Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter and All That Jazz… Clearly, since I believe love is determined by actions and means that are greater than myself…
After The End
Authors Note: This chapter is slightly different to the last one. That's because this is Harry's PoV, and I realised that as different characters, Harry and Hermione had different ways to react to what Hermione realised in The Dying Swan.
This chapter gives Harry a truly heroic commitment to himself and to Hermione. I felt pity for Harry in HBP, being suddenly turned into a Raiders Of The Lost Arc hero… to me; Harry is this emotional hero who values his courage not in his ability to act, but in his ability to feel.
This chapter is dedicated to Harry; the emotional hero, the man behind the scar, who I'm thankful to have seen in 5 books. This chapter may be slightly confusing, but I'll quote Baz Luhrman in an effort to explain it:
"It is far more heroic for him to try to stay and honour his commitment… and allow her to go up"
A thousand thanks to everyone who reviewed and rated this story, you guys rock! I'm thankful beyond my ability to express it. Thanks!
The title refers to Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. More to the Allegreto from the Seventh Symphone. I'd highly recommend it for this reading.
Chapter Three: Chronicle of an Inevitable Surrender - Vol. II: 7th Symphony.
"And the cries that are drowning his down
Will make him scream
Kiss me and kiss me until I feel you…
Kiss me and kiss me until I die…
Kiss me and kiss me until I suffer
Kiss me and kiss me until we die"
~La Ley
He breathed in the essence of her, allowing the wondrous smell to drive him into a feeling of dizziness that he couldn't relate to anything else. He tightened the hold he had around her waist and pulled her to him, kissing the top of her head lovingly.
They hadn't spoken a word for a while, but the silence was strikingly comforting. He knew her mind was drifting off somewhere, and he enjoyed just holding her in his arms. He heard her sigh a few times, feeling as her chest rose and fell with the heaviness that accompanied a sigh. For some reason, every time she sighed, he felt an urge to pull her to him, an urge to reassure her, of what he didn't know.
The strange comfort in the silence didn't go away. The silence was emotionally heavy, but so were they. The silence was unusually reserved, and again, so were they. The silence was unique, in the same way they were. The strange comfort in the silence didn't go away, not even when she tore the silence with a determined question that rebounded around the room.
"Did you think of me?" she asked with her head against his chest.
As if a conversation had been momentarily interrupted, he knew exactly what she was talking about. He knew, because he had known where her mind was drifting off to as he cradled her in his arms. He knew what she was asking, and he had an answer, because, almost unconsciously, he had drifted off to the same place.
"Everyday," he answered. It was most absolutely true.
She straightened and looked at his face. There was that chocolate look of hers… the one he recognised as the one that told him she sometimes still had trouble believing it all had happened. He liked that look. It reminded him in a silly, fluffy way that it was all, indeed, real. He knew he had one of his own. And he liked that even better.
"Everyday," he whispered. He grabbed her face with both hands, pulling her close to him. He felt her breath against his face, and saw the question that lingered in her eyes like a shadow of that intoxicating curiosity that was so particular of her.
"I thought about you… I hoped you'd be alright, I hoped you'd think of me," he sighed. "I secretly hoped you'd wait for me…" he kissed her temple, lingering against her face for a moment then rubbing his own temple against hers.
"You were the only thing that kept me from sliding into some dark place…"
The silence fell again.
Her forehead was pressed against his, and the silence was now the interlude through which his words were sinking into her.
A strange urge suddenly overtook Harry. He loved this woman, loved her more than anything or anyone. She had been his one motivation through the trivialities that his destiny had commanded upon him. There had never been a time when she hadn't been the actual core that kept the rest of him alive.
Everything that hadn't included her had been trivial to him. He had acknowledged this with a heaviness that his heart had never been able to get over. He knew why he had done it, but whenever he went back to it, he had trouble finding the reason why she had done it. He knew there were sparkles of tears in his eyes, because simply, he had trouble believing he had meant so much to her, that she had momentarily given him up.
"Why?" he asked suddenly, interrupting the silence, oblivious to the "sinking in" interlude they had wordlessly agreed to and the steering the conversation she started somewhere else.
"Why what?"
"Why did you stop looking at me?" he asked, tilting his head slightly to the side. He would blame his insecurities later; at the moment he just had to spit the question out.
"Because you asked me to."
He frowned. She was impassive.
"Would you have done anything I would've asked you to?"
"No."
"Why did you do it?"
"Because it was important to you."
"Quidditch was important to me. You wouldn't have played Quidditch if I'd ask you to."
"Did you want me to play Quidditch?"
"No."
"There's your answer."
"I didn't ask you a question."
"But you had one."
He sighed. He let his head fall forwards and stood there a moment, with his head hanging and his breathing slow and measured.
"How come you knew?" he didn't mean what she had said about the question, and he knew she knew.
"You don't need me to answer that." She was smiling ever so slightly, the kind of smile only he would be able to pick up on.
"I want you to. Why did you let me marry her?"
The mood shifted. She stopped smiling.
"Same reason you let me marry him."
"Which is?"
"We were tired, we needed time to heal. It was like the winter, just because the trees are bare doesn't mean they're dead. Then comes spring… then came spring."
"To Paris," he said, perfectly aware of what she meant.
"To Paris," she smiled again.
~*~*~
Paris, One Year Before - Maktub
~*~*~
"Take a bow the night is over
This masquerade is getting older
Lights are low the curtain's down
There's no one here
I've always been in love with you
I guess you've always known it's true"
~Madonna
Some people like Paris. Some people find it romantic, magnificent, utopic… but Harry never did.
