8
August 21st, 1999
She stood in the wreckage of Hogwarts, surrounded by smoldering rubble and ash. A soft breeze blew her hair into her face and with it the scent of death and sulfur. She thought how insane it was that at eighteen she knew the smell of death. This thought almost made her laugh. It bubbled up in her throat and threatened to overflow, but she bit it back, squeezing Ron's hand like an anchor, tethering her to the real world.
She looked past all the broken bodies, the blood pooling in the entrance way of the large oaken doors. There was a leg protruding beneath a pile of debris still clad in a blue and white trainer, tinged crimson and brown from whatever had buried it there in the first place.
It all felt surreal. Sometimes, at the oddest moments, it hit her that this was real life. In the moments when they were running or fighting for their lives, it was either do or die. There was no time to think, only to react. But here, in a moment of clarity, it all felt like a dream, as if she were looking down on the carnage, separated from it somehow, rather than having taken part in it just moments before.
"NO!"
McGonagall's voice screeching through the bloodshed snapped her back to reality. Up ahead, a crowd gathered in front of those who survived inside Hogwarts. Bellatrix's laughter rising up from the throng of Death Eaters sent chills up her spine and immediately sent her mind spiraling back to the cold floor of Malfoy Manor. She began to shake, and Ron pulled her closer to him.
She scanned the crowd, trying to see Harry amongst them, knowing all along that if they were here, that meant Harry was gone. She pushed that thought from her mind, thinking I can't think about that now. Get the snake. Harry said to get the snake.
Just then she spotted Hagrid's enormous form emerge through the crowd, Voldemort and Nagini a few steps ahead. In Hagrid's arms lay Harry. He looked so much smaller than could even be possible. Not an hour before, he had seemed so big, so real, so much a part of her. Looking at him now felt like she was being broken in half, as if it were her soul being torn in two, but there was no horcrux here, no salvaging herself. A part of her was gone. She had watched him walk away, knowing what he was and unable to stop him from walking headlong to his own death. But then, she hadn't truly felt it the way she felt it now.
"Harry! No!" She heard Ron and Ginny cry out in unison. She couldn't speak. She couldn't breathe. She remembered the task Harry had given her and Ron, but that only made her angry. How could he ask her to keep fighting? He could he have asked her to go on as if part of her wouldn't die with him?
She felt Ron begin to pull away, to try and run to their best friend, but she held on to him. She couldn't lose him too. Without him too, there would be nothing left of her.
"Silence!" Voldemort demanded, and the voices that had been screaming for Harry died away.
"You see?" he asked, motioning toward the ground where Hagrid had just laid Harry's lifeless form. He walked back and forth in front of them, his bare feet sliding snake-like across the cold stone. "Harry Potter is dead! Do you understand now, deluded ones? He was nothing, ever, but a boy who relied on others to sacrifice themselves for him."
That's not true,she thought. He gave himself for all of us.
The words were on her lips waiting to be spoken, but Ron beat her to it. "He beat you!" he yelled, and the crowd erupted once more.
"He was killed while trying to sneak out of the castle grounds." He sneered toward them, his red eyes glowing in the morning light. "Killed while trying to save himself-"
LIAR, she had started to yell, just as Neville charged through the crowd, wand leveled at Voldemort. A loud BANG emanated from Voldemort's wand before Neville had a chance to open his mouth. His back arched as he flew through the air, and he landed ten feet away with a groan.
She gasped and took a step toward him, but Ron clenched tighter on her hand and shook his head infinitesimally. "Not yet," he mouthed toward her.
It felt like her blood was boiling. Just standing here watching, waiting for whatever hell Voldemort had in store for them was worse than any battle she'd been in. She felt like she would explode if she didn't do something soon.
Just then, Neville was spelled off the ground where he lay, and dropped heavily onto his knees. Grimacing, he tried to stand. His attempt sent him splaying on the ground again as the Death Eaters jeered in front of him.
Voldemort stepped toward him and hissed, "And who is this? Who has volunteered to demonstrate what happens to those who continue to fight when the battle is lost?"
"Neville Longbottom, my Lord," Bellatrix said with a laugh. "Son of the aurors, remember?"
