On The Color Of Fur
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Hermione wasn't herself. Or, more likely, she was, only now, it was a more heightened version of her, stripped to the very core until all that was left was a bundle of nervous energy that made her slightly ill. In the past, before (that word accompanied by its silent addition—… the war, the deaths, the misery —unspoken, yet always understood), Hermione had always managed to stay on top of things. Had been disciplined and in control enough for them not to bother her much. Not to derail her.
These days, though, things ambushed her in swarms, little but compounded, chipping away at her sanity in a coordinated onslaught she had little chance of withstanding. So it wasn't any surprise that there wasn't one specific thing Hermione could fault for the pixies eating away at her insides, but a multitude of them.
Yet, in the interest of being concise, the linchpin of her anxiousness could be traced to one thing in particular: their first class of Defence Against the Dark Arts had at last arrived.
Her lack of sleep didn't help matters. Fretting into the early hours of the morning might not have been helpful, but it was, in the end, inevitable, as inescapable as the down, down spiral her thoughts had taken. So much so that agonising over all the little things—Ron had more than once called her a nitpicker, and despite the spirit in which the comment was no doubt intended, she used to take it as a compliment up until now—had affected her brain, and now even her musings were muddled.
Because when it came to worrying, people often cautioned against not seeing the forest for the trees. But Hermione had had her fair share of forests, perhaps even so for several lifetimes. She was somewhat of an expert at this point. And she'd learnt what all could hide behind every trunk.
So, if she were to break down a forest and see each singular tree that made it up—and of course she would, Hermione was nothing if not thorough and forests were deceitful things — the list of threats that clung onto the branches, lurking beneath their leaves under the cloak of muffled silence was rather lengthy.
For starters, the first traces of fog permeating the woods came from the fact that DADA lessons would be shared with Slytherins. This meant that the first pair of eyes glinting in the darkness, watching, would be Malfoy-grey.
That thought alone made her hands tremble.
Hermione imagined it had been intentional on Professor McGonagall's part to force the culled seven and eight years of both houses together precisely on the subject that was the cause for their divide: the Dark Arts and its opposition. She doubted it to be a mere oversight and, had it been anyone else, Hermione would have considered callous disregard as a possibility, but she knew the Headmistress of Hogwarts too well to believe her unfeeling.
Nevertheless, lumping together students who had been on opposing sides of a war and expecting them to—and here Hermione couldn't help but let out a wet laugh— magically solve their issues didn't strike her as the best of plans. Nor did it seem the sanest.
She supposed that time would tell if it was an ingenious first step to the bettering of Slytherin-Gryffindor relations or the gravest error in judgement. And by time telling it, Hermione meant the very next half-hour. So she swiped the tears that had slipped unbidden, swallowed down a sob, and pushed her feet to keep moving. The only solid thing around her was the ground.
In conjunction with that fact, she sensed a trap lying in waiting amidst the forest trail, ready to spring from underneath the bed of fallen leaves, its triggering mechanism built on the expectation that their lesson would be a practical one.
Once upon a time in this very castle, a different Hermione had objected to and fervently argued against theoretical DADA classes. It had proved instrumental, that illicitly obtained practice, it being the very reason some of the students had made it alive. Except the end of that story didn't deliver a happily ever after.
Fairy tales, she'd found, leant more towards the macabre than the ones her mum would take her to see as a child. Perhaps Hermione should've steered clear of the Disney adaptations and put more credence in the motives behind their inception.
They had originally been intended as warnings, after all.
And what more of a warning did they need to the fact that a hands-on DADA lesson shared by rivals held the potential to devolve into a full-out confrontation? Just the thought of using offensive magic, of having need of it once more made her skin itch and caused Hermione's stomach to lurch (even being more than halfway to the Great Hall, there'd be no breakfast for her, it appeared, though an entire pot of black tea wouldn't go amiss).
All those things combined were reason enough to make Hermione wish nothing more than to skip class, settle down with a book, and be content with reading the N.E.W.T. level material in solitude, that desire so unlike her erstwhile self it was jarring.
But because gripping tales (and here she had mostly forgotten about the forest and fairy elements, though they weren't entirely unrelated) required an element of urgency, the last reason had to be the ticking clock.
There was a window of response that Hermione kept missing. She hadn't gone to Ginny, Neville, or Luna for the first five days since they had set foot in Hogwarts and now the gap between them had turned insurmountable. Likewise, she had failed to answer Remus' missive in a timely manner (or at all, honestly), and now the awkwardness that came from ignoring someone, albeit unintentionally, had grown vines like Devil-Snare she couldn't help but be choked by as she braced herself to face him.
Wasn't it odd how it was far easier to create distance than to shorten it? All the former required was inaction, while the latter clamoured for movement, effort, will—all hard, weary things. Standing still came at a steep cost, heavy tolls, ones Hermione couldn't afford, yet she lacked the fortitude to set herself into motion.
It seemed that whenever sand saw fit to start filtering down an hourglass, she was forced to wade through the dense grains as if through quicksand or a sandstorm or both, and as of late, she hadn't been able to beat either. Hermione was too late. Always terribly so.
She lingered in a jagged disconnect as most of her relationships eroded around her.
The climb of two sets of stairs was murder on her knackered body, and, once she finally traversed the long hallway towards the classroom on the second floor near the door she had fled from mere days before, Hermione wasn't entirely sure of what finally made the anxious mass in her belly tip towards upset.
Maybe it was dread over the class itself. The clear split between Slytherins and Gryffindors was easy to spot, each house hanging along the edge of opposing walls, which, coupled with the vanished school desks brought to mind the parting of the Red Sea, with Remus at the end, bent over his desk looking nothing like Moses. That was bad enough, but something told her the fact that Remus' gaze hadn't immediately found hers across the room when she suspected his werewolf's senses had picked up on her presence right away was to blame.
Her heart broke a little just then, despite how silly it seemed.
Shifting on her feet, still standing in the arched doorway, she dragged her hands over her robes to rid them of the sweat that began to form on her palms. Hermione's mind willed Remus to look up and see her. Willed jade-green eyes to meet chocolate brown and grasp the desperate apology they wished to convey. Yet the longer they didn't, the more she feared they wouldn't.
Hermione forced her gaze away. None of the students were aware of her presence, and though the room looked much the same way it had from her memories of her third year, neither the upbeat sound nor the thrill of facing a Boggart was present.
The desire to flee overtook her once more, her heart tattooing the inside of her ribcage with a painful drum. Hermione clasped her hand around her scarred arm, nails digging into the gnarly flesh under her robes until the crescent moons stung enough to distract her from her own mind. Over the last year, she had learnt her body would divert focus from potential, imagined threats to real pain in a bid for survival, the distraction allowing her to cope. It wasn't a long-term solution, but she made it hurt long enough for her to step into the classroom.
Hermione owed Remus that much. Owed him a sign, belated and piffling though it was.
The apology would come later.
A/N: Time got away from me, guys, so to make up for it, there'll be another chapter on Friday. And it'll have a little bit of Remus' POV to compensate for the cliffhanger on this one :)
Huge thanks to River-Mel.O.D for the review!
I hope you enjoyed this one!