “So don’t ask if I’m okay. It’d be more appropriate to ask yourselves that.”

She walked out of that classroom, leaving in her trailed a mess of broken desks and destroyed futures. But she didn’t even blink.

Merinah went home. She told Mommy about what happened.

Mommy and she left their home that day. And as they drove away, Mommy told Merinah sternly, “Don’t remember this, Merinah. Don’t remember.”

So Merinah didn’t.

Hermione Granger’s eyes snapped open. She found herself staring up at the tops of trees and a cold, gray sky. Silvery, moving. Reminded her of mercury.

Deadly, quiet, elusive.

Something in that sky told her that today wasn’t going to be her day.

Paranoid, girl. Really, Herm, you’re paranoid.

She pushed herself into a sitting position and realized where she was by blinking a few times. She was inside a navy blue sleeping bag. A long-dead fire lay at her feet, gentle wisps of smoke and ash seeping away into the mercury sky. A quick glance to her side and she saw Harry lying beside her, in another sleeping bag. His own separate sleeping bag.

She touched her lips, remembering the night before. She hated being the proper person she was. They hadn’t done anything.

She slithered out of her sleeping bag, kicking it off her legs, causing it to disappear as she did so.

Magic. She was still magical, after everything.

She sighed and pushed herself to her feet. Time to think about what was going to happen. But she couldn’t. Not with that rippling, glinting mercury above her head. What if it started raining? She’d die. The sky seemed toxic.

She subconsciously tugged on her knotted hair.

There was the sound of moving nylon behind her and she turned to see Merinah pushing her way out of her own little tent. She looked perfect, as usual, dressed and clean. Hermione almost envied her.

“Morning,” said Hermione in the dullest voice she’d ever heard.

Merinah glanced up, startled. Her eyes clouded. “How long have you been awake?”

“Five minutes?” She shrugged. “Why?”

Merinah shook her head and looked away, but Hermione caught that glimmer of apprehension in her eyes. She knew there was something wrong with Merinah. Her instincts were screaming at her. Mercury! Mercury! Sky! MERINAH!

And all she had to say to them now was, “Shut the hell up.”

Merinah snapped her head around. “Excuse me?”

“I was talking to the little voices in my head,” answered Hermione calmly.

A raised eyebrow. Shake of the head. Grin. Merinah, all right. But what about that mercury in her eyes?

“We’d better get moving, you know,” Merinah informed her.

“Where to?”

“I know a place.”

Why should I trust you? Hermione asked. But it wasn’t Hermione. Hermione truly believed she was mad. How many voices was that in her head now? Five thousand?

Hermione just stared blankly at Merinah as she stepped over the log Hermione was sitting on to stand next to the soundly sleeping Harry.

Kicking him a little in the side, she said to Hermione, “Trust me.”

Did I give any indication I didn’t trust you? she asked.

But at the same moment, she also wanted to say something else. Why should I?

Hermione clutched her head in her hands as Harry sat bolt upright at Merinah’s fifth kick.

“Rise and shine, darling,” Merinah said mockingly.

I need to get control of myself. I need to pick through this muck and come to a conclusion. Too much stress. Yes, that’s it. I have to trust Merinah. She’s our only hope… But there was still that voice in her head screaming, Mercury! Mercury!

“Where exactly are you taking us?” Harry asked as they tromped through the forest. He shoved at some huge spider webs as he followed behind the quickly moving Merinah. Hermione trailed behind him, unusually subdued. Her eyes were huge and she stared at the ground rather than ahead.

Harry worried about her. He’d become very possessive over her.

“Somewhere safe,” Merinah called back, slashing through the underbrush and little saplings, blazing a trail for her two companions. “Trust me.”

Hermione mumbled something behind him. Turning around to catch her words, he stopped and caught her arm as she attempted to move on past him.

“What’d you say?” he asked, trying to sound as gentle and soothing as possible. There was something wrong with Hermione today. Something was off-key.

