Who's to Say

This is my first HP fic…so I welcome constructive criticism! Please review…tell me what you think!

Who's to Say

Mocha eyes watch out of a second story window as shadow incases the English countryside. The rain begins to fall—slowly, slowly—a melodious rhythm lulling her over-analytical mind as it listens to the soft tapping on the window panes.

She turns away from the clouds and into the bleakness that is her bedroom. Her gaze sweeps over all traces of the life that she once had: the pictures from her first day of primary school, the dolls she played with in her room pretending that they were real, the books that gave her her first companionship. Then her eyes settle on what her life has become: a ginger fur-ball of a cat/kneazle curled up on the foot of her bed, with a red and gold trunk at the end spilling over with spell books, quills, and spare bits of parchment. Her scarlet lined, black Hogwarts work robes, and her uniform hanging in the wardrobe.

She walks away from the window and over to the beautiful Victorian style writing desk in the corner. She had begged her mother and father to get it for her when she was eight—and she loved it still. It is chipped in some places, with ink stains and scratches on the course surface from her quill, yet at the moment, holds only one piece of parchment. A note; written in the familiar untidy scrawl that she has come to love. The blue ink still shimmering in the candlelight echoes its ghostly words to her from the paper…as if he was speaking, whispering into her soul…

Hermione,

I hope that this finds you. I had to sneak Hedwig out of captivity—good thing Fred and George taught me how to pick a lock, huh?

I'm getting worried about you. Ever since we got off of that platform, away from King's Cross, you have been so distant from everyone…from me. I find myself needing to hear your voice—even if it's only to lecture me!

I hope that your parents have cooled down since I saw them on the platform. I'm so sorry for what happened that night; I know that I cannot say it enough. Dudley was kicked out of Smeltings so my wonderful relatives have been overly inhumane lately. Hopefully your mum and dad have not resorted to the measure that the Dursley's have to deal with transgressions. I can tell you…I'm beginning to get claustrophobic.

Please, write back soon. If you don't then I'm going to really start worrying about you…not that I'm not there already! I'll have to wait to send this until my uncle leaves for work. Please send work back with Hedwig so I know that you are safe and feeling better.

All my love,

Harry

Sitting down on the edge of the bed she surreptitiously wipes the tears that are softly running down her slightly red cheeks. She closes her eyes as her memories take hold of her struggling mind...

*~~*~~*~~*

“Hermione Jane Granger! I cannot believe you! What has gotten into you lately?” Helen Granger storms at her daughter after the front door has closed behind the three occupants of the home.

“What are you taking about?” Hermione asks, exasperatedly falling into the couch in front of the large, stone fireplace.

“I mean that, apparently, you suddenly feel that since you will be eighteen this year you can do whatever you dang well please!” Helen retorts.

“Whatever I dang well please?! Mum, listen to yourself! I can make my own decisions, I always have. You can't force me into submission. I can decide who I want to love!”

“Love?” Douglas Granger interjects, “How can you know that what you are feeling is love, Hermione? You're only seventeen, and he's only sixteen. This all could very well be an excessively maddening trick that your hormones are playing on you. You could get serious, put your heart—your life—on the line, and then he could break it when something `better' comes along, or when you, or he, is killed in the line of fire.”

“He's my best friend,” Hermione says, narrowing her eyes at the looming figure that is her father, “I just know.”

“He has nearly gotten you killed four times over the past six years, Hermione! Second year, Third year, Fifth year and then just a week and a half ago,” Helen snaps.

“That wasn't his fault, mum! Harry didn't cause any of those things. He's the one that saved me from them!”

“He saved you? He saved you! Hermione open your eyes! If you keep carrying on with that boy you'll be killed,” Doug interjects with an obvious sorrow filling his eyes.

Hermione stands from the couch, the coming storm blotting out all outside sources of light from the room, casting the Granger's into shadows.

“Don't talk about him like that!” Hermione cries, her voice dangerously low. “And he did save me dad. Who do you think stopped Tom Riddle and the Basilisk? Or held off the Dementors by the lake? Got me out of the Department of Mysteries? It was Harry every time.”

“Hermione, the most powerful, most evil wizard the world has ever known is after his blood! What, do you actually believe that Voldemort will take pity on you if you get in his way—on Harry's behalf, no less?” Helen asks.

“I could die anyway,” Hermione says quietly, her voice small and far away, her eyes taking in the details of the wood flooring.

“What did you say?” Helen asks.

“I said,” Hermione repeats, her voice rising, “that I could die anyway, with or without him! I'm a Muggle born. I'll always be filth in the eyes of Voldemort and his Death Eaters.”

“Why provoke it, Hermione?” Helen asks, dejectedly. “Why decide to put your heart on the line for someone who could very well die tomorrow, or tonight, even?”

“Because,” she retorts. “Because my life wouldn't be worth living if I didn't have him, mum!”

