Black Dresses

A/N: This was begun before the sixth book was released and finished without the inclusion of those plot points. I’m just like that. So this fic goes from sixth year on.

Obligatory Disclaimer: Clearly I don’t own Harry Potter, otherwise this would have been the sixth book.

Black Dresses

She owns too many black dresses. She has stood at the edge of gaping holes too often, tears restrained in order to maintain the stoic façade of those beside her. If the Order members do not cry, neither will she. She has listened too often to the words of the service- she has heard them so many times, they all have, that they could recite the litany in one mournful voice from memory, but instead stand in one silent mass.

“Students, I bring you sad tidings…”

When Hagrid is killed, the first member of the Order to fall to Voldemort during the Second War, she realizes, with tear stained dismay, that she does not own anything appropriate for a funeral. Her school robes are emblazoned with her Gryffindor colors, house divisions that would be inappropriate for the event. She cries for an hour in her four poster bed, ostensibly because of her duress in not having something to wear. In the end, Tonks gets her to a store and she buys the first black dress, a velvet affair that is warm under her thick winter cloak.

“Harry, what’s wrong with Professor Lupin?”

When he turned to face her, the anguish was visible in his eyes.

When it comes time to bury Tonks, it is June and too hot for velvet, and she has to get herself to a store. The second dress is a somber linen slip dress. Its airy fabric is now faded from too many washings.

“Hermione, we’re telling you first because we think Ron will take the news best from you-”

“Yes, Harry already knows.”

By the next winter, the winter of her seventh year she has grown several inches and the velvet has become too short- the biting winds of the Scottish moors would freeze her legs solid while they bury Ginny. Since she has reached her full height she invests in a black silk. She seems to know she will have ample opportunity to wear it.

“Hermione?”

He was too unflinching, bracing himself for her reaction. “Ron, what’s happened?”

“They didn’t feel any pain…”

She wears black lace when they bury her parents. She is particularly unflinching as the two caskets are lowered into the ground, and she stands with her ruffling lace skirt rippling in the light spring breeze, as it had done when she was a child, before she’d known about things like war and prophecies and Avada Kedavra.

She’s somewhat iconic for her stoic grief. The wizarding world becomes accustomed to images of her standing beside some gaping hole accompanying the news of every death. The Order begins to send her as a sort of emissary when things begin to get too hot for more prominent members to appear. Harry hates that.

“They won’t be content until they get you killed too. Like you’re not a target. Like everyone doesn’t know you’re practically a member of the Order. Hermione, you can’t go anymore.”

“I have to go. If I stop going- look, the Order can’t just hide itself away, become some shadow in the night that no one ever sees. The world needs the affirmation of our presence- they need to know that someone is fighting for them. If I stop going…”

Two weeks later she is there when they lay Professor McGonagall to rest. She wears a black dress, but over it she sports a crimson coat with gold trim and her House scarf. It is the least she could do.

Chander Lovegood was a respected journalist in the Wizarding community.

Luna is the one to find The Black Dress in the back of the closet as she searches for something to borrow when they bury her father. It is black crepe cut on the lines of an old Celtic design for mourning clothes, and embroidered all over with ancient runes of laments, and dirges in silver threads. It is beautiful. She had purchased it while on a short holiday to Ireland the summer before her parents died. When Luna finds it, she wonders aloud why Hermione hasn’t worn it before. Hermione simply responds that she is saving it.

Luna doesn’t ask anymore. Her silvery eyes, red from tears, say that she knows who Hermione is saving it for.

“There’s no one for me to hide behind anymore, Hermione. And if I don’t go for him, he’s only going to come for me again and I can’t let him hurt- ”

“Hurt who Harry?”

“Anyone. I’ll go after the funeral.”

It is coming to the end, whether for good or for ill, no one knows. When Dumbledore dies, Hermione attends in black satin and with a heavy heart. She does not let go of Harry’s hand the entire time, as if her desperate grasp can keep him from facing the destiny that has lain before him since he was born.

“He left already, Hermione, and I’m to follow him as soon as I tell you.”

When he goes, she carries out her tasks at the field hospital with a jerky nervousness that reflects the attitude of all those around her. But when she returns to her room, she takes the Dress out and contemplates it lying on the bed with wide un-crying eyes. She is practicing stoicism.

“We’ve had news from the front. You aren’t going to like it.”

She stands before this, the last grave and she bites her lip, but does not shed a tear. She clasps the arm next to her and the sun plays on the metallic thread of her dress, the Dress, the last black dress. She knows that even if she wanted to she could not tear her eyes from the dark hole and she does not until it is filled with the dark moist soil.

When it is finally done, she turns, and steadied by his hand at her back, she manages to leave the graveyard, though for days afterwards, the image that appears when she closes her eyes is the inscription on the tombstone:

Ronald Weasley. Beloved Son, Brother and Friend. 1980-2000.

She owns too many black dresses. They stay in her closet, in the front, her own personal memorial to all those who died in the war. One in particular she takes out and contemplates sometimes, a sad, musing smile on her face, contemplating the injustice of the destination of a dying Death Eater’s last curse, and it rests before all the rest, in its place of honor. But she never wears any of them. She never wears black at all anymore.

She wears white quite frequently, and she loves scarlet and emerald and sapphire. But she never wears black, and no one ever asks why.

The bride wore white satin robes and carried a bouquet of white roses and forget-me-nots.

Harry loves her in white and delights in her curves wrapped in white lace and velvet and satin and linen (though never crepe). The only black clothes she ever buys their children are their Hogwarts robes and there is nothing black in their house. She will never forget- would never want to- but she also never wants to live in that place again. She no longer believes in stoicism.

Now she believes in emotion and passion and unfettered expression. Life is too short for niceties and she is too well known for her unabashed frankness to cause any lasting detriment. When she laughs too loud, as she often does, people just gladly wonder at the fact that she can laugh at all.