This is something I've been working on for a while, and I'm glad I finally managed to finish it by taking part in the Take a Lyric Competition - "Take my tongue, take my lungs, if you need it" - Don't Kill The Magic by Magic!. I'm not sure it fits exactly with the lyrics, but that's what they made me think of…
I did steal a line (well, mostly) from Alexander Pierce in the Winter Soldier movie, because it was too gorgeous to pass on, so that doesn't belong to me.
Please leave a review to let me know what you thought of this.
Word count: 1372
down the rabbit hole
"I can't do this."
"You know that's wrong," Hermione says softly, almost kindly – almost, because she lost the ability to be kind a very long time ago.
It's not, but Draco doesn't mind as much as he should. Perhaps this was always meant to happen anyway, or perhaps it was not, but it was happening anyway, and there's nothing he will do to stop it, so he just raises his wand.
Blood flows, Draco feels sick and beside him, Hermione smiles.
"See, I told you that you could do it."
(but the story doesn't begin here, in fact, this is just an insignificant moment of their story)
(this is a beginning, but not the beginning. There is one death, two spells and three little words that would have been harmless in a perfect world)
(only it's not a perfect world)
Hermione is happy. She's walking hand in hand with Ron, and there's a new shiny ring on her finger.
Ron asked her to marry him, and she said yes – what else could she answer anyway? This day is the happiest she can remember, and she feels like her heart is about to burst out of her chest.
It burns like a roaring inferno and she feels like she's on a high from which she'll never be able to come back down. It's a feeling she never thought she'd feel, but now that she does she can't imagine a moment without the blissful warmth spreading through her body and the love she has for the man next to her.
It ends brutally and all too soon, the way all the best things do.
There is a green flash and someone screams in pain – is that her? – before her entire world blacks out.
When she wakes up, she's alone and so, so empty she wishes she had died too.
(the healers tell her she's lucky, and that they don't know how she survived with so few sequels, and that it's a wonder she's still sane)
(she puts a hand on her too flat stomach and glimpses a gold ring on her right hand, and she knows she's not)
Everyone's a bit broken when she gets out of St Mungo's, her the most of them all. Harry hugs her so tightly there's an instant in which she fears she'll break, and Molly can't look at her without crying. Ginny apparently stopped eating solids, and when Luna drops by she doesn't even mention Nargles.
That's how she meets Draco – she has to get away from the Burrow. There, she can almost hear Ron's voice in her ears every time she enters a room, making jokes she pretended not to find funny. Now, she wishes she had laughed at at least one of them.
Draco's been broken too, but that happened some time ago already. Hermione doesn't think he was ever made to be on his own, and now with his father in prison and his mother on what is essentially house arrest, he clearly doesn't know what to do with himself.
He's the last person she expected sincere condolences from, but he offers them anyway, and for some reason she finds herself sharing a drink with him, then two, then three. Well, you get the story.
He's nicer than in most of her memories of him, but that's alright, she's changed too.
("I'm not your Weasel, Granger," he warns her as he kisses her)
("That's okay, I don't want you to be," she answers as she pushes him on the bed, and that's it)
One day, she talks with Harry. They both left the party early – she can't even remember what it was about – and wandered off into London.
"This world is sick," she says, and it's not a revelation that comes to her at that very moment. It's something she's known for a while, perhaps since the first time she's stepped on that train back when she was still a wide-eyed girl.
Harry sighs and wraps an arm around her shoulders, and answers, "I know, but what do you want me to do about it?" because of the three of them, Hermione was always the one with the plan, and because out of all of them, Harry is probably the one who understand what she means the most.
"I want to change it. I want to make it better; I want this world – our world to be somewhere we won't be afraid to live in."
Harry hums in agreement, but they keep walking. She can see him thinking about this though, and she knows he'll agree. It's in his nature to want to help everyone.
"Just the two of us?"
Hermione thinks of Draco, drowning in a world he doesn't know how to live in, of Luna, ridiculed for being different, of the Weasleys who were losing child after child to the same people, of all the children who died in the Battle of Hogwarts because they were born of the wrong parents or were at the wrong place. She thinks of Harry, who died for a world who doesn't deserve him, and of herself, weeping at her future husband's grave.
"No, we'll have help."
(it starts surprisingly like the DA – a lot of people meeting in a bar)
(had Dumbledore or anyone from an older generation been there, they could have told them that Voldemort has started recruiting his Death Eaters in the exact same way forty years ago)
(but everyone aware of the similitude is either dead or in Azkaban, and Hermione is already too far gone to care)
Before they know it, Harry is at the head of a revolutionary movement that gains more followers and support every day. Or he would be, if Hermione wasn't actually the one orchestrating everything from behind the scenes.
After all, Harry was the Man-Who-Defeated-Voldemort. He was the one who struggled against Darkness and fought for fairness since he was a child. Harry Potter was trustworthy, and people wanted to follow him. They wanted to prove that their inaction during the year Voldemort had taken over had been a fluke – even when everyone knew it hadn't been.
Hermione however, is just the poor Muggleborn woman who has lost her future husband. There is no way the Wizarding world will ever listen to her.
But they'll listen to Harry, and that's why she whispers her ideas into his ears.
("Don't you feel bad for manipulating him like that?" Draco asks her one day as they lay in bed)
(Hermione waits for the pang of guilt in her chest but it never comes)
("No, I don't.")
("I never would have expected that of you Granger.")
("Well, people change.")
Harry believes he's making the world a better place. He'll probably die believing it, too.
But Hermione knows better. Harry refuses to see the world as it is, but Hermione doesn't – and Draco doesn't either. They both see it as it really is: flawed, and far too damaged to ever be healed.
Sometimes, to build a better world means having to tear the old one down, and after what it did to them, they have no problem being the ones to do the tearing part.
("Tell me you're not in love with me," she asks one day)
("I'm not in love with you," lies Draco)
(She laughs until tears come to her eyes, but in the end she only feels sick as she answers, "You're not a very good liar.")
("Yeah, well, we all have our faults.")
(That we do, she thinks as they go back to planning how to take over the world)
Some days, Hermione stares right in front of her into something she's the only one to see, and she wonders if she too will be defeated by some prophesized Savior, or if she'll be taken down by one of her friends finally realizing her madness.
Her money is on Draco – Harry could never hurt her, and everyone else respects her too much. Draco though, Draco knows her.
But as the old adage goes, keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. It's a way to live like any other, and the only person who could have convinced her otherwise is already dead.