DISCLAIMER: Usual disclaimers about JK owning everything apply; I borrowed a few quotes from Angel (one of the best shows ever) and may have unintentionally stolen the idea of wand-making from a story called `Career Day.' I think I did. I don't remember. But if I did, way to go with a terrific idea. I liked it so much I borrowed it.
AN: I don't know if I'd consider this `shippy' but I wanted to do something about Harry and Hermione discussing how much it sucks being them sometimes.
The Price of Being Extraordinary
It was colder than it should be in early October, Hermione noted as she stepped from the tent and pulled her shawl tightly around her shoulders. The leaves crunched beneath her boots-a sound for which she was glad. Crunching leaves meant that the weather had stayed dry. It also made approaching intruders easier to identify. She nearly tripped on Ron's big awkward feet on her way toward the fire, stopping and smiling down at him affectionately.
"Ron," she whispered, leaning down and giving him a gentle prod with her wand, "Ron, go inside and get some sleep."
"My shift over?" he muttered groggily, rubbing his eyes and blinking at her.
She fought her eyes from rolling, "Yes, it's my turn. Go to bed." He didn't need telling twice and slithered into the tent, shutting the flap behind him. "Some lookout," she joked to her other best friend who'd been staring somberly into the fire for the past several hours.
"I told him hours ago I was fine," Harry said gruffly, passing a rock from one hand to another. "You know Ron."
Hermione sat down on the log bench next to him with a yawn, "That I do."
"You didn't have to get up," he said, studying her carefully, "I'm all right by myself."
"Harry," she sighed, "you've barely slept in weeks. We agreed it would be easier if we took shifts."
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine," she protested, not afraid of the temper she was testing. "Why don't you go and try to rest? I'll be fine out here."
"I'm not tired," he insisted stubbornly.
She rolled her eyes, "All right, fine. But if you're worried about me, don't be. I've got Boils and Sores: A History of Unfortunate and Uncomfortable Curses to keep me company," Hermione held up the thick tome invitingly. "If any Death Eaters come skulking about, I'll just bore them to death." She waited for him to smile, even give the faintest hint that he'd heard her. "Or, I could just beat them over the head with it-same concept, really."
The ghost of a smile crept its way onto his face, "I might need to borrow that later."
"Sure thing," his green eyes wandered past her and over to the wooded hill to the east. "Have you been over yet?" she asked quietly, running her fingers over the worn pages of her book.
He shook his head, "Tomorrow, maybe."
"Tomorrow sounds good," she agreed amiably, not wanting to push the issue of time. Not wanting to say that they were running out of it rapidly, that every day they stayed in the same place, the more opportunity Voldemort had to find them, that once winter came they would be hard pressed to find a place to stay as well secluded as the woods behind Godric's Hollow. She didn't want to seem insensitive, pushing Harry toward his parents' grave, but they couldn't afford to stay there for more than two more days. "What have you been doing all day?"
"Thinking," he answered honestly, tossing a rock from one hand to the other, his eyes focused back on the fire.
"About tomorrow?"
"About a lot of things."
"Like what?" Harry turned to face her and studied her again slowly, almost scrutinizing her. "What?" she asked, feeling her cheeks getting warm.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Of course," she smiled, feeling herself relax once he looked away from her.
"Were you happy with Ron?"
Taken aback by the question, Hermione opened her mouth to answer, closed it and cocked her head to the side. "Why do you ask?"
Harry shrugged, "I just wanted to know."
"Um…well…" it was a much more difficult question to answer than she'd expected. Things with her and Ron were complicated enough without Harry asking any questions. She and Ron had gotten…closer toward the beginning of summer and had really tried to make a go of things before Bill and Fleur's wedding, and even for a while after. Maybe it wasn't meant to be, maybe the timing was off, or maybe they had simply confused their affection and playful arguments as something deeper. Whatever the reason, anything more serious than a few snogs and cuddles had not developed and any spark they might have had had fizzled out on this exhausting journey.
But that wasn't what Harry had asked.
While it had lasted, for however short a time, had she been happy with Ron? No, not always. Had he made her feel safe and wanted and appreciated? Sometimes. Did she dare say that it hadn't been nearly enough? "Yes," she decided, chewing her bottom lip, "I suppose so."
"You suppose so," Harry repeated thoughtfully, dropping his rock and picking up his wand, twirling it between his long fingers.
"It wasn't all that different," she rationalized thoughtfully. "We still fought quite a bit-you know that-but…I don't know it was…more complicated, I suppose, not any better or worse. I prefer this to the way we were, though, if truth be told."
"This?" he asked, not looking up from his wand twirling.
She shrugged, "It wasn't going to work out and we both knew it. We make better friends really, when you get down to it."
