After The End

AN: And so it is… Plot bunny showed up, kept nagging me, begging me to get it done… then I watched, for the second time “Closer” and it was like suddenly, the tip of the iceberg was there! Many holes in this chapter… promise to fill in. Sorry! No smut in this chapter, but some will come in next chapters.

Huge many thanks to lovely brother Gil for polishing this! You. Are. The. Best. Love you tons!

After The End

“And so it is

Just like you said it would be

Life goes easy on me

Most of the time

And so it is

The shorter story

No love, no glory

No hero in her sky

I can’t take my eyes off of you”

~Damien Rice

They had all gotten their happy ending.

They sure as hell had.

They were One Big Happy Weasley Family.

But Harry used to laugh at that.

Every single time, as he walked ceremoniously to one of their meetings, he would laugh at that statement. Sometimes, he merely chuckled under his breath when he thought about it… most of the time; he would laugh it off with his actions. And, Merlin! Did he enjoy it!

There were times when he pitied Ginny. Times that he felt actual sorrow at the thought that he was making his wife go through this, even if his wife was unaware of it all. But all thoughts of sorrow, and all thoughts of Ginny, completely evaporated when he met her.

And today was one of the days in which he smiled broadly, and chuckled under his breath as he walked. Harry wasn’t actually sure where he had picked up the habit of walking whenever he went to meet her, but it was comforting to think that he could always walk to her. As it was comforting to know that the sun would come out, no matter how dark the night turned; it was comfortable to know that he could walk to her, in spite of apparition, or brooms or floo powder.

His smile widened as he turned around a corner and saw her. She was sitting on a bench, in the exact spot she said she’d be. She had a heavy burgundy coat, and a knitted scarf of a dark wine colour, wrapped around her neck. Her hair was tied up in a loose bun, and a few strands of her curly hair were framing the side of her face that was visible to him.

She was wearing a pair of black trousers, and she had her gloved hands on top of her knees. Her back was held straight against the bench, and her purse was sitting next to her. She was holding a black plastic bag in her hands, and her eyes alternated between looking at the bag and staring straight ahead. She was looking at the bag as he approached her. She must have known he was there, but she surely wanted to hear what his entrance was going to be about.

“Hello stranger!” he said in an amused voice. He had just set the tone of the talking that was to come.

She turned her head to look at him, and without further thought, gave him a broad smile, her eyes sparkling in the cold. She took her purse in her hands and moved to her right, making him a spot to sit in.

He smiled back at her, fighting back the desperate need to hug her and snog her senseless right there in the street.

As he sat, however, she returned to staring straight ahead. Harry imitated her, understanding what she was asking him to do.

“And so it is,” she whispered slowly, seconds after Harry started to look ahead too.

He nodded. She wasn’t staring directly at him, but he knew she could see him nodding.

“Indeed,” he whispered back. He smiled a bitter smile before he went on. “The many amusements of their work have taken our heroes to the city of the unknown where everything can happen if you have a computer and a blue screen!”

She laughed. Her laughter filled some of the emptiness that Harry had been holding inside his chest since he last parted with her. In spite of the cold, Harry started to feel warm.

“Otherwise known as L.A.,” she said, the laughter vibrating through her words.

He nodded, laughing quietly as if not to interrupt the sound of her laughter.

“L.A. it is!” he said. He turned t look at her. Her image was breathtaking. For a moment, Harry wondered how he could have been so blind… how had he not noticed it before!

He was so stupidly in love with her that he simply couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it before. She was everything to him, she was the reason he woke up in the morning and the reason he walked and ate and breathed. In spite of his wife, she was his everything! And, true, sometimes he felt bad about doing it. He felt bad about feeling it. But he knew it could not be helped. He was in love with her. And, as much as he cared about Ginny, he knew Ginny could very well sod when the time came to be with her only.

Harry was used to have these moments. He had been dealing with them since they first started to see each other. At first, they were filled with angst and guilt. He had been unfaithful to his wife, and to the promise that he had made to her. He had broken a vow that he had swore to Ginny in front of many people, and one, that he thought, he meant to keep.

He felt miserable. He felt disgusting, and he became a traitor. He had not just began the road to finish off his marriage, he had also started to walk a road in which, when the time came, he’ll be walking without his best friend.

Harry was the very thing he wanted to end with. He had become the hurt of the people he loved.

At first, what seemed worst were the holes and the emptiness. He was in love with her, but he had a wife, and if he was in love with a woman who wasn’t his wife, where did that leave his wife? He had tormented himself several nights straight going over and over around the same thought. Wondering, if he had ever loved her. He wanted to think he had, but how could he have loved Ginny, if he had always been in love with her?

He went, again and again, at it. Repeating to himself he was the world’s biggest jerk. He couldn’t possibly be unfaithful to his wife, betray his best friend, and love someone else’s wife, all at the same time. And, during those sleepless nights, Harry thought he would never be able to live with himself again.

But then he would meet her. And then he would kiss her and touch her and they would go places that neither one of them knew with their spouses.

One night, Harry stopped wondering. He stopped feeling the guilt, the sorrow, the shame. He realised that there was no way back.

He felt bad for Ginny. And he surely didn’t want her to suffer. But he had realised that there was nothing he could do. Because the more time he was with her, the more time he spent loving her, the less he wanted to be with Ginny. And sadly, and though he couldn’t bear to think that there will come a day when he’ll have to face her and say it, he realised he had never loved Ginny.

And now Harry didn’t wonder anymore if he had ever loved Ginny, or if he was a traitor, or if he deserved hell for what he was doing. He wondered how he had been so blind that he had not seen the monkey dancing in his kitchen table. He wondered how he hadn’t understood before, that he was blindly, brainlessly, extraordinarily in love with Hermione.

He sighed. He somehow loved having these moments. It made him aware of how much they were achieving, even if what they were doing was called cheating. They were being themselves. And by being themselves, Harry knew, that it didn’t matter how much of a cheating it could be called, they were finally being true to themselves!

“Have you been waiting for long?” he asked her.

“No, I haven’t,” she said slowly turning around to look at him. Her face brightened once again with that smile that Harry knew had always been his. And again, he wondered how he hadn’t realised it before.

“Actually,” she said, snapping Harry back to earth. “I just sat here, I was buying Ron this,” she said, showing him the plastic bag.

“What is it?” he asked her, grabbing the bag from her.

“A movie,” she answered, her stare fixed in his face.

Harry chuckled as he took out the DVD that was inside the bag. But he laughed out loud when he read the title.

“The Sound of Music?” he asked through the laughter. She was laughing too.

“I know,” she answered. “I felt strange when I asked the retailer for it,”

“Why does Ron want ‘The Sound of Music’?” he asked amused.

“I don’t know,” she said shrugging. “I can’t even explain why he watches T.V. so much!”

“I know,” Harry said. The laughter still lingered in his voice as he returned the movie to the bag. “Same with Ginny, she loves to watch the thing. I swear she watches more than I do!”

“Ron does, too,” she said thoughtfully. Then she seemed to break out of her reverie. “Would you believe that he owled me from Australia this morning so I would get this for him?”

“Did not!”

“Did too!” She answered laughing. “I nearly killed him!” She sighed before continuing. “I think he never listens to me… I told him we were passing as muggles on this one!”

Harry reached out and took her gloved hand in his. He squeezed it, softly, only so that she’d feel his meaning.

“It’s not that it bothers me, Harry, it doesn’t,” she said. Harry always felt a strange warmth inside when she spoke his name with an emphasis. She had just done so, and he could feel the strange burning inside of him. “It’s just that he was about a second from blowing up our mission… and think about it, what if he had done? We would have gone back to London!”

“I know,” he whispered reassuringly. “And we would have missed our Hollywood vacations.”

“Well, technically, it’s not—“

“I know it’s not vacations!” he interrupted her with a smile. Trust Hermione to get technical. “But when it comes to you and me… we’re never working, Hermione, we’re living!”

She smiled at him. He read her smile and smiled back. She understood what he meant. And that was it.

A few moments of silence went by, they were simply staring at each other. Then Harry bent over and kissed her cheek. It was warm against the cold. He retreated and touched the back of his hand against her cheek, stroking softly.

“Is the hotel too far away from here?” he asked in a whisper.

“No,” she said, shaking her head ever so slightly. “Just a couple of blocks, want to walk?”

“Sure,”

She smiled and got up, taking his hand in hers, and dragging him up with her. She started to walk with his hand wrapped around hers. Through their gloves, he could feel the slight fidgeting of her fingers as they repeated the motion that she started whenever they held hands.

“Did Ginny leave this morning?” she asked as they walked on the same direction Harry had been walking through.

“Yeah,” he answered. “I left later, because I spent a huge bunch of time trying to make my bag,”

“As usual,” she said with a playful smile as they came to a corner and waited for the light to stop the cars and allow them to cross. “To the other side, Harry, this is The United States,” she said as Harry turned to look right instead of left.

“Right,” he mumbled. Thank Merlin for Hermione, he thought. “Anyway, Ron, as usual, came with his old boring talk about -“

“Taking care of me?” she asked as they crossed the street, a smile playing in her voice. “Making you swear you won’t get me killed and all that jazz?”

“Pretty much, yeah!”

She looked at him as they reached the other side of the street. She stood motionless for a moment, and then broke into laughter. Harry joined her, unable to contain himself.

“Well, we’ll just do the usual,” she said, as they reassumed their walk. “We won’t tell Ron just how much care you take of me, would we?”

“As always, yours are the best ideas,” he said, kissing her hand in a silly manner. “However, I hope we get back before they do, you know I hate dropping you home without a proper goodbye.”

“I know,” she said, she hated it too. “We’ll work around it, and, if we can’t, we can always come up with something to miss the games, can’t we?”

“Or we could just let them think we’re working,” he said.

She stood silent for a few steps, and it wasn’t until she pulled his arm so they’d turn a corner that he asked her what was going through her mind.

“I was just thinking… that it’s… I don’t mind to say we’re working, I discovered I love my job!”

Harry knew she wasn’t done, so, instead of replying, he asked again.

“How so?”

She stopped walking. She turned to look at Harry and her look brightened up as she woke up from her daydream state.

“Well, I’m always with you,” she said, shrugging slightly. “What’s there not to love?”

~ ~ ~ ~

“And we’re really not paying for this!” Harry exclaimed, when he entered the suite the second time.

He had gotten in with Hermione, who had checked in the night before. But before Harry attempted any unpacking, Hermione had dragged him out of the hotel, telling him that they had to go out and get dinner.

“Why can’t I unpack?” Harry protested as she closed the door behind them.

“Because you’ll take ages, Harry!” she said amused, grabbing his hand and starting to walk down the corridor. “I’ll do it for you when we get back, I promise,”

“Alright then,” he said, a smile playing in his lips. He leaned into her and kissed her temple soundly, squeezing her hand.

Holding her hand in a place like that, where they had nothing to worry about. Where the shadows of guilt could not reach them, gave Harry the strength to keep up when they got back. He lived out of these little sabbaticals that they took from London.

It had been during this time, Harry realised, that certainly someone up there must care for him. For every time he felt like he couldn’t take it anymore, every time he felt as if he was drowning in his façade, a small trip out of town would show up, and they’d escape London in a frenzy to be themselves for a few days, without the tormenting hunting that their other selves did as they breathed down their necks.

And when it wasn’t them travelling, then they would be left alone. Ginny and Ron would leave for several days to attend Quidditch matches in other places of the United Kingdom, and, when they got lucky, in other countries.

And life wasn’t what he had once thought it would be after Voldemort had been defeated, but at least helped them steal certain moments of happiness to fill the holes that their One Big Happy Weasley Family kept digging into them.

Harry sighed, savouring the moment of happiness that they were having right there, walking down the corridor of the hotel’s third floor. He looked at Hermione, who was walking with her eyes focused on her shoes. Harry smiled. He knew that she was savouring the same moment, in the same fashion he had done. She didn’t say so, but he knew. And she knew that he knew… and that was precisely what made the moments a reality to look forward to.

“Where do you suggest we have dinner then?” he asked, interrupting her reverie as they waited for the lift. She looked up at him; the sparkle of a memory that had just been unlocked was lingering in her eyes.

“I just got here last night,” she said, pretending surprise. “What makes you think I can already suggest a place for us to dine?

Harry laughed softly at that. He loved this woman! He truly did! And he loved to know her in the way he did, too.

“You’re my Hermione,” he said, bringing her hand to his lips ceremoniously. He kissed the back of her hand, allowing his lips to linger against her skin. He released her hand slowly, and stepped back.

“And I’m sure you already ate a couple of books about the place,” he said with a slight smug.

Hermione fought to contain a smile, then grabbed his hand again and stepped into the lift. By the time she pressed the number one, she had lost the battle against the smile. Harry waited, without saying anything. A young couple, around their age, got into the lift at the second floor. Harry remained quiet.

As the lift stopped on the lobby, the young couple stepped out before Harry and Hermione. And just as Hermione attempted to follow them, Harry pulled her back and she stared at him with her eyes widening.

“So?” he asked.

“So what?” she asked, a perceptible puzzle ness in her stare.

“Did you or not?”

She breathed a laugh between her teeth and gave him a reproachful look, like the one that adults reserve for toddlers when they’re being annoying.

She looked away; the smile had won the war within her as she turned her look back to Harry.

“Just one,” she said still resisting to the smiling. “And I believe we should go to the Ivy,” she said resolutely.

Harry kissed her lips soundly in a quick kiss that had an intended meaning. The kind that served as communication for them, even when no words were included.

He retreated and he was greeted by a wide smile. Hermione chuckled, shaking her head slightly.

“And a leaflet I found at the lobby,”

Harry grinned at her and pulled her out of the lift, just in time for the doors to close behind them.

And now, an hour and a half later, after getting lost around a couple of corners; and carrying the dinner they had chosen to take to the room with them, they stepped once again into the room.

It was a large room, composed of three different smaller rooms. There was a small living room, with a large sofa on the right side, and a small wooden table with two chairs on its left side. Opposite to the door was a mini bar, with a small freezer and a shelf filled with several different kinds of glasses.

Through the right, on the end of the wall against which the sofa leaned, the space in which a door would fit, was empty, leading into the bedroom. Inside, a large bed, also made of wood, materialised into the main feature of the room. At the end of the room, a pair of glass doors led to a balcony, in which a small, round breakfast table was. In front of the bed, a plasma TV was inserted into the wall.

And where that wall met the other wall, a door led into the bathroom. The bathroom was a room almost as large as the bedroom, in which a Jacuzzi filled half the space. The wall, against which the Jacuzzi leaned, was made of glass, showing off a spectacular view of the Hollywood valley.

“I told you I love my job,” Said Hermione as an answer to his statement. “Think about it,” she said. “We’re always together, we go out of the country to see fancy places where we never drop a penny, and we get paid for it!”

“I’d do it for free,” Harry said, turning to her. She was setting the dinner they had gotten from the Ivy in the table for them. “Where this job has taken us is a priceless place for me.”

She smiled at him from the table. Harry walked to her and they sat in chairs across from each other.

“So,” Harry said as they tucked into their dinner. “Brief me, what are we doing here?”

“As a matter of fact,” she said smiling, as Harry poured wine in her glass. “We’re on holiday!”

“Holiday?” Harry said, stunned. “You said—“

“Well, not technically a holiday, thanks,” she said as he passed her the glass. “You see, we’re here to recognise the place…”

“You mean like –“

“Like we don’t have to do the actual work,” she interrupted. “Exactly!”

“Excellent!” Harry grinned. “So, we get to know Hollywood and then the Ministry sends Aurors to do the dirty work!”

“Pretty much,”

“I love you!” Harry said, leaning in the table to speak closer to her face. “I love this town. I love this job. I love you!”

Hermione laughed. Harry’s face was only a few inches from hers. Harry felt the anticipation build up inside of him. He felt the odd tickling inside of him, the one he had grown accustomed to.

“That’s a lot of love for you Harry,” she teased with a smile.

Harry pressed his lips to her. Only pressed them against her mouth, didn’t go any further into any kissing. It was almost as if he was trying to seal what he had just told her. He retreated in one swift motion.

“You know,” he said. “You’re supposed to say I love you too!” he exclaimed, pretending to be outraged.

“I know,” she said, the smile she had just teased him with still right in place.

Harry leaned back against his chair, folded his arms in front of his chest and looked up at her expectantly. She said nothing.

“Well?” he asked.

“Well what?” she asked back, trying hard and failing terribly to.

“Agent Granger,” he said, actually succeeding in keeping his face straight. “You SO asked for it!”

He hadn’t finished speaking the last sentence, when he picked her from her chair and started to carry her into the bedroom.

“Harry!” she said, laughing. “We’ve got food!”

“We’ll use a reheating charm, then!” he said as he reached the bed and lowered her to it. Lowering himself on top of her. “You haven’t even properly kissed me since I got here!”

Hermione didn’t reply. Instead, she leaned into him, and slowly, brought her lips to his. Unlike when he had done it before, she opened her mouth and sighed against his mouth, asking him, silently to stop the talking and get on with the kissing.

Then the kiss became a battle of their tongues, as they quickly, and skilfully took possession of the other’s mouth. In a practiced motion that was now not only familiar to both of them, but that had became the source of strength with which they lived their lives. This was what Harry knew he was living for. This was why he didn’t feel guilty, of the burning feeling that he felt for her. Why he didn’t feel guilty of deceiving his wife.

Because, only there, with her in his arms, with her passion, her frenzy and her hunger matching his; he was his true self. He was home!

*~*~*~*~*

“All that dreaming and missing of you without having you

All that inventing you

All that crazy searching through the streets, without finding you

And then we went, on a sudden impulse

In a desperate moment

Confusing love with companionship

And the idiotic fear of being old and lonely

And we chose with the head

What was the heart’s

And it’s not about them

It’s about time

For making me face you…

Late”

~Ricardo Arjona

Hermione sighed.

It was times like this when she felt truly and honestly stupid.

She had always been so logical, she had always had such an ability to put two and two together, that she couldn’t help but feel stupid when it came to *it*.

How could she live with it, for more than a decade, and never realise it was there?

Where had all her logic gone? Why hadn’t her mind put two and two together like it always did?

Didn’t she have more than an ability to do that?

She sighed. She wished she could stop recriminating herself. But it was a never ending cycle. It wasn’t as if one could carefully plan that kind of event; but she simply couldn’t help but allow her bossy nature to take over sometimes.

Because, truth to be told, she wished it wasn’t like it was.

She stared at her left hand, and unconsciously, started to roll her rings with her thumb. She felt bad when she looked down at her hand and wished those rings weren’t there. She felt like she was betraying a part of herself. That part of her that had created a bond with a promise she once made. And that part of her ached with guilt when she actively failed her promise.

There was a cold breeze blowing across the unknown city, though the weather itself wasn’t as cold as it had been the morning before. The breeze hit her face, and she enjoyed it as it blew her hair away from her face.

She sighed.

She was in the balcony of their room, and she had wrapped around herself one of the two robes from the bathroom. She had just heard Harry wake up. He straightened when he felt the empty space on the other side of the bed. He had reached for his glasses and scanned the space for her.

She heard him sigh and throw himself on the bed again. Then he laid down for a while, simply staring at the ceiling as he liked to do when he woke up. He fumbled around the bed for a while, as he usually did. Then, Hermione heard him get up and walk to the bathroom. She heard him as he walked to the living room, and when he stepped back into the bedroom, he was holding a mug with tea, just like the one she was now holding, and which, she wondered vaguely, why she had filled in the first place, since she hadn’t even touched it.

He leaned against the glass door, and looked at her. She was facing the city; she couldn’t see him looking at her, but she could feel his eyes on her.

“What’s the matter?” he asked softly. Hermione feared she would find it impossible to speak past the knot in her throat. If it had been Ron who’d ask her what was happening, she would have said ‘nothing’. Ron would have asked if she was sure, and when she’d say she was, he’d shrug it off and go do something else.

But with a slashing pain in her chest, she thought: this was Harry! And Harry knew. And she knew, for the life of her, that she couldn’t lie to Harry.

“Hermione,” he said in a questioning tone.

“Today…” She started to whisper. She turned her head slightly, fixing her gaze on the rings in her left hand again. “Today…” suddenly, She got choked up; a powerful impossibility to speak had overcome her throat.

“Today is one year,” Harry whispered from behind her.

Hermione felt her eyes start to water; slowly, the tears clouded her vision. She could catch, through the blurriness, the glimmering of her engagement ring in the sunlight. She felt the stab of guilt again.

Tears rolled down her cheeks as she realised that she had been feeling those stabs of guilt for a year.

“Has it really been a year, Harry?”

He didn’t respond. He didn’t need to, it hadn’t been a question. She didn’t need an answer.

She turned her body to face Harry, fighting back the tears as she met the sad expression that possessed his features.

He met her gaze. The grass green that his eyes took on after he had just woke up, met the teary golden brown that her eyes adopted when she cried.

“You know I wish it weren’t like this,” he said, his words punctuated with the sadness she saw in his face.

Hermione was suddenly struck by a thought that made her widen her eyes and cover her mouth with her hands, dropping the mug on the floor, and provoking it to break in pieces and cause a piercing noise.

“Harry,” she cried, horrified behind her hands.

Harry didn’t wait for her to say anything else. He threw his own mug to the floor, paying no attention to whether or not it broke. He closed the distance between them in two large steps and wrapped her in a hug.

Hermione cried against Harry’s shoulder, clinging to him, digging her fingernails on his back. Harry held her by the waist, and pulled her ever closer every time she let out a sob.

“Harry,” she sobbed against his neck, feeling a crashed emotion between guilt and shame and the comfort of Harry’s hug.

“I don’t care how!” She cried. “I only care that it happened!”

Harry brought a hand to her hair and began to run his fingers through it in a slow, soothing motion. Hermione wept against Harry’s embrace, trying to allow Harry’s touch to soothe her. Harry didn’t say anything; he just caressed her lower back, and ran his fingers through her hair.

“What kind of a woman am I, Harry?” She cried in an agonized howl.

“Hermione-“ he started, but Hermione cut him off, disentangling herself from his embrace and directing her tormented stare at his eyes.

“What kind, Harry? To continue to deceive my husband like this? AND TO LOVE YOU LIKE I DO?”

Hermione hid her face in her hands, shaking her head slightly. She didn’t mean to bring all the insecurities and flaws of her tormented self into this trip. They didn’t even have to work! This was supposed to be a holiday for them. Why couldn’t she stop recriminating herself?

She turned her back on Harry and faced the city again. Her hands were shaking, and she had to press them hard against her face so that they would stop.

A few moments of silence went by. She didn’t want to look up and see Harry. Because she knew that Harry was only waiting to give her an answer. She dreaded what he would say to her. She didn’t want to face the fear that maybe she was indeed horrible and cruel, and that this whole thing had been a total mistake.

But, the next thing Hermione knew, Harry’s arms were wrapping her from behind, and Harry was leaning his face against her neck. She felt Harry’s hands grabbing hers, and taking them away from her face, dragging them down until she’d laid them down on top of his, as his arms tightened around her waist, and he breathed against her neck, sending shivers down her spine.

“What kind of a man am I, then?” he whispered, his words vibrating in her neck. “If I love you just like you love me?”

Hermione relaxed against Harry’s chest and slowly, she wrapped her arms around his.

“There’s nothing like me and you,” he whispered close to her ear. “We can’t help that! You and me, are older than this.” As he said this, he wrapped his left hand on hers, and their rings clinked against each other.

Hermione sighed, leaning her head against Harry’s shoulder, and feeling her eyes water again.

“Why didn’t we realise it before?” she said, so softly that she wondered if Harry had heard her. “Why is it coming to us at the cost of them?”

“I don’t know,” he sighed, kissing the top of her head. “I wish we hadn’t needed to be imprisoned to realise what we had left outside.”

“Harry, do you ever wonder what would have happened, if we…” suddenly, Hermione found herself at a loss for words. Harry caught on, however.

“If we hadn’t been married?” he completed. She nodded. “No… maybe, we…-“

“Needed the prison to appreciate the freedom?” she finished for him.

“I wish it were otherwise, but yes,” he said, pressing her body closer against his.

Hermione knew he was right. She couldn’t explain her earlier outburst. She knew those came sometimes, during the times when she felt the weight of her betrayal. But most of the time, those outbursts came in the moments when she felt careless and free of loving Harry.

When her feelings crashed against her thoughts. When she thought it had to be wrong to love Harry, but when she felt it was right to love him. And then the rings would remind her that, however right it felt for her… it couldn’t be right for Ron.

“Are you okay?” Harry asked her.

