Hermione cups her hand, holds it outstretched with the owl treat in her palm. Darcy looks down at it dubiously and shuffles his feet on the windowsill, ruffling his feathers.
"Oh, honestly!" Hermione huffs. She drops the treat onto the ledge, turns and strides into the kitchen. "You are the most stubborn, stuck up -" She lifts the lid of the bin, peers inside and starts rooting through the rubbish. "- demanding bird I have ever - Ah-ha! There you are." Hermione pushes one of her hands inside the bin, pulls out the corpse of the poor mouse unfortunate enough to cross Crookshank's path the night before.
She puts the lid back on and walks back into the living room.
The owl cocks his head to one side, turning it to look back inside the room and at Hermione. One of his talons catches the discarded treat and knocks it off the sill. Hermione's almost sure it's not an accident.
"There," she grunts, dangling the mouse before the bird. "Happy now?"
Darcy plucks it from her fingers and starts tearing into it, pinning the corpse beneath his feet for extra leverage.
Hermione grimaces and turns her head slightly to one side, averting her gaze.
She picks up the small scroll she'd written to Blaise earlier; rolling the parchment between her palms while she waits for the owl to finish. She taps her foot against the floor and tries not to talk herself out of postponing the meeting. It's her own hang ups that are causing her the dilemma. Two more weeks will make no difference to Blaise. He'd offered her longer originally anyway, said that it was a complex project and she should take her time, maybe take a holiday.
She would have met the deadline any other time.
She just hasn't been able to concentrate like she usually would and it's set her back. After seven years on her own she's just grown too out of practice at working with the distraction of company.
She doesn't think it would be much easier if she was used to it, because Sam's just – He's a ball of mood swings, restless energy and angst that rolls off him filling up the entire house. It makes her think too much of what it must have been like to be around Harry and her after Ron's diagnosis. It just plain makes her think too much.
It's an uncomfortable, prickling reminder and her mistakes stand out so much clearer now she's seeing them in everything Sam does; in the way that Dean permeates everything for him.
Hermione rubs her forehead with the back of her hand. She closes her eyes and knocks her head back against the window frame.
She wonders how much of the two months before Sam turned up were spent looking for a way to get Dean back; how far he considered going – how far he went and thinks about own single-minded determination.
Ginny had been the first one to get frustrated with her; the first to try and pull her out of her obsessive research and try to get her to face up.
"This is enough, you're coming back to the Burrow. I don't care if you don't want to. You're not being rational, Hermione. When did you last even eat? Charlie, I need -"
Hermione had been too focussed to listen; there'd just been so much to read before she could even start to think about taking it any further.
When Dean had visited before he – She tightens her grip on the paper, bites her lips and blinks hard. It had been so easy to hear Ginny's words in Dean's voice when he'd spoken of Sam. She keeps thinking of that now.
"He won't give up. He just – won't. And I don't know how to get him to –"
She'd tried to be sympathetic; tried not to let the hurt out, knew it would be angry if she did. She'd put her hand on the small of his back and rubbed small soothing circles against his skin. She'd kissed his neck and shoulders, wrapped an arm around his waist and let her tears run silent down the nape of his neck, ignored the hollow pit opening up in her stomach.
All she'd really felt was a desperate kind of hope that Sam would find something.
Sometimes, Hermione thinks that the most distracting thing about having Sam here is the way he's a constant reminder that he never did.
She'll be sitting at her desk, and one look at Sam takes her back to the doorstep of the Burrow with Molly Weasley standing in the doorway, pulling Hermione into a hug and muttering something about losing all of them at this rate.
She remembers the feel of Molly's jumper against her face and saying, "I'm sorry. I have so much to do. I haven't found a cure yet. I will though. I promise."
She keeps thinking about how they both failed and that she feels a hypocrite every time she judges Sam; feels sure if he knew he'd have no problem calling her on that fact too.
She glances back at Darcy, sees him preening his feathers, all trace of the mouse gone. She looks down from him to parchment; it's crumpled and torn slightly in the middle where her hand has crushed and twisted it.
Hermione tuts at herself, looks back at the bird and says, "I know full well I can't send it to him like this, no need for you to glare at me like that."
She pulls her wand from the back pocket of her jeans; has to lift the hem of her jumper up to withdraw it. It's a reflex to just mutter a quick Reparo before holding it out for the owl to take. She doesn't really think about it, instead she lets her mind drift to thoughts of standing on her doorstep; kissing Dean goodbye. She wonders where Sam buried him, and considers the fact she's never asked.
