Chapter Text
Hermione Granger spent an unhealthy amount of her life wondering what her last thoughts would be. It made sense to speculate, as each perilous year of her youth brought the eventuality closer. By the time she was nineteen and stumbling out from the ruins of the old school castle, she’d become far too familiar with death’s enthralling face. Miraculously, the war hadn’t been enough to shepherd her into that chilled embrace, but…it was only natural to wonder.
She’d hoped for precious memories: the rolling green hills of Chipping Norton, the bony shoulders of her father as he hoisted her up, the cheerful faces of her friends, glowing in the flame-lit common room. She’d contemplated emotion; would she feel fear? Regret? Relief? Or, worse, a dismal assortment of all three? She’d wrestled with superstition, never one to believe in gods—though she’d once not believed in magic, either. Would there be a hand to guide her to the ‘other side’ that poets and scholars debated the existence of, or would she simply fade into the great, unthinkable nothing?
As it turns out, it was nothing so grandiose.
Her final thoughts came in rapid-fire; that she’d wasted her last purchase on a stale pain au chocolat from Pret A Manger; that she would never get to finish reading A Dense History of Magical Communities, Vol III: West Sussex; that Ginny would be the one to find her on the floor of their shared flat—wearing the pyjamas that she’d lied about stealing; that she’d failed to submit the minutes for yesterday’s meeting about the reassignment of leftover campaign funds.
Had she left the burner too close to the curtains? Was she still on the organ donor’s registry? Who would tell Harry and Ron? Had she lost hold of her bodily functions and pissed herself, or was that humiliation still to come? Would there be any point in holding a funeral, let alone a state one? Who would feed Crookshanks? Was this supposed to feel quite so confusing, or had she somehow also managed to get dying wrong?
There was something monumentally heavy on her chest—Crookshanks, probably, come for one final humbling. Except Crookshanks had never felt this heavy before, and his attacks always came in the form of precise jabs into her unsuspecting ribs. This was different, a slow and unremitting press of something broad against her sternum, threatening to crack the cartilage. It could be normal, of course; Hermione had never died before, how would she know? And yet, as she lay there in the growing dark, thinking about how foolish she had been not to double-check the expiry date on the vial, she could tell something extraordinarily peculiar was happening.
The pressure banded around her waist, tightening as she braced for the crack of her ribs and the puncture of her lungs. That really would be the icing on the top of this overbaked cake, wouldn’t it? She’d imagined this would feel like floating, but it was nothing of the sort—more akin to drowning.
No.
Something was wrong.
More wrong than dying.
She felt the urge to crawl, to scream, to claw. She couldn’t tell the difference between falling or flying, up and down, left and right. All she knew was that she needed to free herself from the pressure on her chest, to writhe and roll until she could escape it, wriggle out from under it.
The vines of this unseen Devil’s Snare wrapped around her waist, her arms, her neck, and she had to do what she had done before all those years ago; relax, concentrate, get it off.
Twenty-four years of life had brought her to this very moment, and with the final seconds of energy she would ever be granted, she pushed against the crushing force, her mind shaking with the effort of it, her consciousness holding on by no more than a singular thread. She pushed until the rush in her ears drowned out every disappointing final thought. She pushed until she could no longer feel any one of her four limbs. She pushed until the darkness that had been bleeding into every corner of her mind, like spilt ink, consumed her whole.
And then, like an overstretched elastic, something snapped.
The sharp sting of its recoil sent vibrations through her limp and lifeless body. White flooded her vision like a thousand tiny knives in her retinas, and she blinked.
“Oh god… Hermione?” A distant but familiar voice called, and she placed it instantly—Ginny. With more effort than should be required, Hermione opened her mouth to speak, to tell Ginny that something was very wrong, but no sound followed. Ginny was already moving, her blurred figure leaping from one side of her vision to the other, the sound of rapid footfall echoing in her ears. “I’ll get the healers. Don’t you dare go back to sleep!”
The room came into focus just in time to see her long whip of red hair fly through the doorframe. Hermione blinked a few times, swallowing hard to lubricate her wizened throat, and tried to take in her surroundings; she was, without a doubt, in a hospital. A diagnostic chart hovered above her head, long tendrils of neon-green light wrapped around her arms and shoulders. She wiggled her nose, her toes, her fingers, taking stock of herself.
Panic shot down her spine as the reality of her situation dawned.
“Finally.” Another voice caught her attention, and she looked back at the doorway, expecting to find Ginny with a line of healers in tow.
