Fic: "Fear in a Handful of Dust" for mandy_jg
Title: Fear in a Handful of Dust
Author: apricot_bath
Recipient: mandy_jg
Rating: R
Characters: Hermione Granger, Pansy Parkinson
Warnings: Character death
Summary: Hermione’s ear meets the cool flesh under James’ starched shirt. She thinks that maybe a lung or two has collapsed, and her thumbs run along his throat, hunting for the shudder of a pulse, and wishing James’ lips weren’t turning the soft blue of the ocean, with none of the ocean’s fervor.
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns Harry Potter, Milan Kundera owns einmal ist keinmal, and Susan Traherne belongs to David Hare.
Author's notes: Well, mandy_jg, I tried to incorporate your character and time period requests, and this absolute craziness was the result - I'm not sure if this is any good, but I hope you like it!
Fear in a Handful of Dust
-
October 31, 1981
-
"This sounded easy, you know."
Hermione nods, hands on James Potter’s still chest, because that’s true.
"It was supposed to be easy. They said it wouldn’t be difficult."
Hermione frowns, her mouth small and cheeks white as apples. The floor is filthy and sticks to her bare knees and her hands are pushing through the folds of James’ ribcage and finding nothing.
"This shouldn’t have been our job."
Hermione’s ear meets the cool flesh under James’ starched shirt. She thinks that maybe a lung or two has collapsed, and her thumbs run along his throat, hunting for the shudder of a pulse, and wishing James’ lips weren’t turning the soft blue of the ocean, with none of the ocean’s fervor.
The body of James Potter is still. The blood seeps over his tongue the color of merlot, and Hermione avoids looking at the eyelids with lashes were quivering a moment before. With a sigh, she lifts her trembling palms and clutches Pansy’s arm, and for the first moment since they have entered the room, she turns to look at her. With a sigh, Hermione says:
"We’re done now."
The timeturner on Hermione’s neck tugs her earthward with all the weight of an anchor.
There’s no sand left.
-
October 29, 1997
-
Godric’s Hollow is still empty. Hermione’s not sure how or why nothing’s been done to the place, but after fifteen years, all that remains is dark soil. No weeds, no gum wrappers, nothing.
Hermione shudders, and moves her wand over the plot, watching the autumnal starlight tap Ron’s hair as he kneels downward, following the light from her wand. Harry sits on his broomstick somewhere above them, drifting slightly as he keeps watch. There are wards and disillusionment charms and an invisibility cloak, but Hermione is still on edge.
Hermione runs the light in lines over the dirt, waiting, remembering Shacklebolt’s instructions, and licks her lips, because her chapstick burned down with the last safe-house and she doesn’t know a spell for that.
"Stop," says Ron, right as Hermione sees the light swell a little and holds her hand still while Ron marks the spot, and Harry pronounces the incantation right for the first time.
Ten minutes later and Hufflepuff’s cup is strapped to the back of Harry’s broom.
-
October 1, 1997
-
"You’re defending her?"
"Hermione-"
"I just don’t understand. You’re defending the girl who had Ron spill his bones on the floor three nights ago. You’re saying we should take her in."
"Yes."
"She’s prejudiced. She’s always been prejudiced. You really think she’ll help us?"
"She will, Hermione."
"All right."
"All right?"
"Harry, I’m the one who begged you to forgive Malfoy, Snape, and Nicholas Darrow. I trust her if you’re so willing to vouch for her."
"Really?"
"So it would seem."
-
November 2, 1997
-
"Why did he listen?"
Hermione looks up from the spell book and considers this.
"He listened because every day he remembers casting that spell," she tells Pansy, "He listened because he remembers Draco Malfoy with his organs on the bathroom floor."
Pansy’s mouth wrinkles in concentration as she fiddles with the hem of her lilac robe. Her dark hair is in short piles gathered over her shoulder, and her eyes are tinged pink with sleeplessness.
"If I’d chosen a different spell, would he have listened?"
"That’s a good question," Hermione replies, digging her teeth into lips that are becoming dry as sandpaper.
"And that’s not an answer."
"I hope he would have listened," Hermione says easily.
"But you know he wouldn’t have," Pansy finishes for her, scanning the shelves of the library, running her hands over the spines curiously. The high, gothic windows lining the wall opposite her carry in ribbons of thin and citrine light and Hermione conjures a blazing blue flame above herself for better reading.
"Yes," Hermione agrees, "He wouldn’t have. And he shouldn’t have to, either."
