When Hermione opened her eyes, a sense of distant familiarity washed over her. A beach spread out before her: all sand, and banks bearing tall grasses that lay flat as seabreeze pressed them in gusts.
Brine saturated the air and stung her eyes as sprinkles of sand, salt, and seawater all met her unprotected. She stood upon a small hill of a sandbank in the middle of nowhere.
Hermione looked around expectantly. Off in the distance was a glowing light in the shape of a window. So small, she would have missed it if it weren't for the dimming sky. She wondered if she was meant to walk toward it. There was no one here to greet her.
Before she could take a full step forward, she saw it. A figure in a billowing cloak was walking toward her, their wand tip alight to guide their steps on the shifting sand. A chill ran through her, and she realised how exposed she was. Quickly, she cast a disillusionment charm and got rid of her footprints, standing in a grass clump to hide any lingering traces of herself.
"Hermione?" It was a man and he sounded familiar, even as his voice was thrown into the waves. She squinted, hoping that at ten feet away, and in the even darker twilight, that she would recognise him.
"Bill?" His ponytail flapped behind him, and his wand illuminated his face with enough light. He had long slashes across his face. She remembered the scars, but at the same time, they looked foreign. Like they didn't belong there. Her mind clawed at the memories, like a fork through jello, and she couldn't quite grasp how he had received them.
"Where are you?" Bill extended his wand and flashed it around the area. It washed right through her. "I'm sorry I'm late."
She ended the disillusionment charm and didn't move. She was afraid that sudden movements would spook him, and she didn't want to end up back in the infirmary so soon after leaving. Malfoy would never let her hear the end of it.
Bill heaved a sigh of relief. "There you are." He extended a hand and she half-slipped down the bank and almost into him. He steadied her until she got used to the shifting ground under her feet. "How are you?" he said lamely, in too loud a voice to combat the undulating winds.
"I'm okay, how are you?" Hermione reciprocated, while also feeling incredibly dull.
"Good. We're good." Bill sounded absentminded. His mind was elsewhere even with the violence of the breeze and crashing waves surrounding them here. They walked in silence until they got to a small cottage with shells embedded into the walls. It tugged at her, and it made her feel safe. It was meant to be safe.
The cottage door shut the sound of the waves and wind out. It all became white noise as she stood shivering. Bill removed his cloak, his boots, all busy and mechanical.
"Where are we?" Hermione looked around. Safe, safe, safe, repeated in her mind. Warmth flooded her like memories knocking on her mind's door, but they weren't able to get in. She had memories here, she was sure of it.
The kitchen was practical. Small, with all the necessities. The living room was adjoined to the dining room, both of which were small and could hold maybe four people at a time, six if one can bear it. And down a corridor, beyond all of those rooms, was a staircase that led up two floors. Everything was on theme for a beach. Shells decorated all the surfaces; the wood and walls were sand coloured. The gentle clink of a wind chime tinkled indoors where the wind wouldn't sweep it away.
Bill gave her a quizzical look before a flicker of something in his eyes indicated to Hermione that he was briefed on her condition. "This is Shell Cottage. This isn't where we're staying. The Order just uses it as a halfway house now."
"Now?" Hermione said to herself more than to him. "What was it used for before?"
"Uh." Bill shifted uneasily before he approached her, and extended his hands to her shoulders, gripping the lapels of her coat to shrug it off. He smiled at her a little nervously. "Fleur and I were honeymooning here." Bill hung her coat and fidgeted with a button. "Then we hosted you, and Harry, and Ron. After the whole Malfoy Manor thing."
"When we got caught by the Snatchers?" Hermione remembered Malfoy's words. The Manor incident, he had called it. Bill nodded, but his eyes looked cautious, like he wasn't sure where to go for fear of getting lost with no return.
"Hermione." Bill looked at her now from his towering height. He was taller than Ron. He had freckles similar to Ron's splattering, and a long nose. But that's where their similarities ended. She could see all his scars clearly, but he still looked like Bill to her. Except for the pity that now crept across his face. She braced herself for the force of his words. "I'm sorry for your loss."
Hermione studied him without a response until Bill looked uncomfortable. "How many people know?"
It sounded angrier than she intended. But not as angry as she felt. It was fine for people to know she has memory loss. That at least is practical, and those who worked with her would be able to understand some things about her without being blindsided. But knowing she had lost a child? She didn't want the forced sympathy.
"Herm-" Bill swallowed thickly. "I don't know who else knows." His shoulders slumped. "Ron told me."
Hermione didn't know what to do with that information. Her initial thought was that Ron cared enough to inform his family. He cared, even if it was a little. Instead of comforting her like she thought it might, it angered her enough that Bill took a half-step back.
