Completed: 1/24/05 11:56 PM
Posted: 1/25/05 12:09 AM
A/N: Only one person guessed it right (well, sort of). dancing in rain you get a cookie! And I don't care if you think the last part is random, I liked it a lot and it made me a bit teary.
Next Chapter: Don't wanna say if it all doesn't fit.
ETP: Again...not sure. Hopefully by this weekend.
"Hello Tonks," Hermione greeted in return. The last time she'd seen Tonks had been at Grimmauld Place the precious summer, and the shapeshifter had been complaining to her about Mad Eye Moody. Hermione hugged the slightly older woman and asked, "How's the boss been treating you?"
Tonks' lime green hair darkened to a nauseating sewage shade in order to match her disgusted expression. "Been running me ragged he has – driving the whole department up the wall."
"Send him my regards."
Tonks grinned – all pearly white teeth – and her long hair turned neon again. "Will do. But hopefully you'll be seeing him before I do." The young auror certainly looked hopeful.
"Why do you say that?"
"Once I'm done helping you lot, Dumbledore has me on Order work over in Germany – finding new recruits and whatnot. The old bloke schedule it so I'll already be knee deep in bear and bratwursts by the time of the next meeting."
"Meeting?" Hermione interjected.
Tonks looked at her oddly. "For the Order, ya know? It's almost a month since the last one."
Hermione's lips formed a soft 'oh', and she shifted the weight uncomfortably between her feet. "Right, of course," she said with a forced smile, but Tonks was rambling on again.
"Must've known Moody was driving me nutters; good man Dumbledore."
Another short smile. "Yes, his is."
Behind Hermione's back, Ron and Harry exchanged glances.
"Right!" Tonks rolled up the sleeves of her robes and with a wiggling of her nose, her hair shrunk back into her head til it was only short spikes jutting out from her head. "The sooner we get started, the sooner Hermione can catch up, and the sooner I can get away from Moody."
"Who'll be training us when you leave?" Lily asked, still worried from her conversation with James.
The ever cheery Tonks beamed brightly and clapped Hermione solidly on the back, "Why little Hermione here! You can handle it can'tcha?"
Remus saw how her eyes had widened when Tonks had touched her, as if already knowing what her answer would be. Though her head was lowered to view the grassy ground, he saw her empty honey eyes close tightly shut and her jaw clench as she fought to keep her entire face from shaking. Her eyes were still closed when she whispered "Of course."
Turning out of Tonk's hold, she walked away from all of them and didn't stop until she was at the very edge of the lake. Not a single set of eyes didn't watch her go, but it was Harry and Ron who turned away from their friend, and, standing close together, stuffed their hands in their pockets and stared into the dark shadows of the forest.
But Remus couldn't look away.
Her tangled mess of curls was longer than he remembered it, and without any binder it reached nearly to her elbows. But despite its length, her hair could not shield the way her white jumper hung off her bony shoulders or how the baggy material hung bunched across hipbones that jutted painfully above her jeans, themselves looking two sizes too big. Skeletal fingers, the color of snow, caught in those harsh, knotted curls as she raked them shakily back from her face – she was shaking all over.
When she turned back around to face a confused Tonks, there was a brilliant smile back on her face. The energetic and happy Hermione was back – all because of a simple smile. It was such a sight that one almost didn't see hollow body, or the absence of light from her eyes – at least they hadn't seen it before.
Maybe Harry and Ron had seen through her mask, or perhaps they'd been played for fools as well – or maybe they'd turned away to keep from dispelling the illusion they wished so desperately to be true. But no matter how brilliant her smile, Remus saw the traumatized and broken girl beneath.
Her smile was so painfully wide, he feared her skin would crack and her lips would split, spilling a trickle of blood down her milk-white chin. There were bags so heavy beneath her eyes that no amount of charm or muggle makeup could conceal – though he saw she'd made the effort; most likely for their sake. She looked pained as she walked back to their disfigured circle, but her voice was clear and sweet as she talked to Tonks.
"Well, let's get started, shall we?"
He opened his mouth as she neared to whisper if she was alright, but to his disbelief, she walked straight past him and came up behind her friends. They parted to accommodate her between them, without turning to look, as if sensing her presence were some unconscious thought.
