Welcome. Cemelina bids that you enjoy her story as much as possible, and that you review with constructive criticism, if at all possible. Cemelina wishes all to know that she takes due notice of the fact that Harry Potter and all other characters used in this FanFiction belong to J.K. Rowling, not Cemelina. If Cemelina were writing something based on her own fictional universe, she would refer to it simply as "Fiction" without the "Fan." Well-wishes, and thank you for your time.
Thump.
Hermione Granger opened her eyes to a mat of brown curls, which she soon identified as her hair. Recognizing the cause of her throbbing side and soon-to-be bruised leg, however, took a bit more consideration.
She had been in the middle of such a pleasant dream. A sort of initiation back into her sleeping cycle, after a week of pure, waking misery. In it, Hermione had been dancing with her best friends, spinning in circles with Ron Weasley and Harry Potter across an otherwise deserted ballroom floor. Faster and faster they circled, until she and Harry were in gales of laughter at the way that Ron's ginger hair spun out around his reddening face. On they went, until Hermione could feel herself getting dizzy. She realized, as she began to collapse, that she'd be taking her friends to the ground with her. This only increased the strength of her laughter. And so it was with a smile on her face that Hermione was brought violently into conscienceness.
It took a moment for Hermione to understand that it was on her dormitory carpet that she lay in pain, not a hard dance floor. Yet the pain itself was very much real, and she was not happy to be awake again. The dream had been so clear, almost lucid. Even so, the details had already begun to drift from her memory. Hermione clung to them desperately, for this was the first happy event in her life to occur for nearly 6 days, not bearing that it was only in her imagination.
Adding to Hermione's confusion and frustration was an actual mass of ginger hair that flew past her face the moment that her eyes opened. In the castle's war-time state of disarry, having any unknown bearer of hair in your dormitory at 3 in the morning was not a comforting prospect. Hermione reached immediately for her wand on her bedside table, but this time the identification process was faster.
Crookshanks.
Hermione stood up groggily, massaging her injured side as she moved. She lit the tip of her wand and watched as her cat exited the room with a speedy four-legged grace, headed to wherever cats go in their nighttime solitude. Coming from her mixture of pain and shock, from falling and then finding a prowling Crookshanks, respectively, Hermione knew that sleep was now beyond reach for this night. The truly frustrating aspect of this knowledge was that only a month ago, Hermione could have crawled back into bed and been asleep again within a matter of minutes. By her estimation, however, it had been since the beginning of October that she had enjoyed a good night's rest.
At first, it had only been nightmares. Hermione would find herself waking almost every morning to dreams in which she was captured by Death Eaters. Dreams in which she'd recieve the news that a mass muggle-killing had resulted in the loss of her parents. Dreams in which her friends were murdered in front of her very eyes, before she'd wake up, sweating and screaming, wishing only that her nightmares could go back to getting expelled from school or failing Transfiguration.
Of course, nightmares of this sort were only natural with the war going on around her. Hermione was not the only student suffering from them, as far as she could deduce from the perpetual dark circles around the eyes of poor Neville Longbottom, or the stringy, unkempt look that Hannah Abbot was starting to take on. The real problem had begun when nightmares turned to daydreams, and what was supposed to be only her mind's imagination had begun to be reflected in her daily life.
Soon, every dark corner held a Death Eater. Every unexpected noise was cause to send stunning spells around the room. Every person Hermione had thought she knew was a potential enemy. What really frightened her about this was that she had always been such a brave and rational individual. All of Hogwarts knew Hermione Granger as the intelligent, rule-abiding, all-together Golden Girl of Gryffindor. How could such an individual be jumping at every small suprise?
Slowly, these thoughts consumed her mind. During the day, she noticed things that others did not see, things that frightened her. At night, she did not sleep, pondering these things.
Distracted though they were, Ron and Harry did not fail to notice the change wrought in Hermione as she lost her ability to get a decent night's sleep. It had been only a week ago that Ron had ended the short relationship that he had shared with Hermione after the last summer, at Fleur Delacour's wedding to Ron's brother Bill. That had been the last truely peaceful day the three friends had shared together. Ron was ignoring the war, pretending it was okay, and finding a strange solace in Luna Lovegood. Harry was preoccupied, refusing to talk to anyone or respond to a kind offer of help. Hermione was living her life in a sleepless trance. Nothing was the same, and for a week, Hermione knew what it was to be in hell.