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Victim of the Fall	By : PrettyDesdemona Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 32726 -:- Recommendations : 5 -:- Currently Reading : 7
Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter universe or any of its characters. I do not make any money off this story. Only love!

Chapter List
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CHAPTER 5

DILATE

“I wake up in the darkness and I don’t have the will anymore to wonder.”

Hermione awoke later that night to the sound of traffic drifting through her kitchen window and the smell of rain on asphalt. Her watch told her it was eight o’clock.

She stretched slowly, Crookshanks leaping off her as she moved. Grunting, she readjusted, rolling onto her back, her arm thrown up over her face. Her neck ached and she felt frustrated that she had fallen asleep in such an odd position. She pulled her wand from her discarded coat lying on the floor next her couch and muttered a quiet “lumos”.

It took her a few minutes to come fully into consciousness and realise where she was. With her wand in her hand, casting its eerie blue glow across her flat, she took in her surroundings again. The differences to what she was used to jolted her. At the Burrow, all she could hear late at night was the wind in the trees, the owls hooting dolefully and the chirps of the cicadas that lived in the long grass. Here, she could hear distant voices, as if there might be a restaurant nearby, the hum of the traffic and the very soft discordant buzzing that was the dividing line, the concentration of magic from the spells hiding Diagon Alley from the muggle world.

The contentedness she had felt when she laid down on her couch that afternoon hadn’t followed her into sleep but, unfortunately, the dream she had been having had followed her when she woke.

It wasn’t so much a dream as a memory of Ron. It was always Ron. And not in some romantic or poetic way either, he was just there most of the time. Sitting in the background, watching. Tonight had, most unhappily, been an entirely real memory of a night they had spent together almost three weeks after the final battle.

Before he’d changed.

The worst thing about it, the thing that was making her heart ache, was his smell. His smell had been in the dream memory and she felt, still, like if she gathered the t-shirt she was wearing up in her hands, she’d find his scent still lingering on it.

It was hot that night, the air thick and syrupy with humidity. Ron and Hermione had decided to go for a walk around the fields surrounding the house. With Ginny still sharing a room with Hermione, and Harry still sharing a room with Ron, the two of them never did get much privacy. And somehow, whispered conversations that were more touch than words in the Burrow’s drawing room after everyone had gone to bed just didn’t seem enough.

They never talked about the war, or the hunt for the Horcruxes those days. Ron seemed to feel like there wasn’t much to say and Hermione felt the opposite. For her there was so much to say she had no idea how to articulate it, didn’t know where to start. The lights and colours of the final battle still fizzed through her mind like sparklers when she was sleeping.

As a result, they walked in silence that night, through the house and, hand in hand, out the back door. They beat a familiar path into the fields, lit by the silvery blue light of the moon. The only sound was the wind shifting the long grass and their plodding footsteps as they walked across the plain, away from the Burrow. They came together to a hill that rose above the others and proceeded up the incline.

“You know Harry and Ginny are most likely copulating in your bed right now.” Hermione said with a quiet laugh.

Ron snorted. “Bloody hell, Hermione, don’t sugar coat it or anything. I was trying not to think about it!”

Hermione giggled. “Yeah well, it’s not like you and me wouldn’t take that chance if we had it. Maybe I should convince Ginny to bring Harry out for a moonlit stroll?”

Ron shrugged. “Nah, it’s our thing.” He gave her hand a light squeeze. “Can’t wait to move out with you though.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Dunno, just been thinking about it I guess. I mean, there’s not much reason to stay here is there? And I reckon you’d make a really good housewife.”

He flinched even before she raised her fist to punch his arm playfully. “Ronald! I am not a housewife!”

“Ow!” He laughed and rubbed the tender spot where she had hit him. “You’re getting better at that, I don’t know whether to be proud or scared!”

“Scared, I think. Anyway, I need my strength to keep my househusband in line. What colour do you want your apron, dear? Magenta or lilac?”

