A/N: Hello, loves! I'd like to take a moment to give credit where credit is due--first to J. K. Rowling for the incredible Potterverse, as well as to The Black Crowes. The italicized lyrics in this chapter are from The Black Crowes song She Talks to Angels. If you haven't heard it, it's distinctly amazing, and you should go listen right now!
Also, as my other fics have a pitifully small number of reviews but considerably more hits, I'll take this opportunity to beg--yes, BEG--that you, oh glorious reader, please review this story. Tell me, at the very least, whether you love it, hate it, or are entirely indifferent. Feedback is love, my friends, and everyone should spread the love. Oh, and if you happen to see any grammatical errors, please point them out--I hate them and must obsessively eradicate them.
And now, for a slightly-more-complete summary: As stated, this is a very AU fic, beginning several months after the end of Deathly Hallows. Harry did not return to life, and the wizarding world is a far darker place than that depicted in the epilogue. This story will follow the lives of a few of your favorite characters--a different one each chapter, for now--as they try to do what Harry Potter, in the end, could not.
she keeps a lock of hair in her pocket
she wears a cross around her neck
Hermione Jean Granger hurries through the deserted streets of Diagon Alley. Her eyes are fixed unwaveringly on the sidewalk, her shoulders bowed beneath the weight of an entire world. In her mind, echoes of former happiness sound like sweet music, laughing children and calling merchants, but in her ears, only silence rings.
Her fingers slip inside her robe, curling around the golden cross that hangs, suspended by a thin chain, around her neck. It is a mechanical gesture now, a method of seeking comfort that she's long since given up hoping to find. The necklace was once her mother's, but she no longer dares think that painful word.
The Grangers have never been particularly religious—like their daughter, they are literal-minded people, and they rarely concern themselves with thoughts of a higher guiding power. However, the cross has been passed down in the family from mother to daughter for generations.
The last thing Susan Granger did before her daughter shattered her memories was clasp the chain around Hermione's neck.
yes, the hair is from a little boy
and the cross is someone she has not met, not yet
Thinking of that moment now makes the woman's eyes burn, but she is far beyond hope and so beyond tears. She blinks furiously to lessen the ache, casting vainly for some less sensitive subject. She's gotten quite good at avoidance these days, avoidance of others and her own agonizing thoughts. However, occasionally her will falters, and she teeters on the edge of an endless downward spiral, not quite consumed by hell and yet not quite free of it either.
She's going to be late if she doesn't speed up. The Portkey will leave without her, and seven days are too precious to waste on account of seconds of tardiness. She dashes into the hulking skeleton of what used to be Flourish and Blotts and lunges to the nearest shelf, which is cracked and nearly topples beneath her sudden weight. She is just in time, for the tattered green book beneath her palms begins to glow, and she is gone.
After her stomach settles, she opens her eyes and sees with relief that the destination has not been changed. It was highly fortuitous that she managed to stumble upon a Portkey in an abandoned building in the first place, but then the Death Eaters are always popping here or there to terrorize and maim. Of course, since the Ministry has fallen, she has no way of knowing when the Portkey will expire or be altered. After months of bitter disappointment after bitter disappointment, she's learned to expect all plans will go awry.
She is far enough away from the Burrow for the walk to be uncomfortably chilly. Winter's grip is slow to loosen this year, as she imagines it should be. Still, she doesn't hurry. She dreads these meetings with every fiber in her being—the all-consuming emptiness and the expression on Molly's face tilt her closer to despair each week.
"Give me strength," she breathes into the quiet countryside.
oh yeah, she talks to angels
says they call her out by her name
It no longer strikes anyone around her as odd that she sometimes speaks aloud to no one. It's not as if they can comment, anyway; there really isn't a soul alive who hasn't developed their own quirk since the Battle of Hogwarts.
That is another taboo, Hogwarts. Hermione's gut wrenches as she thinks of it, both as it once was and as it must be now. She squeezes her eyes shut, one, two, three. Perhaps it truly is a dream, and she'll wake up tomorrow to Harry and Ron's laughter…
Her heart constricts. For a second, her body empties of breath, and darkness dances in and out of her vision. This is an exquisite form of torture, but she does not stem the flood of memories that beat against her wounded spirit. As she stands shivering in front of the Burrow, her hand strays from the cross and into her deepest pocket, where her fingers brush a lock of red-orange hair.
oh yeah, there's a smile when the pain comes
the pain's gonna make everything alright, alright yeah