16 November 1998.

Grim silence woke her nearly thirteen hours later and she wondered if this was what it felt like to be run over by Abraxons. Silence meant Monday. Silence meant Kingsley was at the Ministry, and that Luna had been taken back to school. Silence meant at least two teams had been sent on missions. Silence meant that most, if not all, of the Weasleys had been dispatched on at least one of those teams. Experience told her that silence meant that at least one person was gong to come back injured. She wondered if hoping for injury made her a terrible person, but pain was better than death.

She moved slowly, haltingly – the muscles in her thighs and her calves were too tight to allow her a normal stride. In a brief moment of what she would later term insanity, she tried to lift her arms to wrestle her hair into some form of submission.

"Bloody hell." She hissed, regretting the impulse immensely as the muscles in her shoulders caught fire and burned. She decided then to forego Muggle clothing beneath her robes and laced her dragonhide boots with more than a little difficulty. Opening her door, she peered both ways before starting down the stairs.

Good. Lord. Who. In their. Right. Mind. Decided. Houses. Needed. More. Than one. Level. And. That. It was. A. Good. Idea. To. Employ. The. Use of. Boxes. To get. From. One. Level. To. The. Next?

She raged within her mind because anger was safer than grief. She didn't have to hurt and it made her feel alive… so she glowered about the abomination they called "stairs" because it was cathartic and truly, stairs didn't matter. Wizarding houses were worse than Muggle. They defied logic and reason and laws of gravity. Thirty stairs. Ordinarily, she appreciated round numbers. Ordinarily, they made her life simpler.

Today was not ordinary.

She cursed the idea behind stairs. She cursed the first man to stand on a rock to reach something beyond him. She cursed the architect of Grimmauld Place. She cursed Harry Potter for his possession of the wretched house. She cursed the Order for making it Headquarters. Thirty stabs of pain as her muscles protested stretching. Thirty opportunities for her mood to sour. By the time she reached the landing, she was quite near livid. She hobbled to the kitchen and was further displeased to see Harry slumped lazily in his chair with his legs stretched out in front of him, drinking tea as he might have if he had he spent the previous day warming the couch.

"Good morning." She was curt.

"Morning." His mood rivaled hers.

She eyed Harry's tea enviously from across the room and with a long-suffering sigh she hobbled across to set the kettle to boil. She looked away and grew distant, and when he studied her, he wondered where she went. He hoped it was good, wherever it was. Just before the kettle hissed, she took away the heat and added water to the loose tea in her mug. Proper tea cups were inadequate. She'd confiscated one of the large mugs that Kingsley drank his coffee from and even so, she needed three to function. She stirred, four times counter-clockwise, paused and watched the liquid swirl, and then reversed the flow with two quick stirs to the right. It reminded Harry of how she looked when brewing the Polyjuice Potion in their second year – a strange combination of concentration and resolve. The tea burned taste buds from her tongue and wrecked havoc down her throat… but even from the first sip, she started to come back to life.

"They sent out Ron." Ah. So this was the source of his mood.

"They're sending you again in two days. I get to stay safe here with Moody as my babysitter because he doesn't trust me to stay put."

She didn't hear his bitterness in his because she hadn't heard the second half of his words at all. Her mind convulsed as she fought to comprehend him, fought to understand. She clawed desperately at the tendrils of her sanity as panic sought to drive it away. She wasn't ready. She killed one man she didn't want to kill two. Three. More. It would be inevitable. It wasn't her, she couldn't do it, it wasn't what she wanted, it wasn't –

"Hermione, did you hear me? My job is to train you. You have two days. Calm down. Make the most of them. You need to change; we're going for a run." His voice was lacking something vital, and his eyes were stony with all the resentment of a teenaged boy. They were sullen, depthless, timeless, and right then, they were devoid of humanity.

She wasn't looking at his eyes. She didn't see the danger because her fragile hold on emotion and reality and poise slipped, and something broke inside her.

"Two days. TWO DAYS? What the hell am I to do in two days? I need time, I need to go to the library, I need to practice, I haven't done this, I'm not ready, I don't know what to do and I killed someone yesterday. I need to be able to bloody WALK. Harry, how am I going to do this? I can't do this, not in two days. I can't… I just can't. What if I'd been trained, what if I knew what to do, what if I didn't have to kill him? Why couldn't I have Apparated faster? Bill said leave. What if…Harry, please don't ask me to do this, please, not yet."

Her voice started shrill and rose even higher as her hysteria grew. Her eyes were bright with tears and terror and her chest heaved and she tried to breathe but her lungs were like the muscles in her legs. They were too tight, and she tried but she couldn't breathe. A new color of fear flecked her eyes because her lungs wouldn't inflate and a corner of her mind thought it odd that her fingers were stiff, but her eyes changed again when her knees refused to hold her weight and she slumped, slid out of her chair and Harry's Seeker reflexes weren't enough to catch her that time.

He softened though, and he sat on the cold hard wood of the kitchen floor and pulled her into his lap. Stroking her hair he berated himself for his treatment of her. She quieted, and it was by sheer force of will that she reined in control of her body and her emotions, quicker today than she had last night. Harry could feel the transformation through the thick layers of their robes, as liquid steel coursed through her veins and settled into the jut of her chin and the brace of her shoulders… and he was proud of her strength but it in a rare moment of perception, it broke his heart because he could see her losing pieces of herself.

The worst part was that she didn't seem to know.

A special thanks to TwilitLife08, Her Royal Goddess, LooneyLovey, heartmom88, SnarkySnape1313 :DD Thank you so much for your time. I'm VERY pleased at the reception of the Snape-Poppy exchange and for your compliments. Your reviews are the highlights of my day. They're inspiring, and motivating, and they make me nicer - people don't know it, but everyone I interact with, particularly at work, is grateful for the improvements to my demeanor. Thanks again :D

Yours,
Threnody