She looked up at him. Tears trickled slowly down her flushed face. Huge, watery eyes gazed at him, carrying a fear and worry that practically slapped him in the face. “Mercury,” she whispered. “The sky is mercury…”

“Hermione?” said Harry in a surprisingly high-pitched and cracky voice.

“Oh, Harry,” she said in a breathless voice. “I’m going insane…”

He didn’t know what to say. Hermione was one of the strongest people he knew. She went on no matter what. She’d become his rock, his stability through this fragile, glass world. Something for him to lean on, to reach out and touch, physically or mentally, and make everything all right.

He reached up with a shaky hand and carefully wiped the tears and dirt off her cheeks. “I’m already insane,” he croaked with a crooked smile. “We’ll go live in our own asylum.”

A beat of silence and stillness, a moment frozen in time. Then Hermione reached up and pulled him down to her level and kissed him fully and passionately. He pulled back in surprise, head still bent to hers.

“I love you, Harry,” said Hermione breathlessly. “Make sure you know that, okay? I always have, I always will, and if I die today, don’t let—don’t let the mercury get you, too, okay?” She blinked away tears. “Fight it, Harry. Kill it, break it, beat it…for me…”

Unable to think of a reply, he responded by leaning in again and smothering her lips and mouth with his own. She broke away, gripping the front of his shirt tightly in her fists. “It tingles,” she whispered.

“What does?”

“Every part of me.”

He smiled. “Me too.”

“I’m honored,” Hermione teased. He was relieved to hear her speak normally again.

“Hey, guys, where are you?” The faint sound of Merinah’s voice penetrated the moment and Hermione’s face immediately clouded again.

She grabbed Harry’s head and kissed him forcefully. Before he could even think of responding, she pushed herself back. She placed a hand on his cheek, tickling the stubble beginning to ground on his face. “Remember what I said, Harry,” she said softly. “Don’t you dare let it happen to you. Don’t let it get you. Fight the cold, and it’ll be more than anything I’ll ever be able to do.”

He reached out to hold her, but she was already gone.

He touched his face, where it burned from her touch. “I love you too,” he whispered to still and silent air, only broken by the sound of Hermione hurrying after Merinah. “I’ll fight it, Hermione. I swear to God, to Heaven, to Hell, to anything…to you…I will.” And he sped off after the two women.

Hermione fought back her fear that the voices were right and accepted them. Accepted her fate. She sensed an evil in the air, an evil coming from Merinah. Still, she was her only hope. She could see it. There was more than one Merinah, as there was more than one Hermione. More than one Harry.

A good and a bad.

Harry had fought and killed the bad. Hermione’s bad had never been truly evident.

Merinah’s bad was alive and well. And it seemed that her good was dead.

Nowhere to go for neither Harry nor Hermione. Nowhere to run.

Still, a hope pulsed through Hermione’s veins. A hope that Merinah, the real, good, true Merinah would come back out and save them.

It was this hope that kept her trailing after Merinah.

She didn’t know what that evil in Merinah was capable of. She hadn’t a clue Merinah was truly Erina Riddle.

But she’d seen the mercury in Merinah’s eyes. She’s sensed that cold, that awful cold, oozing from Merinah’s very being.

Hermione was prepared to die for that hope inside her. But she wasn’t prepared for Harry to die.

She knew, somehow knew, Harry could save, or beat, or do something, that could save himself.

But…unless Merinah’s good won…Hermione knew she, herself, would die.

She reached into her back pocket and pulled out her wand, clutching it tightly in her hand like it was her own life. Hold tight to her life.

“The mercury skies,” Hermione whispered in a chanting voice. “The deadly poison in her eyes.”

She closed her eyes and somehow managed her way through the forest after Merinah, blind.

“The careful lie, the crows that fly, a heavy sigh…and the innocents that die.”

And she somehow felt strength. Strength that she may indeed when this battle, dead or alive.

It was magic.

Hermione knew magic. Hermione was good at magic. So Hermione tried some magic...

To be continued…

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