Darkness is My Light

Chapter 9

Hermione listened to the creaking of the house in hopes to hear the tendrils of music from Narcissa's garden. When she had fled the balcony, she had kept running. She had always searched for the truth in life but this was truth she couldn't bear. She felt suffocated, like she was drowning. She couldn't breathe listening to Draco comfort her. It had felt perfectly, mundanely normal to have his comfort. She had to flee from that feeling; she couldn't believe it was right.
She had taken twists and turns and stairs running, and then ran until she couldn't feel her feet. She had reached a dead end some time ago. Instead of continuing another way she allowed herself to slump to the ground, breathless, and crying.

When she ran out of tears and could not bear to think any longer, she got up, her joints aching angrily. She had, of course, made herself incredibly lost. So now she was walking slowly, listening for traces of that music. She was stuck like a Muggle until she could get back to her room where her wand laid waiting.

She took stairs down, hoping to hit the ground floor, but after a time, she got the impression that there were several more floors and hallways than she would want to count. She sighed tiredly; there were some things in life that no one should ever learn to understand. Draco Malfoy was one of those things.

Hermione had not seen Malfoy, much less spoken to him, since one year after graduating. She had been out to lunch with Ron, although it had been more like teatime. It wasn't often she found time to see Ron; she was very busy. She had been traveling through Africa for almost seven months trying to figure out what to do with her life. When she got back she had sought out Ron first. He proposed lunch, his treat, since he had a job now. She, herself, was jobless, houseless, and money less. That didn't really bother her, though.

Malfoy had been walking along the street by the café with a woman Hermione almost recognized. Hermione only saw them because Ron had been in the bathroom. Her eyes wandered outside to where the pair was walking. Malfoy had his hand on the woman's small of her back, guiding her somewhere. They stopped and she looked across the street. He was whispering into her ear and actually smiling. Then he turned around.

Malfoy's smile faltered and then disappeared. He locked eyes with Hermione in shock, but quickly shook himself and said something to the girl. They crossed the street, back in conversation. Except that Malfoy looked back at her once.

But that had been years ago. She had all but forgotten the meeting, really. But something had changed between graduation and that moment, and something had definitely shifted between then and now.

She had picked up an odd tabloid or two while looking for a job after moving in with Harry, and often times she would see the Malfoy name appear. It seemed that Draco had been slowly getting rid of the Malfoy fortune, donating it to causes Hermione had never heard of, some she believed he wanted to keep a secret. But as time had wandered on, the Malfoy name had begun to disappear from popular culture, replaced, instead, by wizard actors and the newest hit singers. The Wizarding World had turned their minds from the horrors of war and death to the everyday things that Hermione found very boring.

Hermione felt her legs trying to give way under her exhaustion; she had not slept in a day and a half really. Giving up on her quest for her own room, she opened the door to her left hoping to find a bedroom. The room was a parlor and it was red in the worst way. She saw no comfortable chairs or beds, so she closed the door and opened the next. This room was empty but for a single table and three stone chairs. She shut that door as well and continued to look.

Twentysomthing doors later, Hermione opened to a bedroom. Inside, there were three queen-sized beds each with a green and silver comforter. Next to each was a nightstand with a lamp. The lamps were pewter-colored with carved snakes wrapped around the stem.

When Hermione shut the door behind her, a fire flared up in the fireplace and the lamps went out. A haze was beginning to settle onto Hermione's mind, pulling her to bed. She felt sluggish and began to move slowly, the air rushing past her. Her eyes were falling shut and her shoes slipped from her feet mid stride. She was beginning to feel that she was not walking at all. She looked down, which took ages to accomplish, and she saw she was right. Her eyes barely open at all; saw her feet floating above the ground. It seemed as though a strong force of energy was pulling her to the bed. She wondered sluggishly if this was bad at all, but she was too exhausted to think anymore. She felt something twist her will as her train of thought slipped away. She touched softness as she hit the bed, the comforter wrapping her in snugly. Her eyes half rolled back and her lashes fluttered with her attempt to keep them open. She half-struggled to get up, but nothing in the world could get her up. Her mind shut down and she saw no more.

In her dreams, Hermione continued her struggle to get out of the bed, only this time she was not alone. There were others in the bed beside her; in all of the beds there were people, struggling people. Through hazed eyes Hermione saw one girl get out and try to run away, but the whole room became a vacuum, sucking her back into the far bed were she fell, unmoving. At one point, she swore she actually woke up, but the vision was just the same, half-crazed people trying to free themselves from the beds. Her body lost track of time, and the dreams began to get fainter, as if all her life's energy was slowly being sucked from her body. And she struggled for her life, an uncontrollable fear gripping her heart that maybe, just maybe, he dreams were real.

~Fini~