Love is Hope: Life after fifth year

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They’d followed Crookshanks, who’d bolted from Harry’s comfortable lap to dryer horizons the second a huge drop of rain had splattered in front of his nose, nearly missing the cat’s fur. By the time they got to the playground, and placed Hermione’s bike so, that they could keep an eye on it during their stay in the little ‘house’, they were soaked. Fortunately, the air was still very hot, so that condition only cooled them down a bit, and didn’t freeze them to the bone. The shelter Crookshanks had led them to wasn’t that large for two fifteen-going-on-sixteen year old adolescents; they couldn’t even sit properly in front of or next to each other. With their backs leaning on opposite little walls and their knees slightly bend; they kind of sat next to each other’s feet.

Crookshanks, after shaking his fur from the bit of rain that had managed to wet him, and in the process getting Harry and Hermione even more splashed, had opted to curl up ‘between’ the two teenagers, not wanting to go near their soaked clothes. The proximity of Harry’s damp body triggered confusing feelings Hermione didn’t care to analyse. But the situation in which they’d found themselves now seemed to scream intimacy. The rain was pelting down heavily, creating the illusion of a waterfall curtain at the exits of the shelter. It felt as if they were in a safe little cocoon, sheltered from the cruelty of the outside world.

Hermione didn’t want to shatter the frail sense of sheltered safeness by bringing up all the bad things that happened this year. Harry didn’t seem too keen on breaking the silence either, but was starting to get used to her unusual silence. It struck her suddenly that she was often the one who’d be talking everyone’s ear off, when she wasn’t emersed in some book or another. Especially in the conversation earlier, about what to study next year, she’d barely advised Harry to take Potions regardless if Snape taught it. She realised Harry must be at least a little confused as to why she hadn’t started advising (nagging according to everyone else) yet. Opening her backpack she took out the food she’d brought with her on the trip. Wordlessly she passed some pie and a little bottle of water to her best friend.

Softly she decided on a subject: “How are they treating you this year, Harry? Did the talk the Order gave them help anything?”

Harry smiled a little, but it didn’t reach his eyes: “I’m allowed to answer Ron’s calls, but I can’t phone him myself. Actually I could, but I would be paying those calls from my own money. And since I don’t care to inform them about my Gringott’s vault, I don’t have the money to afford those calls. And it’s not like I can take a paid summer’s job anywhere near here. For one, no one would hire someone of my ‘reputation’. Secondly, they still make me work around the house and the garden, so I don’t care to go working somewhere else also, even if I would get paid for it. Any way, there’s always someone of the family ‘supervising’ my conversations. You can only enjoy seeing them get painfully constipated by hearing magic and Quidditch talk so many times; it’s getting a bit old. And I guess one big plus is that they don’t punish me with the confiscation of meals any more; they still use it as a threat, but they aren’t trying to starve me.”

Regardless of his last statement, he’d wolfed the pie in a matter of seconds, and was already munching on the last bite of the second piece she gave him, all the while explaining the new situation with his relatives. Although she was hungry, after her bike ride, she ate slower. After she gave her piece of mind on the Dursley’s, she couldn’t stop a yawn. Though she wasn’t suffering from insomnia, she felt very drowsy; the ride, the rain and the food were making her forget she was quite uncomfortable on the wooden floor.

Silence had again claimed the teenagers. Hermione let her head rest against the wall and closed her eyes. When she heard her cat purr she automatically stretched out her hand to stroke the lazy ball of fur. She smiled when she bumped on Harry’s hand. Crookshanks had always liked Harry, especially after meeting Sirius. Her smile vanished slowly; she’d always believed Crookshanks wasn’t just some cat, she always felt safer when he was around. And Crookshanks had loved Sirius, known to trust him; maybe they wouldn’t have had the chance to ever get to know Sirius without this very cat.

Apparently Crookshanks didn’t care anymore about getting wet as he jumped on Harry’s lap, out of Hermione’s reach. He started making a noise that was at the same time soothing and saddening, as if he knew very well what had happened to his buddy, Padfoot, and was trying to mourn with Harry. Hermione opened her eyes to see Harry watching Crookshanks intently, both green eyes locked onto each other’s. Hermione watched amazed at the spectacle, not daring to even move, afraid to disrupt the moment.

Harry looked away from the cat: “You remember that veil? The one you said was dangerous?”

He didn’t wait for her to nod, but Hermione was fairly sure he meant the veil in one of the rooms at the Ministry of Mysteries. Although she hadn’t heard the *voices* Harry had been talking about, she’d felt something peculiar coming from it. She remembered how everyone had been enthralled by the vibe coming from it. After shaking Ron he’d helped her bring the others away from it, and with what she’d heard from Neville’s version of what had happened after she’d lost consciousness, it had been a great relief she’d managed to get them away from it. Imagine one of them wanting to go through it to investigate where those voices came from...

