FIC: 2nd Song (HermionexTonks) 2/3
2nd Song - HermionexTonks - pg-r - 2/3 (1)
complete, full length fic starting in the summer pre OotP, continuing until the eventual end of the war. There are some rape references, for the record, and the fic is image heavy. You'll see.
(I own nothing, except for Sirius' leather jacket. That's mine).
dedicated to my M - tireless beta, appalling speller, part-time muse. With love.
(7: white light blinding bright)
She was on the doorstep on a Tuesday, not quite at the end of the summer (the third time she went to Ron's in August, and didn't go...Ron was getting used to not being seen). Those few days (those three weekends), were something she'd treasure, lying in bed in her clothes (she'd got down to her underwear once: white cotton): feather-light touches and learning kisses.
She'd spent the summer collecting kiss stories.
When Tonks opened the door, she held up the card, an eyebrow raised. Tonks grinned, her hair pink and black, baggy jeans and a clinging liliac shirt (three buttons undone, flash of pink brighter than her hair).
"Happy Not Birthday?"
Tonks shrugged.
"You're going back to school soon...I wanted tonight to be special..."
"It's going to be special on the doorstep?"
"Come here..." With a fistful of Hermione's shirt, she yerked the space closed between them. Her bottom lip curved into the bow of a smile before she lent forward and pressed a kiss to Hermione's mouth on the doorstep. "Now come inside."
"There was more cake," said Tonks, mournfully, batting a circling sphere of soft blue light out of her face with the hand that wasn't twined through Hermione's fingers, "This is the cake that survived..."
"Survived what?"
Tonks blushed.
"Thegreatcakedroppingincident...which we're not speaking of." Hermione bit down a giggle and pressed a kiss to the corner of Tonks' mouth.
"It's...very nice cake...a grand cake...and the lights are lovely...did you make them all?"
Tonks nodded, still looking a little flustered. Hermione stepped behind her, wrapping her arm around her, her chin resting on her shoulder. She pressed her palm flat against Tonk's belly, fingertips overlapping the waistband of her jeans.
"You know, I'm not hungry..." she said. Tonks slid her hand over the back of Hermione's, dipping her head.
"It was supposed to be...you know...romantic..." Gently, Hermione turned Tonks in her arms, locked her arms around her waist (kept her).
"Romance," said Hermione, with all the surety of a teenager in love, "has nothing to do with pretty lights and cake."
"Do you want to..?"
"Yes." She was so beautiful, that defiant (demanding) tilt to her chin. "Yes."
"Okay," said Tonks, pink lace on skin under cotton, feeing brave.
x
Hermione lay back on the bed in her t-shirt and her panties, knees drawn up self conciously, watching Tonks in the doorway. The magical light cast a forgiving glow over the young woman as she came into the room, leaving the door to the hallway open (who was going to find them here?).
"Are you sure?" said Tonks, pulling at the buttons of her shirt (her belly flat and pale). Hermione nodded.
Tonks' smile was a fragile, newborn thing, as she shrugged lilac cotton off over her shoulders. She stood at the end of the bed, her pink bra laced with turquoise ribbons, her hair spilling over one eye.
"You're the most beautiful thing in the world," she told Hermione, unzipping her jeans.
"You're not sitting where I am," said Hermione, softly, knotting white cotton with her hands. Tonks pushed down her jeans with both hands, kicked them off as she climbed up onto the bed (long bare limbs and candy coloured lace).
"You want to stop, you tell me," she said, rubbing her hand over the arch of Hermione's bare foot.
"You've done this before."
"Sometimes." She bent to press a kiss to the delicate bone that pivoted in Hermione's ankle, lacing the inside of Hermione's shin with soft kisses. Gently, (a hand on either knee), she spread the other girl's thighs, so that she could kiss the trembling muscles there (the delicate, unprotected insides of her knees). She traced the arc of Hermione's hip-bone with the tip of her tongue, nipped at white cotton edged in elastic. She nuzzled at Hermione's hands, still knotted in her t-shirt. Hermione sat up to let Tonks pull her shirt over her head. They kissed, soft, slow, Tonks' fingers buried in Hermione's thick hair, dripping kisses from the corner of her mouth to her collarbone in sharp relief, down over the slope of a neat breast, the edges of her teeth finding a nipple through cotton. Hermione made a little sound. Tonks looked up.
"No?" Hermione's fingers twisted in her hair, pulling a little.
"Don't stop."
She moved to lie along side Hermione, leg hooked across her thighs to keep them spread as she buried kisses in the curve of Hermione's neck under her hair. Hermione's arm was hooked around her neck, her other hand across her eyes, fingers spasming and stretching as Tonks kissed around the edge of her bra. Gently, she eased down the straps of Hermione's bra, pushing down looser fabric (not wanting to take it off altogether - remembering how terrifying it was to be naked for the first time at point blank range to another human being, even if he was kind, red hair and soft hands). Carefully (loving every minute, longing for this) she licked Hermione's nipples hard (pale pink over paler skin). Hermione's fingers danced between her shoulderblades as she licked. She left a trail (treasure) across Hermione's chest, up, into the hollow of her throat.
"I just want to..." There were no words for what she really wanted to do (tear her apart, climb inside her, be her, own her, consume her, all of that), so she kissed her instead, tongue darted, conquering kiss, hand skitter-skating down over virgin skin and white cotton, cupping warmth and wet layered over bone. Hermione made a small, helpless sound into the kiss, as Tonks traced the shape of her with a middle finger, outlining secrets in dampness on white cotton (invisible ink). Hermione's body was alive with being touched (talker, lost for words). Covering Hermione with her palm, bare arm pressed against Hermione's trembling breast, she lay down on her side (soaking wet, desperate for...friction, for anything...just desperate for this). She pressed her nose against Hermione's cheek, as she pushed her fingers down past elastic into slip-slide and heat. Hermione's head fell back, her hips snapping forward. For a moment, searching, Ton's fingertips slid, and then Hermione's hand was on her wrist (iron grip), yesyesthereyes, breath of affirmation and she began to rub her fingers back and forth, watching the light filter and change across Hermione's pretty face. Crease of concentration between dark brows as she rocked, as she worked as she rolled her cheek against Tonks, mashing her nose slightly.
"I...I..." She caught Tonks' mouth with her own, desperate, searching kiss, push of tongue (need you every way, every place). When she came, her entire body curled in on itself, Tonks' hand at it's centre working, moving until long after the last aftershock.
"Had you ever..?" Hermione shook her head, her leg hooked between Tonks', Tonks' cunt nestled firmly against her thigh.
"I...was waiting..."
"Waiting for what?"
"For you?"
"Liar..."
"Romantic though, right?" She rolled onto her side, smiling into the dark room when Tonks pressed the length of her body against her back. She stifled a yawn in the pillow, and murmured something that sounded terrifyingly (wonderfully) like i love you.
"G'night, Hermione..." She whispered (kiss for tousled hair folded twice behind Hermione's ear), "Happy not birthday." She fell asleep imagining the throbbing heart of her want going supernova, dismantling the world, leaving something new and brilliant behind.
(on a Wednesday, in love.)
(8: to me, in memory)
It had to be there, it had to...
Frustrated, Hermione rubbed the back of her neck, toeing off one of her uncomfortable (but professional) shoes off under her desk, staring at the book as though she could will it into answering her question. She'd followed all the steps...she'd done her job. She didn't understand...unless...
She was halfway into the stacks before she remembered her other shoe.
On her way back to her desk (immaculate: pens aligned to blotter, message shoot well out of the way, muggle desk calender).
