A heavier piece... Different circumstance. Different world. Same emotions.

Listening to: "World Gone Mad" by Bastille, "Brother" by Kodaline

I don't own Harry Potter.

TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual assault, although this piece deals more in the healing than the actual event.

World Gone Mad

The bed hangings were wrong. Hermione Granger was especially meticulous about her bed hangings. When she left her bed in the morning, they were carefully pulled aside to reveal her bed. When she went to bed at night, she made sure that the hangings were neatly drawn around her bed for privacy. But these hangings were wrong. They were disheveled and askew, with one side only hanging onto one last ring to stay attached to the bed. It looked as if someone had been angry or violent. Or very, very drunk, her mind reminded her snidely.

Although the bedspread was red and gold, she could tell that it wasn't her bed. The sour stench of sweat on the sheets – mixed with a little cologne – upturned her nose and made her sensitive stomach churn.

It was eerily quiet. A magical silence. A charmed one. It set her teeth on edge.

She pulled the bed hanging the rest of the way down and stood carefully, looking for her wand. Her hair was a disaster, and her dress looked like a sorry, torn travesty of an evening gown. But more importantly, her entire body hurt, specifically her legs and, well – she didn't want to think about what other areas hurt at the moment.

Her wand was halfway under the bed, tucked inside the robe that clearly had been haphazardly discarded the night before. She fixed her dress and wrapped the robe around her, thankful that there was no one in the dormitory at the moment.

Hermione descended the stone stairs, skirted across the common room – which was blessedly empty but for a few first years playing Exploding Snap in the corner – and dashed up the stairs to her own dormitory. She sat on her bed and pulled the bed hangings around her, thankful for the darkness that relieved the tiniest bit of her pounding headache.

Her stomach rolled with nausea, and Hermione immediately bolted from her bed and into the bathroom. She emptied her stomach into the toilet, still smelling the alcohol from the night before.

She flushed the toilet and sat on the closed lid. How many drinks had she had the night before? Surely not enough to cause her to black out like that. Surely not enough to give her this bad of a hangover. She counted on her fingers. A butterbeer, but there was barely enough alcohol in that to get a House Elf tipsy. One – no, two – glasses of punch, which she had already known to be spiked with Firewhiskey. But two drinks. . . and she had woken up in someone else's bed.

What else had been in her drink?

The sick feeling settled in her gut again, but this time the nausea was far from hangover-induced. What had happened to her last night? Surely someone hadn't taken advantage of her? But the blackout. . . the torn dress. . . waking up in someone else's bed.

Hermione turned on the shower and stripped herself out of her dress. The water was scalding, but she embraced it. Her fingers were violent as they scrubbed at her flesh, hoping to tear away at where his fingers could have been, where his lips might have touched.

On her thigh she found the first fingerprints, five little purple ovals pressed into flesh. The nausea rose up in her again, and she threw up on the floor of the shower, sliding down against the wall. The marks were down her thighs, around her wrist. Two dark purple hickeys stood out against the pale smooth skin of her breasts.

Taking a deep breath of air, she slid one shaking hand down her stomach and there – the swollen, painful flesh told her everything that she needed to know. The sobs rose up in her unbidden, and she cried in the little shower cubicle – scratching and scrubbing at her flesh – until the water ran cold.

Lavender Brown was waiting for her with a smirk when she exited the bathroom, carefully wrapped in a bathrobe that hid the purple bruises and her angry red scratches. She sat on her bed.

Lavender bounded across the room and seated herself next to Hermione on the four-poster. "So," she said snidely, a sick note of excitement in her voice. "I heard all about last night from – well – an unnamed source. He said that you just couldn't say no."

The urge to vomit was back, but Hermione couldn't run to the bathroom with Lavender sitting on her bed and begging for details about her sordid night. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Who would have known that Gryffindor's princess would find love at the Slug Club?" Lavender crowed, before moving to her own bed again. "Parvati is going to love this."

Hermione drew the bed hangings around her, casting silence. And then she cried, hot tears dripping down her cheeks and onto her pillowcase and bedspread while she gasped for breath against the panic in her chest, the guilt and shame building within her.

oOoOo

When Hermione finally got up the courage to show her face in the common room, Harry and Ron were waiting for her in front of the fire. Ron's face was sullen, and he immediately turned away from her to stare into the fire. Clearly he was still jealous that she had taken McLaggen to Slughorn's Christmas party the night before.

Her stomach recoiled at McLaggen's name, but she swallowed back the nausea in favor of greeting her two friends.

Harry, in direct contrast to Ron, immediately jumped to his feet, concern written all over his face. He ran up to her, eyes raking quickly and concernedly over her body, which was carefully covered with a loose jumper and a pair of jeans.

"Hermione, Merlin! Are you alright?" Hermione immediately recognized the note of alarm in his voice.

Her voice was small when she replied, "Fine, Harry. Just had a bit too much to drink."

She had hoped that it sounded convincing, but Harry did not stop hovering over her. "Luna and I were getting some of those little cakes – you know, the lemon ones – and she was trying to explain one of those creatures of hers to that vampire friend of Slughorn's. . . . When I turned around, you and McLaggen were gone. I even looked in that alcove that you had been hiding in before."

Ron finally spoke up, disgust evident in his voice. "I think I can pick up from here." He stood up and faced her, crossing his arms firmly across his chest. "You came back here with McLaggen, stumbling all over the place and making a bloody show of yourself. Clearly drunk off your arse and too sloshed to care about anything other than your bloody date. Practically hanging off of him, you were."

"And?" Harry cut in worriedly, and Hermione remembered that Harry did in fact know that McLaggen was only her date to make Ron jealous. "You helped her up to her own dormitory? Called one of the girls? Lavender?"

"McLaggen had it pretty well in hand, didn't he?" Ron's voice was icy. "Said she had had too much to drink, so he was going to take her upstairs to sleep it off."

