A/N: Hello. Thanks to everyone who reviewed (All my love and cookies to you), and here's another slaughtered muse (I found him lurking in the freezer next to my tatter-tots). By the way, this is a late Christmas drabble (I think I've given up on stories), and takes place during Hogwarts' holiday break. Review for a tot?
Disclaimer: No, no, no. I own no part of the Potterverse whatsoever.
Claimer: A converse shoebox full of nail polish.
Summary: Pictures, like memories, eventually fade.
Can I Keep You?
He was reckless. He was what she'd regret twenty years down the line, and he was currently standing before her bedroom window, one hand tucked in his pocket the other holding his broom, and breath rising in odorless white clouds. Hermione shut her eyes briefly before unlatching the lock on her window and swinging it open, barely missing Harry, who was grinning slightly
"What are you doing?" She whispers, frightened her parents may wake. Harry responds with a small shrug.
"Come with me," He says, extending pale fingers out to her. Hermione hesitates a moment, casting a glance at her bedroom door before taking Harry's offered hand. She wonders if any of this is real as she straddles the window frame.
They walk down the brightly lit street, neither one saying a word. She thinks the Christmas lights are the prettiest things she's ever seen, he thinks she is. The air is cold, and bites at her skin through the pink cotton pajama bottoms she's wearing.
It isn't until they've walked around her block a couple of times that Harry finally breaks the comfortable silence they've been in.
"Can I keep you?" He asks as they stand in front of a house with shiny white 'icicles' hanging from the gutter. Hermione tilts her head, studying him.
Her breath has risen, her heart stopped, and her insides tangled into a thousand knots. She thinks she may be in love with him, she can't be too sure though, she's only sixteen (not nearly old enough to know what real love is).
Hermione's hand finds his and she tugs him towards her house (where she hopes her parents are still asleep). It isn't until they're lying in her bed, a tangle of sheets, clothes, and limbs that she answers, cheeks flushed and half asleep.
"Always."