Would You Like A Hand?

1 | alone

The silence didn't bother her anymore.

Sometimes, she wondered if she had gone deaf somewhere along the way. She almost welcomed the thought; if it meant she would never have to listen to those awful screams again, she would gladly go deaf.

Except the inability to hear would likely result in her death, and in this world, dying was not an option.

At least, not a good option.

Not that dying was ever good, but dying now was much worse than before. Dying now meant something entirely different.

A crackle broke the silence under her feet, and she looked down at the broken glass strewn all over the asphalt ground.

Her eyes, which had been unseeing before, focused as she mechanically looked up again. Buildings stood in front of her, holes and cracks in the walls and rubble all over the street. It took her a moment to realize that she was back in some town again.

She wanted to turn around - her instincts screamed to run into the forest she had been travelling for the last few days behind her. The forest was safe. Nature was unaffected by the undead, and the undead themselves didn't seem to like roaming around in natural areas. Maybe it was because they had no reason to be there.

But she stayed still as her brain tried to tell her that she had to go into town and look for food and maybe more weapons. Taking a step forward, she deliberately put her foot down harder to hear the crackling again. So I'm not deaf, she thought. She tended to think that same phrase a lot in one day. In fact, it had only been a few minutes ago that she had last thought it (when there had been a bird flapping it's wings somewhere near her in the forest).

But it was time to be quiet again. There were always undead in town, and she didn't want to attract any attention.

Observing the buildings around her, she took note that the area was residential. Picking the most stable looking of all the nearby houses, she wandered in, holding her wand tightly in front of her. Just past the front door, a body lay on the ground, bloodied and scarred. Unrecognizable.

Unmoving.

That was the most important part. It seemed the human had died and hadn't even had the chance to walk around lifelessly. She only hoped it would be the same for anyone else in the house. Not because it was morally bad to wish upon people the misfortune of being undead, but because she just wanted to survive.

Her luck seemed to hold out as she explored the place and made sure there was nothing dangerous hiding from her. She found more bodies, long dead. One had been smaller, obviously a child. She had taken a thin cloth from his hand to wipe at her grimy face and moved on.

She had been halfway ready to shoot a spell when she saw movement in front of her, but in her pause, she realized that only a shattered mirror stood in front of her and the movement had merely been her reflection.

It didn't bother her that she barely recognized herself. Old blood and dirt stuck to her everywhere and her face had smudges where she had rubbed with the cloth, her clothes had tears and rips all over the place, and her eyes had deep bags under them. A small, worn out knapsack hung against her back (because anything too big would slow her down). She looked like a monster - almost like all the other undead wanderers.

But she still had her bushy hair.

She pulled a leaf out of it and then continued exploring the rest of the house. It went smoothly until she found herself in the basement. There wasn't anything wrong down there, except for the fact that the layout had been similar - almost exact - to somewhere else and she'd had to force a flashback away before she -

Her breathing had picked up and she sat down against a wall, holding her head in her hands and repeating familiar names to herself (Harry, Ron, Harry, Ron, Harry, Ron) out loud, hoping to calm herself down because -

I can't die here!

Time passed as she sat there, frozen in one place. This happened from time to time, and she was almost surprised that she was still alive. She never knew how long she froze up for. She just knew that sometimes it hurt so much that she couldn't move, and somehow she was still alive despite that fact.

By the time she was calm enough to stand up again, it was getting dark out. She finished up (shakily) with scouting out the building and returned to the kitchen to scavenge for edible food.

Only finding a small package of crackers, she ate two pieces carefully and then stuffed the remaining ones into her knapsack. The crackling from the wrapper made her flinch as she put it away. The noise reminded her that she could still hear, but also that the undead could hear her.

She stayed in the kitchen, sitting on the floor against a cupboard, waiting for morning to come back. The time of day made no difference to the undead - they wandered no matter what - but because it was harder to see at night, she hid away in the dark.

She figured the other survivors who were travelling like her did the same. It was a death wish to travel in the dark.

Sleeping was a death wish, too.

For her, even more so. She always woke up screaming, attracting the undead to her area. And now, even though she was exhausted, she stayed sitting rigidly, twiddling her thumbs and counting in her head.

This was the hardest part since she'd been separated from Harry and Ron. They had her back in the past, so she didn't have to be on the lookout constantly, wearing herself down. Now, she knew it was only a matter of time before she was killed from over exhaustion.

If she didn't go completely crazy first.

Most days, she wondered if she was already crazy. Because she already suffered from panic attacks and nightmares; why not add crazy into the mix? And it didn't help that she'd been alone for a little while now. She couldn't remember how long it was ago that she'd ended up travelling alone. For all she knew, it could have only been yesterday.

Or it could have been months.

Sometime in the night, her eyes had closed (although she was still awake). Hours passed, she thought (but she could have been wrong), when she heard a soft noise in front of her. Her eyes flew open immediately, but there was nothing there.

She debated casting some light over the area, but she was beaten to it.

"Lumos," a vaguely familiar voice murmured, and she brought a hand up defensively, blinded by the sudden light.

There was silence as her eyes adjusted, and she would only realize later that it was a shocked silence.

She would also only just realize that she had almost forgotten her own name until it was said aloud.

Disbelievingly, the voice said, "Hermione Granger?"

And then the stranger undid his disillusionment charm to reveal himself.