Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Period, end of story.
After The End
Authors Note: In my wildest dreams, in my most outrageous expectations, the 3 years it's taken to finish this have meant something to all of you too. Thanks to all of you reading, whether you've been with the story since its first day or whether you just read chapter one.
This chapter took very long, and hence was influenced by a variety of things, from Quentin Tarantino (who gave me the idea of this chapter's name years ago), to Michael Ondaatje who became my favourite author and inspired the format of the chapter. A small bow to JJ Abrams for his Alias, which constitutes all the knowledge I have of spying.
Thank you, very, very much!
Chapter Seven: The Lonely Grave of Paula Shultz
"For all the love we've made
Just one thing stays the same
The lamp gets dusty
The pipes get rusty
But I don't wanna wash my hands clean"
~Hanson
~*~
She walks into the meeting room and breathes in the cold air wishing they would turn off the cooling charms. She takes the seat that's waiting for her.
Looking to her left, she stares at the empty seat breathing in deeply and wiping her sweaty palms on her dark cotton trousers. She fills her glass with water and ceremoniously stares at it.
The instant he walks through the door, the air gets caught up in her throat and suddenly she's stopped breathing.
She feels silly, childish and so incredibly out of character that she tries to talk herself into pulling it together. She finds she's unable to control the overflow of memories and the physical recollection that her body makes of the feel of his hands on her and the way his lips captured hers.
She can't help herself and she raises a hand to run it through her hair, grabbing some of it in the same way he had done the night before. She gasps as quietly as she can.
He sits next to her on the seat she stared at and he looks sideways to meet her eyes.
She knows it's impossible, but as she tries to act casual, she has no doubt that everyone in their division can tell she had sex with Harry. No more than 24 hours ago, he had been inside of her, his name dying in a throaty whisper as she held him closer. And she now takes the time to wonder how exactly did she manage to show up in the morning and hand over her report.
She realises they've been staring at each other when Director Kendall enters the room and calls out their names.
"Our objective today is simple," he says. She turns her head and tries helplessly to pay attention. It's harder than she imagined to concentrate on the female face she's seeing projected on the board.
"The woman in the photograph is named Victoria Doren. Two hours ago, one of our contacts intercepted her as she arrived to London to meet with this man," Director Kendall waves his wand and the picture changes into that of a man with a long face and dark small eyes. "Muggle Simon Thorne, a well known drug and arms smuggler who's responsible for supplying the Knot family, who I'm sure you've heard of,"
"They were former Death Eaters," says Harry and she gasps again the minute she feels Harry's hand on her knee. Her attention is on the verge of being lost entirely and she has to try too hard to keep focused.
"Why are we being briefed on this?" she asks in an attempt to get back on track. "Isn't this Auror Department?"
"It was," says Kendall. "But then Doren was interrogated. This woman is a witch, but the muggles are still unaware she is. She's been working as the bridge between Thorne and a group of former death eaters, larger than just the Knotts. They are planning to use a magical alteration on muggle weapons to blackmail the Minister for Magic into releasing other former Death Eaters our of Azkaban."
"How, precisely?" she asks.
"Doren claims to be unaware of that. Which is why you are going in Hermione, and that is what you and agent Potter will be finding out," he answers her and she looks over at Harry. His hand is still on her knee and she is overly conscious of the way they are looking at each other.
"Doren was scheduled to meet Thorne during an art benefit gala in the Durham University Oriental Museum. Hermione will meet with Thorne pretending to be Doren, Harry will go as back up. You will find out the details of the exchange and then the two of you will lead a tactical team to retrieve the weapon and bring them into custody."
She looks at Kendall and slightly nods her head. She feels Harry's hand dropping from her knee and she is feeling suddenly very vulnerable.
"Everything goes the muggle way, absolutely no magic." Kendall says before he rises from his chair and starts to walk out the door. "You leave in one hour,"
~*~
"Touch me and I will follow in your afterglow
Heal me from all this sorrow
As I let you go I will find my way
I will sacrifice 'til the blinding day when I see your eyes
Now I'm living in your afterglow"
~INXS
~*~
The water was cold. It travelled from the glass into her mouth and down her throat. She was shaking, but she knew it wasn't because of the cold. Her heart was beating in a murdering anticipation that she was dangerously getting used to. It was the same she could recall having felt a few times in her life. When she called her Primary School teacher an incompetent, as she sat on the stool where Professor McGonagall placed the Sorting Hat on her head. When Viktor Krum approached her slowly under the mistletoe and gave her a considerate but anticipated first kiss. The night more than one year ago, before she had opened the door to that small hotel room in Paris.
She drank the cold water and placed the glass ceremoniously on the sink. She waited. She turned and walked into the living room intentionally staring at the space around her before sitting on a big comfortable armchair. She waited.
She waited and her mind went over the lines that she had imagined she'd say but which she knew will be useless for anything but making her heart stop beating for a second every now and then. She rubbed her hands against each other miserably failing to stop the shaking. She was shaking. And desperate chills ran up and down her spine with too uncomfortable a speed.
And then she froze.
She felt it coming and a second later as she heard the door open, her body froze and her mind went blank. It was time, she knew.
She hadn't planned, she hadn't rehearsed anything but in one particularly sharp moment, she found clarity and knew instantly, what she had to say before Ron even spoke.
"You're home!" He said. "Brilliant! I just dropped Ginny off at her flat and Harry wasn't there, I was afraid you two would be off at some work thing."
She rose from the chair and turned to see Ron dropping his England embedded luggage in the living room. He stared at her and smiled.
Painful guilt filled her for a second and her eyes closed as if by their own will. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes to see Ron looking at her, a transparent expectation in his eyes.
"Are you alright?" he asked almost unconsciously. Because unconsciously, Hermione thought, that is exactly what you ask your wife if she's looking like hell has just frozen over in your bedroom.
For the first time in a long time, she told Ron the truth to the question he'd been asking her for years and for which she'd always responded with a well practised lie.
"No," she said exhaling a breath she didn't realise she'd been holding.
Ron turned confused to look at her. He frowned, a confused expression on his eyes.
"Ron I have to talk to you." Hermione said shortly.
"Did something happen while -"
"Ron," she interrupted, trying to look at him. Her emotions attempted to overpower her and she turned her eyes to her shoes, staring into the leather flower on top of her toes. Quick, she told herself. She raised her eyes and met Ron's. Like a band aid, her inner voice spoke.
