morituro: of someone who is next or destined to die

rating: g
genre: angst
pairings: it's about the recognition and mirroring of hermione and remus, and all the possibilities that war and grief strip away.
POV: Hermione
author's notes: this prompt came for the entirety of my seventeen year old self's entire life. this, like, echoes back through the years to punch her in the face.
word count: 1,039

There's a lot of pain in the interminable time between dying and waking up. Lifetimes between the realization that taking Dolohov's voice was not enough and prying her heavy, heavy eyelids open.

As she drifts between oceans of pain, Hermione wonders if she will ever be able to look at the colour purple and not flinch.

After several false starts and half-remembered dreams, the taste of potions in her ears and the echoes of almost familiar voices in her mouth, Hermione finally blinks herself awake.

There is something bitter about seeing the familiar worn sweater at her bedside. Like the darkest of chocolate or freshly harvested wolfsbane.

The last days, weeks, years are tangled up in her pain and her long sleep, but Hermione knows that something terrible has happened. More terrible than what put her in this hospital bed, the ceiling above her glaring white under the midmorning sun. (She will remember this moment for the rest of her life, however long that is.)

Professor Lupin startles when he finally notices that she's awake, his gaze returning from whatever far off time or place that was holding it, arrested.

"Hermione," he breathes, "you're finally awake."

Hermione coughs, deep in her chest, enough to split her apart along her new seam, and suddenly Professor Lupin explodes into a flurry, helping her get propped up on her many pillows and getting a straw to her mouth.

"Slowly," he warns.

Hermione does her best to do as he instructs, but the moment the water touches her tongue, she is gulping, like a desert plant or a wounded thing.

She whimpers quietly when he pulls the glass away, and he chuckles sympathetically.

"I know, but you'll make yourself sick."

Hermione knows this, but it's another thing when she doesn't know the last time she took a sip of anything that wasn't the potions coating her mouth fuzzy.

"Where are the others?" Hermione finally croaks.

Professor Lupin closes his eyes for a moment and Hermione can't breathe.

"Your friends are all fine. Harry, Ginny, Mr Longbottom and Miss Lovegood have all been released. Ron is two beds down from you."

And Hermione inhales, then, like it's punched into her.

They're alive. They're all alive.

Wait.

Hermione didn't know the word "your" could contain so much sorrow.

No no no.

Except, well.

She already knows, doesn't she?

She shouldn't make him say it out loud.

It would be a cruelty.

But, well. Hermione has never stopped for anything in the need to know.

"Who?" she asks.

It sounds like a wand snapping in two or the rustle of the Whomping Willow.

Professor Lupin smiles.

It is a ghastly thing.

A dead thing.

"Peter and I are the last of the Marauders," he says. "I wonder which one of us is next?"

It is a bleak thing to say to a sixteen year old girl, but Hermione has died for lifetimes, and now she is at war.

A werewolf will only answer the call of his own kind, but there has always been kinship between them, Hermione and Remus.

If their lives were a storybook, then maybe they would be mirrors.

Instead, all they get are shards of reflections and sun in their eyes, and moments where their gazes catch and tear and in the galaxies between them and who they have been and who they have become is a field of flowers blooming, never to be realized.

Hermione has a single great love of her life and a ghost of what never should have been and what never was.

In a different world, maybe. But they don't get a different world, they get this one, where Remus is tired and fraying and Hermione has old eyes and fire enough to outlast the sun, and they are, the both of them, dying for what they are and who they love and all the desperate lonely bravery of their souls.

"You're being an idiot," Hermione tells him.

She wouldn't have, even three months ago, but she has a bag strapped to her hip and the only person who remembers the girl she was, eight years old and crying because she doesn't understand why she can't make friends, the tea pot exploding in the kitchen, is her, now.

Remus clenches his jaw and doesn't make eye contact with her.

"Fine," Hermione rolls her eyes, "I won't tell you what you already know."

Remus does turn to glare at her then, but Hermione doesn't finch.

They stand shoulder to shoulder watching the dancing.

"You should go dance," Remus says, finally.

"I wanted to talk with you."

Unspoken between them is the fact that this moment cannot last. It's all about to shatter out from underneath them.

"You'll be safe."

Hermione smiles wanly. "I'll do my best to make sure Harry is ok, Remus."

He frowns. "Don't just take care of the boys; take care of yourself, too."

Hermione's smile deepens, bitter, all teeth.

They both know what they will do when it comes down to it. Remus just never got the chance.

"We'll be as safe and smart as I can manage," she promises.

"Well, then, there's no better chance in the world."

Hermione breathes that in and lets herself sway into his shoulder, the two of them caught for a breath, caught on a wave of all their possible futures splintering in front of them, until the only one true path is left.

Hermione closes her eyes and swallows hard.

She doesn't believe in divination, but she has a terrible feeling she knows how this ends.

"I'll see you soon, Remus," she says, instead of crying, and presses a soft kiss to his cheek.

Harry lives, in the end.

Hermione does her best to ensure it.

Remus doesn't, and Hermione cannot stand to look at him spread on the Great Hall's stone floor.

There was no one to tell her he is dead, but she didn't need it.

She could only have ever saved one of them, and it was always going to be Harry.

On that, they would always be in agreement.

It is cold comfort.

Hermione grasps Ron's hand tighter and presses her thigh closer to Harry and wonders when it will be enough.