"Hermione, do you think the nargles will give me back my shoes for the funeral?"
"What...? Luna?" She mumbles, eyes snapping open in confusion.
She's seated on Hermione's bed, smiling her kind smile. "My shoes. I'll need them."
Hermione bolts up, frowning and combing her bedraggled hair from her face. What is Luna doing here? Has something terrible happened?
The last thing Hermione remembers is Malfoy's bare back as he exited her room, the lash scars casting ugly shadows on his pale skin. She'd told him 'Happy Birthday'. Why did she done that? It was such a strange thing to say under the circumstances... Wasn't it?
She decided to leave the lamplight on after that. Just in case.
"Hermione, you're over thinking again." Luna scoots closer, stirring the air around them.
"I..." she pauses as she catches a faint whiff of something sweet. "Luna, what are you doing here? Has something happened? Where is McGonagall? Shacklebolt? Have you woken Nott? Has Headquarters been attacked?"
She grins, teeth yellow in the light and eyes widening in their owlish way. "No. Hermione, sometimes I think Harry has worn off on you."
Hermione slides from her bed, the carpet stiff on the soles of her feet. "Luna! I'm serious! What is going on?! Where are Shacklebolt and McGonagall?"
Luna's shoulders droop with an exasperated sigh and Hermione smells the heavy sweetness of her breath. There is a foulness about it, though, like she hasn't brushed her teeth. "They are attending the funeral, Hermione."
Hermione reaches out and grabs Luna's shoulder. Her skin is icy and wet from the rain. "Whose funeral, Luna? You're not making any sense."
Luna cranes her neck and tilts her head up to Hermione, the action unsettling and rigid. Hermione's skin crawls and her heart thuds in her chest at the endless possibility of disasters, but the odor of Luna's breath paralyzes her. It reminds her of the time she found an abandoned dead dog tied off in a garbage bin when she was ten.
In that moment, she notes the eerie flat-blue of Luna's eyes, no flush of pink at the edges or redness in the veins. Even her cheeks lack color. Hermione's heart lodges in her throat and she chokes on her own saliva. The earlier smell she'd mistaken for something sweet turns fetid. Not fowl breath but the breath of a—
"Mine." Luna finally chuckles, causing Hermione to wrench backwards, eyes wide with horror.
"Luna!" Hermione gasps. Not real! I'm dreaming! I'm dreaming! I'm—
"Hermione, what's wrong?" Luna lurches from the bed, shoulders robotic and legs unsteady. Her grin is macabre in the shadows, teeth dulled green and leaning like old tombstones. The shadows are playing tricks, she assures herself, but the sinking hollows of Luna's eyes send Hermione's fingers skittering across the nightstand and groping beneath her pillow for her wand.
It isn't there. But it doesn't matter! This is a dream!
"Hermione. Why am I always dead in your dreams? Why do all of us die?"
At that, Hermione turns and finds other silhouettes floating behind Luna, tall silhouettes and short ones. Ones with reddish hair and ones with black... and blond.
He steps forward, in front of Luna, and Hermione can't contain a groan of disbelief. Unlike the others, his pale eyes are electric, hateful. She throws her hands out in front of her, defenseless—but it's only a dream! Her mind screams. Just a dream! A dream! Dream!
YOU ARE READING
Touchstone || Dramione
FanfictionHarry Potter has lost, but that doesn't mean the Order is finished. Determined on only her mission, Hermione Granger is blind-sided when she finds Draco Malfoy alive and fighting in the slave pits. What she does next could ultimately cost the Order...