"I'm leaving, Ron." She said. Her hands were sweaty and her heart felt as if it were mere seconds from puncturing her chest open with the strength it was beating at. "You. Tonight."
She dropped her eyes again and heard the silence as it echoed through their flat. Pain, honest, brutal and cruel pain seared an uncomfortable sting in her heart. A truthful physical reaction to the actual pain that it caused her to break her best friend's heart.
In the echo of the silence, she raised her head and stared at the pictures over the mantle. A time when they were careless, happier and free of all the painful love that was breaking their hearts because it took her away from Ron to bind her together with Harry. She wished she could take her marriage with Ron back and tears flooded her eyes in the battle she fought to keep them open. Her lips tightened against each other as the only mean she thought she could suppress sob.
"Why?"
His voice was a hollow hissing sound that dragged the words with aching necessity. Her own voice, in the only word she spoke, felt like a desperately impossible effort to get past the lump in her throat.
"Harry."
Ron raised his head and the first emotion that his eyes showed was a mild confusion.
"He's married to my sister." He said with a frown.
"We're in love." She said as the recognisable warmth of a tear ran down her cheek. She allowed herself to be helpless to stop it.
"But… we're happy." He said in an almost inaudible whisper. "Aren't we?"
~*~
"I don't see myself when I look in the mirror
I see who I should be
I don't see myself when I look in your eyes
Thank god for that"
~Starsailor
~*~
She doesn't say a word since they get off the plane. He trembles if he thinks about the gaping hole that her silence is making him feel inside, so he consciously tries his best to ignore it. It is rather hard.
He wants to reach out to her and touch her. If only to indulge in the feel of her warm and soft skin under his hand, because his anxiety makes him burn inside with the need to touch her. He feels a painful and impending need to kiss her before she goes out, to reach out for her hand and be the last thing her hand holds before she walks out the door.
He wants to speak with her. But the distance she is imposing on him is far more painful than its cause, even if he surely always knew not to expect anything less from her.
She hasn't stopped. She moves around the room, arranges her paperwork, re reads the brief, looks around for her clothes. She hasn't stopped, and he's aching for her to take a moment to look at him and for them to have the conversation that's eating him inside.
He has an epiphany when she opens up her luggage and takes out a rather beautiful black dress: He is desperate to speak with her, but he has absolutely no idea what to say. He can't take it back, he knows. He can't make anything better, even if he were to speak with her. He can't change anything now, but he so desperately knows, that even so, he needs to speak with her.
He can't take her silence because it is the one thing she's never given him.
She's about to go into the bathroom and he knows he will lose her the second she does.
"Hermione, listen," he says, with enough attitude that she stops what she's doing, but with enough gentleness so that she doesn't feel attacked.
She looks up at him. Her eyes are weary and slightly lost. The way she stares at him makes her look foreign and so strange that he suddenly wants to break down and cry. In the last year, he hasn't looked this intensely into her eyes and seen anything but either sheer happiness or burning desire.
"Harry look," she begins. "I know you think this op's too dangerous for me to -"
"Yes, but that's not what I wanted to talk to you about."
A moment goes by and she doesn't say anything. His heart is pumping so horribly hard inside his chest, that he fears she can hear it. Her face has frozen and her jaw has tightened, her eyes on the floor.
"I don't think that there's anything to be said about that." She says quietly.
"Except you haven't said a word since I told you." He whispers.
"That's because there's nothing for me to say." She says, her mood shifting perceptively and now she's gone into a rather defensive mode that he knows he should be intimidated with.
"What is going to happen now?" He says, his own mood shifting to a desperation he was unaware he felt.
"What kind of question is that, Harry?"
"It's the question that's eating me inside, Hermione," he says angrily but quietly. "It is the only thing I can think about because as horrendous a person as it may make me, I cannot imagine my life without loving you like this. And I realise I've fucked up, okay? I know I have."
He goes quiet and she relaxes visibly. She stops being in a defensive mode, but she's still not looking at him.
"Harry, please go away."
He finds himself shocked as she speaks the words and the sentence is formed.
"Hermione, I'm in love with you, alright?" he speaks. He knows that as of right now, this has become the only argument he has going for him.
"You've always wanted this -"
"No! I've always wanted this with you." He interrupts her.
"But she's your wife."
"Because I didn't know it then," he takes a step towards her and she finally looks up at him. Her eyes are fierce with a determination that scares him, but he ignores it and holds his ground.
"Harry, you know this has reached its breaking point," she whispers sadly. "She's your wife and you-"
"And I love YOU!" he yells and grabs her by her arms. "I want this with you, Hermione. I can't… I have to have this with you, Hermione. It…"
"Harry, we can't…" she whispers in an attempt he thinks is to interrupt him, but she stops.
"Don't say that, Hermione,"
"You know it's true." She whispers, her voice almost breaking. "You know it is… "
"No, Hermione," he says with the impending desperation he's feeling quickly filtering into his voice. "I love you"
"And I love you, too," she whispers so quietly he can barely hear her with the terrible pounding of his heart and the creeping fear that it's very dangerously overpowering him. Her eyes are filled with tears and he is vaguely aware of the fact that his strong grip on her arms is probably bruising her. He doesn't release her.
"But there cannot be ways around this…" she looks down to the carpet and then back again at him. "I love you too but that's just not enough."
"How can you even say that?" He asks with his voice broken. "Don't you know, Hermione? Don't you see?" He wants to shake her, he wants to crush her against him and yell out in her ear. But he only grabs her face with both his hands. "How can you not see that loving you is the only thing that's kept me alive since I met you?"
She starts to cry and he's now lost all of the angry determination that gave him power and he feels himself crumble down in a way that is distant and alien to him.
"You can still love me," she says trying to breath in, but a second later a sob breaks her voice and she's not capable of speaking anymore.
"I can't love you like that, Hermione." He crushes her against him and his own sobs break his voice and stop his breathing every few words. "I can't go back, I can't go back to loving you from within and far away. I can't love you any differently -"
"Harry go away -" She pushes him off, her sobs not diminishing her strength. She pushes strongly and even though by strength alone she can't move him, he recognises her intentions in her strength and very unwillingly pulls away.
