Sam stares at the ceiling and watches as a spider makes his way almost to the centre before turning back and zig zagging its way into a corner.
The wind's a loud roar outside, it rattles the glass of the cabin's windows trying to find a way in to chill the warm air it's denied.
Sam's slept through worse.
Could sleep through a hurricane, according to Dean. Almost did the one summer when they were staying down in North Carolina. Would have too if Dean hadn't woke him up and dragged him into the small bathroom of the motel they were staying in to keep him safe.
He can't now though.
Every little sound's too loud - drilling into his head.
He thinks.
The noise in his head is louder than even that hurricane.
When they'd been kids, Sam remembers their dad being gone for days. Too many instances to count. Too many for it to be anything but normal to Sam. And he'd grown up knowing the words, 'gonna be a few more days, Sammy' like other kids knew 'eat your greens.'.
It was never a big deal.
Sam hadn't known it should be. He'd just nodded at Dean and asked him when they could get some more Lucky Charms because they were almost out. He'd just always trusted his brother to take care of everything.
He never noticed the way Dean's shoulders would tense up, how he seemed unable to sit still during the days following one of those announcements. Not until the Christmas Dean told him the truth.
Sam remembers Dean getting off the phone with John on Boxing day; his shoulders sagging and bottom lip bitten raw. He'd listened to Dean's quiet, "Yes, sir. Of course. Yes. I will," as he hung up the phone, and Sam had noticed, for the first time, that his brother's voice broke as he said, 'gonna.'
That night Sam hadn't been able to sleep.
He'd watched Dean, lying with his back to Sam, the way his breaths weren't even enough for sleep and had asked, "Dean, is it dangerous? What he does? He's going to be okay, right?"
Sam closes his eyes, wraps a hand around the amulet around his neck; presses it into the skin of his chest so that he can feel every edge of the metal.
He hears, clear as a bell, "Course he is, Sammy. He's a fucking superhero. Superheroes don't die." But the room hadn't felt any warmer to Sam and Dean's voice had been too shaky.
"I'm cold," Sam had said and Dean had rolled over, pulled up the comforter and replied, "Come here, squirt."
Sam had been eight and Dean had stopped just hugging him two years before, swapped it for affectionate hair ruffling that pissed Sam the hell off for the same reason that Dean liked it.
There were exceptions though.
Sam had slid under Dean's comforter, let his brother draw him in close, pressing his nose into the crook of Dean's arm and closing his eyes. He'd tried not to think of the things outside that their dad might be fighting and then Dean had said, "'s okay, Sammy. I'm here."
"Can't sleep?" Hermione asks.
Sam shifts his gaze away from the spider, looks at figure haloed by light in the doorway. His eyes feel hot – itchy - but he doesn't dare lift a hand to rub them.
"Umm," Sam acknowledges. He eyes Hermione curiously and wonders what her excuse is. It's tempting to ask just to have something else to focus on.
Hermione steps into the room, flicks the switch on a floor lamp on; banishes her silhouette. She tightens the cord on her dressing gown, folds her arms. "I'm going to get myself a cup of hot milk. Want some?"
"Depends," Sam answers, pushing himself up from the chair. "Is it going to be drugged again?" His voice is a hard edge, accusing, and Sam's not sure if he wouldn't prefer not knowing and just accepting the cup anyway, pretending obliviousness. He knows if she offers it to him, he'll turn it down.
Hermione pauses before answering. Her lips flatten and sag, and she looks away. "No. I just thought you needed - But, no. That's not – long term." She falters, fiddles with the ties again.
"Milk would be good," Sam says. He thinks the other conversation is not one either of them want to have. "Can I help?"
"You said, earlier, that you'd tell me how you met Dean," Sam says.
Hermione's just put his cup down on the kitchen table. He'd been fiddling with his hands, tracing a scar on the back of his left one, his eyes on them rather than her.
She turns back to the kitchen counter, pours her own cup of milk, and nods. "Yes. I did." She takes a deep breath, exhales slowly blowing the air over the top of her mug as she lifts it up. "I don't know where to start," she admits, turning back to the table.
Sam's back is all tense lines and frustration. He makes the air crackle and she's suddenly glad she's not empathic. She doesn't know how anyone would hold up under the weight of the emotions rolling off him. As it is, Hermione feels the pressure of them like a hard kick straight back into her own past.
Maybe a sedative would have been a good idea after all, but she thinks it would have been the selfish choice.
