"I buried them!" Hermione screams at Harry and Ron, tears streaming down her face. Anger has bubbled into hurt, into pain, into loss. She's given up everything for these two boys standing in front of her, and she wonders if they'll ever understand why forever is such an impossible concept.
In Arithmancy, infinity is signified the muggle way: two zeros, lined up next to each other. Two zeros, that mean nothing apart, are everything together; she wonders what muggleborn brought the concept into the wizarding world and admires the sweet irony a little bit more every day.
She's sacrificed her family- her mother and father are buried in Australia, their memories shards of pretty colored glass like the kind she played with outside of their church, after a storm shattered the mosaic window. Even today, she thinks those little pieces are there- the curve of Mary Magdalene's skirt, the arch of Gabriel's sword, the glow of Jesus' halo- just waiting to be found and coveted by the next small witch-child with no friends and less social skills. Her parents are safely in their graves, their memories of their only daughter and her dangerous, devastating world hidden behind a screen of normality and numbness.
She's buried their desire for knowledge, and need for travel, and want for curiosity like a child burying marbles, each fervent part of their personality hidden under layers of dirt and sand and earth. What terrifies her, though- beyond all reason- isn't that she could do it. She's never questioned her abilities as a witch, never.
No. What she is terrified by is the ease with which she could do it.
It took less than an hour, all told- she'd packed her bags and erased herself from their photographs and taken down anything that belonged to a child in less than an hour.
She wonders if Harry and Ron know that she's given up her muggle roots long before this war ever began. She wonders if everything Umbridge and Voldemort spout- everything she thought as false- is somehow, in some twisted manner, true.
She stands on one end of Ron and Harry's tent- not her own- and screams everything that they never imagined she gave up.
"I placed them in Australia," she whispers, fine as sanded rosewood. "I killed myself, Harry! I played God!" Tears blur her vision, now, blurring the anger and loss into hurt and fear and so much worry.
She's tired, of caring and fretting over these two boys who don't care for everything she's lost, of losing sleep and counting the cartons of food because there's never enough and fighting for a better world when she's never known one.
Hope has driven her, hope that her life will become better one day. Hope that, someday, the world will flip from caring about beauty to caring about intelligence, that one day she'll have the sneers for everyone else instead of hiding from their sneers to her.
One day soon, the words out of her mouth won't be I buried them but I hate you, and then all her dreams of a better world will become ash under her feet.
"I can't do this anymore," she tells him through the hollow feeling in her chest. It's never been the Golden Trio, as much as she'd wanted to believe in that, and she's in more danger with these inconsiderate children than she can be outside. Everyone knows if it came down to it, Harry would choose Ron, and nobody even questions it. That dismissive wave rankles something deeper every day.
Two extra wands mean nothing when you tally up that there'll be thirty more coming at you just for the boy at your side.
Harry flinches, green eyes impossibly wide, and she thinks that he ought to be used to this- to people disappointing him. It starts from his parents and spirals down to her; Dumbledore and Sirius and Snape and Lupin also star in some sharp-edged farce of the tragedy that's his life.
Ron hasn't said a word, all this time that she's screamed. He's left behind his family, yeah- and she thought he, of the two, would understand her pain.
But he hasn't yet lost a brother or a sister or a parent, and while it's an ugly thought, she can't help it. Both Ron and Harry are children fighting in an adult's war, children caught up in blackandwhite and redagainstsilver and goodneverbad. She's been the older sister dragging them onward, forcing them to look at the truth, rubbing their faces in it like they're little puppies.
Hermione's tired of it all.
Harry isn't a puppy; Ron isn't a fool. They'll figure it out soon enough, hopefully before someone dies. Hermione already has so many people's blood on her hands, and she can't quite bring herself to feel the guilt at erasing that small sliver of innocence both had.
They're two inconsiderate fucks that have made her hold the burden of their life while they partied.
And… she's stayed this long because Harry deserves someone by his side, and God knows Ron's never been called dependable in his entire existence, and she's the only one they'll trust for the job.
But there comes a time when sacrifice is overshadowed by selfishness, and Hermione won't let her name go down as Harry Potter's sidekick who died an ignominious death in the shadows.
Maybe now is a bad time for ambition to hit, but it's there, and all she can do is look at the boys in front of her, separated by ten feet and a giant chasm.
"Please, Hermione," Harry steps forward, entreating. He will beg her if she asks, will get down on his knees and give her the world if she wants him to. It's surprisingly alluring, and devastatingly destructive.
Ron joins him. "You don't have to leave, so-"
"I love you," she tells them both. A couple months back, she thought she loved Ron so much more, in a sort-of, just-maybe, more-than-platonic kind of way.
Now, she knows that you make your own love, in war and out, and waiting for the knight to come sweeping you off your feet isn't worth the time and will only result in silver hairs and silver tears. Plus, she isn't any kind of a princess, because who's ever heard of a bushy-haired, socially awkward, intelligent one?
Sleeping Beauty was lovely, but slept for a hundred years. Cinderella lost her father and mother and spent years scrubbing her step-mother's grate. Snow White was poisoned. Jasmine was imprisoned.
When she thinks about it, did anyone have a happy life? Endings don't constitute a story, and life isn't a happily-ever-after.
Forgiveness isn't in Hermione's nature, but neither is she cruel. So she doesn't sneer at Ron, doesn't smirk at Harry. She smiles gently, knowing it holds the edges of maniacal, merciless rage- the same that came over her when she sliced Dolohov's mind to ribbons in that café; Ron and Harry think she obliviated him, but she damn sure knows how to get revenge.
…According to her predictions, he'll never recover.
Both boys recoil from that expression. Hermione widens it just a touch, reveling in their secret fear, and wonders when she went insane.
She decides it sometime between erasing her mother's memories and burying her father's.
It doesn't matter, though. What does is that Dumbledore left the three of them a treasure-hunt across England without all the clues. Solving it means triumph, failure means death.
It's just too bad for him that she has her own plans.
"I found some information," she says quietly. Hopefully, they will listen. If they don't…
Hermione Granger is done playing babysitter. She's read the war books, her father was in the military. And she's never been shy about using her resources.
Every damn tactic in the muggle book will be used, and she'll fucking bring Voldemort to his knees with her forefathers' words. Irony isn't something only wizards can appreciate.
She's set herself up against two megaliths.
Let's see who wins this round, gentlemen.
The smile hangs uncomfortably in the air, but she doesn't give a damn.
Because, honestly, I can't imagine that the same Hermione who fought for SPEW and Buckbeak and justice wouldn't fight for her world. And yeah, I painted her insane. Sue me.
...sane people don't erase their parents' memories without talking to them.
Hope you guys liked it! And- Verdun is considered one of the lasting examples of attrition warfare in WWI. Falkenhayn, a German officer, was described as wanting to 'bleed France white.' This is the spin-off of the title.
Reviews inspire me!
-Dialux