fic: speak and you choke
Apr. 19th, 2014 06:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lynzie914title: speak and you choke
fandom: harry potter
characters: Hermione-centric (some of Hermione/Ron, and a fair amount of the ensemble you would expect.)
prompt: what horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.
rating: pg-13 (for dealing with depression and the aftermaths of war)
disclaimer: I own nothing.
summary: The war ends and things go back to normal. Only not the normal she or Harry or Ron are used to. It’s the normal they were all supposed to have; full of things like Quidditch and laughter and books to explore. It is not the normal Hermione knows. (Post-DH, so spoilers abound.)
a/n: This is all![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fluffyfrolicker’s fault. ALL OF IT. Her and her prompt that made my brain think too much and write HP fic for the first time in like ten years maybe. So basically if its horrible and everyone is ooc, then well, it’s not all my fault. (Yes, I’m dragging you down with me fluffyfrolicker. Yes, I am.) Also, I don’t know how much is strictly canon compliant of things that were supposed to come and I might have mixed movie moments and book moments and not known it. So expect all canons mixed in there.
The war ends.
(The war was always going to end of course, but they were on the winning side, and that is what changes things, what matters.
Once upon a time she would have said they were on the right side, but things had changed. She knows there are no longer right sides in war, just death and destruction and pain and—
She knows there is no right side.)
The war ends and things go back to normal. Only not the normal she or Harry or Ron are used to. It’s the normal they were all supposed to have; full of things like Quidditch and laughter and books to explore.
It is not the normal Hermione knows.
--
Hermione spends the months after holed up with books researching memory charms, reversal charms, and everything in between that might aid her search.
She has it figured out within a month. Probably less, two weeks and three days to be exact, but this is important and she has to be sure. Hermione would not allow more damage to come to her parents. She wouldn’t.
She had come too far to be the one that did it herself.
(She thinks of Neville’s parents in the hospital ward and the candy bar wrappers he slips into his pockets, and she can’t be responsible for that.
She can’t.)
But Hermione studies longer after she’s found what she’s sure is just the right reversal charm, because that is who she is.
The idea of going and facing her parents and them knowing what she had done. That has very little to do with it.
That’s what she says to herself when she’s looking in the mirror.
--
Ron tries to come with her. Forces the issues until she snaps at him and almost feels bad.
(They haven’t really been apart, the three of them, since that last day at Hogwarts.
The idea of her leaving and never coming back again—
She had felt that pain before. Some sick, twisted part of her thinks maybe he deserves it. He had done it to her once, only without the warning or goodbye. At least she had given him that.)
“He’s right you know,” Harry says quietly, “You shouldn’t go alone. It might not be safe.”
There were still Death Eaters out there with grudges, sympathizers who didn’t wear the mark. And she was Hermione Granger; the mudblood, the girl who should have died and not survived in the war. She was a target if there ever was one.
“I think it’s best if I do this alone.” She says.
“It doesn’t have to be Ron,” Harry tries to help, “Maybe Ginny could go with you or one of the Order members—”
“I said no, Harry.” Hermione yells.
Her voice echoes off the walls and he takes a step back.
(Her wand is in her hand she notices belatedly and she can feel magic surging through her, wanting to come forth. Wanting to attack.)
“I need to do this on my own.” Hermione says quieter, regretfully. Because what had Harry or Ron ever done to make her yell. Instead they were just trying to make sure she didn’t get added to a long list of names of people who would someday be forgotten.
“It’ll be better that way.” She says it like she believes it and Harry nods his head like he understands things he can’t possibly truly understand.
She snaps her suitcase closed and she leaves him behind.
(She feels guiltier leaving him behind than Ron and she should feel bad for that too. But Harry has Ginny to talk to, has Mrs. Weasley to fuss over him, and Professor McGonagall to keep a level head on his shoulders.
He doesn’t need her anymore.)
--
Her parents decide to stay in Australia.
They’ve carved out a new life for themselves and they like it there. They enjoy the weather and the sunny skies and her mother found a place that makes tea as if they were still in England.
Their happy.
And who is Hermione to do anymore damage to their happiness?
They do not talk about what she has done. Not after the explanations are over and she apologizes for what had to be done. But they look at her sometimes, like they don’t recognize her.
They look at her the same way they did when they opened the door and asked who she was and how could they help her.
--
They go back to Hogwarts. They never did finish their seventh year and their NEWTS are important. Mrs. Weasley emphasizes this to them and Hermione agrees, but she does not feel it like she once did.
Ron moans about the fact that he already has offers to become an Auror, they all do, that they don’t need more school. They don’t need to go back to that place.
Hermione holds his hand and moves closer to him, her face pressing into the crook of his neck. “We’ll have to go back eventually.” She says.
They couldn’t avoid it forever, even if they wanted to.
So they go back in groups, segregated from the rest of the seventh years. All of them grouped together that didn’t get to finish school or attend at all the year before. Their all put in the same dormitories; Gryffindors, Slytherins, Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws all mixed together in a blur of colors that sometimes makes Hermione dizzy.
They share rooms and classes, even special tutoring sessions for the students further advanced. They get their own table in the Great Hall.
It’s much smaller than the rest.
--
Ron sighs, throwing down his quill and his half-finished essay, eyeing her and Harry. “Is it just me or this year boring?”
“You didn’t have to take History of Magic,” Harry says not looking up from his own essay.
“Not what I meant,” Ron says as if it’s obvious, “I just—Isn’t this the point where we usually fight a troll or a three headed dog or something. I mean, where are all the danger and dark arts to distract me from my studying?”
Harry laughs and Hermione can see the smile in his eyes.
Hermione doesn’t laugh or smile. Just stares down at the essay she had finished hours ago, exactly the length required, no more and no less. She knows it will earn her a gold star.
Her arm itches and she wonders if Ron really meant it as a joke. Wonders if she agrees with him.
Essays and papers and volumes littering the floor around her is a familiar scene. One that has repeated itself over and over in years past.
But it still feels like something is missing.
--
She hides in the library, only it’s not really hiding, because she’s Hermione Granger and everyone knows to look for her there.
But she is done with her homework, done so far in advance that it’s never happened before. She had even started asking certain teachers for more work to keep her busy, to give her reasons to stay in the library for so long.
(“I just want to be prepared for my NEWTS,” She says and it rolls of her tongue like it’s the truth.
No one bats an eye.)
She reads volumes and tomes of times past, of great wars and times that remind her too much of the present, but she can’t put down. She reads about the rules and regulations of the wizarding world and the punishments doled out to those who dare defy them.
She reads up on potions and transfiguration and charms and the idea of time travel and when it was still just a theory.
She makes notes in a muggle notebook. Sometimes coherent and sometimes in the sidelines. Fills it up and moves on to a new one and another one after that.
Hermione soaks it all up, things she will never need to know, things that don’t matter (not in the long run), things she doesn’t even care about. She fills her mind with it all.
It makes it a little easier.
--
She never wakes up screaming, but the nightmares come anyways. Of things she shouldn’t want to remember.
Hermione wakes up drenched in sweat instead, her breathe coming too quickly, and her pulse racing.
But she never wakes up screaming.
--
Harry and Ron talk in the common room about life to come after Hogwarts, of the Aurors they will be, and the plans they are making.
Harry is in constant contact with the Ministry (“Turns out being the boy who lived has some perks after all.” he smiles, but it doesn’t met his eyes.) and Ron sends letters back and forth with Bill, who was temporarily working with the Aurors, helping clean up all the messes left behind in the wake of Voldemort’s demise. (We could always use another soldier, the letters said. Because that’s what they were now.)
“I could be Auror.” Ginny says across from them, sitting on Harry’s lap.
“I’d certainly run away from you if you were waving a wand at me.” Ron mutters and his hand caresses Hermione’s.
“I’m not sure I want to be though.” Ginny continues, ignoring him.
Ginny has as many options as the rest of them, maybe more because she’s not trapped with the stigma of being part of the “Golden Trio”, but she doesn’t have her life mapped out.
Hermione likes her a little more for that.
--
Draco avoids them in the dormitories they share, avoids most people really. His face is gaunt and there is screaming that sometimes comes from his rooms.
Hermione doesn’t need anyone to tell her who it is coming from.
He never meets their eyes and Harry and Ron fall so easily into a pattern of ignoring him. There’s an unspoken agreement to just let each other be, to never bring any of it up again, and to never seek one another out.
Hermione catches herself staring at him sometimes in the Great Hall. Her eyes following his movements and watching for something she can’t quite place. She thinks about talking about him sometimes, maybe to just see the reactions of everyone around her. Maybe, because he reminds her of herself at eleven years old, surrounded by people, but all alone.