Hermione debated the thought for a moment. Her outburst had gone. Harry knew of those outbursts, he had his own sometimes, and now he wanted to make sure she didn’t need to take anything else out.

She didn’t.

“I am,” she said, raising her hand to caress Harry’s face. “I’m sorry I ruined the first morning of our trip,”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said, turning her to see her face. “You haven’t ruined anything!”

“Harry, I just had an emotional breakdown!” she said.

“Hermione,” he said. “This is what makes us, us! We face each other and we’re not afraid to be ourselves… this is… you’re my safe place, where I can be me! You… you…-“

“You’re my home!” she whispered.

Harry nodded slowly, taking a long blink as he did so. He touched her temple with the back of his hand, moving it up and down, and taking in the moment, Hermione had an idea. Her eyes widened and she looked up and Harry for a moment, then placed her hand on top of his. Their rings clinked again. She knew it may not mean something at all, but this week had to be perfect and if that was what it was going to take, so be it!

Hermione let go of Harry and ran into the room.

“What just happened in your mind?” he asked after her.

“Just a moment,” she said. She opened the handbag her mother had given her on her twentieth birthday, and which she always took on travels. She searched inside of it, it had to be there, she had never used it! She had never found use for it, but she had kept it within the bag as she received it.

There it was!

She pulled out a small velvet pouch, with a thin ribbon that closed it. She smiled at it. It was it!

“What’s that?” Harry asked as he reached her.

“Is just what we need,” she said, raising up and looking at Harry. She took his hand in hers and once again, their rings clinked. “This week, Harry, we are going to see like we did before we became imprisoned.”

Harry gave her a puzzled look. Then, he looked from her to the small pouch in her hand, and when he looked at her again, there was the understanding she had been waiting for.

“You’re brilliant!” he said, a wide smile on his face. He moved their hands so that he was the one holding hers, and ever so slowly, took away her engagement and wedding rings. Then, just as slowly he brought her hand to his mouth and placed a long lingering kiss upon the back of it.

He freed her hand, and she understood his gesture. Just as slowly as he had done, she took his ring from his finger. Then, she placed his hand against her temple. And now she felt it!

The rightness of it was there! Their hands were naked in the company of the other. They didn’t need to wear any masks when they were alone. Their hands were naked… as were their souls. She smiled at Harry, and he returned her smile. She kissed his palm as he withdrew his hand, and took the pouch from her.

“These rings,” he said as he placed her rings on the pouch. “Belong to the other Harry and the other Hermione.” He held the pouch open for her, and she dropped Harry’s ring inside of it, hearing as they made the last clink of that trip.

“This week,” Harry said, closing the small bag. “We’re just Harry and Hermione.”

Disclaimer: Obviously, I do not own Harry Potter; since I like Hermione and respect her and think of her as a role model.

And, well, if I’d own Harry Potter, I wouldn’t need to write this story, since Harry and Hermione would have already been together.

After The End

Author’s Note: This is the moment to say that this story is written for her. For the girl, who lived with a heart whose woman was already awake. For the woman, who was mercilessly murdered by The Plan, when it forced a Sleeping Potion down her throat.

For all of us… women and men who were touched by the Girl with the heart of a woman.

Eternally grateful to Puccini’s, whose Opera “Madama Butterfly” kindly gave Hermione the chance to have her catharsis. ;)

"To die with honour when one can no longer live with honour."

I write this for Hermione. Because, she lives here, even if she’d rather die in Canon after HBP.

Thanks to my loved Gil, for all the love and support, and for taking the time to fix up the horrors that my excited writing does.

Chapter Two: Chronicle of an Inevitable Surrender

Vol. I: Love Is Blindness

“Love is blindness

I don’t want to see

Won’t you wrap the night

Around me

Oh my heart

Love is blindness

In a parked car

In a crowded street

You see your love

Made complete

Thread is ripping

The knot is slipping

Love is blindness

A little death

Without mourning

No call

And no warning”

~U2

Hermione woke up when she turned around in the bed and felt the sunlight shining right into her closed eyelids. She opened her eyes and blinked at least three times before she turned around and met Harry’s gaze, looking at her from one of the living room chairs.

He had the chair against the corner of the room, and, somehow, Hermione knew Harry had dragged the chair over there. He hadn’t levitated it, or summoned it; he had dragged it, and she could clearly picture Harry doing so… sitting on it, watching her sleeping form until she woke up.

She smiled and he smiled back, though his eyes had already been smiling. He was wearing the bottom of his pyjamas, and was sitting crossed-leg; his left hand was holding a mug with his usual morning tea.

“Hey!” she mumbled sleepily, hugging her pillow under her head.

“Hey yourself!” he whispered lovingly.

Hermione had noticed that Harry had a certain way of addressing her that was simply special and unique. And… that wasn’t a new thing. Harry had always been special whenever it came to her. She knew it, she had always known it, and… she simply couldn’t believe that she could have induced the blindness which she used to relate to that.

“So, today’s the day,” she said, turning, to lie on her back and look up at the ceiling.

“Don’t say it,” he quickly said. “Let’s not say it.”

She looked at him, a sad but understanding smile on her face.

“We’ll see each other tomorrow… it’s Charlie’s birthday,” she said. “And we’ll see each other on Monday at work,”

“Still,” he said. “Don’t say it.”

“Harry,” she said. “You know that just because we don’t think about—”

“It’s not about not thinking about it,” he interrupted her as he ran his right hand across his messy hair. He sighed then gave her a look. One of his Harry looks… this one—a pleading Harry look. “It’s about forgetting that today only has eight hours for you and me.”

Hermione heaved a sigh. She took the covers from her, and sat on the bed. She stared at Harry for a moment before getting up and walking to him. She sat on his lap and he wrapped his arms around her, placing his mug on the floor.

She snaked her arms around him and ran her fingers up and down his naked back, touching her forehead to his and they remained silent, allowing the moment to linger.

Harry had spoken words that meant a whole world to them. Harry had spoken the words that echoed, something that he told her one year ago. And those words had been the key with which they had unlocked the door to their prisons.

Before she engaged herself in a lengthy travel back through memory lane, Hermione broke the silence with a quiet, loving whisper.

“I’d like that.”

~*~*~

The Dying Swan - One Year Before

“How long before I get in?

Before it starts, before I begin?

How long before you decide?

Before I know what it feels like?”

~Coldplay

“Something is about to give

I can feel it coming

I think I know what it is”

~U2

Hermione sighed as she stepped out into the backyard of The Burrow feeling as if she’d been walking the whole day with a heavy burden on her shoulders. Which probably, she thought, she had.

Harry was in the backyard, chasing kids around. Bill and Fleur had two: Jacques and Claire. Charlie had married a Polish witch he had met in Rumania, and they also had two kids, Andros and Melinda. With ages from 7 to 4, all four kids had a liking for Harry that suited him strangely well. It was oddly peculiar of Harry, but he was totally natural when it came to kids. They loved him and he loved them. It was as if he had a special gene for fatherhood, but Hermione had never considered why he didn’t have his own children.

Just like she had never stopped to consider why she didn’t have hers. It was not that she didn’t like them, she liked kids… it was just that she didn’t feel the time was right. She sighed. That was what had started the heaviness of her day.

She sat on one of the chairs in the porch and, in a dream-like state, watched Harry play around with the kids. She didn’t notice how Harry fixed his eyes on her, or how he frowned after he studied her face for a moment. She woke up from her reverie as Harry was knocked down by a pair of running kids.

The kids gushed that Harry had lost the game, and that he now had to sit and wait until it was over… Harry only argued with them for a couple of sentences. He then looked at Hermione and caught her looking at him. He smiled at her and then turned to the children, saying that he was accepting defeat. He walked to the porch and sat on the chair next to Hermione’s.

He was smiling, and Hermione made an effort to smile up at him before he sat. She should have known better, but she still tried.

“It seems like you lost a child’s game over there,” she said in a whisper that echoed her effort to seem light and fine.

“I kinda did,” he answered smiling. “Four to one, you can’t argue.” As he sat, Harry determinedly looked at her. She could feel his eyes, even though she wasn’t looking at him. She knew it was worthless to keep pretending, so she sighed again and looked at Harry.

He had stopped smiling but as he met her gaze, he gave her a shy, understanding smile. Hermione liked that smile: it was always comforting, and (if she had to be honest) it was with that smile that Harry told her what was coming.

“What’s going on with you?” he asked in a soft, calm voice that vibrated through him and reached Hermione when he covered her hand with his.

Hermione was sure that it would be useless to pretend nothing was happening. This was Harry, there was no way around it, he knew something was not right with her, and there would be no point in lying to him, because she knew he had a very good idea where her heavy sighs were coming from.

She looked at the floor for a moment, gathering her strength, summoning all of her Gryffindor courage. She didn’t know why it seemed difficult to her to speak about it, but she thought that it had something to do with that terrible sense of wrongness that she had felt since the argument started. She closed her eyes for a brief moment, and when she opened them, she raised her eyes at Harry and sighed once again.

“Ron and I had an argument this morning,” she said. She fixed her eyes on Harry’s. It only took a moment for Harry to nod his head slightly, and for Hermione to know that he had understood. By argument, Hermione meant a real one. Not stupid, senseless and pointless bickering that every other day brought for her and Ron.

“What happened?” he whispered.

Hermione took a deep breath before she went on. She had no idea how to approach the subject, so, she went straight at it.

“This morning, Ron told me he wants children.”

Harry gasped. Years later, Hermione would never be able to explain why, but back then, she understood Harry’s gasp. She understood why he had suddenly taken a gulp of air and why he hadn’t been able to release it until several moments later. Back then, she had been grateful for Harry’s gasp, and she looked into his eyes and, without uttering a word, she told him so.

In his eyes, Hermione saw the understanding. She didn’t need to say another word. He understood that her answer to Ron had been no. Harry understood why she had said no… understood what it was that seemed so wrong to her about having a child with Ron… understood why she couldn’t bring herself to push that aside and just give it a try.

He understood why she simply couldn’t fill the holes that Ron’s proposition had opened.

And he understood, that, what troubled her the most, was that she was afraid that those holes hadn’t been opened just that morning, but had been there for longer than she could be able to count.

“There is nothing gone,” she said. It was almost as if they had just had a long conversation in which she had told him all that she and Ron had told each other. But she hadn’t, and yet it all made sense—and Harry understood. “But there’s something wrong.”

Harry closed his eyes for a moment and lowered his head. He stared at the floor, then looked back at her, raising his head up straight.

“There is nothing gone,” he whispered. “But there’s something missing,”

As Harry uttered those words, Hermione knew that he was no longer talking about her and Ron. Harry was talking about himself and Ginny. She hadn’t asked the question, but Harry knew better. He gave her an answer for a question that she hadn’t asked, but which brought comfort into her anxious, questioning self.

She looked up at Harry, her eyes bearing the sign of the comfort that his words had given her. She was looking at Harry, their eyes communicating in that language that had been their own since before she could remember it to be. And it was then when she first saw it.

It.

It was staring intently at her from Harry’s eyes. It couldn’t be, but it was.

She blinked, in an effort to spot more keenly what she had just saw, as if she could really see it with her eyeballs. But she knew it was there… it wasn’t there because her eyes had spotted it—it was there because she felt it! It was there, because, for the first time in many years, she had opened up the door that she locked away with a key she had hidden under books and cleverness.

It was there, coming from Harry… as if Harry himself had spared the key a look and tried to take a peek at what they had both imprisoned.

Harry was looking at her as if he could see it too… and Hermione saw, for an eternal second, that Harry was seeing it too. And she knew it in the desperate, apologetic, comforting, reassuring look that he gave her.

She almost opened her mouth to say something, though a thousand thoughts were in her mind and she hadn’t decided which one to act upon.

“Hey you guys!” Fred shouted, poking his head into the porch from the door. “We’re gonna cut the cake! What’re you waiting for?”

When Hermione jumped out of her reverie, she started to tell herself that it couldn’t be true, that it had been a delusion of her troubled mind. She hadn’t been very coherent that day; that had been it.

She didn’t react when Harry let go of her hand, and she ignored the confused look in his eyes. She barely registered how she got up and told Harry to go in; she registered, as a vague and swift memory, going inside the house. She never remembered what Charlie’s birthday cake was made of, or what colour it had.

Monday morning came and she remembered very little of the sleepless night she spent in her bed, looking sideways at Ron every now and then.

But she couldn’t forget it.

Hermione got up and showered and ate breakfast and talked in barely civil terms to Ron. She dressed and brushed her teeth and waved goodbye to Ron as he told her he was leaving. She walked to the parking lot downstairs and drove to work. And she couldn’t remember having done any of those things when she opened the door to her and Harry’s office.

A piece of parchment was resting on her desk, on top of a messed pile of books and papers.

“Went to the Hospital. Baby’s coming. Come Quickly.

Love,

Helen and Neville”

She hadn’t finished reading the note, when a smile spread on her lips. Authentic happiness swelled within her. And, for a moment, the *it* that she hadn’t been able to get away from her mind was pushed aside by the happy news.

Before her determination could settle for that thought, she heard the door behind her open and close; and she knew Harry was now in the room.

She didn’t allow her determination to hesitate. She turned on her toes and looked at Harry. It was obvious to her that he, just like she did, had not slept a minute. It was clear that he hadn’t been able to push the thought away, and that when he looked at his wife he had felt the same strange stab she had felt when looking at Ron.

But they had to make room for something else for a moment.

She looked at him, and, silently told him with her eyes that it was going to have to wait. It was not the time. And fact is, that she didn’t wait for a reply, because, fact was, that she was afraid of listening to a reply she hadn’t anticipated, or, even worst, the one she, in the back of her own mind, had been secretly expecting.

As soon as she stated her determination with her eyes, she gave him a wide smile.

“What?” he asked. In his voice Hermione heard the same fear that was in her heart, and wondered, for a moment, how come they were both Gryffindors, if they were giving in to fear instead of facing it. But again, she was determined to push *it* away. And, forcing herself to follow the plan, she beamed at him.

“Come!” she said, walking forward and taking his hand. “Helen and Neville are having a baby!”

As if that explained it all, she dragged him to the parking, and opened her car, with the keys that she didn’t get the chance to pocket. Harry mechanically sat in the passenger’s seat at her left; and it wasn’t until she was driving into the packed streets of London, that she was hit by what was happening. They were heading to the muggle hospital were Helen was going to give birth!

Helen was Hermione’s cousin. Though they had never been close, after Hermione’s dad died of a heart attack five years earlier, Helen had become a strong and steady support for Hermione and her mum.

When the war had ended, both Harry and Hermione had joined the Auror Training Program. One year into their training, the Security and Intelligence Agency of the International Confederation of Wizards contacted them.

When their training was finished, they had been assigned as partners—part of the Division in charge of Infiltration and Stealth. Their work had them, some times, in various places of the world; most of the time, working infiltrated. Sometimes, they went all the way, from infiltrating to catching the bad guys. Other times, it was their job to recognise the scenario and craft a plan that was later followed by Aurors from the Ministry.

That meant that they both had constant communication with the Aurors—and Neville was their usual contact. He’d entered the training program at the same time as they did. He made their perfect counterpart at the Aurors’ office.

And, because they worked so closely together, Neville met Helen.

Hermione honestly had to admit that, sometimes, she was very jealous of Helen and Neville. She had always known they had something special, some thing quite unique about them. Something that, beyond different, seemed almost seamless. Not because it was flawless, because it wasn’t… but because, in the perfect motion in which their relationship progressed, they seemed to complete each other. And Hermione, if she was true to herself, had to admit that she had never had that.

And that morning, as she walked inside the hospital room, she felt it.

Neville and Helen were sitting on the bed, a small bundle of blankets in Helen’s arms.

“Hey!” She greeted happily.

“Sorry,” Neville said, looking at them, a smile on his face. “He didn’t wait for anyone,”

“Harry, Hermione,” Helen said. “Meet Frank. Frank, these are Harry and Hermione, say hi!”

Hermione appreciated the sight in front of her, and she was able to let go of the shield that had been covering her. She felt the emptiness that she had been pretending to overlook, but had always been within her. She allowed her mask to fall off her face, and she saw herself there.

As if she was an observer within someone’s memory, she looked at herself standing there in the hospital room. She saw her face as she smiled at Helen and as she talked to them both, apologising for being late. And, looking from a distance, she understood finally and clearly, why she had been jealous of Helen and Neville.

She understood how they were both just Helen and Neville. They didn’t hold back, they didn’t keep things shut… they didn’t measure every little bit that they gave the other, and they didn’t walk cautiously around each other, preventing themselves from falling into the unknown.

And she saw, with a piercing pain inside of her, everything she had been trying so hard not to be.

Her eyes watered, and her pulse quickened. She was about to run from the room and throw her shield and armour out the window, when the inevitable happened.

Suddenly and accurately, she felt a strong and familiar hand on her shoulder.

And, if she thought the world had just crumbled… she had been wrong. For it was right there—as she felt Harry’s hand on her shoulder—that, for the first time since she was 16, she saw clearly.

And this one time, she couldn’t deny it even if she wanted to.

It was there, she felt it, coming out of Harry, and vibrating in the hand that he had on her shoulder. It was there, burning inside of her, like a fire—just as real as it had always been. As real as the room in which they were in. As real as Helen, Neville and Frank in front of her, as clear as the fact that she had purposely blinded her sight.

It was as if time had stopped running on its normal pace, and had suddenly gone slower. And she saw the world around her crash into pieces and rebuild itself into a new one she hadn’t seen before. She saw how her mask came off, and she saw, with shooting pain, how the last eight years of her life had been a total and complete lie.

In seconds, Hermione saw her life change in a blur of undefined images that she recognised because she realised that, unconsciously, she always had. She felt a blinding desperation to unravel those images and find an answer that would tell her for how long she had been living on the lie that had been eating her alive without her even noticing.

And the terrifying question popped into her mind in one, impossibly long, second.

Why?

It rang through her mind in a permanent echo that didn’t stop when she blinked and realised that time hadn’t stopped running on its normal pace. She didn’t get the time to wonder where time had gone off to; or how she stood there in the room as she realised all of that—how could her mind understand such a rushed flow of realisations, if they had only happened in a few, very rushed seconds.

Neville was pulling at her arm, asking her to go outside the room with him. She realised that Harry’s hand was no longer on her shoulder as they exited the room, Harry following behind her and Neville.

“Hermione,” Neville said, closing the door as they stepped into the corridor.

Hermione blinked a few times, consciously aware of the fact that she felt that disturbing, disorienting feeling of being almost drunk, when one can command the body and feel it move, but wonders if it’s all really happening.

She tried to focus on Neville, focus on what he was saying—but it was hard, since Neville didn’t really appear to be there, his voice sounded distant to her ears. Hermione sent her mind a conscious order, telling it to focus on Neville, but she felt as if her entire self was working in slow motion.

“I need to go home,” Neville was saying. “Need to bring Helen a few things she forgot, and—”

“I’ll stay with her,” Hermione interrupted, blinking intentionally hard to settle her mind.

“I won’t take long,” Neville hurried to say. “I know you guys have to be in Paris this evening.”

“Oh… I… oh!” Hermione muttered, running her fingers through her hair, sighing. She had forgotten about Paris completely. She hadn’t packed and her office had a ton of paperwork waiting to get done before she’d leave. “It… will be alright, I’ll stay. We have a few hours left, and it’s not like you’ll be gone until tomorrow, right?”

Neville stepped forward and kissed her cheek.

“You’re an angel, you know that?” He then turned to look at Harry, and it wasn’t until then that Hermione considered that Harry was having the same strange feeling that she was trying to fight. As soon as she took into account that Harry, standing behind her, had had the same realisation that she had endured, the funny feeling of being unconscious left her.

“She’s an angel!” Neville told Harry. “I won’t take long!” he said, opening the door again and going in. “I’ll tell Helen.”

Neville didn’t realise what he had just done. But he had left the crouching tiger and the hidden dragon to face each other, with nothing standing between them to crouch or hide under.

Hermione was looking at the floor, as if it was very interesting to analyse where her shoes met the floor. She sighed a very deep sigh that felt as if it had been trapped a lifetime, which it probably had. She let her head fall forward and closed her eyes, as she tried to catch her breath.

When had it started to be so hard to breathe? When had her hands started to sweat? When had she stopped feeling her legs?

When did she start to feel as if she had just woken up from a very long sleep?

The silence hung between them, holding on to the last bits of time it had left. Though Hermione wished to end it, she didn’t. For she felt, in the silence, that eventually it was going to be ended, because finally, they weren’t going to run anymore. That road had ended.

And, if she had any doubts, they were swept away when Harry took matters into his hands and finished with the silence.

“Where do we go from here?” he asked in one steady, firm voice.

Hermione raised her head, opening her eyes as she did so. She turned slowly, to look at Harry behind her. First, she turned her head, and then her torso, moving her feet until she was almost there.

She saw, in Harry’s eyes, that they didn’t need to speak about anything. He was quietly asking her to reassure him.

I know you felt it.

And Hermione found her own reassurance in the pleading in Harry’s eyes. So she gave him hers with her own eyes.

I did. I know you did too.

What now?

Harry didn’t move, or say anything. But his eyes gave her a smile that wasn’t on his face.

Hermione consciously placed a smile of her own in her eyes and gave it to Harry.

Something came between them for a second. Something that Hermione knew well, even if she had never acknowledged it before.

The Line.

And, it surprised her that she hadn’t ever recognised its presence there, not even when they had chosen to move its position and draw it in a spot that separated them even further.

She wanted to erase it, and never see it again. She felt like crying and pulling at her hair and laughing. She looked at Harry and she saw the same need in his eyes. She was going to step forwards and sod the line.

“Hermione!”

Hermione jumped at the sound of her name, being spoken at her back. Her eyes opened wide at Harry and she didn’t say a word.

“You are the best!” Neville said, placing his hand on her shoulder. Hermione caught her breath, unbeknownst to her that she hadn’t been breathing. He turned to Harry: “You’re staying?”

Harry looked at her, and she knew he had to leave. He had to go and do their paperwork so she could stay and then go to Paris. She gave him a quiet and subtle nod.

“I’m going,” he said to Neville. “Have stuff to get ready.” He now turned his attention to her. He bent and kissed her temple, his cheek lingering against hers as he whispered in her ear. “I’ll see you in Paris.”

“Okay,” she whispered back in an almost inaudible voice.

Harry straightened up and looked at Neville. Neville smiled at Hermione as he walked down the corridor. Harry looked at her and his eyes remained on her until Neville was almost turning right towards the exit. Then, he turned around and sped up after Neville. He went round the right corner and she didn’t see him anymore.

Hermione took a deep breath and opened the door. Inside, a nurse was taking Frank out of the room. She smiled at Hermione and left. Hermione looked at Helen as she closed the door that she held open until the nurse went out.

Helen smiled, and it was as if suddenly, all her defences had gone down. Her hands began to shake, and she couldn’t feel her legs.

She thought that this was Helen, and she had just had a baby, and she, Hermione, couldn’t go freaking Helen out, she had a baby just hours ago!

Calm yourself, she told herself. You can’t freak Helen out just because you’re freaked out. Get a grip, Hermione!

“What are you waiting for?” Helen said in a steady voice, her smile imperturbable.

“For what?” Hermione asked, slightly taken aback. Her eyes wide and her thoughts suddenly stopped.

“Cast a Silencing Charm and then tell me what happens to you,” she answered imperiously.

“Helen, I—”

“Hermione I just had a baby!” she said, near the edge of irritation. “I know something is going on with you, and I know it’s a big thing; trust me, I wouldn’t be asking you if I couldn’t tell it wasn’t.”

Hermione’s lower lip trembled. She should have known better. Taking a deep breath, she took out her wand and cast the Silencing Charm without speaking. She turned to Helen, but she didn’t know where to start. What was really going on with her? Where did it all start?

“Are you going to tell me what happened to you, or do I have to guess?” Helen said, raising one eyebrow.

“I don’t know what it’s…” she cut herself off. She had every intention of talking with Helen, but, once again, she didn’t know where to start.

“Hermione, what—”

“How do you say?” Hermione interrupted Helen. She didn’t know where to start? So be it. “How do you say, I’ve been fooling myself into a delusion that has ruled my life for eight years?”

Helen frowned, clearly puzzled.

Hermione felt a tear roll down her cheek. Emotion overtook her and she tried hard to bite it back, the effort to keep herself from breaking down right there, becoming a burden that felt much too heavy.

She directed her eyes right at Helen, who was expectantly waiting for her to speak. She knew this was going to kill her, but she couldn’t fight it back, and the words were out before she knew it.

