Chapter Eight: The Birdman
"Harry?" Hermione whispered as she dragged her fingers along his arm.
"Hmm?" he mumbled with his face buried in the crook of her neck.
"Why did you leave?"
Hermione spent the last hour with her back snuggled into Harry's chest, relishing in the feel of his arms wrapped around her. She felt the serene rise and fall of his chest against her and listened to his breathing as it tickled the skin on her shoulder. At her question, however, his sedate demeanor vanished. She felt the tension flood through his arms and she couldn't feel him breathe at all.
"I told you why," he replied, clearing his throat.
"No, you didn't," she answered. "You said that you needed to get away and you felt like you were locked in the cupboard under the stairs."
"You remember that?"
Hermione turned her head and looked up at him. "How could I forget something like that? You led me to believe your notoriety caused you to be uncomfortable here." She looked at her fingers, threaded through his, and relaxed into the pillow. "Now I'm not so sure."
He didn't respond.
They lay there in silence, their arms and legs a blissful tangle of devil's snare. Convinced his lack of response was an affirmative answer, she closed her eyes and tried to block out the infernal logic that demanded she send him on to greener pastures.
"I didn't lie."
Hermione's eyes popped open and she twisted around to look up at him. "What do you mean?"
He tucked her tighter against his chest. "I did feel like I was locked in that cupboard. It was my place, no one else's. It was the loneliest place on earth, but it was mine. No one would bother me there. No one would seek me out, or talk to me, or check to see if I was alive. It was just me…only me."
"That's a terrible place."
"But for all its faults, it was a place I could go to shut out the world…to escape it for a while."
"So leaving here was actually like returning to the cupboard?"
"In a way, I suppose it was."
"But you were trying to shut me out…to escape me."
"Not only you."
Hermione squeezed her eyes closed and drew a shaky breath. "I knew." She shook her head. "I knew the day you told me you were leaving. I actually thought you were going to tell me that you had feelings for me," she scoffed, "right until you said you were going away."
"You weren't wrong." Harry chuckled aloud. "You're never wrong."
"Yes, I am."
He shifted on the bed and gazed at her. "Well, perhaps about all things Quidditch. You aren't the sharpest tack on that subject."
"I was wrong about Hedwig."
"Hedwig?"
"I considered all manner of avicide with regard to that feathered traitor."
Harry laughed. "Traitor indeed! She should be knighted by the Hufflepuffs for her loyalty."
"She didn't stay with Ron when I moved out, did she?"
"No."
She nodded with begrudging assent. "That still doesn't explain how you got the key to my flat. None of my spare keys are missing."
"One of them is."
Hermione shook her head. "I checked! I only have two spare keys to this flat and they're both exactly where I left them!"
"You only have two spare keys in the flat, you mean."
Hermione opened her mouth to argue and stopped just as she gathered her breath. Her chest deflated like a child's party favor and she slapped a hand over her eyes. "Mum."
"Mum," he echoed.
Hermione shook her head. "I should've known. She wasn't remotely surprised that you had returned. I reckon she got used to it while I was unconscious at St. Mungo's."
Harry dipped his head and kissed her shoulder. "You're not angry?" he asked with a hopeful tone.
"I should be bloody riotous! It just proves that neither of you believe I can take care of myself. She's never believed it, and you…"
"…wanted to ensure you were safe while I was gone," Harry interrupted. "And you said you should be angry. That implies you aren't," he finished without stopping for breath.
Hermione cut her eyes toward him and tried to contain the smirk on her face. "Well, it did prove somewhat useful, didn't it? Had you not been an effective conspirator, I'd still be swimming at the bottom of my bathtub."
"Not something I like to think about," Harry whispered as he leaned back into the pillows.
"So, how did you find out about Ron and me?"
"Well," Harry hesitated. "Your mum and I made arrangements before I left. Should anything happen that she felt I needed to know about, she would send Hedwig after me."
Hermione scoffed. "I'd given mum and dad a spare set of keys a week before I moved out."
"Your mum had the letter and the key ready when Hedwig arrived. The rest, you know."
Hermione turned her head and pushed herself onto her side. Harry's arm curled around her back and pulled her over so she could rest her head on his chest.
"I thought I'd never see you again," Hermione whispered.
Harry pressed his lips to her head and mumbled, "I promised you I'd come back."
"Where did you go?"
Hermione felt him shake his head as he tightened his grasp around her. "It's not important." She raised her head and met his eyes intending to argue the point. He interrupted her before she could get the words out. "What's important is that I'm back…and you're safe. Nothing else matters."
