all things repeat.
Snow was falling. It was delicate, the way it touched her hands. Hermione could hardly feel it, but if she thought about it hard enough, every flake had left its mark on the back of her hand, on her palm as she turned it around. The air was thin and empty, but when the snow touched her skin, it left behind a fleeting
warmth. A subtle connection before the cold came back. There was just a little further to go. She could catch a taxi.
She still had time.
There was still enough time, enough not to worry.
Her eyes lifted from her hand to doors that were wide open, waiting to welcome her. To warm her. It wouldn’t take long. She still had time.
St. Mary’s was a small cathedral, but as she climbed the steps, she could feel it. The miniscule burn of doubt. As if walking through those doors would raise some alarm. But when she stepped inside and followed the hall to the chapel floor, nothing happened.
No alarms sang in her head.
Nothing around her changed.
But as the sound of quiet hymns and holy prayers muttered softly by patrons swarmed her senses, the urge to leave wrapped itself tight about her throat. It was something deep and innate, an instinctive need to flee that left her boots glued to the floor.
She willed herself to move forward. To make a choice to move forward. There was nothing holding her back anymore.
He was gone. He wasn’t here to pin her in place. She could move.
The beauty of the vaulted ceilings and the glow of streetlights filtering through stained glass told her to stay. The closer she looked, and the more she allowed herself to see it all, the soft flicker of votive candles was inviting, their small dance luring her closer.
She had time, she could still hear small grains of sand spilling through the tiny bottleneck of the time turner that was tucked beneath her sweater.
She could stay. Just for a few minutes.
Just to warm her hands.
Just to feel, for a moment, that she was free to choose where the time she called her own could be spent.
Her steps were slow, keeping that slow, deliberate pace of the patrons round her.
She wasn’t alone, and for that she was grateful as she made her way to the votive candles that stretched across their altar.
Hermione Granger had read the Bible.
She knew its stories.
She almost understood the need to believe in something greater.
But not quite.
Even still, a hand lifted to pluck a matchstick from its canister.
She looked up, if only to admire the beauty of the quiet space around her.
Quiet prayers softened the silence.
Little fires burned, everywhere. Warm and bright.
But as she watched that tiny flame catch and cupped her hand around it, seeking out a place for it to go, something in her chest felt frantic. A place to go. As if she didn’t. As if this little fire would burn to its end while she stood there.
Her mind searched for something, through the gaps in her memory that time had left behind.
There was nowhere to put it.
No unblemished wicks that would take it and let it breathe for the sake of something she didn’t want to forget.
She would forget it all if she could.
Him.
Hunting her down. Chasing her. Waiting for her to grow tired enough to give in, to let him have her.
The wire had grown thin and tight, threatening to snap.
She almost wished it would.
But she couldn’t, because something scratched at the back of her mind, clawing its way out to beg her to keep going—
“Careful with that. You might burn yourself.”
Hermione’s eyes snapped up, her brown eyes wide and blown from holding onto the small source of light. The air in her lungs vanished.
She was greeted with a small smile. The kind given out of concern.
A pair of gentle eyes watched her, a softened version of cadmium green, bright with something only the devout could acquire.
The hand she had cupped around the flame was almost too warm; it licked at her palm, looking for something to devour.
“There aren’t…” Her voice was quiet, she remembered herself and let her eyes fall away. Back to the candles. “There aren’t any candles.”
His laughter was silken. Stop it.
“Here,” he reached towards the back of the altar. Hermione couldn’t move when the other lightly touched her elbow. His fingers were long, fine-boned but defined and strong as they returned with a glass-wrapped candle.
His hand remained where he had put it. As if he somehow knew to keep her steady. Stop it. Hermione didn’t move, not until a moment passed and his eyes didn’t leave her until she looked back at him and let him slip the matchstick from her fingers to light the candle for her.
“I—” She finally remembered to breathe. How long had it been since someone had seen her? How long had she slipped under the radar of others without being noticed? Hermione was certain she had become a ghost. “Thank you.”
He watched the candle’s wick catch and begin to burn. When her eyes dropped to watch it too, he looked at her. Like he saw something that he recognized but kept it to himself.
“Of course,” he said. His hand was still there. As if he had forgotten it was there, until he remembered and let it fall away.
He was still holding it. The candle. But she wasn’t looking at it. She was looking at him.
“Oh,” he said. “You should say a prayer.”
When she took it back, their fingers brushed and something static popped at the end of her fingertips. It was just the weather. Just the weather. It was a small candle, not big enough for such broad hands—stop it.