Calender.
She dropped her books.
"Shit!" She bent to pick them up. "Shit fucking...shit."
"Problem?" said Angus (older, technically superior).
"Appointment. Forgot. Have to...take off."
"Should have taken off hours ago," he muttered, going back to his own notes. "Youngsters."
--
Hermione was doing her best to re-pin her hair in the mirror of her creaking, clattering flying metro (parked, for the moment, on the curb outside the staff entrace of St Mungo's). The little car shuddered when Ron Weasley swung down into the seat, throwing his rucksack into the back seat.
"You're late."
"I know. I forgot what time it was."
"Aren't you going to change?" She cast a critical eye over finger spiked red hair (too long to be spiky), bags under his eyes, crumpled shirt. Third year medic. Even Aurors qualified sooner than healers. She shook her head (dislodging a pin).
"I am changed, Ron."
"Huh...really?" She straighted her white blouse.
"Yes."
"Huh. I guess some people just look like librarians, right?"
"I am not a librarian, Ronald."
"Librarian...Researcher..." He said, as she kicked the little car into gear, carefully guiding it into the air. "In the end, Hermione, it all comes down to one thing..."
"And what's that, Ronald?"
"It's all just ugly shoes, isn't it?"
x
"You're late," said Tonks (from the corner of her her mouth) as Hermoine slid into the bench seat beside her.
"I didn't realise that we were running to a schedule..." said Hermione, glancing around the room. There will still a lot of faces that she didn't recognise dotted around the Leaky Cauldron (few minutes left until closing time). In the corner, Dumbledore and Professor McGonnagall were talking, heads bent together over a pair of Butterbeer bottles. From a table to the right of the bar, Charlie Weasley winked before looking back to his mother (Molly, never the same after Bill died so suddenly, after memories of Gideon and Fabian came spilling back).
"We're not...but you know how Remus gets." Remus Lupin, sitting on his own at the bar, staring at nothing (these nights were always hard for him).
She hadn't realised that she was staring (Tonks' arm behind her in the booth, warm weight in the small of her back), until Harry spoke.
"We got you a drink, Hermione." He set down the glass in front of her, sliding into the opposite side of the booth, quickly followed by Ron (nudging with a hip and a hand under the table).
"What is it?"
"Absinthe, I think he said," said Ron, stealing a sip of Harry's pint (earning an over-the-glasses warning glance).
"It's very...green." Evidentally, the management of the Cauldron were still persisting with their somewhat disatrous programme of 'muggle drinks from around the world'. Tonks sipped her pint (black and white) somewhat tentatively.
"Hey," she said, with a tentative smile. "This isn't so bad."
"What?" said Harry, grinning, "You don't trust us?"
It was only then, waiting for midnight, tracing over long ago scratched legends (table-top religion) with her fingertip that Hermione realised how rarely any of them smiled anymore (how rarely they laughed). Not just Harry, in the finally stages of Auror training, but all of them: Ron who so often went home bloody and battered (decided to become a doctor after no-one was there when Bill needed someone - Mother's love will only go so far)...Charlie, who was home from Romania now and doing what he could at the Ministry. It had been six years. The war had been going on for six years, and they were all soldiers now. Picking at a P with her fingernails, Hermione twisted her hair, and wished to feel fifteen again.
"Friends," said Dumbledore (low voice for speaking after midnight, chairs and tables in a circle, Ron holding Harry's hand through slats in the chair, Molly already tearing up, her head against Arthur's shoulder), "An occasion like this needs no introduction."
They had been here before. Exactly here. It was almost always the same. Hermione leant back against Tonks' body, Tonks' chin on her shoulder, a denim clad thigh on either side of her (walls to her country). She listened.
"We gather not for gathering's sake," said the old headmaster, "But to commemorate and to recall. Every year, our list of personal fallen grows...We gather to remember, and to ensure that no sacrifice goes unremembered, and no fate, however freely chosen, uncelebrated."
"Here, here," said Arthur Weasley, quietly (father to one son murdered and another gone blank and pale behind St Mungo's windows).
"To the fallen," said Dumbledore, his face, for a moment, closed with all the guilt of a commander (all those murdered sons and daughters. They said that he remembered every name).
And then it started (everybody knew their places, their steps. They'd been here before, though there were always new names).
"James and Lily Potter," said McGonnagall, seeming frail, these days, lifting her small glass. "Lily, who was bonny and brave. James...who was never as bad as he wanted to be...He never could quite live up to Sirius Black's terrible reputation." A ripple of laughter...Harry was wearing the pleased, dreamy smile that he always wore whenever anyone spoke about his mum and dad. Charlie was the next one of his feet, shoving his hand through his red hair self conciously. He walked across the bar, taking a swig from his Guinness (wink for Tonks -- there's no point in feeling jealous of some people). "To Bill, who was my brother," said Charlie. "To Percy, who was also. Bill who fought the good fight, and Percy...who made a hero of himself, in the end. The both of them, brighter than Ron and quicker on the uptake," He ruffled Ron's longer hair with his free hand, "And will be thusly missed and always loved."
Ron groaned, and buried his face between Harry's shoulder blades. Suddenly, she wanted to hold them both in her arms (the same part of her that sometimes thought that babies were what she wanted). Tonks' arm tightened around her waist.
"To Mad-Eye, dear Mad-Eye..." said Tonks, her words vibrating along Hermione's spine. "Biggest, scariest bastard who ever walked the earth. Made my life a living hell...made me a better Auror for it. God-speed, you bastard. You scared the shit out of me but I loved you..." She kissed the side of Hermione's neck, whispering a prayer for Mad-Eye, two years gone now, into her skin.
"Something to say, Severus?" said Dumbledore. Hermione looked at the potions professor, folded into the shadows that leaked thickly in the corners of the bar.
"To those lucky enough to have passed on," said Snape, softly, lifting whatever it was that he was drinking into the air. A kind of silence settled over the Cauldron; a seething, waiting quiet.
"I guess that just leaves me then," said Remus, from the bar.
"Yes..." said Dumbledore. "I fear that time has come once again, Remus." Whiskey glass in hand, Remus stood.
"The moon," said Remus Lupin, "Shines with borrowed light. A star generates it's own. The muggles...they say that a star's light takes years to reach the earth. A star's light lingers after it dies. I can still see his light." He took a sip of his whiskey. "We've lost so much. I've lost so much. Lily and James, and I almost learnt to live with that, thought it hurt" (a glance there for Harry) "...and then Sirius went and proved it, irrevocably as brilliant as he was." Remus Lupin raised his glass, a trembling toast. "Severus had it right, I guess. None of us are going to live forever."
"To Harry Potter," said a voice from the back of the room.
"To Hogwarts," countered Harry, raising his pint glass, blushing.
"To those who fight," said Molly Weasley. "To those who do and did their best."
It was all that they could do, in the end. Our beloved dead.
That, and a hope of Heaven.
one minute...
She squeezed into the booth between them (aware that they were holding hands in the small of her back, pretending not to notice), wishing that Tonks was there (saw her ghosting outside with Remus). She'd been worried about Harry, after Sirius died, after they left Hogwarts, after it became known that he was powerful (incredibly powerful). She'd worried about him, but then one day Ron had appeared at the flat (her's and Tonks') with a funny look in his eyes, and his red hair toulsed, and his hands busy with the hem of his shirt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, but quiet hands and gentle kisses and red hair are grounding things.
So she trusted them together.
"Are you happy, Hermione?"
"Yes," she said, immediately.
