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She blinks hard in the bright sunlight, its heat like a fire flickering over her skin. Hands like vice-grips around each arm propel her forward, the first touch she’s felt in years; their relentless pace leaves her no time to adjust, to acclimate, to prepare herself for what is to come.
With a sickening lurch, the ground beneath her feet disappears, along with the sharp, cold brine in the air. It’s warmer, milder, and the grass is dry as she sinks to her knees, tips unsteadily forward until her cheek is pressed to the earth. A dirty cloth bag lands just off the tip of her nose.
With two deafening cracks, the strong hands leave, and she is alone.
Again.
Eyes squeezed shut, breathing deeply, slowly, Hermione runs through her numbers.
Ten – no, eleven, now.
Eight.
Six.
Five.
Two.
Two again.
One.
She listens for the thrum of her pulse, ear pressed to the inside of her wrist, but it is hard, out here, with all of the noises. And there’s something in her hand, something smooth and cool, the corner of it pressed into her cheek.
She runs her numbers again, and again.
Feeling steady at last, she opens her eyes and investigates her unexpected possession. It is a piece of parchment, nicely folded – or, it was, before it became wrinkled and bent in her clenched fist.
If she tries, really tries, she can just remember one of the strong hands thrusting it into her grasp before the grating shriek of sliding metal stopped and the sudden light poured down upon her.
She opens the parchment, delicately, weak fingers struggling with the wax seal. It’s a crest, and it feels familiar, but she can’t place it, can’t reach through the fog back to… before.
The first pass, she can barely make the shapes on the page turn into letters. Two more tries, and she’s got them into words. It takes another three reads before they’re sentences, before they hold any meaning.
McGonagall. Headmistress McGonagall.
And the seal is Hogwarts. A school. Her home.
McGonagall says that her position is available immediately. Her job. She tries to remember, to think what jobs there are at a school, but she can’t. She can’t, she can’t, it’s not coming, she can’t breathe, everything is fog, there’s a weight on her chest she can’t breathe can’t remember-
Eleven.
Eight.
Six.
Five.
Two.
Two again.
One.
Hogwarts is home. She’ll figure out the rest when she arrives.
Now it’s time to go.
She digs into the bag, finds clothes – so big, so brightly coloured – finds paper in thick bundles, finds…
A stick. Just a stick. The truth pushes at the fog, wants to break through, but it’s too much, too painful, and she’s worked so hard to protect herself.
It’s just a stick. And it isn’t going to help her get anywhere.
She stuffs it back into the sack, deep, and rises shakily to her feet. One barefoot step at a time, she limps over the grass, bag in one hand, parchment in the other.
Severus arrives at the designated drop-off twenty-three minutes early. The wind is absent from the moors today, air warmed by a mild sun, and the quiet calm feels almost eerie after the din of the castle.
At eight minutes past, he begins to get nervous.
Seventeen minutes after the scheduled arrival, he finds their depressions in the grass. Two sets of boots, steady and strong; between them, a mess of crumpled grass, where someone had clearly fallen – or been pushed down.
He sees the unsteady trail weaving away on its own, and knows it was foolish to hope.
It’s a slow walk, and the sun sinks quickly. But the dark feels like a friend, and with its familiar weight on her shoulders, she can finally stop her counting. She licks her cracked lips, feels blood well where they’ve split.
That, too, is familiar.
When she is too tired to continue, she makes herself walk a hundred paces more. Fifty more after that. Twenty. Ten.
Then, finally, she rests.
Eleven years now since the end of the war, and Hermione Granger fears no man, no beast. Under the open sky, no colder than she’s been a thousand nights before, she sleeps.
She dreams only of fog.
The days after her release feel unbearably long. Each hour is a lifetime, and it is frankly miraculous that he doesn’t kill any of his colleagues.
He doesn’t sleep, doesn’t eat.
He finds himself watching the owls at every meal, whipping around to search out every glimmer of light that could be a Patronus, and he hates the part of him that is still hoping to hear from her.
Only eight months together.
What did that matter now, on the other side of everything?
Waking to a brightening sky is unusual, and the soft glow behind her eyelids brings with it the immense weight of panic on her chest, crushing her, holding tight her lungs so she can’t breathe.
She runs her numbers. Eleven, eight, six, five, two, two again, one. The weight is still there. Eleven, eight, six, five, two, two again, one. Better, slowly better. Again. Eleven, eight, six, five, two, two again, one.
When the hold around her chest loosens enough to breathe easily, she stands.
And she walks.
The sun sinks again, and again, and again and once more she runs her numbers as the sky lightens around her. She knows she covers less ground each day, because each day she moves slower, feels stiffer, stops sooner.
She thinks sometimes of the stick in her bag, and each time wonders why. It’s just a stick.
She loses the parchment, though she can’t remember when, how.
She can’t remember much.
He contemplates writing to her.
Not to beg, or to guilt. Not to ask anything of her.
Simply to tell her that he knows the names of the six jurors who voted to convict.
Just in case she wants to know.