He knew it as he sat on a large, heavy leather couch, with his back facing a large window through which the Eiffel Tower shone its evening lights. He knew it as he held a cigarette in his right hand, one that was halfway wasted, and which he hadn't touched to his lips. He knew it as he felt the darkness fall upon him… with the City of Blinding Lights shining its way into the night at his back.
His back lazily resting against the couch; his arms hang lifelessly on each one of the couch's arms, the smoke of the cigarette clouding the right side of his features ever so slightly. He felt expressionless… he felt blank… numb.
He was staring off to distance, but he couldn't see anything. He had seen it all earlier that day… he needed to see no more.
Yet his eyes kept searching in the dark… as if he had missed something on his way there…
Which he had.
He had missed them on his way there. Them. He asked her to get lost, and she did. He asked her to leave herself behind in the same way he had left himself on a cupboard under the stairs.
And she loved him so much, that she did… And it wasn't until now that he understood the delusion that he had triggered when he thought they could hide such a thing under the bed.
Their true selves couldn't be kept in a cupboard under the stairs.
He felt tears in his eyes as the darkness was joined by the cold and his numbness was joined by desperation. He felt the emptiness of the wait that was threatening to murder him. Sweet, slow, merciless murder at the hands of time… much too slow… much too merciless… never sweet enough.
Eight years was slow… certainly merciless… but eight years was a time gap that had no sweetness to it.
Blank again… numb.
He felt as if he had just woken up from a very heavy sleep… he had dreamed of his life going on, but now that he woke up, he realised none of it had ever been real… an eight years coma. Did people wake up from a coma after eight years?
The world was spinning around the chair he sat in. Spinning out of control. Eight years of dawning. Or was it just an afternoon of dawning. How long had it been? How big was the gap… and even worst, how deep had it scarred them?
Spinning…
He had once heard that when one crashed into love time stopped… but then time ran like crazy to catch up. It was now that he thought that was probably true.
Spinning….
He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, he defeated the spinning force that was overpowering his mind and focused… on the door in front of him.
He had seen the look in her eyes. He had seen the lost dawning become a sunrise in her eyes… he had seen her, and that was enough to know she was coming. And still, when he heard the key dig into the doorknob and saw it turn, his heart sped up and his breath got held inside his chest for one, perpetual moment.
Within a second that he barely got to see, she was there.
The same slim, not too tall, bushy haired figure of hers. Eternal picture of a tasteful perfectness that constantly felt to him as a bookmark to his life, who told him where he had been whenever he needed it. The spark, shining at him from the cinnamon brown eyes he had grown so accustomed to.
Her.
The one that had, countless times, given him the map to find himself.
The one.
"You don't smoke," she whispered suddenly.
Harry turned to look at the cigarette in his hand. It was true, he didn't smoke, he just stopped for a pack of cigarettes.
"Don't even want to," he whispered back. They both liked that song.
"Checked your change?" she asked in a playful whisper, a small smile barely visible in the dark.
Nothing happened.
She was just there… where she had always been… and Harry wondered how did he ask her to give that up? How did he walk around his life, believing that such thing could be swept to a corner… what had they done with five years that had preceded their deaths?
Hadn't it always been her?
Not a moment had gone by when she hadn't been first. Not a day had gone by when he didn't think of her. Not a turning point had happened in his life when she wasn't there. Not a decision had been made when he didn't want her approval.
Not a morning came without his heart swelling at the thought of her.
He slowly rose from his sitting position, his eyes locked on Hermione's and he saw the truth float in the room for a moment. He saw it, and he saw her staring at it. In one second that had taken eight years, he blinked and looked at her for the first time since that fateful summer morning. He looked into her chocolate brown eyes, and he saw Hermione staring back.
Love never gives up… its faith, hope and patience never fail.
She sighed, closing her eyes in a long blink. When she opened her eyes, she let out a breath, and Harry understood it as if she had told him every word he needed to hear.
He took the four steps that were separating him from her in a measured and deliberate pace, almost asking her to stop him. To hold a hand to him and ask him to stop… but she didn't.
Time had ceased to exist within the walls of their small hotel room. Time had stopped and they were both sixteen once again. He was still the scared boy who looked up to her for every answer and she was the young woman who eased his existence with her kindness and her cleverness… only his destiny had been fulfilled… and now time was theirs.
He was now standing in front of her and she was raising her head so she could keep her eyes on his. A battle between their eyes was taking place. And a thousand, silent words were exchanged as if ammunition. There was strength, determination and a darkened passion in her eyes that he hadn't been a witness to in eight years.
He knew he was shaking because of the cold but he didn't care. He knew he was completely out of himself, he knew he wasn't in a perfect or flawless use of his five senses, but he felt a knowledge that was heavy upon him and that was the one that had started to press his heart against the back of his chest, making his breathing uneven.
He knew that it was all his fault.
And never, in his 25 years, had he regretted so much to be Harry Potter. Never. Not when Sirius died, not when Hogwarts closed, not when Dumbledore died, not when he killed Lucius Malfoy, not when he went after Voldemort. Hell, not even when he finished Voldemort.
Regret filled him in a second, making him shiver and immediately feel a heavy burden upon him. For a moment, he had the same physical feeling of falling off a broom. He felt heavy and unbalanced.
He regretted that all of the time that had been lost upon them; had been lost because of his name shining brightly in the record of a prophecy. It would have been so much different if that hadn't been him.
He defeated the silence to take his soul out of the dark place where it was inevitably sinking into and spoke the words that were the first step out of the small cell that kept him prisoner.
"You know it's my fault," he whispered, his voice bitter and heavy. "You know it is."
