Chapter Text
“No.”
“Please?”
“No, Hermione. No way am I bloody doing that!”
“Harry-“
He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, sniffling as he shut his bag and tucked it into the compartment above their heads. He retook his seat opposite her, no longer looking at her and indicating the end of their conversation.
Hermione sighed before looking out the window to see the rolling hills as the train continued along the tracks. She watched as the weather slowly turned worse, the sky full of clouds and the clouds themselves dark and heavy with rain.
Ron shuffled his feet as he sat beside her, clearly not liking the tension any more than she did. It wasn’t her fault that Harry was stubborn. All she wanted was for him to see the benefit of seeing a mind healer for their eighth and final year at Hogwart’s. They had all been invited back but ‘invited’ may have been putting it lightly.
They were told they should return to complete their seventh year from start to finish as they had spent the entirety of it fighting a war that was thrown onto their shoulders. They had a choice yes, but it didn’t feel like it.
She had only suggested for Harry to see a mind healer because she knew that he was losing it. She could see it in his downcast eyes and his shaky hands.
Although she did hide her own hands.
“Harry, please. I’m only saying it because I’m worried about you.”
“And I’ve told you Hermione,” he said, turning to face her again. “I don’t need to see a healer. I’m fine.”
But she knew he wasn’t fine.
None of them were fine.
Not when the Harry still woke almost every night from nightmares of the war. Watching himself in his subconscious be hit with a green curse and his lifeless body on the ground in the forbidden forest.
Not when Ron was still mourning the loss of his older brother and trying to hold himself and his family together while George continued to shut himself out from the outside world.
Not when Hermione herself was guilt ridden with the thought of never being able to see her parents again. Or the fact that she still hadn’t fully recovered from the curse that Rodolphus had hit her with during the final moments of the battle that had her recovering in St Mungo’s for three weeks after.
Or even when she remembered the way that Malfoy had looked at her as she cursed him for the rest of his life.