Harry looked stricken, and in that moment, Hermione knew that she could never tell her best friend what had happened – or rather, what she had pieced together of what had happened. It would kill him. And possibly get him thrown in Azkaban, if she were being completely honest.

He looked at her. "And did he? Just take you upstairs to sleep it off, I mean?" There was a hard edge that Hermione had very rarely heard in Harry's voice, and it promised pain if McLaggen had hurt her.

"His date, his responsibility, right?" Ron grumbled in Harry's general direction, but Harry ignored him.

"Did anything happen that you didn't want to happen, Hermione?" His voice was icy, laced with cold anger. It was disconcerting coming from her happy – albeit moody – best friend.

Hermione swallowed past the bile in her throat. She rearranged her lips into what she hoped looked like a reassuring smile. "Nothing happened, Harry. I was just a little too drunk."

"Oh, thank Merlin," Harry breathed, sounding for all the world as though Voldemort himself had been vanquished. "Let's go to lunch, then? It's already started."

Ron perked up at this. Clearly these were the words that he had been waiting for since Hermione had descended from her dormitory. He headed toward the door, Harry following.

Hermione hung back a little, letting them go on ahead. "Uh, Harry?" The raven-haired boy turned back toward her, a tiny flicker of worry in his face again. "You can go on ahead. I'm going to stop by Madam Pomfrey's on my way down. Stomach Soother," she said with a grimace.

Harry made a sympathetic face and nodded, already being pushed out the portrait hole by a very impatient and hungry Ron.

Hermione waited a moment before heading to the Hospital Wing to see Madam Pomfrey. The guilt and disgust were twisting her stomach viciously, so much so that she was half-convinced that she might actually need a Stomach Soother when she arrived. How had she been so stupid? How could she have let herself get so drunk? Why had she chosen that stupid dress? Just because she felt pretty in it? It was all so stupid. She shouldn't have asked McLaggen – she had only asked him because she wanted to make Ron jealous, and look at how it had all ended up. Stupid Ron. Stupid McLaggen. Stupid, stupid Hermione.

She slipped through the portrait hole herself, hands in the sleeves of her jumper. The guilt was eating away at her stomach while she walked, reminding her incessantly that she had been the one who had asked McLaggen to go to the party with her. She had accepted the drinks from him. She had basically asked to go home with him. She had gotten herself in too deep, and it was all her damn fault. What would her parents think? Would they consider her as impure as Hermione was feeling right now?

The Hospital Wing was empty when Hermione arrived, which she was grateful for. Madam Pomfrey bustled toward her from where she had been organizing potions vials in her office.

"Oh, Miss Granger – you look dreadful! Here, have a seat on the bed while I have a look." The Mediwitch hurried her toward the nearest bed. Hermione was almost offended that the woman had assumed that she was sick when there really wasn't a thing wrong with her aside from a bad hangover and a major case of soul-eating guilt.

"No, no, really – it's okay," Hermione stammered nervously. Madam Pomfrey turned to face her fully when Hermione wouldn't follow her over to the bed. "It's nothing like that. I just – well . . ."

Madam Pomfrey's gaze still held a bit of its initial concern – Hermione figured that it was probably a look that she had perfected over many years of dealing with foolish students – but was now ripe with disapproval. "On the bed, Miss Granger."

Hermione followed the instructions and sat on the edge of the bed, nervously crossing and uncrossing her legs.

"I should have known that I would have a few of you in here after Slughorn's party last night. I hardly need to cast a spell to know that you'll be leaving with a dose of Stomach Soother and perhaps a good Headache Relief." She summoned the two potions with a mere twitch of her wand, catching the vials deftly.

Hermione swallowed them obediently, returning the empty vials to the Mediwitch. Although she felt much better, she still felt the overwhelming guilt lying deep in her gut. Potions couldn't fix everything, after all.

Madam Pomfrey smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. A hint of disapproval still lingered in the lines around her mouth. "Feeling better, Miss Granger?" She paused for Hermione's half-hearted nod before continuing. "I wonder if I should have left you to deal with the consequences for the day. It just takes one miserable hangover to convince one to mind their drinking a bit more. Well, off you go."

The older woman sent the empty vials back to her stores in her office with a flick of her wand. Hermione had to ask now. She had to. Madam Pomfrey was just turning and leaving, most likely to return to her task of organizing the potions vials. It looked like there had been a fresh restock that very morning, which made Hermione think of Snape. She knew that the professor had been at the party last night, albeit briefly. Hopefully he hadn't been up all night brewing the potions that Madam Pomfrey needed. No, surely he had better time management skills than Harry or Ron . . . or both of them, combined.

Hermione swallowed all of her pride, all of the emotions roiling in her gut, all of the panic stuttering in her chest. "Madam Pomfrey?" The Mediwitch turned back toward her expectantly. "There's just – there's one more thing, sorry."

"Make it quick, Miss Granger. Those potions won't organize themselves." She nodded back toward her office.

The panic in Hermione's chest was making it difficult to breathe. Clamping down on it, she forced herself to speak despite the shakiness of her voice. "I need – do you have the potion? Um, you know," – Hermione looked down at her fingers, which were shaking slightly – "Plan B? Or whatever it's called in the wizarding world."

Madam Pomfrey looked carefully at Hermione, meeting her gaze. "I do not have it yet, but Professor Snape is restocking it as we speak. He should be here within the next fifteen minutes." She lowered her voice as though imparting a secret as she said, "Professor Slughorn may teach Potions at the school this year, but his potions just aren't quite the same as Professor Snape's."

Hermione was looking at the floor, trying to avoid the disappointment that she was sure that she would see in Madam Pomfrey's eyes. "Miss Granger, look at me." Hermione looked up silently, tears threatening to fall. "It's going to be okay. Come sit in my office. We'll wait for Professor Snape together."

Hermione followed the Mediwitch into her office, where the older woman immediately went back to organizing potions once Hermione had taken a seat in one of the leather chairs across from the desk. She picked at the cuticle on her thumb until it bled, watching disinterestedly as a small drop of blood swelled where the nail met her skin.