"I'm sorry, I know it's personal." Bill's hands came up defensively, trying to placate her without knowing how.
"You're right, it is." She kept the words that threatened to spew out of her locked inside. In the too-small cage that held everything together, and simultaneously locked her in.
It was personal. She lost a child. Ron too, of course, and he had every right to inform his family. But, he also left. Bill didn't lose a nephew. His family didn't lose a family member. Ron said one thing right – no one knew she was pregnant. Attempting to sympathise with Hermione felt cheap because of this. They didn't know, so why do they care? Ron didn't.
If she let her fury fill this small cottage, she wouldn't get to leave here. She'd just be repotted and left abandoned because she refused to cooperate. Bill still looked a bit affronted. She didn't calm her features. But, that was mediated by her lack of explosion, and she was satisfied with that.
"Where's Fleur?" Hermione deflected. Bill looked relieved at the change of topic, which almost made Hermione laugh out loud because he was the one who brought them here in the first place.
"She's on her way back, I think." Bill looked out the window and Hermione followed his gaze. She had temporarily forgotten where she was, and the sounds and smells flooded her senses as soon as the tension seeped away.
She didn't miss the way Bill's eyes had gone from relief to indifference as he stepped closer to the window. His back was now to her; it became a wall so she wouldn't be allowed to read him.
"Where did she go?" Hermione stepped up beside him, and she bumped his shoulder with hers. Her turn to placate, even if she wasn't feeling like it. Becoming a team player needed to be something she could do.
Bill huffed, his steeliness melted slightly. "She was supposed to be arranging your room, but that doesn't take five hours."
Hermione noted the sharp tone of his voice, and how bitter it felt in the air.
"Do you go on missions without each other often?" Hermione upped her innocent cadence and immediately cringed. It was too much. Bill didn't seem to notice.
"Often," he admitted. "We're stretched thin."
Hermione huffed. "I remember your wedding." She surprised herself with her own words and briefly wondered if she was crossing a line.
"Oh yeah?" Bill's eyes softened as he looked at her. "Yea," He inhaled deeply, his eyes lost focus as he reminisced, "that was a great time. Before all of this." He gestured vaguely and blinked back to the present. His expression hardened again, and Hermione followed his gaze.
Fleur's hair was so fair that it captured the moonlight and shone. The sky was completely dark now, all blues and purples faded into black. Hermione expected Bill to move from his station, but he stood there, watching his wife in her elegant march back to Shell Cottage.
The door swooped open with the aid of the wind. Hermione tasted the electricity in the air and knew a storm was coming. The sky was devoid of stars. She watched the moon get swallowed into shadow. Fleur stepped into the cottage and shut the door without greeting either of them as she shrugged off her coat.
"Zere has been a change of plans." Fleur hung her coat and looked at Bill, then Hermione. Her eyes were dead. Hermione felt it rattle through her, like a resonating sound on a wine glass's wet rim.
"What do you mean?" Bill stepped away from Hermione, taking his warmth with him. She didn't comprehend until now that she could grow so attached to warmth, so easily.
"Ze room for 'Ermione is no longer available." Fleur gave Hermione a look, one that Hermione assumed was meant to be apologetic. It looked more like inconvenience.
"So where do I go?" Hermione leaned against the coolness of the window and found the sensation familiar. In its own way, comforting. She was familiar with cold, even if she craved warmth.
"She is to stay here, wiz us," Fleur announced before strutting away and disappearing up the staircase. Bill stood helpless.
"What does she mean by ' wiz us '?" Hermione did her best French accent impersonation.
"I don't know." Bill was halfway down the corridor now. Hermione stood at the window, confused, frustrated, and with anxiety as company. This didn't feel like a plan.
Was the Order so badly off that they couldn't get this right?
"What am I supposed to do?" Hermione called after him as he took two steps at a time.
"I don't know!" His voice was distant. Then he ducked his head down into view, ponytail falling over his shoulder. "There's a room right there," Bill pointed to a door behind the staircase, "that you can use for now. I'm going to figure this out."
He disappeared completely before she could say thank you.
So with her meagre possessions, she cautiously opened the door to a bedroom that had a view of the beach and incoming storm.
She took her beaded purse in her palm and it was heavy and reassuring. Something to focus on.
Hermione sank onto the bed and upended it. A notepad, pen, a stick of lip balm, an unidentified ointment, and a wallet fell out.
She plunged her hand into it. To her frustration, she only felt the bed through the bottom of the bag.
Memories didn't come and go for her. They took things.
She couldn't remember how to get to its contents.