Secrets and Masks

63. Under the Cherry blossom tree

11th April;

Hermione wondered if Harry had felt like this when he'd discovered that he was a Horcrux.

That'd been such a long time ago. It almost felt like it hadn't happened, like it was just a horrible, awful story that'd happened to someone else and Hermione had just read about.

She remembered being in the ruins of the great hall with him when he'd realised. She remembered feeling like her chest had been hollowed out as she stared up at him and how much she wished she could save him. She remembered how tightly they'd hugged each other because they thought it was going to be the last time.

She didn't remember everything that clearly. She couldn't recall what she'd been wearing or what his parting words to her had been, but his expression? That she did remember because, at the time, it hadn't made sense to her.

He'd just found out that he was a Horcrux, and he'd looked calm. He knew what it meant and what was going to happen to him, but he hadn't looked scared or like he wanted to run away. He hadn't looked upset or angry, instead, he'd looked at peace. Like he'd already accepted that it was going to happen and there was nothing he or anyone else could do about it.

She didn't understand it at the time, but she did now.

Because what was the point in getting upset? Screaming that it wasn't fair and punching the wall wasn't going to change the fact that for Voldemort to truly die, Hermione had to die too. Curling up into a ball and crying wasn't going to change the fact that if everyone else was going to live, she couldn't.

In that first moment, she'd been terrified but after that, a sort of eerie calm washed over her. That was that. There was nothing anyone could do.

And now that she knew, so many mysterious were suddenly solved. The way she'd felt Voldemort's magic crawling and festering under her skin for months. The way Voldemort had looked at her when she and Theo had Apparated back to Malfoy Manor. Both of those things she hadn't understood at the time, but now she did. They'd happened because she was a Horcrux.

The nose bleed she'd had the week before, she must have had it at the exact moment Harry had destroyed the medallion. A signal that Voldemort's magic was growing weaker A warning that her time was running out ...

What a strange thing it was, to have to contemplate her own mortality in her late twenties. She always knew death was going to come for her eventually, it was inevitable, but whether it be on the battlefield or on the executioner's block, a large part of her had always thought the war would claim her life in one way or another.

Once upon a time she'd been happy to die for the Order, and she still was, but the problem was that she'd started to want to live again. For the first time in a decade, she could see the war was ending and she'd dared to imagine what her life might be like on the other side of it.

She'd started to picture herself surviving. She'd let herself fantasize about travelling the world with Malfoy, riding on his dragon's back going from one city to another. She'd pictured exploring jungles and ruins with him in the day. She'd fantasised about her nights with him, curled in a bed, one bed, together, smoking expensive cigarettes and drinking whiskey from every country they visited. She'd started to want a life after the war, she'd started to want a life with him and now ... It was gone, just like that, and there wasn't a spell on earth strong enough to undo it.

Hermione was a Horcrux. Voldemort had made her a Horcrux. Whether he'd done it intentionally or if it was an accident like Harry had been, it didn't really matter. It didn't change anything. If Voldemort was going to die, then Hermione needed to as well.

She thought about a lot of things in those first few minutes. She thought about her parents and if she'd see them again when she died. She thought about how the world would change after the war. She thought about Harry going into the forbidden forest alone and it made her realise that she didn't want that. She didn't want to die alone, and then, she thought about Malfoy.