Silent Night

Author-Note: Firstly and most important I like to thank my wonderful Betareader Nia for her insightful help. Thank you so very much <3

Please, please review.

Phoenix

Silent Night

Twilight was being overtaken by the advancing darkness. The already deep purple of the sky slowly deepened to black. On the horizon, the first tiny stars could be seen as a light breeze announced the coming night. Night brought its own kind of silence as all voices issuing from the illuminated windows back in the Burrow died out one after another.

The wind touched the leaves on the trees that surrounded her. For just a moment, nothing felt heavy on her heart. It was as if during the quiet, breathless moments it took for day to transition to night, someone finally let her breathe freely again. The cool air caused her skin to tingle. After the warmth of the day it was a blissful feeling. But it lasted only a moment.

She closed her eyes against the familiar thoughts that assailed her anew. The fleeting beauty of nightfall could not take away the last few days; it could not make things undone. Heaviness returned and her eyes filled with tears. Hermione Granger sat on a branch—an old branch, and watched another day pass away without being able to find the courage to say it. Some Gryffindor, she thought. She knew her world was changing, she understood all that, but still, she could not bring herself to say those words which had weighed so heavily on her since Ron told her the truth and they cowered there in her heart unspoken--silent.

The truth. It had been hard for Hermione to accept that she had not learned it from Harry directly. Her hurt was absolute. There came a point where she seriously questioned the role she was playing in Harry’s life and the answer was nearly as simple as it was unbearable. To Harry, she reasoned, she had always been “the brain”; the one who could figure things out, the one he could trust to find the answer, but never ever the one he would seek for emotional comfort. Never the one he could share his heart with.

For this, Harry had the Weasleys in his life. Hermione glanced back at the Burrow. The last lit window in the house went black. Darkness embraced her; comforted her, but it was the silence that made her feel alone—separate—useless. The past days here at the Burrow had been anything but pleasant. She’d felt alone, separate and useless there too, but the days were anything but silent.

They had been marked by her own fits of rage and temper. She had known Harry wasn’t telling her something; something important. And, at the back of her mind was the nagging thought that continually resurfaced; maybe—maybe she wasn’t important to him anymore. She drew her knees closer to her chest.

The pleasant coolness of the night air had turned chill and she began to shiver, but she was determined to stay here in the silence. She sat, hugging her knees to her chest and watched the stars and planets above her with child-like wonder. Could they really seal a fate—seal the course of a life? Hermione’s logical mind could not, and would not accept this Prophesy, but her heart did. Her heart agonized over it.

She struggled against what her heart believed—what her heart was preparing her for. Since she had heard, she had begun to memorize moments—his every movement—his laughter, even his fits of temper and shouting so she would not forget when that day came. Her mind--her logic tried to shake off this feeling of inevitability, because that day should not, could not exist—not for Harry. Hermione’s logic simply would not accept and could not imagine a life without Harry in it. But her heart was already mourning.

And then, with a sigh, the realization slowly came—how thoroughly her life had already become intertwined with his. Even if she meant nothing to him, she could not stop loving him. “Love...,” she whispered. It was something she knew nothing about. All she knew, with a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold, was that it was there—a part of her very being. And she searched herself again trying to pinpoint the year, the month, the day when it had become a part of her. It had been coming on so gradually that she couldn’t do it.

“What are you doing out here all alone?” A low male voice startled her out of her reverie and she let out a shriek of surprise.

Standing beside the branch and gazing at her was Harry Potter himself. In his eyes she could see a kind of puzzled curiosity that plainly indicated he did not understand her. Of course he did, how could he understand someone who was so completely outside his little world.

Hermione did not answer, but she felt her temper rising. She remembered storming out of the Burrow. There had been no fight, no argument, just that awful, lonely silence. Everyone had known of the Prophesy; everyone but her—she had to hear it from Ron, and then by accident. She’d been curious as to why Ginny and Ron had been whispering to each other-- She had been the only one who had not heard it directly from Harry himself; the only one Harry had not personally told.

“Hermione?” Harry’s voice roughly intruded into her thoughts. He had sat down on the end of the branch and was daring to look at her almost accusingly; as if she’d done something wrong.

“Just leave me alone!” she snapped at him.

He recoiled as if she had slapped him and she could see temper welling up in him.

“For days now, you’ve been like this to me—ONLY to me!” He spat angrily back. “Tell me what I’ve done to you, Hermione, because I really don’t see how I deserve these—these attacks!” He moved to stand up again, but Hermione was faster.

She jumped up fiercely and glared at him. “And you’re an angel, I suppose! Just because I’m not good old reliable, predictable, always there Hermione then something is wrong with me. You can tramp around for an entire school year in a towering rage, but if I want to be left alone, I’m suddenly the one on the attack!”

“What are you talking about?” Harry frowned at her in utter bewilderment.

She did not answer right away, but glared at him a moment before turning her back on him. “Once I thought,” she began in a whisper, “I was your friend, or something like a friend—just a little important to you. But it seems I’ve been wrong. You’ve just kept me around because you needed my knowledge—my mind, and nothing more.”

She couldn’t see his face, but Harry’s voice was incredulous when he spoke. “How—how can you say something like that, Hermione? Regardless of what you are saying right now, you have to know that you mean more to me than just a talented mind I can tap into—you have to know how important you are to me—how much, how much I depend on you, Hermione, the person.”

She could feel him moving closer as he continued. “Do you know that you were the first person I ever remember hugging me—the first to ever show me any appreciation not because I was the Boy-who-lived, but because of me myself, Harry. You have got to know how much you mean to me, Hermione.” His voice shook slightly at these last words.

Slowly, she turned around to face him. His hand was upon her shoulder and his eyes pleaded with her to believe him.

She believed him. Perhaps part of her had always known this. Perhaps that was why she had been so angry—because she knew how much she meant to him and his silence had felt like a terrible betrayal. She looked steadily back at him communicating in their own unique way the thing that was at the heart of her hurt and anger.

She knew at once when he’d understood, when he’d read her eyes and her expression correctly, because his face fell.

“You know about it, then, the Prophesy?” He sighed as a deep sadness appeared on his face.

“Why, Harry, why?” She asked, as tears welled up in her eyes and was astonished to see tears in Harry’s eyes as well.

“Because,” he said, anguish in his voice, “I couldn’t bear for you to see me as a murderer. You—you told me once I was a great wizard. You always believed in me—but after this prophesy, what will I be? What will I have become to you, Hermione?” His eyes were pleading with her to understand again.

She did. And with that understanding came a peace and a certainty she had not known in days.

She moved closer to him and when she spoke, her voice was quiet and confident. “Do you honestly think I’d stop loving you because of a Prophesy, Harry?”

He didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. No further words were needed as silence embraced them both.