AN/ This is my first attempt to post a story on this site so hopefully it goes well enough. I'm a little nervous because I know this site is far better run than anywhere else I've posted but I love this place, I read stories from here all the time. I have a bigger story in the works and an awesome beta that will be helping me through it so hopefully you like what I bring.
Heaven
The Great Hall seemed almost a stranger to Harry today. Its benches clean and clear, the silence of the room was eerie as he sat alone in the spot that he and his friends always seemed to end up through their years here.
His mind was numb. The rest of him was just about the same. He couldn't feel much as he reached down and laid his palm across the item settled in front of him. He took up the locket by the chain and once high enough, he let it fall until the chain hooked through his middle finger and swayed back and forth.
So much had been lost for this one piece of jewelry. Certainly they'd assumed that it meant the beginning of an end to the reign of Lord Voldemort, a name he'd lost fear in three years ago. Of course, he'd found out that this Horcrux was nothing more than a fake and that he'd risked the life of a man he truly cared for, perhaps cared for the most outside of his friends, and of course, Sirius, who was also no longer in his life.
Harry couldn't seem to come to grips with why a person who seemed to mean so much to this world was forced to deal with so many difficult losses. All he'd known through his young life was hate and disdain that he'd suffered from the Dursley's who looked at him as nothing more than a burden and a freak. Then he came here and found compassion and companionship.
There was Ron, his best friend and the person he would walk into battle with every time for the simple fact that Ron could push away his fear to be simply loyal. He was loyal at times, perhaps to a fault but ever steady and consistent, though jealousy could rear its ginger colored locks a time or two
Ginny was a fair distraction and that was something he appreciated. She tried her best to be support for Harry, even if her timing was never perfect and she could be a bit childish at times. He wondered at times whether or not his status as The-Boy-Who-Lived, meant more to her then him just being a boy.
Of course when it came to loyalty and consistency, few came close too-
"Harry," her voice came through almost as though he'd been waiting for it since he'd sat in this place and its mass solace. Turning his neck a bit, he saw her come from the entrance dressed in a large. She wore a black skirt that cut off just below the knee and her hair was hanging down low across her back and just a bit over her shoulders. She was painted with subtle make up and a smile that shimmered off the light of the Great Hall's mass amount of windows.
His eyes cast away from her once more but he was pleased to hear that her steps didn't stop towards him. Hermione never ceased to read him and that was something he appreciated, not having to explain his moods constantly around her because she'd learned them. She taken the time to understand when he was okay and when he wasn't.
She stood a bit behind the bench where he sat; he could feel her close and opened his hand once more to see the locket resting inside. "We should really be going, Harry. The others are ready but I don't think they'll start without you."
There were so many thoughts racing through his mind. So many thoughts of loss and life, and he was desperate to break it all down into one simple question and he felt compelled to ask. In a way, he trusted only Hermione with the query.
"Hermione, do you believe in… heaven?"
He could sense that the question shook her simply by the fact that she had no immediate answer; it took a lot to draw silence from Hermione when a question was in the air. Turning his glance back to her, there was warmth in her eyes that Harry immediately knew he would never be able to explain. It settled him, calmed him as very few things ever really could.
Harry flinched a bit as Hermione settled into the booth beside him; suddenly she seemed as weary as he was and that made him feel a bit guilty. It certainly wasn't his intention to draw anyone to his level of overwhelming pity.
Still, there was a quizzical look in her eyes and with his gaze trained on her; she pried. "Are you talking about-muggle heaven?"
"Yes,"
A flash of a somber smile painted Hermione's face. "You know, I asked my mum this about-what-seven years ago. It was right before Hogwarts, before I received my letter." There was a deep, incredibly deep hole in her heart that was creaking open to him as she spoke. He could see this in her eyes, in the way she struggled to look at him but never backed down. Harry knew that she was digging into the darkest parts of who she was. She was doing this for him, so that he may be able to do the same. "I'd been having… accidents at school, the girls there, they'd make fun of me quite often, well you remember, I had those God awful teeth and you could lose a hand in my hair and I seemed to have more books than friends, even when my backpack was empty." She laughed shakily, as if to play off how miserable she was before Hogwarts. The entire notion of anyone making Hermione feel this bad bothered Harry more than he'd expected it would.
Even in their first year, when Hermione was still locked away in the shell of a bookworm, he'd been known to cast an eye roll or two in her direction, or pass it off as her simply "being Hermione," which was really just code for her being annoying.
Yet she never wavered, even now she stood by him, when his world was dark, when he couldn't see the hope or the light, or whatever it was that he was being steered towards. Ron was there, physically at least. But he was always able to do other things, to talk with other people and live normally through it all. He made friends and had a broader life than Harry was allowed, and he took full advantage of it.
However, only now did Harry realize that Hermione never did. When the evils in their lives would show themselves, Hermione would never falter, she would simply let it consume her and Harry could almost envision that each of the countless nights he'd spent awake in this castle... he wasn't alone.
