Thirty-Four
Day: 1493; Hour: 8
Hermione blinks, startled, and lowers her hand. "Ron...you were talking to Shiver?"
"What?"
"Shiver...the Auror, staying in this room. He's planning the miss-"
"Oh, no. I didn't know whose room it was... I thought it might be open."
Ron was usually very focused unless one of two things walked by him – a woman or food. If it happened to be a woman with food, whatever he had previously been focusing on became a lost cause to his attention. Ever since he came back, anything drew his attention away. He was constantly scanning every detail around him, like something might jump out from the peeling wallpaper and launch at him.
She knows that she should expect this. While she understands, she can't help but feel that he should be more relaxed with her. It's disconcerting to see one of your best friends of the last decade become cautious and wary of you. She wishes that her friendship, or anything in the world, could be strong enough to stop that. She wants to be the thing he can hold on to, but she doesn't know if he will let her be.
"No, tough luck with that. Harry put your trunk in the room with him. I think it's the one by the kitchen... You can ask him at dinner. Is Shiver in there?"
"Tough luck," he repeats, a small smile pushing its way onto his face. She grins back at him, at the smile, but he's moving away before he can see it.
Day: 1493; Hour: 14
"He has some memory loss."
"How much?" Hermione asks, pulling her knees to her chin on the old couch. Her toes fit perfectly inside a torn slot in the cushion. She doesn't know how many times she's slid her foot inside of it while interrupting Draco's viewing pleasure of infomercials.
The sound had gone out on the television at some point and a commercial plays of a woman running through a wheat field, endlessly in silence. Harry sits beside her, his arm pressed into her leg, and his hat pulled low on his head. His glasses are clenched in his hand as he rubs his eyes in exhaustion or frustration.
"I'm not sure. I don't want to ask too many questions and freak him out, just in case it's a lot. He already has to take that calming draught for his anxiety. I know he doesn't really remember the Graveyard. I know he remembers the mission we went on before that, but he doesn't remember getting freaked out by the spiders on him when we were there."
"It's normal to block some things out. It's the mind's way of coping. Not to mention... Well, we don't know what happened to him, Harry. It could have...affected things."
"Yeah," he says softly, bending forward to rest his forearms on his legs. "I think I'm going to bring him with me to the psychiatrist."
Hermione feels her shoulders go back in surprise, turning her head to look down at the back of his head. "You're seeing a psychiatrist?"
"A 'Transitionist', they call them. The Ministry sent one while I was still in hospital. Lupin asked me to talk to this guy... I didn't want to, but I did, because they wouldn't let me leave until they made sure I was alright. It helps, a little. I can tell him the worst thing in the world and he's under magical oath to never tell another living thing. There's no judgment, or..."
"Or?"
"I don't know. It was hard at first, but then it was kind of nice. Someone to tell me what way was up, but still be unattached. It's sort of like...talking to yourself. Talking it out. Having things make sense or just... I feel better when I leave. I think more clearly. I start moving on. I guess that's the point."
"Oh." She nods and acts like she understands, but there's some mix of emotions tangling up at the pit of her stomach and she's sick with them.
"It's not like that," he whispers, bringing his head up to look at her. She reaches forward to slide his glasses back up his nose. "I thought it would be easier to talk to someone who was there, who is here, in the war. Those are the only people who could really understand, and who could know why I did the things I did because they did them too. But it's... You should come."
"Come?"
"To one of the sessions. Just to try it out and see if you like it. You know, it helps to talk to someone who has been there, like you. But...the point is to get through it, right? And it's easier when the person you're talking to doesn't have anything to get through themselves. It makes it easier to just...move on. With me, it doesn't help me to know that someone else is going through it too. I don't think it would help you either. You would be too busy trying to help the other per-"
"Didn't you say—"
"I don't really talk about...you know, how I feel. I just say stuff that happened. Sometimes she's wrong but she usual- She gets it right. Like...like it's all universal. And it makes me think that maybe every one of us is feeling the exact same thing. That you are. That Ron is. That maybe I can fix- It's more just understanding. I need to sort through things, and... I-"
"I'm not trying to tell you that you shouldn't go, Harry. I think it's a good thing."
