Dandelions
By purple_mud
Rating: PG13 for language.
Pairing: H/Hr
Disclaimers: Standard Disclaimers apply. I don't own Harry, Hermione, Ron and certainly not the lovely dandelions.
Author's Note: I've done a bit of editing. Don't know if it's any better, just made itty bitty changes. It's basically the same thing. Please feel free to let me know what you guys think. Comments, questions, suggestions, constructive criticism are all welcome. Thanks and don't forget to leave your reviews, I appreciate them all!
Dandelions
They started to drift apart as soon as their fifth year ended. Hermione immediately knew that something in them changed when they stepped out the Ministry of Mystery. Some basic, fundamental aspect in their relationship shifted and not one of them knew how to bring it back.
She wrote to Harry all the time during the summer after their fifth year. Everyday she wrote to him but he never answered any of her letters. When she had signed her last letter not just with her name but with her tears as well, she knew that she was already in love with him and worse, it was too late to change her feelings.
She didn't know when exactly she began to see Harry differently, but she knew well enough to realize that whenever he spoke her name, she felt a small thrill inside her; when he touched her skin, she felt butterfly wings fluttering inside her heart. She knew his smell - like morning air, green grass and that tangy scent of wax he always used when polishing his broom. And whenever he's near, she didn't have any fears and courage as pure as steel would run in her veins, making her brave enough to say Voldemort's name and stand in front of Harry's own rage, just as she had done that many nights ago, before they all made that terrible decision to rescue Sirius in the Ministry of Magic.
She told him all that and didn't leave one single word out. Because she had always been honest with Harry and now wasn't the time to start hiding her feelings from him. She wasn't expecting Harry to answer her right away because this was after all a serious confession that would and could change them both forever, and so she waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
When weeks had passed and Harry still didn't answered, she finally picked up the quill and wrote to Ron.
And because Ron deserved the same kind of honesty, she told him everything.
His reply had been short and so utterly straight to the point:
Forget about him. - Ron
The following day, while Hermione laid on her bed watching the white curtains of her room fluttering ever so slowly, Hedwig arrived. Her white wings flapped soundlessly as she glided effortlessly inside her room. For a moment, Hermione was sure that she had fallen asleep and was now dreaming that awfully painful dream, but when Hedwig finally perched herself a top Hermione's bedside table, Hermione slowly sat up in bed, wishing not for any answers, or apology or explanations, but for Harry. Just Harry.
Hedwig regarded her with soft yellow eyes, darkened with that strange mix of knowledge and sadness Hermione had always seen in every owl. Hedwig tilted her head from right to left, right to left, staring at her so intently that she wondered if Harry could see through Hedwig's eyes.
She let Hedwig rest first and gave her a bite of the tuna sandwich she had brought in her room yesterday afternoon. When Hedwig bowed her head to sip cool water from Hermione's teacup, she finally freed the bundle of unopened letters tied on Hedwig's leg.
It was heavy, as heavy as her heart, heavy with all the words that she had written there. She traced Harry's name, written so very carefully by her own hands, in the smudged and folded envelopes. There was no note. No explanation. Just a thousand unanswered questions.
Hermione calmly placed the letters beneath her bed, picked up her quill and parchment. She immediately wrote back to Ron.
Help me how.
She waited for days for Ron's reply, lying on her bed and thinking up ways on how she could ever forget about Harry, if she could ever forget about him at all.
She started brushing her hair every night, imagining that with each stroke, she could erase every memory of Harry stuck inside her mind. Her scalp burned and ached but when she laid her head down on her bed, her now brown-glossy hair spilled across her pillow, she dreamt of Harry still.
She began drinking coffee so black and bitter and vile, she would always choke on her first sip just so she could stay awake all night. She would sit by their front porch in her yellow summer dress, stare at the sky and wait for Hedwig or Pig or for any answer from her two friends that might save her from this loneliness that was too deep she was afraid she'd drown and never resurface again.