“I’m in love with Harry!” she said as the tears began to roll down her cheeks. Much too suddenly, she only saw the outline of Helen and the bed and the window behind it. She blinked as the words she had just spoken hit her. “Oh God! Helen… I just realised!”

Her hands went to her head, and she pressed her palms against her temples, as if afraid her head was going to explode, to fall on the floor, detached from her body by the slicing ache of her realization. She ran her fingers up and through her hair, pulling it down with her hands.

“Hermione,” Helen said in an anguished whisper.

Hermione tried to look at her, but her eyes were full of tears and she couldn’t find her face in the blur. She realised her hands were on top of her chest, her fingers curling as if she could grab the heart that was speeding up within, and where she felt a sharp pain.

“Helen,” Hermione mouthed as she tried to breathe, completely unable to stop the tears that she felt she was drowning in. “I can’t breathe! Helen! I can’t breathe! Oh God!”

She let go of it completely. She started sobbing, one hand on top of her chest, still trying to grab her heart from the outside, the other covering her mouth as if to quiet the sobs.

She walked unconsciously over to Helen’s bed, not completely aware of where she was going. She leaned against the footboard of the bed.

“Hermione!” Helen was crying at her in a tortured voice. She extended her arms and Hermione leaned into her embrace.

“God!” She sobbed against Helen. “No! God! Helen… Why? What happened to us?”

Hermione didn’t expect Helen to answer, but she felt a pivotal need to cry out the questions that had been eating at her since the afternoon of the past day.

She wrapped her arms around Helen, forgetting the bit about not wanting to freak her out. Hermione needed to cry her heart out—shattering sobs coming out of her throat—and she simply couldn’t do a thing to keep them inside.

Helen was stroking her back softly, murmuring in her ear, trying to soothe her… but Hermione couldn’t stop. She felt a pressing ache in her chest, and a horrendous swelling in her lungs, as if air couldn’t reach her lungs properly, which she thought was probably happening.

“Hermione, please!” Helen shrieked. “You’re going to hyperventilate!”

Hermione tried desperately to take a breath, but she couldn’t stop bawling. She closed her eyes and made up her mind. She opened her mouth and took a deep breath.

She separated from Helen and sat on the edge of her bed. She stopped sobbing, but her eyes were still filled with tears, and those tears still rolled down her cheeks.

“Helen…” she started, her eyes were staring past Helen and lost on the window at her back. “I don’t understand… what, what happened?” she asked in a whisper, again, not expecting an answer. “Why didn’t we… see?”

“I…” Helen started. Something occurred to Hermione and she focused on Helen.

“Did you know?” she asked Helen, her eyes wide. Helen said nothing, she stared at Hermione. “Helen, tell me!”

“I always wondered…” she said, sighing. “Why it… it wasn’t you and Harry in the end?”

Hermione opened her mouth, but nothing came out of it. She actually had nothing to say, she realised she had opened her mouth in disbelief. It seemed unreal that someone would have thought about she and Harry, and that she, Hermione, hadn’t.

She closed her mouth and lowered her head, staring at the sheets on Helen’s bed.

“Go on,” she whispered.

Helen placed her hand on top of Hermione’s. She sighed before she spoke.

“It’s just…” she hesitated, trying to find the right words. “It always appeared to me as if you and Harry… well, had something special… something that you and Ron never… something like me and Neville!”

Hermione saw her vision cloud again. Helen went on.

“And… you were always there… and, Neville has told me… all the stuff you two did, and it made sense… and I could never explain it… why, why would Harry rescue you from that troll if you weren’t even friends?” She finished, looking up at Hermione expectantly. But Hermione wasn’t paying attention anymore.

Helen’s words had hit something in her. They had triggered a memory to play itself inside Hermione’s mind, like a movie. And, suddenly, completely out of nowhere, she remembered. Where, when and how the lie had started.

“Hermione?”

“I remember…” she whispered, again, feeling the difficult to breathe. “Helen I remember why… and when and where… and how,” the tears were rolling again, and she knew that soon, she was going to be sobbing.

“What?” Helen whispered.

“Everything you said…” Hermione whispered absently, as if she had taken Veritaserum. “You’re right… it makes sense… but I remember,” she held back a sob as the memory replayed in her mind. “I remember the day we thought we could let it die.”

Hermione got up and walked to the wall on the right of Helen’s bed. She did remember, with excruciating detail, she did.

She felt the sobs attempting to overtake her again, but she had to let it all out.

“Summer,” she whispered, again in the absent voice that sounded hollow, even to herself. “Before sixth year…” A sob escaped her and she placed her palm against the wall for support. “We were at The Burrow… and he told me.”

“What?”

“And we let it come between us.”

“Hermione, what—”

“He looked at me…” Hermione couldn’t believe she had really stopped thinking about that one, crucial and agonizing moment of detour. She wept again, in the same helpless way in which she had done moments ago.

“He told me about it and he looked at me… and, I… I… he didn’t say anything, but I knew! I knew he needed it. And, I… agreed! I… didn’t say a word,”

“Can you please explain-“

”Voldemort,” she said in a harsh, determined voice.

“Voldemort?” Helen asked, confused.

“That morning,” she said, turning to Helen. She had controlled the sobbing again. “Harry told me about the prophecy. I had told myself, over and over, that… whatever it was, I was going to stay where I was… I wasn’t going to let it come between us.”

She turned to the wall. She sighed deeply, and again, she felt as if the sigh she was letting out had been contained within her since that morning, eight years ago.

“But he told me, and we exchanged looks…” she paused, anticipating the cry that she felt building up inside of her. “And his look… he asked me to keep it… it wasn’t going to be easy, and…” the pain in her chest pierced at her, as she replayed the moment, and Harry’s look. She remembered with a painfully precise detail.

“I would have done anything… Anything to help him!” Her cries echoed all around the room, and it had been a good thing that Helen had asked her to cast a Silencing charm, because her cries pierced her own ears. “And… he needed to let his mind control his feelings… I know that’s how he did it!”

Hermione didn’t understand how she kept talking with the pain in her chest and the tears rolling, and the lack of breath, but, she spared a moment to thank her determination as she controlled the sobbing for a moment.

“Do you see, Helen?” she whispered to the wall, wondering if Helen could listen. “He… we, cut a piece out of the picture that morning! … we… we, let it go! … so he could chase the moment, when it will be better and he… when he looked at me—” A sob came out of her throat and she tried to hold it back as she remembered what she had shut behind a scar in her heart so she wouldn’t remember.

“He told me he couldn’t give me everything… and, we,” she was openly crying again, her cries felt desperate and hopeless. “We couldn’t… he couldn’t… and I wanted to refuse… but I couldn’t… he needed me, and he needed me behind The Line!”

Hermione leaned against the wall; her cries now overpowered her and she felt she couldn’t hold herself up.

“I got a black eye that morning!” She cried helplessly, the aching memory felt like a heavy weight in her chest. “And it didn’t matter that it got cleared up… because I never saw again!”

She turned to look at Helen, although, again, she couldn’t really see. She knew Helen was crying. She wished it hadn’t been like that. She wished it so badly that it hurt.

“Why?” She moaned. “Why did we let it come between us? Why didn’t I say anything? Why did I agree? Why? Helen!” Hermione was shouting to the room. Everything ached within her. From her throbbing throat to her shaking hands. “Why did we let it come between us? It wasn’t worth it!”

She was pulling at her hair again, desperation trying hopelessly to get drained through her hands. Her hair didn’t hurt as it should have, there was only the desperation, the tears streaming down her face. The unfair pain that reminded her of what they had lost. The time they had lost.

“How come we never looked back?” Suddenly, Hermione remembered a series of moments, and the pain within her intensified with a strength.

“There were times…” She whispered. Then the feeling overtook her and she was speaking through her cries. “He would give me a look… and I… GOD! … I wished to act upon it! I… wished to shake it out of us… and the first time!” Hermione hid her face in her hands in a rushed manner, and then, just as quickly, uncovered her face. “The first time he left me to go face it… for the first time, I saw him leave and… I couldn’t help it!”

Hermione realised she couldn’t feel her legs and that her knees were bending, and she couldn’t do a thing as the painful liberation flowed out of her.

“I looked at him!” She howled. “I gave him the look and asked him to reconsider before he left… I didn’t say anything… I looked at him… and he…” Hermione was remembering this as she spoke, and that one, particular painful moment, stabbed her in the chest, as it had done the first time. “He said…GOD!” She yelled. She doubted she was praying, but it seemed to flow out of her naturally in the middle of her unexpected catharsis.

“He said… he said ‘Don’t look like that Hermione!’” Hermione had never fainted, but she felt close to loosing all self control. She remembered the moment with a sickening accuracy. She remembered looking at Harry with wide eyes, and seeing how Harry refused to see what she was showing him in her eyes. And how he walked away, that first time; the first time she saw him leave to start it. The beginning of the end for his mission, but the end of the beginning for them.

Hermione made an effort to control her legs and walked to the bed. She sat on the edge, and then felt Helen’s arms on her shoulders, embracing her from behind.

“Why did you marry him, Hermione?” She said between her own sobs.

“Helen!” Hermione said, turning around and facing Helen, who backed away a little bit. “What do you do when a man you love kneels in the middle of a street and offers you a ring?”

“You love him?” She asked, frowning.

Hermione fell silent. A warm tear was falling out of her right eye right at that moment. She had to pause to think. That, she knew, was not a good start.

“I do,” she said finally. “I did… he was the guy there, telling me it’ll be fine, that Harry would come back in one piece…” she looked into Helen’s eyes, almost begging her to approve what she had thought. “It was never like Harry, but how do you not love that?”

“Hermione…”

“I know!” Hermione got up from the bed again and walked to face the door. “I know it wasn’t right! But… don’t you see? Nothing of what we did from that day was right… it was all…” She sighed as she anticipated the word that was to come out of her mouth. “Easy.”

“But Hermione,” Helen insisted. “The war ended! Why didn’t you go back at it then?”

Hermione closed her eyes, lowering her head. She knew the answer to what Helen had asked her. But it wasn’t just painful to admit it… it was so unfair… it had been so unfair.

“Because it takes all your strength to crawl out when you’ve been buried alive…” She sighed as she turned around and looked at Helen. “And the bloody war sucked it all out of us!”

Hermione lowered her head as silent tears fell from her eyes. The terrible realisation, and what was worst, the most rightness of it; felt horrendously heavy on her. She needed to shake it all off.

“I didn’t…” Hermione tried to whisper. “Never wanted him to be anything other than who he is… but… it was so unfair on him, and on us… that I never blamed him.”

The feeling of being almost over the edge of her consciousness came back, and Hermione felt dizzy at the thought that was tormenting her. She raised her head and directed her eyes to where she saw the outline of Helen.

“I would have done anything…” She said, the tears streaming down once again. “And I did… I let him undo the picture…” She sobbed, now she couldn’t care less about trying to hold back. “I thought we could leave it behind! I never knew… I…” Again, her legs were betraying her and she felt herself slowly bending, and she didn’t fear the fall… she knew she was grabbing at consciousness because of her determination. “I didn’t stop to think it would come after us! I would have done anything to help him… and…” She covered her mouth again, in a subconscious attempt to shut out what she was saying. “AND WHEN HE KISSED HER I SMILED AT HIM!”

And then she couldn’t hold herself up anymore, and she was only inches from falling into the floor, when she felt a pair of strong arms around her pulling her up, supporting her against him and allowing her to lean against him and weep in his shoulder.

She had rescued him many times. She had wrapped her arms around him in a thousand metaphors and had lifted him up many times, from many different floors. She had never expected any payback from him; but right then, Hermione thanked whatever God there was for having Neville in her life.

“Why?” She cried against his shoulder. “Neville, why did we let it come between us? Why didn’t we hold to it? Why did it come between us? Why? It was not worth it!” she wrapped her shaking arms around his back, and poured it all out. All the desperation, all the pain, all the frustration, and he kept her wrapped in a firm hug, supporting her, in a way that reminded them of how she had supported him when they were younger, and back in the days when she and Harry were their true selves.

It was then that it hit Hermione that it simply couldn’t have been any other way: Neville knew.

“You knew!” she cried. “Neville, you knew! Why? You saw it as it fell between us! Why did we do it? Why didn’t you make us do something?”

“Because,” he whispered against her hair. He took her by her shoulders and made her look at him. “You wouldn’t be looking at freedom, if you hadn’t been imprisoned.”

Credits:

-The lines “There is nothing gone, but there’s something wrong” and “There is nothing gone, but there’s something missing” Both come from Hanson’s song Underneath

-The line “What do you do if a man you love kneels in the middle of the street and offers you a ring?” is a rephrase from a line by Carrie in Sex and the City.

I collect quotes, so, if I used another that you recognise as not mine, then it probably isn’t! Let me know, so I can credit it.

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: 7^th 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”

Disclaimer: Don’t own Harry Potter and All That Jazz… Clearly, since I believe in freedom, beauty, truth and love.

After The End

Authors Note: I deeply apologise for the delay on this chapter; even though I’ve wanted to write it for a long time, it took a great effort to come out.

I love this story and I love writing it; but I love you readers more. You’re the inspiration to write this story. I live for the reviews where I get to know that I’ve gotten across someone’s heart.

I don’t think that artists should do art to please themselves. That’s cheap, that’s not art. I write this piece of art for the people who need answers to their questions.

This chapter is dedicated to you, wonderful readers. I love you all! I’m eternally grateful to all of you who have given my art the chance to give you answers.

And with that in mind, I will quote Sex and the City here:

"When it gets cold outside, New Yorkers head inside and look for ways to generate heat" ~Carrie

Thank you all! Please forgive the delay and enjoy, this is for you!

Chapter Four: Out of Sight.

“Welcome into the night

Where some people stop being

Waiting to be born again

There’s always a reason to hold the pace

That this time has set for us

Welcome into the night

Where some stand still

Waiting to be born again

To discover once again

The roads that will take us

To each other”

~La Ley

Poetry

It kept ringing through her brain as she heard the sound of her stilettos stepping on the dust-covered floor like a humming beat that settled her footsteps into a subtle rhythm to carefully keep the peaceful loneliness of the room. The layer of dust was so thick that her footsteps were barely audible, as if she was walking on a carpet.

Poetry.

She saw it in the dusted fireplace, in the furniture, covered by linen white sheets that had gathered dust in the course of 25 years. They had never touched anything. He didn’t want to touch anything, she knew. He hadn’t ever spoken a word about it, but she had known, it was something she felt in the way he moved around the house. He wanted it to be the way it had been. She hadn’t asked why or how, but she knew it was important to him. It was as if this house was a piece in the giant puzzle of his life, and he wanted to pocket it to be able to sort it out later, once it had all been over on another end of the puzzle.

The poetry. Almost as if the house would be telling a story to her opened eyes, attempting to tell her something that words couldn’t get across. It was in the lingering smell of loneliness, in the feeble grey sunlight that crept through a window whose curtain had been torn by time. The window next to it had a small hole in its glass through which the morning air kept blowing the curtain inside ever so slightly, but not enough to sweep the dust off the floor.

Her heart ached as she contemplated the sight. It was painful, it was melancholic, it was sad. It was as if this huge chunk of some people’s life had vanished in the place, leaving behind a gigantic house, filled with old furniture that collected dust as the years passed, and the memories, the moments that had been lived there now laid hidden under the thick layer of dust.

Lily could have laughed here, and James might have kissed her in front of that fireplace. They could have shown baby Harry the snow that appeared out the window on Christmas, Sirius might have been over for tea some afternoon, and they would have laughed Snape off in these furniture.

Poetry… such bitterness and such sweetness; such sadness and such happiness; such an assortment of contradictions, merging into the space around her, like the life that had been his during a time he had no memory of: so lovingly conceived, but so cruelly taken away.

Tears were swelling up in her eyes when he spoke, and she tried to bite them back furiously. She knew it was affecting him and she had to try hard to be strong for him.

“My Gringotts vault for your thoughts,” he said behind her.

She smiled. She swallowed to hold back the tears and turned to look at him.

“They’re not worth that much,” she said with a small smile.

“They are to me,” he said as he walked close to her and wrapped her in a hug.

Such angsty picture, she thought; their warm hug in the coldness of a house that had once been the epitome of family warmth and that was now the only remains of the life that could have been his.

He sighed against her and she breathed him in. There was a heavy weight within him that he was trying to lift, and she felt lost in the heaviness that the visit had incited in her and which made her feel helpless in his quest.

“Tell me what you see,” he whispered in her ear. He felt lost, she felt it through him and it pained her not to have a map to give to him.

“Poetry,” she answered truthfully.

He let her go and looked in her eyes. She held his gaze for a moment and then looked around the old living room again.

“There was so much love in this house,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “It’s like… a thousand moments, Harry,” she directed her eyes at him. “A thousand moments that your parents lived here that we haven’t unravelled, and every little thing in here is waiting to tell a story that’s been covered by linen sheets, gathering dust for years.”

She sighed and looked at the dusted fireplace. “It’s a crime we didn’t come here before,”

“No,” he said.

She looked at him.

“It’s not a crime,” he told her. “This is the right time. You and me, now: This is the right time to do this,”

Silence fell a moment. A question burned within her and she hesitated to voice it. But she looked at him and it suddenly came out of her mouth.

“Harry, why are we here?”

Harry sighed. He turned his back on her and started to walk out the living room into the entrance and stood in front of the beautiful wood staircase that led to the second floor.

He sighed again and slid his hands inside the back pockets of his trousers.

“When we last came here,” he said. “I... I thought I was going to find an answer to all my questions and I…” he stopped and let his head fall forwards in defeat. Hermione ached again to see him so lost; she wanted desperately to reach out to him and pull him to something he knew.

“I didn’t deserve to be here. I was unworthy of my parent’s memory,” he sighed and raised his head, turning it to look at her. “I was so mad.”

She approached him slowly, again listening to the subtle sound of her footsteps on the floor. He extended her hand for her to take and she took it firmly without hesitation.

He sighed again and turned to look at the stairs in front of them, trailing the steps into the second floor.

“When I came and saw all that was here, all that had been theirs, I felt so mad at them for leaving me! And leaving behind all those unanswered questions!”

He rubbed his eyes with his free hand and Hermione squeezed the hand she was holding.

He squeezed her hand back as he looked around them, his eyes shining with unshed tears and his nose wrinkled in the way he did when he tried to hold back tears.

She cherished these moments that he gave her. The ability that he had empowered her with when he shared these moments with her, completely careless about his vulnerability, This man standing in front of her was the one she loved with a crazed desperation and with an impossibly strong will. She loved him!

She loved the man that he was, this man that he had allowed her to see him become; this man that knew when to take steps back to walk forwards.

She loved him!

He started to walk up the stairs, holding firmly to her hand.

“When I married Ginny,” he said. “She wanted to… you know, come here.”

She knew. Figures. He waited, the silence felt heavy in such an empty place.

“And I… I just couldn’t.” he sighed as they reached the end of the stairs and stepped on the second floor’s hall “There were no big reasons or revelations… I just couldn’t. Plain and simple.”

He wrinkled his nose again and took a breath.

“I know now that I didn’t have enough love to clean this house of all the grief and pain that made it so dirty…” he sighed.

She knew what he was saying, she understood every word… and still, a part of her refused to acknowledge what Harry was saying, as if it was too good to really be true… but when it came to them these days; nothing was ever good enough.

“I loved you, I did. I know I did,” he continued. “But I didn’t love you this way! And I know you didn’t love me like this either.” He raised his hand and caressed her cheek with his thumb. “I didn’t love you like this Hermione! Merlin! I didn’t! I didn’t have this burning need to love you and to have you love me! And… “ He stopped, at a loss for words. He moved forwards and placed his lips against her temple, pressing the side of his face against hers, leaning to whisper in her ear.

“For the first time, I honour what my parents left behind! I honour my parents when I love you because for the first time I truly understand what it is they died fighting for!”

She threw her arms around his neck; tears rolling down her cheek as she pressed her face to his shoulder, feeling his arms envelop her around the waist, pulling her to him. She breathed him in, completely aware of the determination with which she was going to help him do this.

“This place needs to heal,” he said, still embracing her. “Do you…” he hesitated and grabbed her shoulders to look at her. “Do you think we have enough love to heal this place of the grief that came upon it?”

“We healed each other, how could we not heal this place?”

~*~*~

“Nunca vas a pedirme que me quede?”

“Pero si tienes que ir al ginecólogo!”

“Jordi!”

“Que cosas dices Vera! Si me dejaste por Antonio!”

“Lo ves? No entiendes nada!”

~La Puta Y La Ballena by Luis Puenzo

~*~*~

She had trouble breathing. It was edging on the grounds of the ridiculous. Her heart was beating its way out of her chest. She breathed a laugh every now and then at that though.

How did it come to this, saints in heaven? How did it happen to her?

It was just dinner.

He was coming over for dinner and she couldn’t breathe!

Friday dinner was not a novelty for them. Once a month, Harry and Ginny would come over, or Ron and Hermione would go to their place.

She knew that this thing she and Harry had was growing steadily out of control but that afternoon, she realised that it was quickly, and overly fast growing completely and utterly out of hand.

It wasn’t just about the wonderful morning they had had together in Godric’s Hollow, or about the wonderful plans they had made to restore the house… it was about the fact that this was growing greater and more powerful inside of her. It was about the fact that they were soon approaching the moment when they would no longer be able to keep this façade anymore.

Hell! She wondered if they were still keeping it!

She felt so impossibly free and happy since she and Harry had unleashed their burning need to be together, that she had started to wonder if Ron really hadn’t noticed a thing. Just that day, she must have had an outrageous number of silly smiles in her face as she drove home from work, as she bought groceries to make dinner. She knew she had a goofy smile as she cooked dinner, and it was only because he was coming over.

Didn’t Ron ever wonder what made her so happy? Didn’t she look crazily in love? Did he think she was in love with him? She tried to push the thought away, but it kept coming back each time she tried to disguise her happy face. It was, indeed, growing absolutely out of control.

She knew it when the bell rang, and the leap in her heart told her it was him on the other side of the door.

Ron was watching the telly, his back to her in the kitchen as he sat on their living room couch. He had just entered a movie in the DVD that one of his team mates had lent him. Hermione was busy around the kitchen.

“Ron,” she said, fumbling around the kitchen, looking for a saucepan. “Kindly get the door for Harry,”

She grabbed the pan she had been looking for and stopped dead in her tracks. “For Harry,” she had said. She shook her head as she set the pan on the stove. This was what she meant. Definitely out of control.

And then she heard footsteps behind her and the sound of a bottle being placed on top of the kitchen table at her back.

“Hi,” he whispered behind her, snapping her out of her reverie. She turned around.

“Hey,” she whispered back. Looking at his figure, leaning against the door to the kitchen, she mentally started to fight a battle against the burning need to jump on him and snog him senseless against the counter.

She felt her eyes filled with tears and how the sight of him, in a pair of black trousers and a dark blue shirt tore something within her. She felt as if she were floating, as if the ground beneath her feet would suddenly open in two and something massively big would appear between her and Harry.

A painful stab in her heart held her breath in her chest in the most impossible sensation of captivity. Her eyes met his and she felt the same sadness in his stare, the same sadness that told her they were both unfeasibly tired of their imprisonment.

Silence fell as she stared into his green eyes, staring back at her with that heavy burden that remained with them, regardless of how many times they would convince themselves out of it. Her lower lip was shaking, her pulse quickened and her breath caught up in her throat in a succession of events that happened in a rapidly swift second.

She wanted to kiss him! She was dying to feel his lips against her own, to feel the freedom of pressing herself against him. She just felt an unbearable, heart wrenching desire to kiss him and have him kiss her back. Just a peck on the lips, just to feel his hand grabbing her arm, pulling her to him; just to smell him closely, just wrap her hand around his neck.

She wanted to kiss him! She wanted to kiss him so badly that it was literally hurting her inside, and her eyes watered, painfully unable to perform a blink.

“I know,” he said in a sad whisper. “Me too.”

She sighed and looked down to the floor for a moment, her stare not particularly fixed on anything, but her mind hardly commanding her brain to regain the control of her breathing in a feeble attempt to get her composure back.

She turned her eyes back to him, to find that he didn’t stop looking at her. And she felt the dreadful fear spread inside of her.

She found herself praying; in the imminent realisation that something, right then and right there had to happen. Something had to happen; effective immediately, or else she was going to burst into tears and throw herself against his shaking arms.

She was losing all control of her emotions and what actions she knew they would lead her into.

She mentally contemplated the eventual sight in a matter of seconds, almost as if she were watching the images on a movie in fast motion: she would be helplessly crying in Harry’s arms. Words would escape her throat, words that Ron and Ginny weren’t supposed to hear. Words that would find inevitable release in the cry that would reveal that ultimate truth of their lives to Ron and Ginny, aimlessly chatting in the living room about Ron’s DVD.

