The Cloak

Prologue

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

~Plato

She pulled herself until she was on the edge of the bed, teetering on the edge of remembering and letting go of it all. She curled her toes just enough so they didn't touch the rich hardwood floor yet, whose coolness would bring reality crashing around her. Sighing, she pulled the cloak tighter around her shoulders, the feel of the fabric against her bare skin willing her to lie back down beside him, singing her the promise of a few more hours of something that didn't exist.

She finally stood, pushing a warm breath through her lips in neither relief nor frustration that it was over, and walked away from the bed. The cloak shadowed her every move and when she collapsed in the corner of the room it clung to her every curve and shape, holding her, and soaking up the grief she finally released.

He stirred slightly. She knew he had heard her, but what could he do but ignore her? Ignore her as he had always done, as he would now have to continue to do. She pulled the cloak tighter around her; the smell of him lingering in it's every stitch. At that moment it was the only thing that prevented her from falling. She stood, wiped the lone tear from her cheek and made to gather up her clothes. She could feel him staring at her, though he was pretending not to. Neither spoke.

Silently she made her way to the bathroom, closing the door and abruptly cutting off the atmosphere of unsaid promises and comforts. It had been one night, and now it was over.

Trembling, she removed the cloak and shrugged into her clothes, wrinkled with feeling and fervor. She cruelly bound her dirty gold locks in a band, letting the too short pieces frame her face.

"It's over," she whispered to her pale reflection in the mirror. Mere hours ago the girl in the mirror had been glowing; her cheeks tinted with red like she'd stepped in from the cold, her hair nothing but a halo of innocence. Now her hair was dirty, her body stained. No, she thought fiercely, tonight you will be stained. Today...today you are painted.

Holding back a fresh round of tears--a sure sign of weakness--she threw the cloak around her shoulders before numbly removing it again. It wasn't hers. It never had been. Then again, it had never really been anybody's.

She quickly opened the door and stepped back into the dark room, the first pale streaks of the sunrise hidden by the blinds. The dark-haired man in the bed flipped over so his back was to both doors: that which she had just come through and that which through she would leave. He wasn't being callous; he was being cold, as they would both have to be now. She tossed the cloak carelessly onto the edge of the bed, the edge which had minutes ago been the only thing holding her in a dream, and headed for the door. With one hand on the doorknob she strained to not look back.

As she opened the door and stepped across the threshold, she left behind her life, everything that had made it worth living. And out on the street an unknowing stranger passed a ghost, a mere replica of what once had been worth something. Miles away on another street, the sun creeping its way over the horizon, another stranger passed another ghost, another who had just walked away from the only man she had ever loved. Unwillingly, Hermione Granger and Pansy Parkinson shared a bond: they had both died that morning and were now walking to a fate far worse: the person they must pretend to love.