"Yeah?" His smile is incredulous and endearing, and she has to smile back.
"Yes, of course. I'm not offended. Everyone...everyone has to do this their own way. I get it."
He nods, throwing his arm over her shoulder and pulling her against his side. "I figure I'll bring Ron to one. I'll talk about something the both of us are dealing with so he can get the feel for it. Hopefully he'll decide to do it on his own. Do you want to come with us?"
"No," she answers quickly.
He pauses, as if to weigh his words, and she can't remember a time that he's done it before. She has to keep reminding herself how much they've grown up. "I think you should try it."
"Harry, you know me. I'll be psychoanalyzing the way they psychoanalyze me." She laughs, he doesn't. "I don't want to talk to a stranger. I don't want... I just don't. Maybe after the war."
"After the war? Why? Things have already happened, Hermione-"
"I'm aware of tha-"
"They are just going to keep piling on. What do you wa-"
"I'm handling it the best I can right now. Talking might be good for you, but it isn't good for me. Not to a-"
"You're trying to ignore it now. Just last-"
"I can't ignore i-"
"Exactly. Hermione, sometimes we need more help than we can give ourselves. Trust me, I know. I'm the one who needed you and Ron through all of Hogwarts and-"
"We wanted to help."
"Well, these people want to help us. It's like their cont-"
"I don't want their help, Harry! I just told you that people have different ways of coping! I accepted yours, why can't-"
"You're not coping! That's the whole-"
"Yes, I am! What do you want me to do? Crawl into bed and cry myself to sleep? Not be able to sleep? Feel bad about being alive when they aren't, and feel so much guilt I even feel it for the families of those I-I-I... Because I do, Harry! I've done all of these things, and I've cried until I thought my head would explode! It doesn't matter if there's some stranger watching me while I do it, it doesn't help! Nothing helps!"
Panic. A desperate, rushed sadness that makes the heart thump wildly, burns at the back of the eyes, clogs the throat, tightens the chest. The sort where you have to scream just to keep from crying but you're constantly rocking on the edge of it. About to break into a mess of salty tears and choked sounds. She feels almost frantic with it and she doesn't know where to put her hands, but she fists one into her chest, rubbing hard, trying to loosen up the hurt.
"You don't know! How do you know if you don't try?" He looks at her, his eyes pleading, and she hates it.
"Because I do! The only thing I can do is help win this war and try to live my life, and be happy. Be happy for them, because they can't be. It's either that or I lose my mind and crawl into a hole somewhere, Harry, that's all I've got! Someone telling me it's okay will not ever, ever, make it okay."
"Hermione."
"I just have to accept these things. I have to accept that they are gone, and that I have done...bad things, Harry. Very bad things. Every morning that I wake up, I forget for a couple seconds. I think of Neville laughing with me over Draco's surly attitude, or Justin making faces at Lav's cooking. I think of Fred putting dye in my shampoo, Seamus saying something perverted about the sausage, or-"
"I know."
"No," and it comes out like a sob. "No, you don't, or you wouldn't be trying to make me go. Every day I miss them. Every day it hurts. But it's mine, Harry, and I have to do this my way."
"Alright. Okay, fine." He pulls his hands through his hair and her own are shaking at her sides. "I'm just worried, Hermione."
His arm comes up to loop around her shoulders and she falls awkwardly against him. She wraps her arms around his chest and wipes the tears off her cheeks on his shoulder. He blows out a hard breath, and she knows he's trying to get her curls away from his face.
"I'm still scared," he whispers into the mountain of her hair. "It wasn't ever really about being scared of facing Voldemort. Kinda, yeah. Mostly, it's been about being scared of losing you, and Ron, and the people I love. Lupin, the Weasleys, and you – that's all I really have, Hermione. I... I don't always do... I'd give and risk anything for the family I have left. I need you."
