Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Final part of this three-shot. For shardraco and mathiasgranger.
Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars
We'll do it all
Everything
On our own
We don't need
Anything
Or anyone
If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
I don't quite know
How to say
How I feel
Those three words
Are said too much
They're not enough
If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life
Let's waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads
I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own
If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life
All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes, they're all I can see
I don't know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never change for us at all
If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
Three years of waiting, and a million people feeling just as bad. What a pair Harry and Hermione make, gaping at each other like fish out of water.
They stand there rather awkwardly in the parlour, Ron feeling like he should sink into the shadows or something. Hermione saves him the trouble.
"Ron," she says evenly, not tearing her eyes from Harry for a second for fear he'd disappear again, "I think Harry and I have some catching up to do."
"Uhh, right," he mumbles, backing out of the room. It's one thing to actively pursue Hermione when Harry was gone and he didn't know how she felt about him, though how he'd missed it over the last three years was remarkable. It's another entirely to stick around when she'd officially made it clear that she wasn't interested. And when Harry was back. He couldn't even beat the memory of the man who haunted Hermione's dreams, how was he to stand up to the real thing?
He goes to wait in the kitchen, where he nurses an entire bottle of Firewhiskey as he waits.
"Harry," says Hermione shakily, almost like she can't believe he's really here, standing in front of her.
He crosses the room in two long strides, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close. She allows herself to sink into the embrace momentarily before she remembers herself and pulls away.
"Where the hell have you been? Why did you leave me? Three years, Harry? Three blasted years and then you appear out of nowhere? What, do you expect me to forgive you and run into your arms?"
Harry shrugs; he'd hoped that was what she'd do, but he needed to do this for himself. "I had to see you," he manages to get out without choking up.
"You've had three sodding years to see me!" she yells angrily, huffing as she turns and makes a grab for the nearest cushion. She starts wringing it in her fingers nervously, half-wishing that it were Harry's neck.
His face flushes as he silently admits to himself that she's right, it has been three years, over a thousand agonizing, torturous days that could have been spent with her.
"Wait, why do you care?" he asks as he realizes she was here with Ron; that the redheaded bastard is still in the picture.
"Why do I care?" she screeches in disbelief. "Are you mad? Why wouldn't I care that my best friend disappeared for three years because I was half his ruddy problem? Because I hurt him so much that it felt like he was being stabbed in the bloody eye? Why wouldn't I care?"
"Erm…" mumbles Harry as he flushes a deep scarlet. Then he hits on the words she used to describe him. Best friend. He was right. That's all he is to her, all he'll ever be. She missed his friendship. Not him, not Harry, just Harry. She missed her friend. "Good to see your feelings haven't changed," he grumbles, wishing that he had his own pillow to strangle right now.
"Like you give a flying pig's arse about my feelings," spits Hermione, suddenly feeling like cursing is the only way to get her point across. "If you had, you wouldn't have bloody well walked out on me."
"You would've stopped me!"
"I tried!"
"Letting me kiss you goodbye isn't stopping me!"
"Letting you? Letting you? Like I pitied you and it was the only way I could think of to say goodbye? Oh, you really are rich, Harry Potter. Did you ever stop to consider that maybe, just maybe, I wanted you to kiss me? That I wanted that bloody forever you promised me on the battlefield? That it broke my heart to see you falling apart up there and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get through to you?"
Harry freezes on the spot. She wanted him to kiss her? She wanted forever? He… he broke her heart?
"Sweet Merlin, Hermione…" he groans, his hand coming up to cover his mouth. He feels like he is going to vomit, he's making himself sick with how stupid he was. Did he ever just stop to ask her how she felt?
As his hand rises his sleeve falls back and exposes his forearm to Hermione, and she gasps as she sees the magical tattoo.
"Harry?" she asks tentatively.
He looks up at her, his eyes watering as he tries to keep the vomit at bay. He's so disgusted with himself that it's nearly impossible.
"Why do you have runes tattooed on your arm? Runes that make no sense?"
Her cool fingers circle his wrist as she pulls his hand from his face, turning his palm and arm over so she can better look at the faint inscription there. She traces her nails along the lines, her face screwed up in concentration as she looks at them. She realizes now that this is the scar she had seen three years ago that she had taken to be self-mutilation. It was nothing but a tattoo of runes that translated into gibberish.
"They make sense," mutters Harry. He looks deep into her eyes before reluctantly pulling out his wand and pressing the tip to his arm. The runes begin to slide apart and the individual lines reform to spell a faint pink name across his skin. "Hermione," he whispers, reading his skin.
She looks up at him, tears in her eyes as they seem to ask her silent question. Why?
"It was the only way I could have you," he says gruffly, pulling away his wand and sliding his sleeve down. "You-you were Ron's."
"Ron's?" she asks curiously. She was certain she had denied any and all advances he had made, and equally certain that the charm Harry had used to create that tattoo was Dark Magic.
"I saw it all. At the battle. When he hugged you and kissed your cheek before I left. When I came back and he was too busy kissing you to make sure I was alive. All those times in the hallways when he'd ask you out or try to kiss you. And I…I just couldn't. I hate him for it, but how could I say anything? The moment his lips touched yours you were off-limits. I can hate him all I want for taking you away from me, but I couldn't try to steal you from him. I'm not like that."
