••dursley•• || piano

                                    

                                          
Hermione,
                          
Malfoy says it's been two months here without you. That means it's your birthday in a few weeks, I can't believe you'll already be eighteen. And I can't believe that you'll have to ignore the day that should be all about you to save the world, or something like that. I hope Harry lets you buy a cupcake or something. 
                          
I wish I knew where you were. That you were safe. That you and Ron hadn't killed each other in the night yet. And I wish I could be there with you, instead of here. My progress here has been slow. Morgana says to be patient, but to be tastefully graphic, I'm not sure how much more patience my body can handle, especially now that all Bellatrix has to do to come visit me is take a trip down the stairs. But she said that He's due back soon and wants to see me again. Maybe I can get somewhere this time, other than making sure that I don't get killed. 
                          
Sorry for talking about being here. I'm sure that if you ever read this, I've upset you. I'm alright, I swear. I just keep hoping that you are too. 
                          
With a sickeningly robust amount of love for you,
Kendra ♡
                          
{::}
                          
Hermione had never thought that she could be driven more up the wall than she was right now. She was already "emotionally fragile" as Ron liked to put it, though it was much more than that. It was self-loathing, it was worry that clawed deep into her throat and never left, it was hatred for anyone who was responsible, it was knowing that there was nothing she could do. She chose to believe, however much he was driving her to insanity right now, that Ron had been right, that Kendra was on some secret mission from Dumbledore to burn them from the inside out. But even though she believed that Kendra was at the very least alive, it wasn't enough. 
                          
She was a living ghost that seemed to haunt Hermione. Grimmauld Place seemed to echo with her muted laughter, always just a room away, behind some locked door. Hermione had gone into the bedroom they had shared, from before they had started dating.
                          
"We can be friends, you know," Kendra had whispered. 
                          
"I'm not so sure we can," Hermione had whispered back. 
                          
Hermione hadn't gone back in that room since. 
                          
She wished she could talk to Harry, even Ron. But Ron... he didn't understand. He had wanted out with Lavender long before he would have been forced apart. Harry knew what it was like to walk around with a ghost at his shoulder, but he was chronically incapable of talking about his feelings at this stage of coping with them. He was throwing every thought he had into finding and destroying Horcruxes, leaving no room to address his own ghosts, much less help Hermione with her's. 
                          
She was alone in Grimmauld Place, 'holding down the fort', as Harry had put it. But they all knew that there was one invisibility cloak, and it was not safe for Hermione to roam the streets of the Wizarding World anymore. Ron was really the only one who could even remotely get away with it, but even then, his trips without the cloak were becoming less frequent and less lengthy. 
                          
She had already done all she could for the day before the memories had overwhelmed her. She had to pause on the stairs as she swore she could see Kendra and herself, only 15 years old, intertwined fingers barely visible from beneath the cuff of their Christmas jumpers, the few short months they had been together then an eternity that seemed like a blink of an eye to her now. Shr had closed her eyes. 
                          
Eventually she made it to the piano, fingers testing the dusty keys. It was out of tune, discordant and haunting as the ivory plunked against the soft weight of her slender fingers. They seemed to move without her thinking, though she wasn't sure if she could have focused on it if she really tried. The melody that her fingers stumbled upon was lonely, as though it was crying out in empty voice for it's partner, the base line, the fingers on the other hand that lay limply by Hermione's side, just narrowly out of sight and out of reach.