"Why?" Pansy retorts, lifting a wide leather-bound volume from the shelf, "He’s running the resistance movement, he’s the one whose mercy is most needed, and there are tons of us, Hermione. There are so many people who would come to him were he to accept them, Hermione!"
"I know that, but there are so many others who would come to him and kill him, and there are so many others who have tried," Hermione replies wearily, marveling at the redundancy of the text and wishing 17th century wizarding illustrators hadn’t valued nudity quite so much.
"Would you have listened?" Pansy asks, seating herself in the kitschy armchair across from Hermione, double-crossing her legs - her skin hangs loose on her bones even now, months after Macnair is killed - and prying open the tome, allowing a cloud of bright dust to escape.
"Yes," Hermione says.
"Why?" Pansy’s fingers run down the page, and she sighs as her nail catches on the aged paper.
"Because I understand you were raised to believe the things you believed," Hermione offers, pulling a notepad and pen from the bag on the lamp stand and taking a note on the uses of Zinnia pollen.
"And what, was too naïve to assess them?" Pansy’s voice is thick with spite. Hermione’s gotten used to this, though she’s not sure why.
"And weren't encouraged to assess them," she corrects Pansy, even though she knows Pansy did assess them, and ignored her assessment.
Hermione can empathize with that.
"What about Ron and the sectusempra?"
"It was one time," Hermione says slowly, because she has nightmares about Ron and the sectusempra along with the white tomb, "It was one time after months of imprisonment, and you came to us right after. One time is not enough to condemn you."
"One murder wouldn’t have mattered?" Pansy counters, smirking at her because even after she has come begging to Hermione and everyone Hermione serves, Pansy is still desperate to find times when she can say you all really are just the lesser of two evils.
"Einmal ist keinmal," Hermione recites, not adding Harry once tried to Crucio Bellatrix, and I nearly got Umbridge killed once, and none of us were old enough to know, and we still aren’t.
"You believe that?" Pansy is trying to get under her skin, and it’s working a little. "One killed house-elf doesn’t matter? One muggleborn tortured?"
Einmal ist keinmal. One time is no time.
"Sometimes."
-
November 4, 1997
-
The ladle tips onto Hermione’s knee, the tin spoon pouring scorching thick goulash into the folds of her robe.
"Oh, sorry, Hermione, I-" Tonks immediately throws a handful of napkins on the leg, and Hermione waves a dismissive hand at the Auror, rising.
"Don’t worry about it, I’ll just go clean it off," Hermione assures her, entering the left hallway to reach the bathroom. Flipping the light switch, she turns the brass faucet to release a stream of cold water into the porcelain sink, running it over the soggy patch of cloth.
The house isn’t warded. Wards are detectable and magic is detectable, but right now they are all untraceable and staying in a household where there is no magic at all.
"Hermione-"
Wand up, wand out, wrist up.
It’s Remus Lupin, whose eyes have sunken so deep into his face Hermione thinks he must be able to see the bones of his nose. He looks endlessly panicked.
"Easy there," he says with a wry smile, and Hermione winces, the tiniest bit, because his mouth is lopsided and Fenrir ripped it apart and she hates him for it.
"Sorry," Hermione says, patting the spot on her robe with a navy washcloth.
"It’s alright," Lupin tells her, "but I was given a message for you."
Hermione nods, pinning a few stray hair back.
"The message was ‘bildungsroman blue’."
It takes a moment for the phrase to trigger a response, and then Hermione remembers hiding behind a classroom door clutching an hourglass against her collarbone, thinking if I see myself I need to shout bildungsroman blue because Dumbledore told me to make a random codeword.
Hermione’s fingers stop where they are smoothing her hair back.
"Oh, no," she murmurs, staring at the dusty mirror, where she sees Lupin’s apologetic eyes meet hers. "It’s not possible that the message was from me, is it?"
"It was," Lupin told her with a sigh.
Hermione thinks on this, and then says: "Well, let’s finish dinner now, and you can tell me after, Professor."
Lupin shakes his head. "You already told me that Tonks accidentally sets the tablecloth on fire, and you and I finish this conversation now, it seems."
Hermione leans against the doorframe, and Lupin sits on the bench across from the door, the blithe rose light of the sunset illumining his skeletal figure through the narrow windows. She thinks he looks almost as weary as Harry.
So many times a day does Hermione wish Dumbledore hadn’t left Harry. Hermione’s never been one for useless regret, but she dreams of the white tomb, and anxiety piles in her blood like air.
