A Promise to Keep
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, although if I did I wouldn't be writing fanfiction now would I? They are the sole property of J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Press, Bloomsbury Publishing, and Warner Bros.
A/N: This is my first one shot fic, so please read and review. I would greatly appreciate it! I first uploaded this back in July 2003, but later edited some pieces in December 2003.
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It's hard to imagine that just three years ago, his life had completely turned around. It was the end of innocence. A new beginning. Now, Harry Potter had lost almost everything to Lord Voldemort and his plight. But not everything. He still had his two friends. The ones who had stuck with him through thick and thin. They outright refused to be left behind. They were all that he had left. His strength rested not in himself, but in Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.
His thoughts drifted back through the past three years and the damage that had been done. There were so many people lost. Cedric Diggory. A boy who always valued fair play and honesty. Harry had always been consumed with guilt whenever he thought about his Triwizard competitor, whom, in his opinion, deserved to win. Sirus Black. He began to feel a prickling feeling from the corners of his eyes. He wasn't afraid to cry anymore. Warm tears trickled down the side of his pale, livid face when thinking of his godfather, whom had always seemed a mixture of a brother and father. His death had caused him to wallow in a near comatose state. There were times when he couldn't see where he was going. He couldn't hear the other students calling out to him. He couldn't feel his own tears that flowed freely just after exiting Dumbledore's office that very morning.
That summer brought about a hailstorm upon not just the wizarding world, but the Muggle one as well. Disappearances, mysterious deaths and illnesses. And however much Harry felt saddened by the chaos within the world, nothing quite hit home to him. That is until the attack in Little Winging. Even now, he could still hear the screams rattling in his memory of that night. Houses were being demolished and destroyed every which way. The fire emitting from many of them, was permenantly etched into Harry's mind. As if he could ever forgot it.
Flashback
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A bloodcurdling scream pierced the usually calm, clear night on Privet Drive. Harry sat up bolt right in his bed, clutching at his scar in pain. His ears were now pounding and his forehead felt as if it would spontaneously combust any moment now. His eyes screwed up tightly, he couldn't see the commotion that was being raised outside.
Clothed in black and masked to hide their features, Death Eaters were making their way through Privet Drive causing hell. But, this wasn't the normal band of a dozen or so. Hardly the case. This was an organized group of fifty violent and angry Death Eaters. They tore through houses, clearly not giving a damn about the International Statue of Secrecy. As if they would care.
Downstairs in 4 Privet Drive, loud hammering and banging could be heard. Harry grit his teeth, still in pain, and put on his glasses. His heart was beating faster with every bang on the door. How, in the name of Merlin, am I supposed to get out of this situation. He thrust open his closet where he kept all of his belongings. His wand was hanging limply from within the pocket of his robes. Without hesitation, he grabbed it. Well, no use bothering with the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery. After all, what's the use of expelling me when I'm already dead?
He could hear the door finally push through and several voices could now be heard from downstairs. An icy cold sensation passed through his entire body. He tapped his trunk with his wand, muttering a simple spell. If I am dead, at least my friends can have the pick of my belongings. Even while jesting with himself, Harry felt queasy with weariness. The bottom stair creaked. They were heading upstairs! Rustling from the next room could be heard. No doubt, the noise awoke Uncle Vernon. He had always been a light sleeper. It was only when his thoughts began resting on his relatives that he really began to panic. What about the Dursleys! They can't defend themselves against magic. Brilliant, Harry. Why didn't you think of this before!
"Listen," whispered a vaguely familiar voice. "I want our orders to be clear. Potter must be kept alive. Do you hear me? Or else we'll have hell to pay later, let me assure you!"
"But, what about the others?" drawled a silky, smooth voice. "The Dark Lord never said anything about them. Are they to be kept alive as well."
"Of course not, you git," said the first voice once more. "Killed. Same as the other Muggles. We'll leave no witnesses."
"Except for Potter."
