All Hallow's Eve

IslandPrincess1

Rating: PG
Genres: Romance
Relationships: Harry & Hermione
Book: Harry & Hermione, Books 1 - 6
Published: 30/10/2005
Last Updated: 30/10/2005
Status: completed

Side by side, they lay in the grass under the shade of a tree at the lake. A light wind blew, scuttling fallen leaves over their supine forms and shaking a few more free of their branches. The air was chilled, hanging over them like the pervasive mist, and ever so often cut blithely through their light woollen robes. And their eyes were trained on the horizon as the sun, in a blaze of bright red, flaming orange and burnished gold, descended to the twilight of the dying earth. This was the dusk of All Hallow's Eve. My attempt at a fic for the season, and seriously, my parents should take away my rights to the computer. Lighter and fluffier than my usual stuff. R&R

Chapters

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A/N: I know I should be working on the next chapter to Aftermath, and I am, and that second part to Die With Me, and the challenge I wanted to do, and my schoolwork, but I just had to do this.

I don't really have Hallowe'en in my country but it's the season, and I was thinking of something fluffy, and just thought I could do this. Clearly, I can't, it just became pointless fluff, I think, but please note, I really, really tried.

Disclaimer: If JKR is kind enough to send the deed to all this in a bag of treats on the night of October 31st, then it will be. *crosses fingers*

*****

All Hallow's Eve

Side by side, they lay in the grass under the shade of a tree at the lake. A light wind blew, scuttling fallen leaves over their supine forms and shaking a few more free of their branches. The air was chilled, hanging over them like the pervasive mist, and ever so often cut blithely through their light woollen robes. And their eyes were trained on the horizon as the sun, in a blaze of bright red, flaming orange and burnished gold, descended to the twilight of the dying earth.

This was the dusk of All Hallow's Eve.

Beneath a pile of browned leaves between them, the colour of her hair, their gloved hands were linked in the barest of holds. Intertwined, the pinkie and the ring, it was the only contact, for the time being at least, they were to allow the other to have.

It was simple modesty though, for they both feared the danger of any more, for they both feared the memory of what they had done, for they both feared the thing that had come between them.

They both feared what their hearts screamed the truth and their minds logically refused.

In the castle just up the bank behind them the first lights were beginning to appear. Like large, late summer fireflies in the distance, the windows of the Great Hall were brightest. There was to be a grand feast there soon, the lights flickered as if to welcome them home.

Their excited schoolmates, in anticipation of it, could be clearly heard wandering the halls within. The sounds of their voices, their footsteps, and their very existence filled the stillness without.

They had not spoken since they first came out here though, words would have jarred the companionable silence.

The Great Hall, they knew, was decorated with candles, pumpkins and candied treats that the more adventurous among them could eat off the walls. In the dungeons one of the ghosts would be hosting a Death-day Party or a Headless Hunt. In the staff room or offices, the teachers would be at work at the most Machiavellian of plans to ruin the students' fun. In the Common Room their other best friend was awaiting their return.

And they should have been up the bank in the castle with him, but here they were lying on the grass without wrapped in their own thoughts.

All this passed at the evening of autumn on All Hallow's Eve.

When had best friends stopped being just that? Why had they stopped being just that? And why couldn't they just remain what they were before?

He had the weight of the task of saving a world on his shoulders. He inadvertently had the responsibility of the lives of his two best friends in his hands. There were deaths, Death Eaters, Horcruxes, Dark Wizards and surprisingly, school work, on his mind all the time. He had no time or place for pursuits of the heart.

She had the weight of aiding him in that task on her shoulders. She had taken on the responsibility of keeping him alive if with nothing else but her own two hands. There was research, books, counter-spells, plans and extra schoolwork on her mind all the time. But she had given up on aiding her heart in place of guiding his a long time before.

Couldn't it be clearer then, that they could not do this?

No.

Because those best friends loved each other deeper than that. Because they were those best friends, and now they had finally acknowledged that fact. And because he had kissed her, and instead of pulling away in shock, she had kissed him back.

And all this had transpired, not on Valentine's Day, but All Hallow's Eve.

And then he broke the silence that moments before had been filled with the music of the wind and the leaves.

“Hermione?” he asked, his voice tentative as he tested her name.

“Harry.”

Her voice was wearied, and then almost afraid. She had been both expecting and dreading the coming conversation. If his action before had been a moment of madness she didn't think she could bear it. If it had been a last impulse of the hormone driven teenager as the man came to his place she knew she would not stand it. If all it had been were a mistake she would never recover. And yet she didn't try to run away.

She was afraid for her heart, but she couldn't leave him to spare it.

He tried again.

“Hermione… why did you let me kiss you before?” he asked.

It was an innocent question, and deserved an honest answer. It had deserved an honest answer from the moment he quietly leaned over and brushed his lips against hers between the shelves of the library earlier in the afternoon. From the very instant she slipped her arms round his neck and drew him closer. From the moment she let him deepen it.

But her voice chose that moment to fail her and her cheeks flushed rose pink. And even if it had worked, what would she have said? And shouldn't she ask why he had kissed her in the first place?

He took her silence for an answer and sat up.

“I reckon I should tell you why I kissed you first then?” he asked.

She sat up too, and noticed that he still made no attempt to break the contact of their hands and neither did she. But he was speaking and she left it be.

“I don't have a reason… and I don't think I want to have one either… I like you… a lot… and more than just your best friend… I really like you Hermione.”

He said this plainly, turning his vivid green gaze unto her with such intensity that it seemed to burn.

“Everyone says that I can have anything, anyone I want… and we both know that that's not true, that until Voldemort is gone, that won't be true… but if they want to know the truth, I just want you… I don't want anyone… I want you.”

She still could not find the voice to speak. And still he continued to.

“It's unfair what I did in there… kissing you like that… but if I'm going to die, if I'm going to ever have peace, ever have the strength to focus… I want you to know how I feel. And you don't have to say anything, and I know that that's not fair either, but I just want you to know how I feel.”

His gaze had lost some of its intensity. In the fading light where the clear sky above was deepening to navy sequined by a sprinkling of stars, she could only just make out the glint of them behind his glasses. He actually looked every bit like the frightened schoolboy faced with his first crush. But she was not his first crush, or his first kiss, or even his first real girlfriend. She was a first of a different kind, and also the last.

She was his first true love.

Maybe it was the magic of this night where evil spirits of the dead were supposed to wander last before the good came the next day. Maybe it was just her imagination and she would wake in the library having dreamt it all. Or maybe it was true.

After years of just being his friend, after years of just being the person he looked to when he needed something and not simply wanted around, after years of hoping, wondering, wishing, she now knew the truth.

How then, could she best respond to that? How then could she best profess that she felt the same? How then could she let him know that he was hers too?

In their First Year, on the anniversary of this day, she had expressed her friendship by lying for him and her other best friend in a troll-ruined bathroom. But this moment was not about friendship and didn't involve anyone other than him. It was a step up and deserved an action to suit it.

She gave him a smile. A true smile, her first real smile in months, and watched as his face relaxed.

And then she leaned forward and kissed him.

And that was all he needed to know as the twilight faded to night on All Hallow's Eve.

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