She sniffs and huffs, trying to swallow past the burn in her throat to keep herself from crying again. Harry Potter still needed her. Not to die for him, or try to solve the latest puzzle, or research until her eyes almost fell out. He just needed her, simply.
He pulls away from her, still uncomfortable with hugs after all these years. He always got flustered, like he couldn't understand the mechanics. She loved them. She loves him. "Are you trying to guilt trip me, Harry Potter?"
"No," he laughs, grabbing the exit door to a heavy conversation. "When did you start thinking everyone had ulterior motives?"
"Not everyone. Not usually."
"He might be rubbing off on you," he says, and they both know who he means. "How long has that...?"
"Awhile."
"Oh." Harry plucks at a loose thread in the leg of his jeans, staring hard at his kneecap. "He treats you well?"
There's an odd laughter that bubbles up in her throat – some mix of hysteria, panic, and disbelief. She wonders if she'll ever get used to talking to Harry about this. How long it will take for her mind to join these two worlds that were forced to separate for so long, because they had to join. Because she can't let go of either one.
"Yes. I told you that."
He nods, clearing his throat as he pushes back into the couch. "You know, I thought he might try to curse me after Italy. Railed on me for ten minutes, at least, and I wondered why he was so hacked off about the mission. Then I thought, maybe..."
He turns to look at her and she's already focused on him. It feels like every inch of her, every depth of her senses, are concentrated on him alone. She can hear the evenness of his breaths, the scratch in his throat when he speaks, the pluck of his fingers on the fabric of the couch. She thinks she might be able to pick up sound at the other end of the house with how hard she is listening.
She feels a bit ridiculous, but she has learned that answers come through many things, and the hardest ones arrive unexpectedly or as slow and pain-ridden as extracting bones with your teeth. Getting answers from Draco was the former – always difficult, beyond reason, and with a sort of masochistic dedication. She still hasn't reached the depth of him. The part that told her all those things she sometimes admitted she wanted to know, just so she could. So maybe she could make sense of her own head. So maybe she wouldn't be so afraid of it anymore.
"What happened?" she asks when his silence becomes too much and pressures her skull.
Harry gives her a curious look. "He didn't tell you?"
Of course not. "Remind me." It comes out a little too demanding.
"At Mungo's." He shrugged, like it was sufficient enough information or something. "He went off. Then I went off. I thought maybe it was about Justin at first. I...sort of forgot about you two after everything. Then he asked me what I would have done if you were killed. If I value Ron's life so much over yours that I don't care. I asked him if he actually didn't trust me with your life. With caring about it. He told me he wouldn't trust me with the life of a maggot, so...there's that." Harry sounds bitter, his eyes angry on the silent television.
Hermione pauses, going over the things she could say that she hasn't already fought with him over. That they might never find middle ground on. "I know you care about me."
"Of course I do. That was the only bit he said about you – mostly just went off about everything else. But when I thought about it later... And you know, wands were drawn. Thought for a moment that I might have to defend myself, and...later I wondered how you would feel about that."
Hermione looks at him knowingly. "Just to defend yourself, Harry?"
"Mostly."
She huffs and shakes her head, looking at the television as a woman smiles over bottled water. "I think I would have been upset with both of you."
He stares at her for a moment and then nods slowly, the living room falling quiet.
Day: 1494; Hour: 18
Hermione can feel her heart pound in time with her feet. It slams against her chest, and her blood pulses through every part of her body. She can even feel it in her eyes, her sight flickering as she crashes into the doors in front of her. Had the knob not turned she would have ended up on the ground from the impact. Her mind is whirling so quickly she had nearly sent up the sparks letting them know that the outside of the building was cleared. It would have been a major mistake, alerting any Death Eaters inside that they were there. Given that she hadn't seen any colors flashing by the windows, or heard any screams or explosions, their presence was still a secret.
