These Strange Familiar Things

These Strange Familiar Things

Chapter 3

A Bitter Caricature of a Smile

And I'd give up forever to touch you

Cause I know that you'd feel me somehow

You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be

And I don't want to go home right now

When all I can I can taste is this moment

And all I can breathe is your light

Sooner or later it's over

I just don't want to miss you right now

And I don't want the world to see me

Cause I don't think that they'd understand

When everything's made to be broken

I just want you to know who I am

And you can't fight the tears that ain't comin'

Or the moment of truth in your life

When everything feels like the movies

Yeah you bleed just to know you're alive

And I don't want the world to see me

Cause I don't think that they'd understand

When everything's made to be broken

I just want you to know who I am...

"Iris", The Goo Goo Dolls

Night was falling in a peaceful London neighbourhood. A couple of children who had stayed out late in the euphoria of summer holidays lingered in the street, their mothers calling them in from golden rectangles of light. A screen door somewhere slammed.

A few streets over, in front of a white Victorian two-story, a nondescript car was parked at the curb. A man in a Scotland Yard uniform oversaw the loading of two body bags into an ambulance and then watched as it drove away, receding quietly unaccompanied by flashing lights or sirens. He turned to the front door, where a man in strange clothing awaited him on the white-gingerbread veranda. The two men talked in low voices as they entered the house.

In the drawing room, Hermione Granger lay on the sofa in a foetal crouch, arms wrapped around herself, eyes half open and unseeing. Ministry officials and Aurors walked past her going in various directions, once in a while sparing her a sympathetic glance but never slowing.

Albus Dumbledore stood by the door of the drawing room talking to Alastor Moody in hushed tones. Hermione was so far away that she didn't even feel the unsettling gaze of his magical eye swivelling to rest on her frequently. Moody nodded at Dumbledore and left the room without another word, leaving the white-haired headmaster to turn and look sorrowfully at the motionless form of his brightest student on the chesterfield.

He looked old.

He walked over to Hermione and bent to feel her hands. They were icy. He frowned at the blue tinge to her fingernails. He quickly straightened and went to the doorway. "Kingsley," he called urgently.

The Auror came swiftly. "Yes sir?"

"Where is the mediwitch? Hermione has gone into shock."

"She should have arrived by now," Kingsley said with furrowed brow. "I'll check into it right away, sir."

"Have you contacted Mssrs. Potter and Weasley?"

"They're on their way, Professor. I'll go and see about the mediwitch."

"All right, carry on then." Dumbledore walked back to Hermione, conjuring a blanket on his way. He tucked it around her shivering limbs, then stroked her hair back from her forehead. Sighing, he sat down slowly in a nearby armchair, for once feeling his years. Why is it always our children who must pay the highest price for victory? He saw again in his mind's eye the twisted bodies of Prentiss and Agatha Granger. More innocents dead every day. Is victory even certain anymore?

He shook himself free of these thoughts. Too many were depending on him. Too many had faith in him, and would be shocked to know such sentiments resided in his wise head. Unfortunately faith alone is not enough to save us. It never has been, in this world.

A loud thump came from the direction of the front door, followed by a muffled "Oof!" and running footsteps. Dumbledore smiled and shook his head.

"Hermione!" Ron shouted, skidding into the drawing room and almost tripping on the rug. "Hermi--" he saw her then, staring and prone, and stopped dead. Harry slammed into him from behind and they knocked heads.

"Ow!" muttered Harry under his breath, and came around in front so he could see. The two boys walked slowly forward, identical stricken expressions on their faces. They knelt before her, Ron taking her listless face in his hands.

"She's cold, Harry," Ron said pitifully. He closed his eyes and lightly rested his forehead on Hermione's. "I don't think she knows we're here." His voice broke. Harry put a hand on Ron's shoulder without speaking, a tear slipping down his cheek.

