DISCLAIMER: Not mine! All things Buffy belong to Joss and Mutant Enemy, all things Harry Potter belong to JK Rowling, Bloomsbury, and Scholastic.

Grief, Like a Threadbare Coat

Hermione never bothered with turning the lights on anymore. Not in her room, nor in the coven’s library late at night. She found it comforting to wander the stacks, the white light from the tip of her wand trailing over leather-bound books. In the dark, she could pretend she was on a midnight research raid in the Hogwarts library, and Harry and Ron were just on the other side of those shelves – out of sight, but never out of mind.

Darkness cloaked reality, leaving Hermione free to make of it whatever she wished.

That night, however, when she pushed open the heavy oak door, someone was already occupying her safe haven. At least only a single desk lamp was lit, rather than the harsher overhead lights; its stained glass shade cast odd shadows and colors across the face of the red-haired young woman curled up small in one corner of the sofa. A novice, studying for the theory portion of her exams, Hermione thought, and then the woman looked up.

Definitely not a novice.

“Sorry,” the woman – Willow – said quickly. “I didn’t mean to – no one’s usually in here this time of night.”

“We’ve probably just been missing each other then,” Hermione replied, not moving from her position in the doorway..

“Oh,” Willow said. “Well – don’t feel you have to leave just ‘cause of little old me.”

Hermione hesitated. It would rather defeat her purpose, she thought, to have someone else there, even if that person had the good sense not to speak. The crinkle of turning pages would be enough to ruin her beloved delusion. But then she stepped inside, letting the door swing shut behind her, silently, since there wasn’t any latch. “Okay,” she said, back still up against the carved wood of the door. “I’m Hermione.”

“I’m –”

“Willow.” Hermione stepped forward; Willow held out her hand, leaving Hermione little choice but to accept it. It was cool and dry and touched by a sort of magic Hermione was finally able to sense after over a year in the coven.

“Yeah,” she said, very softly. She looked up at Hermione with eyes that were too wide and too lovely to be quite credible, and, without letting go of Hermione’s hand, said, “You, uh, you know then? What I did?”

“I was here that night. You caused quite the stir.”

Willow let go of her hand. There was room on the couch beside her but Hermione remained standing, hoping to eventually drift back toward the shadows of the stacks.

“I almost ended the world,” Willow said, in her strangely flat American accent, “and you call that ‘quite a stir’?”

Hermione shrugged. “I was having a bad day. It didn’t sound like such a terrible idea at the time.”

“Okay,” Willow said, drawing the word out to three or four syllables and eyeing her in the spooked sort of way Hermione had grown accustomed to recently. It comforted her, really; despite her glib words, there was something unnerving about Willow, and the fact that Hermione unnerved her in turn was a good sign.

There was a short, uncomfortable silence. At least Hermione assumed it would have been uncomfortable if she had noticed that sort of thing anymore. Willow certainly didn’t seem that pleased with it from the way she finally stammered out, “So, I, uh, haven’t seen you around here before. You’re not one of the coven, are you?”

“No.”

“Right. Then, er, what are you?”

“Garden variety witch,” Hermione replied. She slipped her wand out of her sleeve. “Lumos.” The wand tip lit up, and so did Willow’s face. Her already wide eyes grew even wider with astonishment and she reached out to touch before pulling her hand back. Hermione offered it to her, and she ran her fingers up and down the smooth wood. Hermione, watching, felt a faint tingle at the base of her spine.

“Is this really –” Willow began, glancing up. Hermione nodded. “I’d heard, of course, but I didn’t realize there were any of, um, your kind, here.”

“Just me.”

“So . . . what are you doing here then? Some sort of project?” Willow handed back the wand and sat up, her entire being transformed by her interest; Hermione recognized in her the familiar eagerness of a scholar faced with an entirely uncharted research area to explore.

She was almost sorry to have to disappoint. “No, no project. This is just my version of a Spanish convent.” Willow frowned at her; Hermione sighed and finally sat, not on the sofa but in one of the armchairs she had always thought too comfortable for actual research. “I’m – well, the general consensus seems to be that I’m a bit mad,” Hermione finally admitted.

“Uh.”

“I find I’m not very objective on the subject,” Hermione went on. “How was it for you? Did you know you’d gone completely ‘round the twist, as we say here?”

