Everything is Definitely Okay
Hermione bolted upright in her bed. She was drenched in sweat. The nightmare was the same. Always the same. Ended the same way, too - with her looking into the eyes of the 4 people she had killed. She couldn’t breathe. Her chest was too tight, but she’d been through this before, so she repeated her usual post-nightmare routine to avoid sinking further into her panic spiral. Almost robotically, she pulled back the covers and stood from the bed, careful not to wake Ron who was peacefully sleeping beside her. She stalked to the bathroom and turned on the light as her bare feet embraced the coolness of the tiled floor. Then, only because she knew it was coming, as it had every time before, she sat next to the toilet and waited until she vomited up the contents of her stomach. Once she expelled everything her stomach had forced out, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and trudged to the sink. Splashing cold water on her face and running her wrists under the cold water, she waited to see which way the night would go from there. She would either feel her chest settle enough that she could spend the rest of the night with a cup of mint tea and a book – there was no option of sleeping anymore – or she would find herself hyperventilating. Breathing so fast that her muscles would contract without relaxation, and she would no longer have use of her arms. They would become clenched unrelentingly for what felt like hours. The first time that happened, she panicked even more knowing she’d lost the ability to simply hold her wand, let alone cast a spell; she had never felt more defenseless. In every attack following, she kept learning how to manage each one. If she felt her hands and arms start to go numb, she would turn on the shower to a scalding temperature and sit under the stream of water until her muscles could relax and she could use her hands and arms again.
Tonight was a tea and book night, thank god. She changed out of her sweat soaked pajamas and into her comfiest sweatpants and t-shirt. Her thick wool socks blanketed the sound of her footsteps to the kitchen as she began to brew herself a cup of tea. She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept through the night. The war ended 3 years ago but to her, it felt as if it hadn’t ended at all. It followed her everywhere. It stayed in her mind throughout her workday, on quiet dinner dates with Ron, and everything in between. The pain was always there, lurking just behind her eyes in her mind. She hadn’t even been in the trenches of the war. She was a healer. She had seen the horrors and the aftermath of every battle. She thought she could convince herself that although what she saw was gruesome and horrific, she was healing everyone she could. And when she couldn’t save someone, at least she was there to give them the comfort they deserved while exiting the world. That was what she was able to tell herself when the panic attacks and the sleepless night began during the war. That’s what she told herself until that November morning when Death Eaters attacked the hospital. She did what she needed to do. What she should have, to protect Harry and the Order. She killed 4 people. From that night on, she could no longer tell herself that she was just a healer. She was now a healer and a murderer.
She didn’t know how the others did it. How were they able to move on and be happy? How were the able to have such genuine smiles? Harry and Ginny’s wedding was a joyous occasion, everyone sang, danced, drank, and laughed, and all Hermione could think about was how the majority of the people there that night had killed others in cold blood. Yet here they were smiling, like they didn’t have a care in the world. Yes, the people they killed were Death Eaters and supporters of Voldemort but still – to take a life and continue on with your own with the ability to smile? She couldn’t grasp the concept.
As the months went on after the war, everyone around her started to adjust into their new, war-free lives, Hermione could not. However, she did become quite adept at faking smiles and putting up a façade of normalcy. She became so skilled, that people actually believed her when she told them she was doing well or when she offered them a smile. She knew people believed her because eventually they stopped asking. They didn’t ask how she was coping, how she was sleeping, or if she needed to see a mind healer. They believed her, so they stopped asking. They thought her smiles were genuine, so they didn’t question it. It only slightly stung that these were supposedly her closest friends, and they couldn’t even see that the light behind her eyes was gone. But she couldn’t blame them, she realized, she was quite good at pretending – she always had been – and they had been through worse after all. What was her pain compared to Harry’s – Harry who had been prepared to sacrifice his life for the rest of the world. Ginny who fought so bravely on the front lines of the war only to come back with one less brother. Hermione knew the weight of murdering 4 Death Eaters was nothing compared to their horrors, so of course they should believe her when she told them time and time again that she was fine.
She tried to talk to Ron about it in the quiet of their small London flat. He couldn’t understand why she felt so guilty over the lives of a couple of Death Eaters, and he became another on the list of people in her life she had to lie to. She loved Ron, she really did. During the war he was kind and comforting. He would sit with her after her long nights in the infirmary when he wasn’t off on missions. Harry would join when he could, but he always had some sort of responsibility to attend to as the Chosen One. Hermione supposed she and Ron were destined to end up together. Everyone said so. They were the embodiment of “childhood friends turned sweethearts.’’ And with Harry and Ginny being completely head over heels for one another, it just made sense that she and Ron would be together, and their chosen family would become an actual one.
She just wished he would be there for her now like he had been during the war. He was helpful that first month, but when he moved past the horror and she hadn’t, she became a burden for him. She remembered the first night that she realized he wasn’t going to be there for her anymore; She woke up in a pool of her sweat as always, but this time instead of rubbing her back and waiting with fresh clothes as she emerged from the shower, he rolled over in bed and said “Hermione I can’t keep doing this. They were Death Eaters. Get over it. I’m so tired at work whenever I have to stay up with you.” She told herself she understood. She was a lot to deal with. This level of support and comfort was too much to ask from anyone. So, from then on she made sure not to wake him.
The unease had crept back into her chest as her thoughts had begun to return to the war and her doubts about Ron. In the nick of time, the kettle began to whistle, pulling her thoughts from the war, returning her mind to her kitchen. She pulled her favorite mug from the cupboard as Crookshanks wove between her legs. He could always tell when she needed a little extra affection on particularly rough nights. She walked with her steaming mug of tea over to her favorite chair. A green suede loveseat in the corner of the living room tucked between the bookshelf and the window. She dimmed the lamp next to her and lit a fire in the fireplace with a quick swish of her wand. She tucked her feet underneath her as she positioned her checkered blanket on her lap, creating a divot for Crooks to settle into. There, she spent the rest of the night getting lost in Jane Austen’s world. Letting her mind calm to the words of Pride and Prejudice, preparing for the sun to rise and with it, the fake Hermione who was absolutely okay and not hurting on the inside one bit.