Unofficial Portkey Archive

There's something happening here
But what it is ain't exactly clear.
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware.

I think it's time we stop
Children, what's that sound?
Everybody look
What's going down?

~ For What It's Worth, Buffalo Springfield,

***

Fears and Tears

***

10 February 2000

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I didn't know if it was the pills or the sound of destruction raining down somewhere anymore. I watched through what little window I had in my bedroom at the barracks. At the cold sun rise, and then the colder sunset across the Ministry of Britain's 511th Evac Hospital. I'd lie in bed and stare up at the ceiling. Books piled high around me, on desks, on chairs, on the floor. What used to be my escape became eclipsed by the bleak sadness setting free the darkness. I'd lie in bed for hours, dismissing nearly everyone at the door besides any rank superior to me for work.

My life: work.

And, dismay.

Ginny would come by and knock on my door.

Usually I just remained quiet even through her pleads for me to get up.

Thankfully, our schedules were opposite…and, even if they weren't, I learnt to be a chameleon, slipping in the shadow before some person, any person, noticed me.

At work I couldn't be bothered, a plus.

I've written him. A lot.

Harry.

I could say I've sent over a hundred letters through the post.

Not a single reply.

Kingsley-or the interim Minister-said he'd look specifically into the matter…

Nine months ago when Harry left for the British Ministry's 52^nd Airborne Squad.

Every day the memories became grainier, less coloured; the only true memories I had with me now encompassed the expiration of those around me. And, I could do nothing. I was human, and that was bad. I used to believe magic could fix anything; that, by picking up one of these books I could figure out the impossible. Now, I realized-I was insignificant. Sometimes I wondered how I even knew how to tie my own shoes, or get dressed, walk upright. I was that machine they taught me to be, and I'd die that machine, just like the rest.

And, that was life.

This was normal.

This was normal at twenty years of age.

***

The captain, the doctor had the radio on while we had to amputate another soldier's leg after one of the terrorists, a Death Eater, had unleashed some sort of bacterial agent. To his hip. The leg was gone. We'd seen this before, the biological warfare in the form of gasses, sprays, or liquid thrown at our kin. I wondered if we did the same thing to them, seeing the bacteria literally eat away at the man's leg: skin and muscle gone, the bone protruding. We had to drug the man to keep him from screaming in pain-he screamed on the way out of the helicopter and into the tent-and this was considered a "good day".

We had on our full attire, in isolation, with everyone very aware of their surroundings for the bacteria could spread like fire if gotten on ourselves.

I watched our captain diligently mold his fingers across where he had to cut, healing through ointments made up this morning and his assistant, with myself, help in cauterizing the tissue surrounding the ball-and-socket joint. I watched our captain through the clear, magical shield covering my eyes go about his business as if this was like eating or drinking, an act of the every day, and I thought to myself:

Would I become like this?

The captain showed no emotion and did his work.

Would I become this numb?

The radio, its stereo scratchy and outdated, played Eric Burdon's ethereal vocals of House of the Rising Sun.

The doctor sang along as he went about his work, stitching the nub carefully.

Oh, mother, tell your children…
Not to do what I have done.
Spend your lives in sin and misery,
In the House of the Rising Sun…

I wondered if this was how he got by.

How he could tune out what I saw on a daily basis, and how this shifted his focus from the death and destruction around him.

Well, I got one foot on the platform
The other foot on the train.
I'm going back to London,
To wear that ball and chain…

He probably missed his family like me, his loved ones, and the people so close to him.

Like me, he probably hadn't seen them for that year or more.

I didn't want to be like him, but I did.

I wanted to remember, but I couldn't.

The machine was that safety blanket; a something I could hide in until it became too real. Then, maybe, one day I would callous over like he has and I could take on anything. The pain. The hellish, undeserved, searing torture. My heart would eventually freeze over, my emotions dry, dusty, ash. I could finally live in this bloodied world without feeling-and that I dreamt in my nonexistent dreams.

***

Anyone near the television watched the moving picture on the black-and-white screen.

In our mess hall, those who were in the process of walking through, reading the Quibbler, or eating the grub they considered "food" stopped. I had stopped, walking by the entryway. I had my surgical cap still on and went to relieve myself of it, pulling the light-and-dark blue cloth from my hair. I crumpled the material up in both my hands, staring blankly into the flickering, yet stale, lifeless monitor.

The image was of Kingsley behind a Ministry-emblazoned podium. Various flags from other countries, the States, Europe, and Asia were accounted for in unity.

I had missed the majority of his speech, Kingsley looking able, confident, but tired behind the four or so feet of wood.

"…The Ministry of Britain, as the world knows, does not want a war. We do not want a war. This generation of Britains, of the International community, has already had enough of this war, of this hate, and of this oppression. But, we are at task to protect what we cherish, and that is our freedom to live and to love our brothers and sisters. We did not start this war, but we will finish this war. God bless Britain, and God bless the Allies against this evil tainting the earth."

My ears perked up at the noise I couldn't quite recollect, an air of trepidation ripe within the room with everyone on pins and needles.

I believed we had hoped the Minister would be giving us good news.

A belief shattered in an instant, minutes in our long, trudging life ahead of us.

Nothing of the sort; a continuation of the same toilet bowl we'd been churning round and round in until we eventually all were sucked down the drain. All of us.

Flaming waves of ginger stood from me across the hall.

Our eyes caught each other's, and I took off, leaving in immediate haste.