"It’s about the cup. And in about ten seconds, it’s going to be about Pansy Parkinson," Lupin tells her.
Pansy strolls through the door at the end of the hallway, grumbling as she examines a charred sleeve, and Hermione wishes for Dumbledore.
-
November 5, 1997
-
"I won’t do this," Pansy shouts, in her voice that is sharp and strained, and her face is stained red. After abruptly leaving last night, she has finally reentered the solarium, where Hermione fell asleep late and woke due to the force of dawn-light.
Hermione blinks, still exhausted, and looks at Pansy, who seems to be falling apart at the seams. Pansy’s hair is dark and filthy, her eyes are too-wide and rose with insomnia, and she is wearing the same grey robes she wore the night before, that are crumpled and frayed at the hems. Months have passed since her time in the Riddle House, but Pansy is still sepulchral. Her flesh is too much for her still-cadaveric body.
Hermione pities her so much that it is hard to breathe for a moment.
"I won’t do it," Pansy says again. She doesn’t look at Hermione but instead at the crackling fire beside her. Pansy’s voice is petulant and low.
"I shouldn’t have to do this," Pansy continues. "And this is, this is, this is you."
Hermione looks at Pansy in surprise, and yells when her elbow hits the oak handle of the loveseat as she shifts.
"You discover, discovered it, of course. And it’s your idea, this kind of martyrdom screams Granger. I would never dream of-"
Pansy breaks off, and turns her feverish eyes to Hermione.
"Are you going to do this?"
"I already have, haven’t I?"
Hermione throws the note from Lupin into the fire, and the flames consume the ink, biting the parchment neatly, quickly, the words engrained into her mind.
It’s already done. Remember: time is unchangeable, but it is addable.
-
November 6, 1997
-
"I don’t understand."
"It’s, well, it’s a spell that sends us backwards."
"That’s illegal. And I thought the strongest time-magic was a time turner?"
"That’s the strongest reversible kind."
"Oh, well, of course, how could you even-"
"I’ve done this already. Look: this has already happened. You can’t dissuade me because I have already seen it through."
"Yes. Yes."
"Come here, Harry."
"I don’t understand."
It’s already done.
-
November 7, 1997
-
There isn’t time for lovely good-byes. The backyard cum graveyard of Grimmauld Place has made disappearing acts typical as dirt.
I want so much to stay here, Hermione thinks.
But more than that, Hermione sees that she is the war, now. She loves Harry and she loves Ron and she loves all of these people, enough that she is about to leave them.
Hermione could not have survived anyway, she believes. She’s sure she will become Susan Traherne if she emerges from these years of giving and giving and giving.
Well, that’s what she tells herself as she begins preparing the potion, and resting her elbow on the paragraph which begins the magic needed significantly diminishes life expectancies and so-
-
October 28, 1977
-
"You can stop pretending to sleep," Hermione says to Sirius, almost rolling her eyes.
He remains still, and Hermione smiles, even though the wind that crawls through the mountains rips the breath out of her.
She's on a mission, and she's on a mission with Sirius and Remus and James.
Peter's home somewhere. Hermione's tongue grows heavy every time the boys mention him, but she's strapped her mind onto her current mission: to gain their trust. And to perform the mission the Order gave them, but at this point a round of surveillance and capture is easy.
Although Hermione knows better than to show them that, and so she lets James aim a stunner at the young Dolohov a moment after she's wordlessly full-body-bound him, and sometimes lets the attackers nearer than she would with her boys.
The three are achingly close to each other. They are like brothers. (They're like Harry and Ron, who Hermione misses so much more now.) They have agreed to protect Hermione and while Lupin is predictably gracious to her, the other two are cordial, and don't yet trust her.
Hermione rests her head against a conjured pillow, glancing around the walls of the wide cave. It's April somewhere in the Himalayas, and night is beginning to be rinsed from the sky. She sighs, renewing the warming charm on her gloves, and turns her body slightly inward to look at Sirius.
"Honestly, if you're awake then you might as well be awake," Hermione tells him, wondering if he knows that his jaw is clenched too much for sleep, and his breathing wrong.
"Why?" he replies, and his eyes open to surprise Hermione, who is haunted by memories of his future.
"Carpe diem, baby," groans Pansy from the other corner, grumbling as she sits up. Bleary-eyed, Pansy looks at Hermione and rolls her eyes, as if to say relax, will you?. Hermione often thinks Pansy wants to say it's already done right back to her.
