When she finally forced herself to turn off the taps and climb out, she stood in the middle of the steamy bathroom trying of summon the willpower to dry off and dress.
She had never felt so unmotivated. Existing seemed like such a unfair demand.
Hermione would give anything for a book — anything to read but the news. She was sick of the news.
Perhaps she would go for a walk. She hadn't been outside since the equinox. She didn't know if she was ever going to be able to go near the hedges again, but perhaps she could manage a walk along one of the lanes. She could inspect the buds on the trees. Count daffodils. Something.
She walked out of the bathroom and went down the icy hallway wrapped in a towel. Back in her room she went over to the wardrobe to pull a fresh set of robes out.
Laying them out on the bed she dropped the towel and surveyed herself.
The remaining scars from Montague had all faded entirely. There was a spot on the inside of her right breast that still felt scarred in the tissue.
Hermione ran her fingers over it thoughtfully. It had been so deep, it probably should have required a more specific healing charm. The area felt taut.
It had been deep enough that the damaged tissue was not just dermal. Typical healing charms were designed for skin and muscle repair. There was probably a specific spell for repairing mammary tissue, but Hermione couldn't remember it off the top of her head. She closed her eyes, and tried to think back and see if she could remember learning it.
She could remember a large book of healing spells. She'd carried it with her constantly for several years. Shrunk to fit in her pockets, always on hand. Stained with blood and potions that spilled and sank into the pages when she was too busy to charm them away in time. Dog-eared to the most important sections. So many dog-eared pages. Crammed with her notes in the margins.
It had been the first thing she bought after Dumbledore died. She remembered the large owl that flew into the Great Hall of Hogwarts and dropped it for her.
Everyone else had been talking about restarting DA. Buying books on defense magic. But Hermione had turned to healing. It had been the start of the schism, the space that slowly grew between herself and everyone else her age within the Resistance.
While they had been drilling shield charms and stunners, she had gone to Madam Pomfrey and asked for an apprenticeship.
She spent most of her days with Madam Pomfrey, memorising every healing spell and advanced diagnostic charms the school matron could teach. Learning which signs and symptoms to look out for.
Healing spell work was highly precise — subtle. It required the ability to filter out distractions and focus, to channel magic with extremely delicate nuance. Determine the proper spell, perfect the inflection, and then funnel down one's intentions with precision.
Healers didn't use physical scalpels, but magically speaking the mental exactitude and wandwork was comparable.
Hermione had memorised diagram after diagram of human anatomy. Drilling herself on all the details she needed to train her eyes to pick up in a diagnostic; puzzle pieces of information that had to be assembled in order to identify what might be wrong.
Then in the evening she'd head to the dungeons to study potions with Snape.
When she had finished with healing and potions, she would sequester herself into a corner of the library, rifling through book after book in search of useful spellwork for Harry. Until she'd fall asleep there.
Slowly, she had drifted away from her friends.
They were all so righteously angry and yet optimistic following Dumbledore's death. There was a fire of certainty driving them that Hermione couldn't seem to spark within herself even at the very beginning. The more she learned, the more her confidence regarding the outcome of the war seemed to wane. No one else seemed to appreciate how hard it was to keep people alive.
When she failed to share the optimism it offended them. She was Harry's friend, why wouldn't she believe in him? Why was she so determined to make everyone feel scared? Did she think she was smarter than them? She couldn't even cast a patronus anymore. Maybe if she spent more time practicing her defense spells she'd stop being so morbid.
It wasn't that they weren't taking the war seriously, but that their perspective was narrowed. It was Light vs Darkness, Good vs Evil. Light always won. Look at the stories look at the history books. Yes, some people would die, but it would be for the cause; a worthy death. They weren't afraid to die for that.
Eventually Hermione had stopped talking and withdrew with her books. There was no point in noting that history books were written by the victors. Or that there were plenty of wars in the muggle world where lives were just another form of ammunition; where battles failed to mean anything, or produce more than a new list of casualties; a fresh row of graves.
Maybe they all needed to believe such things, but Hermione couldn't. She'd needed to prepare. She buried herself in healing, in potions, in books until the Ministry of Magic fell and the War officially began
Then she'd been rushed off to begin studying in France. Then Albania, when France became too dangerous. Then Denmark. Then — Austria? No.
Had there been somewhere else, before she went to Austria? It felt like there was a gap. A blur. Hermione pushed at the blank space in her memory. Somewhere, somewhere else she'd gone to study. Where could it have been? Why would she forget it? She forced her mind toward the blur and it was just dimness. A low golden light emanating from a lamp, dust, the scent of old paper, dry and green, and the thin chain of a necklace in her hands.
Nothing else. She pressed harder, but the memory faded into the back of her mind again. She couldn't remember anything more.
Just like she couldn't recall the spell for repairing mammary tissue.
She sighed to herself as her fingers fell away from the knotted tissue.
The faultiness of her memory was increasingly unnerving.
Sometimes she wasn't even sure she knew who she had been during the war. She remembered herself as a healer. Just a healer and a potion mistress.
At some point she had diverged from that person, and she didn't know how or when it had happened.
When had she become someone that Voldemort would describe as dangerous? A person who leveled half a prison. Who burned dementors, and stabbed Graham Montague with poisoned knives?
Hermione had no idea where that version of herself could have come from. She found it difficult to believe the person had ever existed.
Somehow that mysterious person had been swallowed up in the darkness beneath Hogwarts. Without the second-hand accounts of Voldemort, Malfoy, and Montague, she would never have even known such a person had existed. She almost would think it was some sort of deception if she didn't have so many scars she couldn't account for.
She glanced down at her left wrist, ran her finger tips over the scattered, silvery scars that mottled her sternum and collarbones, and then traced over the long, thin scar between her seventh and eighth ribs.
Healer Stroud had said the fugues in her mind weren't a dissociation or multiple personalities, but Hermione rather felt that they must be. Hermione as she knew herself to be would never have leveled half a prison and killed countless other people in order to break-in. Not even for Ginny. Hermione wouldn't have treated everyone else as collateral damage in a rescue attempt. She didn't know how fill a sky with burning dementors. She had never carried poisoned knives, much less learned how to stab anyone with them.
There was something cavernous in her ignorance, and she didn't know how to reconcile it.
She pulled on her robes, went downstairs, and wavered at the veranda door. The air was warm and smelled loamy, with faint traces of sweetness. There were huge beds of daffodils and irises that had seemingly sprung up in previous two weeks. The birds were singing.