The Day After Tomorrow

IT'S A BITTER TASTE

13 - IT'S A BITTER TASTE

THE light filtered through Hermione's window in bright rays. She'd slept right into the late morning and for a bewildered moment she lay in blissful ignorance and then the events of last night blinked into focus.

Surely it had been a dream, Malfoy in her muggle room bleeding blood and sadness.

It must have been a dream.

Hermione glanced about her room looking for traces of last night, anything to confirm that it had all been conjured by her imagination, she felt changed like she'd come to some critical realisation, except she did not know what. She knew something significant had passed between them last night, an exchange of something, she just couldn't find a word to describe how he had lifted some imaginary weight from her shoulders.

In the morning rays, the scrawled letters at her arm looked delicate and she found for the first in her life that she didn't flinch away from them. She blinked up, dazed and amazed and there on her bookshelf was a gap, the only evidence she needed to realise that he'd borrowed a book from her.

Oh. She felt it like a burst of light in her tummy, warm and glowing and strange.

Her body felt that way too as she shifted out of bed, like her limbs were floating and air light.

"Who do you suppose that boy was?" Mr Granger murmured over his coffee, it was late now but his daughter hadn't emerged from her room. These days she was usually up before them, this felt to Mr Granger as mildly suspicious.

Mrs Granger glanced up from her toast and looked at her husband a little bemused. "I suppose he was a friend, just like they said." She heard her husband huff and take a hearty sip.

"He seemed a little strange didn't he?"

It was true, the boy had been striking in his features all in blazing whites and muted greys. Mrs Granger could remember examining him the night before and concluding that he had carried with him the aura of a lost boy.

His face had been gaunt and his eyes hooded but his smile warm when he'd shook their hands. Polite to the point that she'd become curious about his childhood. The set of his shoulders and the rigid way he stood reminded her of a soldiers, which parents had brought him into the world. She couldn't imagine why Hermione had never mentioned him.

"Who's strange?" Hermione interrupted as she entered the room.

"That boy of yours." Mr Granger supplied still stonily glaring at his now empty cup of coffee.

Hermione felt herself squint and quickly busied herself with making breakfast. "He's not my boy." She had a feeling that behind her back her parents were exchanging secretive knowing looks.

"Whatever you say," Mrs Granger said in a tone she used often, it was the one that made it clear that she planning to agree to disagree. "So you invited him over did you?" This time she sounded carefully curious, her tone prodding.

Hermione had prepared for this on her way down the stairs, deciding that it was better to stop with all the lies. "I'm planning on returning to Hogwarts." By the looks on her parents faces she could tell that they'd been expecting a different explanation altogether.

Their expressions made her wonder briefly about Julian. About her muggle classmates, about whether they'd miss her or not, whether they'd even known her long enough to learn to miss her. Probably not.

Mr Granger put down his mug altogether and watched his daughter carefully. "Are you sure Hermione?" She nodded in determination and he knew that just like him, once her mind was set there was little he could do to change it. Truth be told he felt uneasy sending her back, he'd never seen reason before but things had changed now.