The Anti-Heroine || A Harry Potter Fanfiction

Chapter LXXXIV

CHAPTER LXXXIV:

Hermione's POV:

Hermione couldn't sleep after her meeting with Cailleach, though she didn't think anyone would blame her. The fey queen's words haunted her and she tossed about restlessly in her too-empty bed before eventually slinking into the room that had been given to Luna.

The younger girl was also awake and she turned in her bed, towards the sound of the creaking door. Her large, silvery eyes were surprised as she blinked up at Hermione, but there was no hesitation in how she pulled back the bedding of heavy woollen blankets and thick furs so Hermione could slide in next to her. "Are you okay?" Luna asked solemnly, and Hermione hesitated for a moment, before deciding to allow herself a moment of honesty.

"No," she admitted. Luna gave her a thoughtful look before she carefully wrapped her small, thin arms around her and Hermione sighed quietly, a smothering weight lifted from her at the feel of a warm body pressed tight to her own. There was nothing even remotely sensual about the embrace, just an offering of comfort and companionship that she gladly accepted.

She almost wasn't surprised when Blaise slunk into Luna's room, not long after. His own brief startlement at seeing her was quickly overcome by understanding. They'd all been through an ordeal that night, one that had shaken them. It was natural that they'd seek out comfort. Blaise had brought with him an armful of blankets and furs but when he tried to set them up on the floor to sleep on, Luna simply fixed him with a shockingly stern look.

"We both trust that you'll be perfectly proper," the younger girl said, almost primly. "Sleep on top of our blankets, if you must, but you will notbe sleeping on the stone floor!"

"Luna–" Blaise tried to protest, but Luna's stern look increased tenfold and Blaise gave in at once, though he did insist on laying on top of Luna's blankets in order to create a degree of separation and 'correctness', as he called it. It was still hardly proper at all and if the circumstances were any different Hermione would be shocked at a traditionally raised Pureblood making such a breach in etiquette, but strange circumstances made for strange bedfellows. Still, she decided that Tom didn't need to hear about this little sleepover when she returned to Gamp Hall.

...she supposed she could add it to the list of things she wasn't telling him.

"I couldn't sleep," Blaise confessed to them quietly, once he was settled at Luna's left, Hermione on her right, leaving the tiny blonde curled between them.

"Neither could I," Hermione admitted.

"Nor I," Luna said softly. "But that's fairly normal for me."

"Do you think they were telling us the truth?" Hermione asked, half-hoping that Cailleach's words had all just been some terrible game the fey Queen was playing, despite what a reach she knew it would be.

"The fey can't lie," Luna reminded her, with a heavy solemnity that ill-suited the small girl. "They can twist the truth, they can omit, they can play clever word games, but they cannot outright lie."

"I know," Hermione sighed, laying back and looking up at the dark ceiling. "I know. But I hoped."

She had her ambitions in life, she'd never deny that; Tom's sly little comments about her one day being Minister of Magic had lit a fire in her blood, had made her heart pound with excitement and a hungry want, but she'd never intended to be anything but loyal to Voldemort after she and Harry had sworn their allegiances to him. She wasn't always happy with Voldemort's decisions, she couldn't and wouldn't deny it, but that didn't mean she'd ever even entertained any ideas about betraying Tom and attempting to usurp him.