She pressed herself between the two boys, who Remus had watched turn their backs to her, and within an instant she had reached out to take Ron's hand as it sought out hers as well. Fingers intertwining, the muscles in the redhead's arm tightened and he squeezed her hand. On her other side, Harry turned a bit to face her and his hand came up to touch her lightly on the smooth place between her shoulder blades. She looked to him as well, and Remus caught her lips moving to say 'thank you'. And then she smiled.
She was thanking them? For ignoring her, when she was hurting and needing their friendship more than ever? Remus couldn't believe it; and yet there she was, standing between them, smiling truly, and thanking them for what they'd done. Not knowing what to think of this, he wondered how much he really knew about their new friends...
A few meters away, James grabbed Lily's hand and said "You were right."
Just then, Hermione turned around grinning, and Harry followed her motion, a less than believable smile on his own face. "Hey Sirius!"
The black-haired marauder was surprised at her sudden greeting to him, and he was startled out of his own thoughts.
"Harry here was just telling me...did you really punch a tree?"
Recovering quickly, he gave a suave toss of his long hair and flexed his arms. "Only because it attacked me first."
"Alright, alright!" Tonks interrupted. "Enough namby pamby messing around. Let's get down to business."
The chatter stopped and they all turned to the witch for instructions.
"I'll be taking Hermione today to show her the ropes. Sirius and Harry, you'll be sparring again, and the same for you Lily and Remus – work on your shielding and infiltration together. James I want you working with Ron today, try and get as many unicorns out of the forest as you can – they've gotten terribly wary of humans lately, so you might need to exert a bit more force behind your powers, James, alright?"
They all nodded and split off for their separate assignments, save for Hermione, who stayed behind with Tonks to start her training.
"So," the auror said, rather conversationally. "Dumbledore told me you've been working with something like 'bombarda'?"
Hermione nodded and watched Tonks pull a duffel bag out of her robes' pocket and enlarge it. Hunkering down beside it, she started riffling through it. "Well, in the interest of 'is good china, we're gonna be using clay disks instead – Muggles supposedly use 'em at things called 'firing ranges'."
Hermione had a goodly mental picture of what she was going to be working with just from Tonks blatantly wizardy description of the muggle devices even before the green-haired woman was pulling them out onto the grass. When she was finished, the heavily loaded duffel was banished back to an inner-robe pocket.
"How good are ya at it?" Tonks inquired.
Hermione shrugged; she didn't really know what qualified as being 'good' or 'bad'.
"Alright, alright – let's have a looksee."
Tonks held up one of the disks, and instructed her to blow it up as she had done with Dumbledore's tea saucers. When Hermione looked at the disk, being held only by two fingers at the very very bottom, she saw only empty space above Tonks' hand, only a tiny pile of dust on the ground representing what had once been there. The clay disk exploded instantly.
Not caring that her hair was riddled with pottery dust, Tonks grinned wildly and shook her head to knock some of the rubble loose. "Brilliant. Can you hit 'em when they're moving?" She asked eagerly.
Again Hermione shrugged, "I've never tried."
"First time for everything being blown up," she joked. "Right, here we go."
Hermione followed Tonk's arm as it lowered in preparation of the throw, her curls spilling over her shoulders as her head moved along with the woman's hand. But as soon as the disk was released, flipping wildly up into the air, only Hermione's eyes moved with it. It was hard to 'see' something as gone if it kept moving out of sight. At it's peak – where it froze for the briefest of seconds at a complete stop – Hermione tried to shatter it, but it was gone before she could complete the act and she blast the top branch off a tree instead.
As it shot back downward, turning end over end, Hermione tried something else. Instead of seeing it broken, she imagine the disk was slowing down like a mosquito trying to escape from the oozing sap of the tree it had fatefully chosen to rest upon. And then it stopped completely.
Tonks stared at the immobilized disk stuck in the air just above her waist with something that was very likely awe. "Brilliant..." The metamorphmagus breathed. "Can you still blow it up?"
Hermione's eyes narrowed a touch and a long, spidery line cracked the plate through the middle before the entire disk crumbled.
Toeing the mess growing on the ground, Tonks tapped her chin thoughtfully and looked blankly at Hermione while she puzzled out the last bit of her thoughts. "Do ya think you could...do it ag'in?"
Lips drawn in a stern line, Hermione nodded stoutly.
"Good on ya," Tonks praised as she tried to kick one of the clay circles up into her hand. Unfortunately, she ended up breaking five or six in her attempt to stay balanced. "Bullocks! I'm dead clumsy..." she muttered.
