For MajiKat's "2nd Person Narrative" challenge and Curiosity is not a sin's "Blaise/Hermione Actions Speak Louder Than Words" challenge at the HPFF forums.
A/N: Just to clear a few things up, this is set after the war when Hermione returns to Hogwarts to get finish her final year. I figured that since she returned, it would be alright to assume that other students in her year would return as well. And I know it's not in the book, but if you've seen the movie you'll understand the part about the scar on her arm. If you haven't seen it...there's a scar on her arm :D
1/1
It was foolish of you to believe that you could escape your nightmares, even in this place that still holds the shadows of yourself as an innocent child, roaming freely in your curiosity and wonderment. You are foolish to think you could leave your past behind you because the past will always cling to you, wrapping its dirty fingers around your neck like a noose and demanding to be listened to and remembered until the day you are placed carefully in your grave.
The first night back, you wake up screaming and your cheeks are wet with fresh tears. The scars that mar your body feel white-hot and brand new, the twisted face of your most recent tormentor still lingers every time you close your eyes. Your bed becomes a cage and you itch to get away. You settle for creeping down the corridor and curling up on a soft couch that has been set close to the fire and preparing yourself for another sleepless night. You don't even hear him come in.
There is no telling if he has been awake all along or if you have made it impossible for him to sleep with your noise, but he is here now and you are strangely grateful. He balances a mug in each hand and holds one out to you, silently asking you to take it. It warms your ice cold fingers and the heat of the cocoa spreads through your body with a pleasant hum until you begin to feel sleepy again.
He sits beside you, staring into the red-gold flames and looking as though he hasn't a care in the world. You want to fill the void between the two of you with words, apologize for keeping him up or at least thank him for the drink, but the words die on their way up your throat because they are emptier than the silence and you resign yourself to saying nothing. Occasionally, as you begin to nod off, you feel his gaze tingling against your skin and his body heat is so enticing you want to curl up against him, but you don't. It is good enough that this is the first time you have felt safe enough to fall back to sleep after a nightmare since you were a child and it's because he is there.
Days melt together and weeks fly by without you recognizing them because your time is so consumed with him. He is an enigma to you and that makes you want to draw closer. The dark sweep of hair against his forehead, the rare upwards curl of supple lips and the flash of clear blue eyes are not familiar to you and that is refreshing. He is something new and undiscovered, untainted by the dark memories you have secretly buried deep inside your chest, so near your heart that it scares you how much power they hold over you in your weakest moments. He is a boy – no, a man now – that you have never taken notice of before because he has made blending in with the background an art form.
Your fellow classmates are not as intrigued by him as you are, in fact they loathe his very existence in the place where they have come to try and rebuild their lives. Maybe he understands that it is not him they hate – they don't even know him – but what he represents: a house that has shaped evil for generations and the ideology of pureblood supremacy. He hears the whispers when he walks into a room and he isolates himself accordingly. You feel a connection to him in times like that because, in truth, you are not so different. You are just as alone as he is, despite the bodies that press against you and the voices that surround you. You would prefer to be next to him like that first night, sharing in his solitude instead of listening to conversations that are so ridiculously normal you can't find words to toss into the air with the others.
The day you think life has reached an acceptable stage of bearable, you feel yourself begin to lose control. You grip the desk so hard your fingers are white and you have lost the ability to breathe. Your heart accelerates and needles prick beneath sweat-soaked skin, fear has been shot into your veins like adrenaline, but it is arresting instead of invigorating. You though you had escaped this feeling of being back out there. It's like He is still alive and your parents can't remember their only daughter and every single moment you have to be alert or else –
His hand is on your arm and he guides you out of the room before you can make a spectacle out of yourself. He says nothing to the professor you've just interrupted nor to the staring students, just scoops up your things in one arm and holds you with his other. You can't concentrate long enough to recognize where he's taking you – you're still a messy tangle of panicked nerves – you only know that he is safe.
He gives you the smallest of smiles before he leaves you in the care of Madame Pomfrey and you find it strange that it is no longer fear your heart is pounding from.
After that first night, the nightmares have not been as bad as you're used to them. In more sensible terms, they have not left you terrified out of your mind as they usually do. In fact, yesterday you woke up and could not recall a single bad thing about your night except that you banged your elbow on your nightstand. You should have known it would not last long because it seems nothing in your life can stay consistent anymore. Tonight it is as if you are back there on the Manor's cold marble floor when she sets her wand on you and your body is covered in a searing, scorching fire that melts your skin and burns your insides until you are nothing. She is not done yet, carving letters into your skin that, for some unimaginable reason, hurts worse than the curse – you scream and you cry and you beg for it to stop.
You don't realize you're caught in a dream until he pulls you out of it. There's a moment of utter confusion before you give into instinct and turn your head into his chest until you've cried yourself into exhaustion. You don't fall back asleep this time, just listen to his heart beating rhythmically against his chest as he holds you. You wait for him to ask what you saw in your sleep, but he doesn't and the pressure of an explanation rolls off your back. It is a comfort no one has been able to give you until now.
