Soul Ties and Ministry Lies

03: Bloody cat

Hermione had become particular acquaintances with the moon. It startled her when she failed to assassinate those dreams that made the curtains feel paper thin. It calmed her as a constant when she was sent on those jobs that spilled blood underneath its light. It greeted her when she finally left the office after overthinking the request to have Draco Malfoy as her aid.

She had listened to it, heard what people had said about the way that it manipulated behaviour, and chose to believe in it. Perhaps she feared that if she did not, she wouldn't be able to believe that good even existed anymore, that there wasn't an outstanding factor that tricked it into disappearing.

But she knew that there was no kidding herself into believing that Malfoy had simply cast himself under the spell of the moon, that some people were just full of the wrong choices. It truly did not matter how many times Shacklebolt tried to use that ministerial reign to convince her that he had signed a contract of his aid and allegiance to their side, as far as she was convinced - it was just words, it's was only written on a fading star somewhere in the galaxy that was nowhere near the controlling light of the moon. His behaviour had only been his choice.

Hermione tried to flicker the night's light elsewhere as she turned the key to the front door, ignoring how she could see the main light of the living room glaring like a bloody lighthouse beacon through the glass. The deep green paint always chipped a little more with each time that the key turned in the lock, this time yanking clean a rather large slice of it away from the base. Scowling and squinting at everything, including how obnoxious full moons truly were, she paused momentarily to give herself one last roll of her eyes. It was a silent prayer, one that hoped that the full moon's aggression had not pulled onto her house too much at the very least.

The key always clicked five times, four to unlock the door and once more because it was stubborn and wouldn't open unless she made it very clear that she intended to enter.

By the time Hermione had hit the fourth click, her house allowed her a small window to feel what was inside so that she could make that decision promptly. It smelled distantly of dinner that had been cooked, nice dinner for that matter, but it was also washed down with a wave of alcohol that stung and burned through the lock itself.

Hermione didn't want to enter at that, but she willed through her exhausted sigh that she would click the lock that one more time, if only to meet her bed.

The house was quiet when she entered, quiet in the kind that wasn't silent enough to mean that it was empty, but quiet in the kind that she had been taught was untrustworthy. In the quietude was the scent of the tomatoes and rice that she had cooked the night before knowing that she would really have hated herself for the late night she was bound to have committed to. There was also the alcohol disrupting the peace that she had smelt before, but that had then been paired with the brown bottles and pair of snoring lungs on the couch that had eaten the dinner that she had so looked forwards to.

It seemed that the quiet was not so quiet, and not just for the grating grind of the snoring nor the brightest of yellow bulbed lights. It wasn't even for the puff of hot steam from the kitchen that reminded Hermione of her lack of food. It was her burning rage, her drunk exhaustion, her screaming burnout, and the thick and sticky fact that she deserved more, that made it ever so loud.

At least the moon had listened to her, she thought rather bluntly as she stared before the muddled scene of her living room. It was a small piece of nothing to hold onto when her house could not even align its bricks to show her that she belonged there, that something was in fact hers to deserve, but if her career had taught her anything it was that nobody held anything, not really.