Hedwig never came. Pig never came.
And there was only the deafening silence around her.
One lazy afternoon, when she couldn't stand the silence anymore, she carefully placed her cup of coffee down the wooden floors that always creaked at night, took a deep breath and walked towards the gate and then out into the streets.
She didn't have any destination, just this crazy longing throbbing inside her. This almost unbearable longing, which she knew, would lead her to Harry.
She didn't get very far. For some reason, she found herself stopping by a shop, just a few blocks away from their house, which was selling assorted flowers.
It must have been the scent of crushed green leaves, so achingly familiar that led her here, on this almost magical place where potted roses as large as her palms and red as deep as blood it was almost black, filled almost every possible place in the store. There were also several pots of jasmines that smelled too sweet her own stomach lurch. There were orchids of every exotic variety, hanging from a wooden bar, its roots brushing against her scalp, soothing the little wounds her manic brushing had caused her. There were white lilies that reminded her of Hedwig's wings. Blue violets, pink tulips and at one corner of the shop, a row of dandelions in full bloom, its yellow petals shyly peeking out and catching the last rays of the sun, casting an almost orange tint to their color.
When Hermione saw the dandelions, she almost burst out crying.
She remembered Harry.
She remembered the way he had shyly smiled when she first saw him on the train, glasses askew and broken. She remembered the child-like wonder that filled his face during his first Quidditch match. She remembered how his eyes had gone wide with that almost painful innocence she desperately wanted to protect when he realized that the wrapped package with his name on it was a Firebolt. She remembered how happy he was when he found out about Sirius, about having a family - a true family of his own. She remembered that even though he hadn't held her when she kissed him at the train station after their fourth year, she had felt his heart beating beneath his shirt, against her skin - fast and short of jumpy. She remembered waking up after the incident at the Ministry of Magic with Harry's eyes looking down at her and his hand atop of hers, not clutching her as though afraid she'd disappear and fade, but with just enough grip to let her know that she was ok and that he had been worried about her. She remembered feeling dizzy when she realized that his fingers were idly drawing circles on her skin, the first brush of giddy excitement traveling along her spine and into her nervous smile as she softly mumbled his name. She had felt so warm them.
Harry had always felt so warm.
Like the dandelions that basked in the afternoon smile.
When she bought a packet of dandelion seeds the owner of the store, an old woman whose hands looked like twisted gnarls of blue and green roots instead of veins, wished her good luck. Because girls her age needed it, because they all tend to fall in love too early and too intensely and because they would bring that love to their grave and would never once forget that boy's name, that boy's grin.
On that same night, Hermione sprinkled the dandelion seeds underneath her bedroom widows. Hoping that this was the cure that she was looking for.
She tended to her dandelions the way she refused to tend on her own heart. She woke up at five in the morning, ignoring the scent of green grass that lingered on her skin whenever she dreamt of Harry. She would kneel on the ground, no hat, no scarf and no glove to protect her, hoping that the heat of the sun would slowly, if not surely drain her feelings for Harry.
But every afternoon, when it was time to water the plants, she cried so soundlessly, so freely that she'd always leave the dandelions swimming in a small pool of salt water. Sometimes she didn't know what it was she was crying for. It might have been for Harry, it might have been for her, maybe even for the two of them. And just when she thought that she couldn't cry anymore, fresh tears would spring up from her eyes and it would trail its lonely path down to her cheeks, to her chin, sometimes to her lips and then finally into the darkened soil.
Her dandelions listened carefully to everything that her heart had to say and they all swayed with the wind to caress her face when she couldn't quite stand the loneliness anymore. At night, they stood vigil on her window and tried to catch pieces of her dreams that would float away and soar up into the sky before dissolving into morning dews - tears in the morning and more tears in the afternoon.