Candle flames dance along the walls, making the room glow a burnt orange, and shadows move like people, like monsters, all around her. She had heard the Nott residence was creepy when they had first raided it, but she had thought they meant it in the way that Malfoy Manor was still a little creepy – the memories in the walls. This place is darker, all stone and morbid portraits. The air is thick and moldy, dark red curtain blowing across dusty furniture as the wind tunnels inside. It has been years since the mansion has seen a house-elf, but they had gotten word that a small nest of new Death Eaters have taken it as their own the past month. The lit candles are proof of that, if nothing else.
The macabre of the room makes her slow down, but just barely, reminding herself of the threat. Her feet are still too loud as she takes off down a hallway, and she's mid-sprint when a hand grabs her by the back of her shirt. Her eyes bulge, her breath catches, and she launches herself forward.
There's another hand that grabs her then, yanking her back again. She swallows the scream and spins, one hand out and knocking into the person's head, and the other holding her wand out. She hears something skitter across the floor as she loses balance between the pulling and her spinning, ramming her wand into the mass with all her weight before registering the face.
"Ha-" she starts, and he slams a hand over her mouth so hard it hurts her teeth. His palm is wet against her equally drenched face, the July night humid and stifling.
She pulls her wand back, and her whole body moves when he lets out a shuttered breath, his eyes darting wildly. He pushes her off his chest, dropping his hand and bending to retrieve his glasses from the floor. Lupin comes out of a room scowling furiously.
"I can't find Ron," she whispers as low as she can, her hands still shaking in panic. "He was behind me, now he's gone."
"We have to go up to the second floor, this one is clear. Are the grounds?" Lupin hisses at her.
"Where did you last see him?" Harry's face has gone pale in the candlelight.
"We'll find him after, we're in the middle of a mission. We need to backup the team on the sec-"
"Outside. He was behind me, now he's gone," she repeats, her mind concentrating on only one thing, her shock and fear fading everything else out.
"You checked-"
"Don't even think about-" Lupin starts, but cuts himself off when he darts forward to grab Harry's arm.
Harry is gone though, racing down the hall, and Hermione follows. She can hear Lupin behind them, and it's all pointless because she already searched the grounds. She had circled three times before heading to the house and...and there he is.
"Ron?" Hermione whispers.
Ron is standing at the bottom of the steps to the door, looking wide-eyed and nervous, his wand tapping against his leg. She can feel Lupin's anger radiating into her back, but she's too relieved to care. She had thought she lost him again, right in front of her this time.
"Lose your way, mate?" Harry asks slowly.
"Yeah, a little."
Day: 1496; Hour: 10
Lavender takes a long drag from her cigarette, leaning against the phone booth that would bring them into the Ministry. Her other arm, fake, is limp and stiff against her side. She is on break from what she referred to as her fucking desk job at Practically Pointless. She had taken the job at P&P three days after she left St. Mungo's – Hermione had been surprised she didn't take off and leave the war behind.
A man shoots them a look as he steps inside of the phone booth, making a face and tucking his nose into his shoulder. Lavender doesn't even notice him, because this is the way she gets when she hasn't seen Harold in a week. Sometimes it takes Hermione back, how much Lavender loves him. Needs him, even, she would say.
Hermione scuffs her boot against the pavement, staring at the gleam across the black. Harry had pointed his wand at them the day before, giving her a dark look when she made to protest, and they were clean a second later. She feels like she lost something, and then she feels stupid for feeling like that. She has a certain way she likes to do things, even if it doesn't make sense to other people. No one else had found it bothersome enough to clean them before. Not even Draco when she tracked dark red mud across his trousers.
She tucks her hands inside her pockets, rocking on her feet. Some days it is harder not to think about him constantly. Especially today, when it feels like weeks since she has seen him, and everything around her is muted from the overcast- black, grey, white, and blue. He would look good next to her, standing against the backdrop. Maybe with his hair caught in the wind, and he would have the co-
"I really want to disappear," Lavender speaks for the first time since she asked Hermione to come with her on break. "But I can't while I'm still waiting."
Hermione turns her face from the refreshing chill of the wind, and doesn't ask her what she's waiting for. She thinks she already knows. Lavender smiles, to herself, to the thoughts in her head, and taps the ashes off her cigarette.
