Not In Kansas Anymore

Chapter Eight: Suicidal Guidance

Harry didn't quite know what had inspired him to walk into enemy territory. He supposed he wanted to know if the rumors were true or if it was just more myth and mere rumor. Somewhere deep inside he needed to know how he was supposed to feel, should he be grieving, should he be carrying on like normal, or should he be having passionate sex?

Grieving, he knew it the moment he saw their gaunt faces, their empty and blood shot eyes, shells operating on caffeine. Draco looked as if he wanted nothing more than to take his head off, but he didn't move from the sofa. Ron looked thoroughly pissed off at him, they hadn't spoken since the divorce, there was the occasional owl of Quidditch congratulations and they gone out for silent drinks together, but they hadn't spoken a word.

It was Fred and George who had the visible reactions. They each grabbed him by one arm and dragged him into a deserted corridor. It was intimidating to have the same face looming over you in two spaces, the same look of disgust twisted over their lips, each with an arm on one side of his head, and their eyes talking fearsome volumes. The kind of books that inspired campfire ghost tales.

"We don't want to know why you're here," said George, making no move to recall the times they had shared together laughing and celebrating long before the twins had walked Hermione down the isle...twice.

"But since you are..." continued Fred in the same degrading tone.

"You can heal her wounds, you owe her that much."

Harry shrank down against the wall only to have two hands pull him back up by his collar. "Me?" he coward.

"You," they replied in identical tones at the same time.

"Lord knows the people who care about her have tried. Ron and Draco going out of their minds with worry, not sleeping. We're here only in the few moments their not and even when they are here."

"She hasn't moved on centimeter. The healers call it shock."

"Me?" asked Harry again.

Fred and George exchanged disgusted looks; "Don't you just have a favorite topic? Yes you, you've treated her like shit since she got pregnant, so it's fitting that you save her from herself."

Abruptly they let go of him and he slid down the wall. "Go."

*

Harry put his hand on the small of Hermione's back and whispered, "Go," into her ear.

Nervously Hermione walked across the platform, she met Draco at the altar and together, the picture of irony, they looked out on the crowd of people gathered in the Great Hall. Draco leaned on the podium casually, his green robes pristine and his hair impeccable. With a forced smile Hermione tugged on the back of his robes to make him stand up straight next to her.

Her hair was swept up in pinned curls that Parvati and Lavender insisted upon. The red velvet robes felt a bit foolish on her tiny body, especially in late May. She looked at the carefully written note cards in her hand and before giving Draco a slight glance she threw them over her shoulder where they bounced off Crabbe's snoring face. "That was our speech," observed Draco, something in his voice and the way his gray eyes followed the fluttering paper carelessly told the audience he didn't much mind.

Hermione elbowed him in the gut and carried on. "I came up here after somebody told me to 'Go'. Pretty basic advice, but after seven years in one place it's a little unnerving to hear that you have only one set of instructions..."

Draco caught on and together they said, "To just 'Go'."

"It's a bit impractical to just tell one-hundred-nineteen seventeen-year-old witches and wizards to just 'Go,'" said Hermione matter-of-factly.

Draco shook his head. "Or it would be if we were any other class, but we're distinctively unique."

"There have been the moments of pain and angst, we've lost so many in our fight," said Hermione bowing her head slightly.

"Then again we've gained just as many," added Draco, counting himself secretly in that number.

"Nobody's ever just told us to 'Go,'. There has always been a precise list of rules: no magic in the corridors. There have been exact directions: add one cup of water, stir windershines four times and then wait exactly six minutes before stirring clockwise. Write four-and a quarter feet of parchment," recalled Hermione.

"Now we just have to 'Go,'. It is a very bizarre sensation to know in a few hours our futures are arriving in packages of decades tied with income tax and saddled with problems so much bigger than inter-house relationships," sighed Draco, knowing Slytherin had lost the House Cup again because three Gryffindors had defeated the Dark Lord.

