Gathering herself. Head resting against the cold of the glass.
Calming.
Breathing in and out.
Calming.
Her magic swirling about her, comforting, her blood, slowing.
Hermione knows she should feel anger. She knows she should feel fury, hurt. She knows she should feel rage at the man who had just walked away.
Sadness.
It seeps into her, slowly, dripping, sliding about her person.
Sadness.
Because she knows what he saw.
Knows and wishes she didn't.
Because his words echo in her brain.
Hiding.
Is she really? Hiding behind an explanation?
Hermione knows the answer to the question almost as soon as it floats through her mind.
Opening her eyes and glancing around.
It was sheer luck, sheer and utter luck that no one had passed them, no one had seen their interaction. That no portraits graced the walls around that particular alcove.
She doesn't know if she could answer the questions the Headmistress would ask if the situation had ended differently, if they'd been caught by a student or another Professor.
Hermione blushes at the thought of such a scenario.
Dismisses it.
The irony of it appropriate and one she does not ignore.
Gathering herself, pulling her cloak back around her shoulders, fingers numbly buttoning her pants, arranging her shirt.
She turns once more to look out the window in front of her.
Palm against the glass.
She'd felt him when he'd walked on the Hogwarts' property, a slow burn at the base of her spine. She'd gone to the window to see him, make out his shadow crossing the property. But there'd been nothing.
A presence. A feeling.
But she hadn't seen him even as her magic had throbbed at his presence.
Even now it throbs, low, in her belly, at the base of her spine, at the point in her chest.
Combining with unfilled sexual tension.
Still burning.
Hermione turns from the window. Determined to go back to her quarters, to start on the third-year essays but before she thinks, before thoughts can tell her otherwise, she is following the trace of his magic. Slow at first, and then quicker, almost frozen feet in trainers hitting the stone floor as she wraps her cloak closer about her person.
Closer yet.
A story.
She needs to tell him.
Because the guilt is something she wants to be rid of. Because she has never told another person. Because it will explain things. It will explain why she continues to hold Ron's face close to her, remembering him.
Because if she did not it would go against something innate, something she is.
Definition.
The good nature that still exists somewhere in the grey that shadows her person.
An explanation of why she turned away from him. And no, it was not because they were who they were, though it had added to her decision.
No, guilt.
Guilty of making a decision that had cost her young love's life, had caused the brilliance that was Ron Weasley to be snuffed, guttered out, in the instance of a green flash.
The desire to tell him almost as hot as the desire to have him was earlier.
The determination to set things right quickening her pace.
Rounding a corner and almost running straight into the upright form of the Headmistress.
Hermione steps back and immediately takes in the older woman's face, a face lined with worry, eyes almost glistening with what very much looks like tears, though in the near darkness it is hard to be sure.
"Hermione," Minerva says, voice thankful, relief evident. "You must come with me."
Alarm bells. Ringing. Tensing.
"What is it?" Hermione asks, even as she follows Minerva, now walking back the way she came.
"It is Lily."
Hermione stops in mid-step as if in a trance. "Lily Potter?"
"Yes." The clipped one word propelling her forward once more.
"What is it?" Hermione repeats. She is surprised to find calmness in her words even as panic and fear run about her mind in a display of chaos, chasing Draco out of her mind.
Too much chaos on this night.
She thinks it even as she continues to follow the Headmistress.
"They do not know. She is at St. Mungo's. Last night she started a fever, nothing unusual. Harry said it appeared as if was nothing more than the flu. This morning, however, she was delirious and by this afternoon she was having hallucinations and her magic…"
Minerva's voice trails off and she stops, turning to look at Hermione.
The younger witch stills at her side, almost running into the older woman.
"Yes?" Hermione finally prompts.
"It is uncontained, almost as if she is not able to control it."
Hermione catches her breath. Just slightly, just barely.
"What do you mean?"
Minerva looks stern, but it is a control, one Hermione has not seen in a long time.
The Headmistress is clearly worried. Clearly distressed.
"I am not sure. It is not harming anyone, does not actually appear to be affecting anything. But." Another pause and Hermione is shaken to see her former Head of House clearly shaken herself. "They believe it is harming her in some way."
"The grey magic?" Hermione asks, though she all ready knows the answers.
Minerva pauses again. "As far as we can tell," she says, quietly, almost gently.
Hermione stares at the older woman for a moment. Just a moment.
She nods once. Curtly.
"Then take me to her."
The relief is palpable on the Headmistress' features and she turns once more towards her office where they can Floo directly to the hospital.
It is not lost on Hermione that the hospital ward they go to is not a traditional ward but a ward dealing exclusively with patients effected by Dark Magic. A ward created during the War.
Something cringes, tightens in her stomach.
A quick pace, though Hermione slows when she sees the group standing outside one of the hospital rooms. Harry has his arm around Ginny, who is standing next to Molly and Arthur, and just to the side George. Waiting, the look on their faces showing the same kind of relief that was on Minerva's when they see her.
