"Miracles seem to rest, not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from far off, but upon our perceptions being made finer so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear that which is about us always." -Willa Cather.
She focuses on her step. Focuses on the intake and outtake of breathe, on the glide of her feet against the stone. She focuses on creating very little noise. Silence, as she moves through the halls of Hogwarts.
Hermione Granger is not supposed to be in the hallways. She is supposed to be either snug in bed dreaming good dreams or in the common room preparing for an exam tomorrow. But she was not able to sleep because nightmares plagued her. She was not able to read over the potions material because she was too restless.
And claustrophobia, real and pressing, even though she was the only one sitting in the common room.
So. She did what she would not usually do, at least without the prompting of either Ron or Harry. She left, slipping out of the common room and into the hallway, ignoring, quite effectively, the hissed reprimand from the portrait and making her way into the shadows.
She wanders for a while, a lone girl, young but with a hint of woman in her stance, in the curls falling from the bun at the back of her head, in the way she carries herself silently through the hallways. The shadows envelope her, her feet in thick woolen socks glide across the stone floor, the night air moving about her.
It's cold, being the end of winter and not yet spring, and there is a frigid bite to the air. She wears a knitted sweater in the Gryffindor colors and she pulls that close to her body, making her way down the hallways in the direction, it seems, of the Astronomy Tower.
There is no real reason for her to go to the Astronomy Tower. Usually, she doesn't like the heights, the dizziness and she has always disdained those who taught there and what they taught there. But something urges her forward, like a pull at the base of her spine and up along her nerves. There will be freedom above the heights of Hogwarts, where she can look outwards, away from the school and towards the old winter moon.
She will not feel claustrophobia there.
Hermione listens for the sound of others. For irritating cats and their irritating owners. For professors or for others, ghosts, circling about the castle in the middle of the night. But it is, after all, the middle of the night and there is nothing. Just her slight breathe, the slight sound in the silence of the hallways, in the silence of the big stone structure that is the school.
Like it's slumbering, she thinks as she walks. Like the school is waiting, holding its breath for what is too come.
Her thoughts could spiral downwards from there, towards a sickening blackness, and she feels her reaction to the possibility, the fear itching at her, scratching at her, so she pushes those thoughts away.
Continues her walk.
Many years later she will remember, after forgetting for a long time, and she will wonder if she came upon the two, the professor and his student, out of something more than just chance. Out of necessity to fate, or something else.
She will recall this night with vivid quality and she will wonder why she had not thought on it until then. But that moment in the future, when she stands on a train station platform, is still many years away, and on this night when she comes upon the voices, her thoughts are scattered and incoherent.
Wondering. Curious.
She does not come upon them suddenly and not completely, but gradually, feeling first that something is there, something large, bigger than life, and then as she gets closer, hearing a voice.
She pauses. Thinks about turning around. Thinks of her common room and the bed waiting in her dormitory. Thinks about the wisdom of looking around the corner. Of what will happen if she does look around the corner. What will happen if she is caught? If she is discovered?
Because she knows the voice, knows the dark tones, the liquid nature of it, knows it because she has dreams about it that rip her into nightmares.
Rip, tear and shred, watching as her friends are killed.
And perhaps it is this reason, because she doesn't trust Professor Snape, because she thinks him a traitor and a git that she does look, pausing and then slowly, very slowly, as to not make a sound, looks beyond the corner.
What she sees does not really surprise her, the tall and black form of her professor leaning towards another who sits in the window, moon glinting off the other's white hair. She supposes the lack of surprise is because she has always believed that Snape and Malfoy were together, companions in the great plans of the Dark Lord. She has never questioned it, not really, though she has played with the argument for the sake of argument.
But truly, she has never trusted Snape and she has always despised Malfoy.
She listens, her hands finding the edge of the wall and gripping it, the cold radiating upwards and around her wrists.
"You do realize there is no choice in the matter? The decision has been made, the consequences laid out and you will complete the task," Snape says in a voice that barely carries to where Hermione stands watching, leaning against the stone.
Malfoy does not reply. He does not look towards Snape, instead looking out the window. The light of the moon is harsh against his face, highlighting the sharpness of his jaw, the straight nose.
"Draco," Snape says and in his voice is something that Hermione has never heard. Something akin to gentleness. It tightens at something in her belly. Pulling.
Snape continues. "I understand this, I understand how much I am asking of you, but this is essential. Do you understand? Without fulfilling the task placed before you, we cannot defeat him."
Draco turns his head and Hermione almost gasps to see his face. There is strain there, skin tight across his cheekbones, circles like dark green bruises under his eyes.
But in his eyes, flashes of anger. She flinches at it, biting her lower lip.
"And why is it my duty to defeat him. Why is it my duty to help you?"
Malfoy's voice is bitter, darker than it should be, older than it should be and the tightness in it, the anger in it, causes Hermione to wince. So much hatred. So much of something hanging there, between the professor and his student.
"Because you have witnessed what will happen if we do not defeat him," Snape says. "Because you understand the consequences for your family, for the world if he is allowed to control it."
