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Blendwerk	By : LadyofClunn Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Hermione/Blaise Views: 5460 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own anything associated with Harry Potter, I do not earn money by writing this story

Chapter List
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Disclaimer: I do not own anything associated with Harry Potter; I do not earn money from this story.

A/N: A huge thank you to dynonugget, who beta-ed this story as a surprise for me *hugs* - all remaining mistakes are mine and mine alone.

Another giant thank you to the wonderful and wonderfully talented draconis23, who made the banner for me!

Blendwerk

Chapter 1, Geblendet

“Voldemort.”

Harry’s voice rang in her ears as she flung her body in front of him. The foolish boy had not been able to restrain himself for a few minutes, throwing himself and with him all of them into this half-cooked plan.

Red light exploded around her. A loud crack of apparition right behind her was the last thing she heard.

***

White. A colour so brilliant and blinding that she had to close her eyes again. The absence of any sound and of any kind of discomfort or pain felt strangely unfamiliar.

Death. Was that it? Heaven was usually associated with the colour white. Had she passed on? Had they finally succeeded?

A soft noise startled her and caused her eyes to fly open. Were there birds in heaven?

This time, Hermione turned her head to the side, in the direction of the chirping sound. A tall, bare window let in copious amounts of bright sunlight. There were no trees to shield away the rays or paint dancing shadows on the blemish-free ceiling with their leaves.

Carefully she sat up. Although the room looked cosy enough with a table and chairs in one corner and a dressing table against the wall opposite the bed she was sitting on, it did not look like a room that had a permanent occupant. It did not have the feel of a hotel room, but bore the faint feel of an upmarket institution.

A hospital?

It was not St. Mungo’s. Had she been found and taken to a Muggle hospital?

Now that her senses were sharpening after lying dormant in her unconscious state, she could hear a low pinging noise, coming from behind the door opposite to the window.

Hermione swung her legs over the edge of the bed and tried a few uncertain steps towards the window. Coming closer, the view revealed more and more blue skies and finally large plains of a lush green landscape, with fields in different shades of gold in the background.

The door behind her was opened and a surprised shriek followed.

“You’re awake!”

Hermione turned around in time to see the startled face of a blonde witch in the light blue robes of nurses, a watch pinned to her chest on the left side. Before Hermione could say anything, the nurse had run off, calling for a healer.

Where were Harry and Ron? Were they in a different room? Had they been captured? Escaped?

There were steps in the hall beyond the still open door, several people approaching at a quick pace.

She did not recognize him at first. His hair was longer, similar to the way his father used to wear it, gathered at the nape of his neck. He looked older, broader, more mature in general.

Taking a few steps back towards the window, Hermione recoiled.

“Malfoy? What kind of joke is this?” she asked wide eyed, motioning to his green healer’s robes.

Draco Malfoy furrowed his brow.

“What do you mean? How are you feeling, Hermione?”

“Hermione?” she asked shrilly. “Hermione? Why are you dressing up as a healer, ferret-boy?”

There were indignant gasps from the two nurses that had followed Draco Malfoy and were now standing behind him in the doorway.

“Hermione, who am I?”

She blinked. No insults, no taunts, no name-calling. Only polite questions.

“You are Draco Malfoy, seventh year Slytherin. Why are you not at school?”

Now the bright sunlight was mocking her. It was too bright, the room too comfortable, the faces of the other people in the room too gentle. Something was wrong. So very wrong.

“Hermione, which year is it?”

Panic gripped her heart with long, icy fingers. She had given the Time Turner to her Head of House; she didn’t have it anymore. Had the snatchers done something to send her through time?

“1996”

Malfoy’s voice was very gentle as he spoke to her after a few moments of silence.

“Hermione, could you please look in the mirror?” He motioned in the direction of the dressing table.

Slowly, never leaving Malfoy out of her sight, she moved forward. In front of the tall mirror she turned.

A woman with long, curly hair was looking at her.

Hermione creased her brow and so did the woman in the mirror. Squinting her eyes to see better, Hermione studied the reflection. It was her, but this image was nowhere near what she had looked like… How long had she been unconscious? Hours? Days? Longer?

“Maybe this will help?”

The blonde nurse offered delicate oval glasses in a silver frame to her.

“I do not need glasses.”

The nurse smiled.

“Just try.”

Reluctantly, Hermione reached for the glasses and unfolded them. Slipping them on, she was surprised that the room around her gained focus and clarity.

Hermione touched her face, still watching the mirror glass with trepidation. She was far from being overweight, but there was also no sign of the painful thinness that she had acquired during her frantic run with Harry and Ron. When she looked very closely, she could see some fine lines forming around her eyes. Were the years of sleep deprivation in the library and the hardships of fighting and running already catching up with her? As she studied the delicate skin behind the glasses, something light caught her eye. A few silvery hairs wove through her curls falling down the right side of her head. They were hardly visible, yet they were there.