Ron chuckled and took her hand again. They crested the top of the hill and came to stand together at its peak. Hermione ducked under his arm to nestle closer to his body. The view from their hill top took her breath away and, despite the heat, she felt as if she couldn’t imagine herself anywhere but where she was, tucked into his body as they stared out at the rolling hills and plains, bathed in the moonlight. It was such a blessing that after everything they’d been through, they had this little piece of easy contentedness to hold them afterwards.

Ron turned his face into her hair. “Love you.” he said quietly.

She looked at him. He didn’t often say that to her. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

He shrugged and smiled as if to say he offered it freely.

“I love you too Ron.”

Then she pulled his face down to meet hers, he didn’t resist and they kissed, her lips lingering on the wet corners of his mouth.

Those were the days when he responded, when his hands wound through her hair and his stubble tickled her cheeks. Those were the days when he actually smiled when he kissed her. His body would dip between her legs and her blood would sing. She could almost see her veins glowing with it. They would lay on the ground together and he would trace the indentations the grass had left on her knees and she would brush the grass seeds off his bare back. Being with him felt merry, jovial. There was a joke in everything and Hermione loved how he offered her a break from her own seriousness.

That night was no different. She was warmly cocooned between the earth, the long grass and him. There was no insecure thought in her mind to contradict it, he loved her.

Loved.

Back in reality her body betrayed her by reacting to the memory, while her mind desperately hacked at the bonds holding her there. Her body wanted to feel it. It wanted his hands and his tongue. It ignored the sounds of the traffic, ignored the smell of the rain and sent her right hand straight down between her thighs to hold her there in the dream where he touched her and loved her.

Minutes later, she cried as she came.

A shout and the sound of laughter filtering in through her kitchen window caused her to jump, her heart beating rapidly. It drew her out of the dream and into the shame. Her hands drew up to her face and covered her eyes. She sobbed quietly. Here was a man who spurned her, turned her away, and she still wanted to feel him. She wanted his love wrapped around her like a blanket, warm and safe. It burned in her chest knowing that somewhere in the world he was alone and happy without her. She missed him and it was pain like nothing she’d ever felt. Worse than Bellatrix’s crucio. At least she’d known the crucio would end eventually but she was going to miss Ron forever.

Everything about what she had just done, everything about what she felt was pathetic. She was useless, wretched and ashamed and those thoughts, those words began to leak through her entire body like black ink.

Recognising the well known signs in herself of an oncoming panic attack, she began to rub at her chest and her feet started to twitch. Her sobbing subsided as her breath shallowed and quickened.

“Fuck. No. It’s ok. You’re ok. Just a panic attack.”

She breathed heavily and sat up, her head spinning as she did. Somehow the words weren’t as comforting when they came out of her own mouth. With a wave of her wand, the lanterns were lit. It was easier to calm down in the light. She knew that if she didn’t get up, she would end up lying on that couch all night. She couldn’t allow her first night in her new flat to be spent hyperventilating and pacing. She knew she’d gotten off to a bad start but she resolved not to let it remain so. She decided that despite her shaking hands and the vague dizziness she was getting, she was going to unpack.

With one last deep, shaky breath, she dragged her beaded bag across the coffee table and began to relieve it of its contents. Again and again she reached into it, pulling out whatever object she happened to grasp and putting it away. She resisted the temptation to upend it onto her lounge room floor as a confusing array of clothes, books and equipment presented themselves to her hands.

As she filled her bookshelf and wardrobe, scattering her belongings around her flat, her mind drifted and she felt calmer. Her flat was becoming more and more home like with every new addition. A photo of her and Ron and Harry on the kitchen window sill, a small crystal hanging in her bedroom window and a statue of an elephant on her nightstand. It felt warmer.

Once she was more than halfway done she thought back to the Burrow. She had a bottle of a ink, a roll of parchment and a quill set on her coffee table before she decided against writing to Harry. The quill was poised above the ink bottle before she decided against writing to Ron. Her wand was in her hand, pointing at the parchment before she decided against sending a Howler to Ginny.

She wrote, instead, to Molly.

