My blood tastes metallic.
It's the weirdest thing for my mind to register, but it's true. The last time I tasted my own blood, it wasn't like this. It's been so long, though, since I tasted my own blood. I see it all the time. I haven't tasted my blood in forever, but I see it every day.
The last time I tasted my blood was in the Final Battle. A severing charm barely skimmed my cheek, but it cut it clean through. I tasted my blood then. It was warm. It was warm and sweet. It didn't make me think of mud at all; that's such rubbish. Blood is blood. My blood is the same as everyone else's.
At least, it was.
The Final Battle. So much led up to it. By the time we reached it, Harry wasn't the same person. Neither was I. None of us were ready. Or maybe we were. Maybe we were too ready. Why would anyone want to be ready for death, destruction, loss? It's a horrid thing to be ready for.
It was Harry and I who went into the battle first. It shouldn't have been. It should have been three. That was why neither of us were ourselves. That was why we weren't ready. Or, rather, why we were too ready. We were ready for death. Ron's death prepared us, as close as you can come to being prepared for such horror.
Ron wasn't the only one we had lost. Lord Voldemort had possessed Ginny again, more successfully this time. He actually managed to make her kill someone. Ginny was strong, but even I can say she would not have lived long with the guilt of killing her own brother. I saw Professor McGonagall carry her out of the castle that night. She told everyone Ginny fell asleep in the bathtub. An accident. I doubt anyone believed that. Not even the Hufflepuffs.
So Harry lost his best friend and his girlfriend. I lost two best friends. It was awful, but it didn't end there. Bellatrix made her way onto the grounds in the dead of night, lured Neville out, torturing his until he died from the insanity coursing through his body. We didn't find him until the next day. He looked peaceful. I think it was because he caught a glimpse of his mother before he died.
Harry was a shell. We all knew what was coming, the Final Battle, and we simply waited for it. School wasn't school any more. Our sixth year was spent waiting. Waiting and watching. Nothing held any more purpose. Finally, the teachers told us there would be no more classes, that there was no use in trying. Not even the Ravenclaws protested. That was a mark of how bad it was.
They stormed the castle in May. We were all gathered in the Great Hall, and then the doors were flying open, and he was striding through the open doorway, Lord Voldemort was there, followed by at least a hundred Death Eaters.
And Dumbledore fell first.
We watched, our mouths hanging open, as his body fell slowly and gracefully to the ground. We stared in shock. No one moved, unless you counted the slow, quiet, sinister chuckling of Voldemort.
McGonagall moved first. She turned over the Head Table and shouted for everyone to fight. The older students pushed the younger to the inside, and we fought. We fought hard, with all the knowledge we had.
It wasn't enough.
Nothing can surprise me more than when the Slytherins rallied with us against Voldemort. It was when Lucius killed Blaise, I saw him do it. They decided quickly after. It was a strength, to have them throwing the Dark curses they had been taught all their lives back at the Death Eaters, rather than our feeble defense spells.
It wasn't enough.
Don't get me wrong. We won. Harry threw the killing curse at Voldemort when he was distracted, when that vile creature was laughing in joy over killing Seamus Finnigan. Avada kedavra, hit him square in the chest. As Voldemort's eyes widened slightly, shocked, not quite gone yet, Harry only spoke one sentence.
"That's for Ginny."
It wasn't over; the Death Eaters kept on. When the aurors finally arrived to help and we had won at last, we had lost far too many. Seamus, Luna, Parvati, gone. Pansy Parkinson. Trelawney. Flitwick. Hagrid.
Dumbledore.
Ginny.
Ron.
He's not supposed to be gone. It's seventh year now, the very start, the first day. It's not supposed to be like this. Ron is supposed to be here with me and Harry.
But he isn't.
Harry's empty, a shell. He's sitting the Gryffindor common room, staring at the fire.
Or a least, he was when I left him for the Head's common room.
I sit on the couch, and I'm crying, crying silently, tears slipping down my cheeks. I'm biting on my lip, crying for Ron, crying for Ginny, crying for Harry, crying for everyone, biting so hard that I make a cut in my lip.
My blood tastes metallic.
I hear the door shut, and I jump in alarm, turning my head to see who it is, turning my head to see who's intruded.
