Embattled

A/N: Those of you who frequent my journal would have read this, in which case, sorry. I just sort of came across it and thought, why not. It’s fluff, and from the boring/ordinary files.

Disclaimer: They belong to JKR, I’m only playing.

*

Embattled

“Permit me a calm dream.

Don’t leave me alone.

That short street—so short!

We have been walking for years.”

The Singing Flower

Shu Ting

(Translated from the Chinese by Caroline Kizer)

*

In the afternoon he chases her out.

She shifts on the swing and grimaces. Weak sunlight tosses in its corral of willows, the garden seized by a burly wind. The Apprentice Healer’s Handbook is heavy on her lap and her fingers ache from holding the pages in place. Shadows and light and shorn leaves hustle past, a breath of old flowers on them. Her hair is webbed across her face. She digs her feet into the ground to stop the swing from heaving in the wind. His roses are bent almost to the ground. So much for fresh air, she mutters to herself. Her eyes sting from the skittish light and lines of faint print eager to take flight. It’s as if the earth’s on the verge of hurtling over its edge with her in its grasp. She decides to go find him.

Inside, the house smells of fresh linen drunk with sun and wind. He’s been complaining of having to work harder than a house-elf. And that, as a result, once she qualifies he’d be her first patient. Wife-Induced Fatigue, he’s diagnosed himself. A tall glass on the kitchen counter holds a yellow rose that’s been wilting for the last four days. She smiles inspite of herself. He’s so proud of it, his first yellow rose, and wouldn’t let her throw it out and fill the glass anew. The countertop is littered with worn petals. She fingers them, eager for the velvety suppleness that persists despite the crinkling brown edges. She thinks about emptying the glass while he’s nowhere to be seen, but changes her mind.

She steps across the kitchen and looks around. He’s lying on the old couch next to the window, one arm hanging over its edge, the other over his face. Crookshanks is perched over his feet, solemnly contemplating the embattled garden. She walks over. His glasses are off, his eyes closed. She stares down at him for a moment, his lips in a half-smile, his chest steady, peace sculpted into the battered hollows of the couch. She drops to the ground and nestles her cheek in the hollow where his flung-out arm meets his shoulder, twining herself around his arm.

A moment and a deep breath later, a hand comes up to her hair.

“A bit windy outside, isn’t it?”

His drowsy but barely conealed laughter tugs at the corners of her lips. She snorts.

“Yeah, can you tell?”

He runs fingers through her hair, and she angles her head. Tangles ease. He pulls at a knot and she winces. “Sorry”, he breathes. Fingers press on her scalp. She makes an unintelligible sound and rubs her cheek against his arm.

By the time he’s drifted past the dip behind her ear and over the base of her neck, she’s almost forgotten the unsettled feeling in her stomach. In the pale light the drama of the trees and wind plays in smudged shadows at her feet. Peace, however momentary, has a smell, she decides. Slightly smoky from bonfires and summer laid to rest, roses folding, wind clearing the land for snowfall. And through the changing seasons, him, his scent never named, never defined, but always there, potpourri of endless hours spent together, years spent loving.

“Are you done?” He murmurs.

“Almost. Just two more chapters.” Her words, begun as a coherent thought, end in a muffled whisper against his skin. He shifts and her head presses against his chest. She turns her face and he nuzzles her cheek.

“You’ll be fine, Hermione.” He says. She swallows.

He doesn’t say it the way everybody else does, dismissively, with an edge of incredulous and hard-pressed patience. At least, not any more. It’s as if he’s seen the open space inside her, with her so small in its windswept middle, forever in homage to an implacable god. I can’t take it for granted, Harry, it seems that way to people, like it’s so easy, but it’s not, she’d sobbed after Ron had teased her mercilessly over spending three days shut up in her room due to a less-than-perfect Ancient Runes NEWT. And that night, having run out of ways to comfort her, so undone and vulnerable against her sharpest defining trait and her deepest insecurity, he’d kissed her for the first time. Don’t mind Ron, Hermione. He doesn’t mean it. And I understand.

“Yeah.” She concedes. She lifts her chin and rests her face in the crook of his neck.

“What time do you finish?”

“The last paper’s at half-past four.”

“What do you want to do afterwards?”

She sighs. His warmth is both sweet and salty. “Come home and go to sleep. And not wake up for at least a week.”

He nudges her face and she angles up until her lips are resting on his.

“That shouldn’t be too hard to arrange.” He says with a grin. “I don’t know about sleep but at least I’ll keep you in bed.” His tongue slips in. She forgets, tomorrow dropping off the edge of a world spinning to a familiar rhythm, lays down, gives in.

--end--