She looked up as Snape swept into the room, as powerful and commanding as ever. Hermione fought the urge to flinch. For the first time in the six years that Hermione had been his student, she felt the fear bloom in the back of her mind of what exactly the man could do to her – with her – if he so wished. Snape paused at the sight of Hermione in the chair and nodded in her direction.

"Miss Granger." His voice held its usual cool dispassion.

Madam Pomfrey began speaking to him in hushed tones, gesturing to the vials of potions that Snape had just brought up and finally gesturing to Hermione. Hermione wrapped her arms around her knees, feeling her cheeks burning. She wanted to melt into the ground and disappear. Perhaps if she were lucky enough, she could find a Time Turner and go back and stop the night from ever happening in the first place.

Instead, Snape approached her, holding a vial of a potion with such a swirling blood red tint to it that Hermione felt slightly apprehensive about taking it. Nausea was the theme of the day for her, it seemed, so she reached out and took the potion from Snape, her fingers accidentally brushing against his.

At the contact, Hermione recoiled so quickly that she overturned the chair that she had been sitting in, although she thankfully was able to keep the vial safely held in her hand during her small tumble. She took a deep breath through the panic that had suddenly burst inside her at the touch.

"Sorry, Professor," she mumbled. "I guess I'm just tired today."

She gulped down the foul-tasting potion and ran from the room quickly, missing the confused and concerned glance exchanged by Pomfrey and Snape.

oOoOo

The war did not afford Hermione much time to think about what had happened on the night of the Christmas party. She was too concerned with keeping on top of her schoolwork and checking in with Harry about his occasional meetings with the Headmaster to ruminate on her own troubles. As such, she pushed down the memory – or what little she remembered – of the event and her feelings about it and continued on with her life.

She knew that she was more on edge as a result. Every time that a fellow student – especially a male student – moved near her, she was immediately aware of his actions and his location in relation to herself. She avoided confrontation and conversation with her male teachers, especially the domineering Professor Snape. She stopped raising her hand in class, stopped bringing attention to herself for anything.

But the thing that she avoided most was touch. Although she tolerated the touch of Ron and Harry – after all, they were her best friends and she knew that they wouldn't hurt her – the slightest touch from anyone else caused panic to bloom in her chest and constrict her lungs. She leaned away from fellow students that sat too close to her in class. She forced Harry and Ron to sit on the end of the Gryffindor table for meals so that she wouldn't be jostled by people slipping onto the benches that lined the tables.

One of Hermione's rules was that she never, ever talked about the night of the Christmas party. It kept her safe from the emotions of the whole event, from the events that she suspected had happened behind closed, silenced bed hangings that night.

Until today.

Hermione had been walking down the corridor outside of the library, preparing to write her Charms essay during her rare free period. Just as she had been about to enter the library, she had felt strong arms enveloping her from behind, pulling her back into a firm chest.

"You've been avoiding me!" McLaggen's voice echoed loudly in her ears, bringing waves of fear and guilt and panic with it. "Where've you been, Hermione?"

Hermione screamed at the top of her lungs. She pushed at the arms that were wrapped around her until they let go in confusion. Once free, she sprinted to the nearest restroom in the castle, already dry-heaving from the sheer panic and revulsion that was wracking through her body so strongly that she could feel herself convulsing with it. She emptied her lunch in the toilet and slumped against the wall of the bathroom stall, assessing herself carefully. She had left her book bag by the entrance to the library in her haste to flee, but her Hogwarts uniform was intact, albeit skewed.

"He wouldn't have tried anything in the hallway," Hermione whispered to herself, trying to take a deep breath to quell the remaining panic and nausea in her gut. "He wouldn't have done anything. You're okay. It's safe. It's okay."

Clutching the fabric of her Gryffindor sweater, Hermione began to cry softly. As she gave into the panic, her crying grew louder and more intense until she was sobbing violently, rocking back and forth on the cold stone floor of the first floor bathroom.

"Miss Granger? Miss Granger?"

The door to the bathroom flew open abruptly, and Hermione heard the sound of footsteps and rustling robes approach the stall that she was in. She had left the door open in her hurry to get to the toilet, and she looked up to see Professor McGonagall standing over her, one hand clutching Hermione's forgotten book bag. Hermione just sobbed harder, noiselessly.

The Transfiguration professor rearranged her robes before kneeling beside Hermione carefully. She deposited the book bag on the floor beside them carefully. "Miss Granger? Can you hear me?"

Hermione wanted to roll her eyes at the stupid question, but she nodded anyway. McGonagall was close – so close that the proximity was making Hermione's skin prickle and the panic rear its ugly head once again.

"Could you – could you – just back up? A – a foot or two?" Hermione choked out, taking the handkerchief that the woman offered her silently.

"Of course," she replied, backing up until she was no longer in the stall with Hermione at all. "Would you like to come back to my office and talk about it?"

Everything in Hermione told her to tell Professor McGonagall that she was fine – that she didn't need anyone to help her. But despite her body and brain screaming at her otherwise, Hermione stumbled to her feet, picking up her book bag from the floor beside her. She wiped her nose on the handkerchief as she followed the woman from the bathroom.

When they reached McGonagall's office, which was just a short walk down the hall, Hermione collapsed into one of the chairs, dropping her bag beside her. She wiped at a few errant tears.

"Would you like a biscuit? The ginger may help to settle your stomach." McGonagall was holding out a tin of biscuits, holding a ginger newt in the other hand.

Hermione reached forward and selected a ginger newt for herself, more out of courtesy than actual desire for the treat. She wasn't sure if her stomach could handle food at the moment, but she nibbled on the end of the biscuit anyway.

When McGonagall had settled into the chair behind her desk again and tea had been called for, the woman looked at Hermione in concern and expectation.