It was a short letter, more full of polite formalities that real words. Hermione only expressed her gratitude for Molly’s support and for letting her stay at the Burrow. She wanted to say more. She wanted to talk about Ron and Harry. She wanted to write pages and pages about them. But she resisted. Molly didn’t need to hear her opinions.

Once finished, she lay the letter aside to post the next day and sat back on the couch, resting her hands behind her head.

As Hermione closed her eyes, she heard a familiar tapping on her balcony window. A handsome screech owl sat outside with a letter tied to its leg. She got up to open the door to retrieved it, wondering as she did who could possibly be writing to her. No one knew where she lived except McGonagall.

She sat back on her couch and unfurled the parchment. She frowned and as she continued to read it, her frown deepened.

Hey Hermione,

McGonagall told me where you were staying.

I was wondering if you’d like to have dinner? You only live just

round the corner from me now and I kinda liked eating with

you at the Burrow.

Let me know,

George

She had no idea what to make of that. She didn’t think he’d actually liked her company on those late nights at the Burrow and had just assumed she was the least depressing option considering who his other dinner companions might have been. She didn’t particularly fancy the idea of spending more evenings in morbid silence with George Weasley. She set the letter aside with the letter to his mother and sat back again, deciding she would answer it later. She didn’t know whether or not she should be worried about his intentions but she knew their time together at the Burrow couldn’t possibly have been considered fun.

The silence of her flat came to rest on her like disturbed dust, making her aware of its presence. She was suddenly conscious of it. Her fingers twirled absently in her hair. With her beaded bag considerably lighter, she now felt restless and uneasy. And the letter from George hadn’t helped. She didn’t fancy reading, there was no homework to do, the flat was relatively clean; she was bored, ultimately.

The quiet here was different. It wasn’t the usual tense and heavy silence that persisted at the Burrow where laughter rang painfully in everybody’s ears. This wasn’t the sort that one didn’t disturb, it sounded hollow and unnatural. It needed to be filled but she didn’t have the faintest idea of how to do that.

Hermione checked her watch again. Nine thirty pm. She sighed. How had she managed to unpack and organise her entire life in just over an hour? And how was she even supposed to function when she couldn’t go one night without alone without having a nervous breakdown every fifteen minutes?

Suddenly she remembered the enchanted record player and box of records that she had somehow inherited off Remus Lupin after his death. She dragged her beaded bag across the table and with much heaving and grunting, extricated the device from the depths of the bag, followed by a wooden crate containing the records.

Since his will had been read, she had never tried to use it. The Burrow didn’t feel like the sort of place one could play music and she wondered if perhaps that’s what she should have done instead of letting the player gather dust in the corner of her room. Maybe it might have helped.

After removing the records, which slipped and slid all over her Persian rug, she transfigured the crate into a spindly legged table and rested the device on top. Casting her eyes back to the pile of records, she began to peruse the titles, almost instantly captivated by Remus’ small but eccentric collection. There was Beethoven and Billy Holiday, Depeche Mode and Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky and Bob Marley. There was a record that boasted two hours of Mongolian throat singing, and another that consisted entirely of flamenco guitar favourites. She found that there was no record in the pile that did not enchant and excite her. She wanted to listen to them all at once and found herself excited by the peaceful atmospheres she could create with such music.

As she reached the bottom of the pile, she found a record that she had heard a lot about but had no memory of actually hearing. Her heart gave an extra hard thud in her chest. She picked it up reverentially, slid the disk out of its slip, put it onto the record player and placed the needle on the outer ring.

“I need an easy friend,

I do, with an ear to lend,

I do think you fit this shoe,

I do, but do you have a clue?”

The music filled her space exquisitely and she felt tears sting her eyes as suddenly, her flat seemed to glow with a new light. Where before everything had seemed grey and sort of distorted, she now noticed the guttering roseate glow of the lanterns playing off the blue tiles in her kitchen. She noticed the rug under her feet throwing its delicate patterns up to the ceiling, vibrant and captivating. Hermione began to sway with the music, still staring down at the empty cover in her hands. Nirvana: Unplugged in New York. Her dad had been there for that concert, he told her stories about it. It was strange that she couldn’t remember hearing the record, but now that she put her mind to it, she realised he had played it a lot when she was very little. She remembered the lyrics vaguely and the songs felt familiar. The music was conjuring distorted images and memories in her mind.

