Whispers

WHISPERS

Now I’m so tired, so, so tired of working this out

Going to give myself up, up to the truth of what this is,

Of what I am…

Stabbing Westward, Red on White

DARK SKIES SEEMED TO BE all that occurred these last few days. The wind occasionally howled as it flew through the trees, searching for the answer to its pain. The lake had even taken on the gray, somber color of the sky. It seemed as if everything, everything on the earth had become a reflection of his mood. It seemed mourning came natural to him.

And he preferred to mourn alone.

It was called for, he mused. People who got close to him seemed to die off and that in itself was enough reason to know that he was meant to be alone. He was meant to breathe alone. He was meant to live alone. And he was meant to die alone. It could not of been spelled out as simple as that.

He sighed and leaned back against the wall, the cool concrete bringing an odd sense of comfort to him. Everything seemed to revolve around choices now. It wasn’t like he actually understood why Fate had picked him to be the Boy-Who-Lived, but Fate had made a choice. His father had made a choice. His mother had made a choice. Lily and James Potter had sacrificed the very air they breathed so that he go on and live. Cedric Diggory had made a choice. He had taken the trophy right out of his hands and unknowingly sentenced himself to death. And Sirius, god Sirius had made the choice to come and fight and lose his life in the process.

All choices for him and only him.

And now, he would have to make a choice. He would have to make of choice of becoming a victim and allowing innocent people to die. Or he would have to me a choice of becoming a murderer and finally ending this thing that Voldemort was obsessed with continuing. His choice would place Ron and the Weasley family in uncertain situations. And god, his choice would even determine Hermione’s fate. He couldn’t do any of that to either of his best friends. But inevitably, his choice and fate was his to bear alone.

Suddenly warmth invaded his body as he felt a blanket being thrown around his shoulders. He knew it was her as soon as her fingers brushed the top of his shoulders, unintentionally setting a bit of ease in his turbulent mind.

“Hermione.” Her name tasted like a fine wine, smooth and strong, intoxicating like a drug. “Hermione,” he murmured again. “What are you doing here?”

She came to stand in front of him, pulling a large gray jumper over her head. A single thought previously overshadowed all his problems that had occupied his mind. He had meant what he said to her that day in the Great Hall during their fifth year. She wasn’t ugly. In fact, Hermione was far from being anywhere near ugly. Sure she wasn’t a Cho Chang or a Lavender Brown, but there was something alluring about her. It was like she was one of those women that artists loved to paint, not to glorify them but to create an unsolvable mystery. That’s what she was, an unsolvable mystery. At one moment he thought he knew her, but it was a moment like this one where she’d turn around and surprise him.

“I saw you from the window when I was walking to my room. You looked cold,” she replied, settling down into the space next to him. Her long coffee-colored locks blew briefly into her eyes and she reached up to tuck it behind her ears.

“I don’t need you to coddle me,” he shot, his haunted thoughts returning to lurk in his mind again.

“Wasn’t planning to,” she responded, ignoring his bitter reply. “And you don’t need to snap at me, you’re not a bloody five year old.”

“And you’re not my mother. She’s dead, remember?”

He regretted the words as soon as they flew out of his mouth. She looked as if she had been struck across her face, the first time he had ever seen her look so genuinely hurt. Her lips pursed together tightly and her amber eyes glowed with so many emotions that it hurt to look at her in the bleakness of their surroundings.

“No,” she hissed. “I’m not your mum. And it’s high time you get your head out of your arse and stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

“Where do you get off?” His eyes narrowed and he felt his anger surging.

She shook her head, her hair falling into her face. Her hands were trembling. “No, Harry. Where do you get off?”

He motioned to speak, but she stopped him with a look that could have stopped the earth from rotating. “I know you’re going through a hell of a time. I know I may not understand or you may think that you can’t share it with me… but god, Harry…”

She sighed. “Sirius died. Your parents died. Cedric died. Innocent people died by the hands of Voldemort, not you.”

“I’ve heard this lecture one too many times,” he snapped back. “Spare me, damn it. I can’t take much of it anymore.”

“Do you ever listen?” The intensity of her eyes was almost mind numbing. “I mean, do you ever stop and listen? Or do you hear what you’ve forced yourself to hear? Is that why you keep pushing people away? Nobody is telling that it’s going to be okay. Nobody is telling that it’s best that you forget Sirius and move one. God! We are only telling you that we are here for you. We are your friends. We are your family. Get that in your damn head!”

He whirled around to face her, the blanket she had placed over his shoulders falling limply to the ground. “So you’re here to listen then. You think that you can take it? Can you take the thoughts in my head? Can you take my memories?”

He grabbed her by the arm, suddenly finding himself towering over her and forcing her to the wet grass. They fell against the ground, his body nearly crushing hers. The closeness of Hermione was suddenly unnerving; the scent of her vanilla perfume mixed with the brashness of the air invaded his senses and nearly drove his mind blank.