"None can deny that you have been – off – this term, Hermione." When Hermione opened her mouth to protest, the Transfiguration professor continued quickly, "Your grades have remained exemplary, naturally, but your behavior outside of the classroom has been a cause for concern. I have not been the only professor to notice this change, nor am I the only one to express concern. And following this most recent incident in the corridor, I think that it is quite clear that there is something wrong, wouldn't you agree?"

Hermione nodded, staring at the floor. She was saved from answering further by the appearance of a knobby elf bearing a tea tray. McGonagall stood and poured a cup for each of them, looking at Hermione expectantly.

"Lemon and honey, please," Hermione mumbled. She accepted the proffered cup gratefully, holding it between her bony fingers.

"Thank you, Toby," McGonagall said briskly, and the little house elf disappeared with a crack. She turned her attention back to Hermione. "I would have ordered a platter of tea sandwiches had I thought you capable of stomaching them at the moment. You have lost weight this term."

There was no need for Hermione to acknowledge this fact. She knew as well as McGonagall that she was swimming in her Gryffindor jumper. Her scarf hid the sharp protrusion of her collarbones, but it could not hide her knobby knees and her too-thin wrists.

It wasn't that Hermione was intentionally eating less. It was just that her stomach couldn't handle large meals anymore. The underlying current of unease and anxiety that ran throughout her body at all moments of the day kept her from keeping much of her food down.

Hermione took a sip of her tea. Earl Grey, her favorite. She knew where this conversation was going, and she needed the comfort of a good cup of tea to carry her through.

McGonagall looked at her, eyes probing in careful concern. Hermione could sense the genuine worry hanging around her Head of House. "Did anything happen at home over the holidays?"

Had Hermione even gone home for the holidays this year? Suddenly, she couldn't remember. Wait, no – she had, in fact, returned home to stay with her parents over the holidays.

"No, everything was fine," Hermione answered quietly.

"Something this term? Are you worried about your NEWTs already? You know that you still have a year before you need to worry about such a thing."

Hermione nearly laughed at the woman's ignorance, although she supposed that her guess wasn't completely unfounded. Old Hermione – Hermione before – probably would have been outlining a study guide for her NEWTs already.

Seeing the flicker of amusement on Hermione's thin face, McGonagall smiled herself. "Perhaps not. Well, then. Was there an incident last term?" The woman paused, thinking back. "Perhaps toward the end of the term?"

Hermione's fingers clenched around the mug briefly. Had Madam Pomfrey told Professor McGonagall of the morning following Slughorn's party? Had Snape?

Hermione snuck a glance at the older woman, who was leaning over the desk and looking at her with genuine concern. She seemed to truly be asking, not digging for information that she had already heard from some outside source.

Taking a deep breath, Hermione choked out, "There was an – ah – an incident, I guess. At the – the end of last term."

Suddenly McGonagall's biscuit tin reappeared on the woman's desk, open and inviting. Hermione stared at it silently, having slipped the majority of her first biscuit into a pocket of her robes to avoid having to eat the rest of it.

"Last term," McGonagall mused. "Was there something that happened between you and Mr. Weasley? Mr. Potter? I noticed that you did not return to the Burrow with them for the Christmas holidays."

"No, no. Nothing with Harry or Ron."

McGonagall's mind finally seemed to settle on the main individual involved in the event that had led them both to this conversation. She hesitated before supplying, "Mr. McLaggen?"

Hermione looked down at her tea, tightening her fingers around the mug again and wishing for a moment that she had the power to crush the ceramic with her hands. It would feel good to break something – to have something else be the broken thing in the room, for once. The only difference was that a simple Reparo wouldn't fix the widening cracks in her soul.

"It doesn't matter who it was," Hermione replied, her voice barely louder than a whisper. There was a pause while she decided whether or not to continue. "It was at Slughorn's Christmas party. Last term."

Stupid. She had already told McGonagall that the incident had happened last term.

"Okay, Professor Slughorn's Christmas party. I did not find myself there that evening. Walk me through the night." McGonagall's voice was gentle, every hint of her usual sternness gone.

"I was excited, kind of," Hermione began, feeling ashamed of her foolish behavior to make Ron jealous. "I had found myself a date – a cute date, even though he wasn't the most . . . gentlemanly."

"Your date was Mr. McLaggen?" McGonagall interrupted, her question seeming to verge on a statement. Hermione did not reply, opting instead to take a sip of her tea. "An unnamed date, then," she conceded.

"I was excited. I wore this dress – it was light, comfortable, flattering." Hermione looked down on the last word, avoiding her professor's gaze. She continued looking at the stone floor while she spoke. "As soon as we got to the party, he – my date – brought us both Butterbeers. Harry was there, so I spent a lot of time with him when my date started trying to catch me under the enchanted Mistletoe that Professor Slughorn had decided to hang all around the room."

"Enchanted Mistletoe," McGonagall repeated, half-disapproving and half-amused.

Hermione looked up, a hint of a smile on her face. "You should have seen Professor Snape get stuck under it with Professor Slughorn's vampire friend. Sanguini, I think his name was. Professor Snape blasted the thing away in an instant and stalked away – probably to take points from Harry for standing too close to the punch or something equally as stupid."

Professor McGonagall offered Hermione a smile in return. "For some reason, that fails to surprise me."

Hermione returned her gaze to her drink, her smile falling. "Well, I was kind of hiding from C – my date, because of the Mistletoe and all. I was talking to Harry in the corner, but Professor Slughorn called Harry away to talk to one of his friends. My date brought me some punch, which was actually pretty good even though I know that there was some Firewhiskey in it." Hermione glanced at McGonagall, hoping that she hadn't accidentally gotten Slughorn in trouble for spiking the punch at his own party.

McGonagall recognized Hermione's worried glance and replied, "The spiked punch does not surprise me. One way or another, Horace always ends up rather intoxicated by the end of his parties." She gave another encouraging smile.