"As happy as you can be," said Harry, like he was seeking permission for something. She nodded.
"You make the best of what you've got, Harry. You make do with what you have."
She laid her head against his shoulder, felt the old peculiar comfort of Ron's cheek against hers. Just the three of them; the doctor, the librarian, the boy who lived.
x
one minute...
She hated it, that trembling feeling at the end of your nose and the tips of your fingers when you knew that you were going to cry. She'd always hated it, since she used to wake up in the night trembling from dreams of her mad aunts (the handful of times that he'd been the one to comfort her, she'd taken with both hands and kept safe). They sat side by side on the low brick wall, and she rubbed the back of his neck, and she hoped that she was doing something right.
"Hold on to that girl of yours, Nymphadora. Don't let her out of your sight."
She wanted to tell him that nothing lasts forever. She wanted to tell him that love is at it's best in the moment, in the future, but it doesn't keep, not the way you want. She wanted to tell him that she missed Sirius, and always would. She wanted to tell him that he might have been the last one standing, but he didn't have to stand alone.
"Shhhh," she said, fingers in his hair, pointing up at the starry sky (bubble of night in London's brightness). "Can't you hear him?"
Remus dropped his head, and she pretended not to see.
"Are you ready to go home, girl?" Hermione looked up, her hair loose from it's pins, tumbled around her face in soft waves. She held out her hand, allowing Tonks to lever her out of the bench, drop a kiss on her upturned mouth. She turned, fingers still laced with Tonks', a kiss for the corner of Harry's mouth, another for Ron's forehead (pushed his hair back with her hand, smoothed it down afterwards).
"Be good, boys," she said, letting Tonks lead her, already fading into thoughts of bed and slip-slide and dawn kisses and falling asleep breathing Tonks' skin. "Be good..." (live.)
Three a.m.
(9: you said you'd wait)
Her hair faded like dying flowers (pink through purple) as she scrunched it with her fingers. She stood to one side of the kitchen, a beer bottle dangling from one hand, fingers of the other shoved into her hair. Ron, Hermione and Harry sat on one side of the long table. Charlie came to stand beside her.
"Fuck," said Ron, still staring. "Fucking fuck."
"Yes," said Remus, rubbing his face with his hands. "Exactly."
"He was a bastard..." said Ron, pushing his hair back from his face with both hands.
"But he was our bastard," said Harry, wearily.
"Stop calling him a bastard," said Hermione, high note of hysteria creeping into her voice as she looked at the wand which Remus had brought back with him as it dripped blood onto the table, "Don't you know that you're not supposed to speak ill of the dead?"
"He'd've spoken ill of me," muttered Ron crossing his arms across his chest. Tonks rolled her eyes, and walked towards the door, taking her bottle with her. Remus looked up at her throught strands of greying hair.
"Where are you going?"
"Out. Somewhere. I need a pass, Professor?" He raised an eyebrow (bisected by a scar, wasn't there last year).
"Don't go far."
She was up the stairs before he had time to tell her to stay in sight.
"So now he's dead," she said, swallowing bitter words with beer, "And we have to pretend to be sorry?"
"You're not sorry?" said Charlie, gently teasing the bottle out of her hand. The skin of his throat contracted when he swallowed (first love, most missed). It was pouring with rain in London that night, but the house was suffocating. Tonks shivered in her jacket (still Sirius'), sitting on the back step of Grimmauld place, huddled under the overhang, the flare and burn of her cigarette the only light in a world gone dark and wet and close. She smoked with a cupped hand (couldn't smoke around Hermione, so it felt like a dirty secret, still, made her feel like a teenager, forget that youth rides on the surface of your skin. Youth is not (and never was) your dirty little secrets). "He never did anything to you."
"Only because I tried my bloody hardest to never go to bloody potions."
"Don't be like that, Tonks. Bitter makes you ugly." She tried to laugh, choked on smoke and beer and the taste of regret.
"You know, you're right, Charlie. You're very right." She cleared her throat. "To dear departed Snape," she said, toasting the night with her cigarette, "you bastard. I hope you're happier where you've gone than you ever were here..."
"I wonder if there's a heaven for potion masters?" said Charlie, sitting down on the step beside her, offering her the rest of the beer. She took it, smiling as she took a swig.
"Dark and dank and full of things that smell funny."
"Ah, he'll be having a grand time." said Charlie, as she laid her head against his shoulder. "All the black robes he can...shake a stick at."
She giggled.
"Oh, Gods, Charlie...how'd we get into this bloody mess?" She said, rubbing her cheek on his shirt.
"Children of the Revolution, darling." He said, and then he bent down.
It wasn't a clean kiss (noses caught, teeth clicked). It wasn't a clean kiss at all, seeped in history and mis-steps and mis-glances. It wasn't a clean kiss. She stared at him, rubbing her lip with the edge of her cuff.
"What the fuck, Charlie?"
"I..." He blushed under freckles, "Tonks, wait, I..." She realised that she was on her feet. She silenced him with a vague gesture of her hand (she'd dropped her cigarette, forgotten clean about it).
"I'll talk to you later, Charlie...I've gotta...go find Hermione, yeah?"
She turned her back on him and left him for the rain to figure out.
She could count the times she'd seen Hermione like this on the fingers of one hand (tension, bouncing, unable to sit still, hair spilling over her shoulders snarled and worried, made cryptic by fingers in constant motion). Hermione stalked around their shared bedroom, luminous hair in her slip, on her tiptoes, her hair like trailing light.
"Why couldn't you have stayed?" She was saying, snapping, not looking Tonks directly in the eyes. "We were all there together, Tonks. You could have stayed...And," Neither of them had sat down since they came upstairs. "And areyoufuckingCharlie?" It all came spilling out of her in a rush, and she looked slapped, once she's said it, eyes wide, flush starting in one cheek. She regretted it instantly, and she couldn't take it back.
Hermione blinked, and Tonks felt her spine stiffen, dead straight. She couldn't help it. Suddenly, it that moment watching Hermione's breasts heave and shudder under silk, she completely understood Sirius (how he'd sometimes managed to appear so cold and cruel).
"Well? Are you?"
"Are you fucking Harry?" She asked, arched brow (maybe you never forgot how to be a Black, if you'd known once, ever, written on your bones). "Ron maybe? Both of them?"
Hermione choked.
"What?"
"You started it..." said Tonks, softly. "You're the one who's asking stupid fucking questions."
They stood there for a moment, Hermione's face flushed red, and then her lip trembled, and she collapsed onto the edge of the bed.
"It's just...Snape's dead." She sounded so fragile (hadn't sounded that young when she was fifteen, sixteen...war makes children of them all, Ron sulking, and Charlie grasping for comfort in remembered things, and Hermione trembling on the edge of the bed, rumpled silk and rumpled hair). Tonks went down on her knees (Scuffed denim, old boards), taking Hermione's hands in hers, kissing knuckles and rings (librarian's hands, researcher's hands, worn smooth at the tips). "It's just getting too bloody close now..." (It's been getting bloody close for years and years, since Bill).
"You didn't even like him, Hermione. None of us did. He creeped me the fuck out..."
"I know, but..."
"You didn't like him, love."
"That doesn't mean that I'm not sorry that he's dead..."
One tear sparkled down Hermione's cheek and a floodgate opened and soon she was in Tonk's arms on the floor sobbing, her tears soaking a trail through Tonks' t-shirt, down over her heart, and Tonks decided to forgive Charlie (stupid mistake, no harm at all), as Hermione cried and struggled and they waited for morning, or for the end of the world...