"Hermione please -"
"I have to get ready, Harry. Go away," She wipes tears away from her cheeks, her hands shaking.
"I can't let you go with this between us like this," He says and approaches her. He has to settle this right now. He cannot bear the thought of her going.
"Harry," she says, she stops crying when she speaks. Her voice is suddenly filled with clarity and determination. "There can't be anything between us anymore."
Silence follows.
He's too shocked and hurt to even open his mouth. He looks at her, and he's unsure of whether it's what she spoke or the determination in her voice that hurt him most. He wants to break her ground and snap her out of this ridiculous situation because it cannot be over. But when he looks at her, he's sure it is.
It can't be, but it is.
"Get out," she says quietly. "I have to get dressed. Harry, go. I'll meet you at the extraction point."
Half an hour later, he's still in the hallway. He's pitifully crying himself dry outside her hotel room, with his back against the door, his sobs shaking his body and his hair more tousled than usual because of all the scratching of his head that he's made as a response to his desperation.
He hears her sobbing and sniffing through the door and he's becoming a monster by the second. Every time he hears her he can't help but wish for all of it to be unreal, for all of it to be a mistake. For Ginny to be wrong. He wishes none of this were happening, and every time he thinks that, he cries even more because he's aware of what a sick, terrible thing to think that is.
He realises that nothing else matters, literally, if he can't have it with her.
Nothing. And he's very sorry for himself, because he cannot believe how badly it's all turning out inside of him. How badly he's behaving.
He's sorry for himself because he never imagined he'd be unable to happily welcome a child into his life. But with horror, he's realising he is.
It's about 2 hours later when he finds her note inside his suitcase. He doesn't know when she left it there, but when he sees it, his eyes and his insides light up with a glint of hope. He opens up his suitcase and finds a new small paper with a quote. Written on the paper from the hotel room.
This one is not cheerful, like the ones she's dropped on his desk ("You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with." - Dickens), or playful like some she's left in the pockets of his trousers ("He expressed no regret for what he had done which satisfied her "- Jane Austen).
It's not cryptic, like the one she once left in his pillow, come morning ("These violent delights have violent ends . . . " - Shakespeare) and it isn't dripping with honest and clichéd romance like other she slipped in his hand with half the world in the same room ("And here too the intimate exchange and echo of childhood history, of scar, of manner of kiss." - Michael Ondaatje).
She has done it with the same careful stealth with which she's done every other. But this one is intensely filled with a darkness that's foreign to him, it is gloomy and painful, and he knows it before he reads it, even if there isn't one thing that's different about the perfectly practised script which he understands and knows even better than his own.
"My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning; my great thought in living is himself."
-Emily Brontë
He wants to leap out of his seat and fuck the mission. Run after her and escape to a distant part of the earth where no one knows them and where their love can be enough.
Instead, he opens up the suitcase with the tech gear and sets up the station to monitor her.
~*~
"I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemy's eyes
Listened as the crowd would sing
Now the old king is dead long live the king
One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand"
~Coldplay
~*~
The moment Harry stepped through the door to his flat; he became aware he was late.
The smell of her flowery perfume filled his nostrils and the presence of her levitated in the flat like invisible mist. A faint feeling of regret threatened to overtake him. He had taken too long at Godric's and under a whispered curse he wished he had paid more attention to the voice in the back of his head that kept rushing him out of the house.
No mental preparation could be afforded now, and the realisation of this hit him painfully fast as he spotted a red head of long hair behind an armchair.
He took a deep breath and held it. He had no doubts, he had no insecurities, but the sight of his wife made him excruciatingly aware of the fact that he should have mentally prepared at the very least some lines to speak.
He heard her take a breath and saw the back of her head move as she stirred. He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment.
"Harry?" she said in a low voice, still sleepy.
He opened his eyes to see her standing up and turning to him.
Her face looked like she was still half asleep and her hair was messy but she quickly ran her hands over it to smooth it back to its usual appearance. He had an impulse to stop her hand midway.
She quickly walked up to him and placed a swift but firm kiss on his lips holding his face with one hand. He didn't have time to react for as soon as she touched her lips to his, she removed them and started talking at an annoyingly fast speed.
"I fell asleep waiting for you. I was exhausted." She said. "I wanted to go out for dinner so you could tell me all about the ball last night. How would you like that? I was thinking we could go over to that Italian place that's so popular, being almost Christmas it must be packed but I'm sure that just by dropping your name we'll get a table."
Harry stared at her. His eyes wouldn't give away any emotion but his emotions were an excruciating vortex spinning from disbelief to anger, to disappointment, to annoyance and back to disbelief. She turned and picked her England bag from the floor in front of the armchair but kept chatting incessantly.
"I'll just go wash my hair and change." She said as she entered the bedroom and then yelled from the inside. "My hair is terribly messy, it rained all the way through the game and you know how my hair suffers through a game like that." She came out again, picked her purse from the entrance table, and searched inside. "I'll put on something really fancy and we'll be off. Wouldn't you change? You look tired, Harry, maybe you should -"
"Ginny." he said in a strong but emotionless tone.
"What?" She said not turning from the search in her purse. "Seriously dear, you don't look very much like yourself."
"Ginny!" He said more loudly.
"What is it?" She said raising her head. Her face was slightly flushed and her eyes were flashing him an angry annoyance that made him change his mind on the spot.
He was not going to be kind, he was not going to be polite and he was not going to be forgiving. He looked at her, saw the lies told, the secrets kept, the unspoken words and in a painful recognition, saw the machiavellic woman who had taken advantage of everything in their situation and everyone around them to tie the knot that would bind them together.
He was not going to take the kind approach to anything. Kind should have been over 8 years ago.
"This will hurt," he spoke quickly. His voice felt strangely empty as he spoke and the lack of emotion in it almost floated in the distance between them. "I'm leaving you."
A silent beat passed before Ginny shook her head and spoke.
"I'm sorry Harry," she said shaking her head in the intentional way that made her hair dance stupidly at her back. Harry felt another wave of anger. "I thought I heard you say -"
"I've been with Hermione. I'm in love with her."
~*~
"There are betrayals in war that are childlike compared with our human betrayals during peace. The new lover enters the habits of the other. Things are smashed, revealed in new light. This is done with nervous or tender sentences, although the heart is an organ of fire."