“Uh,” Willow said again. “No, I guess – I guess not. At least not at the time. Er . . . if you don’t mind my asking –”

“The same thing as you,” Hermione answered, even though she knew people hated it when she did that – answered a question before it was asked. It wasn’t Legilimency, just logic, but they never seemed to believe her.

“Oh,” Willow said, blinking. “Who, er –”

“Everyone.”

Willow looked stunned. “What –”

“Well, not literally everyone. My two best friends, my parents, a lot of my classmates and teachers – everyone who mattered, really. To me, I mean.”

“Oh my God,” Willow said, hands coming up to her cover her mouth. “Hermione . . .”

“I couldn’t end the world,” Hermione continued. “I don’t have that kind of power. And anyway, we’d just gone to all that trouble saving it. It would have felt ungrateful.”

“Yeah,” Willow said slowly, still staring.

“This,” Hermione said, gesturing generally, “just seemed easier. Here they let me read all day and no one bothers me. I help out in small ways, but my magic is quite mundane compared to the others.’ Compared to yours.”

“Hermione, I’m sure that’s not true. From what I’ve heard –”

“No, it’s all right, I like it that way. I can stay here forever if I want. You, though . . .” Hermione looked up and held Willow’s gaze. “You have to leave eventually. Go back.”

“Yeah,” Willow said awkwardly. “Look, I – I think I’m getting kinda sleepy after all. I’ll see you around, okay?”

“Probably not,” Hermione whispered, and watched her escape.

***

Willow managed to stay well away from the library for the next three days. She’d never seen Hermione anywhere else, and she somehow had the desire to employ some serious avoidance tactics. Crazy or not, there was something about her that gave Willow some serious wiggins of the skin crawly variety. But maybe that was just the other witch’s own grief and the way she wore it, like a threadbare coat – old and worn and too comfortable to let go of.

But the fourth night, Willow woke gasping and crying, Tara’s name on her lips and the smell of charred human flesh in her noise. She found herself out of bed and halfway down the hall before she even realized what she was doing, and then she couldn’t deal with the idea of going anywhere else, not even back to her room. The library let her pretend she was back in high school, researching something nice, normal, and Hellmouthy with Giles and Xander in the middle of the night. Back when her worst fear was that Xander would never notice her. Back before everything went so horribly wrong.

The library was dark when she pushed the door open and for a moment she thought she was safe after all – but then she heard a soft footfall and saw the small nimbus of bright, white light moving among the stacks. Hermione’s wand.

And, really, how cool was that? Willow knew it was ridiculous, she didn’t need a wand, but she still thought it would be cool to have one. For a moment she was diverted, just watching the little light, and it was only when Hermione suddenly gasped, startled, that Willow realized she’d just been standing there for goddess only knew how long, staring like a total dope.

“Sorry, sorry,” Willow said quickly. “I – uh – sorry.”

Hermione frowned at her, not angry, just sort of puzzled. Her long, bushy brown hair was tousled and tangled from sleep, though Willow somehow had the impression that she’d already been in the library for awhile before Willow had startled her. “It’s all right,” Hermione said. “Nightmare?”

“Yeah. You?”

“No,” Hermione said, glancing down at the cover of the thick, dusty book in her arms. “It was a good dream. Waking up was the bad part.”

“Oh,” Willow said. “I get those too sometimes.”

Hermione nodded. “I think the nightmares are easier.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Willow wasn’t so sure about that – but she was one hundred percent sure that that was a conversation she did not want to have. Hoping to head it off at the pass, she stood on tiptoe to see which book Hermione had taken down. “Research?” she asked, a little hopefully. The books still scared Willow more than anything else – that was where it had all started, after all – but it would have been nice to have something to talk about that wasn’t nightmares or dead friends and lovers.

“No, just some light reading,” Hermione replied.

“That’s light?” Willow asked, raising an eyebrow.

To her surprise, Hermione didn’t laugh or even smile. “Hmm,” she said, ducking her head.

“Sorry,” Willow said quickly. “I didn’t mean to – I’m sure it’s very interesting.”

“Oh, no,” Hermione said, “you just sounded like a friend of mine. He used to always say things like that.” She went and sat on the couch at one end, curled up with her socked feet tucked under her and the book propped open on a pillow in front of her. Willow, after a moment’s pause, retrieved her own book from where she’d stashed it under the cushion of one of the armchairs and went to sit at the other end. They looked at each other across the length of the couch. Like bookends, Willow thought. Safe bookends with lots and lots of books between them.

