[AO3 Crosspost] Her victory is a long, quiet one

[terresdebrume]

✗ TECHNICAL DETAILS

FANDOM: Harry Potter
SERIES: -
RATING: Teen and Up
WORDCOUNT: 664
PAIRING(S): Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
CHARACTER(S): Hermione Granger
GENRE: Character study.
TRIGGER WARNING(S): Mentions of past torture and trauma.
SUMMARY: Eight letters changed her life.


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M, U, D…

Her hand snaps away, as if burned, as if this were new -the pain, the tears, the ghosts.

M, U, D, B, L….

The letters burn at night, fresh as the first day and never once forgotten, as if none of it had ended, as if nothing that happened after was real and she was still trapped in a timeless manor with silvery snakes on every surface, laughter in her ears and fire in her throat. It’s like she’s still there and still scared, screaming from pain and fear alike -for herself, for her friends, for her love, for her world… for everything.

M, U, D, B, L, O….

She stopped wearing short sleeves.
It’s too hard to explain and it’s too much to erase memories and it’s too unthinkable to put a spell on them, as if nothing happened. The neighbors’ kids stare and wonder why the Dentists’ girl keeps long sleeves even in the midst of summer -there are rumors, wondering if she had problems, if maybe she was away for mental health reasons rather than education. They talk and ask each others questions when they think she can’t hear, and when her lover comes -not boyfriend, there was never time to be just boyfriend before the certitude was carved out of her- they see the faded swirls of red and think they’re right.

M, U, D, B, L, O, O, D

Eight letters of uneven, unhinged handwriting in the flesh of her forearm and infinite memories of crazed eyes, disheveled hair, sour breath in her face just by brushing her fingers against them. Eight letters carved in minutes, if that, but months of silence and explanations afterward, months of apologies for the lies she told and the spells she used, months of stolen looks and hidden pains and tears, months of wondering if anything would ever be the same again -a question she has yet to resolve.

Mudblood.

The word has stopped to hurt.
It doesn’t mean anything to her now, doesn’t even catch her interest -isn’t she more than her blood status, after all? Is there anything left in her of the Muggle she once was? The Muggle world is not for her anymore. She doesn’t feel at ease, doesn’t feel complete. The word doesn’t mean anything anymore, but the letters do, and although she has yet to figure out what they mean exactly, she knows she doesn’t feel comfortable living in a world that has no place for them.

She still has nightmares about those letters.
Dark dreams, filled with smoke and burning castles and brains strangling the life out of her most loved one, and she knows these nightmares will never fully leave, just as much as she knows there is no place for them in the world of her childhood. She can’t forget them. She’s not certain she wants to -what, then, would be left of the little girl she was? Of the people who died and those who killed?

Sometimes at night, she lies in the arms of the man she loves and stare at their left arms, his circled with tentacles-like imprint and hers, forever reminding her of numbers tattooed in Muggles’ skins, long before her time. In the end, she thinks maybe Wizards and Muggles aren’t so different as some purebloods like to think.




Later, after the medals and the ceremonies, after she’s gotten used to seeing the scars on her arm and the discomfort of people’s face when they shake her hand, after Ron has put a ring on her left hand, she gets used to seeing the two images together and not question it, until a day comes when it’s been ten years since Malfoy Manor and she realizes she hasn’t thought of her scar in nearly a week.


Ha, she thinks with a small, triumphant smile, I won.

And then, because life must always win, she goes back to her dishwashing and trying not to wake Rose up.