“What makes you think that you can take all of me? What makes you thing you’re so special that you understand?” His hissed, his lips inches from her own. Her gaze matched his with a frightening passion; he almost lost the will to breathe.

“What makes you think I can’t?”

He lost it then, his lips descending atop of hers. There had always been something magnetic about Hermione. She had a force that seemed to draw people to her and up until he lost his control, he had always been able to resist its lure.

There was something completely different about this kiss. Cho’s kiss under the mistletoe had been awkward and clumsy. But this kiss had been completely in the other direction. This was fire. It was like he was learning how to breathe. He needed to have more of her. He needed to be burned by her.

He entangled his fingers in her hair, the mere softness of her curls causing a moan to vibrate in his throat. He decided that tasting her lips wasn’t enough and lowered his lip to the crevice of her neck. The combination of silky skin and the scent of vanilla were like a tantalizing drug, wrapping around him and refusing his freedom.

“Haarry…”

He looked up into her eyes; a heated liquid gold filled with emotions he couldn’t recognize. She looked beautiful like this, he decided. Her hair strewed around her in the grass like a crown. Her eyes were half-lidded but no loss of intensity occurred.

What was her choice?

What was her choice when it came to him?

“I can’t say I love you,” he whispered, the sensation of his fingers entwined with hers finally coming to his attention.

She was silent for a moment; her eyes seemed to be peering into the shadows of his own. How was it that Hermione seemed to be the only one who could force out a shamble of emotions that he never knew he possessed? Why was it that Hermione always knew the right thing to say?

“I’m not asking you to,” she responded finally, a velvet whisper.

“Then why me?”

His fingers began to take a life of their own and started to trail a path down her cheek and onto her jumper. He needed to know her choice. Why was he her choice?

“Why me?” He repeated. “Why me?” His cold hands slipped under her jumper and made contact with warm, smooth skin, inciting a low hiss from her lips. His fingers danced up across her stomach and came into contact with the lace of her bra.

“Why not?” She challenged with a heated whisper, her eyes daring him further. “Why not you?”

“Because,” he stated, lowering his lips onto the plane of her stomach. “Because you have a choice not to. Because I could kill you with these hands.”

His lips followed the path his fingers had taken previously. Hermione’s fingers entangled themselves in his hair, her breathing erratic. This was wrong, he mused. This was wrong because he was taking her choice. He was making her choice for her.

And he didn’t care.

She pulled him up to look at her; one hand tangled in his hair the other under his chin. “What makes you think I have a choice? What make you thin I had one to begin with?”

She pushed him back and leaned over him, her legs straddling his hips. Her hands cradled his face in her palms, her gaze holding his own. Her hair fell into a curtain around them as she traced his lips.

“What makes you think that I had a choice to begin with, Harry? Why are you so sure you know me? I’m not your parents. I’m not Dumbledore. I’m not the Weasleys. I’m not Sirius. What gives you the right to assume you know that choices I can and cannot make?”

He lips were seconds away from his, a maddening urge to claim her screamed to be released from within him.

“I didn’t choose to need you, Harry,” she murmured, brushing a soft kiss on the corner of his mouth. “Like I didn’t choose the need to breathe.”

She leaned down and took his earlobe into her mouth, nibbling gently. He moaned arching his hips into hers and inciting a gasp from her lips.

“Then why me?”

“Why not you?” She repeated, her lips brushing the side of his neck. “If your hands can kill me, why can’t my lips…”

He hissed as their hips began a slow, rocking motion. The contact between the two of them had always been far from innocent, but now it reached the point of madness. Madness was never supposed to taste this good.

“If your hands can kill me, the my lips will poison you.”

“I can’t love you,” he murmured shakily.

They both knew he was lying. Her fingers trailed against his lips. “I’m not asking you to.”

He crushed his lips to hers again, relinquishing in the sweet taste of them. If this is what it was like to die, he would gladly give himself to death. Even if it were a little poetic because life these days was full of poetry. Hermione’s lips would be the death he’d want to die.

He pulled her against his chest, burying himself in the crock of her neck. His lips trailed his against her flesh, causing her breathing to go awry. She arched backwards into his embrace, an invitation that was no longer a refusal. Hands began to wander and the room began to spin, and suddenly he knew ecstasy once more.

This was his choice.

“Poison me,” he whispered in a feverish conviction. “Poison me.”

She said nothing. She didn’t need to.

Moments later, night came to pass. The sky was dark and the air was still bleak. But by the light of the moon, one could make out a large imprint on the planes of grass and a wool blanket fluttered softly in the whispered secret of the wind.

FINISHED

Kaze + Sheer boredom + Too lazy to write my new stuff = This old fic reborn. *shrugs* In all honesty, I think my muse is just waiting for the season finale of Alias.

Review, por favor.