"And now? Harry James Potter, if you are dabbling in the Dark Arts…"
Harry sighs heavily, hanging his head and ignoring her accusation. "It's been three years, Hermione," he rasps, refusing to meet her gaze. "Ron stopped being my friend the day I left and didn't even get so much as one measly owl from him wondering what happened. I don't care anymore."
"So you've come to steal me away from him?"
Harry nods. "I'll kill him if I have to, Hermione, but I need you. I really can't take this anymore. I'm broken, and you're the only one that can fix me. Hex me for being selfish, I don't care, but for once in my life I want what should have been mine in the first place. I never got to tell you…"
He trails off, leaving Hermione to contemplate the idea of him murdering Ron for her. She opens her mouth to tell him it's not necessary, there's nothing between them, but the words that next come tumbling out of his mouth are so beautiful that she can barely speak.
"I love you, you know."
Hermione is sure she is hearing things, and looks up at him with wide eyes. "Y-you… you what?"
"I love you."
"Then why did you leave?!" she screams, throwing the thoroughly-wrung pillow at his head. "If you love me so bloody much, why the hell did you disappear for so long?"
"I thought you were with him!" replies Harry equally angrily. "And that you weren't comfortable showing it for fear of how left out I might feel! It'd be just like you to do that, you know, sacrificing your own happiness to make sure I was alright."
"And what the fuck do you think you were doing for three years?" yells Hermione, barely registering that she has just used the worst curse word she knows of. She is too frustrated to care. "You sacrificed your own happiness, the chance to tell me how you felt, because you thought I'd be happy with Ron?"
Harry nods solemnly, regarding her features carefully. "You just swore."
"I know I fucking swore but for the love of Merlin Harry, you've been gone for three years, you suddenly appear in the parlour and tell me you love me and you left because of it and you expect me to just take it calmly?"
"Um, this probably isn't a good time to interrupt," says Ron, staggering into the parlour with the now-empty Firewhiskey bottle in his hand, "but I'm all out of booze and I'm gonna need a helluva lot more if you want me to get through tonight without trying to kill Harry. I'm in no condition to Apparate."
Both Harry and Hermione glare at him, and he shrugs his shoulders. "Confundus charm it is, then," and he walks down the hallway with his wand pointed at himself.
Her anger dissipated when Ron entered the room, and Hermione sits back wearily on the couch with her eyes shut. "Do you really love me, Harry?"
He immediately kneels in front of her, clasping her hands in his own. "I do."
"What are we going to do about Ron?" she asks, opening her eyes and meeting his.
"Sod Ron, we'll do it all-everything, on our own. It's you and me, Hermione. Our whole lives we haven't needed anything or anyone but each other." He presses his lips to her fingertips, and the ghost of a smile flits across his face. "But Hermione, please… Is there a chance, even the smallest chance, that maybe you could return my feelings? Not now, I don't want to pressure you, but… someday?"
"Oh Harry," she whispers, sliding down to join him where he is kneeling on the floor. She looks into his eyes and then tugs him back to lay on the carpet with her. "Tell me something," she says. "If I just lay here, for however long, would you lie here with me and just forget the world? Forget Ron, forget the Prophet, and forget anyone and anything that might get in our way. Would you? Can you just forget the world, Harry? Pretend it's just you and I?"
"It's always been just us," he admits, turning his head to see her.
She smiles and they lay there contentedly for some time before Hermione speaks again.
"I don't quite know how to tell you how I feel, Harry," she admits nervously. She has had three years to prepare for this moment, and yet her usual eloquence and elaborate vocabulary escape her when she needs them the most.
"You could tell me you love me," he says with a small smile.
She shakes her head and his face falls. "Oh Harry no, it's not that I don't. It's just that, well; I really think those words, those three words, are said far too much." She pushes herself up on her elbows so that she can see into his eyes. "For us, those three words aren't enough."
His heart begins to beat faster as she lowers her head to his and their lips meet. There are no fireworks, only the smooth feel of lips on lips as Harry's arm comes up to encircle her back and pull her closer.
"Do me a favour, Hermione?" he says gruffly against her lips.
"Anything."
"I can forget the world for you. Can you say those three words for me? Even if they aren't enough?"
She pulls back, looking fearfully into his eyes. She knows that once she says those three words, she'll be too far gone to save herself. If he leaves her again, she won't be able to deal with it.
"Promise me you won't leave again."
"Hermione, understand something. All that I am, all that I ever was… I can see it here, in your eyes. Your perfect, beautiful eyes. All I want to see in them now is all that I can be. And that's nothing without you. I'm not going anywhere. Not as long as you want to be mine."
She blinks back tears at his eloquence, now realizing where hers has gone. "I love you," she whispers.
He smiles, a real smile this time, his trademark lopsided grin. With his arm around her waist he lifts his other hand to her shoulder and turns them over, pinning them into the carpet.
"Mine," he growls fiercely, silently praying that Ron can hear that Hermione is now off-limits to him.
"Yours," she replies, kissing him.
"Forever."
<><><><><>
Forget what we're told, before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life
All that I am, all that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes, they're all I can see.
I don't know where; confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never change for us at all.
If I lay here, if I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
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