Sirius laughs, in that bitter, pleasant way that Hermione is unused to, and in a coil of movements he's a black dog, barking straight into the faces of Remus and James Potter.
Pansy stretches her arms high, and while the three boys are scuffling amicably, gives Hermione a look, and grins. "There are people to the left, twenty minutes off," she reminds her.
Hermione throws her head back as the dawn spills over them, and tastes adrenaline, sour and familiar.
A stunner chips the stone at her feet, and the day Hermione saves James' life become the day she gains his friendship.
-
November 2, 1978
-
"You blew up the wedding cake."
Sirius grins, baring his teeth and rubbing his hands.
"It just burst into rainbow flames and sang hickory dickory dock. ‘Blow up’ sounds a little too frightening," Remus says, shaking his head in a good pretense of shame, belied by his own smile.
"You know," Lily says, cocking her head and watching the cake cum bonfire that blazes at the high table, "It’s almost kind of tame. I really expected something more - oh."
The wineglasses begin to juggle in the air, circling by the hands of a phantom acrobat, and the tables do the can-can as the opening notes of In the Mood play from somewhere near the peak of the tent as fireworks erupt.
"This is nice," Hermione remarks casually, snatching a wineglass from the air and gulping merlot. Her bridesmaid’s dress is a lilac gown with straps that dig into her back and a pale hue that leaves her skin looking sallow. The lilac does, unfortunately, leave Pansy looking lovely, as the stitches seem to fit her body perfectly - Hermione’s fairly sure Pansy knows spells for altering things like this, but her pride keeps her in the purple potato sack - and she smiles as she sips her own white wine.
It’s odd, because Pansy spends an hour tracing her eyes perfectly each morning because she says she wants to look gorgeous at the funeral and Hermione says well, if the funeral’s coming, what does it matter?
Hermione thinks it's funny. It’s also funny to see that the eye shadow Sirius tampered with worked, because now when Pansy shuts her eyes, the words my nose is fake appear.
Pansy thinks casting a spell that only lets Sirius sing cinquains is funny, and so the wedding toast begins with the lines my toast / for the nights hosts / will be charming at most.
-
September 20, 1981
-
"We split them up, see. We give them the information we can, without revealing too much, and then have them repeat back to us exactly what they need to do."
Hermione hands Pansy a list titled Useable Future Facts. Pansy grits her teeth to stop the flood of remarks concerning Hermione's skill with naming things.
In the kitchen it goes like this: the word is bildungsroman blue, alright?
And in the dining room, it goes like this: only a Potter can go into the soil beneath Godric's Hollow, alright?
James and Remus apparate with pings to their own flats, and Pansy, stirring a cup of tepid lemon-ginger tea, lets her head fall onto the green card table, so that her cheek is pressed against the plastic.
Their flat is tiny and magically decorated, with one bedroom to share (not like that Pansy tells Sirius a thousand times over, because his humor's not extinguished yet) and Hermione taps her fingers on the counter.
"I couldn't do a proper locking charm this morning," she admits.
Pansy releases a little, choking weepy noise, and shuts her eyes.
"I'm scared," Hermione whispers. She doesn't regret this, not really, what's done is done, but her body feels simultaneously heavy and light, and she's glad more of herself was put into the spell than Pansy, because her magic is a silhouette.
They sit like that for hours, Hermione's mouth half-open with her eyes on the calendar, where Halloween is circled because that's when she'll have to be sure of James' death, of the magic which seals the site of his murder, and Pansy simply watching her, waiting for acceptance to settle in.
>December 10, 1981
-
Hermione’s bones are evaporating, thinning like a drop of ink in a bowl of milk.
She's sitting with her legs crossed on the patio, in the tulip-yellow sundress she bought for Easter, and the December sun swells around her, traverses her, wraps her in its realities.
Pansy sits beside her, and they're both smiling, just a bit, because the Hufflepuff cup is seven feet under, and death approaches, but success replaces their dissipating blood.
Time spins slowly, time has spun, and everything is addable but unchangeable, she thinks. But I haven’t written Remus the note yet, I haven’t written-
Hermione remembers the manic gleam in Remus’ eyes, and forgives him. She thinks of James and Lily and that joy cometh in the morning and smiles.
Pansy sits beside her, swinging her legs so that her kneecap is scratched, and when the stars emerge, she is alone. Her spine tugs her to the floor with its newfound weight, and Pansy feels her magic exit, before her skin begins to.
It is evolution, this is unity: Pansy joins air and time and now Hermione, and finally she is done.