Maybe because he reminds her of herself now.
Lost and alone in a sea of people, slimmed down from what it once was, but overwhelming all the same.
(Someday the tides will come sweeping in and maybe they will pull them both under. Maybe they will let it.)
She watches him and her arm starts to itch and she turns back to Harry and Ron, to what they are saying. Pretends she was paying attention all along.
--
“You’ve been awfully quiet lately.” Ron says.
They’re sitting in front of the fire, people are around them somewhere, but she barely notices them over the sound of Ron’s heartbeat in her ears.
“Have I?” She asks absently.
“You haven’t even nagged me about my homework.” He smiles when he says he, she can hear it in his voice, but it feels strained just the same. “I have to remember to do it all on my own. It’s a wonder I’m even passing.”
It’s nothing they don’t know anyways, that they hadn’t lived through, he could fail all his NEWTS and still end up an Auror, she almost says.
She doesn’t.
“I’ve just been busy,” Hermione says. “With all my classes. I’m taking more than you, remember?”
“I know.” Ron says, his hand running down her arm bringing her closer to him. His hand brushes her scar, just barely, but enough to remind her that it’s there, and she curls closer to him. “I still kind of miss it though. The nagging.”
Hermione laughs and she thinks it’s not forced or pretend or because she should. “You wouldn’t be saying that if I was doing it.”
“I know, but it just doesn’t feel the same.” He says, kisses the top of her head and she sighs.
He isn’t wrong.
She shifts instead, leaning so she can reach his face and place a gentle kiss there, “I’ll have to work on that then.” Hermione tells him.
Ron pulls her in for another kiss; longer, deeper, and more meaningful, because the cards have been laid out on the table and he can now. His hands grasp at her waist and she rests her hands on his chest, closing her eyes as she sinks into it.
(Behind her eyelids she can see Draco’s tired face, Fred’s blank dead eyes, Neville’s bloodstained sweater, and Harry’s lifeless body as Hagrid carried him back to them. She can see Snape bleeding from the neck and Remus’ body laid out next to Tonks.
She can see so many people and none of them are Ron.)
Hermione doesn’t open her eyes. She kisses him harder instead.
--
Slughorn praises her in almost every class, takes in her work and tells the others that she is the standard to which they should hold themselves to. That they should strive to be more like her.
(Ron and Harry are there too, and she thinks if only he could, he would include them as well. The Golden Trio, weren’t they the perfect collection items for a man like him?)
Once the comments would have made her preen, would have caused a smug smile on her face that she tried and failed to contain. She would have had her hand up high in the air after every question he asked, instead of the carefully crafted practice of every third. Answering no questions would have just lead to long looks from Harry and Ron and conversations she doesn’t want to have.
But now she knows how to make potions to save someone’s life. She knows darker ones too, ones that can take their lives away. She knows potions that can keep her up for days at a time and leave her healthy and with no fear of collapse. She knows potions that will leave her enemies paralyzed for days, waiting for the wolves to devour them.
Nothing Professor Slughorn can teach her will be anything like she taught herself.
Flitwick follows in his footsteps, so does McGonagall and the new Defense teacher, and she is praised as the star pupil in all of her classes. She wants to be happy. She really does.
Some part of her is, she supposes. Some part deep inside that she can dig up when other people are watching. But mostly Hermione just thinks that that there is nothing there for her anymore. That this place, that once held all the answers, had become something new.
She thinks that Hogwarts, for all its unknown rooms and pathways and mysteries, has become too small for her.
(Sometimes she feels like she has stopped breathing. The giant walls that once had tumbled down around her, had trapped her inside.
She never says that out loud.)
--
She’s staring at the lake outside the windows, the sun glistening off the waves, when she collides with something. With someone. Her bag falls and her things scatter, as does theirs, books and parchment spread before them.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t—I’m sorry.” Hermione says quickly leaning down to clean up the mess. She quickly pulls her books away, dividing the ones she knows don’t belong to her and the parchments she doesn’t recognize the writing on into a separate pile.
A bottle of ink from the bottom of her bag had broken and spilled out, was seeping onto the castle floor, the black puddle slowly growing larger and larger, and without realizing she stopped to watch it. Mesmerized by the way it grew and didn’t stop.
Hands full of books and parchment that belong to her block her view, snap her back to reality, and she looks up to see Draco staring back at her.
“Here,” is all he says.
She takes them without comment, vanishing the ink, and putting her things back in their place. Her notebooks are there and some part of her brain, still overly curious and over working, wonders if he even knows what they are.
Hermione hands him the books that belong to him, his arm grazing her own in the exchange, and she feels it brush against her scar. It should give her flashbacks, she thinks. It should bring back pain and anguish and memories that make her want to tear him apart because he was there and he didn’t stop it. No one did.
But all she can think of the matching brand on his own arm. One he hadn’t asked for, but had received just the same. The Dark Mark forever branded there, no matter who had won, reminding everyone of who he was and what he had done. And no matter how many long sleeve sweaters or robes he wore, everyone would still know it was there.
They would never forget.
(Hermione knows.
Even in the summer, she had still worn long sleeves. Healing and concealing charms don’t work on wounds like Bellatrix had inflicted on her.)
“It’ll get easier,” Hermione says, meeting his eyes.
He stares at her for a long time, like he’s trying to determine the sincerity of her words. Trying to figure out if this is some act of charity she feels she must commit or something else.
“Is that what you really believe?” Draco asks, “Or is it just what you tell yourself?”
“I have to believe it.” She tells him.
It’s not really an answer.
--
She goes to the library, like she had been planning. Finds a book on the Founders, reads about how they came together for this great and noble cause. Educating young witches and wizards, making them into something more, something better.
Reads about how it all fell apart.
Hogwarts a History never tells the details, this book doesn’t either.
She reads between the lines instead.
--
Professor Flitwick holds her after class, asks about the essay she hasn’t turned in.
“That was due today?” She blinks.
“Two days ago, actually.”
He’s looking at her oddly, only it’s not really odd, not anymore. She’s seen the expression too many times for it to be something expected now. She just wished she wasn’t so used to it anymore.
“I have it here.” Hermione tells him digging through her bag. Done to the exact length he had asked for, footnotes citing her sources, and in clear precise writing.
“I’m sorry,” She says handing it over, “I know it will affect my grade.”
“Not to worry, dear.” He says with a pat on her hand, “I’ve known you long enough to know you had it done on time. No need to deduct points, things slip our minds sometimes.”
He turns away, placing the paper on his desk, and she is gone before he turns around, her feet carrying her away as quickly as possible without running.
She thinks she might hate Professor Flitwick. She thinks she might be a horrible person for thinking such a thing.
It doesn’t change anything.
--
Hermione finds herself in the same bathroom she came to cry in her first year. The place her friendship with Harry and Ron began. The place she almost died for the first time. The place it all began.
She slides down the wall, pulling her feet up to her chest, and waits for the tears to fall like they did that day.
They used to come so easily.
She doesn’t cry now. And no one comes to find her (to rescue her). Not even a troll. Eventually she gets up and leaves on her own.
--
She finds Harry in her dormitory one night after dinner. She’s not sure how he got in there, but he’s Harry Potter The-Boy-Who-Died-And-Then-Lived-Again, and who is she to question him?
He has her notebooks spread out in front of him, notes scribbled and crossed out, and crude drawings for him to see. He’s leafing through the one on Wizard Law, but the one dedicated to time travel is beside him and she wonders how much of it he had read.
(There’s a page inside, of names and dates and times, of things she wishes she could go back and change. Things she never will, because they won, and changing any one of those things might lead to a different outcome.
But she writes them down because their important and if she could she wants to be the type of person who would risk it.)
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to go through other people’s things?” She asks.
She’s not really mad, more curious than anything else, and somehow that makes it worse. She should be angry.
Once upon a time she would have been angry.
“These are…they’re brilliant, Hermione.” Harry says ignoring her statement as he looks up at her. “I don’t understand half of it but—if you showed them to the Order or someone from the Ministry, they would offer you a job in a heartbeat.”
“They already offered me a job,” Hermione sighs, shedding her out robes, “Several in fact.”
“Still—”
“It’s just something I do to pass the time, Harry. Nothing to make a big deal about.”
She hangs her robes up carefully, pulls of her shoes and knee socks, and doesn’t even blink about Harry being there. A year alone together and she’s no longer shy or demure in front of him. Doesn’t even think of Ginny and the anger she might feel.
