I was reading sad post-war fics last night, so I can only blame them for the tone of this. The song (and title) is Weightless, by Black Lab.

Enjoy. Hopefully.

ooo

Weightless

ooo

Who is to know the truth?
When no-one is left
And no-one is there to save you

ooo

Hermione remembers, with clarity, those times when their biggest worries were whether house points were to be deducted or not. She acknowledges that there was once a time when she loved her books because they were enjoyable, and not merely because they were an escape.

She remembers, but remembering helps nobody.

She walks into her apartment, feeling the warmth hit her like a wave. She closes the door firmly shut, and walks into her kitchen. It's dark in here, the sort of dark that creeps up your arms and hides beneath your collar. She switches on a light, and turns on the kettle.

She stands there long after the kettle has boiled, staring at nothing. Finally, any need for a cup of tea forgotten, she walks into her bedroom and collapses in a heap on her bed.

But she does not sleep. Because she knows the dreams will haunt her.

And the dreams are much, much worse than insomnia.

ooo

She sees Harry one morning, and they talk over cups of coffee. He tells her about his job, tells her that life as an Auror is wonderful and that they're getting new recruits from France next week.

He tells her that Draco Malfoy has joined them. He's changed a lot, Harry says her with a small smile. He's almost bearable now. Funny, huh?

Yeah, she replies, but her voice is lost in the chatter and the clatter of dishes. Funny.

When she meets up with Ron, he is as cheerful as ever. He looks older, age creating creases between his eyes and by the corners of his mouth. But they are happy creases.

"Sometimes I wish we could go back to those first years, when we were young and hadn't experienced anything," he confides one day. "Those times were so much easier, you know? I still have nightmares about it. I still wake up covered in sweat, dreaming of Fred." His eyes are still cheerful, but now they are masked with a thin layer of sadness.

She knows exactly what he means.

ooo

Time is relative, as is everything. It moves achingly slowly, but still with an underlying rushed pace, as if it has someplace to be. She sometimes loses track of time. Her job at the Ministry is quiet, and she handles the theory side of things, and that's okay.

She doesn't want to do any field work. It might bring more nightmares.

She'll do anything to escape the nightmares.

One day, Harry sends her an owl. Having a meet-up with some old friends and some of the Aurors from work, it says, his messy script creating smudges over the page. You should come.

Poor Harry. Trying to save from herself. Sometimes, she catches him stealing glances. She knows that he notices the tired circles under her eyes, and the pallid tone of her skin. Ginny does likewise. Ron doesn't notice, but she doesn't take offence. That's just Ron for you.

The question is, will she go? Will she risk meeting somebody less than desirable and have them see her in the state she's in?

Concealer, she thinks resolutely. That will hide the physical effects.

And as for the hollow look in her eyes, well, people rarely noticed that. They never looked hard enough to notice, anyway.

She will go, she decides. If only to escape this solitude.

ooo

Malfoy is the first person she sees.

Well, she doesn't really see him. Her vision has gone blurry, hazy from another night of little sleep. She feels almost as if she is walking in a daze, as if it is another person who is walking through the door to Harry and Ginny's house, greeting her old schoolmates with a wide smile that is so fake it makes her cheeks hurt.

Eventually, she is faced with him. She has collapsed on one of the plush sofas, tired and weak. It has been so long since she has slept, she thinks. Maybe, just a little nap…

"You have to face me, sometime, you know," he tells her, matter-of-factly. He has seated himself opposite her and is smiling at her.

No. That can't be right. Draco Malfoy doesn't smile. He smirks, leers, sneers, and simpers, but Draco Malfoy does not smile.

"I wasn't aware that I was avoiding you," she shoots back, although she has been avoiding him, and it's obvious. But she's tired and she just wants him to leave her alone. Or, at least, let her sleep.

"Granger, are you alright?" His eyes are concerned. "You look…"

"Work," she blurts out, as if she needs to explain herself to him. "Work is busy. You know. Tired."

Fatigue has pushed her past the point of comprehensibility, it seems.

"Right," he says, looking disbelieving. She doesn't blame him. "I was going to strike up conversation with you, but you hardly look in the state for conversing. Maybe you should get some sleep, Granger." He looks almost pitying, and she hates that.

"No," she says, dragging out the 'o'. "I can't. I can't."

She shouldn't have come. She knew she shouldn't have, but she had come anyway. She was so stupid.

His face disappears from her view, and she's oddly disappointed. Why, though? This is Draco Malfoy, who tried to kill her and her friends, who was assigned to kill Dumbledore, who became a Death Eater.

Who also redeemed himself beyond most people's belief.

Who has just shown more care for her wellbeing than any of her friends have in months.

"Come on, Granger," he murmurs, and then another face appears in her vision, brown hair and flickering green eyes. Together, Harry and Malfoy lift her and place her on the bed in the spare room.

She sleeps, and dreams of Draco Malfoy, lying on the ground, blood pouring from his gut and screams emitting from his throat.

She'll never sleep again, she resolves.

It always goes like this.

ooo

When she wakes up, she first thinks that there's nobody in the room. Gathering her bag and clothes, she prepares to Apparate, to leave the room before Harry or Ginny is aware of her consciousness.