-
"There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust."
-T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Author: apricot_bath
Recipient: mandy_jg
Rating: R
Characters: Hermione Granger, Pansy Parkinson
Warnings: Character death
Summary: Hermione’s ear meets the cool flesh under James’ starched shirt. She thinks that maybe a lung or two has collapsed, and her thumbs run along his throat, hunting for the shudder of a pulse, and wishing James’ lips weren’t turning the soft blue of the ocean, with none of the ocean’s fervor.
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns Harry Potter, Milan Kundera owns einmal ist keinmal, and Susan Traherne belongs to David Hare.
Author's notes: Well, mandy_jg, I tried to incorporate your character and time period requests, and this absolute craziness was the result - I'm not sure if this is any good, but I hope you like it!
Fear in a Handful of Dust
-
October 31, 1981
-
"This sounded easy, you know."
Hermione nods, hands on James Potter’s still chest, because that’s true.
"It was supposed to be easy. They said it wouldn’t be difficult."
Hermione frowns, her mouth small and cheeks white as apples. The floor is filthy and sticks to her bare knees and her hands are pushing through the folds of James’ ribcage and finding nothing.
"This shouldn’t have been our job."
Hermione’s ear meets the cool flesh under James’ starched shirt. She thinks that maybe a lung or two has collapsed, and her thumbs run along his throat, hunting for the shudder of a pulse, and wishing James’ lips weren’t turning the soft blue of the ocean, with none of the ocean’s fervor.
The body of James Potter is still. The blood seeps over his tongue the color of merlot, and Hermione avoids looking at the eyelids with lashes were quivering a moment before. With a sigh, she lifts her trembling palms and clutches Pansy’s arm, and for the first moment since they have entered the room, she turns to look at her. With a sigh, Hermione says:
"We’re done now."
The timeturner on Hermione’s neck tugs her earthward with all the weight of an anchor.
There’s no sand left.
-
October 29, 1997
-
Godric’s Hollow is still empty. Hermione’s not sure how or why nothing’s been done to the place, but after fifteen years, all that remains is dark soil. No weeds, no gum wrappers, nothing.
Hermione shudders, and moves her wand over the plot, watching the autumnal starlight tap Ron’s hair as he kneels downward, following the light from her wand. Harry sits on his broomstick somewhere above them, drifting slightly as he keeps watch. There are wards and disillusionment charms and an invisibility cloak, but Hermione is still on edge.
Hermione runs the light in lines over the dirt, waiting, remembering Shacklebolt’s instructions, and licks her lips, because her chapstick burned down with the last safe-house and she doesn’t know a spell for that.
"Stop," says Ron, right as Hermione sees the light swell a little and holds her hand still while Ron marks the spot, and Harry pronounces the incantation right for the first time.
Ten minutes later and Hufflepuff’s cup is strapped to the back of Harry’s broom.
-
October 1, 1997
-
"You’re defending her?"
"Hermione-"
"I just don’t understand. You’re defending the girl who had Ron spill his bones on the floor three nights ago. You’re saying we should take her in."
"Yes."
"She’s prejudiced. She’s always been prejudiced. You really think she’ll help us?"
"She will, Hermione."
"All right."
"All right?"
"Harry, I’m the one who begged you to forgive Malfoy, Snape, and Nicholas Darrow. I trust her if you’re so willing to vouch for her."
"Really?"
"So it would seem."
-
November 2, 1997
-
"Why did he listen?"
Hermione looks up from the spell book and considers this.
"He listened because every day he remembers casting that spell," she tells Pansy, "He listened because he remembers Draco Malfoy with his organs on the bathroom floor."
Pansy’s mouth wrinkles in concentration as she fiddles with the hem of her lilac robe. Her dark hair is in short piles gathered over her shoulder, and her eyes are tinged pink with sleeplessness.
"If I’d chosen a different spell, would he have listened?"
"That’s a good question," Hermione replies, digging her teeth into lips that are becoming dry as sandpaper.
"And that’s not an answer."
"I hope he would have listened," Hermione says easily.
"But you know he wouldn’t have," Pansy finishes for her, scanning the shelves of the library, running her hands over the spines curiously. The high, gothic windows lining the wall opposite her carry in ribbons of thin and citrine light and Hermione conjures a blazing blue flame above herself for better reading.
"Yes," Hermione agrees, "He wouldn’t have. And he shouldn’t have to, either."
