Author's Note: I wrote this about a year ago, and only just realized I'd never posted it here on Portkey. I'm not sure how good it is, seeing as it was written through the haze of adult beverages, but here you are. Please read, enjoy, and review, if you like.
Broken
I look at you from across the table. It takes a while for you to notice, so engrossed you are in whatever my husband has to say. But when you look up at me, when green touches brown, I feel struck as if by the lightning bolt hidden beneath your black fringe.
I'm frozen to my chair, wineglass stopped half-way to my anxious, longing lips. My heart seems intent on erupting from my chest, so hard it is beating. I gasp at the sensation, pain and pleasure entwined. I do not hear your wife, though she continues to speak to me. I cannot concentrate on her. I see only you.
So I make myself look away from your penetrating gaze. I make some silly excuse. I make a hasty retreat into the empty Burrow, away from the back garden full of in-laws and children and friends. They suffocate me, suddenly, their mere presence. Their eyes barely glance in my panicked direction and yet I feel accusations hurled at me. My own imagination, taunting me.
I try and flee from it as I do the ones I love. How can they know my thoughts? Not one is skilled in Occlumency. Indeed, chatter continues untouched and it fades to a happy hum as the door closes with a soft thud behind me. No one bothers looking close enough to see such tainted thoughts. Everyone assumes the best, and how could they not, after everything?
I pause near the doorway of the scullery. Pause only for a moment - long enough to hear the door open and close softly again. I continue through the house, searching for my only chance of refuge. I hear your voice as I near the loo.
"Hermione!" your voice is a shout upon a whisper and I am struck once more.
My steps falter, but I can't not go on. I push the door open, try to close, but there you are. You're everywhere; I cannot escape you, especially when you push the door open with the greatest of ease. My efforts so vain, so ridiculous. I cannot look at you.
"Look at me." Your voice is pleading. How can that be?
My voice will not, cannot respond. I stare at the sink, my hands gripping its edges until my knuckles are white as the porcelain beneath. I close my eyes, I do not see you. But I feel you. I always feel you, standing there behind me, your eyes on the bushy curls that fall down upon my back and shoulders, obscuring my face, my shameful face.
"Hermione," you say again, and your voice is softer than ever. Do not be kind to me. My desire is wicked, but you seem uncaring. You persevere, hands at my waist, turning me around. My pride - or is it my shame? - keeps me from facing you. Indeed, I am feigning much interest in the buttons of your shirt, which resides untucked beneath your robes.
"Hermione." Stop saying my name. If you only knew what it does to me when your voice shapes my name…
My face, though obscured by endless brown and frizzy curls, is crumpled in misery. You may not see, but can you feel it? My love, how can you not? How can you not, at the very least, hear the wretched tearing of my equally wretched heart? It is the only sound I hear now - the chatter of the happy family outside is muffled by the doors, the space, the time. They are all so far away now. This is our own world. But why are you here?
Before I even know what I am doing, I speak. And the words are my own, but the voice is foreign. The voice is choked, distorted by pain and longing. "What has become of us? How did this happen?"
I can feel your gaze upon the top of my head as I continue to stare at the brown buttons which dot a neat line down the middle of your crisp white shirt. You are silent and I wonder if I even asked such a question. Perhaps I only thought it.
But your arms are around me suddenly, holding me fiercely, as I've never been held before. I gasp, fall into you, closing my eyes against the pain of what's happening and all I wish could happen. My body quakes in your grasp, so suffocated, so quenched, so desperate for more. Surely, you must know. You must feel it, too. How can only one feel so much, all alone?
Your lips are upon my hair, they move from crown to forehead, slowly. Are you savoring this, too? The heat of your mouth upon my hair and skin. Does it drive you mad as it drives me? Does it tempt you further… as it tempts me?
Your hands move from my waist, exploring my back, my stomach, my hips, my arms. Your hands are greedy, and my body only wishes it had more to give. Have me, I'm yours, just don't stop. Don't ever stop, my love. Draw this out unto eternity.
But a hand snakes its warm, slow way up my neck and along my jaw to my chin. At last, I face you. My eyes must be red with unshed tears as they gaze into yours, questioning, hopeful, loving and lusting. I tremble once more in your arms. My bottom lip quivers, yearning, desperate. Your eyes leave mine to gaze at it with the same yearning, the same hope and questions and lust and love. You struggle as I have done for so long now, so many years.
Should you give in? Should you turn and run? Should you hold me closer? Should you push me away?
The desire in your eyes is enough to leave me light-headed. So long has it been since we accepted the burden of us - unattainable, unfortunate, belated. How can we live with ourselves? How can we be here, like this, so close to the point of no return, when the world continues without us, despite us and our silent longings?
But how can we stand it? How can we bear to resist any longer? For years have we struggled, long before a war in which our desires were muted, long after the acceptance of others to which we seemed most ardently bound. How could we know it would come to this?
How could we know it would come to a point when resistance no longer stood a chance? When we would be pressed together in a closet-sized toilet in the house of our mutual in-laws, unable to go on with the charade of happy marriages and pleasant dispositions, without seeing each other, feeling each other…
"I don't know," you whisper in answer to my question, at long last. And how could you know? How could I know? Life had simply sailed on, no pause, no time to think, no time to understand the meaning of this, of us.
"We had a chance," I reply in the same whisper, my eyes desperately clinging to yours. "We had a chance long ago… do you remember?"
And you shake your head. Your eyes close with bitter remorse. Your forehead presses against mine. I can feel your scar through our fringe. It is oddly comforting, and I take a breath, closing my eyes, too.
"I remember it all," you say at some length, still with so quiet a voice. I can feel the sadness in it, the regret.
"I tried to make you see," I whisper, half-hoping you won't hear me. I knew even when I tried that you wouldn't have seen, so absorbed were you in the mission with which our dear, fallen mentor entrusted you.
"I couldn't see," you say, though I already know. "I couldn't see anything then, and now we pay for it."
I shudder again, bite back a whimper. My arms wrap themselves around your neck, pull you an inch closer. How am I not brave enough to pull you still closer and closer? All it would take is one small, yet so significant bit of effort.
"We had so much time then," I say. "Where did it all go?"
"Yes, we had time," you reply, and your voice is tainted with both love and anger. "Time stolen by him, stolen by the war and the mission and the lies… and the others… the little, misguided feelings we had for others…"
"I tried to make you see," I say again, but my voice is not an accusation. I know he can't have seen, not then when everything was so unstable, unsure… when it was the greatest achievement just to find a decent meal or a safe camping spot.
"You stayed behind," you whisper then and you sound far-away, as if in a dream. "You held my hand in the snowy graveyard. You guided me through it all."
"We guided each other." My voice is softer than ever as we press even closer. I can feel our resistance breaking, our will weakening. I'm trembling again with the force of it, my shaking hand making its tentative way into soft black hair.
I stare up at you and your eyes mirror the mingled relief and resignation in mine. So long, so long has it been that we've carried our burden, the burden of our forbidden desire. So long has it been since my lips touched yours in that one, simple, quiet, desperate moment of abandon in the quiet,forgiving space of an empty forest.
"How can we not?" Your whisper is hot on my lips. And I understand your meaning just before the space between is closed. As your lips touch mine, I cling to you and you to me.
How can we not guide each other through this, too? We've reached the point of no return. We can never go back now as we rip clothes from each other in a desperate bid for freedom. It is another war, somehow no less devastating and no less triumphant. It has taken us so long to get here, to accept and consummate what has long been brewing inside us.
There's only so much resistance one can take. Maybe rules are, after all, made to be broken.