Harry clenched his eyes shut with passion. If there was anything at all in the world, it was the feeling of Hermione's body pressed against his.
She was thin and weak, with dry brown hair hanging down her shoulders in frail clumps, but to Harry she was the most wonderful sight his vision could behold. Pale moonlight shone upon their two figures, and in its white shadows the ornate patterns of falling snowflakes could still be seen twirling and frolicking in the air. Everything else was darkness.
Harry buried his face into Hermione's hair deeper and felt his glasses tilt askew, but he just wrapped his arms around her even more tightly. He and Hermione were the only two that existed; the rest of the world was mere black ink, smudged meaninglessly across a blank canvas. The snowflakes, flickering like fairy lights in the silver beams of the moon, twirled faster outside the frosty glass, vying for attention, but Harry ignored them. Hermione was all that mattered. She was everything to him.
Suddenly loud coughs burst through the stillness, its sharp, raspy edges cutting into Harry like a knife. He let go of Hermione and felt waves of dread quickly filling him up again as he watched her bent body convulse in harsh spasms. The coughs continued ruthlessly, and Harry saw, to his horror, specks of scarlet already scattered across the plain white sheets.
"Stay right there, Hermione," Harry yelled, jumping to his feet, while the girl shook and gasped before him. "I'll get some water-
"Don't leave me-please-
"Just hold on!" Harry almost felt like crying. "I'll be right back, all right?"
So he spun around and hurtled across the room, with Hermione's coughs pounding against his ears like grinding gravel. He wrenched open the door and looked around the empty hallway wildly for the nearest water fountain or bathroom; in a blind panic he turned to the left.
He ran and ran, passing door after door, his throat burning with each ragged breath, but no fountain appeared in sight. Harry heard himself swear loudly, and in his anguished desperation, he wrenched open the nearest door and shouted to its sleeping occupants,
"Does anyone know where any water is?"
The dim figures before him shifted around in their beds and groaned, but Harry's eyes caught an empty mug perched atop one of the dressers. He lunged at it, seized it by the handle, and dashed back to the doorway. Time was running out. Smacking his forehead and inwardly cursing his stupidity, Harry turned to the right towards Hermione's room again. His wand was still lying on the bedside table next to Hermione; he could have just used the Aguamenti charm…
Harry pushed open the door to Hermione's room. To his relief, the coughs seemed to have died down, but terror quickly seized him again when he saw her body sprawled out upon the bed, her arms hanging limply off the sides.
"Hermione!"
He rushed to her side, grabbed his wand, and clumsily filled the mug with clear water. Thankfully, he could still hear her breathing very quietly, and he dropped into a chair and lowered the mug to her parched lips. Silence ruled over the darkness yet again as Hermione drank slowly, the mug shaking in Harry's fingers. After a minute she shook her head, and Harry placed the half-empty mug upon the dresser next to his wand, illuminated brightly by the soft moonlight. The snowflakes had now faded away into the black night, leaving only a pale white moon to burnish through the windowpanes.
"Harry," he heard Hermione almost whimper. He gazed down at her and saw tears sliding from her eyes and soaking the pillow beneath her head. "I don't want to die. I want to be with you."
Harry could feel his heart skip a beat. Before he knew what he was doing, he bent down and pressed his lips tenderly against her forehead. "I'm staying right here," he murmured against her skin. He could feel her sharp breaths upon his neck like a winter wind.
Tears continued to stream down Hermione's temples. They were glistening in the light of the moon.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered. She sounded as if she was in pain.
"For what?"
"If I just got better, everything would be alright. But right now I'm just a burden."
"You're very important to me," Harry replied quietly. "None of this is your fault. It's me who should be apologizing."
"Why?"
Harry straightened up on his chair. He scratched his head absentmindedly, searching for the right words to explain. "After Sirius died," he said after a minute, staring at the dim shadows that were his hands, "I was in Dumbledore's office. I was really angry. I remember screaming at him that I didn't care about anything anymore. You know what Dumbledore told me after that?"
He glanced briefly at Hermione, who continued to lie on the sheets, staring up at him with an odd unreadable expression.
Harry went on. "Dumbledore told me that I did care, no matter how much I refused to believe it. I cared so much that I could bleed to death with the pain of it." He could feel the waves of memory wash over him, and the corners of his mouth twitched upward in a mirthless smile. "Well, right now it seems as though I'm bleeding to death with the pain of almost losing you, Hermione. And I'm apologizing for not realizing it sooner."
