Something Like Stillness
Fred didn’t speak when Hermione stepped inside his room.
The door closed behind her with a soft click, and for a moment, neither of them moved.
Hermione stood in the quiet like it might shatter beneath her. She was wrapped in her blanket still, hair falling wild around her shoulders, eyes darker than usual in the low lamplight.
Fred set his book aside and stood. “You okay?”
“No,” she said honestly. “But I don’t want to be alone right now.”
Fred stepped aside. “You don’t have to be.”
She crossed the room and sat on the edge of his bed, careful, like the floor might give way. He sat beside her, leaving just enough space for it to still feel respectful—but close enough to feel warm.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “Kept thinking about what could’ve happened.”
Fred looked down at his hands. “Me too.”
There was a long pause. The kind that wasn’t awkward, just filled with things unsaid.
“Do you remember third year?” Hermione asked suddenly. “When I was using the Time-Turner and basically a walking zombie?”
Fred blinked, surprised. “Hard to forget. You nearly hexed me and George in the library.”
“You kept stealing the Arithmancy textbooks and hiding them in the ceiling tiles.”
Fred smirked. “It was for science.”
Hermione laughed quietly. “You drove me mad. I was so tired, and I was trying to keep up with fourteen subjects, and the two of you thought it was hilarious to rearrange the shelves by the Dewey Decimal System.”
Fred grinned. “To be fair, it was very educational. You learned how to swear.”
“I learned how to swear in Latin.”
“You called me ’pestis ambulans’,” he said, mock offended.
“‘Walking plague’ felt accurate.”
He laughed, head tipping back, and the sound was real—not just relief, but joy. A piece of what had been missing for months.
“You used to drive me insane,” Hermione said fondly.
Fred looked over at her, still smiling. “You were like a very intense little sister.”
Hermione snorted. “Exactly. That’s what makes all of this feel so… wrong, sometimes. Like I skipped a hundred steps and woke up suddenly seeing you.”
Fred’s smile faltered. “I’ve been seeing you for a while now.”
Hermione blinked.
Fred rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly sheepish. “Not like that. Not back then. You were Ron’s friend, and a know-it-all, and I was seventeen and trying to open a joke shop. But… later. After the Battle of the Department of Mysteries. You came back with that look in your eyes—like you’d seen too much. Like you’d already started carrying more than you should.”
She looked down. “I felt like that.”
Fred’s voice softened. “I remember thinking you looked older. Not like a kid anymore. Like someone who’d already lost something.”
Hermione didn’t speak. Just pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.
“I didn’t know how to talk to you then,” he admitted. “You were brilliant and hurting, and I didn’t think I had anything to offer.”
Hermione turned her face toward him, eyes shining. “You don’t have to offer anything. Just being here… it matters.”
He nodded.
She shifted, letting her legs stretch out again. Her foot brushed his knee. Neither of them moved.
“I thought I’d be okay if I just kept doing things,” she said. “Kept researching, kept planning, kept trying to stay useful. But when I thought I was going to die yesterday, all I could think about was that I hadn’t told you how much you’d started to matter to me.”
Fred’s throat worked as he swallowed. “You matter to me too. And that’s terrifying.”
She looked over at him. “Because of Ron?”
“No. Well—maybe a little. But mostly because… if I let myself care, really care, and something happens to you—I don’t know if I’d come back from that.”
Hermione closed her eyes. “I feel the same.”
There was silence again, but this one was heavy with understanding, not fear.
Fred shifted, turning to face her more fully. “I know we’re still in the middle of everything. And I know there’s no guarantee for tomorrow. But I don’t want to keep pretending this isn’t real. I want to be… here. With you. However that looks.”
Hermione’s lips parted, and for a moment she didn’t say anything. Then, quietly, “That looks a lot like hope.”
Fred grinned. “God forbid.”
Fred shifted, turning to face her more fully. “I know we’re still in the middle of everything. And I know there’s no guarantee for tomorrow. But I don’t want to keep pretending this isn’t real. I want to be… here. With you. However that looks.”
Hermione’s lips parted, and for a moment she didn’t say anything. Then, quietly, “That looks a lot like hope.”
Fred grinned. “God forbid.”
She laughed again, and he felt something inside him ease.
They talked for a little while longer—about Hogwarts, about how she once punched Malfoy and instantly regretted not doing it sooner, about the time Fred charmed Peeves into only speaking in limericks for a week. The warmth between them wasn’t romantic or reckless. It was steady. Trusting.
Eventually, Hermione stood.
“I should go,” she said softly. “I need sleep. And if I stay, I might fall asleep here and then Ginny will never let me hear the end of it.”
Fred nodded, though a small part of him wanted to ask her to stay. “Okay.”
Hermione hesitated in the doorway. “Thank you. For tonight.”
Fred smiled. “Anytime, Granger.”
She slipped out into the dark.
⸻
She barely made it an hour.
Sleep dragged her under fast, but it didn’t hold her gently.
She was back in the Department of Mysteries. The broken prophecy spinning in slow motion, dust floating in the air like ash. She was screaming, but no sound came. Then everything shifted and she was in Malfoy Manor, the cold stone floor beneath her, Bellatrix’s voice coiling around her like a snake.
“Let’s see how much pain the Mudblood can take before she breaks…”
The knife in her arm again. Ron’s shouts from below. Blood.
Then—
Fred’s body, limp on the floor. His hand twitching once and then not at all.
Hermione bolted upright in bed, gasping.
She pressed a hand to her mouth, trying to silence the sob already rising in her throat.
The house was silent.
It was just a dream.
It was just a dream.
She couldn’t breathe.
She slid out of bed without thinking, grabbing her blanket. Her feet carried her back down the hall before she even registered what she was doing.
She knocked once. Quiet.
Fred opened the door in seconds, like he’d been waiting.
He took one look at her face and stepped aside.
She didn’t say anything at first. Just walked in, climbed into the bed still rumpled from their earlier conversation, and sat against the headboard.
Fred sat beside her, eyes never leaving her.
“Nightmare?” he asked gently.
She nodded.
“Want to talk about it?”
She hesitated. Then: “Bellatrix. The Manor. And then… you. You were on the ground.”
Fred didn’t speak. He just reached out and took her hand, his thumb brushing over her knuckles.
“I didn’t want to be alone,” she whispered.
“You’re not.”
Hermione leaned into his side, slowly, carefully. Her body still trembled, but it began to ease under his touch.
“Stay as long as you need,” Fred said quietly.
“I don’t want to leave.”
Fred looked down at her, her head resting against his shoulder now. “Then don’t.”
He didn’t ask for more.
He didn’t try to fix anything.
He just stayed awake with her until she fell asleep again.
This time, the nightmares didn’t follow.