A/N: Thanks to all who reviewed.
Krysalys73: Thank you again for your kind reviews. I'm always so happy to see your name down as the reviewer! Thanks for the offer, but I think I might want to hold off on the stick for a while.
Suicide-greeting: I'm getting a clearer idea on that…Thanks for adding me to your author alert list!
Lesa: As I said above, a better idea on the direction. Confession: none of my stories have any direction when they start. I don't think I could write them if they did.
F75: Thank you! Glad you're reading my other one too!
BuckNC: We shall see, we shall see. Thanks for adding me to your Author Alert list!
A/N II: I still own nothing. I bet that was surprising.
Now, on with the story…
* * *
Ron sat at the kitchen table that afternoon, moping at the abysmal failure his efforts to speak to Hermione had come to. Harry and Ginny had fared no better and were now in the living room listening to the Wizard's Wireless and talking amiably to each other. Ron thought of Hermione lying alone and silent in his bed and wished for her company, if only for a moment.
It had been nearly a year since the two of them had spoken. There hadn't been much to say after she told him she was going to be marrying their hated Potions Master. He had laughed glibly at first, thinking she was making some sorry, bookish attempt at a joke. His mirth had quickly subsided when he understood the seriousness of her intent.
He had gone to the wedding like a dutiful friend, but his face had been somber and his eyes cold and dead when he had met her in the receiving line. She seemed a bit put off by his attitude which served only to annoy him. He had wondered why she would expect anything else. The virtue of time had led him at last to see what he previously could not. He thought of her time turner briefly and sighed. Too bad those days were over.
He remembered how he had naively thought that everything would return to the way it had been if he stubbornly protested the unity of Hermione and Severus. Now it seemed so foolish. Instead of having his wish granted, he had lost his friends and let his life grind to a screeching halt. He knew now he should have congratulated her and offered his support, though he still would have rather given his condolences. He had let matters get out of hand.
Now he was sitting here with his head in his hands and nothing to do but wait until she wanted to share her burden with him. He wondered, not for the first time, if she ever would given the way he had treated her the last time she had come to him for support and help. He wondered why she was here in the first place. He was the last person that even himself would have thought to come to for sympathy after his performance at her wedding.
He sighed, pouring himself a spot of vodka, just enough to cover the bottom of the glass and barely enough to taste. Anymore would have him laughing like a fool and red in the face. He swirled it around with the ice and orange juice and poured it over his tongue, blanching a bit at the bitter taste. He would never get used to it, and didn't think he wanted to. He liked the feelings it gave him too much to actually allow himself to enjoy it the way his former friends so carelessly did and drown away his mounting sorrows. He had ruined everything else in his sorry life over the past year. That would have been just another step everyone else would have expected him to take.
For Ron, however, that was one step too far.
* * *
"Hermione?" Great, visitors again. It had been easier when it had just been Ron and his parents. It was easier to pretend, easier to hide inside of herself. Then, Ron had been the hardest but the pain in her heart every time her eyes feel upon him was enough to hold her in check. Now there were Harry and Ginny.
She heard the sound of chair legs scraping across the wooden floor and tried not to cringe. The heavy settling of a body coming to rest. The slight groan of the wood as Ginny made herself comfortable. A long visit. She fought the almost girlish urge to roll her eyes.
Perhaps there was hope for her yet.
"I could read to you if you would like." No. That meant fervent boredom and having to fight the urge to give corrections for sloppy diction and improper pronunciation. Besides the fact that she had given up books.
She heard the rustle of pages and tried not to sigh. Another long afternoon. Somehow, the days passed faster when they only bothered her with the lunch tray. They would beat her down and drag the words from her simply by virtue of their constant watch over her. It had been less than two hours since Harry had left her.
"June 15th, 1997: I had a devil of a time forcing myself to wear the hideous taffeta gown that Hermione insisted upon for me, but I felt that I had to. Lavender and Parvati refused point blank to be in her wedding, and Ron and Harry would make bloody awful bridesmaids. I tried not to complain too much, since I was the only one." That hadn't bothered her, Ginny being her only bridesmaid. Severus had had no one until Dumbledore had forced Professor Vector, who had stood nervously adjusting his robes the entire time. She still thought he had done it more out of kindness for her than he had out of liking for Severus.
