Down Under

There is no way to push off the awkwardness when Hermione finally disentangles herself from George. 

“I—” she takes a gulp of air and sits up, wiping a clumsy hand over her eyes. 

George’s hands slide down her back and to her sides, his eyes landing on her face as he pulls back slightly and observes her. He is still so close. 

Hermione blinks. If she leans just a hair forward the tip of her nose will touch his. She takes another breath and looks away, hiccupping slightly. 

George’s head tilts to the side, his fingertips still brushing the fabric at her waist. “You’re alright?” 

“Mhm.” She gives a shaky nod, shifting away and putting her hands down on the mattress beside her, letting her weight drop into her palms. She feels George’s hands retract and cold air rush to take their place. 

“I’m fine,” she says, her voice steadier now. She takes a deep breath in and shakes the hair from her face. “I should—I should get ready for bed.” 

“Right. Yeah.” George nods and quickly stands, the mattress groaning at the movement. The pink flush returns to his neck, and he seems to look everywhere but at Hermione. “I’ll—er—I should repack—you know—” 

Hermione chews her bottom lip and bends to retrieve her beaded clutch from where it has fallen on the floor. Face flaming, she takes out her wand and taps the bag so it transforms back into her usual knapsack. 

“I’ll just go take a shower, then,” she murmurs. 

George makes a noncommittal noise and Hermione scurries to the safety of the bathroom. 

As the door clicks shut behind her she looks up and catches sight of the mirror hanging above the sink. She reels backwards, momentarily thinking some dark creature has joined her.

It is her own reflection. Hermione swallows a cry and leans over the bathroom sink, taking in her features slowly.  

Her face looks like it has been on the receiving end of a stinging hex, her skin red and blotchy and bloated. Tear tracks cut through a layer of grime and dust, and angry red lines crossing her cheeks loudly advertise the precise places where she had pressed herself into the creases of George’s shirt. 

Hermione stares at the face in the mirror, forcing herself to catalog the ugliness. Her eyes are so puffy from tears that they are nearly closed, the red-rimmed skin making her look like a rabbit. The glistening tears only highlight the grayness of her skin, and the impressions left from George’s shirt make it clear just how weak she has allowed herself to be. 

Weak, she is so weak for letting her emotions overcome her like that. She is so selfish for forcing George to comfort her. 

She is supposed to be in control of her emotions, able to move past the realm of feelings and approach problems logically. She is supposed to be someone other people can lean on. 

What good is she, if she cannot even hold herself together?

Her eyes scan her reflection further, taking note of the tangled mess that is her hair and the tear in the strap of her black dress. She doesn’t know how her dress tore, if it is a remnant of the battle in the restaurant or a more recent occurrence. She runs a fingertip over the frayed fabric.

This is what happens when you let yourself break down, she chides herself. This is what you become when you let emotion take over. 

She slips her finger under the strap of the dress and slides it off her shoulder, then does the same on the other side. With a gentle push the black fabric slides down her hips and pools at her feet on the tile floor. Hermione steps out of it, leaving the crumpled dress in a pile. 

She removes her underwear and turns to look at herself again in the mirror. She hardly recognizes the body in front of her, so changed from a year ago. Her skin is weathered and tough, marred by various scars that she knows will never fully heal. The months of traveling and fighting have left her leaner than she has ever been, her ribs and hips pushing dangerously against her skin. 

Hermione tries to picture herself as she would have looked last summer, the last time she saw her parents before she recast their memories. The picture is fuzzy but she guesses she was softer, cleaner, fuller. 

She wishes she could recapture that fullness now. 

A rushing, biting guilt swarms her stomach at the thought of her parents seeing her like this, not knowing what has happened to change her so drastically. She wonders for the first time if it wouldn’t be kinder to leave them as they are, to let them live their lives without the worry of a strange, damaged daughter who lives in a world they cannot understand. 

Selfish, she is so selfish for wanting them back as badly as she does. 

Hermione steps back into the hotel room nearly an hour later, all evidence of her tears and weakness burned away by the scalding shower. 

George sits in the bed near the window, covers tucked around his leg and a heavy book open in his lap. He looks up as the bathroom door clicks closed. 

“All set, then?” he asks in a light voice. 