“Was this a friend-friend?” Willow asked, when Hermione didn’t go back to her book. “Or a, er, boyfriend?”

“Just a friend,” Hermione replied with a sigh. “If he hadn’t died, he might have been a boyfriend.”

“Oh,” Willow said faintly. She should have known better than to ask. “I’m sorry.”

Hermione nodded and looked down, though Willow, watching, didn’t think she was reading a word. After a minute she opened her own book – Persuasion – and picked up where she left off. It was the third Jane Austen she had read since arriving in England, because it was just so easy, she thought, to lose herself in the pleasingly British flavour of the drama and the language with all its long sentences and weird semicolons. Her first night in the library, when Willow had felt surrounded by hundreds of leather-bound guardians of dangerous knowledge, she had thought that there could not be anything even remotely evil about Jane Austen.

She had checked with Giles just to be sure, but it seemed she’d been right. So, Jane Austen it was, for the time being at least.

She didn’t expect to fall asleep, sleeping, like eating, not being real high on her list of hobbies these days. But she did, apparently. In her dream, Tara was dressed as though she’d stepped out of Willow’s book, but when she spoke she sounded exactly like she always had. Her low voice was achingly plaintive as she asked, “Why are you leaving me here?”

“I’m not, Tara, sweetie, I’m not, I’m sorry,” Willow said desperately. She reached out to try and grab Tara’s hands, but Tara stepped back swiftly. “I tried, you know I tried, but I couldn’t.”

“You could,” Tara said. “If you wanted to, you could. You’re so powerful, Willow, you don’t have to leave me here like this. We could be together, just like we planned.”

“I – no, Tara,” Willow replied, letting her arms drop back to her sides at last. “Tara, I’m sorry, but it was wrong before, with Buffy. I know that now. And, and even if I could, you wouldn’t thank me, you know you wouldn’t.”

Tara’s face changed suddenly, transforming into something dark and ugly and hateful. “You bitch,” she snarled in a voice sounded nothing like her own. “You don’t want me back.”

“No, Tara, no! I’d give anything, but I can’t!”

“What, are you fucking that little slut? I saw you looking at her.”

“No, no,” Willow said, reaching for her even though she knew it was a dream, it had to be a dream because Tara would never have said those things, never, ever, never. “No, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t –”

“Don’t lie to me,” Tara replied, turning her back. “I know. I can tell. Here I am, barely cold and you –”

“Willow, Willow, wake up.”

Willow jerked awake, sending the book tumbling to the floor. She looked up; Hermione’s eyes were wide and concerned from inches away, and her hand was warm on the patch of bare skin where Willow’s nightshirt had slipped down off her shoulder.

Too close, way, way too close.

Willow scrambled up as fast as she could and backed away, almost falling over an end table in her haste. “Sorry, sorry, I have to – bye.” Willow fled the library and didn’t stop until she was back in her room. Then she leaned against the wall and slid down to the stone floor. She leaned her forehead on her knees, letting the hot tears fall into the soft cotton of her pajamas. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, Tara, Tara, I’m sorry.”

***

Hermione didn’t see Willow again for awhile after that. To her surprise, she worried. She remembered worrying a lot, once: about her marks, about whether they’d get caught breaking a school rule and be expelled, about Harry and whether he’d survive, about Ron and whether he’d ever notice her. There had been a lot of worrying, and outright fear as well, right before the final battle.

Afterward, there hadn’t been any at all. There had been no one left for her to worry about.

But when Willow disappeared for two weeks, even though Hermione was in the library every night, pretending to read and actually waiting for her to appear, Hermione was worried. She was even a little disappointed, which surprised her more. She remembered the cool, dry feeling of Willow’s fingers in her own, and found herself asking Miss Hartness about her

Miss Hartness looked at her sharply and paused a moment before answering. “She’s having a difficult time of it, I’m afraid. It’s to be expected of course, but there isn’t much any of us can do.”

“Oh,” Hermione said, and left quickly, before Miss Hartness could say anything more. The witches in the coven lacked the power of Legilimency – and likely would have forbidden it even if they had had it – but Miss Hartness is extremely adept at reading auras, and Hermione found that it often came to the same thing. She was not at all sure what Miss Hartness would have seen in her aura at that moment, and she was taking no chances.

A few days later, Hermione had almost given up when she pushed open the library door and found Willow there, curled up on the sofa again. She had Northhanger Abbey this time, but somehow Willow didn’t think she’d been reading. She looked up and closed the book as Hermione came in and shut the door, keeping her back against it like she had that very first night.