"What are you?" Sam asks, his voice brittle and hard.
"Pardon?" Hermione swallows reflexively, glances around the room, on edge from Sam's sudden appearance and change in mood. She didn't hear him. She's out of practice. Her lips thin for a moment at the thought - chastising herself - then relax.
"I thought we were getting past this?" she asks, forcing her voice soft. Two steps forward, three steps back, she thinks.
Sam doesn't blink, doesn't answer, just says, "You said you weren't a hunter."
Hermione nods cautiously, feels the affirmative's needed even though Sam's tone clearly wasn't questioning that fact. She has the feeling she's walking straight into some kind of trap and she's not entirely sure that there's a way to avoid it. She thinks whatever she says Sam will find a way to twist it back.
"Then what the fuck are you 'cause you sure as hell aren't just a translator."
Hermione opens her mouth, but Sam's striding towards her.
She hesitates, but only for a second. She reaches back behind her, fists the length of her wand in her back pocket. She's not that out of practice. She's been on hunts with Dean – just one or two while Sam was still at uni. She even sparred with Blaise last time he visited at his insistence that he needed a challenge. Blaise would never be so crass as to suggest to her that she was the one who needed it.
With Blaise though, not Harry.
They never – Never anything like that with Harry. Not now. They stay away from anything remotely resembling just how quick they had to grow up and learn to defend themselves.
Sam stops, smirks all self satisfied and smug, and looks towards where her hand is coiled. "What," he repeats slowly, "are you?"
Hermione thins her lips and wants to bang her head against something hard and dull. She can't believe she got caught. Everything else – her books, the herbs, some of the small bizarre artefacts she's picked up over the years – could be passed off as an interest in the supernatural, but for this. It's why she's been careful not to use any real magic outside of shut doors she was pretty sure Sam wouldn't cross without knocking.
It was dumb.
Hermione sighs, loosens her grip just slightly, but doesn't let go. Sam's not stable, condescending though that sounds. Hermione knows how well trained Dean was, knows enough to guess Sam's just as competent if not possibly more so because Sam's – different. 'Special,' Dean had said.
She eyes him warily and doesn't respond straight off. She considers offering tea, taking this discussion into the kitchen, but she's pretty sure that would only wind Sam tighter right now. One moment he's all calm consideration, noting down facts and listening carefully, the next he's hot headed and impulsive like every argument she'd ever had with – Ron.
"I'm a witch," she says softly, meeting Sam's eyes and holding firm. She forces her hand to pull fully off her wand, lessen any threat she might appear as. There's a temptation to cross her arms, bury her hands into the wool of her cardigan. She thinks the gesture might appear too defensive. She thinks Sam's just about smart enough to pay attention to small little tells like that; would have to be after being around Dean for so many years. So instead, she clenches her hands once, drops them to her side and forces them loose.
Sam narrows his eyes, looks back down toward where her wand is still sticking out her back pocket. "You're -" Sam hesitates, holds in the accusation Hermione thinks was about to come. The one she expects. His brow's drawn down in heavy frown lines and he's just staring, eyes flickering like he's speed reading a book.
"Dean didn't believe me either," Hermione says and smiles small and gentle. "Not sure you have the same reasoning or motivation as your brother though."
"I've met witches," Sam says, his face is twisted and he looks away from her. "They don't – I've never seen their magic work like that. You're different."
"I – You've met -" Hermione flounders, hates the feeling that she doesn't quite have all the information she should. "How do you think it works then?" she asks at last and does cross her arms this time.
Sam snorts, it's a harsh, derisive sound that has echoes of Snape every time one of her housemates answered a question of his wrongly. It makes Sam seem suddenly far uglier than he is. It's something that none of his previous anger has managed.
He looks back at her, drops his eyes down then snaps them up. "It works by temptation," he says coldly and steps forward, moving until he's in Hermione's space, looking down at her.
She tilts her head to the side and up, cocks an eyebrow and refuses to be intimidated.
"Tell me," he sneers, "did you give your soul up knowingly or were you tricked? Is that why Dean came to you?"
Hermione frowns. "My soul?" She shakes her head. "Why would you think - I was born a witch. I wasn't tempted or tricked. You can't – You have to be born with magical aptitude, you can't -" Hermione's voice fades.