Hermione laid her head back down on his chest. Content to agree with him, for the time being, she closed her eyes and let the rhythm of his heartbeat lull her to sleep.
***
"He came down to the store last night," Rachel whispered across the counter.
"Who!? Bird Man!?" Tracy responded. Rachel nodded as Tracy's eyes brightened and she folded her arms over the Formica countertop. Pushing her soda aside she asked, "What did he buy?"
"Same thing he always does."
"What did he say?"
"Same thing he always does."
Tracy's face fell as she grabbed her soda drink and sucked on the straw. Rachel laughed and pushed a plate of fresh-baked cookies in front of her friend. "Here," she giggled. "Have one on me. Chocolate always makes me feel better."
Tracy snapped a cookie from the plate. "Like you have anything to feel sore about! That makes the second month in a row I've missed him!"
"The way he is, you may never see him again."
Tracy glared. "Thanks." She chomped down on the cookie and propped her cheek on her hand. "He's so mysterious."
"And hot."
"Shut up!" Tracy laughed, pushing her friend's arm off the counter in front of her. They dissolved into laughter as Rachel made her way down the counter to old man Harvey who'd requested his third order of steak and eggs.
"Please tell me you aren't drooling all over that bird-watching weirdo again," a male voice chided as he stepped out of the back room.
"He's not a weirdo, Sammy," Tracy responded.
"No weirder than you are, twit," Rachel snapped as she passed Sammy behind the bar.
"Right. He buys the shack up Old Laurel Cliff that isn't fit for a Grizzly to live in, has no running water, no electricity, no phone…I don't know how he gets down here half the time. Have you ever seen him in a truck?" Sammy retorted.
"So, he's a little mysterious! Maybe he likes nature. Maybe he has a cell phone, who knows?" Tracy argued.
"Right. The guy goes months at a time without being seen in town and you think he has a cell phone?"
"How do you know he hasn't been somewhere else in town? There are other places besides this old dive," Rachel said.
Sammy rolled his eyes. "When Mrs. Lattimer died, it dropped the town population to 209. If that weirdo foreigner was in town, what self-respecting citizen of Eagle's Peak, Wyoming, would keep it to themselves?"
Rachel dropped her dish towel and stalked around the counter to an open box on the floor. Crouching over it she began stocking the dusty shelf with the latest shipment of canned goods from Rock Springs. "Yes, God forbid anyone in this hole keep their gossip to themselves."
"You know," Sammy said in a conspiratorial whisper as he leaned over the counter toward Tracy. "The Sampson boys put out a premium for information."
"What?!" both Tracy and Rachel chimed together.
Sammy broke into a smile and crossed his arms with a satisfied gloat. "Word on the street is that Adam and Tommy are going to go up there tonight and do a little recon."
"Word on the street?" Rachel scoffed. "What the hell do you think this is? New York City? There is one street! Go outside and have a look, Sammy, it's the one that gets all muddy during a hard rain."
"Sammy, are you ever going to get off this big city kick of yours?" Tracy asked.
He looked her in the eyes and replied, "Maybe I'll get off my 'kick' when you stop swooning over the weirdo foreigner's ass."
"Not likely," Rachel muttered from the far end of the aisle. Tracy giggled and Sammy's face darkened.
Tracy took another bite of her cookie and smiled. "Well, I can't wait to see what Doc Robinson has to say about Adam and Tommy. Haven't the last four attempts to break in on the birdman ended in a trip to his office?"
"Don't you mean the last five?" Rachel said, returning to the front of the store, tossing the empty box into the back room and leaning against the counter.
"Shut up," Sammy growled. "I got those welts from rock climbing!"
"You'll have to show me how to rock climb with your ass," Rachel chided. The girls dissolved into laughter as Sammy stomped through the old mountain mercantile toward the front door.
As he slapped the screen door open, he barked, "When I get to the city, I'm never coming back to this hole - or to you!"
Rachel continued to laugh, "Two months without mom's cooking and you'll be begging for a hot meal!"
Sammy stalked down the gravel road continuing to mutter about his elder, and only, sister. Perhaps she had no greater ambition than to take over the family mercantile, but he did. He wasn't one to be held back…tied down. He looked over the rugged landscape of northern Wyoming and drew a breath of mountain air. He closed his eyes and the tension began to ebb from the base of his neck.
An eagle screamed overhead and Sammy's eyes popped open to follow its course. Not surprisingly, it was headed for Old Laurel Cliff, the home of the infamous foreign birdman that had become the bane of his existence.
He cast a glance back to the mercantile. Its broad wooden porch was littered with mismatched rocking chairs. His mother decorated the front with a variety of hanging baskets that were also for sale. The rickety sign mounted to the roof, reading "Addison's Mercantile," weathered over the years in the same way as the rest of the wood sided building.