Malfoy stepped up next to her, his reflection making eye contact with hers.

“Hermione, this is the year 2006. What is the last thing that you remember?”

***

Resting her head on her up-drawn knees, Hermione was frantic. Her outward appearance was one of utmost calm, but inside she was screaming for help. Out of fear of being sedated or sent off to a mental institution, if she was not resident in one already, she had forced herself to be cooperative and polite to a degree that hurt.

Malfoy had calmly explained to her that she had had an accident at work, at the Department of Mysteries. There had been an as of yet undetermined unleashing of pure magical energy, and she had been caught in the very centre of it.

How was it possible? How could she not remember the last ten years of her life? Yesterday, she had been setting up camp with Ron and Harry, had cooked a paltry meal of berries, mushrooms and stolen ingredients from the last supermarket they had managed to find.

How could she forget the final battle, Ron’s heroic death, saving her life and that Harry had actually vanquished the Dark Lord? It seemed unthinkable.

Yet, there were stacks of newspapers piled on her white hospital bed. Current ones, proclaiming the date as 17^th of July 2006, back issues covering the last battle, Harry’s recovery and how he withdrew from the wizarding world entirely, now leading a secluded life in New Zealand in an undisclosed, unplottable location.

They said they would try to get her some books on the war.

She had spent an hour in front of the mirror. She had counted the grey hair. Five at the right side of her head, near the hairline, just above her brow, two on the left side, a bit further back. They were hardly visible in the curly mass, blending in with the different tones of brown, caramel, and golden brown. That’s probably why she hadn’t bothered to do anything about them.

A ray of sunlight reflected from the shiny surface of the ring on her bedside cabinet she had been staring at. White gold. Or was it platinum? A simple, rather wide band. Not fussy, not frilly, exactly how she would have imagined her wedding band. She had tried it on, and it felt foreign and uncomfortable to have a ring on her left hand.

The Prophet had covered the union between the war heroine and the silent Slytherin meticulously. There had been so many pictures. A smiling Hermione holding the hand of Blaise Zabini walking down Diagon Alley. Blaise Zabini accompanying her to a Ministry ball, his hand protectively on the small of her back. This photo Hermione smiled at the photographers, then turned her head to look into Zabini’s eyes, who then reached for her hand and kissed the inside of it.

That scene depicted so much intimacy, such comfortable companionship that a sharp pain had stabbed through her. How could she have forgotten? She could remember Blaise Zabini from several classes in Hogwarts, but he had always been in the background, never among those who hunted her down in the corridors to corner and intimidate her. As far as she knew, she had never spoken to Blaise Zabini.

Their wedding must have been the social event of the year in 2003. The cover, as well as several pages and the centrefold, were dedicated to the ceremony, the dress, the bridesmaids, the decoration, even the style of calligraphy on the place cards had been discussed in detail.

Hermione watched herself kissing the handsome man next to her, watched herself eating cake from his hand, dancing the first Waltz to open the ball. The style was tasteful and looked like something she might have chosen for her wedding.

Yet there was only blackness in her mind when she strained to remember.

Picture-Hermione twirled happily, her white robes lifting in an elegant circle, showing a white lace garter, interwoven with blue satin ribbon, just above her knee.

***

She had recognized him from the pictures. Had he crossed her path in the streets, she would have bypassed him without a second thought.

Blaise had been tentative. Understanding. Gentle.

He sat with her, had told her stories about their life together, had made her laugh.

He came back every day, sitting with her, reading to her, talking.

It did nothing for her.

Her mind was still a blank, black, infinite space when it came to remembering anything beyond that flash of light, when the Snatcher had aimed his spell at Harry.

Harry. Would he really withdraw even from her? Losing his best friend in battle had been too much. He wanted to live in peace and quiet.

So she had been told.

They were the healers, the nurses, the therapists. They all said the same thing. If her memory did not come back naturally soon, they would have to try to trigger it with magic.

There was a small Pensieve sitting on the table in her room, next to the stacks of history books and newspapers. It was smaller than the Pensieves she had seen so far and had a pleasant, light grey colour that made the stone it was carved from soft and pleasing to the eye.

For several days they had urged her to, implored her to deposit all the memories of her ‘last’ year that she remembered in the Pensieve so they could examine them together.

Balking at the thought to freely give out memories of Order meetings, research and hunting and destroying Horcruxes, she had yet to consent to this path of treatment.

Blaise had been her only support, insisting that she should only do what she felt comfortable with.

There was something in the way that he did not try to fill the lapses of silence with idle chatter but kept her company that suggested a very strong and genuine relationship.

He had not touched or kissed her, saying that he understood if she needed time.

Time. It always seemed to come down to time.
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Blendwerk