Chapter: Connected
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"Beware of those in whom the will to punish is strong."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
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This is how she remembers the end of the world:
But first.
The day after, (when all was silent and finished; after) the field outside the old school was a wash of black and green.
And then.
During the chaos: red. Everything was red and she couldn't see flashes the color of every rainbow but she knew they were there: purple, yellow, pink, orange, blue.
Green.
She looked out over the grass that was once green (the color-curse of green) and saw one body, a creature with different parts and different colors that moved separately but the same, all connected and fighting together.
(fighting)
She could not aim so she guessed. Time was a box she could not open so she guessed. She could not understand (the only time, the only time) right and wrong
(which side?)
so she just guessed.
They say that glory hides in war, waits for a quiet time to surface and spread its forgiveness, its light. She says that glory disappears, because there was not glory that day, or the day after when the quiet time had come and gone.
(black and green, she remembers)
Just then, in the middle of everything that was, she imagined a thought that made her step shake like a startled thing.
I wonder if he has died yet?
Because she didn't really think anyone could survive this day.
Because, you see, she had left his side sometime in the beginning.
You see, don't you?
And then.
(she remembers this part almost the clearest of them all—almost)
She saw one of her boys, the other, the one with the most cause of everyone to be afraid even if he wasn't. He stood in the terrible white shadows of this place they once both loved while He, the cause of the black and green in the field the day after, stood in the dark.
The air around the boy (not Harry, never Harry, because those were not Harry's eyes) began to move and tremor like heat on a frozen day.
A startled thing.
The boy looked at Him with the black things on his face (those were not his eyes), and He could not look back.
The air shook, and the boy's mouth began to move.
A startled thing.
And then everyone was on the ground because the air exploded.
A startled THING.
She lifted her head and her neck creaked. She saw the boy and Him caught and connected (connected and fighting together) by arcs of light that would have been beautiful.
Both screamed until the end, noises that sounded like throats could rip out.
And then, green.
(A flash of green and an inhuman sound, a dissonant shriek. Two silhouettes fall and only one is breathing. Victory and pain. She screams.)
She ran. She ran through the fallen creature that was connected and fighting together.
And the boy got up, shaking like a startled thing, and she saw his (Harry's) eyes, the color-curse of green.
Out on the field, only those without the black burn mark rose from the ground on conquering (but not victorious, never victorious) feet.
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(She felt like turning to him when they lay on the floor of his empty house after they saw white. She felt like saying "I'm glad you weren't there that day. I'm glad you missed the end of the war" because she had seen his black burn mark.)
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And then the end of the world was over for most.
For most.
(All that she has lost.)
Later, much later, they looked at those who had not stood up. She looked for what she already knew was true.
She had left his side sometime in the beginning and he had not returned in the end.
(You see, don't you?)
And she finally saw someone she loved. Someone she loves.
(An ashen face and blossom of blood.)
And this is the part, the hardest part, because she remembers it the clearest of them all.
She made a sound that hurt, and sound that tore her lungs and heart from her body, and Harry, that boy who was once someone else, held her with his arms.
The sky (not heavens, never heavens) opened up and wept rain hard enough to blur everything else.
And the day after (when all was silent and finished; after), the rain made a green, green film (a mold, they said, but it made her sick to think like that) to cover those bodies that had not moved since the day before, and the blood that soaked through the clothes and once green grass and soil turned black like necrosis.
Death, she learned on the day after, is black and green.
But first, that first moment when the world crumbles around you
(She is alone. An ashen face and blossom of blood.)
(Hogwarts. Home. Love. All that she has lost. The war shines red in her mind.)
death is red and hard.
This is how she remembers the end of the world.
This is not a victory.
This is not a story for telling.
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On her doorstep he touched her elbow and they disappeared like camouflage. Hermione stumbled when the apparation completed itself and Draco's hand moved from a mere connection to a strong grip on her forearm, keeping her upright. "Thank you," she said, her hair falling over her face.
He nodded and watched her, lifted his hand halfway like he wanted to touch her again, brush her hair back from her face, but she did it first. Instead he said, quietly, "Of course."
She smiled faintly, a flush high on her cheeks for a reason she didn't understand because within the span of the last week she had been bare and exposed on the floor of this man's sitting room, gasping and crying with him. But she wouldn't think about that now.
And then she lifted her head and saw where they were.
"Oh… Draco." It slipped out before she could remember herself.
The empty halls of the National Gallery hung shadowed and soft, a languidly winding serpent with treasured walls for insides through which they walked. Hermione's breath felt rigid because she loved this place so much and they were here. She turned to him, eyes shining. He caught her gaze and the corners of his mouth lifted just enough. "How?" She breathed.