“We have NEWTS to worry about first, before all of that,” She continues because that is what she’s supposed to say, “Then I’ll worry about what job I want.”
Harry sighs, closes the notebook he was looking through and stacks the others into a neat pile. A habit she thinks he learned from her, but she isn’t sure.
“This isn’t punishment, you know?” He says, “They just don’t—they don’t think we’re ready yet. To face the real world, to go out into it after everything that happened. I think they think we’ll break and this is just…”
“We spent over a year out there,” Hermione says, “All alone. If we didn’t break then, what makes them think we’ll break now?”
“They just worry.” Harry says and the conversation seems backwards. Like he’s repeating her lines and she’s saying his.
“It’s all useless, isn’t it?” She asks quietly, her tie goes next and the top buttons of her shirt. “Who’s to say we haven’t broken already?”
Harry sits on her bed, staring at her notebooks for a long while, not saying anything.
She likes it better that way.
No reassurances or platitudes or special treatment.
If only she could convince the rest of the world to follow in his footsteps.
--
“Harry’s been quiet lately.” Ron says over a game of chess. It’s an ordinary muggle board, one he had bought for her over the summer.
(“I know you don’t like the other kind.” He had said like an apology.
It was after she had come home from Australia. Alone.)
“I hadn’t really noticed.” Hermione says.
She moves her bishop to guard her knight. If her calculations are right, Ron will win in three moves, but her knight will be safe.
“Are you sure he hasn’t…said anything to you?” He asks, “Mentioned anything?”
“Wouldn’t Ginny be better to ask?” She says her eyes still on the chess board, “He’d be more likely to talk to her.”
“I don’t really want to—I’d rather not have to ask her.” Ron says.
She isn’t looking at him, not directly, but she sees his hands gesturing oddly in her peripheral vision.
“Then I guess you’ll just have to ask him.” She shrugs.
She moves one of her pawns. Two more moves and then he’ll win.
--
Professor McGonagall—Headmaster McGonagall now, she reminds herself—calls her to her office.
She offers her tea and biscuits and they make small talk about her classes and her family in Australia and how they like it there. Hermione asks in return about things she knows are appropriate under the circumstances, avoids questions about the Order directly.
McGonagall abhors small talk, prefers the direct approach; Hermione knows that and has always respected her for it. She doesn’t much care for it either, but Hermione had learned how to play the part well, polite and simple questions that don’t ask too much of the other person. It was easy to fall into the act, she’s had practice over the summer.
“I asked you here for a reason.” She says.
“I imagined.” Hermione says, it borders on sarcastic, but not enough to be caught.
“I know you’ve had different offers from the Ministry,” McGonagall continues, “Job offers for when you leave here. I had wondered if you had…I was wondering what direction you were leaning in.”
Around her the ghosts of Headmasters past stared down at her and she could feel there gazes.
“I know I’m no longer your Head of House but—”
“I haven’t decided anything,” Hermione tells her, “I haven’t settled on anything.”
“Do you have it narrowed down?” She asks.
She doesn’t want to be an Auror. Hermione knows that. But she doesn’t think that answers the question. And if it does, it will just lead to more.
“No, not yet.” She says instead, her gaze steady and sure. Like she has lists of the pros and cons of each offer back in her room.
(She doesn’t.)
“Any department would be lucky to have you,” Professor McGonagall says and Hermione smiles, because isn’t that what she’s supposed to do?
“And I want you to know I’m here if you have questions, if you want to go over your options. I know that Professor Trelawney might not be the best option when it comes to talk like this for you.”
Hermione imagines the conversation in her head, imagines the woman spelling out her doom just by grasping her hand. (“You’re seeing the past,” Hermione would tell her, “That’s already happened.” And she reach out again, searching and searching, and Hermione’s answer would always be the same. “That’s already happened. You’re looking into the past.”)
“Thank you, Headmaster.”
She gets up to leave, but Professor McGonagall’s voice stops her.
“I know you were alone for a very long time,” she says, “Just the three of you…But you’re not alone anymore, Hermione. There are people who care about you.”
And people who still want her dead, but no one ever says that part out loud but Harry or sometimes Ron in fits of anger. They would all prefer to forget.
“Thank you, Headmaster.” She repeats.
Dumbledore’s painted eyes follow her as she leaves the room. She can feel it.
--
Neville finds her in the library pouring over a potions’ book that isn’t listed on the curriculum for helpful reading. Nothing in it will help her with her NEWTS, but she takes notes in one of her muggle notebooks, memorizing ingredients and where to find them.
He stands awkwardly in front of her, afraid to interrupt the infamous Hermione Granger in her natural state, and she closes the notebook carefully but leaves the book open. It’s from the restricted section and she doesn’t want him to see the title.
“Hi, Neville.” She says smiling up at him. Her voice is kind of scratchy, too long in the library not speaking to anyone, as everyone else is spending their Saturday off somewhere else.
“Hi, Hermione…I’m sorry to interrupt.” Neville says, his feet shuffling.
Some days it’s hard to imagine that this is the man she fought side by side in war. Other days, with his back held up straight and a glint in his eyes, it’s all she can think about.
“It’s fine, just a bit of light reading.” She says.
“I was wondering if you could do me a favor.” Neville says.
“Of course,” Hermione replies.
“I just—I was hoping you could look over my Herbology essay.” He says quickly, his hands thrusting out several piece of parchments towards her.
He has surprisingly nice handwriting she notes.
“Neville, you know more about Herbology than I do,” She tells him, “I’m not even taking the class.”
“I know but, I just need it to be perfect.” Neville says, finally sitting down across from her. “I talked to Professor Sprout and Prof—Headmaster McGonagall and if I do well on my NEWTS she’ll take me on for an apprenticeship. Professor Sprout says that maybe I’ll take over for her when she retires in a few years.”
Hermione remembers Neville from their first year, the boy who stood up to them and was ready to face them down in a fight he knew he wouldn’t win. She remembers the man who killed Nagini and the smile on his face when it was done.
And who was she? She was the one who left him in a full body bind and walked away from him. That was who she was.
“I just need, I thought you could go over the grammar. Make sure it all makes sense.” Neville rambles. “I’m just—I’m nervous.”
“Of course, Neville.” She smiles and she slips the papers into her notebook. “I’ll get it back to you tomorrow.”
“You’re a life saver, Hermione.” He grins.
He walks away and all Hermione can think about is the possibility of Professor Neville Longbottom, spreading his passion and love for Herbology for generations to come.
(She wants to tear his essay into little pieces and throw them into the fire in the common room for everyone to see.
To make a statement.
But tearing it up, burning it; none of it would change anything.
His passion and his love for the subject would still be there. After everything that happened, it was still there.)
--
She finishes going over Neville’s essay in less than an hour. There is little to nothing to fix or change. What she does find is merely missing commas and things she seeks out that Professor Sprout would never notice herself. (She may be a teacher, but even she does not hold her students to the standards Hermione holds herself and those around her.)
After that she wanders into the Herbology section. Finds a book on toxic plants and poisons. It’s old and dusty and she thinks even Neville himself has never read it.
She spends the rest of the day reading it, lost in the tombs of the library.
Hermione will give Neville back his essay later that night, with a smile on her face and a promise that he has nothing to worry about.
(“You have a wonderful future ahead of you,” She might say. She might even believe it.)
--
She finds Ginny on her bed this time, relaxed against her headboard as she flipped through one of her own textbooks. They were in the same year now, but in none of the same classes.
There are letters spread out in front of her, familiar ones, all with the Ministry seal. One is the exception, Gringotts had sent her a letter asking her to fill the position that Bill had currently vacated.
“You and Harry have been spending too much time together.” Hermione says, depositing her bag down by the bed and moving to her wardrobe to find different clothes to change into.
Seamus had exploded a potion during class and she had ended up with it splattered across her. Slughorn had roared in anger, and the class had stared in fascination. Hermione had took in her sputtering professor and wide eyed classmate and laughed quietly. No one had seemed to hear her over Slughorn’s echoing voice, no one but Harry and Ron, who watched her the rest of class.
“Not nearly enough in my opinion,” Ginny says, “And even when we do spend time together Ron always seems to be around.”
(Because he doesn’t want to leave Harry again, Hermione thinks, because he doesn’t want to repeat past mistakes. But she won’t tell Ginny that, because after all they went through, it feels like a betrayal of trust.
She wonders what Harry tells about the year they spent on their own, what Ginny tells him about what had happened while he was gone.)
