Hello! So this is my take at an actual HP fanfiction, bear with me. It's also probably a little different than what you might expect but then that's the beauty of fanfiction, isn't it?
Anyways, I'm on the fence about this one so please, let me know what you think! xx
CHAPTER ONE
"Merlin, 'Mione! You look terrible!"
"Thank you, Ronald. Once again your tact leaves much to be desired." His insensitive (yet honest) comment earned him a smack from his girlfriend who then stepped over to coo comfortingly over Hermione.
As the pretty blonde witch made her way toward her, Hermione was unwaveringly grateful that they were friends now or this would be a form of torture she'd rather do without. Not only did it make things easier for her to be with her best friends, since they were almost always with their significant others, but she found that the other witch wasn't too terrible to be around - even if they had few mutual interests. Thankfully, Lavender had changed a great deal from the gossip-hungry beauty queen she had been in school - though war tended to have that affect on people. Lavender's maturity enabled her and Hermione to actually get along throughout recent years without the petty snarkiness and thinly veiled dislike that used to lace their interactions.
It also helped that Lavender knew Hermione had no romantic interest in Ron whatsoever.
But she found, just because she liked the girl now, didn't mean she wanted her hand stuck to her face. She didn't particularly want anyone touching her at the moment and she shuddered with dread at the amount of hugging that would inevitably come her way. Goose pimples erupted as her skin practically crawled with the image.
In fact, it made her positively ill.
"It's best you don't touch, Lav. I'm not quite sure what it is that's wrong but if it's the flu then I don't want any of you to catch it. I really shouldn't be here actually," she mumbled. "It wasn't this bad this morning, only a slight headache." One she had taken a potion for, fat lot of good that it did.
The young woman sighed and contemplated returning back through the fireplace to the small comfort of her flat. Her empty flat. But it was Sunday and that meant the weekly Weasley luncheon. This particular Sunday though happened to be the only Sunday of the month that everyone was going to be able to be here. Charlie would be present, albeit reluctantly due to Molly and her overbearing tendencies to hen-peck with repetitive conversations of marriage and babies that nearly suffocated the perpetually single dragon tamer; and of course Harry, who upon the end of the war decided he wanted to see the world and immediately set off to travel once the majority of restorations were done, was making this Sunday his day as well.
Grin and bear it, she ordered herself.
If she left now then she wouldn't get to see him for another month and even though they wrote each other almost every other day, it wasn't the same. While she was happy that he was happy - he was getting to do what he wanted for once and she'd hex anyone who tried to interfere - she missed him terribly.
Sighing, she cast the jar of floo powder one last longing glance before staring resolutely ahead. She wasn't going to miss this. Not even when she should be in bed. Or dying.
Because she really felt like dying now.
It'd been seconds, mere seconds, from her small conversation with Lavender and her inner debate and she already felt so much worse. Her splitting headache had brought friends who were apparently quite angry with her for trying to have a good day.
And she was sweating.
She didn't even have to look at herself to know.
She knew it in the way that you were totally aware of something embarrassing but pretended to be oblivious so of course it's the one thing you focus on. And she could feel it. Beads of it, small ones, dripping down her temples, annoying pinpricks of moisture on the open space of her forehead, and tickling the valley between her breasts. It was clearly too hot.
Scorching, really. She needed air.
Excusing herself with what she hoped passed for human words, Hermione carefully slipped between the confused and concerned couple and made her way to the door, fumbling with the knob before stumbling through and out into the bright afternoon.
Son of a -
Sunlight hit her the way a pillow wouldn't but a sledgehammer might.
Hermione tumbled down the stairs, knees jarring with the grassy impact. She might've sprained her wrist when her weight fell forward too fast but the sharp pain was drowned out by sudden and all encompassing itchiness.
Her skin was alive.
That was the only explanation. Or there was something moving, living, under her flesh.
She had to get it out. Had to. Had to get it out, out, out getitoutgetitout-!
