Nightmares and Nocturnes

The War Eternal

Chapter 26: The War Eternal

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1999

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Hermione sat up in bed, panting, and tried to blink away the last vestiges of the interior of Malfoy Manor from the sleep-deprived channels of her mind. She was relieved, at least, that her memories were growing hazier, less concrete; she remembered the episode - the torture, she corrected herself firmly, call it by its name - less as a chronicle of time than as flashes of blurred visions, tricks of light.

Time, in her mind, was no longer linear. It wasn't past or present; there was no longer a distinction. She suffered it now as she had suffered it then, experiencing the same hour or so on an unbroken loop each night.

Flashes of color, mostly. Aged mahogany. Black robes, black ink, a flash of steel.

A pale glow, a silvered edge; of course it's you -

Of course it's us -

Of course it's pain -

Each time a collision. I'm sorry, she swore she'd seen him mouth; she still wasn't sure if she hadn't simply imagined it.

Coward, she'd thought back firmly, but her final glimpse of him - fearful, remorseful, resigned - was always the hardest to blink away, and she was glad, for reasons she couldn't understand, that she had not said the word out loud.

It took a moment - a few conscious breaths - and then she gradually rid herself of the ghost of Draco Malfoy, making a point not to wonder if he were sleeping soundly tonight. Instead, she sat up slowly, peering around in the dark until she found the vacancy she'd expected.

"Hey," she whispered, tiptoeing outside and joining Ginny a few feet from the tent. "How long did you last?"

Ginny spared her a vacant half-smile and shrugged before returning her attention to whatever she'd been looking at. "Couple hours," she replied, aiming her chin further in the distance. "Doesn't look like they've gone to bed yet at all," she commented, and Hermione grimaced, catching sight of Harry and Luna in the distance. Luna was looking at the sky, her chin up and tilted curiously; Harry was looking at her, his eyes caught on the angle of her cheek.

Hermione caught the glimpse of longing on Ginny's face and felt something oppositional rise up in her chest.

"I don't think," Hermione began uncertainly, but Ginny shook her head, interrupting.

"Don't," she said quietly. "You don't need to make me feel better. I can see it for myself," she remarked, leaning back onto her elbows and gesturing. "And really, it's not like I'm - " she paused, carefully parsing out her words. "I'm just happy for them," she concluded, skirting whatever she'd been about to say. "I want them to be together, honestly."

"Ginny," Hermione said skeptically, but she was cut off again.

"I mean it," Ginny said firmly. "He's different now, you know? And so am I," she murmured. "Something's happened to him, and to me."

"Still," Hermione protested, flinching from the burdensome earnestness that had chirped its way into her voice. "It could still work," she insisted, but Ginny shook her head slowly.

"Whatever he shared with You-Know-Who is gone now," Ginny remarked. "I can feel it. The absence of it," she clarified, and Hermione grimaced.

"Isn't that a good thing?" she asked tentatively. Ginny shrugged.