Whole
God's in his Heaven
All's right with the world!
Robert Browning - Pippa
Passes
---
When he wakes in the middle of the night, he is not surprised. Immediately, his eyes drift over to the clock on the bedside table. He squints to make out the numbers.
12:01.
Right on target, he thinks, a smirk playing across his face.
Next to him, the sheets are rumpled and tangled, but the space usually occupied by his wife is empty.
Also right on target.
Pulling back his own sheets, he climbs out of bed, wondering why either of them bothered to try and sleep in the first place.
Sleep on this night is impossible.
The floor is cool under his feet, pinching at his heels and he shivers. Grabbing a dressing gown, he goes in search of his wife.
He finds her in the same place that he finds her every year. She's pouring three rather large glasses of firewhiskey and lining them up on the coffee table.
His wife rarely drinks.
She's far too rational for it - his wife has always needed to think clearly. She hates the way that alcohol dulls the senses.
But on this night - this one night - she can't ever seem to help herself.
She's giggling as he approaches her - her eyes gleaming at him. A beautiful smile lights her face before she wraps him into a warm hug. He smiles back at her, then gives a her deep and soulful kiss - like the world is just beginning.
This is the woman he sees every year - the woman she's never shown the rest of the world. She's positively giddy and girlish, a childlike joy emanating from her.
This is the woman that she allows herself to be on this day, once a year.
The day the three of them survived.
The day that Voldemort died.
He settles himself down next to her and he knows - she isn't the only one that feels it - she isn't the only one that wants to indulge herself in alcohol and celebrate until her head is swimming delightfully to match her mood.
But one of them isn't here yet.
Their fireplace flares a brilliant green, then with a whoosh, he appears.
"G'morning, Ron," she greets cheerfully, holding up a glass of firewhiskey.
"Good morning," he responds, taking the glass from her. "Haven't thought about starting without me?"
She gives him a playful frown before picking up the other two glasses and offering one to Harry.
"Honestly, Ron, I'm offended!" She grins, then raises her glass. "To Harry, for saving the world as we know it from the clutches of evil," she toasts with an overly dramatic flourish.
"To Harry," Ron toasts, "for thoroughly kicking the arse of evil!" He gave Harry a cheeky grin.
"To Ron and Hermione, for saving me when no one else could," he responds, a puzzled look crossing the faces of his two best friends.
"Cheers," and their glasses clinked before they each downed their contents in one gulp.
Harry shifts himself on the sofa, drawing his knees up beneath him and letting out a contented sigh. He watches as Ron removes his cloak, the brilliant orange and red of his Cannons jumper clashing horribly with his hair. Hermione is laughing at something he said while she refills each of their glasses.
He looks away from them, feeling tears rising unbidden, prickling at his eyes. He remembers the whispered words of an older Hermione and the weight of their implications - a kiss on the battleground, hidden from everyone. Then there was Ron, and his promise fulfilled.
He often wonders what they looked like. How much time had passed and what it must have done to both of them - what they went through that drove them to do what they did.
He never told either of them what had happened that night.
Sometimes the wondering and the what-ifs threaten to drive him mad. He felt a twinge of survivor's guilt at first, curious as to why he should have been spared, why he was allowed to cheat death when so many others died that night.
He almost told her one night, a few months after it happened. Wanted desperately to tell her and Ron and see if they had any memory, any echo of a recollection as to what had happened. He needed to know why he'd been allowed to cheat fate.
They shared a flat in London then, not too far from Diagon Alley. Ron was on tour with the Montrose Magpies as a reserve keeper and Hermione had been attending Stonehenge. Harry had spent those months recuperating - the final duel having drained him of a large amount of his magical ability. Time and rest would heal him completely, and he had a standing offer to join the Auror division when he'd fully recovered. However, the weeks of rest had given him too much time to think and ponder and replay those few moments over and over again.
His moods would fluctuate back then, from simple gratitude to be alive to a sullen moodiness at feeling unworthy. It caused a bit of a strain between the three of them, but they adapted, as they always did. Still, Harry carried the burden of knowledge.
He hadn't felt he deserved to live.
And so he had decided. Tonight. He was going to tell her tonight.
That's when the large tawny owl had flown through their open kitchen window and dropped the scroll in his lap before flying out again.
'They set things right. You'll know when it's your time.'
There was no signature on the scroll. No one to question further. And then he realized that he was meant to carry this knowledge alone; there was no other way to explain the fortuitous arrival of this note. Perhaps it was his penance - their burden of life without him in exchange for his burden of knowledge. He read it again.
'You'll know when it's your time.'
'You'll know.'
And then he felt it - truly felt it for the first time since that night on the battlefield.
He wasn't supposed to die. He was supposed to live.
He deserved to live.
And his heart felt suddenly light.
When Hermione came home that night, they made love for the first time. He proposed less than a week later.