Hermione set the candle down. She didn’t know any prayers. At least none that could be said here. Her lips parted to speak, holding his gaze, like if she looked hard enough, she might find one. His eyes dropped, just for a moment. Something fluttered to life in her chest. It raked down her spine and pooled in her belly—stop it.
“Maybe you can say one for me.”
He smiled at her words. It was quiet and bright and warm and she didn’t know what to do with it when a stranger looked at her like that and smiled.
She knew this feeling. The stutter of her heartbeat in her chest. The moment two strangers saw something in one another and thought, ‘I know what this is.’ Like it was something they always known. Like they already knew each other. As if they had agreed to be here, somehow. At the same time. Right here. Now. A mutual recognition, of sorts.
She didn’t know how to breathe anymore.
She knew this feeling.
It had to stay here. She couldn’t take it with her, but she could take its warmth. She could hold onto it. She didn’t have to give it back.
She was looking at him. His eyes were on that flame again. Soft and hanging onto its little holy light, like it was something that he needed too, despite the fact that it was hers.
When he looked up to find her eyes again, she was gone.
There was nothing holy for him to find, no light other than what those candles had given her.
Not anymore.
She almost missed her train, the last of the night. The brisk walk to the platform had evolved into a hurried clip, dodging and dipping between travelers that exhibited far better management of their time. She was never late.
Hermione Granger was never late.
But she made it, just in time, and was breathless and shrugging out her coat to help cool herself down as she stepped down the cramped aisle of the train car.
Every seat was taken.
Every car.
Every seat.
Every sleeper cabin.
It was too late to go back. To leave the cathedral sooner. To keep track of the minutes as they passed and try again. She was too tired, her nerves too thin to risk twisting them through time for something that could have been avoided had she simply paid attention.
Her time turner was shoved into her bag. Hidden away. And with a reluctant breath, Hermione continued on down the aisle. But there was nothing. The holiday travelers and weekend get-awayers had swarmed in, swooping in on any available seating, and the deeper through the cars she went, it became clear that the next five hours were going to be exceptionally uncomfortable.
A sigh shoved its way out of her, and just as her hand reached out for the door to the gangway that would open up into the next car, she was pulled from her thoughts, the deep, tangled mess of them, by a laugh.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Dark jade eyes flickered under the glow of an overhead booklight.
He motioned to the seat beside him, dragging his bag off of it in offering to her.
“You should be more careful,” Hermione smiled, something soft and thankful as she stowed her bag away. “People will start to talk,” her quip was met with a brief connection of their eyes as he glanced up from his book.
He watched her for a moment, watched her lips curl into something playful that surely wasn’t meant for a stranger but she couldn’t help herself. He shook his head to himself, almost laughing, before his eyes fell back to his book at the precise moment that Hermione slipped by him.
There wasn’t much space. His eyes could have wandered if he let them, she thought—stop it. It was immediately shoved away as she settled into her seat. His eyes were pouring over his book. She didn’t have one.
It was too dark to see out of the window. Her gaze immediately fell to what he was reading. A nosy habit. A cheap paperback, creased and battered, dogeared with margins that overflowed to the highest of heavens. The title caught her eye.
Love Is A Dog From Hell.
“What is this?” she asked. She didn’t recognize it. That didn’t happen often, but she couldn’t remember the last time she had read much of anything. If she had, whatever it was was too far out of her reach.
He didn’t look up. “My name is Adrian.”
Her eyebrows furrowed. “What an odd title.”
He looked up, his eyes found hers in a lazy kind of way. “My name,” Deliberate, but lazy. Still warm. “Is Adrian.”
The lights in the train car darkened.
“My name is Hermione,” her cheeks flushed but it was dark. Maybe he couldn’t tell.
“I know who you are,” His eyes fell to her mouth and back. He could tell, and he watched her lips shape themselves around her name in what little light remained over their heads. “But yes. It’s very good. Anything by Bukowski is good.”
“I’m sorry,” She shifted in her seat; a hand dragged nervously through her hair and he watched her do it. Her eyes scrutinized his face, in search of something familiar. She didn’t know him. “How?”
He laughed, quieter in the dark. He turned the page and kept reading.
The title of the poem read, “something.”
“Everybody knows who you are, Hermione Granger.”
Adrian let her read with him. He could tell that she had thoughts and opinions and remarks. Bukowski was lewd and derogatory and visceral and unflinching. But she was tired. She fell asleep, eventually.
Wake me up at King’s Cross, she said, just before she did. As if she knew he was going there too.
Her head eventually dropped onto his shoulder when she fell asleep. That happened sometimes. It was something that happened on trains. With strangers. He didn’t mind.
I will, he said.
When the conductor walked by to check their tickets, Adrian didn’t wake her. Her ticket was still in her hand. He punched theirs as a pair.