Quiet Revolution

Chapter 8 - Holding Uncertainty's Hand

I can see that you've been crying
What's the use in you denying that what you have is wrong?
I heard him promise you forever
But forever's come and gone

When Ron finally woke up, Dean ran to tell Seamus, who yelled it so that half the Great Hall heard. Hermione dropped her toast and half the school watched as she tore out of the Hall and didn't stop running until she spotted a pale, but grinning Ron who was hugging a shaking Ginny.

When Ginny let go, she had tearstains etched on her lightly freckled face. Her eyes grew wide and she smiled a pretty smile at Hermione and ran to hug her next. And then she trotted off.

Hermione stood before Ron and felt oddly self conscious in front of her only living best friend. He looked back at her and she was surprised to see before her not even a hint of a grin - no slight traces of any type of smile.

What was going on? Say something.

Comment about how girls always hug. Comment about how

"Ro---"

"Why didn't you warn me, Hermione? I could have died, did you know that? That's what Madam Pomfrey said to me."

She reeled back slightly and felt her lungs gasp shortly for breath.

"I did warn you!"

"But you didn't stop me!" he spat out. "You knew how dangerous it was, and you didn't stop me!"

"Ron!" Hermione cried out, gathering all her tears on the inside. "You're being so stupid--"

"Aren't I, Hermione? That's me, right? It was always Ron, you don't understand. Oh, Ron, you should have known. And all you could think about was Harry being gone! Well, guess what, Hermione?!" he shouted.

"What?" she seethed.

"I'm still here! We were best friends. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

We were best friends. We were best friends.

She trembled a bit on the inside, and her heart almost cried out in surprise to compensate for her lack of verbal skills.

"Ron," she finally uttered. "I saved your life!" Her voice was soft, slightly shrill - a dangerously desperate edge clung to her vocals.

"Good one; did Malfoy help?"

"As a matter of fact----" she began vehemently.

"Forget it, Hermione," Ron said, his voice melting back into his usual gentle boyish tone. "I'm tired. Just... leave me alone."

"Ron," she insisted, using all her strength to hold back her tears.

"Just... go have fun with Malfoy, okay? You seem to be fine doing that, without me."

She looked at him with pure expressions of utter shock playing on her face the entire time. She didn't know how to defend herself further - she lacked the strength that she had lost to Harry's death.

So Hermione Granger took one of the hardest steps she'd ever taken in her life. She turned on her heal and walked the other direction, away from Ron.

He never tore his eyes off her.

***

"Well, Weasley did have a point."

"I beg your pardon?" she demanded coldly.

"Have fun with Malfoy, he'll make things better for you!" Draco said, making his voice extra nasal in a mock fashion.

She picked up a book and promptly hurled it in his direction. With all his years of being a Seeker, he expertly dodged it by a narrow inch.

"Not bad."

And then Hermione uttered a string of words that made Draco exclaim: "Granger!"

She felt her anger dying down and simmering into a revolting pool of regret. What had she just done? She had walked away from her only living best friend in the entire world. Was it really going to be okay?

"It'll be okay," Malfoy finally said reassuringly, kicking his legs up lazily onto the table. "Once we get this spell figured out, Potter will be back and Weasley will have no recollection of this."

And still, this made her uneasy. She bit her lower lip softly in an effort to block the tears.

Draco looked at her. "Crying is a sign of weakness," he said calmly.

"I wasn't going to cry!" she snapped, lying through her teeth.

"Oh, pardon." Draco yawned, and just before he proceeded to turn this into a full staged mockery by stretching out his arms in the seat, he caught her face and saw her struggling at a full breath to stop herself from crying.

He lowered his hands and tried to think of something to say.

Instead, she did.

"It's hard," she whispered.

He opened his mouth and closed it. Opened it again, closed it again.

He looked down and turned to the correct page, then pushed the book forward to her.

"I know," he finally said. "It is."

And they both began reading and said no more.

***

"Take a seat, mate," Dean gestured casually up at Ron. The lanky boyish redhead was shooting glances at Hermione who sat alone and looked tired with her untouched plate of food in front of her just a few seats down.

Ron looked back down at Dean; across him sat Seamus and his girlfriend, Lavender, who looked up at him encouragingly. Friendship had been cutting him deeply in the past few months of his life. First he had lost Harry, now Hermione was rapidly and surely slipping away. The two backbones to his life had died - one had crumbled... departed this life. The other had fallen apart and willingly walked away from him.

You let her, he thought guiltily to himself.

But she doesn't care about you anymore, another voice chimed in.

"Hey." An actual line of speech hit him in the face. "Traditionally, we eat sitting down and put food into our mouths," Seamus' lightly accented voice called cheerily at Ron.

He finally sat down in front of his plate and watched, as Hermione had done earlier at her spot, as the unappealing meal began to formulate before him.

"She's been driving Parvati and me, absolutely mad," Lavender said loudly, following Ron's glances. Ron looked up at her.

"What?"