Finally she had a few more disks in her hand. "Ready now? Try 'n blow it up faster this time."
Hermione nodded her understanding, and waited for the throw.
After a half hour's time she'd gotten good enough to shatter the disk without having to completely stop it, and each minute that passed she could slow it down less and less and still be able to find her mark. And then she could blast it without any slowing of it at all.
Now Tonks was working to hone her sharp eye by throwing the disks out in all directions, rapid-fire. Eyes the only part of her that didn't seem turned to stone, she followed each disk and destroyed it quickly before darting to the next and the next.
She felt as if she were standing on the edge of two entirely different realities. On one side, the air positively hummed with magic, and like a spectator she watched clay disks twirling lethargically through the air turn to earthen dust. On the other, she heard the soft whinnying of unicorns, the soft groans of mental exhaustion, and the whistle of steel as it contacted with swings of pure strength, like wind.
"Oi, Hermione...do you know the spell they put on snitches?"
Hermione stepped back across the line and blinked her eyes to focus on Tonks excited face.
"Yes," she answered. "Wizards invented it specifically for Quidditch – after using real Snidgets became illegal."
"Feel up to a challenge?" Her face suddenly became concerned. "Oh no, haven't run you down have I?"
Hermione shook her head quickly. "Oh no, I'm fine."
"Phew!" Tonks grinned. "I really wanted to see how you'd do against a disk with the snitch spell on it."
It was certainly a good idea, and she was no where near in danger of exhaustion. In fact, she felt as if she'd never have to sleep again. She felt absolutely buzzing with energy, and her skin burned in an almost painfully delightful way – overtaking the poor replacement of her white jumper, that she'd donned in the frigid cold of the morning, when every one else had gone for t-shirts and tank tops.
"Let's do it," she agreed, and found Tonks had already bespelled half the disks.
While Tonks finished her spellwork, Hermione's adrenaline levels subsided to their normal standard and the burning heat in her hands and forearms faded as well. For a good minute Hermione was able to feel nothing at all as she waited patiently for the exercise to begin.
But then the anticipation began to grow.
As the pile of disks remaining to be bewitched dwindled, the scalding flames rose inside her until she felt as if the very edges of her vision were afire. Her fingers were senseless appendages that she could only tell were still attached by a glance; all feeling fled her legs, but still she remained standing – with the dizzying sensation of being nothing more than a head and torso floating above the ground.
As if it were a sentient being, the heat, or more specifically 'Magic', sang in excitement of the coming events. It was like the signals being sent to fire her adrenaline hormones was acting as a stimulus to whatever it was that directed the flow and release of her power, and as her energy levels spiked, the fire enveloped her.
The first disk zipped up into the air, and as the others quickly followed its example she crossed the brink.
The 'other' world was gone, as well as the line that had divided the two of them. All that was left was the world of flying disks, with its off-red scheme of color. Trapped in the crimson world – the color of passion and fire – Hermione felt a pushing and a pulling in her abdomen as if something was trying to release itself.
She looked down at her pale pink hands splayed across the ruby fabric of her jumper, though still in some incomprehensible fashion following the clay saucers, and watched the cloth and the skin beneath stretch impossibly outward in a beastly shaped face.
Fear, above all else, gripped her in its clawed hands, and in a panic she pressed her hands across the straining animal that was pulling away from her and struggled with all her might to press her flesh flat once more. The world around her darkened to the mahogany hue of dried blood, and the heat and 'Magic' cried out.
--
"Oi! Hermione?" Tonks ducked a kamikaze disk and walked back towards Hermione, who hadn't moved an inch since the snitched plates had been released.
The brunette was standing oddly stiff, arms locked down by her sides, and as Tonks neared hesitantly, afraid that she might be breaking the girl's concentration and get herself blasted instead; she was able to see Hermione's eyes clearly. They were widened so far her lashes disappeared into her brows, and the whites of her eyes had all but drowned the honey irises. Tonks broke into an all out run.
"HERMIONE!"
There chorused a half dozen cries of surprise as the shout wrecked the focus of the other trainees, and then a loud, high whinny from the startled unicorns.
--
The fanged jaws snapped at her shoving hands, the beast refusing to go back inside. It strained and twisted and pulled so hard from her stomach that her back bowed. All she could see were a hundred masked faces, their black-gloved hands reaching for her, and she was terrified.