"Why?" Pansy retorts, lifting a wide leather-bound volume from the shelf, "He’s running the resistance movement, he’s the one whose mercy is most needed, and there are tons of us, Hermione. There are so many people who would come to him were he to accept them, Hermione!"
"I know that, but there are so many others who would come to him and kill him, and there are so many others who have tried," Hermione replies wearily, marveling at the redundancy of the text and wishing 17th century wizarding illustrators hadn’t valued nudity quite so much.
"Would you have listened?" Pansy asks, seating herself in the kitschy armchair across from Hermione, double-crossing her legs - her skin hangs loose on her bones even now, months after Macnair is killed - and prying open the tome, allowing a cloud of bright dust to escape.
"Yes," Hermione says.
"Why?" Pansy’s fingers run down the page, and she sighs as her nail catches on the aged paper.
"Because I understand you were raised to believe the things you believed," Hermione offers, pulling a notepad and pen from the bag on the lamp stand and taking a note on the uses of Zinnia pollen.
"And what, was too naïve to assess them?" Pansy’s voice is thick with spite. Hermione’s gotten used to this, though she’s not sure why.
"And weren't encouraged to assess them," she corrects Pansy, even though she knows Pansy did assess them, and ignored her assessment.
Hermione can empathize with that.
"What about Ron and the sectusempra?"
"It was one time," Hermione says slowly, because she has nightmares about Ron and the sectusempra along with the white tomb, "It was one time after months of imprisonment, and you came to us right after. One time is not enough to condemn you."
"One murder wouldn’t have mattered?" Pansy counters, smirking at her because even after she has come begging to Hermione and everyone Hermione serves, Pansy is still desperate to find times when she can say you all really are just the lesser of two evils.
"Einmal ist keinmal," Hermione recites, not adding Harry once tried to Crucio Bellatrix, and I nearly got Umbridge killed once, and none of us were old enough to know, and we still aren’t.
"You believe that?" Pansy is trying to get under her skin, and it’s working a little. "One killed house-elf doesn’t matter? One muggleborn tortured?"
Einmal ist keinmal. One time is no time.
"Sometimes."
-
November 4, 1997
-
The ladle tips onto Hermione’s knee, the tin spoon pouring scorching thick goulash into the folds of her robe.
"Oh, sorry, Hermione, I-" Tonks immediately throws a handful of napkins on the leg, and Hermione waves a dismissive hand at the Auror, rising.
"Don’t worry about it, I’ll just go clean it off," Hermione assures her, entering the left hallway to reach the bathroom. Flipping the light switch, she turns the brass faucet to release a stream of cold water into the porcelain sink, running it over the soggy patch of cloth.
The house isn’t warded. Wards are detectable and magic is detectable, but right now they are all untraceable and staying in a household where there is no magic at all.
"Hermione-"
Wand up, wand out, wrist up.
It’s Remus Lupin, whose eyes have sunken so deep into his face Hermione thinks he must be able to see the bones of his nose. He looks endlessly panicked.
"Easy there," he says with a wry smile, and Hermione winces, the tiniest bit, because his mouth is lopsided and Fenrir ripped it apart and she hates him for it.
"Sorry," Hermione says, patting the spot on her robe with a navy washcloth.
"It’s alright," Lupin tells her, "but I was given a message for you."
Hermione nods, pinning a few stray hair back.
"The message was ‘bildungsroman blue’."
It takes a moment for the phrase to trigger a response, and then Hermione remembers hiding behind a classroom door clutching an hourglass against her collarbone, thinking if I see myself I need to shout bildungsroman blue because Dumbledore told me to make a random codeword.
Hermione’s fingers stop where they are smoothing her hair back.
"Oh, no," she murmurs, staring at the dusty mirror, where she sees Lupin’s apologetic eyes meet hers. "It’s not possible that the message was from me, is it?"
"It was," Lupin told her with a sigh.
Hermione thinks on this, and then says: "Well, let’s finish dinner now, and you can tell me after, Professor."
Lupin shakes his head. "You already told me that Tonks accidentally sets the tablecloth on fire, and you and I finish this conversation now, it seems."
Hermione leans against the doorframe, and Lupin sits on the bench across from the door, the blithe rose light of the sunset illumining his skeletal figure through the narrow windows. She thinks he looks almost as weary as Harry.
So many times a day does Hermione wish Dumbledore hadn’t left Harry. Hermione’s never been one for useless regret, but she dreams of the white tomb, and anxiety piles in her blood like air.