"Always talking to herself and whatnot. I remember earlier in the year, she claimed that she saw... get this," Lavender leaned in, brewing more petty anticipation as Seamus and Dean listened closely, "Draco Malfoy!" Lavender whispered and then chortled.

Ron choked on the dry bread that he had stuffed into his mouth. So he wasn't the only person she had consulted about this. He let the laughter die out a bit before he smiled half-heartedly at the other three. And though he felt a ripple of discomfort wave through his heart when Hermione silently trotted past him, he only ate more and smiled harder.

***

"Here."

Draco was sitting in the only armchair the Gryffindor common room had. It was his favourite chair to sit in. The common room around them was pale and silent; as everyone had gone to Hogsmeade. He looked down at the side table and saw that she had placed an apple, a cookie and half a sandwich, wrapped up in a thick wrinkled napkin next to him.

He looked at her questioningly. She didn't even notice his glance, having been too preoccupied with seeing Ron earlier in the Great Hall. She just began speaking with authority.

"I thought you might be hungry," she explained. "So eat up, we have a lot of---"

With one swift motion and a burst of sounded frustration, Malfoy knocked the food off the table and growled menacingly at her, staring at her fiercely.

She looked at the food that had fallen to the floor, the sandwich falling apart and the broken cookie pieces scattering around on the thickly patterned.

The tension suddenly grew as thick as the soupy fog that drifted outside their window. It was near December, and the weather coated down on them with thick layers of freeze and chill. From far away, Hogwarts looked like a little ice castle.

He broke that tension by speaking roughly, his voice sounding huskier than usual. "I can't eat, remember?" he snapped. "I can't bloody taste anything."

"Oh," was her response. She bent down and began to pick up the pieces of the broken sandwich and to her surprise, saw a pair of bent knees make swift contact on the rug next to her a hand pass her the apple.

She looked up at him cautiously, her face checked with slight surprise.

He met her eyes coolly with hers for a second before looking down and then getting up.

"We'd better get started," he said quietly.

She waited for him to give her a hand to hoist her up, but he didn't. Instead, he merely began walking toward the entrance to the common room and undoubtedly to their quiet spot in the library. She waited a second until he disappeared to give herself a chance to let out a long, exhilarated breath.

Her lungs were aching - her chest was throbbing. An inexplicable rush of pain came in waves, sweeping across her body. She didn't know what hurt so much. This new pain - the absence of Ron. Or the pain that would never soften no matter how many days came and how many colors the leaves turned - Harry.

"Hermione?"

"Oh!" Hermione cried out and quickly wiped the sides of her eyes with the back of her hands as Ginny bent down and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"What's wrong?" concerned rounds of brown eyes gazed upon hers. "What happened?"

"Nothing," Hermione said quickly, getting up. Ginny got up with her as well. "It's just... I realised I completely wrote my essay in the wrong format and I was upset at the thought of having to redo it, it's very irritating to rewrite essays that you've already put through deep reading spells, you know," she added quickly.

Ginny nodded, grinning and rolled her eyes. "You and your perfection, I'm sure it'll be fine. So you're sure you're okay?"

"Absolutely!" Hermione chirped like a bird.

Awkwardness.

"All right," Ginny said and began making her way up to the dorms.

Hermione studied Ginny Weasley carefully as her shiny trails of wavy fire-speckled hair followed her. Ginny had been through almost just as much as Hermione from the War, but she didn't fall apart like Hermione did.

Something was wrong. Hermione knew this. She wasn't supposed to be this weak. Not if Ginny wasn't. Not if the rest of her surrounding world was so free and strong.

Something was wrong. And Hermione was going to find out what.

***

The stars were the sun's children and the sun would hold them dear; when the moon begins to understand this connection - then the universe will realign for you. See Step Two for further instructions.

"Why," Draco started icily, "is it still on Step One? Shouldn't we have mastered this by now?"

She looked over and grabbed the spell book from his hands and muttered a charm on it.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

"I'm putting it into a deep reading spell. It'll tear the instructions apart and give us any hints or sub-information we may have missed from simply translating languages. Maybe we don't know all parts of this step, we must be missing a spell or something. Oh! Here, it's done reading."

"What does it say?" He looked over at the book and was able to take it out of her hands before she snapped it brusquely to her side. He sneered rudely and sat back as she read.

"When lost, always remember to retrace your steps - the past and its history will help you greatly."

"Thanks," Draco spat down sarcastically at the page. "It's all so clear to us now."

Hermione's head snapped up as she looked at Draco in the quiet corner of the library. It was a weekend and nobody ever visited the library on the mornings at the weekends - especially when it was nowhere near exam time. The glass window next to them opened up the world of white fog and drear. "Didn't Professor Binns teach you anything?" she scoffed. "When history is mentioned during a spell, always turn to the most reliable source - 'Hogwarts, A History.' Honestly, you should have known."

He looked at her. "Your point being? Do you want to quiz me on Hufflepuff's favourite colour while we're at it?"

"Well," Hermione said, snootily. "If you'd read Hogwarts, A History, you'd know---"

"I did read it," Draco snapped irritably. "It was rubbish. Bored me half to death."

