Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Nope, not me.
A/N: For all those people who wanted resolution on the Hermione/Sirius situation at the end of The Space Between The Stars. This takes place just after the events of that fic, during the very last segment of the epilogue with Harry and Sirius. You might want to reread that, but it should make at least a modicum of sense without it.
Just a warning - there are a hell of a lot of religious allusions in here. I apologise sincerely if I offended anyone. I don't think I will have, but if I have... sorry...
A note to readers who haven't read The Space Between The Stars - this may not make a whole lot of sense to you. The Space Between The Stars is a long fic, but you might want to read that first... or this will be stupid and confusing for you, and I'll get a whole pile of reviews saying, "Whaaaa?"
But even (this is for you all) if "Whaaaa?" is all you have to say, please review and make a poor uni student happy! This is a pretty hasty job - a momentary inspiration - so I apologise if it's dodgy. But I think we did need to hear from Hermione, even if only for a bit...
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They looked like a father and son, standing there at Regina's grave. Leaning on the parapet, Hermione watched as Sirius took up his violin and began to play. Harry stood beside him, unspeaking, unmoving, just... being there. Comforting. Stalwart. A son.
Hermione blinked back tears. It hurt. It hurt so much, this pain tearing at her skin, her heart and soul. She felt lost - lost in madness and fear, lost in her own confusion. It... it was like being crucified. My own personal Golgotha, she thought, wiping her eyes furiously. How apt.
She watched, an unwilling voyeur who could not tear her eyes away, as Harry laid his hand on Sirius's back. A single gesture of comfort. A son's gesture.
That could be mine, Hermione thought. It should be mine! He's my father, not Harry's! That's my mother lying dead in the ground!
She hated herself almost instantly for what she had thought. How dare you, Hermione?! she screamed mentally at herself. Harry has given everything to Sirius - his whole heart, his whole mind. He loves Sirius like a son should. You... the nails of crucifixion drove deeper into her hands. Good Friday, then, for Hermione Granger, though not much was good about it. You turned your back on that, Hermione, when you told Regina Lupin you could never be her daughter.
Regina Lupin. Her mother.
Her dead mother.
Psyche?
I'M NOT PSYCHE! I'M HERMIONE!
That night - had it really only been last week? - burned like Moses' burning bush in her mind; cyclical, undying. Bound upon the wheel of fire was she, and she could not escape.
Honour thy father and mother.
She had just about killed her mother by rejecting her. And now her mother was dead, and she would never see her again.
She thought of her parents - her delightfully dull dentist Muggle parents - but even the thought of their smiling faces could not soothe her soul. No respite, then, for the ungrateful daughter. Abandoning her Muggle parents for the world of magic, then abandoning her magical parents in a stupid teenage tantrum. I murdered the prophets, she thought. There is no salvation for me.
She was not religious - she never had been - but she felt like she had committed some great sacrilege. Masochistically, she craved punishment, she craved pain, she craved fire and brimstone, the seventh circle of hell, screaming with Catiline in agony, but she hated it when it came. Why was that?
"Hermione?"
She turned. "Ron, what are you doing up here?"
"I could ask you the same question?" Ron joined her at the parapet, but he did not touch her. Far below them, at Regina's grave, Sirius set down his violin and began to weep, great shuddering sobs.
"You think you should be down there with him, don't you?"
She did not have to answer. She just looked at him, and knew he could see the answer in her eyes.
Ron sighed. "Look, Hermione... I'm not very good at speeches. But... it's not your fault."
"I know that," she snapped. She did, at least, know that. There was no way she could have known that the goblins of Gringotts would set free the wights like that, that her mother would sacrifice her life by tearing them out of the Tapestry.
But still her heart beat with a dull, thudding ache. Hermione Granger, Hogwarts resident genius girl, tarred, feathered, crucified, and humiliated. Here is Hermione, Queen of the Jews.
Paradise lost.
"You know," Ron remarked, "she was nothing like you, you know."
Her head snapped round and she looked at him sharply. "What?"
He wasn't looking at her. Instead, he gazed down at Harry and Sirius. "She was... I dunno, just really different to you. You're all... active and stuff. You... you never wait for people to tell you what to do. If something happens that you don't like, you tell them straight - like when you told Harry he had a saving-people thing, or when you told me I have the emotional range of a teaspoon. But she..." Ron sighed, "- well, she sort of seemed to wait for things to happen to her, you know? That's why the thing at Gringotts was so shocking... because she actually did something." His voice was softer now, Eden, the Promised Land. "She... she was like you then, Hermione."
She didn't say anything. The tears were pouring down her face now.
And Ron noticed. "Oh... Merlin, Hermione, I'm an arse. I... I really stuck my foot in it that time. Ginny's always telling me I'm insensitive, and -"
"No, Ron," she cut him off quietly. "That's - that's the best thing that anyone's ever said to me since - well, since I found out, and... she died."
Ron's face brightened. "Really?"
She forced herself to smile. "Really." She didn't know why it was so comforting, to hear she had been nothing like her mother, except at the very end. Perhaps because it was honest. There was hardly any honesty in these dark days.
But perhaps she would get an Easter Sunday, after all.
"Have I graduated to having the emotional range of a tablespoon now?"
She laughed gently. "Don't push it, Weasley."
He chuckled and wrapped his arm around her. He did not speak. He did not need to. The silence spoke volumes.
Harry and Sirius were leaving Regina's grave now. The moon, a sickle crescent, illuminated the night.
"You're jealous, aren't you? Of what Harry has with Sirius?"
"Sort of."
"You don't have to explain."
"It's just..." Hermione knew she didn't have to explain, but she... well, she had to. To herself more than anyone else. "He's... well, he's my father, I suppose, even if he's never really... been that to me. And... I suppose it's like Harry has taken the place... that would have been mine if none of the bad stuff happened and I'd stayed Psyche and grown up as his daughter."
"I - I don't know what to say."
"Just being here is enough, Ron. Thankyou." She meant it, too. His very inadequacy - his inability to lie to her - made him all the more adequate to her.
They stood there for a little while longer in comfortable silence, gazing at the stars. It was cold, and Hermione shivered. Inside, a clock struck midnight.
"It's Sunday now," Ron remarked softly.
Resurrection, then, for her? Hermione wasn't sure. But... for now, she felt... redeemed, anyway.
"It's getting cold," she said quietly.
"Come on," Ron said. "Let's go inside."
As they left the tower top, Hermione glanced back over her shoulder at her mother's grave.
So long, Jerusalem, she thought.
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REVIEW!
Don't expect a whole lot of fic action from me in the near future... but I promise that the prequel to The Space Between The Stars is in the works. Cross my heart! Just remember I'm a student now and have very little time...