Hyaci here! New story, new style, yadda yadda. Please read and review!
Untamable brown curls flew behind Hermione in the wind as she began her mad dash. Her eyes were filled with fear, darting between two figures: a young man with messy black hair and enchanting green eyes and his opponent, a monstrosity with pale, translucent skin and feral reptilian features. She couldn't let this happen, she couldn't.
She tripped as she ran, over the body of a friend, the bodies of a dozen friends. She was so close, yet so far away. Her eyes widened as a flash of green light was issued from a wand, colliding with a burst of red light streaming from the other.
And then there was whiteness. She never got to see the outcome of the duel. Had Harry won? Or had his adversary overpowered him? Deep down, she knew that her friend was inexperienced, was nothing next to his foe. What was he thinking, engaging him in a duel like that? Hermione could only hope that her friend had a trick- had something hidden in his sleeves.
Hermione closed her eyes, no longer wanting to see the whiteness that surrounded her. What did it mean? Was she dead? Was she alive? Was she stuck somewhere in a horrific limbo between the differing, but ultimately interrelated realms of life and death? Surely not… surely she'd know if she were dead.
Then, a voice, from out of nowhere. A familiar voice, yet so foreign, associated with warmth but speaking in a cool tone she'd never heard it use before. Emotionlessly, heartlessly, it spoke to her, spoke to her even though she wished she were deaf so she wouldn't have to hear- but she'd hear even then, because it did not speak to her ears- rather, it spoke to the very depths, the inner confines of her soul, the hidden vaults that she never knew existed.
"Dumbledore?" She'd meant to whisper it out, but it had come out as a cry, a declaration, rather than a wisp of a question like she'd wanted it to come out as. Why had it come out like that? Subconsciously, she knew- it was because she'd never truly wondered who the voice was, or why it spoke to her- for this moment, about the voice, the person it belonged to, the intent, the purpose, she was omniscient, a god, with an infinite knowledge that stretched out far into the horizon, out into the distance where she'd never hear nor see of the ends of it evermore.
"Yes, Hermione," a voice, sagely and old, ancient, having existed far longer than time, to the point of intertwining, becoming time itself, but inside she knew that, no matter how old, how wise, how intelligent, how sharp the man the voice belonged to was, he wasn't ageless, and neither was the voice. It was the driving force behind it that was ageless, an eternal charioteer of motives and emotions that pushed on for its own selfish needs that nothing could satisfy.
"Where am I?" Yes, where was she? She wasn't in the world, but she wasn't out of it either- instead, she felt like she was parallel, coplanar, skewed to it, never too far away, but never truly connecting. She felt ostracized, yet she knew that she was an internal force within the workings, the foundation of the world that she had just departed from, yet she hadn't, because she'd never been of that world to begin with.
"You are wherever you want to be." An answer that was no answer at all, a thought that had no meaning, that sprung from a mind more abstract, messier, yet more rational, more organized than her own, a mind that she had no business knowing, trying to understand. A mind both far greater, yet far lesser than her own, a mind not quite as prone to miniscule mistakes, but downright clumsy in regard to the significant ones, that she could only barely understand.
"Harry- where is he?" Where is he? Her best friend that she'd helped since that day they'd become friends, in the girls' bathroom, while he and his friend fended off a troll with a mere hovering charm, something what was unthinkable yet accomplished. Something one would never recommend to others, but would condone and applaud if performed by oneself.
"He's safe." Relief filled her, intangible yet so solid she could almost reach out with a trembling finger and touch the sides of it, so solid she could almost revel in its opaqueness, yet translucent at the same time, delicate and powerful, weak and strong, cold and hot, cool and lukewarm. And perhaps more than relief, because a feeling filled her- something she couldn't discern, stronger, more powerful than any longing she'd ever felt before, for any boy or any book, stronger than any magic she'd ever seen performed or otherwise.
"And Ron?" The other boy, the one who left them when times were bad, but it was the fact that he came back that counted, right? Ignore the bad in favor of the good- or in this case, the better, because it did her no good to judge- even though she felt the truth of the matter was, she'd stayed and he'd left- so ultimately she was the better of the two- the better friend, the better person, better overall and in every way.
Yet she knew she'd never be as appreciated, never be as close to Harry, never talk of this or that, simply because she wasn't who she wouldn't give the world to be, that traitorous person who left them behind on their mission because his greedy belly felt empty and his taste buds dissatisfied. When he left, all the feelings they had between them- all the possibilities, endless- had faded away into nothing, melted into a puddle of obscurity, gone in a flash because of his greed and selfishness, because he had deemed it necessary to put himself over the fate of the world, over their mission, over everything that he was and wasn't, over that which would affect him but wouldn't.
"He too is safe." Unsurprisingly, no feelings rushed in at her- not relief, not happiness, and definitely not love. She felt cold- alive but dead inside, emotionless, as if she didn't care for him anymore- as a friend, as a lover, as a person. Perhaps he and his horrific deeds had put an end to any association they could've had- perhaps after this was all done, if she returned, she would leave him behind, a memory both good and bad to be abandoned as she set off for her happy ending- or in this case, satisfactory ending- in the sunset.
"Why am I here?" Yes, why was she here, in this cold, hot, white, black room, with the voice of a man who had been a corpse for a better part of a year- a voice she thought she'd never hear again, until she heard it earlier, but it was a different voice than it was in life- more knowing, more aged, more powerful- more assertive than Dumbledore had ever been in life- with that thought, she understood- this was the voice of an entity so powerful that she could not witness its true form without exploding in the fury of a thousand million suns. It merely assumed the voice that she knew she could face, and so she faced it.
"You are here to choose life or life." Life or life? Surely he meant life or death? Perhaps this entity had misspoken- no, there was no way, because she could feel the infinity of the being surrounding her with its voice- with Dumbledore's voice, and she knew that the being was no Dumbledore, made no mistakes, did not sacrifice clarity for focus on the greater good, which would allow differences in interpretation and subsequently fissure in the ranks. No, this voice knew what it was doing and what it had said.
"Two lives?"
"Yours and the one before you. Should you return to yours…." A pause. "Should you return to hers…"
Contemplating this for a while, she sat but stood as she mulled over the words her ear had just lassoed into her brain, was focusing on absorption as she was compelled to make the choice. Her mind spun faster and faster, until it spun so fast the world was once more stationary- and she reveled in that stability- that clarity. Now that her mind was clear, she understood exactly what he meant, exactly what it meant, exactly what it took her for- exactly who and what she was.
When she opened her coffee colored eyes again, they were still hers, yet they were somebody else's, because her eyes were sea green, unfathomably deep, far colder and far more fiery than the brown eyes she would have seen had she looked in the mirror. She remembered both the life that she owned and the life that she borrowed.
Her name… was Lily Evans, and in a moment of weakness, she had seized the body of her son's friend in order to hope to see him one more time- all grown up and the same as his father. She had fallen into this life so deeply that she forgot her identity- she had fallen in love with her husband- his features- in their son, and now that she was back where she belonged and Hermione was back where she belonged, she knew that everything was going to be alright. If her son came to her now, she would welcome him with open arms, but if he didn't, then she could wait.
Because she had all the time in the world.