"Potter won't be alive much longer to tell anyone else, you hear me? Now, let's get this over with!"
The door to Harry's right flew open. He could hear Aunt Petunia shriek with fright.
"Say, you lot!" Uncle Vernon tried to say in a menacing voice, but clearly the tactic was not working. Before he could let out another word, the first voice shouted, "AVADA KEDAVRA!"
A vivid green light flashed through the bottom of Harry's door. The entire house was shaking due to the effects of Vernon Dursley dropping dead with a sickening crash beside his wife, who lay shrieking with wide eyes. Harry knew it wouldn't be long before Petunia Dursley felt the effects of the infamous curse. And sure enough, he could hear another thud, this time much lighter shake the foundations of the house.
Without wasting another breath, Harry slipped on his Invisibility Cloak that was hanging from his coat rack. He had inherited this priceless gem from his late father. He grabbed his trusty Firebolt racing broom from his closet that he kept hidden. Mounting his broom, he couldn't help but feel ashamed for what he was about to do. He was never one to flee from the scene. He liked to face death head-on. Fighting for his life spared him from the monotony that usually plagued him every summer up until now. Not to mention the fact that he simply left the Dursleys to die. They never had a chance in the first place, Harry thought. I couldn't protect all three of them, not to mention myself, from several Death Eaters! I always knew they would come to a sticky end, he thought, but felt a bit disgusted with himself for even thinking of such thoughts.
Another booming crash rattled throughout the house. Dudley. Now there was nothing left. Harry stood transfixed to the ground before he realized the full extent of the situation at hand. Footsteps were now edging closer to the door as he fastened his cloak even tighter around him, so as not to fall off. The doorknob jiggled a bit. I'd never thought I'd say this but...got to hand to Uncle Vernon for putting all of those locks on my door. He stepped up his desk, which stood in front of his window. One by one, the locks were being picked off. Harry's heart was now racing to it's full extent. With a slight push out the window, Harry was now sitting in midair atop his broomstick.
The door finally burst through. He could see what appeared to be 7 masked figures now occupying his bedroom. He glided further away from them, but just enough so that he would be able to hear what they were saying. One of them was gesticulating loudly and pointing to the open window that Harry had flown through.
"The window!" he shouted! "Bloody hell! How are we going to find him now, Malfoy? This was your plan."
Harry grinned at the thought of outsmarting a bunch of Death Eaters, especially at the displeasure of Lucius Malfoy. However, one look down the street changed his emotions drastically. It looked no longer like a street, but like a war-zone. Houses were burnt to the ground. Bodies were strewn across every which way. Everywhere Harry turned, the Dark Mark was illuminating through his glasses. He looked upwards and his eyes settled on the luminescent skull directly above 4 Privet Drive. His heart twisted when he saw it. He felt a strange feeling of deja vu. One that he couldn't shake. And for the first time in Harry Potter's life, he broke down and cried silently over the Dursleys.
True, they had physically and emotionally scarred Harry, but they did take him in none-the-less. He felt as every bit as ungrateful as Uncle Vernon said he was. He groaned at the thought of growing up in a Muggle orphanage. Would he have suffered the same fate as Tom Riddle? How ironic that would have been...
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End Flashback
He could never forget the looks on everyone's faces when Harry showed up at 12 Grimmauld Place that night. They appeared to be relieved, seeing as how many had already thought him dead. Mrs. Weasley sobbed and fussed over him so much, he thought for a moment of being a bit claustrophobic. Ron and Hermione were both there as well. How could they not be. His thoughts lingered as he remembered his conversation that night with Hermione.
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A soft knock rapped at the door. Without waiting for an answer, Harry stepped into the high-ceiling room that Hermione shared with Ron's younger sister, Ginny. "Hermione?" he whispered. He wasn't sure how late it was, only that he had hardly fell asleep. No matter how hard he tried, every time he would close his eyes, a pair of snakelike eyes were gleaming back at him glowing a grotesque blood red. That, and the fact that Ron was snoring as loud as a lawnmower. He felt that Hermione would understand the need for him to speak to her.