"You can," Sam says coldly. "I've met them. So dumb they didn't even realise they were being manipulated."
Sam looks at Hermione and she hears the unspoken accusation loud and clear, feels her skin bristle with offense at Sam's implication.
"I wasn't manipulated," she says, slow and sure.
Hermione steps past Sam to the bookcase behind him, reaches for a book and slides it out, her finger catches on the spine of the one behind and she tips it back on one end so she can pull it forward easily. "Here," Hermione says and holds the book out to Sam, mouth tense, she bites down on her tongue and forces herself not to rise to the way he's looking at her; pity and contempt twisting up his face. "This explains some of what you're asking." It's a rudimentary history text, one she'd picked up before she started Hogwarts, something to help her eleven-year-old self understand a little more of what she was being told she was part of. "You can ask me questions after if you like. But I'm not what you think. I didn't know that was – Demons can do anything, Sam. Look at you. But my best guess is that it all has to come from somewhere."
Hermione clenches her fist and thinks of all the propaganda about Muggle-borns and Squibs that Voldemort touted during that last year.
Sam snorts, but he takes the book anyway. He turns toward the front door and Hermione doesn't argue, try to stop him or explain further as he turns the handle and pulls it open. She knows this isn't something she can force.
He pauses on the threshold.
"Dean knew?" he asks.
Hermione nods, realises he's not looking and says, "Yes. Not from the start, but for long enough. It was - he understood."
"We met a coven of witches a few months before -" Sam hesitates, backtracks and says, "A few months back," instead of the obvious. "All twisted up in temptation from this demon. They had no fucking idea. Did Dean tell you about them? When he came?"
"No," she answers honestly. Her throat feels tight and she knows the path Sam's leading her down.
"Huh," he says, and it doesn't sound curious at all, but satisfied like a bully finding the exact taunt to make you break, punch back or just cry. "Wonder why."
Sam doesn't come back until the evening. Hermione would be worried he left for good, but every time she looks out the window the Impala's still sat at the end of the drive in the same place it's been for the past week and a half, since Sam turned up.
When he does come back, he's drunk.
It's well past dusk and Hermione had locked the front door an hour earlier, choosing to wait by the window reading instead.
Sam rounds the Impala, leans heavy against the boot for a moment. He's still there when Hermione opens the front door and looks out.
He has one hand spread on the curve of metal, arm taut holding him up. His other hand's in his pocket like he's looking for something. It comes back a moment later with a set of keys.
They clink too loudly in the quiet of the evening and Sam's fingers fumble the small key ring, trying to find the Impala's.
"Sam," Hermione calls out, her voice heavy with a sigh.
Sam glances up, glares at her with slanted fox eyes and it suddenly feels like they've slipped ten days back in time.
"Sam," Hermione repeats, stepping out onto the porch.
"'m gonna sleep in the car," Sam slurs, thumbing a key between his fingers with satisfaction and sliding around the car, his weight half slumped against its side.
Hermione huffs out an irritated breath and takes another three steps forward, her arms wrapping around her middle in the chill of the night air.
"Sam, don't be stupid. It's too cold. You must be half frozen already."
Sam's head rolls on his shoulders, sliding to one side as he regards her. "'m fine. Fucking awesome."
Hermione grunts, mumbles, "Stubborn idiots," under her breath and steps down off the porch. When she reaches Sam he's got a key in the Impala's door and his bag's abandoned on the ground so he can balance easier.
Hermione reaches up, turns his head to her with one hand stretched up and grasping his chin. His eyes are ringed so red they look almost bruised and his arms are prickled with goose bumps.
"Merlin, will you just come inside. Please," she says.
Sam slumps against the car, wipes at his nose with his forearm.
"I read your book. 's in my bag."
His breath smells of whiskey and there's a smear of dirt on his cheek. Hermione licks her thumb, rubs the pad over the tarnished skin, miring the lines tears have tracked through it.
"How can you be sure," Sam asks.
Hermione snorts. "I know what evil looks like," she replies. She slides her hand down to Sam's shoulder, squeezes once and drops down further to catch his hand that's still holding the key in the car's lock. "So do you. Do you really think I'm evil, Sam?"
"I think," he says slowly, considering, his vowels drawn out and slow. "I think you're kind of a know it all."
Hermione smiles, but she doesn't feel it. Her eyes feel damp and she can hear the echo of another voice in her head. "So, I've been told."