She appeared in front of me, having apparated that distance, her pop making me take a step back. She never was one to dismiss, stubborn.

"Hermione-why haven't you spoken to me?"

I didn't give her the time of day, or night, or whatever bloody month it was anymore.

I didn't give a fuck.

I made my mind up in that mere second and apparated from betwixt her holding my shoulders, making her shuffle forward for she'd been leaning on me. Instead, she grabbed air. She scowled, turning one way down the hall and legged it, her boots clomping down the darkly-stained, shiny floor. Busting through group after group, she'd been persistent. I knew. I knew for I heard her knock, her fists banging my bedroom door. I'd apparated into the medical barracks.

In the lavatory, I began disrobing. I had to get the filth off. I had to get the blood off. With the water on full blast, I shoved my head underneath it.

Maybe, I thought, I could drown her out.

Maybe, I thought, she would grow tired.

Maybe, I thought, she wouldn't tear down my door.

But the third maybe never came.

I heard something finally give, a wrench kind of sound as if the very metal twisted and heaved until it could hold its shape no more. I didn't shut the deluge off, the echo cascading from the opened lavatory into the closet I lived in with a bed. Looking onward, I saw two of the three hinges gone, blown away. That was the noise, the squeal as it took a certain kind of witch to remove them. And, she did, unfastening the final hinge and I-

With wandless magick, I swiped the air, having a chest of drawers dig up from its bolted down feet.

I didn't have to wait long, the door giving in and falling the moment I threw the chest of drawers at her.

Heartily trained, too, she flinched, but caught the force of which I used and threw down the chest of drawers before it could escape the confines of my small space.

The chest of drawers landed in a mess along my chest, bursting forth with all my clothes scattered everywhere.

A drawer had flown out and hit the wall, making a slender desk of books and a radio fall, toppling all to the floor.

The radio cracked, a fuzzy sound appearing beneath the crashes which came, to clearly turn on:

Why does the sun go on shining?
Why does the sea rush to shore?
Don't they know it's the end of the world
`Cause you don't love me anymore..?

"Leave me alone!!" I screamed so loud I felt as if my vocal chords would bleed.

"Hermione!" huffed an exhausted Ginevra, her chest heaving from the immense amount of effort she drew upon to get to me-ultimately.

I fell into a heap of myself onto the ground.

I sat on my knees and slowly slumped forward.

Tears trickled and flowed easily from their ducts.

"It…hurts…so…much…"

Why do the birds go on singing?
Why do the stars glow above?
Don't they know it's the end of the world?
It ended when I lost your love…

I felt something warm envelop me, and then her shout, "Oi! The fuck you pricks looking at?!"

My room grew quieter, the buzzing of which gained in my ears softened and the lights from the hallway ceased. I looked up through my strewn, chaos of strands sticking together like tattered curtains to see she'd lodged the door from the floor back into its position. And, that she was on the floor with me, embracing me to her.

"I haven't heard from you in-!"

"I haven't showered in days-I haven't eaten-I work-" I cried into her, wailing as I hugged myself. "I haven't slept-"

I wake up in the morning and I wonder
Why everything's the same as it was?
I can't understand
No, I can't understand
How life goes on the way it does…

"It's because of the God damned pills!" She fled from around me, the coldness seeping back in; the cold like a wet blanket atop me, suffocating. "The God damned pills, Hermione!"

I heard my pill bottles being opened, and then thusly thrown across the room. "I've seen you steal these from the medical room! I knew you were popping them up like Bertie Bott's! This isn't a fucking game, `Mi! You could die!"

Whatever pills didn't land in the floor was promptly flushed down the toilet, Gin having a go at the loo.

"Maybe that's what I wanted!" I screamed out over the radio, the water still pouring waterfalls into the cavernous sink.

Why does my heart go on beating?
Why do these eyes of mine cry?
Don't they know it's the end of the world?
It ended when you said goodbye…

"I won't let my best friend talk like that-!" She was in front of my again, her warmth back with me.

But, I was gone into my own realm of madness.

Not quite that far from reality.

A fine line of sanity.

"I need to get you some help- You won't talk to me! You need to talk to someone! I won't let you leave me!"

Leave.

"I'm leaving…," I spoke calmly, and through reddened eyes I coughed up swallowed tears.

"What?!" Ginevra choked.

"I have to see him-I can't not see him anymore! I can't!"

"There's a psychologist-a Muggle, you know, on base. He can help-"

"I don't care anymore, Gin," My voice hauntingly reverberated off the chilled environs, the British winter creeping in from every tiny crack. "I've decided. It's done. Over."

Why does my heart go on beating?
Why do these eyes of mine cry?
Don't they know it's the end of the world?
It ended when you said…

"I'll be on the next eagle flight out to London."

"A-Are you," She became a stuttering version of herself, topped with ripe emotion. "Suicidal, `Mi?! You know if you sign up for that you'll be out of here! You might not ever come back!!"

I felt her hands on me tighten their grip.

"I can't live like this anymore." I heaved, thoroughly drained.

"What…?" Her voice was short-lived, a breath of itself, squeaky.

"…I need to know if he's still alive."

Ginevra gazed on with a steadily gaping, twitching mouth, concussed.

…Goodbye.

***

{Author's Note: Back to work for me. This series and the chapters are going to be much shorter than Life and Times which helps as my days are just as short of free time. Life and Times takes a lot out of me; but with these I can write them in a relatively sane amount of time.}

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