Partial – 4/5
The car rumbles quietly past identical, endless streets. It turns into one that is not endless, one which has a house with an angel on the mailbox with a grassy children's park at the end. The street is circular and windy, with many bends before the park is crossed and the angel reached.
He drives straight and is slowly slowing down when he breaks the silence. 'We're being ridiculous.' The breath comes out like a sigh and the sigh sounds like exhaustion.
Hermione the Lonely and Hermione the Tired cause her to sigh with him in exactly the same way. 'Completely,' she agrees. After the first bend, Hermione the Memory Worker reluctantly lets her see the lost memories and as they filter back in all their unwanted gore, she chokes back a sob
'We said "them."'
'Yeah.'
"Fred died.'
'Yeah.'
Their voices are toneless. The air is faintly oppressive. Hermione the Memory Worker recites tome after tome of suppressed memories from the restricted section in a strangled voice as if she herself can hardly believe she recorded something so horrific. Now she knows everything and the faces are not a blur or the names erased. She can see the dead lying on the table, the survivors crying, George kneeling at Fred's head with silent tears running down his face and her arms around the sobbing Ginny who both reaches out and pulls away from her family, and her best friends, one twin dead and the other left behind. There is a lump forming in her throat. It hurts. Hermione the Warrior yells that it is weak to cry. Do not cry, she commands, you shall not cry. So she swallows, but that does nothing and she feels as if she is choking. Her breathing is laboured. The car is so slow and yet suddenly excessively fast. The bends make her nauseous.
The car is coming up to the house with the angel on the mailbox. It seems to sigh. She sighs too and her vision clouds and hazes over. There is something wrong. Her cheeks feel strange. Hermione the Observational pats them, wondering what has happened.
Why are they wet?
Hermione the Bouncer, the velvet rope and the door are all knocked over and out by a rampage of Hermiones that is too violent and the unionised onslaught too foreign for the boundaries to hold back. They can vaguely hear Oliver calling out to her as the tears drop off her chin and she begins to hyperventilate. The car passes the mailbox with the angel on it and screeches to a skidding halt alongside the park at the end. He runs around and opens the door and all the Hermiones fall out in a flurry of coats , completely rampant in the state of perpetual catastrophe that sends the alarms blazing Gryffindor red and all Hermiones huddled and screaming into the same dark corner that Hermione the Suicidal gave up on life.
'Breathe, Hermione,' he tells her as he crouches down at her level, holds onto her arms. How can she breathe? Since the war, there has been no breathing and no grieving and everyone relying on her too much so that she has literally cracked under the pressure. 'Come on, you can do it.' She is surprised to hear real, strong concern in his worried voice. She is so used to toneless, distant voices of those left behind, or screams, or shouts, or absolute, deafening silence.
She tries to breathe on the green, sludgy ground of the park, tries to stop. All Hermiones fail and she collapses, so that he is holding her too thin, not perfect after all, broken and partial everything in his arms. He instinctively pulls her to his barrelled chest and she drenches his shirt, sobbing uncontrollably the very way she should have from the start instead of keeping it dangerously pent up, even when it started to break her apart beyond immediate, self-sufficient repair. Oliver coos and whispers and pats her back and slowly the tsunami falls down and washes away in a flood of raw emotion and anger that Hermione the Warrior says she should not feel and certainly not show.
The partial Hermiones flood out in the tidal wave, incapable of staying in the not so dark, flooded and wet corner any longer. They fizz out of existence like the froth of an ocean. All that is left is the crying of salty tears of the hysterical Hermione Granger and her scarred hands clutching the folds of a black coat worn by Oliver Wood.
-x-x-x-
Children stop to stare at the strange scene by the roadside, with two oblivious young adults leaning against a hazardously parked dark blue car, sitting in dirt. The woman, younger and thin with bushy curls, has her face in the older man's broad shoulder. He has turned his head, seems to be whispering in her ear that is lost somewhere in the brown mane, and the children find this incredibly interesting.
The scene seems to have stopped. A soccer ball rests in a twelve-year-old's hands, forgotten as he studies them with his head cocked to the side, bumps, cuts and scrapes on his arms and legs. His mother calls him over and reprimands him on politeness. It is rude to stare.
But the child refuses, simply noting he was not ogling, but studying. Does she not want him to grow up empathetic? She smiles, says that yes, partially, though some people may take it the wrong way. Look after women. She glances at the two on the roadside. Like that. He is doing alright. The boy nods, returns to his friends and kicks the ball high.
The man with the brown hair, brown eyes and woman in his arms begins to rock her gently. He whispers words. Some are what he thinks she wants; others are what he knows she needs.
Because his mother said the same thing.
-x-x-x-
It is just Hermione who stares blankly up at the afternoon sky with dry eyes, neither watching rain fall nor feeling it prick her skin like hundred, continuous needles. She does not smell Oliver's cologne or the rain or mud or recently mowed grass. Oliver's words of practicality about the rain go unheeded. Her mind is… her mind is…
Silent.
Quiet.
Empty.
This is what she is aware of.
It seems to extraordinarily strange to her. No one is screaming or crying or advising. It is surreal.
And when she finally accepts this fact, she can hear Oliver speaking next to her. She turns her head on the door. 'It's raining,' he says simply. She meets his eyes for a second. They are darker than hers.
'Yes, it is.' She turns away, looks up at the grey, overcast sky. And then, slowly but surely, she can feel the humid tension that has built up thick within the air, taste the rain on her tongue as she runs it quickly over her lips, hear the puddles as each new drop joins the others with a ripple and smell the mown grass and cologne. Hermione turns back to him.