Dumbledore rose as someone entered the room with a clatter. The boys looked up in surprise. "Professor Dumbledore?" Harry whispered, sounding lost. His mentor gazed back at them with undisguised sorrow, his blue eyes dull without their usual twinkle.

An foot tapped impatiently on the hardwood floor. "Excuse me," said a sharp voice. "You people will have to clear out so I can get to work."

They looked over as one to see an aging woman with a severe bun and a dour expression, thin-lipped mouth set in an irritated line.

"Well?" she barked, her frown deepening. "Move, I said."

Ron snapped out of his trance and jumped up, shielding Hermione with his body, angry colour blooming in his face. "Don't tell us to get out, you... you... whoever the hell you are! We're not leaving. Hermione needs us," he said loudly.

The woman's eyes narrowed. "What she needs," she bit out, "is medical attention, not the bumbling ministrations of two slavering teenage boys." Ron's eyes looked as if they were about to pop out of his head, and Harry stepped forward antagonistically.

Dumbledore held up an appeasing hand. "Please," he said and looked at the mediwitch. "She does need medical attention, and in fact needed it quite some time ago," he said, with a slight edge to his voice. "We will get out of your way and allow you to do your job."

She pursed her lips at the insinuation but nodded tersely. Dumbledore put a hand on each boy's shoulder and guided them out of the room; they were still tense with resentment. "Reminds me of bloody Snape," Ron muttered in irritation. Harry snorted explosively, trying hard to contain his hysterical laughter. Suddenly his eyes burned, and he didn't know if he was laughing or crying. Both of them became very grave then, glancing worriedly over their shoulders at Hermione.

"She will be all right," the headmaster reassured the boys--noticing, somehow for the first time, that they were young men.

The two did not answer, but exchanged a speaking look and sat down on the hallway floor to wait.

*

Rain drummed rhythmically on the roof, wrapping a blanket of lulling sound around the Burrow. The usually chaotic household was unnaturally silent. Hermione lay contemplating the raindrops weeping down her bedroom window, alone and buried in quilts.

Back at home, she had been treated for shock and told to gather her belongings for an indefinite stay at the Weasleys'.

The medicine still having its numbing cotton-wool effect on her, she went into her parents' room, rummaging at her mother's vanity table for the item she sought. After a moment her hand closed on it; she glanced at it fleetingly and stuffed it in her pocket.

She had steeled herself to go into her bedroom, unbearably relieved that her mother's body had been removed already, and spared a few seconds to pick up a couple of sentimental items and drop them in a bag, glad of the merciful sluggishness of her emotions. As she turned away from the dresser, a shiny package on her bed caught her eye. She walked over for a closer look and took a shaking breath when she saw her mother's looping handwriting on the card. For our dearest Hermione.

She grabbed up the present and put it away without looking at it again, about to leave, when she saw a half-crumpled piece of paper lying on her bedspread, revealed from where it had been stuffed under the gift. Scrawling, drunken letters spelled out H-E-R-M--and that was it. The scribe's time had run out.

There was no way she could manage this now, no way for her to even imagine reading what would surely be damned words from the pen of a dying woman.

The note went into her pocket along with what she had grabbed from her parents' room, and she fled from the bedroom as if demons were chasing her. Dumbledore, Mad-Eye and her two best friends were waiting for her at the bottom of the steps; her trunk, discarded in the afternoon's events, floated in the air next to Harry. Seeing the wild look in Hermione's eyes, they wisely refrained from breaking the silence and motioned her out the door.

The Knight Bus departed with a hiss and a screech of brakes, and Hermione, lost in thought, barely registered the hand that grabbed her arm to keep her from flying back ten feet...

Hermione's mouth twisted in a bitter caricature of a smile as she watched the window. Strange that it was raining, crying for her at a time when she felt the tears had simply vanished from inside her, leaving an aching dry space. Ironic really, considering how she had always scoffed loudest at the Disney it's-raining-because-the-world-feels-my-pain cliché. It seemed that today she wasn't going to be allowed to hold onto even her comforting mantle of intellectual dogma.