"But you're happier now?"
Hermione gave a sigh and sad smile. "I'd be happy if this war were over," she admitted frankly. "If we were all back in school and I could go to my spot in the library and curl up with a good book," her eyes lost their wistful glaze for a moment, "Not, of course, that Boils and Sores isn't a scintillating piece of literature." Harry smiled and nodded his head in agreeance. "I just wish things were normal again…then maybe I'd feel happy."
"I shouldn't have dragged you along."
"Excuse me, Harry, but `dragged me along' is hardly the way I remember it." She realized then what he meant, where the sadness in his eyes had come from. "I didn't mean to say it that way, Harry. I wish things were different, of course I do, so does everyone. But that doesn't mean I don't want to be here, fighting with you. If I have to be anywhere in this whole crazy war, I'm happy that I'm with you."
Harry gave a tired smile, "Always the know-it-all, eh?"
She smiled back, "Would you know me any other way?"
And then they were quiet for a few moments while Hermione pretended to read and Harry returned to staring at the fire. She'd read the same sentence four times before she allowed her mind to wander, no longer caring if it even looked like she was paying attention to the words on the page before her.
"What will you do?" she asked finally, closing her book.
Harry looked up, surprised, "Hmm?"
"When the war is over," she said with a small smile, "What will you do?"
He looked as though he was considering this for the first time. "I guess I hadn't thought about it in a while."
"Really?"
"I mean, I always wanted to be an Auror but lately…"
She tilted her head to the side, "Lately what?"
"Lately I've been thinking that if we get out of this alive, I'll have had just about as much Dark Wizard fighting as I can handle."
"Well then what would you do if you could do anything in the world?"
Having set his wand beside him, he tossed the stone between his hands again while he thought in pensive silence for what felt like a long time. "I think I'd make wands," he said at last, nodding in approval of his own idea.
"Wands? Really?"
"That's when everything started for me," he explained, "when I made a bunch of books fly off the shelves with a wand."
Hermione smiled, "You flew books off the shelves?"
"And smashed a bunch of bottles, too," he remembered ruefully.
"I set Mr. Ollivander's robes on fire and spoke fluent Japanese," she countered with a giggle.
They laughed for a moment before Harry sobered, "Everything was so innocent then."
Noticing the change in his tone, Hermione pursed her lips and tried to keep things cheerful. "So you'll make wands and not be a bloody creeper like Mr. Ollivander."
"He was terrifying, wasn't he?" Harry reminisced with a shake of his head.
"Absolutely," she agreed with a shudder. "You'll make wands, Ron will be the star Keeper for the Canons and bring them back to their days of glory and I'll…" she trailed off and looked down at her hands.
"You'll be the best Healer St. Mungo's has ever seen."
"Right," she sighed. "That's what I'll be."
"But if you could do anything in the world, Hermione, what would you do?"
"I don't know," she answered truthfully, a smile creeping back onto her face. "Isn't that funny? I don't have any idea. Don't get me wrong," she continued hastily, "Healing is a fine profession; I'm just not certain it's what I want to do for the rest of my life. I think I just chose it because it was what everyone expected me to study."
Harry nodded, "Yeah, I know what that's like."
"Yeah," she agreed, "I'd expect you would."
He got up then and added another log to the fire, prodding the flames with a long stick. "If I ever sat and tried to figure out how much I've been through in my life…"he sighed, "How much I've done…"
"Just because someone else expected it," Hermione finished softly. "Yes, well, I guess no one ever explained that being the wizarding world's only hope in the fight against," she sighed wearily, "unspeakable evil doesn't offer a whole lot of wiggle room when it comes to making your own decisions."
He gave a weak laugh, "I should have read the fine print." He shook his head, "Not that I had much of a choice in the matter."
"Even if you had, you know you'd still be here."
Harry shrugged, "Probably. You know me, I've got that damned…oh what did you call it? A `saving-people-thing'?"
She smiled, "At least I don't lie to you."
He was quiet for a few minutes, his lips pursed in thought. "What else have you done because it was expected?"
"Oh, Harry I don't know if this is really something we should be talking about."
"C'mon, you know everything about me."
"That's because it's my job," she reasoned, "someone's got to keep track of you."
"Answer the question, I'm curious now."
She sighed and twisted her lips, pressing her fingers together. "Well, I can't pretend that I didn't try particularly hard to make things work with Ron because I felt like…everyone else wanted it so badly." Harry's eyebrows rose but he remained quiet. "And in the end, I guess that was part of the reason it fell apart. Because I realized that even if everyone in the world told me we were perfect together, it never felt right. Not to mention," she added, "that I felt like everyone was smirking at me with this bloody `I told you so' look on their face."