"Yes," agreed Hermione. "Its new adventures that are a bit scary." She laughed a bit. "Forget our fears of flying and Quidditch, we haven't got to worry about curfew anymore. Now its forever we've got on our hands."

"Some of us are going to teach, walking these halls again," said Draco, looking at Hermione expectedly.

Hermione ignored his gaze and said, "Some of us are getting married and starting a family promptly." Ron blushed a bit behind her.

"There are spots at the Ministry opening..."

"Memoirs in the works..."

"Places behind bank counters to be filled..."

"Photos to be taken..."

"Corners to be walked around," said Hermione, starting to draw this little speech to an end.

Draco knew where she was going and said, "Uncertainties waiting around those very corners, but just because we have a bum map doesn't mean we can avoid that alley."

Hermione picked up on his thread and concluded, "Someday we're all going to need a bit of guidance as we blunder forward and it's very basic what we need to be told..."

Together Draco and Hermione said, "Go."

Polite applause followed and Dumbdlore started to hand out diplomas, tassels changed sides, hands were shaken, polite acknowledgments we said, and then Dumbdlore stood up as parents were finishing pumpkin juice. His voice rang out across the hall as he said, "GO!"

*

She was just a solitary figure silhouetted against the stark white of her bed. Brown hair against white gown, tan skin against white sheets, and holy brown eyes open and staring from inside her whites. A lonely angel with clipped wings, a fallen angel. Hermione didn't see him, if she had her reactions would have been faster. Harry shut the ward door behind him, she didn't even hear, she just looked across the room.

He stood a few feet away from her, looking upon her as though she were a dangerous and caged animal, if he was thinking straight he would remember exactly what it was like to be barred away. "Hermione?"

That voice was so darn familiar, so cold, so nervous, not at all like the sweet and condescending voices she had been hearing for the past three days. This voice wasn't very nice. Then it came again; "Hermione?"

It was Harry.

Her head snapped around and she set eyes on him, her face twisting into knots of hatred. "Get out!" she snarled. "I hate you, just get away."

Hermione kept her eyes trained on him, he had cheated on her, he had torn her happy life away, he had shunned their children--their unborn children--and now...those children were gone. This had to be his fault, there was no other way, and it all just led back around to him. "I am not going anywhere."

"I hate you, understand? Bugger off!" Hermione looked at him and Harry had to tell himself not to take a step back in the wake of her rage, she was so distant, so closed off like she had built tall walls of ice around her in the time she had been here.

Harry looked her back in the eyes and he was not greeted by warm liquid chocolate dashed with cinnamon and amber, rather he saw glaciers capped in icy resentment...she was boiling with hate and yet she remained arctic. "Do you really Hermione? Do you really hate me? Or is it someone else you hate...yourself maybe?"

Hermione immediately reacted, though it was as if she was moving in slow motion and Harry was surprised at how much it hurt for the next words to ring out. "No Harry, I just hate you."

Quietly Harry turned and walked away, his head down and he could feel Hermione watching him.

Draco snatched him. "Well?"

Harry looked up at Draco miserably; "Oh, she's back with a denying passion."

The spark of hope that lit through both Draco and Ron was tangible and both of them bolted through the doors before the realized that Hermione was gone.

*

The dorm was bathed in moonlight and the door was gently swinging shut, but by looking in from the window you would notice nothing out of place. There were five beds, with five snoring teenage boys in them; actually there was one bed where a tall black boy was sleeping with a short girl. The girl had her long ebony hair wrapped around the crown of her head, and her breathing came easily as she slept protectively under the boy's arm. Through the thin material of her nightgown her stomach moved and her dreams were undisturbed.

In the next bed a sandy haired boy restlessly turned, his dreams debating possibilities his conscious did not dare ponder. Then came the boy who talked in his sleep, somedays he spoke of fields of nurtured plants, but most days he preached vengeance against a few whom had obviously wronged him.