The easy one.
She makes too many of those. It's a habit she's sure she should have broken by now. After everything.
"You said he was on a hunt. What was he hunting?"
Hermione pulls a chair out and sits down. "Local curse," she answers and thinks about looking down her path, past the gate and seeing Dean's sleek black car that first time.
Sam's cheek twitches and his eyes narrow when Hermione fails to elaborate.
"There's a piece of land, other side of the town. Developers bought it up after the old woman who owned it passed away. This was just before I'd moved into town. I guess, early to mid two thousand and one."
Sam nods, takes a sip of his milk.
Hermione watches him for a moment, takes a drink of her own milk. She thinks of Harry after Sirius died. The way he'd eat up any and all stories of his parents and their friends, the way he'd looked when Hagrid had told them tales of them down in his cabin.
"I'd looked at the house and the land by extension. It was self contained and seemed like it might be what I was looking for. A little more open than I'd have liked, but it was far enough out of town to offer some degree of privacy and I thought I could always plant some fast growing trees." Hermione pauses. "Is this okay? Do you want me to -"
"No." Sam looks up. Looks at Hermione. "No, it's good. I want to know."
The sentence hangs like it's unfinished, like there's something more to come, but Sam stays quiet, closes his mouth.
Hermione hears the ending as clear as if he'd said it anyway. She reaches across the table, lays her hand on Sam's arm.
He looks down at it, moves his arm to pick his drink back up. Hermione's hand falls away, knocks against the table and she pulls it back.
She thinks about the stories Dean would tell about his brother – the touchy feely one, always wanting to 'talk about his fucking emotions.' Her lips tilt down just a fraction.
Hermione nods, she opens her mouth to start again, but Sam cuts in.
"Do you have some paper?"
Hermione raises an eyebrow. She lifts her hand, pushes her hair back behind her ears. "Umm -"
"It's easier to concentrate when I can take notes," Sam says. "I've been doing it so long, when we're investigating cases, you know? It feels wrong to listen to you and not – write it down. You know?"
Hermione feels her cheeks heat and she gives a small, self conscious smile. "I – Yeah, it does. I forgot you were -" Hermione hesitates, bites her lip. "Dean always used to say how alike we were."
Sam frowns, looks like he wants to ask something, but Hermione cuts in first.
"Let me get you one of my notepads, then we can get back to the story."
Sam's nodding as she turns to the door that leads back to the main room and her desk.
"You knew my brother pretty well then?" Sam asks, all his petulance from earlier back in his voice.
"As well as he let me," Hermione answers, walking through the doorway.
When she steps back into the kitchen Sam's got his arms crossed on the table, back slumped over as he rests his forehead against one arm.
"Do you want to call it a night?" Hermione asks. Sam looks tired, his eyes rimmed red and heavy. While Hermione's own milk hasn't done a thing to bring on drowsiness she doubts she's been sleeping half as bad as Sam has the last few months. Maybe it's just catching up. She remembers that feeling; going too long without any kind of a decent rest and then just crashing out for a week - everything too much.
"Nah," Sam replies. "I'm good."
He takes the notepad and pen from Hermione, lips turning up in a forced half smile. "Thanks," he says. "Sorry."
Hermione shrugs and doesn't ask what for. She sits back down.
"I didn't get the house. Obviously!" Hermione gives a small laugh and Sam's shoulders lose some of their tenseness. He picks up the pen.
"As I said, developers bought it. I'd found this place by then. I wasn't bitter. This suited my needs better in the end; more private, less land to maintain, just what I'd been looking for. Anyway, it took a few months for the planning permission to go through, but they finally got the go ahead for a new mall. That's when it started."
"I'm not one to really listen to most of the gossip that goes on around here," the waitress says, flicking her hair back over her shoulder and leaning in across the counter conspiratorially. "Not the type."
Dean raises an eyebrow, can't help looking down past her face to the cleavage framed between crossed arms. Dean would actually bet that she's exactly the type, and probably starts half of it to boot. "Course not," he replies, giving her a grin. He flicks his eyes up, lifts his eyebrows slightly and adds, "But working somewhere like this -"
She laughs and it actually does wonders for her. "People talk, yeah. Especially when their tongues have been loosened by a few drinks."
Dean takes a sip of his own and nods, his hand lifting to loosen his tie.