But it’s an excuse, and a sorry one, and he’s not particularly proud of what it says about him that he spent so much effort to find out.
She knew that side of him – said she loved it, even, as she loved all of him.
But that was then.
And now she’s been out for a week, and he’s had no word, and the hope he’s nurtured has bypassed grief and turned to shame, like ash in his stomach.
The cold iron of the gates hurts to touch. Her skin is thin, and it has crisped and reddened under the mild sun. She wears shoes of mud and blood, and her entire body feels feverish.
Running her numbers – eleven, eight, six, five, two, two again, one – she tries once more.
The latch lifts, and the gate swings open.
The fog is thick, hanging low and heavy, though the day around her is clear. But her feet know this path, know it well, and she counts out the steps across the grounds. Eleven, eight, six, five, two, two again, one.
With the lightest touch, the great oak doors fall away, and the cool stone walls swallow her in. She hears them close again at her back, and is comforted to know that she’s held securely once more.
She lets her feet continue to guide her, down empty halls, up staircases that seem to swing under her feet, laying out the shortest path. Colours, bright and shifting, flicker at the edge of sight, and soft voices whisper on every side. It’s too much, the fog is failing; she screws her eyes shut tightly and runs her numbers again and again, as her feet take her on.
Her path ends at a door, nondescript. She sets her tender hand to the knob, and a wash of warmth runs through her.
It makes her think of the stick in her bag.
Shoulder leaning into the door as it swings open, she steps into the room.
So this was her home, then. Or is, maybe.
It’s not what she remembers, or what she thought she might remember, or once remembered remembering. But five years is a long time, and the fog has stolen so much, and she supposes the spartan surroundings could easily have been hers.
There, a bed. She knows those.
And a chair. And… And books. Something pushes at the fog, something small, and because it doesn’t seem dangerous, she lets it through.
Yes. She remembers books. She had books. She liked books.
Hers, then, this room. Her bed, her books, her chair. And through this door: her sink, her shower.
Those, she knows, are always cold. And her body is burning hot, crisp.
She lets the cloth bag drop to the floor at her feet, and steps into falling water like ice.
A shimmer over his skin, almost like a sixth sense, tells him that his wards have been breached. No, not breached –
Unlocked.
“Enough,” he hisses, and the students duelling in pairs around him freeze. He doesn’t bother to dismiss them before he takes off running down the halls, cursing Hogwarts’ anti-Apparition wards.
Figures crowd into the portraits near his classroom, clamoring for his attention. “Severus,” the painted figures shout, “Severus – she’s back!”
He ignores them all, flying through turns and up stairs, desperate to move faster, to be there now.
To see her.
She runs her numbers again – eleven, eight, six, five, two, two again, one.
The water flows into her ears, and she can hear her heartbeat at last, and nearly weeps for its return.
Something shifts in the room around her. Maybe. She keeps her eyes closed, stays under the cold spray, gives up the sound of her pulse for the litany of her numbers, raspy and dry.
“Eleven.”
There’s a shift, she’s sure of it: air moving, something changing in the space beside her.
“Eight.”
A noise, another noise, but she pulls at the fog, draws it up, covers her head.
“Six.”
Something brushes against her elbow, featherlight, and she cringes away.
“Five.”
He’s been mad at her, he realizes. Furious. That she’d ask him to wait, tell him she’s coming back to him, and then run off without so much as a “Sorry, I’ve changed my mind."
He’s been livid.
And he only realizes it when he sees her, shivering in filthy clothes, and it all falls away.
The shirt she’s wearing is the same one she wore when he saw her last. It’s threadbare, stretched and torn, but he couldn’t possibly mistake it. She’d worn it for him, his favourite blue, a declaration only he could hear.
He can see her wand sticking out of the bag discarded on the floor.
She’s muttering something, something he can’t quite make out.
He steps closer, moving slowly, cautiously. There’s blood mixed in with the dirt swirling on the tile floor, and he wants nothing more than to search her head to toe, find every wound and heal her – but he’s seen his share of trauma, can recognize someone on the edge of breaking down completely. The spray from the shower kisses his hands, and he suppresses a hiss at the cold.
Up close, he can see her chapped lips, watches them as he tries to decipher her endless muttering.
“Two,” she whispers. “Two again. One.”
His heart breaks anew, and unable to hold himself back any longer, he reaches out to brush the matted hair away from her gaunt cheek.
His touch is like lightning. Like fire, like the noon sun, his heat burns away the fog and she is left gasping, panting, breathless as it all comes rushing back.
Two years each for the Obliviation of her parents. Another year for theft and impersonation, for breaking into Bellatrix fucking Lestrange’s vault. The outrage over the charges, her horror at the conviction.
Five years in isolation, cut off from her magic, from everyone. Darkness and silence and nothing more.
Sinking slowly into the fog, holding to the sound of her own heartbeat.
And him, waiting. The one she had to leave behind.
She cries out as if struck, then crumples into his arms, sobbing, great wailing heaves that wrack her entire body.
“There now, girl,” he whispers, voice breaking. “It’s over. You’re done.”