"I want to go to the top of a mountain," Lavender nods, raising her hand into the air and staring up at it, a ring of smoke dancing from her fingers. "Asia, maybe. I want to see mountains, and clear water, and fresh air. I'm not ever going to wear clothes, and I'm going to bury my wand somewhere until I need it again, because I don't ever want to see it. I want to get fat-"
Hermione laughs. "I'm going to ask my mum to make so many bad, sugary things for me, she'll be shoving me into her chair at the office after a week."
"Exactly!" Though Hermione is pretty sure Lavender has no idea she's referring to Dentistry, or even what it is. "I want to get married and learn how to cook. I want to learn how to do everything with only one, stupid arm, and not feel rushed. I want to sleep whenever I want, and never worry about a thing. I want to forget the world, both sides of it, and I don't know if I'll ever come back."
Hermione smiles, wrapping her arms around herself at the break of thunder, expecting the rain any moment now. "It sounds nice, Lav."
"Would you hold it against me?" Lavender is very serious now, her cigarette burnt so far down to her fingers that it must burn, but she doesn't seem to notice. "Would you hold it against me if I never came back to see what this turns into?"
The question reminds Hermione of something. Another moment maybe, in the dark, and being very afraid. "It depends," Hermione whispers, knowing grief, knowing the different ways they had to heal.
"On?" Lavender smiles, flicks her cigarette, and pulls Hermione into the phone booth with her.
"On if I can visit, I guess."
They both smile at one another, laugh a little. Lavender turns her head away, still smiling, but Hermione can see the faded sun glint off the wetness on her eyelashes.
Day: 1497; Hour: 11
"Do you want to take this from him, Hermione? Are you going to go up there and tell him he can't go, that he has to just sit there in his head? Remembering everything they took from him and did to him, and he can't do a thing back? He got confused! We all have!"
Harry is angry and fed up with her, his eyes sparking dangerously. Hermione had been telling him about Lavender's new job and brought up the idea of Ron working there. Ron had been scaring her lately, and one of the last things she wanted was for something to happen to him when she had known he wasn't there enough to fight. Harry had turned from casual, to determined, to angry in the last ten minutes.
The woman exiting the bathroom earlier had given Hermione a look like she was crazy. But this was Harry, her Harry, and she couldn't give a toss if people thought he was the most powerful wizard of their time. What she did give a toss about was how much he wasn't listening to her.
"He's not fit to go—" she tries.
"From the stories I heard, you weren't either, but no one stopped you. No one took it away from you. Don't you dare, Hermione."
"I can't lose him!" she yells, throwing her hands up.
"Well, I can't either! Don't try to make it out like I don't care, because that's rubbish, Hermione! That's such shit! Don't you dare say I don't care about him, that's my best mate, and-"
"I'm not saying that at all!"
"He needs it! You don't have the right to take that away from him. I'll watch his back, I'll be by his side, but I'm never going to take this from him! And neither are you!"
Day: 1497; Hour: 13
Despite her lingering anger, confusion, indecision, and busy thoughts, she still grins when she sees him. He raises an eyebrow at her greeting, sprawling his legs out in front of him, but she can see his lips twitch as he looks back to the silent television.
"You were right."
It takes her a couple seconds to know what he's talking about. He probably knew she would bring it up and wanted to get it over with. "You heard?"
His eyebrow raises so high that his eye twitches a little, like it always did when he was incredulous. "Shouldn't you be doing sign language if you thought I was that deaf?"
She rolls her eyes with a muttered "Shut up," and looks up toward the ceiling. As if she can somehow know by looking there if Ron had heard the argument as well. If so, he and Harry are probably complaining about her being overprotective and bossy, and maybe some things she doesn't want to hear.
"Weasley isn't fit for missions, but nothing is going to change him going on them."
"He should be pulled." She plops down on the couch next to him, her shoulder banging into his, and he lets out a low grunt but doesn't move.
"Mm."
"Would you pull him, if you could?" she asks, and Draco is silent. "Honestly?"
