The Fallout by EveryThursday (reposted)

Thirty-Seven

Day: 1512; Hour: 22

There aren't any lines in the world. There is rarely something that is starkly this and that. The world is full of colors, and on either end is white and black. But it isn't pure white and absolute black. There is nothing that is so good it's never done anything bad, and even the evilest of people have experienced something good - even if it's only love for their own self, it's still love, and Hermione has never been the sort of person to spell it backwards.

Between all these colors, this kaleidoscope of humanity and lives, there are still no lines. There are just spaces were the two colors blend, forming shades and other colors entirely. A person can go their whole lives roaming back and forth across the spectrum, or maybe staying in one spot, but nothing is easily defined. It's about principles, and the things we are taught, and the things we learn. It's about dropping off a cliff, trying to fly, and never knowing what color you land in.

Because it's about perception too. Hermione sees herself in shades of red, after pink, after white, because she has done bad things, but she is a good person. Some people see her in white. Death Eaters see her in black, or brown, in mud and dirt, dirty blood. She sees them in the almost-black too, just as clearly as they see themselves in the off-white, and she wonders at that. She thinks about it a lot. Perception. And she wonders how they all got here, in their color fields.

Maybe it was a circle. A long, arching circle, where the first Muggle-born hated some pure-blood because he looked at her weird. Maybe she spit on his shoe, and so he went and told his friends, and they all hated her. They watched her in their world, watched her have to learn the things they were born knowing, and they called her stupid. Then maybe she got top marks, or learned those things very quickly, and maybe took someone's job, and people got scared. So they told their children, watch out for those Muggle bloods. Their blood isn't pure, they're dirty. Then more came, and more became scared, and they thought, why are these people stealing our jobs? Handling our money? Making laws in our government? Why are these dirty bloods, these Mudbloods, why are they even here? They shouldn't even be here.

Then it spread. It spread and spread for generations, until the lies got thick, and the misconceptions were brutal, the perceptions became principles, and people really hated. People decided they wanted them gone, and they would kill them to do it, because it was the only sort of sense they've known since birth. Because eight generations ago, their great-grandfather had his shoe spit on. So then the colors expand, and there is a war, and people die, and then there is another war. Then a lot of crazy things happen, because people have to prove the worth of their life by taking other people's, and now everyone is scared.

It comes around the circle, and all of them are dirty now. Nothing is definable, because Death Eaters were formed by a half-blood, and in the heart that sometimes beats under her dirty-blooded ear is pure, pure blood. It comes around the circle because Blaise Zabini's pure blood is mixed with his saliva on the top of her shoe, and when she looks up, it is the one whose great-grandfather might have started it all. He's lowering his wand, and his shoulders are shaking, and all around them the colors stream.

He grabs her arm, yelling something about the meet-up point, and tugs her behind him as they run. She tugs back, and when he turns, she kisses him. Quickly, because it's not the time, but she thinks it might be the exact time he needs for her to do it. He just killed one of his old best friends, months after he had killed another, and sometimes she forgets how much harder this can be for him. Sometimes she remembers the horror-shock burning his face when he doesn't think anyone is watching.

His lips taste like sweat, and his hand is dirty when he drops her arm and presses his palm into hers. His fingers wrap tight, squeezing her hand, and then they are running again, out across the color field.