Thank you for all of your kind reviews. Here's a little inbetween of the story and epilogue of what was supposed to be a one-shot. Hope you like it.
"So… do you guys believe me?"
Ron and Hermione stared at Harry for a few seconds. While Ron looked at Harry like he deserved a straitjacket, Hermione had an inquisitive look on her face. It looked very cute.
"How am I going to believe," Ron started slowly, as if talking to a retarded monkey, "that You-Know-Who came back from the dead, and you killed him just like that! Then you killed Scab- I mean Wormtail, tied up to a grave."
"Wormtail was wearing the Dark Mark!" Harry argued. "He must've been… I don't know… affected by it! What happened to Snape? Didn't he die?"
"He did," Ron confirmed. "He just started screaming for no reason and we thought he passed out. Colin took pictures. No one's seen Karkaroff. But how do we know You-Know-Who killed him? Moody died, and we all know he isn't a Death Eater!"
"Moody died?" Harry asked in horror.
"Yeah, he died the same way. How could You-Know-Who have killed him from… wherever you were? You have to be joking!"
"Then how is Cedric dead?! Are you telling me I killed him!?" Harry yelled at him, for the first time standing up. He had assumed that the moment Cedric appeared, dead, that Ron would have believed him. He couldn't believe that Ron didn't. Who accuses their best friend of murder?
He couldn't help but notice that Hermione didn't say a word. She seemed to be working something out, but slower than he really wanted. Usually, she would nibble on her bottom lip as if it was a tough decision. But she seemed to take this as if she was answering a divination question. Then, she just stopped. Nothing changed in her appearance, she didn't look up, but Harry could just tell that she stopped thinking. It seemed that she had an answer, and was confirming it with herself.
"I don't know!" Ron yelled, snapping Harry's attention back to him. "First, you just pop out of the maze with the cup. Next, Cedric just comes out of nowhere, dead. Then, when Dumbledore tries to talk to you, you ignore him and grab us and ran to some strange room we never heard of that looks exactly like our common room."
"Dobby brought Cedric's. Then he told me about this room."
"How are we supposed to believe you? Dobby will agree with anything you say, whether or not it's true!"
"What am I supposed to do to prove it? Bring back Voldemort's body? If you don't believe me, then you don't. It's not my fault that you don't believe your friend!"
Ron was quiet for a moment, and Harry almost thought he would change his mind. "No, I…I don't believe you. It's just not possible! No one could do that! You-Know-Who is unbeatable, and you didn't even touch him?"
"No, I didn't." There was a hard edge to his voice. Ron didn't believe him. He didn't believe him. What he had, half-an-hour ago, considered his best friend in the world, did not believe him. Granted, it was a little far-fetched, but now Ron was practically accusing him of murder! What other explanation could there have been? "What do you want me tell you? The spirit of Voldemort took over Cedric and killed Snape, Moody, Wormtail, who knows who else, and died before he got to me? Think, Ron! What else could have happened! Only Voldemort could have done it!"
Ron looked far from convinced. "Then show me his body! Or Pettigrew's body! Show me some damned proof or I will never believe you! You really could have killed Cedric for all I know, all these lies you're spewing! I'm your friend! How did Cedric die? Was it an accident or something? Tell me the truth!" He demanded, frantically waving his arms. They had both long since left the comfortable chairs they were sitting in, but neither had approached each other.
Harry had had enough. It was time to call Dobby to retrieve Voldemort's body.
He took a deep breath, and yelled "D-"
But he stopped. No. Ron was his friend. Why didn't he at least take a grain of truth? He didn't believe a single damned word he had said. The fact that the cup was an illegal portkey that took him to places unknown completely escaped Ron. The fact that Cedric was dead, obviously by a killing curse, Ron ignored. The fact that Harry himself was covered in blood, sweat, and tears, his right arm practically immobile, due to the large bloody gash, escaped his notice. Every single other strange phenomenon that had happened in the past forty-five minutes was out of his range of caring.
The fact that Harry had never before lied to him, mattered little to the redhead.
No. Ron had made his choice. He would give him his proof. Later.
"Alright, then," Harry said dejectedly. "If you don't believe me, then you don't believe me."
"Oh, come on! I know most of that is made up, but you can't tell me what happened?" Ron asked, oblivious to Harry's sadness.
"Go talk to Dumbledore for the real story," Harry muttered darkly, looking down at his dirty fingers, his fringe covering his unnoticeably fading scar.
Ron left without a word, eager to know what actually happened.
There was a silence in the room. He was sure Hermione could hear him breathing. He didn't notice when she stood up.
He did notice, however, when she shot towards him and clung to him in a hug, with so much force, he toppled backwards into the chair, that reclined for them both. She didn't let go; Harry tentatively put his unhurt am around her, desperately hoping that she wasn't thinking she was an uncomfortable weight.
She stared shaking, and Harry could feel the tears through his shirt. Harry had no idea how to deal with crying girls; he didn't even know why she was crying. So he rubbed her back awkwardly.
Was it because of him? Why, though? He was alright. Was it for Cedric? She didn't know him that well, they never even spoke. Was it because of…?
No. She couldn't have been thinking…? No!
"H-Hermione?" He stammered into her hair, "Do you… believe Ron?"
Hermione snapped her head up with such force that if it wasn't for his reflexes, she would have broken his jaw with the back of her head. "What?" She asked with ferocity. Her face, streaming with tears, her brown eyes staring at him with disbelief. Apparently that hadn't even entered her mind.