~Michael Ondaatje
~*~
In a series of quickly blinding seconds, Ron's expression changed so dramatically that it made Hermione take a step back.
For the first time that evening, fear was crawling up her system and like a curse, it seemed to hit her across the chest and she could have sworn it was like magical light hitting her. She could feel, for the first time in all the years she's know him, the magic vibrating out Ron and all around him, fearfully reaching her and making the hairs in the back of her neck stand.
"How long has this been going on?" he asked angrily in a very loud voice. Hermione calculated the reach of her wand. Two flower vases on the coffee table vibrated as Ron's voice echoed in the flat.
Hermione looked into her husband's blue eyes. The rage, the almost evil tint to the anger in them was something Hermione had never faced before. She had seen Ron angry, had seen him go off, and had seen his magic accidentally blow up every now and then.
But it was an actual fact that she had never considered up until then, that although she and Ron fought, argued and picked at each other at any opportunity, she had never once, been the object of such fury from him.
She feared, but as she looked in his eyes, she didn't dare lie to him.
"For over a year," she whispered. "Since our Paris trip last year."
Ron looked at her and then his hands closed into fits and he turned his back to her. He lowered his head as he walked away from her and then turned back to her.
The ire in his eyes was almost painful to watch and yet as much as Hermione desperately tried to look away, a part of her kept her staring at him, painfully reminding her of the fact that she owned Ron that much.
His voice, though still loud and angry, was slightly more composed than the last time he spoke.
"Are you going to live with him?"
"You can stay here if you want-"
"Oh look!" he said angrily, all his composure vanishing in a second. Once again, Hermione felt the vibrations of uncontrolled magic and realised in an unpredictably agonizing moment that Ron was not doing anything anymore to contain it. "I don't give a fuck about the spoils!"
"Ron I'm sorry," she tried to say in spite of her unease. "I'm sorry we didn't mean to hurt you, we-"
One of the flower vases to her right exploded from within, pieces of hand painted glass flying all around the living room. Hermione instinctively ducked from the flying glass and looked at Ron.
"Ron you have to try to calm down and listen to me -"
"Why? Are you going to explain it?" he yelled. The other vase exploded as soon as he spoke.
"Ron, please -"
"You can't explain it!" He yelled even louder. "You… with Harry! With fucking Harry of all people, Hermione!" He turned his back to her and placed both his hands on each side of his head. He ran them through the back of his head until he rested them around his neck.
"You're brilliant," he said quietly. "But even you can't explain any of this and convince me that it makes sense, because in the wildest and most horrible of dreams, this didn't end like this."
She lowered her head and stood quiet, emotionally accepting defeat.
"It's Christmas eve," he whispered quietly. "And I'm not…" He lowered his head and visibly struggled with himself. "I'm not even going to ask why,"
Silence followed and she looked again to the floor with her eyes clouded by tears.
Slowly, Ron walked to an armchair and sat there, his head between his legs.
She raised her head and turned to look out the window. Snow was falling steadily and a small amount of it framed the window.
"How," he began. He stopped and raised his head from between his legs. "How did you go on like nothing happened?"
"I…" She realised, the moment she opened her mouth that she didn't honestly know herself. She still felt honesty was the best approach. "I don't really know… I … " she stopped and considered the way she would phrase her thoughts. "We didn't want to hurt you,"
"Don't do that," he said. He was quiet, quick and cold when he spoke. "Don't..-"
"Ron, we-"
"Don't Hermione!" he yelled. "Don't you go patronising it like it's anything less than what it really is." He hung his head down again. "Just tell me, just… " He got to his feet and walked across the room to her.
He raised his hands gently and slowly as if to grab her by her arms but a second before touching her, he stopped and let out an angry and frustrated cry.
He sat on the armchair again and visibly relaxed as he did.
"You stabbed him," he said quietly.
"I know," she whispered, her eyes closing for a few seconds as if reflectively.
Several beats of time had gone by in silence before he spoke again.
"Fuck, Hermione," he said. "Why now? We're married, and you… you both had to wait all this time to pull this off?" He said, grabbing his hair with both his hands and slightly pulling it in the same fashion Harry always did. "We're married… how does that happen?"
He fell silent. He looked up at her and his eyes were plagued with such a resigned sadness that all her efforts to be strong immediately began to crumble.
She fought the overwhelming desire to break down in hopeless tears. She opened her mouth to speak and immediately closed it again.
"Hermione, speak to me!" he said loudly and determined.
"I…-" she stopped a second before saying she didn't know. In her heart, she knew. "I… It was like waking up." She said in a whisper.
Her emotions flew loose from her and she went on to speak them up as they came.
"Like I woke up from a rather strange dream state I had been in since the war. I just…" In hushed whispers and accented statements every few words, she found herself telling him what she had dreaded he knew. "I awoke to find everything different. I felt different, you felt different, and most of all, he felt different. My world had shifted for me to realise that… This was always there. I had always -" She stopped for a second. She wanted to bite her words back to keep him from hurting. She fought internally a moment, but the words came out while she was still battling them.
"Suddenly, I realised I wanted to give a lot of me that was not mine to give. The part of me I was supposed to give to you…" she sighed loudly. "It was his."
He remained quiet and immobile.
"I meant it, when I said I wasn't going to ask why, but… Hermione," he raised his head and pierced her with his stare. "Why did you marry me?"
"I didn't know," she whispered between sobs she tried her best to keep quiet. "And I wish I did… For you, Ron I wish I knew." She covered her eyes with her hands and sobbed before she managed to speak again. "Because you deserve so much better than this!"
"Oh, fuck off Hermione!" He said in a rather annoyed voice. "Saying bollocks like that is not going to make it easier for me, you know?"
She felt so shocked and hurt that she could do nothing but hide her face in her hands and sob as quietly as she managed to.
"Ron, I didn't mean to -"
"Oh, damn you both!" Ron cried in exasperation. "Yeah you did, Hermione. You speak shit like that hoping it will make me feel better about you going off with him. And it won't. Nothing will. You're trying too hard, and the harder you try, the easier it gets for me to feel that we never meant anything to you!"
"It was not like that, Ron," she said with determination that felt almost foreign in the emotional vortex she felt she was in. "You know it wasn't."
She was looking at him with the same determination that ran in her words and he shook his head slightly.
