Chapter One: Smile, Smile, Smile

"Another dream?"

Hermione nodded, refusing to meet her husband's eyes. Jonathan King stood next to the bed, looking down at his wife of two years with a vaguely concerned expression on his kind face.

There had been a time, early in their marriage, when Jonathan had been deeply affected by Hermione's nightmares. The first few times she had woken up from a bad dream—her face red and drenched in tears and sweat, her usually tranquil eyes wild and unseeing—Jonathan had held her tightly to him, rocking her and murmuring sweet nothings in her ear. Occasionally—though they never mentioned it outside the bedroom—he had even cried with her, such was the depth of his empathy.

Now, however, after two years filled with such nightly disruptions, neither Jonathan nor Hermione paid much attention to the dreams. They had accepted them as a part of their life, something to be regarded in much the same way as a leaky faucet or a perpetually flickering light bulb—as a mild irritation not worth troubling over.

"Yes, but it wasn't too bad," Hermione replied at last, pushing the thick white comforter off of her body and swinging her legs over the side of the bed. "Don't worry about it, Jon. Finish getting ready."

Jonathan nodded and walked back into their bathroom, a tiny, white-walled affair that stood adjacent to the couple's equally miniscule bedroom. Hermione sat still on the edge of the bed for a few peaceful moments, listening to her husband perform his morning ablutions. She closed her eyes, letting the sounds of running water and Jon's pattering feet fall over her like a comforting blanket.

Despite her assurances to Jon, the past night's dream had been one of Hermione's worst. She had dreamt of the Manor for the first time in nearly a year, a dream that always left her numb with fear and weak with the memory of her own torture at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange.

Hermione gritted her teeth as images from the dream flashed through her mind—a mind that was still too dazed from sleep to put up its usual mental guards.

Hooded black eyes glinting down at her, lit from within by the fires of madness. White hot pain as the blade of a knife slices through her delicate skin, carving hatred into her too-thin arm. The wild, feral laughter of the damned, repeated a hundred times over as a nightmarish echo, bouncing off the walls of the cavernous room. The terrified mutterings of the voice inside her head, saying over and over, Harry where are you?

"Are you sure you're alright?"

Hermione opened her eyes abruptly and was met with the worried gaze of her husband, who was standing in front of her once more.

"I said I'm fine, Jon," she said, rising to her feet and stepping around Jonathan to head towards the bathroom. A second later she felt a warm, callused hand on her arm.

"Yes?" Hermione said, turning to face her husband.

"I'm sorry," Jon said, and Hermione was relieved to see that some of the worry had faded from his eyes. "You just looked like you were in pain, that's all."

"It's nothing," Hermione repeated.

"I know, I know," Jon said, smiling slightly. "I know that you're strong and independent and that you like to handle things on your own. But—if you ever need someone to talk to, I'm always here."

"Of course you are," Hermione said, leaning forward to give Jon a light peck on the cheek. "You're my otter, after all."

Jon grinned, then leaned down to give her a long, lingering kiss, massaging her lips gently with his own.

"Jon, it's already seven o'clock," Hermione said, glancing over at the alarm clock when the kiss was broken. "You're going to be late."

"Oh Jesus," he said, following her gaze and resting his own eyes on the glowing red numbers. "I thought it was still a quarter till."

"Apparently not."

"Yes, I've realized that, thanks," Jon said, rummaging in his pocket for his car keys. Hermione followed him out of the bedroom and through the living room, stopping at the door leading out of their flat.

"Good bye, dear," Jonathan said, leaning down to graze her forehead with his lips. "I hope your classes go well."

"Yours too," Hermione said, blowing him a kiss as he opened the door and stepped out onto the landing. "I'll see you when I get home."

Once Jonathan had gone, Hermione headed back into the bedroom to get ready for the day. She sat down at the little wooden dresser that Jonathan's mother had given her as a twenty-seventh birthday present and began to brush her hair, gazing tiredly at her reflection in the mirror. Red-rimmed eyes looked back at her through the glass, and Hermione thought that she could see the ghost of fear still haunting their brown depths. Her face was unnaturally pale and her mouth was compressed into a thin line. Her normally uncontrollable hair looked lifeless today; Hermione could see her exhaustion reflected in the limp brown curls. Her students had been teasing her all week about her tired appearance, saying that she must have a new love-interest keeping her awake at night. Recalling their jests, a sudden image flashed through Hermione's mind.

Tonks, sitting at Molly Weasley's kitchen table in the middle of the night, her normally vibrant hair reduced to a dull mousey brown. She is crying; she doesn't know that Hermione is in the room watching her, doesn't know that Hermione has long guessed the reason behind her tears. Suddenly Tonks looks up, and—

Hermione, now fully awake, threw up her mental guards, banishing the unwanted memory from her mind. A second later nothing was left of the image but a few wisps of silver smoke.

Hermione took a deep breath, set down her brush, and picked a small compact up off of the dusty surface of the dresser. It was nearly seven thirty: the first golden rays of a newborn sun were streaming in through the bedroom windows, and the drunken shouts of the New York city night had long since given way to the lively sounds of morning traffic. A new day had undeniably begun; for Hermione, this meant a return to the simple world of waking reality. She refused to let the shadows of her past enter this world; those shadows belonged to the nighttime realm of dreams, and she was determined that they should stay there.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

"Professor, what exactly does Owen mean by the phrase 'undying dead'?"