Pray tell, something had to happen.

And almost as if she would have known, almost as if she would have seen the same series of mental images Hermione had. Almost as if she knew what would happen if such thoughts were to come true; almost as if she knew what the result would be to her… Ginny happened.

Hermione sighed. And then, in the time frame of a second, her brain began to place two and two together. And a thought formed in her head that made her lose her temporary calm and freeze on the spot.

Ginny actually had a habit of “happening” between them. It was a part of the way in which she lived; it was the way in which she had kept Harry with her for as long as she had: she happened, every now and then between Harry and Hermione.

Hermione had always recognised the aura of determination around Ginny. The strange change of personality that Ginny adopted when it came to be in the way of Harry and Hermione; almost a completely different person in the face of the impossibly strong bond of Harry and Hermione. And Hermione had wondered, many times, what was it that provoked that change in Ginny.

And frozen as she was in her kitchen, for the first time, that evening; Hermione knew.

In a quick blur, seemingly to a very fast portkey travel, Hermione understood what was the thing that ignited that sudden and violent change in Ginny: Ginny knew. Ginny had always known.

Hermione thanked whatever gods there were, for the marvellous strength and ability to gather herself that she had always possessed. Even as it took all the strength in her to shut the thousand desperate thoughts in her head that wanted her to lose herself to a nervous breakdown.

“Evening Hermione,” Ginny said, entering the kitchen and walking up to her, kissing her cheek. Hermione’s mind was racing in spite of her efforts to shut every thought down. Ginny knew! Ginny who had just kissed her cheek; Ginny had always known!

Hermione heard herself greet Ginny back as her eyes began to burn and she felt slightly dazed in the revelation her brain had just put together.

“Oh!” Ginny said again, peeking over Hermione’s shoulder at her unfinished dinner. “You’re making Italian!”

Hermione tried to look behind her at her dinner to give herself time to settle her mind and give Ginny an answer, but the more she tried the more the feeling of disorientation possessed her mind.

“Yes she is!” Ron interrupted. “But don’t go peeking around, I’m going to finish this movie and if you intent to watch with me, it’s going to be right now,”

“Oh yes!” Ginny said, almost jumping and going after Ron into the living room.

“What are you watching?” Harry said, turning his head around to look at them as they sat in front of the television.

“The Red Violin,” said Ron.

“The Red Violin,” Harry repeated in a low voice, turning to Hermione, grimacing. Immediately, his expression changed, as he understood whatever emotion there was on her face. She couldn’t make her brain do anything; she was absently listening to Ron and Ginny. She knew Harry had meant for her to remember that one time in Italy, when rain had poured down over the city and they had remained in their hotel room, watching ‘The Red Violin’ on the DVD.

But the mood changed and Harry had his eyes fixed on her, puzzled, as the voices of Ron and Ginny seemed distant and shallow.

“Where did you say you left off?” Ginny asked Ron as he skipped the first chapters on the DVD. “Has he died yet?”

“He dies?” Ron asked bewildered, turning to Ginny.

“Oops!” she said, chuckling.

Hermione felt Harry’s arm grabbing her own and her eyes snapped at him, wide open and somewhat disoriented.

She had to tell him right away.

“I have to talk to you,” she whispered, placing a hand in his arm and looking for her wand in her skirt with the other. She waved her wand on top of her dinner, which started to finish itself immediately. She took Harry’s arm and walked out of the kitchen determinedly and quickly. She positioned herself behind the couch where Ginny and Ron were watching the screen. She commanded her brain to run and find an appropriate course of action.

“Listen,” she said. “Harry and I…” She stopped, giving her brain a moment to find a reason to go hide with Harry on her study. Ron turned to her and looked expectant. “I have to show Harry some new thing I found out on the case we’re working on,” she said rather quickly, thanking her mind for the speed. “It’s kinda, you know…”

“Super Secret, yeah,” Ron interrupted her, turning back to the screen. “We won’t bother or sneak around,” he said in a tone that suggested he was bored to the death of their secretive mood when it came to work, and in a quick succession of images, Hermione was reminded of Ron’s reaction when Percy talked about work.

“Right,” Hermione said, looking at Ginny, who hadn’t even acknowledged what she said. “Thanks, we won’t take long,” she finished somewhat distracted.

She turned to Harry who was still wearing the puzzled look of preoccupation in his face.

She met his eyes. She had meant to say something like ‘come on’ or ‘please Harry’ but she realised Harry was ready to follow her, so she just grabbed his arm and walked.

Hermione walked past the living room and took the stairs that led to her study. Harry’s footsteps behind her soothed her spirit and the desperation she had felt in the kitchen. She breathed in deeply as she reached the end of the stairs, and by the time she opened the door and held it open for Harry; her heart had slowed its beating.

The study was Hermione’s room in that flat. It was like the sacred place that was only hers. Ron rarely entered it, mostly because he had no business there, being as it was filled with books Ron didn’t know how to use.

Most of Hermione’s muggle appliances were there. The phone she used to talk to her mum, a computer she bought in spite of Ron’s insistence that she didn’t need one. All of her books were there, and a couple of leather armchairs she liked to read on.

She turned the light on and closed the door after her, locking it with her wand. She turned to Harry.

Harry took out his wand and waved it over the door, silently casting a Silencing Charm.

“I know,” he said, pocketing his wand and sighing as he met her eyes.

“What?” Hermione frowned.

“I know, what you just found out and are about to tell me, I know it.”

“What do you mean-“

“Ginny knows.”

Silence followed his statement. Truth was, that it wasn’t that Hermione felt surprised that he knew; but she had to admit it had taken her off guard. In a quietly immediate agreement, they let the silence heal the moment. Let the silence gently fall upon the harshness of the truth.

And as they did so, Hermione couldn’t help but feel how her anger steadily increased. It increased as she contemplated the wrongness of that truth. What it meant, what it told them. And the anger that she couldn’t help burst out of her in a crazed frenzy that she was unable to control, regardless of the importance of the silence.

“For how long?“ she exclaimed.

“Oh Hermione!” Harry said exasperated, throwing himself on one of her black leather armchairs. In her favourite one, leaving only his right profile visible to her. “Forever! She’s known forever!”

“But how-“

“She’s not stupid, you know.” he interrupted.

Silence, again fell upon them and it was clear to Hermione that her eloquence had been defeated by Harry’s bravery.

Tears gathered in her eyes as the anger she felt mixed with frustration, betrayal, hurt and the sight of Harry’s frustration as he ran his fingers through his messy hair in heaviness.

“Why?” She whispered, trying not to sob. “How?” Her earlier thoughts slam back into her head then. “How did it come to this?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered, sighing a sad chuckle. “But she knows,” he said, rubbing his hands against his face, as if trying to wash something off it. “She’s always known, and all these years she’s watched me dying in life…”

He chuckled again, in a sturdily sad way that made her shudder.

“And one of these days, I wondered what she thinks… she’s not stupid, she must know something is different with me” he looked into her. “And I wondered if she think she did it. It made me sick just to think of it! Why is she doing it, Hermione? Why does she keep doing it?”

Hermione didn’t know for sure if Harry had asked her that question, but she couldn’t help herself when it came to provide answers she possessed.

“She got what she always wanted,” she said simply.

“Is that a reason?” he asked her; almost as if he had been waiting for her to reply that exactly. Although Hermione knew he was asking a rhetorical question. “It’s no reason to do that, Hermione, what kind of cruelty is that?”

“I know it’s not,” she said.

“Least of all when you and I gave up each other for the reason we did!”

“Harry-“

“I know!” he said exasperatedly, leaning against the armchair again.

Silence fell again in the room, and for a moment, the only sound was Harry’s frustrated sigh as he ran his hand through his messy hair.

“Damn!” He whispered. Hermione lifted her head and looked at him as he maddeningly looked at her bookshelves, not really concentrating in looking at them.

“It shouldn’t change anything!” he said, looking straight ahead but not particularly looking at anything.

“But it does,” she sighed, leaning against her desk.

“Of course it does!” he said, turning in his chair to look at her. “It changes everything,”

“It changes everything,” she repeated in an anguished and almost inaudible whisper.

He rubbed his temple, sighing and letting his head fall forwards.

She felt the heaviness he felt. She felt the sorrow he felt, the betrayal he felt.

“I…” he tried to say. “I… I shouldn’t feel better about us, but I do!”

“Harry –“

“She’s always known! Before she ever had anything with me, she knew! When we married, she knew!” His stare was piercing her. It pained her to see him like this; he felt betrayed, because he had failed to see it, when everyone, including Ginny did.

“She married me and watched you get married knowing it!”

He felt betrayed; because he had never questioned anything in Ginny’s behaviour; because he had never tried to see her beyond the excuse that she was to keep hiding from himself. And Hermione knew, he also felt defeated. Defeated by simplicity and emptiness. Defeated by cowardice and fear. Defeated by the mediocre way with which they had accepted the next best thing.

Hermione sighed. Her own head fell forwards and she admitted her own defeat. He had finished an evil Lord and she had helped him do it, and yet they had not seen through Ginny. She had deciphered a thousand riddles to help him accomplish his quest, and yet she hadn’t seen what Ginny had.

“Harry,” she whispered.

He looked up at her; his sad green eyes bore a heaviness that was unspeakably dreary. It was moments like this when she knew that Harry was still that little boy that had been locked under the stairs in a cupboard. He had become a strong, responsible and stable man, but his emotional reality will always be clouded by his childhood abuse.

And Hermione cursed Ginny. Cursed her with every fibber of her being, with such strong anger and hatred that she didn’t know she was able to feel. She cursed Ginny, for locking Harry again in that cupboard.

She cursed Ginny in her mind but kept her heart focused on Harry.

She doubted if she ought to ask the question that danced wildly in her mind, but she desperately longed for any sort of peaceful soothing for Harry.

“Do you think she knows…” she hesitated. “About… you know,” Hermione said, her head down.

“Us?” he asked.

“Yeah, you know,” she said, raising her own head. “In the sense that-“

“Yeah, I know what you mean,”

“Does she know we know?”

Harry stood silent for a moment, then threw his head back against the head of the chair and breathed a bitter laugh.

“No,” he said, running a hand through his hair again. He laughed again, the bitterness in his laughter almost painful.

“Like the Dursleys with my magic,” he said to the ceiling. “She thinks she can rub it off me,”

He went silent again, and focused his eyes on her bookshelves, although Hermione knew he was not interested in the titles of her books.

“Oh Harry,” she whispered.

“The other day… as I was getting ready for work, “ he said, lifting his head and fixing a pair of teary green eyes on her own. “I looked at her. She was brushing her hair in her vanity and I just” he trailed off, whether for a tight throat or for a loss of words, but Hermione felt sympathy for that moment when he lacked eloquence. “I… haven’t words to say how wrong it felt to me!”

“I’m so alone in that flat Hermione! She… doesn’t know anything! And you know I don’t mean in that in the mundane sense. I mean she doesn’t know anything about me! She doesn’t know anything about what I feel… she doesn’t know the man she married. And she says she loves me, but how can she love someone she doesn’t know?” Hermione had tears in her eyes, and her mind frantically recalled the curse she had intended upon Ginny.

“Every minute I spend in there tears something in me, I’m back to that cupboard, Hermione! Do you understand what that means to me? I’m afraid I won’t ever get back what I’m losing in there, because I’ve come to realise that the reason I feel that way is that she’s not you!”

“I’m afraid I’ll get lost in there… and that I won’t be able to find you again,”

“Harry!” She said in an anguished whisper.

She tentatively attempted to prevent maddening sobs from escaping her throat, trying hard to focus on the strength Harry needed from her right then.

“Is it wrong?” Harry whispered, looking intently at her. It reminded Hermione a bit of a couple of moments in their teenage years; when he’d look at her… Hermione, I need you to teach me how to do a Summoning Charm properly by tomorrow afternoon… Listen, Hermione, I was just up in Umbridge’s office and she touched my arm… it was that painful look with which he’d look at her, trusting she had an answer to all his questions and doubts.

“What we do,” he said. “Is it wrong?”

Hermione felt her eyes water as the thought and the heavily burdened sound of Harry’s voice came together in her head.

“It can’t, can it?” he whispered, his eyes piercing her with their intensity.

“It’s not,” she said, feeling steadily as the slight tickling in her nose told her about how her eyes were tearing up slowly. “There’s so much rightness,” she said. “In all the ways in which I love you… it can’t be wrong.”

She turned slowly to look through the window, realising she wasn’t sure her eyes would be able to hold the look into his.

“I love the way in which you make me my morning coffee,” she whispered, a tear rolling down her cheek, which she wiped furiously.

“I love the way you know exactly the time I like to have tea in the afternoon. I love that you know I like to do paperwork alone in our office. I love the way you play with my hair and the way you dip your head in it to smell it.”

He chuckled behind her and she turned to him, managing a teary smile as she did so. She turned to him.

“I love that you asked me to teach you how to do a Summoning Charm. I love it that you taught me to like Quidditch. I love that you think of my stubbornness as determination and of my know it all-ness as brilliance”

“I love it that I can be me with you. I love it that we don’t have to pretend. I love everything about us, Harry! I love it, I just love it!”

He ran into her and crushed her against his chest. She grabbed him with her arms around his back, burying her face in the soft cotton of his shirt and crying silent tears against it.

“I’m so free, Harry! I’m so free when I’m with you!” she cried against him. “It can’t be wrong!” She took his face in her hands and looked into his eyes. “We’ve giving each other so much! Harry, it’s NOT wrong!”

“I love you so much!” he whispered closing his eyes and leaning his forehead against hers. “I’ve loved you, I’ve always loved you!”

“It’s not wrong, it can’t be wrong!” he grabbed her face in both his hands. He gave a frustrated groan and let go of her, running his hands desperately over his hair.

“It’s so unfair!” he growled.

In the midst of the insanity she could breathe in the room; in the tension that could be cut with a knife; in the dizziness that made her knees feel weak, Hermione found herself speechless. Her lower lip was quivering and her hand was still floating in mid-air where Harry’s face had been and where the strength of his statement lingered around her like a glowing light.

Her gaze was fixed on her shoes, were its focus could be lost between the sparkling embroidered leather, and her hands began to run up and down the length of her skirt. She felt tears burning their way out of her eyes and she fought the need to look at Harry when he turned to her.

“You know it is,” he said to her as he sat once again on her favourite armchair.

“Harry,” she said as she approached the armchair he was sitting in and rubbed his arm lovingly while sitting in the arm of the chair.

“Hermione,” he whispered. He turned to look at her and pulled her by the arm, until she was sitting in his lap. “I love you,” he whispered, rubbing his temple against hers. “It hurts, the way I love you hurts.”

For a moment there, Hermione completely forgot where they were and what they were supposed to be doing downstairs where she could hear the movie Ron and Ginny were watching.

The sound of the music coming from downstairs was steadily intoxicating her, and the smell of Harry and the feeling of his face tightly pressed against hers was slowly and increasingly driving her to an unconscious point from where she knew she will not be able to head back to consciousness easily.

The music was vibrating in her ears, almost pressing her body against Harry. It sounded like the red wine she had while cooking still tasted in her mouth, like Harry’s hand, rubbing her waist felt like. It was a merging of sensations that were tempting her endlessly and oh did she want to be tempted.

She didn’t think, she didn’t contemplate, she didn’t plan it; she just lost her ability to restrain herself for a moment.

She pressed her lips against his.

And Harry had been waiting for her to do it. He kissed her back with hunger and an insatiable need to pull her closer. His arms enclosed around her waist and she wrapped her hands firmly around his neck, pulling his head closer to her.

She bit his lower lip in the hungry way in which she hopelessly wanted him at the moment. Nothing else mattered. Everything outside had vanished into air; the wife and husband downstairs, the dinner in the kitchen, all the suppositions they were supposed to be fulfilling.

The world had suddenly become she and Harry, kissing in her favourite armchair, which, she guessed, was now going to become her top favourite armchair.

Harry’s hands were pressing her waist against him in a tight embrace that she gave into, pulling him against her just as desperately. The tension and the frustration she had felt earlier in the kitchen were being easily poured down in the frantic kiss and the immeasurable freedom that she felt in his arms.

In an indescribable contradiction, Harry’s hands were holding her gently, but with a possessive strength that made her knees feel weak and her soul feel thankful that she was seated.

The room became ethereal and all she could feel was Harry’s embrace and the burning desire to screw the impossibility of their situation and beg Harry, in the most unspeakable of desperations to do it with her.

“Harry,” she whispered hoarsely as he abandoned her mouth and began attacking her neck, trailing her artery with a path of kisses until he reached her earlobe and gently started to suck on the spot bellow.

She took a deep breath slowly, savouring in the feeling of Harry’s lips against her skin; in the softness of his mouth, in the gentleness of his closeness. In the remarkably perfectly loving way in which he was totally devouring her neck, as if he had been longing, dreaming for days to have her in his arms like this.

She moaned, in a strangled voice that came out of her mouth as if she were trying to keep quiet.

“I charmed the room,” he breathed in her ear. “Don’t hold back,” he whispered, kissing her earlobe.

“Harry,” she moaned loudly, and he pressed her against him, tightly and firmly around the waist and she could feel the hardness that was being throttled against his trousers.

The music. Good heavens! The music was captivating her in an impossibly enthralling feeling of dizziness where all she could think about was Harry. Harry kissing her, Harry’s wild hair between her fingers, the warmth of his body pressed against hers, his hand grabbing her tightly around the waist. The wetness pooling between her legs, the way in which Harry’s hand had found the hem of her skirt and was skilfully pulling it upwards as he caressed her thigh.

Harry returned his lips to hers, wrapping her in a violent kiss, pressing his hips against hers.

She had rarely felt like this. So turned on in such a frenzied desire to surrender to her wildest dreams. Because she had had those dreams in that very room, more than once, reading in that very armchair, writing on her desk, she had wished for Harry to pin her against the bookshelves and make frantic and careless love to her.

She had forgotten about Ron and Ginny in the living room downstairs. She had forgotten of their discussion and of the painful statements that had clouded the room moments before. It was just Harry, the world was just Harry and her, and her tremendous need to be pushed against her bookshelves and wrap her legs around Harry.

“Harry!” she moaned as Harry tore his lips from hers.

“Hermione,” he whispered, biting lightly on her earlobe. “Do you want to?” he whispered hoarsely, in the voice Hermione knew he only used politely, for he’d die if she were to say no. “Here, right now, do you want to?”

“Can’t wait,” she whispered back, taking his face on her hands and closing her lips around his.

Harry grabbed her waist and pulled her up skilfully, just as she had fantasized, pushing her against the bookshelves and pinning her against them with his body. He tore open the embroidered jumper she was wearing setting its buttons to fly around the room and ravishingly pulled down her black lace bra, sucking on her nipple as his hand caressed her thigh up and down.

She sighed loudly, leaning her head back against the shelves, grabbing Harry’s hair with one hand while her other roamed behind her around the shelves for something to hold on to. The burning spot between her legs ached furiously as Harry’s hand reached the hem of her knickers and began to insufferably tease her. She bucked her hips against his, in an attempt to bring his hand closer to where she wanted it, but Harry’s hand remained teasing the side of her knickers and the spot where her leg met her hip.

He couldn’t seriously mean for her to beg. She was burning up; she was dying against her bookshelves!

“Harry…” she moaned.

“What?” he whispered playfully.

Hermione bucked her hips against him once more and once again, he pretended it didn’t happen. She sighed in frustration and pinched his arse as revenge.

“Hermione, what?” he said playfully, meeting her eyes. His were dark with desire and fixated on her own, she knew what he wanted and couldn’t believe he was really asking it from her at such a time.

“Please, Harry!” she moaned. “Please!”

That was all it took.

For next thing Hermione knew, Harry was on his knees, her knickers had disappeared, and his tongue pressed against her clit. She gasped loudly and wrapped her hand around a mass of Harry’s hair, pulling at it unintentionally but being unable to contain herself.

Harry took her right leg and threw it over his shoulder, his mouth sucking on her lips as he did so. He placed one hand against the bookshelves, supporting him against her and placed the other right under his mouth. His tongue licked her entrance and Hermione trembled slightly against him; one of his fingers softly caressed her cunt making her buck her hips violently against Harry’s face. He guided his fingers slowly into her, sucking on her clit.

Hermione moaned loudly as Harry’s fingers entered her and savoured the feeling as she buried her fingers in Harry’s hair. She threw her head back and closed her eyes, massaging Harry’s scalp and breathing deeply and slowly, all the while increasing the pleasurable feeling of Harry’s ministrations.

Hermione felt a soft and delicious tingling bellow her belly and she knew her orgasm was approaching 0quickly and strongly. She opened her eyes and turned down to see Harry’s head between her legs staring closely at her, watching her every movement and expression. His hand against the bookshelf was holding her skirt, all of its fabric gathered on top of her stomach. Her eyes met Harry’s and Hermione was suddenly aware of the weakness of her knees and of her stilettos and their far too high and far too thin heels.

She grabbed Harry’s shoulder and pulled him up. Harry separated himself from her and rose slowly, leaning against her and she grabbed him by the arse, pulling him closer to her to feel the hardness inside his trousers against her warm cunt. She forced her lips down against Harry’s, tasting herself in his mouth that was warm and on his lips that were swollen.

She lowered her hand and opened his trousers, sneaking her hand inside while keeping his lips trapped between her own. Harry gasped against her mouth when Hermione’s hand had sneaked inside his boxers and had closed forcefully around his penis. She ran her hand up and down his length, obliging Harry to break the kiss and force him into a harsh, sudden intake of breath. Harry was clearly trying hard not to buck his hips against her but kept rubbing his crotch against her in an insinuatingly delightful way that Hermione found unbearably inciting. Harry’s breath was hot against her temple and she felt the wetness on her hot cunt increase and the aching tingling under her belly get pleasingly warm.

She took her hand out of Harry’s pants and ran her hands over the hem of them before pulling them down to his knees in one swift and skilled movement that had been practiced a thousand other times.

She looked into Harry’s eyes and his emerald green ones were dark and heavy with a desire that clearly was as urgent as the one that she felt in her lack of breath and in the warmth below he stomach. Their eyes locked as Harry’s legs skilfully sneaked between her own and he took her right leg by the knee and threw it around him, where she wrapped it hardly and steadily around his arse. His eyes held her own and Hermione leaned in and kissed him tenderly and softly, feeling his tip tentatively positioned on her entrance. She drew back and stared at him and next second, Harry was inside of her.

Her breath caught up in her throat for a moment and then she moaned loudly and grabbed his arse strongly with both hands pushing him deeper inside. Harry buried himself deep within her and they both stood silent and motionless for a moment. She breathed in the musky essence of Harry and ran her hands across his still clothed back. She savoured the moment while it lasted and then felt Harry grabbing her other knee and wrapping it too around his waist. He pulled her up by the arse penetrating her even deeper.

She moaned wildly and immediately took his mouth in hers; thrusting her tongue into his mouth as she felt him thrust into her.

She heard the music from the movie downstairs, consciously holding on to the thought that Ron and Ginny were downstairs, and that up there in her study, Harry was shagging her fantastically against her books. Harry broke the kiss and pushed her harder against the bookshelf drowning her in the feeling of completion that she felt as he plunged within her. She was starting to lose control or grasp on any rational thoughts, her mind had completely focused on Harry and his penis penetrating her.

Books to her left and right fell to the floor as she was pushed against the shelves every time Harry plunged his cock deep into her cunt. She felt her orgasm building up quickly, in a maddeningly fast series of feelings all of which followed each other rapidly. Harry thrust inside of her and she met his thrust eagerly and completely unconsciously. There was only Harry and the amazing feeling she experienced when he pressed her against the bookshelf and his cock buried inside of her.

The feeling of Harry as he drew back slightly and plunged back inside. The feeling as he kissed her mouth at the same time that he moved his hand between them and touched the tip of his fingers to her clit. The feeling as he rubbed furious and fast circles over it, and thrust inside of her at the same time. The sound of the books falling; the sound of the wood hitting the concrete wall; the sound of her hips moving in time with his own and crashing against each other in what was a perfectly practiced motion that never failed to make things new.

She was going to come; she could feel it, in the spiral of sensations that was ignited in her clit and inside of her cunt where Harry’s hardened cock rubbed tightly and warmly against her walls. She could feel the spiral rising up from the spot in which the base of Harry’s penis rubbed against her. She could feel her orgasm building up quickly and rather crazily.

She and Harry had had quickies before. They sure had. But nothing compared to the fact that Harry, by taking her in, in her favourite room in that flat, was making a long time fantasy come true, and what was better, he was exceeding all her expectations at that.

