Insomnia

Note: The characters here represented are the property of JK Rowling. Absolutely no profits have been derived from this work, and no copyright infringement is intended.

"Harry! Harry, wake up! Harry… HARRY!"

Harry flew upright in his bed with a shout, hand flying to his fiercely burning scar, ears ringing with the sound of breaking crystal and high, rasping screams.

"Hermione. We need to see Dumbledore. We need to see Dumbledore right now!" Stars exploded in his vision.

"What happened? What is it?"

"No time. We have to talk to Dumbledore… there's no time."

With that Harry suddenly shoved her back, leaned over the bed, and threw up.

"Oh, god. I'll get him. It's okay. We'll see Professor Dumbledore."

Less than thirty minutes later, the Headmaster arrived alone at number twelve Grimmauld Place.

Hermione heard his quiet entrance from the kitchen doorway where she stood, staring at Harry. He was seated in a chair pulled up close to the stove, a steaming mug of something at his foot and his head between his hands. Mrs. Weasley was bustling about, inventing things to do all over the kitchen, though there appeared to be little requiring her attention.

"Professor Dumbledore, Harry's in here. He won't tell us what he saw," Hermione said, setting her jaw and dropping her shoulders, physically manifesting her extreme effort to calm herself.

"Thank you, Miss Granger" he said as he approached and then moved past her, stepping into the kitchen and softly closing the wooden door behind him.

Hermione understood herself to be kindly dismissed and moved from the doorway to sit next to a shivering Ginny on the stairs. She provided her companion no comfort as she might have done even three months before. In fact, the only thought that went through her head as she covertly glanced at her twitching companion was Please, god, don't let her start crying.

Professor Dumbledore had only been with Harry for a moment when Mrs. Weasley emerged from the kitchen through the swinging door, looking anxious. She said nothing to the young women on the steps – there was nothing much to say – and settled for joining them with wringing hands.

Several silent minutes passed.

Hermione was leaning forward and sideways with the effort to eavesdrop, pressing her head against the thick ebony banister to her right as she attempted to get closer to the closed door, when she felt it. Her compulsive curiosity caused her to be the only one to feel the Headmaster's simple ward flare to life for just a moment before flickering out again like a candle. She barely had time to glance at her stair partners and register that they had not noticed when the swinging door slowly opened.

The Headmaster stepped into the foyer and twinkled for a moment at the undoubtedly humorous picture the three women presented, huddled up like mice on the stairs. He spoke in a hushed voice so as not to disturb the infamous hallway portrait. "Harry has had a disturbing nightmare, but he's now feeling better and asking to return to bed. He's very tired after the ordeal. I would ask that you all defer your extensive questioning until tomorrow so that he might have a chance to rest." He smiled faintly.

Ginny and Mrs. Weasley stood quickly and silently to retrieve Harry from his chair by the stove. Hermione also rose and stepped towards the kitchen but only to glance at Harry long enough to note that he was dazed and disoriented, and apparently falling asleep on his feet.

Her eyes flicked back to the Headmaster, a question on the tip of her tongue.

"Professor," Hermione began.

"Goodnight, Miss Granger," said Dumbledore softly. He gave her a significant moment's glance over his half moon spectacles before turning and silently disappearing into the black depths of the hallway.

Hermione stood in the dark for a few moments. She couldn't have explained how she knew it or why, but she was sure that Dumbledore had just acknowledged that something was amiss and in the same instance instructed her beyond a shadow of a doubt to keep absolutely silent.

He needn't have bothered. Who would I tell? Hermione wondered as she made her way up the creaky stairs and into the room next to Harry's. Locking the door behind her, she crossed the floor and sat gingerly on the midnight blue velvet armchair. Picking up the book she'd dropped earlier at the sound of Harry's screaming, she opened it on her knee and resumed staring out the window into the black night.

She remained that way for many hours, mentally re-examining the events of the evening. When dawn broke across the navy sky, she had long since abandoned the analysis of two disturbing conclusions: first, that was no nightmare; and second, after his meeting with Professor Dumbledore, Harry had worn the unmistakable, bewildered look of a victim of a mild Obliviate.

As the sky became the sickly green gray that indicated morning, Hermione pulled herself slowly out of her chair. She moved with deliberation as she dressed, her exhausted body feeling as though it were submerged in some viscous substance.

She wandered down to the kitchen and made the strongest coffee she could, staring at her hands all the while as she leaned against the kitchen counter and listened to her little Muggle coffee machine bubble. Taking a mug and the whole pot with her, she made her way to the small household library and shut the door with no intention of emerging for the rest of the day, not even to ask Harry about his 'nightmare'. She was already convinced that when he woke, Harry would remember very little of the ordeal.

The remaining days of August passed much like that one until finally the first of September arrived. Standing before the neatly made bed and next to her precisely packed trunk, Hermione resigned herself to reaching for the final item, hidden away in a drawer of the side table. She'd put it there two months earlier, unable to look at it, unable to acknowledge its existence, and she hadn't touched it since.

With trembling fingers, Hermione slowly extracted the heavy frame, pausing for a moment to look at the red leather backing, before carefully turning it over in her hands.

She looked down at her own face. She and Ron and Harry had been on the Quidditch grounds and it had been snowing. It had been the beginning of their third year and they had been laughing and waving, laughing and waving, laughing and waving.

Hermione expected to cry, wanted to even. But tears didn't come, even when she looked very carefully at the odd lopsidedness of Ron's grin. Her eyes drifted away from him and over her own image coming to rest on the boy at her other side. His messy black hair, his laughing green eyes…

She heard the glass covering crack as the frame collided with the wall before thudding to the ground. Disappointing. She would have liked it to watch it shatter. She stood staring at it where it lay for a long time until Mrs. Weasley's voice echoed up the stairs from the first floor landing.

"Hermione?"