"It’s about the cup. And in about ten seconds, it’s going to be about Pansy Parkinson," Lupin tells her.
Pansy strolls through the door at the end of the hallway, grumbling as she examines a charred sleeve, and Hermione wishes for Dumbledore.
-
November 5, 1997
-
"I won’t do this," Pansy shouts, in her voice that is sharp and strained, and her face is stained red. After abruptly leaving last night, she has finally reentered the solarium, where Hermione fell asleep late and woke due to the force of dawn-light.
Hermione blinks, still exhausted, and looks at Pansy, who seems to be falling apart at the seams. Pansy’s hair is dark and filthy, her eyes are too-wide and rose with insomnia, and she is wearing the same grey robes she wore the night before, that are crumpled and frayed at the hems. Months have passed since her time in the Riddle House, but Pansy is still sepulchral. Her flesh is too much for her still-cadaveric body.
Hermione pities her so much that it is hard to breathe for a moment.
"I won’t do it," Pansy says again. She doesn’t look at Hermione but instead at the crackling fire beside her. Pansy’s voice is petulant and low.
"I shouldn’t have to do this," Pansy continues. "And this is, this is, this is you."
Hermione looks at Pansy in surprise, and yells when her elbow hits the oak handle of the loveseat as she shifts.
"You discover, discovered it, of course. And it’s your idea, this kind of martyrdom screams Granger. I would never dream of-"
Pansy breaks off, and turns her feverish eyes to Hermione.
"Are you going to do this?"
"I already have, haven’t I?"
Hermione throws the note from Lupin into the fire, and the flames consume the ink, biting the parchment neatly, quickly, the words engrained into her mind.
It’s already done. Remember: time is unchangeable, but it is addable.
-
November 6, 1997
-
"I don’t understand."
"It’s, well, it’s a spell that sends us backwards."
"That’s illegal. And I thought the strongest time-magic was a time turner?"
"That’s the strongest reversible kind."
"Oh, well, of course, how could you even-"
"I’ve done this already. Look: this has already happened. You can’t dissuade me because I have already seen it through."
"Yes. Yes."
"Come here, Harry."
"I don’t understand."
It’s already done.
-
November 7, 1997
-
There isn’t time for lovely good-byes. The backyard cum graveyard of Grimmauld Place has made disappearing acts typical as dirt.
I want so much to stay here, Hermione thinks.
But more than that, Hermione sees that she is the war, now. She loves Harry and she loves Ron and she loves all of these people, enough that she is about to leave them.
Hermione could not have survived anyway, she believes. She’s sure she will become Susan Traherne if she emerges from these years of giving and giving and giving.
Well, that’s what she tells herself as she begins preparing the potion, and resting her elbow on the paragraph which begins the magic needed significantly diminishes life expectancies and so-
-
October 28, 1977
-
"You can stop pretending to sleep," Hermione says to Sirius, almost rolling her eyes.
He remains still, and Hermione smiles, even though the wind that crawls through the mountains rips the breath out of her.
She's on a mission, and she's on a mission with Sirius and Remus and James.
Peter's home somewhere. Hermione's tongue grows heavy every time the boys mention him, but she's strapped her mind onto her current mission: to gain their trust. And to perform the mission the Order gave them, but at this point a round of surveillance and capture is easy.
Although Hermione knows better than to show them that, and so she lets James aim a stunner at the young Dolohov a moment after she's wordlessly full-body-bound him, and sometimes lets the attackers nearer than she would with her boys.
The three are achingly close to each other. They are like brothers. (They're like Harry and Ron, who Hermione misses so much more now.) They have agreed to protect Hermione and while Lupin is predictably gracious to her, the other two are cordial, and don't yet trust her.
Hermione rests her head against a conjured pillow, glancing around the walls of the wide cave. It's April somewhere in the Himalayas, and night is beginning to be rinsed from the sky. She sighs, renewing the warming charm on her gloves, and turns her body slightly inward to look at Sirius.
"Honestly, if you're awake then you might as well be awake," Hermione tells him, wondering if he knows that his jaw is clenched too much for sleep, and his breathing wrong.
"Why?" he replies, and his eyes open to surprise Hermione, who is haunted by memories of his future.
"Carpe diem, baby," groans Pansy from the other corner, grumbling as she sits up. Bleary-eyed, Pansy looks at Hermione and rolls her eyes, as if to say relax, will you?. Hermione often thinks Pansy wants to say it's already done right back to her.