"The wedding went okay. It was a bit austere, but I expected that from the practice. It never seemed happy, though. It was a grotesque adaptation of what I believed love was supposed to be. They were so grim as they exchanged their vows, so perfunctory as they kissed. I don't think Hermione ever smiled, and I don't think Snape ever stopped scowling." Fair assessment. Keen observation. Truth, if a little stretched. There were many kinds of love. She wondered if Ginny would understand that. She wasn't going to ask.
"Ron and Harry were complete gits at the reception. Ron shook hands with Hermione like she was some curmudgeonly old neighbor he had met only once in his life, and Harry completely passed over Snape except to stare him down and look at his shoes as though he wanted nothing more than to spit on them." She hadn't missed the subtleties there, either. Once those things had hurt her but now she could hardly feel them against the aching pain that had become her life.
"I tried to be cheery through the whole thing, but it was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I never wanted to see her with someone like him. He doesn't even make her happy. He doesn't know how to smile himself, so how could he ever presume to make her? Damn potions anyway!" Something stirred for just a moment. It would have been challenge if it hadn't been so tired and defeated all ready. She used to love potions. She had loved them enough to teach them. In another time. In another place.
"I don't see whatever it is Hermione does, but I do know one thing. If he hurts her, I'll go to the ends of the earth to kill him." Of course she couldn't see. There were many kinds of love. Love was like potions. It was subtle and exact. You had to know just how and when to stir it. It need to be heated properly and vialed with care. Like potions, it also had its uses. She had never been so careless with potions as she had with her own heart. She did not doubt that Ginny would kill Severus. She wouldn't wait for an explanation. She wouldn't worry herself over the matter. The man had been unreachable since Christmas.
"Hermione, I will kill him." She was right. At least that was one touch she hadn't lost.
"When I find him, he'll wish that I hadn't." You wont find him. She had helped to make sure of that. No one would find him until it was time. Not even her. She tried not to let her heart rate increase.
"I just wish you would tell me what he did." There were many kinds of love. It wasn't so much what he ever did as what he never would do.
"Please, Hermione, tell me." Could different kinds of love coexist? Maybe. It was hard. Here she was, proof of that theorem. Too stubborn to let him be, too hopeful to give up.
That was why some dreams deserved to die. They caused too much suffering to be allowed to live.
She heard a heavy sigh and listened as her friend's diary closed, feeling a soft gust of air from between it's pages. She would have thought Ginny would have developed an aversion to journaling.
The chair was moving back against the wall it had come from now. Steps again, and she was gone.
Had she wanted to make her angry?
Had she wanted to make her sad?
Or had she simply wanted to make her think?
She focused her eyes on the room around her, stretching into a more comfortable position and fluffing her pillow.
Whatever her intent, Ginny had managed to make her confused.
For a moment, she felt as though she were alive again.
* * *
He didn't want to do this. Try as he might, he couldn't remember anything he had ever wanted to partake in less, except maybe having to sit through the horrific travesty that was her wedding.
Harry stood by him now, watching his every move. Damn him, anyway. He had said how hard it was for him to talk to Hermione. Ron wondered why he couldn't have taken that into account when he insisted that the Weasley boy take his turn at talking to their oldest friend. Even his unflappable sister had been choking back something that sounded like tears when she had finished her session with Hermione.
He had put it off for as long as he could, not even having really bothered to look at her all day aside from rousing her from sleep and a brief moment when he, Ginny and Harry had all simultaneously paid her a visit. The other two had paid their individual respects to the inert parody of what had once been the girl he adored and he had let them take over his duties as her nursemaid, happy for a reprieve of the only, and yet most draining he had ever experienced, task that he had in his life. Today, he had pursued drinking a weak screwdriver and having a long nap in the armchair by the window. Depression had combined with depressants and the incongruous warm rays of the afternoon sun had helped him to sleep off what would have otherwise become another irreversible slide into the oblivion of nonexistence.
Since Hermione had come, it had pained him to see that the only understanding ally he had in his attempt to fade away from life was one who had entered the extreme of the condition he wished to achieve in what he was certain was an unwitting manner. She was never one to bend. Perhaps that was why she seemed to have broken.
He sighed heavily, wishing that he could escape from his duty with the ease that the breath escaped from his lips. Shutting his eyes to blank out the pain for a moment, he ran his hand through his thick pate of red hair, not caring that the gesture had undoubtedly left it standing on end. He had now seen her at her very worst. He doubted there was enough of her left to care about such a fickle thing as his appearance. For her, it would have been a triviality even in a perfect state.
