A/N This is the very late gift to Crossy70; as it's so late it'll be a two-shot! Hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer; Nothing belongs to me (cries)
Reflection Of a Waning MonsterWindows. Floors. Walls.
Broken. Stained. Bloodied.
Shattered glass. Torn carpet. Cracked stone.
Shards tinted with red. Fabric seeping with red. Portraits violated with red.
And the innocent girl, devoured by red.
She wasn't there, not really. She couldn't be. This was Hogwarts, this was her home! So... Where was she? Wandering endlessly, she felt her trainers slip against the blood-soaked floor and crunch over the remains of what had been, for hundreds of years, windows and walls. Nose wrinkled against the metallic smell, she looked around her slowly; she had walked these halls so many times that she had arrived to a place she had, well, conflicted, memories of.
It was here that she had been taught by a man possessed by Lord Voldemort, a glorified actor who she had definitely not fancied, a werewolf who happened to be one of the most brilliant men she'd ever met, a Death Eater, a woman she had mentally scarred, and then... Well, another Death Eater. Supposedly.
Just a few minutes away from the chaos. A chance to be quiet. She sighed and leant against the entrance, thinking about her Potions Professor, when her brace, the door to the well-weathered Defence Against the Dark Arts Classroom, suddenly opened. She flew backwards, lying on her already sore back, and staring into a pair of eyes she'd been longing to see all night.
"I'm sorry, I thought you..." Remus began awkwardly. "I thought you might be..."
"Another dead body?" She asked darkly, before sighing and laughing humourlessly. "Well not yet at least! Though I imagine we'll all be by the end of tonight."
Remus knelt down to grasp her hand and pull her up, before grabbing her into a tight hug. "I'm so glad you're okay." He murmured.
Hermione felt close to tears as she rested her head against his shoulder and allowed her body to lean against him. "I'm so glad too."
They smiled sadly at one another, before Remus gave a half-hearted chuckle. "I would offer you some chocolate... It makes you feel better... But, considering the situation and, well, the fact I don't have any... Would you like to come inside?" Hermione blinked, looking at the arm that held the door open and the classroom inside, then back to the red hallway outside, and dashed in.
She jogged to her old desk, sniffling slightly; now was not the time for crying. "Are you..." She began awkwardly, not knowing how to finish her question.
"Okay?" He supplemented, before giving the wry, humourless smile she knew all too well from Order meetings. "No, but then I suppose none of us are."
"Unharmed?" She finished her question after a moments pause.
He nodded slowly. "I guess so. Well, I've not been hit with a crucio just yet." His limp attempt at humour made her shake her head in grief. "I guess I'm one of the lucky ones." He murmured, before his head snapped up to meet her eyes once more. "Are you?"
One corner of her mouth lifted in a grim representation of a smile. "Okay or unharmed?"
"Both."
She shrugged. "It doesn't matter really. I have a job to do; I have to help Harry. Whether I'm okay or not, whether I'm unharmed or not, whether I end up," She took a deep breath before continuing, "dead or not, it doesn't matter. Just as long as I help him. Just as long as we win."
Remus considered her for a few long seconds before grasping one of her cold hands in one of his warm ones. "It does matter." He murmured. "To a lot of people. You're not just his sidekick; people care about you."
When she met his gaze he was surprised by the maturity in her eyes, a maturity of the kind he'd only seen once before; not in Dumbledore's eyes, not in Harry's, but in Sirius's. It was a maturity born of the worst kind of grief and loss and, more than that, the assurance that everything would forever be tainted with darkness. Happiness wouldn't be quite so happy. Humour would never be clean and pure. And innocence... Innocence was a childhood dream, lost to the shadows. She swallowed thickly. "If I don't help Harry, there won't be anyone left to care."
Sighing heavily, he rested on the desk next to her. "What have you lost, Hermione?"
She blinked at him a few times, before a sweet crease in her eyebrows and a slight downturn in her mouth showed her confusion. "I don't understand."
He pulled his eyes away from the darkness of her eyes and looked at the wall instead. "You've lost something, something that the others don't understand."