Hermione feels a strengthening of panic.
Because what if she can't help.
What if there is nothing for her to do?
What if she can't fix it?
A mediwitch comes out of one of the rooms. She is a plump woman with bright blue eyes who looks every bit as worried as the rest of them.
Hermione again feels something in her chest lurch, fall, stomach knotting.
"You can come in now; we are done with the testing," she says quietly to the group of people outside the door. The mediwitch put a hand out to Ginny and Harry. "Mr. and Mrs. Potter, if I could have a word with you."
Hermione catches Harry's look, the fear clearly written in his features and something distant, something like a waif of thought, floats through her mind. She remembers the same exact look when he'd found out about his role in the war against Voldemort. A pale faced eleven year old with all the world on his shoulders.
It wrenches at her, wrenches and tears and it is only with extreme control on her self and her emotions, a control she has learned since the war, that she does not go to Harry and wrap her arms around her.
That, after all, is Ginny's job now and Hermione would never assume it again.
So many changes. So very many changes.
Even as she follows Molly into the room.
And stops dead at the magic circling around the younger girl.
A choked sound reaches her ears, even as her hand comes up to her mouth, realising the sound came from her.
Hermione sees the magic, sees it swirling about the young girl as she lays on the bed, eyes closed, dark eyelashes against pale cheeks.
The whirling of grey. It's the only way she can think to describe it.
But the grey is tinged. Tinged with something silver, something red, the normal magic that she always associates with lighter colours, yellows, oranges, pulsing, but twisting with the grey magic.
Intertwining.
Three steps take her to the child's side and Hermione places her hand against her forehead, wincing at the heat coming from it.
A movement at the door and Hermione turns her head to see Ginny and Harry walk in, hands tightly clasped.
All eyes turn toward them.
Harry swallows. Hermione sees it and a rush of guilt, of love, of understanding, so overwhelming she has to turn away.
To look on their daughter. Her Goddaughter. So young.
So very young.
Swirling with the magic she had created.
The magic that might be killing her.
Closing her eyes, even as she hears Harry start talking behind her.
"They can't get her fever down." He says. Echoing in the room.
Words. Deadpan.
Terrified.
Harry continues. "The magic," clearing his throat, "Her magic is getting in the way of all their efforts."
Hermione turns then, turns and stares, because the solution is so easy. So very easy, if that is the extent of the problem.
If the magic is the only reason the girl is sick.
"Are you sure that is what is hindering their progress?" She asks, and notices that Molly and George both wince at her harsh tones. But she has to be sure.
Has to be sure.
Harry catches her eyes, brilliant green eyes pained. Then a flicker of something as he sees the witch in front of him, sees the tilt of her chin and the almost possessed fire in her eyes. A flicker of hope.
A solution.
Hermione always has the answers.
"That is what they have determined." He says slowly.
Ginny must have seen the same thing in Hermione's face because she takes a step forward, though she does not let go of her husband's hand.
"Why, Hermione?" She asks, and her voice is little more then a small tone in the otherwise silent room.
Hermione looks away from Harry, to Ginny, and then to the little girl in the bed. She doesn't know what the effect of it will be on her, but she knows without a doubt what she can do about it.
"I can channel it." She says quietly. "The magic, I can channel it away from her."
A mutter and the rustle of fabric.
"Are you sure?" This time from Harry.
Hermione does not look to him, still staring. "Yes."
And then another voice.
"She did it while Ginny was having Fred," George says. "Lily was having trouble with the magical residue and it looked like Hermione took some of it away from her."
A gasp.
Molly.
"Then you can do this?" Harry.
Hermione does not look up to see the hope in Harry's eyes. She can hear it in his voice.
"Of course." She said.
Something stirring deep in her belly.
Fear.
But now is not the time. And she is a Gryffindor.
Hermione pulls her cloak off, laying it gently on the chair next to Lily.
"Contact Severus," she says over her shoulder. "He has a new fever reducer he and Draco have been working on." She knows of it because she is the one who sent him the idea.
Anonymous of course.
She continues.
"I don't know how long this will take, so as soon as I am finished it will be best to be prepared."
A pause. Silence.
"How?" George again.
Hermione looks over at him now and she sees uncertainty in his face.
He continues. "How are you going to do this?"
Hermione smiles then. Gently. At him. At Harry next to him, at Ginny holding Harry's hand.
Molly. Arthur. Minerva.
"I just am," she says.
Then turns from them and closes her eyes.
She has never done this. Not like this at least. She knows, somewhat, almost instinctively, how to redirect the magic away from the little girl. She'd done it before, as George had pointed out.
But this is different.
Bigger.
Not just strands of magic smoothed away with a steady hand.
Torrents. Pulsing at barriers.