He could see the glimmer of Tracy's blond hair cascading over her shoulders as she continued to laugh, probably about him, to his sister Rachel. He'd known Tracy since Rachel's first day of kindergarten. He was hard-pressed to remember that day, as he was only three, but he'd been told the story enough times, it became a part of his memories whether he wanted it to be or not. Although he didn't acquiesce to the idea that his naked meandering through the carrot patch was the reason she didn't notice the grown man in front of her, he couldn't be sure.
"Maybe if I had some fancy accent and claimed to be writing a book about birds she'd notice me," he mumbled to himself as he kicked a rock down across the gravel parking area.
His mind wandered through their friendship over the years. Without realizing it, his feet carried him away from the mercantile and toward the overgrown trail that led to Old Laurel Cliff. He thought to turn back, remembering his last trip to survey the "birdman's" property, until a snowy white owl streaked overhead. He'd never seen a white owl in Eagle's Peak.
He watched the owl glide toward the dilapidated cabin and ran up the trail after it as quickly as he could navigate the underbrush. Knocking twigs and limbs out of his way, he was determined to sink the birdman at his own game. If he was the ornithologist he proclaimed to be, he would be outside the cabin, studying the owl and taking notes. If he wasn't, then Sammy's theory that he was a reclusive British crackpot would be confirmed…and he could claim victory in the face of the two unnerving women at the bottom of the trail.
His steps slowed as the cabin came into view through the trees. Sammy watched each step to ensure the errant snap of a felled twig would not alert the birdman to his presence. He stepped over a log and ducked behind a rusty oil drum that looked as old as the mountain itself. Peering over it, he saw the owl, perched on a branch just outside the door. It was mere feet from the shack and yet the birdman didn't appear.
"Some great birdman," Sammy whispered aloud. "He doesn't even know it's there."
Feeling burgeoned by the birdman's lacking skills of observation, he slid around the drum and crept toward the window at the back of the cabin. Kneeling under the sill he stretched up to peer through the hazy pane of glass.
"He is crazy."
The owl was perched in plain sight of the open door, yet Eagles Peak's notorious hermit couldn't be bothered to notice. He scrambled around the room, tossing things into a trunk with such celerity they seemed to pack themselves. He snapped the trunk closed and stuffed an envelope into the back pocket of his jeans. Sammy couldn't help but notice the cabin was as spartan as it had been before the birdman bought it. It had only one room with a wide porch that overlooked the peak. The stove, clearly broken, had not been repaired and the old refrigerator sat, unplugged, on the porch beyond. As Sammy pondered how the man had eaten these last few months, he realized his prey had stopped moving.
Heart pounding in his chest, Sammy felt his stare upon him through the window. He drew his eyes to the immobile figure standing in the open doorway and began formulating excuses for whatever ailment was about to befall him. Oddly, he saw the birdman in a way he'd never seen him before…smiling.
The birdman's eyes gleamed brighter than the Wyoming sky and before Sammy could think to explain his presence on the Old Laurel Cliff property, he winked at him…and disappeared.
Sammy blinked his eyes and pressed his face to the glass but the birdman was gone. He ran around to the shack's front porch to see a snowy white dot fading into the horizon. Shaking the thought from his head, he popped his head into the shack. Nothing. The birdman was gone. And suddenly, Sammy wanted nothing more than to spread the news to Tracy.
***
"Didn't anyone know your name?" Hermione asked as she rolled through the park with Harry by her side.
"No," he responded, stopping to pluck a stargazer lily from the flower bed near the pond. He handed it to Hermione. "They're my favourite," he explained as she took the flower from him.
"I imagine they are," she replied with a smile. She slid the stem behind her ear and continued to push herself along the sidewalk. "So, why did they call you the birdman?" she asked, knowing full well what the answer would be.
"And here I thought you only asked the questions for which you had no answers."
"When do I not have the answers?"
"Then why ask the question?"
Hermione hesitated, finally deciding to be truthful. "Because I want to hear you say it."
Harry's footsteps fell silent and he stuffed his hands into his pockets. She stopped and turned to face him, for once glad that her vantage point was lower than his and he couldn't avoid her gaze by staring at his feet. He drew a breath and looked at her. "They called me the birdman because every minute of every day I watched the skies for Hedwig. I knew when she came to me, I could return to you."
Hermione felt the shiver radiate down her arms. She wasn't sure if she was seeing the love in his eyes now, or the passion in them from last night, but she didn't care.
"We have a lot to talk about," Hermione whispered.
