Summary: On the eve of Harry's wedding, he turns to an old friend for comfort. This is a prequel to House of Cards and Everyday Tragedy. I think this is one of the best things I've written of the late...
"It's late, Harry," she says, having followed the flickering light of a single wand down the creaky
staircase and outside onto the porch. "Everyone else has been in bed for hours. It's a - a big day, tomorrow
is."
He shrugs miserably, staring out over the rain-slicked backyard. She can tell at a glance that he's seeing past the broomshed, beyond the wooded patch where they used to play Quidditch two-a-side, back when things were less complicated. She can always tell.
The rain streams down his forehead, flattening his unruly hair and plastering his fringe to his forehead, masking the scar that made him so famous. For the briefest of moments, he looks more like the little boy she used to know and less like the man he's become. It's hard to believe that in no time at all, he'll be strolling up the aisle to marry Ginny Weasley, she realizes with a start. Even after the diamond engagement ring and the frilly invitation, it hadn't seemed real to her. There was always time, you see? Hadn't they shattered a dozen nightmares, cracked a hundred codes, and broken a thousand curses all at the last possible moment? But now, with the soggy streamers and empty bottles of Ogden's Firewhiskey leftover from the bachelor party scattered across the yard, it is suddenly, agonizingly clear that they are out of time. The eleventh hour has come and gone and no time-turner on earth can send them back. Not now.
After all they'd been through together, he'd gone and gotten himself betrothed, engaged, affianced, and - as of tomorrow - hitched. And that changes everything.
"I can't do this, Hermione," Harry murmurs.
Unable to think of any words to ease the difficulty of his situation, she resorts to rubbing her tired eyes on the sleeve of her nightgown. She's not surprised to hear him voicing his reservation. She knows him well, reads him as though he is another one of her books.
"I used to want this," he says, as though he's reassuring himself of that fact. "Before…" He doesn't need to fill in the blank. Before the war. Before everything went to pieces and before he was expected to pick up all those broken pieces and remake his life. "But this is something I have to do," he cocks his head at the archway, draped with flowers, lengths of silk, and strung with fairy lanterns. They'll stand beneath that archway tomorrow, Harry and Ginny…
Once upon a time, before their little corner of the world went berserk, she'd thought about Harry - about falling in love with Harry, to be precise. Being young and naive, she'd placed "being in love with Harry" in that catch-all category of "maybe someday" things: sky-diving, for one, dying her hair ostentatious colors, for another. Not now. Maybe someday. Probably never. It wasn't until she was threatened with the immediacy of losing him (to Voldemort, to the Prophecy, to another girl), that she realized that she'd loved him all along.
"I don't want to hurt her," Harry says, tucking his knees up under his chin. Then he adds, with an ironic laugh, "That and I've already bought my dress robes."
"That's a poor excuse for tying the knot."
"What do you think, then?"
"I think that I'll support you, no matter what."
"Tell me not to marry her. Tell me I'm making the biggest mistake of my life."
She meets his gaze dead-on, only to be disarmed by the intensity of the look in his eyes - a look he's surely never cast in Ginny Weasley's direction.
"Tell me you love me, then," Harry says recklessly, eyes scouring her face, anticipating her answer.
"I can't."
"Can't love me or can't say it?"
"Can't break up a wedding. Can't be the reason you don't marry Ginny."
The rain gradually lets up and still he says nothing. She doesn't want him to marry Ginny, doesn't want that door to close, but she cannot in good conscience tell him what to do. She must not tell him the truth, that yes, she loves him, and no, she doesn't think a union forged between Harry Potter and the youngest Weasley stands much of a chance. Her words carry too much weight with him for her to speak so frankly on the eve of his wedding. She has the power to ruin everything. Or save it.
"Harry, say something."
"I'm a son to them, to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley," he mumbles, as though that ought to settle the matter. He cradles his head in his hands as the world spins around him.
Suddenly, she finds herself quite incapable of remaining silent any longer, despite her best intentions of keeping whatever feelings she might have out of it. "And if you are a true son in their eyes, they want nothing more than your happiness!"
"No." She can see by the steely look in his eyes that his mind is made up. It's the same look he wore when he tried to dissuade her and Ron from following him on the hunt for the Horcruxes, the same look he had about him before the final battle. It's always the same look of dogged determination, the need to live up to all the lofty expectations of others, even when he would rather crawl away into a corner and hide. "The Weasleys have been nothing but kind to me. It'd be a poor way to repay them, trampling on their good will and hospitality."
"Your being noble will only get people hurt!" she cries, caution be damned.
"No one need suspect a thing," he says impassively, settling into his position, digging in for the long haul. "Not if I'm a good husband and son-in-law-"
"If you'd rather live a lie than come clean, then-"
"If I'd rather live a lie - what?"
"Harry, please-I didn't mean-"
"It's late," he says darkly. "Everyone else has been in bed for hours, Hermione." He brushes past her and the screen door squeals on its hinges as he throws it open and stalks inside, leaving Hermione alone, alone with the painful realization that her words haven't saved him. She's tossed him a line but he's drowning anyway.
They're out of time.
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Should I keep going with this series? It's all out of joint because I wrote House of Cards (the slow dissolution of Harry & Ginny's marriage first), and then Everyday Tragedy (Harry getting read to move out) and now I'm at the beginning, but would anyone be interested in more?
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