The bushy-haired girl looking up at him opened her mouth anxiously, perhaps to contradict him, but Harry held up a hand. For some strange reason he could not breathe very properly, as though his heart had been tugged upward and was blocking the air passageways in his throat. There was an unnatural pressure behind his eyes.
"But this pain I'm going through," he plowed on, "is very, very important to me. It's my way of telling you…that I do care. I care so much that I'm bleeding to death with the pain of it."
In the white light shining from the window, Harry could see Hermione lift up a hand towards him, and he grabbed it.
"Don't you see?" His constricted voice was starting to crack like glass. The pressure behind his eyes was becoming more unbearable by the second. He could already feel the tears welling up behind his eyelids.
"Harry…"
"Don't you see?" Harry repeated.
Hermione shook her head.
And then the tears came. They dripped from his emerald green eyes and spilled onto his face, but he sat there next to the bed, clutching onto Hermione's hand and laying his cheek upon it like a pillow. This moment was all he was living for now. And he said finally,
"I want you to see my pain. I want you to see my pain so that you can know how much I care. I care so much, Hermione." He was holding her lifted hand in both of his, and in his passion he kissed it. He was dying with the pain, it was true, but he wouldn't trade it for all the Galleons in the world.
He looked down at her, and tears of her own were clinging to her eyelashes like the morning dew on a grass stem. But she was smiling. It was for the first time in months.
"Hermione, I will never, ever leave you. I'll stay with you wherever you will go."
"That's good."
Harry's hand was still clasped tightly over Hermione's. Outside the window he could hear the first feeble stirrings of the wind, whispering groggily in the slowly brightening air, while the light from the moon was receding behind faint indigo shadows.
"Harry?" Hermione's brown eyes were wide open. "Where are you?"
"I'm right here."
"I can't see anything."
Then he knew what was happening, and renewed tears blinded his vision in a seeping rush. He promised that he would stay with her, but she was drifting away to a place he could not enter. "Hermione," he choked out, wrapping his fingers around her hand even tighter, "Please…"
"Where are you, Harry?"
And Harry, harboring no more strength to sit up, collapsed onto the bed by her side. He wrapped his free arm around her waist, and then murmured, with a love that seemed to be drawn from the highest cloud, "I'm here, Hermione. I will never leave you." Her body was slackening, and she was getting colder underneath his arm.
"I'm glad," Hermione replied, her voice barely a whisper, and she smiled again with a serenity that appeared impossible. And then her eyes closed.
Harry watched her, his mind strangely blank. She was laying next to him, completely motionless, a ghost of a smile lingering upon her lips.
And for a mysterious reason that would never be known, he suddenly felt his eyelids becoming very heavy, heavier than he had ever felt them, and with a small sigh, he fell asleep in the darkness. The door creaked open behind him, but he did not hear. Everything had dissolved into nothingness, and he was sinking and sinking, down, down, down into the dark depths of an eternal sea.
He would never leave Hermione.
Never.
***
"Miss Granger? It's time for your early morning medicine."
The Healer cautiously entered the room and waved his wand with a single sweeping gesture. The plain lamp hanging from the ceiling flickered for a moment, and the entire room was suddenly engulfed in bright yellow light.
"Hermione Granger? Are you still asleep?"
He abruptly stopped short. His eyes grew as wide as saucers, and the medicine bottle he was carrying slipped from his fingers and fell with a plunk upon the tiled floor.
Hermione was there, as he could see, but something else caught his eye. There was a boy, a handsome, bespectacled boy, with jet-black hair and a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead, lying on the mattress next to her, holding her in what looked like a tight embrace. Both of their eyes were closed.
The Healer cleared his throat loudly, hoping they would wake, but the boy and girl continued to lie there, undisturbed, as if they had gone off to a distant place and could not hear him. He leaned forward confusedly and then gasped.
Their bodies were not moving. They were not breathing. Instead, an odd sort of contentment seemed to have stolen over their faces, as visible as the deep indigo sky outside the frosted window.
Panic-stricken, the Healer dashed back across the room and disappeared through the doorway, searching for help.
But it was useless, for Harry and Hermione had already left the world together. They had each other, and that was all that mattered.
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A/N: Thank you so much for sticking with this to the end; it means a great deal to me. I would greatly appreciate it if you let me know how I did. Once again, thanks.
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