"In the night, when the wind dies and silence rules the place of glittering stone, I remember. And they all live again." - Glen Cook, Soldiers Live
The hotel door had a catch-and-release mechanism which kept it from slamming shut as Reid rather violently tried to yank it closed faster. Slamming doors has never solved problems before and it never will, but there is something immensely satisfying about slamming a door shut, the shocking volume of the sound drowning out the click of the lock and then the subsequent rattle of the walls around the frame. Spencer Reid was not a violent man, but he saw the most depraved and brutal consequences of violence nearly every day, and in the middle of a case such as this one where they were stuck in a discouraging hamster wheel of no progress despite the tireless investigation of the local cops and the BAU, slamming a door or two was a small simple way to relieve a bit of stress… something that was being denied to him by this damn door in this stupid hotel in this god-forsaken city.
Reid stripped off his bag and coat and paced restlessly around the room, trying to calm down after a frustrating, unproductive day after a string of increasingly frustrating, unproductive days. Usually Reid handled the emotions that came with this job with a slightly detached academic professionalism or a resigned weariness, but some days were just too much. Like today.
A part of him knew that Hotch had made the right call; sending the stressed-out team back to the hotel after three days of grueling, nonstop work. But the biggest part of him that was still flipping through files and studying crime scene photos was screaming for him to be back at the local police station working to find this unsub.
That smaller part of him observed that Hotch had also made the right call by not allowing the team to take home the case files to distract them from resting. Not that it matters when you have an eidetic memory, Reid thought cynically.
Reid accidentally kicked over his bag, and it unceremoniously flopped over and spilled its contents. He swore, glaring at the bag which really had done nothing wrong, and used his foot to aggressively kick the mess out of the way. But he missed a small card, that stayed flat against the hotel room carpet, and he froze when he realized what it was.
He slowly withdrew his phone from his pocket.
Then immediately shoved it back in, disgusted with himself. You're on a case, you need to focus, and she probably wouldn't pick up anyway.
He sat down on the bed and busied himself with taking off his shoes, vest, tie, and belt, trying to ignore the card still on the floor. Left in his jeans and shirt, he turned off the bedside lamp and flopped back onto the bed, on top of the covers and stared at the ceiling.
His eyes began to adjust to the oppressive blackness of the room but as everything began to be shaded in colorless dark hues and separate back into real objects and not just shadows, he found that to be worse than being unable to see. At least when it was completely dark, he could maybe pretend that he was back home and that this horrible case was over, or better, that it had never happened.
He squeezed his eyes shut and tried all the mental tricks and rituals that had helped him fall asleep before but all he could see were photographs. Crime scene photographs, autopsy photographs, and worse, photographs of the victims before they died. There was something truly disturbing about seeing a smiling picture of a murder victim, like going back in time for one second and meeting a normal person but knowing something horrific would happen to them someday and not being able to do anything to stop it.
Reid swore again and angrily turned on the light - well, as angrily as someone can flip a switch, it was like that stupid door that wouldn't let him slam it. He surged upward and sat on the end of the bed, pressing his hands hard against his eyes like he could force them to stay closed.
Finally the angry tension left his body and he slumped, defeated, and gazed tiredly around him at the utterly uninteresting room. He hated hotel rooms. At least in the police station, even when the team was stuck, they were surrounded by bulletin boards and dry erase boards and files and it felt like they were doing something. And as much as he may hate seeing graphic crime scene photos, there was something infinitely worse about being in such a picture-perfect hotel room that seemed so untouched by the savagery humanity was capable of. It was just unfair.
His eyes cast about the room, looking for a diversion, but he was too agitated to read a book or watch TV and he was too tired to go somewhere else.
Reid began feeling claustrophobic. There was nowhere to go, not even to sleep.
His gaze landed on the card, the blue inked words on it staring innocently back at him.
In a surge of desperate impulsiveness, he snatched the card and punched the numbers on his cell phone keypad, pressing call before he could second guess himself and holding it to his ear.
As the dull electronic sound of ringing went on for what felt like hours, Reid felt his rash courage draining out of him and he began to regret his decision. But it felt like his phone was glued to his ear; he couldn't bring himself to hang up.
Just as the endless ringing was bordering on unbearable, there was a muffled click.