Before she could start arguing with herself what the archway had been exactly, she heard Harry continue. Resisting the urge to tell him her theories about what it could be, she settled for listening in the hope he’d finally talk to her about Sirius.

“I heard people whispering behind it, just lurking out of sight...” He paused and continued in a different tone: “He came for me, like I thought I was coming for him. He was great, fighting and duelling... And then Dumbledore came, and I remember thinking everything was going to be ok, that we were saved. Everyone stopped fighting to look at Dumbledore, except Sirius and... Lestrange... he was... taunting her, daring her...”

Hermione was glad Neville had already told her what had happened, because otherwise she doubted she could make a lot of sense of Harry’s ramblings. She wasn’t really accustomed to this either. Not that Harry had a great talent of telling difficult stories with much clarity, but especially when it was a story Ron and Hermione knew nothing about prior, he tried to give the big picture before starting to ramble. Seeing his hands shake and his pale face frowning due to suppressing his emotions, she reached out and whispered a consoling, “It’s ok, Harry”

Obviously that was the wrong thing to say: he scooted back as far as he could – which wasn’t that far, considering the limited space they found themselves in, but the action was enough for Hermione to withdraw her hand. Harry spoke with repressed anger: “Don’t you get it! It’s never going to be ok, anymore. Sirius’s gone, and no matter what, part of it’s MY fault. And you know what, I blame him, too. He had no right to put himself into danger like that, he had no right to DIE, he had no right to LEAVE me when I needed him most!”

By now Hermione barely controlled her sobs. But Harry seemed to have waited for this opportunity, and though he didn’t raise his voice as had become his habit over the year, he ranted further with a nasty intonation that would’ve made Malfoy proud: “What’s the matter Hermione, I thought you were just dying to get me to talk about Sirius. Weren’t you trying to bring him up in a conversation all the bloody time those last few weeks at Hogwarts. Isn’t that why you rode all the way here? Why you couldn’t wait to see me, oh and without Ron, who’d shut you up if you’d try to mention *him*? Isn’t that the reason, coming to solve little Harry’s problem? Well, guess what, you can’t solve this Hermione, and if you came here to tell me I told you so, you can just...”

‘CLACK!’

Harry never got to say what she could do with her “I told you so”. Later, Hermione couldn’t remember how she had managed to slap him from where she sat, but she did. As a reflex her hand went to her mouth as if to repress a gasp. Her being was flooded by enormous relief and overwhelming regret at the same time. She was trying to speak but found herself out of breath from suppressing her sobs. When did he get so mean? Just moments ago, he was the sweet boy she loved so much, and now his words hurt her about as much as Dolohov’s curse had.

“Don’t...” she finally managed. Harry’s head was still tilted to the side after her slap, but he’d brought his gaze down, so she couldn’t see his expression through the bangs of hair shielding him from view. Reason told her that he was just hurting, grieving, but this was one of the rare times she couldn’t bring herself to view everything from an objective point of view, separating her emotions from her thoughts... How dare he lash out at her, how dare he!

Harry’s shoulders were shaking slightly, and for a fleeting horrific moment she believed he was laughing at her, before realising he was crying. For a moment she felt very stupid, not knowing what to do. Her anger and indignation had melted completely the second she realised he was crying. Her best friends didn’t cry, they were boys! She did the crying, and even then it was as seldom as humanly possible. She had the overwhelming urge to take him in her arms like a mother would and try to sooth his pain, but she knew with almost complete certainty, that he would reject that kind of gesture even now.

In a span of two seconds she made a decision. Scooting closer, she sat herself beside him. He made as to prevent her from coming closer, but she rapped her arms around his torso and put her head on his chest. Hoping he wouldn’t reject her like this, because for all the world it was she who was being comforted and not the other way around, she was silently weeping on his shirt. In the back of her head she had a taunting thought that she was over-analysing things again. But at least Harry didn’t push her away. She felt him relaxing and hesitantly bringing one arm around to pet her back. She almost laughed through her tears.

She remembered him telling her about the sobbing Cho and how he didn’t know how to handle such situations. Trying to sooth him, she whispered, her voice quavering a little: “Harry, I’m so sorry. I... I mean, I miss him too,” she felt Harry take a breath as if he wanted to interrupt her, but she didn’t give him a chance, “I know the loss I feel can’t even begin to compare to what you’re going through, but I feel like... well, I don’t know how to feel anymore. It’s like everything is upside down, and I don’t know what to think anymore. I’ve always known the danger that came from being a Muggle-born in the magical world, especially with Voldemort back, and I’ve always accepted that. I knew after Voldemort’s rebirth it would be a whole new level of danger, but I just guess... Well, I knew in theory there would be pain and loss and death, but I just never...”