"Would you marry me, Hermione?" he had asked, his voice shaky.
"Oh, Harry, don't you know I'd do anything for you?" She smiled through her tears, and he couldn't help but laugh through his own, knowing more than any other man that she truly meant it.
Ron stood beside them both on their wedding day, just as happy as the bride and groom. And when the time came, Harry stood beside Ron at his wedding.
And their happy lives haven't stopped.
Harry eventually joined the ranks of the Aurors. Hermione, after gaining several wizarding degrees, decided to become an Unspeakable, utterly fascinated with all they had to offer. Ron finally became a team member of his beloved Cannons.
A few years later, and more Potters and Weasleys were born into the world.
For three hundred and sixty-four days out of the year, they're simply normal wizards. They visit one another's families and share occasional meals. Ron and Hermione still bicker - occasionally they fight. Harry still manages to outperform most professional players on a broom, and Ron always tries to convince him to leave the Ministry. After all their years of marriage, Harry and Hermione still share less than chaste kisses in public.
But they give themselves this one day - just the three of them. This one day to remember.
"I can't believe it's been 15 years, Ron," she says softly, almost calmly, and Harry is snapped back to the present, wondering if the alcohol is wearing off.
"I know," he replies. "I can't believe - it doesn't seem that long."
She gives Harry a sultry smile and touches her mouth with her fingertips. "You kissed me before you left - you promised you'd be back, just so you could kiss me that way again." She blushes.
"Bloody hell! That's what he said to me, too!"
Harry throws a pillow at him as Hermione laughs.
They continue to drink and carry on the rest of the night. No worries about work in the morning. Their fame and exploits have forever guaranteed that they are exempt from any demands of the wizarding world on this day.
His heart feels light and a part of him wants so badly to tell them - to truly thank them both for what they've done. How his life belongs to the both of them.
He remembers how it used to frustrate him at first - how a part of him felt as if he couldn't ever express enough gratitude for their sacrifice.
He remembers the way they clung to each other after Voldemort's death (the second time). They needed no one else in the world but each other and no one but them understood everything they'd gone through - together.
All we had was each other - and it's always been enough.
"You know," a highly inebriated Ron begins, "I'd 'ave made a damn good seeker if that ruddy slag hadn't 'ave broken my arm!" He throws an empty shotglass up in the air and tries to catch it. Thankfully Hermione's 'reparo' is just as effective when she's completely drunk. "How in the bloody hell did you manage to truss her all up like a Christmas bird after beating whassis face?"
Harry grins and doesn't say anything. He's heard this before - he hears it every year.
"Don't be silly, Ron!" Hermione says, her speech slow and deliberate to fight off the inevitable slurring.
"It's not silly," he says firmly.
"Yes, it is," she affirms, "when you know full well that Harry didn't do that; you did!"
This part is new and Harry looks up, startled.
"Oh... right. Stupid cow!"
"Stupid time travelling cow!"
And both Ron and Hermione collapse in a fit of giggles.
Harry is silent, his eyes wide.
"I like it much better this way, don't you?"
"Oh, much," she nods, her eyes trying to regain their focus.
"You're a better Unspeakable than a professor."
"You're a better Quiddishhh," she vigorously rubs her face, "er, Quidditch chappie, than an Auror."
They both turn to look at Harry, who's mouth is agape.
"Not what I pictured, though," Ron said.
"Whaddya mean?"
"Thought he'd be fat and balding by now."
Hermione snorts, then laughs hysterically. She crawls towards Harry and throws her arms around him. She motions for Ron, then throws an arm around him as well.
"Much better," she repeats, her tears of joy lost in the embrace.
"Much better... always knew you were brilliant."
She squeezes them both tightly, Harry's face still fixed in astonishment.
It was supposed to be the three of them.
It is the three of them.
Forever.
A perfectly balanced triangle.
No longer fragments struggling on alone.
***
A/N - So that's it, our first official outing as the OBHTF. Look for more and exciting author pairings between the four of us in the future (and don't forget to check out the Goldy & Kaze author account as well - the two of them are so special as a couple they merited their own pairing - *laughs*). And yes, as much as it pains me, I must pass on this little note. I made the mistake of telling Goldy implicitly to NOT EVER KILL HARRY AGAIN! And while she agreed that it was indeed a painful thing for her to do, she also did it again - just to spite me! Altho', she swears up and down that she didn't actually kill him again per se. So, for those of you interested in seeing what would have become of Ron and Hermione had they not ever been given the opportunity presented here, feel free to visit Goldy's LiveJournal for her one-shot So Impossible. Otherwise, I'm more than happy to accept this as the end all, be all happy ending that I wrestled from her twisted little depress-o-fic.
And also, special thanks go out to danielerin, for gifting her lovely beta skills and walking me through the tribulations of Word.
Love as always - Demosthenes.