"This woman moved into the old Gravely place last year. She'd been looking around town for a while. I heard a few folks say she had her eye on a different house, bigger plot, but developers out bid her on that one. Good job too, Mall's gonna bring a lot of jobs to the area."
"And you think she has something to do with the illnesses?"
"Look, I don't believe in curses or whatever else the rest of the town wants to call what's been happening."
Dean frowns and looks down at his notebook, wondering if it's really so much better to be so oblivious, and automatically thinks of Sam and how he'd always seemed a little quieter after he'd known the truth, a little more withdrawn. How the next time John had been packing up to go on a hunt Sam had feigned a stomach bug to try and make him stay.
"But I know that there's something wrong there. The woman, she – She kinda creeps me the hell out. And then there's the other stuff."
Dean takes the bait, knows she's drawing this out, going for maximum drama whilst simultaneously trying to keep his attention longer. "What other stuff?" he asks.
"Peter Eliot. He's a teacher at the elementary school, had quite the crush on her. I think he took her out once or twice too. Anyway, he took her home one night. Her car had broken down in town. I don't know what happened but he didn't speak for three days. Not a single word. To anyone. Sent a letter into the school explaining that he couldn't come in."
She looks pointedly at Dean, clearly impressed by this particular detail's weirdness.
Dean looks over the half a page of sparse notes, sighs and looks up at her. "Is that all?" he asks.
Chloe's (or Carla's, Carrie's, whatever her name is) face falls. She pulls back from the bar, readjusts her top so that she's less on show. "Like I said, I don't really listen to gossip.
Dean nods, takes a final swig of his beer and stands. "Well, thanks for your help, Claire." He says, tucking his pen into the inside pocket of his jacket.
"It's Clarice," the waitress corrects.
Dean just hums absently, checking through the messages on his phone. There's one from his dad, checking up on how Dean's doing with the case, no mention of the Banshee John's hunting on his own. Dean frowns and tries not to feel bitter. There's another one, this time from Sam. Dean smiles as he clicks 'open' and reads it.
Happy Birthday for tomorrow, bro.
It's simple and takes Dean all of five seconds to read. So he reads it again. Twice. Then clicks save and flips the phone shut.
Dean feels the black hole in his stomach pulse and expand. He's half tempted to lean over the bar, catch Clarice's hand, give her a wink and say sorry. See if maybe she'll let him take her out back to the car park; fuck her in the back seat of the Impala.
He wonders if it would hurt less if Sam called more often, if maybe it would be easier if he just stopped. Dean thinks the possibility of the latter's more likely, but he doesn't really think it would have the desired effect though.
Instead, he turns to the door, pauses and turns back. "How do I get to this old Gravely place then?"
Sam smiles. It's not a happy one, it's twisted and wry; self deprecating. "Dean and Jess shared the same birthday."
"Your girlfriend?" Hermione asks.
She doesn't look like she's particularly interested in the answer. She looks like she already knows and that the question was just her way of being polite and making conversation.
"Dean told you," Sam says, and she nods.
"Sort of. He didn't say her name, just that she -" Hermione stutters mid sentence, looks down at the table and her drink.
A year ago, Sam thinks he might have said 'It's okay' and reassured her, instead he watches her flounder and finds some kind of perverse satisfaction in the knowledge that for the first time since he's met her she doesn't look totally self assured and composed.
"I'm, er, sorry."
She looks uncomfortable and the words sound unsure, like she's already regretting them as soon as she sounds the first syllable. Sam takes a drink to hide the up-tilt of his lips.
"Merlin! I can't believe I said that. I hate it when people say that. It always sounds so hollow."
"Yeah." Sam replies. "I know. Carry on."
Dean knocks on the door, turns around and looks around the small garden.
He'd had to stop off at the gas station just outside the town for extra directions and now the light's failing. He looks at his watch and rubs a hand across the back of his neck, thinks maybe he should have just headed back to the motel, checked in with his dad.
The garden's planted up neat; postcard perfect picket fence surrounding it. He notes some familiar plants; can't remember the names of all of them though. Sam would, kid was a freak with stuff like that. Dean recognises enough to guess there are a fair amount of herbs amongst the collection. It could just be a kitchen garden, but could equally belong to someone with experience of or links to hunting.
Could be a witch's. Mixing up potions and casting curses on the locals.
That's certainly what the town's people would have him think; what Clarice would have him think.