(10: our love's aching)
She was going to die. There. She was going to die there alone, and far from home. She flung out a stun-spell desperately, slipped to one knee in the mud (and the blood) and the rain. Not here, not now, not him.
Not him. He was the spitting image of his mother (his terrifying, cruel eyed mother), even with blond hair plastered to his skull (little bit broader through the shoulders than Ron...taller than Harry). Blood showing on his mouth (she'd caught a lucky blow, early on). He sneered like his father.
"Only one place for a whore like you," he sneers, spitting. "Mudblood in the mud," And he levelled his wand at her, laughing (she could barely hear him through the rain). She raised her head, at least (would not, could not cower to him).
"Crucio."
He was smiling when he said it.
In the white light which flashed, she saw Mad Eye Moody trying to smile, and Bill Weasley holding out his hands. Now she cowered. Now she crawled. Now she babbled and begged to die, as he dragged her to her knees by a handful of her hair.
"Only one use for a mudblood bitch like you..." He snarled. When he loosed her, she didn't have the strength to struggle, just knelt there, head bent (thought as hard as she could about living, about Hermione, about walking away and hoped that it was a prayer). He jerked his sleeve up, and held it out to her.
"Kiss it."
She did the only thing that she could. She turned her head (pouring rain) and pressed her lips to the dark mark (ink and blood) and waited for an end that didn't come.
x
Crawling on her hands and knees (nearly there, nearly there, nearly there), feeling concrete through jeans and the palms of her hands. Lost her coat somewhere along the road (wanted to go back, Sirius', but it was so fucking heavy, so heavy and maybe Charlie or Bill'll go back for it in the morning, once the rain stops). Not cold anymore...not anything anymore, numb. numb, numb, liquid and trickling. Trial, leaving a trail (blood and scuff, path to follow back). Getting tired, but getting close (nearly there, nearly there, nearly there). Be there soon, safe and sound.
Home.
Manages to hit the door once (curled fist) before collapsing, curling in on herself, sleeping (not sleeping, slipping). No wand, no locks, trapped, locked out, forgotten. Tries to scream (voice thin and curling in on herself).
She could love him, when he opens the door. She could honestly love him forever.
Harry is an angel, with a crown of hallway light.
x
He couldn't quite lift her (she was almost as tall as he was), but he managed to get her standing, managed to get her in out of the rain. He tried not to think about how much blood there was...her jeans soaked, her hair rusty, her white shirt marked with handprints (holding herself together). He kept her standing, her head lolling against her shoulder, and shouted from the front door, for Remus, for Charlie, for Ron for anybody.
He couldn't hold her forever.
Charlie came running up from the kitchen, a startled backwards glance for Mrs Black, swearing and wailing before he actually registered what was going on.
"What...when..." He saw Harry's knees wobble, and took hold of Tonks' arm, her weight, swinging her up into arms made strong by the work he'd chosen (he had a Weasley's easy grace, but Charlie had been forged in fire). "Go find Ron," he said, turning, a little lost (she was limp in his arms, so broken), "Now, Harry!" He snapped (worried), Harry standing stammering. "Now," he said, a little softer.
"What the bloody hell is all this..." She comes down the stairs, half of her hair pinned up, a sheaf of paper in her hands. She stopped, dead.
Harry took the stairs two at a time, caught her before she fell.
x
Oh, God, I don't believe in you, but if I did, and you took her, I'd never forgive you, I wouldn't I couldn't I'd never believe in anything again. I'll never believe in anything again, if you take her. Ron says he's done his best (I believe him, I trust him, what else is he going to do?). He's done his best, mended the things that are broken (oh, god, the things he said, the things they did to her, don't want to think about it can't can't can't). There was so much...I've never seen so much blood. Ron did so well, he did so...I mean, I knew he was a doctor, but I didn't quite believe it until I saw him do it, until I saw him change. He's a different person, he's so good. I trust him with my life. I trust him with hers. Says he mended all the things that are broken, that it's her job now, her choice (come back come back come back).
Oh, God, she's so cold.
Come back come back come back I love you more. I loved you first. I love you. Please.
I'll die with you.
Come back.
x
"Will she..?" She was scared to ask the question (sitting at the bedside, Tonks' fingers laced through hers, puzzle to be solved, code to be broken). She was scared to ask him. He was her best friend. He was going to tell her the truth. Ron paused (taking her temperature, making notes, keeping watch).
"It depends."
"On what?"
"On whether she wants to come back or not." He said, not looking at her, like he was reading lines from the sheet. "On whether she's got it in her to come back, Hermione. Look at her..." He smoothed her hair (washed out, faded) back from her forehead. "She's so tired." (Caring boy, made for this). He reached out across the bed, rubbing the back of Hermione's hand, Tonks' fingers. "She loves you...she's strong, Hermione." He tried a smile (came out one-sided). "Just let her sleep now...Let her rest her head."
Hermione tried to smile, leaning forward until her cheek touched sheet (top of her head brushing Tonks' hip). The sheets were clean and white. As Ron kissed her on the temple and left her, she tried not to think of all the blood.
Strange, halfway place, this (almost there, not quite gone), light and dark and Sirius is waiting for her on the line. He's younger than he looked for a while, dark hair a soft curtain, shoulders broad and strong and young under scuffed up leather. He's reading one of Remus' pulpy poetry paperbacks. He smiles before he sees her.
"So that's where my jacket went..."
It's all that she can think of to say.
"Mine first, baby girl..." He's so handsome (was he always so handsome?).
Of course he was.
"Where are we?"
"Heaven, more or less."
"More or less?"
"It's a bit of a walk."
"In which direction?"
"You see that silver glow on the horizon?" She nods.
"That's where all the good things are."
"Oh..." She's not sure if she actually says it, or just wants to make the sound. He tilts his head for her, smiling (faint but true light...)
"Don't you want to know what's back behind you?"
"I guess..."
"A second chance, and everything you'll ever love."
"You're here though,"
"I'm everywhere you are, baby-girl. I'm everywhere you take me." (oh, my star is fading fast).
"Hermione?" Hermione sat up with a start, hair tangled hopelessly on one side of her face, violet shadows under her eyes. She blinked before a smile that shone spread across her face.
"You're awake."
"Was there any doubt?" Hermione's beautiful smile dies a little (dims).
"There was quite considerable doubt." She reached out to stroke Hermione's face (such a simple pleasure, such a good thing, the smoothness of skin against her palm, and all that warmth).
"I'm here now." Hermione turned her face to kiss Tonks' palm, let her lips linger (thankyou for something given back).
"Do you...remember anything?" She shook her head (bits and pieces).
"I'll remember tomorrow. Come lie down with me."
Hermione lay down slowly, like she was scared that Tonks might break. She wouldn't break (she hadn't). She was so tired (drowning). She felt like she was never going to move under her own power again.
I will move myself tomorrow.
She laid her head on Hermione's chest, between her breasts.
"Who cleaned the windows?"
"Ron and Harry..." said Hermione, sleepily. "Under Remus' instruction."
"It stopped raining."
"It did."
"You can see the sky from here."
"Yes, love...yes you can."
And she felt sleep and comforted (not whole, not healed, scuffed up and rubbed raw and bleeding, not anywhere fixable, but somewhere deep inside). Fixing could come later. She wouldn't let him win (not you, not them, not your mother, not your fucking family. I spit on you. We're better than you. We always were). She lay there, just lay there (which was easy), let the world simplify to Hermione's heartbeat and the smell of her hair, to no pain and a glimpse of a pure blue sky after rain.
