INVISIBLE STRING

1.THE RETURN

CHAPTER ONE
THE RETURN

I've been having a hard time adjusting - This is me trying by Taylor Swift

WHEN HERMIONE returned to Hogwarts, she had been prepared for a lot of feelings. Grief, fear, loss; she had spend the whole train ride back to the castle wondering about how it would feel to be back, much to the dislike of Ginny Weasley, who tried her best to cheer her up every minute of the day.

My point is: Hermione had been prepared for a lot of things, she had made a habit out of always carrying her little bag - enchanted to fit much more than the size might suggest and still filled to the brim - to be even more prepared, but nothing in the world could have prepared her for this.

For it to feel so... normal.

The castle had been magically rebuilt, the trees on the grounds of Hogwarts were regrown, the Quidditch stadium standing again.

Hogwarts was filled with its usual catter, people talking about their classes and their teachers like nothing happened.

Like the war had just been a bad dream, a nightmare you would forget about after a few days passed.

Hermione couldn't understand them. And believe me, she tried. She craved that kind of obliviousness, she wanted to let go, but a part of her was always back in that war, fighting.

And she didn't even know who she was fighting against anymore. The memories? Herself?

Sure, Ron had changed when he lost his brother, but he was also quick to look for a position as an Auror to sidtravt himself. Harry had too. They both were still haunted by nightmares, but they seemed to move on better and quicker than Hermione did. Ron had even asked her to marry him a few days after the ending of the war had been official.

Of course she had said yes. She had loved him for so long, longer than she probably realized herself.

That was the only moment after the war she had felt true sincere happiness in every bone and every part of her body.

Ever since that she just felt kind of numb. Not because of his proposal of course, she just couldn't forget the pictures.

The voices, the screams, the faces.

Her parents, not recognizing their own daughter anymore, scared of the strange woman across the street. Hermione had left them and ever since then, she hadn't been able to bring them back. As much as she missed her parents, she was so so scared.

Bellatrix.

The face of Bellatrix Lestrange as she hovered over Hermione's hurting body. Her lips tucked upward in a disgustingly wide grin, her tongue licking at her teeth like the sea licked at the shore.

Sometimes, when it got especially bad, Hermione could still feel the strands of Bellatrix long curls tickling her cheeks, the touch torturing her in the darkness of the night.

Hermione sighed to get herself out of her dark thoughts. She hadn't learned to embrace them as a part of hers yet, not wanting to just accept them with the stubbornness she grew so used to.

The room was silent, quiet. Nobody of her old dorm had returned, some because they didn't want to, wanted to leave Hogwarts and those dark chapters of their lives behind them and move on, and some because they couldn't.

Breakfast would begin soon. Not like it was worrying Hermione. She had sat on the windowstill next to her bed for hours, watching the sun rise, greeting the castle with the long, warm rays of its shine; embracing the grounds of Hogwarts with its light like a mother embraced their child in her arms.