"Come on mate, you have to do it sooner or later." Harry was looking at him now with more concern than he had ever seen. He might have had to go in there, but he did not have to share the burden of his soul with her. To him, it seemed that she either had enough on her mind already, or that there wasn't enough of her there to mind. Either way, it seemed like a brutal thing to say to the girl.
He smiled wanly at Harry and walked into the room, shutting the door behind him and satisfying himself with the extra click of the lock. He would speak quietly so that his friend outside could not hear the words he said and would never know if he had confessed to Hermione or not. He moved to sit beside her bed and found to his surprise that she had not fallen back upon the pillows but was still sitting up with her head resting against the wall.
"Did you want something," he asked nervously, knowing she would not answer.
Her hair left large damp spots where it touched her cloth pajamas, and he moved to push it back away from her shoulders. Deftly, he walked over to the dresser and lifted the brush he had been using ever since Hermione's arrival to detangle her hair before tucking her in for sleep. Placing one arm beneath the crook in her knees and one beneath her arms, he lifted her and moved her forward. She was little more than deadweight.
After getting his friend situated, he scooted in behind her and began brushing her long hair, cursing Ginny, who had helped the older girl to bed, for towel drying the frizzy mass without bothering to brush through it. Already, little pieces were starting to stick up everywhere.
At first, he did nothing but run the brush through her tresses with long, even strokes, thinking back to the times they had shared at Hogwarts. At some point, he began sharing his memoirs aloud with her, not knowing if she could hear him. He wondered if the words were reaching her mind. He wondered if his thoughts were touching her heart. The one-sided conversation was so odd it made it unbearable to him. Words were a connection between two hearts and with only one person doing the talking it was a tenuous link at best.
He mused that perhaps this made him as uncomfortable as seeing the girl he loved in such pain. There was no acknowledgement from her as he spoke. Never were his words interrupted by the little sounds and grunts of attention that he had always before paid no mind to. He tried to tell her a funny story, but without her laughter the humor died quickly away. A slight bit of sorrow became dull and meaningless when her eyes were so glazed and apathetic. He might as well have talked to the golden snitches on his bed sheet.
Finished with all of the tangles, he began braiding her hair into the long plait that he had customarily done ever since her unexpected arrival at the Burrow two weeks ago. He wondered what she would have thought of wearing her hair like that and weakly asked her. Of course there was no answer.
Moving out from behind her, he scooted her forward a bit more and then helped her to slowly lean back, fluffing out her pillow and giving the sheets an airy flip before he tucked them in around her. He was careful not to make it too tight, lest she should want to stir sometime in the night.
"Where did you go, 'Mione?" His voice sounded only faintly like his own and he scorned himself for such a display of pain when her plight was so obviously superior to his own. He could hear the tears choking his voice. "What happened to you?"
He listened with all his might for an answer but the only sound was the soft brushing of fabric as the sheet rose and fell with each breath she took. He wondered if she would have rather been dead.
He took her soft hand in his, holding it warmly for uncountable minutes. Somehow, he couldn't help but blame himself for all that had happened to her. If only he had been brave enough to face the fear that had beaten him down every time. When he had faced the bogarts, it should have been the face of Hermione Granger he had seen rather than the giant spiders. After all, he would have rather faced Aragog and his children a thousand times before having to pluck up the courage to tell her what he had always wanted to and never could.
He stared down at her again. Her eyes were closed now, her lower lip hanging slightly open as though she were lost deep in a dreamless sleep. He brushed a stray hair away from her face, and softly ran his finger across her forehead. It was cool as ice and she did not so much as flinch.
Carefully, he leaned forward and touched his lips to her forehead, never letting go of the tiny limp hand he held in his own. He pulled back slowly and stared down at her again, his heart feeling heavier and more filled with grief than it ever had in his entire life.
"It should have been me instead," he wept softly. "Gods, Hermione, If only I'd ever been able to tell you how I love you." He stopped for breath and looked upon her sleeping facing. There was no hint of life other than the soft sound of her breathing.
"Merlin help me," he whispered, taking her in for a moment before dropping his head onto her sleeping hand, "I wish it were me instead."
* * *