When it was almost time to pack her books and robes inside her trunk and return to Hogwarts, the dandelions bloomed. They weren't the same bright yellow that Hermione had seen in the store. They were pale and sad with a streak of orange that Hermione once thought as sun kissed but realized as wounds that didn't actually bleed.
She became more broken hearted and gave up on her dandelions.
But she couldn't give up and didn't want to give up on Harry. She started worrying that something had happened to him. He would never return her letters unread, he might not read them, but he wasn't cruel enough to return them - all unopened, as though he couldn't be bothered with her, with what her heart had said.
When she was all but ready to run away with the night on her back, search for Harry in her pale blue nightgown, by foot, with nothing more than a mental picture of his smile and the light of the half moon, Ron finally came to see her.
He had asked his father to drive him to the Grangers and had put on his best shirt and his cleanest pair of pants. When she saw him outside their house, shifting from foot to foot, wondering exactly what to do with the doorbell, she stood watching him for a whole minute, not quite believing that this was Ron she was seeing.
He was so tall. He didn't look like a boy anymore. On any ordinary afternoon, with the orange sun just setting behind Ron's own burning hair, she would've mistaken Ron for an old friend of her dad, or some older guy wanting to ask her name or their number. There was that familiar air of gangliness about him, long arms and even longer legs but other than that, Hermione couldn't quite see the eleven year old boy who had made her cry and wished that she wasn't magical in any way.
"Ron!" She finally called out, when Ron started screaming at the door bell, his voice echoing all around the almost empty street. A few boys who were playing with a small soccer ball glared at him.
When Ron waved at her, she was already out the door running, her bare feet never even touching the ground. She flung her arms around him and for the first time, he held her. Nothing awkward in the way he wrapped his arms around her waist, almost lifting her up.
"Gerroffme." Ron mumbled through her hair and Hermione giggled tentatively, waiting for Ron to let her go, let her float back down to earth.
They stood outside the orange and pink and purple streaked sky, wondering where the younger Ron, where the younger Hermione had gone off to, if they'd actually ever return and how come they never realized that they had all grown up so much.
"You're so tall." She said, standing on her toes to look at his eyes, which were thankfully the shame shade as it had always been. "And your hair is so much shorter."
"Mum cut it off while I was sleeping." He grumbled the sour note in his voice so very apparent. "What's up with that Door's Bell of yours? Dad warned me about them, but they wouldn't do a damn thing and I couldn't even see a bell to begin with! I had to shout to get your attention."
"You needed to press this." Hermione said, indicating the small button. Ron stared at it suspiciously and as soon as she pressed it, a buzzing sound was heard from inside the house.
"Doesn't sound like bells to me." Ron said frowning, cocking his head slightly to the right to listen to the sound of not bells, but a hundred bees all buzzing together. When Hermione tried to explain how the doorbell worked, Ron cut her off with an almost panicked look. "Where's your mum and dad anyway? Why are you all alone in the house?"
"My parents are at the clinic." Hermione informed him.
"Clinic?" Ron gave her a worried look. "They're ok?"
"Yeah. They're dentists." Hermione explained. "They work there."
"Ugh, right."
She laughed out loud at the confused expression on Ron's face but even before she can infect Ron with that same carefree laughter, the joy bubbling inside her chest died immediately when she realized that Ron was here! In front of her. At her house. At a muggle street, wearing muggle clothing, that thankfully looked normal enough, but he was here!
"Is Harry… is he… why are you here?" she asked in a sudden rush of words that couldn't quite keep up with the pounding of her heart.
"He's fine. Holed up at the Dursley's last time the Order check. Behaving rather well, they all happily noted." Ron said in his usual sarcastic tone that betrayed the extent of his anger that Hermione knew he was trying to hide from her.
She took his hand and led him into their back porch where they both sat down and stared at the sky, her hand inside his.
