Senses
Smell:
The odor of the Burrow is always the same, an amalgamation of all things pleasant and homey: warm laundry, fresh air, lemon cleaner, baking bread, crackling fire, old books, and worn leather. Harry breathes it in as the door swings open, unable to hold on to all of his discontent here. This place has meant more to him than any other building in Britain, save Hogwarts perhaps.
"I'll just go give Mum a hand," Ginny murmurs in his ear, and she flits off to the kitchen, her stylishly cut red hair swishing around her collar. She doesn't wait for any sort of acknowledgement on his part, but there is a curious flooding sense of relief that she is gone, even just temporarily. It surprises him, and he wonders how they have fallen so far, so fast - or has he just been unaware all this time?
He turns his attention to the bustle of the ramshackle and beloved old abode. Just as the place is rarely pristine, it is also rarely quiet. A new generation of largely ginger-haired mischief makers can usually be found in great quantities here, especially at family gatherings like this holiday dinner.
His eyes trip through the blurs of motion and noise - his own children have quickly dispersed among them. He spies Rose…and then Hugo. Ron is here then. He wonders whether or not Hermione is, and is not sure how either possibility makes him feel. Oddly enough, the first emotion that comes to the forefront is abandonment. He snorts at his own ridiculousness: as if Hermione has gone and left him to be married-to-a-Weasley all alone.
He nods to George, folded over on the sofa, explaining something - probably nefarious in nature - to two of Bill and Fleur's boys. Charlie and Arthur are discussing something in the Prophet that the older man has unfurled across his lap. In the kitchen, he can hear the clank and clatter of dishware. The laughing shrieks of more children filter in from the back garden. And almost as if his own thoughts have conjured him up, Ron suddenly appears in from outside, ambling through the back door with a lanky and casual almost-grace that suggests forever fifteen. He stomps the snow off of his boots, and unwinds his scarf.
"Harry…" he half-nods in acknowledgement. His hands are in his pockets, shoulders hunched up, ostensibly in defense from the cold and snow, but Harry has known him long enough to see through the put-on air. Ron's features are pinched and tense; he appears to be nearly all angles and corners.
"How's everything?" Harry asks, once he has moved close enough to his best mate to speak in a low tone.
"Mostly dreadful," Ron says candidly. "Rose hasn't spoken to me since she got home from Hogwarts and found out I'd moved out." His voice is sort of bleakly matter-of-fact. "We - we didn't want to Owl her about it and ruin her last days of term - seemed sort of cruel. As it was, she got a nasty shock once we got home."
Harry nods sympathetically. He had noticed the awkward reunion at the station, and had steered his brood away from it on purpose, hoping to give everyone the time and space they needed to continue adjusting.
"How's… Hermione?" he says carefully, testing for conversational land mines. Part of him is still angry at the unfaithfulness, but the two men have never discussed it - indeed, Harry has no idea whether or not Ron even knows that he knows.
Ron heaves a great sigh that manages to go unheard in the cheerful babble of the house. Harry can smell melting caramel, and wonders if Molly has green apples as well.
"I reckon almost anybody'd know that better than I would."
Harry shoots Ron a quizzical look.
"You haven't spoken with her?" His eyes darken with alarm as a thousand horrendous possibilities launch through his mind at light speed. "You haven't checked on her?"
"I brought the kids here, didn't I?" Ron laughs, but it is mirthless and brims with regret. "Believe me, she is not so shattered over losing me that she's any danger to herself. You've always worried about her too much."
You've never worried about her enough, Harry thinks, but wisely chooses not to speak those words aloud. He has been trying his best to stay neutral in this conflict, a difficult task considering his numerous in-laws and to whose side they naturally aligned themselves.
"You know how she is - how she's always been," Ron continues, speaking in an almost reminiscent tone. "She's got a persona for every situation - something she's researched and honed to perfection… dons them like bloody dress robes. There's Work Hermione and Mum Hermione and Hermione With A Cause. Turned On Hermione, now… there was an impressive one…when I got to see her, that is."
"Good God, Ron, I don't - " Harry pleads, feeling almost sick, as he thinks of the other women Hermione mentioned. He half-turns away, only to see Ginny come to a stop just behind him, proffering a goblet of a dark wine. Her teeth flash white, as he accepts the drink and leans down to kiss her cheek. Their movements are perfectly coordinated, but she moves away wordlessly. Absently, he watches the sashaying movement of her hips beneath the material of her green skirt.
We're like a bloody magazine cover, Harry thinks, and he has to tamp down a rising tide of raging despair. Ron is eying him curiously, and Harry has a fleeting worry that his best mate has noticed something.