Sam lets Hermione lead him inside. He lets her push him down into one of the kitchen chairs, wrap a blanket around his shoulders and smooth a warm wet wash cloth across his face.
He feels like he did when he was thirteen and John had dragged him and Dean along on a hunt for a Chupacabra in San Antonio. "It'll be good practice. Nice and easy." They hadn't known when they'd headed out to track and kill the thing, that they were hunting a mother and her brood. They would have been more cautious if they had.
John had just killed the first of her offspring when the mother had gotten the drop on Sam, knocking him to the ground from behind. He'd caught his temple on a rock in the process. When he'd come round a few minutes later there was a heavy weight on his back and a sharp pain in his neck.
Sam had looked up to see Dean a few feet off, hand's steady on his gun as he took aim and fired.
Later, Sam remembers Dean helping him back into their motel; woozy from blood loss and unsteady on his feet. Dean's arm was a warm, solid weight around Sam's waist, holding him up, talking nonsense to keep him conscious while their dad was still back at the nest watching the bodies burn.
Dean had pushed Sam down into a chair. He'd come back a few minutes later with a washcloth and a few bars of chocolate. His hand had shook as he lifted Sam's chin to clean the wound, pressing cool white cotton against Sam's skin and murmuring a litany of curse words intertwined with Sam's name under his breath.
Sam had just felt weak, too tired to sit up, too tired to answer Dean's questions. He thought they were mostly rhetorical anyway. His eyes were heavy and it had been so easy to fall forward, rest his forehead against Dean's shoulder and breathe in his brother's familiar smell.
Dean's breath had stuttered out, his hand shaking as it spread palm flat across Sam's back pulling him close. "Fuck Sammy. Scared the shit out of me."
Sam watches Hermione's face as she finishes up with the cloth, dropping it in a bowl and lifting a glass of water from the table. She washes her hands in the sink then moves back in front of him.
"Here," she says, pushing a cold glass of water into one of his hands, holding his fingers on the tumbler.
"I don't need looking after," Sam says.
Hermione's tongue pokes out through her teeth, licks her lip once and then she's biting down on flesh, pulling it into her mouth and worrying it until Sam's sure he sees a crack. "Sometimes it's okay," she replies.
Sam lifts his free hand up to her face, almost cups her cheek, but settles the pad of his thumb on her lower lip instead. He drags it down, pulls it out from between her teeth and watches it spring back. He can feel the callous' on his skin from too many hours spent training with guns and knives; breaking them down, building them up, learning to hit a target on demand. He can feel the ridge Hermione's teeth have scarred into her flesh.
"You do this for Dean? Clean him up after a hunt?" he asks and superimposes Hermione into the memory of a dozen random girls he's seen his brother kissing over the years, hears Dean laugh, low and genuine and Sam leans forward.
He pulls her close, lets his legs fall open and tugs Hermione into him with on hand on her hip. Her eyes are still open when closes his, and he thinks about whether he'd be able to taste Dean if he bit into that ridge, tore it open.
"Sam," Hermione breathes against his lips; into his mouth. Her back's stiff, but there's no resistance when he tugs her those last few inches, when he opens his mouth against hers and tries to get her to kiss back.
She doesn't. She keeps her mouth closed and lets Sam take everything except what he wants. She lets him suck on her bottom lip, stroke his tongue along it and Sam feels like he's begging for something he's never going to get.
He growls in frustration and pulls her in too hard, tangles his hand in her hair and presses them closer too quick, causes her nose to bump his.
Hands settle on his shoulders, and Sam bites down on her lip, pushes forward again. It feels important and he thinks of Dean in a motel wanting Sam to come with him, saying they'd get along.
"Please," Sam says. "Sorry," and he knows it's not an apology for wanting more than Hermione's given; that he's not apologising to Hermione at all.
Hermione's hands lift and resettle, rubbing slow circles from his shoulder to his neck, her fingers finding and digging into pressure points there. She kisses back, back loosening and lips brushing Sam's. She keeps it slow, forces Sam gentler, her mouth closed and chaste. The kiss is soft and all too regretful like her voice when she said his name.
The pleasant numbness that had settled over him with the first few mouthfuls of whiskey seems long gone. Sam thinks he might be crying, but he can't feel the familiar tightness in his chest that he associates with it or the prickle behind his eyes, just a wetness on his cheeks and a distant hiccupping that he doesn't think is coming from Hermione.
