A.N.:This is my first fanfiction and I'm really excited to be posting here at portkey! This story is based on "Absolutely" by Nine Days. I hope you enjoy it!
Chapter One:
This is the story of a girl,
Who cried a river and drowned the whole world!
And while she looked so sad in photographs,
I absolutely love her,
When she smiles...
The wizarding world was divided after the war. This time it wasn't because of prejudice, or blood, or sex, or what school you went to, or what type of being you were, or even what wizarding family you came from. Oh those were there of course as they always had been and probably always would be, but there was something much more subtle and all the more potent for its subtleness at foot. Something that most wizards didn't think was different at all. Something more obvious to the three of us than anyone else.
Whether or not you like it or will it to happen, war does change you. You cannot watch people die in front of your eyes and learn to turn away indifferently without a huge change on your outlook on life. You cannot watch people you considered close friends suffer and turn a blind eye so that you can continue fighting without building a few walls around your heart. You cannot stay up every night studying as much defensive spells as you possibly can in an attempt to live through the next day and not think about dying. You cannot kill another living person without feeling guilty, even if you do it to save the lives of your friends, your family, and your self. You cannot come out of all of that alive and watch your loved ones being buried without wishing that you had died instead of them.
And for the three of us, you cannot witness the darkest of magic ever used, spend a year destroying it, and not be able to tell anyone else what it was you were doing without forming an unbreakable bond that not many could understand. That you yourself sometimes did not understand. It separates you, makes you different from everyone else, and makes you rely on each other at all times for everything. After all, who else but us could say they'd been to the pits of hell and made it back again and who of those people could explain how they did it in words?
Anyway, the division was there between those who had fought at the front lines and those who had done their part at home. Friends and sweethearts who'd seemed inseparable at the beginning of all this could no longer relate. It was like all those who hadn't seen what we had seen were living in some fantasy land where everything was ok while those who had were tormented by the thought that everything was not. That ok seemed so very far off from where they were. The worst part was, none of the fantasy land people realized that anything was really off, they just continued going and going like it could just be easily forgotten. Like it wouldn't stick to us like glue once Voldemort was finally gone. After all, we `won'; we should be celebrating.
Yes we won. We also lost. Lost brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, children, uncles, aunts, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, grandparents, cousins, and teachers. Voldemort was gone as were the death eater's who cowered beneath us after the three of us killed Voldemort. Houses were demolished, hearts broken, people killed, and blood shed.
But all of this paled in comparison when Witch Weekly started mentioning celebratory balls and parties. Articles abounded on Hermione, Ron, and I. Speculation on whether Hermione would end up with Ron, Krum, or me. On whether or not I'd get back together with Cho or Ginny. On Ron's interlude with Lavender in sixth year. We were the highest of celebrities regardless of our feelings on the subject.
Ironically enough, it was Hermione who told us that we should attend each and every party we were invited to and live out our fame in good grace until it died down. Ron and I nearly had a coronary and fumed all of our frustrations out on her for an hour. She was supposed to be on our side; surely she understood how horrible everyone was acting! She sat there and took our rant with quiet dignity and when we were done she said something I'll never forget.
"Yes, going to parties right now seems brash and crude to us. Being celebrated when all we want to do is cry or go back in time to save more people is absolutely horrid. Watching people spend more time thinking about our love lives than respecting the dead is unthinkable to us. But…but not to the people who have lived their lives in fear for far too long. Whether we feel it right now or not, this is the mark of a new and happier era. A time when no one has to fear coming home to the dark mark and their dead families. They may not have been through what we have, but they have been through enough and this-living- is what we were fighting for in the first place. It's harder for us to move on than almost anyone else. We've seen more horrors, but we have not done more. Each and every person fought in their own way. We fought a part of the battle other people did not know about and we won. People celebrate us because we're a symbol to them. If we can move on and rebuild ourselves from the ashes, so can they. We've all lived far too long in ashes, and something needs to be done to pick our society back up. To leave behind despair, but not to forget what we've lost either. We can help with that because the people will follow our lead. We'll go to all the funerals, all the speeches, all the rebuilding, and yes all of the parties. We will live if for no other reason than to make sure the wizarding world follows along in our footsteps. It wont be easy and I suspect at first a lot of it will be acting. Maybe longer than at first. But we've got to do it because we may have won the battle against Voldemort, but we have another grueling battle to face up to. Its courage after the fight; the courage to move on. And we've got to; we've got to encourage others to as well. When it's just the three of us we can cry, we can scream, we can yell until we're horse with anguish, but out there we may show only some sadness. Some, but not so much so that anyone, even the smallest child, begins to feel hopeless. They don't understand how we feel, no one will, but they also feel hurts. Ones that we may not understand; ones that may be completely different from our own. A society that hurts and doesn't move forward is a society that expires. We cannot let that happen. So go and dust off your dress robes boys, we have a ball at the Ministry tomorrow night."
