Hermione sighed and swore quietly under her breath as she changed positions from laying on her back staring at the canopy of her four-poster bed to her side to get a better view of the small clock on her bedside table. Even though the clock read half past two in the morning sleep was proving elusive.
No matter how many times she changed positions or tried to shut down her mind and sleep, her body seemed determined to rebel against the idea. Another sigh signaled her decision. She quietly got out from under her covers and placed a bare foot on the cold stone floor of the seventh year girls dormitory. Now fully emerging from behind her hangings, she couldn't detect any of the telltale signs of a sleepless night from any of the other girls sharing her room, which only increased her frustration.
'I am not going to lay there and torture myself any longer,' she thought indignantly as she grabbed two sizable novels from the top of her school trunk at the end of her bed. As she stepped carefully across the room Hermione cast a nonverbal Silencio at the room's heavy oak door to silence its chronically creaking hinges and passed through into the stairwell that led to the Gryffindor common room.
Hermione passed each of the younger years' doors on her way to the common room, again she heard nothing, a sign that everyone else in Gryffindor tower was capable of accomplishing such a simple thing as a full night's sleep. She made it down to the bottom of the stairs and turned the corner to look into the common room.
She had expected to see an empty room and a smoldering fire casting long barely-there shadows across the deep red carpets. However, what she did see was a roaring fire that bathed the room in a comforting warm glow and a head with easily recognizable messy red braids poking above the high back of the couch directly in front of the fire. However, her feeling of satisfaction at not being the only sleep-challenged student in the tower was tempered with her concern for Ginny and her apparently similar battle for sleep.
Hermione crept up behind the couch in case Ginny had actually fallen asleep, but when she approached the worn arm, it was apparent that she was wide awake.
"Fancy seeing you here," Ginny deadpanned as she continued to stare into the fire, her tired eyes almost unblinking.
"I could say the same to you," Hermione muttered back to her friend as she sat down on the opposite end of the couch to Ginny's right. "I didn't even hear you leave the room; I thought you were finally getting some sleep."
"Wishful thinking, my friend" groaned Ginny as she leaned her head on the back of the couch, still watching the fire crackle.
The two girls sat in silence as the seconds ticked by loudly on the large clock that sat in the center of the fireplace mantle. Ever since the girls had returned to Hogwarts, neither had been sleeping well. Hermione knew it was hard for Ginny to be back in the place where she had been brutally mistreated the year before, the place her brother died. For Hermione, sleep had been hard to come by since her encounter with Bellatrix Lestrange the previous spring.
As such, this was not the first time that Hermione and had accidentally met Ginny in the middle of the night only to sit in these same places, her sitting quietly, staring and Hermione pretending to read one of her many books.
"Do you want to talk about it," Hermione broke the heavy silence that always fell over the pair at this hour.
"Do you?" Ginny snapped back, not allowing her eyes to stray from the depths of the roaring fire in the grate.
"Fair enough," Hermione whispered. Ginny was right; she did not want to speak about why she was spending another night awake in the common room.
Silence settled back over the couch, building a barrier between the two that Hermione imagined she could reach out and touch. 'Maybe I should have stayed upstairs,' she thought as she turned a page in her book, not remembering a single thing she had read on the previous page.
After a few minutes of continuing in this fashion Hermione heard Ginny shuffle around in her spot on the couch, so she glanced to her left and suddenly made eye contact with her younger friend. Hermione hadn't noticed before, but her eyes were red-rimmed and her forehead crinkled into deep lines that made her look much older than her seventeen years.
"I think I need to talk about it," Ginny whispered so Hermione could barely hear her.
"OK," Hermione said, not wanting to push too hard and scare her off. At this moment Ginny reminded her of a doe ready to dart away from her again at the sign of any danger. Ginny had never before offered to speak about her sleeping problems, and Hermione did not want to deprive her of the opportunity to get some of her burden off of her shoulders.
"I feel like I'm going crazy…" Ginny started slowly. Hermione just nodded, trying to keep her face neutral in a way that would encourage Ginny to continue.