He shrugged tightly, a trace of bitterness in his tone when he gave the answer. "Malfoy fortune, you know. People will do anything for money."
She was far too entranced to be offended by this, by breaking the rules. "Oh yes, that damned money," she said, her tone almost playful. But he had reminded her who he was and who she was and what this meant.
He was very quiet, but it was strangely comfortable. She felt him watching her as she moved with a fantastic reverence through the dimly lighted halls of the museum, sharing anecdotes and dialogue from her childhood visits as she encountered a remembered work of art. They didn't touch, they didn't delve too deeply into the reason for his silence and her guilt, but they kept a relatively constant stream of conversation reverberating off the yellow-lighted walls.
And through it all:
Ron, I'm sorry.
Because she knew she still loved him.
She tried not to think it. She really did. He saw it in her face—how could he not?—but said nothing.
They had been walking for nearly three quarters of an hour, through the alabaster garden of statues posed like frosted flowers, over the polished floors that reflected caged masterpieces, by the magnum opuses of so many forgotten and remembered figures, when her hip brushed his and she saw the Rembrandt, stopping to re-memorize for the thousandth time.
He joined her at her side, their placement mirroring that of more than a year ago when the halls had been filled with light and the air around them was buzzing with tension of a different kind. Hermione tilted her head to the side, studying the woman on the stream in the painting. "She looks…private. Like she doesn't know anyone is watching her." Her voice was distant.
"You look beautiful." He was not seeing the painting anymore and when she turned towards him he was there.
Her smile faltered because there was everything that was entirely not light-hearted in his eyes. "O-Oh… thank you." He had never said that before. And then, because she felt like something was caving in on her, she stepped forward and put her face to his neck and stayed there, her eyes closed as she let her mouth rest at a hollow in his throat. She tasted the skin that she could feel tremble beneath her lips. He didn't move until his hands caught her upper arms, hard flesh against yielding, and pressed her closer, his head falling so she could feel his breath on the shell-curve of her ear and the rasp of his cheek on her temple.
And she knew there was something wrong about this, about the way they needed one another to keep from falling into something much, much worse. But she didn't pull away.
"I can't…" It came out muffled against his flesh and because she felt like she would cry. His breath fell harshly on her skin and she felt his chest jerk in respiration against her, heave and tighten like panic. She tried again. "I can't…"
Ron… All. That. She. Has. Fucking. Lost.
It came out in a sob and everything that she had been feeling exploded. "I can't help feeling like I'm betraying something" even as she pressed against him.
She expected him to rage. She expected him to burst and fling her away, eyes flashing and back again to that cold. Because she knew how terribly confused she was and she knew that he was feeling the every little bit of brunt from it.
He must have felt her tense in preparation for hate, rejection, frustration (anything) because he let out his breath in a huff of what could have been amusement. Hermione wanted to move, to see his face, but she was caught in the world of his solidness and skin.
"Granger, do you remember what I called you for the first seven years of our acquaintance? Filthy little mudblood?" Her body went tight and she pressed her cheek into his shoulder because she remembered.
He touched her hip, her shoulder, her neck, her lips, her breast. "That was my life. You think it was just me calling you those names? It was my father and my mother and the society I lived in. That was how I lived my life until this." His voice went hard and hoarse, like what he was saying hurt him. "You are supposed to be dirty and repulsive to me, but all I want to do right now is kiss you. Everything is uprooted and sideways. I'm betraying everything I've ever known by simply being in the same room voluntarily with you. So let's not speak about betrayal again, shall we?"
And they didn't, and Hermione pressed close to him. And then he, softly and then with more insistence (desperation), did all he wanted to do right then.
And nothing caved in on them. And they did not fall into something worse.
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They ate on the floor of the Central Hall, wiping up crumbs as they fell on the buffed wood. The food was simple and good. Hermione had taken off her shoes, and they lay forgotten next to her knees. She was telling him how she had planned her lessons, how she had faced a room full of antagonistic former-peers, how she had lived in the year when they had lied to themselves.
That night she learned that Draco Malfoy was a good listener when nothing else was allowed to get in the way. No prejudice. No society. No mold. No dirtyfilthymudbloodspoiltevilpureblood.
After she told him she had received the idea of discussing DNA in class number six from Mr. Weasley, of all people, she stopped and stared at him. "You've changed, Draco. You've changed so much. When I first saw you come into that classroom I didn't think…you acted the same. But you're so different now."
He looked at her from under that pale hair and chewed on a grape thoughtfully before answering. "Loosing your parents and running from both sides can do that to a person. I didn't have time to be an pampered aristocrat."
