Remains of the day
They threaded through the dense maze of London, through the long streets and tiny lanes, while the smoky sky rained on them, leaving them cold. Cold.
The masses of humanity huddled from one place to another, sighting each other, yet lost in a sea of faces in the inhuman world. There was a variety of emotions, fear, anger, hatred, pain. But who cares about them anyway? They were just the people walking next to you, or having lunch at the same restaurant. Why would anyone care?
But no one would have forgotten her face. Fire burned within her and her green eyes were aglow. She had been wronged, surely. But no one cared, after all.
The two people finally reached their destination. Or rather, a grey mass of rubble, where there had once been a homestead, but now, a ruin.
Screaming, she fell upon the remains, trying to search for what she had lost. Her family. Her home. Her memories.
They all had taken it away from her, just because she dared to oppose them. Because she stood tall and proud, as one of their strongest adversaries, the one who would not back down.
She tried to find the remains of her loved ones, blood streaming down her hands, as the stones and sharp wood splints cut into her hands. He tried to stop her.
No. She wouldn't.
Here and there she finds pieces of what were there. A bit of china, probably from her mother's prized collection. A tiny glass eye, maybe from one of her childhood playmates.
A book, smelling of her father's touch.
She would find them.
Her hands find something, wedged between two stones. She stares at it, remembering an old man, who smelled of the country, of green grasses and wooden trees. Of summers spent frolicking in the arms of nature, among the sweet-scented apple trees, and the cinnamon.
Her grandfather's old white hat, faded, torn around the edges, yet intact.
It was once a pure, pristine white but that was long ago, hidden somewhere in the recesses of her memory. Her life.
Suddenly, she realizes, she knows, that they could not destroy anything. Maybe her physical, material memories, but not who she was, or what she would become.
She gets up, a new resolve in her heart. She glimpses at the ruins lying in front of her.
She will not let the broken shards of her past prick her feet, like pieces of green-sea glass, along a distant sandy shore.
She will take revenge.
She holds his hand, and leads him away from what has-been. To lead him into the future.
"Hold on, Hermione. Be strong." he whispers and kisses her forehead.
"I will be. I have found what I was looking for."