"He's scared." Ron finally said, unsure where to begin. It seemed to Hermione like an excuse already and she had to steel herself because she realized with a start that although Harry was fine, this was not a visit to deliver bad or good news, that whatever it was that Ron was going to tell her, it will somehow break her heart.
Despite the heat still rising off from the pavement, Hermione shivered and pulled her hand away from Ron. She wrapped it around herself and wished she wasn't so silly, wasn't reduced to this girl who had done nothing the whole summer but brushed her hair a thousand times and not care whether it shined in the morning or if it was all tangled up in a nightmare she left behind when she woke up. She had barely started any of her homework, had ignored her parents, Crookshanks and worse had abandoned her dandelions and everything else all because of one boy. The one boy would could make her feel so alive and empty all at the same time.
"He's bloody fucking angry, also."
She nodded because she didn't know what else to say. Because she somehow expected that. Understood it even.
"He's in a real bad mood." Ron said as though repeating it would explain everything.
"Did the Order," Hermione paused, swallowing a sudden lump in her throat, "did they intercept all my letters to Harry?" She wanted to cover her ears the moment the question snaked out of her lips but she kept them by her lap, clenched in tight fists, nails biting deep into her flesh.
"No. He received all his letters just fine." He informed her.
"Oh." She was thankful for the honesty and while a part of her wished Ron would be less brutal about it, another part of her was also glad that Ron wasn't attempting to sugar coat anything, because she might hate him for that and right now, she didn't want to hate anyone, especially Ron.
"Went there myself the night you wrote to me." Ron paused and gritted his teeth and Hermione was suddenly afraid that he'd snap his jaws into two, so she grabbed his hand and held it in between her smaller ones. Ron finally sighed and shook his head. "The bloody idiot said that he doesn't want to be friends with us anymore, can you believe that?"
She heard him clearly, loudly and Ron's voice echoed inside her head and she could see Harry standing by the window, not looking like the Harry that she had once known, but a different Harry's who's cheeks would be stained and wet from tears he'd cry only when he's asleep. He'd have a more defined jaw by now, maybe even his eyes would be darker, not just because he had seen death but because he was trying too hard to be brave and think of others before himself. Hermione couldn't help the tears that fell on their locked hands.
"It's not what he wants." Ron said, suddenly sounding alarmed by her outburst. He had never really known what to do with her when she started bawling like a baby and Hermione couldn't blame him. She would sometimes even scare herself whenever she started crying. "It's what he thinks he needs to do, the bloody, fucking git." Ron said shaking his head.
"It's not his fault." She sniffed and tried to wipe her tears, tried to hide it from Ron, which was of course ridiculous, since he had seen her cry so many times before.
"Bloody hell, Hermione, it's not our fault either. Why is he taking it out on us? Nobody ever put that idea inside his head. He isn't our hero." Ron cracked his knuckles, "I ought to have stayed longer to knock some sense inside that scared head of his, but his pig of a cousin was already screaming bloody murderer at me and Harry just wanted me to leave."
Hermione looked away almost knowing exactly how Harry might be feeling right now. He would not be able to handle losing anyone anymore after Sirius. Sirius had been the last straw and now, the only way to live would be to live alone.
A strangled sound, so pitiful, filled the night and Hermione was surprised to find out that it came from her.
Ron patted her head, almost tenderly. "He loves you too." He whispered softly, revealing a secret he wasn't even supposed to know. "He loves you more than anyone else." Ron said finally. "The fact that he couldn't damn open your letters should mean something to you."
"I wish he had." Hermione said sadly.
"Well he didn't and we all know how stubborn Harry can be. But don't you cry over him, because 'Mione, he does love you - I don't know how exactly he loves you, you have to ask him that, but c'mmon, don't tell me that you think he doesn't care, because we all know that he does."
Hermione would later think that it was amazing how Ron had realized everything even before she had, maybe even before Harry had but at the time, she couldn't quite grasp the enormity of this revelation.
