All Hail the Dark Lord, Or Something Idiotic Like That

Ghosts around us pt3

A/N: Not my story! Original available on ao3

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"Yeah...come on," Ron uncharacteristically actually took Harry's hand in his and pulled him towards the stairs, somehow instinctively realizing he needed the comfort.

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The house was so familiar and also so different than what Harry was used to as they made their way past the room he normally shared with Percy in the future, the room he'd turned into his ritual room, and what had been his study with all the dark artifacts he'd collected. The artifacts which he traded on the black market as a sort-of job to fund the underground network of people he had cultivated to safeguard families away when they became in danger from the ministry, or more specifically the Department of Relocation and Retrieval.

"Harry...?" Hermione began.

"Wait until we're in the room," he mumbled, remembering Fred and George's extendable ears well, and he hadn't seen them around yet, which usually wasn't a good sign.

He briefly debated what he should tell Ron and Hermione before just throwing all his ideas out and settling on telling them the truth. He'd never lied to either of them, ever, and he wasn't about to start now. Besides, if he was going to have an inner circle, it was going to be these two...and if they disagreed with this whole plan, then that was actually a very important thing to take into account. He was self-aware enough to realize that neither he nor Percy were stable individuals. If they were going to change this insane plan for any reason, it would be because Ron, or more likely, Hermione told them it was a bad idea as the two people who would understand why they did what they did but also not have gone through all the trauma they had.

"You're sharing with me in here," Ron remarked, opening the familiar door and pulling Harry inside.

"Spill," Hermione put her hands on her hips and glared at him as soon as she closed the door behind them.

Harry huffed and instead pulled out his new wand and cast a complicated privacy ward around both the door of the room and the empty portrait he knew Headmaster Black frequented. "Is that a new wand?" Ron frowned.

"What was that spell?" Hermione exclaimed at the same time.

"Right...so, sit down on something and give me a minute, ok...if you haven't noticed, I'm having a bit of a hard time right now," Harry plopped down on his bed and buried his face in his pillow for a second, just trying to still his racing heart and cut out all the external stimuli and ghosts around him.

"What happened this summer, Harry?" The bed dipped beside Harry where he knew Hermione had sat down with him.

He gave a wry snort, not even knowing how to start addressing that. Their Harry was dead...erased from existence, and the Harry they had now was so broken that only hope, sheer stubbornness, firewhiskey, and Percy held him together these days. "I need a drink," he grumbled but sat up to look at them again.

"I'm going to start with 'I'm sorry,' and I'll circle back around to that," he began in a deep sigh, seeing Ron sit on the edge of his bed beside Hermione and them both look at him in anticipation. "Hermione...I need you to actually consider something for me, will you?"

Hermione looked so very confused. "Of course, Harry...what's up?"

"What would you do, Hermione Granger, if things had gotten so bad, you couldn't fix them. You were in the middle of hell before you even realized it'd began. Everything you cared about, everything you held dear was gone, and there just wasn't a way to fix it," he looked at her with tired eyes, eyes that had seen his world fall around him and his family ripped from his arms.