He soon becomes a solid fixture in your life, entering your room on the worst nights to comfort you, wiping away your tears and pressing warm lips against your forehead and into your hair. You know what the others think when they see him leaving in the early hours of the morning, but you don't care. He is not your friend, not yet at least, but he seems to always be there to see you in your weakest moments and you like having him there.
When you wake up one night with your hands clutching at your throat and the pain as new as ever, he gently pries you away and traces the thin, faded mark made by Bellatrix's wicked knife with careful fingers. You mourn the loss of his tender touch when he pulls away with a challenging smile on his face and pulls the collar of his shirt down until you catch a glimpse of where a deep gash once bled on his toffee-colored shoulder. You read his challenge and, not one to be outdone, grab the hem of your thread-bare shirt. His grin fades all too quickly when you lift it just enough for him to see the thicker, longer scar that stretches across your stomach and disappears somewhere on your ribcage.
Your face has turned into a grimace in memory of the pain this particular injury put you through, yelping in surprise when you feel his lips, smooth and soft, graze the rough ridge of skin. The action is frighteningly intimate, but he looks like such a little boy right then, trying to kiss it all better, that you let him because when was the last time someone tried to kiss your nightmares away?
He's not done with his little contest, though. He turns so his back is facing you and lifts his shirt so you can see the way his skin illuminates the physical manifestation of his pain. You gasp and move forward, your fingers gently skimming what you had assumed was numb tissue, but he flinches at the contact. You're left in awe of what might have caused it – where exactly was he during the war? Not at school or he wouldn't have returned. You have heard whispers that he had fled the country with his mother, but he must not have done a very good job at it.
When he drops his shirt and turns his attentions back to you, a cocky smirk on his face at the thought of winning, you raise your left sleeve. Only a handful of people have ever seen this particular scar and you prefer to keep it that way, disguising its existence with long jumpers and glamour charms. You are not ashamed of it, but it reminds you far too often of a time you would like to forget.
The cuts are deep and jagged and form a word you have never quite understood. Its meaning is simple enough, but its stigma had never quite stuck with you until the woman that haunts your dreams most often branded you with it, making extra sure it would be permanent.
You are unprepared for his reaction. He does not comprehend what it is you are showing him at first and when it finally does sink it, his long muscles stiffen and he sits frozen on your bed, his mouth slightly open and his eyes staring. It stays like that between the two of you for several long, increasingly uncomfortable minutes until you move your arm away from the spotlight and hesitantly touch his face. He jumps away and is off your bed and out of the bedroom before you can even think of asking what's wrong.
The change in him the next day is immediately noticeable. He is not the quiet, reflective boy you thought he was because something confusing has taken over him. A muscle in his jaw twitches at the slightest provocation, his voice is not soft and melodious when answering a professor, but harsh and swift. You feel his eyes on you more often than before, but he looks away as soon as you try to catch him at it. When he crosses paths with you throughout the day the air is tense long after he leaves.
You don't like this gulf that has suddenly come between the two of you. He is your friend, you realize. Even if you never speak to him, his mere presence at your side means something infinitely more to you than words could ever express. You desperately want what he has to offer, but you are afraid that the offer has been revoked now that you've crossed a line too personal for him, shared something about you that no one wants to see.
Your mind is not riddled with bad dreams that night, but he comes to your room anyway and you are so used to it and so pleased that he is not rejecting you completely that you don't mind. You are content with just watching his long, lean figure sprawl onto your armchair until you something on his face catches the dim moonlight and you realize that he is crying. You don't think, you move. Slipping out from underneath your blankets to comfort him as he has comforted you so many times already because that's what friends do, right? Even strange ones like the two of you.
Your fingers look pale against his skin when they brush against his cheek for the second time in as many nights and you feel the heat of his tears momentarily warm your skin before turning cold. You wonder if these tears are for you and then you discard the thought because why would they be – what have you done to earn them?
The warmth of his hand grabs yours and presses it closer to his face, as if he had been afraid you would pull away. He takes a deep, ragged breath before looking up at you with glassy, beautiful eyes that enchanted you from the beginning. They are swirling shades of blue that remind you of gentle summer lakes one moment and then turn into a vision of windswept storms the next. So very, very gently he reaches up and brushes an escaped strand of curly brown hair behind your ear, your skin skittering with electricity from where he's touched your skin.
There is something repentant in his gaze and it catches you off guard more than the feeling of his lips against yours. Your first kiss with this mystery boy of yours is chaste and sweet and filled with something infinitely sad that you feel in the careful way he moves against you.
You react when he pulls back, missing the warm pressure almost as soon as it is gone. Your fingers find their way into his dark hair and he wraps his familiar arms around your body and you meet again and again and again until you can't breathe anymore and your heart has been melted into a warm puddle by the simple love he carries behind his kiss.
Your past finally lets go of you for the simple reason that there is no room for it anymore and with no more empty spaces for it to linger in it allows itself to be locked safely away into a tidy corner of your mind where it cannot disturb your peace any longer. The pain fades into a hazy memory and the scars are now nothing more than scars. For the first time in what feels like ages you let yourself actually live.
A/N: I hope you liked it and that it made at least a little sense :D Please review!