I will move myself tomorrow.
complete, full length fic starting in the summer pre OotP, continuing until the eventual end of the war. There are some rape references, for the record, and the fic is image heavy. You'll see.
(I own nothing, except for Sirius' leather jacket. That's mine).
dedicated to my M - tireless beta, appalling speller, part-time muse. With love.
(7: white light blinding bright)
She was on the doorstep on a Tuesday, not quite at the end of the summer (the third time she went to Ron's in August, and didn't go...Ron was getting used to not being seen). Those few days (those three weekends), were something she'd treasure, lying in bed in her clothes (she'd got down to her underwear once: white cotton): feather-light touches and learning kisses.
She'd spent the summer collecting kiss stories.
When Tonks opened the door, she held up the card, an eyebrow raised. Tonks grinned, her hair pink and black, baggy jeans and a clinging liliac shirt (three buttons undone, flash of pink brighter than her hair).
"Happy Not Birthday?"
Tonks shrugged.
"You're going back to school soon...I wanted tonight to be special..."
"It's going to be special on the doorstep?"
"Come here..." With a fistful of Hermione's shirt, she yerked the space closed between them. Her bottom lip curved into the bow of a smile before she lent forward and pressed a kiss to Hermione's mouth on the doorstep. "Now come inside."
"There was more cake," said Tonks, mournfully, batting a circling sphere of soft blue light out of her face with the hand that wasn't twined through Hermione's fingers, "This is the cake that survived..."
"Survived what?"
Tonks blushed.
"Thegreatcakedroppingincident...which we're not speaking of." Hermione bit down a giggle and pressed a kiss to the corner of Tonks' mouth.
"It's...very nice cake...a grand cake...and the lights are lovely...did you make them all?"
Tonks nodded, still looking a little flustered. Hermione stepped behind her, wrapping her arm around her, her chin resting on her shoulder. She pressed her palm flat against Tonk's belly, fingertips overlapping the waistband of her jeans.
"You know, I'm not hungry..." she said. Tonks slid her hand over the back of Hermione's, dipping her head.
"It was supposed to be...you know...romantic..." Gently, Hermione turned Tonks in her arms, locked her arms around her waist (kept her).
"Romance," said Hermione, with all the surety of a teenager in love, "has nothing to do with pretty lights and cake."
"Do you want to..?"
"Yes." She was so beautiful, that defiant (demanding) tilt to her chin. "Yes."
"Okay," said Tonks, pink lace on skin under cotton, feeing brave.
x
Hermione lay back on the bed in her t-shirt and her panties, knees drawn up self conciously, watching Tonks in the doorway. The magical light cast a forgiving glow over the young woman as she came into the room, leaving the door to the hallway open (who was going to find them here?).
"Are you sure?" said Tonks, pulling at the buttons of her shirt (her belly flat and pale). Hermione nodded.
Tonks' smile was a fragile, newborn thing, as she shrugged lilac cotton off over her shoulders. She stood at the end of the bed, her pink bra laced with turquoise ribbons, her hair spilling over one eye.
"You're the most beautiful thing in the world," she told Hermione, unzipping her jeans.
"You're not sitting where I am," said Hermione, softly, knotting white cotton with her hands. Tonks pushed down her jeans with both hands, kicked them off as she climbed up onto the bed (long bare limbs and candy coloured lace).
"You want to stop, you tell me," she said, rubbing her hand over the arch of Hermione's bare foot.
"You've done this before."
"Sometimes." She bent to press a kiss to the delicate bone that pivoted in Hermione's ankle, lacing the inside of Hermione's shin with soft kisses. Gently, (a hand on either knee), she spread the other girl's thighs, so that she could kiss the trembling muscles there (the delicate, unprotected insides of her knees). She traced the arc of Hermione's hip-bone with the tip of her tongue, nipped at white cotton edged in elastic. She nuzzled at Hermione's hands, still knotted in her t-shirt. Hermione sat up to let Tonks pull her shirt over her head. They kissed, soft, slow, Tonks' fingers buried in Hermione's thick hair, dripping kisses from the corner of her mouth to her collarbone in sharp relief, down over the slope of a neat breast, the edges of her teeth finding a nipple through cotton. Hermione made a little sound. Tonks looked up.
"No?" Hermione's fingers twisted in her hair, pulling a little.
"Don't stop."
She moved to lie along side Hermione, leg hooked across her thighs to keep them spread as she buried kisses in the curve of Hermione's neck under her hair. Hermione's arm was hooked around her neck, her other hand across her eyes, fingers spasming and stretching as Tonks kissed around the edge of her bra. Gently, she eased down the straps of Hermione's bra, pushing down looser fabric (not wanting to take it off altogether - remembering how terrifying it was to be naked for the first time at point blank range to another human being, even if he was kind, red hair and soft hands). Carefully (loving every minute, longing for this) she licked Hermione's nipples hard (pale pink over paler skin). Hermione's fingers danced between her shoulderblades as she licked. She left a trail (treasure) across Hermione's chest, up, into the hollow of her throat.
"I just want to..." There were no words for what she really wanted to do (tear her apart, climb inside her, be her, own her, consume her, all of that), so she kissed her instead, tongue darted, conquering kiss, hand skitter-skating down over virgin skin and white cotton, cupping warmth and wet layered over bone. Hermione made a small, helpless sound into the kiss, as Tonks traced the shape of her with a middle finger, outlining secrets in dampness on white cotton (invisible ink). Hermione's body was alive with being touched (talker, lost for words). Covering Hermione with her palm, bare arm pressed against Hermione's trembling breast, she lay down on her side (soaking wet, desperate for...friction, for anything...just desperate for this). She pressed her nose against Hermione's cheek, as she pushed her fingers down past elastic into slip-slide and heat. Hermione's head fell back, her hips snapping forward. For a moment, searching, Ton's fingertips slid, and then Hermione's hand was on her wrist (iron grip), yesyesthereyes, breath of affirmation and she began to rub her fingers back and forth, watching the light filter and change across Hermione's pretty face. Crease of concentration between dark brows as she rocked, as she worked as she rolled her cheek against Tonks, mashing her nose slightly.
"I...I..." She caught Tonks' mouth with her own, desperate, searching kiss, push of tongue (need you every way, every place). When she came, her entire body curled in on itself, Tonks' hand at it's centre working, moving until long after the last aftershock.
"Had you ever..?" Hermione shook her head, her leg hooked between Tonks', Tonks' cunt nestled firmly against her thigh.
"I...was waiting..."
"Waiting for what?"
"For you?"
"Liar..."
"Romantic though, right?" She rolled onto her side, smiling into the dark room when Tonks pressed the length of her body against her back. She stifled a yawn in the pillow, and murmured something that sounded terrifyingly (wonderfully) like i love you.
"G'night, Hermione..." She whispered (kiss for tousled hair folded twice behind Hermione's ear), "Happy not birthday." She fell asleep imagining the throbbing heart of her want going supernova, dismantling the world, leaving something new and brilliant behind.
(on a Wednesday, in love.)
(8: to me, in memory)
It had to be there, it had to...
Frustrated, Hermione rubbed the back of her neck, toeing off one of her uncomfortable (but professional) shoes off under her desk, staring at the book as though she could will it into answering her question. She'd followed all the steps...she'd done her job. She didn't understand...unless...
She was halfway into the stacks before she remembered her other shoe.
On her way back to her desk (immaculate: pens aligned to blotter, message shoot well out of the way, muggle desk calender).
Calender.