"It doesn't matter what I know, Hermione," he responded. "You both fucked up, and I'm not about to accommodate my feelings to suit your needs."
She collapsed down into an armchair, her knees too weak and her hands shaking. A part of her was terrified and yet another part was tremendously relieved because through her emotional blurriness she started to feel as the weight inside of her slowly released her. But she was grieving, for she could see something dying before her eyes. And yet, she was refusing to acknowledge how surprised she felt. She had expected yelling and violence; but Ron, she has realised, was being far more mature than she would have given him credit for.
"We're such a bunch of idiots," Ron said suddenly, running his hands through his hair again. "All of us,"
She raised her head and met his eyes, her expression blank and cautions.
"And I'm the worst of all," he said quietly. "Did you ever love me?"
"Oh, Ron, I did." She whispered. "I really did. I never meant to hurt you. I loved you so -"
"But you always loved him more, Hermione." He interrupted. He sighed. "And we have all been idiots," he whispered.
"Oh Ron!" she exclaimed. "Of course we're idiots! We cut our lives in half to go off and fight a war, and we didn't learn anything!"
"Harry died," he said, in a way, almost as if it were an afterthought, as if it had just occurred to him. "He died! And we all came back and went on pretending that hadn't happened!"
"I can't pretend anymore!" she said, her voice breaking in spite of her effort to steady it.
"I know," he said quietly, lowering his head slowly.
"He died, for a moment there, he actually died." He said again. "And here we all are, the three of us and my delusional sister, pretending! Of all things, pretending we're living in this happy family… settling!" He raised his head and stared back at her. "I settled in this comfortable, uncomplicated thing with you and you're miserable."
"I wasn't always," she whispered with a small smile.
He went quiet again. He rose from his chair and walked to the window, staring fixedly at his reflection in the glass and snow falling in the cold city.
"Is he telling my sister now?"
"He's meant to."
He sighed.
"We would've guessed," he began, staring straight into the reflection of his own eyes. "That he died so we could have something… better, than this ridiculous circus. I don't know if my sister understands that. I don't think she ever did." He moved his head to the side and Hermione saw his profile reflected on the glass.
"Sometimes, I think he won." He said. "Because we're all miserable! Ginny cries when it's time to come back home after tour. Harry hasn't spoken to me in a year, and we haven't had sex since you stabbed him." He sighed after he said that and then ran his hand through his hair again.
"I know I'm a rightful git half the time, but I'm not that much of an idiot, Hermione. Sometimes I think Harry killed him but he won!"
He turned around slowly, not looking at her but clearly addressing her with his body language.
"Just… go away, Hermione,"
For a second, she didn't move, she didn't try to speak to him, to clarify anything else, to attempt to give him any kind of peace of mind, because she knew such an attempt would end up in utter failure. But she found it remarkably hard to simply walk away.
"Please," he said quietly, his voice breaking so slightly it was almost imperceptible.
She rose quietly from the chair and walked up to the door, grabbing her handbag from the coffee table. When she reached the door, in a quiet motion she stopped. After staring at her hand for a moment, she removed her rings, the shiny diamond sparkling stubbornly in the artificial light. She laid them down in the table by the door. She felt like her throat was closed. She felt like saying something else, but she didn't know what exactly.
She simply reached for the door, and once she did, he spoke again.
"You know the one, most painful thing about this…" he said, his head down and his voice crashed. "Is somehow I've always known. I always knew for you, it had to be him."
~*~
"A love story is not about those who lose their heart but about those who find that sullen inhabitant who, when it is stumbled upon, means the body can fool no one, can fool nothing - not the wisdom of sleep or the habit of social graces. It is a consuming of oneself and the past."
~Michael Ondaatje
~*~
"What is that supposed to mean?"
Gentleness, kindness and restrain momentarily escaped Harry's mind as he heard the words his wife had just spoken. His emotions turned quickly into anger, frustration and utter disbelief. He was in an increasingly faster vortex.
"What do you mean 'what is that supposed to mean'?" he asked angrily in a steadily low voice.
Ginny lowered her head but raised her eyes to look up at him. Her stare was steadily uncomfortable and angry. She stood motionless, her eyes on him, as if she were attempting, for the first time in the 15 years she's known him, to read him. As if she had considered her position during those painfully long seconds, her posture relaxed, she turned her head and sighed.
"Ginny-" he tried.
"You better get ready," she said as she turned her back to him and walked to their bedroom.
It took a moment for Harry to fully understand the extent of what she had just said. He frowned and then immediately followed her with an annoying confusion taking over his emotions in a sudden rush of unexpected surprise. She had certainly misheard him, he thought. She wouldn't dare push her luck so hard, so fast.
Stepping into the bedroom, he found her shedding off her clothes on the bed and walking in her lace underwear into the closet. As she turned on the light, Harry saw her take a look at his cleared side of the closet and scan the empty shelves and hangers.
She then turned to her side and took out a dress and a fresh set of underwear, peacefully ignoring his presence in the bedroom and the lack of it in the closet.
She walked back into the room and laid the clothes on the bed.
"Harry," she said. "I said you should get ready,"
"And I said I'm leaving you," he snapped.
She looked down to the floor then slowly but steadily walked to the bed and sat next to her cleanly ironed short dark green dress.
She didn't seem upset or confused, but instead seemed calmed and relaxed. She kept quiet, and the only sign of her reflective anger and the subsequent argument that it provoked in her head was the tightness with which she kept her knees together and her hands over them.
Harry hesitated. In spite of his anger and annoyance, for a few seconds, he felt sorry for Ginny. He felt sorry for what he had done to her, he felt sorry for the delusion that she had lived in for so long. He felt sorry for the painful surprise that he had just greeted her with.
He didn't want to feel sorry for her, but he found he couldn't help himself. In spite of what he had meant to her, and how badly she had ignored what little she knew about him in order to pursue her own interest, during a period of his life in which he wanted nothing but to avoid reality and play pretend, she had been the most helpful, willing device he had to get through.
Even if it had always been a lie, if it still seemed as if it had always been a period of someone else's life. Even when he consciously couldn't see kids, or happiness or his parent's house and happily ever after with her, she had once given him what he asked of her.
She had played him and that much was true. But he couldn't help feeling as if he had played her too.