"I think maybe for a while Harry thought that I'm…I was in love with you." Ron said in a softer voice, one that Hermione rarely heard. "I mean… I once thought that too you know."
When she took her hand away from his grasp to place it over to heart, Ron stood up and walked towards the dandelions that she had planted. There were three more remaining flowers, but they all dropped and kissed the ground.
"He wrote to you all the time." Hermione finally realized.
Ron nodded not looking at her. "I promised I wouldn't tell. But you look awful Hermione and so did he and it was just ridiculous how he sort of brightened up when I actually told him that I wasn't in love with you and I thought you knowing would, er, make it better." He scratched his red hair, letting a few strands stand up before patting them down. "I think you actually turned kinda yellowish there for a minute." Ron said and although his back was to her, she could sense the mix of emotions in his voice, the smirk he was trying to hide.
She looked at her hands, all pale and lines drawn together to form whatever shape destiny has in store for her.
The calluses on the pads of her fingers came from holding the quill too tightly, the ink-soaked tip biting into the several pages of parchments. Ron's from working so early, so young, to help out Mrs. Weasely in the house. Harry's from gripping the broom too hard, knuckles turning white, getting a glimpse of the ivory white bones beneath his flesh.
She imagined Harry seating at the edge of his bed gripping her letters, his own hands shaking. She glance at Ron imagined him telling Harry that he wasn't in love with her.
It was all so complicated.
It was all so simple.
"Mum thinks that we should let Harry be, he needs time, he needs to thinks things over, you know, all the things my mum would say." Ron gave a tired sort of sigh somehow tinged with a smile. When he turned to her, the lopsided grin was almost back in his face. "So I'm assuming that they're the right things that we ought to do which means we ought to go against it, because we always work well going against… well, all the grown ups. Dad personally thinks so too, but he swore me into secrecy and I can't quote him on that."
"This summer is the longest." Hermione finally said, touching her head as though she had been spinning in circles all these months.
Ron snorted and tried to give her an encouraging smile. "Tell me about it." He shook his head and surveyed the little patch of earth that she had tried to use as her salvation. "You aren't much good at plants 'Mione. They all kinda look pathetic to me. All sad and droopy. What are they anyway? Carrots?"
"Dandelions." Hermione answered, finding herself stepping back to familiar territory. One that doesn't scare her so much, because this was Ron, and she was safe with him. He didn't have her heart in the palm of his hand that he could crush any minute, any time that he decides to.
"What did you do to them?" Ron asked turning his head to throw her a smirk. "Did you cry over them?" Ron asked, kneeling to get a much closer look. "Mum said that you should sing to the plants. Dunno what singing actually does, but I think the gnomes like mum's singing, else, they wouldn't stay on our garden too much."
Hermione smiled, picturing the Weasley's quaint happy home. She walked towards Ron, wondering if he could offer her a fraction of that warmth that only Harry could seem to give her. Wondering if she could offer him that same warmth and knowing that they both can't, but they can at least try because they were after all good friends, because that's how they're going to survive the next year. She sat next to him, "Tell me more about the gnomes."
Ron looked at her as though she was crazy, as though she was a younger version of Ginny asking him for more stories during bedtime, begging him for just one, just one last time, but never ever actually sleeping after that one last story.
"They're out in the garden right now, all scurrying and running about. Mum's driving us all mad every morning, getting us up really early to get rid of them. But there are hundreds of them, I tell you and it's just me and Gin." Ron heaved a heavy sigh, rolling his eyes upwards. "Percy never works at the garden; he thinks he's too important to do all the dirty work. He spends all his time in his little hidey-hole thinking up ways on taking over the Ministry. I still can't believe mum and dad forgave him that quickly, but I still have his awful letter and I haven't talked to him since. Gin and the rest of us hadn't talk to him either, ever since that little stunt he pulled with Fudge. Serves him right, that big headed git."