Voldemort smiled his snake-like smile again. "Ah, yes. I remember." He looked down on Neville as he struggled to regain his feet. "You show spirit and bravery, young Longbottom. You will make a valuable Death Eater. We need your –"
"I'll join you when hell freezes over!" Neville interjected as he pulled himself to his feet, favoring one side, but standing, nonetheless. He lifted his chin and shouted, "Dumbledore's Army!" Once again, the crowd exploded through Voldemort's silencing charm with chants of "For Harry" and "For Dumbledore!"
"Very well, Neville," Voldemort almost purred. The dangerous quality of his voice made Hermione's heart quicken.
"We have to do something, Ron. He's going to kill him right here in front of us," she whispered.
But Ron was transfixed as Voldemort said, "On your head be it," and a crash came from overhead. The multitude looked up in unison to see the Sorting Hat flying through the air. Voldemort caught it, and announced, "There will be no more sorting at Hogwarts. There will be no more houses."
He pointed his wand at Neville, who collapsed to his knees and seemed to freeze in place. He violently crammed the Sorting Hat onto Neville's head, pulling it down past his nose. She could see Neville twitching beneath it as she tried to remember the hat's material and whether or not Neville could breathe..
"Neville here is going to demonstrate what happens to anyone foolish enough to oppose me." Voldemort flicked his wand toward Neville, and the hat burst into a white, hot flame.
As if burning him alive wasn't enough, Voldemort released Neville from the binding charm, and his screams filled the air. Hermione could feel the heat from where she was standing ten feet away, hot enough to redden her cheeks. Neville's voice cracked as he tried to pull the hat off his head. Hermione could smell the unmistakable scent of burnt hair and flesh as Neville gave up his attempts to remove the hat. Instead, he was hitting himself in the face repeatedly, trying to extinguish the flames. Now, other cries filled the grounds as the students tried to rush at the Death Eaters, who fired curses to hold them at bay.
Hermione reached for her wand, and realized it wasn't in her pocket at all. She began inspecting the ground beneath her trying to find it, knowing it couldn't be far. She felt Ron's hand leave her own as spells erupted around her. She was on her hands and knees, tears burning her eyes, searching desperately for her only means of protection. She was forcefully thrown backwards by someone's foot connecting with her face, and she landed on her back hard enough to force the air from her lungs. She looked up and tried to blink away the double vision as Bellatrix crashed down on top of her, pinning her to the ground with her knees across Hermione's arms.
She smiled the decaying smile that Hermione remembered from Malfoy Manor and said, "Now, we can finish what we started, mudblood." Hermione's eyes widened in fear as she tried in vain to buck Bellatrix off her chest. Bellatrix reached inside the sleeve of her robes and pulled out a knife that Hermione immediately recognized as the same one she had used to carve the slur into her flesh only weeks ago. Grabbing it with both hands, Bellatrix raised the knife high above her head and plunged it down quickly, sinking the blade up to the hilt in Hermione's chest.
She gasped violently and sat straight up in her bed, clutching at her chest. She momentarily mistook the sweat that had drenched her robes for blood, causing her chest to tighten further. In the pitch-black darkness of her room, Hermione frantically searched for her wand on the bedside table, smashing a glass of water in the process. When she finally found her wand, she yelled, "Lumos," barely recognizing her own voice as the room illuminated around her. Her hands were shaking as she aimed her wand at every shadow in her room. Realizing it was all a dream, she dropped her wand on the sweat-soaked blankets intertwined in her lap and began rubbing her forehead. She silently willed her hands to stop shaking and tried to focus on her breaths, as Alys as taught her.
"Breathe in through your nose for a count of four, hold it for a count of four, then exhale through your mouth for a count of eight."
1-2-3-4
1-2-3-4
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8
1-2-3-4
1-2-3-4
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8
She continued trying to focus on her breaths for what felt like ages before she stopped and realized that her heart no longer felt like it was trying to escape from her chest.
It isn't real, she thought. That's not how it happened.
She heard Aly's voice again, speaking softly in her mind. "When you have these irrational thoughts or dreams that you can't seem to shake, first examine them for truth. Is this something that really happened or even something that you really should be worried about?"
She began breathing normally, focusing on the dream, examining it for truth. Most of her dream was accurate. She really did see Harry's body. Neville really had rushed forward trying to take on Voldemort by himself. Voldemort really had lit the Sorting Hat on fire atop Neville's head.
