When We Were Beasts

Backwards

Eight sleeps since Hermione killed Angelina.

Hermione stopped trying to count days - it was useless and just drove her mad- but she could count sleeps.

And it had been eight since she left Angelina on that glistening floor, her own reflection dragging her backwards with a hungry smile on its face.

Hermione could barely occlude.

She wasn't sure if it was lack of nutrition, lack of proper sleep, or because her mind had too much trauma stuffed into it all at once, but Hermione could not bury it all.

If she buried Angelina, Malfoy's face as he let her go would grow like a weed in her sacred garden. If she buried Malfoy, she heard Flint's flesh being torn apart by teeth and hunger.

It seemed she needed to pick her poison and drink it already.

Hermione picked Malfoy.

She didn't mind seeing his face in her dreams, in her mind as she wandered and sprinted and killed from room to room.

It filled the hole in her stomach where food could not, the hate and rage that came with remembering what he had done to her.

Hermione often thought of Draco Malfoy as she slaughtered monsters and people alike.

It was his face she pictured when she stabbed Zacharias Smith with a unicorn's horn. (Hermione was disgusted with herself when she barely cried, though she did have several nightmares about it.)

She imagined Draco Malfoy making these desperate noises when she left a werewolf drowning in a lake of ink, caught in the snare she made on a whim.

As Hermione continued on, she stopped trying to push him out of her mind.
Instead, she embraced every moment she thought of him.

Both because it gave her renewed energy to think on his death, and because it left no room for her guilt and agony to linger on who she'd murdered and left just as ruthlessly as he left her. Hermione didn't want to realize she was becoming no different.

****

Hermione wasn't sure what her breaking point was. All she knew was that she hadn't found it yet, but it had to be close. Because she was cracking.

****

It was a gold and maroon door.

Carvings of magnificent lions and crimson courage and brutal swords and violent victory told their stories over the wooden surface, while the handle glistened the color of fresh copper, a capital G stamped into its surface.

The door frightened her.

But there was no other exit, and so Hermione turned the handle with shaky fingers.

****

It was a renovated version of the Head Girls room in Hogwarts.

One entire wall was a bookshelf, the books overflowing onto the carpeted floor.

A marigold fire crackled in a fireplace, the sword of Gryffindor hanging above the mantle. Three loveseats hugged the space, as if friends met here often to spill secrets and share sweet treats.

Tucked into a side room, Hermione could see not only a modern day toilet but a tub and shower behind a linen curtain, three bars of soap resting on the porcelain surface.

Hermione saw an icebox, a stone sink, cupboards stocked with food.

Last, beside the door she had just walked through, Hermione saw a bed that could have fit five of her, made neatly with mustard yellow blankets and sheets that displayed a mighty maroon lion roaring in its center.
At the foot of the bed was an open trunk full of clothes. Jumpers, undergarments, trainers, dresses, robes, even muggle jeans.
Resting on the mound of pillows was a wand made of vine wood and dragon heartstring.

Hermione fell to her knees with a wail and began to weep.