Notes: Rather angsty. Written as an outlet for some RL troubles.
~Believe~
or The Comfort of You
She knew something was wrong when she got home.
Harry didn't come out to greet her as he almost always did when he got home before she did; the house was dark as he also hadn't turned any lights on. Another bad sign as it meant something was terribly wrong; Harry always retreated into darkness when he was troubled.
She frowned and hurried upstairs, not even bothering to hang up her cape and put down her bag.
She found him in the study, as she'd expected. (It was another of Harry's habits that he avoided their bedroom when he was troubled. He had once explained that he never wanted to "taint", as he put it, their bedroom with the "shit", again his word, he experienced at work. He wanted to keep their bedroom apart from that, sacred only to their happiness, the good moments. So whenever he was troubled, he retreated to the study.)
She found him sitting behind the desk, his head resting in his hands, dozing restlessly.
Quietly she turned on just the one desk light and then kissed his forehead gently. "Harry? Harry, it's me."
He jerked awake so quickly she drew back slightly, startled. He hardly ever woke up so jerkily; it was yet another sign of how distressed he was.
He blinked and saw her and his face crumbled. He fell forward out of the chair, landing on his knees on the floor, wrapping his arms around her so tightly she gasped.
"Hermione." His voice was muffled in her robe but she could hear the pain in it and flinched.
"I'm here, Harry. I'm here," she said soothingly, holding him tightly.
She didn't ask what was troubling him. He would tell her without her asking, she knew.
His breath hitched on something like a half-stifled sob. "They died, Hermione!" he finally said in an anguished whisper. "He was so young, so young. Only eight and he died!"
She winced at the agony of sorrow mingled with a sharp sense of disbelief and confusion, as if he was wondering how something so terrible could happen, which she could hear in his voice.
His shoulders shook with convulsive shudders and she knew he was reliving the awful occurrence. She tightened her arms about him, kissing his hair, feeling a surge of helplessness. She hated to see Harry suffer like this, hated that she could do so little, as it sometimes seemed, to help him.
It was some time before his shudders ceased and he seemed to relax slightly. His arms loosened their hold on her although he didn't let go and he finally looked up.
And she gasped at the look in his eyes, as if something inside him had died that day. Dear Merlin, whatever had happened had truly shaken him to his soul, grieved him to his soul.
"They were Muggles," he began dully, as if all emotion had been drained out of him. "Muggles. This psychopath wizard; his name is Abel Seton, broke into their home and killed them all. Killed the father first in front of his wife and two children. Then the youngest one, a baby only five years old. The mother was screaming over the body when he killed her. The 8 year old boy was all that was left, having watched his father, his little brother, and his mother be murdered. And then Seton killed the 8 year old before turning his wand on himself." He told the dreadful story with no change in expression, except once when his voice cracked on describing the mother screaming over the body of her dead baby. He had already exhausted himself until there was nothing left, no more emotion left to feel.
She shuddered. Dear God… How was it possible for people, for humans, to be capable of such animalistic cruelty? And yet we call ourselves civilized…
"I- I don't know what to say, Harry," she finally said lamely. "I don't know if I can help you." And she didn't. What could she do or say to ease the agony of having to see such a sight? Having to hear of it was bad enough but to have to see the dead bodies of such young children, the agony of sorrow on the mother's face in death…
His arms tightened around her. "No. You do help. God, Hermione!" his voice broke on her name. "I don't know how I would get through a day without you. Don't know what I would do if I didn't have you to come home to." He lifted one hand to lift her chin until she met his eyes. And she was relieved to see the empty, dead look in them had receded somewhat; those green depths were still shadowed by the remnants of his pain but they no longer looked like the eyes of a man who'd lost part of his soul. He was whole again, her Harry once more.
"You don't have to do or say anything to help; you just have to be. Every day it seems I see more of the sadistic cruelty, the evil humans are capable of; I deal with the dark side of human nature every day. But then I come home to you, you who spend your days helping people, healing them, not only because it's your job but because it's just who you are. And it's because of you that I'm able to go on, able to keep doing what I'm doing. You keep me believing in the good in human nature, more than anyone else. So you shouldn't ever think that you can't help. You help just by being here, by being yourself. You save my soul, Hermione."
She blinked back tears, touched to the depths of her heart by his words. Harry wasn't given to speeches, only really talked about his emotions with her and even then, it was usually the more basic thoughts and feelings. The things that went deepest, that went to his soul, he only occasionally opened up about. So the rare times when something happened to break through the walls he kept around his innermost feelings, were all the more powerful for their very rarity.
She didn't say anything, couldn't say anything. No words could express what she felt at that moment. She just leaned forward and kissed him, loving the familiar feel of his lips on hers, the familiar taste of him. It wasn't a kiss of passion. The kiss was soft, gentle, a declaration of love. But more than that, amid the dark events of the day, it was an affirmation of life, an affirmation of the good, an affirmation of the belief that, despite everything, humans were not fundamentally evil. It was a kiss that healed his soul…