bruised like violets
Hermione ran out into the snow after Ron, screaming his name, stumbling over tree roots, unable to see through her hair the wind was whipping into her face, unable to feel the stinging rain against her skin, trying to keep calling for him as sobs overtook her body, and even as she heard the unmistakable crack of disapparation she couldn’t stop forcing his name out of her mouth, her throat going raw, until she couldn’t feel her lips, mouth numb with the cold, and stumbled back into the warmth of the wards to Harry. “He’s g-g-gone! Disapparated!”
Feeling suddenly unable to stand, she collapsed into the chair by the entrance of the tent and hugged her legs close to her chest, as if they could fill the gaping hole Ron had just created. She dimly registered that Harry had covered her with blankets––except they were Ron’s blankets, smelling unmistakably of him, that woodsy-soapy scent that she had once smelled leaning over a cauldron of amortentia, and her freezing hands tugged them closer to her, burying her frozen face into them as the tears that would not stop dampened the scratchy fleece.
An unknowable amount of time later, she wiped her face with a dry corner of the blanket, her sobs having slowed to a sniffle, her tearducts seeming to have run dry. The storm still raged outside, Harry's even breathing the only sound in the dark tent. She suddenly became aware that she had to pee, and uncurled herself from the chair, her muscles screaming in protest after being clenched tight for so long. Stumbling into the bathroom and sitting on the toilet, she stared at her reflection in the mirror, meeting her own blood-shot eyes. It seemed impossible, somehow, that her body could continue to function at all, that the urge to urinate could even be felt through the curtain of numbness that had fallen over her.
Feeling as if she was on autopilot, Hermione turned on the shower, brushing the worst of the knots out of her hair as steam filled the tiny room. She cast a privacy charm, not wanting the echoing sound of the running water to wake Harry, and stepped under the faucet. The warm water hit her still-frozen skin as if it was boiling, but she barely noticed, sinking to the floor, letting the shower pound into her back with her head between her knees as the tears started again. Ron’s last words ran through her head over and over––I get it, you choose him. As if there was a choice! As if she had any other options in this world that hated her––and the jeering cries that were always in her ears when she put the locket on came back to her, a cacophony of Death Eaters, Walburga Black, Draco Malfoy, years of whispers in the hallway: mudblood, mudblood, mudblood, mudblood, and Ron wasn’t here for her to turn to anymore, and Hermione found herself standing and punching the tile wall in front of her over and over, unable to get the voices out of her brain, blood running down her arms and mixing with the water at her feet––you are alone, your blood is dirty, he never wanted you, worthless, ugly, scum on the feet of the wizarding world, and it didn’t matter that she wasn’t wearing the locket, because Ron’s departure made her feel worse than the locket ever had, and she screamed incoherently as she pounded on the walls, til she collapsed back to the grimy floor of the shower and the tears began again.
Eventually the water ran cold, and Hermione dragged herself up and turned off the tap. Wrapping a threadbare towel around herself, she rummaged through the medicine cabinet for the dittany, pouring it onto her hands, wasting more of it than they could afford but unable to care. The scrapes closed instantly, but her knuckles were still swollen, and she cast a glamor over them for Harry. She cast a drying spell on her hair (something she almost never did, as she’d never mastered the charm and it made it all stick straight up in the air every time) and manhandled the resulting cloud into a scrunchie. Slowly, she brushed her teeth, her hand throbbing as it curled around the toothbrush. Undoing her privacy charm and stepping out of the bathroom into the tent’s shock of cold air, Hermione pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a tee from the foot of her bed and crawled under her covers in the hope of an hour or two of the sweet oblivion of sleep.