Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, don't ask, don't tell. JK and Pearl Jam, forgive me. Just having a little fun.

Note to readers: Hermione/Voldemort. "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town" by Pearl Jam songfic. They're great in concert. And, also, thank you to DC101 dj, John Ballard, who played this song as I typed it up... I dunno how he knew, but Ballard knew.

Pour Sharon, la reine de le radeau de H/V, et pour Greg "Roche", un disc-jockey de DC101 et mon fan favori de Pearl Jam.

"Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town"

I seem to recognize your face.

Haunting familiar, yet I can't seem to place it.

Cannot find the candle of thought to light your name.

There was a merry little blaze in the fireplace of Harry's quaint and modest country cottage. It was his way of starting over after the war. The cottage, I mean, not the blaze, as such. The blaze was more my way—no, I was dwelling. Oh, but how could I help but dwell? Forgive me, for I am only human, with a memory that defines me—but, oh, the memories...

I sat alone on the sofa in Harry's sitting room. Harry and Ron sat in armchairs somewhere off to by side, talking. On my other side was a Christmas tree. There was holly on the mantle. I was aware of Christmas carols playing—or were they being sung?—somewhere, but I knew not where. I was merely staring—transfixed, entranced—into the fire.

How do you describe a fire? Dancing flames, yes, like fire spirits or faeries or pixies practicing their pagan rites. Logs and kindling crackling and popping, embers glowing like jewels. Words used so often that they have no effect, barely produce a picture. Words used so often they're practically part of the definition. But fire... it's one of the first, one of the primogenial experiences, registered and catalogued in the mind as part of the basics, part of the frame of reference that allows us to describe and understand other things. Oh, but the flickering lights... like breathing... alive... like a soul...

Lifetimes are catching up with me.

My breathing hitched at the sudden memory. I was trying not to think, but knew that a part of me was making me think about it, guiltily wanting to think about it. Because sometimes I think that it didn't happen, that it was just a poetic hallucination I experienced due to the cold getting to me. Or the butterbeer. And sometimes I fear that if I don't think about it, I'll lose the memory, I'll lose all of it, those snowflakes lost in the air...

Oh, but I experienced it, I know that I did, an experience now registered and catalogued and filed away into my mind, into that most basic frame of reference so that I may experience real feeling again... oh, and if I were to lose it...

All these changes taking place.

...those eyes... of amber... scarlet... those eyes of flame...

"And do you remember His eyes? I swear, the devil must have such eyes—"

Something pulled me back into reality, dragging me back almost painfully. Though I'm not sure what was painful, reality or my thoughts, like the first gasping gulp of air after holding one's breath under water for a long, long time. I turned my head to Harry and Ron. They were talking about the war, like reminiscing old men. But it hadn't been that long ago. Memories were fresh.

"I remember the first time I had to face Him. And those eyes... they were inhuman... eyes aren't supposed to be red like that."

His eyes. Red eyes. Amber. Scarlet. Red eyes.

I wish I'd seen the place but no one's ever taken me.

And a panic surged through me. A panic that was brought on as if, by this new pieces of information, this idea, this spark, I feared I'd lose that precious memory entirely. Was it really fear? I wasn't sure. I just had to get out.

Quickly rattling off some excuse and apology to Harry and Ron, not even stopping to hear their replies, I threw myself from the sofa, grabbed my cloak, was out the door, and I was gone. Harry and Ron just stared.

Hearts and thoughts they fade. Fade away.

"Hey, you think she's okay?"

"Hermione was never quite the same after the war."

"Yeah, maybe it was too much for her."

"Yeah, maybe it was."

Hearts and thoughts they fade. Fade away.

I swear I recognize your breath.

Memories, like fingerprints, are slowly raising.

When, to the world, I died, I gave my enemies—the world—the death that they wanted. When I faced Potter, who was just a boy not yet eighteen and yet wise beyond, I think, the devout and loving masses that followed him. I faced the boy who held the world's hare, the world's tool, the being into which all the world channeled it great many feelings because that was his purpose. I faced him and knew that I was done.

