The next morning she had woken up snug in her bed. For one luxurious moment, she was able to float in the left-over amnesiatic haze of sleep. Unaware of the heavy burden she needed to figure out how to conceal. Hermione went to stretch and the loss of the normal weight of her necklace as it rested between her breasts was missing…
And then it all crashed around her.
She remembered the bitter taste on her tongue as the vile and blasphemous culmination of their time together happened without her consent. She remembered his hatred as he spit the edict that had destroyed her. Two simple words. Not even magical in nature, was all that it had taken.
She remembered the empty feeling as she stood for far too long in that corridor. Unable to force her limbs to follow the orders to move. She remembered falling to her knees and crawling over to the ghastly scene of costumed trolls learning ballet. An impeccably outlandish rendering to oversee her humorous undoing for a wizard she should despise. She remembered hearing her harsh sobs but no longer being connected to the body that had betrayed her sensible mind and caused the whole mess.
She didn't remember how she had gotten from her crumbled place under the tapestry to her bed. Which was, obviously, quite concerning…
Her first thought was Obliviation, but if he had gone through the trouble why not be merciful and take all of it? Why leave her with the jagged weeping wound that shock had delayed the detection of? Or the ability to ruin him? No… He had, no doubt, returned to his bottle and drunken himself into oblivion.
That left a whole host of equally unpleasant possibilities. The least of which was her dissociation had reached the level of black-out territory and she had gotten herself there.
All of this analytical rumination was secondary to her most immediate concern... How was she supposed to put a smile on her face and pretend like the world was the same as yesterday?
Especially, when she didn't even have lungs anymore…
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Thankfully, those closest to her were distracted by the looming Quidditch match to give her much notice. Between the customary escalation in the disbursement of assignments towards the end of the year by the professors and the near constant practice schedule, she hadn't had to play her pragmatic act nearly as often as she had anticipated in the days that followed.
The evenings when Ravenclaw had the pitch were the hardest. Not only did she have dinner to contend with, but the hours of playful banter and heartfelt laughter while Harry, Ron and Ginny caught-up on their academic workloads were excruciating. A new type of hellish torture as she tried to stay focused on the present for such an extended period of time, she was always a second or two too late with her upbeat responses.
Hermione managed to keep up the carefully crafted charade for four days before Ginny started to pick up on the underlying forlorn expressions that would slip in during quiet moments of reflection. When a lull in conversation would allow for the wound to flare, the pain was doubled by a deep throb from the cursed flesh on her side. An unfortunate side effect of her body having to process another trauma.
Her grief was a fickle thing. Instead of observing the five stages like that muggle psychiatrist claimed, she was stuck. Denial had been easy to overcome... She had believed the unexpected end long before she had left that room. Anger and depression were whole different monsters. They circled and fought for constant control, never leaving the time she required for bargaining. Granted, she didn't have anything left to negotiate with herself over.
No glimmer of hope. No deep well of resilience. Nothing but an injured circus animal left to lick at her scars after each grueling performance that was demanded of her. There was no room for acceptance when every single brick of the stupid castle was branded by some memory of him. She had nowhere to run to escape. Even the Forbidden Forest was tainted.
Regardless, none of that mattered on the Saturday morning that Ginny walked into her dorm.
She had been floating in one of those fleeting moments of detachment. Grounded in the moment by the weight of Crookshanks laying across her chest. His purrs vibrated as she pet from the top of his scraggly orange head to the tip of his puffy tail. The independent feline had become increasingly needy over the last couple days. He refused to leave her side unless she was in class or at mealtimes. Not quite brave enough to face the loud racket of so many students, he had taken to waiting patiently in the doorway of the Great Hall for her to head to her next destination.
He opened one yellow eye and sent a baleful glare in the witch's direction. Upset by the interruption to his leisurely nap, his purrs quickly turned into a cautionary growl.
"Be nice…" Hermione murmured her warning, giving him one last swipe along his body before leaning up onto her elbows to welcome her friend.
"Yeah, be nice you mangy menace." Ginny returned the glare from the unfriendly cat as she closed the door behind her. Her long red hair was wild and knotted. Her eyes alight with the fire only flying fast could bring out in her.
His low growl morphed into a hiss, the hairs along his back prickling up in territorial display of dominance. Not perturbed in the slightest, Ginny hissed right back, her shoulders raised to make herself seem bigger.
