Chapter Text
Hermione hadn't cracked a smile in a little over four months.
Others had tried to coax her into a self-deprecating smile, making rueful jokes to get her to come out of her self imposed ban on the act itself, but she simply didn't care anymore about catering to anyone's feelings.
It wouldn't be fair to smile, to laugh—
If there was one thing Hermione Jean Granger knew for certain, it was that to grieve was to live, and Hermione never did anything halfway.
The black wings of ravens flapped high in the air, gliding over power lines as she stared at her family home one last time before warding it and locking away that part of her life forever.
Her parents would never remember her, but that was fine.
She knew it would end up that way when she cast the charm, and the Mind Healers confirming her destruction did not deter her from her path.
She would return for her final makeup year at Hogwarts and then—
And then—
No more dreams of patenting new inventions for the joke shop.
No more wild ideations of red hair between her fingers and sparkling blue eyes meeting hers beneath quilted blankets on a chilly Christmas morning.
Well, she supposed she could see those eyes again if she wanted—vibrant and lively turned dull and tired beneath the weight of the reality of it all.
It wouldn’t be the same, though.
Never again.
Shuttering the emotions behind her newfound walls of Occlumency, they wavered once, twice, before slamming down beneath the force of a metaphysical book in her mind just as she pulled her wand out of the messy bun in her hair and Apparated away, opening her eyes to the hustle and bustle of the designated Apparition spot in Muggle London.
It wasn’t long before she’d gone through the checkpoint to platform Nine and Three Quarters, the sentimentality of it all making her wish she’d simply Apparated to Hogsmeade, but Harry and Ron had pleaded, and who was she to deny them, just like always?
Even when they didn’t realize that she was dying inside.
She immediately wished she’d taken up Kingsley on his offer to intern with him in his office and sit for her NEWT exams remotely, instead of completely making up her Seventh Year with the rest of her class that had been displaced, a kinder way to say they’d been on the run from the people who were controlling the school at the time.
Faces, familiarities, joyous laughter and voices all combined into one swirling vortex of memories that Hermione couldn’t stand to hear.
She wanted to slam her hands down over her ears and scream.
Because how could Dean Thomas and Hannah Abbott be smiling and laughing with Seamus Finnigan when the person who always used to make them laugh was gone?
How could Ron be slapping Harry on the back and guffawing at some insipid joke when there was nothing to laugh about at all?
Turning quickly away, Hermione stuffed her hands into her bag that had never left her side while she’d been on the run and pulled out the tiny bottle with its even tinier dropper.
Unscrewing the lid, she placed one minuscule droplet of the liquid on her tongue and almost immediately the euphoria filled her senses, her mouth warming as the thick scent of honey tingled into her veins.
Closing her eyes she sighed and tilted her head back towards the sky, inhaling the steam and smoke of the train, the potion masking it and she breathed in cotton candy powder and sugar crystals.
A flurry of motion caught her eye and there in the background were two Aurors holding onto the arm of Draco Malfoy who, with his signature sneer, still managed to seem as if he were above everyone on the platform, even with his lawful escorts.
His eyes were locked on hers, though, and they kept flitting to the bottle she still held aloft in her hands.
There were black and purple bags under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept in months, and there was a ghostly pale sheen to his skin like he hadn’t seen the sky in ages.
Even his platinum hair had somehow dulled.
Maybe that’s what Azkaban did to a person—dulled their shine until they were the very antithesis to who they’d been before.
Of course, he wasn’t in Azkaban anymore, finishing the rest of his sentence locked away at Hogwarts with the rest of them, only without the perks of Hogsmeade weekends for distraction from the school year.
Dressed head to toe in all black, his dress shirt melted into his trousers as the Aurors began herding him forward.
It was more than obvious that the potion Hermione had been partaking in wasn’t necessarily legal, so it wasn’t her imagination that made Hermione see Malfoy’s eyebrows jump in surprise before settling back into his annoying, poncy smirk.
Quickly tucking her contraband into her bag, her nerves fully flattened, she donned her most unaffected look and went to meet her friends, all thoughts of Malfoy well and forgotten.
“Hermione, there you are. Your aura is a startling shade of grey and is flickering—are you quite well?”
Luna Lovegood's kind eyes had clocked her mood almost instantly, and Hermione froze up at her question.
How was she supposed to answer that?
Luna’s wistful eyes matched her wispy white hair and pale cheeks, and Hermione wanted to cry at the open vulnerability and kindness on her face.
She hated lying to her friends.
