Because of Reasons

They started her second night home after Fourth Year. They started and they wouldn’t stop.

Nightmares plagued her dreams, so bloody and so horrific that she wished she was back in First Year alone in a girls’ toilet screaming as a troll bore down on her. She wished she was back in First Year being suffocated by Devil’s Snare and riding a chess piece across a transfigured board.

They continued and she wished she was back in Second Year, knowing a monster prowled the halls of the school she would spend the next eight months in, hunting victims like her. She wished she was back in Second Year trapped in her head for two months, hearing everyone around her but unable to scream at them that it was a basilisk. Unable to beg for help because she needed them to let her out, just let her out she would go home, just please let her out.

They continued and she wished she was back in Third Year, surrounded by monsters that drained the little joy and energy she managed to hold onto between juggling twelve classes and Ron’s tantrums about that god-forsaken rat. She wished she was back in Third Year with a serial killer after one of her best friends—who had zero regard for his own safety—and a common room, the very place she lived and slept, was broken into by said serial killer. She wished she was back in a shack standing between her best friend, a mass murder, and the teacher she had trusted, and thought had betrayed her despite it. That she and Harry were going on a grand and frankly recklessly idiotic trip through time dodging werewolves, Dementors, and riding Hippogriffs.

They continued and she wished she was back in Fourth Year, unable to do anything as one of her best friends was entered in a suicidal tournament that could only be described as a harebrained scheme by an old wizard vying for office in the next elections. She wished she was back to mediating between her two best friends and cramming in extra time in the library to research and help Harry with the upcoming tasks.

She even wished she was back watching as one of her best friends reappeared in a field in front of her, pale, soaked in blood and clutching the dead body of his schoolmate. She wished she was back to hearing him chant he’s back, he’s back, he’s back.

Because if she was back then, as horrible as it had been, and if she wasn’t here now, perhaps she would be able to care a little more that You-Know-Who had returned to haunting their world, complete once again. Perhaps she wouldn’t be left thinking, yes, it’s bad. But this is worse.

Except she wasn’t back then.

Instead, she was here, and those nightmares were not only plaguing her sleep anymore, she could see them every time she closed her eyes, sometimes even when they were open. There were dark circles that lay heavily under her eyes, darker than she had ever seen them—which was saying something considering how often she had seen them. Her parents kept shooting her looks, but she didn’t have the energy to start a conversation, reassuring them of things she knew were not true, hiding the things that were. She would go as long as she could without having to act out that charade again—she had done it often enough, every summer since she began at Hogwarts.

Alone, she watched as children were torn apart, Diagon Alley littered with bodies and blood caked between the cracks in the ground below her and the spaces between the bricks on the walls. There were piles of snapped wands, and then others in the process of being dissected by people in white coats. She saw men and women dragged kicking and screaming through clean white halls, strapped onto metal tables and later laid out in pieces on tarps.

Magicals were held down and raped, she was held down and raped. And in her visions she was grateful. She was grateful because they left her behind when they were done instead of taking her with them. Not all were that lucky.

There was an old house that often appeared in her dreams, the halls dreary and cold with dust laid over everything it could touch like a possessive lover. A portrait hung proudly on the wall, but she knew it hadn’t said a word in years. There was an old house-elf she had never seen before, and a kitchen crowded with a long wooden table splitting it in two.

There was also a blonde woman who gave her weary smiles. The older she was in her dreams, the more often it was only the two of them and the old house-elf in the house. It was still too much when even the shifting of a shoe against the floorboards was enough to send her into a panic.

At one point, the people she saw started wearing thick shackles with modern Muggle technology, a small green light blinking every now and then. Though the dreams never explicitly said it, a whisper at the back of her head told her what they were for anyway.

You didn’t honestly think they would let you keep your magic, did you, silly girl?

And, well, she certainly hadn’t thought about it before, but now it was one of the only things she could think about. That, and the realization that it was becoming more and more difficult to convince herself they were dreams.

Hermione liked reading and learning—it was quite dissatisfying to see how few others did—but more importantly she liked knowing things. And she knew dreams didn’t work in such a way.

While the human brain was an incredible thing, to create dreams so real, so new, shouldn’t be possible. Dreams were made from a collection of already witnessed scenes and memories mixed and matched together, but never completely new. These were.

She saw herself in a mirror years from now and the image of her older self was too vivid, too precise upon waking up, to just be an invention within those few hours asleep.

And then she was told she couldn’t write to Harry. Or respond to any letters he sent. And how was she supposed to focus on anything when she was being haunted and knew she, like many others, would soon be hunted by You-Know-Who, and yet couldn’t even confide in her best friend? She had already fallen behind on her summer reading.

If things kept up the way they were, she wouldn’t be able to review all the material before Fifth Year began, and she knew that this year was going to be bad. If the last four were not proof enough, then You-Know-Who’s return was a solid enough argument.

She wanted the nightmares—you know that’s not what they are, the new, quiet part of her whispered—to stop.

She wanted to go back to all the times at Hogwarts when things were happening which most definitely should not have been happening but were happening anyway.

She wanted her parents to stop looking at her in growing concern. Playing the annual charade of her school not being lax with their safety regulations—and a common ground for reckless child endangerment—was exhausting. How would she find the energy to play that role on top of everything else?

She wanted You-Know-Who to go back to being the shrivelled baby creature Harry had once told her and Ron about, well past midnight in their cozy Gryffindor common room.

She wanted Headmaster Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore to stop sending her letters about going no-contact with her first friend.

How was she supposed to ignore his panicked letters about the nightmares that plagued his own sleep, and all the words he didn’t write but she read off the paper anyway, about what plagued him when he was awake, and do nothing?

There were so many things she wanted, so many things that should not be happening but she also could not stop, so instead she focused on the things she wanted and may, even if the chance was infinitesimal, achieve. The priorities that were not focused on herself, and therefore could become a reality.

I want, both she and the voice thought in tandem, to give the dubbed Boy-Who-Lived a chance to live. And I want his first friend to have the chance to continue living.

So, Hermione Granger sat at the desk in her room and wrote a letter. It was “short and sweet” but it said everything she needed it to.

They had to meet. They had to talk. And they could not tell anyone else.

With a quick trip to Diagon Alley while her parents were at work, two sickles spent at the owlery to have the letter sent, her simple, unsigned letter was carried off.

Even with it addressed to a Mr. Padfoot, Hermione hoped it made it to Sirius Black properly. She doubted she would be able to track the convict down herself.

Because who better to help with Harry’s safety than his very own godfather.