A soft knock came at her door. Ron poked his head tentatively in and stared at her with big eyes. "Hermione? Can I come in?" She just looked at him, saying nothing. He took this for assent and sat down next to her on the bed. Hermione turned away from the expression in his eyes, feeling uncomfortable with the fierce misery and pity she saw there. "I'm so sorry Hermione," he said in a choked whisper. She closed her eyes at the awful words. Was there anything more idiotic to say to a bereaved person?

She snapped her head around and looked him in the eye. "What do you want, Ron?" she said coolly. He jerked, looking like a kicked puppy.

"I...what? I want to...comfort you. Make you feel better," he said haltingly, confusion mirrored in his blue eyes.

Hermione let out a harsh sound between a sob and a laugh. "What are you going to do? Bring my parents back? Give it a rest. I just want to be alone." She turned over in bed, her face to the window. Men. Always needing to fix things.

She heard him gulping behind her, struggling to speak. Finally he said, "I just wish I could take away some of the pain, love. That's all."

Her stomach clenched at the endearment, something that had weakened her knees the first time she had heard it from his lips almost six months ago. It was such an unlikely thing for Ron Weasley to say, the earnest, blushing adolescent retreating momentarily and affording a glimpse of the captivating and mature man he would one day be. Now it made her feel something close to pain in her abdomen. She tried to recall the sweet warmth he always stirred in her, the way his smile affected her...but there was nothing. The space her first love had occupied was a gaping canyon, desolate and deep.

"Please, Hermione," said Ron, his voice breaking. He put a hand on her shoulder. "I love you, I know you love me. I would want you to be the one to hold me if I was in your place..."

Hermione spun violently towards him. "Don't you dare presume to tell me what you would do if you were in my place," she ground out in a low, dangerous voice. "You have no idea. Look at you, you've got so much family it's coming out your ears! Seven identical orange heads all grinning all the time. Well maybe you don't know what I need, Ronald." She spat the last part. He stared at her in speechless shock, tears standing in his eyes.

"Maybe you shouldn't presume you know what I feel," Hermione said in a lower voice, looking down at the brightly patched quilt she was twisting in her hands. "Maybe my heart is dead to love." The last was barely audible.

Ron looked as if the ground had turned to dust under his shoes, like something had died inside him. "You don't love me then?" he whispered, never breaking his stare.

She fidgeted under his intense gaze and wished he would stop looking at her. Guilt ate at her stomach, bringing a harsh colour to her face. The silence stretched out between them. "I know I did. I know I want to. But I just don't," she finally said miserably. She glanced at him fleetingly, dreading the look on his face. He was standing with his back to her, shoulders hunched as if to ward off another blow. "I'm sorry Ron."

Suddenly she felt a freezing anger. Why was she apologizing? Wasn't it Hermione who had walked into her home on the first day of summer and encountered the grotesquely murdered bodies of her only living family members? It wasn't her fault she no longer felt anything for her boyfriend. She just had nothing to give him, felt no reason to give it.

He turned around and looked at her, surprised to see the angry mask on her face. "Look Ron, I'm not sorry, okay? I didn't do this; Voldemort did. He's the one that cut out my heart and threw it away, so don't give me those beseeching eyes asking for so many things I can't give. I don't need this right now."

Ron swallowed. "Okay." He tried to say something else, his mouth moving dumbly, but then he gulped, another silent sob choking him. He ran a shaking hand through his unruly hair and dragged a sleeve across wet eyes. "Would you like me to sit with you?" His voice barely wavered, but she could see the effort in the set of his jaw.

Hermione sagged and fell back against her pillow. "Just go, Ron."

She didn't watch him leave and close the door quietly behind him. She was looking out the window. Mockingly, it had stopped raining. She let out a sobbing breath and turned her face into the pillow, willing slumber to carry her away from herself.