She was just so used to it now that she couldn’t find the point in telling them the truth when there was nothing they could do to help her.
Even with all of Harry Potter's “Chosen One” attributes, he still couldn’t bring the dead back to life.
“Quite well, Luna, thank you. Now, let’s steal a compartment before the rest of them leave us with nothing.”
Luna simply ignored the fact that Hermione’s cheery disposition wasn’t extending to her two best friends as she hadn’t glanced their way once since downing her potion and made their way onto the train and into an empty compartment towards the very back of the train which was surprisingly full considering, well, the full scale war that had just taken place earlier in the year.
“I believe Harry, Ginny and Ron were going to sit together, so that is fine with me. Harry’s Nargles are gone, but Ron’s are swirling rampantly around him. It’s quite terrifying, really.”
Hermione could only worry why Luna hadn’t found any Nargles around her own head.
Merlin knew she’d been keeping more secrets than just Horcruxes from everyone.
Ron caught her eye from afar but the clench of her chest at the sight of his red hair brought prickling tears to her eyes and she made a mental note to up the potency of her potion.
She was going to need all the help she could get this last year if she had to be confronted with the memory of him in the form of his brother every single day.
“Hermione, you’ve gone all blue. I’m sorry you’ve lost so much. I lost my cousin, and I’m still quite lilac at those thoughts.”
Hermione gripped the arm Luna extended her while discreetly rubbing her eyes.
She was about to reply when someone opened their compartment door.
“This one’s already taken, see.”
The anger in the voice was hard to miss, but the two Aurors beside him shoved him in completely.
“This is the last one, it's this or we take you back with us to your cell. You pick."
They were nameless, almost faceless Aurors with the way Hermione couldn’t pinpoint them at all.
It was sad, really, how many Aurors hadn’t come to their aid until the gavel fell on the true winner that long night of the Hogwarts battle.
She waved them away in the compartment, eyeing up Draco Malfoy as he stood cornered like a wounded animal, eyes flaring with pure, undiluted rage.
Before he could open his mouth, however, Luna arrested the situation like always.
“Draco, how lovely to see you again. I nerve got to thank you for the blankets and meals in your dungeons, you made the experience much more comfortable than the others.”
Hermione felt her lips pull up into an involuntary smile, shock swarming her senses while her potion had her giggling behind her hand.
It wasn’t funny—really, it wasn’t.
She’d been tortured at the manor where Luna had been imprisoned.
She’d been cut into and cursed, had almost died.
But still—it was sort of funny that Draco Malfoy of all people was now being forced to sit with them for the duration of the train ride back to Hogwarts where he’d tried to assassinate the Headmaster, had let Death Eaters into the school, and—and, well, it was just funny.
Hermione didn't allow her Occlumency walls fall enough for her to become devastated at this new development.
Surely, something else should have made her smile and laugh for the first time since...something warm and happy and sweet but no, it had been a macabre sort of dark humor that had really done it for her.
Maybe her days on the run had well and truly fucked her up, it seemed.
"What's so funny, Granger? Laughing about your friend being imprisoned? Doesn't sound like the sanctimonious morals I've come to associate with you."
Hermione shook her head as the rest of her giggles finally dissolved, watching as the Aurors exited the train, following their path through the crowds of people, ignoring Malfoy and his tirade completely until her eyes fell on a group of the elder Weasley children waving goodbye on the platform, no doubt savoring it as Ron and Ginny would be both at Hogwarts again for one more year.
Molly and Arthur clung to each other while Bill and Fleur clutched each other tightly, Fleur's small pregnant bump poking through the folds of her gown.
There were smiles on all of their faces.
All of the faces except one.
Luna was saying something but Hermione tuned her out.
Her eyes were imploring, begging him to look up at her just once, just to let it be a mercy of some sort.
In the days and weeks following the battle, she couldn't make eye contact with him.
It had been too raw, too fresh.
Until one day he'd cornered her.
"Look at me, Hermione."
"I can't," she protested, shaking her head as George grabbed her by the shoulders.
"I can't be alone in this grief, Hermione. Mum and Dad are coping as best they can, but they have each other. Ron and Ginny have Harry, Bill has Fleur. Fuck, even Charlie has a new boyfriend that he can share this with, but me? I'm alone in this. Don't you get that? My other half is literally gone, and the one person who meant the most to him can't even look me in the eye!"
She did, then, but the shock of it was enough to send her to her knees.
He held her up and they cried together, piecing themselves back as best they could that summer until the jagged edges flattened and smoothed out, if only just a bit.