"Harry!" she gasped in surprise. She was sitting in bed, her covers drawn up to her waist while writing something in a pocket-sized book. She quickly stuffed it under her pillow as he neared her. "What is it?"
"I-er-" he stammered, unable to find the words to say.
She gestured him to sit down at the foot of her bed. He glanced over for a moment at Ginny, who was sleeping as soundly as Harry wished he was. "Harry? Is this about the Dursleys?" Her voice became strangely high-pitched and edgy as if it were causing her great trouble to talk.
He nodded slowly. "I don't understand it, Hermione! I've hated them all my life. I've wished every sort of death and torture upon them and yet I feel sad when those things do happen." He put his head down in his hands and took a shuddering breath.
She placed a comforting arm around him, unsure of what else to do. He looked into her face, which seemed much more pale than usual. Her brown eyes gave off such a feeling of warmth that he found it hard not to look away. "I was wondering when you would talk to me," said Hermione in a voice barely above a whisper.
"You knew I was coming?" he asked, a bit surprised that Hermione knew him that well.
"Of course. After what happened earlier this summer-" She broke off. She couldn't bring herself to talk about it. But it was Harry. The mere fact that it was him she was spilling her heart to made it perfectly all right.
"I never got the chance to say how sorry I am about that, Hermione," he muttered, knowing indeed what she was about to refer to. "It's all my fault what happened. To the Dursleys, your mum and dad...everyone."
She shuffled a bit in her bed. Peering deep into Harry's face she said, "It wasn't your fault, Harry. Nothing could have stopped what happened. Not you nor I. Don't you ever blame yourself for anything that V-Voldemort has done. Do you hear me? Don't wallow in sorrow for something that you never caused in the first place, Harry, because I don't blame you one bit. You're my best friend. You always will be. So is Ron. Nothing can break that between us. Not even death."
Harry couldn't look away from her face that held such a fierce passion that he had never seen before. He nodded once more, unsure of what to say. "I have no one, Hermione."
She forcibly shook him by the shoulders. "No, Harry! You have me. You have Ron and the Weasleys. The Order. You're not alone and you never will be. Even until that final battle, we'll be by your side. Including me."
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And now that time has come. That was all Harry had left. Ron and Hermione. The Order was gone...the Weasley's were deceased, except for Ron. Strangely, Hermione was correct. She always has to be right, doesn't she?, he couldn't help but think. He smiled the first smile that he had felt in ages. How could he be smiling at a time like this? His face quickly retained his rigid form once more. However, he couldn't help but smile when thinking of all the times that Hermione had been correct. He could hardly keep track of them all. Harry often vaguely wondered why she hadn't been sorted into Ravenclaw. She's smarter than the whole lot of them. If she was a Ravenclaw, we wouldn't be as close friends as we are now. He shook out his reverie and stuffed his wand in the inside pocket of his Hogwarts robes.
It was now past midnight. Now was the time to leave if any. He looked at Ron, now sleeping unknowingly in his four-poster bed. I'm sorry, Ron, he thought desperately. I have to get to him first before he gets to you...or Hermione. He couldn't bring himself to wake him up and personally say a goodbye to him. The same goes for Hermione. If he saw their faces, knowing that he was walking towards death, he wouldn't have the heart to leave them.
Harry pulled two pieces of parchment from within his robes. He placed one of them on Ron's beside table. That was the easy part. The tricky part was getting Hermione's letter to her. Hedwig! he thought jovially. He called out for Hedwig, who flew through the open window and perched herself on the beside table .
"I need you to take this to Hermione, all right, Hedwig," he whispered as the owl hooted softy. He stroked her feathers gently. "Leave it somewhere close. Goodbye, Hedwig."