She was being pushed so hard against the bookshelf that she knew she’d have terrible marks and bruises on her back by the time she’s woken up next morning. But in the delightful dizziness she was feeling, Hermione could only concentrate on her ridiculously fast approaching orgasm.

And then, she heard it.

Someone coming up the stairs. She could hear the footsteps above the music, getting closer, and closer. And the spiral feeling that she knew announced her orgasm, increased infuriatingly. She was shaking against Harry’s body; her legs wrapped around his waist tightly and her hands grabbing him by the arse, holding out for dear life.

Harry broke their kiss and looked into her eyes.

He had heard the footsteps too, and he had been, just like her; pushed immediately over the edge.

Hermione had placed the locking charm herself, but her mind still played around the thought of being discovered. She didn’t stop to question why it only provoked her even more, but it was the fact that she could hear Ron’s footsteps outside the door and watch Harry’s face as he pushed his cock into her that set her off.

Then Harry pressed his lips to hers strongly and quickly for only a few seconds, not going further into the kiss. He drew back and whispered in her ear.

“He’s out there, but he can’t hear you,” he whispered hoarsely. “Don’t hold back.”

And in perfect timing, Hermione moaned her orgasm loudly as her body trembled in a series of pleasurable spasms that ran through her body like electricity. In time, she felt the base of Harry’s cock become hot against her and felt him spilling his release inside of her.

She kept shaking against him as he, himself, placed one of his hands against the bookshelf for support as he came within her.

She took a deep breath in and began to relax slowly against Harry when she heard the knock on the door.

Harry was panting against her shoulder, burying his face on her hair.

Neither one of them stopped in the attempt to regain their breaths, Ron was outside the door, but he couldn’t get in. That was still their moment, and in an unspeakable agreement, they didn’t do anything to end it.

“I take it you have a Silencing Charm,” Ron’s voice came from the other side of the door. “But Neville’s in the fire.”

Harry and Hermione both raised their heads in time to meet each other’s wide eyes.

“He needs you to go in now, he says they caught him, whoever you’ve been looking for.” Ron’s voice said.

“You guys have to go!”

~*~*~

“There either is or is not a way things are. The colour of the day, the way it felt to be a child. The feeling of saltwater on your sunburned legs. Sometimes the water is yellow, sometimes is red. But what colour it may be in memory depends on the day. I’m not going to tell the story the way that it happened. I’m going to tell it the way I remember it.”

~*~*~

Paperwork was something Hermione never minded.

Harry hated it, with a passion; but she felt rather comfortable doing it.

It was almost like a lingering habit of her younger self; the feeling of her school years, the kind of things that young Hermione Granger, in spite of all the Big Bad hunting honestly and thoroughly enjoyed.

And so it became almost like a habit for them; they’d catch a bad guy, and Hermione would stay to do the paperwork, while Harry would go settle the legal stuff with Neville.

Truth to be told; Hermione loved that unspoken agreement of them. She loved to have the office to herself; to stare out the window whenever she felt like it, to pace around fishing for ideas and even to stare dreamily at Harry’s desk without being conscious of the silly smile that would play across her lips.

Which, was the reason she didn’t welcome the knock on her door around noon that Monday, as she sat on her desk writing the paperwork from their weekend catch.

She sighed, leaned against her chair and cursed under her breath at the idea that vanished into thin air as she lost her concentration.

She rubbed her temple, looking at the clock behind Harry’s desk and shocked, as she realised that it was already past midday and that she had been working non-stop since Harry left her around eight.

She changed her mind rather quickly and welcomed the distraction.

“Come in,” she said to the door.

Shock followed as the door opened and Parvati Patil came in.

Hermione got up rather quickly from her chair and stared at Parvati. Truth was, she didn’t look much different than she did back in their school days. She was still fairly good looking; rather stylish and it seemed to Hermione, quite shallow.

Parvati had, though, acquired a rather imposing presence that she didn’t possess back then; and which Hermione thought, she had probably developed in her way up to the Editor In Chief of Witch Weekly.

Much as she tried though, Hermione was unable to hide her surprise when she got up to greet Parvati.

“Parvati,” she said, rather breathless. “Well... what… what a surprise!”

“Hermione,” Parvati said, extending a hand that Hermione shook. “I imagine, it’s been a while,”

“Why yes it has!” Hermione said, trying to shake the surprise off her. “Hmm…. How’ve you been?”

“Well, you know,” Parvati said, impassively looking at her purse, playing it around her hands. “I’m doing alright, how about you?”

“Good, I’m… I’m good.” Hermione answered, completely transfixed at the fact that she had shared a bedroom with this woman for seven years and now had nothing to say to her.

“You, I… What can I do for you?” Hermione asked, motioning to Parvati to take the chair in front of her desk. Parvati fidgeted around, still playing her purse around her hands, and switching her weight from one foot to the other slightly.

“Is Harry around?” she asked, not taking the seat and looking at the floor.

“Umm, no, he’s with Neville over at the Ministry,” Hermione answered, well, of course, she thought. She wanted something from Harry.

“Good,” she said, raising her head and truthfully staring at Hermione for the first time since she stepped into her office. “Hermione, listen,”

Parvati stopped moving her bag and grabbed it hard, looking at Hermione in the eye, and Hermione was again, felt unable to hide her surprise.

“I have to talk to you,” she said. “And, I was thinking maybe you would agree to have lunch with me so we can discuss this some place out of here,”

Truth was, Hermione didn’t ask many questions. It had to be said that she and Parvati had never been friends. Sure, they’d been roommates, but Hermione was sure any of them would have willingly changed the situation if they could have.

She was in a position to say that she was hardly one of Parvati’s first choices for a girl’s lunch out; and if Parvati had something to say to her, that involved being out of her building, then it was hardly unimportant.

And fact is; Hermione was right.

They were sitting in a small restaurant in muggle London. Parvati had ordered white wine and Hermione’s glass had just been filled by the waiter. Parvati drank from her glass before sighing and looking at Hermione.

“Here’s the thing,” she said rather heavily; as if it took quite an effort from her to speak out the words.

Hermione drank from her glass and stared at Parvati; feeling a strange unease in her stomach, a mixture of nervousness and curiosity, like the one she had felt the first time she had given a speech in Primary school.

“One of my reporters,” Parvati began. “She was interviewing some Quidditch players in Los Angeles a few weeks ago, and she…”

Hermione felt all blood drain from her face before Parvati spoke the words, in an irrefutable realisation of what it was Parvati was about to say.

“She saw you and Harry.”

Hermione felt as if a bucket of cold water had been dropped on top of her head. She felt the shock and the preoccupation fall upon her almost as if it wasn’t even herself being shocked and preoccupied.

Parvati stood on the opposite side of the table, staring at Hermione, waiting for a reaction from her. Hermione, totally aware of that fact, still remained speechless.

She had never thought something like that could happen. Everything was carefully planned. How careless had they been? How could she have thought that no one was ever going to find out?

How did it ever occur to her that she and Harry could keep such a secret locked away?

“Hermione?”

Hermione tried to shake those thoughts off her mind and focus on Parvati, who was searching her purse for something.

“She,” Parvati was saying; she took an envelope out of her bag and handed it to Hermione. “She took pictures.”

Hermione’s eyes widened as she grabbed the envelope from Parvati and took out at least ten pictures that she scanned in a hurried fuss. She and Harry in The Ivy, eating lunch, Harry grabbing her face in the street, she and Harry, kissing in The Ivy, she and Harry walking holding hands.

Hermione wished to have a nightmare. She wished to wake up and realise she had dreamed the whole thing. She wished to vanish into thin air.

And then it came to her. Parvati was going to publish that in the magazine; she was only telling her out of respect, or out of habit or to drive her mad.

“Hermione?” Parvati repeated.

“Oh my God!” Hermione whispered as she looked at a picture of her and Harry hugging on the terrace of The Ivy.

“Hermione?”

Hermione raised her eyes, tears swelling in her eyes, as she prepared herself to beg Parvati not to publish any of what she had there. Readying herself to ask for Parvati’s mercy. She realised she wasn’t thinking properly, but her eyes wouldn’t focus on something other than the pictures in her hand and her brain wouldn’t think of anything else but the thought of those pictures being printed in Parvati’s magazine.

“Parvati, I…”

Parvati interrupted her, raising a hand to her and speaking up.

“Listen Hermione,” she said. Hermione didn’t know why, but she remained quiet and listened to Parvati.

“I don’t expect you to believe that I have any intentions to publish any of this in Witch Weekly,” She said firmly. Hermione released a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding and felt the threatening of her eyes to shed the tears she felt swelling.

Parvati reached her hand out and placed it on top of Hermione’s. Hermione was shocked by her gesture, but her shock was overtaken by the fact that she was actually touched by Parvati’s gentleness.

“Look,” she said. “Alice, the reporter who took these; she, for some reason, came to me with it, instead of running it in this week’s edition for everyone in the magazine to find out,”

Hermione looked at Parvati, trying to advert her eyes from the pictures she was still holding in her hand.

“I hold respect for you, and I hold respect for Harry,” she continued. “I’m not going to tell anyone, and I’ve asked Alice, well… actually I’ve threatened Alice not to tell anyone,” she sighed. “But you’ve got to be more careful!”

Hermione sighed and stared at the table, unable to believe her situation.

“Hermione, I can’t cover up for you two,” Parvati said with a heavy sigh. “This time, it was Alice who found out and who, luckily came to me before anyone… but that may not be the case another time, and I…”

Hermione raised her eyes back to Parvati.

“I can only control what my magazine writes, not anyone else’s.”

“Parvati, I,” Hermione said. “I don’t know what to say,” she said truthfully.

“Say that you are going to be more careful!” Parvati answered. “Hermione, don’t you get it? I’m coming to you! But someone else, in another publication will not come to you if she sees this!”

Hermione understood that by ‘she’, Parvati meant Lavender.

Parvati and Lavender had had a big fallout when they went into different publications. Lavender was the owner of the new Witch Talk. Lavender had gone mad that it was Parvati instead of her that had been made Senior Editor, and she had gone and had installed her own magazine to compete against her. It was no secret, to anyone, that Lavender was a much more soulless reporter, and that she would have more than one reason to sell them out.

“If she finds out,” Parvati said. “She won’t doubt to publish it, she’ll want to sell it out, and as it is,” she sighed. “She doesn’t like you, because she still has a thing going on for that Ron thing in our sixth year.”

Silence fell. Hermione knew Parvati was right, but she felt far too shocked to tell her so. She was amazingly grateful that Parvati was doing what she was doing, she felt astonished that Parvati had grown to become that woman sitting in front of her. She was thankful she was actually mistaken earlier that day when she met Parvati. Because she had little left of the Parvati she had been in their school days.

Hermione sighed.

“Thank you,” she said truthfully, staring at Parvati in the eye. “Won’t you put your job in the line for this?”

“No,” Parvati said, sipping her wine. “We’re doing fine as it is on sales, and William, the owner, is quite fond of me, besides,” she sipped her wine again. “What he doesn’t know doesn’t hurt him.”

“Parvati, I…”

“You’re surprised I’m doing this, I know.” She leaned against her chair and looked at Hermione sympathetically. “People change,” she said with a smile.

“I’ll say,” Hermione answered with another smile.

Suddenly, Parvati broke into laughter. Hermione looked puzzled at her.

“Then again,” Parvati said through her laughter, gracefully taking a sip of her wine. “Truth is, I always thought it was going to be Harry and Hermione in the end!”

Author Notes:

Thank you all for reading, truthfully and honestly, I’m grateful and flattered that you waited so long for this chapter. I deeply and sincerely apologise for such a long wait. I adore you all.

Quotes in this chapter:

1. “There was so much love in this house” From Minority Report by Steven Spielberg.

2. “How did it come to this, saints in heaven? How did it happen to him?” From “The Red Violin” by François Girard.

To petrynronlover: I tried to read your story but it’s like locked or something, I’m not a FF.net user. Perhaps you could e-mail it to the address on my profile? I’d like to read it, I really would!

Disclaimer: Don’t own Harry Potter and All That Jazz; which is kinda clear, since if I was writing it, then this would be unnecessary, for they would’ve gotten together in the actual book.

After The End

Authors Note: I’m so sorry it’s taken me this long to update. I’m really sorry. I don’t plan to take this long between chapters, but between school work, interior design I’m doing outside school, and the fact that the day only has 24 hours, chapters keep taking longer and longer.

Because you all waited patiently for it, and are loyal to the story, I have 2 presents for you.

The first, is a drawing made out of the steamy study scene in chapter four… Can be found:

Here in my LJ

And the second is a soundtrack to the story. I decided I ought to treat you with something really special. So here are some of the songs that have inspired (and continue to do so) this story. From chapter 1 on, 18 songs for you to listen when you read to this.

Can be found here:

Also in my LJ

Thanks a lot, I appreciate your loyalty and love you all. Here’s chapter five (finally!)

"Always the years between us. Always the love. Always the hours.” ~Virginia Woolf

Thanks so much for keeping up with me, even through the long waits! I adore you all.

And PS Thanks to Marce, for lending me her lamp.

Chapter Five: Splat! or A Rush Of Blood To The Head.

“Oh brother I can’t, I can't get through

I've been trying hard to reach you 'cause I don't know what to do

Oh brother I can't believe it's true

I'm so scared about the future and I wanna talk to you

Oh I wanna talk to you”

~Coldplay

Silence.

Silence all around, wrapping him up like a heavily cold wet blanket that couldn’t shelter him from the air that was blowing crazily across the cemetery.

He had never been there.

Yet something he couldn’t understand kept stirring an irrefutable impulse within him, telling him, urging him to go. To tell them before he even told himself because he had to acknowledge the truth to them, had to apologise first.

Tears were swelling in his eyes as he leaned over the left one and brushed away some dry leaves that the cold wind had gently but waveringly placed on top of it.

It was going to snow soon, the coldness in the air was almost testable.

Silence.

Not that he had expected anything other.

Silence, heaving his need to articulate that which he knew he owed them. Heaving his terrible, terrible need to apologise.

Tears he couldn’t hold in, tears that were telling him, whispering the words inside of him, words he knew he had to speak out loud to make it happen.

Tears that made his breath intake heavy and unstable.

“I’m sorry, you know,” he said with his jaw rigid, squinting his eyes and wrinkling his nose in a determined effort to hold the tears back.

He tried to catch his breath, and his effort to hold back the tears became useless. He felt tears rolling down both his cheeks, burning their way down against his cold face, and fighting with their warmth against the coldness of the winter air.

“I’m sorry.” More tears. Why in Merlin’s name didn’t he do it before? Why hadn’t he done it before?

“I’m so sorry, SO sorry! For all those times when I thought you hadn’t fought hard enough, for all those times when I blamed you, for all those times when I so terribly let you down. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t realise before that you two died to give me something greater than myself. That you died for me to live the life you were leaving behind! I’m so sorry!”

He brushed the tears away furiously with his sleeve. He had to do that, he had to do it so badly that a sudden rush of adrenaline started to curse its way through his veins and made him feel a hot burning tickling inside his chest, even with the horribly cold wind hitting him on the face.

“I’m sorry that I let it down, I’m sorry that I turned my back on that life! I’m so sorry I wasn’t strong enough. So sorry! So sorry that I acted like a coward when she was there all the time, ready to give me all of her, ready to surrender to whatever I was going to ask of her. And that I still wasn’t able to face her and everything that she had for me! I’m sorry that I didn’t let her give me that which you died so I could have.

I’m sorry that there were times when I thought nobody loved me. I’m sorry.”

He kept rubbing his sleeve against his eyes, feeling the coldness of the fabric against his skin, his eyes felt horribly hot inside his very cold face.

“I’m sorry that I threw eight years of my life into the trash bin, because I was too scared. I was so scared. So scared that I wouldn’t be able to make it, that I wouldn’t be able to live through it. I’m sorry.”

His tears were drying fast and growing cold on his face with the amazingly cold wind. It was going to snow very soon, probably that very afternoon. And he was only wearing an everyday jacket. His face was cold and his hair felt almost wet at the back of his head. But he was finally there, and the warmth within him was still strong enough.

“I’m sorry… mum.” That word! That word which burned something in his throat and made his lips tremble as it came out. “I’m so sorry! Because every time I think about you, about what you did for me… I realise that I’ve wasted a great deal of it. You died for me, so I could live; and I’ve inflicted myself a tortured semi life. I’m sorry because I’m so aware I’ve let you down.” He lowered his head, admitting his defeat, his helplessness in the middle of the acknowledgement that he had wasted his mother’s sacrifice.

He swallowed hard.

“I’m real sorry…” he swallowed again. “Dad.” Another burning stab in his throat, a strange tingling inside his neck and trembling right under his tongue as he spoke the word and heard it linger in the air. “Because it isn’t until now that I realise what I should have looked for everyday. That I should have looked endlessly and tirelessly for that which made you die for us. I’m sorry because I realise I gave up looking far too long ago.”

He raised his head and stared at the bare tree that was behind the gravestones and that grew imposing behind them, in the most horrendous irony; so full of life against such a perfect materialization of death. The wind hit his face wildly and violently, and Harry felt as the amazingly heavy weight on his shoulders began to feel lighter. He breathed a bitter laugh.

“Funny thing,” he said, now turning to look at the horizon of white stone at the side of him. “When I first walked up to here, I didn’t think I knew where to start.”

He looked back down.

“I’m still sorry. But I should thank you.” He shook his head slightly, a smile creeping through his lips. “Because, Merlin help me, she still loves me! After all this time, she still loves me!” he looked at his hands, helplessly his sight cloud again. He fought back, hard.

“All this time, all we’ve been through, and she still loves me. I love her. I’ve always loved her. I need her, so badly, so badly that even I can’t measure it. And she’s…” he struggled, admittedly at a loss for words. “She’s,” he chuckled. “I think you’d find that she’s a lot like you.”

He sighed, trying to breathe in, his chest pressing his heart against his ribs.

“She’s devoted her life to love me. She would have died for me; she’s saved my life countless times. She’s… made me! She’s made me who I am now, and,” he struggled again, any way he thought of phrasing what was on his mind simply felt wrong. “And I… I’m a good man! And I know that’s got to be the oddest thing to say, and this has got to be the oddest place to say it. And, I’m probably the least appropriate person to say so… But she’s done a fine job with me.” He smiled in spite of his situation. He couldn’t help it when it came to her. He sighed. “You’d be happy.”

“And whenever I think about her and what she’s done for me, I know you would have liked her.”

His breath caught up in his throat. He didn’t ever think it was going to be that hard.

“You would have loved her!”

His hands had stopped being an interesting subject to be looking at. He faced the hard, impossibly white stone pieces in front of him, both buried so steadily and deep into the ground that they were unwavering to the wind that so violently blew all around.

“I came here,” Harry started again. “I came here… to tell you guys that I know. I know now. And I’m still sorry. But you should know I plan to make it right, because she’s… the way she loves me, I’ve realised I couldn’t turn my back on it now, even if I wanted to.”

He sighed again. All of a sudden, the rush of tears had stopped. He understood he had let it out. And it was a welcoming feeling.

“I know you didn’t. I know because I’m alive.”

He searched his mind, tried to search within him, wondering if it was all out. He took a deep breath.

“Thanks, for loving me. It seems almost offensive to thank you guys for that, especially after admitting that I sometimes thought no one loved me. But… I know you did. Loved me enough to let me live and screw up so badly and learn that I was wrong and come to apologise. Thanks. It’s vague, to say something like this, but I think about you… a lot lately. And I love you.”

He took one last look, then turned on his heels and started to walk away. Two steps and he had turned around.

“And I’m sorry, for all those times when I came and then couldn’t get pass the gate. I promise I’ll come back. I’ll never do it again.”

The walk outside was incredibly shorter than the walk inside. Probably because he felt lighter and much more calm as he walked outside than he had felt making his way inside. The sight of Neville’s back leaning against the gate unspeakably lifted the remaining of the weight on his shoulders.

“Oh mate!” Harry said, making Neville turn around. “Your wife’s going to murder me if you catch a cold out there, get in the car already!”

Neville laughed as he threw away the wrapper of a Chocolate frog he was still eating.

“Yeah, she would,” he said as he walked to the car and opened the door. “All said and done, then?” he asked Harry as he, opened the door on his side.

“All said and done,” Harry said, a grateful smile across his face. “Thanks mate!”

“No prob,” Neville said as he got in the car.

Neville turned on the engine as Harry closed his door.

Apparition was forbidden at the Federation Headquarters, and although Harry had his own car, he had been going about business with Neville all morning, and he had drove Harry over at his own request and would now drop him back to work. As they started to drive away, Coldplay came on the radio. Harry liked Coldplay, there was a delicious contradiction between the singer’s voice and the sweetness of the harmony that lured Harry inevitably.

Something about it, something about that tasteful contrast, reminded him of Hermione. Something about the music… or the lyrics, he didn’t really know what, it just reminded him of Hermione. He smiled silently as his mind told him he was losing it.

He looked to his right and looked at Neville. They kept driving in comfortable silence. An enjoyable silence that presented no need to be filled. Neville understood. He had always understood things about Harry that no one, with the exception of Hermione did. He understood a lot of the parts of Harry that seemed to crash against the rest of him, and Harry felt he understood a lot about Neville that most people didn’t. It had surely taken him a while to understand that Neville had a lot more to him than the small boy who lost a toad and asked Hermione for help.

He was thankful he had gotten over that, he was thankful he and Hermione had Neville in their lives.

Neville understood the hesitation that Harry felt during the war; he understood Harry’s insecurities. Neville understood the need to get a job where he would develop for what he could do, not for who he was. Neville understood his need to visit his parent’s graves. Neville understood his love for a woman that wasn’t his wife, but that he had loved since before any of them had a clue about love. Neville had seen it happen, and unlike most of the people around them, he had never tried to take it out of the picture.

Neville knew about it all, knew about them belonging to each other, knew about them giving it up for each other, knew about them being unable to resist that self imprisonment any longer. Knew about them being tired of their façades.

And that never ceased to feel like a breeze of fresh air for Harry and Hermione.

“So,” he spoke as he stopped on a red light. “How’s it going with the house?”

“Great actually,” Harry said, immediately excited to talk about the house. “It looks great, they just finished with the garden yesterday, Michael said it ought to be ready by the end of the week.”

“That bloke, Michael,” Neville said distractedly. “He’s rather good, isn’t him?”

“He’s brilliant!” Said Harry. “Made a bloody fantastic job with the house! I swear, Hermione and me, we thought half of the house was irreparable. Then, in comes Michael and we’re both speechless!”

“And what are you doing with it? Moving in?”

“Haven’t thought about it,” Harry answered honestly. Truth was he and Hermione had been walking circles around the possibilities since they started to fix the house, but they hadn’t placed any cards on the table. “Haven’t even discussed it with her,”

Neither one said anything for a moment. It wasn’t until the light turned green and Neville kept driving that Harry spoke again.

“Is it?” Harry asked in a low whisper that he wasn’t sure Neville hear because he had almost spoken those words to himself.

“What?” Neville asked puzzled.

“Love,” Harry said, shrugging almost in spite of himself.

“What do-“

“No, it’s just…” He interrupted Neville. “I just… I don’t want to think this decision is rushed, but I… I can’t help feeling this way about her! I’ve loved her; I’ve always loved her, before I knew what love was, before I got confused about it, before I got scared. Before I screwed up! And the most amazing thing is that she loved me too… and after all this time, after all we’ve been through, she still does!”

“Neville,” he said turning to him. “ I don’t even know if I’d love me if I was her! I can’t see straight, I can’t think, I can’t concentrate, nothing keeps my attention away from her!”

Neville laughed. His laughter amused Harry even though he knew his situation was no laughing matter.

“You know,” Neville said. “In the language of the Contemporary wizard mate, you’re doomed!”

“Exactly!”

Harry laughed in spite of himself. There was no other way to it, there had never been. He had always been hers and he couldn’t have changed it, even if he would have wanted to. Harry loved Hermione. Now, back then… forever. It was the one single constant in his life since he was eleven. He loved her, and in spite of everything he had gone through he wouldn’t curse his luck, for he had been lucky enough to have her love him back. He would go through it again if it meant he’d have her in the end. If in the end, he could still have that sweet feeling of lightness in his heart, and that goofy smile in his face when he thought of her, he would kill a dozen Voldemorts

The laughter died down and both Harry and Neville got quiet again. This time, it was Neville who spoke.

“Do you…” Neville hesitated, as if he was looking for the right words. “Don’t you ever wonder… if you hadn’t had the Voldemort –”?