It is that same, undefinable expression. 'What?'
He blinks then asks, 'Are you okay?'
Hermione cracks a wry, bitter grin. 'Not really.'
'Oh.'
'But I'm better.'
'That's good.'
She nods. But something strikes her as she moves her fingers in her coat pocket, feels paper through her leather gloves and hears it crackle as she clenches it. 'The list!' she cries, 'We're awfully late.'
Oliver laughs at that. 'The list was absolute bollocks from the start,' he tells her. 'I reckon it was just a ploy to stop us from making anymore mischief.'
She cracks a tiny smile. 'We were rather difficult.' Hermione stands up against the car.
He follows her up and leans against the front door. Oliver brushes down his coat and rubs the back of his neck, saying, 'You're not a mind-wasted bitch, Hermione.'
'And you, Oliver, are probably not a coward,' she agrees then pauses to look up at him. 'I'm sorry about that.'
He nods. 'I am too.'
'And about the Quidditch…'
'It's okay. I was being a jerk.'
The mothers start to usher their children back to the car, muddy soccer balls and all. They watch them in silence, the rain falls harder.
Hermione continues to watch the park empty as he rubs his face and does up his coat, muttering, 'Today is really messed up.'
'Everything is.'
'How do you mean?'
She fingers her scarf. 'I'm a war hero. I'm famous in our world. Did you think I would be stronger?'
Again, he rubs the back of his neck. He admits, 'Yeah… I did, actually,' but his voice is not unkind and it does not hurt her how it might have.
'They all do. Since I've found that I'm not, I don't know who I am…' Hermione swallows and puts her head in her hands. Her mother's words come back to her. 'This stranger is repulsive.'
Oliver immediately puts his arm around her again. 'You're not repulsive at all,' he comforts.
'She is,' Hermione cries, 'I… I know what I am, but I don't know who I am. I seem to be so many things at once, all the time. I can't tell who are me, who are not and who are only temporarily me. There's almost thirty parts scrambling around inside.'
He rubs her back, shakes her shoulders lightly. 'Everyone's like that.'
'N-not like this.' Her hair brushes his coat as she vigorously shakes her head.
'Maybe not so many, but they are.' He laughs shortly. 'I mean, obviously, after what our generation has been through we're expected to have rather erratic personality changes.'
'Oliver…'
He interrupts her. 'We are all partial; so many different bits to make a whole. People have so many sides to their personality. There are so many bits running around inside of us that sometimes it's hard to be "strong." It's just how humans are, Hermione.' She doesn't respond, still with her hands covering her face. He nudges her. 'It's okay to be partial,' he murmurs.
The rain slows and returns to sensationalising skin with needle pinpricks and soft, whispering flicks and trickles. Slowly, Hermione removes her wet leather gloved hands from her face and swallows. Her voice is small. 'Really?'
'Really.'
She smiles for real this time, small and deep like they have always been for her, and Oliver grins and pulls his beanie back further down.
His ears stick out tremendously and Hermione laughs.
Oliver drives her home.
-x-x-x-
Around three-thirty, the guests start to depart with gratifications flying out of their mouths and promises to stay in touch. Hermione stands with her parents, not their daughter, not a host, not perfect after all, just Hermione Granger waving and embracing and kissing off Friend Of the Family, Dentistry Colleague, Uncle, Aunt, Cousin, Grandparent, Second Cousin, Rover the Labrador, each telling her what she needs to know.
But she does not hurt inside at all.
She genuinely smiles.
And Hermione is still smiling when the Wood family are filing out the door. It falters suddenly because she realises there is no possible way for her to see him again and a part of her, it does not matter which, cannot bear the thought.
Mrs. Granger laughs, turns to her and tugs on her arm. 'Hermione, dear, this is Jean.'
Jean smirks wickedly, winks and nods subtly to Oliver who is grinning obliviously beside her, beanie and all. Hermione realises that she knows and she gets an idea. She smooths her features and says, 'We've met, Mum.'
'Oh,' says her mother, deflating slightly. 'I was simply hoping you'd catch up with her sometime with this nice young lady, very polite and thoughtful.'
The older Woods look at her as if she is crazy and Mr. Granger luckily saves them unknowingly from an awkward silence. 'I hope you enjoyed the lunch.'
Mrs. Wood smiles pleasantly, her voice carrying a laugh. 'Oh, yes. It was very entertaining.'
The small talk ends. The women wave to each other, the men shake hands and kiss the women's cheeks. 'Oh, I have someone for you to meet, Jean,' Hermione tells her when they get a chance.
Jean cocks her head to the side, purses her lips and twinkles her eyes. 'Sure,' she agrees. 'I'll see you around.'
Oliver and Hermione hesitate for only a moment. Then he leans forward, a hand lightly on her shoulder, and he kisses not her cheek but her temple, managing to catch the corner of her left eye. His lips are warm and Hermione feels herself flush, stop breathing and start shaking all at the same time from the slight stubble that grazes her skin. She steps forward presses her body closer to him. An accidental brush of jeans that makes him grin broadly.
Her feeling of dread vanishes. She doesn't know when or how but she feels promised. His eyes shine and her own dance and he goes out the door with a flourish of black coat.
Look at me, she thinks, please look back.
He does and he grins and turns the corner away from her sight but not her mind.
And when Hermione's mother gives up trying to lecture her on her 'irrational excuses' for the outburst at the dining table three hours prior, Hermione hardly notices, still grinning like a fool. She flies to her bedroom, walking more confidently than she had in years, and stares at her glowing face in the mirror.
Then she smiles.
And parts of her fit back together.
-x-x-x-
-AA-