The man in the station had frowned when Dean had asked about the house and its owner, said he should stay away; that weird things happened around that house of late. When Dean had asked, he'd just said, 'some of the local kids have seen stuff', and that 'nothing good has happened to the town since she moved in.'
Dean's stands in the garden and snorts.
He's not naïve. Dean knows evil things can come in some pretty damn innocent looking packages. But he trusts his instincts and this just doesn't feel right. He hasn't even met the woman yet, but it feels – It feels like superstition and Chinese whispers. It fees like locals mistrusting someone new.
Still, doesn't hurt to check it out at least. He's made mistakes before. Once. And look what happened then, he'd nearly got Sammy killed.
He turns around again, lifts his hand to knock at the door a second time.
"Can I help you?"
Dean stops, hand caught mid knock and looks to right. There's a woman standing by the edge of the house.
Dean assesses her quickly. Like he would any potential threat. What he sees is a young woman, British accent that would make her stand out all the more, wild brown hair and beautiful in a kind of understated way; like she has no interest, like this is just who she is.
He thinks of Sammy and smiles.
She's wearing rolled up jeans, sandals and a white tee. One hand hovers by her right hip, thumb tucked inside her jeans pocket, the other holds a basket laden with freshly cut plants, Dean can see the end of a carrot sticking out through the pile of foliage.
He lets his hand drop, fingers loosening as the instinctive urge to pull his gun falls away.
"Hi, my name's Agent Bowie. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions?" he asks, smiling.
"Bowie?" the woman asks, eyebrow raised and a more than a little suspicious.
"Yeah," Dean replies, taking a step forward and wondering if maybe he was wrong. She's looking at him like she can see straight through him, like he's something to be solved or deciphered and Dean can see why she would put the town's folk on edge.
She watches him for a few beats then takes a deep breath and smiles back.
"I take it you have some id, Agent? Before I ask you in for tea and this little chat."
Dean nods, reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out the fake badge. The woman moves forward, looks it over, looks towards the fence and his car, and then up at him.
"You'd better come on in then."
Hermione rests her chin on her hand; swallows down the last dregs of her drink. Sam's arms are folded on the tabletop, his head resting on them and eyes closed.
She looks down into the empty bottom of her cup, pulls her hand across her eyes and shifts, moving to stand up; wash the cups and head to bed.
"What happened next?" Sam says, eyes open and blinking up at Hermione, looking as sleepy as his voice.
"You should get some more rest," Hermione tries, reaching for Sam's cup.
"Not tired enough yet."
Hermione laughs, can't help it. Sam sounds like Teddy when Harry's trying to get him to bed; all petulant protestation, even his bottom lip looks like it's protruding in a pout.
Sam scowls up at her, his wrinkled brow making him seem even younger. It's easy to imagine stepping back in time, Sam having this discussion with Dean. She'd bet Dean folded every time too. Just the hint of those eyes were probably enough to bend every ounce of Dean's will to Sam's.
Hermione feels a pang in her chest and slides back into the chair. "Okay."
Sam's props his chin up on his arms, looks up at her through a curtain of brown bangs. Hermione wants to reach out, slide a hand through them and push them back off his face, tell him he needs a hair cut. Just like she used to with Harry.
"He wasn't very subtle," she starts and Sam almost cracks a smile. He seems to realise at the last minute, swallowing it away like some forbidden thing and Hermione knows that guilt.
She looks down to the tabletop, follows the grain in the wood and breathes out, concentrates on the story.
"Have you heard much about the mall development on the other side of town? Dean asks, closing the front door behind him. His eyes do a quick sweep of the room, checking for anything that stands out; any risks.
The woman's standing further inside by a desk and when Dean looks across at her she's got her eyebrow quirked, head cocked to one side. She still has the basket hooked over one arm, but her other hand is on her hip – expectant, Dean thinks, and maybe a little amused. He frowns and looks around, trying to clue himself in on the joke.
She lets out a sigh, says, "Hard not to. It's a little bit of a big deal for most people around here." She brushes her hair back of her face, huffs when the curls fall back into her eyes almost straight away and slides the basket off her arm onto the desk.
"So, this is about the spate of sicknesses, right, Agent?" she asks, tugging a band from around her wrist and pulling her hair into a pony tail.
Dean's eyes narrow in suspicion. She's still smiling, cocky and sure and Dean's pretty damn sure by now that he's missing something.
