Be Silently Drawn || Remus Lupin & Hermione Granger

Chapter 18 ( Part Two )

Be Silently Drawn
Part Two

Hermione lay restlessly in the darkness of her bedroom. Sleep eluded her again tonight like it had done so often lately. As much as she wanted to, she simply could not turn off her mind, could not stem the flow of her thoughts, which gravitated toward Remus and the time she'd spent with him twenty years in the past. The memories, so achingly bittersweet now, gripped her firmly and would not let her go.

Their first kiss under the star-strewn night sky...

Butterflies swooping in her stomach every time he smiled at her...

The warmth of his embrace melting her in the midst of the stinging cold snow...

Hermione didn't know how she had survived the last few weeks without him after spending the previous three months constantly by his side. She missed Remus so much. Like she'd done countless times since she'd returned to the present, she took the rose from her bedside table, the beautiful, magical rose that somehow looked as freshly picked and as gorgeous as it had the night Remus had plucked it from the Weasleys' garden. The only comfort she had was its scent, his scent. But that was not nearly enough.

Sitting together by the fireplace, his fingers interlacing with hers...

The hours that flew by while they studied together, and their stifled laughter in the quiet library whenever they got off track...

Their last night together in the boys' dormitory...

Hermione heaved a frustrated sigh and glanced at her alarm clock: 1:17 AM.

A few minutes later, having accepted that trying to find sleep tonight was futile, Hermione sat in the kitchen of her parents' home, idly submerging a teabag into a mug of steaming hot water and reading a book of poetry written by a man called Rumi.

"I knew you'd be up."

Hermione looked up from her book. Her mother stood at the entrance to the kitchen wearing a blue dressing gown and a tired but gentle smile.

"I'm sorry, Mum. I didn't mean to wake you."

"It's all right, honey," Mrs. Granger said, moving toward the counter to pour herself a glass of water. "Like I said, I expected you to be up. You never can sleep the night before school starts. Every year I find you awake, drinking tea or hot cocoa and poring over one of your new textbooks." She took a seat next to her daughter. "Which one is it this time?"

"It's not a book for school. It's a collection of poems."

"May I have a look?"

Hermione sipped her tea while her mother read the poem she'd been contemplating moments before, the poem from which the three words engraved on the necklace Remus had given her had been taken. Shortly upon returning to her parents' home the day after Harry's birthday, Hermione had done some research on the phrase and gone to a nearby bookshop to purchase Rumi's work.

"Ah," Mrs. Granger said when she reached the lines Hermione had highlighted. She put the book down on the table and studied her daughter closely with her keen brown eyes. "When are you going to tell me about him?"

"About who?"

"About the boy who gave you that necklace you're always wearing and that rose you keep on your nightstand. The boy you're in love with."

"How did you know I'm...?"

Hermione trailed off, unable to bring herself to say the next two words. Not because they weren't true — they absolutely were — but because in some ways the realization that she was in love with Remus, and the vulnerability that came along with that realization, terrified her.