She followed his lead and stared at the wall, where a grotesque picture she thought she remembered from Moste Potente Potions, depicted a man's own intestines strangling him. "Carrow needs a lesson in home decoration." She muttered, and was rewarded with a bark of genuine, surprised laughter from Remus, as he grabbed her hand again and squeezed reassuringly. "It should be your pictures on the walls, I always thought so." She murmured after some time.
"Huh?" He replied with, he noted scornfully, a considerable lack of intelligence.
As if she had only just realised what she'd said, Hermione blushed scarlet. "Well, uh, it's just that, um, well... I mean Lockhart had, er, all these, uh, portraits and stuff and, well, I, hum, just think that it would, erm, be better if there were, heh, pictures of, you know, a nice guy." Hermione Granger, she thought bitterly, you are a bloody idiot; you are a blathering mess and just... Ugh!
Remus blinked once. Then twice. Then thrice. After about the tenth blink he cleared his throat and, in a voice that would ever be able to show the true gratitude he felt, quietly said, "I'm glad you think I'm a nice person Hermione."
She threw a quick glance in his direction, before slumping slightly. "I know you are a good person." She left the desk and wandered over to the wall, to look at another portrait; this one was a harsh depiction of what she knew to be an inferus. "They're mindless, you know?" Her voice was almost a whisper. "They don't know, they have no concept of their life." She turned and faced him, tears shining in her bright eyes. "How awful must that be?" She asked softly. "To have no memory of a life you've lived?"
He frowned at the sudden change of subject, and when he spoke, there was confusion in his voice. "It must be awful, yes."
"Only a monster would do it."
He noted her toneless voice and repeated in the same way. "I suppose so."
She sighed, her whole body seeming to collapse in on itself, before straightening her spine and, refusing to look at him, coolly said, "That's what I've lost." He made a confused sound and finally, her eyes met his, but they were cold. Much too cold. "I've lost my innocence. My humanity." She clarified.
Exhaling heavily, he attempted a smile. "We've all had to do things we wouldn't like, this is a war after all and we-"
Shaking her head, she cut across him. "You don't understand. No-one understands. I couldn't even tell anyone other than Harry and Ron and they just. Don't. Get it."
"Get what?" He asked in confusion.
Her chilly exterior cracked slightly, and a sole tear ran down her cheek. "I'm a monster." She whispered, and when he moved to comfort her she shied away in fear. "No!" She yelled, when he opened his mouth to speak. "You don't get it Remus! I am a monster!"
"No," He whispered, moving to comfort her even as she backed into a corner, "you're not a monster. Whatever's happened, whatever you've done, you're-"
"You don't get it!" She whispered as she wept and curled into herself. "I as good as killed them. Perhaps what I did was worse than killing them."
He froze and considered her properly; she wasn't an idiot, and she wasn't a girl. She wasn't a monster either, but there was something... Off. "Who, Hermione? What did you do, and who to?"
Whatever frozen shell she had wrapped around her shattered, and her voice ripped violently through the classroom. "My mum and dad." She near enough screamed. "I took their memories away!"
Remus fell to his knees and wrapped his arms around her. "That doesn't make you a monster! You protected them, you-"
"They don't even know they have a daughter." She spat violently. "Eighteen bloody years, just wiped out." Lost in her memories, she barely noted Remus rubbing her arm reassuringly. "They had a trip to visit the National History Museum." She was whispering now, and he felt his heart break as he realised what the coldness in her eyes was. It was a wall of ice which she hid behind. "She was thirty-five, he was thirty-two. They... Well, they think they went there to 'see if anything had changed'." She sniffed. "I deemed that memory 'worthy', when I walked through their minds and judged everything. The cake afterwards? No, that couldn't stay." He made an inquisitive sound and she sighed, finally relaxing into him. "I wanted to go," She whispered, "so I begged and begged and begged, then when we arrived I saw the cafe. It was right next to the entrance, and there was this stunning looking coffee and walnut cake. We spent about ten minutes in the actual museum before I realised I knew it all, and I started pleading for a piece of that cake. I was seven."
