A/N: Maybe I'll eventually combine chapter one and two into an prologue because after this is when things are really going to start happening. As always, thank you for reading!
oOo
Hermione was running through the halls of the Ministry with a recklessness she rarely embraced, hair flung loose from its light encasement billowing like warning smoke behind her. Later she'd be shocked that there had been no tears pooling at the corners of her eyes, no sobs escaping from her mouth; in fact she would be startled by how little she had felt beyond her booted feet slapping the tile. In a numbness that heralded a coming storm, she sprinted forward through hallways that were rapidly becoming exceptionally small.
With an expertise Hermione had spent the last four years honing, she was battling down emotions that reared their deranged heads just barely in the back of her mind. The trigger was there in that conference room: the eyes of her co-workers starring at her with pity, their whispered words of sympathy. She had to leave before they had a chance to feel sorry for her. Hermione barely noticed when her hip hooked a door as it opened, causing her to stumble, before she quickly caught herself mid fall with her Auror reflexes. Pushing through small crowds of Ministry workers mulling about in the hallways, Hermione's mind was for once exceptionally blank. Distantly she registered papers flying through the air as she shoulder checked a wizard carrying a hefty report in his arms, but she kept running.
At the end of the war, when Hermione had returned to Hogwarts to complete her studies and take her NEWTS, the anxiety had been near constant. It had come on not as a slow creep of the high tide overtaking the shore, no, it had been a torrent. A flood of biblical proportions. The quiet and calm of school life after a year on the run served only to intensify the disquiet raging inside her.
The year the trio hunted for horocruxes, Hermione could not indulge in anxiety, her astute intellect had been occupied with survival; worry and doubt are a luxury of normalcy. When the morning is not guaranteed each night after you close your eyes, you cannot waste your time fretting about tomorrow. It's finally when the world has been righted and returned to sanity that the shadowy demons of woe and fear come crawling from their trenches. Before the war Hermione had had no trouble articulating and expressing herself, back then she had understood her emotions and had allowed them to ebb and flow like the sea. Voldemort had changed everything.
"Granger?" Suddenly a hand shot out and strong fingers wrapped around her left arm as Hermione shoved her way down the hall. Her head whipped around, curls slapping against her cheek from the motion, to stare into silver eyes. "Where are you going?"
A thousand responses spun through Hermione's head all at once, but they were abruptly silenced by the sneering face of Draco Malfoy.
Quite unexpectedly the world narrowed to the steady beat of her pounding heart.
Thump.
Her eyes grew wide.
Thump.
Her breathing slowed.
Thump.
The world exploded in a flurry of physiological trauma.
In a now inaccessible region of Hermione's brain she logically knew she was not laying on the cold tile floor. She knew the ache in her back was psychosomatic, that the tremors in her limbs were just the ghosts of curses long faded, but adrenaline hit her system like a punch to the head all the same.
In a series of actions no one watching would be able to accurately recall later, Hermione grabbed Malfoy's wrist with her right hand and twisted it, eliciting a grunt of unexpected pain from the pure-blood, while she simultaneously slammed her left palm up and into his nose. It was quite a stretch for her short arm to make it up to his face, but Hermione had always been an over achiever.
"MOTHER OF CIRCE WHAT THE FUCK!" Draco grabbed his bloody face, flinging himself away from Hermione and into a wall. "Why is it always my nose with you fucking people?! Have you lost your fucking mind?!"
Maybe she had, but Hermione wasn't giving herself the chance to stop and contemplate the possibility.
From behind her someone called out "Petrificus Totalus!" and she cast a silent protego while swiftly grabbing her wand from it's holster around her thigh.
"STUPEFY!" She called out, sending the spell first to her assailant and then, twisting, she threw another at Malfoy.
"Shit!" Harry called out as he jumped out of the way of her spell with mere millimeters to spare. "Hermione, stop! I cast the spell at Malfoy!"
But she did not, could not, stop. The wizard before her and the ones quickly rushing up from behind him were not her friends and colleagues, they were phantoms in silver masks with howling voices. Hermione's amber eyes were large and dilated and she was brandishing her wand like a woman possessed, waving hexes and curses with reckless abandon.
"Is she Imperiused?!" Ron yelled from behind Harry, deflecting a nasty stinging hex, a specialty of his former fiance.
"I have no clue." Harry muttered, throwing a stupefy at his best friend before rolling out of the way of a hex. "Seamus, clear the hall!"
"On it! EVERYBODY GET THE FUCK IN YOUR OFFICES!" Seamus yelled.
"Oh for Godric's sake." Harry rolled his eyes and continued throwing spells at the wild haired witch. Harry, Ron, and Seamus had all taken off after Hermione, expecting to find her crying in her office not assaulting Malfoy in the hall. Though Malfoy's bloody face stupefied on the floor did perk up their spirits a bit.
Without warning a blast of cold air shot from Hermione's wand with enough force to send the three fully trained Aurors flying backwards off their feet.
"Shite that was new!" Seamus groaned from the floor.
"She's running again!" Ron took off after Hermione before he was fully standing, stumbling the first few steps, but the witch was a dark flash of messy curls already too far in front of him. He turned back to his friends on the floor. "Damnit, get up!"