Hermione's fingers dig slightly harder into flesh and she pushes back from him with just enough force. Sam catches the look on her face and has to look away, can't stand the truth he sees there.
"I'm not a way to Dean," she says, her voice firm, but sad. "That's not something I can give you."
"I promised him I'd save him," Sam says back. "And I couldn't. I tried to make a deal -"
Hermione sucks in a breath and Sam feels her hands flex even through the blanket.
" - but no one came. It was the only thing he ever needed from me and I couldn't -"
"Shh," Hermione coos. "Sam, Dean knew, okay? He knew. All he ever wanted was for you to live, Sam. He just wanted you to be happy. Safe and happy."
"But he's not here."
"I know," Hermione replies and her voice sounds full of the tears Sam can't feel. "But you're not the only one who's upset at being left behind. You're not the only one who's tried to do something and failed. At some point, you just have to accept that we are all limited."
"I can't just move on. You can't expect me to just -"
"I don't. Dean didn't either, but he wouldn't have wanted to see you like this."
"Sometimes, I wake up and I can't picture his face."
Sam feels Hermione's hand on his cheek before he registers she's moved it. "I know. Sometimes, we can try too hard. It's okay, Sam. It's really okay. Come on. Drink the water and we'll get you to bed."
Sam looks up at her and see's the glisten of tears on Hermione's cheeks too. "Did you love him?" he asks and doesn't know why he hasn't asked it before, why it didn't occur to him that she might.
Hermione bites her lip and Sam finds himself smiling at the now familiar tell.
"Yes," Hermione answers. She seems surprised by the answer and her voice breaks over the simple affirmative.
Sam's not sure if the way her eyes widen as she gives the answer comes from the realisation or just the fact she's telling Sam. He doesn't care, just feels something in his chest give like a knot snapping undone.
He wants to say good, to smile and say he's glad, but instead he takes a long sip of the water, asks Hermione if it's okay if he has a bath first.
Hermione's pen scratches against paper, quick fast strokes that seem to barely lift or pause. A page turns and there's the noise of parchment dragging against parchment.
Sam watches the fire flickering in the grate, tries not to think too much about the flames. He taps his fingers against his knee. When he stops to listen, he realises he's drumming out the opening cords to Pink Floyd's Wish you Were Here. He scowls, flips to The Shins and Caring is Creepy with a frustrated huff.
Three pages turn and there's a heavy, dull clunk of a book being put down.
When he looks down at his hands again they're back to Floyd. Sam remembers sitting in a bar off campus during his first week at Stanford, the familiar chords filling up the air like a dull roar making his beer hard to swallow.
He stills his hands from the rhythm and turns on the sofa to watch Hermione. He leans back against the cushions, openly stares.
Hermione doesn't blink or raise her head. She just keeps scanning back and forth between the texts and the scrolls she has open making notes.
Her hair's wild and frizzier than it has been since he arrived. She keeps pushing her hands up into it, pulling and scratching at her scalp whenever she seems to hit a part that challenges her. She bites her lip when she thinks, chews the end of her pen when she's reading. Her walls are lined with books and there's something in the way she stands; the way she looks at Sam that makes him think hunter even though he knows that she's not.
Sam sits up before he really thinks about doing it, asks with an instinct and forethought that's all his brother, "He said we were alike?"
Hermione doesn't respond right away. Sam's getting used to the fact that it's hard to talk to her when she's working. She gives it all her concentration.
Sam gets it. The similarities are clear, but he wants to know. He wants to fucking hear what Dean picked out – what he saw. He wants to know why.
Hermione looks up, licks her bottom lip and gives him a soft smile. It's not intended to be as suggestive as it comes off, Sam's sure.
She puts her pen down before she responds. "He thought -" Hermione laughs. "He thought we'd bond over our mutual geekiness - our love of books and studying. He thought we'd break his brain with all our sharing, caring and talking things out. He thought if we ever met I'd see the error of my ways and run off with his 'smarter, if less attractive - Dean's words I promise - younger brother and seduce you over an old Latin tome."
Sam laughs and Hermione seems to smile wider – more genuine. "I think he just thought we'd get along. That we had similar attitudes to things."
Hermione pauses there, frowns slightly and Sam's sure there's something more. She just shakes her head though, smiles again and Sam lets himself forget the possibility of anything else.
"What are you working on?" he asks.