Binns was just as boring as always, and with her constant lack of sleep it was getting harder and harder to stay awake in his classes.
Her eyes fluttered close, the grip on her pen loosened…
She opened her eyes wide, drew in breath and tried to shake herself a little to wake up more and sit straighter.
"The effect of the goblin war of wand-" What? That couldn't be right, she needed to concentrate. He must have meant one, not wand. One what though.
What year was he talking about? Her mind was fussy and she knew she would drift. Unable to stop it she could only feel herself slump down on the desk as the dreams took her again.
She made a mistake in mentioning his name. The wards fell and they could hear movement out in the forest.
The snatchers were here
"Run."
She needed to get away, go faster, be quicker, be better, not a step out of place, not a moment not to concentrate on her steps, on the people in pursuit, there was no time for any of this, no mistakes– her step was a little to the side and she felt it twist.
It didn't matter, pain was not an option she could afford right now.
They were too close, she had to slow them down! Save Harry, save Ron. "Reducto!" Moss and bark exploded behind her, but no yell of pain and the sound of her pursuer didn't change.
They were going to catch them. There was no doubt left, she had failed them, failed Harry, failed the world.
"Sorry Harry" she threw a spell in his face and was immediately accosted from behind by strong arms. The feeling of being trapped and hopeless.
Still trapped, but now inside, different people. Harry's face was unrecognizable because of her.
"I don't know father"
"Look closely, Draco. We can't call the Dark Lord and be mistaken again."
No room for mistakes, never any room for mistakes.
"We will get her to talk."
This time the arms weren't holding her from behind, but from above. The ground at her back, one arm and her body trapped by being sat on, the other by one hand holding her down, and a knife carving her flesh.
She screamed and screamed and screamed, her arm burning as Bellatrix carved something into her arm.
"Hermione!"
Was the voice of Harry and Ron real, or just a dream? She wondered as she woke to find herself sprawled out in a similar manner to how she had been in her dream.
The concerned and puzzled looks of people in Hogwarts uniforms was all that met her, none of them familiar, none of them her friends. When did she get here?
Her arm still burned and she looked at it as her breathing seemed to steady. The blood slowly seeping out of the wound snapped her into a state of being alert again and she quickly sat up and hugged her arm close, hoping it wouldn't be noticed. That the blood couldn't be seen. Where was Harry and Ron? How did she lose them?
"I'm fine." She said to her onlookers, the strangers. Mind still not connecting who they were, but knowing they could not be told what had just happened. She wasn't safe, she hadn't been since those wards went down.
She sat down at the desk again, bending over to hide her arms, one slowly bled, and the other was busy trying to perform spells to vanish the blood. Tears were swallowed and hidden as she tried to regain her composure. Everyone was still either openly staring at her, or sneaking her glances when they thought she wasn't looking.
It wasn't working, she would need a trip to the nurse. She shook her head– not safe –the toilet then.
As soon as the class let out, she ran to get to the second floor bathroom, hoping Myrtle was still away in a bend of a tube somewhere.
She went into a stall, still not taking a risk that someone could walk in, even though she knew no one ever walked in her, no one except her.
The spells didn't seem to work on making it stop, or removing the blood completely. Toilet paper went flying everywhere as she pulled at it, desperate to make the blood stop, desperate to make it soak up.
She didn't notice her tears had started flowing until they started to drip on her now open wound, stinging with their saltiness. Nothing to do, it wouldn't stop, it would never stop. She could never escape this scar, her past, what had happened that night.
Abandoned. That's what she had done, she had abandoned her best friends to an unknown fate, selfishly porting herself into another time where instead of dealing with problems, instead of helping with the war, instead of stopping everyone from dying she was hiding in the bathroom.
She fell down on the soaked floor, crying. The irony wasn't lost on her, this is how it all started. Crying on the bathroom floor, hiding away from her problems to escape everything instead of being brave.
They were all right, she no longer had any reason to be a Gryffindor. The hat was wrong, she had changed, she was no longer brave or chivalrous. Maybe her determination to stay away from all of her issues could be counted a gryffindor trait, but it wasn't strength.