Potter screamed his curse and, with a flash of light, I screamed. Screamed and screeched and shrieked, inhuman and terrifying enough for them to remember it as they'd always remembered me. I recoiled and cowered in pain, and with more light—the light of justice, holy light—I disappeared.

Me, you wouldn't recall, for I'm not my former.

The happy majority assumed that the curse was simply too powerful for me to have left remains. Of course, there were always the conspiracy-lovers who whispered that still I lived. No one listened. The whispers died. The want to believe that I was dead was too strong for the world to believe anything otherwise.

I had died, and yet I had not died. Physically, no, I had not died. My body still functioned, lungs took in air, heart pumped blood through my veins. But in spirit, in true existence, I was dead, just as so many survivors of war are. I do not flatter myself with pretension. Not like this.

What is death? A change in carbon ratios? The loss of animation? No, I know death, fought it for so long in my own private battle, but I know now that I am dead. I think I may have been dead all along.

But, like a spirit, a ghost, a soul confined to limbo, to purgatory, I walk among the living, unseen merely because the world does not wish to see me. I returned to Hogsmeade, one of the first towns to truly recover, and watched as an objective observer, because I was not one of them.

It's odd when you're stuck upon the shelf.

But I wanted to remember what life was like, wanted to experience something again. I wanted to change with the world, to feel a part of something again. I thought that if I could see people living and live again myself, I could be forgiven and continue on. But I was too far away from everything, or perhaps everything was too far from me. No matter how many memory-like worlds I walked through, I could not reach anything. Except for one—...no. I was dead.

I changed by not changing at all.

Small town predicts my fate.

I was dead and convicted of my condition. I could not believe there was anymore life in me. Who could ever see different? But no one wanted to see.

Perhaps that's what no one wants to see.

It was snowing on High Street, cold, so cold. Hell is not a furnace, it is cold. Hell is the Earth, for Hell is nothing more than the absence of Heaven. I walked on, past shops with golden glowing windows, surrounded by people and yet so alone.

I was losing myself as I walked, as though drinking the waters of the Lethe river of Hades to forget my past life, as though my soul would keep walking and leave my body behind. I was losing myself. Could I even remember my own name?

"Tom!"

As if an old part of myself resurfaced, answering to the fall, the human instinct of identity by simply responding to one's own name, a humanity I was sure I had lost... I turned.

I just want to scream hello.

My god, it's been so long. Never dreamed you'd return.

But now here you are, and here I am.

Oh, hearts and thoughts they fade away.

She was running to me, through the crowd, through the snow, to me. And in that simple acknowledgement of my presence, I felt some existence again, and I remembered.

Hermione.

Hearts and thoughts they fade. Fade away.

She'd seen me before, in the Three Broomsticks. Realizing who she was, I'd fled, and yet with the sudden anchoring weight of existence that I felt now, I couldn't leave her.

Hearts and thoughts they fade. Fade away.

But I must. I had to... She could never forgive me, and I would never be able to bear her hate.

Hearts and thoughts they fade away.

And yet she was running to me, a fear present in her face, but not a fear of me. The young, beautiful creature, she ran to me and embraced me, adding further weight to what anchored me to this world.

Hearts and thoughts they fade.

"Hermione..." I whispered, stunned, and moved to pry off her clinging hands, but she would not stand for that. She held on.

Fade away.

"No, Tom, it's okay," she assured me breathlessly, pulling back only to return my gaze, oh, such warm brown eyes. "I know."

Fade away.

"Hermione..." I pleaded, as though to explain everything to her in just her name. Foolish, silly little girl who saw the dead; the brilliant young woman, for once, would not listen to reason.

Fade away...

To silence me, she leaned forward, and, having to stand on the tips of her feet, stretching up to reach, pressed her lips to mine. With her heart beating and pulsing close to mine, my own heart responded, and I was alive again. It wasn't just my heart—my soul responded to her. I was caught and saved from fading to nothing, held prisoner in the world but I was held by her and I was happy.

Pretty good singing there.