After (Dramione)

Chapter 1

The young woman came out of her bed and went down the stairs that she now used every day. She sat down at the table to have breakfast with the family who had so kindly welcomed her. She did her best to give them a nice smile, but her bleak eyes left no doubt that he was not really sincere.

Tomorrow they would return to Hogwarts, Hermione had not set foot there since the war, a little less than a year before. The fall of the Lord of Darkness had changed many things, shattered many minds, destroyed many lives and removed many smiles from faces that were once so joyful. War heroin was one of those things that that fall had changed.

She had closed in on herself and was moving further and further away from her friends unintentionally. When Ginny told her that she could not stand this situation anymore, her friend had tried to change and spend more time with her friends, but nothing did, she did not laugh, smiled and spoke very rarely, in a voice devoid of emotion. The Gryffindor looked empty. Yet the opposite is what she had. Too much was constantly in her head, especially bad things. Too many negative emotions that negated the positive. She had tried not to let bad memories extinguish the good that her friends were trying to get her, she had tried, in vain.

She couldn't get past everything she had experienced. She often pretended, pretending to smile, to laugh, to have moved on, to be happy again, but she was not deceiving anyone. Her loved ones hadn't said a word, and when they sometimes made the remark, she changed the subject, retreated to herself or said she was just tired. She was mad not to tell them the truth, but she couldn't, they wouldn't believe her, and she didn't want to risk them rejecting her. When she was back in bed at night, she wondered how she had arrived there in bed without remembering the day.

As if his brain had disconnected from his body. It was happening to her more and more and began to scare her. What if someone told her something important? She compared herself to an automaton when this kind of thing happened, and she spent her day making movements as she was ordered to do, as this one was just an empty panty of emotion, feeling, meaning. She felt excruciatingly empty. The only other things they felt were negative, she was sad, terrified, guilty and lonely despite the presence of the Weasley family and Harry. She was the only one who felt the weight of that secret that had been hanging over her shoulders for weeks. She ends up thinking that maybe, in Hogwarts, she would finally be safe.

It was very late at night or very early in the morning, depending on the point of view, when she decided to swallow a dream-free sleeping potion. She slept extremely little, two or three hours at most, but it was already a win.

She dressed and had breakfast in the same lethargic state she had for several weeks. Without knowing how she got there, she actually took possession of her body in front of the Hogwarts Express, when Molly held it against her. Hermione became completely tense and tried to calm down before thanking once again the mother of the family who had welcomed him into his house without protesting. She eventually got on the train after her friends and moved into the same wagon as them. Ginny settled in his boyfriends arms and the brunette kissed her on the forehead. Hermione stood in the corner, as far away as possible from her own boyfriend, who looked at her with an injured look.

She knew that he had done nothing to make her act like that with him, but she didn't want to be close to someone physically. Ron had been patient, he had said nothing and tried to do his best to make her feel comfortable, but it was still very hurtful. Today he had decided to talk about it, so he sighed and looked at it.

Hermione, it can't continue...

The brunette agreed with this sentence even though she did not know exactly what he was talking about. She gave him back his look, completely lost.

-What's going on? Why don't you come near us, talk to us? I have been patient, I have tried to understand what you feel but you have to talk to us Hermione... I am your boyfriend and I love you, I am worried for you, I want to help you but you leave me no chance to do it.... I can't get closer than a meter without you running! Please explain...