“You haven’t responded to any of them, have you?” Ginny asks as Hermione pulls out a green sweater. Ron will crinkle his nose at it, Gryffindor pride and all, but she likes the way it looks on her. Besides, she had started running out of clothes without dirt or blood on them, and hadn’t been shopping yet.
“No.” Hermione says, “They can wait until after NEWTS. They might not even want me after that.”
“They’ll want you even more.” Ginny shakes her head, and Hermione turns, pulling off her outer robes, tie and shirt, as if Ginny wasn’t even there.
She had seen all her scars before, there was nothing to hide.
“The brains of the trio,” Hermione laughs, pulling the sweater over her head. Sometimes she thinks about failing the NEWTS on purpose, just to see what would happen to all those job offers Ginny had spread out on her bed.
(Nothing. Nothing would happen.
Because she would still be Hermione Granger. Harry Potter’s best friend. The brightest witch of her age. The muggleborn who defied all odds.
It wouldn’t change anything.)
“Have you even considered them? Any of them?” Ginny asks.
“I threw away some.” Hermione shrugs. There are still over twenty letters on the bed, each of them capable of rotting her teeth and stomach with their overly complimentary words.
Everyone wants a piece of The Golden Trio now. Will do whatever it takes to get it.
“What happens after we take the NEWTS?” Ginny asks.
“We graduate.” She replies.
“And after that?”
Wasn’t that the big question? The one that no one had asked before, but everyone had wondered about. Hermione Granger’s grand plans for the future. Because Hermione was a woman who always had a plan. It was in her blood, in her movements and words. It was ingrained on her very soul.
Always have a plan. And a backup plan after that. Something that will save you, protect you, from those who wish you harm.
Hermione didn’t have a plan anymore.
She hadn’t had one in a long, long time.
“I’ll figure it out.” She says.
(There’s no conviction in her tone, both women can hear that.)
--
She finds Draco in the library, when she’s wandering though the stacks. She finds him in a familiar section, knows why he’s there.
He has book after book after his feet, some look as though they were thrown in frustration. But they were magical books, her mind reminds her, and they can protect themselves from harm.
“Here.” Hermione says wandering down the aisle and pulling out a familiar book. Draco looks up at her wearily, but no books or insults are thrown. “Page one hundred and eighty six, it has the most powerful concealment charm I’ve found.”
She turns and hands him the book, her hand grazing his. “It won’t work on everything, I don’t know if it will help you, but it’s what you’re looking for.”
Hermione knows, she was the one looking for it months before.
She turns to go, to find another part of the library to sink into, but his voice stops her. “Why are you being nice to me?”
“I think ‘nice’ is a generous word.” Hermione says turning back around. They had barely spoken since the year had started, mostly in class when they had no choice.
“Why don’t you hate me?” He persists, pushing himself up and stepping towards her. “You should hate me.”
She stares him down, his angry and sad eyes locking into hers, and she wonders what he sees. She wonders if he sees anything at all.
“The only reason you know about this book…Why don’t you hate me?” Draco asks.
(Because hate required work, she doesn’t say. Hate required passion and feelings she doesn’t think she has anymore.)
“You didn’t do it.” Hermione says, “And she…”
She struggles with the words and it surprises her. It had come so easy before, faking her way through conversations she didn’t want to have.
“There’s no one left to hate.” She says.
He keeps staring, like she’ll do something, fire a hex maybe if he looks away.
“Page one hundred and eighty six.” Hermione says turning away, “I hope it works.”
Merlin knows, it hadn’t for her.
--
The mail arrives in the morning, with the papers, owls flying in all directions. An unfamiliar one lands in front of her and Hermione is not surprised. She suspects it’s another Ministry official trying to find out what she plans to do after Hogwarts. The Department of Mysteries was especially persistent with her.
She turns it over, to see which department it was this time, but sees the familiar scrawl of her mother’s handwriting.
Hermione hadn’t gotten anything from them since she had left Australia, hadn’t heard anything from them.
(Their last words had been goodbye and Hermione thought she had known what it meant.
Permanence and finality.)
She stares at the envelope for a long time, at the way her name is written, her mother’s name in cursive in the corner and the stamp on the edge, like it was being delivered by a postman and not an owl.
She stares at it for a long time before she realizes she’s tearing it to shreds, into little tiny pieces that she’s not sure even magic can put together. Confetti for them to use the next time they defeat a dark wizard intent on taking over the world.
She tears and she tears, and sob comes out of her throat she thinks, a cry for something she doesn’t know. And then there is nothing left.
Nothing in her hands to destroy, to break, and leave to crumble.
Just a destroyed letter in pieces in front of her.
(She thinks if she can look hard enough she can makes up the pieces of her mother’s name, put them together like a puzzle in the chaos she created.)
Hermione looks up and the table is silent, everyone watching her. Most with concerned, sympathetic eyes, Ron’s more than anyone’s. Some with just plain curiosity. But there is no understanding there. There is nothing she wants to see.
She vanishes the pieces away, grabs her bag from underneath the table, and leaves with not a word said.
--
She skips her classes, goes outside and onto the snowy grounds, finding a tree to lean against with a good view of the lake. It has iced over, but the Giant Squid sometimes appears, breaking it up, only for it freeze and form over again.
Hermione has a book open on her lap, telling her of the Great Wizarding War of 1662, but she spends most of her time staring at the lake. Watching for the motions to repeat over and over.
Harry is the one to find her, settles down against the tree next to her and watches the lake with her. She doesn’t think they’re seeing the same things.
“Where’s Ron?” She asks.
“Checking the library, the dormitories…anywhere you might be.” Harry says, “He keeps asking the paintings if they’ve seen you. I think it’s starting to annoy them, one of them sent him to the dungeons.”
“I only go there for potions class.” She says.
“I know.” Harry nods.
The sit in silence and Hermione turns back to her book. It takes twice as long to read one paragraph, but she powers through. Because she’s Hermione Granger and all the answers can be found in a book, all you have to do is look hard enough.
Isn’t that what Dumbledore’s last message had been to her?
“Do you want to talk about it?” Harry asks, breaking the silence.
She continues reading.
“Hermione…”
“Isn’t this backwards?” Hermione laughs, “Aren’t I supposed to be the one giving motivational speeches to you?”
“Probably,” Harry says, “You’re definitely better at it.”
“No I’m not,” She shakes her head. There’s a tear drop on the book on lap, she doesn’t know how it got there.
“Hermione…what’s wrong?”
She laughs and its loud and she thinks it calls the Squid to the surface again, the pain and agony wrapped up in the sound of bitter laughter, because be breaks through again.
It’s such a loaded question, such a complex one. It’s one she isn’t sure she even has an answer for.
“Hermione…”
“I don’t think I expected to survive it,” Hermione says, “I don’t think—we were always going and going and I just wanted it to stop, I did. I wanted to breathe again. But I think I forgot how to. I don’t think I know how to do it anymore.”
It all comes tumbling out and more tears splash the pages of the book.
“I don’t think I thought it would end. Or if it did I thought—I don’t know if I thought I would be here when it was all over. I didn’t think any of us would be.”
Harry reaches for her hand, and she can see traces of the scars he still has there, as the two hands interlink.
“Do you…Do you ever miss the tent?” She asks quietly.
“Every day.” He says.
It feels like the most real conversation she’s had since she left the hospital wing all those months ago. The most truthful at least.
“Does that make us bad people?” She asks.
“Not bad people,” He says, “Just…damaged ones.”
He says it with a shrug of his shoulders, like this is nothing new to him, like this is the way it has always been, for him and for her. Like this normality and they are curling around it but not conforming to it somehow.
“I don’t want to miss the tent.” She says.
“Then find something you want more.” Harry says.
--
She spreads the letters open over her bed, throws away the ones that she knows are for show only, people who want her for her name and not her brain or power.
(There is a difference between Hermione Granger war legend, and Hermione Granger. You just have to squint real hard to see it.)
Hermione pulls out one of her empty notebooks and starts making pro and con lists about each one. Tries to figure out what is she wants.
She closes her eyes and tries to imagine herself in the positions, in the fights and battles they represent. She closes her eyes and tries to picture things that don’t come from before, but after.
She tries to see it.
The pro and con lists remain short.
When she closes her eyes she sees dinner at the Weasleys’ and empty chairs and Draco’s face as she offered him the book in the library.
It is not some miracle fix. She does not feel better. And alone in her dormitory, the tears do not come.
But it’s a start, she thinks. A beginning.
It is a light at the end of the tunnel she has been lost in for so long. A dim light, but a light just the same.
And maybe that’s what matter.
Hermione thinks it has to be.
(“Is that what you really believe? Or is it just what you tell yourself?”
