This is Not a Story About Faith...Except that it Just Might Be

This is Not a Story About Faith...Except that it Just Might Be

Hermione was born a Catholic.

By age ten, she'd logically concluded that she was an atheist.

Nineteen and she'd broken the fifth commandment so many times.

During her twenty-first summer, she found herself in confessional.

*

"Bless me Father, for I have sinned," she murmured through the grate in perfect Italian, her thin fingers petting a stained crucifix gently, as though remembering something she could almost forget.

From the other side of the grate came the exasperated voice, in heavy English, of Father Luccido. "Granger," he rolled her name, all the 'r's' coming tough like the jagged hem of her scarf, wrapped around her shoulders and knotted here and there, keeping the knit together as best as possible. "How many times must we do this?"

"Just once more," she said placidly, blinking away wet memories that dripped off her eyelashes and splashed on the cross. "Father, I have killed a man." She could say it now without even choking on the verb; time had made (allowed) Hermione admit things, terrible things.

The Father nodded his head, though Hermione could not see it. "But how many have you saved?"

Hermione bit her chapped and scarred lips and replied quietly. "Not nearly as many," she picked at the scarf, the faded colors of victory: gold and red.

"No," said the Father, "but what about him?"

And Hermione knew he was talking about Harry.

"He needs me."

"Does he, really?" pressed the Father.

Hermione nodded earnestly. "Of course, he's blind, what would he do for sight?"

"Surly," began the Father, "if he is as good as you make him up to be, then there are others who would care for him." Hermione knew he was right. There were others, with less going on in their time, people who had come to terms, who hadn't run all the way to fucking Rome...there was Ron, Ginny, Luna, Draco (she really missed his hands around her waist)...eternities of people who owed Harry something, anything more than owls a week late, telephone calls garbled and not cheap, flashy forwarded messages that Hermione read to him.

"He needs me," sobbed Hermione, she hated this part of the conversation, hated it more each time, but she could never tell the Fath--

"Could it be that you need him?"

Oh, that was a twist, and that was low.

Hermione blinked several times in quick succession and carefully asked, keeping her voice even and delicate, reverting to a dialect somewhere between English and Italian out of a forced habit. "What is my penance?"

"You have punished yourself enough child, you have exiled yourself to Roma, prayed yourself horse until you were faithless again, helped others so much that you've forgotten why you like helping in the first place. There will be no penance tonight."

Gulping down her surprise, Hermione exited the confessional, immediately her eyes found Harry and she walked towards him, her head bowed in frustrated reverence, clutching her crucifix until her hands turned red -white--pink. "Hello," greeted Harry before she had even placed her hand on his shoulder. "How did it go?"

Same question everyday.

Hermione slid on to the pew beside Harry and sighed heavily. "I miss...I miss...I miss stuff," she ceded finally.

Somehow, Harry's rough hands found their way to Hermione's face and sloppily wiped off a tear, his thumb colliding with her nose and he laughed lowly. "This used to be so easy."

"Laughing?" asked Hermione, because she knew she didn't laugh anymore.

"Maybe for you," recognized Harry wisely, "no, for me it's the movement that's harder than before."

"Of course."

"What else do you miss?"

When Hermione didn't answer Harry added, "I miss the smell of grass, there at the end, when you and Ron were figuring out what to do with me and Draco I did a lot of smelling. Rome smells like garlic. Home smells like gingerbread."

"Gingerbread?"

"And Mrs. Weasley."

Hermione couldn't help it anymore, her head fell onto Harry's shoulder and she said, "I miss English, I miss Ron, I miss school, sweaters, the Underground, I miss Draco, and that horrible blight of a Ferris wheel."

The church around them emptied steadily as they sat there bathed in nostalgia. Their reminiscing slowed to a halt until they were sitting there in an all-encompassing silence, Hermione leaning on Harry just the way she always had, her tears drying into nasty little memories.

"Wake-up," whispered Harry, searching for Hermione's hand and squeezing it gently. Out of her hand came the crucifix, crashing toward the floor.

Such sweet symbolism.

Shaking off the cobwebs and other intrusive devices set to hinder her approach into conciseness Hermione mumbled, "Did I?"

"Yep."

"Let's go home," said Hermione decisively.

*

Ron smelled like...ginger something.

Hermione ran into his bear hug, throwing her thin body into his arms, nuzzling his collarbone as the burly man picked her up, and mumbled joyful nothings into her ear, nonsensical phrases that she'd missed.

"Ferret!" screamed Hermione over Ron's shoulder just as Ron opened his blood shot eyes and shouted hoarsely, "Harry, mate!"

Hermione and Ron dropped each other and flew in polar directions.

"What on God's glorious green earth are you doing Granger?" asked Draco as Hermione tried to strangle him.

Tears halted in her throat, Hermione whispered in Draco's ear as he held her, "No more God. I have so much damn faith I'll probably choke on it."

Draco kept a protective grip around her waist as he pulled back and examined her with eyes that knew every nuance of her body: from the dip of her navel and curve of her neck to the fucking arch of her foot. She was still Hermione Granger. The same grotesque scarf was knotted around her neck, a shabby chic braid ran down toward her bony hips, and her bag looked liked she'd used it to fight a bull.

