Obliviate -the lost week (Harmione)

Heartbeat

Harry's limp head fell once again from Hermione's frantic hands and in her lap. She looked for his pulse, again, and found it, again, but he wasn't waking up. She took off the horcrux that still hang from his neck. She couldn't cry, just couldn't. The witch accioed another revitalizing potion, poured it in his mouth and forced him to swallow. She refused to believe that there wasn't much more she could do. Incantations hadn't worked. Silent tears were trapped behind her eyes.

The girl wondered how this had gone so bad and so suddenly. Pieces of today glistened in her mind as she stared at him in shock.

"I seriously can't work like this"

Hermione was really trying to work on the boiling potion, distracted as she might be by the events Harry's presence evoked; but every time he moved, he did so a pinch closer than he had before Christmas. And each time her hand would hover over the cauldron, and her breath would be caught in her throat. It definitely turned the witch's attention from the potion. A month sooner she suspected she would have found it annoying. The girl now was trying hard not to giggle. It was a worrying thought.

"I wasn't doing anything" he said.

She looked into green eyes, eyebrows raised, and looked pointedly to the hand Harry had placed on her waist.

"I don't like that we have so much work to do" she scolded both of them. "But it must be done"

He tensed, the witch's veiled reference to the war shaking both of them.

"And we need some things from the market, so today is a busy day. Having a single wand, we have no choice but to go together"

Before placing her ear over Harry's heart, so she could follow his heartbeat without a stethoscope –his pulse too weak to serve anymore-, Hermione pulled the Invisibility Cloak from the place it still held: half over them, impeding her movements; and she couldn't but remember how had he held this same cloak in his hand even before she was ready to part, a beam on his mouth like she had rarely seen that year. As before, something warmed up inside the girl; a kind of tenderness. She recalled how she had nonsensically put on her best McGonagall mask, so he wouldn't notice how it made her feel that he couldn't wait to be this close to her. 'Stupid' she thought; but she didn't mutter it, afraid it would drown the fragile sound of his heart. 'Stupid!' she thought again, reminded of how much time it had taken them to discover the abnormal quietness of the market they had apparated in, the absence of the cashier. Time enough to joke silently about the new kinds of candies. Time enough for their whispers to be drawn by the cries.

The yell froze Hermione's smile as she turned under the cloak, a chocolate bar still on her hand. Harry was already heading towards the voice. The voices. Because there were also laughs, immature laughs that reminded her of Mayfoy's thirteen-years-old self, the one she had punched. Only, this time, that didn't sound like bullying. It sounded like killing. When the witch attempted to grab Harry's hand, he had already left the protection of the cloak... wandless, to make it worst... But running after him, Hermione had –barely- time enough to launch a disillusionment charm over him before they saw him; so they only saw her behind him. She doubted they had noticed Harry's feet still visible before the drops of the charm reached them. The cloak having fell to her own feet, it had no use but to impede her walking, thankfully her hands were free of it so by moving at the same time than the kids she could launch a 'Protego'. She couldn't see Harry, but knowing he was there she could almost perceive his silhouette where the light diverged, and after a moment she was sure the curse hadn't touched him: there was no sound of a body collapsing. She hoped she could earn some time. Looking into the kids' eyes, she asked:

"What are you doing?"

"Just having some fun with the muggle" a kid answered.

The young woman looked at him, saw his smug smile. The improvised masks on their faces – tiger's, spiderman's, clown's colorful faces; children masks, not death eaters'- chilled her to the core.