"Why are you crying? Did I do something wrong?" He had thought that she felt sorry for him, for what she thought he had done.
"Harry - NO, you didn't do anything wrong! What could have made you think that?"
"Well…" Harry muttered, distracted by how close they were, "you were crying, and I don't know why…"
She burrowed her head back into his chest and squeezed him tighter. She said something around the lines of 'not mad', 'sorry' and 'Ron's an idiot'.
Harry was confused, but stayed silent, relishing the tight, but somehow comfortable embrace.
As she rambled into his shirt, she mumbled a few more phrases that he was able to pick up from time to time; 'not your fault', 'so sorry', 'don't listen to Ron', and 'I believe you' were all common phrases. Harry's heart felt lighter. It was what she said last that really caught his attention.
'I could have lost you.'
Harry loosed his hold on her and lifted his head. "Funny," he muttered, "I thought the same thing about you."
Hermione seemed to stop crying and pulled back, so they could see each other. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "You mean when you were thinking that I might not believe you? You know I do, Harry. I always do. You've never lied to me before."
"Not that," Harry whispered, focusing on her eyes. "I was thinking that at the time, yeah, but I was also thinking about how I could have lost you."
Hermione made an eloquent "Huh?"
Harry sat up with Hermione and the chair reclined back with them.
"Hermione…" Harry started slowly, then stopped.
He had promised himself he would do this. He was going to do this.
He had lost one friend.
But he wasn't much of a friend to begin with.
What was the worst Hermione could do?
Leave him.
Like she could've done before.
She said she wouldn't leave him. He looked in her eyes, filled with such concern, and remembered back to the moment when he thought that he was never going to see Hermione again.
But if he did see her, he was going to tell her.
Damn it, he was not going to have two people call him a liar today.
"Hermione…" He started again, but continued, "…while I was up there… I thought I was going to die… and it made me think. A lot."
"You had an epiphany?" Hermione asked her friend, taking the silence Harry had given her to mentally compose herself.
Harry wasn't sure what that word was, but he nodded absently. And Harry started. For the next fifteen minutes, Harry told Hermione of everything that happened in greater detail, so Hermione never even needed to ask questions. He told her how it felt like his entire life flashed before his eyes, from his earliest memory of the Dursleys to the moment he was tied to the gravestone. He had talked about the only friends that remained by his side, which had recently dropped to three. Both chose to ignore that Hermione made herself more comfortable by sitting sideways on his lap, and steadied herself by looping her arms around his neck. He held her up by putting his un-bandaged arm around her waist.
"At first," Harry continued, "I thought that since Ron was my first friend, then he was my best friend. Apparently I was wrong. You were always the better friend. You were always my best friend."
"Th-thank you, Harry," Hermione said with a small sniffle and a hug, "that means a lot to me. You are my best friend, too. And my first."
Harry fumbled for a moment and looked down. "Thanks."
"Harry?"
"Hm?"
"You haven't finished telling me what you were thinking."
He looked up at her, and she could see the desperation and fear in his eyes that reached out to her. He whispered, in a broken voice, "Are you sure?"
She nodded resolutely. "Of course, only if you want to."
"No, I mean…" he took a deep breath. "I mean, are you sure you won't… leave me?"
Hermione, the entire time Harry had been telling her his inner turmoil, had been in full Hermione-mode. But when Harry finished talking, her brain instantly shut down. She didn't know what to say, what to make of what he said.
No, no, that was a lie. She knew what he said, but what did he mean? She opened her mouth to ask him, then closed it. Then, wordlessly, she leaned over and touched her lips to the corner of his mouth.
She leaned back, looking into his eyes. "Only if you want me to."
Harry couldn't really say what he felt at that moment. He didn't notice, though, that for the first time that day, he felt like smiling.
"Never," he promised, and hugged her to him. He didn't know what that kiss was supposed to mean, but he prayed to whatever gods that had gotten him out of that mess an hour ago was still here for him now.
He would tell her. He would summarize it for her.
"I… I love you, Hermione."
She leaned back once again, and Harry saw the silliest little smile on her face.
Faced with what she had determined as the most unbelievable truth she had heard all day, Hermione's grin couldn't be contained. Finally, she burrowed her head in Harry's neck and closed her eyes. The day was catching up to her - she had never been so emotional as she was today, ever since Harry walked into the maze so long ago. She couldn't trust herself to even speak. She risked the last of her energy into words, for him.
"I love you too, Harry. I truly, truly do…"
She fell asleep, hugging him tighter to her, refusing to ever let him go again.
With her very comforting presence and her not the least bit uncomfortable breath on his neck, Harry tilted back, and silently thanked the room for the pillow that appeared behind his head.
He had escaped death that day, and somehow found his way into heaven. That was the boy-who-lived-again's final thought as he drifted off to sleep.
The End.
Author's Note:
After all the reviews about saying how the epilogue was too short, I finally decided to agree with you. And that is why I wrote this second chapter almost four years ago.
It was hidden in the vault of failed HP fanfictions and one-shots that I am currently re-visiting and freshening up. Last Modified date- January 15, 2009. Just like the epilogue, it's short and sweet- But a bit longer, and a bit sweeter.
I've made a disgusting habit of turning one-shots into two-shots, so I might as well try looking for the sequel to Gray Lord that I just know I have somewhere…