With a jolt she realised she loved it, not just because her Dad had talked about it and played it when she was little but because the music spoke to her. She got it.

When he got back, she’d give him the record. He’d like that.

She stopped swaying.

When he got back.

But he wasn’t getting back. Not unless she went to get him. Not unless she undid the memory charm she’d placed on him a year a half ago. Did Wendel Wilkins even like Nirvana? He didn’t sound like he did, he sounded like the kind of man who listened to BBC radio 4 and went golfing on the weekends. He sounded like the kind of man who covered up his tattooed arms and brushed them off as foolish decisions made in his youth. What if he’d had his tattoos removed? She’d always liked that her dad was a tattooed dentist. What if now he was just a dentist?

What if her mum had removed her tragus piercing and thrown out all her old books on women’s lib? What if she’d stopped going to art galleries and started going to dental conventions? What if she didn’t like mushrooms anymore? What if she stopped trying to force Hermione to eat them?

What if they weren’t them anymore? What if Hermione had botched the memory charm and erased Nina and Barry Granger forever?

Hermione pulled the needle off the record with a violent scratch before she could really think about what she was doing. Her hands were shaking again. She scooped Crookshanks up in her arms and, leaving the records scattered across her living room floor, fled to her bedroom. She climbed, fully clothed, into her four poster bed and clutched Crookshanks to her stomach.

Hermione’s new flat might look nice in the light of the candles, it might have a nice view and she might like the blue tiles in the kitchen; but it wasn’t home. It didn’t have a green walled kitchen with a light scorch mark on the ceiling from when she’d accidentally left olive oil in a hot pan. It wasn’t filled with the scent of her mother’s shampoo and perfume. There was no glimpse of her name written in rose vines over her father’s back, no laughter over her mum’s obsessive cleanliness when she insisted on ironing her pyjamas, no half finished game of trivial pursuit on the dining room table. No mum. No dad.

It was just her.

The panic she’d fought hard to keep on a short leash since she’d arrived in Diagon Alley that day was finally allowed free reign in her mind.

She was alone, and she was going to be alone for a long time. She had a whole year at Hogwarts in front of her and for those 365 nights, she would be entirely alone in this flat. Unaccompanied, unaided, isolated. If she died, no one would know. She could lie bleeding in her bathtub for days before someone found her. No one to talk to, no one to fight with, no one to pat her hair and tell her she was beautiful and kind and clever and she would be ok. At least at the Burrow she was part of a collective feeling of grief and misery. Now, she had to face her own grief and misery full on; naked, vulnerable, raw. There was only herself now.

And she didn’t know what to do with that. She didn’t where to put the hurt. She couldn’t just sit it on her nice new bookshelf and leave it be. The records might dull the sound of it ringing in her ears but it was still there when the silence came back.

So she wept. With Crookshanks pressed into the curve of her stomach, the smell of rain on asphalt filling her flat, the moonlight shining through her window and onto her bed, she cried until she slept.

And silently, as the tears soaked the pillow under her head, when she was just a hairs breadth away from sleep, she resigned herself to doing exactly this for another 365 nights.

A/N This chapter was really personal for me. It came very much from the heart and I hope that came through to all of you, my lovely readers.

Tori - I'm loving the way your reviews are making me think a lot about what I'm writing. And all your questions will be answered in due time :) Thanks ever so much for the love!

Chester - Thank you, thank you, thank you! That is EXACTLY what I am going for!

B - Just try and stop me posting! No, seriously, my lack of self restraint here is a little alarming haha.

The lyrics in this chapter are from the song About a Girl on Nirvana's Unplugged in New York.

The quote at the beginning of this chapter is from Ani Difranco's song Dilate. Her music has served as a huge inspiration for this piece. I own nothing. Thanks Ani!
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Victim of the Fall