The owl stretched out her wings and took off in flight towards the girl's dormitories. With a resounding sigh, he gently pushed open the door and walked down the narrowing, spiral staircase. He stood in the dark Gryffindor common room. Everywhere he turned came memories of the three of them plotting the next great adventure or Hermione nagging at them to finish their homework. He'd never have another moment like that.
Hermione would brandish me if she heard me thinking like this. She'd always say there was hope. Even with all that's bad in the world, there is still some good. He choked back something near the back of his throat. His eyes became strangle prickly all of a sudden and the corners began to well up. Bloody hell, why am I so emotional all of a sudden? He bit his lip in frustration and walked out of the portrait hole. Harry pulled out his trusty Invisibility Cloak from inside his robes. In one swift movement, he thrust it over him and fastened it tightly.
Walking ever so slowly, so as not to awaken anyone, he walked through the quietly eerie castle. Hogwarts brought so much warmth an comfort, but now it was just a constant reminder of how many lives were destroyed. That blackness covered the castle in so much despair that one would think a smile would be prohibited by school regulations. The echoes of his footsteps resounded throughout the halls. Harry slowed his pace a bit and continued.
No matter how much he fought it, his thoughts always lingered on Hermione and Ron. He couldn't bear to even imagine the look of horror on Hermione's face if they were to figure out that he was no longer alive. She was always the one coaxing him to be reasonable, logical, and rational. And he wasn't heeding her pleas. His stomach dropped a few inches. If I make it out of this predicament, I'll be sure to give her a million apologies. He remember those times when his brash attitude paid off...and those times when he suffered for it. In his fifth year, in the Department of Mysteries, he need for heroics almost spent the lives of his friends and many in the Order of the Phoenix. His head filled with dismay and worry when he saw Hermione drop to the floor unconscious. How he wanted to dismember every limb from Antonin Dolohov's body. She always told him that it wasn't his fault, but that spell had caused her permanent damage for the rest of her life. When she was too excited or when her emotions were on overdrive, she would often feel a sharp bolt of pain in her chest. Madam Pomfrey told her that she will have that scar for the rest of her life. That makes two of us.
For a split second he thought he heard footsteps behind him. He turned around quickly, but there was nothing there. Harry shrugged the feeling off that someone was following him and sped up, not caring that his footsteps were echoing even louder. He pried open the heavy wooden doors and exited the only place that he called home. With a glance around him, he slipped off the cloak and folded it neatly back into his robes. He stood there for a moment, taking in a last look at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. How he would miss this place. And his friends. He shuddered as he felt the cool night air blow against his face. It was extremely cold tonight. Unusually cold, in fact. He was hesitant about it, but he turned away and faced the dreary blackness of the Forbidden Forest. Harry was too busy contemplating his next move, that he had hardly noticed the soft creak of the entrance doors.
A hand grasped him gently on his right shoulder. Harry received such a shock that he nearly jumped a few feet in the air. He clumsily lost his balance and fell hard on the ground. He looked up at whose hand that might of been, scared to even know the answer.
It was Hermione.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Harry!" she whispered frantically. She held her hand out for him to grasp. "Are you all right?"
He held on to her hand as he pulled himself up. "I've felt better," he admitted. He had been knocked so hard to the ground, that it took him a moment to register in his mind what was going on. "Hermione, what are doing here?" he asked in a strangely stiff manner.
"I-er," she muttered, shuffling her feet a bit. "I got your letter." A gust of wind blew through the area, causing Hermione to pull her cloak around her. "I couldn't sleep," she said before he could speak. "I saw Hedwig fly in not too long ago. I wanted to see you, Harry."
Harry noticed that her eyes were bloodshot and her face was red and moist. He felt his stiffness ebbing away when he saw her eyes began to water at the corners. "Don't think that I didn't want to see you, because I did. I need to do this on my own and get it over with. Even if it means death, at least everyone will be safe and that's all that matters to me. If I had seen your face, knowing that you didn't want me to leave, I don't think I could leave. Every minute I stand here talking to you makes it even harder for me to leave."