“Always. Every day.” he interrupted Neville. It was a fact, an undeniable fact that not a day would go by when he wouldn’t daydream about it. That maybe if things had been different, everything would be easier for them. She would be his wife; they would have children, happy children. Everyone would be happy. At least happier. He usually tried not to let his thoughts go that far.

Harry sighed.

“I guess,” he said. “That maybe it’s just that people like us isn’t supposed to have that,”

“Harry,” Neville said as he drove the car around the corner of the street where the Federation was. “There isn’t people like you two.”

~*~

“Desperation is a tender trap - it gets you every time


You put your lips to her lips to stop the lie


Her skin is pale like God's only dove


Screams like an angel for your love


Then she makes you watch her from above


And you need her like a drug

Oh, love - you say in love there are no rules”

~U2

~*~

He loved her.

Did he love her?

There were times when he wondered. On gloomy days, on long days, on endlessly exhausting long days in which the morning alone seemed to last three days.

Was it love?

He couldn’t help but wonder. Not because he wasn’t sure, but because he wanted to tell himself that he was making the right thing. Again, not because he was having second thoughts but because he couldn’t help needing strength to take the next step. It was a never ending mental debate.

He loved her.

Yet how do you do it? How do you do it to someone?

For love, he was doing it for love. And the question would start a slow deliberate dance inside his head, in spite of his efforts to help it.

He did love her. But he couldn’t stop counting the reasons why he knew he did.

It was a vicious circle in which he kept spinning around hopelessly.

He loved her. He loved her, loved the way she fixed coffee, loved the way she arranged the paperwork, loved the way she curled her hair in her fingers while reading, loved the way her face brightened when she felt happy, and the way her brow furrowed when she was concentrating.

Loved the way he felt when he thought of her, loved the way she made him feel, loved the way he felt when he went to meet with her.

That feeling that wouldn’t go away, that feeling that trapped all of his emotions in one, single beautifully mixed emotion that made his heart soar and something unspeakable inside of him rejoice with the heavy and very comforting weight he felt inside his chest.

That warmth, that velvety envelope he felt inside of his chest that suddenly made his impossibly hard beating heart feel too big for the space in his chest. That warmth, that delusion he felt in, that warmth which drove with him in the reduced space of his car all the way to Godric’s Hollow.

The warmth that spread a broad smile across his face since he first caught a glimpse of the old, nineteenth century house.

What a perfect example of each and every feature in the Victorian houses that composed the Queen Anne period; stunningly looking white woodwork, flawless brickwork, details in blond limestone; a most imposing set of perfect oriel windows with impossibly beautiful corner towers.

The asymmetrical front was painted in an impassive champagne colour and some of its elaborated details in a strong shade of red with a massive growth of deep green ivy that covered a huge portion of the left side of the house from the front to the back. Along with the thick layer of snow that had been mercilessly falling since the night before, the house composed the most perfect image of a Christmas greeting card.

It had taken two months, and now the house looked so imposingly beautiful that the shadow of death, sorrow and depression that Harry had seen on it, seemed like something he remembered from a past life.

Upon arriving, he had to be honest with himself and admit that the astonishing result had exceeded all his expectations. Two months ago, the house’s interior looked like an empty canvas. Loads of wooden furniture, perfectly patterned carpets, comfortable window seats, carefully detailed bathrooms and the most astounding ballroom dominating the left side of the first floor, but all of it covered in either white sheets or a thick layer of grey dust.

A lifetime in furniture and memories, resting neatly under cotton white sheets that covered everything, sacrificing themselves to shelter the old belongings from the dusted hand of time. The layer of dust was so thick, that not one of the sheets had survived the cleaning, they all had resulted permanently damaged and had been thrown away, an act that felt in itself, somewhat offensive. There, in the trash bin, were the only witnesses to the fate of his parent’s belongings in the course of the last 25 years. Permanently damaged, with no promise of ever being restored, like so many other things in his life.

He had feared, at one point that restoring the house would not be possible. But the joy, the joy when, before his eyes, the house started to separate itself from all of those irreparable somethings that scarred his life way deeper than any war scar he may possess.

What a bliss he felt when Hermione found Michael to do the renovation. What a delight to hear when Michael told them that the house was completely reparable.

“The foundations are still standing, and the plumbing only has to be repaired in specific places, we can easily replace the windows and reinstalling the electric connections should be no problem.” He had said.

Michael was a known renovator who had worked on some houses for the Federation. He was very talented and specialized in Victorian Houses.

Harry had told Michael that he could spend as much as he needed to in the house, and now, as he got up from the car and stared at the exterior, at the freshly painted walls, at the new windows and at the renewed garden, he was sure it had been money well spent.

How ironic it all seemed to him now.

Every penny had been worth it. Whether it had been spent on the new paint, in the restoring of the furniture or in the extra money he had paid to keep the renovation a secret. Every penny had been worth that one moment.

The house that had been his parent’s, and that was now going to be theirs.

The moment of going in the house, smelling the fresh paint, feeling the restored furniture, using the fireplace for the first time. That moment and the two months before, the experience of witnessing the house in its original state and being able to fall in love with it as it came back to life, had no price tag for him.

He had almost hated it at the beginning. He hated walking into a that time machine, hated the heavy weight that would burden his heart in that unstoppable rush of emotions that inevitably came with the surrounding flashes of images that appeared everywhere and composed imaginary memories of the life that had once been his parents’. Staring into the emptiness that was the house, with Hermione grabbing his hand tightly and him crushing it between his fingers, trying to hold onto her as if to the life he actually knew, preventing himself from going insane in the emotional overload that the destroyed house brought upon him.

He had been torn when they started to search the house. The thousand things they had found!

In a matter of hours, it was as if the house had suddenly become a book. A recently opened book, waiting eagerly to tell a story about the people that had lived there in a detailed description that lay hidden in the endless list of objects that had collected dust over the years. Pictures of unknown people, letters that had been kept as memories in a bedside table; letters that had never been sent, kept hidden in an old trunk.

Clothes… the clothes that were still in his parents’ closet, such unspeakably dreary thoughts had clouded his mind; why didn’t someone take all of that away?

Clothes, toys, china, flute glasses, pillows, books, bottles of wine that were at least 50 years old.

An open book, where every little thing was a careful description in a new chapter. A book… and books were one of the things she was best at.

She had read the house from beginning to end. Every chapter, every word, every meaning that lay hidden in a subtle metaphor, she had taken it and made it hers, she had made the house hers and before he knew it, Harry found himself feeling completely overwhelmed by the differences she had made in the house. She had fallen in love with the house, and her happiness that was evident in every minute she spent passionately planning the reconstruction, had made him fall in love with the house as well. He started to look around the house and find Hermione everywhere.

In the new curtains, in the restored furniture and the flawless match it made with the new contemporary pieces. In the new carpets and in the newly polished wood floor, in the new glasses on the windows, in the repaired fireplaces that now shone with new marble. She had managed to leave something from her in the newly designed bathrooms, in the new Main Bedroom and even in its Walk In Closet.

He could almost breathe her in when he entered the house… he could almost breathe them, they were everywhere in the house and that had made the house their new favourite meeting spot.

He could imagine them sitting in the porch, easting breakfast in the small table in the kitchen, and having Neville and Helen over for dinner in the fancy dinning room. He could imagine her shoes in the right side of the closet, and her books in the library with its hidden door behind the stairs. He imagined the smell of her hair in the bed of the main bedroom and her perfume bottles in the dresser that sat across it.

He imagined a quiet Friday evening, watching a movie in the TV room. He had even imagined what could be done with the spare bedrooms. He kept imagining it whenever he came to the house and, from the front, he could stare into the window to the right side, which he secretly daydreamed about.

He would stare at the window on the side for minutes. It was the only room with a window facing west. He imagined her on a chair, the sun on her hair and a smile upon her face. He had to shake his head and clear his mind.

He chuckled and walked into the house.

Ginny had left the day before with Ron and the Quidditch team for Montreal where England was playing a match against Canada. He and Hermione were meeting in Godric’s Hollow to check the ultimate result of the renovation and to have lunch with Michael before he left back to the States.

Saturdays… he remembered a time when he enjoyed Saturdays. He remembered a time when Saturdays didn’t mean anything but another day on the fight. He remembered a time when Saturdays meant an impossibly large amount of homework piled over the weekend. How young and innocent they were. Saturday morning, bright sunshine cast upon the layer of snow that now covered almost every surface of the house’s exterior and its surroundings.

Saturday morning, as he walked into the house, his footsteps echoing around the Entrance Hall and into the Living room as he walked into it. The sight that welcomed him in there, brought a bright smile upon is face. He didn’t pay attention to the burning fire in the fireplace, or to the new sofa by that French designer Hermione had wanted to buy. He didn’t look at the painting in front of him but to the small detail to its right.

The lamp.

Harry had given her that lamp.

He had seen it in New York and had compulsively bought it for her.

It was a 12 inches tall lamp, made with white and green recycled paper, wrapped around an iron structure that twisted around its axel in a shape that, from its hexagonal base, represented a developing leaf.

The designer, a very lovely lady with long dark brown hair and big dark and shiny hazel eyes; had told Harry that in Spring, when the leaves started to grow back in the trees, they curved around themselves before they were able to blossom in their entirety.

“It reminded you of us,” Hermione had whispered with a lovingly melancholic smile before Harry had even started to explain it.

The lamp. Harry smiled and breathed a laugh when he saw it impeccably lying on top of a table positioned on the left side of the fireplace. He looked right and saw an identical table with a clean surface, expectantly waiting for an occupant to its surface.

He immediately looked down to his hand and the paper bag he was carrying with his own lamp inside. With the other lamp, with the lamp that was surely going to occupy that very surface.

“You know, he didn’t even realise I took the lamp out of the house,” he heard her voice say behind him.

He turned around and met Hermione who was wearing torn jeans and a green cotton shirt that he liked very much, she had on a furry coat and high black leather boots, the sight of those boots could have ridden him to absolute insanity.

“You think?” He asked absently.

She sighed. Musical sound in that breathing of hers that made his world so much better, if only because it allowed her existence.

“I’m sure,” she said bitterly.

Bitterness in the hidden meaning of her words, bitterness in the metaphor. As I’m sure you would have, she meant.

She took the bag from his hand and walked into the living room to the empty table. Delicately taking his lamp from the bag, he heard her voice.

“Did she leave?”

He sighed, he didn’t know why. He looked at her, as she bent to place the lamp in the low table. Either she was going to behave, or they were going to be late with Michael.

“Yeah, yesterday’s afternoon. Went on an hypoglycaemic rant about missing the ball and what a shame that was.”

She laughed.

“Oh dear! Didn’t you promise her to take pictures of the evening for her?” She said smiling as she turned to him.

“Do we have to go?” he asked her, pulling his best pleading face.

“Yes, we do,” she said as she walked to him. “You know what occurred to me this morning when I was lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling after I woke up?”

Harry smiled. He had an idea he was going to like it, that imagery alone was a good set up.

“What?” he asked, honestly interested.

“We’re going on a date.” She said, trying to hide a smile and pretending to be somewhere between impressed and offended.

“A date?” He asked, playing along. How he cherished moments like this, his entire life wasn’t enough to cherish each and every one of the moments like that he got to share with her.

“A date!” She walked close to him, her eyes sparkling as she did so.

“We’ve got to be losing our touch,” he said, as he wrapped his arms around her waist as soon as she was within reach.

She threw her arms around his neck and pressed her temple against his.

“I know is hideous,” she said in a gentle whisper. “But we’re going together and alone and…” she tilted her head to look into his eyes.

And she was giving him the look. The one that could pin him to the wall and turn him into the most useless excuse of a man at her service.

He looked at her. In her eyes, that something, the warmth he had thought about while driving, there it was, looking at him, straight ahead, live, in full colour.

“I’ll wear that dress you bought me in New York,” she whispered. She leaned into him, brushing her lips against his ear before she whispered.

“And if you behave, I promise I’ll let you take it off me later.”

~*~

While lovers laugh and music plays

I stumble by and I hide my pain

The lamps are lit the moon is gone

I think I've crossed the Rubicon

I

Walked the streets of love

And they’re full of tears

I

Walked the streets of love

And they’re full of fears

~The Rolling Stones

~*~

For Harry, there were days upon days. There were days among days. Days that went by quickly and in a rhythmic rush that usually sped up around his activities and disappeared into the depths of the past months he flipped through the pages of his calendar.

Days that didn’t seem to end, days that were boring, days when an hour contained several days in the most impossibly real of the illusions, because Harry knew days only had 24 hours. Days that flowed in the way a good song combined music and lyrics. Songs like days, days like songs, beauty and ugliness, where there is perfectness just as there is the offensive attempt to do just fine.

Good songs as good days. And Bad songs, just as there were bad days,

And there was the one day Harry dreaded and avoided with a passionate strength and an undeniable anger: He hated it with the same passion with which a devoted musician hates the horribly offending attempt of a song that the merciless dj’s insist on playing over and over, always with the appalling misconception that they were doing good.

The day he wished to erase off the calendar, in the same fashion good musicians wished to take the bad music off circulation. He wished it. He wished it badly and with the most fervent need. It was just one day. One day! One day he wanted to ignore, one day he had wished to sleep through. Because ultimately, the fact was that the mystical balance of the universe would not be utterly destroyed if Harry Potter refused to acknowledge the twenty-second of December, so the reason people kept insisting on celebrating it simply escaped his comprehension.

Many things escaped his comprehension, but that unstoppable insistence, that almost fanatical hunger, completely failed to enter his head as a coherent thought. He found it impossible to swallow their overrated impression of him, as if he was worth the attention. As if it was a celebration that he had faced one of the most terrible moments of his life. As if one yearly celebration where everyone danced and went home pissed up out of their minds, would magically erase the memory of the people lost, of the moments gone, and the experiences missing that had developed into the event they all wanted to consider a holiday.

He was no hero. He never had been. Something inside of him burned and twisted in a horrible pain whenever Ginny would look up at him with a smile, firmly holding his arm, and smiling stupidly to everyone who approached to thank Harry. The torment! The humiliation, the awkwardness, the feeling of being an utterly lost soul in the middle of a crowd where no one really saw through him. Especially his wife.

He didn’t care. He didn’t like it. He didn’t want it.

“Celebrate the sixth anniversary of Harry Potter’s heroic defeat of He Who Must Not Be Named,” the invitation read. Such a fabricated lot of rubbish it all was. Harry hadn’t defeated Voldemort, he hated that word; defeat. So hideously mythical, carefully constructed out of lies that had been fed with the eager will of people’s hunger for hope; in Hermione’s words.

Torture, is what that ball was. Torture that never ceased to make him terribly unhappy and uncomfortable, torture that made his soul twitch horribly around memories he wished he didn’t have. Torture he had unwillingly endured five times already, and during which time he had only clarified one truth: it never got any better.

He couldn’t help it, his mind purely continued to proliferate that feeling of being impossibly trapped within the four walls that composed the Great Hall of Hogwarts. Not the music, not the nice people or their well-meant greetings; not the food, not fancy decorations, not the wine, not the old friends made it better. Although, truth to be told, the wine and the old friends sometimes had helped tremendously.

He was tired, he was trapped, he was being made fun of in an incredible display of ignorance and disrespect for him and whatever it was that he had done and whatever reasons people thought he might have had. He felt like a puppet being forced to perform in a very lousy show because the truth was that no one in the room had ever understood his true purpose. It was a stupid analogy, but it was one that worked for him.

It was like the most gigantic and unbearable hole in the holidays, the only day he did not look forward to when December and its celebrations arrived. The Federation’s ball? He could deal with it. The Ministry’s party? Very bad, but he could also deal with it. The One Big Happy Weasley Family Christmas Dinner? He could also endure it, however painful it was to sit in the same room with Hermione and pretend he didn’t wish to bump into her under the mistletoe and blush like a 15 year old before snogging her senseless in the most clichéd of the displays of love there were.

But not that utterly display of the biggest of lies. Not that party, not its unbearable mocking face, not the celebration he so badly wanted to omit. And that particular year, as he opened his eyes in the morning of the 22^nd of December, Harry realised that in the course of just one year, he had lived enough lies to burden his already exhausted soul for a lifetime.

One grain of truth, one small particle of something real and absolutely empirical that wasn’t being kept behind closed doors and shushed whispers and runaway trips to the outside of Britain was what he was longing for.

One little truth that could be seen by everyone and that could be shown everywhere. One little truth that didn’t make him feel like everything that was true in his life was actually a lie to everyone else.

That very thought that tormented him endlessly, was ironically his one Christmas wish. Ironically, because, what did he care what everyone thought of his life and what was true of not?

Had it turned important all of a sudden? Had it turned important in the course of a year for the reasons he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep hidden much longer?

A year ago, they had both settled on an unspoken agreement about keeping it a secret for the time being. What in the world had changed that suddenly, one morning he woke up and ‘the time being’ was over? Something had changed, something that had been small and quiet a year ago, was now gigantic and loud and didn’t want to be kept hidden or quiet anymore.

Truth. One bit of actual, verifiable, public truth. He longed for the truth to be out of the closet, once and for all; at least for a little while. For a little while his hurt would hurt no more.

Truth that would make them enthusiastic, happy and outrageously willing to celebrate what both of them had wanted to avoid every year.

He sighed as he looked at his messy, wet hair in the mirror.

The truth that had made her eyes shine and sparkle the day before.

The truth that had driven him through an unknown eagerness when he opened his closet and took out his suit with amusement as opposed to laziness; that had him trying to tame his hair with enthusiasm as opposed to hopelessness. For the first time, and however out of character it seemed for him, he was actually looking forward to the night.

The one thing that was bound to make the evening bearable, and possibly even appealing that, like everything in his life that could possibly be considered appealing began and ended with her. She. His reason, his inspiration, his strength. The only love he truly knows how to love back.

He sighed. What an impossibly perfect truth that was. So perfect, so impossibly perfect that he was, really and honestly, for the first time, looking forward to the party. He sighed again. Sighing had turned into a part of his character all of a sudden. He was doomed.

He smiled in spite of himself. He really was doomed. He took out a red and gold tie that she had given him; Prada. He thought hopelessly about her, like a spark that caught fire, his lips formed into a smile every time he thought about her and the thousand images that would drive his mind into the craziest frenzy of imagined memories he was looking forward to create. The Prada tie, she had bought it for him in Paris, said that it was absolutely astonishing and that it was so Gryffindor that she had immediately thought of him.

He thought of her, imagined himself grabbing her hand and walking her slowly and deliberately to the dance floor in front of just about all the wizarding world.

She had opened the box and taken out the tie and had thrown it over his neck, delicately attempting to tie it. He had been utterly mesmerized by the eagerness with which she described how the sight of the tie had ignited a series of thoughts about him that revolved in her mind until that very moment.

He had ravishingly made love to her right then.

He was so doomed.

He shook his head slightly to himself, breathing a laugh. He couldn’t even carry a thought to end. He looked at the tie in the mirror as his hands expertly made the knot. She had once told him that neither one of them would ever be able to look at that tie and not think about his desk at the office nor the way he had so hungrily shagged her against it.

He smiled broadly at his reflection. She had been so right.

He finished the knot and started to button his shirt, a white cotton piece, also by Prada and also from Hermione. Hermione had chosen that in New York.

She kept telling him that he was doing things the wrong way; he was supposed to button first and then tie the knot. But he kept doing it the other way around. She had bossily told him that behind him in front of that very same mirror and then had opened his trousers and wrapped her hand around him. She had forced him to walk them both to the bed and have their way around each other. They had been late.

He kept smiling. He lowered his head as he buttoned the last buttons on his shirt.

He didn’t even hear her until she spoke.

“Your tie is not straight.”

He raised his head and looked in the mirror to meet her reflection standing at his back, her eyes on him. He had been unconsciously expecting to hear the doorbell ring.

But of course she had Apparated. He mentally shook himself. Why had he been waiting for the doorbell to ring? He grinned at her. The doorbell, that was so totally out of character.

She grinned back.

She walked slowly and deliberately to him, her face glowing in the dim light of his bedroom.

“Prada then,” she said with a mysterious smile.

Harry turned around and met her smile face to face.

‘Is it too fancy?” he asked nervously, flattening the fabric of the tie against his shirt. “I keep wondering when is it going to turn into a small flat,”

She laughed, shaking her head slightly in a flirtatious fashion he was convinced only he had been a witness to.

“Too fancy?” Her laugher lingering in her tone. “You’ll wear it for life!”

“I’ll have to!”

She lowered her head for a moment biting her lower lip in the same fashion she had just laughed, looking impossibly ravishing. She raised her head and met his eyes, a mischievous twinkle in her own. A tiny, playful smile spread across her lips as both their eyes connected and a floating, invisible, ethereal something suddenly seemed to be luring him to her, to the time and place when his body would completely be at her mercy. And that smile of hers, it refused to go away!

“What?” he said, smiling in spite of the tingling feeling in his body that kept insisting he should throw her over the bed and have his way with her.

She raised her face to him and their eyes met again. The same feeling he had, he could see it in her eyes.

She breathed a laugh.

“I’m just wondering how am I going to keep the women away from you tonight!”

He smiled. Moments like those, when he could almost smell the feeling inside of her body that called out for him. He stared at her, his eyes moving down from her face to the graceful neck that was exposed down until her cleavage where her breasts insinuated to him behind the shiny red fabric of her dress.

Further down, where stylised drapes of the same fabric hugged her waist tightly and allowed a lively moving skirt to caress her legs in a swift movement of layers of fabric that floated glamorously to her every move.

He swallowed.

Crowning the breathtaking image, he stared at a pair of strappy stilettos with shining little stones all over the front strap. He blinked and looked back up to her face but his eyes were quickly drawn back to the cleavage were the low cut corset insisted on reminding him of what lay beneath the fabric.

It took a moment for him to register that she had just spoken.

“What?” he asked stupidly.

“I’m guessing it worked then,” she said smiling triumphantly.

“You want to put that on a shirt?” he asked staring at her as he ran a hand through his hair, trying to distract his mind from every thought that wanted the dress out of the way.

“Is that what you bought in New York?” he asked breathlessly.

“You mean what you bought for me in New York,”

“And money well spent, that was.” He said as she approached him slowly.

“I almost feel like it’s too beautiful to be worn,” she said with a sigh as she came up to him and leisurely grabbed his forearm with her hand and then started to run it softly up and down his arm, sending electric impulses all over his body.

She moved it higher and reached his shoulder. Her hand pressed his shoulder with her hand before she steadily grabbed his neck and caressed it, a moment then grabbing it firmly.

He savoured the moment, the feeling of her hand touching him through the marvellous fabric his shirt had been made of. He thought that at least now he knew why it was so expensive.

She smiled at him. Her hand grabbed his tie and started to pull at it, fixing the knot he had made earlier on the centre.

“You have to stop doing that,” she said with a mischievous smile. “Put the shirt first, then the tie!” She exclaimed playfully as she finished replacing the knot and ran her hands smoothly down his chest.

She pressed her hips to his and her smile broadened.

“You have to stop doing that!” he whispered as he grabbed her by the back of her waist and pulled her to him, pressing her hips even more against his.

“I do?” she asked teasingly.

“If you want to go to that party, that is,” he whispered smiling at her, moving his lips close to hers, only inches away. “Unless…”

Her eyes twinkled and then her smile broadened.

“Unless nothing!” she exclaimed taking a step back and looking at the mixture of disappointment and surprise in him. “I told you if you were good tonight! We’re leaving, get your jacket!”

~*~

“Take my photo off the wall if it just won’t sing for you

Cause all that’s left has gone away

And there’s nothing there for you to prove

Oh look what you’ve done

You made a fool of everyone

Oh and it seems like such fun

Until you lose what you had won

Give me back my point of view cause I just can’t think for you”

~Jet

"I sat for a portrait once, electric experience!” Tonks said happily as Harry wondered vaguely when the conversation had gone to talking about portraits.

“Great, you slept with DeKooning once, can we get on with our lives?” Seamus said with a smirk.

“I did not!”

Around the circle, old friends, war companions and work mates; collective laughter as Tonks tried to say how, for the tenth time, she didn’t sleep with DeKooning. Another waiter with another round of drinks approached them and the empty glasses were quickly switched with filled ones. More laughter, more jokes and teasing went around the small circle as the alcohol freshly took hold of the laughing jokers once again.

But no amount of collective laughter or alcohol managed to take his eyes off of her in front of him on the opposite side of the circle.

He was sure she had choreographed their positions. He only had to look in front of him to find her dressed in that dress that was so good on her that it had him wondering whether it came from heaven or hell.