"So I have to watch you ogle my sister, but you can't listen to me talk about my wife?"
"Ex-wife," Harry corrects thoughtlessly, and then winces with Ron's flinch. "Sorry." He takes a too-large gulp of the wine, and nearly chokes, clearing his throat awkwardly. "You were saying?"
"Hermione was perfectly cordial tonight, when I picked up Rose and Hugo," Ron says. "She was brisk and efficient, and was dealing with me like she does with any unpleasant but necessary duty. We were friends once, friends for more than twenty years. And it's like - we were - I was an unwelcome stranger she found on her doorstep. It used to be my doorstep too!" Ron is frustrated and scared, and this change has obviously loomed large and all too real over him. He is like a child realizing that he has actually broken his favorite toy, and that it is irreparable. Harry almost feels sorry for him, until he remembers Hermione in the cafe, nervous, sad, fiddling with her teacup.
"P'raps you should have thought of that before you cheated on her." The sentence comes out before Harry can stop it. Ron freezes, and color begins to rise silently in his face like mercury in a heated thermometer.
The warm smell of yeasty bread does nothing to stop the bile from rising in the back of Harry's throat, as he watches Ron with a half-wary, half-challenging gaze. In the kitchen, the oven door bangs, and there is an excited clamor from the Weasley grandchildren. The aroma of sugar cookies wafts into the room.
"She told you." It is a statement of fact, not an inquiry, and it escapes through Ron's clenched teeth.
"Did you think she wouldn't?" The question is a gentle barb, subtly reminding Ron of Harry's historical closeness with Hermione.
"I thought she hadn't."
"Because you're still alive?" His words are light, but he is both joking and not joking, and Ron knows it.
"In a manner of speaking," Ron replies dryly. The two men measure each other for a moment. Ron seems to be assessing where Harry's ultimate loyalties lie. Harry is gritting his teeth, hoping to keep unwise words back, words that may severely harm, without doing any good at all.
"How could you, Ron?" He finally says, has to say. "If anyone - if anyone else had hurt her - you know - we'd do time in Azkaban to pay them back. We swore to protect her when we were all still kids ourselves. And you - the one - even more than me - you're the one who - " His words are garbled, nearly incoherent in his effort to articulate the disbelief, the betrayal that he insanely feels on her behalf, while trying to stem his rising temper.
"You don't know how it was," Ron manages to say evenly. "Merlin knows I'm ashamed of myself, but - but she - " Both of his hands run backward through his hair, clenching briefly in frustration. "She has these - these preconceived notions tricked out in her mind of the way things are supposed to go… and - and when they don't - when I can't live up to them, she - oh, the nagging and the carping and the stony silences. You should try living with her. No one could ever survive up on her pedestal except you, anyway."
Harry wants to argue with him, wants to point out any one of the myriad of times when he disappointed her, but something in Ron's words hits uncomfortably close to home.
You should try living with her.
A yearning surges up within him to have the opportunity to do just that, and it startles him badly. Ginny and her mother come out from the kitchen then, and Harry feels sure that his guilty impulse is parading itself across his shocked face.
"Couldn't you have talked to her? Let her know how you felt before just hopping into bed with whoever was convenient?"
His words are louder now; a little too loud, perhaps, as Charlie glances their way, and Ginny watches them, curiously and pensively tense. Ron's face is glowing. Chairs scrape across the scarred wooden floor, as the family begins to be seated. Delectable smells of roasted meat, hearty gravies, and steaming vegetables mingle deliciously.
"You can stand there and lecture me all you want to, Mr. Perfect Marriage," Ron hisses. "It doesn't change the fact that Hermione, who can do no wrong in your eyes, failed at something, and that's what really chafes at you."
"You have no idea what you're talking about, Ron," Harry fires back, feeling backed into a corner. "I've never said I thought Hermione was perfect. But she didn't fail at this, she was sabotaged. By you."
Mrs. Weasley is talking more loudly than necessary in an attempt to cover their angry exchange. The children are bouncing around the room like happy pinballs, scrambling to sit by their favorite cousins, and do not seem to have noticed anything amiss. Ginny crosses the room, and loops her arm through his.
"Come on, Harry. It's time for dinner," she says, as if nothing out of the ordinary is going on. The smell of the food nauseates him. He pictures Hermione, sitting in her empty house, alone on Christmas Eve, and yanks his arm out of hers, more roughly than he intends. She stumbles a little, caught off-guard. The family is staring at him, and he feels the heat rise uncomfortably into his face.