Hermione nods and sets her knapsack in front of the entertainment stand. “Just about.” She runs a hand over her freshly plaited hair and adjusts the collar on her pajamas. Eyes firmly planted on the ground in front of her, she turns back the sheets of her own bed and slides in. 

“Well, I, for one, am absolutely knackered,” George says airily. He closes the book with a snap and leans over to place it on his nightstand. “I might actually sleep tonight.” 

Hermione bites her lip and makes a vague sound in response. She lays her head on her pillow and turns to face the wall. 

George turns the switch on the lamp, sending them into darkness. She can hear him shuffling in his own bed, can hear the pull and swish of blankets being tugged and readjusted. 

“Goodnight, Granger,” he murmurs, his voice somewhat lower than before. “We’ll keep looking for your parents in the morning.” 

Hermione swallows and nestles her face deeper into the pillow, squeezing her eyes shut. Breathe. She must breathe. 

“Goodnight,” she whispers. She pulls the blankets tighter around her and lets her head lay heavy on the pillow. The exhaustion coats her bones again, and she wonders if George is right. Maybe tonight will be a night she sleeps easily. 

***

Sleep does not come, though every atom in Hermione’s body cries for it. She closes her eyes and deepens her breathing, hoping that she might be able to trick the sandman into visiting her if she can pretend convincingly enough. 

Sleep, as usual, ducks and dodges her. 

It avoids George, as well. She knows this though they do not speak again. She can hear him moving, can hear the shuffling of blankets and his occasional sighs. 

Hermione closes her eyes and tries to ignore this, just as she tries to push away the familiar resurgence of images and sounds she blocks out every night.

The hotel buzzes around her. Her thoughts turn to Yaxley, the snarl on his face as he lunged for them in the restaurant. She inhales sharply and forces her mind to go blank in an attempt to shut down this pathway as well. 

She thinks of happy things. She thinks of Harry and Ginny, together at the Burrow. What are they doing right now? It will be daytime in England. Maybe they’re playing quidditch out in the orchard. Maybe Ron is there with them, as well. 

She pictures the three of them on their brooms, zipping through the trees and laughing. She can see Harry sitting on one of the old broomsticks from the Weasley’s shed, a smile on his face as he glides through the air.

Harry flies around a particularly large tree trunk, and his broom becomes a dragon. Suddenly, Hermione looks down and realizes she is on the dragon with him, Ron and Ginny behind her, screaming as they approach Hogwarts. She can already see a tower crumbling, can smell the smoke and dust in the air. 

No—

They are falling—falling—falling into the darkness and chaos. 

Hermione looks around but the castle is so dark, the smoke too thick. There is fire—fire! Fire! She tries to scream, looking around for Harry and Ron. They are nowhere. She is alone. 

The smoke grows thicker, the fire blasts across the corridor, and she runs. The castle falls around her, pieces of stone and drywall tumbling from above. Someone runs next to her and she recognizes Fred Weasley’s face just in time for an explosion to rock the floor beneath her. A large piece of stone comes down and strikes Fred’s head and he tumbles beside her. There is no blood, no visible cut, but his glassy eyes tell her he is gone. 

Hermione tries to scream, tries to cry. 

Nothing. Nothing, there is nothing. No sound, no words. 

She can hear someone—Harry or Ron—yelling for her in the distance, telling her to come back—

“Hermione! Hermione!”  

She screams and thrashes as a shapeless form comes into focus above her, the tip of a wand nearly touching her face. She reaches out and tries to smack the wand away, tries to shove the form from her. 

“Woah, hey—” The wand drops. Hands come up to wrap around her wrists and hold her arms steady. George’s voice moves closer, shifting as Hermione continues to struggle. “Hermione, it’s me.” 

Hermione pauses, her breath pushing out in rough gasps as she takes in George kneeling beside her on the mattress. He lets go of one of her hands and picks up his wand, the light now illuminating his face. 

“You’re okay,” he says. He releases her wrist and shifts, hovering over her, his lit wand held up between them.

