Loneliness is the Cloak You Wear

I could make myself a murderer. It would be so easy to sit on his chest and clamp my hand over his mouth, pinch his beak of a nose, and just suffocate him to death. I could stab him in the heart and watch the life run out of him. But no, I had seen something similar years ago, and it made me feel ill. Blood did not bother me, not normally, but his? No, no stabbing. Maybe poison, but knowing him, he had developed a tolerance. It would be just like him to do something like that.

I could just throw him back out into the snow, Stun him repeatedly in his raven wreathed head, and let the elements take him. He was already so vulnerable, gripped in stages of hypothermia, quivering like some dead leaf on a pale bark tree. No, the bears might get him, though I had not seen a bear yet, just the tracks. Somehow, the bears would probably not bother with someone so sinewy as him. All gristle, no fat, and creaky knees.

I could rig the fireplace to kill him slowly with carbon monoxide, pack my shit and just move on to the next place, away from him. Christ, I had moved so many times, and always, always, he would find me. For a long time, I thought I had some sort of Tracking Charm on me, but one I could not find. Sometimes he found me in hours, sometimes days, and then, maybe I was getting better at hiding, and it would be months. He had tracked me across the entire expanse of Russia, into China and Mongolia, sub-Saharan Africa and into the Amazon. I had tried hiding almost under his big nose, but he found me. That was the last place in the somewhat civilized world, a Muggle cottage in the Hebrides, a place I had really liked. I changed tact, and headed for the Americas.

Seven months, it had taken him seven months this time, finding me in the Canadian Rockies at the end of a very terrible winter. This had been the longest time.

Oh, I had been so careful, living as a Muggle mostly, rarely using my wand, never going out, living like a hermit in a cabin on a remote mountainside, my nearest neighbor twelve miles down in the valley. And even that neighbor was seasonal and lived in a Muggle caravan to fish in the river during the spring and summer. I had only used the most magic to outfit the once abandoned cabin, some hold over from the coal mining boom of anthracite long ago. The nearest place of any consequence was Banff, but I had never gone there. There was no one for miles and miles, and I liked it that way. It gave me time to read, write, and just be.

But no, it was transient, like everything in my life had been since the day Voldemort was nearly destroyed and my best friend, my boyfriend, and so many other people I knew were beaten, captured, and offered to Voldemort's most loyal. The thing was, I had almost gotten away, but I was Hermione Granger, and somehow I was a hot commodity. My blood status suddenly meant nothing, and every Death Eater and Death Eater's spawn wanted to breed me. Strong stock, I heard it said after they finally caught me.

Voldemort lived, somehow, but as far as I heard, no one had seen him in person since that day in May 1998. I had a sneaking suspicion that the snake fucker was dead and Bellatrix Lestrange was running the show, maybe Lucius Malfoy, if he had not been killed at some point for being the most pathetic Death Eater of them all. No, it was probably still old Tom Riddle, or some manifestation of him, shedding his latest skin.

The last battle I had been involved in was in 2000, when Neville Longbottom and Ginny attacked Malfoy Manor, killing Yaxley, Rodolphus Lestrange, and a few others to free me and several others being held there. I can't remember those days well any longer, and I know I was repressing it in lieu of being able to live some semblance of a life. I know that Draco Malfoy lost a hand, trying to keep a hold on me, for some reason. He had been good to me, when others had not. No, no, I didn't want to think about that. I knew I was being treated differently than the other girls, kept clean, fed, and clothed. I was...set aside. I would not know why until later.