“Hi,” Willow said, nervously.

“Hello.”

“Miss Hartness said you’d asked about me.”

“I did. I was worried.”

“I’m okay, really,” Willow said. “Well,” she amended after a moment, “no, I’m not, at all, but at least I haven’t gone all black-eyed and veiny, so that’s good. And the nightmares are just . . . normal nightmares.”

“They weren’t normal for awhile?” Hermione asked, raising her eyebrows. She sank down into one of the armchairs and watched Willow pick at the fuzz on her pajamas.

“That one I had that night – before, I mean,” Willow said. She shook her head and then pushed her red hair out of her face, still not looking up. “Normal is what it very much wasn’t. And there were others, afterward.” She swallowed. “I don’t know what it is, and Giles doesn’t know either, but we think – something is coming.”

“So I hear,” Hermione said. She had heard whispers among the coven, which she had done her best to ignore. She hadn’t been all that successful lately, though, and so she knew that it was something evil, something devouring. Something she probably wouldn’t be able to escape by hiding from it.

“Yeah,” Willow said, looking up at last. “Anyway, we think . . . we think it was messing with me. In my dreams. It totally freaked me out, especially the first time. I’m really sorry,” she added, “for the way I ran off that night, after you’d been nice enough to wake me up and everything.”

“It was nothing,” Hermione said. “I’m very used to frightening people away.”

“It wasn’t you though,” Willow insisted. “It was the dream and . . . my stuff.”

“Willow,” Hermione said gently, “don’t worry about it.”

Willow frowned thoughtfully at her from a moment then, and finally said, “Er . . . I hope you don't mind me saying so, but you seem . . . less, er, crazy.”

Hermione sighed. This just confirmed her own suspicions; no one else had been nearly so direct thus far, but she could tell from the way Miss Hartness and the other coven members had been treating her that something had changed. “I think I might be getting better,” she admitted at last, when Willow only kept looking at her.

“Well, don’t sound so happy about it,” Willow said, smiling tentatively. “You might strain something. Isn’t that why you’re here? To get better?”

“No,” Hermione said – snapped, actually, and that scared her. She hadn’t been angry in years. She hadn’t been angry or disappointed or worried or anything else at all, and then along came this red-headed American lesbian Earth mother goddess with a grief so much newer and sharper than Hermione’s own and, on top of everything else, the power to end the world, and Hermione’s carefully cultivated depressive solipsism just evaporated like – like fumes off a potion. It made her even angrier.

“No?” Willow repeated.

“No!” Hermione said, sitting up straight in her fury. “You came here to get better. I came here to get away. I am here because if I’d stayed there I would have killed myself eventually – not that I would have been nearly as flashy or selfish about it as you apparently were,” she added, just to twist the knife.

Willow blanched and drew in on herself. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t go into a Spanish convent intending to come out again,” Hermione said, ignoring the apology altogether. “I don’t plan to ever leave.”

“Ever?” Willow said, smiling forcedly in a transparent attempt to diffuse the tension. “Won’t it get kinda boring though? I mean, all the coven members – they all leave sometimes.”

“I don’t get bored,” Hermione replied tersely.

“Really? ‘Cause it seems to me like you might put Curious George to shame in terms of, er, curiousness, and even I know books can only take you so far.”

“I don’t,” Hermione said, as firmly as she could manage. “I mean, I’m not. Curious.”

“But when you asked earlier about my dreams,” Willow objected, “I could tell you were interested.”

‘Well, I’m not!” Hermione said, falling apart altogether at last in the face of Willow’s unrelenting questions. High above them, there was a sound like a window shattering and then a rain of glass shards falling to the floor. Hermione hardly noticed. It had been a long time since she had let someone push her to this point and it felt . . . good. Scary, but good, and that was even scarier. She swallowed, and continued, desperately trying to achieve an even tone of voice, “I’m not interested. Or concerned or intrigued or attracted, so you can just forget about it.”

Hermione had always thought the cliché about “words hanging in the air” to be silly, but for the first time in her life she understood it. Her words did hang there, between them, and Hermione’s breath caught in her throat, where the words should have stayed.

“Attracted?” Willow said, sounding both horrified and breathless.

For once, Hermione was the one to flee.

