When the Bell Tolls - Dramione

11.

August 15; 10:18pm

Hermione checks her watch, but all she can see in the lantern light is the top three numbers.

"I was a bit late." She says it lowly enough that she wouldn't be surprised if Malfoy didn't hear her over the bell.

"It's not the first time."

She rolls her eyes up, spotting the moon through the fog and dark clouds. Specks of rain touch coolly to her cheeks.

"You act like I'm late every time."

"I wouldn't notice."

Her hand drops back to her lap from wiping the water from her face. That's right, he wouldn't. "Oh." Diing...ding. "Does it go slower or faster when you don't know?"

He turns his head, and his hood is pulled back enough that she can see the line of his nose and damp locks of hair. "It doesn't exist. Fifteen minutes is an hour, or day, or five seconds. It's all the same when you're doing the same thing. Time becomes unimportant until you're looking back at it. Living it feels slow. Looking back, it's always too fast."

"I can't imagine that. Time being unimportant." She lives by it. Her alarm clock, her watch, her work hours, when she picks up Malfoy, when she brings him back, what time to eat, time to sleep, deadlines, birthdays, anniversaries.

"You mark it with events. Something different that happens. It's how you separate days." He shrugs. "It's the same for everyone, prisoner or not."

"Oh, no, I always go by time." Except in the forest, the search for the Horcruxes. Time moved differently then.

"You live by the exact time every day, but hours and days don't matter after years. A person does the same thing for five years, and looking back, it went fast.

They do something different and memorable every week, and the five years were full, slow. People naturally fall into dull patterns, and it's dullness that eats time, not events."

She stares unseeingly at the light gleaming off the wet fabric over his kneecaps. "Sometimes I feel like the war ended a decade ago, and sometimes it's like it was last week. Some things I barely remember, and others, I can't stop remembering. I think that's why they feel so recent."

Ding.

She cringes, not knowing what she was thinking to admit that out loud. She shouldn't have. She really shouldn't have. She wants to pull it back from the air where it's floating around their heads, turn back the last thirty seconds, erase it from his mind.

Her face is hot, and Malfoy doesn't speak.

August 17; 4:58am

Crack, as loud as thunder and directly in the kitchen.

Hermione flies to her feet without a thought. It feels like her stomach and heart are still sailing upwards, until she spots Malfoy, and they drop back, colliding at the bottom of her gut. He's covered in dirt, and there's blood on him again, seeping from his forehead, jaw, and coating his hands. His hair is a mess, and his eyes are wide with a feeling that echoes back at him from her chest.

"What--"

She jumps back when he raises his wand, almost stumbling over her chair as she yanks her wand out, then aims it at him. He turns his head towards the left, his eyes staying on hers, and she turns hers as well, a mutual question. Hers is along the lines of whatareyoudoing, and she has no idea what he's asking.

"Do you think I'm not me, or are you stupid enough to think you can take me?" she asks breathlessly, her heart pounding painfully in her chest, adrenaline pulsing through her limbs.