Nightmares and Nocturnes

The Rubble and the Rising

Chapter 30: The Rubble and the Rising

The first time Hermione Granger looked at the facade of Hogwarts Castle, it had a distinctly visible sheen to it; a gleam of newness, despite its age. She was nearly twelve years old at the time, wearing robes still crisp from purchase and clinging to the thought of new ink and parchment and books; to the glimmer of starting over. The castle shone that night, welcomed her, arms open. She sat in the boat upon the lake and floated, inside and out, and pondered her life, her future.

Her magic.

She remembered standing outside the castle the day she knew she wasn't coming back; remembered leaving it not long after Dumbledore's funeral. It looked sad, she thought, or else especially fixed, and she had never been more conscious of the fact that it was made of stone. Perhaps it made it easier to leave that way. Perhaps it had done her a favor. She remembered the stairs had not shifted at all that day; it was as if the castle itself had mourned, lethargic, and like many of its inhabitants, could not be brought to its feet.

On the second of May in 1998, the castle had loomed. It seemed to know that war had been brought to its doorstep, and Hermione had pressed her fingers to the walls, feeling anxiety within the cracks. Hush, she wanted to say, wanting to feel it purr contentedly beneath her fingers, but she couldn't quite gather the nerve. She'd been frightened enough herself to feel the cracks in her own foundation, the unsteady beat of her heart, and couldn't have managed it, her thoughts less with the castle itself than with those inside it; those who would later fall, and never leave.

That was the last time she'd been inside, and now she wished she'd taken that moment to console it, even for an instant. It looked like a prison, now, or a prisoner. I know what that feels like, she told it silently, staring from the forest's edge.

We've changed, you and I.

"Tell me," Draco had said to her quietly as he was pulling on clothes early that morning, changing out of his blood-spattered shirt from the graveyard. "Is there something in your battalion of tales about a storyteller?"

Hermione paused, considering it, as she pulled on a pair of Pansy's slim trousers.

"There is, actually," she said, muttering a spell to adjust the taller woman's hem and straightening, frowning into space. "I don't know that we have time for it, though."

She tried not to shiver at the thought; at the idea of having time, or not having it, as the case may be. Time was a thing she'd never possessed, and certainly could not reliably predict now. It seemed foolish to even discuss it. To discuss anything.

She stopped, feeling lost and uncertain, and Draco must have caught the look in her eye.

"Let me guess," Draco murmured, coming up behind her to press his lips to the back of her neck. "Does she defeat a monster, or love a prince?"

Hermione took a breath, letting him rest his chin in the dip of her shoulder. "Both," she said softly, and he nodded, waiting. "There was a king," she explained. "A king whose heart had been betrayed, and so he hardened it, taking a wife each night and then killing her in the morning, doing so each day for a thousand nights. And after a thousand women had died, and the king himself was nearly lost to his own pain, he took a storyteller for a wife; a scholar, who was witty and well-read, who conjured up a plan for her survival." She leaned her head back, resting it against Draco's chest. "Each night she would tell the king a story and then she would stop, ending the tale at daybreak, so that the king would keep her alive another day, just to hear her stories. And this continued, day after day, until after a thousand and one stories - "