She didn't say anything. She was calmed and quiet. Whatever had happened to her between the moment he left her at the hospital and the moment she walked through the door had meant something to her. Her anxiety was gone, and left behind was the soft peaceful expression with which she was looking at him.
A moment went by through which the silence became almost imperceptible and he felt a burning desire to join her in the peacefulness he could see in her eyes.
"I don't know anything but you," she whispered with a small smile. Her expression softened even more and that burning desire he felt threatened to overpower him.
"People would think," she whispered. "They would assume someone like me knows it all. But I don't know anything. I don't trust any of my knowledge, because I don't trust anything… Not even books because it's people who writes them!" Again, her expression softened to an extent Harry would have thought impossible.
He couldn't remember anyone else who'd look at him with such compassion. Not pity, but compassion… compassion as in kindness.
"It's my endless quest for trust that keeps me in the state of perpetual research… but you…" She stopped for a moment as if she was trying to find the appropriate word. She sighed.
He felt tears prickling in his eyes and began to see her through a blur that cleared slightly when he blinked.
"I've never had to look for you! You opened up to me! And for the first time I knew something for sure! I knew it's not what you find but that which finds you that makes your trip worthwhile!"
"Your trip couldn't have always been worthwhile." His voice became a whisper that nearly drowned in his throat on his struggle to defeat the knot that was preventing him from breathing. "I lost you. I let you go away, I asked you to go away!"
"Oh, Harry!" She said. She took three steps that separated them and threw herself into him and wrapped him in a hug. "You don't understand a thing!" She said in a voice that suggested she thought he ought to know.
"You didn't let me go away!" she whispered. "This thing came between us and you asked me to move away to duck it while you took care of it." She sighed and let her head rest against his shoulder, her mouth bare inches away from the skin in his neck. He could feel her hot breath and every time she breathed in, it made him shiver.
"I'm sorry," he said, closing his eyes painfully and breathing in the smell of her hair. "I'm so sorry," he whispered.
"I learned to trust you in a way I've never trusted anything or anyone," she whispered. "And you told me that day we'd get it back… I saw the truth in your eyes and I trusted you."
"But time is not as forgivable Hermione," he said with bitterness. He let go of her and turned towards the window. "Time… we're not who we were that summer morning anymore."
"Yes we are!" she whispered at his back. Harry squeezed his eyes shut to prevent the tears from defeating his determination not to cry them.
"I'm scared," he said in a whisper containing an anguish that seemed foreign to him.
Silence met his statement. A beat or two during which she gave him space to acknowledge what he had just spoken. She was giving him space… because, of course, she already knew. And it was that perpetual and almost unnatural knowledge that she had of him, that met his eyes as he turned around to face her.
She knew, but he still had to let it out.
"I was so scared, Hermione! I am so scared!" He cried and at once felt her arms sneak around his waist and the side of her face pressing against his temple as she wrapped him in a fierce, strong embrace from behind.
"The things that I did!" he cried. He felt his face give into the inevitable flood of tears that could no longer be kept inside his eyes. "You can't see it in my face," he said making an effort to control his tears and the knot that possessively had wrapped his throat.
"But if you could see my inside, my whatever you want to name it, my spirit, that's the fear I have deeper than any scar on my forehead."
He felt an almost unnatural strength in her arms as she nudged him to turn around and meet her face. He saw in her eyes the peaceful expression that she was fighting to keep in order to give him strength, and he felt the same regret he had felt earlier. This time, not because of who he was, per se, but because of what that had made him do.
He felt unworthy of the amazing amount of strength that she was summoning to give it to him.
"I think I'm ruined." He whispered, lowering his head, unable to look into that warmth in her eyes he felt he didn't deserve. "It kept trying to put me in the ground, that war, but I wasn't ready. I fought back, with everything I had, I fought back."
He raised his head tentatively and dared a look in her eyes.
"But if I had goodness, I lost it. If I had anything tender in me I cursed it dead."
"Harry -" she started to whisper, but Harry couldn't bear it.
"I don't deserve you." He whispered in a defeated voice, turned his back to her and walked several steps away from her. He slowly turned around again.
Tears were streaming down her face already. For a moment, Harry felt ready to see her turn around and walk away, saying that it was all a delusion of them.
But seconds went by and she didn't move. She was standing in front of him, with tears falling down slowly and peacefully down her cheeks, and reflecting the light from the Eiffel Tower.
He knew that she wasn't going to turn away on him, let alone claim it all a delusion. But he had to admit that relief swept past him as he saw her, really not turning away and really not claming it a delusion. The relief of seeing how, in front of him, the truth his heart had kept from them for so long, was actually coming to life.
She walked towards him. The two steps he had walked away from her just moment ago. In a motion of delicate and determined fashion, she raised her hand to his temple and brushed away the sight of a tear in it, lingering in the position for a moment.
A single plea was shining at him in her eyes, begging him to look at her. To look into her.
Into his goodness… everything he had tender in him… that was her.
He had missed her. He had missed her so badly.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, as tears rolled down her face. "If I seemed to have gone away for a while… I'm here, I've always been!"
He crushed her against him. Attempting to hide his face in her neck, trying to breath her in, trying to take all of her into himself. He had missed her!
"You're the one!" he cried against her, feeling her arms pulling him to her with the same frenzy that he tried to hold her.
"You're the only thing that keeps me from sliding into some dark place." He took her face in his hands, placing his forehead against hers and sighing, allowing their tears to mix together and their breaths to attempt to regain normality.
"A thousand moments," he whispered against her, kissing the tip of her nose. "Like a bag of tiny diamonds, glittering in a black heart. Doesn't matter if they're real, or if they're things I made up. The shape of your neck, the way your hand enclosed around my arm."
