#dailymicrofics

Andromeda watched and waited. She knew it would be too much, but Hermione had insisted.

Hermione made the effort to trace Andromeda’s features, but the girl in the photograph danced away from her fingertips. Hermione trailed after her. Andromeda pretended not to notice the way Hermione kept her arm angled--a wrist to shield her from a picture of Bellatrix grinning down on the camera from atop a high wall just before she leapt off.

“You look so much like her.”

Silence stretched between them.

“Does that bother you?” Andromeda said.

Hermione closed the photo album on her finger for a moment before slipping from between the pages and losing their place entirely. She set the book down between cold tea cups and drew a leg up between them on the couch. “When we first met,” Hermione sighed, and when her eyes flicked over Andromeda’s face they lingered on the places Andromeda knew they would--square jaw, high cheekbones, and the same dark, oval eyes under a perpetually creased brow. “But now I see the differences.”

Hermione reached up and brushed her thumb over the bridge of Andromeda’s nose. That too had once looked just like Bella’s--for the first six years of her life--until Andromeda had slipped while playing on the stairs. Bellatrix had found her in a flash, pulled her up and vanished the blood, had set the break with unintentional magic and dried her tears before the ruckus summoned the wrath of either of their parents.

Hermione would never be in a place to hear about the girl Bellatrix had been before she grew into the woman she became.

Andromeda closed her eyes.

“And here,” fingers skimmed her cheek, tickling eyelashes, “this beauty mark. Look at me, Andy.”

Hermione was mapping her face, fearless, and when she swung a leg over Andromeda’s lap, Andromeda found her hips and squeezed hard, intent on keeping Hermione there. “And you’re softer…here,” she kissed the corner of Andromeda’s lips and her warm hands cupped cheeks suddenly flushed with the press of Hermione’s body against hers.

“Your smile,” Hermione whispered, “your smile is completely different.”

Andromeda raced up Hermione’s back, overwhelmed with the need to stake her claim, and pulled her into a kiss.

cw toxic codependent sisters, blackcest, and abuse (child and intimate partner) below the cut. we goin’ to superhell today

“She was smiling when she came in,” Hermione said.

Fleur found her in a dead-end hallway. She was sitting, staring at her hands, on the missing gurney the nurses had been searching for all week. The interns had tucked it away back here, their own safe hiding spot. They could keep it a while longer.

Fleur sighed and hoisted herself up beside Hermione. “It happens, it happens all the time.”

In between. 139 words. @sapphicmicrofics

“Where did you get this?” Fleur said.  She’d never spoken in a tone so dark.

Hermione took a step back but Fleur lunged forward and ripped the photograph away.

“In my dorm.”

“I cleaned out that room myself. Where--” Fleur’s jaw clenched. She looked down at the trembling photograph and took a deep breath. “I’ve been working very hard to--” she measured her words, “Hermione, this belonged to a friend of mine. She kept it tucked between the pages of a--”

“I know who it belonged to,” Hermione said.

Around them, weathered flyers still clung to every telephone pole: a beautiful, smiling blonde angel--lost too soon.

Hermione shifted under the weight of her bag, the diary was a lead weight’s worth of secrets. Maybe she hadn’t been an angel after all.

Lily’s never slept in the Head Girl’s room though she’s had the key for months, and when she wakes up she’s forgotten where she is, but only for a moment.

“How long was I--”

“Four hours.” Narcissa is exactly as Lily left her, with a leg tucked under her and the other dangling off the bed, an arithmancy book spread open across her lap.

“You need to take a break,” Lily says through a yawn. Narcissa doesn’t pull away when Lily stretches and their hips touch--it’s hopeful progress.