The tactic worked and her companion's ears flattened before he launched himself from his resting place and ran to hide under Patel's four-poster. His pathetic little growls sounding more defiant than his actions showed him to be. He really was a big baby at heart…
"You should be nicer too." Hermione accused.
Ginny's eyes widened in shock. "He started it!"
"And I am finishing it." She repeated the phrase Mrs. Weasley used whenever she had to intervene on her children's many squabbles.
Ginny scowled at her, but made her way over and plopped down at the end of the bed. Leaning against the footboard post, as she always did, the girl's brown eyes assessed her for a fraction of a second. "What's going on?"
"Nothing." Her dismissal was immediate.
"Come on, Hermione… You are not fooling me. What is going on with you?"
An innocent and expected inquiry from a friend. One that should be able to open the floodgates and allow for commiseration over what idiots boys were, but all it did was set off alarm bells to tread with caution, "I don't know what you are talking about. Other than my regular annoyance at the way you and your brother treat my cat… I am quite happy."
"Is it that boy you've been seeing?" Ginny's eyes narrowed again, filling with an unexpected malice as she cut to the truth.
"What?" Hermione hoped her features showed the proper surprise. She was much too distracted by keeping herself from curling into the fetal position. A flash of his seething resentment at her confession, the one that wouldn't leave her alone, made her chest throb. "No… We are great!"
"Are you going to tell me who he is then?" The other girl prompted. "It's been months."
"I… I told you. I'm not giving you any more hints." She shook her head and fell back so she could stare up at the ceiling.
"And I'm not askin' for hints. I want you to trust me." Ginny's tone softened.
Another urge for a vulnerability that she wasn't able to give. The fact that it hurt the only friend she had who'd noticed the subtle changes in her demeanor tore at her. A new laceration to add to her collection.
"It's not just my secret, Gin. I can't… I can't betray him like that. It wouldn't be right." Hermione told the stones above her. Her reasoning was sound. There was no need for either of them to deal with the ramifications when it was already over.
"You honestly think he hasn't told his friends all about your little trysts?"
Theodore Nott's disturbed look from his memory caused a fresh wave of pain. Her hand twitched to grab at her aching side, but she fisted the blanket underneath her and leaned back up to stare at the witch as a cover for the reflex. "I know he hasn't."
"How could you possibly know that?" Ginny scoffed at her supposed innocence.
"Because… Well… it wouldn't take longer than a couple of hours for everyone in the castle to be chattering about it if he did." She explained.
"I will not judge, I promise." The witch at her feet vowed.
"You don't have the faintest idea of what you are promising…" Hermione snapped. She never wanted to hear a false oath again. Well-intentioned or not.
"Of course, I do!" Ginny looked confused at the accusation. "You, obviously, love the git and I love you. So that means I will deal with it no matter who he is.
The words that she had longed to hear falling from the wrong set of lips, set off an unwarranted explosion of fury inside of her. "Get. Out."
Her friend's eyes widened in shock, "What?"
"You heard me… Go practice for your O.W.L.s or something." Hermione insisted, trying to reign in her out of control emotions. "I'm done having this same conversation with you over and over."
"Stop being such a wench."
It was such a simple and justified command. And yet, it sent another flare of rage straight through her, unleashing the caged creature who wanted to watch the world burn. "Or what? Are you going to hex me?"
"You've gone hysterical again, haven't you? Cracked under the stress?" There was a new edge that hadn't been in the witch's previous words. A valid but damning observation.
"Me?! I am not the one who is obsessed with what is going on in my friends' sex lives!" Her criticism was a low blow. Which was the point, she would say just about anything to get the girl to leave her be. She needed the time to nurse the festering lashes. Old and new.
"I couldn't care less about your sex life, Hermione. Whatever this wizard is doing to your head is a whole different matter." Ginny's eyes narrowed into another glare, transfixed somewhere only she could see. Her anger directed at the appropriate source.
No longer able to stop herself, Hermione rolled onto her side. The tops of her thighs crushed against the throbbing hole of her chest and she mumbled into her knees. "He… He isn't doing... Just leave me alone, please."
"No." Her refusal was followed by the shifting of her weight as she laid down. She wrapped a protective arm around Hermione's shoulder. "I'm staying right here."
A desperate attempt to hold the broken pieces together, that had absolutely no chance of working… Hermione had fallen too far down the rabbit hole.
Nothing was real.
