The door to her quarters slams behind her.
One step, another step, and then…
Fury. Burning. Flaming.
How dare he?
She stills, hands closing and opening, closing and opening. Poised. Ready.
How dare he?
Body moving before the mind makes up it's mind, turning, energy pulsing and ricocheting off her, off the stone walls, her own magic, shadows and colour combined, twirling, madly, madly.
She reaches the doors leading back, to confront, to demand, hand up to push it open, to confront him, darkness rising up in her, taking over, filling and the chill is blessed, is perfect, so very perfect.
The sound of the Floo.
Behind her.
"Hermione?" A voice, gentle, questioning, normal.
And suddenly all the magic that she is gathering around her, nurturing in her anger is gone, not even smouldering.
Just gone.
She turns from the door and looks at George's head floating in the green flame.
His eyes immediately grow concerned, "Are you ok?"
How to answer? Is she ok?
A pause. Seconds. Merely.
She walks towards the fireplace. Heavy feet, laden down.
She reaches the Floo and kneels on the stone in front of it.
Tired.
With a normal tone she answers. "I'm fine George, just a long night. Did Ginny have her baby?"
George nods, though his eyes still watch her, scanning her face, but there is nothing to see, not any more, she truly is just tired now. Exhausted.
"A few minutes ago."
Hermione smiles, slightly, tilt of her mouth. "I will come through in a moment."
George pauses, reddish blonde hair glinting in the green flame, "You're sure you're ok."
Hermione leans forward and reaches her hand through, touching his cheek, anchoring herself, cool palm against his heated skin. The contact surprises him but he does not pull away.
The faint echo of his magic coming through the contact.
A glimmer in the otherwise empty field of her own.
She lets her hand drop. "I am. Just let me change clothes, I will be through in a moment."
He nods, and then disappears, green flames replaced by normal ones.
Hermione stands, staring.
And because the fury she felt has left nothing, a barren waste field in its wake, she does what she can only do, she falls back into the role of Hermione Granger, Harry Potter's friend, Ron's ex-lover, Lily's Godmother, brilliant witch.
It allows her to shower, to change clothes, to pull her hair into a braid at the back of her head, and to Floo to the Potter's without so much as a tinge of thought.
A bare and open wound.
On fire as soon as she steps through.
Piercing pain.
Elemental magic.
Blood magic.
One step into the kitchen, whirling, whirling, body screaming, nerves screaming.
And darkness.
Gathering her up in its arms and pressing her against its coldness.
Hermione Granger collapses in front of three startled Weasleys and one Harry Potter holding his newborn son in his arms.
Hermione wakes to a small hand patting her cheeks.
Opening gritty eyes, hot and dry, she sees Lily looking down at her, eyes concerned, too concerned for one so young.
"You fainted Aunt Hermny," the little voice says, the special pronunciation of Hermione's name causing something in the older witch to twist painfully.
But she doesn't understand.
Nothing is making sense.
And why is she lying in a bed?
"What happened?" She asks, throat dry, painfully so.
Lily smiles then, a quirk to her mouth that lights up her face. "I have to go get Daddy and Uncle George, supposed to when you wake up."
Hermione nods and struggles to sit up. The light weight of Lily falls from the bed and the girl runs from the room, dark hair streaming out behind her.
The sound of small footsteps and then the sound of two, no three, heavy sets of footsteps.
Harry is the first one through the door, followed by George and then Molly.
Hermione vaguely realizes Molly fussing about her, vaguely realizes George looking at her with unconcealed worry, but her eyes are focused on her long term friend.
Harry is angry.
His brilliant green eyes bite with it.
Hermione looks away when Molly presses a glass of water in her hand. "You drink this my dear, just water is that, but here," she takes the glass and replaces it with a potion bottle, "This is just a bit of Pepper Up to revive you. Whatever happened my dear, you just, you look like a ghost, I swear…"
Molly would have continued, Hermione knows it even as she dutifully drinks down the potion.
But Harry cuts her off, "No need to fuss Molly." He looks over at George and then back to his mother-in-law, "Can I have a word with Hermione?"
George leaves immediately, but Molly looks over at Harry in surprise, something about his voice catching her interest. "Now Harry, it's not Hermione's fault she fainted, and I don't know if you…"
Harry smiles at Molly, his charming smile, effective in its sincerity. "Don't worry, I'm not going to yell at her."
Hermione doesn't believe him.
Molly does though and she pats Hermione's hand before getting up from the side of the bed and leaving the room.
She closes the door softly behind her.
Hermione watches Harry.
She doesn't know what to expect. She doesn't understand the anger in his eyes. In fact she doesn't understand anything, her mind struggling to focus on anything for any amount of time.
Tired.
