Author's Note: There is a line in this chapter that I borrowed from Book 1: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Sorry for the delay in an update…I spent the entire day yesterday putting up Christmas decorations, etc…not fun…very tiring…but at least it's done. I hope that you enjoy this chapter and please tell me what you think! Title of this chapter comes from one of my favorite songs, "Forever and For Always" by Shania Twain…beautiful song.
Chapter 13
Forever & For Always
"In your arms I can still feel the way you
want me when you hold me
I can still hear the words you whispered
when you told me
I can stay right here forever in your arms"
"And there ain't no way--
I'm lettin' you go now
And there ain't no way--
and there ain't not how
I'll never see that day...."
("Forever & For Always" by Shania Twain)
Harry woke up the next morning and to his dismay, he was alone in the bed. Had what happened last night just been a dream, he wondered. He looked myopically around the room and reached absently for the bedside table for his glasses. He found them and looked around the small room. She was standing in the corner of the room, looking out the window. He smiled as he saw that she'd put on his shirt. The sight of her standing there, in profile, with the early morning sunlight shining on her face, took his breath away.
He pulled the sheets away from him and sat up in bed, with his legs hanging over the edge of the bed. He found his boxer shorts among the pile of clothing and quickly put them on. He walked over to where she was standing and wrapped his arms around her waist.
"Good morning," he whispered, kissing her neck.
"Good morning," she said, laughing as his tongue tickled her neck.
They were silent for a moment, holding each other and looking out the window.
"Is everything okay?" he asked her finally.
"No," she said simply. She felt his arms go tense as he held her.
She turned to face him.
"Between us, everything is wonderful," she said, touching his cheek. "Everything else…that's another story altogether."
"I know it's hard," he said to her. "But you're not in this alone."
She nodded and went willingly into his comforting arms.
"So," she said a few moments later. "This magic stuff? Was I any good at it?"
He looked at her amazed. "Are you kidding me? You were, excuse me are, the best I've ever seen. I don't think there was a spell that you couldn't do."
"I wish I could remember," she said wistfully.
"You will," he said. "It's just going to take time."
He looked quite thoughtful for a moment.
"What?" she asked him.
"I have an idea!" he said, taking her by the hand and leading her back to the bed.
"I think I like your idea," she said giggling.
"Not that," he said, sitting down on the bed. He turned to her and then grinned. "Well, not just yet."
She smiled and took a seat beside him on the bed.
He reached over her to the bedside table and opened the drawer and pulled out his wand.
"This is my wand," he said. "Wanna try it out?"
She looked at him, a mixture of awe and uncertainty on her face. "I couldn't."
"Of course you can," he said, handing it to her. "It's just like riding a bike."
She rolled her eyes. "Yeah."
"It is," he said. "We'll start off easy. I know, we'll do the first one we ever learned back at Hogwarts. You made Ron so mad! You were able to do this first off and Ron---well, let's just say he had a little trouble."
"Okay," she said. "What is it?"
"The ability to make things fly," he said. He took his wand back from Hermione's hand and showed her the proper way to hold the wand and how to perform the correct wrist movement. He stopped suddenly and a far away look came over his face. He gave out a laugh.
"What?" she asked. "What's so funny?"
"It is so surreal that I am teaching you how to do something," he said. "If it hadn't been for you, I don't think Ron or I would have made it through any of our classes."
"Quite the little procrastinators were you?" she asked amused.
"You could say that," he said. "I used to like to call it organizationally challenged."
"I like to call that a crock of shit," she said, laughing.
"Hey," he said, trying to look affronted.
"Now are you going to show me how to do this or what?" she asked him, poking him in the side.
"Alright, alright," he said, shaking his head. "All you have to do is use the proper movement and say the words properly and you'll be able to do it."
She nodded and watched in awe as Harry swished and flicked the wand and pointed it at a book on the table. He said clearly and concisely, "Wingardium Leviosa!"
Hermione watched enthralled as she watched the book rise off the table and hover about four feet above the table.
"That's absolutely brilliant," she said, her voice in an excited whisper.
"Thanks," he said, smiling broadly. He took the book from the air and placed it back onto the table. He handed her the wand and looked expectantly at her.
"Let's see you do it," he said. "Just do like I showed you and say "wingardium leviosa."
She nodded and using her wrist just as Harry had, she swished and flicked the wand and said, "Wingardium Leviosa!" To her delight, the book rose up in the air and hovered just like it had when Harry had performed the spell.
