Bring Me To Life ((Adam))

[Hermione Granger]

'How can you see into my eyes like open doors?
Leading you down into my core,
where I’ve become so numb
without a soul; my spirit sleeping somewhere cold,
until you find it there and lead it back home.
Wake me up inside, wake me up inside,
call my name and save me from the dark.
Bid my blood to run before I come undone.
Save me from the nothing I’ve become.'
-- Bring Me To Life, Evanescence

For the second morning in a row he was there - albeit without the coffee stain along his front and loud swearing to accompany it. Hermione sustained the blush threatening to spread and proceeded to calmly close the door of the Staff Room and walk towards the seat she had occupied yesterday. Overnight, she had contemplated her colleague's words carefully: the way he had spoken, the slight yet permanent frown running along his nineteen-year-old forehead that made him look at least ten years older; the eyes that were open yet guarded, young and bright yet old and weary. Adam Greene was an odd but interesting balance of both the modern and the vintage; a bridge between the old and the new generations. Hermione, on the other hand, had felt for quite a while that she was nowhere; she hung in limbo, neither young nor old... She wasn't in between, like Adam. If Hermione could choose, she would want to be young again; naive, innocent, pure. However, the fact of the matter was, she acted more like she was forty years her age: too serious, too pushy, too uptight. Hermione rarely acted her age unless she was arguing with Ron or having fun with her best friends.

But those days were long gone.

Hermione shook herself from her brief reverie, as she usually did, and seated herself down primly. She avoided Adam's eye; didn't even bother to say Good morning, which she assumed he would think quite rude of her. It was, yes, but Hermione had been steeling herself to say this for about twenty-four hours, and she was determined, with that stubborn pride of hers, that she would say everything she intended to say. Too often, over the last year, Hermione had retreated into her newly formed shell, convincing herself that she had nothing to gain from telling the world her secrets. However, things were about to change - and Adam was the first step towards redemption. Mot exactly how Hermione envisaged it really, but she recognised she was in dire need of breaking free of her self-built inner prison cell.

Coughing to draw attention to herself, Hermione kept her eyes firmly on the page of her parchment as she spoke. "In my third year I used a Time-Turner to get to all my lessons, and then used it to change the past and save the life of an escapee of Azkaban." Her fingers picked nervously at the edge of the page, fingers shaking just a little, like a leaf in the breeze. Her voice continued though, strong and unrelenting. "In Fifth Year I was jealous of Harry because he was better at Potions than me. In Sixth Year I fought wand-to-wand with Death Eaters, the parents of my classmates. In Seventh Year I erased my parents' memories of me and sent them to Australia to protect them." Hermione felt her eyes sting, but she was determined that she would get through this without shedding a single tear - because she was stronger than that. "After I graduated Hogwarts, my best friend was killed and I helped to save the world. I have faced Lord Voldemort and I was there when he was beaten. I gave up on life; I gave up on the love of my life and probably, a marriage. I gave up on friends, family and feeling." Hermione swallowed but her mouth was dry. "I gave up on myself until Dumbledore told me to change my life, but even though I'm living, even though I'm breathing, and all of that tells me I'm still alive, I still don't believe it; it's like I'm empty and it always hurts... always... When I'm eating, teaching, sleeping. And nothing in this world scares me because there is no longer anything to be afraid of, or anything to lose."

Hermione stopped. Silence reigned until she bravely put her eyes to Adam's, wondering what his reaction would be. "And now you can make your judgement of me, but even though that's my life story, do you really think you know me any better? Does that really tell you anything about Hermione Granger?" she asked bitterly, though she was also welcoming anything Adam threw at her - resentment, disgust, acceptance. Hermione didn't care. She just knew she had to show Adam that, regardless of one's past and one's background, she didn't believe any of that defined oneself. What Hermione truly believed was that your experiences mould you, but even though you could relate your stories to other people, they would never understand. It wasn't them who spent eight years struggling against the most powerful wizard in the world; it wasn't them who watched their best friend die. That wasn't their life, it was Hermione's, and that was her burden to carry alone. She had told Adam all of it, but could he really understand? And could she ever understand his pain?

