The Fallout by EveryThursday (reposted)

Forty

Day: 1531; Hour: 4

It has been over a week since she left the safe house, and the eight days make her long for the broken down house before they even patched the roof. She spends her days patrolling the perimeter of something. Wards are placed around it, and she's careful not to edge too close. She isn't told if she is protecting it or minutes away from breaking into it, or even what it is.

She had come with a team that included Ron, but he had been taken to a different area. She's with Tonks instead, who supplied good company for three days and nothing else -- she has no idea what they're doing either. All they do know is that they are constantly on guard for an enemy or unfamiliar face, making them completely twitchy and jumpy, even in the shifts they take to sleep. Hermione has felt this level of paranoia all through war, but it kicks her in the gut after the ease of being in the safe house. It takes her two days before it feels natural to her, or at least natural enough not to make any stupid mistakes.

She and Tonks patrol the perimeter they were given, their backs to one another but sticking close together, back and forth, back and forth. It rains for seven of the eight days, and by the fifth she is thankful for it, having gone too long without a shower. The days are hot and damp, the bugs circling and biting constantly. She feels as if she has been stranded in a jungle.

The night is the worst, no magic allowed unless necessary, and the woods fill with the sounds of animals and the distant rampage of howling. Sometimes Hermione can feel it reflected off the inside of her chest, banging down into her gut. A sort of wildness that she understands, that the night had taught her somewhere back at her first dozen missions. It reminds her of apes in their cages, slamming against the bars. Something is coming, and I'm ready, because I have no where else to go.

They can't stop being afraid, no matter what they talk about or remember.

Day: 1531; Hour: 17

Tonks looks up at her, her hair tossed about her head in a mousy brown. "Everyone wants peace. They just want it in their own ways."

"I guess that's why we'll never have world peace. Even after the war, there will still be those who want the world a different way."

"But as long as there is enough peace, as long as people aren't killing each other over beliefs... That's good enough for me."

"I think..." Hermione whispers, her fingers ghosting down rough tree bark as her eyes linger on the glimpse of sky through the trees. "I think that might be the closest we can come. And I think that's okay with me too. I'll be happy. With that."

Tonks is silent for five squelching steps, and both their heads jerk to the call of a bird from the trees. "There were a group of war protesters outside of the Ministry the other day."

"What?" Hermione pauses, and her boot sinks further into the mud.

That's all the ground is now. Mud, and slick mud, and thick mud, and deep mud, and more mud. Hermione and Tonks are both completely covered in it, and soaked from the rain. The wind rattles their bones, and both of them are sick. Today is cold, the season beginning to change, and Hermione can't help but be afraid of pneumonia.

"There's some who believe we could have made peace with...Voldemort, without the war. More have started coming because they think the war should be over now."

Hermione is pulled between two worlds. She never believed in war either, but she has learned that sometimes there is no other option. At the thought of people protesting, she is stuck between understanding and anger. She doesn't want the war either, but it's not like anyone had a choice. Here they were, fighting for their lives, while people were angry because they were taking too long. As if they wouldn't have just snapped their fingers and been done with it years ago. And were the lives of her friends, sacrificed for the sake of this war, nothing but a tragic mistake in a failure to communicate with the most powerful Dark Wizard of all time? This isn't about choice, or superficial sacrifice, it never was. It is about the value of life, the rights of humanity, and of a world that can be any sort of beautiful thing it wanted to be.