Chapter 2
Hermione’s day moves in a blur after the incident with Theodore, thankfully, the store is busy and Elizabeth has too many tasks to complete for her to ask Hermione what had happened.
She had watched Theodore walk out of the store a few moments after she bolted from the back room. He gave her a short nod before exiting and going on with his day. She could only hope that he didn’t tell anyone that she did not drop off the face of the planet.
“I can handle closing if you want to head home for the day,” Elizabeth comments as she flips the open sign to closed.
“Thanks, you get home safe.” Hermione shoots back as she makes her way to the back of the store and grabs her tote bag as she heads out the back door. She firmly shuts it behind her and starts her walk back to her flat.
The autumn coldness seeps into her as she makes the walk back to her flat, the wind blowing the few stay hairs that escaped her hair sticks around. The regular 6:00 rush hour has the streets and sidewalks busy as she hurriedly tries to get out of the cold. Once she gets to her apartment complex she takes the stairs, going up three floors before opening the door and going to her flat.
Opening the door she turns on the main lights, illuminating her simple living and kitchen space. Both have hardly any decorations and are very simple. There’s a dark brown wrap around couch in the living room and a flat-screen mounted to the wall, a dark brown lift up coffee table in front of the couch and a bookshelf just off to her side.
The kitchen looks hardly used, the only sign that she even uses it is the coffee splatters around her coffee machine.
She unzips her combats and leans against the wall for support, her vision blurring as she forces herself to get the other shoe off. The adrenaline from the day wearing off quickly now that she’s in the safety of her home. She steadies herself as she moves back to the door to lock it, taking a deep breath as pain courses through her body.
This isn’t the first time her bodies punished her, ever since the day at Malfoy Manor she’s been running on fumes. The more she pushed the more whatever Bellatrix’s knife had in it cursed her. If she took it easy for a few days she’d be better, the cut would heal enough to a scab, and sometimes it wouldn’t flare for weeks, but the minute she overdid it again or got too stressed she’d be back to square one.
Her vision swam as she took deep breaths, shouldering off her tote bag and then fishing through it. Her hands find her mobile and open it, she finds the only person she ever calls and presses dial as she takes deep breaths leaned up against her door.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Ginny’s voice is a welcome reprieve from her overly loud mind.
“I’m so sorry to bug you Gin, I need a favour.” She whispers through the line, for a moment there’s static until Ginny speaks up.
“What happened? " Hermione sighs and slides down to the floor, the sheer exhaustion from her body catching up to her.
“Theodore Nott saw me today, I need you to check if anyone else knows about where I am.” Her voice wobbles as she forces the panic down again.
“I’ll be right on it, let me check the system here, thankfully Harry’s running late today so I’m still at the ministry.” Hermione waits as Ginny searches through all of the databases, knowing that it can take a moment for anything to pop up.
“I’ve got nothing but I’ll keep a close eye on it.”
“Thank you, I’m so sorry just seeing him had me shook me up a bit.” Her head droops against the door as she goes through the practiced breathing exercises. Breathing in for five seconds, holding it and breathing out.
“I wonder what he was doing out with the muggles.” Ginny comments, still typing on her end. She was silent for a moment before adding,
“Did you know he owns some mystery club in England?”
“No? Should I have known that?” Hermione questions.
“No, probably not. You still don’t get out much, do you? How are you feeling? Usually, stress makes you sick.” Ginny questions. Hermione sighs, Ginny being the only person who knows where she is or how Ill she’s felt since the incident.
“I’m not a fan of going out, you know that. I never have been even when we were in school. But yeah, I have to take it easier the next few days. I’ll probably call out of work if I’m being honest. Listen I love you but I’m gonna let you go. Give me a ring later, okay?” Hermione says softly over the phone.
“I love you too, I’ll ring in a few days.” Ginny sighs deeply before hanging up the phone.
Hermione just barely picks herself up off the floor, holding onto the wall with one hand and her phone in the other until she can take a few steps to the couch. Her vision swims in and out as she places her phone on the coffee table, the room spinning as she softly plants herself on the couch, lying down and grabbing the purple throw blanket that was on the end cushion, placing it over herself as her whole body throbs in pain. Nausea plagues her as her eyes flutter shut, her head already sweating as the flare takes over.
Before long her eyes are shut and she’s drifting in and out of conciseness.
Her phone buzzes in the morning, her alarm for working going off as she cracks her eyes open. She reaches out to the table, silences the noise and then texts Elizabeth.
“Hey I’m so sorry but I’m Ill again. I need to call out.”
Not even a moment later Elizabeth texted her back.
“No worries, rest up and take it easy.”
Hermione sighs in relief and lays her head back down, her body still too painful to move. Elizabeth took her on as an employee 5 years ago when Ginny helped her get the flat, and Hermione explained her situation. Sometimes her body just gets sick and she has to take it easy or it just gets worse. Thankfully, Elizabeth could sympathize with her struggles as she had her own struggles with chronic pain and was always understanding when Hermione needed to call out.