“Sorry—” Hermione mumbles, pushing sweaty strands of hair from her forehead and sitting up. The picture of Fred Weasley’s glassy eyes, the smell of smoke, ebb away as her vision clears. She swallows, her throat feeling like sandpaper, and rubs at her aching eyes. “I don’t—”

“Don’t worry about it.” George’s voice is heavy, hoarse, and he slowly comes into focus as Hermione’s eyes adjust to the dim light. 

She lets out a sigh and tilts back, leaning her head against the headboard. She feels like she is underwater, the thick nighttime air pressing against her skin, pushing in on her from all sides.

George waves his wand and the light extinguishes, sending them into darkness again. 

Hermione takes a breath, trying to quiet her hammering pulse. Happy things, she must think about happy things.

The mattress dips and George perches himself on the edge of her bed. He doesn’t touch her, but she can feel his presence, the warmth emanating from his skin, the faint smell of cinnamon and smoke carrying through the air. 

She both wants him to move closer and hopes he stays away. She can feel an aching tug in her gut, a longing to lean into him and ask him to cocoon her in his arms again. This time, she doesn’t know if she would willingly let go. 

“You’re alright?” he asks, his voice washing over her like a wave. 

“Yeah,” she says, pushing a hand through her hair and thankful for the darkness enshrouding them. “It was just a dream.” 

“Do you still get them every night? The nightmares?” George asks, the low vibrations of the question running up Hermione’s spine and making her shiver. 

She nods, and then realizes he cannot see her. “Yes,” she whispers. “Every time I close my eyes.” 

George shuffles, the mattress and bedding shifting as he does so. Without seeing him, Hermione pictures him fidgeting, adjusting his limbs and running a hand through his hair as he does when he is preoccupied. 

“What do you see?” 

Hermione takes a scraping breath and brings a hand to cover her face. She thinks back to the crumbling castle, the smoke-filled air and glassy-eyed stares. “I see the battle,” she says. “Over and over again.” 

George inhales beside her. “That’s what I thought.” 

The familiar pressure returns to Hermione’s throat, the horrible sensation that her body is imploding. “I don’t know how to make them stop,” she says. “I don’t know how to stop seeing it.” 

“I don’t know either.” George shifts, and his foot knocks against hers. Hermione scoots to the side, giving him space to sit more fully on the bed. “I asked Mum right after—that first night—about dreamless sleep potion, but she wouldn’t give me any. Said too many wizards start taking it and then can’t get themselves to stop.” 

Hermione lays back down, her head nestling into her pillow. The darkness coats her, and she feels something in her stomach loosen. 

She hears George adjust, feels him move further onto the mattress. Through the darkness, she can make out the outline of his face, turned upwards towards the ceiling. Her chest clenches as she remembers a different face, so similar to George’s, staring emptily into the sky as the world crashed around them. 

“I saw Fred tonight,” she mumbles into the pillow.

She hears a short hitch in George’s breath. “How was he?” 

She bites her lip, turning over on her side to face him. “Dead.” 

George doesn’t say anything, but she feels him lean over, run his fingers down her arm until they find her hand. She opens her palm, lets his hand wrap around hers. She squeezes. 

“Do you see him?” she asks softly. “When you sleep?” 

“Every night.” George’s thumb presses into the crook of her hand, and his voice takes on a misty, far-away tone. “But when I see him, he’s usually alive.” 

Hermione doesn’t say anything. She sinks her head into the pillow, clasps her hand more firmly against George’s. 

“I’d almost wish the dreams wouldn’t stop,” George says, “if it didn’t hurt so much when I wake up.” 

Hermione doesn’t say anything. Her lungs and ribs ache, straining to hold the rushing warmth and pain ballooning inside of her. She runs her thumb over the back of George’s hand and tightens her fingers around him. 

She thinks of her nightmare, the castle falling, the faces of the dead. 

“George?” 

“Yeah?” 

His hand moves in hers, bracing against the mattress as he twists and faces her. Hermione bites her lip. 

“Do you know what happened to Lavender Brown?” 

George pauses, and in her mind’s eye Hermione sees his eyebrows lift, his head tilt to the side as he considers the question. 

“I saw her in the Great Hall,” he says at last. “Afterwards. She’s—she’s gone.” 

“Oh.” Hermione takes a shaky breath, her head dropping further into the pillow. 