"And Merlin knows we can't have that."
"Well I certainly can't," she agreed, shoving a few curls away from her face. "I don't know Harry, I suppose living up to other's expectations isn't the worst thing that could happen. I just…" she trailed off, her eyes settling once again on that wooded hill beyond them.
"You just what?"
"I just wonder sometimes, that's all," the look he gave her urged her to continue. "I know it's stupid, but I just wonder how things would be if people expected different things, you know?"
"Like if someone expected you to train security trolls and me to open a morally unscrupulous ice cream shop in Knockturn Alley?"
Hermione laughed, "Something like that. I know it sounds horrible-and you can't ever say anything to him of course-but I can't help but wonder if I would have ever even considered Ron as anything more than a friend if everyone hadn't…" she sighed, looking melancholy, "oh well."
"Maybe you would've wound up together anyway," Harry suggested with a thoughtful shrug.
"But do you ever think…" Hermione looked like she was choosing her words carefully, "Do you ever wonder…" she paused again, "that if it had been…well, if you and I had been expected to fall in love with other people…do you ever wonder how things would have played out?"
"Other people than Ron and Ginny, you mean?"
"It's just a thought," she said quickly, opening her book once again. "I just wonder that maybe if, things had been…expected differently from the start, well, if things had been different between Ron and me, that things might have been different between you and me too." Harry didn't say anything, nor did his expression change, Hermione turned her focus to the words on the pages in front of her. "Silly, I know. I mean, why think about something so inconceivably imposs-"
"I think about that all the time," he said quickly, turning his eyes to the fire.
She pursed her lips sadly, "We must have missed our moment, hmm?"
"Maybe we're not supposed to," Harry said, concentrating on rolling his wand between his hands again.
She felt her eyebrows crinkle, "What do you mean?"
"Maybe there are some people who just don't get to have that. And people like us just sort of learn to-"
"Harry," Hermione leaned over and put a hand on his shoulder, "there are no people like us," she smiled sadly, a lock of hair falling into her face.
He reached across and pushed it back behind her ear, his hand lingering on her cheek; when he spoke, his voice was just above a husky whisper, "It really kills me that you're always right."
Hermione tilted her head against his hand and closed her eyes for a moment, blinking out an accidental tear. "It's the, uh," she pursed her lips, "the curse of being a know-it-all."
"Maybe when this all over-" he began with a hopeful tone, but Hermione put a hand to his lips and shook her head.
"Let's not do this, Harry. Not now."
Harry cupped her face with his hands and kissed her forehead gently. "I don't know what I'd do without you." He rested his head against hers for just a moment and offered a sad smile before pulling away.
"Where are you going?" she asked, confused when he stood up and pulled his cloak on over his jeans and jumper.
He pointed to the hill he'd been avoiding for nearly a week. "I'll be back," he promised, his eyes holding something she couldn't quite place. "Wait up for me?" he asked, motioning to her book and her shift as lookout.
"Of course," she assured him, an unfamiliar lump forming in her throat as she watched him begin his hike up over the hill and down into Godric's Hollow.
When he returned, things would be just as they had always been. She would be best friends with a boy who had a destiny too big for his shoulders. She and Ron would continue helping him carry his burden and she would never let on that things weren't just how she'd always assumed they'd end up.
She would never finish her thoughts, to Harry or anyone else, that it didn't matter if she chose to study Healing or the training of security trolls or Divination, that being in love with Harry or Ron or anyone else for whatever reason didn't matter because when she was honest with herself, Hermione couldn't see herself surviving the battle to come. She couldn't see farther than that moment by the fire to see who she would be embracing when the smoke cleared, to wonder if she'd live to get married and have children, or even if she'd live to see Harry come down from that mountain and pretend like nothing had ever happened.
Two more tears slipped down her cheeks before she had the chance to brush them away. Just keep him safe, she thought, to whoever was listening to a scared little girl by a campfire. Just let him get through this-let him see the world he's going to save...even if I'm not there to see it with him.
Being in war forces you to live moment to moment; to treat each day as a pleasant surprise and do your best to make it count. Hermione realized this as the morning dawned cool and damp and Ron stumbled sleepily out of the tent while Harry made his way slowly back down from the Hollow. She looked at Ron's rumpled pajamas and hair, listened to him and Harry grumble about not having enough to eat and joke as they prepared a meager breakfast and she smiled to herself.
Saving the world might have been a task for which none of them were prepared, they may not have had a future much past the age of eighteen, and there may not have been anyone else like them in the world; but they had each other, and that was enough.
AN: Did it rock your socks directly off your feet? Did it blow goats? Should I give up writing for good or become the next JK? My future hangs in the balance. Let me know.
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