“I have to believe it.”
It’s not really an answer.)
fandom: harry potter
characters: Hermione-centric (some of Hermione/Ron, and a fair amount of the ensemble you would expect.)
prompt: what horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.
rating: pg-13 (for dealing with depression and the aftermaths of war)
disclaimer: I own nothing.
summary: The war ends and things go back to normal. Only not the normal she or Harry or Ron are used to. It’s the normal they were all supposed to have; full of things like Quidditch and laughter and books to explore. It is not the normal Hermione knows. (Post-DH, so spoilers abound.)
a/n: This is all
fluffyfrolicker’s fault. ALL OF IT. Her and her prompt that made my brain think too much and write HP fic for the first time in like ten years maybe. So basically if its horrible and everyone is ooc, then well, it’s not all my fault. (Yes, I’m dragging you down with me fluffyfrolicker. Yes, I am.) Also, I don’t know how much is strictly canon compliant of things that were supposed to come and I might have mixed movie moments and book moments and not known it. So expect all canons mixed in there. The war ends.
(The war was always going to end of course, but they were on the winning side, and that is what changes things, what matters.
Once upon a time she would have said they were on the right side, but things had changed. She knows there are no longer right sides in war, just death and destruction and pain and—
She knows there is no right side.)
The war ends and things go back to normal. Only not the normal she or Harry or Ron are used to. It’s the normal they were all supposed to have; full of things like Quidditch and laughter and books to explore.
It is not the normal Hermione knows.
--
Hermione spends the months after holed up with books researching memory charms, reversal charms, and everything in between that might aid her search.
She has it figured out within a month. Probably less, two weeks and three days to be exact, but this is important and she has to be sure. Hermione would not allow more damage to come to her parents. She wouldn’t.
She had come too far to be the one that did it herself.
(She thinks of Neville’s parents in the hospital ward and the candy bar wrappers he slips into his pockets, and she can’t be responsible for that.
She can’t.)
But Hermione studies longer after she’s found what she’s sure is just the right reversal charm, because that is who she is.
The idea of going and facing her parents and them knowing what she had done. That has very little to do with it.
That’s what she says to herself when she’s looking in the mirror.
--
Ron tries to come with her. Forces the issues until she snaps at him and almost feels bad.
(They haven’t really been apart, the three of them, since that last day at Hogwarts.
The idea of her leaving and never coming back again—
She had felt that pain before. Some sick, twisted part of her thinks maybe he deserves it. He had done it to her once, only without the warning or goodbye. At least she had given him that.)
“He’s right you know,” Harry says quietly, “You shouldn’t go alone. It might not be safe.”
There were still Death Eaters out there with grudges, sympathizers who didn’t wear the mark. And she was Hermione Granger; the mudblood, the girl who should have died and not survived in the war. She was a target if there ever was one.
“I think it’s best if I do this alone.” She says.
“It doesn’t have to be Ron,” Harry tries to help, “Maybe Ginny could go with you or one of the Order members—”
“I said no, Harry.” Hermione yells.
Her voice echoes off the walls and he takes a step back.
(Her wand is in her hand she notices belatedly and she can feel magic surging through her, wanting to come forth. Wanting to attack.)
“I need to do this on my own.” Hermione says quieter, regretfully. Because what had Harry or Ron ever done to make her yell. Instead they were just trying to make sure she didn’t get added to a long list of names of people who would someday be forgotten.
“It’ll be better that way.” She says it like she believes it and Harry nods his head like he understands things he can’t possibly truly understand.
She snaps her suitcase closed and she leaves him behind.
(She feels guiltier leaving him behind than Ron and she should feel bad for that too. But Harry has Ginny to talk to, has Mrs. Weasley to fuss over him, and Professor McGonagall to keep a level head on his shoulders.
He doesn’t need her anymore.)
--
Her parents decide to stay in Australia.
They’ve carved out a new life for themselves and they like it there. They enjoy the weather and the sunny skies and her mother found a place that makes tea as if they were still in England.
Their happy.
And who is Hermione to do anymore damage to their happiness?
They do not talk about what she has done. Not after the explanations are over and she apologizes for what had to be done. But they look at her sometimes, like they don’t recognize her.
They look at her the same way they did when they opened the door and asked who she was and how could they help her.
--
They go back to Hogwarts. They never did finish their seventh year and their NEWTS are important. Mrs. Weasley emphasizes this to them and Hermione agrees, but she does not feel it like she once did.
Ron moans about the fact that he already has offers to become an Auror, they all do, that they don’t need more school. They don’t need to go back to that place.
Hermione holds his hand and moves closer to him, her face pressing into the crook of his neck. “We’ll have to go back eventually.” She says.
They couldn’t avoid it forever, even if they wanted to.
So they go back in groups, segregated from the rest of the seventh years. All of them grouped together that didn’t get to finish school or attend at all the year before. Their all put in the same dormitories; Gryffindors, Slytherins, Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws all mixed together in a blur of colors that sometimes makes Hermione dizzy.
They share rooms and classes, even special tutoring sessions for the students further advanced. They get their own table in the Great Hall.
It’s much smaller than the rest.
--
Ron sighs, throwing down his quill and his half-finished essay, eyeing her and Harry. “Is it just me or this year boring?”
“You didn’t have to take History of Magic,” Harry says not looking up from his own essay.
“Not what I meant,” Ron says as if it’s obvious, “I just—Isn’t this the point where we usually fight a troll or a three headed dog or something. I mean, where are all the danger and dark arts to distract me from my studying?”
Harry laughs and Hermione can see the smile in his eyes.
Hermione doesn’t laugh or smile. Just stares down at the essay she had finished hours ago, exactly the length required, no more and no less. She knows it will earn her a gold star.
Her arm itches and she wonders if Ron really meant it as a joke. Wonders if she agrees with him.
Essays and papers and volumes littering the floor around her is a familiar scene. One that has repeated itself over and over in years past.
But it still feels like something is missing.
--
She hides in the library, only it’s not really hiding, because she’s Hermione Granger and everyone knows to look for her there.
But she is done with her homework, done so far in advance that it’s never happened before. She had even started asking certain teachers for more work to keep her busy, to give her reasons to stay in the library for so long.
(“I just want to be prepared for my NEWTS,” She says and it rolls of her tongue like it’s the truth.
No one bats an eye.)
She reads volumes and tomes of times past, of great wars and times that remind her too much of the present, but she can’t put down. She reads about the rules and regulations of the wizarding world and the punishments doled out to those who dare defy them.
She reads up on potions and transfiguration and charms and the idea of time travel and when it was still just a theory.
She makes notes in a muggle notebook. Sometimes coherent and sometimes in the sidelines. Fills it up and moves on to a new one and another one after that.
Hermione soaks it all up, things she will never need to know, things that don’t matter (not in the long run), things she doesn’t even care about. She fills her mind with it all.
It makes it a little easier.
--
She never wakes up screaming, but the nightmares come anyways. Of things she shouldn’t want to remember.
Hermione wakes up drenched in sweat instead, her breathe coming too quickly, and her pulse racing.
But she never wakes up screaming.
--
Harry and Ron talk in the common room about life to come after Hogwarts, of the Aurors they will be, and the plans they are making.
Harry is in constant contact with the Ministry (“Turns out being the boy who lived has some perks after all.” he smiles, but it doesn’t met his eyes.) and Ron sends letters back and forth with Bill, who was temporarily working with the Aurors, helping clean up all the messes left behind in the wake of Voldemort’s demise. (We could always use another soldier, the letters said. Because that’s what they were now.)
“I could be Auror.” Ginny says across from them, sitting on Harry’s lap.
“I’d certainly run away from you if you were waving a wand at me.” Ron mutters and his hand caresses Hermione’s.
“I’m not sure I want to be though.” Ginny continues, ignoring him.
Ginny has as many options as the rest of them, maybe more because she’s not trapped with the stigma of being part of the “Golden Trio”, but she doesn’t have her life mapped out.
Hermione likes her a little more for that.
--
Draco avoids them in the dormitories they share, avoids most people really. His face is gaunt and there is screaming that sometimes comes from his rooms.
Hermione doesn’t need anyone to tell her who it is coming from.
He never meets their eyes and Harry and Ron fall so easily into a pattern of ignoring him. There’s an unspoken agreement to just let each other be, to never bring any of it up again, and to never seek one another out.
Hermione catches herself staring at him sometimes in the Great Hall. Her eyes following his movements and watching for something she can’t quite place. She thinks about talking about him sometimes, maybe to just see the reactions of everyone around her. Maybe, because he reminds her of herself at eleven years old, surrounded by people, but all alone.