"What do you mean, Harry?" Neither of them were aware of the fact that they still held each other's hands tightly.
Harry took a deep, shuddering breath. His head became strangely light-headed. Better late then never, a voice told him knowingly in his thoughts. He stepped closer to her. "I love you, Hermione." He felt as if poison had been extracted from his soul. A deep secret that had been lying there for ages, waiting for the right time to be revealed.
Now it was Hermione's turn for a shock. Her mind buzzed with a thousand thoughts and not one of them were intelligible. She couldn't bring himself to looking into his bright, green eyes, for one look at them and she would melt into oblivion. But her impulses were saying something quite differently. She looked up at him, with such on odd expression that Harry frowned a bit.
"Say something, Hermione," he whispered. "Anything."
"Harry, I-" she paused. Hermione didn't quite know how to put her feelings into words, because she's not the type of girl that would tell the world how she feels. "I don't know what to say exactly." Harry felt her hand shaking a bit in his palm, but he couldn't tell if that was a good sign or one of complete and utter disaster. "Except that-I-I-love you too."
Harry felt a warm feeling of glowing relief and happiness spread through his entire body. "I thought I was the only one. You never did seem too interested in anybody else except for Krum...and perhaps Ron."
"Ron?" she asked in surprise. "Vice versa more like, Harry. I'd thought you'd figure that out before. I talked to him about it last year while you were in the hospital wing for so long. Why do you think he avoided us for a few weeks?"
He did remember that awkward occasion, but had never quite figured out what the matter was with Ron. When Ron had began speaking to them again, he did notice a slight change in the relationship between Ron and Hermione. Of course they still bickered occasionally, but he never once asked about Viktor Krum, not even when she brought up his name. How could Harry have been so blind not to see it? How could he have been so blind not to notice Hermione, even through all her silent pleas for his attention?
"I guess I never thought about it before," he said. He hung his head back and stared at the brightening stars in the deep night sky. "Could I have been more stupid not to notice?"
"Well," Hermione said hesitantly, "with Ron it's-"
But Harry cut her off gently, "No. Could I have been so stupid not to notice you when you were right in front of me?" He looked at her once more, and Hermione could feel the energy emitting from his vivid eyes.
"You know what they say about love being blind," said Hermione softly, the wind almost capturing her words. She inched a bit closer to him. "I love you, Harry. I always have. It just takes a few things to realize what you truly have. You don't you what you have until it's gone and I don't want that to mean us. I know what I have now and you're going to come back. And if you don't, I'll personally curse V-Voldemort into oblivion." She smirked.
Harry laughed nervously. How could he leave now, knowing what he would be missing if he was to fail? They were now so close that both of them could feel each other's heat.
"You can defeat him, I know you can," she said reassuringly. "You're a great wizard, you know." She smiled even wider this time, making Harry's stomach jump in leaps and bounds.
"I'm not as good as you," he said, fondly recalling a moment from when they were only eleven. Now they were seventeen, they've come of age. "I can't believe we still remember that, Hermione. That was so long ago, and now-"
Hermione put a finger to his lips gesturing him to be silent. For a moment he felt as if she had heard something rustling in the distance. Perhaps someone was watching them! But all thoughts of Voldemort flew out of his mind once she rested her lips upon his. Harry's eyes widened in shock while his heart pounded against his chest. But he relaxed once he felt Hermione's still shaking hand. She was just as nervous as he was. He felt a bit reassured.
She hesitantly pulled away from him and rested her forehead against his. Their minds were racing. Could this possibly be happening. Had I just kissed one of my best friends? both of them seemed to be thinking. Harry pulled his head down closer and whispered in her ear, "I'll see you soon, Hermione. Really soon. I promise." And he sealed his last words with another soft kiss. He squeezed her hand gently once more looking at her now tear streaked face. He looked towards the Forbidden Forest and made his way towards his impending fate.