Sirius laughs, in that bitter, pleasant way that Hermione is unused to, and in a coil of movements he's a black dog, barking straight into the faces of Remus and James Potter.
Pansy stretches her arms high, and while the three boys are scuffling amicably, gives Hermione a look, and grins. "There are people to the left, twenty minutes off," she reminds her.
Hermione throws her head back as the dawn spills over them, and tastes adrenaline, sour and familiar.
A stunner chips the stone at her feet, and the day Hermione saves James' life become the day she gains his friendship.
-
November 2, 1978
-
"You blew up the wedding cake."
Sirius grins, baring his teeth and rubbing his hands.
"It just burst into rainbow flames and sang hickory dickory dock. ‘Blow up’ sounds a little too frightening," Remus says, shaking his head in a good pretense of shame, belied by his own smile.
"You know," Lily says, cocking her head and watching the cake cum bonfire that blazes at the high table, "It’s almost kind of tame. I really expected something more - oh."
The wineglasses begin to juggle in the air, circling by the hands of a phantom acrobat, and the tables do the can-can as the opening notes of In the Mood play from somewhere near the peak of the tent as fireworks erupt.
"This is nice," Hermione remarks casually, snatching a wineglass from the air and gulping merlot. Her bridesmaid’s dress is a lilac gown with straps that dig into her back and a pale hue that leaves her skin looking sallow. The lilac does, unfortunately, leave Pansy looking lovely, as the stitches seem to fit her body perfectly - Hermione’s fairly sure Pansy knows spells for altering things like this, but her pride keeps her in the purple potato sack - and she smiles as she sips her own white wine.
It’s odd, because Pansy spends an hour tracing her eyes perfectly each morning because she says she wants to look gorgeous at the funeral and Hermione says well, if the funeral’s coming, what does it matter?
Hermione thinks it's funny. It’s also funny to see that the eye shadow Sirius tampered with worked, because now when Pansy shuts her eyes, the words my nose is fake appear.
Pansy thinks casting a spell that only lets Sirius sing cinquains is funny, and so the wedding toast begins with the lines my toast / for the nights hosts / will be charming at most.
-
September 20, 1981
-
"We split them up, see. We give them the information we can, without revealing too much, and then have them repeat back to us exactly what they need to do."
Hermione hands Pansy a list titled Useable Future Facts. Pansy grits her teeth to stop the flood of remarks concerning Hermione's skill with naming things.
In the kitchen it goes like this: the word is bildungsroman blue, alright?
And in the dining room, it goes like this: only a Potter can go into the soil beneath Godric's Hollow, alright?
James and Remus apparate with pings to their own flats, and Pansy, stirring a cup of tepid lemon-ginger tea, lets her head fall onto the green card table, so that her cheek is pressed against the plastic.
Their flat is tiny and magically decorated, with one bedroom to share (not like that Pansy tells Sirius a thousand times over, because his humor's not extinguished yet) and Hermione taps her fingers on the counter.
"I couldn't do a proper locking charm this morning," she admits.
Pansy releases a little, choking weepy noise, and shuts her eyes.
"I'm scared," Hermione whispers. She doesn't regret this, not really, what's done is done, but her body feels simultaneously heavy and light, and she's glad more of herself was put into the spell than Pansy, because her magic is a silhouette.
They sit like that for hours, Hermione's mouth half-open with her eyes on the calendar, where Halloween is circled because that's when she'll have to be sure of James' death, of the magic which seals the site of his murder, and Pansy simply watching her, waiting for acceptance to settle in.
>December 10, 1981
-
Hermione’s bones are evaporating, thinning like a drop of ink in a bowl of milk.
She's sitting with her legs crossed on the patio, in the tulip-yellow sundress she bought for Easter, and the December sun swells around her, traverses her, wraps her in its realities.
Pansy sits beside her, and they're both smiling, just a bit, because the Hufflepuff cup is seven feet under, and death approaches, but success replaces their dissipating blood.
Time spins slowly, time has spun, and everything is addable but unchangeable, she thinks. But I haven’t written Remus the note yet, I haven’t written-
Hermione remembers the manic gleam in Remus’ eyes, and forgives him. She thinks of James and Lily and that joy cometh in the morning and smiles.
Pansy sits beside her, swinging her legs so that her kneecap is scratched, and when the stars emerge, she is alone. Her spine tugs her to the floor with its newfound weight, and Pansy feels her magic exit, before her skin begins to.
It is evolution, this is unity: Pansy joins air and time and now Hermione, and finally she is done.
-
"There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust."
-T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land