If that fact wasn't embolizing because it was so terrifying, she might have been able to be grateful for the reprieve. There was no arm along her side or fingers that gripped at her shoulder. There were no lips to scream her alarm. There was no ever-present ache from her hollowed center. All of it had been a construct of her own mind. This was an unbelievably detailed hallucination.
She had never woken up in St. Mungo's.
And even worse… It was only a matter of time before some new nightmare took hold…
Would it take the form of more Death Eaters twisted into inferi who pulled her apart bit by bit? Her sinew like bloody ribbons in some bizarre dance of death. Later explained as her mind's way of coping with the movement of the scar both inside and outside her body. Or what about the eons of Crucio she had suffered under the hands of loved ones and strangers alike? That had been the multiple seizures that had jerked her body as numerous incorrect countercurses had done their own damage.
This had to be some karmic delirium to teach her to let the adults handle the major problems.
Be a good girl. Follow the rules. Lesson learned.
Time to move on…
But on to what?!
The unknown was much more sinister than the anguish of this delusion.
How was she supposed to cement herself in a moment that wasn't real? In her hopeless cynicism, her hands started to claw at her limbs. Shredding at the skin and fabric alike. Driven to get any input into her extremities. In an instant, she was the wild animal again- groomed by the traumas in her short life, real or otherwise, to seek the pain. Didn't she deserve it?
"Stop it, Hermione!"
The shriek of distress reached her ears and she knew she was onto something…
She raked at the flesh of her chin, down over her neck and collarbone. And suddenly she was able to gasp in some air and whisper. "Help me…"
Ginny wrenched her onto her back with shaking hands, "Merlin… You're bleeding!"
"T… Trunk." A simple enough word, but it was sandpaper as she tried to get her lungs to expand again.
Recognition flared in the witch's eyes and she was instantly at the foot of Hermione's bed, digging through the carefully organized contents until she found the one she was looking for. In a flash the redhead had helped her to sit and was coaxing the bitter liquid from the vial down her throat. "There we go… Just a bit more."
Ginny set her back against the soaked mattress. She set the vial down and grabbed her wand with a shaky hand, "Vulnera Sanentur."
The incantation was said three times during the tricky wand movement but the girl, somehow, managed to knit together all of her self-inflicted injuries. Her freckled face was drawn and pale at what she had been forced to witness, but her voice was firm with the job before her. So much like her mother…
Hermione wished she could apologize and thank her, but the calming potion had started to work its magic. Her lips were numb and she couldn't make them work properly. Not like a few short seconds ago, when she hadn't even had lips. This was viscerally different. They were there, just desensitized to the commands her brain was trying to send.
"Why? Why would you do this?" Ginny asked her as she slipped her wand back into the pocket of her jeans.
I don't know!
Her mind screamed, but her lips stayed pressed tightly together. The other witch helped get her into a sitting position and Hermione looked down at the mess she had made. Her shirt was in tatters and soaked dark red, almost black, with her coagulating blood. She really was dirty…
"You won't scar. You didn't go deep enough for that… Thank the Gods." Ginny rambled as she worked the saturated fabric from her skin.
That's too bad.
Ginny's ceaseless twittering never stopped as she undressed, cleaned, redressed her friend and then changed out the blankets and sheets as well. Neither did Hermione's mute responses.
"You are going to end up killing yourself!"
No, I won't. I'm not suicidal…
"There was no reason to take it this far."
Yes there was… but you'd never understand.
"It doesn't look like you've taken a potion in months…"
You try functioning when feeling like this.
"You are smarter than this shit!"
Am I?
"All over some good dick? Really?"
Don't be so vulgar.
"I wish you would tell me…"
It's Malfoy!
"He can't be worth all this, Hermione."
He would have…
Back and forth, the silent conversation went on until Ginny helped her under the covers and said, "I'm going to get Pomfrey…"
"N… No!" Her instruction was mumbled but she managed to get it out.
"You… You need help that I can't give you…" The other girl didn't try to hide her reluctance at the thought of delaying professional treatment.
"After…" She fought to make her tongue form the words she needed to say. The veil of medicated unconsciousness was smothering and caused an odd tingly warmth to spread throughout her body. "...sleep."
There was a long silence in which her eyes fluttered closed, Ginny rubbed her shoulder comfortingly before surrendering, "Okay… I will go with, if you want me to."
Hermione tried to show her thanks but it came out all garbled and slurred. No longer able to wrestle the lethargy. The last thing she felt was the weight of Crookshanks jumping back on the bed to settle at her side.
Her loyal protector…