Essence of Murtlap / fifth year
She could always do things alone but with other people she worried. She worried about what people thought of her, about what she thought of other people. Once in primary all the boys and girls had to give a speech about aeroplanes, and she worried about hers for weeks and it was wonderful, her best work yet, and the teacher and even the students applauded politely and didn't say anything at all about her hair or her voice or her teeth. Then the next girl stuttered and sniffed and cried through hers, half-prepared, and Hermione had to leave the room. The next morning she wouldn't leave her bed—her parents tried to talk to her through the locked door but eventually she was running a fever and it was a week before she could go leave her room again and go to school.
She's not afraid of accidents by herself but in aeroplanes there are all the other people and all their families.
So it's not fair that she met him, that he saved her, that she's a part of the terrifying thing into which he's been drafted. That she needs him to need her, and that he does. She knows that he cared about other people before he was allowed to know any and when she is overwhelmed now that keeps her from locking herself in her room.
She knows he'll be back soon and she knows—she is very smart, sometimes when she gives speeches the teacher and even the students who say terrible things to each other about her teeth applaud politely when she's finished—she knows that eventually she will have to deal with the way he makes her feel. But she locks that up and earlier she hummed while she was mixing the ingredients so that her breathing stayed even and her hands kept steady.
"Here," she says anxiously, pushing a small bowl of yellow liquid toward him. "Soak your hand in that. It should help."
Thanks, he says. She thinks about things so that she won't run a fever. He is a good person—good in a way he can't understand. She thinks that's what makes her feel the way she does. She names it and she locks it up because he cares about everybody, even people he's not allowed to know, and she has to think about it because that's what she loves about him, anyway.