Maybe because he reminds her of herself now.
Lost and alone in a sea of people, slimmed down from what it once was, but overwhelming all the same.
(Someday the tides will come sweeping in and maybe they will pull them both under. Maybe they will let it.)
She watches him and her arm starts to itch and she turns back to Harry and Ron, to what they are saying. Pretends she was paying attention all along.
--
“You’ve been awfully quiet lately.” Ron says.
They’re sitting in front of the fire, people are around them somewhere, but she barely notices them over the sound of Ron’s heartbeat in her ears.
“Have I?” She asks absently.
“You haven’t even nagged me about my homework.” He smiles when he says he, she can hear it in his voice, but it feels strained just the same. “I have to remember to do it all on my own. It’s a wonder I’m even passing.”
It’s nothing they don’t know anyways, that they hadn’t lived through, he could fail all his NEWTS and still end up an Auror, she almost says.
She doesn’t.
“I’ve just been busy,” Hermione says. “With all my classes. I’m taking more than you, remember?”
“I know.” Ron says, his hand running down her arm bringing her closer to him. His hand brushes her scar, just barely, but enough to remind her that it’s there, and she curls closer to him. “I still kind of miss it though. The nagging.”
Hermione laughs and she thinks it’s not forced or pretend or because she should. “You wouldn’t be saying that if I was doing it.”
“I know, but it just doesn’t feel the same.” He says, kisses the top of her head and she sighs.
He isn’t wrong.
She shifts instead, leaning so she can reach his face and place a gentle kiss there, “I’ll have to work on that then.” Hermione tells him.
Ron pulls her in for another kiss; longer, deeper, and more meaningful, because the cards have been laid out on the table and he can now. His hands grasp at her waist and she rests her hands on his chest, closing her eyes as she sinks into it.
(Behind her eyelids she can see Draco’s tired face, Fred’s blank dead eyes, Neville’s bloodstained sweater, and Harry’s lifeless body as Hagrid carried him back to them. She can see Snape bleeding from the neck and Remus’ body laid out next to Tonks.
She can see so many people and none of them are Ron.)
Hermione doesn’t open her eyes. She kisses him harder instead.
--
Slughorn praises her in almost every class, takes in her work and tells the others that she is the standard to which they should hold themselves to. That they should strive to be more like her.
(Ron and Harry are there too, and she thinks if only he could, he would include them as well. The Golden Trio, weren’t they the perfect collection items for a man like him?)
Once the comments would have made her preen, would have caused a smug smile on her face that she tried and failed to contain. She would have had her hand up high in the air after every question he asked, instead of the carefully crafted practice of every third. Answering no questions would have just lead to long looks from Harry and Ron and conversations she doesn’t want to have.
But now she knows how to make potions to save someone’s life. She knows darker ones too, ones that can take their lives away. She knows potions that can keep her up for days at a time and leave her healthy and with no fear of collapse. She knows potions that will leave her enemies paralyzed for days, waiting for the wolves to devour them.
Nothing Professor Slughorn can teach her will be anything like she taught herself.
Flitwick follows in his footsteps, so does McGonagall and the new Defense teacher, and she is praised as the star pupil in all of her classes. She wants to be happy. She really does.
Some part of her is, she supposes. Some part deep inside that she can dig up when other people are watching. But mostly Hermione just thinks that that there is nothing there for her anymore. That this place, that once held all the answers, had become something new.
She thinks that Hogwarts, for all its unknown rooms and pathways and mysteries, has become too small for her.
(Sometimes she feels like she has stopped breathing. The giant walls that once had tumbled down around her, had trapped her inside.
She never says that out loud.)
--
She’s staring at the lake outside the windows, the sun glistening off the waves, when she collides with something. With someone. Her bag falls and her things scatter, as does theirs, books and parchment spread before them.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t—I’m sorry.” Hermione says quickly leaning down to clean up the mess. She quickly pulls her books away, dividing the ones she knows don’t belong to her and the parchments she doesn’t recognize the writing on into a separate pile.
A bottle of ink from the bottom of her bag had broken and spilled out, was seeping onto the castle floor, the black puddle slowly growing larger and larger, and without realizing she stopped to watch it. Mesmerized by the way it grew and didn’t stop.
Hands full of books and parchment that belong to her block her view, snap her back to reality, and she looks up to see Draco staring back at her.
“Here,” is all he says.
She takes them without comment, vanishing the ink, and putting her things back in their place. Her notebooks are there and some part of her brain, still overly curious and over working, wonders if he even knows what they are.
Hermione hands him the books that belong to him, his arm grazing her own in the exchange, and she feels it brush against her scar. It should give her flashbacks, she thinks. It should bring back pain and anguish and memories that make her want to tear him apart because he was there and he didn’t stop it. No one did.
But all she can think of the matching brand on his own arm. One he hadn’t asked for, but had received just the same. The Dark Mark forever branded there, no matter who had won, reminding everyone of who he was and what he had done. And no matter how many long sleeve sweaters or robes he wore, everyone would still know it was there.
They would never forget.
(Hermione knows.
Even in the summer, she had still worn long sleeves. Healing and concealing charms don’t work on wounds like Bellatrix had inflicted on her.)
“It’ll get easier,” Hermione says, meeting his eyes.
He stares at her for a long time, like he’s trying to determine the sincerity of her words. Trying to figure out if this is some act of charity she feels she must commit or something else.
“Is that what you really believe?” Draco asks, “Or is it just what you tell yourself?”
“I have to believe it.” She tells him.
It’s not really an answer.
--
She goes to the library, like she had been planning. Finds a book on the Founders, reads about how they came together for this great and noble cause. Educating young witches and wizards, making them into something more, something better.
Reads about how it all fell apart.
Hogwarts a History never tells the details, this book doesn’t either.
She reads between the lines instead.
--
Professor Flitwick holds her after class, asks about the essay she hasn’t turned in.
“That was due today?” She blinks.
“Two days ago, actually.”
He’s looking at her oddly, only it’s not really odd, not anymore. She’s seen the expression too many times for it to be something expected now. She just wished she wasn’t so used to it anymore.
“I have it here.” Hermione tells him digging through her bag. Done to the exact length he had asked for, footnotes citing her sources, and in clear precise writing.
“I’m sorry,” She says handing it over, “I know it will affect my grade.”
“Not to worry, dear.” He says with a pat on her hand, “I’ve known you long enough to know you had it done on time. No need to deduct points, things slip our minds sometimes.”
He turns away, placing the paper on his desk, and she is gone before he turns around, her feet carrying her away as quickly as possible without running.
She thinks she might hate Professor Flitwick. She thinks she might be a horrible person for thinking such a thing.
It doesn’t change anything.
--
Hermione finds herself in the same bathroom she came to cry in her first year. The place her friendship with Harry and Ron began. The place she almost died for the first time. The place it all began.
She slides down the wall, pulling her feet up to her chest, and waits for the tears to fall like they did that day.
They used to come so easily.
She doesn’t cry now. And no one comes to find her (to rescue her). Not even a troll. Eventually she gets up and leaves on her own.
--
She finds Harry in her dormitory one night after dinner. She’s not sure how he got in there, but he’s Harry Potter The-Boy-Who-Died-And-Then-Lived-Again, and who is she to question him?
He has her notebooks spread out in front of him, notes scribbled and crossed out, and crude drawings for him to see. He’s leafing through the one on Wizard Law, but the one dedicated to time travel is beside him and she wonders how much of it he had read.
(There’s a page inside, of names and dates and times, of things she wishes she could go back and change. Things she never will, because they won, and changing any one of those things might lead to a different outcome.
But she writes them down because their important and if she could she wants to be the type of person who would risk it.)
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to go through other people’s things?” She asks.
She’s not really mad, more curious than anything else, and somehow that makes it worse. She should be angry.
Once upon a time she would have been angry.
“These are…they’re brilliant, Hermione.” Harry says ignoring her statement as he looks up at her. “I don’t understand half of it but—if you showed them to the Order or someone from the Ministry, they would offer you a job in a heartbeat.”
“They already offered me a job,” Hermione sighs, shedding her out robes, “Several in fact.”
“Still—”
“It’s just something I do to pass the time, Harry. Nothing to make a big deal about.”
She hangs her robes up carefully, pulls of her shoes and knee socks, and doesn’t even blink about Harry being there. A year alone together and she’s no longer shy or demure in front of him. Doesn’t even think of Ginny and the anger she might feel.
“We have NEWTS to worry about first, before all of that,” She continues because that is what she’s supposed to say, “Then I’ll worry about what job I want.”
