"
I think we deserve
a soft epilogue, my love.
We are good people
and we've suffered enough.
"
— SEVENTY YEARS OF SLEEP # 4. NIKKA URSULA
The bite on her leg itches often and it's all she can do not to scratch it till it bleeds.
Remus had sealed the wound with powdered silver and dittany (it's the only way to stop the bleeding he'd told her) and she had laughed through the pain because the irony was too much.
Hermione half-wishes the wolf had bitten through artery and sinew and bone and left her unfixable, destined to bleed out before he ever found her. It would have been easier that way, a clean-cut end to her suffering that she wouldn't be responsible for.
Instead she finds herself being torn apart every full moon, body stretching and snapping into place, a forest of fur sprouting from her skin. She digs deep gouges into the earth and howls, long and low. They run, she and Remus, flank to flank and paws barely grazing the grass as they glide shadow-silent through the night.
They hunt and race and wrestle like pups, and it's the most alive Hermione has felt since the whole damn war started. There's no complication to her wolf-mind, no room for thought other than the here and now. Sometimes she wishes she could stay in this form forever.
They wake up miles apart or meters but always with the same dawning sobriety. Today isn't any different, and she comes to consciousness in her newly human body feeling the prickle of pine needles digging into her back.
Fog is heavy and thick on the hills when they make their way back to the burrow in silence. She's come to hate that place and all it represents. Empty rooms and lingering ghosts. She can barely recall a time when it was a place of love and laughter and safety. Loss has carved out a place between her ribs and fogged over her memory.
It's not spoken about or even acknowledged really but when she stays in Remus's room that night because her own is too claustrophobic she fits into his arms like she's done this a thousand times.
her long legs are clumsy and unpractised and she stumbles over tree roots and snaps twigs
she knows she is the prey and he is the predator and she can feel warm breath the backs of her calves each time she slows just a little too much
under wolfsbane remus had been slow and loping and licked her fingers and she had never understood why he was so wary of his wolf-self but now she does, because so few werewolves opt into taking the potion and the one chasing her is blue-grey and scarred and for a heartbeat before this chase started she saw the hunger in his eyes
In her nightmares she's always running and she wakes up sweaty and shaking more often than not, but Remus only pulls her closer and buries his face in her hair and he understands, and she falls asleep again into dreams where she's no longer human at all.
Harry would have said something when they came downstairs together the next morning but he's not here, he hasn't been here for a while, and Hermione struggles not to resent his absence. So she doesn't think on it. Instead she focuses on the feel of Remus's hand in hers, a warm anchor to a world she wishes she were no longer a part of, and ignores the prickle of eyes on her at breakfast.
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