The Space Between
It's when she wakes up that she realises she's not alone.
She can feel a strange warmth beside her, hair tickling her cheek, and if she listens closely two mouths breathing, two hearts beating beneath her hand.
It's when she cracks an eye open that she remembers.
Remembers heated glances across a dim room, remembers hands fumbling, numbed by memory, with shirts and jackets, remembers an old heat stirring somewhere deep inside her.
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Hermione Granger has forgotten how to breathe.
There is no air left in the world, she has quite decided.
But the stranger is still waiting for his answer.
"Do you mind if I sit here," he had said, the words coming out in a slightly accented voice, a statement rather than a question. A firm, tanned hand grasps the top of the chair.
Hermione gives an inward sigh. Yes, she does mind, she's busy, working on something that hasn't quite taken form yet, rather is a vague, creamy mauve shadow on the outskirts of her mind.
But they both know she won't say this.
Instead, Hermione dips her head down and presses a finger into the scattered sugar by her teacup before looking up, eyes flashing dark.
She nods.
The man grins and takes a seat, shifting in the hard backed chair.
"You've forgotten me, haven't you, Hermione."
For a moment she's bewildered, searches his eyes, so dark they're almost black, and his easy, confident grin for a trace of familiarity.
She finds none, and it doesn't surprise her. Hermione has been out of the world, out of contact with everything known for too long to recognise a shadow from her past now.
"Blaise," he tells her, with no trace of uncomfort. "Zabini. We were in school together."
She remembers now. A young, slight boy with devil eyes and silk hair who rarely spoke, preferring the still of silence.
"It's nice to see you again," she says, but they both know she doesn't mean it.
There's a moment of silence, and Blaise gives her a kind of searching scrutiny with his blackened eyes.
"So, what are you doing now, Hermione?"
She likes the way he says her name, how it rolls of his tongue like honey or melted butter.
"I write." She wants to leave him with that, but something in his eyes makes Hermione elaborate. "I'm a journalist. For the Observer. It's a… Muggle newspaper. And books. I write books."
Hermione senses this is the part of their tête-à-tête where she would return the question, but can't be bothered with niceties for a man from this old life, this world she wanted to forget.
But Blaise examines her in such an imploring way she feels she must be more, feels she must give some part of herself to this man that has taken the time, spoken to her, offered a part of his own life.
"You're not…" he begins, but pauses, unsure how to continue.
Hermione shakes her head. "I'm not… I don't…" She sighs. She hates explaining this, hates watching these people pity her, offer sympathy, compassion, when really all she needs is quiet, space.
But he just nods, quietly understands.
He stands.
"Hermione."
Her name is breathed, like a prayer.
"Come with me."
Sometimes Hermione feels like everything's crashing down around her, like she exists only in a whirlpool of dark and shadows and memories. Sometimes she longs so much for only a brief respite from this hell that she cries and it tears at her throat, at her skin.
Outside a wind is blowing and leaves float along the road, orange, red, gold and green.
She sucks in a breath and stands.
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Everyone's gone. She doesn't need to look, only close her eyes and feel the absence around her, the silence that sticks to her skin and wraps around her like a blanket of night.
Breathing deep, she runs a finger over the stones, examines the intricate flecks of granite, marble, slate.
She runs her fingers over the words etched into the stone, so perfect they mock her, taunt her, torture her.
All of her friends. Her family, blood and water.
Everyone.
Consumed by a growing darkness only stopped for their sacrifice.
The voices in her head drown her, and she finds herself kneeling, chanting quietly to herself the names that appear on this place of marked bravery, honour, remembrance.
"Remus Lupin, Minerva McGonagall, Hannah Abbott, Ginny Weasley, Draco Malfoy, Emmeline Vance, Neville Longbottom…"
The list grows, names she knows, names she doesn't, names she cherishes more than her own.
She reaches the end, and it is that her voice falters, as two names slip out.
Ronald Weasley. Harry Potter.