Hermione gasped. "What? You did?" she cried out. She had never, ever met anyone who read the book in its entirety.

"Yes," he said lazily. "The prologue too."

"Er. Well..." She became flustered and then stopped talking altogether. "Fine. Then you know what to do. We have to look to that book for reference." she finally said meakly and Draco smirked at her as he got up, leaving Hermione Granger stunned.

Draco Malfoy... of all people.

"What about the epilogue?" she shouted at him as she packed her book into her bag and ran after him.

* * *

Hermione started out her academic career studying alone. When she became friends with Ron and Harry, she still didn't bother to study with them much - when she did, it was usually the two of them attempting with all the strength in the world to do work while Hermione did a bit of light reading. She couldn't study seriously with them.

These study sessions, or lack thereof, cut a delicate fine line in their friendship when the Trio became separate for awhile.

And at the end of the day, it was always okay because Hermione would always take a study break and drown pleasantly in Harry and Ron's carefree banter and sometimes often surprisingly intellectual conversations. It was always okay because sometimes Harry needed help with Potions and Hermione was always there to tell him the difference between a rose and tulip petal. And it was always okay because at the end of the day, the three still gathered in the common room, late after the rest of the school had fallen deep into their slumber, hot mugs of chocolate in each hand and they would celebrate their friendship.

But, anyhow, serious study sessions were always alone. And Hermione had liked them like that.

Now she was sitting on the large study table in the Gryffindor common room, Draco Malfoy propped up on an arm chair, her worn copy of "Hogwarts, a History," placed on his lap. The two of them were deeply immersed in their reading and she could not, for the life of her, imagine Ron or Harry in Draco's place with such a concentrated silence.

"You think it's in the introduction?" Draco finally called out after a long period of deep reading. "There's some useful information in there."

"Oh," she gushed, turning around in her chair. "I love the introduction. Don't you think it's brilliant how they cleverly added little spells relating to Hogwarts and/or history in general?"

He looked ready to Avada Kedavra himself.

"Right. Okay," she said, clearing her throat. "Well, you're right. I found something in the introduction. This is the one, I think." She pointed to a page down on the copy of the book she had snagged from the library.

He got up and walked over. Peering over her shoulder, he read it out loud. "The spell of Ipse?"

He muttered an ugly string of curse words and she shot an eyebrow up. "It means," she said impatiently. "The spell of self. It'll help us to discover ourselves in a new perspective. Developed here at Hogwarts in 1840 by---"

"Oh, for Merlin's sake Granger. Go write your own damn book why don't you, I don't care. Just---"

"Why," she interrupted, "are you being so rude?"

He slammed the book down. "I hate this bloody business! It's been so long and we're still on step one. By the time we reach step two, I might be dead!"

"We're trying!" she insisted. "That's what matters! We're doing what we can! Trust me, Malfoy."

He didn't respond.

"I just hate not having the answers," he finally snapped grudgingly from his sulking spot on the Gryffindor couch. It was Neville's favorite couch to sit on and had a comfortable dent, in the rich cherry red fabric, laced with silky gold embroidery, from all his sessions of being the background of many a hearty Gryffindor conversation back in the day. Now Draco had drooped one arm over the side of the couch and the other hung from where he clung at the top.

"Well so do I," she said pointedly. His eyes flickered for a moment and for that moment he had begun to realise how much the girl sitting in front of him had in common with him.

"Well, I hate looking for them through books. Putting your life into the trust of a cut up tree is crap."

"Can I start the spell yet? This is a very complicated one that requires a lot of concentration," she stated brusquely. "You're wasting time, Malfoy. And you know that little factor means more to you than me."

She was right and he hated that. He wondered if maybe Weasley and Potter hated it too. And then he speculated that he finally had something in common with those two.

Oh, God. This life was awful. Terrible.

But, "Yes," he said gruffly.

She gave him a smug smile and proceeded to clearly point her wand at him while reading the spell from the book, concentrating hard.

"Granger, watch where you point that w----" All of a sudden, a sharp beam of light hit Draco square in his ribs and he thrust his whole body and lurched forward, grabbing Hermione on his way down. She cried out in surprise. They both hit the floor which suddenly melted into a cold pool of refreshing clouds.

The clouds turned black, then blue, and then a pleasant shade of sky.

For a long minute, they were flying. Draco could feel the cool wind thrash comfortably through his blond hair and for support, he felt Hermione's hand securely enveloped in his at his side - it didn't even bother him. He felt at ease with the world for that one split second that spun on the axis of time.

And he wondered if Sabrina knew what the hell he was doing. Meddling with powerful spells, using Granger like this. Desperately trying to seek his life back - one that fate granted him to end awhile ago.

He wondered this for awhile. It had been awhile since he had questioned what he was doing. He was too set on capturing the prize and didn't want to concentrate on any rules the game had.

And, suddenly, they fell.

Only one thought occurred to Draco as he crashed on the hard floor painfully.

Game over.