"You asked me to help you master a Summoning Charm," she whispered hoarsely. Harry released a breath of relief; she understood what he meant.
"You gave up your Christmas holidays to talk to me,"
"I knocked on your door and you opened up to me,"
"First hug ever… A hug I hugged everyday of my fighting,"
"Everyday of my waiting," she whispered.
Harry sighed heavily. It had been hard on him, but the truth of it was, that it had been harder on her. He had no way out, but she had done what she did out of choice. She chose to do it for him because he had asked her to, and that had to be harder.
"Was it all my fault?" he asked in a quiet, resigned voice.
"No," she whispered, shaking her head slightly in his hands.
"I was so scared," he said.
"I know,"
"I was so scared!" he repeated. "I should have told you that day! I was so scared, Hermione!"
"I know, Harry, I understand!"
"You… everyone they were all speaking to me, talking me into things, but I couldn't listen to anything they said, I… I couldn't understand a word anyone said to me and soon I couldn't see them anymore… I… everything was a big blur in front of my eyes, and I had to go away."
"I know," she cried. "I knew it then -"
"I had to keep you away!" he interrupted her. "Because I was going to end it, there'll be a time when it'll be over!"
"Harry-"
"I had to make sure I'd still have you when that time came!" he said. He lowered his head, sighing heavily.
"I never meant to lose you," he whispered in that heavy voice that seemed oddly unlike his own. "Everything I've ever done has been for you!"
He turned his back on her again. He couldn't bear to see her and the sparkling tears and warm look in her eyes.
Once again, he felt loving arms wrap around his waist and slowly but unwaveringly turn him around to meet her.
"You'll never lose me," she whispered. "I always come back to you."
She stood on tiptoes and touched her lips to his mouth. Barely allowed her lips to rest against his, but in that swift, impossible short second, perfectness shone an evening light into Harry.
He looked at her, as drew back. His eyes might have been wide, but he didn't care. For a moment, Harry understood that this was the way it all should have been. He leaned in and crushed his lips against hers.
She tasted like a warm spring morning… like flying on a broomstick for the first time… like the Hogwarts letter he got when he was eleven… like relief sweeping past him as he kneeled in the Department of Mysteries. She tasted the way blissful relief tasted like: flawlessly unique and impossibly ideal.
The room started to spin around them again, but Harry didn't care. She was kissing him back, and for the first time in eight years, he felt alive in his own skin.
Her hands grabbed and pulled his hair, and his arms held her tight around the waist, fumbling around with the fabric of her shirt. He could feel her desperation when her tongue met his, when she attempted to taste every inch of his mouth. He knew she could feel his desperation in the way his hands wandered around her waist and in the way he kept trying to pull her closer.
Their tongues met and battled in a beautifully rhythmic symphony that intoxicated every one of Harry's senses. He was intoxicated by the way she hungrily kissed him back, by the way her lips were pressing against his, by the strong desperate way her teeth scraped is tongue, by the sweet smell of her hair, by the warm hand she had sneaked under his shirt and up and down his back.
Her tongue was warm and soft inside his mouth and Harry knew, in one, perfectly lucid moment, that this was it. Completion. In the form of Hermione Granger, breathing life into a body that could have been death, he had found the missing piece to his puzzle. That which he had not been able to fill in eight years, that hole that ached within him in the night, and which he kept trying to ignore, was being filled by her kiss.
In the way she was pressing against him, in the way she was exploring the inside of his mouth with her tongue, in the way she allowed his tongue to explore her mouth. In the way he could feel her warmth through the skin at her back, in the way her hair tickled the side of his face.
She was right. Everything was right!
Hermione and her shaking body in his arms, her warmth pressed against him, her mouth opened up to him, her hands on his back… it was impossibly right! It was so right that he knew his eyes couldn't see straight. It was so right he couldn't stand upright. It was so right that anything else was wrong beyond thought.
The ring on his finger… the wife in his flat… the husband in hers… the weddings… the rings on her finger…
Harry broke the kiss suddenly, panting against her, trying to catch his breath.
He pictured his wife; he pictured Ginny. He pictured her flawlessly red hair, her smile and her bright eyes… her wit and sense of humour. He pictured their every day life, the way she looked at him, and the way she talked to him... the way she talked to others about them.
And he realised how anything that wasn't there in that tiny hotel room in Paris with them was wrong; they were right… they could never be wrong together. And then nothing mattered anymore. Everything else became a blur that Harry couldn't see through the tears that clouded his vision. Everything that did not belong to them was simply unimportant.
The only thing that was important was to look in her eyes, to run his hands around her waist, to feel her chest pressing against his and be aware of how her heart was beating in time with his.
Something hurts within Harry as he leans towards her mouth again, meeting her halfway. It was all so right, that for a moment, Harry felt the grief that had to inevitably come with the reality of their situation.
This was not how it was supposed to be.
This was not how he would have pictured it, how it should have been. He shouldn't have to push away all thoughts of his wife and her husband. They shouldn't even have a wife and a husband! He should have won a war and should have given them both what they had given up. He should have survived that war in one piece, instead of the mess he had been. He should have been longing for his life after the war, instead of being hopelessly exhausted.
He should have started to build the world he had fought for, instead of expecting to see it happen.
This shouldn't be like this at all!
There should be lights and candles and roses and wine and music, not desperation, and hunger and tension and hurt.
She should be his wife because she's always been the air that he breathes and the blood that his heart beats. She should be his wife because she belongs to him and always has.
Harry knew it; he always knew it was true! He knew it as she moaned against his mouth releasing the tension that has been building up during eight years and finally flowing out and between them in an uncontainable rush.
