Chapter 10: You Are Not Alone
He came back to her the night before, much to her delight. They had made love until they were exhausted and fell asleep.
Harry awoke first, he blinked blearily. He was spooned up behind Hermione, his right arm slung over her waist, holding her close. He lifted his head to see Hermione was sleeping with a small smile on her face. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her right shoulder. She murmured his name happily before snuggling in further with a sigh.
Harry watched her for a moment longer before he slowly and carefully pulled away from her, making sure that he didn't wake her up. She needed her sleep, and he needed to think. He shifted so his back was facing her. His legs slid over the edge and he shifted the cover so it covered his lap and bowed his head.
He had to do this…it wasn't fair to her for him to keep doing this.
~_HxH_~
Hermione opened her eyes to see Harry was sitting with his back toward her. His legs were over the side of the bed and he was hunched over, looking like he had the weight of the world on his shoulder.
"Harry?" she reached out, her hand sliding up his back, caressing the old scars of whipping marks he had received at the hands of his uncle. She sat up, pulling the sheets over her bare breasts. "Is everything okay?"
"I have to leave," he told her, not looking at her. Hermione frowned.
"Then why don't you?" she asked. He had left many times before but he had always come back.
"Because this time, I can't come back," he told her. Fear gripped at her heart. Her hand froze on his shoulder as she stared at the back of his head. "It's not fair of me to do this."
"Do what?" she choked out, her fear making it difficult for her to concentrate.
"I can't keep doing this. I can't keep coming back and pretending that everything is okay when it's not!" he burst out, his hands gripping the sheets tightly.
"I didn't think you were pretending," Hermione snapped and Harry sighed. "We are so close to our goal. Why are you suddenly scared?"
"Hermione," he turned around and grabbed her hand in his. "There is a chance that this might not work, and you need to be prepared for it. I should leave you; give you the chance to move on without me." He reached out and cupped her cheek. "You are beautiful and you are amazing. There are plenty of men out there who can be there for you, who can love you."
"But none of them are you," she whispered. "None of them will get me like you do. You understand me." Harry closed his eyes in pain. "I love you."
"And I love you," he assured her, opening his eyes to make her dark ones. "But I can't…I won't do this to you, Hermione. I won't stop you from living your life like you should just because I'm being selfish."
"You're not being selfish. I was the one who came up with the idea. You tried to talk me out of it in the beginning, remember?" he looked away. "I want to do this, Harry. We have already lost more than a year because of them. Please…don't back out now," she begged. She didn't want to lose him, not now, not when they were so near.
"What if it doesn't work out?" he challenged, looking at her. She held her breath. She hadn't thought about it, hadn't dared to. She didn't know what she would do if it didn't work out. She was staking everything she had. Harry seemed to realise that. "Please, Hermione," He moved closer, pressing their foreheads together. "Please move on if it doesn't work out. I can't bear to think of you mourning me for the rest of your life. Not when you still have plenty of time ahead of you. You can still find another love, have a family. Live."
"None of that means anything without you," she told him, pulling away from his embrace and turning her back to him. "I'm doing this for you, because you asked me to."
"And I see it tearing at you every night before you go to sleep," Harry countered, exasperated. He loved and admired her, but she could also drive him crazy with her stubbornness. Hermione stood up, wrapping the sheet around her body and moved away from the bed.
"I made the choice to go after them. I made the choice to torture them. I didn't have to, there was nothing saying that it had to involve torture, but I wanted to!" Hermione snapped before she spun around to see Harry was now standing at the other side of the bed, another sheet wrapped around his waist. "It's not as if you held a gun to my head and forced to me do it!"
"But it's still tearing you apart!" Harry snapped back, some of his anger slipping free. "You think I don't know about the nightmares? Even when I'm not with you, I can still hear you Hermione."
"But it will be worth it in the end!" she reminded him.
"Only if you do it in time," Harry countered her before sighing. "Hermione, we both know that there is a chance it won't work, but you refuse to accept the possibility. You've closed yourself off to it. What are you going to do if it doesn't work?"
"Why are you doing this?" Hermione asked, her left hand tightening into a fist. "Why do you want to believe that it won't work?"
"Because I want to know what you will do," he admitted. "All I have ever wanted for you is to be happy, to have a family, a career. I never wanted you to live in misery because I died." Hermione sighed.
"Harry, you were all I ever wanted," she shrugged her shoulders almost helplessly. "You're the one who made Hogwarts worth it. Without you, my life just seems so…empty."
"But you are still alive. You still have the chance to move on, to find someone else," he pleaded.
"But you are still here," she pressed on. "I can still touch you, hear you, and see you."
"But I'm not alive, Hermione. I can't give you a child. I can't marry you. I can only be with you for a short time and each time…my time grows shorter," he reminded her in a hard tone, trying his hardest to keep his emotions under control.
"I don't get where all this is coming from," she exclaimed. "You were fine…"
"It's because of the way I died!" Harry snapped. Hermione stopped and stared at him, startled by the change in his attitude. Not once since he came to visit her had he ever talked about his death. Harry sighed, running a hand through his black locks. "When I died, my soul tore itself to pieces. That is why I'm stuck in a limbo. Add in the promise we made…I find it very difficult to move on." Hermione opened her mouth but Harry shook his head. "Hermione, I have never feared death in my life. I always knew that my parents would be on the other side waiting for me. The promise prevented me from being able to move on."