Ron sat down next to her and continued, his voice sounding so achingly familiar that Hermione suddenly longed for sleep and dreams. He fiddled with the green grass before continuing, not looking at her, but at the place where their fingertips were almost touching. "The twins are just as bad as Percy, busy with making Puke Cards." Ron glanced at her, grinning, suddenly looking like the boy she had met on the train, "they reckon that it'll be a hit. You know, you give out Puke Cards to people you really, really spite. Got one reserve for Malfoy, although I'm asking the twins if they can make it spit instead of puke, that'll sure teach Ferret Boy a lesson."
Hermione shook her head. It was so easy to be young again and not care about a world, the only trouble then was how to get back at Malfoy without getting detention. Now it was all about surviving. And it seemed such a harsher world than before.
She couldn't go back. They couldn't go back, especially Harry.
And did they really want to go back at all? Wasn't growing up all about moving forward? Although sometimes, Hermione couldn't help but feel like it was more about blindly groping around and trying not to stumble too much.
How much exactly was too much? She wondered briefly.
"They're having a hard time, Fred and George are." Ron said, not breaking his story and Hermione wondered if it was more for him or for her or maybe for both of them because they both know how they'd miss Harry. Terribly. Like a wide gaping hole between them. Hermione took Ron's hand again; thankful for the endless chatter that, for the first time, filled her empty nights.
"You see, it's supposed to puke only when you open it, but it keeps puking on it's own. And they have to clean up all the mess before mum finds out about it. So it's usually just me and Ginny over at the garden. And well, the gnomes too."
Hermione smiled.
"What do you want to do Herm?" He asked finally.
She tilted her head up in the sky, somehow knowing that they were all looking at the same nameless stars, the same slow-moving clouds, Harry by his window his hand touching Hedwig's snow-white wing. If that was the case, they weren't so far from each other, were they?
A little time was something that wouldn't mean too much to them.
If Harry loved her, as Ron had told her, they could over come anything. She had yet to know a kind of magic that was stronger than what they have: friendship and love.
"Let's give him what he wants." Hermione finally said. "He never asked anything from us anyway. Just this time. Just this one time and if after this summer and he still hadn't realized that he can't be without us and that we can't be without him, we'll both knock some senses in him."
Ron looked impressed. "Well, I have to say that that was awfully un-Hermione-like, but it's bloody brilliant."
"And I can help you out with your de-gnoming problems. I think I need to learn a thing or two about gardening anyway." Hermione said gesturing over her dandelions.
The dandelions quietly nodded their agreement with the wind. They had known every pain inside her heart and they know that all they need are little wishes, tiny hopes and simpler dreams, then they could all start healing and blooming and when it's their time to die, become seeds once again, they can float happily away and grant someone their wish.
Hermione reached out and plucked one, handing it over to Ron, who tucked it in between the first and second buttons of his shirt.
They smiled at each other, finally finding the eleven years old inside them, a silent reassurance that everything will be fine. It's not so hard as it seems. What could be harder to deal with than a boy who has yet to know where exactly he stands? A stubborn boy with a broken fragile heart? And a girl waiting for him?
They had dealt with three headed dogs when they were eleven years old, a Basilisk when they were twelve, Dementors when they were thirteen, an obscenely compulsive liar of a reporter when they were fourteen, and Death Eaters when they were fifteen. And now they would have to deal about love, the way all sixteen years old around the world, muggle or magical, deal with: with a bit courage and uncertainty but definitely with a lot of heart.
Maybe with too much heart. Hermione thought as she took the other dandelion and tucked it at the back of her ear. But how could that be such a bad thing?
When Harry returned to them, she'd give him a dozen dandelions, all bright and yellow and happy and filled not with her tears but with her promise of not just forever but of her heart as well.
END
End Notes: The sequel, I am having lots of troubles with it… *ducks flying rotten tomatoes* but, I do promise that I'd post something... decent, at least. I am still working on it, though. Wish me luck.