Prophecy 472

14- Fight or Flight

Someone was screaming, the wails so loud they reverberated in Hermione's skull. It hurt her ears and her throat. That's when she realized the noise was coming from her.

She was on her knees in an instant, hunched over Ron, clutching handfuls of his shirt in her fists, as he lay silent, ignoring her cries. "No, no, no, no, no." Hermione tugged harder at the shirt, pulling as if moving his torso would put energy back in his body. Her knees dug into the muddy ground, her head dipped low over one spot above his chest. Her eyes were almost unwilling to look upward yet, didn't want to search his face for confirmation. Instead, her gaze focused on the spot where she knew his heart should be beating, working with her hands and her tears to make him move.

When pulling didn't seem to work, she deciding hitting might. Her balled up fists rained down on his chest, striking him, willing him to sit up and protest. The fists came down faster and faster, but the force behind them grew lighter, until Hermione collapsed over him, her face pressed into the cool linen of his shirt, her mouth open in a silent scream.

Another heaving sob was ripped from her, and her body convulsed with the effort.

"Ron!" she wailed, the tears soaking through the fabric of his shirt. Hermione inhaled several times in quick succession, unable to catch her breath. Her hands lay at either side of her face, still pressed against his shirt, her fingers digging into his skin there.

Behind her, Hermione heard commotion, people running toward her. She drew herself up and over Ron's face finally, as if to shield him from whatever else was coming. She pulled his head inches off the ground and cradled him in her arms, searching his face for anything, something to prove this wasn't real and the world hadn't just caved in on itself.

"Noooo," Hermione cried, her fingers running over his closed eyes. "Oh God…please no."

It was getting harder to see his face, her vision was so blurred from tears. Her throat felt raw from the screaming and she was still having trouble getting any air into her lungs. It didn't matter. She rocked back and forth with Ron in her arms, sporadically crying out wails of protest, begging for this not to be true.

There was a hand at her shoulder and she heard Harry's voice, but she couldn't make out what he was saying. She jerked away from Harry, pulling Ron's  dead body even closer to her. Oh God…Ron's dead body. Fresh tears fell then, another wave of grief hitting her as she tried to comprehend the idea of Ron being a dead body.

Harry's arm found her shoulder again, tugging more insistently. Well he could just keep tugging. She wouldn't let any of them near him, would refuse to let the moment come when she had to release Ron and face the reality of it. If she just stayed there forever, she could imagine it was her and Ron, outside of the burrow, locked in an embrace.

Her nose touched his hair and she breathed in deeply, the most oxygen she had been able to get in since collapsing to the floor. The smell of his hair was like a memory, something she had never forgotten, not through three lonely years of longing for him. Hermione's tears dampened his hair as the horrible longing struck her once more. She couldn't fathom a lifetime of that yearning, of forever having to live in a world where he didn't exist. He had been her compass point for so long, the thing that had kept her on her course, even when he didn't know it.

He was the love of her life and she would hold onto him forever; she'd be damned if she let Harry Potter take him away from her now.

Hermione felt another touch, this time to the back of her skull. She reared her head back, ready to growl at Harry or whoever else was trying to take Ron from her arms. But this touch was lighter than Harry's had been, more…unsure. Hermione looked up and blinked, trying to see through her wet tears.