"Spiked punch, yeah. Well, I remember talking to Luna about something for a moment – Wrackspurts, maybe. And then my date brought me another glass of punch, and . . ." Hermione trailed off, looking pointedly at the floor. Suddenly, even the hot tea didn't sound appetizing anymore. Her stomach was rebelling against the few sips that she had taken, as well as the nibbled ginger newt that was technically residing in the side pocket of her robe.

"And after the punch, Hermione? Did you return to Gryffindor Tower? Did you talk to Mr. Potter or Miss Lovegood?"

Hermione stayed silent for another long moment. "After the punch . . . I don't know. I don't remember any of it." She felt a fresh round of tears pricking her eyes. "I woke up the next morning and . . . "

This time, McGonagall did not encourage Hermione to continue. The two of them simply sat in silence for a few minutes, with McGonagall periodically sipping on her tea.

When Hermione spoke again, her voice was shaky with tears. "I woke up the next morning in his bed. My – my dress was torn. My robe and my . . . wand were thrown under the bed." She dashed away a tear that had escaped and rolled down her cheek. "My whole body hurt."

Professor McGonagall rearranged a stack of papers on her desk and leaned forward, reaching a hand toward Hermione. "Hermione, you do not need to continue if you do not want to. I understand. It's okay. I – I understand." Her voice was soft, comforting.

Hermione looked at the woman's outstretched hand for a moment before shaking her head. "I can't – I don't like people touching me anymore. It – " A brief burst of anger slashed through her chest at the simple inconveniences in her life thanks to him, but she merely clenched her fingers around the mug again and looked away as McGonagall withdrew her hand.

"I don't know how to talk about this," Hermione began again. There was an edge to her voice, as though the words that she was speaking were cut on weeks of pain and the tears that were still welling up in her eyes. "I don't even remember it, really. I just remember seeing the bruises the next day in the shower. I felt guilty that I had let myself get that drunk – that I had gotten myself into that situation in the first place. But I went to Madam Pomfrey and I got the potion and I haven't thought about it since."

"Hermione," the woman murmured, and it sounded like her heart was breaking for the young girl sitting across from her. "Hermione. It wasn't your fault. Do you realize that it wasn't your fault? He was the one who crossed all of the boundaries, who broke all of the rules. The drinks – I believe that he could have drugged your drinks. Merlin, it wasn't your fault. Do you hear me?"

The tears came unbidden then, along with everything that Hermione had been pushing down for the months since that night. She curled in on herself, dropping the teacup, dropping the barely-nibbled ginger newt. McGonagall came around the desk to kneel in front of her, banishing the broken teacup and the ginger newt from the floor.

"Hermione, will you allow me to hug you? Only if you are comfortable with it." McGonagall's voice was careful, and she kept a cautious distance between them so that Hermione knew that it was her choice.

Hermione uncurled slightly to look at her Head of House. Sympathy – empathy – was written across the older woman's face.

"I won't hurt you. I promise that I won't hurt you."

Hermione sobbed and nodded once, letting the woman come nearer. McGonagall laid one tentative hand on Hermione's shoulder at first, feeling the way that Hermione stiffened abruptly under the touch and instinctively tried to pull away. After a moment, she leaned further into the touch, and the stern Transfiguration professor pulled the girl into her arms, holding her tight against her.

Although the panic was fighting to claw its way up her throat as McGonagall held her tightly, Hermione leaned into the embrace. She's my Head of House. She won't hurt me. It's McGonagall. I trust her, Hermione repeated to herself firmly. But finally, her body relaxed against the woman. And Hermione just cried.

oOoOo

"Do you ever just wish that you were someone else? Not like – dead or anything. Just someone else, who didn't have all of these things happen to them? Someone who could live a normal life?"

Hermione's voice was slightly nasally, and her face was red. She and Harry were hanging upside-down off of their respective beds in the tent in the Forest of Dean.

Harry's reply was swift and definite. "All the time. Look at me, Hermione. I'd rather be anyone but me, if I'm being honest."

"Anyone?" she teased, choosing to take her question in a more lighthearted direction than she had originally intended it. "What if your anyone was . . . Malfoy? Or Snape!"

Harry made a face at her. "You know what I meant." He flipped over on the bed so that he was facing her right-side up. "What did you mean?"

Hermione felt the blood continue to pool in her face from her awkward position. She felt a flicker of nervousness in her chest as she wet her lips to reply. Although she had finally revealed the full story of the night of Slughorn's Christmas party to Harry, it didn't make it any less difficult to talk about.

"I don't know," Hermione began honestly. "Sometimes I just think about the fact that if I were anyone else, it never would have happened. Or if I had just decided to go to that party alone. Or with you. Or if I hadn't decided to take the one person who would make – "

She cut herself off abruptly. Neither of them had spoken of Ron since he had left them a few weeks earlier.

Harry didn't have to ask what Hermione was talking about, or even question the abrupt the subject change. Hermione still had days when she didn't say a word at all, and that was okay. She would slip into her coat, grab her wand and a heavy blanket, and sit outside the tent to keep watch for them. Harry knew not to startle her on those days – or to touch her without warning her that he was going to.

But some days, it seemed that Hermione needed to talk about it. So Harry listened when she brought up the topic out of nowhere, as though it was a normal thing to talk about on a cold, boring Friday morning in a warded tent in the middle of the woods. Everything in their life was a fake normal, a collection of oddities strung together to look like a normal life.

"Well, you're not wrong," Harry conceded. "All of those things would have changed the outcome of the night, but they also feel like tiny ways of blaming yourself for what happened. Micro-blaming." Harry grinned proudly at his new word.

Hermione flipped around so that she could properly face Harry as well. "Are you actually telling me that you don't . . . micro-blame yourself for everything too? The Daily Prophet literally spent an entire year telling the wizarding public that you were haunted by your past ghosts and whatever other ridiculous nonsense that they could come up with to construct an emo, tortured Boy-Who-Lived."

