Loving the Lonely

Chapter 13

So far into her own head, Hermione hardly notices the weeks passing. She's little more than a body, a shell even, drifting through her classes and head girl duties. Sleep can't even offer her a reprieve anymore. Sleep comes so rarely now but when she finally does sink into slumber, it's fraught with nightmares. 

The screaming faces of her parents are still there, and the gray men with their invasive eyes, and she fears she'll never have a night without seeing some combination of those individuals. With them now, though, is the sneering face of Draco. 

So often, he'll hiss, "pathetic," in her ear. He'll lean in close, being sure she never misses a single word. "You actually thought I cared for what you had to say? All those nights when you thought the wolf was your companion, your confidant, and it was me, laughing all the while." 

Draco always looks the same in these dreams; a twisted version of him and Specter. His teeth are long and jagged, slipping into full view when he smirks with cruel abandon. When she tries to run from his words, she's punished with twisted claws scratching long lines down her face and arms and legs. If she can't run, can't move an inch, stuck in a whirlwind of his words, it's his eyes that will hurt her more than anything else. The molten silver of Specter in one eye and the steely gray of his human form in the other. They bore into her, digging like a scalpel through her body and cutting away at everything inside until she's just flesh and bones with no soul, no heart left.  

"You're every bit the monster they say you are," he'll snarl sometimes, on the worst nights. "You're worse than I am, and I see that now. I should have gotten rid of you all those nights that you came crying to the wolf." 

The first time he'd appeared, stepping out of a swirl of dark fog and stalking towards her, she'd howled with rage. "You've no right!" She'd screamed, "you lied and tricked me." 

He'd pounced on her, more wolf than human, and had whispered all the terrible taunts her parents have in the past until she'd woken up screaming. She didn't sleep for two days after that. 

The second time he came, she'd reached out to him, begging and pleading for him to stop. In her dream, she let herself sink to her knees, grasping at him even though he never held a solid form unless he was trying to hurt her. Her hands had fell right through him and he'd laughed when she tipped forward, off-balance, and landed face-first in the dirt. When she had finally woken up, his laughter echoing in her ears, she'd found herself on the floor, and had cried for far longer than she'll ever admit aloud. 

Every time after, Hermione offered silence and nothing more, because she's learned when to listen to her dreams, and what they're telling her now must be right. She's stupid for ever thinking she could be anything but a beast. 

Old habits come back in a rush as she loses her sense of time. Meals are skipped without even realizing she's doing so, and when she does try to eat, it tastes of nothing or, more unfortunate, taste of ash and tar and rot. Classes blend together until Hermione can't remember which lectures had ended with the professors giving homework assignments and which hadn't. Her routine of staying up until her body can physically take no more comes back with a vengeance as well. 

Hermione can see the worried faced of her friends, whenever she manages to keep her eyes open long enough to actually process their presence at least. She can't make herself sleep, or eat, or focus, though. It's like the ability to function has been swept away from her mind, replaced only with more nightmares that are stealing every bit of sanity she has left. 

At the very least, she's managed to keep her ability to lie. 

"Just feeling a tad ill," Hermione whispers when Harry gives her an odd look the third time her head swoops down to lay on her table in class. She gets a shush and a glare from the professor for her efforts, but Harry at least looks placated, if a bit concerned for her health.