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The Beginning

Chapter 37: The Beginning

Three years later and they still lived there, still together, still clinging to each other. It was perhaps because of the dreams that she and Ron couldn't last. He wanted her to need him, he wanted to hold her when she shook in the night; but his arms only made it worse, and so she'd eventually moved down the hall.

Hermione woke before the sun, as she had grown accustomed to doing over the last month or so. She padded quietly to the kitchen of Grimmauld Place, trying desperately not to disturb Kreacher in her wake, hoping fervently that nobody else would be around.

No such luck.

"The dream again?" Harry murmured, leaning against the counter and sipping a cup of coffee.

She jumped at the sound of his voice, her hand pressed protectively against her clavicle.

"Harry," she stammered. "I - "

"Sorry," he said quickly, taking a mug from the cupboard and pouring her a steaming cup. "Too early to startle you, I suppose."

"A bit," she agreed weakly, though she slid in easily beside him, letting the warmth of the beverage radiate against her hands as it passed from his fingers to hers.

"The dream again?" he prodded.

"Yes," she said, closing her eyes and taking in the scent of it. Another day. "It's been . . . rather insistent, lately."

He sipped his coffee quietly. "Insistent?"

"It's more than just the voice now," she clarified, biting her lip and working out the kinks in her neck from her scattered hours of restless sleep.

"Have you told Ron?"

He wasn't looking at her. He knew the answer.

"He knows I've been having dreams," she said slowly. "But he thinks they're nightmares. From the war," she explained.

Harry nodded.

"How long?" he posed, taking another sip.

"Since I agreed to take the job at the Ministry," she said, sighing. "I suppose it's just stress."

"But you've been having the dream since before that," Harry pointed out carefully. "Haven't you?"

She closed her eyes, feeling the caress of the words as they flitted through her mind.

This life or any other -

It had never been a nightmare. That's what Ron had never understood. He wanted simple, cut and dry, but she could never explain it.

"Yes," she said weakly, finally raising her own cup to her lips.

They sat together in silence. She knew why Harry was awake; he never slept much, really. There had always been something in both of them, some itching, nagging thought that they had somehow outlasted their own purpose. It was better for him when Ginny was here, when he had something to care for; something to protect. But Ginny was with the Harpies at the moment and the odd feeling of displacement had never really eased for Hermione, so it was times like these, both of them in a dull state of wakefulness - or a wakened state of dullness - that kept the two of them helplessly bound to each other.

"It could be stress," Harry said finally, harkening back to her initial point. Neither of them really believed it.

They only knew how to bear the gravity in silence.

"Probably," she agreed, letting her lips linger on the edges of the cup.

"You start today, don't you?" Harry asked, though he knew the answer.