"Don't even think about it, Granger."

She jumps, turning to stare at him. Malfoy is sitting in the chair beside her bed, watching her with appraising eyes. He has nice eyes, she decides. Grey, and icy, but with a hint of sunlight that appears to be trying to break its way through.

"What are you doing here, Malfoy?" she demands of him. She itches to Apparate, to run away from whatever he might say. Or do.

The Hermione Granger everybody had known and loved five years ago would not have done that. She would have thrown back some biting remark, told him to go bully a Hufflepuff or something of the like.

But she was not that same Hermione Granger; she was exhausted, and cold, and tired, and she did not have the capacity for this much fear or anxiety any more.

"It's a free world, is it not?" He smirks at her, that familiar smirk. She almost cries with relief, seeing that smirk. It's something she is accustomed to. It's something she knows. That is comforting in itself.

She shakes her head at him. "Not any more, Malfoy," she tells him. "Actually, I'm not sure it ever was."

His smile is rueful. "I just wanted to see that you were okay."

She looks up at him, and is confused by what she sees. Concern, mixed with fear. Fear of what? She has no clue, but those are two emotions she can understand.

"I'm fine," she tells him. "Just tired."

And he smiles and tucks her hair behind her ear and it's all very normal and comforting and yet…

Different.

She Disapparates with a crack, and vaguely, she hears his snort and his biting words, "Running away again, Granger?"

But then again, his words don't matter anymore. They're just sound, thoughts. They can't hurt her.

ooo

The second time she sees him, she is positive that somebody has it in for her.

She is sitting at her local park, feeling the sun warm her pale and cold skin, trying to relax after a long day of work.

Granger, her boss had said. You need some rest.

She agrees. But she can't tell him that truth. That she wants to rest. But rest is elusive nowadays. Rest is something to be strived for in dreams, something that slips through her fingers constantly. Rest would entitle letting her guard down, which would lead to the nightmares.

Anything was better than the nightmares.

"Hey, Granger."

The voice appears to come from nowhere, but after further inspection, she discovers that it comes from a bench to her left. "Don't look at me like that," he scolds, one eyebrow raised. "I'm not stalking you or anything."

Hermione stares at him, mouth agape. "What are you doing here?" she demands, like an odd recurring deja-vu.

After some contemplation, Malfoy says, "I live near here." His eyes, those frosty grey orbs of ice and sunshine, watch her with some interest.

"I've never seen you around here before."

He throws her an odd look. "Yes," he says strangely. "Of course you haven't."

Hermione's not entirely sure what this is supposed to mean, but she's not sure she likes it.

She turns on her heel and starts in the other direction. Better to run away than to have to face her past.

But it's true what they say: you can't run forever.

ooo

One night, she comes home to her empty apartment and collapses into her empty bed. She has been fighting sleep and her past for so long that it's gathered up inside her, and explodes out in an array of sobs and memories.

She's positive that this is dying.

Short gasps, her chest constricting. Her hands clutch at the sheets, and she feels as if she's once again watching her life from somebody else's perspective. The writhing girl on the bed is not her.

It is merely the ghost of her.

"Granger?"

Yes, this must be dying. Or maybe insanity. Do you hear the voice's of your old nemeses whilst descending into the throes of madness? She wasn't sure.

She wasn't sure of much of anything anymore, to tell the truth.

"Granger?"

She can't do anything. Her lips are firmly pressed together, and she digs her fingernails into her palms. This is too horrible, she thinks, begging somebody, anybody, for this to end. Too horrible.

Because, for a second, she feels a tiny butterfly of hope unfurl in her gut.

He comes forward and he sits beside her on the bed. She admires the way his hair falls over his face like a windswept curtain. He places a hand on her cheek, and slowly, but surely, her heartbeat slows until it is almost back to normal.

And then she begins to cry.

"Oh, Hermione," he whispers, and a tear rolls down his cheek. In any other time, any other situation, it would seem completely crazy to her that Malfoy just happened to turn up in her apartment, find her having some sort of panic attack, and now he's crying with her

But she doesn't question it. She lets him slip his arms around her and she whispers back, "I'm so tired," but she's not sure if he hears her, she's never sure.

"I know," he says into her hair. "I know." And he speaks as if he knows exactly what she means.

She lifts his shirt off, and he reaches for the clasp of her dress, and then everything merges together in a mess of pain, tears, lust, and blood, and it's beautiful and yet tragic at the same time.

ooo

Monday morning, she wakes up to an empty bed. She has expected no less.

She walks into the kitchen, needing coffee. It suddenly hits her that she slept soundly last night, without dreams, nightmares, or even a trace of restlessness. She feels...rested. Alive.

There is a note on her kitchen table, and she glares at it for a good ten minutes before she picks up the offending parchment. It feels soft between her fingers, welcoming. There is one word scrawled across the parchment.

Tonight?

She tucks the note into her pocket, and throws open the kitchen window. The summer breeze flows through the kitchen, and Crookshanks hops onto her lap and mews.

And then she begins to cry, because she can feel the hope once again settle around her heart, and she has never felt something so beautiful.