ethrosdemon ||| Harry Potter

War: A Woman's Work
by ethrosdemon
slytherinpride@obsessedmuch.net

Hermione's life is about boys. The lanky, fragile, boisterous ones that move around her in the day. And the sinuous, ephemeral, man-claiming ones that float through her dreams at night.

She fancies herself a feminist and very modern, but she's too self-aware to deny the reality of her life. A central fact of her life is that women are footnotes to history in the Magical world the same way they are in the Muggle one. No matter what her gifts, her capacity for knowledge and her deft abilities with spell and wand, she will always be a complement to Harry. A comrade and helpmate to The Boy Who Lived.

It took her years to come to the realization of her place in the tapestry, and even more to accept it. Even now she chafes and struggles against the shadow that is her accidental alliance. But recently she's been reassured by the thought of others who came before or who lived a similar existence. She finds particular solace in the memory of one woman, Lily Potter.

Sitting in the warded kitchen of the Burrow, Hermione tries to stretch her thoughts into another person's pattern. Did Lily choose James knowing he would take a stand against the Dark Lord? Was she equally committed to the cause? Did the War throw them together, or were they steadily building a relationship through furtive glances and hidden blushes before the carnage began? Hermione has pictured it many ways now. But, she's not really interested in that, in 'LilyandJames'. It's just a force of habit to work out all the details.

Hermione's own life is one of accidents. The odd convergence in her genes for magical affinity and a genius mind. If not for Harry and Ron and a chance meeting, would she have been sorted as a Slytherin? She's wondered that often, ambition has always been intrinsic to her personality. If not for Gryffindor, perhaps not against the Dark Lord either. Hermione does not believe in fate as fiercely as she disbelieves in Divination. Even now.

Stress has no meaning for Hermione anymore. She can sleep standing up, go for days with no food, and look at an eviscerated corpse without blinking. There are no tears to swallow, no sobs to muffle. She hasn't even *felt * like crying since she watched Molly die shielding Neville, who had his back turned to finish the wards around the rose garden. Hermione remembers standing on the footpath, gnomes peeking out from under the edges of her robes, with her wand raised avadakedavraavadakedavra blazing through her mind, over and over and over until Ron lifted her rigid form and carried her into the house.

But that night, she found her purpose, her charm to keep her last vestige of self. She remembered Molly. Hoarding every detail she could cull from the last ten years of their acquaintance, Hermione remembered. As she did, she charmed every dimple, every pie, every lost night of sleep and worried look into a book. The key to fetch her from the page was set at Firecracker. Hermione was determined it wouldn't be Mum, that Molly would be remembered as more than just a mother of seven children.

In the insignificant amount of free time she finds, Hermione is working through each woman she knows who's fallen to their cause. The ones she knew personally came first: Lavender, Padma, Minerva, Magda, Pansy. The list is extensive, because Hermione isn't a foot soldier, and she knows everyone. Molly isn't the only one she's seen rigored in Crucio or burnt alive by Incindrio or haemorrhaged by Exsanguinus.

Even with so many personal spirits to remember, Hermione can't help but try to construct Lily on safe nights. The rare occasions she makes it to the Burrow or to the Finnegan cottage she usually finds Lily waiting for her. Always waiting to take up her small reserve of energy. Reminding her of her priority in Hermione's book. The keystone and the prime mover. The one who sacrificed so they could all have life. Not just Harry.

Hermione has all the photos now, all the lingering fragments from school days, all the memories from friends now dead. People know she's interested; Sirius brought her the trunk from the attic at Privet Drive. Harry didn't mention that, and let her look through it before him.

Even with artefacts and other people's dusty memories, she still doesn't *know * her. That has become one of her few fears left, that she will *never * know her. All her knowledge and borrowed time, but she can't save the essence of the One who made everything that came after possible. Save who Lily really was, what she sacrificed so others might live. War obliterates ego, the 'I' of self, but Hermione is determined to recreate the 'she' of Lily.

She's taken to calling herself the Apostle, and she calls her diary Biblios when she speaks of it. Ginny told her she should probably keep all of that between them, because the guys already think she's going 'round the bend.

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