It's been a while. A lot has happened. Let's see where this one goes. I will aim to return to Paperweight as soon as the mood strikes. My grammar sucks. I apologise. Anyone who wants to beta is welcome. All the love xx

Disclaimer: The only thing that belongs to me is the plot, as always.

Now here I go again, I see the crystal visions
I keep my visions to myself, it's only me
Who wants to wrap around your dreams and,
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?
Dreams of loneliness,
Like a heartbeat, drives you mad
In the stillness of remembering, what you had,

Fleetwood Mac - Dreams

There's a hand reaching up for her and a pair of eyes full of fear, silently looking in her direction for help. She tries to reach for the hand, to pull its owner from the darkness swallowing them and launch them up into the light. But she is too late. The hand is too far away, the eyes are the only spots of light she can see in the dark now and even they are slowly fading. And suddenly they are gone and her ears are filled with a terrible shriek…

She sits up suddenly gasping for air as if she had just swum the length of a pool underwater. Her hands are trembling and she's shivering even though it's the middle of summer. The heat of the room is pressing against her lungs as she fights to even her breathing. Throwing back the thin sheet covering her she slips out of bed and pads shakily over to the semi-open window and shoves it open the rest of the way with all her might.

She takes in deep gulps of the crisp air, slowly feeling her heart rate return to normal and the shaking subside. She shakes her head, mortified at her own silliness. It's just that ruddy dream again, Hermione. She chastises herself. You've had it nearly every night for six months. You should be used to it by now.

But she's not used to it. The dream is still just as haunting as it was that first night she dreamt it, all those months ago. It was silly, what had triggered it. A stupid fight with Ron before bed, a name shouted that she had tried so desperately to push out of her mind since the battle of Hogwarts nearly a year prior.

"STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE I'M DRACO FUCKING MALFOY," Ron had bellowed after she'd shot him a look on contempt during their argument. The name had shot through her like a shard of broken glass, piercing her chest and lodging itself there, refusing to budge no matter how hard she tried to remove it.

It was the first time she'd heard his name in years. He wasn't mentioned in any of the discussions she had had surrounding that horrible, horrible day. But she never had forgotten, never had managed to completely rid her mind of the memory of his face as he was forced to choose a side.

Ron still believed that that last stupid argument - over goodness know what now - was what had put their relationship on the fast track to ruin. She hadn't bothered to correct him. She still hadn't told him that their relationship was over only months after it had started from her point of view. That the love she thought she had felt for him was nothing more than an intense desire to help her to forget and to help him to forget, in some way too the horror that had unfolded in front of them in what should have been their final year at Hogwarts.

Harry had Ginny to comfort him, to hold him in the night when he woke up screaming. Ginny had Harry's shoulder to sob desolately onto during the untold number of funerals they'd attended in the month following the Battle.

The truth of the matter was, Ron had needed her and she had needed him to support each other through the never-ending healing process. And she did love him. Like a brother. After the Battle, every kiss they had shared had her wincing on the inside. It felt wrong in some way to be so intimate with Ron, even though she had thought it was what she had wanted at the time.

Unresolved sexual tension, her mother had referred to it as when she sat her down after their breakup and told her the whole story. According to her, had they kissed under normal circumstances the whole thing would have been done and dusted with in minutes. But the incredible strain that they were both under at the time forced her to keep up a charade for both of their sakes.

But it was over now and that's what mattered to Hermione. She had broken up with him as gently as possible, saying that they were headed in two different directions (which was true) and she wanted to salvage the friendship they shared, rather than press on in a relationship that neither of them was fully invested in.

The way Ron had taken it, agreeing to push aside the last twelve months of their lives without so much as a moment's hesitation, told Hermione all she needed to know. They were there for each other when they'd needed each other the most and now they were both ready to move on.

And now, just shy six months of six months later, she know they'd made the right call at the right time. Harry and Ginny had just announced their engagement and Ron was in a relationship with a friend of Fleur's whom he had met when she had stayed at Shell Cottage for a few weeks.

Emilie was a much better match for Ron than herself Hermione thought privately. The girl was playful and mischievous, a wicked twinkle always visible in her sparkling blue eyes. She'd never seen the two of them so much as raise their eyebrows in annoyance at each other, whereas she and Ron were always arguing about something or another.

Her sentiments were echoed by Molly when she'd let slip once that she'd not seen Ron look so carefree in sometime. Molly had looked guiltily at Hermione as the two of them had laid the table for supper, mumbling a hurried apology and turning away, flustered. Hermione had taken Molly's hand and had assured her that she agreed wholeheartedly. At the end of the day, she and Ron were a nightmare of a couple. More plates than she liked to admit had been thrown at the back of a retreating ginger head and too many nights had been spent in stony silence. Neither of them were truly happy.

Hermione was grateful though, that the Weasley's continued to treat her as one of their own. She had an open invitation to the Sunday roasts cooked by Molly each and every weekend and they even began to tease her about bringing a 'plus-one' to the family gatherings. Hermione jokingly brushed them off, citing focusing on her studies as the main reason she had not found someone yet.

But standing there, in front of her bedroom window that night, staring unseeingly out into the cloudless sky, she knew in her heart of hearts there was another reason. The reason being there was the image of a pair of eyes, burned into the back of her retinas, a pair of eyes so full of fear that it took her breath away.

The reason was the eyes that were begging to be pulled from the darkness and into the light.