So tired.
Harry walks over and sits in the chair next to the bed, leaning forward so his elbows rest on his knees, hands dangling between his legs.
A handsome wizard with too many years in his face.
"What is going on?" The question, soft, pursuing, but still with an underline of anger.
Why is he angry?
The question is on her lips but something about his expression does not allow the question to pass them.
Hermione sits up further in the bed, the potion slowly taking its effect and though she never fully forgot what had happened earlier now it's strengthening, memory flitting here and there.
But not the feeling. Not the emotion.
Nothing.
Blank.
Waste land.
"Hermione!" An exclamation, a harsh tilt on her name.
She locks eyes with Harry.
"I'm just tired," she tells him. It's the truth.
So very tired.
Harry shakes his head in frustration, getting up from his chair suddenly and pacing the room, energy radiating off him.
Hermione can feel it, a tickling alongside her own magic.
She relishes the small tinge of magic though it is harsh against already raw nerves.
Harry turns on her, pulling a hand through dark hair. "What gives Mione? Ever since Christmas, before Christmas, you've been distant, like a shadow. We all thought you were doing ok, moving on from Ron's death, and then I find you at his grave, and during Christmas, barely there." The burst of words, accusing.
Slaps across her face.
If only verbally.
She pulls herself inwards, upwards, gathering herself.
Harry sees it, he knows her well.
"Bloody fucking hell!" An exclamation, completely out of the realm of Harry's personality, an echo of someone else.
It causes her to flinch backwards.
But the exclamation causes something in Harry to deflate and as suddenly as the anger appeared it is gone, replaced by something else.
Concern.
Love.
Him coming to her bed and sitting next to her, pulling her hands in to his, searching her face. "What is it Mione? Is it this project, with Malfoy, is it too much?"
Green eyes searching her face, searching, searching. Hermione meets those eyes, briefly, and then looks away.
"No." She says. First word, spoken in a whisper.
And because some things change and some things do not, Hermione straightens slightly, pulling on her ever present strength, broken, yes, but there if only in pieces.
She squeezes Harry's hands, smiling, stronger, building. "No," she repeats firmly, "Its not that, not entirely. It's been a little hard, because I have had to revisit some memories, but nothing I can't handle."
Harry nods slowly, "Is it Malfoy?"
A flash of memory, of the feel of his mind in hers.
A surge of desire. A surge of anger.
Gone.
Nothing.
Hermione squeezes Harry's hands again, "No. Malfoy is Malfoy, hard to work with sometimes, but it's just a combination of things. You know me, so overly sensitive sometimes."
Harry is watching her, "You know I would not ask you to do this unless it was important."
The smile that Hermione gives him is bigger this time, fuller, almost reaching her eyes. "I know Harry, I know. I really am ok, just a combination of stress and elemental magic, it's sometimes a little overwhelming since, well you know, and then the combination of you and Ginny, it was just a little much, but I'm ok now."
A look of concern, of doubt.
The smile reaches her eyes now. Finding equilibrium, "I'm fine Harry. Now," she straightens some more, moving so she can get up off the bed. "How is your wife, and the new one?"
The change of topic is instantaneously effective.
Harry's smile could light several different Muggle Londons. "Brilliant Mione, simply brilliant."
Hermione laughs and if the laugh is slightly brittle and slightly forced Harry does not notice. "Well then, I shouldn't be laying about in bed when I can meet the newest member of the family."
Harry gets up from the bed immediately, sticking out a hand to help Hermione to her feet.
She takes it and though the room spins for a moment she is able to contain it, focus it.
Control. Slowly.
She follows Harry out of the room, down the hallway, down the stairs, to the kitchen where everyone is gathered around Ginny and the baby in her arms.
Ginny looks beautiful even after the twelve hour Muggle labour, now healed with magic, red hair framing a face alight with happiness. Hermione sees the colours around her, brilliant colours of magic, of happiness, barely any shadow, any tingeing at all.
Hermione smiles at it, something easing in her chest.
Ginny sees her and flashes her a brilliant smile. "Since when, Hermione Granger, do you faint?"
The room erupts in laughter and Hermione is enough of herself to feel the slight blush along her cheekbones.
"It must have been my stunning good looks, I have that affect on young witches," another voice, George, calling out next to Ginny, his eyes amused, though still slightly concerned.
Hermione rolls her eyes, putting a hand on her hip, "Honestly," she says.
And suddenly everything is ok. Everything is normal and if she ignores the dark shadow around the newborn Potter, and the growing of her own darkness, it's because she tells herself there is a time and place for everything.
And darkness is not wanted in the happy family scene she sees in front of her.