"'Mione!" Ginny's frantic shout was echoed by a myriad of voices but she couldn't specifically pinpoint who said what. They were talking too fast and too loud and the pounding behind her eyes was getting worse, she could barely keep them open.
Two thumps signaled bodies landing on either side of her bent form. Hands hovered over her bent back, vibrating with tension and the need to touch but hesitated when a garbled 'no' pushed past a newly sore throat.
Gods, what is wrong with me?!
She'd never been like this. Only the Cruciatus compared and this - whatever it was - was fast surpassing it.
Everything hurt.
Gross understatement.
She was sure there was a curse to burn someone alive from the inside out, she just couldn't remember it or how she could have possibly received it. But that wouldn't explain the itching. Or the strange high pitch keening trying to make its way out her mouth.
Hermione grunted, a heavy sound as her fingertips started tingling. And by tingling she meant she was being bitten. By ants. Had to be. There must have been, so many little tiny angry red ones constantly biting and biting and biting and -
"Granger." Blaise.
Slytherin. Ginny's boyfriend. Healer.
Thank Merlin.
"Blaise. What -" Top teeth met bottom teeth in a grinding and screeching halt of speech as she tried to block the scream that rode a new wave of pain.
She ached.
Briefly, she wondered if it were feasible for human bones to spontaneously change density. Of course she knew it to be impossible but that's what it felt like. Various parts of her body were suddenly lighter, then growing heavy again. It was happening rapidly and her chest heaved as air rushed through flared nostrils.
All potential possibilities and responses evaporated; everything other than it hurt.
Breathe, her mind whispered, trying to sift through the conscious thoughts rife with agony to find the still functioning part of her.
Identify. Isolate. Trap. Store.
The mantra from a therapy session long since ended for lingering terrors looped through her mind. She concentrated as best as she could through the kaleidoscope of pain, gathering up and folding, layering, and binding pockets of identified torment before shoving the roughly made mental books into a cardboard box in a dark corner of her mind. It would last minutes at most but it would be enough. The pain was still there but it was dampened to where she could communicate without screaming.
Hopefully.
"- be impossible!"
Hermione peeked up through a curtain of sweat soaked wild hair to see Blaise and Ginny standing in front of her. Ginny was turned toward the yard, facing the rest of the Weasley family while Blaise was looking at her, hovering between indecision. Surprisingly, Fleur was seated to her left, murmuring softly in French.
"What's impossible?" Sweet Circe, is that my voice?
It was almost indistinguishable. If she had swallowed gravel it would have sounded better than whatever it was that just came out.
Blaise immediately crouched down, tiny lines etched into dark skin crinkled as his eyes tightened with worry.
"Are you Muggle-born?" The urgency in his voice coupled with the bizarrely unexpected question startled her and Ginny tried to calm down the horde of angry Weasley that reacted badly.
"I don't understand. Is that why I'm sick?" He looked as if he wanted to touch her, shake her really, but instead he only spoke faster though his tone never changed and the volume stayed low.
"Yes and no. I believe I know what's happening but it's physically impossible given your heritage."
A virus untransmittable to Muggle-borns? Did such a thing truly exist?
"Well, I'm adopted." Gasps rang out through the open space but Blaise didn't react like the others. She was taken aback as he swore violently, Ginny's hair whipping with the force of her turn, mouth open in shock. The Italian was normally extremely composed and very rarely used any sort of profanity. At least in English. To hear him swear now, especially in front of so many people made Hermione's chest tight.
"Do you know anything about your birth parents? Your ancestry? Where they came from? Were any of them from magical blood?" It came out closer to an interrogation and almost faster than she could comprehend because the pain was coming back. Siphoning slowly from small holes in her mental cardboard construct.
"Greece," she whispered. "There was nothing - is nothing. My parents -" she moaned, clenching her fists to avoid tearing at the skin of her arms which burned now. "I was found. No papers. Put in orphanage." Scarlet half-moons appeared on her palms from nails dug in too deep. "Adoption went through in Greece, not England."
