Bit of a darker one, folks. Warnings are character death, self-harm, and femslash. Do enjoy. As always, your feedback is greatly appreciated.
Her hands were warm, and that's what Hermione will always remember. Of course, Ginny had always reminded her of fire. Striking red hair the color of searing hot coals, lips that burned with a longing where ever they touched, and a passion as strong as the licking flames of the most disastrous fires.
When she would cut, that's when the memories, those utterly sweet and, in her mind, historical, memories would flow with her blood, drip down her arms, wrap around her wrists, and fall, droplet by droplet, onto the pristine floor of the Prefect's bathroom. She had once, so long ago, taken the razor with her to Ginny's grave. She thought it would be more fitting to be close to her true love, while she thought of happier times, that perhaps the heat of those times would stretch past the Veil of the living, and reach Ginny, pull her back, back to Hermione.
But the emptiness, the sadness, was only worsened by the stone angel Ginny's name was carved into, by the stretch of ridiculously green grass that covered the onyx casket, where the most beautiful person in Hermione's universe now lay for eternity.
"War is cruel," Albus had said to her. "It takes away everything good in the world. But, I think, if you will look hard enough...there is more good in this world than bad. War is cruel, Miss Granger, but it is also temporary. It does not last forever, it diminishes, it vanishes, after a time." And he'd looked at her over those half-moon spectacles of his, his eyes brimmed with tears, and Hermione wanted to believe him, with all of her shattered heart. She'd wanted to think that this...broken feeling of loneliness, of void, would disappear, would only make her stronger.
But he'd been wrong, as the greatest of men were, at one time or another. She'd lost the only thing she'd felt worth fighting for, the only person that ignited within her soul a burning desire for life, for lust, for whatever tomorrow brought. Because Ginny was warmth, Ginny was a torrid tide of joy, of life.
Most of the adults told her she was too young to have experienced that kind of life-altering love. Seventeen was hardly an appropriate, an acceptable, age to have loved so deeply. They told her that in time, she'd move on, see other people, feel the same kind of spark again, soon, probably.
But they'd been wrong, so heinously wrong. And so, while the crimson blood pours in lovely patterns down her pale arms, Hermione recalls Ginny's hands, that are warm, that take her away.