George’s fingers loosen their hold on Hermione’s hand, turning so his thumb presses into the center of her palm. He kneads the base of her thumb, working slow circles into her skin as quiet stretches between them. 

 “I was horrible to her,” Hermione whispers, her voice cracking as the words leave her throat. “All of last year, when she was with Ron. I was so awful.” 

George’s thumb pushes into the crux of her thumb and index finger, sliding up so his hand sits against hers. His fingertips drag across Hermione’s hand, finding the spaces between her fingers and interlacing them with his own. 

Hermione takes a breath and squeezes her eyes closed. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs into the darkness. “I shouldn’t—” 

“It’s alright.” George squeezes her hand. 

She shifts, her body growing heavy. Her hip sinks into the bed, then her shoulder, then her feet. One arm splays across the mattress between them, her hand still clutching George’s.  

“Will you sit here for a little bit longer?” she asks, hating herself as she hears the way her words quiver, the bald vulnerability of the question. 

“I wasn’t planning on moving.” George adjusts his legs and skims his thumb over her wrist. 

Hermione bites back a sigh and lets her head drop more heavily into the pillow. 

“It’s easier,” George says, his voice softer, “having someone else here.”

Hermione nods, nestling her face deeper into the soft fabric of the pillowcase. “I know.”

George leans over, brushing a lock of hair from her forehead. “Go back to sleep, Granger,” he says. “I’ll be here.” 

***

George is already awake when Hermione opens her eyes the next morning. She turns on her side, squinting as she sees him sitting on top of the bed near the window, brow furrowed as he reads by wandlight. 

“What are you doing?” she asks, voice still thick with sleep. 

He jumps slightly and then turns to face her. “You’re awake.”

“Mhm.” Hermione rubs her eyes with the heel of her hand and props herself up on her elbow. “So are you. Did you sleep at all?” 

George shrugs, looking back at the book in his lap. “As much as I usually do.” 

Hermione bites her lip and runs a hand through her hair, cringing to think of what it must look like. She forces herself to look away from George, a gentle heat creeping up her cheeks as the events of the night come back to her. 

He must think her so silly, so selfish, for carrying on like that. She thinks of how she asked him to sit with her, the way she had clung to his hand. 

Weak. She is so weak. 

She pushes herself up to sit and takes in the room. Her knapsack sits on the floor where she left it and the bathroom door sits ajar. Slowly, she swings one leg and then the other over the side of the mattress and rises. She bends to retrieve her bag and ducks quickly into the bathroom, letting the door slam shut behind her. 

She takes extra care getting ready, splashing her face with cold water and casting a smoothing charm on her hair before twisting it into a loose knot at the nape of her neck. 

She thinks of mornings when she was young and woke up in a foul mood, how her mother would sit behind her and plait her hair. Sometimes a few extra minutes in the morning and a pretty hair clip were all you needed to face the day, Miranda Granger would say. 

Hermione wishes her mother were here now. She wishes she could sink onto the tile floor and feel her mother’s deft hands run through her hair, the strands pulled taut as they were twisted into place. She wishes she could feel her mother drop a kiss on the top of her head and pat her cheek as she tied the plait in place.

She can’t remember the last time her mother kissed her. She wishes she had thought to capture the moment, to catalog every hug and kiss and whispered endearment from her parents. She could take all the memories, bind them in a little book like the white pages that had sat in their kitchen, open the pages whenever she wanted to see them.

Hermione breathes in deeply as she tugs on her jacket. She won’t need to revisit lost memories much longer, she reminds herself. She will find her parents. She will get to them before Yaxley does, and she will find a way to make them remember her. 

She gives her hair a final pat and glances at her reflection in the mirror before pushing the door open and striding back into the room. 

George still sits on the bed near the window, shoulders hunched and wand pointed at something in his hand. He looks up as Hermione exits the bathroom, eyes running across her face before dropping back to his hand. 

Hermione follows his eyeline and sees what looks like a thin silver chain hanging between his fingers, glinting in the dim light.

“What—” 

“Just something for the shop,” he says, shaking his head and stuffing the chain in his pocket. 

Hermione frowns but doesn’t press. She pads over to her own bed and drops onto the mattress, crossing her legs beneath her as she faces George. 

“We need to figure out what our plan is,” she says. “Now that we know Yaxley is here.” 