More than once, she would raise her eyes and met his own above the crowd and the noise around them, when for a moment the crazy, drunk frenzy that surrounded them would shut itself down and allow them to share an endless moment of genuine fascination.

Literally, he would not hear a thing; he would not see anything else but her. Her eyes staring intently at him and the carefully masked desire that only he could read in that secret look that her eyes would shot him with. The spark that was almost invisible and almost too quick to be seen but which he managed to come across in her stare. A moment he wished he could fold and pocket so he wouldn’t forget, even though he knew he wouldn’t.

A moment that would disappear as fast as it had appeared; they would blink and the moment would be finished. He would go back to his fake attempt at being interested in the collective conversation and back to stealing glances at her, trying to be quick and pass undiscovered. A stolen glance at her cleavage, another one to her waist, a quick one to her hips, a long, stolen moment during which he stared at her neck, drifting away from the conversation he was supposed to be taking a part of. He would raise his eyes to her face to find her staring at him. Her eyes signalling him to continue his distracted role in the conversation.

He sighed.

Taking a distracted part in a conversation he had no interest in. Taking a part in the conversation when he would much rather be taking part in a very different kind of conversation with the very distractingly hot woman across him.

Distracted again by her. He shook his head slightly and drank from his Jack Daniels. He enjoyed the sweetness of it as it reached his throat and lost his eyes on Hermione’s dress and the way it curved over her hips, sending a thousand thoughts to his mind; thoughts he knew he shouldn’t be having while in a circle that was discussing the portrait Ernie had paid for his daughter.

He tried to clear his mind from the thoughts that had him wondering how he could better take the dress off, when could he do it, and what would she be wearing underneath. He took another sip from his whiskey and found the glass was empty. He stared at it distractedly, as if his mind couldn’t quite process the thought.

“Looks like you need a refill,” he heard her voice say in front of him. The way he had heard her voice was a momentary fascination; above the sound of the music that a band as playing and the noise of hundreds of people chattering. He had heard her voice as if it would have been magically charmed to be raised over the rest of the sounds around him that had no importance at all.

He met her eyes and smiled at her.

“Me too,” she said happily, smiling back.

She crossed the small circle and came to his side quickly.

“We’ll see you around mates,” Harry said as he waved his hand with the empty glass and placed the other on the small of her back.

“Bye,” Hermione said as she and Harry started to walk towards the opposite side of the Great Hall where the drinking bar was located.

“I can’t believe Hannah!” Hermione said as soon as they were out of eavesdrop. “She didn’t keep her eyes off of you!”

“She didn’t?” Harry asked truthfully amused. “Really?”

“You didn’t notice?” Hermione exclaimed. “It was so obvious it was painful!”

Harry laughed.

“I told you I was going to be completely unable to take their eyes off of you!”

“Well,” Harry said as they approached the bar. “I think you’re doing a brilliant job at it. You’re the only one I haven’t kept my eyes away from!”

“Then I guess you could say we have both very good taste when it comes to dressing each other.” She said with a smile.

“A Jack Daniels for me,” Harry said to the bartender. “And a Martini for the lady,”

“Have we met?” Harry heard Helen’s voice behind him.

They turned around and met the grinning faces of Helen and Neville.

“Helen, hi!” Hermione said as they hugged and kissed hello.

“You two have been taken the entire evening!” Helen said as she kissed Harry’s cheek.

“Everyone wants to have a word with Harry,” Hermione said as she took her drink from the bartender. “Is ridiculous!”

“I’ll say!” Harry muttered as he drank from his refilled glass. “What’s your poison?” He asked the couple as he shook Neville’s hand.

“A vodka tonic for my wife, and Brandy for me,” Neville told the bartender. He turned to Hermione.

“You’re looking beautiful tonight,” he said, immediately causing a smile from her.

“You do!” Helen said, turning to her too. “Where did you get that?”

“Harry bought it for me in New York,”

“Designer original?” Helen asked.

“Austin Scarlett original,” Hermione said smiling broadly. She looked at Harry who was smiling just from looking at her. He had an idea of how goofy he looked and he rejoiced in the knowledge that he didn’t care.

“And look at you mate!” Neville said as he passed Helen her drink. “What’s with the fancy suit?”

“Hermione bought it for me,” he said looking down at himself. “Nice isn’t it?”

“Very nice,” Helen said as she checked Harry out.

“It turns into a small flat,” Harry said jokingly as he took another sip from his drink.

The laughter suddenly had a different sound to it than it had back in the circle they had just been in. He smiled as Neville wrapped his arm around Helen, while they were both laughing at Harry’s statement.

He looked over at Hermione and smiled at her. Definitely a different sound in the laughter.

She smiled back at him as the laughter died down and he felt his heart leap in his chest. He had to admit that had been the best date of his life.

“Who’s watching Frank?” Hermione turned to Helen, taking a sip from her drink. Harry couldn’t help looking at her lips and the terribly tempting way in which they wrapped around the edge of the glass.

“A sitter,” Helen answered. “Muggle sitter. Neville had to charm my cell phone so I could use it out there in the grounds.”

“How did you do that?” Hermione asked with wide eyes.

“Had to pull some strings at the Ministry,” Neville answered with a grin. Harry laughed.

“Neville!” Hermione exclaimed.

“Speaking of which,” Helen interrupted Neville when he opened his mouth to answer Hermione. “And before you two can say another word, I’m going to call the sitter outside.”

“I can’t believe you did that!” Hermione said, her expression somewhere between surprise and offence at the thought that someone had defeated the statements in Hogwarts: A History. “How did you do it?”

“Mate,” Harry said to Neville. “Either you tell Hermione what kind of charm you used, or she’ll spend the next month in the Federation’s library.”

“Not to mention she’ll be mad at me,” Neville said drinking from his glass.

“Oh don’t be silly,” Hermione said, smacking his arm friendly. “I won’t get mad,”

“But only if you tell her,” Harry said grinning.

“Harry!” She smacked his arm now. She turned to Neville. “No, only if you take me out for a dance.”

Neville smiled.

“Not afraid I’ll step on your feet?”

“Not even!” Hermione said smiling back.

“Brilliant!” He answered. He turned to Harry. “Sorry to steal your date, mate!”

“Go on, I trust you,” Harry told him. “I’ll steal your wife to the dance floor as soon as she comes back.”

“Fair deal,” Neville said as he placed his drink on the bar. He took Hermione’s drink from her and left it on the bar too, then took her hand and walked her to the dance floor.

He leaned back against the bar, watching Neville and Hermione, completely unable to take his eyes off of her. Unable to stop looking at the way her eyes twinkled when she smiled, or the way her hips moved beneath the layers of fabric that composed the skirt of her dress, or the way her hair seemed to float seamlessly as a frame to her smiling face.

Best date of his life, by far. Even if he counted the needless ‘thank you’ that he had gotten since they crossed the door, even if he counted the thousand times he had been asked about Ron and Ginny. Best date of his life, because he had walked in with her grabbing his arm, and he was walking out with her at the end of the night. Best date of his life, because he loved her crazily and she looked like a smouldering temptation that was a promise to him if he was good.

He remembered her words. “I promise I’ll let you take it off me later”

He was so going to behave, he thought as he drank his whiskey, an evil grin on his face.

“You have to do something, you know,”

Helen’s voice startled him suddenly. He jumped and turned to see her standing on his left side.

He smiled at her.

“What do you mean?”

“Look at you!” she said. “The way you look at her, is so obvious is pitiful!”

Harry laughed wholeheartedly and stared at his drink. He shook his head and drank it all. He raised his eyes and saw Hermione again. She was in what seemed to be an appealing conversation with Neville. He tried to see himself looking at her and to see what Helen saw. It was probably very obvious.

Helen sighed next to him.

“It doesn’t have to be like this Harry, you know it doesn’t.” She whispered.

Harry lowered his head and sighed. He had to admit that it was probably pitiful too.

“You don’t have to keep doing this to yourselves!” she said in a whisper as she grabbed his arm. He looked at her and her warm brown eyes reminded him of Hermione. There was honest concern in her eyes, a sincere anxiety and a truthful intention to make it better.

“There is a way out!” she said.

“It’s not that easy, Helen!”

“But this ain’t easier either!”

Harry sighed again. He looked over to Hermione. Neville must have told her something funny, because she was laughing with genuine happiness shining over her face.

He looked back at Helen.

“I know it’s hard,” she said reassuringly. “But Neville and I are here, and we support you. Please tell me you know that.”

He smiled a weak smile at her.

“We know.”

“Good.” She said smiling back. “Now take me to the dance floor and wipe that sad expression off your face, it doesn’t match your suit.”

He laughed.

“Okay,” he said nodding.

He took her hand and walked with her until they found a comfortable spot in the dance floor. He had just wrapped his hand around Helen’s waist when he heard someone say his name.

“Harry hi!”

He turned to see the face of Lavender Brown, dancing right next to them with a Quidditch player from the Tornados.

“Hello Lavender,” Harry said quietly. His blood started to speed up through his veins. Hermione had told him about it, Parvati had warned them, and his heart’s beatings started to go faster and faster inside his chest. He feared the colour on his cheeks would give him away.

He looked at Helen, desperate for a device to manage his way out of a conversation with Lavender.

“This is Helen,” Harry said stupidly. “Neville’s wife,”

“Oh yes,” Lavender said with a grin. “We’ve met. You look beautiful tonight Helen,” she said in a tone that suggested she was reciting a practiced line.

Harry’s heart was beating quickly and painfully with the desperate fear he was suddenly being a victim of.

“Thank you,” Helen said, forcing a smile. She turned to Harry and Harry saw, to his immense relief that Helen tried to move the dancing to his right and away from Lavender.

“Is Ginny dancing with Neville, Harry?” Lavender said before they could get away. “I haven’t seen her tonight!”

Harry sighed and looked desperately at Helen before he turned to Lavender.

“She couldn’t make it,” he said, trying to fix his eyes in the spot between Lavender’s eyes, to avoid her stare, at the time he attempted to control his voice. “She’s in Canada, with England’s Quidditch team,”

“Oh yes!” Said Lavender, looking over at her partner. “How could I forget? Big game, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Harry said. “She was sorry she wouldn’t be able to come,”

“Oh you tell her I said hi.” Lavender said with what seemed to Harry a very hypocritical grin. He couldn’t wait to get away from her, but unfortunately, she wasn’t going to let him go easily. “You came alone?”

Harry sighed.

“No, I came with Hermione,” he said, looking briefly at Lavender and then turning to Helen, almost as if talking to her. “Ron’s in Canada too,”

“Oh but of course!” she said excitedly. “He’s England’s best keeper, isn’t him?”

“Yeah, well-”

Harry was interrupted by Neville’s voice.

“Sorry, hate to interrupt,”

Harry turned with wide eyes, welcoming Neville’s timing.

“Hermione’s gone to the toilet, and I really need my wife for this song they’re playing,”

Harry smiled at Neville then turned to Helen.

“Not even a full song,” he said. “Save it for next time,”

He took Helen’s hand and placed it on Neville’s.

He didn’t say anything to Lavender as he walked away, although he heard Neville greeting her. He walked quickly out of the Hall and into the Entrance Hall. People was getting in and out of the front doors in big furry coats and shaking snow out of their heads. It was snowing heavily outside the castle and a very cold breeze flew into the Entrance Hall through the opened doors. Harry leaned against the wall and tried to catch his breath.

For the first time, in a year, he had looked at Lavender and had feared the unexpected. He looked at Lavender and feared that she’d know.

Hermione had told him about her lunch with Parvati and the conversation about them being spotted together in Los Angeles. And now he had seen Lavender and could have sworn he saw knowledge in her eyes and a mysterious sparkle in her eyes that seemed to tell him she was only trying to answer the right questions. Parvati’s warning seemed to be ringing in his head.

He ran a hand through his hair closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. He tried to shake the thoughts out of his head; he couldn’t let a paranoiac feeling of his imaginative mind ruin the evening. They were having fun, Hermione was having a good time and he was not going to ruin that with the suppositions that his mind made after a short talk with Lavender.

“Play the hero,” he told himself in his mind.

He opened his eyes and straightened up, looking to the left into the hallway that led to where the first floor’s bathroom was. He walked to it and attempted to find Hermione.

He didn’t have to walk all the way to find Hermione.

She was staring into the grounds through an opened window in the hall. He looked at her from a distance, marvelling in the way she looked, with the pale moonlight reflected on her and the way her dress glinted in the night.

He was suddenly trapped in an internal struggle. He could have watched her all night, and his night wouldn’t have gone to waste, but he also wanted desperately to hold her to him and feel her arms wrapped around his waist. He smiled to himself before he broke her reverie.

“Don’t jump,” he said.

She turned around, staring at him with surprise for a moment before she smiled.

“Would you save me?” She asked with a glowing smile.

“Not in this suit.” He answered before breaking into a laugh.

He walked to her and wrapped her in his arms, smelling in the essence of her hair and the smell of her. That smell that wasn’t her perfume or her shampoo but the smell of her that he knew only he recognised, from intimate moments when he had smelled her and made sure he could lock the memory of it so he’d remember it.

She stepped away from him and smiled.

“If I tell you,” Harry started. “That you look beautiful, for which time would I be saying it?”

“Tonight? Eleventh,” she said with a smile.

“Really?”

“Nah, I just made that up!” she said, suppressing a giggle.

“Well, you look beautiful,” he said, resting his hands on each side of her waist.

“Thank you,” she said, wrapping her arms around him, just as he had wanted her to. “Why aren’t you at the party?” she asked with a mischievous smile.

“Because it’s a dance, and to dance you need a partner.” He smiled back. “My partner is right here.” He touched her cheek with the back of his hand, and she closed her eyes, breathing him in.

“Me?” She asked in a whisper.

“Dance with me, Hermione,” he whispered back.

She opened her eyes.

“Alright, let’s!” She took his hand gently and started the walk back to the Great Hall.

Neither one spoke as they walked back. All thoughts Harry had of Lavender started to vanish deliberately as he and Hermione returned to the Hall. He had certainly imagined the whole thing; there was no reason to tell Hermione about it. He turned to look at her, she was walking steadily and with her head slightly bent low, as if paying attention to the way her feet touched the ground.

For a moment, he felt a tickling sensation inside of him, urging him to suddenly stop her and touch his lips against her temple. The moment vanished as they entered the Great Hall and Hermione raised her head, looking around.

She looked up at him and smiled. He smiled back and dragged her to the centre of the Hall, which had been emptied to give space to the dancing couples.

He didn’t realise when he found a good spot and started to dance. The comfort of the moment made everything around them pieces that fit so perfectly in a puzzle that he couldn’t see the difference between them. He became conscious of their situation the moment the tickling feeling that he had felt inside, somewhere between his stomach and his heart, started again.

Her right hand was wrapped in his left one and he had both hands against his chest. His other hand was protectively placed on the back of her waist, her arm resting against his own and her hand gracefully placed on the spot where his arm met his shoulder.

He lowered his head slowly and their faces were inches away from each other. He had looked intently into her eyes and her eyes had met his stare. And that had been it.

He remembered the feeling because he had experienced it before, many more times than he would like to admit. His eyes on hers, and that tickling feeling that started to revolve inside of him with that recognisable desire to kiss her.

He suddenly wanted to kiss her, like a burning feeling inside that he felt unable to control. He wanted to kiss her so badly that his body was seconds away from wrapping both arms around her and press her against his chest, which suddenly seemed to be so far away from her.

The music that they were dancing to, suddenly became an ethereal and hypnotic surrounding space that made him afraid he’d forget where they were and all the people they were surrounded by.

He stared at her face, her lips that were slightly glossy, the soft curls of her hair that were kindly framing her face. The way her neck curved beautifully to meet her shoulders and chest, and the way her dress hugged her breasts and exposed a part of them to him.

He raised his eyes back to hers and found them filling with tears.

Something inside of him tore painfully, and not only because she was crying, but because he realised, that they had gone through that same moment, countless times already. And the excruciating truth was that they shouldn’t at all.

All the people around were suddenly separating them, as an agonizingly justified response to the people that were now playing Quidditch an ocean away from them. He was standing only inches away from her but the reality was that they weren’t anywhere closer to where he knew they ought to be. She blinked and caught her breath, tears falling from her eyes.

“Harry!” she cried quietly, lowering her head and swallowing a louder cry.

“I know,” he whispered reassuringly, also lowering his head.

They had felt it too many times, in too many places, immediately disguising it as something else that would have nothing to do with the reality that they knew they couldn’t yet face. So many times that it was painful to think about it. In the Weasleys dining table at Charlie’s birthday three months ago, at Hermione’s kitchen two months ago. In the street, three weeks ago, at Bill’s birthday last week, at work the day before; too many times, too many places. Too many lies that were, for a reason that escaped his jurisdiction, finding their pitch that night. Of all times and places, it was right then, in the middle of Hogwart’s Great Hall, when she raised her head and looked at him, that he saw it in her eyes that it was time.

She had big tears on her cheeks that twinkled against the lighting; she was painfully biting her lower lip to hold back a gasping intake of breath that would call the attention of all the people around. Once again he felt pain, not only because he realised the heart wrenching situation they were in, but also because he didn’t want her to cry those tears or to feel that same pain he was feeling.

He made his mind very quickly and without second thoughts.

The time had arrived.

He hadn’t expected it, and he could see it in her eyes that neither did she, but the time had come, and he could see their second chance practically knocking on their door, and Merlin help him, he was not going to let it go to waste.

In that swift, thoughtless way in which he had always done the kind of things people might have considered heroic, he conducted his actions.

He let go of the hand he had wrapped around his left one and grabbed her other hand. Her eyes met his with a puzzled look for a very short moment, but he didn’t let her ask any questions. He started to walk with her, pulling her gently at first but then feeling how she walked by herself, willing to follow him. He silently thanked her for the moment of loyal trust.

He felt like he was in a dream, because of the hard and fast beating of his heart and the way he could sense her anxiety in the way her fingers moved where he held her hand. They arrived quickly to the Entrance Hall, and looking around the emptiness in it told Harry that mostly everyone had arrived, and that there was a good chance that outside, very cold snow was falling over.

But he was not going to hesitate.

He walked with Hermione’s hand still firmly wrapped in his, and went through the doors that led to the snowy darkness of the December night.

He looked around and once again saw no one.

He grabbed Hermione and pushed her against the cold, snowy stone of the wall and he met her eyes for a very swift second that clarified the intentions of his mind even more.

He pressed his lips against her in a fierce kiss that could have instantaneously taken his breath away. She responded at once, her hands going to his neck and pulling his head closer against her. She still had tears in her face and some of those tears had left a salty flavour on her lips that encouraged him into the kiss. Her hands still transmitted her anxiety as she ran them through his hair, but her lips kissed him hungrily with the very same feeling that had disturbed their dancing moments before.

He didn’t know whether it had been the fancy dresses, or the expensive drinks, or the company of good friends living in authentic happiness. He didn’t know if it had been the bloody brilliant way in which she looked, or the way she had fixed his tie earlier, or the way she looked at him when he found her near the bathroom.

He didn’t know what, but something that night had triggered the sparkling moment that was about to take place and kissing Hermione against the cold wall of the place where he could say, it had all started, he thought of Helen’s words earlier that night.

Neither one of them had their coats on and Hermione’s purse was still inside on a table where they had been seated. He didn’t know what the next step was, but he knew where they were going. He didn’t really know how, or where, but he knew that right then, they were going to do exactly what Helen had told him earlier. They were going to do something about it.

Author Notes:

~The character of Michael is inspired in Anne Rice’s character in “The Witching Hour”

~The lines: “Great you slept with DeKooning, can we get on with our lives?” And “Don’t jump. Would you save me? Not in this suit.” Are from “Great Expectations” by Mitch Glazer.

~”Because it’s a dance and to dance you need a partner. My partner is right here” from “Shall We Dance” by Audrey Wells.

~The joke about the Prada shirt turning into a small flat is from “Sex and the City”

~The joke about the hypoglycaemic rant is from “A Lot Like Love”

The two titles for this chapter belong, respectively, to a “Sex and the City” episode, and to a Coldplay album. Both of which rock fabulously.

Please, if you find another line that you think isn’t mine and isn’t credited here, let me know and I’ll credit it immediately.

So, I debated a long time whether I should post this chapter alone, or wait till I’d have chapter 7. In the end, you deserve to know I still write this story and chapter 7 is coming very soon.

Disclaimer: Don’t own Harry Potter. Obviously. Enough said.

After The End

Authors Note: What words would be more eloquent than I’m sorry? This chapter… was a never ending struggle! And, I could explain, but seriously? You probably just want to read the chapter!

So, if you clicked the link again after so long. Thank you. I apologise for such a long wait. And now, I’ll apologise again, in advance, for this being such a short chapter. But it has to be! The story cannot go on if this chapter doesn’t happen, and as it is, this is all that has to happen in it. That makes it very particular because this story has evolved, to my surprise, developing a life of its own, and this chapter was very hard and excruciating but now that’s done, I’ll thank one of my latest influences, Betsy Beers and Shonda Rhimes, producers of Grey’s Anatomy. Shonda said this, which kind of envelops what this chapter is about:

“The one thing you want to give Izzie is some closure. And I love hearing Denny say ‘Nothing is ever going to be the same again. I love you. Bye.’”

Now, I’ve never been to New Orleans. But I love it. And, I guess at first, I didn’t mean this chapter to make such a big deal of New Orleans, and I hardly kept in mind that it was the anniversary of the hurricane while I wrote it… but I love New Orleans, and it breaks my heart that it’s had such a hard time. With all my love, to New Orleans in thanks, for the greatest deal of imaginative resources it’s given my creativity since I first read about Garden District.

I’m sorry if you get the feeling that nothing happens in this chapter. I would understand.

Chapter Six: Breaktown

“Are you ready to quit?

Are you ready to learn?

Are you ready to find the spark inside and let it burn?

I’m the walls that close in

I’m the words you won’t say

I’m the voices you choose to keep inside

And lock away every day

You keep it all to yourself

You’re just like everyone else

So take a good look around

Now, welcome to Breaktown”

~Hanson

New Orleans was always warm.

An exceptionally warm and pleasant difference when compared to the coldness of the snow clouded London that they were coming from.

The warmth in the night was almost intoxicating and for a moment, as she stared out the glass French door that led to the balcony while elegantly holding back the velvet curtain, she thought she could live there. The warmth that she could see outside the window intensely flooded the room and increasingly felt like expensive liquor down her throat. Like one holiday summer afternoon in Paris when she was a kid, or a sunny morning in the grounds of Hogwarts.

She wanted to savour New Orleans. She wanted to savour New Orleans like the southern beauty it was. She wanted to savour the night like it was not going to end for them to go resolve their so inevitable resolution.

She wanted to savour New Orleans like the colourful blend of old and new that it was. She wanted to savour New Orleans in the same way she longed to savour the freedom she and Harry were so eagerly expecting.

She sighed as she opened the French doors and stepped out in the balcony. The breeze that blew over Garden District wasn’t sharp and cold as it was in London but inviting and refreshing as she breathed it in. It softly blew away the hem of her silk nightgown, and gently caressed her hair, producing a pleasant tickling against the back of her neck.

She took a deep, silent breath; her hands resting against the tasteful wooden balustrade that enclosed the small balcony overlooking the luxurious Garden District.

She could imagine herself living there. Admiring the Mardi Gras parades from that very balcony, walking down those classical European streets, living in that stylishly graceful house. She could have lived there and she almost smiled to herself.

She was thrilled by the impossibly appealing mystery of the city. A thousand secrets and old hidden and forgotten stories that had taken place in that fabulously splendid place. The mystery of the unknown that was hidden everywhere waiting eagerly to be discovered almost made her envious of the people that inhabited a place of such extraordinary and old exquisiteness. The lights, still glowing from inside the living rooms and bedrooms; the Christmas lights that nearly spoke to her in the dimness of the bluish night that shadowed Louisiana. Everything spoke to her, telling her about walking people and the distant sound of jazz music.

Everything, from the faint glow in the sky, to that fantastic smell that was somewhere between old magnolias and fresh lilacs, it was everything the way she had read it in the books. Everything was as she had imagined it, while reading the mysterious, epic stories of love, betrayal, power, humanity and lust that countless times had constructed the passionate, intense southern novels she had loved to read.

She could have fallen in love with that city. Maybe one day, she and Harry. Maybe, once this was all over.

She turned around and looked into the darkened bedroom that they were occupying in the stunning Federation house in Garden District. Harry was sleeping tight in the large bed, his exposed back almost shining in the warm darkness of the room.

She smiled.

She felt an impulse to lay on top of him, her chest against his back, and her face hidden in the crook of his shoulder kissing his temple before joining him in his peaceful sleep.