She dropped her books.
"Shit!" She bent to pick them up. "Shit fucking...shit."
"Problem?" said Angus (older, technically superior).
"Appointment. Forgot. Have to...take off."
"Should have taken off hours ago," he muttered, going back to his own notes. "Youngsters."
--
Hermione was doing her best to re-pin her hair in the mirror of her creaking, clattering flying metro (parked, for the moment, on the curb outside the staff entrace of St Mungo's). The little car shuddered when Ron Weasley swung down into the seat, throwing his rucksack into the back seat.
"You're late."
"I know. I forgot what time it was."
"Aren't you going to change?" She cast a critical eye over finger spiked red hair (too long to be spiky), bags under his eyes, crumpled shirt. Third year medic. Even Aurors qualified sooner than healers. She shook her head (dislodging a pin).
"I am changed, Ron."
"Huh...really?" She straighted her white blouse.
"Yes."
"Huh. I guess some people just look like librarians, right?"
"I am not a librarian, Ronald."
"Librarian...Researcher..." He said, as she kicked the little car into gear, carefully guiding it into the air. "In the end, Hermione, it all comes down to one thing..."
"And what's that, Ronald?"
"It's all just ugly shoes, isn't it?"
x
"You're late," said Tonks (from the corner of her her mouth) as Hermoine slid into the bench seat beside her.
"I didn't realise that we were running to a schedule..." said Hermione, glancing around the room. There will still a lot of faces that she didn't recognise dotted around the Leaky Cauldron (few minutes left until closing time). In the corner, Dumbledore and Professor McGonnagall were talking, heads bent together over a pair of Butterbeer bottles. From a table to the right of the bar, Charlie Weasley winked before looking back to his mother (Molly, never the same after Bill died so suddenly, after memories of Gideon and Fabian came spilling back).
"We're not...but you know how Remus gets." Remus Lupin, sitting on his own at the bar, staring at nothing (these nights were always hard for him).
She hadn't realised that she was staring (Tonks' arm behind her in the booth, warm weight in the small of her back), until Harry spoke.
"We got you a drink, Hermione." He set down the glass in front of her, sliding into the opposite side of the booth, quickly followed by Ron (nudging with a hip and a hand under the table).
"What is it?"
"Absinthe, I think he said," said Ron, stealing a sip of Harry's pint (earning an over-the-glasses warning glance).
"It's very...green." Evidentally, the management of the Cauldron were still persisting with their somewhat disatrous programme of 'muggle drinks from around the world'. Tonks sipped her pint (black and white) somewhat tentatively.
"Hey," she said, with a tentative smile. "This isn't so bad."
"What?" said Harry, grinning, "You don't trust us?"
It was only then, waiting for midnight, tracing over long ago scratched legends (table-top religion) with her fingertip that Hermione realised how rarely any of them smiled anymore (how rarely they laughed). Not just Harry, in the finally stages of Auror training, but all of them: Ron who so often went home bloody and battered (decided to become a doctor after no-one was there when Bill needed someone - Mother's love will only go so far)...Charlie, who was home from Romania now and doing what he could at the Ministry. It had been six years. The war had been going on for six years, and they were all soldiers now. Picking at a P with her fingernails, Hermione twisted her hair, and wished to feel fifteen again.
"Friends," said Dumbledore (low voice for speaking after midnight, chairs and tables in a circle, Ron holding Harry's hand through slats in the chair, Molly already tearing up, her head against Arthur's shoulder), "An occasion like this needs no introduction."
They had been here before. Exactly here. It was almost always the same. Hermione leant back against Tonks' body, Tonks' chin on her shoulder, a denim clad thigh on either side of her (walls to her country). She listened.
"We gather not for gathering's sake," said the old headmaster, "But to commemorate and to recall. Every year, our list of personal fallen grows...We gather to remember, and to ensure that no sacrifice goes unremembered, and no fate, however freely chosen, uncelebrated."
"Here, here," said Arthur Weasley, quietly (father to one son murdered and another gone blank and pale behind St Mungo's windows).
"To the fallen," said Dumbledore, his face, for a moment, closed with all the guilt of a commander (all those murdered sons and daughters. They said that he remembered every name).
And then it started (everybody knew their places, their steps. They'd been here before, though there were always new names).
"James and Lily Potter," said McGonnagall, seeming frail, these days, lifting her small glass. "Lily, who was bonny and brave. James...who was never as bad as he wanted to be...He never could quite live up to Sirius Black's terrible reputation." A ripple of laughter...Harry was wearing the pleased, dreamy smile that he always wore whenever anyone spoke about his mum and dad. Charlie was the next one of his feet, shoving his hand through his red hair self conciously. He walked across the bar, taking a swig from his Guinness (wink for Tonks -- there's no point in feeling jealous of some people). "To Bill, who was my brother," said Charlie. "To Percy, who was also. Bill who fought the good fight, and Percy...who made a hero of himself, in the end. The both of them, brighter than Ron and quicker on the uptake," He ruffled Ron's longer hair with his free hand, "And will be thusly missed and always loved."
Ron groaned, and buried his face between Harry's shoulder blades. Suddenly, she wanted to hold them both in her arms (the same part of her that sometimes thought that babies were what she wanted). Tonks' arm tightened around her waist.
"To Mad-Eye, dear Mad-Eye..." said Tonks, her words vibrating along Hermione's spine. "Biggest, scariest bastard who ever walked the earth. Made my life a living hell...made me a better Auror for it. God-speed, you bastard. You scared the shit out of me but I loved you..." She kissed the side of Hermione's neck, whispering a prayer for Mad-Eye, two years gone now, into her skin.
"Something to say, Severus?" said Dumbledore. Hermione looked at the potions professor, folded into the shadows that leaked thickly in the corners of the bar.
"To those lucky enough to have passed on," said Snape, softly, lifting whatever it was that he was drinking into the air. A kind of silence settled over the Cauldron; a seething, waiting quiet.
"I guess that just leaves me then," said Remus, from the bar.
"Yes..." said Dumbledore. "I fear that time has come once again, Remus." Whiskey glass in hand, Remus stood.
"The moon," said Remus Lupin, "Shines with borrowed light. A star generates it's own. The muggles...they say that a star's light takes years to reach the earth. A star's light lingers after it dies. I can still see his light." He took a sip of his whiskey. "We've lost so much. I've lost so much. Lily and James, and I almost learnt to live with that, thought it hurt" (a glance there for Harry) "...and then Sirius went and proved it, irrevocably as brilliant as he was." Remus Lupin raised his glass, a trembling toast. "Severus had it right, I guess. None of us are going to live forever."
"To Harry Potter," said a voice from the back of the room.
"To Hogwarts," countered Harry, raising his pint glass, blushing.
"To those who fight," said Molly Weasley. "To those who do and did their best."
It was all that they could do, in the end. Our beloved dead.
That, and a hope of Heaven.
one minute...
She squeezed into the booth between them (aware that they were holding hands in the small of her back, pretending not to notice), wishing that Tonks was there (saw her ghosting outside with Remus). She'd been worried about Harry, after Sirius died, after they left Hogwarts, after it became known that he was powerful (incredibly powerful). She'd worried about him, but then one day Ron had appeared at the flat (her's and Tonks') with a funny look in his eyes, and his red hair toulsed, and his hands busy with the hem of his shirt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, but quiet hands and gentle kisses and red hair are grounding things.
So she trusted them together.
"Are you happy, Hermione?"
"Yes," she said, immediately.
"As happy as you can be," said Harry, like he was seeking permission for something. She nodded.