She gave us a stern look that couldn't quite hide the tears in her eyes and we felt like the biggest gits in the world. Of course Hermione was fed up with the way everyone was acting, but like usual she was a hundred steps ahead of us and willing to loop around patiently to bring us up to speed. She had analyzed the situation perfectly and come up with the only solution that would benefit as many people as possible. It would be excruciating for us, but it was absolutely true. It wasn't just our love lives people followed. We were their heroes, and right now they needed us to keep being their heroes. If that meant going to awful parties and smiling fake smiles, we would do it without complaint. Well…at least where anyone could hear us.
So we accepted invitations to each and every ball, party, speech, funeral, and building re-opening. We allowed ourselves to be coddled, complimented, and invaded by the press to keep up the morale. We kept our voices light and hopeful, we smiled, we danced, we dated…sort of, but I'll get to that later. Ron and I would falter with the acting once in a while, but Hermione was a determined jewel. She fought for everyone, of all species, to come together to form a stronger society than the last one. To get rid of prejudices that caused feuding and come up with peaceful alliances. She cried lightly at funerals, but never as much as I knew she was dying to. She backed Remus for the first non-human ever to become Minister of Magic and won the wizarding world over by sheer force of will to make the wizarding world a stronger and safer place. She made speeches that had her listeners crying with hope at the end and helped Ron and I to write the same. It's safe to say that the main reason the Wizarding World got back on its feet so quickly was due in large part to Hermione, my brilliant best friend and so much more.
Ron and I were the only ones who saw her moments of despair, tiredness, and stress. We saw her cry, we saw her scream, and we saw her punch and kick the stuffing out of a punching bag. We saw her fall back onto her bed with exhaustion with the knowledge that if needed she would be up and acting energetic at a moments notice. We saw her fight to forget that even with all the precautions she had taken with her parents; giving up her home source to keep them safe, some rough bandit muggles had killed them anyway. We saw that the super-human effort she put out that astounded everyone down to Draco Malfoy nearly killed her. We hardly ever saw her smile for real. I doubt Ron ever did.
I knew that I would never, no matter what good I did for my entire life, ever deserve this woman. This best friend who was there for me in the middle of the night when I had nightmares of Voldemort's face right before he died. Who held me when I cried and told her I was too weak to keep up this front that she got through with such selfless effort. Who pushed my hair back and kissed my scar gently and told me it would all be alright in the end. That she would always be here to help me through and if she had to give up every spare moment in her life trying to make me smile that she would in a heart beat and she'd never regret it either. Who actually laughed, a real and happy laugh, when I sarcastically quipped that I would smile when she did.
I remember our first night with stunning clarity and I'm sure I always will. Ron had left the Durmstrang Ball with some bird he didn't know and we didn't expect to see him until early afternoon the next day or even the day after. It wasn't new to us and I had done the same on many occasions, even though I always felt guilty afterwards. Hermione always waited until around date four or five to go and shag a guy, but she'd had many date four or fives. The entire bloody world wanted a piece of the Golden Trio's tail so to speak. Anyway, this night Hermione and I came home and decided to spend the night alternately watching movies and talking together. That resolution didn't last long and it was all Hermione's neck's fault.
We settled into our usual position when we were watching the telly- when we had time to watch the telly that is. I leaned back against the armrest and the back of the couch and Hermione sat between my legs, leaning her back against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her waste and leaned my head on her shoulder and she brought her hands around her folded up knees and leaned her head against mine. It really was one of the worst and the absolute best of fates that she still had her hair up after the ball, exposing a long line of graceful and slender neck that smelled just like Hermione. I really don't know what was going through my head when I decided I needed to taste it, to taste her, but by the time I realized I had thought it, it was far too late to stop myself from trying.
I leaned slightly into her and she didn't seem to notice too much. When you slept spooned up next to one another in a tent for body warmth you didn't worry so much about personal space anymore. I let my lips brush lightly across her neck and apart from stiffening slightly she did nothing. I took this as my sign and I opened my mouth and trailed hot open-mouth kisses up and down the column of her throat. Her breathing hitched slightly and I moved my hands up and down her arms in a slow caress as I continued to explore her neck. When I suckled slightly on her ear-lobe she moaned out my name. I think that was when I finally snapped.
The next morning I woke tangled up with a naked, sleeping Hermione and my bed sheets. I smoothed her hair back behind her ear and she mumbled something unintelligible and moved closer to me, pressing all sorts of nice womanly bits against areas which were all too happy to feel them. That's when I decided to wake her up and it was a rather bloody fantastic wake-up shag as were all the shags the previous night.
