Night After Night
Title: Night After Night
Team Name: Spy for the Death Eaters
Word Count: 5x100
Rating: PG-13
Challenge: Dark Mod’s Birthday! Secondarily Spinner’s End, Traitor to the Light
Characters: Hermione/Severus
Disclaimer: I am making no profit. Any characters or settings recognizable from the Harry Potter series belong to J.K. Rowling. The rest is mine.
A/N: Happy Birthday, dear Droxy.
~*~*~
As usual, she wakes up at the muffled sound of the door. However carefully closed, she always hears it.
The bright letters on the screen of the alarm clock stare at her, poisonous green. It’s always 3 a.m.
It’s pitch dark, but she’s used to it; she never opens the shutters anymore, there’s no point in that. Swathed in darkness, she lies, enjoying still the warmth of her bed, the dry smell of books tinged with a pungent note of ink from the unfinished letter on the table. She’d rather not get up, but she has a task to perform
~*~*~
She pushes the soft mound of covers; the lingering warmth ebbs away regretfully. She sits on the hard edge of the bed, feet fumbling on the bare floor for her slippers, wand already in hand.
She doesn’t need the Lumos for climbing quietly down the narrow staircase or navigating around the spindly table and the rickety chairs in the living room. Every brick in this house is a bone in her body, every creaking board flutters its wings in the gap of her soul; each shadow a strip of her flesh, its silence the blood that thrums in her veins.
~*~*~
There’s light however in the small kitchen (he’s not prejudiced, he’s had electricity installed). It pours like a golden blessing from the little round globe above the table, falling on the lank, black hair and sinking into the width of the black-clad shoulders as he leans over the stove, lifting the kettle to fill his cup.
She only sees the tilt of his neck, the angle of the jaw and she feels every tense sinew as if it were her own, and the damp warmth that seeps in rhythm with each heartbeat through the heavy wool coat, speckled with rain.
~*~*~
He turns towards her, cup in hand. It’s lime-flower and verbena tonight, pale yellow-green like Crookshanks’ eyes, the scent sweet and penetrating as it wafts over (there’s still a draught from that chink in the corner of the window pane). The kitchen table between them is scrubbed and bare.
“It was you,” she says. “Emmeline, Minerva, Harry...”
His shoulders sag a little, or maybe it’s just an illusion; night after night, she can’t decide. The fragrant cup in his hand doesn’t tremble. His fingers curl tenderly around the fragile rose-painted china. “For you. It had to be them, or you.”
~*~*~
Her wand is pointed at him but she waits for a heartbeat, then another. He only shrugs, fingers tight around the steaming cup.
The arc of green light spouts strong and true from the tip of her wand. For a moment, he floats in the eerie haze, then he slumps down behind the wooden table. The cup rolls intact on the linoleum.
In the past, she used to vanish the body and pick up the cup. Now she just turns, slips her wand in the sleeve of her flannel nightgown and heads back upstairs.
There will always be another night.
Team Name: Spy for the Death Eaters
Word Count: 5x100
Rating: PG-13
Challenge: Dark Mod’s Birthday! Secondarily Spinner’s End, Traitor to the Light
Characters: Hermione/Severus
Disclaimer: I am making no profit. Any characters or settings recognizable from the Harry Potter series belong to J.K. Rowling. The rest is mine.
A/N: Happy Birthday, dear Droxy.
~*~*~
As usual, she wakes up at the muffled sound of the door. However carefully closed, she always hears it.
The bright letters on the screen of the alarm clock stare at her, poisonous green. It’s always 3 a.m.
It’s pitch dark, but she’s used to it; she never opens the shutters anymore, there’s no point in that. Swathed in darkness, she lies, enjoying still the warmth of her bed, the dry smell of books tinged with a pungent note of ink from the unfinished letter on the table. She’d rather not get up, but she has a task to perform
~*~*~
She pushes the soft mound of covers; the lingering warmth ebbs away regretfully. She sits on the hard edge of the bed, feet fumbling on the bare floor for her slippers, wand already in hand.
She doesn’t need the Lumos for climbing quietly down the narrow staircase or navigating around the spindly table and the rickety chairs in the living room. Every brick in this house is a bone in her body, every creaking board flutters its wings in the gap of her soul; each shadow a strip of her flesh, its silence the blood that thrums in her veins.
~*~*~
There’s light however in the small kitchen (he’s not prejudiced, he’s had electricity installed). It pours like a golden blessing from the little round globe above the table, falling on the lank, black hair and sinking into the width of the black-clad shoulders as he leans over the stove, lifting the kettle to fill his cup.
She only sees the tilt of his neck, the angle of the jaw and she feels every tense sinew as if it were her own, and the damp warmth that seeps in rhythm with each heartbeat through the heavy wool coat, speckled with rain.
~*~*~
He turns towards her, cup in hand. It’s lime-flower and verbena tonight, pale yellow-green like Crookshanks’ eyes, the scent sweet and penetrating as it wafts over (there’s still a draught from that chink in the corner of the window pane). The kitchen table between them is scrubbed and bare.
“It was you,” she says. “Emmeline, Minerva, Harry...”
His shoulders sag a little, or maybe it’s just an illusion; night after night, she can’t decide. The fragrant cup in his hand doesn’t tremble. His fingers curl tenderly around the fragile rose-painted china. “For you. It had to be them, or you.”
~*~*~
Her wand is pointed at him but she waits for a heartbeat, then another. He only shrugs, fingers tight around the steaming cup.
The arc of green light spouts strong and true from the tip of her wand. For a moment, he floats in the eerie haze, then he slumps down behind the wooden table. The cup rolls intact on the linoleum.
In the past, she used to vanish the body and pick up the cup. Now she just turns, slips her wand in the sleeve of her flannel nightgown and heads back upstairs.
There will always be another night.