Anyone But Me

Chapter Seventy-Two

The next morning she had woken up snug in her bed. For one luxurious moment, she was able to float in the left-over amnesiatic haze of sleep. Unaware of the heavy burden she needed to figure out how to conceal. Hermione went to stretch and the loss of the normal weight of her necklace as it rested between her breasts was missing...

And then it all crashed around her.

She remembered the bitter taste on her tongue as the vile and blasphemous culmination of their time together happened without her consent. She remembered his hatred as he spit the edict that had destroyed her. Two simple words. Not even magical in nature, was all that it had taken.

She remembered the empty feeling as she stood for far too long in that corridor. Unable to force her limbs to follow the orders to move. She remembered falling to her knees and crawling over to the ghastly scene of costumed trolls learning ballet. An impeccably outlandish rendering to oversee her humorous undoing for a wizard she should despise. She remembered hearing her harsh sobs but no longer being connected to the body that had betrayed her sensible mind and caused the whole mess.

She didn't remember how she had gotten from her crumbled place under the tapestry to her bed. Which was, obviously, quite concerning...

Her first thought was Obliviation, but if he had gone through the trouble why not be merciful and take all of it? Why leave her with the jagged weeping wound that shock had delayed the detection of? Or the ability to ruin him? No... He had, no doubt, returned to his bottle and drunken himself into oblivion.

That left a whole host of equally unpleasant possibilities. The least of which was her dissociation had reached the level of black-out territory and she had gotten herself there.

All of this analytical rumination was secondary to her most immediate concern... How was she supposed to put a smile on her face and pretend like the world was the same as yesterday?

Especially, when she didn't even have lungs anymore...

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Thankfully, those closest to her were distracted by the looming Quidditch match to give her much notice. Between the customary escalation in the disbursement of assignments towards the end of the year by the professors and the near constant practice schedule, she hadn't had to play her pragmatic act nearly as often as she had anticipated in the days that followed.

The evenings when Ravenclaw had the pitch were the hardest. Not only did she have dinner to contend with, but the hours of playful banter and heartfelt laughter while Harry, Ron and Ginny caught-up on their academic workloads were excruciating. A new type of hellish torture as she tried to stay focused on the present for such an extended period of time, she was always a second or two too late with her upbeat responses.

Hermione managed to keep up the carefully crafted charade for four days before Ginny started to pick up on the underlying forlorn expressions that would slip in during quiet moments of reflection. When a lull in conversation would allow for the wound to flare, the pain was doubled by a deep throb from the cursed flesh on her side. An unfortunate side effect of her body having to process another trauma.

Her grief was a fickle thing. Instead of observing the five stages like that muggle psychiatrist claimed, she was stuck. Denial had been easy to overcome... She had believed the unexpected end long before she had left that room. Anger and depression were whole different monsters. They circled and fought for constant control, never leaving the time she required for bargaining. Granted, she didn't have anything left to negotiate with herself over.