"What?" she blushed self-consciously under his vague brand of scrutiny.

Draco shrugged and said, "Hate you."

"Nothing's changed then?" she clarified, kissing him casually.

Flipping his classic hair out of his crystalline eyes Draco arched a brow. "Not a damn thing."

Fred then hit her back and pulled her to him backward, laughing into her ear. "Six months is too long. Not ever again. Malfoy's been an absolute mess."

"A mess?" giggled Hermione.

"He's antagonizing our customers," said Fred, spinning Hermione around in an uncanny dance.

*

The Burrow was now a hostel.

Turns out things do change in six months.

Hermione and Draco bunked in Mr. and Mrs. Weasley's old room because none of their children would go near it. War changes everything (how many times has Hermione heard that adage?). Harry and Ron had Ron's room, the orange chips of paint now repaired simply, and the bed sheet patched and repatched by...

"If you ever leave again I will kill you!" snapped Ginny, slapping Hermione's arse with a wooden spoon, her apron around her waist, batter of some sort on her forehead like a battle scar.

Like mother like daughter. Though some swore they'd never see it.

Hermione giggled and tucked into the sandwiches laid out before her.

So strange that no one seemed ready to reprimand her for taking their hero and escaping, as far and as fast as she could.

It was almost as if they understood. But they couldn't because they didn't know the whole story. And they needed to know. Needed to know something was wrong with their Hermione.

*

In the mirror, she looked perfectly normal. Big brown eyes, tan skin too dark for her to have spent the past winter in England, hair positively everywhere, but you would never know something was wrong.

So she scrunches her nose up and tries to figure out what it is.

According to the doctor, she is fine: no cancer, diabetes, hemophilia, influenza, insomnia, depression, allergies or claustrophobia.

All she has is a strong hypochondriac mindset.

Except that she knows something is just not right here as she spins in the mirror, eyeing herself from all conceivable angles. This is just a pair of grey sweatpants, a yellow tank top, mismatched socks, and a watch.

"So what's wrong with me?" she says to herself, watching the hot tears.

"Nothing," said Ron, and Hermione gave a gasp of surprise as he hugged her. He sat his head in the crook of her shoulder and wrapped his big arms around her, watching them shift subtly in the mirror. Red hair next to brown, pale freckles on wet tan skin, tall and short... "You're fine," he murmured, breath warm against her cheek.

"Then why can't I write 'god' with a capital 'g'? Why can't I breathe the same air as Harry without feeling guilty? Why do I feel so out of depth here? Did I break something? Am I really here?"

Ron let her ask questions for ten solid minutes before she stopped, out of breath.

"This is so surreal," he said, still watching them softly sway in the mirror. They looked like best fucking friend, like normal adults. Except that if you looked close you could see the scars on his hands from knives and potion burns, the ink perpetually staining the pads of her fingers, the age mutually tainting their young faces (especially in their eyes, in the way they blinked like sages), and if you listened to the tones in the air you could tell that they knew each other so well that they could make a sketch with their eyes closed and when you picked up the paper, on it would be nothing except love red fingerprints.

There was nothing normal here: fine, yes, normal, never again.

Suddenly Ron pulled himself off Hermione and walked to the edge of the bathtub, leaving her reflecting in the bathroom mirror alone. Running his hand over his face, he fell into the empty bathtub backward and fully clothed.

The ugly pink curtain hiding his face, he said flatly, "Draco's going to purpose."

Hermione climbed into the bath opposite of Ron, the faucet poking her back, scrunching up her knees and pulling that curtain with her to hide the secrets from that dumb mirror. "I'm going to say 'yes'." She looked Ron sadly in the eyes, crying cool tears now.

"I always thought it would be me," he said finally, looking so antique in the little light that filtered though the curtain. He reached his hand out to hold hers, big and small back again, for the very last time. "Nothing goes as planned."

"People change."

"Sad little girls run away."

"Harry needs us, you know."

"No, we need him."

"Desperately."

Hermione's face broke out in a smile. "We're sitting in a bathtub."

Looking at the absurdity of the scene Ron said, "I don't want to leave yet."

"Good," sighed Hermione, embracing the pain of the faucet. "Because I'm finally comfortable."

Comfortable for the moment.

*

"Bless me Father for I have sinned," sang Hermione through the grate. Her rosary hung funny, contrasting sharply with the white of her dress.

"Continue child," allowed the Father, instantly recognizing the long lost voice.

"It has been five months since my last confession," she replied happily, "And it will be the last one I ever make."

The Father chuckled good-naturedly. "Blasphemy."

Hermione crossed her legs and ticked off several sins for the Father. "I had sex yesterday purely for fun, I do not attend church on a regular basis, I recently stole peanut butter, started a bonfire on the beach, and--oh, yes, my shirt doesn't have sleeves."

"I thought you killed a man once," inquired the Father delicately, testing the waters here.

Hermione shook her head. "I did, yes, but I have saved others."

"And of yourself?"

"Oh, I sort of saved myself. Bathtub therapy, you see."

The Father did nothing for several moments, then he said plainly, "So, you've learned what?"

"Life is not a long term commitment."

"Then," began the Father, "your penance is to be happy."