The flames inside her had reached an all time high, and though she knew it was burning her away from the inside out, she couldn't stop the gasps of pleasure as it rolled through her with its fatal desire. She was losing control again and she knew it. Some distant corner of her mind that had yet to be rendered babbling and useless by the addictive heat kept screaming the names of her friends over and over again. They were there – she couldn't let her powers hurt them.
But at the same time the pulling at her abdomen was too much to bear, and her magic was screaming at her to let it out – both demanding to be sated. She had the vague sensation of being forced to her knees, and looking out across the swarm of slowly flitting disks she watched two amber eyes distinguish themselves from the burgundy backdrop.
Like a shot had been fired, or some unknown signal gone off, the thing that's face imprinted her jumper roared and burst right from her body in a gasp-rendering surge of magic. She caught its distinctly emerald eyes as its ghostly, apparition form bounded away towards the first set of eyes, long tail swishing behind it.
--
"REMUS!"
Remus gasped as a force plowed into and through him with a feline scream echoing in his ears. It hit the part of him that was the wolf with enough power to make the monster inside him awake and roar in return; and for a moment, Remus thought Hermione had forced his change to come early. It was the intoxicating flames consuming him in the great metaphysical cat's wake that made him not want to care.
Then a slender hand gripped his shoulder and all the fire and bestiality inside of him was sucked out to the sound of Lily's gasp.
--
The magical world flared bright red again, nearly bordering on fuchsia in its sudden exuberance; the color of fresh strawberries. She was back on her feet. The disk nearest to her was encompassed by a ring of fire that quickly duplicated itself around surrounding clay disks, and as the magic leaked out of her the first ring-marked disk disintegrated, followed by the next and the next. No matter how the snitched disks moved, the rings stayed with them and were destroyed in domino-like precision.
With an almost hyperactive gaze, she followed the moving plates in their destructive process until they were all gone. The final clay saucer made a last ditch attempt to avoid demise by soaring over her head – fiery circle streaking the air in its wake. Hermione turned with infinitesimal agility in this world of slow motion, and locked her darting eyes on the fleeing plate. It exploded in a shower of tan powder.
The red-pink world begin sliding away, giving way to the Technicolor world of her reality, as the energy began to subside. The line reappeared, invisible but noticeable all the same, and she crossed gladly over it into the realm where everything was the color it should be and moving the correct speed, and just before the last piece of her left the magic dimension, there was a low growl and something plowed straight into her back, making her arch and stumble the final step. The beast was back inside.
--
As she blinked her eyes to clear the haze from them, she looked around at the training grounds. She was the only one left standing.
Remus was half on his knees, staring up at her with a look that was in the same family as 'awe' and 'amaze'. The others were lying in different states across the grass. Tonks was recovering the fastest, pushing up off the ground with such a strain in her arms one would think her robes were made of lead. Sirius was the next to start rising, though he seemed loathed to do so and equally unaware of the doofy smile on his face. James and Harry, lying in ironically identical positions just off from him, followed next, leaving Ron and Lily still down.
Ron took such a painfully long time in regaining himself and pushing onto his knees, that the others asked if he'd hurt himself in the fall. Lily lay just behind the now-crouched Remus, hair angelically halo-ed around her head, looking absolutely comatose. James ran to her and pulled her into his arms, quickly brushing the silken ginger strands from her cheeks to look down into her face. Thanking the gods as her eyelids fluttered and then opened, James kissed her quick and assisted her in sitting.
She smiled, and weakly lifted a hand to his cheek. "That felt wonderful..."
Hermione's skin itched. She twitched her shoulders but it did nothing to alleviate the pestering need to scratch. It was an odd sensation like that of tiny ants running up and down her flesh, and not entirely pleasant. She was slowly regaining the feeling in her legs, and her arms had fully reconnected to their respective nerve endings, but continued to burn.
"Are they...all...right?" Her voice came out slow and flowing. It was thick and rich like liquid honey. Her tongue felt odd and unwieldy, and sounding as if she had trouble forming the words she wished to speak.
"What the hell was that, Hermione?" Ron asked. He sounded as if he'd just run a marathon.
Hermione's brow creased, and though slow in answer, she responded truthfully. "I am not certain."