"I'm sorry," he mumbles at her. He cannot meet either her gaze or Ron's. "I'm not hungry."
The front door has banged shut behind him, before he realizes what he is doing. The night is crisp and star-studded, serenely silent under its new blanket of snow. The air is cold, and burns his nostrils as he inhales. He hunches his shoulders against the chill, and thrusts his hands deep into his pockets. For a fraction of a second, he is unsure what course of action to take. Should he go back inside, pretend that everything is all right? Should he stay out here until he is numb, perhaps in every sense of the word, or until Ginny sends James out to look for him?
He looks over his shoulder at the homey little cottage, the clamor of the meal muted and distant, light spilling like honey out into the snowy garden.
He Apparates away.
***
She lifts wide, startled eyes to his when she opens the door. She is already dressed for bed, in comfortable, soft, knit pajamas, and her hair is scraped back into a haphazard ponytail. The scents of coffee and popcorn seem to hang in subtle clouds around her. Soft Christmas music is playing on the wireless, and he can hear the resonant sound of unfurling paper, as presents are wrapping themselves.
"Harry?" She stammers a bit, the what are you doing here coming across in the way she speaks his name.
"I'm sorry," he apologizes, although he's not sure what for. Her eyebrows crinkle together.
"Why?"
"I - I shouldn't have come - you're all ready for bed, and - "
"I'm fine, Harry." There is soft amusement in her tone. She holds the door open for him, and as he slides into the house, he can smell the fresh shampoo scent of her hair. He spears her with a glance, and she challenges him with an almost arch look. "Isn't that why you've come? To check on me? To make sure I'm not sobbing all alone in my dark bedroom on Christmas Eve?"
He begins to feel discomfited. It sounds rather ridiculous when she puts it that way.
"Ron and I had words," he blurts suddenly, and then she is concerned. Her fuzzy, red socks are barely peeping out from underneath her baggy pajama pants, as she shuffles across the room and turns off the wireless. Behind her, a bow ties itself jauntily atop a gift, forgotten.
"About me?"
The power of speech seems to have abandoned him temporarily. He nods, and she sighs.
"And then you stormed out, and came straight over here?"
Another nod. Another sigh.
"Oh, Harry." It is the plea of a much put-upon mother.
"I just can't - I can't stand to see you in - I can't stand to know he - I - "
"You can't protect me from everything, Harry. You can't shield me from life." She pours him some coffee from the carafe on the counter, and hands him the mug. He cups it in his hands, savoring the warmth, and inhales the strong aroma; he imagines that the richness of it shores him up inside, fortifies him.
"I wish I could," he says, in a heartfelt voice, and she smiles at him. "You've always been there for me - and now - now there's nothing I can do to make this better."
"I'm a big girl, Harry," she needles him gently. "I've been alone before, and this - this isn't your mistake to rectify, your battle to fight. I don't want you to - I don't want to cause problems in - with your - with the family."
"You're my family too," Harry counters stubbornly, sipping the coffee. "I would certainly hope that Ron doesn't think that's going to change - or Ginny either," he tacks on as an afterthought.
Hermione sets her coffee down with a soft chink on the countertop.
"I don't want to cause problems," she repeats, more firmly. She doesn't say `between you and Ginny', but Harry knows that's what she means.
"We've been best friends since we were eleven," Harry snorts. "Why on earth would there be problems?"
They are silent for a moment, a long-ago jab resounding in both of their heads. Don't pretend as if you know anything about Quidditch… Ginny has always been edgy regarding Hermione's relationship with Harry, though the two marriages seemed to have tempered it somewhat.
"Well, Ron is her brother, Harry," she says matter-of-factly. "It's only natural that the Weasleys will side with him."
The detached way she pronounces the surname stabs at him; she has already assumed the mantel of an outsider… no longer one of them.
"You're still the mother of our nephew and niece. Still the mother of Weasley grandchildren," Harry points out. "That won't change."
She sighs a bit in concession of his point, and directs the wrapped presents into position under the tree. Her wand arcs gracefully through the air.
"I even got him something," she says in a non sequitur. "Stupid, isn't it?"
"It's not stupid at all," he dissents softly. "You were married for fifteen years."
She tries to force her trembling lips into a smile, and shuffles to the armchair, sitting abruptly in what could nearly be called a collapse. She slumps forward, folding over onto herself, and an escaped segment of hair swishes past her cheek, blocking her face.
"I miss him." The admission is so quiet and breathy that Harry almost doesn't hear it at all. He moves over in front of her, and kneels down, clasping her warm hands in his. He tucks the recalcitrant locks behind her ear, so he can see her, so she can see how much he aches for her, how readily he would ease this burden for her, if he could.