Harry nodded. He looked over her head to the park bench behind her. "This is as good a place as any, don't you think?" Without further conversation, he walked over and sat down.
Hermione rolled to his side and locked the wheels on her chair. Folding her hands in her lap she watched a mother duck waddle into the pond with four fluffy ducklings splashing in behind her. They sat in silence, neither seeming to know where to begin.
"Hermione," Harry's voice resounded over the gentle breeze. "You have to know how I feel about you."
"I do," she responded. She did know how he felt. He'd told her as much the night before, but more important than words during sex, she felt how he felt. That was something that didn't come to her often.
"Then you know that none of this matters to me," he continued, waving his hand over her chair. Hermione couldn't help but roll her eyes; it had become such habit these last thirteen months. "But that does," his voice hardened.
Feeling her ire she cut her eyes toward him and replied, "What does?"
"That." He adjusted his position on the bench to look at her directly. "The Hermione I know and love is in there somewhere. She doesn't roll her eyes and shrug off my feelings. She's the one who always kept a watch for me. She's the one who confiscated my Firebolt because she thought it was dangerous. She's the one who stood in my face and refused to allow me to run off to the Department of Mysteries without first adhering to her infernal logic. She's the one," his voice warbled, "who threw herself in front of that curse with no mind for her own safety."
"So what does any of that have…"
"She's not the one sitting in front of me now who thinks she's worthless because she can't walk," Harry interrupted.
Hermione fell silent. Harry leapt from the bench and jammed his hands in his pockets. Pacing in front of her, his mouth bobbed open and closed as he searched for the words.
"Harry, you deserve someone…."
"Who what?!" Harry spat. "Someone who can walk? You don't get it, do you Hermione?"
Hermione felt her brows furrow with confusion. "What's to get, Harry?"
"You are in that chair because of me!"
Hermione threw her hands in the air. "Oh, please let us have another guilt party for Harry Potter!" she spat. "I told you, this was my choice!"
"Exactly!" Harry exclaimed. He dropped to his knees in front of her and Hermione was startled to she his green eyes darken with misty tears.
"Hermione," he choked, "I've never had anyone love me before. I don't know what that feels like…I'm not sure that I know how it feels to love someone." He took both of her hands in his. "All I know is when I look at you, I can't breathe. I can't think. I can't do anything but imagine what my life would be like with you…and without you. And when I see you in this chair, something inside me hurts."
"Harry," Hermione whispered as she wiped a tear from his cheek.
"No," he continued, wiping the other cheek with the back of his hand. "It doesn't hurt because I feel guilty. I don't. I know this was your choice. I never asked this of you. That's what hurts."
"I don't understand."
"Hermione, you chose to give your life for me. You didn't think about it, you didn't make a chart of the advantages and disadvantages. It was your gut instinct and you did it without thinking of the consequences to yourself."
"I know," she replied, shaking her head with the confusion that had not been alleviated.
"No one has ever loved me like that."
They both fell silent.
"Yes, they have," she replied.
"My mother doesn't count."
"Harry!"
He shook his head. "I don't mean it to sound that way, but she was my mother. It comes with the territory. I've never been surprised from what I know of her that she would've given her life for mine."
"Why not?"
"Because she was supposed to love me."
Suddenly, Hermione understood.
"Oh, Harry," she said, tightening the grip on his hands.
"You didn't have to love me. You chose to." He chuckled. "Dumbledore once told me that our choices make us who we are. You look in the mirror and see someone crippled…someone incapable of being who she was a few years ago." Harry shook his head and smiled, an errant tear trailing down his cheek. "I see someone who loves me. I see this chair…and I see you sitting here…and I can't forget that you loved me enough to choose this life; that you chose it for me."
Hermione's vision blurred as the tears welled in her eyes. "That's why you left," she squeaked.
Harry nodded and looked away. "I couldn't stand it. Every day when I looked at you I crumbled inside. I loved you so much, but…"
"But I was with Ron."
"And I wasn't strong enough." Harry's head fell in shame. "I'm so sorry, Hermione."
Without thinking she reached between them and wrapped her arms around him. He returned the gesture, burying his head in the crook of her neck. "I left you when you needed me because I was selfish…the one thing you weren't. Please forgive me," he added at a whisper.
"There's nothing to forgive," she replied. "I love you." He tightened his embrace around her.
He pulled away, gathering himself. "Hermione," he cleared his throat. "I'll do whatever it takes to help you. I'll do whatever you want to do. But please understand that I don't see this chair as a hindrance to our relationship. I see it as the embodiment of it."
"Love conquers all?" she replied with a smirk.
"Love conquers all."
***