"Umm," he hums, walking towards the bookcase and running his eyes across the titles that do nothing to settle the unease in his stomach. He looks back across the room towards the woman, but she hasn't moved.
"Malleus Maleficarum. The Barddas of Iolo Morganwg?" Dean asks, voice fumbling the pronunciation of the second title. Dean coughs and strokes a thumb down the spine of one of the books before continuing. "Unusual collection of books you've got here."
The woman's smile breaks into a full out grin. "Iolo Morganwg," she says, pronouncing the fucked up collection of constantans and vowels carefully and with the same air Sam had whenever he was correcting Dean's Latin. "I translate occult texts for a living. It's a specialist area. I find it helpful to know the background of the subjects I'm translating. It helps with the accuracy of the interpretation. That one's really not very accurate though. Morganwg was a bit of a bard you see, that wasn't even his real name. He liked to embellish and create, but there are elements that seem to have some foundation." She pauses, seems to consider something for a moment, then steps forward, leaving just a few feet between herself and Dean. "Did they tell you I'm not right, Agent? That I inexplicably give men colds when I don't take them to my bed?"
Dean feels his fingers twitch, knuckles flexing and knocking against his thigh with a reflexive need to reach for the gun in the holster beneath his jacket or the knife strapped to his ankle.
She doesn't make an offensive move though, just stretches her hand out and says, "My name's Hermione. Nice to meet you. Agent."
Dean has the distinct impression from the inflection she puts on that word she's just as suspicious of him as he is of her.
Dean takes her hand anyway, shakes it and nods. "Locals sure don't seem very fond of you, Hermione."
Hermione laughs and shakes her head. "No. Guess they don't. It's not that easy being an outsider in a close knit community."
She's looking at Dean like there's a question in that statement and he feels the truth of it more than he's willing to admit. He knows too well how being new makes it easy to point the finger, especially when you don't quite fit in. He's willing to bet with that accent, this collection of books and her profession that Hermione doesn't fit in very well at all.
Still, it doesn't make her innocent either.
Hermione nods. "How about I make some – coffee? And then I can tell you a little about what I know of these so called illnesses?"
Dean's eyes snap up sharp at that.
"And in return," she adds, "maybe you can be a bit more honest about who you are and why you're here."
"Did you fuck him straight away?" Sam's voice is resentful and full of challenge.
Hermione flushes, can't help it. The question's too personal and too crudely put with the tone Sam inflects on the wording to initiate any other response. She coughs. Anyone else she'd tell to mind their own business, with Sam though she thinks he'd argue the point that it is his business and there's something Hermione finds herself unable to deny about that.
She brushes the discomfort off and says, "No," with a smile. "I'm not quite that easy, Sam." She pauses then adds more honestly, "I didn't date much. I haven't dated much. It's not something -" she flails, gesturing randomly with her hands and trying to catch onto a way to explain her hesitation without going into the specifics of her childhood and the subsequent fallout, the way it affected her so called love life. In the end, she just says, "It was the first time in ages that someone had asked me who I'd been actually interested in. Dean was – He was interesting and clever; good at his job. He made me laugh and it's -" She shrugs. "It was unexpected. I won't deny I considered it."
"But my brother was gonna be leaving town in a few days?" Sam says, sounding quieter, more placated.
Talking to Sam is like a rollercoaster of emotions, half the time he seems to be pushing her for something, the other half he just seems sad, resigned.
"Yes," she answers, tracing the top of her cup with one finger.
"So what happened?"
"After we removed the curse or after I said no?"
Sam shrugs.
"I offered to make him dinner, but he said he should head back out. That he had another job lined up." She shrugs and Sam nods, forestalling any further explanation. "I told him he could call me if he ever needed any advice on this kind of thing."
Hermione smiles; remembers pressing a piece of paper with her number and email into Dean's hand as they stood outside the Impala, saying, "Call me if you need anything."
Dean's eyes had lit up with a smirk and a leer. "Anything eh? You sure you don't want to get that drink?
Hermione twists a curl at the nape of her neck around a finger, hears herself several years younger saying, "I'm sure," and not being anything of the sort.
"I take it he took you up on the offer?"
"Yes. Two months later he called me up about a case up in New Brunswick - a tribe of Red Caps whose forest was being reduced due to a logging company making way for new housing. It was bringing them in closer contact to more humans, hence some clashes."
"Red Caps?" Sam asks, confused. "But Dean – he knows how to take out a bunch of fucking Red Caps."