"Amazing," he said. "See, you're a natural."
"I could have used this when I was moving into my apartment," she said. "Moving furniture isn't fun. This could have saved me a lot of back pain."
He smiled.
"Would you want to look at some photo albums?" he asked her.
She nodded and he walked over to the coffee table and came back a few seconds later carrying two leather-bound photo albums. He gave her a reassuring smile as he sat down beside her again and handed her one of the albums.
She opened the album and gasped as she saw that unlike photographs she'd seen in the past---the people in these photos were moving around.
"Harry?" she asked, looking at him in disbelief. "These photos!"
"Oh, yeah," he explained. "In the wizarding world, are photos and portraits are like that."
She gasped again as she watched a photograph of herself, Harry and this Ron person. In the photo, the photo Hermione was waving enthusiastically up at the real-life Hermione.
"So, um, when was this one taken?" she asked, still looking at the photo with her mouth agape.
"I think that was during first-year," he said. "We were in the common room when one of Ron's older brothers was fooling around with a camera taking photos of everyone."
"Why am I rolling my eyes at Ron in this photo?" she asked him.
Harry laughed. "You and Ron have what I would call a love-hate relationship," he said. "You loved to get on each others' nerves. In fact, I think you pretty much had it down to an art. We weren't always friends, the three of us."
She looked alarmed. "What happened?"
"Well, I think it was just us being typical 11-year olds," Harry said thoughtfully. "Ron thought you were mental when first met you."
"I can't say as I blame him," Hermione said with a slight laugh. "In the flashback I had of meeting the two of you, I was positively a terror. I don't think I even gave the two of you a chance to contribute to the conversation. I must have been talking a mile a minute."
Harry couldn't help but nod and Hermione poked him again in the side.
"So, what changed?" she asked. "What made us become friends?"
"Well, it's kind of ironic that I just showed you the Wingardium Leviosa spell," Harry started. "Like I told you before, you were the only one to get it right away. It annoyed Ron to no end. He tried to get it and you told him that if he didn't stop he was going to take someone's eye out. Then, you proceeded to show him exactly how to do it, and he was really cheesed off about it, to tell you the truth. Well, afterwards when we were walking out of class, he was telling all of us what a nightmare you were and how it was no wonder you didn't have any friends. You walked past us and you heard every word he'd said."
He looked at her and she looked a little hurt by what he had just said. He put a comforting arm on her shoulder.
"Well, that evening happened to be Halloween and at dinner that night, you weren't there. One of the other girls said that they'd seen you in the girls' bathroom crying over what Ron had said. Anyway, someone let a troll loose in the castle."
Hermione interjected at that moment. "Excuse me? Did you just say a troll? Why do I think that you're not talking about one of those annoying dolls with the different color hair?"
"Because I'm not," he said winking at her. "This was a fully grown mountain troll! We're talking 12-feet tall, ugly, big…and carrying a club in his hand. Anyway, we were all heading to our common rooms while the professors sorted it out. I suddenly remembered that you didn't know about the troll. So, Ron and I went looking for you."
"You saved me?" she asked. "My heroes!"
Harry laughed. "Well, it wasn't pretty. I jumped on him and the best I could do was stick my wand up his nose. He was about to hit me with the club when Ron took out his wand and did the old Wingardium Leviosa and the club flew out of his hand, rose up and then proceeded to hit him hard on his head. Knocked him out completely."
"And that's how we became friends?" she asked, in utter astonishment.
"Yeah, well there's some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a 12-foot mountain troll is one of them, I guess," Harry said.
Hermione nodded and they continued to look through both photo albums. Harry would point out where the photo was taken and who the various people were. When they finished, Harry noticed there were fresh tears in her eyes.
"What is it?" he asked, taking the albums from her lap and placing them on the floor.
"It's just," she began, wiping a tear away from her cheek. "What if I don't remember anything else, Harry? I looked at these photos and they all look like someone else's life. They aren't my memories anymore! What if I never get it back?"
He took her in his arms and stroked her back. "Shhhhh. It's okay, Hermione. You will get them back."
"But what if I don't," she said, her voice muffled as she had pressed her face into Harry's chest.
"Hey," he said, releasing her from the embrace and cupping her chin in his hand. "If you don't, you don't. We'll just have to create new memories. We already have."
"We sure have," she said softly, leaning in to kiss him.