He couldn't get enough of her, couldn't pull her close enough, couldn't kiss her deep enough
He felt her tears against his face as she grabbed the front of his shirt and fumbled with the buttons urgently, careful not to take her lips off his. She threw it off his shoulders hastily, and moved her palms all over his shoulders, making him shiver as he felt the coldness of the room in his back and the warmth of her hands on his shoulders. Her hands were shaking, and her lips trembled against his. He was aware that she knew the one hundred and one ways in which this could have been better.
She pulled away and looked into his eyes. He could see the same grief that he felt, the same desire to make everything else go away. He couldn't help but raise a hand to her temple and brush away the tears that were drying there. She kissed his lips in a quick kiss, barely touching her lips to his, in a reassuring kiss.
"This… this… this is how it is, you know," she whispered. She kissed him again and new tears were flooding her eyes.
"It's not -"
"It's just how you said it would be," she said, closing her eyes, shedding tears as she did so.
"All those other ways it could have been,"
"It's not about what ifs Harry!" she said opening her eyes and looking up at him.
Harry was silent for a moment, looking in her eyes and understanding what she meant, understanding what she knew they had to do.
"It's about forgetting they could have been," he said in a low voice.
She wept against him when she leaned into his mouth again. Her tears weren't sorrow or grief. They were passion that she couldn't hold inside anymore, and that knowledge unleashed his own tears. As he pulled her delicate blouse off and stared at the sheer beauty of her chest, part of it covered in a delicate black satin bra.
This was Hermione. His Hermione! The one that was his best friend… Hermione, who wasn't supposed to make him feel like his heart would come out of his chest, or like the world would end if she'd put her shirt back on.
He smiled to her, the entirety of the situation felt natural. Felt right to the core. Felt to him like a dream he had dreamed several times but had always thought too good to be true and yet it was coming true.
It felt like them.
Like a phoenix, finding life out of ashes, finding courage out of weakness, finding the dawn after the dark.
Life, as he lifted her up and she instantly wrapped her legs around his waist. Life, as he walked them both the three steps that separated them from the large bed that seemed completely out of place in such a small room.
Life, in the uncontrolled rush firing up between them since the moment they fell on the bed. Something that felt to Harry as the heavy weight of lost time… the heavy weight of all the time they had lost… of all the moments that had never happened.
Life, when Harry laid Hermione on her back, feeling her hands running up and down his back as his own hands caressed her lower abdomen softly but intently. Her ankles, running up and down his legs with her stilettos still on, wrapped her legs around his, while one of her hands slipped inside the back of his trousers, teasing the back of his waist.
Life, when he broke the kiss and started to kiss his way over her neck tracing a path with firm kisses on her chin and temple, he sucked on the side of her neck, just below her ear, and felt a smile on his lips as she gasped and dug her fingernails on his back.
Life that he felt in her hand on his trousers as he kissed her along her collarbone, stroking and pressing her palm against the bulge on the front. He gasped for air, and she pressed her hand more roughly against his crotch, gasping loudly herself as he reached the curve of her breasts and placed light kisses on the exposed skin that her bra didn't cover.
Life, when she stopped her hand and arched her back slightly, pressing her chest against Harry. He cupped her breast through the lace fabric with his palm, kneading it and circling her hardened nipple with his thumb. She leaned into his touch for a moment, breathing heavily and moaning slightly before she continued her task on his trousers, scrabbling around with the zipper. She unzipped and opened his trousers, obliging a sudden intake of breath from Harry as she slipped her hand inside, intently feeling him through his underwear as she slipped his trousers down his legs. Harry stopped what he was doing for a moment, straightening so he could get out of his trousers.
And it was then that he saw her.
Saw her intently as what she was. She saw what he had turned her into. He understood, with a painful stab that made him feel cold for a moment, what he had done to her that summer morning when he asked her for time. He didn't know things would get so completely out of hand… he had wanted to think that he could end Voldemort and make things right with her the next day.
He had wanted to think that by keeping it away, he would keep her alive.
But he had been so wrong, so awfully wrong.
And there she was… lying on the bed of a cold and dark hotel room in Paris wearing nothing but a pair of jeans and a lace bra. The immaculate image of everything his life had been missing, spread on a bed, allowing him to lead them through a door they had just discovered… she wasn't mad, she wasn't even disappointed. She was willing to trust him… she was still willing to trust him.
And he realised he owed her an apology.
"I'm so sorry,"
The words were out of his mouth before he could process them. He was sorry. He was so sorry he had to push them both away to deal with it.
"Harry," she whispered. He could see it pained her just as much. He felt even sorrier.
"Hermione, I'm so sorry," he whispered again, he was drowning in an endless confusion that was quickly overpowering him. There was nothing heroic in it. "I'm sorry," he said again, sitting in the bed, facing her still lying on her back, her hair spread all over the pillow.
"Harry, please-"
"I'm sorry," he repeated, interrupting her. He couldn't stop saying the words. "We almost lost it!" He opened his mouth to explain himself further to her. But he mumbled, and felt the desperation of being completely unable to say anything.
Hermione sat on the bed, moving her face close to his, her eyes fixed on his, bearing that look he knew her eyes flashed whenever she had something to tell him. Like she had a secret or something.
"We didn't," she whispered, taking his face in her hand. Her hand was warm and her touch was gentle yet determined. She moved her face even closer and touched her lips to his ever so softly, reassuring him, taking the part of the hero, just like she did whenever he couldn't play it anymore.
She closed her eyes, leaning her forehead against his, sighing deeply. He felt her hot breath in his temple, and smelled in the essence of her.