He moved his gentle rubbing from her arms to her shoulders. "Did you get it?"
"The cake?" He nodded, and she gave a loud, albeit short, burst of laughter. "Yup, I did. They always spoiled me." She gave a dry smile. "But I hated it. It was too sweet. Not enough coffee and not enough nuts." He gave a small, sad smile, and she continued, seeming as if she were in a trance. "He always made me a birthday cake." Her voice emotionless. "He couldn't bake at all, neither of them could. But they always made a cake for me. He'd try to bake and she'd try to decorate. When I was younger they'd give the cake to the other kids at primary school; to try to help me make friends, I guess. I was a fairly unsociable child, weird, they called me. They kept it up though, even when I came here." She gestured vaguely around her. "They send cake on my birthday every year." Swallowing thickly, she shook her head. "Sent." She let a hiss of self-hatred force itself through her teeth. "Harry was always grateful to have a piece, even when it was awful. How can I complain?"
Remus halted in his gentle massage, and glanced at her. "Sometimes," He began slowly, choosing his words with careful deliberation, "it's harder to have something and lose it, than to never have had it at all." She turned from where she had found herself, resting between his legs and near enough on his lap, to briefly frown at him in confusion. He didn't smile, didn't even attempt to look like things would be okay, which she was beyond grateful for, but still, his voice was soft and gentle. "Harry's never known what it is to have parents. Much as Sirius tried, much as I" he swallowed thickly, "tried to fulfil my promise to Lily and James, we could never be a parent to him. And Merlin knows that Petunia Dursley was never the, um, ideal mother figure." He shook his head as though shaking off an irritating bug. "Anyway, you can't compare your situation to Harry's. Much as I love him," He gave her a genuine, beautiful smile, "and I do love him, I don't think he could have done what you did."
She sniffed sadly, turning back to staring at the inferus. "He's not evil enough."
"He's not brave enough." Remus corrected gently, as his hands moved from relaxing the tense muscles in her shoulders and neck to gently stroking her wild hair. "What you did..." He murmured, twining one tendril of flyaway curls around his finger and giving a small smile as it bounced with life. "No one will ever understand. They won't understand the loss, they won't understand the... The sacrifice, and they certainly won't understand the," he leant around her side and glared at her pointedly, "misplaced, self-loathing. But none of that means you're alone, and it certainly doesn't make you a monster. What you did makes you brave."
She scoffed at that, and turned around once more. "What I did makes me heartless."
"No." He whispered. "What you did makes you a Gryffindor."
At that she finally swivelled around properly met his eyes and, he was relieved to see, the chocolate orbs were warm once again, the icy chill of heartache being burnt away by the force of their combined lion's fire. "It sucks, sometimes." She murmured.
He rested his forehead against hers, kissing it softly beforehand. "I know. Trust me, I know." He heaved a breath and made himself smile weakly. "But you can't ever compare yourself to Harry." His gaze turned serious as amber eyes bore into rusted charcoal. "Harry's parents... James and Lily, they're just dreams to him. They're imaginary people that he never really knew. They're..." He swallowed thickly. "They're dreams, that's all. And that's not fair. It's not." He spat the hatred out, before softening once more, and resting his cheek next to hers. "But he won't ever understand what you had to do. Remember, Hermione, it wasn't just them that lost eighteen years; it was you too. The only difference is, well, you remember." He felt her cool tears run down his face, or perhaps they were his own tears? "It's okay to grieve, it's right, it's healthy! But never compare yourself to Harry. It's not fair to torture yourself like that."
She shrugged in an unconvincing sigh of nonchalance, and he casually brushed a strand of hair away from her eyes. "Harry's parents are just a dream to him." He repeated in a gentle whisper.
"An image in a mirror of desire." She muttered back, and gave a weary smile when he pulled back and tilted his head in confusion. "The Mirror of Erised, ever heard of it?"
