YOU DIDN'T MEAN TO • PANSMIONE

( ONE !)

SHE WOKE UP SCREAMING. She always woke up screaming, her throat raw and scraped from the sound of her own voice, drenched in her own tears and sweat, her hair tangled and her fists clenched in fear. She would sit there, her eyes open as wide as possible, trying to accustom themselves to the darkness, to see if there was something that could harm her.

There never was.

Instead, her breathing would slow, her heart beat calm, and then she would realise that she was still safely tucked into her bed in the Gryffindor corridor, and the girls were all sleeping around her, and that she had never screamed, for they weren't awake.

She wished they did wake. She wished that someone would hold her tightly, and tell her everything was going to be okay. She wished that she could close her eyes with someone's arms around her, and know, know that she was utterly safe.

Normally, Hermione could fall asleep again, flutter her eyelashes close and hope the morning would come sooner than it really did. The dark still closed in around her, and her heart still stuttered when she heard a noise, but she knew that she was secure. That she wasn't alone and helpless anymore.

But tonight she just couldn't bring herself to close her eyes. She swung her feet over the side of the bed, gingerly, not wanting to wake anyone up. A small snuffle from Ginny's bed, around which the scarlet curtains were tightly drawn, caused her some alarm, but she dismissed it, and drew her wand.

She murmured the spells twice over, and checked the bar on the door, reminding herself that she needed to remove it before the others woke up. She wasn't sure how they would react if they knew that the girl who was technically the year above, and who had helped Harry Potter defeat Voldemort, couldn't sleep without a firmly locked and protected door. Longingly, she glanced at her clock, hoping that sunrise was near, but the time read only two am. A small sigh slipped from between her lips.

She stepped nimbly over a few socks scattered on the floor (mostly hers), a t-shirt (Ginny's) and a school robe discarded between their two beds (probably Ginny's). Collapsing back into bed, she stared up at the ceiling, tracing the patterns on her bed curtains with her eyes, hoping that she might, might just fall asleep, and not have to feel her pulling fear all the night. It was the bitter unease that pained her, the fear of not knowing what might jump out of the darkness, and the silence. It was so silent, as if the room was waiting for something.

Hermione had to be ready. She had to.

-

"Hermione? Hermione, wake up!" Ginny's concerned voice penetrated the last remnants of her wooziness, and she rolled over, a small groan escaping her lips.

"What?" she grumbled, rubbing her eyes and pulling strands of hair from her mouth. Ginny's freckled face looked down at her with one eyebrow raised. With a sharp movement, she yanked the covers from the bed and folded her arms. "What?" Hermione demanded, sitting up. She had been up at five, opening the door again, and allowed herself to doze a little before her alarm began to ring. She didn't think that she had fallen asleep, but being brought back to the world with such a shock confirmed that she must have.

"I thought that getting up on time was one of the most important duties in this world," Ginny remarked, glancing at the clock perched helpfully on Hermione's bedside table. "As you have so informed me, and Luna, at least a hundred times." She reached out a lithe arm and tilted the clock towards Hermione, without taking her eyes from her friend's face. "Without a good sense of time, when we go into the working industry, we would be lost." Nimbly, she sprung onto Hermione's bed, and shook the alarm clock in her face. "Your bloody alarm clock has been ringing for a good fifteen minutes, and none of us can work out how to turn the damn thing off."