Stay invisible, stay under the radar, keep the timeline, that's what she had told herself she needed to do. Why though? What if all of her efforts to preserve the timeline would result in them ending up in the same space, but instead of being a trio that could count on each other, they would just be them. Alone, confused and about to die.
Harry or Ron would have known what to do, they wouldn't fall apart like she was now. They were her strength. But, unlike in her first year at Hogwarts, they were not going to come through those doors to save her.
She was alone, and she owed them. Gathering the little strength she had, she made another more conscious effort into the spells she cast on her hand.
It helped a little, enough that she could use the toilet paper she had gotten all over herself to soak it up and then make a temporary bandage with some transfiguration. Hopefully, it would keep her secret until classes were over for the day.
The next class was another with Rosier next to her. Sitting down next to him, she hoped she would be able to hide it from him. He was the last one she needed to know about this.
The class started normal enough, Rosier eyeing her more than the lessons on the blackboard but still managing to solve everything easily.
She had a temporary reprieve from the blood soaking her sleeve, but the pain was getting more and more intense. She would constantly close her eyes to try and stay in control, pain was not an option right now. It was just this class and then she could retreat to the library to research ways to get rid of the pain and bleeding. Or she could get back to her dorm and feign sleep and hide in her bed. She just had to hide the pain a little longer.
But her pain was obvious to everyone.
Evan was mad, who had laid a hand on her when he had made it abundantly clear that she was his? This would not do. He had been watching her the entire class, noticing how the pain seemed to increase instead of lessen. Whatever had happened, it must be dark magic at hand, or she wouldn't start hurting more.
"Who hurt you?" He whispered so as not to arouse attention from anyone else as he sat up straight.
"Stop asking me that," she whimpered. Eyes fluttering close and her fram bending over more in pain. He ignored the fact that her sentence made it seem like he had asked this question before when this was the first time he had spoken to her today.
"Tell me so I can hurt them," he leaned closer, trying to gauge her reactions to his questions hoping she would slip while she was in pain.
"Since when are you the noble knight?" She finished the sentence with a gasp of pain and stopped taking notes and used one hand to hold the other.
"Never," he responded. "I've told them that you aren't to be touched until I am done with you."
"Seems noble for a slytherin." He ignored her feeble attempt at a joke or misdirection, whatever it was he wasn't interested in it.
"Tell me who it is."
She didn't respond. A single tear ran down her cheek as she continued to clutch her arm in pain. He could see the blood staining her sleeve around where she was clutching. The arm with 'Mudblood' carved in it.
He didn't stop watching her the rest of the class, trying to coax her into letting him know who it was, but also careful since she was in so much pain. When class was over he spelled all their belongings in their respective bags and picked them both up before telling her, "Follow me."
No movement at first, but with a little more forceful, "come," she moved after him.
He led her to an abandoned classroom and closed the door. Her knees hit the floor as she doubled over in pain again.
"Show me."
She shook her head and motioned to the door. He sighed and locked the door, put up privacy spells and then motioned again, "now. Show me."
Instead of showing him, she weekly lifted her arm and cast some more spells, the last of them being to reveal if there was anyone else in the room. Curiously, it wasn't just humans she checked for.
As she started taking off her robes he relaxed, she was trusting him enough to show him it seemed.
At last she pulled up her shirt sleeve, revealing the bloody 'Mudblood' scar. He kneeled down in front of her, taking her arm and studying the wounds. Her breathing had quickened and had the situation been less serious he would have quipped about that. How her pulse seemed to race at his mere touch.
He took out his wand and she seemed to regret letting him see it because she started to squirm and tried to get her hand back.
"Trust me," he squeezed her wrist slightly to calm her down.
"I can't trust you."
"You have to trust somebody sometime. Even if it's just with fixing a wound." He looked up into those warm chocolate eyes that were full of pain. "Is there anyone else you can trust?"