"I love you," he said when they broke away from each other. "I'm going to be by your side through all of this. Professor Lupin, who you met yesterday, well, he's got friends in The Ministry of Magic and at St. Mungo's who have been working on memory research for years. New breakthroughs are being made on a daily basis. They'll find something that'll bring your memories back. If they don't, we'll be disappointed, of course, but that's not what's important. The important thing is that we're together again. That's what matters to me."
"That's what matters to me, too," she said, smiling through her tears. "I've been looking for you these four years, you know that? I didn't always know what I was looking for, but I knew that I'd find it someday. It was you, Harry."
"I love you," he whispered again to her and took her in his arms again as they fell back onto the bed.
Hermione and Harry walked into Billie's a little after five for the start of their shift. They had made plans to go and see Simon Maxwell in Asheville the next evening. Hermione was nervous to say the least. It wasn't something she was looking forward to, but it was something that had to be done. She had no idea what he could say to explain what he'd done to her. There wasn't anything he could say that would make her forgive him for what he'd done. How could he have done that? She couldn't help asking herself that question over and over.
She was also looking toward this inevitable confrontation with a sense of trepidation. She was worried that Harry might not be able to keep his emotions in check when they talked with Simon. She hoped he'd be able to keep things in control, but she knew it would be hard for him. Every time they mentioned Simon, this cold, angry look came into Harry's eyes. She couldn't blame him. When she tried to wrap herself around the pain that he must have gone through these past four years, she felt an overwhelming sense of anger toward her "Father". From what Harry had told her, his life these past four years had been a big struggle, to say the least.
She also thought about her parents…her real parents. While she had no memory at all of them, Harry told her about them. She couldn't imagine the pain they must have gone through to lose their only daughter, their only child. That was a type of heartbreak that Hermione hoped she'd never have to experience in her own life.
After their visit with Simon, Harry said they'd go to Atlanta to let her parents know that their daughter was very much alive. Hermione had been hesitant about this.
"Won't it hurt them when I look at them as if their strangers?" she asked. "Maybe I should wait until I have all my memories back."
"They'll want to see you," Harry had said. "I think they'll understand. They'll be so glad that you're alive. It's been very hard on them these past four years."
Hermione had acquiesced.
So, they walked into Billie's hand-in-hand that evening. Billie smiled knowingly at them as they approached her in the kitchen.
"So, I take it that everything's okay?" Billie asked, after hugging the two of them.
"Not entirely," Hermione said. "But it's getting there."
"Good," Billie said. "So what should I call you now? Julie? Hermione? Darlin'?"
"Hermione," she said with a look at Harry. "I'm going to need to get used to hearing myself called that."
"Alright," Billie said. "Hermione. That has a nice ring to it."
"Well, I better go and get clocked in," Hermione said, kissing Harry on the cheek before walking to the back room. Billie pulled Harry back.
"Harry," she said. "I'm glad everything worked out."
"Me, too," Harry said. "I wanted to thank you for everything you've done for her. I'm glad that she had you in her life."
"She's a great girl," Billie said, her eyes twinkling. "So a wizard, huh?"
"She does tell you everything, doesn't she?" Harry asked with a laugh.
"Yeah," Billie said. "Hey, do you think you could help me out with lottery numbers? We don't have the lottery here in North Carolina, but I go up to Virginia every now and then to get some tickets. You have any way of seeing into the future?"
Harry shook his head. "If I did, I think I would have done that already," he said with a laugh.
"Spoken like a true smartass," Billie said laughing at him. "I knew I liked you for a reason."
Harry couldn't help but laugh back as he walked back toward the backroom so he, too, could clock in for work.
Julie was just wrapping her half-apron around her waist, when he came in.
"Are you going to be okay?" he asked her. "With tomorrow? I know it won't be easy."
She nodded. "I have to be. I need to hear from him why he did this."
Harry nodded and took her in his arms, placing a kiss on the top of her head.
"Promise me, you won't do anything rash, Harry," she asked him.
He was silent.
"I can't promise you that," he said. "I know you don't want to hear that, Hermione, but that man deserves to die for what he did to you; to all of us."
"I know," she said. "But I don't want to lose you to prison. Promise me you won't do anything rash."
He rested his forehead against hers, they were looking right into each other's eyes.
"I'll try," he said softly. "I can promise you that I'll try."
"Okay," she said.
"Okay," he repeated.
She couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that came over her when she thought about this inevitable confrontation. She said a silent prayer that everything would be okay. She finally had the chance to be happy. She prayed that nothing would happen to screw this up. Not now, when they were both so close to regaining their life together that had been robbed of them four years ago.