Author: Well, me. Fortyfive stars.
Rating: As low as they go – no, not really. PG.
Disclaimer: HP's not mine and will never be – so shall it remain for eternity.
A/N: I hope I haven't defeated my own purpose in this. It's a 1000-word drabble that is supposed to be pensive, bittersweet even. If it isn't then, hah, I am sure at least someone will have the decency to let me know. I have no idea if she is reading this or not, but I would like to give a cookie&applaud to Duj. (duj) Her stories are wonderful, she's got an amazing Snape perspective and appears to be just generally more observant than I. (especially concerning a certain scene in HBP.)
Who are you thinking of today?
Hermione sits on a smooth-riding Swedish train –they take a curve so elegantly it is like flowing water- and misses the Hogwart's Express very bad. Every bump on the road feels like a friend now that she's in a strange country, headed for a strange city that she doesn't remember the name of but instead trusts her efficient clerk to let her know when to get off. Gothburg? Was that it? Well, something like it.
She looks out the window; she is riding commuters' seats (upon her own insistence) rather than business class. Cheaper. Now she is glad of her economical sense (even the Ministry's newly appointed head of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs should set a good example and not spend more than necessary) because these panorama windows are few but make up for it by spanning most of the wall. If she turns around she knows the sea will be there behind her – ebbing, swelling, patient and uncaring as only water can be. Hermione has her back against the coast as the train steadily runs up towards its destination – a muggle noisily fights a newspaper a few seats to her left. Someone coughs, another one attempts to pat away a yawn, even though it is two in the afternoon already. She looks back out through the huge glass in front of her, lifting her eyes above the heads of dozing muggles that cluster in the full wagon; outside there is rolling farmland. The sky is overcast, painted in grey, bruise-like clouds and she can't help but think that he is somewhere under these skies as well, somewhere somewhere.
It's almost amusing that it is only with the growing distance between them that she has begun to feel close to him again; with every added mile a closeted longing breaking out in full bloom. It's almost amusing, but these feelings that start to pronounce themselves again are not susceptible to being locked up again. So Hermione only sits and stares at the foreign skies above her, outside the train and the landscape-dominating soft grassy hills that rise and sink with barely a breath, and she just can't concentrate.
She should be working, rehearsing all those polished lines she is soon going to need but can't do anything but helplessly consider all the things she might say to him, everything she might have said to him in those preciously few right moments when anything was possible. Yet she did not, and yet she will not, because she was never a bridge-burning sort of person.
And as easy as that her eyes strain to catch even a wisp of blue sky between the ominous clouds and she is slipping into the one memory of him that she can cherish without pain. Only confusion. Always confusion, but for once never hurt.
"Did you know I think of him all the time?" she'd said and even while doing so she hadn't been sure why. "No, of course you don't. Silly me. I even… Merlin, I can even wake up thinking he's still there, and then I remember, and then I wish, just… just really wish that we knew for sure. That he wasn't merely… most likely dead. How the hell can anyone be most likely dead?" He was not interested, at all, and the dispassionate glance he gave her was reply enough. But as silence descended and seconds helplessly drifted by between them like falling snow he surprised her yet again.
Possibly it was because they were the only ones who weren't extravagantly sloshed. Possibly it was because the quiet night forced a feeling of intimacy. Or maybe because this was the day that would never be forgotten, that would with time be part of the history that students were expected to know; two years after and yet it was as yesterday, two years and yet she could not bear the thought that they would all become history. It was not a night upon which anything was forgotten. But either way he quietly said, while looking at the starry December sky with a blank expression,
"We always carry our dead with us. And if men and women lie down with another's image in their minds... well, Miss Granger, it would not be the first and the last time."
She still wasn't sure what that had meant, encompassed. He was as unfathomable as he had ever been, but still there appeared to be a… not exactly lightness but perhaps less black… Yes, there was a feeling of less black around his presence lately. Almost like one of these days he would begin to live without an incomprehensibly huge burden on his back. Maybe even laugh? Can you find your way back to a normal life, build and repair yourself into something that is whole and mended again? Maybe he even could laugh, maybe he really did have that ability built into him under all that chance and circumstance had made him.
She remembers laughing herself, at the thought of him as much as smiling.
Now she knows he does. But does she? Love, does she?
Yesterday I was talking and I thought I heard your name
It sounds so ridiculous but you're driving me insane
So I come running, my shadow chase me to your door
Only to have me tell you like so many times before
This is how you're that star in the sky
And this is my love you, my painful goodbye
Yet it isn't the missing man she is thinking of now, it is not the third point of the golden triangle that no one has seen since a battle-long-in-coming three years ago that occupies her mind as of late.
Then simultaneously the song Beautiful Day pumps into her eager ears and a flash of sun breaks through the clouds, glorifying the day.
And suddenly she has walked the entire winding pathway around her spiralling thoughts and wonders;
What is Severus doing now? Who is he thinking of today?
I hope you liked it, even though it didn't say much. Just between you, me and the bedposts - it's my first drabble. And it's raining here, blech. Well, gives you something to do with your free time, doesn't it?