"This is Hermione Granger, how may I help you?" She sounded professional albeit curious, and extremely alert for two in the morning. The very sound of her voice calmed him so that he forgot to identify himself immediately and just sat there, overwhelmed by the feeling that he wasn't completely alone anymore.
"Hello?" Her voice split the air again, this time tinged with wariness.
His face heated at his lapse in greeting. He was briefly glad she couldn't see it (although he would have gladly exposed his embarrassment to see her in person right then). "Oh, sorry. Um, it's me - I mean, this is Spencer Reid?"
"Spencer!" She sounded surprised, but happily so. "How are you?" She said warmly.
His eyes betrayed themselves by glancing at the open file on the small hotel room desk. He flipped it closed. "...I'm fine."
For a second the other side of the line was quiet. When she spoke again, her voice was soft but stern. "Don't you lie to me, Spencer Reid."
"I -" he started to apologize but she cut him off.
"And don't you say sorry either. I know you're on a case and you said you didn't like being distracted. Something must be wrong for you to be calling me out of the blue like this." It sounded like she was going to continue but she took and audible breath then abruptly stopped, waiting for him to respond.
"What if I just wanted to say hi to a friend?" He deflected.
"If that were true you wouldn't have phrased it as a question." She retorted. "And I highly doubt your one-track mind would have allowed yourself to be distracted while you're on a case without a sufficient reason."
A short laugh escaped him, turning into a sigh of relieved tension, like air escaping a popped balloon. "I have been called many things in my life, but I have never been accused of having a one-track mind."
He could hear the bemused smirk in her voice. "It's not always a negative thing. In our - in your line of work," she rushed to correct herself, "Your mind needs to be on one track to get the job done."
"That's true." Reid admitted. "It's not often I meet civilians that can understand that..." He trailed off pointedly, hoping she would answer his unspoken question.
She hesitated only briefly, but long enough for him to notice. "Some of my closest friends back in the UK work in governmental law enforcement." She hesitated again, longer this time, before finally admitting in a very serious voice, "I actually worked for the government as well… for awhile."
"Really?" Reid said, instinctively surprised, but upon immediate further processing, not very shocked at all. Private boarding school with a specific educational focus… "You went to a military academy." He realized.
"Not exactly." She said sounding amused again, as if by some private joke. "Our government did select a lot of their candidates from my school, yes. But there were many other career opportunities I could have pursued."
"Why didn't you mention this before?" Reid said, trying to ignore the tiny flickering of suspicion he had as a profiler.
"I don't how it is here in America, doctor," She responded playfully. "But we English can be somewhat reserved. We don't tell all the sordid details of our past on a first date."
At the word date, Reid stopped breathing for about half a second while a thousand thoughts roared through his mind. Then he heard the voice of his best friend: be cool, man, just be cool. "Was, uh," he cleared his throat, trying to recover. "Was your work in government sordid?" He asked, hoping his voice conveyed teasing skepticism and not the very uncool nervous wreck his mind was in.
"Isn't it always?" She murmured, the gentle sadness in her voice just shy of bitter.
Her tone of voice inspired him to toss the idea of being 'cool' - after all, he hadn't been cool for almost thirty years, why start now? He asked tentatively, hopefully, "So… we were on a date?"
She laughed, loud and bright, banishing all the creeping darkness in his lonely hotel room. "Perhaps not, if only one of us thought so!"
He smirked; she was clearly teasing him so he would return the favor. "My friend Emily always told me that it doesn't count as a date unless the actual word is used before the event itself." Actually, she usually used that argument on Morgan, who was of the opinion that spending any one on one time with a woman he was interested in counted as a date. It was a recurring and brutal debate between the colleagues.
"I like the way your friend thinks." Hermione mused approvingly. "And if you share her opinion, you can always remedy our current predicament by asking me out on an official date."
Reid grinned at her cheekiness. "Why Miss Granger, how presumptuous of you." He said, adopting a purposefully terrible British accent as a tease.
She snorted. "Ten points to the FBI for your truly horrifying impressionist skills." He quirked an eyebrow at her odd turn of phrase but chalked it up to some sort of British academic rewards system from her schooling days. "And I prefer the term optimistic." She rejoined, her tone outrageously flirtatious even to his oblivious ears.
"Presumptuous and forward. A lethal combination." He laughed.