If you moved along the dorm windows you would see a boy sleeping with a stupid vapid smile plastered over his face, his arms cradling a body that wasn't there, his form is cut with strong streaks of moonlight, he was at perfect harmony with himself. Odd because he was dreaming of the person who was missing...

Finally came the bed petitioned away with heavy curtains despite the fact that it was nearly summer and the curtains kept in warmth. There was a boy wrapped in the choking sheets, tossing, longing for a comforting hand on the small of his back. He sleeps lightly and in disturbed spurts. He wakes when his friend turns over, when Neville yells of revenge, and he woke when the girl sneaked out of the room on padded feet.

Cautiously, holding the wand he sleeps with, he looked out from his hangings to see the door closing. Stressed he falls back on the pillow and after torturous minutes he falls back to sleep.

The boy in the bed next to his, Ron, rolls over on to the deserted mattress and perhaps he feels the missing warmth, perhaps he hears the condensing of his friends pillows, or perhaps he can feel your eyes watching him from the window.

He cracks a sleep caked eyelid and moves an arm over the bed, though he knows she is gone. Denying himself the pleasures of suspicion he contributes her absence to his dreams and falls back to sleep with the added warmth of sheets.

Perhaps if he had stayed awake just a moment longer he would have seen the girl wonder back in. And though he does not see her cover herself in his presence, you would see that she had a content smile, a smile that betrayed her full belly and just a touch of peanut butter on her cheeks.

*

Hermione could feel the wind blowing in over her face, gently sweeping over her cheeks and billowing the fabric of the hospital gown. She looked down and could see nothing of the Muggle street below. Perhaps this was for the best and she wouldn't be as shocked when she hit the ground.

There was a problem with being wrong, she didn't like being wrong, her life had been about perfection, perfect grades, perfect alabaster body, perfect family, perfect love...

She had always had the intention of living the sitcom life style, where problems worked themselves out in ways that were always harder than they seemed. Inside she knew she had gained the perfect body, it had been filled with life, and it had been brutally ripped out of her hands, torn from her grasp. Her family had been swept under the rug, she had had her revenge but that loss had started all the trauma, all the sticking out of hip bones, all the tears, the catatonic states that she had to be torn from...that tree was just the root of her imperfection. Then there had been love, love had become a disappointing object for her, and it never ended the right way. One love ended in a fainting spell, the second in a courtroom, and her third love had fallen, literally, down a set of marble stairs.

And it was always her fault.

It wasn't really something she liked to admit to herself, the fact that it had been her to faint, her to call for the divorce, her to trip. She would have liked to blame it on sour arrows, Harry, and then Harry again, but he was right. She had always been to blame, it was her fault, and now she should pay for it. Now she should just leave. It was only fair.

And what better way to do that than through the open portal before her?

*

The world passed in slow motion. One moment her feet were planted on the stairs in the fuzzy slippers. The next moment her feet were not on the ground and she was lying on the marble floor, her head was pounding and a sharp knife was driven through her gut.

She heard the bowl shatter into a zillion tiny pieces and vaguely registered that it had been a nice looking china of Draco's mum's.

Next she heard the book catapult out of her arms and make a sickening thud somewhere far off in the distance.

Her head fell on to the floor; her own body colliding with the cold floor and she knew nothing past the darkness.

*

Draco gripped her arm as she pushed her hip up on to the window; she struggled against him trying to escape through the window, to fall into the next world portal. "No," he groaned pulling her off of it.

Ron settled her effigy half on to his lap and ran shaking hands through her hair, hugging her to him, letting her dry sobs bleed into his shoulder. It was hazy to her as sounds were savored by her ears, as her heartbeat was enjoyed, her unsteady breaths finding a revered pattern, and the simplicity and delicacy of her state...life...was awfully refreshing.

She didn't hear the words the four voices said to her, or at least she didn't understand them. She found herself in clothes, she found a darning needle mending her soul, and two weeks later she was finding her way around the Manor again without eyes mentoring her steps.