"Hermione, I know those curses are forbidden and all, but if Crookshanks rips up my homework one more time, I will seriously Avada Kedavra his orange butt without any guilt."

The cat's owner laughs so gleefully that Ginny can't help but scowl at her from her desk. Hermione is sitting cross-legged on the couch, the homework destroyer in question currently curled in the dip of the older witch's lap. The tangerine coated feline seems to make his squashed, Persian face almost smug as he rears his head back to gaze at Ginny from his perch. Ginny resists the absolutely mental urge to make a face at him.

"He's such a darling, though." Hermione scoops the lump of fur upward, her nose dipping into the mane around his neck. "Aren't you, Crookyshanks? Aren't you just the sweetest?"

Ginny rolls her eyes so hard she risks spraining them, dipping her quill into the black bottle to her right before she begins scribbling again. "Unlike you, Mrs. Graduate, I still have a whole year left of studying to do and I'd rather not have to explain to McGonagall how all of my essays were eaten by a vindictive, miniature lion."

The other girl just laughs, sliding flat on her back to gaze up at the high pointed ceiling of Ginny's room. Hermione likes it here; the Burrow has always been a home to her, a soft place filled with pink-cheeked redheads. Her fingers comb through Crookshanks' brassy coat while her russet eyes draw shapes in the air above her. Of course, while the Weasley house still has that warm, comfortable feeling, like a mother's arms, everyone can feel the hole perforated almost literally in the walls like a crater.

Fred's absence is a physical thing, something tangible that touches all of the Weasleys and their guests. It's cold and steel-like, sharp, and sometimes it feels so positively real that Hermione thinks they all might start bleeding. Sometimes, they do, though the blood is clear and salty and flows down sorrowed cheeks at the dinner table while they all stare at the empty seat beside George. It feels like more than crying and Hermione can only compare it to an open wound weeping in sync with their heartbeats and pulsing; every moment they keep on living is another reminder of who isn't.

It's nearly August, but time is a slow bandaid, a snail-like stitching process that seems to hurt more than it heals. Hermione props herself up on her elbows, Crookshanks grumpily leaping from her stomach and onto the floor. The witch's eyes are on Ginny, bent over her parchment, the gray feather flicking almost furiously with her words. Hermione feels her throat tighten, slowly pushing herself straight, legs swooping to the floor. Ginny doesn't look up. The thick lines between her light brows spell out words only Hermione can read and she wants nothing more than to erase them - replace them.

Hermione has never really known death, minus the one time her bird died when she was nine. But even then, she knew it was just part of the cycle that is life; things die, they decompose, they feed the soil, plants grow, a cow eats it, and it all starts over again. Before she went to Hogwarts, before death became an actual thing Hermione had to fear, death was just scientific. Just nature. That's the way Hermione has always calculated things, like math equations, life plus insert variable here (age, illness, accident, homicide) equals inevitable death. It's how things are supposed to happen. Naturally.

But death is different when you feel its fingers grasp cold and hard around the throat of someone whose face is a permanent part of your daily life, something your eyes are just used to seeing and actively seek out when it't no longer there, even when you know it won't be. It's different when it brushes through a house of a family you love, a girl you love, and leaves her tainted with deep, carved out holes. It's different when it touches you. And that's when Hermione realized that it's not like math or science or nature at all; it's cruel torture thrown upon humans without any sympathy because the universe is anything but fair.

Hermione has seen the kind of damage death can do, the chaos it leaves in its wake. She has seen the lights in Ginny's eyes slowly diminish as every morning cracks the dawn with the same, irrevocable truth; Fred is dead. It makes Hermione wonder how often Ginny's dreams are better than reality.

Ginny gives a startled jump as warm arms close around her neck from behind. Hermione's nose is just behind the redhead's ear, the soft inhale of her breath like a soft melody Ginny has subconsciously known her whole life but never knew what instrument it was supposed to come out of. The quill lays flat on the parchment, her writing hand reaching up to curl gently about Hermione's slender wrist. Beneath the flesh, in her veins, Ginny can feel her heartbeat. Her own sounds hollow in her ears, a rock tossed down a cave, only echoes.

"I promise to keep Crookshanks out of the room from now on," she mumbles, the warm flesh of her lips paintbrushing her words on Ginny's ear.

The Gryffindor takes a deep breath that she ends up holding for a long time, the smell of Hermione - vanilla and books - swelling in her lungs like helium in balloons, like she'll just leviosa right through the ceiling. "I didn't mean to snap at you." Ginny turns her lips down to feel the soft, pale hairs on Hermione's arms on her lips. "I'm just, you know, school's starting soon and I'll be away and I won't be able to see you again until Christmas and -"

"Shh." The soft coo makes Ginny melt against the back of her chair, head falling backwards to the feather-light strokes of Hermione's lips on her neck. The older witch is an antidote for the darkness that so often plague's Ginny like an illness, making her unreasonably angry and mean, even to the girl she loves most.

"I'm sorry."

"Stop apologizing." Hermione's voice rolls against Ginny's collarbone in a cool breath, the wispy curls of her dark hair tickling the redhead's cheek. "I don't blame you one bit, Ginny Weasley. I know it's hard. I know you're trying."

The hand not noosed around Hermione's wrist hovers over Ginny's chest. She thinks she could push her hand right through her body sometimes, the way Fred not being here makes her feel. Their family is large and some of the age differences are wide, but they're close-knit. Ginny loves every single one of her brothers for unique reasons, no one more than the other, all the same. But other than grandparents who are supposed to die, Fred is the first thing she's lost that's really left a scar. And it's not like the one Harry wear like a badge of pride for the loss of his parents, it's something hidden and painful that punches hard into her gut when she walks by Fred and George's old room or the hollow space at the table or the way her mother looks at their family portraits on the walls and the way George can't look in the mirror anymore and -

"Hermione."

The older girl crushes the redhead to her chest, the movement so fast they both fall to the floor with hard thuds. It makes Ginny laugh, sparingly, softly, but the beaten breaths break into sobs that crash against Hermione's shirt, tears bursting with the strength of tidal waves through the dams of her eyelids. Hermione rubs her back like it'll iron out something tangled inside of her, fill in the holes that the past few months had punched into her.

And then they're kissing, Ginny straddling Hermione's hips on the floor with her fingers bunching the material of the other girl's shirt into loose fists as Hermione's hands snake into a field of orange hair. The kiss is a thousand promises that can't be worded, even by someone as well read as Hermione, it says I miss him and I know all in the same heated breath, and it breaks with heavy pants on both ends as brown eyes settle into blue like rocks in a pond. Ginny knows that the witch beneath her, warm and breathing, with a beating heart and gentle hands, is the only buoy that's going to keep her from sinking.

Hermione's fingertips graze the pink cheekbones of Ginny's pale, freckled face before she brings her closer and mouths an inaudible I love you against her parted lips, watching the younger girl's eyelids flutter as if the words are physically crawling down her throat to pool warm and soft in her stomach. Hermione won't let Ginny drown because she's seen the kind of damage death can do, but she's also seen phoenixes shaking off the ashes and soaring back into their home in the sky.

The ripping sound of nails in parchment wrenches the two apart, Ginny flinging madly for the desk where a pompous Crookshanks sits with a damn near grin on his face. Ginny spews threats loudly at the silent feline and Hermione laughs and laughs and she's so glad that Fred's humor lives on.

A/N: I'm on a bit of a kick, it seems, with these two. THEY'RE JUST SO PERFECT.

Also this oneshot is kind of ... weird, but I needed to get it out so I did SO THERE.