The wrenching of her heart hasn't lessened since it happened, like they said it would. Those unlucky enough to survive, those who had told her in the aftermath that to hold on was enough, that soon it would be over, soon she could live again.
Hermione doesn't think this time will ever come.
She stands and, pushing her lips to the stone, turns and leaves.
Cries gently as she leaves that place, that world, behind.
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Her coat is dark, obscure, and she pulls it closer around her as the frigid wind rushes.
Blaise tells her he is a professor at a nearby wizarding university. Ancient History, he says, Greek and Roman. He tells her about Echo and Narcissus, Persephone and the pomegranate, and how the Gods the people created reflect their own savagery.
He's handsome, she thinks. Tall, with broad shoulders and dark skin. His hair is greying at the temples and his mouth is curved with thin lips, mocking.
He uses euphemisms when he talks.
She likes that.
Hermione tells him about her work; how she captures a moment in words and how she is fascinated by the stillness, how these moments will never happen again.
Nothing is ever the same, she tells him.
You can never tell the same moment twice.
He smiles and likens this to the fickleness of history.
She's asking tentatively about his world, what it's like now, what's different.
Everything, he says. And nothing.
This is when it starts to rain.
Blaise takes hold of her arm and they rush under cover, cramped in the shelter of a doorway.
Her brown hair is bunched at her shoulders, damp, and rivulets of rain creep down the contours of her face.
She smiles and her muscles cramp, as if it is her first in years.
She looks up at him and their eyes catch. Her breath makes tiny puffs of steam in the air.
Holding her hand to the rain, Hermione bursts from the cover of the door and tilts her face to the sky, and laughs.
The rain slows and they continue walking, the rough moistened gravel crunching under their feet.
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When they come to the dark green door of Hermione's home, there is an awkward pause.
She feels inadequate, like a blushing schoolgirl. Hermione straightens her shoulders and gathers height. She is a grown woman, she can handle this.
"Do you want to come up for coffee?"
She hates herself for the uncertainty in her voice.
But Blaise smiles, that same silly, secretive smile he's been giving her all day, and nods, touching the pad of his thumb to her neck.
Her fingers stumble over the keys for a moment before one slips in.
The door creaks ominously.
Hermione feels like she's entering another battlefield, her doorway a threshold into certain death.
She steps in.
Blaise follows close behind, and Hermione can feel his eyes follow her form down the hall, feel the ghost of his warm hand shadowing the small of her back, a gentle touch.
Hermione moves to the kitchen to make coffee, a pretence, a silly cliché that must be observed.
Blaise moves with her, and sits across the counter.
The space between them seems miles, like the river that ran between Hero and Leander.
"I just want you to know," she says, passing him rich syrupy coffee that glints like his eyes, "that I don't usually pick up history professors in seedy cafes."
He chuckles. "Neither do I."
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The trembling of her hands is stilled when two larger, browner ones grasp them, slowly turning her around, and a warm mouth is lowered to her own.
At first Hermione is timid, careful, like she is a child holding a china doll, but soon her mind is gone and her senses take over.
Fingers trailing down her back, a hand fisted in her hair, and a mouth on her pulse point.
She shivers in delight and soon finds herself pressed at the base of her bed, being gently lowered to the mattress.
There's a fever pulsing in her blood, pounding, being pulled from deep inside her like the winding of a tight coil. Heats pools in her belly.
Her clothes are tossed in a pathetic pile on the floor, and then it's only skin against skin. Flame against flame.
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"You're awake."
Blaise is looking down at her, an unnameable softness in his eyes.
"Yes."
"I think you're afraid."
Hermione is silent for a moment and she looks away at the blood red walls.
"Of what?"
She feels rather than sees him shrug, but then a hand wraps around the curve of her waist and she is spooned against a solid chest.
"Don't worry."
Long fingers brush hair from her face.
"I think everything is going to be okay."
And Hermione knows that even if this is her last moment with him, even if he never calls, even if the world crashes down around her tomorrow and she never hears his voice again, never feels so safe again, it will be okay.
And it is.