Seventeen

EPILOGUE: Portrait of Solaris.

Hermione believed that suicide was a form of murder— premeditated murder. It's a slow progress: the first time you see a blade, you fantasise about it slicing deep into your skin and let the blood trickle out like a worm crawling in its soil. Solaris was the daughter of smoke & bone. Death kissed her skin so hard it didn't leave a mark, but it bled into her skin and held her bloodstream like a mother holding her baby.

Girl, thorn, serpent— she hung onto Hermione's ribs like rolled out cigarettes clutching onto her bones, the ashes are burning down to her belly and she can feel their love becoming an eldritch tale. Hemlock braids, lint–skinned, cupid's spitfire. It was wrong for Hermione to ever come across the wish to never have met Solaris, but she still did. She asked why, wished to be high, wanted her girl to lie and lie and lie: Solaris was an entropy, a guest room, a fucking patchwork. It's been twenty–eight hours without her cigarette smoke, her caffeine stained skin and Hermione still couldn't move. Her back was pressed against her floral duvet, her eyes were polluting the ceiling after she had stared at it for too long. The sides of her mouth were still stained with her lover's kiss and divinity: her hands and her epidermis was just a blanket of flesh to hide the memories of them that stirs beneath her flesh and bones. Hermione still couldn't move.

Her demise cut her skin open, she was promised it would be quick and painless—she could feel the sin infecting her gardens and plaguing her vision, she wished to heal a land that was wisping and weeping but she felt a little lighter to know that she planted a tulip in the terra firma that was littered with the screaming ghosts that didn't let themselves be seen by her— she didn't feel like it was quick and painless. She felt the knife.

"Hermione?" His voice was soft but it felt like a shrill slicing through her ears. His knocks faltered into tinnitus.

"I'm not here."

"You are,"

(was she really)

"Let me in."

"I don't want to talk, Harry."

"'Mione, I know you don't. And that's alright, just let me in and we can get ready to go."

"Go where?"

"To her burial," Harry said slowly. "You're giving her eulogy. Remember?"

"Come in."

"It's—erm—it's locked."

"Have you forgotten we're literally in Hogwarts, Harry? Use a spell."

Alohomora.

"Hey."

Hermione hummed.

"Do you want to sit?"

"No."

"Fine," Harry sighed. He moved from the edge of her bed and laid down next to her. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"I—uh," Hermione chuckled sadly. "I just miss her. It feels. . . Strange. Like a part of me died with her."

"But does it relieve you?"

"Her death? No, Harry. Of course it doesn't fucking relieve me."

"Not her death," Harry shook his head. "The fact that she spent her last days here happy. With you. Doesn't it make you feel better to know that in her last moments she felt something she never had?"