"Most of the time during the day, I'm fine. I don't think about everything that happened in this castle, but then at night... or when a pass the corridor where Fred died, or the Carrow's old Muggle Studies classroom I feel like I am back there. When I try to sleep all that shit is right there ready to play on the inside of my eyelids all night long." Ginny said all of this quickly, without a breath, like it has cost her a great deal to get that out.
Hermione looked at her friend as she dropped her eyes to her clenched hands. "You're not going crazy, Ginny," Hermione said softly.
At her words Ginny's head whipped up, her eyes locking with Hermione's. "I can't get away from it, I'm so fucking mad, so bloody sad I can't stand it," she whispered a single tear rolling down her cheek, catching the light of the fire as it fell.
"I wish I knew how to help you, in a more concrete way, but I am mad too. I have no solution. None at all." Hermione explained trying to keep a wobble from making its way into her voice. "Look at me, sitting here talking to you at three in the morning."
Ginny let out a watery laugh, "thank you, Hermione."
"For what?" Hermione demanded. "I have nothing here, I can tell you that it will be okay, but that's it. I am a mess, have been since Malfoy Manor, honestly, and I'm even more of a mess now that I'm away from that ridiculous brother of yours."
"You're one of the strongest people I know, Ginny admitted. So the fact that we are equally fucked makes me feel a little bit better.
"Nice, Ginny," Hermione laughed.
"And I miss Harry... I'm guessing just as much as you miss Ron, pathetic right?" groaned Ginny.
"Yes, I imagine they were helpful distractions over the summer, weren't they?"
Ginny nodded in agreement as a small smirk teased the right corner of her mouth for a moment before disappearing rather quickly. "I talked to Harry about what happened here last year, you know as a tradeoff for knowing everything you lot did last year."
Hermione nodded, she did know that Harry and Ginny had had an exchange of information at the beginning of the summer because Harry had cleared it with both she and Ron before talking to Ginny.
Ginny continued, "It was bad here, Hermione. I lost track of how many times I was a practice target for the Cruciatus curse in the Dark Arts Classroom. DADA was my last class today, so that's what's been on my mind tonight. I wish they would change the classroom."
Hermione paused before answering. She could not imagine having to go back to the drawing room at Malfoy Manor where she almost lost her sanity at the hand of Bellatrix Lestrange. She hadn't considered that Ginny had been through as much pain as she had, if not more.
"You're so strong, Gin." a look of surprise registered on Ginny's face as Hermione spoke. I only experienced the Cruciatus on one occasion. You had to be wary the whole time you were here last year. I don't know how you're doing this."
"I'm not doing this. I'm losing my mind!" Ginny snapped, frustration seeping out of every syllable she spoke. "I just want to move on."
"When I figure out how I'll let you know. I think sleepings a big part of it but if I knew how to get to sleep I would," Hermione said as she put her book on the arm of the chair and shuffled over to Ginny's side of the couch, completely invading her friend's personal space to lay her head on Ginny's shoulder. "In the meantime, we'll keep talking in the middle of the night and just make it through the year so we can get out of here and start our real lives."
Ginny dropped her head to the side, leaning into Hermione now. "I'm glad you came back with me," she professed.
Hermione surprised herself by replying, "I'm glad I came back too." Hermione had been missing Ron and Harry, especially Ron, since returning to Hogwarts without them last month and had considered marching herself to the headmistresses' office on multiple occasions to withdraw from school.
Hermione smiled to herself, realizing that the friendship that she had built, and was still building with Ginny was growing to be as important to her as her relationships with "her boys," as she affectionately calls them in her head.
"Want to try and sleep again, Ginny?" Hermione asked, once again breaking the silence.
"We should," Ginny replied. "Maybe we can get a quick nap in before breakfast."
Both girls rose slowly off the sunken cushions of the couch. After Hermione collected her books, she followed Ginny up the winding staircase to the seventh year dorm.