Her mind drifts as she falls back into unconsciousness, playing out the memory of Theo taking care of her arm. Him being so gentle with her, looking like he was holding back tears as he saw her mangled arm.
Her phone buzzing woke her up again, Elizabeth’s contact popping up as Hermione flipped her phone open and answered.
“Is everything alright?” Hermione asked while letting out a soft yawn.
“Yeah, listen there’s some guy here asking for you. Say’s he knows you from school and that it’s urgent.” Suppressing a groan she takes a deep breath before answering back.
“Just let him know that I won’t be in until tomorrow or Thursday and if it’s urgent, he can go to someone else.”
“Here, you talk to him. he’s insisting that it’s very urgent.” Elizabeth says and then passes the phone.
“Hermione, where are you? “Theodore’s voice is soft and concerned as Elizabeth shouts “Feel free to use the back room!”
“Theo, you agreed.” Hermione whines through the phone pitifully. The sun coming through the window is making her head hurt as she closes her eyes with her phone pressed to her ear.
“You seriously thought I wouldn’t want to check on you after yesterday?” Theo huffs a laugh through the phone.
“I was hoping you’d respect my plea to leave me alone, please tell me you haven’t told anyone.” She whispers into the phone, the door to the back room shuts indicating that Theo has finally reached some privacy and isn’t in the middle of the store on her boss’s phone.
“I haven’t said anything to anyone, are you alright, you sound unwell?” He asks softly, lowering his voice to a softer pitch.
“I just needed a day off, minor headache but enough to be a nuisance if I don’t take it easy.” She brushes off his concern easily.
“Listen I’m worried about you.” She scoffs at his words.
“Theodore I’ve managed just fine on my own, please just drop it and go give my boss her phone back.” If it weren’t for his annoying her, his voice would be able to lull her to sleep.
“Respectfully, if yesterday was any indication of how you’re doing, I sincerely doubt that.”
“Goodbye Theodore.” She grumbles before tossing her phone on silent and launching it to the other end of the couch. Content to let herself fall back asleep.
She doesn’t wake again until it’s dark out, and only the,n when her body feels less like she’s been run over does she stand and make her way over to the kitchen, taking a glass from the cabinet and filling it with water. She takes small sips so she doesn’t accidentally bring her nausea back and then moves to the fridge where a container of plain pasta sits. She takes it out and opens her cabinet to grab a fork and then moves to her island to eat in silence.
Her hair stick is long gone and her curls are going to be a pain to untangle, but her body doesn’t always agree with what she needs to do and if she were to try and do anything besides just get home yesterday she would’ve likely collapsed in the shower for the millionth time.
Her eyes still feel heavy even after sleeping for over eighteen hours, her body is not anywhere close to being rested but it’s not nearly as heavy or painful as it was before. Once she’s forced herself to eat half of the left over pasta and finish another glass of water she moves to put everything away and clean up. Her house is silent besides the sound of traffic rushing by even at such a late hour.
She checks the locks one more time before flicking the lights off and making her way to the bathroom, flicking on the overhead light, the small area illuminates. Everything in the bathroom besides the bathmat is white. A spare towel hangs on the door as Hermione undresses, unravels the bandage and quickly tosses it in the trash without looking at it and then starts up the shower. She turns on the sink and plugs it, letting it fill with cold water and then dunking in her sweater. Reaching under the sink cabinet, she grabs out the peroxide and adds it to the mix, letting her sweater sit while she climbs in the shower.
By the time she gets out of the shower water has run cold, her body trembling as she dries off and runs knot detangler through her hair. It smelled like strawberries and was meant for children, but it worked like magic for getting out pesky knots without making her want to chop all of her hair off.
She grabs the extra healing balm from the sink and reaches into the cabinet underneath to get the gauze, quickly redressing the wound. She barely glances at it as she gnaws on her lip from the pain of touching it with the healing balm. Years of muscle memory work in her favor as she goes through the motions of tying the gauze off. The balm didn’t ever heal it, she used it more to dull out the pain every time it reopened. The hope of it ever fully healing had long since passed.
Once she’s finished with her arm, she places everything back where it belongs and pulls the plug from the sink to let it drain before directly hitting the sleeve of her shirt with more peroxide. It fizzes and then she dabs at it with her towel until the stain lifts. She hangs the sweater over the top rail of her shower and then makes her way to her bedroom.
Her room is small, and the walls are painted purple. Her bed sits against the farthest wall next to her balcony that overlooks the city. There are bookshelves that line both walls and a record player that sits on top of the one closest to her bed. Keeping the bedroom light on she trudges to bed and pulls back her black sheets, lying down, she clicks on her heated mattress pad to the first setting in hopes that it helps her body relax enough. Her alarm clock sits beside her, in bright red, it glares the 6:00 am time at her, she doesn’t have to be at work until 10:00 but she knows she won’t be able to sleep. Reaching over, she grabs the romance book that was sitting on top of her makeshift bookshelf/nightstand and starts reading.