"That was her magic backlash," Tonks answered, now on her feet and wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. "A right powerful one too. We all have backlashes, just never enough actual magic to create a properly noticeable one. Good show."
Turning to face the now bright-red haired witch, Hermione was confused when the auror took a step back. "Blimey, Hermione! What the crike happened to your eyes?"
Hermione made move to look at herself in the lake, but as she turned her friends who, by Tonks' comment, where now looking specifically at her eyes, made varying signs of surprise. Slowly placing her barely felt feet one before the other she crossed the grass, clay rubble crunching under foot, and peered down into the glassy waters.
The honey brown color of her eyes had darkened a shade and bled outwards to stain the whole of her eye. Within the swirl of depthless color, a hundred white stars glittered and twinkled in her aquamarine reflection.
"This...has happened...before," she murmured, and reached up, her fingertips falling just short of touching her lashes.
She'd never been near a mirror at the time of high magical output, but just like she remembered the hot flashes of fire, she remembered the glittering night sky appearing in her eyes.
She straightened and turned back the group. "It...will pass."
"Well how did this backlash reach all of us?" Sirius asked, assisting James in getting the jelly-legged Lily to her feet.
Tonks scratched her head. "Beats me how it started—"
"You touched me?" Hermione's star-ridden eyes locked on Remus.
He shifted and looked almost defensive. "You...looked like you were having a fit, er, something..." He hastened to explain to his actions.
"The wolf called out my backlash," Hermione clarified.
Now Tonks looked truly interested. She didn't have any more idea than they did over how their powers worked, but being a metamorphmagus had made her the only reasonable choice for the job of figuring it all out – despite how dead clumsy she was. "So instead of reabsorbing, all your backlash went into Remus..." she reasoned out. "And then when Lily touched him..."
"She got the whole lot of it, plus some of Moony's," James continued.
"It was wonderful," Lily repeated needlessly, and Sirius rolled his eyes.
"And Lily was obviously overwhelmed by it, and...I guess, inadvertently funneled it off to the rest of us," Harry finished.
"Then it...came back to...me," Hermione added.
Tonks' lower lip jutted out thoughtfully and she nodded her head at the theory's eventual conclusion. "Sounds 'bout right."
"Yes," Hermione affirmed in her syrupy voice.
"Hermione..." Remus spoke up. "Is that what you always feel? When you use your power, I mean."
The lethargic mode she seemed to be stuck in was quite aggravating to Hermione as it took her a good four or five seconds just to blink her eyes. "Yes," she answered and his eyes widened in surprise.
Sirius laughed barkingly, and moved to clap Hermione on the back. "You can share that little experience any time."
She smiled a bit, but stepped away from his hand. "Perhaps...it is better...if no one...touches...me...for a...moment."
His handsome face fell a moment, but then quickly brightened as he scampered off to tease Lily.
"Lovely Evans, you seemed to enjoy that." Her eyes narrowed. "Wasn't it positively or-"
"Don't say it, Black." She hissed. "Be decent for once."
Grinning roguishly, he held a hand to the side of his mouth as if to ward his little secret off from the world, than contradictorily proceeded to finish in a loud stage whisper. "Positively orgasmic?"
"Sirius!" James yelled as Lily turned red in the face, though he was having trouble as it was holding back his own laughter.
While Harry tried to hold Sirius for Lily to properly attack, and Remus stood back scolding the lot of them, Hermione was listening to the whispered words of Tonks, leaning close to her ear but making a conscious effort not to touch her.
"I think so." The tussling teenagers caught Hermione saying, her voice almost back to its normal tones, and they turned to look as Tonks gave an excited leap, and consequently almost came tumbling straight down on Hermione.
The brunette quickly pulled her hands beneath the cuffs of her jumper and used her woolen-encased hands to catch the graceless auror. Sheepishly scratching the back of her head, Tonks' face blushed to match her hair and the high energy young woman bounced off to the side as clay fragments began to shake against the ground.
"This is bloody brilliant," Tonks exclaimed clapping her hands together.
Pieces suddenly started whizzing through the air finding their companions and matching debris. Over a hundred clay plates began rebuilding themselves from the bottom up, segment by segment, and some even speck by speck so destroyed had they been. Once every mote of clay had found its home again, the cracks thinned and then disappeared entirely, leaving each disk whole again before they all flew into a neat and orderly pile at Tonks' feet.
"Well...you know, Hermione," Ron said with a bit of a laugh – trying to break the silence with a joke. "She hates waste."