But as the hours progress, as she is teased by George, hugged by Molly, and holds the new baby, the darkness grows in her, a steady and constant flow of her magic, rebuilding, replacing, gathering pieces, putting them together, recreating, a waste land, blasted by a certain wizard, developing, creating.
Blood magic.
Shadow tinged with red.
Growing. Growing.
And with it the fury she felt in the beginning. The anger, but also the control, her control, keeping the anger in check.
No one notices, no one wants to notice, though occasionally George shoots her a look, occasionally Harry shifts in his seat, Molly gives her more hugs than she would usually, and the baby, sensing it, the familiar even though he has only been in the world for less than a day, snuggles against her chest, his base magic recognizing hers.
And it continues.
Fluid.
Grace.
Until when she finally leaves the Potter's, Flooing back to her quarters at Hogwarts, her magic is fully restored and her anger is something brilliant to behold.
For those who know how to look.
She leaves her quarters to search out the one who will know even without looking, who will feel it even as if it were his own.
The one who, anger now swirling about her person, is the cause of it.
She relishes in the anger, moving through the passageways, passing students with a friendly look in their direction, passing other faculty with a nod, polite, distant, held in check, held in control.
She takes away points from two fighting Slytherins, she sends a sick Hufflepuff to Poppy and tells a first year Gryffindor how to get back to the Main Hall, all the while scanning, looking, her magic floating about her in waves of shadow.
Searching.
Hermione goes to his rooms first, climbing the stone stairs, the torch flames flickering slightly as she passes, the portraits watching with unconcealed interest, poised for something, knowing something is coming because they have sat so long on the walls and can, now, pick up on the slightest twirls of magic.
And Hermione's magic is more than twirling. Its vibrating.
But he is not in his quarters, she knows it as soon as she reaches the doorway, the wards glowing slightly, black and dark red, protecting from intruders.
She turns on her heels, the black cloak she wears twirling about her ankles, and makes her way back down the stairs.
She checks the Main Hall, she checks the library, she goes down to the potions classroom and checks there, to Shacklebolt's, the current head of the Slytherin house.
But he is not in any of those places.
Yet she knows he is here.
Hermione can feel him, has felt him since she came through the Floo. A vibration to her magic, like the tight lines of the magic are being softly plucked, played with a feather touch.
A distinct pressure at the base of her spine, the burn of ice at the point on her chest.
She finds herself in the entry way to the castle, staring at the heavy entrance doors, the dying sunlight of the day coming in a myriad of colours through the glass, highlighting, creating movements in the air.
It is eerily quiet.
The witch standing in the fading light is the only one in the massive room, a black cloak, a mass of curls pulled back in a half knot at the back of her head, a pale face, straight shoulders, delicate hands.
Closing her eyes.
Allowing the blood magic to rise up with hers, allowing it to swirl in reds and greys and blacks, strengthening, strengthening, a touch, a flicker, reaching, reaching.
And there. Just there.
A presence.
She opens her eyes and goes to the great doors, pulling one open and slipping out into the frigid air of a dying afternoon.
Feet moving, quickly, quickly now, over the snow, a direction, the control slipping, anger moving with a wave of the blood magic she has released, if only a small amount, enough, enough to cause the storm around her to grow, slowly, slowly.
Even as she hurries.
Small, firm steps, black cloak against the white snow.
To the Quidditch pitch.
Where she knows he is.
Alone.
Coming around a corner, over a hill, and then to the stands, slowing in step even as she gathers the warmth of fury around her, even as the pressure at her spine presses down, down, growing hotter, focusing.
She raises her eyes to the sky.
And sees him.
Distant, a figure in the air, moving with speed, with grace, flying with the same assurance of everything and anything he does. Arrogance, beauty, in the black cloaks moving about him, in the wind moving through his hair, flying with surety, depth.
It catches at Hermione, pulls at her, pulls at that something in her, at that connection, but different than just the connection, different then the compulsion allowing her to know where he is, different then the blood magic swirling in her veins.
Different.
Basic.
Primitive.
Watching him, never thinking flying could cause awe, never thinking flying could be beautiful, could be what she is seeing.
A spike of heat.
In her womb, as she watches him come closer and closer, just making out a profile in the falling light of the day, his hand about the broom.
And she remembers, remembers those hands on her skin, tracing up her thigh, cupping around her waist, fingers moving, pressing, caressing, marking.
And the anger is gone.
Replaced by sorrow, at what was, and what was lost, and a decision she made out of guilt, out of what she thought was necessity.
But wonders.
Wonders now if it was nothing more than fear, fear of the enormity of something she had never felt before. The enormity of what it could mean.
A time of chaos, long distant, and one night of clarity.
Hermione turns away.
The man flying through the gathering night does not see the small woman walking back to the castle.
Away from him.
Again.