"Of course you do. You can't just…erase…the years you had with him."
She is just barely touching the backs of his hands, her fingertips like feathers, whisper-light, but she is not looking at him. Even though they are so close that he can detect the cinnamon in the coffee she was drinking, her gaze is distant.
"I wonder…" she muses. "If I've - I've gone about everything the wrong way round. If I just wanted so badly for Ron to be what he's not, that I never - I never appreciated what he was."
"You want to reconcile with him, then?" His voice stays casual, but something inside him twists at the words, at the thought that she would take Ron back. He cannot identify why this would be so profoundly disturbing.
She smiles at him a little, and shakes her head.
"It would never work. Maybe we shouldn't have ever - but then we wouldn't have the kids, and - well, they're worth all of it, really. We might be happy again - for a while - but it wouldn't be long before we fell back into our old routine, the yelling and the slamming doors and the - God, the things we've said to each other." Her head droops down into her hands again.
The heavy silence is smothering, and Harry inhales a deep breath through his nose and teeth.
"You should come back to the Burrow with me."
She doesn't raise her head.
"Don't be stupid, Harry."
"You're family," he reiterates. "You were family before the ring and the piece of paper, and you're family still. And if they can't see that, if they can't see how - "
He stops suddenly. She has lifted her head, and is gazing at him, eyes shiny-wet with unshed tears, lashes stuck together in starry points. He isn't sure how he was planning on completing that sentence, but somehow, he is certain that it would have been ridiculous and dangerously revealing.
Revealing what? That you're alone in this house on Christmas Eve with your best friend, and she's divorced from her husband and you're disenchanted with your wife, and you need to haul arse out of here before you do something really, really stupid, a snide inner voice says in one panicked breath.
"Thank you, Harry," she murmurs, her voice raspy and tear-clogged.
"For what?" he asks, having become thoroughly separated from his train of thought.
"For saying that. It means a lot, really. And even when you can't see me as much anymore - or if you don't - I mean, I'll know that - "
"You will always be my best friend, Hermione, even if you divorce a thousand Weasleys."
She laughs then, and he is glad. He stands up, disengages his hands from hers, and backs away, groaning in chagrin over the creaking in his knees. When he reaches the front door, he stands with his hand on the knob, at a loss, knowing he should leave, but desperate to stay, here - with her - in this quiet haven, where he feels like a real person again.
And something like that must be evident in his face, and he is able to tell the moment she recognizes it for the potential it has. He sees her eyes widen and her lips part slightly. Her hands tremble, and the coffee cup that she has just picked back up slips from her fingers and shatters on the hardwood floor. Coffee blooms across the floor in an abstract splatter.
"Oh, look what I've done," she complains, but her voice is high and uncertain.
"Let me help you get that," he offers, but she turns him down.
"No, no," she says, too fast. "I'll clean it up." Even as she speaks, she has mopped up the spill with a swish of her wand, and the chunks of ceramic are realigning themselves. "You should go."
There is a double edge in her words, a warning in her dark eyes. He knows that she has become aware of this newly-born, nameless thing, arising nebulously from the ashes of his disintegrating relationship with Ginny, and that she is afraid, afraid of what ruin may come, where the ever-widening ripples of her wrecked marriage may lead them all.
"Yeah, they're probably wondering where I am." He deliberately misunderstands her, keeps his words light, even though he is lying. He is sure that Ginny and Ron, at least, know exactly where he is.
She follows his lead.
"Thanks for stopping by," she says brightly. "Happy Christmas."
He looks as if he'd like to say one more thing, but decides against it, forcing a smile in response to her well wishes. After one final hesitation, he grips the door handle and wrenches it open, plunging through the gap like a cliff-diver finally leaping from the precipice, and shutting it decisively behind him.
He lingers on the stoop for a moment, his hand still clenched tightly around smooth metal, his face so near the door that the piney scent of the Christmas wreath fills his nostrils.
There is silence from inside for a moment, and then she has turned the wireless back on. He reluctantly unwinds his fingers from the door knob, and clomps down the steps, thinking to himself that the smells of coffee and popcorn will never again separate themselves from thoughts of her.
TBC
A/N: I was very excited by the response to this little story. I was sort of partial to it, and liked that it was more "sensory" than action. I hope you liked this next installment too. The chapters are shorter and simpler (trying to keep it to 2 scenes per chapter), so it should be updated fairly quickly.
You may leave a review on your way out, if you like!
Cheers,
lorien
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