George nods and runs a hand through his hair. “Right. I’m assuming you have thoughts?” 

Hermione bites the inside of her cheek. “Just a few—” 

A small smile curls at the corner of George’s mouth. “Let’s hear them.” 

“We can’t keep going as we have been,” Hermione says, a hand coming up to play with a loose button on her jacket. “It’s too slow. We need to cover more ground.” 

George nods, eyebrows raised. 

“So I think we have two options,” Hermione continues, glancing up at him. “We either split up and go to different places so we can cover twice as many libraries each day—” 

“Absolutely not,” George scowls. “There’s a psychotic death eater on the loose here who would probably love to kill us both. We’re not splitting up.” 

Hermione gives a tight smile. “I thought you might say that. So the second option is we stop looking at library patron records and try a different tactic. Something that will let us quickly look across multiple cities.” 

“What would that be?” 

“The white pages,”  she says. “It’s a book—the Sydney library will have one for most of the cities in Australia, I would bet—listing everyone who lives in the city and their phone number.” 

George’s forehead creases as he frowns at her. “It just lists everyone who lives in the city?” 

Hermione nods. “For the most part. It’s not foolproof—people can choose not to list their number—but it’s a starting place.” 

“Alright.” George runs a hand through his hair as he studies her. “You said we’ll be able to find those at the library?” 

“At least the white pages for Sydney and the surrounding towns,” Hermione says. “If we don’t find them here we might have to try other major city libraries, but we should be able to find those without too much trouble.” 

“Right.” George breathes in, his eyes still on her. “And we’ll just bring the white page things back here?”

Hermione frowns. “No. We’ll work at the library like we’ve been doing.” 

George shakes his head. “We can’t do that.” 

“Whyever not?” Hermione crosses her arms over her chest and leans back. “It makes perfect sense. We’ll be able to work quickly and have help to find all the volumes—” 

George shakes his head, more firmly this time. “It’s too exposed. We still don’t know exactly how Yaxley found us—” 

“We can do some basic wards—” 

“We won’t be able to do all the wards we have up here,” George grimaces. “Not in the middle of a crowded library. If we’re here we’ll have a better chance of keeping anyone out, and if someone does find us we’ll be able to fight them without worrying about breaking any secrecy laws.” 

Hermione purses her lips. “Going back and forth from here to the library will slow us down.” 

George’s frown deepens. “Not as much as being dead would slow us down.” 

“We have to—” 

“Look,” George sighs, getting to his feet and coming to stand in front of her. “We’ll go and we’ll duplicate as many of those white pages as we can find at the library, alright? We can fit all of them in that neverending bag of yours and bring them back here. We won’t have to go back and forth, and the only thing that will take extra time will be finding and duplicating everything we need.” 

Hermione chews her bottom lip, turning over the plan in her mind. She sighs, her stomach sinking. They need to be careful. She knows this. 

“Fine,” she says. “We’ll do that.”

“Good.” George tilts back on his heels and checks his watch. “We can go to the library right when they open to get everything.” 

“Okay.” Hermione nods. “We have a plan, then.” She brings a hand up and runs it down her face.

They can do this. They can use the white pages and find her parents. They can outrun Yaxley. 

But a dozen small, nagging thoughts dig into her brain. This might be another dead end. A phone number won’t tell them where exactly to find the Wilkins. Wendell and Monica Wilkins might have chosen not to list themselves in the book. They could still be too new to Australia to appear in it. 

Hermione closes her eyes, trying to quash the fears. 

When she opens her eyes she finds George watching her, expression soft. “Come on,” he says, taking her hand and pulling her up. “Let’s get breakfast. I’m starving.” 

Hermione nods, swaying slightly as gets to her feet. George’s fingers interlock with hers, once again anchoring her to the world and holding her steady. Hermione tightens her hand around his, her mind turning again to the library and the white pages and her parents waiting somewhere for her to find them. 

George squeezes her hand and tugs her arm, taking a step towards the door. 

They can do this. They will get breakfast and work out their plan for the library, and then they will find her parents. 

George takes another step towards the door, pulling Hermione behind him. She lets out a soft breath, looking down at their clasped hands. She bites her lip, runs her thumb over his knuckle, and follows.