Congruent (DM+HG)

4

A/n: this chapter contains suicide and self harm. I urge you to please read with caution and there will be asterisks where the scene begins and ends.

Just remember, you are well loved and appreciated. If you are feeling down and need someone to talk to shoot me a DM <3

December 15, 1998

It was always the same.

A lucid dream tattooed permanently into her brain. The same eerily unfamiliar destination as the caliginous sky looms above her– radiating its glacial energy that encompasses her veins. 

There was a bright light– almost a glitch of static that rippled her point of view to change the scenery into a cornfield. She was surrounded by a ring of fire, flames dancing violently to match her quickened heartbeat.

Her wand cast a green light– a body collapsed to the ground. The void inside her was numb and empty, sucking the color from her skin to replace whatever palpable feeling was trying to burst its way through. She would cautiously walk towards the body, grappling with the remorse consuming inside.

This is what she dread the most– looking down at the lifeless eyes, so abandoned with memories that had been planted and flourished from years of blossoming into becoming something– a human being. A human who had feelings and beliefs that she took away, pulled at the roots and left the soil to rot.

An exterminator.

Her eyes shot open, gasping out for starved breaths as her stomach tied itself into a gruesome knot. All the acid instantly ascended to her throat, her mouth heavily salivating as she tried to swallow back the nausea– but it continued to crawl its way up. 

You will kill everyone in the Order...

Slowly, the content in her stomach was simmering..

...or it will be by my hand...

Now, boiling.

...and the blood shall be on your hands.

She grabbed the cauldron from the corner and regurgitated what little she had left in her abdomen. Hermione sat with her knees drawn to her chest– cauldron in the middle for support, continuously rocking back and forth to ease the anxiety that pumped through her bloodstream. Her body was blisteringly cold, most notably from her lack of appetite and dehydration, as her eyelids grew immensely heavy– fighting off days and weeks of slumber.

It took everything in her capacity to fight the night terrors that were embedded into her mind– destroying every part of her brain to make room to fill every aspect with horror. It was hard to blink the vivid terror away, as it constantly replayed like a broken record. Even if she closed her eyes briefly, it crashed into her sight. 

What was she to do? 

All her morals were in question, being interrogated by the rights and wrongs that were imperceptible to comprehend. But it did not matter, there were no choices offered. It was a blatant order to beckon all her weakness– for she was the mouse, ready to walk into his trap to cleave every fiber of her soul. 

Hermione could not fathom to think of all her friends dying at the hand of someone as heinous and evil as Voldemort, being his toy till he was pleased with his recess before they met their brutal demise. The calamity of reality was imprinted on her flesh. The reality that has scourged her blood from crimson red to black tar. 

She had to be the one to fulfill the task given. She had to swallow back the acid accumulating in her jaw, burying the notion away. 

Hermione was never a religious person. She believed there was a holy presence, but was left skeptical if the testimonies of the holy tome were true. It was something she always bit her tongue down on the topic to avoid further conflict. But a sense of hallowed vitality seemed to awaken inside her, a box that had never opened fully.