She didn't smell like the flowery silliness he smelled on his wife… she smelled like candy and lemon, like chocolate and pumpkin juice, like honey and vanilla, like pepper and cinnamon… Like her… like an endless mixture of contradictions that he couldn't define, but that was etched into him far deeper than the scar in his forehead.
He grabbed her head, feeling his fingers dig into her hair, loosing them between the curls… she opened her eyes and he stared at her with a different kind of pleading in his eyes. Her lips crashed into his and they were off again. The fireworks and the spinning were off again as if they had never stopped.
His trousers were out of the way, and he knew she could feel him hard against her leg as he laid her down on the bed again. He began to work on her trousers with his lips still locked with hers, his hands shaking slightly as he opened her trousers and slid them down her legs.
He opened his eyes and moved down her body, taking her jeans all the way off. He took her left leg in his hand, rubbing her ankles where her stilettos were still tied; he didn't feel like taking them off, he wanted to leave her on them. He kissed her leg as he made his way back to her lips, taking time to gently stroke the side of her hip as he passed her knickers and pretended to ignore them, making her moan and throw her head back.
He levelled his face with hers, staring intently at her.
"Please," he whispered. He kissed her neck, her clavicle, and her shoulder. He raised his head and looked at her again. "Please Hermione,"
He kissed her lips, not going any further than pressing his mouth to hers hard.
He then kissed the skin of her breasts that was exposed, softly and gently, in the same fashion that he asked for her forgiveness. He kissed the space between her ribs and kissed his way down to her abdomen, running his hand up and down her tight, reaching out for the elastic of her knickers.
He raised his head at her again as he found his way inside her knickers, deliberately touching everywhere but where he could feel her burning up. He kissed her temple as his finger found her sensitive spot.
Harry lost it the moment he felt her tugging at his underwear and pushing it down his legs to then wrap her hand around his cock. He trembled slightly against her, the hand he had inside her knickers freezing for a moment. He sighed against her face, her hand running up and down his length, feeling him, drawing a circle with her index finger around the tip, running up and down, squeezing the base and then pulling all his length.
He raised his head to look at her… there had never been a way back. Slowly, he pulled away from her, kissing his way down her chest and stomach, finally dropping little kisses along the line where her skin met her knickers.
He gently slid his fingers underneath the elastic fabric and slowly began to pull them off.
He began to rub two fingers against her clit. She was wet and hot, and she felt impossibly soft against his fingers. She moaned and threw her head back, her mouth opened as she ran her fingers through his hair. Without a second thought, Harry replaced his fingers with his mouth. He used his tongue to lick and suck her lips, with the same intensity and sheer desperate passion with which he had kissed her mouth.
She pulled at his hair with one hand; the other firmly held one side of his face, resting warm against his temple. She sighed and whimpered, bucking her hips against his face. She moaned his name as he slid a finger inside of her. She was positively shaking under him, her hand pulling so hard at his hair that she would end up with several hairs in her hand.
He sucked on her hard, almost afraid that it would hurt her, rubbing a spot inside of her with his finger. He had his eyes open and was looking intently at her as she bit her lower lip, and a moan escaped her throat. He sucked and licked, sucked and licked, then slid another finger inside of her, sucked and licked once more. He felt her pulling at him. The hand she had on his temple grabbed his head and pulled him up.
"I want you inside me," she whispered hoarsely.
He looked in her eyes. They were teary; shining with tears he knew she was going to cry any moment now, but there was determination. A steady determination that he knew well because he had been on the receiving end of that determination many times… he knew it because it was a part of her, and he knew all about her… and what he didn't know, he read in her determination, he was about to.
And that was it.
He entered her and all of a sudden, they knew all about each other. He saw it perfectly clear there, staring at them from a corner in the room. Young Harry and young Hermione had gotten it back. Finally. He saw the tears that rolled down her cheeks, when she blinked. He knew that was young Hermione crying, crying tears of happiness and relief because finally she was going to be herself again.
He was just there for a moment, inside of her, feeling her. Feeling what it was to be somewhere he had always been meant to be in. He was just there for a moment… almost bidding goodbye to the fake Harry and Hermione who had taken their places while they were gone.
"I do," she whispered. Her tears were silently rolling down her cheeks as she spoke. "I forgive you,"
He kissed the tears in her cheeks slowly, his mouth lingering against her face. And then he kissed her, and they rocked silently and quietly against each other. Pain and sorrow being slowly, and literally, fucked off.
He kissed her as he moved within her, he kissed her as he ran more desperate circles on her clit, he kissed her as she came under him, and he kissed him as his own climax overpowered him in a moment of impossible relief.
And by the time he woke up next morning, sorrow was over and done with.
~*~
"And I, like a firework, explode
Roman candle lightning lights up the sky
In the cracked streets trampled under foot
Sidestep, sidewalk
I see you stare into space
Have I got closer now
Behind the face
Oh...tell me...
Charity dance with me
Turn me around tonight
Up through spiral staircase
To the higher ground"
~U2
Harry woke up to the bright Paris morning sun on his eyelids. He woke up slowly, blinking several times as if trying to convince himself he really was awake in Paris, and that he hadn't dreamed the whole thing.
He knew he hadn't.
He could smell her in the pillow, he could feel her presence in the room. He knew she was sitting in the window seat before he opened his eyes to actually see her sitting there. He opened his eyes and found her there; through the blinding sunlight he could see her sitting form, staring off into distance, holding a mug in her hands.
It was no morning after. There was no shallow eloquent pillow talk. No promises, no requests, no awkward looks or nervous stammering.
