Rating: PG-13 for angst and adult themes.
Title: The Wishing Jar
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters, settings, and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling as published by, including and not limited, to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books, Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. The use of these characters and settings is for entertainment purposes only; no infringement is intended or should be inferred. Additionally, locations in and around the United Kingdom are used as a basis for "historical reality" or in a purely fictitious manner.
Spoiler Alert: Books 1-5.
Summary: You know that you are moving further away. The more you force yourself to remember, the more you make yourself regret, you know that your actions are making your true self move further and further away into yesterday.
Pairings: Harry/Hermione
Author's Notes: Though it does not seem it as first, this is Harry and Hermione and it is in second person POV. No comments or reviews are necessary.
Oderint dum metuant.
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THE WISHING JAR
[] HAEC CREDAM A DEO SCITO
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It was winter.
You were still awake. You were lying in your bed, staring at the ceiling, watching the faint light of the moon dance and shift as the wind rustled the leaves on the trees outside of your bedroom window.
You were cataloguing your favourite mistakes. Again.
This is what you do at night. This is what you do every night.
Rewind. Replay. Relive.
You love the winter. You love the chill in the air, you love how it stings your lungs as the moisture within crystallises, you love the feel, the transition from stifling warmth within to exhilarating frigidity without, as you walk through the door.
You love the winter because you feel as though you can hide, disappear in the snowdrifts. You don't have to see their accusing eyes then. You don't have to care.
You know they have no right, that they are wrong, but you still take their criticisms within your heart, to have and to hold.
You tell yourself it's to make you stronger. That their hypocritical accusations will help you to withstand anything that life might send your way.
It's a lie. But you have become quite adept at lying to yourself.
You were lying in bed, late at night, early in the morning, you were lying in bed and you were staring at the window. You didn't see the window, or the glass, or the sky beyond, you allowed your vision, one that was already clouded, to blur to shadow and light.
You listened to yourself breathe.
You thought of her.
The breath caught in your throat.
He would have been 21.
It seemed like it had only been a day. It seemed like it had been all of those years.
You used to stare at a bottle of Firewhiskey. It held no answers; you knew that well. But it held all of your wishes. Wish upon wish, spoken into that wishing jar. Then you would swallow them, feel them burn as they slid down your throat, feel them churn in your belly.
For an entire year, you did not know what the world was like as a sober man.
It happened in October. He would have been 21.
You were lost; you were gone, for one whole year. It took you that long to find your way out of the bottom of the glass.
You used to cradle your head in your hands and let nothing but the measure of a dram dictate your life.
Now you lie awake in your bed at night and think instead.
You have been told that there is a light at the end of the dark tunnel you feel you are lost in. You don't know if you want to see that light. You feel you deserve the darkness, the black. You want it. You don't want to see anything. You don't want to be seen. You don't want to move forward and you cannot move back.
There is a warmth against your back. The warmth of the sun. But you don't want to turn around. You don't want the light to see you. Not like this.
You are lying in your bed. You are awake. Your thoughts are performing their nightly ritual in slowing rending your insides.
Part of you wants to let it out, the memories, the ideas. Part of you wants to shout them, scream them, purge them, get it out, let it out, goddamn it let it all out before there is nothing left of you within. Part of you wants to at least put it on parchment. Just to get it out of you. Just to be able to feel free.
You know these thoughts are threatening your life. Your sanity. But you also know that the hypocrites who surround you would use those thoughts however they want to. Use them to tear you down from the outside in.
You would rather maintain control and slowly kill yourself with the bleakness of your recollection.
You think you understand it.
But you don't.
But you have gotten to be an expert in lying to yourself.
You know that you are moving further away. The more you force yourself to remember, the more you make yourself regret, you know that your actions are making your true self move further and further away into yesterday.
But you are starting to like it there, in the dark. Even though the emptiness, the solace, frightens you. No one can reach you there. You believe that you are safe.
So, you begin to like it.
Keeping company with the dust of your actions. The rust of your memories. Keeping company with the past, all that is over and gone, all of the people who were never coming back.
All that has been forgotten by the others, or so you believe.
Keeping time with the forgotten…but not by you.
You have connived yourself into thinking that you have found comfort in the black of what was lost.
What you think is fear is actually hope. It has turned now to fear because of the pain and the cost of your struggle. Your unwanted birthright. The scar on your forehead.
He would have been 21.
You searched for a reason to go on.
You tried. You are certain that you really did.
But it took too long.
At one point, you thought that you would be better off closing your eyes one last time.
You wondered who would come looking for you. Who would find you?
Would God come looking?
There were many moments where you wished you had believed in Him, in order to blame Him. But you didn't know Him, you never did, was never given a reason to, not even false motivation. What God would have kept letting such pain persist? What God would allow murder and murders to run so freely? What God would have taken him? You didn't know and ultimately you didn't care. So you had no one to blame other than yourself.
In time, you left such considerations by the wayside and buried yourself in the dust.
There is a warmth against your back. You can feel the touch of the sun. You know that all you have to do is turn around, to face it. Then the darkness would be gone and you would be able to see yourself again. Find out what is left. Relearn how to live. Remember how to forget.
There is a warmth against your back.
You turn away from the window and look.
Hermione is curled up in the armchair next to your bed. Her nightly vigil. An empty cup of tea on the nightstand beside her and a stack of books on the floor by her feet. While you spend your time hiding away in your ersatz purgatory, she has been waiting. Patient.
You wonder what she sees. You wonder what she dreams.
Her eyes are closed. There is the flutter of movement as she sees places, wonderful places, cities filled with life and song, people with shining faces and welcoming eyes. You know she must dream of these things.
She looks peaceful and pale in the wan light of the moon.
Her lips are parted slightly. There is the barest susurration.
Her hair is loose and hangs in those ringlets that she hates around her face.
You wonder what she is thinking underneath, when she watches you sleep.
You find that you can barely inhale.
She is humming.
She is humming in her sleep. She is singing to you. You wonder what it means.
You watch her, listen to her, hear her. For the first time in months, you feel.
You feel her.
You feel Hermione.
You are taken by wonder. You are amazed.
The faded hues of your bedroom begin to turn, begin to change. There is a shift from grey and blue to pink and yellow.
You watch the sun rise upon Hermione's sleeping form.
She is humming to you.
You can hear yourself singing that song.
You sing it over and over until you start to see.
The darkness falls away from your vision, replaced by light. Replaced by Hermione.
He would have been 21. He had been your best friend.
But he would have wanted you to go on. She sings this to you, your other side. Hermione. You had been unstoppable together. You had done the impossible together.
And now there is only two.
It is winter.
You are awake, wide-awake. You are lying in your bed, staring at Hermione, watching the sunlight bathe her face in radiant splendour, highlight her honeyed curls, thaw the winter's chill.
You remember that it had been two years. Two years since that October, two years since three had turned to two, had turned to one. Two years since Ron, and then you, left Hermione alone. He had good cause. He had no choice. You had the world before you. And you turned away. You couldn't live what truth you did then, but you still forced your mind to take you there.
You stopped crying long ago. You stopped everything.
But she stayed with you. She watched over you. She maintained her faith in you.
You watch the evening turn to dawn. You watch the darkness be replaced by the light. You watch as Hermione, feeling the sun on her face, opens her brown eyes, looks at you, and then smiles.
And instead of feeling fear, you begin to have hope. And you are no longer so afraid.
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