She hummed, abruptly serious. "Spencer… I once waited nearly seven years to tell someone my true feelings for them, only revealing them during a practically life or death situation." She paused and his whole world seemed to pause with her. "You know better than anyone how short and terrible life can be. I won't wait seven more years for another chance at happiness." She said determinedly, and Spencer felt something fragile and warm flicker to life in his heart. "I don't know you very well, but I rather like what I know so far and I'm not going to play any games like when I was a silly teenager."
Some part of his mind that was still capable of normal thought processes reflected that 'silly' was probably a word that never applied to Hermione Granger, even in adolescence.
"I, um, I like you too." He managed to say in the only-slightly awkward silence after she finished speaking. He heard a soft intake of breath over the phone.
"Good." She said softly, a smile in her voice.
"But," He continued with a grin, "I'm not going to ask you out over the phone. My mother and all of my female friends would never let me hear the end of it." She laughed lightly, like bubbles rising in water. It made his grin widen. "So you'll just have to wait until I return."
"The suspense is unbearable." She said dryly. "How ever will I go on."
Her sarcasm made him roll his eyes fondly. "I guess you'll just have to keep being optimistic." He teased.
"I plan on it." She said warmly.
That warmth filled the ensuing comfortable silence between them only interrupted by the soft sound of their breathing, and in that quiet, knowing she was with him in spirit if not in person, Spencer was able to face the ugly shadows lurking in his mind without fear.
He closed his eyes and let the sound of her breathing give life to the ghosts that haunted his memory, and he was able to remember them as he never knew them, with smiles and laughter and breath and heartbeats.
"It's children." The words escaped Spencer before he could stop them.
"I'm sorry?"
He closed his eyes and gripped the phone tighter. "The case I'm working right now. The unsub is killing children."
"Oh, Spencer…" Hermione's voice was soft and heavy, and instead of feeling better like he had hoped, he regretted burdening her with this part of his life. But before he could apologize, she said in the same quiet voice, "A long time ago, when I was… working for the government… many people I knew and loved died. Teachers and friends and schoolmates. Children." She paused. "There is nothing that can make that better, not beautiful memorials or posthumous medals they never received or moving speeches about love and sacrifice and bravery they never heard. It doesn't matter what kind of pretty plaques and statues you decorate it with, a grave is still a grave."
Spencer thought of all the families he had seen cry, the parents unable to accept that the body lying in front of them was their child, and of all the reassuring words he tried to comfort them with that he himself could not believe but hoped they would.
"There's nothing that can make it better." Hermione repeated with a sigh.
"What happened to your optimism?" Spencer managed to tease gently, without any real humor to his words.
"Optimism doesn't come naturally to me, after the past few years of my life." She said reflectively. "I'm not optimistic in spite of tragedy, I think I'm optimistic because of it." She laughed slightly. "I know that sounds a bit silly, but I always think about something one of my old professors said: 'happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if only one remembers to turn on the light.' Such a simple and age old concept, light versus dark, but I think people often try to battle against darkness without light, and it will always be futile. So in my everyday life I try to strengthen the light in my life, like my friends and my knowledge of truth or even just enjoying a good cup of tea…" Her voice turned a little shy here, "Or maybe enjoying the company of a certain FBI agent that I rather like," Spencer grinned, "because that gives me strength to battle my darkness, which comes mostly in memories."
Spencer was quiet for a long moment, absorbing what she said, and Hermione misread his silence and laughed again in a self-conscious way. "I know it sounds unbearably cliche, but my professor was the sort of person that could read a cheesy holiday card and have it make the same impact as the theory of evolution." Her voice turned nostalgic. "He was a man that deserved to be remembered with the likes of Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela and Gandhi, but he didn't want such things and so most of world doesn't remember him…" She sighed again.
"He sounds like a remarkable person." Spencer offered, then added with a surge of courage and honesty, "But not, I think, more remarkable than you, Hermione Granger."
"Oh! Well, I… um…" Hermione huffed. "Now you've gone and flustered me, Dr. Reid. And here I thought I was doing a rather decent job at being eloquent."
He laughed. "You were." He reassured her. "Seriously, Hermione, that was exactly what I needed to hear."
"Then I'm glad you broke your 'no personal calls on a case' rule and called me." She said warmly. "Although you might not want to make a habit of it, I wouldn't want to be the reason you get distracted." She joked.
Spencer smiled. "I think I made the right call, pun intended."