"Life is never perfect," Hermione murmured and looked away. "I never assume that, ever. Your pain is your pain and my pain is my pain... My loss is my loss. We shall forever be alone. I could try and understand how it feels in your position, but I'm sorry, I can't. No, I'm not sorry. Whether I like it or not I cannot be you. I can't truly understand you, and I can't expect you to truly understand me. So when you wonder why I am the person I am, you will know: it was my experience that created this person, and I am flawed and imperfect. I automatically judge a book by its cover and I am stubborn and I am selfish. I am all of those things." She gave a small, almost imperceptible smile. "Do you really want to tell an imperfect person like myself all of the things you told me yesterday? How do you know you can trust me?"

[Professor Adam Greene]

Hi. I'm your dad. Too blunt.
Hey there... I'm sorry that you've never met me before, but I'm your real father. Too calculated.
I wish I could have known you better. Too vague.

Adam sat wit his elbows propped on his knees, the tip of his thumb bit lightly between his teeth. He was in a daze, his mind envisioning the first time he'd get to see his son since Dixie had taken him away. Jamie. That was his name. Adam wondered what type of face he would have. Would it resemble Adam's at all? He imagined short blond hair, spiked on top of his little head. What if he never saw him again in his life? Adam wouldn't let that happen. Never.

His thoughts were interrupted when he heard the stone gargoyles being relieved of their statuesque positions, followed by the soft sound of footsteps as another professor entered the lounge. Adam's gaze followed the noise, somewhat happy to see that it was Hermione who would be joining him. After having left her yesterday with a lot to chew on, he was somewhat curious to see if she had any sort of response. She'd had an entire night to mull on his comments, but perhaps she'd choose not to offer any sort of reply. He'd not mind either way, but he kind of hoped that she'd at least mention something about yesterday's conversation. But... nothing. Silence. Maybe he had angered her.

Refusing the break the silence himself, Adam sat for the few minutes until Hermione finally decided to speak. She jumped right in, almost as though she were preparing to dive into cold water. You never thought about it, you just dove in head first. Otherwise, you could stand at the edge forever and always think that you’d be better off to avoid the freezing cold. He listened quietly, his eyes concentrating on her face, watching the emotion radiate from her every word. A lot of what she was saying had been bits and pieces from the cloud of rumours that followed Hermione. The public had always posited so many things, none of which were ever really confirmed to be true or just stories. But now he was hearing everything from Hermione herself. She had no reason to lie, so Adam took everything she said as truth.

It wasn't until her last statement though that she really evoked a response from Adam. "I'll never know for sure, but that's the essence of trust." Why was it that nobody seemed to understand this. Was he the only person truly capable of trusting? Adam knew that wasn't the case. Still, he found trusting someone so easy. It was fate that you couldn't trust. People were predictable because they were flawed. You could always count on their imperfections to guide their actions. It wasn't a precise science, but human nature boiled down to perfect imperfection. Plus, trust wasn't just knowing what someone would do, it was knowing that they were human. Trusting that they were just as flawed and imperfect as you were. "Sometimes it's about trusting whenever you're not so sure that you should."

Adam looked down at the table. "I'm sorry though for what you've had to endure. You're right. Your pain is yours and mine is mine. We'll never be able to understand exactly what the other has experienced. But... that doesn't mean that we don't know what it's like to feel pain. Pain is pain. There are different degrees, but it's all the same emotion. We may feel it differently. Cope with it differently, but at the end of the day, we both live with the same thing. We both live with that pain of our pasts. For me, it's just a matter of wondering if there's even a future." He laughed, realizing how stupid he must have sounded. After all, he was the Ancient Runes and Arithmancy professor. Wasn't he supposed to be an expert on the art of seeing the future through various means? If only it were that simple.

[Hermione Granger]

Hermione listened to Adam's response. In truth, she was mildly surprised at how accepting and non-judgemental he was. He was a mere nineteen years old, and although, as she had previously said, age meant little to her, he really was quite insightful for someone so young, so inexperienced... No. Adam wasn't inexperienced; not when it came to matters of life anyway. Evidently, Adam's experiences had also left their mark on him, as they had on Hermione. She felt a blossoming bond, invisible yet tangible, between them; now they were connected by something. Hermione had never been a trusting person by nature; she was analytical and assumed the worst in situations, and often in people as well. However, whether it was because she felt bonded to Adam, or whether it was because she had not trusted in someone for so long - hadn't even had a proper conversation like this in about a year - Hermione realised she was beginning to trust (if that was the right word) her colleague sitting before her.