Harry sighs, closes the notebook he was looking through and stacks the others into a neat pile. A habit she thinks he learned from her, but she isn’t sure.
“This isn’t punishment, you know?” He says, “They just don’t—they don’t think we’re ready yet. To face the real world, to go out into it after everything that happened. I think they think we’ll break and this is just…”
“We spent over a year out there,” Hermione says, “All alone. If we didn’t break then, what makes them think we’ll break now?”
“They just worry.” Harry says and the conversation seems backwards. Like he’s repeating her lines and she’s saying his.
“It’s all useless, isn’t it?” She asks quietly, her tie goes next and the top buttons of her shirt. “Who’s to say we haven’t broken already?”
Harry sits on her bed, staring at her notebooks for a long while, not saying anything.
She likes it better that way.
No reassurances or platitudes or special treatment.
If only she could convince the rest of the world to follow in his footsteps.
--
“Harry’s been quiet lately.” Ron says over a game of chess. It’s an ordinary muggle board, one he had bought for her over the summer.
(“I know you don’t like the other kind.” He had said like an apology.
It was after she had come home from Australia. Alone.)
“I hadn’t really noticed.” Hermione says.
She moves her bishop to guard her knight. If her calculations are right, Ron will win in three moves, but her knight will be safe.
“Are you sure he hasn’t…said anything to you?” He asks, “Mentioned anything?”
“Wouldn’t Ginny be better to ask?” She says her eyes still on the chess board, “He’d be more likely to talk to her.”
“I don’t really want to—I’d rather not have to ask her.” Ron says.
She isn’t looking at him, not directly, but she sees his hands gesturing oddly in her peripheral vision.
“Then I guess you’ll just have to ask him.” She shrugs.
She moves one of her pawns. Two more moves and then he’ll win.
--
Professor McGonagall—Headmaster McGonagall now, she reminds herself—calls her to her office.
She offers her tea and biscuits and they make small talk about her classes and her family in Australia and how they like it there. Hermione asks in return about things she knows are appropriate under the circumstances, avoids questions about the Order directly.
McGonagall abhors small talk, prefers the direct approach; Hermione knows that and has always respected her for it. She doesn’t much care for it either, but Hermione had learned how to play the part well, polite and simple questions that don’t ask too much of the other person. It was easy to fall into the act, she’s had practice over the summer.
“I asked you here for a reason.” She says.
“I imagined.” Hermione says, it borders on sarcastic, but not enough to be caught.
“I know you’ve had different offers from the Ministry,” McGonagall continues, “Job offers for when you leave here. I had wondered if you had…I was wondering what direction you were leaning in.”
Around her the ghosts of Headmasters past stared down at her and she could feel there gazes.
“I know I’m no longer your Head of House but—”
“I haven’t decided anything,” Hermione tells her, “I haven’t settled on anything.”
“Do you have it narrowed down?” She asks.
She doesn’t want to be an Auror. Hermione knows that. But she doesn’t think that answers the question. And if it does, it will just lead to more.
“No, not yet.” She says instead, her gaze steady and sure. Like she has lists of the pros and cons of each offer back in her room.
(She doesn’t.)
“Any department would be lucky to have you,” Professor McGonagall says and Hermione smiles, because isn’t that what she’s supposed to do?
“And I want you to know I’m here if you have questions, if you want to go over your options. I know that Professor Trelawney might not be the best option when it comes to talk like this for you.”
Hermione imagines the conversation in her head, imagines the woman spelling out her doom just by grasping her hand. (“You’re seeing the past,” Hermione would tell her, “That’s already happened.” And she reach out again, searching and searching, and Hermione’s answer would always be the same. “That’s already happened. You’re looking into the past.”)
“Thank you, Headmaster.”
She gets up to leave, but Professor McGonagall’s voice stops her.
“I know you were alone for a very long time,” she says, “Just the three of you…But you’re not alone anymore, Hermione. There are people who care about you.”
And people who still want her dead, but no one ever says that part out loud but Harry or sometimes Ron in fits of anger. They would all prefer to forget.
“Thank you, Headmaster.” She repeats.
Dumbledore’s painted eyes follow her as she leaves the room. She can feel it.
--
Neville finds her in the library pouring over a potions’ book that isn’t listed on the curriculum for helpful reading. Nothing in it will help her with her NEWTS, but she takes notes in one of her muggle notebooks, memorizing ingredients and where to find them.
He stands awkwardly in front of her, afraid to interrupt the infamous Hermione Granger in her natural state, and she closes the notebook carefully but leaves the book open. It’s from the restricted section and she doesn’t want him to see the title.
“Hi, Neville.” She says smiling up at him. Her voice is kind of scratchy, too long in the library not speaking to anyone, as everyone else is spending their Saturday off somewhere else.
“Hi, Hermione…I’m sorry to interrupt.” Neville says, his feet shuffling.
Some days it’s hard to imagine that this is the man she fought side by side in war. Other days, with his back held up straight and a glint in his eyes, it’s all she can think about.
“It’s fine, just a bit of light reading.” She says.
“I was wondering if you could do me a favor.” Neville says.
“Of course,” Hermione replies.
“I just—I was hoping you could look over my Herbology essay.” He says quickly, his hands thrusting out several piece of parchments towards her.
He has surprisingly nice handwriting she notes.
“Neville, you know more about Herbology than I do,” She tells him, “I’m not even taking the class.”
“I know but, I just need it to be perfect.” Neville says, finally sitting down across from her. “I talked to Professor Sprout and Prof—Headmaster McGonagall and if I do well on my NEWTS she’ll take me on for an apprenticeship. Professor Sprout says that maybe I’ll take over for her when she retires in a few years.”
Hermione remembers Neville from their first year, the boy who stood up to them and was ready to face them down in a fight he knew he wouldn’t win. She remembers the man who killed Nagini and the smile on his face when it was done.
And who was she? She was the one who left him in a full body bind and walked away from him. That was who she was.
“I just need, I thought you could go over the grammar. Make sure it all makes sense.” Neville rambles. “I’m just—I’m nervous.”
“Of course, Neville.” She smiles and she slips the papers into her notebook. “I’ll get it back to you tomorrow.”
“You’re a life saver, Hermione.” He grins.
He walks away and all Hermione can think about is the possibility of Professor Neville Longbottom, spreading his passion and love for Herbology for generations to come.
(She wants to tear his essay into little pieces and throw them into the fire in the common room for everyone to see.
To make a statement.
But tearing it up, burning it; none of it would change anything.
His passion and his love for the subject would still be there. After everything that happened, it was still there.)
--
She finishes going over Neville’s essay in less than an hour. There is little to nothing to fix or change. What she does find is merely missing commas and things she seeks out that Professor Sprout would never notice herself. (She may be a teacher, but even she does not hold her students to the standards Hermione holds herself and those around her.)
After that she wanders into the Herbology section. Finds a book on toxic plants and poisons. It’s old and dusty and she thinks even Neville himself has never read it.
She spends the rest of the day reading it, lost in the tombs of the library.
Hermione will give Neville back his essay later that night, with a smile on her face and a promise that he has nothing to worry about.
(“You have a wonderful future ahead of you,” She might say. She might even believe it.)
--
She finds Ginny on her bed this time, relaxed against her headboard as she flipped through one of her own textbooks. They were in the same year now, but in none of the same classes.
There are letters spread out in front of her, familiar ones, all with the Ministry seal. One is the exception, Gringotts had sent her a letter asking her to fill the position that Bill had currently vacated.
“You and Harry have been spending too much time together.” Hermione says, depositing her bag down by the bed and moving to her wardrobe to find different clothes to change into.
Seamus had exploded a potion during class and she had ended up with it splattered across her. Slughorn had roared in anger, and the class had stared in fascination. Hermione had took in her sputtering professor and wide eyed classmate and laughed quietly. No one had seemed to hear her over Slughorn’s echoing voice, no one but Harry and Ron, who watched her the rest of class.
“Not nearly enough in my opinion,” Ginny says, “And even when we do spend time together Ron always seems to be around.”
(Because he doesn’t want to leave Harry again, Hermione thinks, because he doesn’t want to repeat past mistakes. But she won’t tell Ginny that, because after all they went through, it feels like a betrayal of trust.
She wonders what Harry tells about the year they spent on their own, what Ginny tells him about what had happened while he was gone.)
“You haven’t responded to any of them, have you?” Ginny asks as Hermione pulls out a green sweater. Ron will crinkle his nose at it, Gryffindor pride and all, but she likes the way it looks on her. Besides, she had started running out of clothes without dirt or blood on them, and hadn’t been shopping yet.