There was still a missing piece by her heart she wasn't sure could ever be filled.
She pulled the window of the train compartment down and hung her head out the window, desperate for one glance, just one—it would be enough to get her through the rest of the term, she hoped.
Hanging halfway out of the window, the train's engine kicked on and let out a teeming whistle that had the parents and friends cheering, but he wasn't looking at her.
"George!"
His head whipped to her, those damning eyes locking on hers and the little bubbling sob built in her chest, but she slammed those Occlumency walls down hard enough that her body shook from the force of it.
The potion had worn off by now but it didn't matter, because he was looking at her and she was looking at him and if she could just pretend for a moment, then everything would be alright.
He waved her goodbye, his mouth tilting in a rueful smile that she could have sworn felt more like a grimace, and then he was gone, the train station well out of view, but still Hermione did not sit back down.
Not until the landscape swelled with mountains and her face grew pink with the burn from the wind did she finally pull herself away, meeting the eyes of one Draco Malfoy, his interest barely disguised by a faux sneer.
She'd grown used to his looks over the years, and this wasn't a general twisting of the mouth in disgust, but merely a show put on to keep others away.
"It's alright, Hermione. He misses you, too."
The breath caught in Hermione's lungs at Luna's words.
"I'm not quite sure what you mean, Luna. George is just my friend."
"Oh, I know. I wasn't talking about George."
Hermione blinked the tears away before they could fall.
At least someone other than George knew, then. At least she had that.
Malfoy didn't stop staring at her after that little declaration though.
"Yes? Is there something on my face or can you not possibly fathom bidding farewell to your loved ones?"
He scoffed, crossing one long, lean leg over the knee of his other as the sheer proportional size of him seemed to overtake the entire compartment.
"Just had you pegged for a different Weasel brother, is all."
"Let me guess—Ron?"
"Do you really think anyone escaped the great Weasel/Brown/Granger drama of Sixth Year unscathed?"
Hermione rolled her eyes. She'd already moved on from Ron at the beginning of their Fifth Year at that point, but no one else really knew that.
She was just about to respond when Luna spoke up.
"Oh, look at that. Your auras are both grey, a matching pair."
Then she returned to reading a book that was almost half her size as she struggled to turn the page.
Hermione rolled her eyes.
It was going to be a long, long year, made even more evident by the fact that once Hermione tucked in by the window and rested her head to close her eyes for a moment, Luna had apparently dashed away to chase a newfound creature Hermione had never heard of.
Opening her eyes, she noted Malfoy was still upright, rigid in posture, eyes haunted and full of demons as if he'd never left Azkaban.
"Is it true they let the Dementors feed from all the prisoners once a week?"
He flinched as if forgetting she had been there at all.
And he was about to respond in kind when Ron and Harry flew past the entrance to their compartment, seeing in through the clear glass before shoving it open and pushing their way inside.
"Hermione, are you alright?"
She looked over at Malfoy on the other side of the compartment on his own bench closest to the doors and shrugged her shoulders.
"Fine, why? Did something happen?"
Harry tugged off his glasses like he couldn't beleive what he was seeing.
Malfoy was, after all, one of the reasons Harry had chosen to come back for this final year re-do—to watch over him and make sure their extended kindness on making sure he'd be given a lesser sentence was actually warranted.
"N-no, but..."
"But why are you sitting with him?"
Ron pointed to Malfoy, whose lips were practically sewn shut at the amount of restraint he seemed to be showing.
She merely shrugged in response.
"Why not? This was the last compartment available."
"But you—"
"What's the time, actually? I need to be meeting the rest of the Prefects about an hour out, to give them all their assigned routes."
"Well we're almost there, but Hermione—"
She stood quickly, grabbing her small bag from where she'd placed it on the floor and didn't give Harry or Ron a glance backwards, but did turn to Malfoy before she left.
"Have a good term, Malfoy."
She could feel the shocked gaze of three boys on her back as she walked out and toward the Prefects cabin, one she'd preferred to stay away from at first but couldn't avoid any longer.
Taking one more discreet drop of her potion, she settled the walls in her mind and strode forward, determined to have a productive, if not solitary, year.
After all, Hermione would rather be alone with her thoughts than suffering in silence with everyone looking down on her as if she were about to lose her mind.
Yes, rather they all think she was the same old Hermione, not affected in the slightest by the war that had raged on leaving her tortured, scarred, and without her lover.
Spring term couldn't come soon enough.