"Fuck! Fleur, you already know what to do. Ginny! I need you to floo to St. Mungo's, tell them Healer Zabini is on his way and we need Containment Room Alpha." Hermione didn't need to look up to know everyone was confused and horrified all at once - she was too. The only person who seemed to understand and be fine with the orders barked out was Fleur, who was now humming loudly next to her head. Strangely enough, Hermione found her breathing slowing down with the sound.
It reminded her oddly of purring.
"Containment room?" Molly shrieked and a part of Hermione wailed at the grating sound. Fleur seemed to get louder as Blaise tried to prevent the inevitable rising tide of obnoxious third-degree from the family of redheads.
"We don't have time for this! She's transforming -" the unmistakable crack of apparition cut off Blaise's stressed response and she hated it.
She was dying and she wanted it to end. Now. Her entire body hurt and she couldn't take it anymore!
The burning itch under her skin increased to an unmanageable degree and she cried out. Arms bare due to her summer top, Hermione wasted no time in ravaging her own bronze flesh. Sticky warmth coated her fingers as she trailed sharp nails down the plains of her forearms.
I will get it out. Whatever it is - it will stop NOW.
Fleur screamed next to her but she didn't care. The itching didn't stop. It got worse. Burrowing. It was something under her skin. She would find it. She would. She would get it out. All of it.
"Hermione!"
All movement ceased.
She knew that voice, even worried as it was.
Harry.
And just as quickly, the pounding in her head vanished.
Her skin still itched and the strange and uncomfortable ache in her bones was still present but the light no longer hurt her eyes and the rushed voices that trailed after his arrival didn't make her want to hide her head underground.
Breathing was easier too and she wasn't so nauseous. Ailments she didn't know she had were gone now; like the hole in her chest. She had been missing something, couldn't find it, but she didn't feel that now. That emptiness, despair, was gone. The loneliness she didn't understand while she had been smothered under the blanket of physical pain wasn't an issue anymore.
Relieved but incredibly disconcerted, and slightly annoyed, Hermione finally lifted her head since tripping through the door.
Fierce emerald eyes caught hers and held. Her body sagged against Fleur unexpectedly as her lungs deflated, a contented sigh flowing through cracked and bloodied lips.
She didn't care about anything anymore. Couldn't be bothered to. Harry was here and she wasn't sure why that brought such comfort but he would make it alright, she just knew.
Breath rattled in her ivory cage as clarity struck, simultaneously damning and freeing from one lung full of air to the next.
She needed him.
Needed him as she needed the blood flowing through her veins. Couldn't breathe without him, didn't want to. Needed to though, needed his scent. Around her, on her. Him. Only him. Dry lips parted and nostrils flared as she finally broke eye contact. Oxygen gathered in the cavern of her mouth, balancing on her tongue for her to taste - taste him.
Hooded eyes traced newly tanned features, roaming over things she'd already memorized but needed to again. His unfairly long lashes, straight nose, sculpted cheek bones, and defined jaw; she noticed that as he aged, the more prominent the aristocratic features from his Potter and Black bloodlines became. She passed over them and down her sight traveled, down, down, along his neck, along the vein she could see thrumming with his pulse and she desperately wished to match her heartbeat to his. So close. Need him. Only him. And still her eyes marveled, all in the span of seconds, barely any time at all and yet it stood still for her. Her gaze drifted lazily over wide shoulders, wider than she remembered, before wandering lower. Hard muscle under-
A pale hand.
A pale hand.
Touching him.
Untempered fury filled her, every corner of her being now alight with rage, body ablaze again but this time it was different. She nearly doubled over with the strength of the tempest brought on by the hand currently curled tightly over Harry's bicep. Hermione could feel people grabbing at her from the sides but she screamed, a terrifying inhuman roar that morphed into something distinctly other. More people were yelling now but she cared not.
The pressure on her arms disappeared as she threw off those trying to contain her, molten brown never leaving the couple in front of her as her sight sharpened considerably.
The still splayed fingers on his arm signified what she could not allow.
Possession.
"Mine!"