Hermione's chest heaved mightily with the effort of breathing as her now exhausted body was propelled forward more by inertia than by the effort of her muscles. White knuckles gripped her wand and she could feel sweat beading on her forehead, but she did not wipe it away. In front of her voices were yelling and her instincts screamed at her to get out of the open, making a sharp left she threw open the first door she saw, quickly casting a locking and silencing spell.
The room was pitch black and in the calm of the darkness Hermione finally stopped moving. Leaning over, she placed her hands on her knees and tightly closed her eyes, she was shaking and though she tried desperately to be still her body would not comply.
Fuck. Fuck. fuck fuck fuck fuck
The witch collapsed to the floor and after opening her eyes, started scrubbing her face with her hands as she took long and labored breathes. The last five minutes -it'd only taken five minutes?- wove themselves slowly through her thoughts and Hermione choked back a shameful sob. The panic attack, flashback really, had come on so quickly; as soon as she'd looked up into those eyes, the eyes she had pleaded with on the floor of Malfoy Manor, she had lost the present.
That should not have happened.
She worked with Malfoy for Godric's sake, he was their department's liaison to the finance division, she had to see the ferret at least twice a month regularly, not including randomly catching sight of him around the Ministry. The panic had been so abrupt, so undiluted. She'd already been on edge thanks to Ron's thoughtless- shite.
Ron and Harry and Seamus. Hermione had cursed and hexed them, she'd even thrown her new ventus spell she'd been working on at them; she'd been keeping that one a surprise. Well, it probably had been a surprise either way.
"Fucking hell, Granger." She whispered into the shadows and let her shoulders sag in defeat. What was she going to do now? She wasn't quite sure she was ready to face her colleagues, the hot shame on her face was too fresh, but she'd caused such a scene. And possibly broken Malfoy's nose, though she couldn't quite bring herself to regret that particular indiscretion, no matter how unnecessary it had been.
Seemed necessary at the time, she mused. With a heavy sigh, Hermione stood and groped for the door knob in the dark, but her hand was met with smooth stone. Can't even find the fucking door now, Granger?
"Lumos." She whispered and held out her wand, but there was no door before her, in fact there was no door at all. Her head swiveled back and forth but all she could see, stretching into the shadows was a grey stone wall. Hermione reached out her hand to touch the wall again. It felt cool and smooth like polished concrete, with no cracks or grooves to suggest masonry. She bent her head back to look up, the wall continued to ascend without the interruption of a ceiling, extending on into darkness in all directions except down, as there was clearly a floor.
What room is this? Hermione turned around and stretched her arm out, but to no avail. Though her wand's light cut powerfully through the darkness, there was nothing in the room to illuminate. Nothing.
The door had been there, Hermione had closed it and locked it. Hadn't she?
I am going crazy, I've completely lost it. Hermione ran a panicked hand through her hair and spun around to inspect the wall again; it was a horribly imposing sight. Giant and wretched and cold and it made Hermione remember things she would have rather forgotten.
"I'm so sorry, Hermione." Ron had said, his blue eyes cast downward. "I'm done, I'm... I'm just done."
"What do you mean you're done?" She had demanded, her voice like dull daggers through her throat. "We've been together for four years, we're engaged for Merlin's sake."
"No, we're... we're not engaged anymore." He hadn't even had the decency to pretend to be sad.
"Why? Why are you doing this? Why are you throwing this all away? We have a life together, we're building a life together." She had pleaded.
"We don't have a life together, 'Mione. We're living two very different lives actually."
"Is this because I didn't move in? Ron, I thought we were over this, I'm just waiting for my lease to be up at my flat, it's not because I don't want to-"
"No, that's, uh, that's a symptom, Hermione, that's not the problem."
"A symptom, Ronald? A symptom? That's not a word I have ever heard you use, who have you been- actually, no, I don't care. Why don't you tell me what the problem is then, if me not moving in is simply a symptom."
"I... it's just... I can't..."
"C'mon, let's have out with it."
"It's you." He'd whispered and her heart had stopped beating.
"Ha. Me? Well don't hold back, Weasley, tell me how you really fucking feel."
"You don't talk to me, you-you haven't fucking talked to me in years!"
"What the fuck are we doing right now? Is this some sort of hallucination, am I having a fucking out of body experience?"
"Not this type of talking, really talking. I have no clue what goes on in her head or how you feel or anything. You shut me out years ago. You have this, this wall around you, you built it and I've tried, but I can't get through it."
"Oh, so this is my fault? Fuck you."
"No, fuck you!"
"Very mature, Ronald."
"You're cold now, Hermione."
Cold
He couldn't even have cracked open a thesaurus and searched for less plebeian words to use to end their engagement. The best Ronald Weasley could do was call her was cold. So uncreative. So common. If you're going to break the heart of your childhood best friend turned fiancee the least you could do for them was put some effort into your reasoning.
"Well, now there really is a wall separating us, hmm Ron?" Hermione laughed bitterly and stared at the wall. "Now what do I do?"
When the wall chose not to respond, she touched it again, this time searching for magic or spells she could feel, but it seemed to be just a normal wall. It felt mundane, ordinary. Hermione pushed on it a bit and when it didn't budge she tried a little harder, but was not rewarded for her effort; it was obviously a real wall not prone to movement. Trying a new approach, she gingerly tapped the wall with her wand. Again nothing.
"Specialis Revelio." She whispered and without warning or fuss Hermione Granger disappeared, leaving the wall once again to darkness.