"Oh, very clever." Hermione snorted.
They chatted about nothing in particular for a few minutes, and Spencer found himself finally relaxing in what now felt like the most comfortable hotel room he had ever inhabited, until his eyelids began to become burdened by exhaustion and yawns interrupted his speech.
"It must be ridiculously late over there." Hermione finally remarked. "You really should go to sleep so you can be at your best tomorrow."
Spencer sighed, knowing she was right. "I know, it's just…" He hesitated. "Well, talking to you has been the best part of my day." He finally admitted. "And I'm… well, I'm afraid of where my mind will go if I hang up and try to sleep in a dark room."
Hermione didn't mock him, not that he had expected her to. She was thoughtfully quiet as she processed this, before saying, "I have an idea, but it might seem a bit strange."
Spencer waited for her to explain, curious.
"During a tough time in our lives, my two dearest friends had a lot of trouble sleeping. We all did, really. I would read to myself in bed and one of my friends, Ron, listened to the radio to help him fall asleep, but it began to drive our other friend, Harry, absolutely mad. One day the radio broke, and Ron thought Harry had done it. He hadn't, it was just an old radio. I was afraid they would fight and was desperate to stop it, so I offered to read to them out loud, claiming it was information they needed to hear. Actually, it was just a story from an old book of fairytales, and when I was done I looked up and they were both sound asleep. Most nights after that, Ron would turn off the radio without being and they would let me read them to sleep."
Spencer wanted to hear more about her friends, but he caught on to her idea. "You want to read to me?"
"If you'd like me to." She said, sounding a little embarrassed.
Spencer remembered how his mother used to read to him, and felt that warm and fragile thing burn a little brighter. "That sounds nice." He managed.
"Okay, hold on a minute." There were some muffled sounds as Hermione presumably retrieved a book and sat down. "Spencer?"
"I'm here." He said with another yawn.
"You mentioned a book you favored during our conversation over tea, and I do work at a library, so…"
Spencer was immediately more awake. "You have In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust?"
"Well, I have the first volume, Swann's Way."
"That's… that's my favorite book."
"I know." Hermione said, sounding pleased. "You told me."
"No, I mean, that's my favorite book because it was my mom's favorite book to read to me when I was a kid." Spencer said, trying not to convey how much this meant to him, yet at the same time, trying to do just that.
"Really?" Hermione said, surprised but not deterred. "Well we can't go wrong with that, although I know I can't hope to live up to a mother's bedtime reading. Anyway, I'm already on volume four but I think for this we'll start from volume one, chapter one." She paused, then said a little awkwardly, "Are you ready?"
Spencer smiled, leaning back and closing his eyes. "Yes."
"Alright, then." She cleared her throat. " 'My sole consolation when I went upstairs for the night was that Mamma would come in and kiss me after I was in bed. But this good night lasted for so short a time, she went down again so soon, that the moment in which I heard her climb the stairs, and then caught the sound of her garden dress of blue muslin, from which hung little tassels of plaited straw, rustling along the double-doored corridor, was for me a moment of the utmost pain; for it heralded the moment which was to follow it, when she would have left me and gone downstairs again…'"
Spencer knew the words of the text before she spoke them, and so allowed the story to weave itself in the background of his mind like a sound machine and instead let himself focus on the expressive rise-and-fall rhythm of Hermione's voice that seemed to reach right into his chest to that bright and fragile thing inside of him, strengthening the light.
"I saw the great void in your soul, and you saw mine." - Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong
Author's Note: I have absolutely no excuse for how long it has been since I last updated this story, but I have not abandoned it and the truly amazing number of people that have been favoriting and following and reviewing my story has been insanely inspiring and has kept me going during those last few months when I have never lacked inspiration more. Ugh, writing this has been like pulling teeth but I am finally happy with it and I think I can start on a more regular updating schedule now.
Also, the votes are in, and magic will officially be canon for Eunoia, so we'll see how I incorporate that in. I have a few ideas but of course, I appreciate feedback.
One last thing, I have another Harry Potter story I'm working on simultaneously to Eunoia, so stay tuned for that.
Again, you guys are phenomenal! Thank you so much for all your reviews and support!
P.S. My best friend always teases me about how I can't seem to end a chapter without some dramatic, metaphorical line, so I did it on purpose this time. It's just so fun!