Through all his self-sustaining thought, Harry barely heard her begin speaking again. "-was a day when all the girls were at their lockers, a few of them took a book of mine, one my mom had given me for Christmas a couple years before. I'd read it before, so it wasn't anything new. But it was my first book. The first one that was actually mine and I begged them to give it back. I even tried to sound mean, like my father had told me." There were tears swimming in her eyes, Harry didn't understand what any of this had to do with his questions about heaven, but he wasn't about to interrupt her. "Then they began tearing the pages out, balling them up, and throwing them at me. I started crying and that was only good enough to make the people who were standing around watching start to laugh." Harry saw her eyes fall shut, as if she were reliving the moment. She was seeing it again as real as the two of them seated on the bench in the Great Hall. They were also a bit closer together now then when her story had started. A broken laugh escaped her lips as she used a free hand to try and draw an image. "All the lockers on the right side of the hall opened at the same time, and the books and backpacks, anything inside them went crashing about across the floor, smacking students and…I believe a flying Science book broke a girls leg." Harry saw a tear streak down her face. He was a second away from wiping it clean, but she beat him too it. She looked furious at the sudden show of weakness.
"Hermione-", Harry tried, but was silenced by her waving hand.
"They started calling me witch. I take that as a compliment now, it's what I am but… in a muggle school 'witch' meant I was different. It meant it was okay for the kids to spit on me and throw matches at me, cover me with water in hopes I'd melt away."
There was a desperate struggle inside of her now and Harry felt a battle within himself to either stop her before she broke or let her finish so she could be free of it. He opted for the latter, keeping his mouth closed and letting a hand that fell across hers do the talking. "I remember one night," Her face brightened a bit. "The night before I received my letter," then turned stone again. But she kept her gaze away from him. "I asked my mum if they'd make fun of me in heaven, because I didn't want to go back to school anymore."
Harry thought he was going to knock her over with how desperately he wanted to hold her in that moment. She was seemingly smaller now, he felt like was looking at her for the first time. He simply couldn't control his voice. "Please don't cry-" He whispered, but it didn't seem to do the trick.
"I was just a girl, I didn't really know what I was talking about, you know? That I was telling my mum that I'd thought I wanted to kill myself. I just wanted to be left alone, how horrible is that?"
Harry shook his head roughly, almost angrily. "S'not horrible, Hermione I know how rotten it can make you feel. I know what it's like to be tormented."
His arm was around her by the next time she'd been given the time to speak, though Harry wasn't sure he wanted to hear anymore. "I know, that's why I-I love you, you've understood me, without ever truly knowing me."
"Kinship," he smiled. He quickly found his breath breath after her admission. "I heard Sirius say that once about my parents." Hermione laid her head gently across his shoulder, their robes intermingling. He looked upon this girl who he had known for almost seven years now. She was strong and steady. She challenged him and didn't let him get away with things based on his names or some sodding destiny. She pushed him to be better because she believed that he could be.
Her eyes danced across his face a few times and he was swept up in how beautiful they were. She had grown up so much and was wonderfully appealing. Harry had often found himself wondering how Ron could see more in Lavender Brown instead of Hermione Jane.
Merlin, she's... beautiful. Did I know this? He wondered, knowing that his silence had carried on for a while now. But he felt as if he were seeing someone entirely different, yet so wonderfully familiar. It was true... he wouldn't deny to Voldemort himself.
He was in love with Hermione Jane Granger. How much? He didn't know, but at this point in his life, no one was more important to him.
"I do too, you know?" The pair pulled away together, keeping contact but enough to see each other's eyes. Harry reached up and used the pads of his thumbs to push away the stray tears on her face, the tears he'd spend the rest of his life battling away. "I love you. I don't know what that means or where it will take us... but I do. The Weasley's might be furious but... I do. Maybe I always have, really."
In the moment when Hermione dared to kiss him, Harry felt a warmth that he could only compare to the distant memory of lying in his mother's arms. A memory he often considered nothing more than his imagination and distant hope conjuring up something for him to hold on too. Her hands snaked around his neck as Harry lost his own in her hair. In the empty common room of the Great Hall, perhaps they had just found the most powerful weapon of all once more. It was the same weapon that Lily Potter had used to protect her son.
Love, of course.
As they separated from the kiss, they were both breathing heavily as though they'd been running to beat a clock from a bout with a time turner. Harry pulled Hermione to his chest and rubbed her back as she smiled against his chest. "You didn't finish your story,"
"There isn't much to finish, really. My Hogwarts letter came by owl the next day. My parents were so worried the night before and so relieved at my excitement the day it came that they allowed me to go. I read all about Hogwarts the first chance I got, and fell completely in love with it. I jumped on a train that's entrance was through a brick wall and met a red head with a rat and, of course... you. The-Boy-Who-Lived."
Harry turned away a bit at that name, but felt Hermione's hand touch his chin and turn him back to face her. A smile on her face, she cooed softly a voice he hoped to hear for the rest of his life, Voldemort be damned. "I do think there's a heaven, Harry. But we don't have to wait for death, to find it."
After another soft kiss and the sounds of passing footsteps outside, Harry held Hermione's had as they stood and let the length of their robes be the cover. There would be time to explain this at some point, but for now it was a secret meant for a boy and a girl and an empty hall, of a world that would never be the same.