He nodded slowly, not taking his comforting hands away from smoothing through the dirt, blood and grit-filled hair that seemed even larger and bushier as the woman shrank. "It's a dark object. Incredibly dark. When I heard that Dumbledore had it here in your first year, that he knew Harry and Ron had looked in it, I..." He trailed away and she saw a furious flash of gold flicker across his eyes, as his mouth pursed furiously, and he suddenly looked uncannily like Professor McGonagall. But feral, much more feral. "I wasn't happy." His scowl dropped and he went back to the kind, curious, wonderful- albeit exhausted- man she knew so well. "Why do you ask?"
She shrugged, and absently began running her hand up and down his arm as he returned his unbelievably relaxing hands to her neck and shoulders. "I guess... I don't know. I guess I've been wondering what I'd see." She whispered eventually. "I mean, I should know that I'd see us win, Voldemort defeated and all that. But... Sometimes I think I'd see me as a kid again, even if I was eating that coffee cake and hating it. With my parents." She gave a dark chuckle and leant into his neck as he rested his head on top of hers. "How selfish is that?"
She felt his long exhalation through the sagging of the body behind her and the way her hair fluttered in his breath. "It's not selfish." He whispered sadly, throat bobbing with barely-restrained tears. "Like I said, it's an incredibly dark object. Whatever's seen there, whatever could be seen there, even the thought of what might be there... It's poison."
"Can't help but think about it though." She muttered lowly. "It's like a bloody mirror to your self-conscious."
"It's not." He near enough growled, pulling her up quickly and resting his forehead against hers again. "It's a twisted, hateful, revolting thing, that can do as much bloody damage as a... A..."
He seemed to be struggling for words, and she pushed a piece of his hair away from his cheek idly. "A horcrux?" She supplied.
"So that's what he did..." Remus muttered as he gazed into her knowing eyes.
"We're sorting it." She whispered back. "Harry, Ron and I, we're sorting it."
He leant even closer, brushing his nose against hers in a tender motion. "You shouldn't even know what either of those things are. You... You're just children." He breathed, his breath warming her cheek. "You shouldn't have to-"
She pulled back, eyes full with tears as she shook her head. "None of us are children any more. I mean," She gave a snort, "they both frequently act like they're bloody seven, but... Well, nobody is. Not just the three of us, but every-bloody-body in this damn school. We've had no choice but to grow up."
"It's not right."
"What is nowadays?"
He smiled sadly at her. "Good point."
She didn't smile back, but kissed his cheek gently. "After all this is over and done with, and with the hope that we win, the students are going to need good teachers." She tilted her head slightly. "You're the best teacher I've ever had."
His blinked a few times, before a wry look overcame him. "It's why I came here, you know, to this classroom. I've always been happiest teaching. Whether it was James and Sirius or Harry and Ron and..." His cool expression gave way to one of doubt. "Do you really think I'm a good teacher? Werewolf and all?"
She rubbed his arm soothingly. "I knew about your condition for more than half a year. It didn't bother me then, and it won't bother me now. In fact, it won't bother anyone with half a brain and-"
She was cut off by his lips gently pressing against hers. It wasn't passionate, it wasn't sexual, but it was an intimate, soul-deep security that she felt throughout her whole being. It was as if some core part of her had reacted to his closeness and his kiss, and she smiled softly as she met his tender eyes. "Stay safe so that you can help them all, please?" She murmured, mouths still close.
"I will if you will." He promised, nodding slowly.
"I never asked," She whispered against his lips, "what do you think you'd see? In that damned mirror?"
He hummed for a moment, before grinning brilliantly, though sadly, at her. "I'd see myself holding my son during the full moon, with his mother next to me. I'd see-"
She darted back, with any thoughts of fucking 'soul-mates' burned from her mind. Standing and turning to hide her burning eyes, she asked in a cold voice, "Did Tonks manage to find you?"
If her voice had been icy, his was burning. "What did you say?"
"Tonks; she was looking for you."
She finally turned, and was alarmed at the fury in his expression. "What the fuck is Tonks doing here?!"