the magpie // tomione

xvii.

"If you knew that I would lie here on this dark November morning

considering nothing but your eyes, your eyes."

— Gwendolyn MacEwen

Hermione apparates to the Forest of Dean.

The air is damp and cold. She sucks in deep gulps of that chilled air, lets it stick to her lungs. Sticky, humid, suffocating.

Fenrir's body lays against her like a weight. Hermione sits with him, holding him, her knees pressing into the detritus and dirt of the forest floor.

The autumn wind sings a dirge.

(She hadn't intended to take him with her, but she couldn't leave him on that concrete floor.)

Hermione watches the mud and dirt as it clogs the drain. Eventually the scalding water runs clear. Her skin is red and raw.

She can still feel his body pressed against hers. She promises herself never to forget this weight. She promises herself never to forget him.

He was the first person she had met in this time.

F.G.

(With her wand she had carved his initials into a rock, placed it gently over the shallow grave. He deserved more.)

What has changed? What has she learned?

Fenrir is dead and she is here . Hermione is trapped, and each day she feels less and less like herself. Everything feels so circuitous and useless. She doesn't even have the diary anymore, as if it could help her. She can't be sure if anyone had read what she had written, or if she had been wasting her time calling out into an empty void.

The timeline is likely damaged without repair.

And Tom Riddle is only stronger.

She delivered two horcruxes to his waiting, greedy hands. He strengthened his following, perhaps a decade sooner than he would have in her time.

But he didn't have Dolohov, or Greyback. It would be harder to get the creatures to trust him. Her mind whirrs through the possibilities. Had she only accelerated his rise from shopkeeper to Dark Lord?

"I'm so sorry," she says to no one in particular. (Maybe to Fenrir, her family, her friends. Maybe just to herself.)

Her voice echoes in the empty flat.

Hermione is alone. Truly, completely, hopelessly alone.

She misses her parents, whose faces have begun to blur. She misses Harry and Ron and Ginny. She misses holding baby James in her arms and rocking him to sleep. She misses those quiet sleepless mornings, where only her footsteps could be heard padding through the hall on her way to the library.

She misses getting lost for hours in the Ministry's archives. The scent of dust and leather and iron. And Draco, always beside her, his nose in a book. He would make some off-handed comment about a particular pair of married cousins (Orion and Walburga being, regrettably, not the only ones) or about some heiress campaigning for the right to hunt muggles. He would probably be disappointed with her now, sitting on the floor and feeling sorry for herself.

Hermione wipes the dampness from her eyes. He would probably call her a crybaby.

Through her blurry vision she can see a figure peeking behind the bed frame. The sight causes her to lose her balance.

"Miss!" The little elf scuffles to her side, poking and prodding at her arm in an attempt to help her up.

"Blinky," she calls out to her in surprise, having pulled herself up to stand (with no real help from the elf). "What are you doing here?"