But that's where the truth ended.
Within seconds of the Sorting Hat igniting, centaurs stormed the castle, causing Voldemort's enchantment over the hat to crumble. Hermione remembered watching spellbound as Neville yanked the hat from his head and pulled the sword of Gryffindor from within the brim. Time seemed to stand still as Neville, tendrils of smoke curling around him, slashed the sword through the air and removed the head of the great serpent in one swift motion.
Neville did not die there. Hermione never lost her wand. Harry wasn't dead. Bellatrix certainly didn't stab her.
"Once you've evaluated the truthfulness, recognize the lies for what they are, then come back to the present. Come back to the here and now."
It wasn't true, Hermione thought, breathing in deeply. That was a lie.
Coming back to the present, she opened her eyes and looked around at her room. I'm safe.
By now, small rays of morning light were pouring in through her window. She picked her wand back up from where it lay in her lap and repaired the broken glass beside her nightstand. She noticed her hands were still shaking as she cleaned the water from the floor.
She lay back down onto her pillow and stared at the ceiling.
She blamed this particular nightmare on the meeting last week. Her encounters with Seamus and Malfoy had both weighed heavily on her mind, and there's no doubt they contributed to her inability to sleep.
Last night, she dreamed of Lavender. She dreamed she was watching, unable to move, as Greyback devoured her. As he looked up from where he sat, hunched over her abdomen, Hermione could smell the unmistakable stench of his sweat mixed with Lavender's blood. Staring at Hermione, Lavender's intestines in his hands, he grinned and blood dripped from his chin. Only, in her dream, Lavender hadn't been dead yet. She had been screaming, pleading with Hermione to save her, her arms outstretched and tears streaming down her face. Greyback yanked her pants open in one swift motion and sank his teeth into the soft skin on the inside of Lavender's thigh. Her eyes never left Hermione's as he tore chunks of flesh from her body.
That wasn't real. Lavender was already dead. I killed Greyback.
The night before, she dreamed she was forced to watch as Antonin Dolohov tortured Remus. He was bleeding and crying, begging Hermione for help. Through his tears, he asked, "Why didn't you kill him when you had the chance?" He screamed in agony, as Dolohov turned his blood to acid. He laid twitching on the ground, green putrescence oozing from his nose and eyes. Dolohov turned toward her and said, "He's right, you know. You wouldn't let Ron kill me in the café. This is your fault."
That wasn't real. Remus was killed by the Killing Curse. She couldn't tell herself that it wasn't her fault, though. She had prevented Ron from killing Dolohov in the café on Tottenham Square. No matter how many times Harry told her that it wasn't her fault, she would never be able to truly let it go. If they had killed Dolohov and Rowle when they had the chance, Remus would still be alive, maybe Tonks as well.
Just like they always did when she thought about the deaths that were her fault, she felt hot tears stinging her eyes. She tried anxiously to stop them from falling, but it was no use. Her defenses were down after days of either no sleep at all or sleep riddled with nightmares and thoughts of facing her own trauma head-on with the ever-approaching start of therapy. The tingling in her hands began, and for a split-second, her chest began to constrict at the thought of another magical explosion.
She allowed herself this moment to just collapse. Rather than fighting her emotions, pushing them further and further beneath the surface, like she typically did, she accepted them. She allowed the anguish and fear and desperation and anger that she had been holding back for months envelop her like a hug from an old friend.
She curled into a ball, clutching her pillow tightly and pulling her knees into her chest. Tears fell from her eyes in waves. She went over and over in her mind those who she had lost. She hadn't even fully realized until then that she had been hiding their memories in the depths of her mind, never giving herself permission to truly grieve them. Everyone else seemed to pretend like the war never happened, so she felt that she had to as well. For once she gave herself over to all the painful memories throughout the entirety of her life.