Harry gave her a fake glare. "Hey, we don't use the Prophet as evidence here." His face dropped into a more serious expression. "But of course I micro-blame myself. Why else would I understand? After the graveyard, I asked myself for weeks why I hadn't just taken the cup myself. After the Department of Ministries, I – well, there are too many things to micro-blame myself for to even pick one as an example."

"Harry Potter! You know that I will – "

"I'm just making a point. Look, the list of things to micro-blame myself for just goes on and on. Merlin, if we're being honest – and really, really thorough – I could micro-blame myself for Quirrell's death. I basically killed him, even though all I could think about at the time was keeping him from getting the Stone and – of course – from killing me. I could blame myself for Pettrigrew's death because I was the one who made the request that led to his death. And I was the only reason why he got that silver hand in the first place. And technically I was the one who let him escape in the Shrieking Shack. And technically, because I was born this all happ – wow, there's a lot to unpack here." He winked at Hermione.

"Shut up, Harry. This conversation was literally supposed to be about me wishing that I were someone else." Hermione grinned, and for the first time all night, it reached her eyes.

Harry met her gaze with a sad smile. "I know. Me too."

oOoOo

"You know, you're almost better than a Muggle therapist," Hermione huffed, her breathing slightly labored from collecting firewood in the forest so that they could make a fire later. Earlier that day that the grocery store, they had found a bunch of bananas and some chocolate that just looked too good to pass up on, so they had decided to make the campfire classic of grilled bananas with chocolate.

"And you're almost better than a tour guide," Harry countered as Hermione successfully led them back to their tent, which was warded carefully and therefore invisible to everyone, including them. They crossed the boundary of the ward with their armfuls of firewood, and the tent immediately shimmered into view.

"I just know how to navigate the woods." Hermione sat down heavily next to their piles of firewood. She watched a bug scurry along one of the branches as Harry sat down next to her.

"Do you think that there'll ever be a day where we'll wake up and not have our first thought be the war or – ?" She left the rest of the sentence unfinished, knowing that he would understand what she meant.

"Maybe," Harry said, poking his wand at the firewood to try to make the piles organize themselves neatly. "I can see myself married to Ginny one day, and one of our little toddlers or kids or whatever jumps on me in the morning to wake me up. And my first thought will be – "

"Of them."

Harry looked at her. "Well knowing me, it would probably be 'these fuckers' or 'bloody hell.' But more importantly, it wouldn't be about who's died this week or where we'll get food today or where the hell my ex-best friend is – "

Hermione reached out and lightly touching his arm, the strength of which was not lost on Harry. She withdrew her hand quickly, but the warmth of her touch lingered.

It had darkened slightly – enough so to start preparing their dinner – so Hermione set aside a stack of wood and started the fire. She began roasting a couple of chicken breasts, which were a rare luxury when they were camping like this.

Harry accepted his portion gratefully. They didn't have any spices to put on the meat, but it tasted divine compared to their typical diet of canned beans or soup between supermarket runs.

"This is brilliant, 'Mione!" He grinned around a mouthful of meat, and Hermione smiled easily in return.

There had been a time when Hermione had wondered if she would ever be able to truly smile again, especially to smile so easily with her friends. The depression in the first few months had been heavy, but with the help of the Muggle therapist that her parents had sent her to, it had begun to clear a little. Instead of being a heavy fog around her, it was more of a mist; she could see through it but sometimes everything looked a little bit distorted. She had her bad days – which Harry tolerated patiently, taking watch the entire afternoon so that she could lie in bed facing the tent wall – but she also had days like this – where she could laugh and smile easily with her best friend.

Hermione was responsible for roasting the bananas and chocolate, because no matter how much Hermione insisted that this was literally the easiest desert to make in all of Britain, Harry insisted that the camping master be the one to do the roasting. She let them heat until she felt that the chocolate was sufficiently melted, cooled the aluminum foil surrounding the bananas with a neat charm, and handed one to Harry.

His hand brushed against hers, and he looked up apologetically. Hermione smiled in reassurance but could only focus on the fact that for the first time in a year, someone had touched her without her feeling his hands on her that night. Although the reflexive rush of panic arose a few minutes later when she leaned into him experimentally while spelling his hands clean, it was okay. It was progress, and sometimes progress was hard to find.

oOoOo

His body was pressing down on her, oppressing her. His hands were splayed on the mattress on either side of her head, making her claustrophobic, making it hard to breathe.

She wanted to kick out or scream, but her limbs felt cumbersome and heavy and somewhere deep inside her lungs, whatever he had given her was cutting off her voice.

The stench of sweat and alcohol mingled in her nostrils. The charmed silence buzzed in her ears, pierced only by his grunts and filthy words.

"Hermione!" a voice yelled from somewhere near her bed, and Hermione woke with a start, scrambling back across the bed to create distance between her and the shadowed figure until she realized that it was Harry.

She curled into a ball and rocked in distress. "Oh, God!"

"Hermione!" Harry called again, trying to call her out of her distress. He stayed beside the bed, sounding for all the world like the helpless boy savior who didn't have a clue how to save what he was given. "What is it? What was it? How can I help?"

"I saw it – all of it," she choked, and she hurled her head over the edge of her bed to throw up what little dinner she had eaten the night before. Harry caught the vomit with a deftly conjured bucket, quickly vanishing it.

"How can I be seeing it?" Hermione cried into her pillow. "How can I remember it when my brain can't remember it?

"I don't know, 'Mione. I don't know." Harry was standing a careful distance away, not wanting to distress her more than she already was. "Maybe that's up there in the brain with why you don't like people touching you or why Ron doesn't like spiders." He toed the ground with one dirty trainer. "Maybe bodies store flesh memories like Snitches do, things we aren't even aware of."

Hermione took deep gulps of air, turning onto her back to face the roof of the tent. She could still see the bed and feel the hard body against hers every time she closed her eyes, so she sat up.