But she had played him consciously, a voice said in his head. And then it was as if the sound would have been turned on in the room and his annoyance, his anger and his determination all came back to him in a rush in which he had a impulse to be reckless and quickly decided to give into it.
"I talked to Seamus this morning." He said in one breath. "You will be receiving the papers once the holidays are over. You can keep the flat. You can talk to Seamus if you want to, or you can get your own lawyer. Just make sure to let me know if… " He thought twice about what he wanted to say. Against his better judgement, kindness was taking over him and when he spoke again, his voice was gentle and quiet. "Look, I'll give you money, if you ask for money." He closed his mouth. That didn't come out kind, he thought to himself.
"Ginny," he tried again. "Let's be adults about this and reach a settlement before it blows entirely out of proportion, please?"
Again, Ginny stood motionless as she was. Unwavering and still, her chest vibrating slowly with the motions of her breathing, her hair was covering a portion of her face in a quiet beauty that was almost poetic.
Because above all things, and in spite of all that had happened, he would always recognise the comforting reality of her beauty. The woman who was still his wife was a breathtakingly beautiful picture of a woman.
He closed his eyes and yet again, reconsidered his attitude.
Their marriage was over, he told himself. He had finally freed himself from his wife, and in his freedom, he found himself aware of the painful evidence of what met his eyes as he opened them.
For as long as they'd been together, Ginny had limited herself to be the beautiful picture of a woman. She had never dared be the woman in his life. She had always lacked attitude, strength, presence and character. In some place in her mind, she had always resigned herself to be just a picture in his life. The picture of the perfect Mrs. Potter.
Since the beginning, she had never been enough. If only because he now realised that Hermione had always been so much more than that. The competition - if there ever was one - had always been unfair for Ginny. He wondered in his painful awareness, the reason why he had prolonged the inevitable for so long.
"I'm sorry, Ginny," he said quietly. "I'm sorry I gave you false hopes for so long. I should've…" he stopped at a loss for words.
"I should've… Merlin! I've no idea what or how I should've done it, but this…" he struggled, trying very hard to find the right words. "A long time ago, I should've given up the pretense that you and I were even remotely meant to grow old together."
He sighed. He lowered his head and ran a hand through his hair, slightly pulling at it.
He walked to her, his steps resounding as a low echo in the silence of the room. He stood quiet and motionless next to her for several beats of time. He sighed again before he removed his wedding band and took her left hand in his, stopping a second to stare at his naked finger. He then stared at her own; at the sparkling, polished white diamond and the golden band underneath it that he had slipped there, apparently a in another lifetime.
"I'm sorry, Ginny," he said again. "Because when I gave you these, I didn't stop to wonder what I was looking for." He turned her hand around with her palm up and gently placed the band that had been his. He turned his eyes to her face and found her staring intently at him.
"Harry!" she whispered distressingly.
Harry dropped her hand immediately but no sooner had he done it that she grabbed it and pulled him close to her.
"Don't, Harry, don't!" She whispered. "We'll talk about this, we will make it through this, we will Harry. In your heart, you know we will!"
"Ginny-"
"We can't be over, Harry, we can't be over." Her eyes filled with tears and her face grimaced in anguish, her hands holding onto his own uncomfortably.
"Ginny, don't-"
"We can't be over!"
He sighed and lowered his head, staring to the carpet. Ginny stood up and turned his face with her hand. He only looked at her for a few seconds, and then closed his eyes.
"Harry, this is insane," she whispered. "It's crazy and all kinds of surreal that out of nowhere…- Harry, you can't love Hermione."
He opened his eyes.
"Harry," she whispered. "You love me, I'm your wife! We're married and supposed to have kids and move into a house and grow old together!"
"Ginny, please don't."
"Don't what?" she framed his face in both her hands and dropped kisses on his temple and then kissed his lips softly. "She is only a fling, Harry. She isn't what you really want. She can't love you the way I do!"
"Ginny, I'm sorry, but that is not the way things really are!"
"Harry, no!" she said, pulling at his arm. "All you have to say is you're sorry, I'll always take you back. I love you. I'll always love you. She won't love you; she's only a crazy adventure, only a crazy blind moment. You know it is! It will be over and then you'll miss me and want me!"
"Ginny-"
"Harry, you know you'll miss me! You'll regret this, you-"
"Ginny, no!" he grabbed her hand forcefully and freed his arm from her grasp. She looked flabbergasted at his forcefulness. "Do you not get it? Did you listen to what I said? I talked to Seamus! I'm asking for - I filed for divorce!
"Harry!" she cried. "We have to talk about this, it isn't-"
"Ginny, don't you see? I'm not sorry! I don't regret any of this!"
"None of this makes sense!" she yelled suddenly and he stopped trying to argue with her.
"It is the only thing that makes sense." He said.
"How can you say that?" She asked him with an anguished cry. "You love me!"
"I don't! I thought I did, but I don't… and I never have."
She remained quiet and for a moment also stood motionless. She took a step back and stared at the floor.
"I thought I did, Ginny. I really did." He repeated. "But I was just a kid… And I thought," he laughed bitterly. "I was sure everything would be so fine! I thought I had vanquished everything evil and that what was left..." he stopped a moment. In his head, he couldn't find the right words. A part of him forgot his soon to be ex-wife was in the room. He spoke words that he realised it was him, the one who needed to hear them.
"In some part of my head it made sense that you and I - that I would be fine enough to make a normal life work. That I would be sane enough to blend in with you. That I would be… that all would be well." He stared at the carpeted floor of their bedroom before turning around and quickly walking to the door where he stopped.
"Nothing's well, Ginny."
His steps were firm and steady, and he had reached the halfway point to the living room when he the sound of her steps behind him made him stop.
He walked until he was standing in the living room and there he waited, in the same place where he stopped walking and holding the same position.
"Don't go." He heard her say as she came closer to him.
"I have to go." He whispered. "I have to do this, for me, finally. For her too, but also for me. All my life, I've not done shit for myself. But this, I owe it to me."
"What about me?" she cried. "How am I supposed to go on and move on after you leave me?"
"Ginny, I don't know. But this has got to be about me."
"But what about me?" She yelled. She was now standing right behind him. "What about everything I've done for you, the time I waited for you? What I gave up to be with you?"
