Disclaimer: Just playing around in JKR's world.
Notes: For danielerin- who encouraged me to post this here. And for Anne- who gave me the idea for the title of this collection of my ficlets.
All these ficlets will have been previously posted at my ficlet journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/avonlea_dreamer.
~Valentine~
Valentine's Day.
The bane of every sane man's existence.
One of the mornings he always dreaded waking up because he knew he'd be inundated all day with a steady stream of Valentine's. The one day of the year when the fangirls who, at every other time, were content to leave him be and gawk from afar for the most part, would come out of the woodwork, it seemed, and try to get his attention. He'd received more Valentines than he cared to think about, most excessively sparkly, glittery, pink and red. Some asked for dates, some invited him into their beds, some sent their pictures along with the card as if seeing their faces would make him suddenly want to meet these girls. (He may be a normal, red-blooded man but he wasn't an idiot. Any witch who'd send him a Valentine like that was automatically put onto his mental 'Never in a million years' list- no matter how gorgeous or sexy she might be.) He'd even received a proposal of marriage in a Valentine. (That probably took the award for Most Disturbing Valentine he'd ever received.)
Oh he'd received countless Valentines, the majority of which he never even read.
He'd written exactly none.
And now, for the first time in his life, he wanted to write a Valentine. He had someone to write a Valentine for.
And he wanted it to be special. She deserved nothing less and it was their first Valentine's Day together. Their first Valentine's Day since he'd finally admitted to her that he felt more than just friendship for her…
He wanted this Valentine to be special.
He stared down at the blank card at a loss.
What could he say to let her know how much she meant to him? That he loved to see her wake up in the mornings and seeing her smile at him every morning never failed to bring a lump of emotion to his throat. That he sometimes thought, when he kissed her leisurely, with no expectation of the kiss leading to anything more, that he could happily spend the rest of his life kissing her… That he sometimes looked at her and just could not believe that this amazing woman, so beautiful, so kind, so caring, so intelligent, loved him…
He thought suddenly of the Valentine Ginny had sent him so many years ago: eyes as green as a fresh pickled toad… The memory made him laugh, even in his current state.
Poetry. He didn't think he could write poetry to save his life; he didn't have a poetic bone in his body.
Random fragments of other lines of poetry he'd read years ago floated through his mind.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate…
He had a mental image of Hermione, her eyes flashing angrily, the expression on her face that boded ill for whatever provoked her. No she wasn't that 'temperate'; she was passionate, passionate about her beliefs, her loves, her dislikes. And he loved that passion, loved the fire in her.
It is the East and Juliet is the sun…
Hermione wasn't just his sun. She was his- his everything. Everything began and ended with her. She was his anchor, his strength, his friend, his love, his reason.
She walks in beauty like the night…
He remembered the awe he'd felt when he'd first seen her body, maybe not perfect by model standards but perfect because it was her… She was beautiful, so beautiful his breath sometimes caught in his throat at the sight of her and he always wondered how in the name of Merlin he could have not seen it sooner. Why it took him more than a decade of friendship to see her beauty, the beauty of inside and out…
No, poetry wouldn't do.
Nothing he could think of to say in the limited space provided could do justice to her and what she meant to him. No words could express it…
And then he knew.
The simplest and yet, in their own way, the hardest words to say, the age-old expression of a universal feeling that somehow managed to retain all its freshness and wealth of meaning… The words that somehow summarized all he felt for her…
The flowers were the first thing she saw on entering her flat that night. A dozen red roses with a card that read, Because it's Valentine's Day… And what meant more to her than the roses, another bouquet made up of daffodils and irises, her favorite flowers, with another card, equally brief and simple but which brought tears to her eyes, a smile to her lips, and a rush of love and happiness to her heart.
There were only five words written in the card.
I love you.
Your Harry
She heard him come in and greeted him with a kiss that said all she felt, a kiss of love, of thanks, of promise.
"Happy Valentine's Day, Hermione," he said simply, smiling into her eyes.
"Happy Valentine's Day." And for that moment, nothing more needed to be said. They could simply smile into each other's eyes, blessed with the simple happiness of loving and being loved.