"Trust is hard to earn, and once it's lost, it's very hard to get back." Hermione laid her hands still, forgetting the paperwork on her lap as she focused on Adam. She gave a small smile. "I think I began to trust Harry and... and Ron's trust when they saved me from a troll in my First Year. Then they began to trust me. Before then, I was just a swotty know-it-all who got on people's nerves." Hermione looked away, feeling a little vulnerable at Adam's intense gaze. "They were my first friends and they meant a lot to me." It was a totally honest statement. She didn't notice that she used the past tense; it just sounded right because Harry was dead... and Ron was no longer a part of her life. Still, even though they were dead, Hermione still valued them as much as she had done since she'd met them all those years ago. Had it really been almost a decade?

Hermione felt her cold layers gradually strip away as Adam spoke. She wasn't normally a distant person; not in the way she was nowadays anyway. Before the war, Hermione had been very bookish and confident... so much so it pushed people away. Her classmates had teased her, rejected her for her bossy and greater-than-thou personality. The truth was, inside that bushy-haired head of hers lay a vulnerable and scared soul, waiting to be loved and cherished. And in return, that little soul - that brave, fighting soul - would do everything in its power to remain loyal and dedicated to those whom it trusted. Adam was one of the first strangers who, since the war, had treated Hermione like a human being; like she wasn't the idol they presented her as in the newspapers, like she hadn't been an irritating and generally disliked child in her younger years. And for that, she was secretly grateful, and almost, in a way, admired Adam for it.

"There's always a future," Hermione said gently, a small, understanding smile finally peeking at her lips. "Whether we like it or not, the world keeps turning... However awful you feel, life still goes on - even if society is ripped apart from under your feet, even if you lose your loved ones, again and again and again, we keep on living." Hermione sighed softly. "I've just realised that... Harry wouldn't want me to mourn his loss every day - which I still do. He was so much to me... a brother." She muttered the words as an old yet fresh memory of Ron sprang alive in her mind. "He would want me to live on, happily. Maybe, live for him. And I've completely let him down." Hermione sounded glum, but she quickly regained the positive outlook she had previously been trying to convey and convince herself of. Hermione rarely let the tough times get to her, and now it was time to get even with Tough. "So you have to keep going, even if you don't want to. Live for those who didn't get the chance."

Peaceful silence reigned - neither comfortable or uncomfortable. Eventually, Hermione asked the question she had been curious about since yesterday morning: "What happened to your wife and son?"

[Professor Adam Greene]

"But..." there was always going to be a future. He wanted to argue the fact, yet he knew she was right. "Don't you sometimes feel like there can't possibly be a future forever though. At some point it's going to end. And, I don't even mean death. Just, at some point there can't be a future. It can't go forever. I guess that sometimes I just wish that it were the case because it just doesn't seem like things will ever get better. Things will never work out, and frankly, it's quite depressing." Adam didn't want to sound like a mopey, sad little kid. Truth was though, he had a lot to be sad about. He had a lot to make him depressed. But so did Hermione. He just needed to realize that he wasn't the only one who had suffered loss and pain. That was the biggest thing he knew he needed to realize from meeting Hermione. And, she was right. Just like Harry would want her to be happy, there were lots of people who would want Adam to be happy. Something inside of him even let him think that Dixie would be one of those people. He wanted her to be happy, that was for sure. Even if he'd never thought if it, he realized now that she probably wanted the same for him.

An ironic laugh. "What happened to them?" he repeated, wondering how she meant the question. "Nothing really happened to them," he said, figuring this was true. "They left." It was a quick and simple statement, but it was one that hurt so much for Adam to say out loud. Saying it. Admitting it. That was what made it real. That was what made it hurt. "But if you are asking what happened as in wanting to know why they left... well, I'm sure I could narrow it down to a reason. An event." Why he was so willing to discuss this was beyond him. Only Sierra had really talked to Adam about this. He kept it inside. He dwelled on it. Regretted it. Hated himself for it. "It was me." A heavy sigh. "It was my fault." Even if it was mostly his fault, Adam couldn't allow himself to blame Dixie for any of it. Even if she was the one to run away just like always, he knew that he was the reason she ran. He was the reason she had come back before, but he was also the reason that always caused her to leave. This time, he doubted whether or not she might return.