Being petrified in 2nd year. Watching and hearing the world around her but being completely unable to move or speak. It was torture
Feeling unloved and unwanted by everyone around her
Hearing the taunts from the others in Hogwarts, even within her own house. know-it-all, bitch, annoying, mudblood…
Terror during the battle in the Department of Mysteries and thinking that she and her friends would never make it out alive. Then waking up to Remus and Harry in the hospital wing, both of them staring at her, terrified, as if she were about to combust, the pain in her abdomen searing like a fire poker as she realized she was screaming
Trying to push McClaggen off of her from behind a curtain on the walk back to the Gryffindor common room, one hand beneath her dress and the other fisted in her curls. His mouth was peppering what he seemed to think were romantic kisses along her neck, but her persistent pushing should have showed that they were unwanted. She kneed him in the groin and ran with the sounds of him dry heaving echoing behind her
Holding Harry's hand as he sobbed while Dumbledore lay dead at their feet
Standing behind her parents, as they sat on the couch watching yet another documentary. The voice of Sir David Attenborough amplified in her mind, tears streaming down her face, as she said, "Obliviate"
Greyback's rancid breath on her face as he pulled her to him and ran his hand up her thigh
Attempting to push Bellatrix off her chest as she felt the knife carving into her skin
Seeing Harry's lifeless body in Hagrid's arms
Lavender's convulsing body as Greyback ripped into her throat
George's emotionless face and dead eyes staring at the ground as they lowered Fred's casket into the dirt
Teddy's wailing from where he sat on Andromeda's knee as Harry spoke at Tonks and Remus's funeral
Images flashed rapidly through her mind, and she couldn't stop them. Faces, screams, bloody bodies. She felt overwhelmed and powerless as the scenes continued to shift. The smell of sulfur and gasoline, tearsbloodsweatsmoke…
BANG!
Hermione's eyes flashed open at the sound of wood splintering around her. Ginny stood in her doorway, wand in-hand and her eyes as big as saucers. Hermione reached for her wand, and in an instant, had it pointed toward Ginny.
Ginny immediately lowered her wand. She dropped it on the floor and raised both hands in surrender. "Hermione, stop. Put your wand down," she said slowly.
Hermione looked around her room to see destruction all around her. Feathers floated through the air, her pillows lay in shambles, and all four posts of her bed were snapped at odd angles, each pointing away from her. Her hair was smoldering, and there were black scorch marks up the wall behind her and on the ceiling directly above where she sat. A pipe must have burst from the bathroom when the door was blown inward because she could see water spraying the wall opposite the sink and soaking her bathroom floor.
What the hell did I do, she thought. Her chest was rising and falling quickly, and she looked at Ginny for help.
As she started to rise from her bed, Ginny took a step back, raising one hand out in front of her. "Hermione, put your wand down."
Hermione was still dazed. She looked down at her hand and, seeing that she was still pointing her wand directly at Ginny, dropped it immediately. She turned both of her hands over, looking at the deep gouges that ran the length of her palms. Blood covered her hands and the blankets in her lap.
She looked back at Ginny and tried to say something, but words wouldn't form in her mouth.
Ginny pointed toward the bed where Hermione sat and cautiously asked, "Can I come in there?"
Hermione nodded, blinking back tears.
Ginny slowly walked toward her, stepping over the remnants of the door and the splinters of Hermione's desk and bed posts. She sat down on the foot of the bed and carefully reached for Hermione's hands. She turned them over in her own and looked up at Hermione, her brown eyes full of concern. "Can I heal you?" she asked.
"Yes," Hermione replied, her voice raspy and gruff as if she had been screaming.
Ginny walked back toward the hallway and reached down to retrieve her wand. She held it up to Hermione, as if asking permission. Hermione nodded. Ginny sat back down on the bed and cleaned the wounds on Hermione's hands. She felt the warmth of Ginny's spells as the cuts on her hands were repaired and the blood cleansed away.
"What happened?" Hermione asked, groaning as her words burned her throat.
"I don't know. I woke up to the house shaking and then I heard you screaming. I… I've never heard you scream like that, Hermione, I …" Ginny stopped and blinked back a tear from her auburn eyelashes. "I thought someone was hurting you. When I made it to your door, it sounded like bombs going off in here. The door wouldn't budge. I tried yelling for you, but you just kept screaming, so I blew it open."
"I thought…" Hermione started but didn't know how to continue. She took a deep breath and said, "I thought if I allowed myself to think about everything instead of fighting it that I could prevent a panic attack or another explosion. I guess that was the wrong choice."