Hermione didn’t know how to continue. She just noticed she was thinking out loud. She had never really pondered that much on all of what she was saying right then, and she certainly felt a little more than uncomfortable about speaking like this in front of Harry. She also realized that perhaps this was what was bothering her the most. Theoretically knowing what it would be like to be in the middle of a war, and experiencing the fact that one of the first casualties was someone you had been close to, was quite a different thing.

When she pondered this Harry whispered: “I know” Though her mind was still fumbling with explanations of what she was going through, she relaxed a little at his cryptic answer. Of course Harry would know what it felt like to loose people that played important parts in one’s life. She felt him bring up the arm that wasn’t around her back to his face and resisted the urge to check if he was wiping his cheeks clean. Shifting slightly to get as comfortable as her position permitted, she asked softly: “Harry?” Because of the noise the still pelting rain caused, she felt his “Mmh”-respons more then she heard it.

“What happened after... after you ran after Bellatrix?” The question hung heavy in the warm and very humid atmosphere of the little house. After some time he straightened up and Hermione went back to her first position, scooting over Crookshanks who had taken up the little place she had left to embrace Harry. Back in their original positions Harry tried to relate what happened when he confronted the murderer of his godfather in the Atrium.

He didn’t sound as jumbled as before. Throughout his story he stayed eerily calm; the ever growing noise of the pelting rain giving them an isolation from the world outside. Hermione was shocked at first, when she heard about Harry trying to put Bellatrix under the Cruciatus Curse, but felt relieved when she heard it didn’t work. She was puzzled about the sudden failure from Voldemort at possessing Harry. As much as she loved Harry and believed in him being a great wizard, there must be some explanation as to why it didn’t work, since it was clear Harry’s Occlumency abilities didn’t have anything to do with blocking the possession.

Harry ended his tale with the arrival of the Ministry members on the scene. Hermione had an inkling that Harry had more to tell but wasn’t ready yet, or wanted Ron there too... Whatever made him stop, Hermione suspected he already had answers on questions forming in her mind. But she refrained from badgering him and stayed silent, watching Harry thoroughly. His calm mask had slipped and he was frowning. Hermione decided to break the silence.

“What’s wrong, Harry?” Mental note to herself: kind of a loaded question to ask Harry.

“What’s wrong? What’s wrong? Aside from a whole lot of obviousness that is wrong, I just told you I used an Unforgivable, I could get lifetime in prison on top of everything else, and you just ask me what’s wrong?”

‘Ok, should’ve seen that one coming, Hermione!’ she thought.

Suppressing the urge to roll her eyes at his little melodrama, she explained: “Harry, you didn’t use any Unforgivable. Not really, anyway. Look, first of all, you know the first time you try a curse, even when you get a beam out of your wand, and you feel the energy that’s in it, that’s still no reason to believe you successfully casted it. I know you’re great at Defences against Dark Arts, and consequently at curses too, but even you can’t do a spell that powerful on your fist try. Second, I know you were a champion for the Tournament in fourth year, but really, didn’t you pay attention in class at all? Granted the professor was a fake, but the information in his class wasn’t. To cast that curse you have to be willing the physical pain, with a lot of hatred behind it. A bit like the opposite thinking pattern that is needed for a Patronus Charm to work... Really Harry, you think you’re going to be convicted for wishing the cause of your emotional ache to feel the pain too? Besides, it was only a refugee from the ministry, a Death Eater, nobody’s going to ...”

She stopped abruptly, slightly disturbed at her own heartlessness, even if it was directed at Bellatrix Lestrange: “I mean, uh... Look Harry, the day you’re really capable to cast that curse, and start using it, then I’ll start worrying. Even if your victims would’ve deserved what they got. By the way, it was you who told me nobody should have to be subjected to that kind of pain. It’s just, in a small way you’d be as Voldemort. Since he uses it also on those *he* believes deserve it. And...”

She realized she’d started talking faster again, babbling and making less and less sense. Since when did she allow words coming out of her mouth before they’d been checked and re-checked by her brain? Aargh! She was going to have to find a way to get herself together, or she was going to really lose it sometime in the near future... Fortunately, Harry seemed to feel better through her embarrassment; he was smiling a bit mischievously at her.

“Why, Hermione Granger fumbling to get her point through? If there even is a point? What’s happened to the smartest witch in the century?”

Hermione swatted at him, smiling a bit shyly. Well, he seemed a bit better now, probably best not to say anything about it, lest he blows up again. While they started talking a bit more comfortably about Dumbledore, Ron and the other Weasleys, the rain outside stopped slowly...

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