shattered

Nice Day

Disclaimer: What point is there in writing this when it’s so obvious that I do not own Harry Potter?

A/N: I like the beginning, but I’m not really satisfied with the ending…

He got the news one Saturday morning when the birds were chirping in the trees outside Malfoy Manor and the sun was shining down merrily and the sky was very clear and blue and there was just the faintest hint of a breeze, and it was a nice day, the kind where you decide to go on a picnic for no reason except that you want to.

And then he read the missive and suddenly, it wasn’t a nice day after all.

Because the birds were too loud and the sun was too bright and the sky was stupid and the breeze was pointless and it was a stupid day, the kind where you want to go sit in a room and stare at nothing.

Really, he wasn’t sure why he cared so much.

Yeah, so Granger had gone and done herself in. Potter’s Mudblood friend was gone. Boo-hoo, let’s all go and bawl our eyes out. Not.

So many times he had fantasized about her death—in the most gruesome ways possible, he had thought, though now that the War was over and he had lived through it, he realized that they weren’t all that gruesome after all. Funny how everyone thinks that they’re so cynical when they’re not really, they’re innocent, and they don’t realize it until they are cynical, and then they’re too late to appreciate the innocence.

He’d dreamed about gouging her eyes out with—not his fingers, that was too dirty, but maybe a stick. He’d dreamed about stripping her and whipping her, and maybe he’d drooled a little over her body too—after all, he was a teenage boy. But funny, he’d always dreamed of the death being quick—not all that slow, you know? Oh of course he had thought of torturing her to death, sort of. But it had never crossed his mind, for instance, to Sectumsempra her and leave her there lying on the ground, blood seeping out of her wounds as her face grew steadily whiter and whiter, and the black blood of death bubbled out of her mouth, and she gave a sort of gurgling sigh and the breath caught and rattled in her chest and suddenly her head lolled and her eyes were vacant.

He’d seen that in the War.

Neither had he dreamed about Crucio-ing her to death, not really. Oh, the idea had crossed his mind, but he had discarded in favor of more inventive ideas, because he hadn’t known then what the Crucio was really like. He hadn’t seen the victims of it scream, hoarse cries ripped from their throat as if with a claw shoved down their mouth, hadn’t seen them arch their back helplessly from the excruciating pain until, in some cases, their spines actually snapped from the strain and they lay there, flopping about a little like dead fish. Hadn’t seen them drum their heels on the floor in a sort of sick tattoo of death and doom until the drumming stopped gradually, slowed down until their feet lay limp on the floor with the rest of their legs, their heels black and blue from the beating they had administered. Hadn’t seen them roll around on the floor with agony, clutching at their faces, their chests, ripping, tearing, doing anything to take away the pain that was thrumming in their very blood, trying their best to escape this miserable hell that was their body until they were willing to do anything, even attack themselves, even draw their claws of fingernails down their cheeks, across their chests, blood pooling from the fierce cuts.

He’d seen that in the War too.

She hadn’t done any of that. She’d done herself in, after all, and she would have been smart enough to take the easy way out. Even though she was a stupid Gryffindor, she hadn’t had the reckless stupid rush-into-everything-and-get-yourself-killed-and-suffer-needlessly kind of courage, just a do-it-anyway-but-with-caution kind of courage, and she hadn’t been one to suffer pain needlessly.

She’d done it in the library—of course—and it had been a long time before they had found her corpse.

Corpse. What an ugly word.

Smart girl that she was, she had searched for least disfiguring, most painless way to get out, to escape from it all. They’d found piles of books in her room later, piles of books about ways to die and kill people, books on Dark Arts most of all, but some Light books too, because after all the Dark Arts were mostly to cause pain.

She’d found one at last, a Dark Art way of all ways, he’d never thought she’d had it in her to do that, little goody-goody-two-shoes that she was. Wasn’t that odd? She’d been the Little-Miss-Know-It-All, and she was still that, her death showed that, but she’d also been the teacher’s pet, Potter’s little pet dog, if anything, frankly. It had been pathetic to see her running after them, warning them, wasting her brains on them, begging them not to do that, not to do this, and they hadn’t listened and got their arses in danger, and she’d had to save them yet again, but still she’d come running to them wagging her tail when they called, licking their heels and smiling pathetically.

They’d ignored her, but she’d just kept coming.

And now she was dead.

Served them right.

She had enchanted a book with a very rare Dark curse, one that took a lot of energy out of the caster. It had been, of all things, her favorite—Hogwarts, A History, and it had been her favorite edition. The pages were worn with careful handling, the cover burnished with the faint tan of old age. As far as the Aurors could tell, she had cast it the night before, hiding in the basement with all the Potions experiment, so that any magical residue or effect could be blamed on them.

Then she had hidden it under her bed, handling it carefully with gloves, and went to sleep. The next day, she had gotten up like nothing was wrong, smiling and talking and eating breakfast. Then after dinner she had gone into the library, and she hadn’t come out again. At first they had taken no notice—after all, wasn’t she always in the library?

But then it had been past curfew, and of course then they were nervous—since when did their ‘Mione break the rules? So they went looking for her, and then they found her in the library.

The curse was very inventive really. All you had to do was reach a certain page of the book, and touch it, and a flash of light would go off, and you’d be dead. It was totally and utterly painless, and, like the Avada Kedavra, it left no mark whatsoever on its victim’s body.