She buried her face in her hands and sobbed. "I'm so done with all of this. Why can't I just be okay?"
Ginny said nothing; she pulled Hermione into her lap and stroked her hair.
"I'm so tired, Gin. I'm so tired of feeling like this."
After lying in bed and crying for what felt like hours, she and Ginny repaired her room, returning the door back to its frame and fixing Hermione's desk and bed. They mended her sink and the broken pipe and cleaned all the water from her floor before heading downstairs for coffee with Hermione's normal pick-me-up of Irish whisky. This is how Harry found them when he came home for lunch.
"Are you two drinking at one in the afternoon?" he asked, looking at them quizzically from where he stood in the doorway.
"Yes, we are," Ginny answered, matter-of-factly, before Hermione had a chance to think of some excuse. "It's been a helluva morning, and no we don't want to talk about it." She took another drink of her coffee, and the look she gave him over the rim of her mug said all that needed to be said.
"Alright." Harry dropped his satchel by the door and sat down beside them. He summoned a glass from the liquor cabinet in the corner, poured himself a whisky from the bottle sitting in front of them, and said, "Glacius minima," dropping two cubes of ice from the tip of his wand into the amber liquid. He swirled it around and took a sip. Looking up to see Hermione and Ginny staring at him, he said, "Let's drink, then."
Hours later, the three had finished off the entire bottle of whisky and somehow ended up on the living room rug laughing and reminiscing about Hogwarts, all ignoring any discussion of The Willows like an elephant in the room.
It wasn't until Harry managed to locate Ron that the discussion turned back to Hermione's ever-approaching big departure. It had taken over an hour of fire-calling various Weasley residences before Ron came stumbling through the fireplace, already a bit intoxicated, from a bar off Diagon Alley.
"Where have you been? I feel like we haven't seen very much of you since we went to The Willows?" Harry asked him, after handing Ron a drink from a second bottle of whisky.
Ron's face turned a shade redder as he choked a bit on the Muggle whisky. "What is this rubbish?" he asked, raising the glass up to look it over. "'Mi, is this that Muggle stuff you're always buying?"
"Yes, and it isn't rubbish," Hermione responded, chucking a couch pillow at his head. "If you don't like it, drink your own whisky."
"Well, you lot brought me here. I was drinking my own whisky." When she cut her eyes at him, he wrapped an arm around her, and pulled her toward him affectionately. "But I'll drink this rubbish with a smile on my face if it's the last time I get to drink with you before you leave. Only two more days, right?"
To Hermione, it felt like the air was pulled from the room from just this one small comment. Just the mention of The Willows immediately brought the butterflies back to her stomach. Harry and Ginny, who had been barely paying attention, immediately fell silent.
"What?" Ron asked, looking around innocently. "Are we not talking about that?"
Ginny made a face at him that was remarkably reminiscent of their mother. "Way to go, twit. You sucked the life out of the party."
"It's fine," Hermione said, picking her glass up from the coffee table in front of her. She took a drink and began twirling her cup around on her knee, watching the liquid swirl around on the bottom. "I'm still not sure if I'm actually going."
"Because of Seamus?" Ron asked. "Or the ferret?"
"Both really. I just… I can't imagine being able to open up with them around. And clearly neither of them even wants to be there." Crookshanks jumped onto the couch and spun around twice between Hermione and Ron before tucking himself into the crook behind Hermione's knees. She rubbed his soft orange fur absentmindedly and added, "Malfoy is court ordered to go, and despite his pseudo apology the other night, I just can't see him making it any easier."
"But maybe you'll get to knock him out again," Ginny said, hopefully. "Seems like the perfect therapy to me."
"I'm actually shocked that the Wizengamot is offering him that. He got two years in Azkaban," Harry added. "Any type of rehabilitation or 'time served' is completely unheard of in the wizarding world."
Ginny scoffed. "Just goes to show you that no matter how progressive the wizarding community claims to be, old money still speaks volumes. I'm actually surprised he even got a year. I'd be shocked if half of the Wizengamot isn't still in Lucius Malfoy's back pocket."