A few days later...
Hermione watched the digital letters of her clock change to midnight. It had been hours since she'd retired for the evening, but since then she'd been able to do nothing but stare at her clock and watch the minutes slowly tick past.
Time is certainly a queer thing isn't it? It was supposed to be this steadfast constant that the entire universe revolved around, and yet it allowed humans to change it. It could be sped up or slowed down, altered and disrupted. If time was a steady line from A to Z than how was it they were able to go from point L back to N, or bring four teenage witches and wizards from F to point Q.
Hermione had been questioning the abstract theory of 'time' since she rolled into bed earlier that night and caught sight of her unobtrusive clock with its red block numbers, and it hadn't been until just that moment – the poetic change into midnight – that she'd settled on an explanation she liked best.
She'd decided that it was all relative. From the human perspective it would seem as if time was as inconsistent as the wind – jumping forward, then doubling back, and repeating itself. However, if one were to step away from it all and see through the eyes of the Powers That Be, they would realize that time was indeed one long, straight thread. It wasn't letting humans to change it, it was letting them think they had control over it, when in cosmic truth, every event throughout time had its place and occurrence, even if that event repeated itself.
Hermione sighed. If that were true, than she'd been meant to bring the Marauders forward in time, and that...was a comforting thought.
Slightly less comforting however, was the freezing temperature of her room and though she was curled up beneath as many blankets as she could find she was still frigidly cold. Insisting that the bright glow of her clock and the subzero atmosphere of her personal quarters were the cause of her latent insomnia, Hermione rolled herself out of bed and headed for the common room.
Comforter still trailing behind her, she shuffled out from beneath the girls' staircase and stopped just short. Someone was already curled up on the couch, firelight catching on their unruly black hair.
"Harry?" She called out softly, venturing a guess.
The boy looked over, surprised by her sudden appearance, and shook his head. "James," he corrected.
"Sorry," she apologized in chagrin.
"Nah, s'ok," He waved her over and scooted to the far side of the couch to show her he was serious. "Come have a seat, I certainly don't need to hog the whole common room."
Hermione hesitated a moment, but the fire did truly look wondrously warm. Obligingly, she waddled over to the plush couch and when James caught sight of her he started to laugh. Surreptitiously ignoring his chuckles, Hermione burrowed farther into the puffy down comforter she'd draped over her head and shoulders and wrapped it tighter around her.
"Oh shut up," she complained, sitting down. "It's cold."
"Aww..." He cooed babyishly. "Come on out little flobberworm – it's a bright new world." He reached over and brushed the blanket back off her head, and a very frizzy-haired Hermione scowled back at him from a pool of blankets around her waist.
"Very funny," she retorted sardonically. Reaching her hands forward, palms out, she tried to soak up some of the fire's warmth. "So what are you doing up anyways?"
He shrugged. "Couldn't sleep. You?"
She smiled. "The same. Been thinking too much..." she trailed off, but James didn't hesitate to pick the conversation up again.
"No one would accuse me of that," he joked, and she breathed a bit of a laugh, her eyes moving from the fire to his face.
"You don't give yourself enough credit. You and Sirius," she amended. "You could both do just as well as Remus if only you applied yourself."
"Thanks, mum. So what were you thinking about anyway?" He drew a knee up his chest, and wiggled down into his corner of the couch as if settling in for some lengthy story telling.
It was her turn to shrug. "Silly things."
"Come on," he goaded, and she looked at him through the corner of her eye in mild surprise. "You can tell your big brother Jamesie."
"Jamesie?" She made a face.
They both laughed, during which, James solemnly swore that he had been quoting Sirius. She forgave him for the atrocious nickname he'd given himself and before she could stop herself, had agreed to tell him about what she'd been thinking earlier. That had been a solid minute ago, and she'd made no move to explain it any further.
With one of the golden pokers, elongated to reach from the couch to the hearth, she absentmindedly stirred the ash and logs, concentrating on making a certain series of pops and crackles rather than on the boy sitting next to her.
"Now I'm all curious, Hermione" He finally said. "What keeps a lovely woman such as yourself from getting her beauty sleep. Boys?" He added the last bit with an overly exaggerated waggling of his eyebrows.
"Tch!" She made an offended sound. "What kept you up?" she shot back.
"I'll have you know, I get mad awful indigestion," he smiled winningly.