"What you gave up?" He asked, turning around to meet her eyes. "I gave up my life, Ginny! And I've never cashed anything back for it." He raised his voice. He was barely realising how her words and the carelessness with which she dared speak them hurt him. "I've never asked to have anything in return. I gave up my bloody life… and it just never occurred to me that I would ever, ever find myself getting more for it than I ever bargained for. And out of all the people around… only one person knew all about it."
He stopped. He did not want to be this forceful with her, but he had gotten to the point in which he realised that nothing about it was easy.
His voice was calmer the next time he spoke, and his stare he directed it to the carpeted floor of their living room.
"Only one person ever thought I was selling myself cheap. And it was always her." He said.
"You could have told me!" She whispered, a cry almost drowning in her voice. "You know I would've helped you! You never shared any of it with me!"
"There are things about being at war, Ginny," he said quietly. "Things you don't tell anyone about. Not because you don't want to. Because those are things you wouldn't understand if you weren't there."
"I could have tried, but you never did!"
He raised his head and met her eyes. They were sparkling with her tears. Her cheeks were a bright shade of red and her nose was swollen.
"But that's it, then, isn't it?" he said slowly. He had his eyes on her but he moved his and swiftly grabbed the doorknob. "I never … never really let you in, did I?" In the way that he looked at her, he could only hope that she would understand how relieved it made him feel to be able to say those words to her. He took a deep breath before speaking.
"A year ago I realised it was because she was already far too deep in."
~*~
"Thoughts of you, warm my bones
I'm on the way
I'm on the phone
Lets get lost, me and you
An ocean and a rock is nothing to me."
~Lisa Hannigan
~*~
The long, fluffy and shiny designer black dress is proving itself to be highly inappropriate to run across the hallways of the Federation Hospital. But she has not time to dwell upon it because she has stabbed Harry.
She has stabbed Harry.
She runs through the halls, but she tries helplessly not to. Her heart is beating excessively fast and way too hard inside her chest; and the way in which the beautiful dress tightens her torso isn't helping. The gorgeous, black designer dress with fluffy skirt and a tight bodice. The dress she was wearing when she stabbed Harry.
She stabbed Harry.
She stabbed Harry and her emotions make her head spin if she even considers letting them envelop her. She feels everything from anger and frustration to utter suffering and anguish. She wants to cry because her mind tells her that she knows she did the right thing. Her consciousness tells her that she saved his life when she stabbed him but in her heart, she's sure she's killed not only him, but also everything in her.
She stabbed Harry, and she keeps running because she feels that if she were to slow down, to stop for one second, the world would explode and shatter around her within seconds because what else can possibly happen after she has stabbed Harry?
When she spots red hair at the end of a hallway, her eyes are so full of tears that all she sees is a blur of white and grey with a red smudge shining over it.
And so she stops. In all surprise to discover that the world has not exploded and is definitely not shattering around her. Even though she was certain she had been the one to destroy it, when she sees Ginny outside door number 317 she has to stop, truly, because she needs a moment to find comfort in that knowledge and recover her balance.
She's trembling, her heart skipping beats repeatedly. When she entered the doors to the hospital, it occurred to her that she could no longer separate personal and professional in this line of work. Everything has become personal.
And as she stops running, she wonders if there was ever a time when it wasn't personal. She doesn't want to duel upon the question to that, because it involves thoughts of risking her life and soul for Harry since she remembers, and now she can't think of saving Harry because in order to save him, she had to stab him.
She breathes in desperately, in a frantic way that makes her chest feel constricted in the tight space of the dress. She leans against the wall and feels how her heart pounds hard inside of her, how her tears still sting in her closed eyes, how she can still feel the cold wind in her face from the running she did from her Apparation point.
She bites her lower lip hard. So hard she's afraid to draw blood. She's momentarily unaware of what her plan of action will be, but she doesn't want to contemplate her place in a world in which she killed Harry. And she shakes her head and gets over her stubborn cowardice. She straightens and smoothes the dress as she walks down the hall, to the place where she can see Ginny against the room's door.
She and Ginny have not known each other in years. But as she approaches her, she is aware of the fact that they may just be sharing more than a deep, unavoidable love with the man inside, because her sorrow, she can see it in little specks of reflection in Ginny's teary eyes and in her pale face.
In the reflection of the window to his room, their eyes meet. She's aware of how Ginny scans her look, eyes her dress mysteriously, even through the troubled state of her expression. She meets her eyes in the reflection. She can't deny the fact that she feels slightly compelled to look away but she doesn't. The night is a dark picture in every window and the staff is starting to turn off the lights around them.
Her eyes fill again with tears as Ginny continues to look at her in the reflection. Neither one of them makes a move to acknowledge the other's presence in the room. Neither one moves forward or attempts to comfort the other one. The drift between them too large and deep, it had toughened over the many years since Ginny made fun of her in the common room.
But because she has always possessed the clearest mind and because Harry is more important, she is the one to speak first.
"What have they told you?" she asks Ginny.
Ginny's stare is unwavering.
"He has a punctured lung, he had surgery and he will be in real danger if he doesn't wake up in 48 hours"
It is then that Ginny turns around and stares at Hermione face to face. She again seems to eye her designer dress with a hint of malice.
It is at times like this, that Hermione borders on crossing the line with Ginny. She feels so past the childish jealousy of Ginny. The mean spirited way in which she simply despises the fact that she and Harry share so much she will never be a part of. It almost offends her. It used to offend her, but since last winter, it has begun to make her feel slightly guiltier.
"What happened out there, Hermione?" She asks in anger. She stamps on her foot furiously and approaches Hermione
"Why wasn't Harry carrying his wand, Hermione?" she says angrily, in a hissed whisper that begins to sound louder as she continues. "Why didn't you do something about it? Where were you? Isn't it the whole purpose of having a partner to be able to care for the other?"
"Ginny, you are aware of the fact that it is a crime to use magic against a muggle?" she replies with other questions. "That it is unforgivable for a wizard trained in combat as Harry? That Harry carries and knows how to use firearms?"
Hermione sighs and lowers her head, rubbing her temples with both hands, moving her neck from side to side. The stiffness in her upper body is a painful physical reminder of the struggles her last 24 hours have been plagued with.
"Ginny," she begins quietly and slowly. "You know, I really, seriously can't do this right now." She says the words partially because she is seriously exhausted and cannot take much more of the recollections that are invading her mind, and partially because she is forbidding herself from imagining what Ginny's reaction would be to her story about stabbing Harry.