***

The next day, Willow decided to take matters into her own hands. This whole “running into each other in the library at two in the morning” thing didn’t seem to be working out that well, so she asked Miss Hartness for permission to take Hermione her lunch. Miss Hartness eyed her for a moment in a way that made Willow want to squirm, and then granted it.

Willow took the tray and mounted the stairs to Hermione’s third floor room with the ever-increasing sense that this had been a really, really stupid idea. She knocked and then gripped the tray with unnecessary force, as though it might try to escape.

Hermione, who would have been expected lunch after all, opened the door without any sort of hesitation – and then stopped, silent, staring, and totally unreadable, until the babble-switch in Wilow’s brain finally flipped on.

“Hi,” she said brightly. “I thought you might be hungry since it’s, uh, lunchtime and everything. I made the salad today. Here.” She thrust out the tray.

Hermione continued to stare at her and made no move to take it. “You’re breaking the rules,” she said at long last.

“Yeah, well, I decided they were stupid.”

“Ten points to Ravenclaw,” Hermione said faintly.

“To which I say, ‘what?’ and add a ‘huh?’ for good measure,” Willow replied with a careful half-smile.

“Never mind,” Hermione said with a sigh. “You’d probably have been in Slytherin anyway. Come in.”

Willow had to turn sideways to get through the door because of the tray, which Hermione still hadn’t taken from her. Once inside she set it on an end table and looked around curiously. The room was very like Willow’s own at the coven – small and plainly furnished and a little drafty, which was pleasant in the summer but she always thought would be uncomfortable in the winter. But there wasn’t anything personal in Hermione’s room, even though she’d been there much longer than Willow – no knickknacks, no photographs, nothing at all. Willow had Tara’s picture by her bed and looked at it every night while falling asleep; somehow she had been expecting Hermione to have something similar, but it seemed she didn’t.

The sound of Hermione shutting the door finally made Willow blink out of her probably super unsubtle contemplation of the room. “Sorry,” Willow said, startling a little. “I didn’t mean to – look, about last night. It’s okay, you know.”

“What is?” Hermione asked. She sat on the bed and poured herself a cup of tea from the teapot on the tray without asking Willow if she wanted any. She also didn’t tell Willow to take a seat, but after a few seconds Willow decided to do so anyway, in the chair beside the desk. It was hard and uncomfortable, but better than standing.

Willow watched her for a few seconds as she placidly sipped her tea, and wondered if this had all been a huge mistake. “I mean,” she tried again, “if you’re, uh – it’s really flattering and everything –”

“What is?” Hermione asked, looking up at last. “That I’m not attracted to you?”

“Hermione.”

Hermione laughed. “Merlin’s beard, have you got an ego.”

“Hermione,” Willow said sharply. To her surprise and satisfaction, Hermione stopped laughing. Willow took a deep breath. “Look, can we both just stop – stop pretending for a second here?” Hermione didn’t answer, but her expression went from cold, deliberate irony to careful neutrality; Willow could only hope that was an improvement. “I – I like you,” she said at last. “I think you’re smart and interesting and if you let yourself get better you’d probably be funny and fun and – and a lot of other good things too.” And a lot of other good things too? Willow wondered exactly when she had caught Xander’s knack for turning totally inarticulate at moments of great need. She controlled her wince and forced herself to go on, “But I’m really sorry, I can’t –”

“I know,” Hermione said. She’d lowered her head over her tea when Willow had started talking, but now she raised it. She looked off to the side though, out the window; Willow, following her gaze, could just see the tops of the green rolling hills of Westbury. “You can’t. And neither can I.” She sighed. “The thing is . . . I am getting better. I wasn’t before, but now I am. And I don’t know what to do, because I’m alive and I’m not even sorry about it anymore, but my life – everything I had in it that I cared about is gone.”

“So you make a new one,” Willow said quietly. “Not that it’ll be easy or anything, I mean,” she added. “But you could do it if you wanted to, I’m sure you could.”

“I suppose,” Hermione said slowly. “But that’s not really the problem. I could do it – but really, why bother?” She looked up and caught Willow’s gaze. “You love someone and then they leave. We both know it. So why bother?”

Willow found she had to swallow hard before she could answer. “Because sometimes they don’t,” she said. “And even if they do . . . the friends you had, would you have never wanted them at all?”

“I don’t know,” Hermione said. “I used to think it would have been better off if I had never – but now, I don’t know.”