He gives her an annoyed look because there are few times when he isn't honest with her, unless he chooses silence over either. "It's a war, Granger. You could argue that we're all fucked in the head by this point. Or you could argue that none of us should be fighting in it at all."
"Yeah, but Ron-"
"I know." He scratches his jaw, his arm moving against hers, and she might lean a little closer. Might force some of the weight in his presence onto her mind so it pushes down everything else, until she can just feel him and be with the things she knows. "You, Potter, his family – you're all still fighting. You pull him from missions and he's got nothing to do-"
"P-"
"Sit and plot missions all day? That'll go well. Get off from work and go sit with his brother – the twin? You'd be leaving him to his own head. Whatever happened to him... He's not coming out of that unless he fights his way out. No matter if you like it or not."
"So you don't think I'm right." She might have sounded a little too miffed, judging by the amusement that flashes across his face.
"I said you were right that he wasn't fit for missions. Take what you can get."
She snorts and stares at him as his eyes narrow on the boat chase whipping across the screen. "So you actually agree with Harry."
His mouth twists and his look of scrutiny turns into a glare as he swings his eyes to hers. "Are you not satisfied until you spread your shit mood to everyone or are you just concentrating on me?"
"Oh, like-"
"Put yourself in a bedroom, alone, for a week. Just a week. It's easier to keep moving when we're moving towards something. The next mission, the next week, the end of the war. Every day is a fucking goal here."
"I know that."
"I would hope so. So you take that away – you stop the movement and you stop it by yourself, then all you have is what the war was and is and did. You only have what it gave you and you're not moving through it. Weasley hasn't had time to put any of it behind him yet. To deal with it. You make him stop now... You should have left him in Italy."
She pauses, her fingers tangling around her knees. "But it's his life. We make him stop now, then we can help him later. We'll have the chance to help him later because he's there."
He stares at her for a long moment and she watches the flick of his eyes journey across whatever he is trying to read on her face. "There's no coming back from some things."
"So what about the end of the war?"
"With the way you think, what, are we all just screwed when the war ends?" He glances away from the television to look at her and she shakes her head. "I don't believe that. And if you do, then you've already given up on yourself, and that's entirely stupid, Draco."
"I did-"
"What's the point of this war if it's not for it to end and to have peace after? I know that we're fighting for other things, fighting for other people, but...but maybe there has to be a part of us that fights for ourselves, too. Right? For happiness. Because if we don't... We might live past the war but we didn't survive it, did we? It would take everything..." He stares at her and she can't catch the emotion on his face. "Frankly, I thought you were too selfish for that."
He raises an eyebrow, giving her a warning look. "I don't know if I appreciate your word choice, but if you'd like, I can show you how selfish I can be."
She doesn't know exactly what he's threatening her with, so she ignores it with a sniff. "I meant it, though. About ourselves, I mean."
She hears him breathe twice, low and deep. "I know."
Day: 1498; Hour: 12
There is no air conditioning in the safe houses, or any way to get cool air besides an open window and a hope for breeze. It's sweltering inside the house, and the heat they built between them only makes it worse. They are both gasping for oxygen in the thick humidity, the sheets soaked under their dripping sweat.
If she could find room for it beyond the places owned by him, she might care about the state she must look to be in. Her skin feels fire hot, red with all that blood rushing up, and shining white in the places the sun can reach past his back. But he's just as hot, wet, a mess as her, and she can barely get a grip on his shoulders with her hands slipping.
His tongue presses to the base of her throat, humming when she fists his hair. She breathes an awkward laugh when he slips from her and she slants across his lap, but the disjointed feeling leaves when she feels his mouth curve into a smile on its way to her jaw.
She digs her knees into the mattress to right herself when his arms slip around her and he pushes forward, pressing her back into the mattress. He shifts, his eyes meeting hers, and she can barely breathe through all that hot air and the way he's looking at her. His hair is matted to his head, forehead, and the sides of his face, and her eyes track a drop of sweat down the line of his nose as he leans forward to kiss her. His mouth presses against hers for just a second before he's panting out laughter.