"You can't do this?" Ginny repeats, her voice seemingly breaking. Hermione raises her head to see her clenching her jaw. "My husband is in a critical condition, Hermione! He almost died tonight -"
"I am well aware of that Ginny," she interrupts her.
"No you're not, Hermione!" she says as her eyes narrow. "You have never understood what it means to love Harry, to be his real partner."
Hermione goes quiet. Her stare still fixed on Ginny, unable to speak a word. She feels tempted to shatter the room around her with her magic. To yell out how she is the only one who knows what it means to be Harry's partner, to have been the one to know it since he was eleven.
She closes her eyes for a moment, and several moments of the past day flash before her eyes. She wonders fleetingly how long it'll take for her to forget about it all.
She opens her eyes and speaks steadily, convinced her voice will not break, because that is the only thing she can do to keep it from actually breaking.
"Harry and I lost radio contact." She begins slowly. "He followed me into the building, even though he knew he should've waited for me at the extraction point. He was intercepted. I said he was my arms dealer, but he had government equipment." She can see Ginny growing slightly impatient, she has kept her eyes fixed on her throughout all of her story, and she's not planning to quiver now. "They were going to shoot him in the head. So I stabbed him."
"You what?" Asks Ginny, her eyes widening and her body tensing.
"I stabbed Harry and saved both our lives, Ginny." She replies quietly. Eyes still on her.
"How could you have even considered doing -"
"Ginny, you have no idea what it is to be out there!" she says strongly, her voice louder, her attitude almost violent. She can feel the magic in the tips of her fingers. "What it is to risk your life out there with him. How determined he is on the field how-" she stops then sighs. "How intense it is."
Silence falls between them. Hermione finally lowers her head and releases a long breath, one that seems to have been living inside her chest for a while now.
"I need to find Susan, excuse me," she says then turns around. She hasn't turned around completely when she hears Ginny speak in a voice that's almost triumphant with malicious glee.
"I'm going to asking him to quit." She announces. "Before he left, I told him I was pregnant." Hermione closes her eyes and is beyond relieved that Ginny can't see her face right then. "And I found out I was wrong while you were away."
Hermione waits for her to say something else. She still would not dare turn around.
"But now he knows this is not a job we can raise a family around."
She feels the need to turn around and wish her good luck with that. To maybe speak to her about how Harry cried outside her door because he doesn't know if she's the kind of woman to raise a family with in the first place.
Instead she walks away.
She doesn't realise how relieved she is with what Ginny's told her until she's at headquarters, crying under the shower because she stabbed Harry and because all the tears and anguish of their evening in hotel room mean that they have hope. Now more than ever.
~*~
"I'm still waiting, as I promised I would, but I find myself alone and at the end of my wits. So now I say to you, plain as I can, if you are fighting, stop fighting. If you are marching, stop marching. Come back to me. Come back to me is my request."
~Anthony Minghella
~*~
He was walking.
The tears in his eyes made it almost impossible to see where he was heading as he passed that hatred war memorial.
He couldn't help himself. He knew he should've Apparated, but he couldn't help the liberating feeling in the walking. It shouldn't have affected him this way, but he wasn't expecting the Christmas carols. His marriage was over, he told himself. It was all over. Relief swept past him in a way he didn't know it before and he shivered as a new song started inside the church.
A part of his brain had to admit that he fancied the scene in one of those romantic Christmas films. The snow was light, but steady. The city was cold and a soft breeze blew against the direction he walked to. Every now and then, he would run a gloved hand over his cheek to remove a tear.
He remembered the carols. He remembered her warm hand wrapped around his, the swift movement of her wand, the tenderness of her gesture and the comfort of her presence.
And he became violently aware of how badly a part of him wished he didn't.
It was like a scar, more painful and crueller than the one in his forehead. His love for her, the way he had tied his life together with her. The pain. The pain in the open wound of everything they had missed, of all the wonderful and distressing moments they had missed. Of all the Christmas Eves they had lost to a childish resolution.
But he remembered with a sting of pain that made him hit his fist hard against his chest as if he could stop the burning sting in his heart. He remembered squeezing her hand in his, staring at white snow covered marble. The tears burning as hot against his face as they did then.
He wished he had looked at her and told her then and saved all the pain and the scars of the past eight years.
The singing of carols started to fade very slowly as he approached the corner that he would turn to meet the house. But he recognised what they were singing.
The words rang in his head because he knew them. Long after the music stopped, he heard the words inside.
He fumbled through his coat pocket to find his keys. The wind was picking up and the snow was heavier, colder. He longed immediately for the warmth of the house.
He paused as he pushed the door open. The breeze and the snow stepped into the entrance hall with him. He closed the door and waited for a moment in the dark.
A faint and soft warm light was glowing in the direction of the kitchen, showering the floor and the side of the wall with its yellow glow. He walked with apprehension because a part of him was just admitting that he wasn't entirely sure it had all worked out.
She had left the door open. And he stood in the doorframe staring at her, at the two empty mugs that sat on the small table she had chosen herself. The two mugs sat in front of her and the steam from a tea pot in the middle clouded his vision of her. Flashing Christmas lights that filtered through the window from the outside faintly glowed against her skin. He was sure she was aware of his presence since he crossed the front door, and possibly since he turned the corner. But still, she took her time before she spoke.
"I was scared," she said in a very quiet voice. "I was very scared when I came here."
"Scared is good," he said without thinking it.
"It is," she said and then she raised her head and her warm, teary eyes met his. He felt comfort and the pain in his chest soothed. "It means I have something to lose."
"You won't." he said quickly and firmly.
Silence fell between them but he spit the words out before he chickened out.
"There were carols in the church when I was passing it." He said quietly. "Like the last Christmas Eve we were here,"
She lowered her head again.
"Hermione I find myself-" he hesitated, trying to find the words. "I find myself wishing we had done all of this back then."
Her response came in a teary whisper, with a hint of a smile.
"I know,"
She looked at him again and smiled. Firmly, securely, with a kind of warmth that made him forget how cold he was. With the kind of warmth he had wished for when he was outside.
"What were they singing?" she whispered.
He paused for a moment.
"The war is over" he said in a flat voice.
"Happy Christmas"
"Happy Christmas, Hermione,"