She closed her eyes and her bare feet almost moved by themselves to approach the bed. She opened her eyes and stared at him with longing, enjoying the rough vulnerability of his sleeping form. Vulnerability. And that ethereal sensation that overpowered her and exposed the undeniable truth of him to her. That moment of verifiable trust with which he allowed her to see him just as he was; no masks, no carefully devised concealment, no skilfully developed reflexes. No heritage from the war that he could easily hide behind, not even the covers that were thrown below his waist were meant to conceal a part of him from her.

There was a real, considerate honesty in that exposure. That naturalistic beauty that she saw in this reality that he showed her, in a surrendered display of sincerity that made her heart swell and gave her a tickling shivering inside her chest.

She tiptoed back inside, quietly closing the glass French doors behind her.

She leaned against the door, the heavy curtain cushioning the cold glass at her back. She took another look at Harry, his breathing steady and his position unwavering. She turned to her left and stared at the impossibly old wooden desk. A thousand sheets of parchment that countless times delivered a thousand letters of love, anger, hatred and regret through rivers of ink, all creeping under a thick shining layer of modern varnish attempting its best to seem old.

She sighed.

Neat, fresh parchment laid on top of the desk, silently expecting the moment when she would conjure a floating lamp above her head and write out what was so painfully caught up in her throat since their arrival.

A strange, unexpected feeling of unease overpowered her, and she hesitated. An almost bitter hesitation that she didn’t understand and was convinced she didn’t want to feel. A hesitation that was stubbornly telling her that whatever she was going to write in that letter was the epilogue of the old book that was to precede the fresh chapter of the new one she had been so eager to open.

She closed her eyes and shook her head slightly, steadily and sensitively coaxing her mind into dominating the hesitation.

It was the time; it was time to embrace the bittersweet ending that was to bring both the undisputable disgrace and the absolute happiness. She opened her eyes and in a short series of movements, she was ready.

Under the incandescent, warm light of the conjured lamp above her, she dipped the quill in the ink and touched the paper with it. Her hesitation vanishing into the air.

“When we were kids, Helen and I loved to play a game. We sat on the train from London to Manchester in the early summer every time we went to visit Granny. We sat there and looked around at the people. We made up lives for the people in the train. We stared at people and made up their lives. If we saw a beautiful woman in an elegant suit, we figured out she was a successful businesswoman, working for a fancy company. If we saw a lively young girl, we imagined she worked on a music store and had a handsome boyfriend named Franco, from Italy. We once saw this woman, who was nothing but fabulous, and we imagined she was French, and owned a fashion store in Paris. We loved it, we loved it badly, it was the best part of going to Granny’s. It was an odd game to play, especially for a couple of 8 year olds but we loved it so bad it almost hurts to remember”

She sighed, raised her head and concentrated on the sound of her sigh, of how the air vibrated as it came out of her lungs. She stared at the wall in front of her before taking a deep breath and went back to writing.

“Then, I went to Hogwarts and many things changed then for us.” She sighed again. “Along the road, the three of us did many things. Some we will always cherish, some people wouldn’t imagine, and some I’d prefer they didn’t. We shaped each other in ways that we can’t understand, and all three of us, some unexplainable way, came out alive. Yet for some reason, I always remembered that game Helen and I used to play. That feeling, of setting our imaginations free to take a wild walk around the train and the way we loved it and enjoyed it. We loved it! We loved it in the same way in which our minds unconsciously deciphered a code that veiled the way we as 8 year olds imagined our own lives would turn out to be.

I don’t remember exactly, but I must have been about 20 the first time I wondered. I had just gotten engaged, and I took the train to Manchester to see mum. There was this girl sitting across from me. The memory of her braided hair and her bright green eyes is so painfully clear in my mind still. She wouldn’t take her eyes off of me. And out of nowhere, out of the blue, it occurred to me that this girl, who was about 8, was doing with me, the same thing Helen and I so casually used to do to people.

The girl kept trying to figure me out, and I realised in an anguished moment of absolute truth, that I didn’t know how to figure myself out. I cried when I met with mum at the house that was my Granny’s.

And that pain, that horrendous feeling of disorientation, has walked around with me for longer than I wanted to admit.

I used to avoid the thought. I used to avoid it like it was an annoying detour I took to avoid an uncomfortable street I didn’t want to walk down. I avoided it when I had the engagement party, and at the wedding rehearsal. And even though I cried that morning, I avoided the thought the day we married.

I have an inevitable tendency to avoid anything that I can’t understand to the point of intentionally ignoring its existence. And I couldn’t understand why something within me told me, that however perfectly happy I convinced myself I was, if young Helen and Hermione were to see me on the train they wouldn’t have thought of me as a successful businesswoman, or as a dynamic and happy dancer.

The fact that I so terribly tried to avoid followed me everyday up until now. Avoiding my situation only made it worse, because as the days, the months went by, it never got better and that fact destroyed my expectations of it all being nothing but a thought induced by a long forgotten memory.”

Hermione sighed again and started a new sheet of parchment.

“I lied to myself. And this lie that I made up when I first took notion of my wrongs, has eaten me away. So much that I reached a point where I learned to take that lie as a habit. And I lied to myself, to you and everyone in my life, thinking and making believe that I was happy.

I was unhappy.

So terribly unhappy.

And I realise how selfish it may seem to acknowledge it just now, when I’ve had so much time to do so. I am sorry. So sorry! Because I wish I knew before! I wish I had been brave, and I wish I had been able to get this across to you. But I couldn’t! I couldn’t do it, and I realise how badly I’ve hurt you. I never meant to.

I didn’t stop lying, and even though sometimes I felt I was drowning in my agony, even when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, I shook my head and shed some tears before I lied again and told myself it was just normal to have moments of total disorientation because that’s what life’s made of when you have the baggage we have.

I’m sorry because for some reason, unbeknownst to me, I never stopped to consider how wrong it all was instead of shaking the thoughts off my mind. I never stopped to consider that there might be a way out until some time last year.

And all these things, these underlying things that I never admitted to you or myself, I need you to know them now. Because you’ll have questions, I know you will, and I intend to answer them, even though I know I probably don’t deserve your sympathy or your attention.

I was unhappy.

I don’t mean to sound like a victim, but I must admit that I never took the time to analyse the signs of my misery, and that a part of me blames you for not noticing either. Because sometimes I wondered! There were times when for a moment or two, I looked at the situation and saw something out of place! I wondered why the slightest thing made me cry and how come I was so totally unable to prevent that from happening. I did wonder. But I never questioned how come you didn’t notice I cried myself to sleep the night that Neville and Helen got engaged. Or that I couldn’t sleep the night before Harry and Ginny’s wedding, and I cried my heart out in the shower the next morning, carefully casting a Silencing Charm so you wouldn’t notice.

I was dying! I was walking, eating and sleeping but I didn’t know why I kept doing it.

I know it’s unfair, but I’ve been living half of a life since we were in sixth year!

And I realise, I swear I realise this is a terrible thing to say, but the only time I’ve felt truly loved, truly complete and understood has been during my time with him. He’s me! He’s meant for me, we are meant for each other! And I’m so sorry Ron!

He’s home for me! He makes my life possible. He’s the reason I still know how to breathe, and I’ve come to understand that I am the reason he still breathes too! This is so cruel! It shouldn’t have been like this and I shouldn’t have to hurt you this bad, but I must do this because I’ve been dying every night for a long time and so has he!

And we don’t deserve this. We don’t deserve this mean despair and the inevitable guilt that we’ve felt because we wanted to be happier. We sacrificed too much already, and as sad as it may seem, that includes you.

It happened because it was waiting to happen. It was a gigantic monster inside both of us that was eating away at our souls, and it was only waiting to make its appearance and attack us when it made sure we were off guard.

The fact that it’s been going on for more than a year isn’t the important part because what really matters is that we’ve been in love since we were little kids who had no idea which way the world turned. I’ve loved Harry every minute of my life since I met him. And my love for him has grown up with me, and has shaped to our circumstances and the events in our lives. And, I swear this isn’t a lame attempt to throw the guilt at someone else, and specially not a way to pull Harry’s hero card. But, you must know, that if the war hadn’t played us the way it did, none of this would be the way it is being.

I’ve loved him for always. But I gave him up to that war because I knew it was what had to be done, and even though I never prepared myself for it, however I could say I had; I still don’t know if I could have gotten through without him.

He says he did get through because of me, and I believe him. I believe him because I am lost without him! I can’t see straight without him, and I wouldn’t know which way is up if it weren’t for him.

I love him. And he loves me too.

Our unhappiness is the product of our stupidity. Of the blindness with which we ignored the fact that giving this up for the war, was not the same as giving it up once it was over.

I was blind when I married you. We were exhausted and confused, in a blur of images and happenings, we didn’t realise that the implications of what we were doing would chase after us sooner or later. But I was blind, very blind when I married you. And for all the right reasons, I wish I hadn’t. Because I wish I didn’t have to hurt you the way I’m doing so. And because even when I wished – because I did – I could love you the way I love him, the undeniable truth is that I can’t.

When I did, when I married you, I had every intention to make it work. I wanted us to be happy, and I thought I could be happy with you, making a life out of little moments in time that would make me look forward to the upcoming ones. And I was sure we were going to pull it off simply because there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do.

But my heart was never in this marriage. And you can’t make love just happen.

One afternoon on The Burrow’s porch, we looked into each other’s eyes, and the world shifted. I knew what I was missing. I knew what my unhappiness meant, and why I was so excruciatingly eager for something else.

I knew that the reason I couldn’t love you more was that I had always loved him. I loved him first and more than anything.

I knew why I was so envious of Neville and Helen. I knew, with painful agony in every bit of knowledge, that I could be honest with myself only with Harry, and that the life I had tried to construct wasn’t strong enough because it had eaten me away and had become a façade I couldn’t live with anymore.

And my time with Harry, it has only been the way we’ve gathered our strength to break ourselves free from this lie that we built around ourselves and that we can’t hold anymore.

I can’t lie any longer.

I wish I could go back in time and make this less painful, back to that day in sixth year when I gave Harry up to the war he had to fight, and so we wouldn’t ever have gotten the hope to make a lie this big work.

But as much as I wish I could fix all the wrongs we’ve made, only one truth makes it all seem right. Harry and I are in love. We’ve made each other, and we belong together. I will not lie to you and this truth, is the one truth that holds every other truth I may believe in. It’s the time for me to be honest and come clean with myself and with you.

It’s been a long time since I was able to live the life that you and I constructed.

I didn’t cheat because I had an affair with Harry. I cheated on you when I let you think I could have my heart into this. I’m sorry but I can’t. I never could.

I have to make sure that you are aware of the fact that we didn’t help the situation simply because we couldn’t do it! And that, as hard as it may seem, I swear is true.

We are deeply sorry Ron. I love Harry. I’ve always loved him and let me say that though I understand this is hard and possibly even cruel, loving Harry is not what I feel sorry for.

I’m sorry because you became the victim of our fear and cowardice. We struggled; I swear to Merlin, we struggled. But we won’t anymore. We know we can’t fight it, and the struggling would kill us if we keep it up. But please don’t think for one minute, that we didn’t try not to do this to you because we did try.

Believe it or not, we’ve been trying to make everything better. I know you’re angry, but I hope you can forgive us. It turns out; sometimes you have to do the wrong thing. Sometimes you have to make a big mistake to figure out how to make things right. Mistakes are painful, but they’re the only way of finding out who you really are.

You and I were over before we began, I’m sorry to say, because I was his before I knew I was. I was his before I convinced myself I could be handed over to you. I was always his.

Love,

Hermione.”

She placed a firm dot after her name and stared at it for several moments before his voice could be heard in the room, making her turn around.

“How long have you been up?” he said kindly. She turned to find him sitting in the bed, his glasses on and his eyes, that she could dimly see with the light from the lamp, fixed on her. His question was not an accusation, or a pointed finger. It was an actual, kind and honest concern.

“Just a couple of hours,” She said smiling slightly. “How long have you?”

“Some 15 minutes.” He answered.

“15 minutes?” She repeated in a surprised awe. “What have you done so quietly for 15 minutes?”

“I’ve been looking at you.” He said with a smile, his voice had no trail of mocking. He had been staring at her. “You were writing. And I was looking at you.”

She gave him a small smile and turned to look out the window. It was probably around 3 in the morning. The moonlight was very bright and the night outside the window didn’t seem dark or shadowy but sparkling and clear.

“I like it here,” she whispered. She turned to him and her shoulders shrugged slightly almost by reflex as a faint smile escaped her lips. “I could love it in here!” She took off her glasses and got up from the chair.

She walked slowly to the window and once again held the curtain to look outside. She was enthralled by Garden District and its beautiful Spanish houses.

She could feel Harry’s eyes on her. It was a warm, comforting feeling that was like a small fire inside her chest, something that kept her warm from the inside against the cold on the outside.

She let her eyes wander around the street, focusing on the bright and colourful Christmas decorations that so perfectly matched each other along the street.

She had bought Christmas decorations that very weekend on Hannah Abbot’s store in Diagon Alley. She had wondered, if Hannah thought something about Hermione Granger who lived in a small flat, buying lights and decorations for a large house. But she didn’t care. She bought lights and decorations for Godric’s Hollow, and she intended to use them. The sooner the better, she told herself.

She sighed loudly and turned to look at Harry. His green eyes stared at her behind his glasses and an expectant intention of his stare gently caressed her.

“Tell me,” he said in a low, gentle voice.

She turned her head again and her eyes stared at the brightened street.

“It’ll be Christmas in three days”

“I know”, he said. Of course he knew, she was not stating anything unknown.

She turned to him.

“I want to be with you.” She said firmly, making sure there was kindness in her eyes instead of fierceness. “On Christmas, we will be together. We’ll have a tree and decorate it and spend Christmas Eve and Boxing Day at home. At home, in Godric’s.”

His face showed no response for a few agonizing moments.

And during each of those agonizing moments, the inner insecure girl in Hermione feared that Harry would flat down reject her.

Yet his eyes sparkled with a smile and his whisper was joyful when he spoke.

“I’d love that.”

She smiled broadly at him and received an equally bright smile in return from him. Unexplainable happiness floated inside and around her. She felt like she was 9 years old, and was opening a deeply longed present on Christmas morning. She nearly chuckled when she considered that there was every chance it felt even better than opening Christmas presents.

“Come to bed,” he said, his smile intact. “I’m dying to hold you.” He said warmly.

She walked to him slowly, taking pleasure in the luxurious feeling of her nightgown’s soothing caress against her legs.

She sat on the bed and stared at Harry’s exposed chest, the lust that erupted within her almost pushed her into kissing his chest right then. But she gracefully sat closer to him and leisurely placed her palm on his chest slowly taking it to the spot she loved where she could feel his collarbone under her fingers.

“You know what it means, don’t you?” he said tenderly. “That we want to spend Christmas together?”

“That we have tomorrow to sort it all out?” she said distractedly.

He didn’t answer. She figured she didn’t even need an answer. She started to run her hand lovingly up and down his chest. He reached out for her and wrapped his arm around her waist his hand rubbing circles in the low of her back.

They were silent for a moment. A confident silence that gave her comfort and pleasure. They didn’t look in each other’s eyes, merely settled in the comfort of their touch. Hermione concentrated in enjoying Harry’s warm hand on her back and the feeling of touching his chest that was warm with the heat of sleep.

The short distance between their bodies nearly made her shiver with anticipation.

It was Harry who broke the silence.

“You were writing to him.”

His tone was not an accusation or a hint of jealously. Something about him wanted to make sure she was not hesitating. She smiled; he still had his inner insecure kid, just like her.

“Yes, I was.” She said looking into his eyes. He tightened his arms around her and sighed.

“He’ll get over it,” he whispered.

“I know,”

*~*~*

“2 am and she calls me

Cause I’m still awake

Can you help me unravel

My latest mistake

I don’t love him

Winter just wasn’t my season”

~Anna Nalick

*~*~*

“Mum,” Hermione said as quietly as her quivering voice allowed her. “This is the part where you react to what I’ve said by saying something.”

“Well,” her mother said. “Do you want me to be surprised?”

“I want you to be honest.” Hermione said with her heart beating twice as fast and pumping somewhere in her throat.

“Hermione,” her mother said calmly. “You showed up at my door in the morning, wearing your designer dress from last night, begging for me to help you move out of your flat so you can move in with Harry into a house you two secretly renovated. You tell me you don’t love Harry the way you ought to love an old time friend but instead, you’re in love with him and the pursuit of your happiness entirely depends on your marriage being finished.” She stopped and sighed. “And you want me to be honest and I…” she sighed again. “Have only two things to say to you.”

“Mum-“

“I have no idea what you’ve been waiting for.” She said with her best comforting mum tone.

A Disarming spell wouldn’t have done better, for her mother’s words utterly and completely disarmed Hermione. The beauty of her mother’s honesty, and the comforting warmth in her voice were the precise comfort and warmth that Hermione had gone after. All the way to Manchester, to her grandmother’s old house, seeking, not so much for her mother’s help to move out but for her approval.

But little did she expect to be so downright surprised by her mother’s reaction, for with her words and with the kindness in her eyes, she told Hermione that she knew, as usually mothers did, that her marriage was over before it even began.

“Mum,” Hermione cried in an anguished whisper. Tears clouding her view of her shoes as she lowered her head. She shook her head slightly and bit on her lower lip then raised her head and stared into the brown kindness of the eyes that were just as her own. “You’ve never said a word.” She said simply, in a tormented whisper that held together all the questions she desperately wanted to ask.

She sighed, walked the few steps separating her from her daughter and wrapped her in a tight embrace. “You wouldn’t be standing before me and your determination wouldn’t possibly be so unwavering if I had.”

A moment of silence went by and then her mother let go of her and turned the kettle off. She poured the hot water in two mugs with tea bags in them and then sat on the table, signalling Hermione to sit in front of her. Hermione sat and wrapped her hands around her mug, resting them in the hot porcelain of her Granny’s old hand painted Chinese porcelain.

“Before your fifth year,” her mother said with a sigh. “You cried yourself to sleep one night and I stood outside your door, tears in my eyes as you sobbed against your pillow. You had loud music in the radio so we wouldn’t hear you, but I did.” Teary brown eyes met Hermione’s and with a warm tear down her cheek she remembered that night, using the music to muffle her sobs. “And I was just about to go in and comfort you when I heard you speak his name between sobs. And I froze and knew! I knew that he wasn’t just your friend Harry, that a deeper, stronger and inevitably gigantic part of yourself you had given to that young man whose sorrow was already your own.” She sighed again and sipped her tea. “He’s owned your heart since you were kids, Hermione. There is no fighting that.”

Her mum reached her hand out on the table and grabbed Hermione’s.

“Hermione,” she said with a bossiness Hermione knew, was also her own. “Stop crying. You don’t need me to help you move out, what you need from me, I already gave it to you. Drink your tea. Stop crying.”

Hermione squeezed her mum’s hand and with her free hand wiped her tears away, blinking once and smiling at her mum.

They remained quiet for a while, drinking their tea and reassuring each other gently in the silence, then Hermione sipped the last of her tea and staring at her empty cup thought of something.

“Mum, you said you had two things to tell me?”

Her mother smiled warmly and got up the table, picking the cups and carrying them to the sink.

“It’s 8 o’clock on Christmas night, I’ll be waiting for the two of you.”

“Thank you mum.”

*~*~*

“Sweet the sin 


Bitter the taste in my mouth

I see seven towers 


But I only see one way out

You got to cry without weeping 


Talk without speaking

Scream without raising your voice

You know I took the poison from the poison stream

Then I floated out of here

Singing”

~U2

*~*~*

Her eyes were staring at the ceiling and her back was against the comfortable mattress covered in the cotton sheets that she had gotten herself; her head resting in her soft pillow. But she wasn’t really there; she was drowning in an ocean of her own device, for she had hidden a thousand feelings under dusty carpets all around her and for the first time she had faced them and taken over them.

She remembered with excruciating agony her first night there and the pain of feeling stupid and small in her unhappiness. She had felt so childish, so silly and disoriented. A distressing feeling that she couldn’t understand, twisting inside her chest and running warmly and cruelly down her cheeks as she cried.

She wiped her tears away with her fingers, trying to clear the blurriness in her eyes. Not to really focus on the ceiling, but to make sure she was seeing clearly.

She had finally released herself from all the chains that she made sure had tied her up to that place. She was making sure she’ll forget that she had ever been in that bed, she was putting behind all the sleepless nights in which she had counted the number of nails in her ceiling boards to keep herself from thinking about her unhappiness and the burning hunger for satisfaction that she so eagerly ignored.

She was forgetting that she had bitten her lips closed to keep from screaming Harry’s name. She was picking up all the dead small parts of her heart that were scattered in that bed. And still, for some reason, the memories flooded her mind and she couldn’t think straight, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t keep staring at the ceiling, couldn’t keep herself from hiding her face in the pillow that was not going to be hers anymore.

She was drowning painfully in her sorrow. And it had nothing to do with packing up the musical box her mother had given her before she went to Hogwarts. It had nothing to do with wrapping in soft cotton fabric the first edition of Alice in Wonderland that Harry had given her in her 18^th birthday. She was waking up to the world around her all over again and for some unexplainable, surprisingly unclear reason, she couldn’t stop crying.

It was as if her dad had died all over again, and Harry had gone to war and she had been left again in the small, grey and white hospital room with Helen and she was floating on a cloud, watching herself cry in the bed she had once shared with Ron.

She felt unspeakably hurt by what memories she had tried so willingly to hide from herself. Her marriage was over and it was suddenly terribly sad. It was over and suddenly she found herself to be in a surprising amount of pain. And her relief was a distant feeling in the back of her heart, because the more relieved she felt, the heavier the relief felt on her shoulders.

She was going to leave! For real, finally, she was going to leave, and that was the very last time she was going to lay her head in that pillow, and touch those covers, and stare at that ceiling. She was crying her heart out, occasionally covering her mouth with her hand to stifle the sound of her sobs. She was shaking and her bare feet twisted desperately against each other.

And the feeling of floating in a cloud above her intensified as she watched herself cry and grab the sheets while closing her fists with her face grimacing in pain. She couldn’t breathe. And feeling very much like a child, she wanted to hug her pillow and bury her face against it, to cry until she would fall asleep.

She was in such an unexpected and surprising agony that her heart was oppressing her chest and closing her throat. She turned around and giving into her compelling need, buried her face in her pillow, feeling the soft caress of her hair against her shoulders.

Somewhere between looking around for her things and documents, and packing up all of her belongings, she had realised that she was really leaving that flat. Forever, she was releasing herself from the imprisonment that it on her. She was producing her freedom, and Harry was going to come anytime now to pick her things up and before the night was over, they would walk out together.

She had packed up her life in suitcases that Harry would be picking up before sunset and now it was time to pack up all the scattered emotions that she had hidden in all the secret places of that bedroom. And to her agonizing surprise, that was taking much more energy, strength and courage that she had expected.

Somewhere between the anticipation of her upcoming happiness and the liberation of her oppressing past, she was finding what she didn’t think she needed. Her tears and pain were closure.

Closure, for when she stopped crying, she felt liberated. She didn’t realise how long it took, but Harry was there when she realised that the tears in her unknown need for closure had a reason. Some wounds are so deep, so profound that there’s no way to repair what was lost and when that happens there’s nothing left to do but wait. And as the night fell upon them and the only light in the room came from the faint glow of the windows nearby, she had no doubt that they had waited. Enough.

She took his hand, got up from the bed into his arms, his body warm against her. It was time. Time to stand up. Time to grow up. Time to let go. Time.

*~*~*

Author Notes:

~In a rather spectacular exhibition of my guilty pleasures, the title for this chapter came from a Hanson song I’m not even supposed to have.

~Three quotes in this chapter come from three fantastic episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, which seems to be one of my latest influences.

“Believe it or not, we’ve been trying to make everything better. I know you’re angry, but I hope you can forgive us. It turns out; sometimes you have to do the wrong thing. Sometimes you have to make a big mistake to figure out how to make things right. Mistakes are painful, but they’re the only way of finding out who you really are.” Is from episode 3.04: What I Am

“Some wounds are so deep, so profound that there’s no way to repair what was lost and when that happens there’s nothing left to do but wait” is from Episode 3.09: From a Whisper to a Scream.

“Time to stand up. Time to grow up. Time to let go. Time.” Is from Episode 3.01: Time Has Come Today

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.

Her chest oppressed her lungs and made her breathing difficult once again then, as she stood in her flat waiting for Ron to return, with a glass filled with water in her hands, in a poor attempt to distract her consciousness with something rather than the waiting.

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,”