Hermione paused on this tidbit, then promptly frowned. "Hey! We didn't even eat dinner tonight—"
"Too late!" He interrupted cheekily. "I answered, now it's your turn."
Shaking her head, Hermione shifted under her swaddle of comforter and stabbed at a charred log. "What keeps me awake at night..." she repeated slowly. This time James wisely kept quiet.
"I think about Azkaban."
James was silent, and Hermione didn't dare look at him for fear that she'd find his eyes on her to be full of pity. She couldn't bear that look directed at her.
"You know there isn't much else to do there except sleep..." she murmured. "I suppose I'm still rather 'wired' from it all..."
The flames waved cheerily in their stone bed and she despondently dragged the glittering poker through the ash.
"It's an awful place. Everyone there is mad; half starved, rotting corpses that by all logical means shouldn't even still be alive. The jailers...they make sure you're always holding on to that last bit of life; they keep you as fodder for the Dementors." Her eyes were showing a bit too much white as she talked, and her grip on the poker was knuckle popping, but she was determined to finish speaking. "They're the reason I can't sleep at night..."
"The Dementors?" James asked, quietly.
"It always hurt less if the sucked you dry in your sleep – at least that way you couldn't hear the others screams. When you woke up you'd wake into a dark despair, but you wouldn't have to relive those...terrible memories," Here her voice cracked.
"I would watch the people I loved dying...over...and over...and over...and then, then I hated them for making me their witness, hated them for suffering, for dying, for the Dementors making me suffer that much more. And then I hated myself...it was cruel and disgusting, but I...I just wanted it to stop."
She didn't know when the tears had started rolling down her face, because all she felt lately was a hollow emptiness where 'Hermione Granger' had once been.
She smiled twistedly through her tears and it was malicious and disparaging. "In Azkaban I slept to avoid them, and now...now I fight to stay awake because they haunt my dreams."
The tears slowed to a stop and began drying in the heat of the fireplace upon her stone-like face. She prodded the hearth and stirred the fire to a brighter life. "Besides, the death eater I put in a coma is sleeping enough for the both of us, don't you think?"
James winced and uncurled himself from the corner, moving closer to her on the couch. "Hermione..."
"I'm not stupid, James. I know you all tried to hide the papers from me, but I read them. Cover...to bloody cover, as the saying goes..."
He was never any good at this comforting thing, and it was rather awkwardly that he patted Hermione's shoulder. "Listen..."
"Twenty-seven seriously injured. That's pretty good for a starving convict without a wand..." She was refusing to look at him. "I ripped off all four of a man's limbs, did you know that?"
Now James grabbed her sternly and gave her a forceful shake. "I don't know what you're trying to do, Hermione, but you have to stop it. Tearing yourself up about this isn't going to undo it."
"I've meddled with time too many times to count," she muttered bitterly. "What's one more time. I'll just pop back into my cozy little cell and this time I think I'll take a nap instead of saving innocent lives."
"No matter what you say to me, Hermione, you know you did the right thing that night. You know it."
More fiddling with the fire. "No one else does."
"I do, your friends do."
Now, Hermione finally set down the poker. She picked listlessly at the smooth material of her comforter, now soaked with the heat of the fire, and continued to look downwards. "Are we really friends?" She said emotionlessly. Now she did raise her eyes and meet his.
"I'd like to think so," he answered honestly.
"I know nothing about you," she countered.
"On the contrary, you know a great deal about me. You're Miss Future Girl," his attempt at lightening the conversation fell short.
"I know your name, your family history – none of it because you told me, and none of it what's really important to know." She shook her head at him and dropped her head again. "I don't even know your favorite color."
"You know..." he said slowly, as if unsure whether or not he should say what he was about to. "Lily said the same thing to me a few days ago."
Hermione's following chuckle was lifeless. "She's a smart witch; I'm not surprised she noticed it."
James scrutinized her, digging his elbows into his knees as he sat cross legged and setting his chin on his fists. "Are you really serious about this?"
She made a strange noise, and in tossing back her head her chocolate curls caught the firelight and turned auburn as the spilled down over the straps of her nightgown. "I must sound crazy." She laughed and it was depressing sounding. "You know I haven't even told Ron or Harry that I haven't been sleeping...I mean, I guess they figured it out, but I haven't told them why."