"I can't sleep like this. You should get some rest." Hermione snatched her wand from under her pillow and threw on her coat, marching toward the opening of the tent. "I'll keep watch."

Harry followed her outside and sat in front of the fire. "I'm not going to leave you alone."

Hermione's face was turned toward the fire, her voice quiet. "Tell me it gets better than this, Harry."

Harry's breath hitched slightly beside her. "It has to."

oOoOo

Harry awoke in the middle of the night to a shadowed silhouette standing in the middle of the tent with its arms out. He instinctively reached for his wand before he recognized Hermione's bushy hair in the dim lighting. Besides, his beloved phoenix feather wand was cleaved in two, the two halves carefully kept in the mokeskin pouch that had been a gift from Hagrid.

"What's going on?" Harry mumbled, reaching for his glasses. He let his eyes adjust slightly to the low light in the tent. "Are you – why aren't you wearing clothes?"

Hermione's breath was catching slightly, sounding as though it was labored slightly with the threat of tears on each new inhale. "Have you – have you ever noticed that we're always touching – something? The floor? Our clothes? Ourselves?"

Harry sat up, finally realizing what was happening. He jumped out of bed, moving to Hermione's beaded bag that was resting on a chair in one of the corners. He reached his hand in the bag but was met with a jumble of books and clothes and clinking vials. "Hermione." He tried to get her attention. "Hermione, where is your wand?"

"On the – on the bed – my bed," came the shuddering reply.

Harry seized Hermione's wand from under her pillow and immediately pointed it at the beaded bag. "Accio Calming Draught!"

A small, stoppered vial flew out of the bag, and Harry caught it easily. He unstoppered it and hurried to Hermione, pressing it to her lips. She drank it obediently, then breathed deeply.

Harry grabbed Hermione's jumper and sweats from her bed and handed them to her without looking. She took them gratefully and slipped into the clothes, turning toward Harry when she was fully clothed again.

"Are you okay?" Harry asked instinctively, feeling stupid as soon as the words left his mouth. Of course she wasn't okay. How could anyone be okay in her situation?

Hermione didn't reply, instead taking her wand back from Harry and casting a warming charm around the tent.

Harry broke the uneasy silence. "I'll kill McLaggen the next time that I see him."

"Please don't." Hermione's voice was small. She didn't want anger from Harry. She just wanted him to be there for her in the middle of the night, when the feeling of the blankets covering her in bed caused her to panic.

Harry met her gaze and saw the tiny plea in her eyes. "Okay. I won't, then."

"The Calming Draught helped a lot. Thanks," Hermione whispered. She poked at a couple of leaves on the ground with her wand, scorching them. The Calming Draught had helped, but every inch of her skin still felt like a live wire, twitching with the weight of her jumper.

Harry put on the kettle, rubbing one hand tiredly over his face. "You don't have to thank me. It's the least I can do to help you."

"Here. Try something with me," Hermione said suddenly, lying on her back toward the edge of the tent and extending her feet straight up to rest on the tent wall above her. "The Muggle therapist back home used to have me do this when I was feeling overwhelmed. It's supposed to help you get blood to your brain or something."

Harry joined her, propping his feet up beside hers. "Hey, this is actually kind of comfortable." He hesitated. "What triggered it tonight?"

"I don't know. The thought of his hands on my skin. Not being able to stop him. Not being able to escape." Her words were coming out in fragmented sentences, but it was all that her tired lungs would allow.

They sat in silence for a few moments. Harry adjusted his feet on the tent wall, rocking them back and forth slightly.

"Did you know that the human body is constantly replicating itself? Making new cells and getting rid of the old ones?"

"I did go to Muggle school for a few years, 'Mione," Harry replied with a chuckle.

"Your body grows a new skin approximately every three weeks. That means that my body is clean, technically. There isn't a single cell on me that he's actually touched."

Harry turned his head to look at her. She was clenching and unclenching her fists silently.

Sensing his gaze, Hermione turned her head toward Harry's. "So why does my skin itch like I can't get him out of it? Why do I want to rip my skin off to be rid of any piece of him at all?" Her voice sounded choked, and she turned away to look at the ceiling again.

"I don't know," Harry replied, wishing that he could just pull his friend close and comfort her. "I don't know."

"It's funny," she said suddenly, in a voice that implied that there was nothing funny at all about what she was about to say. "We're fighting a war, and my PTSD is from one drunken night."

They sat in silence, both knowing that it was more than just a drunken night that plagued her and that the war would cause its own problems one day, if they ever lived to see its end.

oOoOo

Hermione sat facing the fire, taking a sly gulp of Calming Draught from the flask that she now never let stray far from her side. Ron was back, and his loud-mouthed, hotheaded, obnoxious presence had shattered the quiet routine that Hermione had established with Harry.

It wasn't that Hermione hadn't missed Ron over the past weeks, because she had. But the sharp sting of his betrayal still lingered in the back of her mind, and his absence had hurt. But more importantly, he knew nothing of the true events of that fateful night or of the nightmares that still plagued Hermione constantly.

She had begun casting silencing charms around her bed while she slept, lest Ron wake up in response to her panicked crying or screaming. The Calming Draught was her constant companion because – well – Hermione had never realized how much it helped to have someone walk through the dark nights and the flashbacks with her. Harry's calming words and his reassuring silences when there were no words to say helped her deal with the emotions welling up inside her more than she had realized. With Ron around again, it was hard to find time to talk to Harry about her burgeoning panic. And waking up from the nightmares without him was a strain on already-high-strung nerves.

The Calming Draught was a rudimentary cure. It masked the panic imperfectly, allowing her to interact with Harry and Ron on a level that was almost normal. She felt as though she were floating through each day in a haze, but the panic in her chest and the agitation of her nerves was momentarily calmed. She could still feel it just beneath the surface, but she could function.