"My eyes just went crossed, didn't they?" She might have blushed if she had it in her.
He pulls back to look at her, grinning, and the sight of it packs up a demand in her chest that has her reaching for his head to pull him back down again. His fingers attempt to grasp her jaw as he kisses her back, his tongue dipping along the curve of her lip before he's gone.
"Shower," he huffs, and she doesn't even have time to open her mouth before his slick hands are pulling her off the bed and toward the door.
Day: 1499; Hour: 7
She didn't encounter foreign soldiers very often. The rare times she had, they had been a part of bigger battles, or had shown up when the Death Eaters attacked in their country. In the beginning of the war there had been small groups from several countries, but they worked on their own for smaller battles. Hermione isn't really sure how it works, or if there are any still in England. They always left afterward, to their own safe houses or their own country, and they just became more strange faces within the smoke and dark.
Hermione knew them by their uniforms alone, which she had sat and memorized, to avoid another incident like the one in Surrey. A group of people had shown up within the smoke, all wearing uniforms. Most of the team had thought they were another country, and that confusion was the reason behind the "friendly fire". It took them two minutes and two deaths before they realized the group had been Voldemort supporting citizens.
Hermione feels the coldness creep over her skin and slide down the walls of her stomach a moment before the woman stops screaming at her in a language she can't understand. She knows what it means, her eyes automatically flashing toward the sky. The sudden silence that covered the town breaks in force as curses and spells are cast again.
She presses herself against the edge of the building, her hands splayed out over the brick, and her mouth puffing vapor in the temperature drop. She scans for any Death Eaters and then raises her wand toward the sky, waiting for the Dementors to come into the line of her sight and wand. She thinks of things; beautiful, happy things.
Running through the sprinklers with her parents, getting top marks at Hogwarts, her arms wrapped around Harry and Ron. She remembers being covered in mud and drenched in ice water, laughing on the kitchen floor next to Draco. She thinks of summers at the Burrow, with the Weasleys all laughing over one another. Her family, their skin sparkling with Christmas lights, and her breathing grows quicker, waves of sadness threatening to wash it all away.
She concentrates harder, ignoring the shaking cold. Draco scowling, soaked in orange juice, and her and Neville clinging to one another so they didn't fall over laughing. The Gryffindor common room; Harry and Ron playing chess, Lavender dancing with her arms in the air and Neville laughing as he joined her, Seamus's rogue grin, the Patils giggling in the corner - all before the war was really a war at all. The screaming of the crowd when Harry caught the snitch, Krum spinning and spinning her, and catching lightening bugs along the river. Draco, with his crooked grin, and then kissing her, his hands hot on her cold cheeks.
The team behind her yells out curses over her shoulder for three seconds before the Dementors come into view. She sends out her Patronus, like she has done dozens of times over the course of the war. The Dementors shriek, shrinking back with her sadness against the power of her memories.
Day: 1499; Hour: 15
Draco's hands are cold compared to the heat of his mouth, and she tries to rub warmth back into his skin. She doesn't know how long he had been standing outside in his boxers and boots, his hand clenched around his wand and his eyes trained on something buried in the horizon. As soon as the back door had clicked shut behind her he had spun, wand aimed, and a dangerous look on his face. It had taken several seconds and just as many blinks for him to register it was her.
I thought it was the werewolves, he had muttered, looking back out toward the horizon. His face was strange when he turned to look at her again, as if willing her to see something she didn't. Instead, she had kissed him, and she doesn't know if he's shaking from the cold or something else.
Day: 1499; Hour: 21
The Death Eaters have murder pacts, it seems. Twice they had gotten close to capturing two high ranks that would know more about locations and plans, and twice another Death Eater had killed them before they could be caught. It is obvious the Death Eaters are planning something, not content at all to back down and go into hiding. A frantic sort of restlessness takes over the safe houses and the Ministry, fear and hope mixing in that urgent way they felt before the Graveyard. But now the hope is quiet – bone deep and raging, but everyone is silent in wishing for it to be the end.