She shrugged, "Maybe I just shared it with you because you look so much like Harry, and I needed that friendly face, but a different reaction than the one I knew would come from him. That's hardly what I'd call a friendship – passing you off as my best friend," Hermione sighed, and fiddled with the golden poker handle as if considering resuming her fire tending. "Maybe you used your power on me. Maybe it was just the right time and place and you just happened to be sitting there instead of an empty couch..."
"Or maybe," James countered. "It's because you knew that one of us needed to take this first step."
When she didn't say anything, he looked up at her obscured profile, and not until he leaned to the side did he see her crumpled face and the saline trails. He touched her shoulder, knocking back some curls, and kneeled over her in concern. "Hermione, what's the matter?!"
"I'm a bad person," she sobbed, throwing herself at him. "But I...don't wanna be. I don't wanna be baaaad." Her hyperventilating breaths were punctuated by alternating sobs and hiccups as she tried to get out the words through her hysterics.
"What are you talking about?" He exclaimed, unsure of whether to pat her on the back or hug her or what. "You're not a 'bad person'!"
"I am!" She insisted, crying into his shoulder. "I do terrible and...and wicked things, a-and that's why...that's why." She sobbed the loudest ever, and James threw embarrassment to the wind and hugged her tightly.
"That's why God sent me to t-that...awful place. I'm a a s-sinner," she whispered, thickly. "I don't deserve...t-to be saved."
James felt his own eyes inexplicably watering. This amazing young woman who had done nothing short of miracles to protect those around her, thought God had abandoned her because of something that was beyond her control. If God had forsaken her, then what hope was there for the rest of them.
"I didn't ask for this," she insisted through her tears. "Just Hermione...that's all, all I wanted. I d-don't want to be alone, James..." Her sobs came full circle again, and she nearly screamed. "I don't want to be bad, anymore."
He rocked her in his arms, over and over again, as if there was nothing else in the world to do but that. He rubbed her back and whispered comforting sounds into her ear as she cried out in blind desperation for the god she believed to have forsaken her. It hurt his heart and stung his eyes, and all he could make were sounds through the lump in his throat.
"I never meant t-to make him angry," she choked. "N-Never m-meant to be something evil..."
"No!" James hissed fiercely, squeezing her painfully tight. "No, Hermione. I don't ever want to hear those words out of your mouth." She cried wordlessly into his shoulder. "You. Are not. Evil. Do you understand me? Voldemort is evil, Hermione, and you are not him."
Her heart-wrenching sounds had died out, but tremors still shook her body and her silently crying face pressed wetly against his t-shirt.
"Do you understand me?" He demanded, emotion making his jaw lock.
For a long moment, Hermione did nothing but cling to him and tremble, but then – very slowly – she nodded against him.
"Good," his throat stuck.
He held her until she pulled away and then handed her the corner of her comforter to wipe her eyes on. With subdued sniffling, she cleaned herself up and wrapped the blanket around her – feeling suddenly colder. Neither of them said anything until Hermione had leaned herself against James and murmured a soft "thank you".
He smiled, and reached over to tuck the puffy covers tightly around her chin, making her look all the more ridiculous in her blanket cocoon. "Everything's gonna be alright, you'll see. That's a Marauder's promise."
Hermione smiled wanly at this and looked softly up at him. "Does this mean we're really friends now?"
His face broke out in a wide grin that made Hermione's sad heart lift and a smile to grow on her own face. "If not then I just let some random stranger leak all over my favorite t-shirt."
She giggled and patted his damp shirt apologetically. "Sorry, James."
He gave her a winning smile and waved it off as nothing.
"Do you think I could become friends with Lily?" She asked.
"I think she'd like that a lot." James answered sincerely and tweaked her nose. "You guys are pretty similar, you know?"
Hermione thought of Harry's mum, and smile widely. "That's more of a compliment than you know," she murmured.
James shrugged indifferently, deciding not to press her on it, and threw his arms over the back of the couch enjoying the view of the fireplace that had drawn him from his dorm bed in the first place.
Hermione was enjoying the playing flames as well. The blasting furnace was comforting in more ways than one and she was glad it was there in addition to James. She was imagining the fire dancing to the sound of its own pops and sizzles when James' voice broke through her thoughts and their camaraderic silence.
"Green."
Wiggling her head out a bit from her comfy blanket, she looked at him curiously. "Green what?"
"That's my favorite color."
