The Fallout by EveryThursday (reposted)

Fourteen

Day: 1256; Hour: 1

Her breathing is mirrored across from her, Lavender's trainer digging into her leg as the other girl adjusts herself in the tiny room. They can feel the Death Eaters walking past the door more than they can hear them, and she tries to make her breath soundless, but she hears it too loudly for it to be working. Her heart feels frozen in a twist, the adrenaline pumping along her shoulders. She can't believe just how close they came to being found by the group of them, and knows without a doubt there would be no escaping this place alive if they had been.

"Hermione?" Lavender whispers, and it's too loud still, Hermione's fear strengthening sounds and movement, until she is sure they will blow down the door with a motion of her finger.

"Huh?" Hermione asks, just a breath with a little more pressure than normal, her eyes darting in the darkness to where she knows the door is.

"Do you... Do you ever think of just...not going back? Like... Like we could stay here, and just not go back. I have family in other countries, and places I can go. We can just...hide. Do you ever think about it?"

"No."

Lavender is silent, which is good, but Hermione is right in thinking she is not done speaking yet. "I'm just so tired of being scared. All. The time."

Hermione waits to respond until she is sure there is no one passing by the door, and stands. "If we weren't scared, we wouldn't be human. People can die all the time -- that's not just war, it's life."

"This is different."

"I know." Hermione finds the knob in the dark, and looks in Lavender's direction. "Are you coming?"

"Would you hate me if I didn't?"

"No."

There's a pause, rustling and thump, and then Lavender brushing against her side. "Let's go."

Day: 1257; Hour: 8

The noises behind her are her friends and not her enemies; she must keep reminding herself of this, because the sounds scare her. She can't remember a time in her life she had ever been so scared...not just this moment, but the entire time period of war. This era, this decade, this century of built up blood, dust, and rust on top of her bones that keeps her slower than she should be and feeling heavier than the stone wall rising up and out above her. This is worse than the monsters in the dark corners of her room (which was just her accidental magic) when she was a child, because she is the monster now. The monster in the left, looking at the one in the right, wondering if it sees her too.

She had thought she knew bravery too, and she had in a way, but not like this - not like now. She hadn't really known what it was like to be brave then, to be holding your breath under mud and waiting instead of fighting. To be afraid of bravery, and so afraid of herself because of it. The ultimate fear was fear of herself, of her wand, of her inclination to run into danger as if she was marked by it. What was bravery anyway? A word on a monument, on an award, on a gravestone? Perhaps there was a different name for what she held, and maybe it did not have a name. Maybe war did not have a name. Simple little words and letters, upper and lowercase letters that were trite and meant nothing to these moments, because it was too big and too important for something small and stupid like words.

What it was was what it was, and maybe that's what Draco had been trying to tell her all along. That maybe if she stopped naming things, stopped putting meaning to these things, she would stop expecting them to be what she named them, and there would no longer be room for the shock and tangled confusion. These years could not be named, nor the things they contained; they simply were and are and exist, and she did to, in them and through them and with them.