A/N: This is a section/chapter/portion left out of Voiceless due to timeline incongruity. It's been brushed up and completed, and should stand alone, but would probably seem utterly melodramatic without the context and backing of Voiceless as a whole. *smiles serenely* Don't say I didn't warn you. And no, not a sequel, yes, just a one-shot.
Also, hasn't been betaed, so feel free to grumble.
Disclaimer: They belong to JKR, I'm only playing.
*
September stormed in. The first signs of autumn bled out within days and yielded to mulch underfoot. Snow, although still months away, rattled unseen in the dying year's breath. Hagrid was forced to take classes inside and the greenhouses steamed with extra heating charms. Neville was thrilled at the chance to see what the early freeze did to the plants, petals and leaves curling in on themselves until Professor Sprout's ministry-grade heating charms drew them out again. Sky and earth wrangled constantly out in the grounds, and the enchanted ceiling wore its most thunderous look for days.
Finally, he decided to remind her, though he was sure she hadn't forgotten.
"Hermione," he started over dinner one night, "You can have Hedwig, you know, to reply your mum." Ron set down his spoon, actually set it down, and stared across the table as if afraid for Harry's life. Hermione stopped mangling her pudding but didn't look up. "Dean says the Owlery is nearly empty", he went on, ignoring both of them, and trying hard to not maul his treacle tart. "Horrible weather for flying. Hagrid's very worried. But Hedwig will be fine, I reckon. She's been there loads of times." Ron cleared his throat. A snap of thunder from overhead intervened and saved Harry the trouble of having to look up.
Hermione returned to her pudding. Ron reached tentatively for his spoon. Silence grunted and settled on their corner of the table like a large animal with a terribly ominous smell. Harry smashed the treacle tart to a pulp as discreetly as he could.
After a few minutes, Hermione left the table. She even took her bag with her; Harry felt properly chastised. Her plate was clean, but he doubted she'd had any idea what she was swallowing.
He felt exhausted, as if he'd been talking for years and years, and his head was full of nothing but his own voice, a constant cacophony. He looked at Ron expecting a severe caramel-smeared look of 'I told you so', but Ron just looked exasperated, and even a little sympathetic.
"Just because you snog her, mate, doesn't mean you can boss her around."
Harry glared.
"But don't worry, she'll come around." Ron waved his spoon sagely. Bits of pudding landed all over the table.
Harry grunted and set off towards the door, not sure where he was going, and feeling quite insubstantial without the customary weight of her bag.
*
In mid-September, just in time for her birthday, she went home. He wasn't sure how it happened, but thought she must have replied her mother before he decided to nag. He stowed this notion away to chew on later, and began to worry about the week she was going to be away. Would it be safe enough? What if she couldn't 'talk' to her parents without her notebook? He hated that notebook; she pulled it out only when she felt defeated.
And what was he going to do for a whole week without Hermione?
She left on a foggy morning in the Knight Bus, and Harry and Ron returned to the castle dragging their feet. Ron spent the rest of the morning trying to cheer Harry up. They went to the Owlery to see Hedwig. Harry told her to not go wandering about this week because he had plenty of letters to write. The grounds were empty. A few thoughts straggled in Harry's head, round and round, scrabbling after each other's tails. And amid the stone walls stained with owl-droppings and a cacophony of shuffling wings, the coin dropped.
She had replied her parents before that stormy night at dinner, and what's more, she'd expected him to know.
A worn-out wind sighed past the window. He leaned against the wall too which bits of straw and feathers were stuck and watched absently as Ron needled one of the barn owls.
He'd broken a promise. Not a spoken promise, nothing so flimsy, but one that they built together with skin and tears and patience.
A spotted owl rushed out the door, scuffing his head with a wing. He rubbed a hand over his face and walked slowly out of the Owlery, oblivious to Ron being attacked by a nesting sooty.
*
Her parents were experts in terror. They were witness to every variety of it, all in a day's work. You couldn't bring a sharp electric drill close to the average person's face without inspiring some degree of anxiety. Panic, mild terror, dread, alarm-they'd seen it all up close.
And so they were also experts in calm. They didn't get upset easily, they didn't panic when things went wrong.
So, getting off the bus Hermione thought, these are not my parents.
Her mother pulled her into a vice of love. She was pale, as if tears and not blood ran in her veins. Her father looked quite lost for a moment, then reached out to hug her too. He looked as if he was trying to say something comforting, for him, for her, for all of them, but this was no broken toy or bruised knee. Hermione extricated herself from both of them and smiled. She had to be strong.
And already it was beginning to hurt.
*
The week staggered on. He was tripping up everywhere, his mind always racing, his days matted up in a tangle of nerves. He didn't sleep. He didn't breathe until Hedwig's wings beat over his head at breakfast. The letters were sparse, so unlike her, stiff and forced. He got the message. He willed and railed at time to move, shove, get on with it, make it time for her to come back already.
He knew it was a bad idea for her to have gone.
"She'll be fine, mate," said Ron a dozen a times a day.
He didn't believe a word of it.
*
Her birthday dinner was a patented disaster. At the quiet, debonair French restaurant a costumed waiter swirled in with a double tiered birthday cake with seventeen candles. Her parents' shadows wavered in the candlelight, falling over the pristine tableware like black paint. She blew the flames out, taking care to keep her face blank, and looked up and smiled at them across the table. Then she excused herself to the ladies and threw up on the white-tiled floor.
That night, her father came into her room and sat on the edge of her bed. Hermione feigned sleep. She lay still under the quilted covers with the large sunflower print that she and her mother had completed one summer, as her Dad's hands shook over her hair and his hot tears fell on her arm. After a while, he quietened, and Hermione felt his gaze on her like the sun on a cloudy day, flickering and faltering beneath a mass of grey.
When he left, she pushed her knees into her stomach to stop it from convulsing and drew the quilt over her shoulders, imagining that the weight of it was Harry's arms around her.
*
He was still in class when she got back. As soon the bell clanged for lunch, Harry raced up the stairs to the Head Girl's chambers. The door was locked. He called her name several times, then pointed his wand at it.
The door opened to chaos. Books with pages ripped in half, quills and mauled parchment, a china jewellery box shattered into fine shards, picture frames thrown against the dresser with their photographs wrenched out of them--the floor belonged to broken things. But he saw it all in a blur, his heart and eyes focused elsewhere.
She huddled in her slip on the armchair facing her bed, swiping at her hair which blew in her face. The curtain swelled behind her, its long arms wailing. The scent of pine from the grounds below hung cloyingly sweet and heavy in the room. Absently, he lifted a red glass globe from the floor, her prized paperweight, and set it back on the pile of parchment threatening to scatter in the wind. Then he crossed the room and sat down on the bed facing her. She looked up, raising her face from her knees, her eyes ringed a pale, exhausted purple.
He held out his arms almost out of reflex, because there was nothing else he could do or knew how to do. She tumbled into them. Out in the grounds, the wind tugged and tugged at bare brittle branches hanging desperately onto trees that could no longer nourish them, until the wood gave way and fell with a crack and wail to rest on the damp ground. It wasn't that she'd become smaller and he'd grown tall, it was just that they'd grown into each other, pared into shape by all the years behind them, and the darker ones waiting ahead.
Neither cared much about being able to breathe.
--end--