There is a moment, a pause and then Snape reaches up and places his hand on Malfoy's shoulder. Snape's fingers are long, thin and white against the blackness of Malfoy's robes. Hermione wonders if she actually sees the pressure Snape uses, a squeeze of Malfoy's shoulders before the older man's hand drops away.
"You will succeed," Snape says and this time his voice is colder. Rigid.
Malfoy looks away from his professor and back out the window.
"Yes, sir," Malfoy says to the window.
Snape waits for a moment, a silence filled with something pressing and pressing.
Hermione expects Snape to tell Malfoy to get back to his common rooms, to instruct him on the next course of action, but instead Snape stares at the younger man and then without another word turns and leaves, a swirl of black lost immediately in shadows.
She knows she should leave. She knows she should turn and walk back to the common room. She knows she should not stand there and watch her enemy, the ferret, sitting in his silence, watch him watching the moon outside the walls of Hogwarts. But she doesn't. Because something is not right. Something is wrong and she feels it like she feels it when she knows the answer to a problem. Knows it in the itchiness at her fingers. In the nerves along her arms.
Because something is not right.
So, she stays, watches the boy that has been her nemesis sitting in the window. She traces his face with her eyes. She sees the sharpness of his profile, but still there, barely, but almost, the trace of someone younger. Someone innocent.
She assumes that they were talking about the Dark Lord. She assumes that something is taking place and she realizes somewhere distant that she needs to inform Dumbledore, Harry, someone. It is essential that she inform them. But for that moment in time, in the darkness of her shadow, she can't stop watching the boy in the window.
And then she sees it, the shake of shoulders, a hand coming up in a fist, the knuckles pushing against his mouth as he pushes against the cry. She sees it, the shadows of his eyes, dark lashes against pale skin, the boy's head bending downwards, his body bending downwards as if the weight of everything were on his shoulders.
Something urges her forward. Something urges her to go to her enemy and embrace him, to take the hand away from his mouth and wrap those hands with her own. Warming them against the coldness of the moon, against the coldness of the night.
She wants to give him comfort, like she would Harry but more, something else, something deep in her belly tightening and tightening at the image of Malfoy in the window trying to silence the sobs that wrack his body.
But she doesn't move. She doesn't move from her shadows. Instead she curls in on herself, pulling her hands together, fingers interlacing, cradling them against her chest so she will not go to him. So she will not pull him towards her. Because that is madness, because that is suicide, because there is no rationality behind such reaction.
Her enemy. Her friend's, family's, her entire world's enemy and she wants to silence the sobbing with a kiss on his lips, across his eyelids and along his forehead.
And the dichotomy of it, the wrongness of it has her shivering in reaction, nerves wracking at the need and want, and the wrongness and the desire and hate and something all intertwined and shadowed.
So very shadowed.
She stands there for some time, not sure how long it actually is, but not until Draco quiets, not until he leans his head against the coldness of the glass at the window does she depart. And then she does with reluctance, something pulling, still insisting on staying, insisting on saying something, doing something.
But who she is, logical and precise, is stronger then this irrational need, so she turns from the boy at the window, from the image of his pale and tear stained face pressed against the cold moonlight.
She turns and heads back to her common room.
She is almost to the entrance when a voice stops her in mid-stride.
"This is something you must keep to yourself, Miss Granger," Dumbledore says quietly behind her.
She turns, a hand coming up to her throat as her heart lodges there.
"Sir?" She manages to squeak out.
Dumbledore's gaze is grave, lacking the usual twinkle. He takes a step towards her. The flicker of light from the candle he carries highlights deep grooves in his face.
"It is very important that you do not tell anyone what you have seen tonight."
Hermione finds her voice.
"Snape and Malfoy… " She starts, but is cut off.
"Professor Snape," he corrects and then continues. "Professor Snape and young Mr. Malfoy are of no concern. I am aware of what has taken place, Miss Granger, and I ask of you to respect me and my wishes to not speak of this to anyone."
There is steal in his words and Hermione slowly nods, wondering at it. "Of course."
Dumbledore studies her for a moment and then smiles, a brilliant smile that reaches his eyes. "Very good, I knew I could trust you. Well then, to bed with you, I believe you have a test tomorrow."
Hermione nods slowly. "Yes, sir," she says automatically, turning towards her common room.
In somewhat of a daze, she makes her way back to the common room and up to her dormitory. She passes no one and somewhere distant she is thankful for it, knowing if did she would not be able to communicate.
So much to think of, so many questions, like a heavy presence in her head. Images, of a white-hared boy, of Dumbledore, circling about her mind in a whirlwind of incoherent thought. What had happened? Why Dumbledore's reaction? And underneath those thoughts, something else, something more primitive, basic. Something that had her aching low in her belly and around her heart.
Hermione takes off her sweater and crawls into bed. Underneath the heavy covers, she curls in on herself the same way she had in the hallway. She cradles her hands against her chest, pulls her knees upwards and in the darkness of pre-dawn, she begins to shake. She closes her eyes, squeezing them against this something, this unknown something.
She tries to stop it. Wills for it stop, the pressure building and building, but it doesn't matter, it comes anyway, like a wave, hurling her towards the base of a cliff.
Clutching her hands tight to her chest, Hermione weeps for something she doesn't understand and wont for a very long time.