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What does one do when their life is split in two?
When you are left not really belonging in either?
There is no place for you anymore.
You exist in-between, left to pick up the pieces of your demolished lives and uncover just what little their really is left.
If you find something worth holding on to you will hold onto to it with all your might, because in the end the worst thing about it all is ...
You are entirely on your own.
oOo
Hermione sat alone in the study of Grimmauld Place. Her legs were folded beneath her and a book open on her lap. The book was open to a random page, she had not really read a word of it's ink-laid knowledge. How could you trust books anymore when you have proven that they do not hold all the answers?
There were no books to help her now.
There was no one to help her now.
Her eyes were fixed unseeingly to the grimy window that looked out across the street of the neglected house. The small park across the road was hidden in shadows, the sun falling lower in the sky with every minute that passed.
The old grandfather clock chimed six in the evening, it's resonating chimes bringing the young witch out of her stupor.
Harry and Ron had gone. They had left at lunch and had not told her when to expect them back, probably so that she would not worry if they did not come home. She tried not to think of that, but she looked guiltily at the book in her lap, it's unread pages staring accusingly back at her.
She sighed heavily, closing the book and placing it gently on the small side table beside her. She did not put it back in the shelf. She would read it. She had too. It was for Ron and Harry. She would read it. But after she had fixed something for dinner.
She rather thought she could go without eating; she certainly did no feel like doing such an act. But she knew she must, if not for her own health then for the sake of the small life growing inside of her.
She rested her hand on her flat abdomen as she walked down the steps from the study towards the front hall.
She often thought that the small life had been the only reason she was carrying on for. It was the reason she pulled herself out of bed each morning. It was the reason she made sure to eat proper meals, three times, each day.
But it was also the reason she was alone at Grimmauld Place, while Harry and Ron went out into dangers unknown.
No, they did not know of the small thing's existence but they had witnessed it's awful effects on it's mother in the early morning's rays.
After a week of unrelenting morning illness they had declared Hermione 'too unwell' to go with them on any actual horcrux searches.
Permitted by the young men only to help in the 'research' side, Hermione was hence confined to the walls of Grimmauld Place as her friends left to search out leads without anyone to guide their reckless natures.
She worried about them but she actually worried more about how much she worried about them.
Hermione wasn't as disappointed as she should have been (as she would have been, before) to have been left behind in their adventure.
It wasn't that she didn't love them, that she didn't care about them or what would happen to them if anything went wrong, but she couldn't exactly put her finger on her source of apathy either.
She thought it perhaps to be consequent of her feeling of dislodgement from the world. She felt as if she didn't belong. Harry was sympathetic to his friend's dispassionate mood, thinking it connected to the mood of the war and the dooming sense of loss that was overshadowing the wizarding community in general, but he really didn't understand.
She didn't fit with them anymore.
She swallowed these thoughts, pushing them away for later, as she moved towards the kitchen.
She stepped a little too close to the entrance hall as she moved across the room and she felt the cold prickle of the wards that Kingsley had placed on the entrance way.
The Order had known of the Trio's intentions for the continuance of some 'mission' given to them from Dumbledore. Although disgruntled, the Order accepted their unrelenting stance for now and suggested that they make a steady base out of Grimmauld Place where protection could be supplied by the Order and they would be contactable (working both ways).
Grimmauld Place was not the safest place anymore. The broken Fidelius Charm meant that the house was more vulnerable, but, as Ron argued to his mother, just as vulnerable as anywhere else, including the Burrow.
Kinglsey had hence placed, in addition to the normal protective wards, a rather disturbing ward of a startling sweeping figure in resemblance of the deceased headmaster that made Hermione shiver just thinking about it's deadened form that sort to distract and deter unwelcome visitors. Not to mention the one in particular 'traitor' whom the Order feared to return to Grimmauld's steps.
It was not the only protection they were given however. As soon as their honeymoon was completed the Trio would be due to welcome the supervision of Remus and Tonks. Harry was not so disgruntled by the pending invasion to their privacy.
Hermione just hoped they would be as elusive as Harry was expecting.
oOo
Hermione slipped on her overlarge T-shirt that she was using for a night gown and then slipped herself under the covers of her bed.
Her skin still radiated warmth from the hot bath she had taken.
She jumped up with a start.
What was that?
She wondered what had woken her. Or had she even been asleep.
She moved her legs against each other. They no longer radiated the warmth from her bath so she guessed she must have fallen asleep. But then what had waken her?
BANG.
She jumped from the bed. The dull thud had come from below.
Ron and Harry!
Not wasting time to grab her dressing gown she fled instead as fast as her small feet and pounding heart would allow her to. Please please be okay, I'm sorry I didn't read the book, okay? I'm sorry. Please don't be hurt. Please don't let me loose you too. Please, oh please. Harry! Ron! Oh my god, please be okay.
She hurtled down the stairs her hair flying madly behind her and her feet not going fast enough for her liking. It was a sudden jerking stop that met her body as her feet froze as her eyes met the figure she finally found in the entrance hall.
His hair was dark and limp falling around and sticking to his face like he had been standing in the rain, although Hermione was sure she had heard not a single drop that evening.
He was crouching on the floor, almost curled up into a ball. He held his wand out in one unsteady hand as he threw a curse at an invisible figure.
"Go away," he rasped, his voice desperate and pleading.
She couldn't move, couldn't help but stare, as Severus Snape rocked back and forth like an abused child, his voice husky and worn as he threw another pointless curse at the figure that haunted him.
Finally brought back into the reality of the situation by a flare of bright orange sparks hitting the wall beside her with another resounding -
BANG
- she shifted out of the darkened stairway to try and catch his attention.
"Just say 'I didn't kill you'"
Severus' eyes flicked over to her. She was slightly amazed that he had heard her, she was sure that it would have taken more than that to pull him out of his shaken state.
He looked back at the figure Hermione could not see.
"I did kill you."
Hermione closed her eyes tight in fear of some horrible consequence of such an admission but when no horrendous pain filled shrieks met her ears she hesitantly peered out through squinted eyes.
Severus was leaning against the wall. Using the backdrop to pull himself up and resting upon it to compose himself.
She watched as he moved out of the hall and into the open space.
She was amazed at just how quickly he had recovered. If she had walked in just then she guessed that she would never been able to imagine the frightened child-like position he had occupied only moments previous.
"Hermione," his voice as silky as ever held no trace of the husky rasp she had heard as she entered.
Wait had he just called her Hermione?