It was empty.
Slowly, her eyes drifted across the room, still unable to fully turn her head. She spotted a vase of flowers placed carefully in the centre of the small circular table—daffodils, her favourites—and a stack of greeting cards beside them. On the floor by the table sat a suitcase that she knew well; it belonged to Ginny, moved from its usual home by their fireplace where it remained packed and ready for her frequent weekend training camps. It was all exactly what one might expect to see when waking up in a hospital bed.
What was slightly more unexpected, however, was the obviously uncomfortable young man occupying the armchair in the far corner—he didn’t look like a healer, not donning the striking green robes the rest of them wore, in fact…he was dressed in fairly ordinary clothing, if not slightly too formal—she might even call it mundane.
Hermione licked her lips and tried again for speech, the words morphing through a cracked groan, “Who—?”
“Who am I?” The man cut her off, rising from his perch, effectively silencing her. His face was a portrait of irritation. “I hoped you’d at least remember that much.”
There was something vaguely familiar about him; bright green eyes and a mop of brown curls upon his head. He looked young, but surely not much younger than her, and her mind scrambled desperately to piece everything together. Nothing made sense. He was far too youthful to be so angry, and far too unknown to be so angry with her.
Hermione frowned deeply and spoke again, “What—?”
“What am I doing here?” he finished for her, and all she could do in return was stare, wondering if there was any way to alert the healers to this enraged intruder. “You tell me.”
Her cracked lips parted to seek clarification, or perhaps to just start screaming, but the door flew open and Ginny barreled back into the room, escorting a small army of healers.
“Look! I told you she was awake!” Ginny all but shoved the senior healer towards the bed.
Hands were on her in seconds; prying back her eyelids, checking her pulse, questions and answers flying over her head faster than she could catch them, numbers called out as a junior healer stood at the foot of the bed and scribbled everything down.
Nobody seemed even slightly concerned about the glowering man in the corner. Was he with Ginny? Surely not…she wouldn’t even let a man buy her a drink, let alone accompany her to the hospital bed of an old friend. Especially not one so…furious.
“Who—?” she croaked again, pointing limply to the man.
“Try not to talk, sweetheart,” one of the healers soothed, brushing her cool palm over Hermione’s forehead. “Let’s just take it nice and slow.”
She tried to shake her head, her brain wobbling like jelly in her skull. “Man…over…there…”
The junior healer looked up from his notes and pointed at himself. “Me?”
Hermione gritted her teeth and pointed again, beyond the junior healer to where the stranger, who did not feel much like a stranger at all, stood looming. He returned her stare, silent and unwavering, as though offering a challenge she had no way of accepting. She’d seen him before, of that much she was sure—at school, maybe? It had been so long, so much had happened, but there was a flicker of recognition.
“There’s no man,” Ginny said from her right, obvious concern lacing her tone as she lowered Hermione’s pointed hand and looked up at the healers expectantly. “Is she okay?”
“Look—” Hermione raised her shaky finger one last time, trying to ignore how much it ached to move.
“It’s normal for patients to experience hallucinations after an extended period in an induced coma.” The healer's smile was warm and gentle.
Hermione, however, had never felt so cold.
Induced coma? Hallucinations? What was happening?
“No,” she groaned, but it either did not register as a word or they were not listening.
“It’s temporary,” the healer continued, and Ginny seemed to sag with relief.
Hermione was still locked onto the man in the corner, whose arms were crossed over his chest and whose mouth was now pressed into a resentful line. Her heart rate spiked as she took him in; he didn’t look like a hallucination. Her imagination wasn’t this good, was it? Wouldn’t he have something noticeably off about him if he weren’t real, like purple skin or an extra eye in the centre of his forehead?
As though she’d voiced her thoughts, the man uncrossed his arms and shoved his hands into the pockets of his pleated trousers. And then he shrugged…he shrugged.
“Don’t look so innocent,” he huffed, and not a single head in the room turned to look at him. “It’s your fault I’m here.”
And that's when it hit, with the force of a sledgehammer, that Hermione knew exactly who this man was. He’d been a boy when she’d seen him last, quietly tucking his chin to hide his face as he scurried after his less-quiet friends in their shared school corridors.
Liquid dread pooled in her lungs as Hermione stared at the very detailed, very real face of Theodore Nott.
Oh, she thought, letting her head fall back against the over-fluffed pillow, I’ve gone fucking insane.