“No.” Hermione says, “They can wait until after NEWTS. They might not even want me after that.”
“They’ll want you even more.” Ginny shakes her head, and Hermione turns, pulling off her outer robes, tie and shirt, as if Ginny wasn’t even there.
She had seen all her scars before, there was nothing to hide.
“The brains of the trio,” Hermione laughs, pulling the sweater over her head. Sometimes she thinks about failing the NEWTS on purpose, just to see what would happen to all those job offers Ginny had spread out on her bed.
(Nothing. Nothing would happen.
Because she would still be Hermione Granger. Harry Potter’s best friend. The brightest witch of her age. The muggleborn who defied all odds.
It wouldn’t change anything.)
“Have you even considered them? Any of them?” Ginny asks.
“I threw away some.” Hermione shrugs. There are still over twenty letters on the bed, each of them capable of rotting her teeth and stomach with their overly complimentary words.
Everyone wants a piece of The Golden Trio now. Will do whatever it takes to get it.
“What happens after we take the NEWTS?” Ginny asks.
“We graduate.” She replies.
“And after that?”
Wasn’t that the big question? The one that no one had asked before, but everyone had wondered about. Hermione Granger’s grand plans for the future. Because Hermione was a woman who always had a plan. It was in her blood, in her movements and words. It was ingrained on her very soul.
Always have a plan. And a backup plan after that. Something that will save you, protect you, from those who wish you harm.
Hermione didn’t have a plan anymore.
She hadn’t had one in a long, long time.
“I’ll figure it out.” She says.
(There’s no conviction in her tone, both women can hear that.)
--
She finds Draco in the library, when she’s wandering though the stacks. She finds him in a familiar section, knows why he’s there.
He has book after book after his feet, some look as though they were thrown in frustration. But they were magical books, her mind reminds her, and they can protect themselves from harm.
“Here.” Hermione says wandering down the aisle and pulling out a familiar book. Draco looks up at her wearily, but no books or insults are thrown. “Page one hundred and eighty six, it has the most powerful concealment charm I’ve found.”
She turns and hands him the book, her hand grazing his. “It won’t work on everything, I don’t know if it will help you, but it’s what you’re looking for.”
Hermione knows, she was the one looking for it months before.
She turns to go, to find another part of the library to sink into, but his voice stops her. “Why are you being nice to me?”
“I think ‘nice’ is a generous word.” Hermione says turning back around. They had barely spoken since the year had started, mostly in class when they had no choice.
“Why don’t you hate me?” He persists, pushing himself up and stepping towards her. “You should hate me.”
She stares him down, his angry and sad eyes locking into hers, and she wonders what he sees. She wonders if he sees anything at all.
“The only reason you know about this book…Why don’t you hate me?” Draco asks.
(Because hate required work, she doesn’t say. Hate required passion and feelings she doesn’t think she has anymore.)
“You didn’t do it.” Hermione says, “And she…”
She struggles with the words and it surprises her. It had come so easy before, faking her way through conversations she didn’t want to have.
“There’s no one left to hate.” She says.
He keeps staring, like she’ll do something, fire a hex maybe if he looks away.
“Page one hundred and eighty six.” Hermione says turning away, “I hope it works.”
Merlin knows, it hadn’t for her.
--
The mail arrives in the morning, with the papers, owls flying in all directions. An unfamiliar one lands in front of her and Hermione is not surprised. She suspects it’s another Ministry official trying to find out what she plans to do after Hogwarts. The Department of Mysteries was especially persistent with her.
She turns it over, to see which department it was this time, but sees the familiar scrawl of her mother’s handwriting.
Hermione hadn’t gotten anything from them since she had left Australia, hadn’t heard anything from them.
(Their last words had been goodbye and Hermione thought she had known what it meant.
Permanence and finality.)
She stares at the envelope for a long time, at the way her name is written, her mother’s name in cursive in the corner and the stamp on the edge, like it was being delivered by a postman and not an owl.
She stares at it for a long time before she realizes she’s tearing it to shreds, into little tiny pieces that she’s not sure even magic can put together. Confetti for them to use the next time they defeat a dark wizard intent on taking over the world.
She tears and she tears, and sob comes out of her throat she thinks, a cry for something she doesn’t know. And then there is nothing left.
Nothing in her hands to destroy, to break, and leave to crumble.
Just a destroyed letter in pieces in front of her.
(She thinks if she can look hard enough she can makes up the pieces of her mother’s name, put them together like a puzzle in the chaos she created.)
Hermione looks up and the table is silent, everyone watching her. Most with concerned, sympathetic eyes, Ron’s more than anyone’s. Some with just plain curiosity. But there is no understanding there. There is nothing she wants to see.
She vanishes the pieces away, grabs her bag from underneath the table, and leaves with not a word said.
--
She skips her classes, goes outside and onto the snowy grounds, finding a tree to lean against with a good view of the lake. It has iced over, but the Giant Squid sometimes appears, breaking it up, only for it freeze and form over again.
Hermione has a book open on her lap, telling her of the Great Wizarding War of 1662, but she spends most of her time staring at the lake. Watching for the motions to repeat over and over.
Harry is the one to find her, settles down against the tree next to her and watches the lake with her. She doesn’t think they’re seeing the same things.
“Where’s Ron?” She asks.
“Checking the library, the dormitories…anywhere you might be.” Harry says, “He keeps asking the paintings if they’ve seen you. I think it’s starting to annoy them, one of them sent him to the dungeons.”
“I only go there for potions class.” She says.
“I know.” Harry nods.
The sit in silence and Hermione turns back to her book. It takes twice as long to read one paragraph, but she powers through. Because she’s Hermione Granger and all the answers can be found in a book, all you have to do is look hard enough.
Isn’t that what Dumbledore’s last message had been to her?
“Do you want to talk about it?” Harry asks, breaking the silence.
She continues reading.
“Hermione…”
“Isn’t this backwards?” Hermione laughs, “Aren’t I supposed to be the one giving motivational speeches to you?”
“Probably,” Harry says, “You’re definitely better at it.”
“No I’m not,” She shakes her head. There’s a tear drop on the book on lap, she doesn’t know how it got there.
“Hermione…what’s wrong?”
She laughs and its loud and she thinks it calls the Squid to the surface again, the pain and agony wrapped up in the sound of bitter laughter, because be breaks through again.
It’s such a loaded question, such a complex one. It’s one she isn’t sure she even has an answer for.
“Hermione…”
“I don’t think I expected to survive it,” Hermione says, “I don’t think—we were always going and going and I just wanted it to stop, I did. I wanted to breathe again. But I think I forgot how to. I don’t think I know how to do it anymore.”
It all comes tumbling out and more tears splash the pages of the book.
“I don’t think I thought it would end. Or if it did I thought—I don’t know if I thought I would be here when it was all over. I didn’t think any of us would be.”
Harry reaches for her hand, and she can see traces of the scars he still has there, as the two hands interlink.
“Do you…Do you ever miss the tent?” She asks quietly.
“Every day.” He says.
It feels like the most real conversation she’s had since she left the hospital wing all those months ago. The most truthful at least.
“Does that make us bad people?” She asks.
“Not bad people,” He says, “Just…damaged ones.”
He says it with a shrug of his shoulders, like this is nothing new to him, like this is the way it has always been, for him and for her. Like this normality and they are curling around it but not conforming to it somehow.
“I don’t want to miss the tent.” She says.
“Then find something you want more.” Harry says.
--
She spreads the letters open over her bed, throws away the ones that she knows are for show only, people who want her for her name and not her brain or power.
(There is a difference between Hermione Granger war legend, and Hermione Granger. You just have to squint real hard to see it.)
Hermione pulls out one of her empty notebooks and starts making pro and con lists about each one. Tries to figure out what is she wants.
She closes her eyes and tries to imagine herself in the positions, in the fights and battles they represent. She closes her eyes and tries to picture things that don’t come from before, but after.
She tries to see it.
The pro and con lists remain short.
When she closes her eyes she sees dinner at the Weasleys’ and empty chairs and Draco’s face as she offered him the book in the library.
It is not some miracle fix. She does not feel better. And alone in her dormitory, the tears do not come.
But it’s a start, she thinks. A beginning.
It is a light at the end of the tunnel she has been lost in for so long. A dim light, but a light just the same.
And maybe that’s what matter.
Hermione thinks it has to be.
(“Is that what you really believe? Or is it just what you tell yourself?”
“I have to believe it.”
It’s not really an answer.)