"You make the best of what you've got, Harry. You make do with what you have."
She laid her head against his shoulder, felt the old peculiar comfort of Ron's cheek against hers. Just the three of them; the doctor, the librarian, the boy who lived.
x
one minute...
She hated it, that trembling feeling at the end of your nose and the tips of your fingers when you knew that you were going to cry. She'd always hated it, since she used to wake up in the night trembling from dreams of her mad aunts (the handful of times that he'd been the one to comfort her, she'd taken with both hands and kept safe). They sat side by side on the low brick wall, and she rubbed the back of his neck, and she hoped that she was doing something right.
"Hold on to that girl of yours, Nymphadora. Don't let her out of your sight."
She wanted to tell him that nothing lasts forever. She wanted to tell him that love is at it's best in the moment, in the future, but it doesn't keep, not the way you want. She wanted to tell him that she missed Sirius, and always would. She wanted to tell him that he might have been the last one standing, but he didn't have to stand alone.
"Shhhh," she said, fingers in his hair, pointing up at the starry sky (bubble of night in London's brightness). "Can't you hear him?"
Remus dropped his head, and she pretended not to see.
"Are you ready to go home, girl?" Hermione looked up, her hair loose from it's pins, tumbled around her face in soft waves. She held out her hand, allowing Tonks to lever her out of the bench, drop a kiss on her upturned mouth. She turned, fingers still laced with Tonks', a kiss for the corner of Harry's mouth, another for Ron's forehead (pushed his hair back with her hand, smoothed it down afterwards).
"Be good, boys," she said, letting Tonks lead her, already fading into thoughts of bed and slip-slide and dawn kisses and falling asleep breathing Tonks' skin. "Be good..." (live.)
Three a.m.
(9: you said you'd wait)
Her hair faded like dying flowers (pink through purple) as she scrunched it with her fingers. She stood to one side of the kitchen, a beer bottle dangling from one hand, fingers of the other shoved into her hair. Ron, Hermione and Harry sat on one side of the long table. Charlie came to stand beside her.
"Fuck," said Ron, still staring. "Fucking fuck."
"Yes," said Remus, rubbing his face with his hands. "Exactly."
"He was a bastard..." said Ron, pushing his hair back from his face with both hands.
"But he was our bastard," said Harry, wearily.
"Stop calling him a bastard," said Hermione, high note of hysteria creeping into her voice as she looked at the wand which Remus had brought back with him as it dripped blood onto the table, "Don't you know that you're not supposed to speak ill of the dead?"
"He'd've spoken ill of me," muttered Ron crossing his arms across his chest. Tonks rolled her eyes, and walked towards the door, taking her bottle with her. Remus looked up at her throught strands of greying hair.
"Where are you going?"
"Out. Somewhere. I need a pass, Professor?" He raised an eyebrow (bisected by a scar, wasn't there last year).
"Don't go far."
She was up the stairs before he had time to tell her to stay in sight.
"So now he's dead," she said, swallowing bitter words with beer, "And we have to pretend to be sorry?"
"You're not sorry?" said Charlie, gently teasing the bottle out of her hand. The skin of his throat contracted when he swallowed (first love, most missed). It was pouring with rain in London that night, but the house was suffocating. Tonks shivered in her jacket (still Sirius'), sitting on the back step of Grimmauld place, huddled under the overhang, the flare and burn of her cigarette the only light in a world gone dark and wet and close. She smoked with a cupped hand (couldn't smoke around Hermione, so it felt like a dirty secret, still, made her feel like a teenager, forget that youth rides on the surface of your skin. Youth is not (and never was) your dirty little secrets). "He never did anything to you."
"Only because I tried my bloody hardest to never go to bloody potions."
"Don't be like that, Tonks. Bitter makes you ugly." She tried to laugh, choked on smoke and beer and the taste of regret.
"You know, you're right, Charlie. You're very right." She cleared her throat. "To dear departed Snape," she said, toasting the night with her cigarette, "you bastard. I hope you're happier where you've gone than you ever were here..."
"I wonder if there's a heaven for potion masters?" said Charlie, sitting down on the step beside her, offering her the rest of the beer. She took it, smiling as she took a swig.
"Dark and dank and full of things that smell funny."
"Ah, he'll be having a grand time." said Charlie, as she laid her head against his shoulder. "All the black robes he can...shake a stick at."
She giggled.
"Oh, Gods, Charlie...how'd we get into this bloody mess?" She said, rubbing her cheek on his shirt.
"Children of the Revolution, darling." He said, and then he bent down.
It wasn't a clean kiss (noses caught, teeth clicked). It wasn't a clean kiss at all, seeped in history and mis-steps and mis-glances. It wasn't a clean kiss. She stared at him, rubbing her lip with the edge of her cuff.
"What the fuck, Charlie?"
"I..." He blushed under freckles, "Tonks, wait, I..." She realised that she was on her feet. She silenced him with a vague gesture of her hand (she'd dropped her cigarette, forgotten clean about it).
"I'll talk to you later, Charlie...I've gotta...go find Hermione, yeah?"
She turned her back on him and left him for the rain to figure out.
She could count the times she'd seen Hermione like this on the fingers of one hand (tension, bouncing, unable to sit still, hair spilling over her shoulders snarled and worried, made cryptic by fingers in constant motion). Hermione stalked around their shared bedroom, luminous hair in her slip, on her tiptoes, her hair like trailing light.
"Why couldn't you have stayed?" She was saying, snapping, not looking Tonks directly in the eyes. "We were all there together, Tonks. You could have stayed...And," Neither of them had sat down since they came upstairs. "And areyoufuckingCharlie?" It all came spilling out of her in a rush, and she looked slapped, once she's said it, eyes wide, flush starting in one cheek. She regretted it instantly, and she couldn't take it back.
Hermione blinked, and Tonks felt her spine stiffen, dead straight. She couldn't help it. Suddenly, it that moment watching Hermione's breasts heave and shudder under silk, she completely understood Sirius (how he'd sometimes managed to appear so cold and cruel).
"Well? Are you?"
"Are you fucking Harry?" She asked, arched brow (maybe you never forgot how to be a Black, if you'd known once, ever, written on your bones). "Ron maybe? Both of them?"
Hermione choked.
"What?"
"You started it..." said Tonks, softly. "You're the one who's asking stupid fucking questions."
They stood there for a moment, Hermione's face flushed red, and then her lip trembled, and she collapsed onto the edge of the bed.
"It's just...Snape's dead." She sounded so fragile (hadn't sounded that young when she was fifteen, sixteen...war makes children of them all, Ron sulking, and Charlie grasping for comfort in remembered things, and Hermione trembling on the edge of the bed, rumpled silk and rumpled hair). Tonks went down on her knees (Scuffed denim, old boards), taking Hermione's hands in hers, kissing knuckles and rings (librarian's hands, researcher's hands, worn smooth at the tips). "It's just getting too bloody close now..." (It's been getting bloody close for years and years, since Bill).
"You didn't even like him, Hermione. None of us did. He creeped me the fuck out..."
"I know, but..."
"You didn't like him, love."
"That doesn't mean that I'm not sorry that he's dead..."
One tear sparkled down Hermione's cheek and a floodgate opened and soon she was in Tonk's arms on the floor sobbing, her tears soaking a trail through Tonks' t-shirt, down over her heart, and Tonks decided to forgive Charlie (stupid mistake, no harm at all), as Hermione cried and struggled and they waited for morning, or for the end of the world...
