willy shakes - hell is empty and all of the devils are here
auction - transcendent
308 words by gdocs
Hermione is starting to wonder if the war will ever go away. She can't stop her heart from beating too fast when she sees a Ministry official in the place where she works. She never knows. What if one of them recognises her as Hermione Granger, the best friend of Harry Potter and an unregistered Muggle-born?
Of course, she tries to remind herself, they do know that she's Hermione Granger. She has to remind herself that they're not going to send her to Azkaban for having magic. She has to remind herself that she is a Ministry official and she wouldn't send herself to Azkaban. She has to remind herself that those times are over.
Still, her hands shakes when someone has curly black hair. Her wand is out when someone asks her a question that's almost like an interrogation.
Her arm throbs when she takes a shower and her arm throbs when she walks into work and her arm throbs when she sees 'Muggle-born' written on someone's papers.
She still checks corners to make sure no one's waiting for her on the other side. She still grips her wand in her sleeves when she goes out to Muggle London—what if she stumbles across a Death Eater, hiding and waiting for her?
And she knows. Hermione knows that she's being ridiculous. The war is over. Why can't she just stop being in this mindset? Why can't she get herself to just calm down and recognise that no one is going to be coming after her anymore? Why is her fear almost transcendent?
Some nights, she still wakes up screaming. Some nights, the nightmares don't stop and they keep coming and she wants everything to just end.
Some nights she wonders if hell is empty and all the demons are here, on Earth, walking around her, haunting her forever.