. . . Chapter 7
. . . Nightmares and Firewhiskey . . .
She sat up, in the middle of a clearing full of fallen, vividly colored leaves. She was near some water and to her right was a steep wooded slope - she had been here before for something. . . The sky above was light pink like the dawn. She stood up and the crunch of the fall leaves under her feet unnerved her. With every step she looked behind her to make sure no one was behind her. Her stomach sank with recognition - where Ron had left her . . .
Whispers flew in with the wind and it started to rain musically on the leaves. She reached for her wand to cast a charm, Impervius was a necessity, but she realized that she didn't have it on her. Maybe it was in her beaded bag...it was gone too. She was unarmed. She tried to call out for Ron and Harry but her voice caught in her throat, she was silent.
A rumbling growl sounded from behind her.
"Oh, pretty is all alone. No ginger, no Potter to protect her. We'll finally get our turns Scabior!"
Greyback was running at her full speed ahead when she turned around to his voice and he pounced on her, his teeth grew huge in her view and he ripped her shirt off of her with his massive, hairy hands. She was trying to scream but couldn't make a sound. He roughly grabbed her hair and started pulling her toward the woods -
Hermione sat up, drenched in sweat, with her heart pounding, shaking, and grabbed her wand from the small side table with a flourish. She frantically lit up the room with a wordless spell and looked around. Ginny's room. Ginny breathed lightly in the moonlight under her white comforter. Her hair was spread out like a flame on the pillow. Trembling, Hermione wiped the beaded sweat off of her face and collar with a trembling hand and swung her feet over the edge of the bed unsteadily. What was today? It was past midnight and so now it was . . .Tuesday, well, Tuesday morning.
Her feet hit the threadbare floral rug on the wood floor and she wiped her eyes roughly and moved silently from the room. Walking down the stairs carefully, Hermione realized she had to calm down and have a cup of tea or a glass of water or something. As Hermione got closer to the kitchen, she heard a muffled noise in the living room. Her heart started racing - it had to be about two in the morning.
She let her wand go dark and peeked around the wall with her heart beating a panicked tattoo against her ribs. George stumbled and walked around in disjointed circles in the living room. She stepped back into the hall and put her back against the wall and let out a breath to slow her mind. She tugged her tank top down to cover the sliver of skin at her hips and her shorts down a little too to make them longer. She didn't want to surprise or scare him or anything and so decided it was best announce her presence.
She coughed and waited a second before she walked into the living room.
"Hermy...what's...what're you doin' awake?" George grinned at her and staggered toward her.
"Just coming down for some water," Hermione said. Hermy? Really? Have I sunk from 'Mione to Hermy, she wondered as she scowled.
"YouwantsomeFirewhisssey?" he slurred, offering her his mostly empty bottle.
"No," she said uneasily, backing away from the overpowering and acrid smell of the alcohol. "Just some water and maybe a little snack, you want something?" She started toward the kitchen. The back of her neck tingled uncomfortably: paranoia at turning her back to anyone was an unfortunate door prize from the last year.
"No. You sit with me or no . . . I'll sit with you. . .You snacks and I'll bring drink," George picked up the bottle and noisily followed Hermione into the kitchen and sat at the long table. "So, Hermy? You and Ronnie, eh?"
She didn't turn around as she filled the tea kettle with water, using her wrist to swirl the water around the base of the kettle. "Hm," she responded. Good, she thought to herself, non committal so Ron wouldn't get teased but George could interpret that however he saw fit.
"Tats...that's good. He'll need a good snog - loosen him up. You too, Hermy," George managed to get out a fairly coherent set of sentences.
"Hey!" She didn't like where this conversation was headed, whether a grieving brother was drunk or not, and shot him a withering look over her shoulder.
"Touchy touchy, Hermy. Not gonna ask me how I'm doing? How's the shop? Pester me relentlessly like ereone else?"
She put the kettle on and turned to face him, giving him a sad smile. "No, Georgie. I think I can pretty well guess how you're doing. I'm making extra tea for you."
"Daww that's sweet. Do you...Do you know what I'm working on in tha shop?" George asked and looked up at her. "Aw you'll never guess it - Harry Potter Glasses. Picture it, yeah? You buy the glasses, when you put them on then everyone looks like Harry Potter. Gonna be a best seller that is."
"George! That's horrid! How scary!" Horrifying images of women forcing significant others to wear the glasses in intimate situations, of everyone walking through Diagon Alley wearing Harry's glasses, of the number of ways the glasses could be misused shot through her brain in a split second.
"No no no, not like that," George answered, obviously sober enough to read facial expressions of abject horror. "Not just like Harry, can't have everyone looking as dull and boring as the Chosen One. No it'd be like...like you're your height and size but your face is just sorta like Harry's and you're wearing like his quidditch uniform! Brilliant!" George was talking excitedly. "We have a lissst of erething we want to try and this, this idea s'a winner."