There was just the moment, the morning, waiting for them to live it.
Finally.
Harry blinked several times, shaking the sleep off his eyes. He could see the frame of her body shaped against the blinding bright light that came in through the window. Blinding, extremely bright light, a delicious contrast to the grey light that usually shines down upon London. He smiled when he thought that. He leaned his head back against the pillow, looking up to the ceiling and smiling broadly. He felt so light headed… he hadn't felt so light headed since the second he made sure she was alive when she had fallen in the Department of Mysteries.
She was looking at him. Through the rays of sunlight that crept into the room, almost as if trying to spy on them, he could see her face, and the sparkle in her eyes directed at him. She didn't have that sparkle last morning.
"You know that the sunlight in Paris is bright and yellow," he said, raising his head to look at her. He was smiling, he couldn't help it. "Whereas sunlight in London is a blend of shades of grey?"
She laughed. Blessed laughter that made her torso vibrate with its strength and that broadened his smile with its freedom. Harry couldn't help himself. He looked at her and couldn't but appreciate the beauty of the sight. She was beautiful… what true and authentic beauty was supposed to look like; free, careless, strong, determined, unique… so beautiful… she was so beautiful. Beauty shone out of her, like the words she spoke, like the looks she gave… like the laughter she was laughing.
"Quite the place to see the light, isn't?" she said with a smile, shaking off the last bits of laughter.
Harry didn't answer. He could tell she wasn't precisely asking him to answer in any way.
He rose from the bed, he knew she had something to say, he could feel it, building up inside of her. He approached the window, looking intently at her. He sat opposite to her, staring at her, though her eyes were fixed on the city outside again. Then she slowly turned to him.
She blinked and looked at the bed, in the way one does when one is not precisely looking at anything. She blinked again and looked at the floor. She sighed. She blinked once more and then looked at him. Her eyes wore an unwavering expression. Then she spoke.
"The night before last," she whispered, as if they were picking up a conversation that had been momentarily interrupted. "I had a dream, I didn't understand it until last night,"
"I walked into an office, and there was a man, a police man sitting there," she kept whispering. "He asked me something… I remember feeling so despaired and so hopeless… so lost." She sighed and stopped for a moment. "Then, I told him I wanted to report a person missing."
She waited for a moment; her stare was intense on his eyes. He felt a certain passion coming from it that he hadn't feel in a long time.
"He asked me the name of the person missing and I said 'Hermione Granger'". She whispered. Now Harry understood it all. "I described her; long bushy brown hair, brown eyes, 5'5 of height, 25 years old… and then the man asked me how long had she been missing."
Harry could see the slight sparkle in her eyes that was telling him how hard it was for her to say all of that, not because of the effort that it meant to say it, but because of what it meant to acknowledge it.
"I clearly said 'Six or eight years, I think'," she said. "And the man said; 'what do you mean, you think? Either six or eight!' And I thought for a moment and decided on eight."
Again she paused. Harry waited.
"Then he asked me how was I related to her, and I said… 'I'm herself'…" she looked down for a moment, took a breath and then looked back at him.
"He asked what I meant, and I said, 'Write it down just like that, 'herself''. Then he gave me a pen and asked me to sign the paper he filled… and when I gave him back the pen… he was you." She brought her hand to his cheek and started to rub her palm slightly and softly across his temple.
"And I walked out… feeling blissfully aware of the fact that I was going to be found… I knew you were going to find me,"
"Hermione," he said, she held her hand up to him, indicating she wasn't over. Harry made an effort to keep quiet. What she had just said affected him. He could feel a strong force clutching at his heart within his chest. She turned her head towards the window again. Her eyes were still, not really looking at something, but staring into nothing.
"I'm in love with you," she whispered, her face turned towards the window. "I'm in love with you!" she said, turning her head to look at him. "And I feel the relief in my heart, swelling it inside my chest!" A tear fell down her cheek, and Harry wished very badly that he could step forward and brush it off. "I'm in love with you! But I feel the ring in my finger."
Harry looked down at his left hand. Sparkling at him in the bright Parisian light, was his ring.
"Are you sorry?" he whispered. He knew, that that wasn't what he should be asking her. He should have said that it was wrong, that he knew it was, that they couldn't possibly keep it up… but none of that seemed important. He had to know, he just had to know if she wanted to walk back to where they had been two days ago.
She chuckled. She looked again out the window.
"That's just the thing…" she sighed and turned back to him. "I know the ring is there, I feel it there. I know I should hate myself for it. I know I'm being unfaithful to a promise I made intending to keep… and all I want to be is happy!"
He reached out for her hand. She wrapped her fingers around his hand, squeezing.
"There's nothing you and I could do together that I'd be sorry for, Harry."
"I know this is not the best way for it to be," he said staring at their hands, fingers laced together.
"But it was waiting to happen," she interrupted with a smile.
He chuckled. It seemed surreal… instead of being worried to death of what was happening or was about to come, they were smiling… instead of remorse there was happiness. They couldn't help it… she was right, it had been waiting to happen, and all he wanted to be was happy.
"Where do you want to go from here?" she whispered, giving his hand a squeeze.
Harry almost chuckled again. She was unsure! How could she be unsure?
He smiled at her.
"I never meant to hurt her and certainly, didn't expect this to happen… though I should have known better," he sighed. "If there's a heaven and a hell, this may buy my way into the second one. I know we may reach the end of this road alone." He paused. He squeezed her hand.
"When I compare all of that to what we have… to this us that's been biding its time, waiting to happen." He let go of her hand and took her face in both his hands.