Hermione focused her gaze on the speaker, a timid-looking girl in the front row whose bright red hair Hermione had always found distracting. Today, like every other class day, the brilliant locks glimmered in the morning sun, the bright light of which streamed in mercilessly through the huge windows of the lecture hall.

"Would anyone like to answer Ms. Harrison's question?" Hermione said, surveying the hundred and twenty-odd students scattered throughout the massive room. Most of these young men and women seemed to be intently occupied with the screens of their laptop computers (not for the first time, Hermione silently cursed the inventors of Facebook), so Hermione was not surprised when only one hand shot into the air.

"Ms. Porter?" Hermione said, addressing the owner of the lone, eagerly wavering hand.

"The poet is referring to the soldiers who have already died in the war," the girl said. "The soldiers are 'undying' because, according to the rulers who are speaking, they will always live on in the memories of those for whom they sacrificed their lives."

"Very good," Hermione said, gracing the girl with a rare smile. "Now, who would like to take a guess as to why Owen included this phrase in his poem? Does he give the rulers any credibility, or do you think that the words are intended to be ironic?"

"I'm gonna go with the second option," a deep voice called from the back of the room. "Poets and artists never portray authority figures in a good light. Free spirits and all, you know, down with the establishment and all that nonsense."

A ripple of laughter spread throughout the lecture hall. Hermione looked up, searching for the pebble that had managed to cause such a ripple in an otherwise static pond. She grinned when her eyes found Jon; her husband had managed to sneak into her lecture unnoticed, and was now sitting in one of the theater-style seats among the students.

"Thank you, Mr. King," Hermione said, not missing a beat. "Now, could you please tell the class your thoughts on the poem as a whole? Perhaps you could start with your assessment of the title."

"Er—what poem is this, again?" Jon said, pretending to look abashed. The class laughed again, sufficiently distracted from their wall posts and status updates by the lighthearted interruption. Many of them knew Jon; he was a popular professor (as much for his youth and good-looks as for his teaching style, Hermione thought wryly) and he had made a habit of popping up unexpectedly in his wife's classes.

"'Smile, Smile, Smile,' by Wilfred Owen," Hermione said. "And I say that not so much for Jon's benefit as fort the benefit of the class, many of whom seem to be more interested in their online conversations than they are this text. I'm afraid that many of you, like my dear husband, might not be quite up-to-date on what poem we're studying."

Many of the students smiled embarrassedly, and Hermione was rewarded with the sight of a hundred laptops being folded shut across the lecture hall.

"Now, back to Owen," Hermione said, trying not to look at Jon. "Does anyone want to answer my earlier question?"

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

"Jon, you really need to stop doing that," Hermione said. The lecture hall was empty now, save for herself and her husband. Jon was standing next to her at the podium, waiting as she gathered her notes and folded them neatly into her cracked leather briefcase.

"Oh, you know you love it when I interrupt your classes," Jon said, grinning.

"How I feel about it isn't the issue," Hermione replied as she attempted to stuff a thick anthology of British poetry into her already overstuffed case. "It's rather inappropriate, don't you think?"

"Professors are supposed to be inappropriate and eccentric," Jon said, waving his hand dismissively. "Anyway, there's something in particular that I need to talk to you about."

"And that is?" Hermione asked, still battling with the heavy book.

"England," Jon said.

Hermione paused for a brief second, then resumed her organizing. She didn't look up at her husband, afraid of what she might read in his expression. Fear had settled in her stomach like a coiled serpent; she could practically feel its sharp scales cutting into her insides.

"I—I was asked to teach there," Jon said. "At the London School of Economics."

Hermione's hand slipped and the anthology fell from her grasp. She ignored the book as it landed heavily on the floor, the crisp white pages wrinkling and the spine snapping with a loud crack.

"When?" She said, her voice surprisingly even.

"Next year," Jon replied. "I—I know that you've said you don't want to go back, after what happened to your parents and all, but—but this is a huge opportunity for me. And…I'd really like us to go."

Hermione stared at him. For some inexplicable reason Jon seemed to take her silence as a good thing, and he began to speak louder and faster, growing visibly more excited as he went on.

"It's a great opportunity for you too, 'Mione," he said. "Think of all the research you could do. I've already asked Sherry about it, and she said you could probably apply for a grant to do research for a semester, or even for the whole year—so it won't be like lost time for you. And—"

"Why are you telling me this now?" Hermione said. Jon blinked.

"Well, I—I just got it all cleared with my department this morning. So it's a definite go if…if you're willing."

Hermione let her eyelids flutter closed. England. Jon wanted to move to England. After everything she had done to escape her native country—a place forever cursed for her, haunted as it was by the memories of war and replete with the risk of being recognized by some member of the magical community—Jon was asking her to return.

"No," Hermione said, opening her eyes. "No, Jon. That is something that I will not do."

A/N: The title of this chapter comes from the poem "Smile, Smile, Smile" by Wilfred Owen. Every chapter of this story will bear the title of a post-WWI British poem.

A/N 2: Please review. It really helps encourage me to continue writing.