Hesitant he waited for her approval before doing anything. A slight nod was all the confirmation he would get and he started to spell her wound. He could feel her slowly relaxing as the spells started to work.
After he was done he rummaged his pockets for something to clean of the leftover blood. It felt surreal that she had trusted him with this.
"Cursed wounds never heal," Evan remarked and handed her a handkerchief. She looked at it, and him, suspiciously. He wasn't about to tell her how he knew that, or how he knew how to fix it. Why would he tell her his secrets when she wouldn't tell him his.
"You are fine with my blood on your handkerchief?"
He scoffed.
She made a gesture to throw it back to him, "I thought so."
"I gave you Yaxley's."
She hesitated to clean the wound and he sighed and took the handkerchief back. Instead of holding around her arm, he cradled it with his as he used his other to clean off the blood.
"Won't Yaxley be mad?"
"Does it matter to you?"
"I-" Her face scrunched up as she thought about that. It seemed she had calmed down after all that and wasn't about to run away from him or start hexing him.
Strange how he seemed to have a calming effect on her when he also annoyed her so much.
"I guess I don't care," she answered at last, looking up into his eyes finally being able to focus on something other than pain. His eyes were so impossibly green, like freshly cut grass. It wasn't fair how beautiful this man was, how charming someone so evil could be. He was evil, wasn't he? Sometimes she had to wonder, here he was cleaning off the blood on her cursed wound without asking for anything.
"Now, who gave you this scar?"
Ah, guess it was too good to be true. He was a Slytherin, she was stupid to think she would get kindness without strings attached.
"I'm not telli-"
"You owe me," he cut her off, tickling her with the silk handkerchief he was still cleaning off her blood with.
All the blood was gone, so why was he still doing that, she wondered before she caught his smirk and understood. He was just trying to rile her up, get a reaction or maybe even charm her into telling him.
"I don't owe you anything," she said as she withdrew her hand from him. It was a relief to her that he didn't do anything to stop her, his hand didn't even clench around hers for a second.
"Don't tell me a 'True Gryffindor' like yourself is not going to repay the favor."
She sighed, having a hard time resisting the urge to give him something in return for this. It was a relief to not be in pain, to not have to hide the blood anymore. To relax for a second.
"Why do you want to know?"
"Curiosity."
She searched his face for signs of him lying, but didn't see anything. Breathing deeply in and out she decided a little bit of truth couldn't hurt. "It was a woman that did this to me, that's all I am telling you now."
She looked up into his eyes as the image of Bellatrix was fresh in her mind and saw him smirk. The slight push at her brain told her she had made a grave mistake, he was a legilimens and had seen the image of Bellatrix in there.
She made a mistake, again. But this time it wasn't the wards around herself she had mistakenly let down, it was the wall around her mind. Rosier had found a way in, but this time there was nowhere to run, she was already caught in his gaze.
Authors Note: Did you miss me?
Can I just say, I am SO SORRY for promising to finish all my stories here then leaving without a trace. Some people worried about me, others, like me, left the world of fanfiction behind around the same time.
For some reason I felt like reading up on all my stories and I found myself sad that they weren't finished, and wondered about their journey. Which is funny because I do know how some of these will end, but I still want to know everything in between. I am not promising to finish or complete all of them, btu for now some will be updated. Thankfully, I have extensive notes and thoughts written down and they were all saved on google documents so they were never lost between updating or changing computers. This story in particular felt like it needed to be told, and I was inspired enough to write this chapter and make a lot more notes and sentences between these two. In theory, I have another 15 chapters written.
There will be a lot more SPaG (spelling and grammar) mistakes from now on without my editing programs or any beta's, so excuse that xD
Lastly, I want to say thank you to all my lovely reviewers who made me realize there was other people than me that wanted this story to be finished:
angel897, Penguin's Flight, Smithback, ClaireBergstrom, Arah, mizgardenia21, Silver Orbed Lioness, LyrebirdSong, Jj, wutzit2yah, sunlitglass, jay, Marine76, LoganLiet
Thank you. You are all amazing, and you made updating worth it.
Xx