Molecules
i. September, Sixth Year
"I could see them on the flipside of a molecule, but
I have all the energy I can take for now"
And the life was the breath, or the choices you made, or both. Choices you've made early on will dog you for the rest of your life, Hermione thought. And then, much more sadly, Dogging.
She felt the air quit her mouth and, measuring the oxygen like lacefly wings, took another breath. She'd left grammar school after the fifth year, but even there she'd learned that no inorganic matter contains carbon and that the CO2 you exhaled was the carbon in wood in wands in dogs in bones.
Dogs and bones.
Sirius hadn't left any bones. Not that she knew of. In an adolescent haze, she had decided that the rest of him must be in the air, and on the tiny burning dog star, the heaviest star known to man, orbits its brother star every fifty years, first discovered by the Dogon people of west Africa, invisible to the naked eye. Science, fifth year. Hogwarts, first year. She had grown superstitious about exhaling around Harry; after all, carbon was carbon. Air with carbon in it--air with Sirius in it--might bring comfort, she thought. In the Great Hall at breakfast, she ignored Ron's hurt eyes as she leaned in closer to Harry and exhaled on his cheek.
Life itself is breathing.
ii. May, Sixth Year
"I'm having trouble focussing
'cause all I see in front of me
is you when we're finally alone"
She stared at the back of Ron's hand and remembered how, yesterday, that hand had slid up her knees and under her skirt. She felt the chair against her back and remembered being pushed against the wall in the Room of Requirement. She felt her chest move as she breathed, her head getting lighter as she remembered how her chest had heaved yesterday, and how it was two more hours till class is out and then my back will be against the wall again with his hands pushing up my skirt again and oh, it'll be lovely again and she couldn't think of anything else with him breathing next to her like that.
iii. 2000
"If I'm not feeling out the flipside,
maybe I'm supposed to be here.
Maybe you're supposed to be here, too."
Hermione was trying to ignore a lot of things these days. Harry's death. Charlie's death. Her parents' deaths. The night the last had happened, she'd come into the common room pale and smiling. They'd waited to see what she would do. She'd spread her hands before her.
"Harry," she'd choked, "Harry, we've something else in common now."
She'd collapsed in a pile of shrieking laughter, thinking how perfectly absurd it was that her parents just weren't there anymore. Poof! Gone! No more. Harry had turned even whiter watching her, and that had only made her laugh harder. Harry! Whiter! She hadn't noticed as the common room fell silent save for her raucous yelps, and kept laughing for long after she did notice, long past gasping and well into hiccups and then dry heaves and then a puddle of vomit on the floor, in her hair and down the front of her robes, and the house-elves would have to clean it up, and she was laughing about that as she stomped her scarf down into it, thinking bugger it all, I'll free them! and her larynx felt like it was cracking and burning under the strain and her mouth was sour, bitter, hot, and her eyes were even hotter and she looked at Ron's clear blue ones and saw something in them crack!. They had crack!ed again after Charlie died. And again! with each casualty after that. And when Harry died, Ron's eyes looked like her mother's blue willow china after the Death Eaters had finished with the kitchen.
But she tried not to think about that. She also tried not to think about how Ron only wanted to take her from behind these days, and how he kept on asking her if she wouldn't like her hair shorter, wasn't it hot long like that? Wasn't it time for a change? and how he always asked her to wear pants more often. And could she lose some weight? he'd mumble. He felt like he was fucking his mother.
She'd never considered it before. She'd look at her hips in the mirror for a second, turn away, look again, and they were just there. If she lost them, where would they go? What would they be? Energy, she knew that, but ... where would they go?
Hips were for having children and for making them. He hadn't touched her hips themselves in a long time, just dug his fingers into her fat (fat that was supposed to be there) to wrap his hands around the bone. Not touching her anywhere she was soft.
She had always imagined their marriage filled with small yelling redheaded children, and she realized again the sisterhood between absence and loss. She knew now that there was indeed carbon in things that didn't exist, as the emptiness of her house, her bed, her parents' spot in the world, her wedding vows shook her till she fell. Dropped to her knees on the bathroom floor, she looked at the trace of tender fat on her breasts that said two weeks late.
She closed her eyes and listened to her body knitting new molecules together. And the decision that had been broiling inside of her for months, to let go Ron the Husband and meet again Ron, your new-old queer best friend surged through her shoulders and back, and she realized too that Ron didn't have to fancy women in order to be a damn good father to this tiny, odd amalgam of themselves. He'd cry of course, and he'd feel guilty for not telling her exactly how much he'd loved Harry. He'd be relieved that he didn't have to pretend anymore, and he'd feel even guiltier because of that. Hermione's own relief and tears shook her from the ground up as she thought in words so simple that I sound all of eight years old, but we'll be happier. We'll both be happier apart.
He's here, she thought, panting through her tears. I'm here, and he's here, and it's now, and we can't waste any more of our lives, we just can't.
Hermione's urgency pulled her to her feet and then to the door, calling down the hall for Ron. As she walked towards his answer, Hermione drew in breath, swaying under the rather odd feeling of plunging back into her body after what felt like a very long absence.