After the Malfoys' trial, the wizarding community had been completely up in arms over his sentence. After all that Lucius did during the war, he only received two years in Azkaban and ten years of house arrest, and Narcissa's charges were completely dropped. Their trail, along with most of the Death Eaters', was closed to the public, so outside of the testimonies given by witnesses, nobody really knew what went on. Even the Wizengamot members were sworn to secrecy and the court transcripts sealed. All of this contributed greatly to rumors that the Malfoys bought their way out of life sentences.
"With Kingsley in charge of the ministry, I just don't think the Malfoys have the same sway they did prior to the war," Harry said.
"Oh, come on, Harry. Money is money. No matter who's holding it, it carries the same weight," Ginny said. Any discussion involving Lucius Malfoy's sentence always angered Ginny. After he slipped the diary into her cauldron in her second year which led to her possession by Voldemort, she hated him more than any of the others, and rightly so. "He should be rotting in Azkaban for all that he did during both wars, but instead he gets to spend his sentence in the lap of luxury in his 'manor.' Fucking disgusting."
Ginny finished the last of her drink and slammed her glass down on the table beside her. "And don't even get me started on Draco. I know how you both felt about his trial," she said, pointing toward Harry and Hermione. "But I still think he knew exactly what he was doing. Had Voldemort actually won, they would all three be singing a very different tune, and you know it."
Hermione wasn't so sure about that. During the entire last battle, Narcissa and Lucius didn't fight at all. They were too busy running around trying to find Draco. And Narcissa had blatantly lied to Voldemort when he thought Harry was dead. She was more concerned with her son's safety than anything else. Draco too had lied for them at Malfoy Manor, claiming to not recognize them. This was almost enough to make her want to go to the retreat, simply to ask him why he had done that. Had Voldemort won, there's no way any of that would be overlooked. He likely would have killed them all.
"I don't know about that," Hermione said. "But personally speaking, I just don't think I can let everything go. Even if the war wasn't a factor at all, how can I sit in a room with him and even remotely talk about what I've been through. He tried every way that he could to make my life hell. That isn't really conducive to a comfortable, trusting environment."
Though she hid it quite well, his "Mudblood" comments always left her sobbing into her pillow at night. She may have been tough Hermione Granger when the world was looking on back then, but when she was alone, those feelings always came to the surface. Being regarded as something less than human and unworthy of the magic that she worked so hard to perfect was infuriating and hurtful in a way that she had never felt before, and Draco Malfoy was the only person who ever made her feel that way personally. The idea of blood supremacy was one thing, but having it thrown in her face regularly felt so much more personal.
"Maybe I'm overreacting but I'm not sure I can forgive and forget all that hurt," Hermione said, remembering every time he had made her feel undeserving.
Ron had been uncharacteristically quiet throughout this entire exchange. Typically, he took every opportunity he could to bad mouth Malfoy, even telling Hermione and Harry that they were crazy for testifying at his trial. He didn't understand that hating him for his prejudice wasn't the same as wanting him to spend his life in Azkaban for choices he was really forced to make.
But now, despite the perfect opportunity to talk about how awful Malfoy is, Ron appeared almost contemplative, which wasn't a look Ron had very often. He took a deep breath and said, "Maybe… hear me out here… but maybe… they deserve a second chance too." Looking toward Hermione, he continued, "You're wanting your life back, right, 'Mi? Maybe that's all he wants too. Maybe that's all they all want. We'll never know if we don't give them that chance, right?"
Hermione was dumbstruck, as were Ginny and Harry. She looked over to see them both staring at Ron with identical looks of disbelief. Ginny shook her head, seemingly waking herself from a trance, stood, and pulled her wand from her pocket. Aiming it at Ron, she said, "Revelio."
"What the hell, Gin? What are you doing?" Ron jumped up, brushing himself off.
"Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?" Ginny asked dramatically.
When Harry laughed, she lowered her wand and took her seat back beside him.
Ron sat back down, but he kept looking at Ginny. "I'm serious. I think if we ever want to move forward from everything that happened, we need to stop looking at everyone else as enemies. Kinda like what that Whitby guy said the other night, right? We have to try to help one another. If he's there, I think he needs help, just like Seamus." Turning to Hermione and taking her hand, he added, "Just like you."
"Wow, that was… very profound, Ronald." Hermione smiled at him and leaned over to rest her head on his shoulder.
She could feel him smirking as he leaned his head over onto hers. "Always the tone of surprise with you."