Pulsing, pushing, demanding, against her own magic.
She feels it, gathering about the girl, gnashing its teeth, no longer tepid, no longer gentle, gnashing, clawing, snarling.
Something distant, in the back of Hermione's ever thinking mind, wonders at the change, wonders at the reason why.
But there will be time for such questions later, after she does this, does what she can.
Gathering herself.
Her own magic, she feels it, a deep pulsing in her blood, the regular magic, oranges, yellows, but also the shadowed magic, a grey tinge alongside those, and under it, supporting it, the red, bright crimson, blood magic, leaping with areas of black as deep as midnight with no moon.
Gathering it towards her.
Another thought, of Draco, wondering if he will feel what she is doing.
Dismissed.
The irony.
Again.
Refocusing.
And with a slow methodical thought she allows the shadows to grow, reaching out, tentatively, a toe in the water, testing.
The chaos she feels is almost too much and a part of her focus shakes, begins to break.
Attention, detail, she gathers those parts together, pieces, rebuilding, and then she does it again, fast, a strike.
Against the girls shadows, against her magic.
Somewhere distant a cry, a gasp.
The feel of someone, of something around her, and for a moment, just a mere moment, she is in control, catching at the chaos of the girl's magic and redirecting, absorbing it, dimly realising she is shaking at the effort, dimly realising her own magic is straining, burning.
A mere moment.
And then she loses control as the wisps of the magic become stronger, bigger, harder.
Demanding.
A tide, a current, against her mind, against her magic, enveloping, persistent. Her barriers crack, leaking, slipping of magic, pushing, pushing.
Pushing.
The barriers break.
A scream.
Distant.
As she is assaulted with the shadows, as her mind tries desperately to back away, to get away from the attack of grey magic, darkness, blackness, tinged with red, away, away, but she is not fast enough, she can't get away fast enough, her mind throwing up barriers, any barriers, but she is not fighting another wizard she is fighting the magic itself, a magic she helped create, and it responds to her, growing, growing, until she starts to lose, slowly, rushing up, rushing up on her.
Water against rocks.
Wearing away.
A whimper, as she starts to fade under the onslaught of magic, as she starts to slowly drown into it. Slowly, slowly, her base magic fading, the shadows taking it over, smothering it, demanding its place in her mind, in her body, in her senses, nerves.
Everywhere.
Until, just in the small reaches of her mind, in the part that is not screaming in pain, confusion, in horror. A small part of her mind thinks.
Blood magic.
And suddenly it is there. The crimson colours rising up to meet the shadows, and the power is strong, undeniable, pushing everything away, burning it, slaughtering it, cleansing it, a pathway.
A light.
And Hermione finds that her eyes are open, that she is laying on a floor, that her entire mind and body is screaming in pain.
But her eyes are open.
Focused.
On a familiar face, so dear, green eyes filled with fear. Turning her head to see an equally familiar face with dark eyes, fathomless eyes.
Eyes that looked seriously angry.
A moment.
And then remembering.
"Did it work?" She croaks, tries, past the pain in her throat.
"Foolish, foolish girl," her ex-Professor swears, gently cradling her body with a hand so she can sit up.
She doesn't look over at Severus or the mediwitch who is waving a wand around her. Instead she focuses on Harry.
"Did it work?" She repeats, this time a little clearer, her throat hurting just slightly less.
Harry sits back on his hunches and then looks up to where a mediwitch is running diagnostic spells over Lily.
Hermione watches the colours play over her Goddaughter's body though she doesn't know what they mean.
A quietness in the room, as everyone watches the mediwitch, no one noticing when Severus helps Hermione to her feet, somewhat unstable, somewhat sick, though she controls it enough to make it to a chair across the room.
Hermione glances up at the taller man and recognizes the scowl on his face and knows she will be in for a lecture. She also notices that George is at her side almost immediately, enveloping one of her hands in his even as his eyes are focused on the diagnostic spells.
"You gave her the potion?" Hermione whispers, not able to speaker louder, struggling even for that.
It feels as her strength is slowly seeping even though she is clearly no longer under the influence of Lily's magic.
A grunt from the tall dark man next to her.
She takes it as a yes.
Focusing. The room spinning slightly, heat circling about her body as she struggles to keep her sight on the mediwitch, on the young girl with the flushed cheeks and hair the colour of Harry's.
Waiting.
Even as breath grows increasingly hard to take in and she knows she is beginning to shake. Chills running up and down her spine even as the heat sucks at her, circles her.
Focusing. A pinpoint of focus, blackness clouding around the corner of her vision, pushing, pushing.
Waiting.
Until the diagnostic spells stop and the mediwitch looks up at the parents, a smile blooming over her face.
"It appears as if it has worked."
And letting go.
Letting the darkness bleed into her focus, letting the soothing nature of unconsciousness move in.
Seeing the swirl of blood magic even as the black takes her.