(10: our love's aching)
She was going to die. There. She was going to die there alone, and far from home. She flung out a stun-spell desperately, slipped to one knee in the mud (and the blood) and the rain. Not here, not now, not him.
Not him. He was the spitting image of his mother (his terrifying, cruel eyed mother), even with blond hair plastered to his skull (little bit broader through the shoulders than Ron...taller than Harry). Blood showing on his mouth (she'd caught a lucky blow, early on). He sneered like his father.
"Only one place for a whore like you," he sneers, spitting. "Mudblood in the mud," And he levelled his wand at her, laughing (she could barely hear him through the rain). She raised her head, at least (would not, could not cower to him).
"Crucio."
He was smiling when he said it.
In the white light which flashed, she saw Mad Eye Moody trying to smile, and Bill Weasley holding out his hands. Now she cowered. Now she crawled. Now she babbled and begged to die, as he dragged her to her knees by a handful of her hair.
"Only one use for a mudblood bitch like you..." He snarled. When he loosed her, she didn't have the strength to struggle, just knelt there, head bent (thought as hard as she could about living, about Hermione, about walking away and hoped that it was a prayer). He jerked his sleeve up, and held it out to her.
"Kiss it."
She did the only thing that she could. She turned her head (pouring rain) and pressed her lips to the dark mark (ink and blood) and waited for an end that didn't come.
x
Crawling on her hands and knees (nearly there, nearly there, nearly there), feeling concrete through jeans and the palms of her hands. Lost her coat somewhere along the road (wanted to go back, Sirius', but it was so fucking heavy, so heavy and maybe Charlie or Bill'll go back for it in the morning, once the rain stops). Not cold anymore...not anything anymore, numb. numb, numb, liquid and trickling. Trial, leaving a trail (blood and scuff, path to follow back). Getting tired, but getting close (nearly there, nearly there, nearly there). Be there soon, safe and sound.
Home.
Manages to hit the door once (curled fist) before collapsing, curling in on herself, sleeping (not sleeping, slipping). No wand, no locks, trapped, locked out, forgotten. Tries to scream (voice thin and curling in on herself).
She could love him, when he opens the door. She could honestly love him forever.
Harry is an angel, with a crown of hallway light.
x
He couldn't quite lift her (she was almost as tall as he was), but he managed to get her standing, managed to get her in out of the rain. He tried not to think about how much blood there was...her jeans soaked, her hair rusty, her white shirt marked with handprints (holding herself together). He kept her standing, her head lolling against her shoulder, and shouted from the front door, for Remus, for Charlie, for Ron for anybody.
He couldn't hold her forever.
Charlie came running up from the kitchen, a startled backwards glance for Mrs Black, swearing and wailing before he actually registered what was going on.
"What...when..." He saw Harry's knees wobble, and took hold of Tonks' arm, her weight, swinging her up into arms made strong by the work he'd chosen (he had a Weasley's easy grace, but Charlie had been forged in fire). "Go find Ron," he said, turning, a little lost (she was limp in his arms, so broken), "Now, Harry!" He snapped (worried), Harry standing stammering. "Now," he said, a little softer.
"What the bloody hell is all this..." She comes down the stairs, half of her hair pinned up, a sheaf of paper in her hands. She stopped, dead.
Harry took the stairs two at a time, caught her before she fell.
x
Oh, God, I don't believe in you, but if I did, and you took her, I'd never forgive you, I wouldn't I couldn't I'd never believe in anything again. I'll never believe in anything again, if you take her. Ron says he's done his best (I believe him, I trust him, what else is he going to do?). He's done his best, mended the things that are broken (oh, god, the things he said, the things they did to her, don't want to think about it can't can't can't). There was so much...I've never seen so much blood. Ron did so well, he did so...I mean, I knew he was a doctor, but I didn't quite believe it until I saw him do it, until I saw him change. He's a different person, he's so good. I trust him with my life. I trust him with hers. Says he mended all the things that are broken, that it's her job now, her choice (come back come back come back).
Oh, God, she's so cold.
Come back come back come back I love you more. I loved you first. I love you. Please.
I'll die with you.
Come back.
x
"Will she..?" She was scared to ask the question (sitting at the bedside, Tonks' fingers laced through hers, puzzle to be solved, code to be broken). She was scared to ask him. He was her best friend. He was going to tell her the truth. Ron paused (taking her temperature, making notes, keeping watch).
"It depends."
"On what?"
"On whether she wants to come back or not." He said, not looking at her, like he was reading lines from the sheet. "On whether she's got it in her to come back, Hermione. Look at her..." He smoothed her hair (washed out, faded) back from her forehead. "She's so tired." (Caring boy, made for this). He reached out across the bed, rubbing the back of Hermione's hand, Tonks' fingers. "She loves you...she's strong, Hermione." He tried a smile (came out one-sided). "Just let her sleep now...Let her rest her head."
Hermione tried to smile, leaning forward until her cheek touched sheet (top of her head brushing Tonks' hip). The sheets were clean and white. As Ron kissed her on the temple and left her, she tried not to think of all the blood.
Strange, halfway place, this (almost there, not quite gone), light and dark and Sirius is waiting for her on the line. He's younger than he looked for a while, dark hair a soft curtain, shoulders broad and strong and young under scuffed up leather. He's reading one of Remus' pulpy poetry paperbacks. He smiles before he sees her.
"So that's where my jacket went..."
It's all that she can think of to say.
"Mine first, baby girl..." He's so handsome (was he always so handsome?).
Of course he was.
"Where are we?"
"Heaven, more or less."
"More or less?"
"It's a bit of a walk."
"In which direction?"
"You see that silver glow on the horizon?" She nods.
"That's where all the good things are."
"Oh..." She's not sure if she actually says it, or just wants to make the sound. He tilts his head for her, smiling (faint but true light...)
"Don't you want to know what's back behind you?"
"I guess..."
"A second chance, and everything you'll ever love."
"You're here though,"
"I'm everywhere you are, baby-girl. I'm everywhere you take me." (oh, my star is fading fast).
"Hermione?" Hermione sat up with a start, hair tangled hopelessly on one side of her face, violet shadows under her eyes. She blinked before a smile that shone spread across her face.
"You're awake."
"Was there any doubt?" Hermione's beautiful smile dies a little (dims).
"There was quite considerable doubt." She reached out to stroke Hermione's face (such a simple pleasure, such a good thing, the smoothness of skin against her palm, and all that warmth).
"I'm here now." Hermione turned her face to kiss Tonks' palm, let her lips linger (thankyou for something given back).
"Do you...remember anything?" She shook her head (bits and pieces).
"I'll remember tomorrow. Come lie down with me."
Hermione lay down slowly, like she was scared that Tonks might break. She wouldn't break (she hadn't). She was so tired (drowning). She felt like she was never going to move under her own power again.
I will move myself tomorrow.
She laid her head on Hermione's chest, between her breasts.
"Who cleaned the windows?"
"Ron and Harry..." said Hermione, sleepily. "Under Remus' instruction."
"It stopped raining."
"It did."
"You can see the sky from here."
"Yes, love...yes you can."
And she felt sleep and comforted (not whole, not healed, scuffed up and rubbed raw and bleeding, not anywhere fixable, but somewhere deep inside). Fixing could come later. She wouldn't let him win (not you, not them, not your mother, not your fucking family. I spit on you. We're better than you. We always were). She lay there, just lay there (which was easy), let the world simplify to Hermione's heartbeat and the smell of her hair, to no pain and a glimpse of a pure blue sky after rain.
I will move myself tomorrow.