The Fallout by EveryThursday (reposted)

Forty-Five

Day: 1563; Hour: 10

She lies with her hands up, fingers spread across the sky. Sometimes she feels like she can curl her fingers and dig chunks of blue into her grip. Then she opens her eyes really wide, like she's trying to shove the world into them, and feels herself disappear.

Day: 1563; Hour: 13

A hot mouth dragging down a long scar on her arm, then the rasp of a tongue over another on her hip. They are from the mission when Seamus and Justin died, and Ron was saved. They are her ugliest scars, and the ones he favors most.

Day: 1563; Hour: 17

She wonders about souls and rebirth. She wonders if she will look down at the eyes of Justin's child, and find him there, inside. If she were to get pregnant, perhaps it would be Neville's soul inside of the child, inside of her. People had been scared to have children when the war was like a hurricane through their cities and homes, destroying everything. When Harry killed Voldemort, when they claimed a temporary victory the world thought was final, it was like they celebrated by forming a new generation.

She wonders if they are all coming back. If she'll walk down the street in a couple years and see Fred's new self throwing Dungbombs into open doors of shops, some kid laughing like Seamus with his arms waving about like the joke was too much for him to handle. Two twins whispering and giggling, a child with a dazed wonder talking about things that don't exist, or maybe even Marcus Flint's twitching eye next to a Muggle-born mother.

Some people believe in reincarnation, and some people believe that babies remember their past lives. Their memories evaporate to fog by the time they're a year old, but it's then, in the beginning of their new humanity, that they remember all of who they really are. At this moment, is Lee Jordan clinging to his past as his new life threatens to destroy it? Is Terry Boot opening his eyes for the first time since he closed them on a battlefield, and peering into the face of his new mother? Are all of them lost and afraid? Are they not crying out at night for sustenance for their bodies, but for their souls? Is losing it just like dying all over again?

The mother in front of her shifts her child away with a strange look toward Hermione. The baby turns his head toward her and maintains their eye contact, his dark, brown eyes unwavering.

Day: 1563; Hour: 20

The night is always the worst. It's always the hardest part to get through. During the day she can actively force her brain to stop thinking about those screaming, shadowed places inside of her. She can find someone, or a book, or a television. She can shake her head, and concentrate harder, and slam it back again.

The night is the hardest. She tries to keep herself occupied until she is so tired her eyes burn, but it doesn't help. She can exhaust her body with missions, or with Draco, to the point where it rules her head and grants her sleep. But when she can't, her mind is far more powerful than any call to slumber. There's no denying the will of that darkness to be remembered.

Her dreams are the very worst. Nightmares forged with knowledge and memories. She dreams of battles, empty faces and broken bodies, of Harry behind the whip and Draco's tortured screams. Sometimes she dreams of her friends dying, or herself, or getting lost forever in a world of smoke. Sometimes she dreams of the ones who already are – she sees their death in front of her eyes, and no matter what she does, she can never save them. Sometimes she is cruel, and in her dreams they are there and laughing, telling her they are alive.

She doesn't think they will ever stop haunting her. And no matter how much it hurts, or how much she fears getting lost, she is more afraid that they will leave her be.