"Umm," Hermione agrees. "I know. I think – I'd been translating a book on races of the Fae when we'd met that first time. I guess I'd had it open on one of the pages on Red Caps or something when he'd been up here. Or he'd looked through."
"Oh," Sam says, then, "Because you turned him down."
Hermione looks down, shrugs.
"It was near by, I guess. He'd just asked if I knew much about Red Caps, and when I said, some, he asked if I fancied working together again. Said he could do with a hand."
"You fell for that?" Sam asks.
"No I – I really didn't think he'd be interested anymore. That he was just -" Hermione pauses, looks at Sam and then away. "Lonely."
Sam swallows, throat working, a twitch in his cheek. Hermione wishes she could take it back.
"Sam. It's okay. He understood. He was proud of you. I just – I don't think he liked working alone much. That job where we met, was one of the first your Dad had sent him out on alone. He wasn't really used to it, I guess. And with me – he had an excuse. He could pass it off as something else." She blushes as she says it.
Sam's quiet for a minute, Hermione doesn't break it by continuing her story. Instead she just watches Sam breathe, his head face down in his arms, back rising and falling slowly.
"You didn't think he was interested," Sam says at last.
"I – I thought he'd get bored quick enough. When he realised I was too much work for too little return."
"So, you went?"
"Yeah, Blaise, my - friend," Hermione still finds referring to Blaise as that awkward, mainly because she can always picture his face so clearly - this mask of condescension, whenever she says it. "He thought it would be good for me."
Hermione hadn't been so sure. She'd questioned the practicalities. Wasn't even sure their methods were compatible given the way Dean had announced he was going to 'hang the mother-fucking little Red Caps out to dry.' Locating and breaking down a curse together had been one thing, the control of Magical Creatures sympathetically yet responsibly quite another.
Still she'd gone, had told herself it was to make sure Dean wasn't needlessly violent, that it was sensible and that Red Caps were notoriously sneaky and he should have someone else around to watch his back.
So, Hermione had done what she did best and focussed on her job. And she really wouldn't have contemplated anything more if not for Dean.
After they'd subdued the small horde, which was surprisingly short work; Dean was efficient and quick and took Hermione's direction and advice without question – she'd been impressed. More so than before with the curse when Dean had seemed frustrated and itchy in his own skin.
"This time you didn't say no." Sam made it a statement not a question, he seemed almost disappointed.
Hermione shook her head. "No, I did. Said no, I mean."
Sam looks up and she smiles at him through a blush.
After, Hermione had been busy bundling the limp bodies up in a net imbued with a strong Sleeping Charm. She'd been focussed on getting them fully secured, ready for transportation to a reserve where there wouldn't be a local Muggle population to be put at risk.
Dean had grabbed her wrist, turned her around, grinned and wiped something she really didn't want to contemplate the origin of off the side of her nose. And suddenly everything had potential again and Hermione had felt sick and a little giddy.
"You gonna turn that night cap down again, or is it worth me asking one more time?"
"He just didn't give up. Next time, he called for help, was about a month later." Hermione laughs at the memory. "He promised me he'd take me to dinner as payment, said he knew I was regretting turning him down the last time so he'd give me another chance. Time after that he just turned up at my door with a case of a cursed necklace and seventeenth century Herbology text behind his back."
Hermione bites her lip. Shrugs. "The fifth time he dragged me to a rare book shop two states over under the guise of a haunting. That time I said yes. Figured he wasn't going to get bored before he realised I wasn't worth it." Hermione didn't mention that Dean pressing her up against a bookcase, trailing his hand down her side, the smell of old books thick in the air and his voice in her ear had gone a long way to destroying her resolve.
Sam yawns and Hermione looks up at him. He looks at her with his head cocked, his eyes moving lazily over her face. "Thanks," he says.
Hermione nods. "You want some more milk?"
"Naw, I'm good." He sits up, stretching out the muscles in his back. "Gonna try and get some more sleep."
Hermione nods and stays seated while she watches Sam stand and stretch, turning back towards the sitting room.
He pauses in the doorway though. "Didn't you want more?" Sam's voice sounds like he's asking something else, his face looks like he's saying something else.
Hermione opens her mouth, closes it and swallows wetting her throat that's drier than she realised from too much talking. She's not used to it anymore.
"It was enough," she says and picks the two cups up from the table as Sam turns back towards the couch.