What was more, after its first victim, its potency was spent. It was made for one person and one person only, perfect for assassinations. In fact, if Granger hadn’t left them a note and all those books, they would have had no idea what had happened. Typical of her to make sure that no one else got hurt, even though she was killing herself because of them.

They found her, sitting still, her back still hunched over the book, her copper-brown strands of frizzy hair all poufed out around her, framing her little heart of a face, which had turned so white and cold by the time they had thought to look in the library.

There was no chance of reviving her. She had been stone-cold.

The owl they had sent had been nothing but a courtesy, really. The others had had no idea of what they’d shared. But he knew.

Oh, they weren’t lovers or any shit like that. Weren’t secretly waiting to elope. Hell, if they had been, he would have made sure she wouldn’t even think of doing herself in like that.

It was just…a connection they shared. All it had taken was one glance—two pairs of eyes meeting across a crowded Hall at Hogwarts, and one shared bridge of pain and loneliness and sorrow.

And that was all.

They hadn’t talked much—in fact, they hadn’t talked at all. No change had been made in their outward exterior, except that Granger did not join her two demigods in vilifying him, and there was an absence of Mudblood taunts during his and Potter’s confrontations in the corridors.

Shared looks over people’s heads in classes and Halls. Brown eyes meeting grey.

Sometimes, at night, she would go to the Astronomy Tower and just sit there, looking out at the stars. After the first week, he joined her, and they would sit there together, not touching, not looking, not talking for Merlin’s sake, definitely not talking, but just—sitting. Sitting together, gazing out the window at the stars, only a slight blur in their peripheral vision and a comfort to know that the other was still with you.

The closest they had ever gotten to a conversation was one Astronomy Tower night. She had left before he had, that time, and after awhile he had gotten up to follow her. It was only then that he had noticed the leather-bound diary on the floor.

She had left it behind, no doubt, and being the sneaky Slytherin that he was, he had picked it up and read it. He felt no guilt about it even now. He knew her well enough to know that if she had truly not wanted him to see, she would have placed a password or something else of that sort on the parchment pages. And she hadn’t.

So he’d flipped through the pages, skimming here, pausing here, reading her curiously cramped and computer-like handwriting on the crackling parchment, finally seeing exactly what her life was like.

She was a funny creature. All books and quills and studies there. All making sure that the teachers weren’t disappointed in her, that Potter and his Weasel were proud of her. Though he had scoffed at the time, he couldn’t help wondering what it was like to have people you wanted to make proud.

They had never spoken of the incident—indeed, they had never spoken at all, and yet—and yet—

When he joined their side during the War, she had known why.

And still, it was odd now, thinking of the diary, reading the missive yet again, and staring at his hands. Because this was Granger they were talking about. If anything, he would have expected Potter to do himself in, that intense passionate stupid creature with those fits of rages and self-guilt in which he would do anything and everything, and that stupid hero-complex that messed his life up.

Or maybe that little Weaselette, Tinny or Finny or whatever the hell her name was. She was weak, he could see it in her face. She flared up with a temper and was a feisty little kid, but she was weak. She broke easily, as had been proved in second year. Too much emotional stress, and she had a breakdown in which she might have killed herself.

But never in a million years would he have expected—Granger.

Why her? She was the kind of person who enjoyed life.

You might have said that she was the kind of person who would have viewed life as a duty, and maybe she had. Maybe she had seen it as a guidebook of rules to follow.

But she had enjoyed it too. He had seen the sparkle in her eyes when she found what she was looking for during her research of those huge old dusty tomes. He had seen the way her face came to light while she was studying, or when she finished an essay, or when she was praised by her teachers.

She loved living, goddamnit! She loved it! She even liked the way Potter and Weasley were so helpless and always came running to her for help, because they were so ‘cute’ when they did it! Because she could feel needed, and if there was one thing Hermione Granger needed in life, it was to feel needed.

She liked doing homework, she liked walking up stairs, she liked listening to birds sing, she even liked brushing her teeth! She took pleasure in the simplest of things. She was the only person he had known who could open the curtains in the morning, look out the window, and laugh for something as stupid as the fact as the sun was shining.

Yes, she had been goddamn annoying. There had been times when he had wanted to wring her little neck, even after their little connection thing. When she had sighed and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling in a superior way, and given the answer in a huffy little voice that practically screamed ‘am I the only intelligent one left in this place’ and then smiled a little. When she woke up in the morning and began frantically scouring the books for the answer, and, even worse, made you do it too. When she snipped at you for being yourself, when she called you a great prat, when she slapped you on the face. When she nagged at you for not doing your homework, even though you barely knew her and she really should have stuck to Potter and Weasley. When she bossed you around and then got pouty when you didn’t listen. When she was an insufferable little know-it-all who you really couldn’t stand.

But that was just part of her.

That was just part of who she was, and never in a million years would he have dreamed that she would have killed herself like that, because it was wrong! Because she liked being bossy and know-it-all and annoying energetic, and she liked complaining to everyone about Weasel’s insensitivity, and she even liked being kicked away from the stupid Duo and then running back!

She liked it, and she would never have ever, ever given it all up!

It was wrong.

The universe was spinning on its axis, but now it was all tilted because Hermione Granger had killed herself, and it was stupid stupid stupid, and nothing was right anymore. She was strong. She wouldn’t kill herself. Never.

The universe was out of place, and he needed to make it right again, only he couldn’t, because Hermione Granger was dead and never in his life would it ever be alright again.

Hermione Granger was dead.

And it was not a nice day.