But nothing, absolutely nothing, equaled the smile she gave me afterwards. It was a happy, real, honest-to-god smile; one that I hadn't seen her use anytime in the past three years since we went to search for the Horcrux's or maybe even longer than that. A smile that lit up her entire face, including those dark chocolate pools of warmth, and made heat bubble inside me. A smile that made all the pretending, all the pain, all the hardships, and death, and sweat we'd gone through seem possible to heal so long as I saw it on her face. And, just like I said I would, I answered hers with one of my own. That smile made me start to hope again although all I realized at the time was that she looked happy and I liked making her look that way.
We spent many nights discovering each other's bodies. I learned every single way to touch, lick, nip, taste, and feel her that would make her go crazy and she did the same for me. We would go until we made each other hoarse. Sometimes slow and passionate, sometimes dirty and rough. Anyway, all the ways, as much as we could. And no matter how bloody amazing it was and how much better it was with her than with any other woman, the very best part was always the smile that came after it.
We never acknowledged this relationship or even defined it. Outside of the flat we shared with Ron, we were still just the very best of friend's. The only person who knew, besides us of course, was Ron. We never talked about it. We would just come home and one of us would throw the other a look, or touch them in a little way that was more than friendly, sometimes we would just pull the other down for a kiss. It was a comfort, it was something that made us smile, it was utterly enjoyable, it was hot, and it was a secret from the wizarding world.
I'm not exactly sure why we kept it a secret from our society. It definitely would have built up their hope to see us in a serious relationship, if not break a few hearts according to Witch Weekly. It would have shown us living life just like we'd been trying to display for the past year. Nothing would have been better for the public. Except…except, we were tired of always playing the heroes. We wanted something that was out of the public eye of judgment and speculation. We didn't want people to ask us if we were in love or getting married. We wanted something carefree and just ours; something to make us really smile.
Of course Ron teased us about it mercilessly. He asked us if we thought we might let people know who the father was when Hermione had her first child or tell people who had placed the ring on her left hand. We always blushed bright red and changed the subject. At that point I foolishly still believed it was just sex between passionate best friends, something that made us happy, something where I didn't have to pretend because honestly out of the two people I could be myself with, Hermione was the girl. A rather gorgeous girl in my opinion and those of wizard's across the globe now that she was allowed to shine with her sheer brilliance. Intimidatingly smart was the new sexy and Hermione set the standards, of course bringing woman equality up right with it.
I was stupid, I was lying, I was shielding myself from any emotions, and now I can admit I was scared. Hermione was none of those things. I'll never ever get over how much I hurt her. I deserve her a hundred thousand times less than I even did before sleeping with her, and if you'll remember I couldn't ever deserve her then. I'll never make it up to her completely. But I'm also selfish enough to admit that I decided to try to get her back anyway. But that's getting way ahead of myself.
About five months after we started shagging, Hermione did start asking about our relationship. She wanted to know what exactly we were and when we were going to bring it into public eye. All things I should have told her the first day; all things I hemmed-and-hawed about for a week until she cornered me and demanded I stop avoiding her. Of course that wasn't all she said. She also told me that she was in love with me.
I am and always will be the absolute biggest prat in the world. If there is one thing I could re-do in my entire life it would be that exact moment. I'd have taken her in my arms, told her how very much I was in love with her, and made sure she was mine forever. I'd have married her, had children with her, grown old with her, and been happy with her from that moment on.
Instead, I froze for about two minutes while she shuffled nervously from side to side and finally asked, "Harry?" I completely panicked. No one had ever told me they loved me before and I'd convinced myself we were just friends with benefits. I told her that we needed to break it off right then. That she felt too much and I couldn't feel the same or lead her on any longer. I took one look into her pretty pain filled eyes and ran out the door and to the nearest pub.
I went home with a bird with deep-brown eyes that night and tried to forget Hermione in bed with that other woman. I did that many nights all with different birds, always failing, sometimes calling out Hermione's name instead. I broke my best friend's heart and couldn't even bear to look her in the eyes to see what I'd done. Ron was livid with me and I suspect only Hermione kept him from pummeling me. I wish she hadn't. It seemed like the end of the Golden Trio and the whole world went mad trying to figure out why we were fighting. We never let on and some of the rumors came far to close to the truth, but no one could ever now what was really happening except for the three of us. And the love of my life no longer smiled that special smile, but the world never saw anything except her fake happiness and her inner strength. I doubt even Ron could tell that difference, but I could, and I knew, and I wouldn't admit to myself how much I suffered because of it.
How many days in a year?
She woke up with hope but she only found tears.
And I can be so insincere,
Making her promises never for real!
As long as she stands there waiting,
Wearing the holes in the soles of her shoes!
How many days disappear?
When you look in the mirror so how do you choose?
Your clothes never wear as well the next day,
And your hair never falls in quite the same way-
But you never seem to run out of things to say...
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