Author's Note: Thank you so much for the awesome comments! They are seriously inspiring and uplifting! This chapter is a bit short but that just means I'll post the next one sooner rather than later. Enjoy, review, tell your friends! ;)
Chapter 4
August 1999
An arm around her neck. A struggle. A flash of light, brighter than she'd ever experienced. A scream, was that her voice? And then a pop.
That was new, she'd never heard that popping sound in this recurring dream before. Or was it a nightmare? She blinked her eyes open, awake as usual after the reverie. She heard rustling from the living room and quickly reached for her wand. The pop must have been real life, not her dream. As her sleepiness left her and she became more aware of where she was, she recognized the popping sound was that of a witch or wizard apparating. Another pop and all was still.
She slowly moved from her bed, entering the living room. "Lumos," she muttered and the tip of her wand lit up, casting a glow around the room. "Homenum revelio." Nothing. She was alone. With another flick of her wand, the lights around the room turned on and her eyes immediately fell on a small package that sat on an end table near the couch. Using her wand, she lifted it into the air, turning it around to examine it. It was small and wrapped not so neatly. She cast a few simple spells to make sure what was inside wasn't harmful before magically removing the wrappings. She turned the box around in her hands before opening it, not wanting to touch it in case it were cursed. These days, she always assumed the worse. Inside sat a remembrall, filled with billowing white smoke that condensed and then cleared as she watched it move around the small clear ball.
Deciding it was ok, she plucked it from its box and it immediately turned the darkest red she'd ever seen. A note fluttered to the ground once the ball wasn't holding it in place and she knelt down to retrieve it. It was a ripped piece of parchment with a scribbled handwriting she swore she'd seen before. 'Please remember me,' read the paper. Hermione closed her eyes, not wanting to cry even though she was alone, but found it hard to bite back the tears. She wanted desperately for all of this to be over, to remember the person she knew she was forgetting. How silly was it that she knew she was forgetting someone and that the someone she couldn't remember had been a huge part of her life? Her eyes snapped opened and she gasped at her own revelation. This was the first time she remembered on her own that it was a person she was forgetting because of the curse that was over her. She looked down at the remembrall in her hand and swore that it lightened just a tiny shade, that a tiny wisp of white smoke had streaked through the crimson red before mixing together. With her hand closed tightly around it, she returned to bed and finished her nights rest.
The next morning, Hermione apparated to Grimmauld Place to use Harry's fireplace which had been wired into the Minestry's floo network shortly after the war. The paperwork to have her own floo linked was taking forever to finish, despite her connections within the Ministry. She had arrived early and went down into the kitchen where Kreacher went about making her breakfast though she tried to insist she wasn't hungry and he needn't do so. She sat at the table, nursing a cup of coffee, her new remembrall on the surface before her. She touched it with the tip of her finger and the smoke near the warmth of her skin began to turn red quickly. She pulled her hand away and watched the smoke turn white again then fade to nothing. She did this several times, letting her finger linger longer each time. Hermione had spent much of the previous day testing out the remembrall, watching the red smoke fill it when touched and fade once left alone. She liked to watch the colors dance together and smiled when they seemed to fight each other for supremacy of their confines, the red always winning the battle. As she watched the colors swim, a tall redhead walked into the kitchen, giving her a double take as he tripped over his own feet. "Oh, hi," he murmured, sliding into a seat across from her, accepting his own cup of coffee that Kreacher immediately brought over. "Thanks Kreacher," he said to the house elf and Hermione noted how unnecessarily kind he was to the poor being.
Hermione took in this stranger's appearance, his broad, strong shoulders, piercing blue eyes, and vibrant red hair. "Hi," she answered cautiously back, her hand moving over the remembrall which instantly filled with smoke that turned red quickly.
"Ron," he said. "My name's Ron. That bloke you can't remember." He said this so casually and sipped his coffee afterward that Hermione was thrown off a bit. She blinked a few times before she could respond.
"Oh," was the only sound she could muster. She was supposed to know who this person was, yet couldn't remember at all. She felt like such a nutter. Thankfully, Harry came in before anyone could say anything else.
"Morning," he said cheerfully, smiling at both his friends. "What do you have there, Hermione?" Harry asked, motioning towards the ball in her hand as he accepted his coffee from Kreacher as Ron had.
"Good morning," Hermione replied and held up the profoundly red ball which Harry immediately identified. "It's a bit odd, really. Someone apparated into my place last night and left this. I think I'm going to put a few protective spells up. I don't know who it was but it kind of freaked me out." She looked at the ball and how red the billowing smoke inside was. "I've never seen one this shade before, not even one of Neville's at school." Hermione swore that the stranger across the table from her, the one who called himself Ron, winced when she mentioned Neville.
"Well it's no surprise it's red," Harry commented. "You've been forced to forget something pretty major." He looked at Ron who just shrugged and looked down at his cup of coffee. "I need to get ready for work, we'll leave soon," Harry added before excusing himself.
Ron looked up at Hermione whose eyes shifted from the remembrall to his face. He stood slowly but bent over the table, leaning in close to her, lowering his voice when he spoke. "Please remember me."
"It was you," she gasped immediately, almost dropping the ball from her fingertips. He merely shrugged again before straightening up and heading out the door Harry had just used. Hermione sat back in her seat with a sigh. "How could I keep forgetting him?" she murmured to herself. She closed her eyes tightly. "Please remember him," she told herself, as if speaking to her brain. "Please."
She opened her eyes and looked down at the remembrall in her hand, lost in thought. As Kreacher pushed a plate of food toward her, she was brought back to the present, forgetting the interaction she had just had with Ron as her mind cleared.