Running from both sides.
She must have looked confused.
He shrugged like it didn't mean anything. "Voldemort had his knickers in a twist that I hadn't killed Dumbledore. Not to mention my father wanted to slaughter me."
Like it didn't mean anything.
Hermione shook her head. "It must have been terrible for you."
"Yeah, yeah it was." He said it as if he was only just realizing it. Like he was unearthing something vital. "It was."
An uncomfortable silence settled over them and Hermione grasped another handful of crackers to fill it. She thought then of the thing she thought of every day.
Death is black and green.
"Where were you during the last battle?"
"Perth, Australia." He answered immediately.
She looked up in surprise. "Perth?"
He nodded, and she didn't ask.
Running from both sides.
"I lost Ron that day. I lost everything."
"You were saying his name that night."
It was so unexpected that she dropped the cracker she had been holding and it fell into the folds on the lap of her dress. She looked into his face and saw that there was no hostility there, no blame or jealousy.
Jealousy?
"I probably was," she said, because she could think of nothing else.
He nodded, and then asked her about Mr. Weasley's obsession with muggle things, because that had been their subject of conversation before and there wasn't anything more to talk about.
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At her doorstep he took her into his arms and pressed his forehead against hers. She shut her eyes and breathed.
And of course she knew it was twisted and generally fucked up but she didn't want to leave when he said "thank you."
"For what?"
"For undoing me."
And it was twisted and generally fucked up but she could have said the same thing to him and it would not have been out of place, because somewhere in this warped world they were connected and saving one another.
She kissed his nearly-smiling lips, a long, calm touch that brought the world (everything that hurts and everything that kills) to a halt that almost jarred.
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That night she finally caught Ron. Reached out with a hand that had no lines and grabbed his arm and pulled.
Stop running.Tell me what to do.
He turned to her and he was just as she remembered. No blood, no cold skin, just blue, blue eyes and a smile.
Hey, 'Mione.
She loved the nickname from his lips.
I love you.
It felt so good to say it so he could hear.
I know.
So what am I supposed to do? I can't forget you.
He grinned like she was telling an ironic joke.
Don't be stupid, love. No one ever said you had to bloody forget me. Just let everything go a bit. I'll always be around, remember. It's not like I'll not be looking out for you.
Hermione was crying and he reached up and touched her, touched her cheek with hands so different than the ones she had felt hours before, the gray eyes in place of blue.
It's so hard, Ron.
But he was gone and she was awake, tears gathering in the hollows of her eyes as she hunched in an empty bed because tonight she had only allowed Draco to kiss her.
She closed her eyes and saw Ron's face.
Just let everything go a bit.
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When she saw him next, when she arrived at his door and knocked a sharp staccato, she told him she was glad, and she told him she was ready to be undone.
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"This is what is hardest: to close the open hand because one loves."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
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Author's Note: Eeek! Almost finished. One more chapter, in fact, and more of an epilogue than anything else. I'm so unbelievably happy that this has been so enjoyed by people and that I am as satisfied as I am with it—a rare thing indeed, believe me.
People will undoubtedly wonder why I've included Hermione's dark experience in the war in the beginning of this comparatively light chapter. The answer is as follows: the story is almost over, and we've never heard much about this huge battle that everyone has been talking about save for the fact that a lot of people died and the good side won. The first part of this chapter reveals a lot about Hermione and why she is the way she is in this world instead of that chipper, sharp student she is in the books. There is also a lot harkening back to the times during and before the war in the part of this chapter that is in the present time. Note the references to her recurring dream at the beginning of the fic. Chapter two, I think. The Last Battle is a massive influence in Hermione's character, obviously, and we need to know. Also, I think it is much more effective to have the beginning at the end than the beginning at the beginning. Understand? Good. Hehe.
I love love love symbolism and metaphor and simile and personification and metonymy. All that shit. All five are in this chapter. Mmm.
I really should be doing actual work right now. I am a master procrastinator.
Thanks to everyone who has ever reviewed or seen or bypassed this story because I love you. And thanks to everyone who gave me the name of the fic I asked about last chapter ("Tangled Up in Blue," by Priah). And thanks to everyone who looked up the symbolism of red and white roses (they mean unity).
Ack! Only one more chapter! What am I going to do? I won't be able to leave this universe. Don't worry, I have some further things (one-shots and the like) in the world of "The Nietzsche Classes" to think about. Angst galore. It's going to be so fun. (Guess! Guess who I'm going to stick together! Just guess! I'm so gleeful right now it should be stupid, and it is.)
Well? Comments? Complaints?