Title taken from a work by Edgar Allan Poe.
The first thing Hermione does when she gets back is shower. She scrubs at her skin till it's red and raw and stinging under the scalding spray of water, and even then she can't erase the cling of dark magic, the aura of uneasiness.
When she goes to bed that night there's the sensation of thick sludge filling up her lungs, clogging her veins. She doesn't sleep.
The next day is exhausting and everyone is asking her if she's okay and all she can do is nod mutely and bring a spoon of oatmeal to her mouth. Harry's too-green eyes meet hers from across the table and suddenly she can barely look at him. Her chair screeches loud on the linoleum when she leaves.
She doesn't sleep that night either.
When she finally goes out on the roof in the early hours of the morning, she finds to her disappointment that she's not alone.
"Tea?" Remus asks, holding out the thermos, and she takes it without a word. They sit together and watch the sun rise. She finds the symmetry strangely funny, and when she laughs he looks at her, startled.
"You haven't done that in a while," is his cautious comment.
"I thought maybe I forgot how," She admits quietly. They're the first words she's spoken in the past day, and the look of relief on his face is worth it.
In the next week she makes a little more effort to talk, to smile when spoken to. Every so often she'll search out Remus for reassurance and he'll give her a tiny nod, a half-quirk of his lips.
Sunrise on the roof turns into a habit. He starts bringing a second thermos and no longer asks her how she takes her tea.
Remus doesn't tell her stories about the Marauders anymore—something in him died after Sirius did. Hermione wonders if he'll ever get that piece of him back, but knows that she has wounds of her own that won't close easy. He tries to make her laugh in other ways, though, and a stray thought wanders into her mind one morning. She dismisses it quickly but it stays sticky and strung across her consciousness like caramel.
She doesn't act on it, not immediately. They sit together for many mornings, and the shadow that had been stretching its claws around her heart slowly loosens its grasp. Harry leaves the burrow for a while. The season changes. Leaves begin to flake and crackle underfoot.
Early autumn chills the air the morning she comes outside with a blanket wrapped around her small form and a worn dog-eared book tucked under her arm. Remus is already there, and he smiles gratefully when she drapes one half of her blanket to cover him as well. It forces them to sit close and she's sure he can hear the flutter of her heartbeat.
"I thought maybe I could read something, if that's okay," She says tentatively after she's settled. He gives her a curious glance, but nods. She clears her throat, suddenly anxious, cracking the book open for the first time since she had taken it from her mother's shelf the night she left.
She allows the words to start slow, soft, rolling off her tongue like droplets of honey. As they pick up something uncurls inside of her, stretching and blinking open sleepy eyes with interest as she speaks of wild things, soft plums in summertime, the songbird trapped in the cradle of her ribcage. She lets the words carry her like a ship at sea and for the first time since they were forced into hiding she's content.
He steals the poetry from her breath with soft lips and she closes her eyes into the kiss, still lost in the limbo of her storytelling. A hand gentle on her waist is all it takes for her to remember who she is, who they are, what they're doing. He doesn't stop kissing her but he doesn't pull her closer, and she knows he's leaving it up to her to decide.
She'd made her choice a while ago.
His scars are stark silver against his skin and she traces each one with the gentlest of touches, finding that she likes the way he shivers slightly against her. He finds the spot on her neck that makes her gasp a little too loudly and she stifles the noise against his chest, through which she can feel the rumble of his laughter.
Hermione finds she likes the way the sunrise sets the stage with a pink-yellow glow, the way the easy breeze turns from chill to lukewarm in a matter of minutes. She likes the small sighs Remus lets escape as she kisses the line of his jaw, his throat, his shoulder. She's giddy and giggling when he flips them so her back is pressed to the blanket she's thankful she brought.
It's not till after when they're lying sated and sleepy on the spread blanket that she realizes this is the first time she's been really and truly content in longer than she can remember. She curls into him and smiles.
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