“Tara and I,” Willow said, looking down at her hands laced together in her lap, “it wasn’t supposed to be like this. We should have been forever and we’re not. But I thought – we thought – for just a little while –” Willow had to stop and take a deep, shaky breath. Hermione reached over and handed her a tissue. “Thanks.” She wiped her noise with it and then swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “We can be friends, though, right?” she said when she was done, because she couldn’t bring herself to struggle on, to try and make sense of Tara’s death yet. Or ever.

“Friends,” Hermione echoed. “Yes. Anyway, I think it might be rather too late to decide otherwise.”

Willow managed a brief laugh. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” She looked up from her steady contemplation of the wad of soggy tissues in her hand. “You know, you could come out sometimes. During the day, I mean, now that you’re getting better. It’s really beautiful here right now. Yesterday it didn’t even rain.”

“We’ll see,” was all Hermione said, and Willow sensed that pushing matters would be the opposite of helpful. But at least this time when she left, she wasn’t running away at all.

***

September 1st. In London, Hermione thought, the Hogwarts Express was leaving King’s Cross. First years were crying and parents were waving good-bye, while on the train two boys were sitting next to each other for the first time. Some poor boy had undoubtedly lost his toad and a host of Muggleborns were about to discover Chocolate Frogs and pumpkin pasties for the first time. Three months earlier such thought would have made her melancholy; the idea that so much could go on when so much had been lost had been unbearable. Now she simply found herself wishing she could see the great red steam engine one more time herself.

The soft slide of someone’s barefoot against her own made Hermione look up. “Whatcha thinking about?” Willow asked. They were curled up like bookends at opposite ends of the library sofa again, but this time it was different. There was morning light streaming in through the windows, high up above even the topmost shelf, and this time Hermione was the one with a novel laying open and unread on her chest. Willow had been studying the same ancient, dusty tome all morning with an unusual intensity.

“Hermione?” Willow prompted again after a moment.

“I’m thinking,” Hermione said slowly, and then stopped. She looked down at their bare feet next to each other on the sofa; Willow had painted her toenails yesterday and convinced Hermione to let her do hers as well. They were red, with a faint gold shimmer. Very Gryffindor. “The past, the present, the future – it’s all the same,” she finished at last.

“Not always,” Willow said. “Everything changes sometime, I think.”

Hermione shook her head. “The things that matter don’t. The good things and the bad things that matter, they’re always the same. I like that.”

“You don’t think it’s frustrating?” Willow asked, closing her book with a dull thump. “We fight and we fight and it’s just to maintain the balance. To keep things the same. Sometimes it feels like we’re on a hamster wheel, running and running and going no where, just round and round and round.”

“Sometimes it’s frustrating,” Hermione said, tilting her head back to watch the dust floating in the light through the window. “Today I like it.”

Willow didn’t answer. Hermione finally raised her head to look at her, and found Willow staring at her, a strange, unhappy look on her face. “Hermione,” Willow began.

“You’re going back,” Hermione said.

“Yes.” Willow bit her lip. “It’s – it’s like I said weeks ago, something’s happening. You know how you said all the good stuff and all the bad stuff – it all stays the same? Well, it looks like someone’s trying to throw it off. We have to stop it. And I have to help.”

Hermione nodded. “When are you going?”

“Tomorrow. I’ve only known since yesterday,” she added quickly. “It’s all happened so fast, but it’s pretty clear now that this isn’t where I need to be anymore. Please don’t be mad.”

“I’m not,” Hermione said, though she is, a little. She’d known before Willow had told her from little signs over the past few weeks, unconfirmed rumors, a certain tension in the coven, the way that Willow had suddenly got over her aversion to the spellbooks and started researching obsessively – it had all pointed to the same thing. “I told you the first time we met that you would have to leave someday. Me, though – I get to stay forever in my Spanish convent.” Would that that still held the same appeal it once had. It was Willow’s fault entirely that didn’t, Hermione thought, a trifle resentfully.

“Do you really want to though?” Willow asked, as though she’d read Hermione’s mind. She sat up, taking away the close warmth of her feet. “You could come with me. You’re powerful –”

“I’m not.”

“You are,” Willow insisted quietly. “I know it. You could help.”

“I don’t want to. I helped save the world once already. Everybody died.”

“But, Hermione, it doesn’t have to be that way.”

“Yes,” Hermione said, and was on her feet before Willow could stop her. “It does. Because you’re going to die too. Don’t you see that?”

