Anchor and Rose | Dramione

Two.

A few weeks later, Hermione stood ankle deep in the black lake.

Her heart was in her throat and her fingers were shaking with force, but she hadn't seemed to notice.

She didn't care that her bare toes had turned blue against the grit of the shallow lake bed.

She shuddered, watching the moon puddle from behind a thick cloud, peering over her. Watching her, taunting her.

Almost asking her, what the hell are you doing?

Though she knew what she was doing. She didn't completely understand why, just that she had to. Her mind had been tormenting her for too long, speaking to her, telling her that she needs to do this, to be peaceful.

To see the end of things, because it was all too much.

So she stepped forward, until her blue feet met the ledge that dropped into the deep part of the lake, where the creatures lived, where the icy cold of the lake bundled into ice pockets.

With a gulp, she contemplated it, pursing her lips. She took a look back at the castle, which stood on the rocks, glowing with a strange shade of purple, almost as if the musk from the lake was illuminating it.

It made her heart hurt, not in the way that makes you cry, but in the way that makes you want to die. Because she couldn't stand there and accept the fact it was going to be destroyed.

She stepped off the ledge.

-

"Wake up! Hermione, Dear Merlin please wake up!"

Fuck.

Hermione's brain was fuzzy, almost feeling like it's frozen. The same feeling you get when you drink a cold drink too fast, but it hurt much more.

She didn't die.

She noted how that was rather embarrassing, and she didn't want to open her eyes.

"Are you awake? Hermione!" She could feel someone shaking her, two warm hands on her brittle skin, one hand just below her collarbone and one on her arm.

Whoever it was, their nails were pinching her skin.

"I'm not dead for christ sake's, so please stop shaking me."

The lights in the infirmary were way way too bright, which felt strange. Although she hadn't spent much time here in recent years, she always remembered her past visits here being dull and feeble, with a subtle brown mist etching through the air, but that was gone now, and everything was too clear.

"You scared the shit out of me!" The voice belonged to someone she didn't want it to belong to. "Merlin what did you do?"

Don't get her wrong, she loved Ginny, she really did, but since returning to Hogwarts she was growing to... dislike her. Not in the way where you actually dislike the person of course, because it was Ginny, she'd always have a place in her heart for Ginny. Yet in the way she simply wanted to punch her in the nose and tell her to bog off for a few days. Ginny was on her case too much, like she was scared Hermione was going to do something stupid.

I guess she had been right to think so.

"I fell." Hermione rushed out, not thinking before the words spluttered out of her mouth. She peered around, squinting, trying to seize up who else was there to listen in on their conversation. Of course, it was empty, par one student sleeping in the corner.

"Fell." Ginny repeated. Hermione studied her face. Ginny didn't believe her, of course. "You think I'm an idiot? What were you doing at the black lake anyway then, at three in the morning? Hm? Having a little frolic in the water?"