"I'm in love with you too," he said. "I'm in love with you! I know it because I wake up in the morning and because I go to sleep in the night…. Hermione, I'm in love with you! And I know it because I am alive! It's simple and it's clear and it just is! I…" He trailed off, trying to find the right words, but everything he knew how to say seemed inappropriate.
"You're the life, breathing air into my lungs and beating blood into my heart." He leaned into her, his nose almost touching hers. "You're my life, and you've been my life before I could do proper magic and before I played Quidditch and before I defeated any evil lords." He touched his forehead to hers, breathing in slowly. "People see Harry The Chosen One… but he wouldn't be anywhere if it wasn't for you… because I fell in love with you before I had a clue what love was all about…"
Now was the time. He knew it… he had to tell her now, because after that one morning, there would be no way back, and she had to know.
"I've been in love with you before I took on the role of Harry Potter," he sighed. "And, whenever I fought in the role of hero I couldn't play, you were there! You… " he paused, not quite sure how to phrase what he wanted to say.
"Whenever I did anything remotely heroic, I did it because of you. Whenever I faced a fight, I would fight for you and the promise of this ethereal us that's always been there"
He touched his lips to hers.
"I feel sorry for her, but I can't find a reason not to love you!"
~*~*~
1 year later - London
~*~*~
"But I'm half delirious, it's too mysterious
You walk through my walls like a ghost
And I take everyday at a time
I'm as proud as a lion in his lair
Now there's no denying it, a note to crying it
You're all tangled up in my head"
~Mick Jagger
Harry laid the bags on the floor of her living room and turned to her. She fought a smile and placed her hands on either side of her waist.
"I could have shrunk it and put it in my purse, you know!"
Harry laughed and her lips kept trying to fight the smile that was nevertheless sparkling in her eyes.
"I know," he said, his amusement not concealed at all. "But you can't tell me you don't love it when I'm all Harry The Hero on you,"
She walked to him, throwing her purse in the sofa. She wrapped her arms around his waist, leaning her head in his chest.
"I don't care about him," she said. "I only care about you,"
She raised her head and looked at him, her eyes piercing through her eyeballs at his very core.
"You're not Harry The Hero when you're with me," she said with a steady determination in her voice. "You're just Harry. My Harry… Harry I love."
He touched his lips to hers ever so softly. It was the things like that he cherished so badly about them. She was right…no surprise! She was right, he was just Harry when he was with her; it was like being on holiday from the Chosen One crap… he was just Harry with her. He didn't need to be anything else.
He chuckled.
"Have I told you that it marvels me to no end that you love me," he said as she leaned her head against his chest again. He sighed. "Not in spite of who I am… but because of who I am… does that make sense?"
She raised her head again. She looked in his eyes. He knew it did make sense.
She was with him… not with Harry Potter… she was with him! She wasn't with Harry Potter in spite of who Harry was… she was with Harry because of who he was… and she didn't give a crap about Harry Potter.
It made a shiver run up and down his spine to just think about it.
He looked around the flat, his arms wrapped around her, and hers wrapped around his waist in the middle of her living room. He knew it was the time. He hated it; he wished he didn't have to go. He wished he didn't have to enter his own flat and feel that burning need to run away the moment he'd shut the door closed. He wished he didn't have to sit around his flat for the night, quietly thinking about her. He wished he didn't have to hug Ginny when she'd arrive to their flat and be unable to compare her embrace to the one he and Hermione were just sharing.
"I love you," she whispered from where her face was hidden against his chest.
He knew that she knew too.
It was now over for the week. He would kiss her goodbye, and Apparate to his flat and wait for his wife. And she would stay there and wait for her husband. And they would have to wear the rings again.
And pretend. Harry sighed. Pretend… again… he was getting tired of pretending; it was the most exhausting part. To walk circles around each other when other people was in the same room. To hide unspeakable words in their eyes so no one would hear.
He didn't want to pretend anymore.
And he knew she didn't want to pretend anymore either.
They didn't say a word, but as Harry kissed her goodbye and Apparated to his flat, he knew that the pretending element had little time left.
They had given the pretending element a year already.
Harry took his bags out of his cloak pocket and threw them on the floor, waving his wand over them to return them to their normal size. He sighed.
He searched into the pocket of his cloak again and sighed as he took out his ring.
He slipped it back into his left finger and sighed again.
It wasn't good enough to have her for the week in California. It wasn't good enough to see her on Charlie's birthday, or back to work on Monday.
It hadn't been like that a year ago, but now… he wanted to be with her all the time. He didn't want to wake up and not see her hair spread on her pillow. He didn't want to fall asleep without her hand on top of his as he hugged her. He didn't want to see her four hours after she'd woken up instead of being the first thing she'd see in the morning. He didn't want to dream about her, he wanted to dream with her!
There were far too many pretences for something that was as authentic as they were. He was tired of pretending, he wanted to breathe.
A.N.: Thanks so much to everyone who waited out for this chapter. I adore you and I deeply apologize for the delay.
Some lines here aren't mine. I collect quotes, and tend to use them in my writing…
The lines
"You're the only thing that keeps me from sliding into some dark place"
"But if you could see my inside, my whatever you want to name it, my spirit, that's the fear I have deeper than any scar on my forehead."
Are from the wonderful adaptation of Cold Mountain by Anthony Minghella.
The line
"Just because the trees are bare doesn't mean they're dead"
Is from Sex and the City
The line
"Everything I've ever done has been for you"
Is from the adaptation of Great Expectations by Mitch Glazer, directed by Alfonso Cuaron.
The lines
"You don't smoke
Don't even want to
Hey now check your change"
Are from U2's song "Far Away (So Close!)
On something else, Maktub is Arabic for "It was written"