When she had the rare opportunity to see her face reflected in a mirror or in the calm surface of a lake, Hermione tried not to look. She didn't want to see the dull eyes, the lank hair, the pale and clammy skin – all symptoms of an abuse of Calming Draught. She knew that the potion would one day cast a blanket of apathy over her entire life, but sometimes Hermione couldn't find it within herself to care.

Ron had lumbered off to the nearby stream, trying to catch some fish by casting at them with his wand, so Harry dropped down beside her.

"Dreamless Sleep lately? I haven't heard you in the middle of the night like I normally do." Harry met her eyes carefully, a mixture of concern and hope mingling in his emerald irises.

"Silencing spells," Hermione admitted.

Harry frowned at her. "You shouldn't have to go through that alone."

"You shouldn't have to either," Hermione responded, clearly referencing his own nightmares. She knew for a fact that Harry frequently cast silence around his bed as well.

"It's different." Harry was playing with the laces on his trainers, fidgeting absently. "My nightmares – when I relive things, I see Cedric dying in the graveyard. I see Sirius passing through the veil."

"What? You think that I can't understand your nightmares just because you re-experience their deaths?"

"Well, yeah," Harry said off-handedly, in a voice that was clearly apprehensive of her next words.

Hermione held up one finger between them. "First of all, you help me with my nightmares despite never having experienced what I did that night." She held up a second finger. "Secondly, rape" – it was the first time that she had forced herself to say the word, and it curdled in her mouth, skittered across her tongue uncomfortably – "isn't as different as you think."

"Yeah?"

"I'm still physically breathing, but something died inside of me that night. I – I don't know. It's the kind of event that forces you to re-evaluate your life, to rebuild yourself from the inside out. Sometimes it doesn't seem so different from death."

Harry reached out his hand and, steeling herself slightly, Hermione took it firmly. She stared into the fire, the crackling almost drowning out the sound of Ron splashing in the stream just beyond the wards.

"You shouldn't be taking that much Calming Draught, you know," Harry said suddenly, his hand tightening slightly around hers. She fought the urge to yank her hand back, ignoring the uncomfortable prickle on the back of her neck from the contact.

"I know."

Later that evening, Hermione settled into her bed for the night. Harry was already burrowed into his cot, facing away from her. Ron had volunteered to take the first watch for the night, and Hermione could see his figure silhouetted against the tent wall in the light of the fire. She raised her wand to cast silence around her bed, then lowered it again.

"Harry?" she ventured quietly, hoping that he hadn't drifted off quite yet. "Can I tell you something?"

"Yeah?" His voice was muffled, but he turned slightly to face her in the dim light of the tent. She knew that her face was probably just a pale blur, as his glasses were somewhere off to the side of his bed.

Hermione hesitated for a moment, but the thought had been weighing on her since their conversation earlier in the day. "Sometimes when I think back to that night . . ." She trailed off, her courage faltering momentarily. "Sometimes I wish that he really had just killed me. Maybe it wouldn't hurt so bad."

The silence that reigned in the tent was heavy, unlike the comfortable or reassuring silences that the two of them usually shared.

After a long moment, Harry cleared his throat, ridding it of the hoarseness of sleep. "For what it's worth . . . I'm really glad that he didn't."

oOoOo

Hermione sat on the edge of the Great Lake, watching the sun come over the horizon and reflect off the still black water.

The war was over. They had truly, finally won, but the cost had been great. The rows of bodies lining the Great Hall weighed heavily on her soul. Fred, Lupin, Tonks, Colin, Lavender – all lives that had been taken far too soon.

The castle was in ruins, parts of it still burning in the pale dawn. She was sure that parts of it would never be fully restored, such as the Room of Requirement, which had been consumed by Fiendfyre as they had fled with the Diadem.

She had destroyed Hufflepuff's cup herself in the Chamber of Secrets, and the fragmented piece of Riddle's soul had dragged up all of the images that she had lived repeatedly in her nightmares. She knew that she would have to tell Ron the truth now, but she wanted a tiny bit of time to prepare herself for the conversation.

She looked toward the burning castle again, squinting in the brightening glare of the sunrise. She counted the towers, and then she counted again, a funny little laugh escaping unconsciously from her mouth. Gryffindor Tower was gone, much of it blasted away and smoldering. The red and gold tapestries in the common room, the squishy armchairs in front of the fire – it was all gone. Her bed – his bed – they were nothing but ash drifting in a Scotland sky.

The tower would be rebuilt along with the rest of Hogwarts over the summer, ready for a new group of students who would never understand the devastation that had happened here just months before. But the dormitory that was seared into the back of her eyelids had burned. The bedsheets that she felt against her back in her dreams every night had been reduced to embers.

She felt a presence beside her and looked over to see Harry settle onto the grass beside her. There was grime smeared across his face, and blood was dripping slowly down the side of his face from a cut above his eyebrow. He looked exhausted, but she could see the burden that had been lifted from his shoulders – and perhaps from his very soul now that a piece of Voldemort no longer resided in his mind.

"No more Calming Draught, okay?" His voice was hoarse, raspy.

Hermione pulled the flask of the potion from her bag and looked at it, rubbing her thumb along the smooth glass. She sighed deeply, knowing that she would have to face the trauma fully again, free from the coping mechanism that she had clung to over the past months.

Harry held out his hand, and she handed the flask to him. In one smooth motion, he pulled his arm back and threw the flask into the lake. They both watched it sink quickly beneath the dark surface of the water.

"Maybe the Giant Squid will find some use for it," Hermione said idly, eyes still fixed on the place where the flask had disappeared. She could almost feel the loss of the potion already.

"We'll get through this together," Harry whispered in a voice that made her think for a moment that the rebuilding could be more difficult than the battle. Learning to live again – it was a process that came with no instructions or guidelines.

Hermione glanced over at Harry, who had returned his gaze to the broken silhouette of Hogwarts across the lake. Her eyes followed his, still fixing themselves stubbornly on the smoldering remnants of Gryffindor Tower.

There was beauty in the burning.