“Hermione that's just your hormones talking, this isn't you, luv.”

“Yes, it is me, mum. I would not be alive right now had it not been for Harry! He's the best friend I have ever had…if I didn't have him and Ron; I would have no one at Hogwarts. No one! I need him, and he needs me. I am not going to lose to best friendship I have ever had.”

“I forbid it!”

The voice that had long been silent calls Hermione and her mother out of their repartee. Hermione's head snaps over to her father. Her mocha eyes landing on his amber ones showing fierce resolve.

“What?”

“I said that I forbid it! You will not see that boy anymore, Hermione, do you hear me? I will not stand stoically aside and let my only child—my little girl—die because she cannot see that a relationship with the most marked boy wizard in the world will harm her, maybe even end her life.”

“Dad, you can't!”

“I can, and I am. Go to your room—now, young lady! We will talk about this no further.”

Doug turns away from his daughter, now with silent tears of fury and disbelief running down her cheeks, and leads his wife into the kitchen. Leaving their daughter to stand horrified, and utterly alone in the growing nothingness.

*~~*~~*~~*

So now she sits; staring longingly out of the window. Staring at the overcast sky, remembering one of her favorite fairy stories from her childhood.

“How I wish Peter would show!” she says dejectedly into the slinking darkness. How she adored the playful attitude of Peter Pan, and how she would long to become Wendy. Only she knew: she would have stayed in Neverland.

A tap on the window brings her out of her reverie. Turning, expecting to see an owl of some assortment, her eyes grow wide as her eyes meet a soaking wet emerald-eyed boy on her balcony.

“Harry!?” she gasps, as she rushes to unlock the bay widows at the back of her room.

He comes in through the now open window. Feet soaking the window seat where they walk. Holding his Firebolt in one hand and the other holding the window open; he steps into her room closing the window behind him. He turns to her—registering the look of surprise, love, and questioning that fills her gaze.

“Harry what are you doing here? If my dad finds you he'll mount your head on the wall.”

“I had to see you. When Hedwig came back without an answer to my letter I was worried sick. I snuck out when the Dursley's fell asleep. Are you alright?” he asks, concern dripping from every corner of his countenance.

“I'm fine…now.”

She quickly closes the small gap that was between them—throwing her arms around his neck, his instantaneously wrapping around her small waist. She buries her face in the crook of his neck, her hands entwining themselves in his sleek, jet-black hair.

“What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“You're trembling. I'm the one who's been in the rain all the way from Little Whinging, why are you shak…” he trails off as he notices her shoulders shaking and soft tears gently making their way down her clammy, porcelain skin.

“Oh, luv, what is it?”

“My dad…he…he said that I could never see you again.”

“Why?”

She looks up; locking his eyes with hers.

“You know why.”

The memories begin to flood his mind as the repercussions of her words take their effect.

Thirteen year old Hermione lying in the hospital wing at Hogwarts; right hand akimbo, grasping at nothing in the air, the other down at her side. She is pale, stiff, and obviously petrified.

A slash of purple light hits her across the chest. Hermione falls , seemingly in slow motion, to the ground in the Department of Mysteries…he feels light headed, then Neville (God bless him!) finds a pulse, and the dizziness takes hold, along with the relief. She is going to be alright.

Hermione falls to the ground, screaming—then her eyes roll back into her head—her body going limp as Bellatrix lifts the Cruciatus curse off of her for the seventh time. Harry feeling his heart collapse as his world lies motionless on the grassy hill before him. The Death Eaters that have been holding him release their hold so that he can run to her, and hold her in his arms; so that he can feel her life slowly ebb away, feel her body gradually losing its warmth as the darkness settles in.

Standing over her bedside as the only Muggles to ever set foot on Hogwarts grounds—Doug and Helen Granger—storm into the hospital wing. Doug glaring at Harry and Helen's eyes registering fear for, not only her daughter, but for what her husband might do the young man standing before them. As they walk over to their daughter's bedside. Face calm seeming, yet nearly lifeless…tinkering on the edge of the forgotten, Doug stops short, holding onto his wife's crumbling form.

“I'm sorry,” Harry says as his memories recede, the tears falling freely down his face.

“Don't be.”

“Hermione, you should get as far away from me as you can. I can't let you die because of me.”

“Harry, I'll die anyway! I will always be a Muggle born, I can't change who I am. We all have to die sometime, right? But, I know that if you leave me now—I'll die right on this spot. Maybe not in body—but my mind, my heart, my soul—will. They are all yours Harry, and if you leave me now—without a thought—I will never really live again.”

Tightening his grip around her waist, he lifts his right hand up to cup her cheek. His touch calm and loving on her skin. Looking into his eyes she can no longer see the boy she met on the train all those years ago. The wide-eyed, innocent bewildered eleven year old child that sat in that train compartment—is now replaced with the loving, passionate, unsteady, and haunted sixteen, nearly seventeen, year old young man that stands before her…his lips slowly moving closer to hers.