But it's only you.
I turn back to staring at the fireplace. The room is dark except for the light thrown by the few flickering flames and dying embers left in the hearth. I'm curled up on the corner of the couch, still chewing furiously on my lower lip.
And I'm clutching my arm.
You don't talk. I don't see why not, but then, you're still sane. You're still the same person you used to be, not taking into account the lack of taunts. You're silent, but you're unscathed.
It's because you don't talk that I'm not sure who you are anymore. I never got to ask Dumbledore if Ginny was telling the truth, if you really were a spy for your side, if you fought for the side of light. I want to know, in a corner of my mind, but I won't ask you, because you don't talk anymore. Neither do I.
I'm not the same anymore.
I don't care about books. Knowledge. Nothing. It's all a thing of the past. Hermione Granger is a person who only exists in memories. I suppose Harry's not the only person who's an empty shell. I am too. There's another thing, too, that's changed about me. I'm not the Mudblood anymore. My lineage hasn't changed at all, but you don't call me the Mudblood anymore, and so I'm not. My blood still hasn't changed a bit, though.
Or maybe it has.
My blood tastes metallic.
You sit beside me on the couch. Why? You never have before. We've been in school for a month, and we've never once spoken. We're only heads because having a Head is tradition. Sprout, the new Headmaster, hasn't given us or the prefects a single duty. It's because this isn't Hogwarts anymore. The castle remains the same, but the spirit of Hogwarts is gone, perhaps forever.
Why are you beside me?
You sit there, and you stare into the fire, and after glancing at you for a moment, I do the same. We sit in silence, both looking into the flames. I wish for a moment that they could swallow me. I could lose myself in their warmth and never want anything again.
"I've seen them."
I look at you sharply. You're still staring into the fireplace. Your voice is hollow, nothing like the arrogant tone it used to carry, accompanied by the smirk and swagger. That was Malfoy. You're not Malfoy anymore, are you?
If you aren't, then who are you?
"I've seen your scars," you continue.
I look at you dully for a good ten seconds before I realize. I look down at my arm, which I'm still clutching tightly. Slowly, I release it, my long pale fingers stiff. The red and white lines stare up at me. I look back at you.
And I don't care.
Why do I care if you know? If you know the one thing I resort to? Walking around, I'm not a person. I'm not a witch, or a girl, or Hermione. I'm not anything. I'm not living. I'm a ghost still in her body.
But when I press the metal into my arm, and see the blood running down, I'm alive, if only for a few moments.
I haven't tasted my blood in forever, but I see it every day.
You slowly push up the sleeve of your black robes, and the same white and red lines that grace my arm, that taint my appearance, haunt me on your pale skin. I half-expected a black tattoo, a mangled skull. The Mark. The Mark that would condemn you.
The only marks you have are the same as mine.
I whisper to you my reply.
"My blood tastes metallic."
You look back at me, no reaction visible in your expression. Then I realize why my blood tastes metallic.
The scars run deep.
I'll never be rid of them. All the losses I suffer, I'll never be rid of. Harry's no longer with me, it's as though I've lost them too. For so long my only companion has been the metal slicing into my skin, letting the crimson tears gush down from my flesh.
The metal that pierces my skin left a bit behind. That's why I taste it. I not only taste it in my blood, I breathe it in the air. I see it behind my eyes when I shut them to sleep. I smell it in the flowers. I feel it in everything I touch. The metal, the blades that have become the bane of my existence, it won't ever leave me alone.
The scars run deep.
My blood tastes metallic.
Does your blood taste metallic too?
You do something completely unexpected, something that I don't think you would have ever done in the world before. But our world is different now.
You take my hand.
I bite my lip harder. Your hand. It's so warm. I expected it to be as cold as ice. I don't ever feel warmth anymore. Even the heat from the fireplace doesn't ever warm me, but your heat does. It makes me feel.
I'm alive again.
I bite my lip clean through.
My blood tastes metallic.
"We'll keep trying."
I nod at you. I won't even try to smile. I don't know if I remember how, and besides, it would be fake. But I understand you completely. We'll keep going, even if life is not even a fraction of what it used to be, and we're in it together. The scars run deep. But we'll keep going.