She didn't want to upset him but she would have to have a talk with someone who could talk some reasoning into him tomorrow. It was absolutely ghoulish to think you could slip on a pair of glasses and be looking at Harry everywhere. "Brilliant it is," she lied through her teeth. Absently, she wondered if Harry and Ron would notice her lie. Probably so, after all these years in almost constant presense. She picked up one of the many of Mrs. Weasley's pastries on the counter and handed it to George. "Here," she commanded. "Eat this or you're going to lose your dinner."
"Bah, dinner was. . . Coming back is. . ." George stopped short when Hermione could tell he was about to actually discuss something important and took a swig, "but you're here and Harry's here. We taking in a new one every year or so. Harry. Fleur. You. Gonna be a thousand Weasleys in about two years. Gonna live here forever?"
The kettle started to whistle and she jumped to get it. She poured a cup for each of them but George made a face at his. Sitting here with George like this wasn't exactly what she had planned when she'd slunk down the stairs but now she couldn't very well leave him. And George's comment was still ringing in her ears. Was she going to live here forever? Should she be looking at somewhere else to live? Was it ok that she was here? Was she wearing her welcome thin?
"Back to the living room?" Hermione asked when she noticed him swaying ominously on the seat of his chair.
"Yess. Sofas not these chairs," George said as he stood up shakily.
Hermione set her tea down and reached out, helping George avoid obstacles like the door frame and the ottomans in the floor and got him safely to the biggest sofa in the room. She went back and grabbed her tea and came into the living room, sitting in the middle of the maroon love seat.
"S'all anyone can talk about you know? Fred," George met her eyes significantly. "And mum. . .she's makin' food all'la time. Bill's always around n' checkin up on me 'most every day. S'about all I can take. . . . So I went back to the apartment after dinner, yeah? Lees sleeping on our couch. S'just sad - should be using Freds room - s'a good room, you know? And then I see this botottle. Bottle," he stopped to wave the bottle around after he'd corrected his pronunciation. "n' I think. 'Yeah, tha's looking very friendly to me' and so then I think 'If I drink with Lee, he's gonna talk about Freds'so I Apparated here at like a couple hours ago and this good ole empty living room and I have been here ever since."
Hermione listened to him and hoped she was making a completely blank face, trying to tuck her feelings behind a mask. Her mind was reeling. George hadn't talked this much since before the battle. He hadn't said Fred's name yet to her knowledge. The only thing she could thing was to try to get him to go to sleep so that Mrs. Weasley didn't come down and find George like this. The last thing Mrs. Weasley needed was more heartache and worry after all of this.
She stood up off of the love seat and picked up a pillow and a blanket.
"George, lay down. Here, take this pillow," she said, stuffing it under his head before he could respond.
"But I'm na' done. I still have about a third of the bottle left to go." His words declined but he snuggled deeper into the cushions on the couch.
"Abeoagua," she whispered and pointed her wand at his bottle of firewhiskey, turning it into water. Hopefully he was drunk enough that the change wouldn't be noticeable. She watched with satisfaction when he drank it and didn't look up at her with an expression of betrayal. He lay back again on the pillow but didn't take the blanket.
Hermione sat back down on the loveseat.
"Those glasses?" George looked at her, well kind of all around her - his eyes were unfocused. "I gotta prototype." George pulled out a pair of glasses that looked just like Harry's and handed them to her. "Puttem on, Herm."
Herm. Hermy was worse, she decided. Hermione eyed the glasses skeptically and put them on only to appease George. She looked back at him but it was a taller, drunk Harry with a pronounced red twinge to his hair and freckles looking back at her and smiling. She laughed loudly.
"These are so crazy! What do I look like?" she asked rhetorically and jumped up and turned toward the mirror.
She checked her reflection, she was wearing Harry's quidditch robes, Harry had long brown hair and looked weirdly, awfully effeminate and much smaller. She laughed and admired herself. It wasn't as realistic as she had been worried it would be. She was done picturing all the horrible and completely inappropriate ways that these would be used. These weren't bad. She took them off and walked over to George.
"I like them, very clever charm," she complimented and saw his grin widen.
"Did Hermione Granger just call me clever? Imma remember that, Hermy," he yawned.
She went back to the love seat and laid on her side and sipped her tea carefully in the reclined position. If she did move somewhere else, where would she live? She couldn't live at her old house, not after what had happened there. The thought made her throat feel think and she reached down absently to scratch her fingernails over the slur on her arm. Harry was so at home here - he wouldn't want to leave would he? After a long lull of thought-filled silence, she looked back at George who was passed out, snuggling with his bottle of what was now water, mouth wide open at the ceiling. Hermione set her mug down. If he woke up, she didn't want to not be there in case he got sick. She got comfortable on the love seat and tried to go back to sleep.
After a few minutes of listening to the clock's light tick tock, Hermione fell into a light but graciously Greyback-free sleep.