He turned to look back at Hermione, feeling like she deserved more of an explanation now that he'd opened up with the basics. "Look, please don't judge me, I'm not really a bad person..." he doubted that she would, but he knew that he'd judge himself if it were the other way around. Hermione seemed to have let down a few of her own walls though from what he could tell. She cared, and he noticed that she cared. She wasn't the type to just ask just because. If she wanted to know, she wanted to know for a reason. Adam wanted to think it was because she cared. Whether it was, or whether it was for another reason, he was going to tell her anyways. "I just wasn't ready. I wasn't ready to be a father. Hell, I probably wasn't even ready to enter the marriage in the first place. But I loved her. I loved Dixie. And I still do. I'll always love her." He knew that he'd always care for Dixie no matter what. She had been there in his lowest of lows, and he'd never stop caring for her whether she was his wife or not. If she was half way around the globe, he'd still think of her and wish her the best in life. "I love my son too. But... it's just hard. Not hard to love him. It's hard to know what to do. I want to be there for him, but sometimes I wonder if she was right to take him away." Even if he thought that Dixie had done the right thing, Adam's desire to be in his son's life was still strong.

"I don't even know anymore," he finished. He hoped Hermione didn't find his rambling annoying or weak. It had taken a lot for him to share what he had shared. Even with Sierra, he wasn't able to explain it the way that he had. For them, it always turned into an argument where Adam would say something he didn't mean. With Hermione, he almost felt as though it was a therapeutic process. He felt a lot better saying what he had said and explaining it to someone who was willing to listen.

[Hermione Granger]

Hermione stared at Adam strangely. He had, in just a few words, a couple of sentences, described exactly how she had been feeling for the past year; the entrapment she felt every day, that loss of hope. "...The story of my life," she replied with a half guarded, half wry expression. "I feel it every day. Ever since--" Her mouth clamped shut. Could she talk about it? She'd shut her grief up for so long, never once letting it out because she wanted to be strong for Harry, but not one night had she been able to forget the flash of green, the lifeless body in her arms. Hermione decided she needed to take a leap of faith - the faith Adam was talking about. He made her realise she needed to believe in something again, because without hope her life was worthless. "Ever since Harry's death," she ended quietly, looking away with tears in her eyes. She blinked them back, refusing to cry in front of a man she barely even knew.

"But," Hermione's breath staggered as she drew oxygen in for strength, "one day we've got to stop thinking about it and live." Her voice became firmer, surer. It was as though Hermione had rediscovered that burning flame within her; it had been re-ignited. "There's more to life than sitting around every day thinking life's not worth living. You're still alive, so make the best of it." She shook her head to herself, thinking, "I've been such a fool, Harry... Such a fool. You wouldn't want this." It was as though someone had knocked down all of her fears and doubts that had been residing within her since Harry's death. Suddenly, it was all gone. Hermione was alive once more. She looked up at Adam with an expression of gratefulness. "...Thank you. I think you just opened my eyes. For the last... year, I've been... lifeless." She pushed her thick hair out of her face and scratched at her cheek nervously. "I haven't been able to eat, sleep... talk to my friends. Now I have no friends!" She laughed bitterly. "And it's all my fault. I pushed them away. The friends I always wanted, I lost. And it was all my fault. They were the most important people to me." Hermione sighed and closed her eyes. "They still are. All of them. Ron. Harry."

A brief silence followed. Hermione opened her eyes again, caught Adam's stare and immediately said, "I... I'm sorry. Forget I said anything." Her tone had become closed, as though shutting Adam off again. Hermione was afraid of telling him too much. She couldn't trust him yet. Not fully. Not because he was a Slytherin, but because her past was too painful to talk about yet, to anyone. Not even Ron; in fact, he was the most difficult of all. Hermione knew she had to face him, but when? She had been a coward - a terrible example of a Gryffindor, Harry would've surely berated, and it made Hermione laugh at such a thought.

Hermione listened silently to Adam. She recognised in him the guilt, the regret that she had been harbouring herself since Harry's death. It lived in her eyes. She saw it each morning she peered into the mirror to tame her bushy brown hair. "Okay." Hermione nodded shortly when Adam asked her not to judge him. "I'll... try not to." She waited for his explanation, and when it came, she absorbed it in silence again. After he had finished, they sat in comfortable quiet, until Hermione broke it. "You will know," she said firmly, strongly, the Hermione she once was and would become again. "You will if you keep trying. You need to keep living for the answers to those questions. And if you want to change, you need to confront all those questions. If you love your wife and your son, show it. Don't drive the people you love away." A look crossed Hermione's face. "Just..." She looked uncertain for a moment. Really, that was what she and Adam were: two uncertain, lost people in the world. "...be strong and never give up. Do your best to change." It was a piece of advice Hermione would, unknowingly, begin to take, as of today.