The moment lasts for only a second; yet, it is held in eternity in the minds of the two teenagers.

“Come with me!” Harry asks as their lips part, catching his breath, watching for her reply.

“Come with you where, Harry?”

“I got a letter from Dumbledore yesterday. They need me to help the Order gain some headway for the war. Come with me to Grimauld Place.”

“Now?”

“Yes! Pack your trunk—get all of your Hogwarts things. We'll call the Knight Bus.”

She turns from him. Soft mocha eyes scanning a room filled with a childhood—a child—that no longer exists in reality. Turning back to him, an expectant look gracing his eyes, she smiles.

“Help me pack?!”

The corners of his mouth turn upward as he grins widely. Capturing his mouth with hers once again, she savors the man that is in her arms—holding her as if the world is about to fall away. The kiss ends and they separate, turning from one another they run all over her room grabbing her things and shoving them unceremoniously into a pile, packing all of her school things into her trunk.

Five minutes later, she closes the trunk. Shoving the lid down tightly—locking it in place. Looking up she sees her best friend, her love, staring back at her from emerald eyes behind mirrored spectacles.

“Ready?” He asks, grabbing Crookshanks off of her bed and walking toward her.

“Yes, just let me leave a note for my parents. I still don't want them to worry.”

“Take your time.”

She pulls out a piece of parchment from her writing desk, admiring for the first time, how truly small the structure is, how demure her entire life, until now, seems. She writes the final line, signing her name in her small scrawl on the bottom of the page. Taking it in her hand, she puts the folded piece of parchment on her bed, right where she normally slept.

“Alright, let's get going while the rain is dying down.”

“Okay.”

Two figures slowly climb out of large bay windows, out onto a stone balcony at the back side of a towering two-story structure. They slowly, surely, climb down the trellis. Sneaking through the yard of the home, veiled in the shadows that surround them. Standing on the side of the road—cloaks, wands and umbrella in place. Harry looks to his left where his hand is encased loosely in hers. He looks up to her, his eyes silently asking if she's ready—her only reply is a small, imperceptible squeeze of his hand.

He holds out his right arm, and the violently purple triple-decker bus crashes to a halt in front of them. As the conductor, Stan, helps Harry with both of their trunks, Hermione slowly turns back to the house that was her safety. The place that hid her from a cruel and uncaring world…hid her from all of the pain.

She feels his arms encircle her waist. She leans her back against his chest, releasing the pain that is in her heart. Letting it get washed away in the rain that washes the earth free of sins and disfigurement. Realizing, for the first time, that her safety, her hiding place, her sanity is contained in the arms of her best friend, the man that she loves more than life.

Turning toward him, she smiles sweetly, confidently at the questioning look that is in his eyes. She leans in quickly, capturing his lips once again with hers, letting herself linger there longer than before.

She pulls back, her left hand on the back of his neck, right around his waist, holding him as close to her as possible. Reaching her right hand down, she engulfs his hand once again in hers, leading him slowly away from the house, onto the Knight Bus.

Once seated on the first level, she sighs as she turns around in her seat toward the window on her right. Looking to the house she can see her bedroom window, with the light on. The bus moves, quickly leaving her neighborhood and any surrounding with a semblance of meaning to her in its wake. The rain running down the window matching her tears, as Harry gently strokes his thumb over her hand where he still holds onto her.

She knows that by now her parents have found her parting words scribbled hastily on a piece of parchment…

Mum and Dad,

“Stand up straight, do your trick turn on the stars.

Jupiter shines so bright when you're around

They tell us slow down, we're too young, you need to grow

Well speed's the key, and they don't know who we are.

Who's to say, we're not good enough

Who's to say, that this is not our love

Mother don't tell me friends are the ones that I'll lose

Cause they'd bleed before you

Sometimes family are the ones you choose

It's too late now, I hold on to this life I've found

Who's to say, we won't burn it out

Who's to say, we won't sink in doubt

Who's to say, we won't fade to grey

Who are they anyway, they don't know

And you say we're too young

But maybe you're too old to remember

And I try to pretend, but I just feel it when we're together

And if you don't believe me, you never really knew us

You never really knew

You and I packing up my room

We feel alright, but we're not welcome

Soon we'll be driving

Cause they don't know who we are

Who's to say, we won't stay together

Who's to say, we aren't getting stronger

Who's to say, I can't live without you

Who are they anyway, they don't know

And you say we're too young

But maybe you're too old to remember

And I try to pretend, but I just feel it when we're together

Who's to say, Who's to say

Who are they anyway

Stand up boy, I shine so bright when you're around”

I will always love you, but I have to do this.

Always,

Hermione

A/N: The song and the title come from Vanessa Carlton's album “Harmonium.”

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