“No,” Willow replied. “I mean, yeah, sure, there’s always a chance, but jeez, pessimistic much?”

“This isn’t funny!” Hermione says, dangerously close to both crying and shouting. The stained glass lampshade of a reading lamp on a nearby table cracked suddenly, making them both jump, and Hermione raked her hands through her hair. After months of not having to deal with any emotion whatsoever, she had found recently that her control on her magic when she was upset had slipped considerably. It made her feel about ten years old, and usually she repaired whatever it was immediately in a fit of embarrassment, but right now she couldn’t be bothered. “How can you be glib about this?” she demanded. “It isn’t funny!”

“I know,” Willow said quickly. “I know it’s not. I’m sorry, it’s just – I went to high school on a Hellmouth, you know? We always tended to joke about that sort of thing – it’s kinda the only thing to do when your school wins the annual cross-town body count competition on a regular basis.”

Hermione refused to laugh, or even smile. Whatever Willow said, none of this was the slightest bit amusing. She looked away to avoid catching Willow’s gaze; her eyes were just too much for Hermione at the moment.

“But you know,” Willow said finally, “it turns out I’m kinda tough to kill. I’m still here, even after everything.” She reached out and grasped Hermione’s hand. “And I plan to go on being here for awhile.”

“Well, lucky you,” Hermione said, pulling her hand away and backing up. “Don’t!” she added, and Willow froze halfway to her feet. She sank back down onto the sofa. “Listen,” Hermione said once she had reached the safety of the doorway. “I hope – I really do hope everything goes well for you and your friends. I don’t want the world to end.”

Hermione didn’t wait any longer; she turned and left as quickly as possible, taking the stairs to her room two at a time. They didn’t need any other good-bye, she told herself firmly. Tomorrow Willow would leave and most likely Hermione would never see her again. It wasn’t like anything had ever happened, or ever could have happened. They’d had no real chance. It was best to end things as suddenly as they had begun.

And if her resolve was proving somewhat weaker than she had expected – well then, that was all the more reason.

***

Willow set her suitcase down in the foyer. She looked around, taking in the grand sweep of the staircase, the hanging tapestries, bright as jewels, the high, thin windows. She’d had no clue at all what to expect when she’d arrived here three months earlier; she’d thought that at the very least she would be treated as a dangerous criminal, locked up, imprisoned, held at arm’s length. Instead she had found forgiveness, and kindness, and a safe place in which to heal herself. She knew how important it was that she go back now, even if it was earlier than they’d planned, but she could not deny that she was afraid. Sunnydale was hardly a safe haven, and she was not at all sure of how much forgiveness and kindness she would find there.

“Willow, are you ready?” Giles said, ducking inside. “We have to hurry or you might miss your flight.”

“Yeah, I know,” Willow turned her gaze to the top of the stairs again. “I just . . . I thought she’d come.”

Giles’s hand was heavy and comforting as he squeezed Willow’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Willow sighed. “Me too,” she said, and followed him out to the car. They put her luggage in the trunk and Willow, checking her watch, ran around to the passenger side. She opened the door – and stopped dead as Hermione came pelting out of the building and down the front steps. She was wearing black robes Willow had never seen on her before, and which she had to privately admit were about as flattering as a burlap sack. Her hair, out of control at the best of times, was whipping into her face, and she looked . . . thrilled. Exhilarated, even.

“Willow,” she said breathlessly, and reached out to grab her by the arms. “Willow –”

“Hermione, what –”

“I’ve got a Portkey,” she said. “To New York, it’s the arrival point for wizards from Europe. From there I can Apparate. Sunnydale, right?”

Willow couldn’t answer. Luckily Giles recovered himself a lot faster and said, “Yes, Sunnydale. Hermione, I don’t believe we’ve met, but may I say that whatever assistance you might provide would be most welcome.”

Hermione nodded. Her fingers tightened briefly, and then drifted up to curl into Willow’s hair. “It doesn’t get you too,” she said fiercely.

“What doesn’t?” Willow asked in bewilderment.

Hermione shook her head, her eyes very bright. “I don’t know,” she said with a laugh. “Death, maybe. Or whatever’s coming. It doesn’t get you. And I want to be there to make sure.” She seemed to hesitate, and then leaned forward to press her lips, just once, against Willow’s. Then she was gone.

Willow stared after her, and finally looked over to see Giles watching her. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, smiling faintly. “I am. Let’s go.”

Fin.