"So you're blaming me?!" she shouted. Harry shook his head but Hermione was on a roll. "We were fourteen and fifteen when we made that promise! You didn't have to keep it!"
"Hermione, you're my best friend! You wanted a promise and I made it. I wanted to keep the promise. We swore that we would always be there for each other, no matter what!" Harry reminded her. "I remembered the promise just before I died and its part of the reason why I'm still here."
Hermione looked away as Harry rounded the bed, moving closer to her as he tried to get her to understand what he was trying to say. He loved her enough to let her go, even though he hated the thought of her being with someone else, he knew it was best thing for them.
"Add in my promise…" he started.
"I agreed, and I'm keeping to it," she cut him off in a hard tone, glaring at him.
"Hermione, I was grieving for Sirius and I thought I had lost you too. You didn't have to…"
"And if I was the one who was dead, would you have walked away?" she challenged him. Harry bit back a growl as he looked off to the side, his hands clenching into fists at the thought of her dead body. "Exactly, you would be doing the same. This is our chance. He is vulnerable and everything tells me that it can work."
"You are getting to close to the edge, Hermione. I fear that you will go over that line if you continue down this path any longer," he looked at her. "There will be no coming back."
"I won't," she promised him. "I know my limits." He arched an eyebrow.
"I saw what you did to him," Harry told her. Hermione flinched before she looked away. "I have never seen you like that when I was still alive, Hermione. You didn't even act that way to Umbridge."
"He deserved it," she muttered out, bitterly and stubbornly.
"You killed him and brought him back to life, over and over again. In the end he was practically begging you! He even called you worse than Voldemort! You refused to kill him until you had brought him back from the dead again!" She swallowed hard.
"It was just the one time," she protested feebly. "I am nearly finished. There are just a few more parts I need and we can be together again."
"I don't want you going near that man," Harry snapped and she glared at him.
"He killed you along with Bellatrix. I want him dead," Hermione reminded him. "Beside, he's the one I need in order to get to Voldemort, and I will be damned if I let you stand in my way because you are scared."
"Hermione…he's…"
"What about him?" she asked. Harry shook his head. "Harry. I saw the sphere, there's nothing you can say…"
"He tortured me about you!" Harry interrupted. "You never heard it because he cast a silencing charm around us before they killed me. He told me that he would hunt you down, that he would torture you in every way imaginable, and he would ensure you would die screaming my name!" Hermione inhaled sharply. "I looked at him and swore that I would kill him, that I would tear him to pieces before he would touch you but he just laughed before he and Bellatrix cast the killing curse at me. The force of two killing curse ripped my soul apart!"
"Harry…" Hermione started.
"If we add in our promises, I can't move on." Hermione turned her face away. "I won't, not as long as you still hold onto me."
"I can't let go," she whispered. Harry nodded as he reached out, his hands caressing her arms.
"It's killing us, Hermione," he whispered. "I'm not alive but I'm not dead. I can't be with you all the time and it kills me not to be able to reach out and touch you. These brief moments are not enough. It's killing you because you are pushing yourself to the limit. You keep trying to find some way to keep me here longer when we both know it's not the right thing to do. It's not natural."
"To hell with natural," Hermione spat him. "There was nothing natural about your death. You were killed and I lost our baby." She bit her bottom lip and Harry sighed.
"You need to talk about it, Hermione. Even though you never knew you were pregnant, you still lost the baby."
"I don't want to," she whispered and Harry nodded.
"I don't want to talk about it either. It tears me to know that I gotten you pregnant and I didn't know it." She looked at him sharply and he shook his head, pressing a light kiss to her lips. "I don't regret that night. I could never. It's just…we didn't think it through, Hermione, and you fell pregnant as a result. You lost the baby and you never dealt with it. You just ran, looking for some way to avenge me…and our baby."
"I didn't know I was pregnant!" she shouted at him, tears in her eyes. "What kind of mother does that make me? I didn't know I was pregnant with our child and I lost it!"
"Hermione, it wasn't your fault. You were only a few weeks pregnant. You didn't have any symptoms," Harry reminded her as he pulled her into his embrace. She wrapped her arms around his waist, holding onto him.
"It was our child," she told him tearfully. "For a short time I was having your baby…and I lost it at the same time I lost you." She shook her head as tears threatened to overwhelm her.
"And you're still in denial. You refuse to acknowledge the loss of our child…and me," he told her.
"I can't face it," she whispered. "I had you both for a short time and you were ripped away from me cruelly."
"And that is why I need to leave. I'm stopping you from moving on, from healing." He closed his eyes when he felt the familiar pulling. "I will always love you, never doubt that," Harry whispered before pressing a soft kiss to her lips and he faded from view, leaving Hermione alone with her emotions and thoughts.
Hermione gasped as her emotions overwhelmed her before she fell to the floor, her tears overtaking her before anger built up inside of her. She slammed her fist into the ground and looked up with hard eyes. She was going to do it. She was going to damn well make sure that she did what she had to do to ensure Harry would come back.
It was the only thing she had to keep her going and she couldn't lose faith…not when she was so close.
TBC
There you go; better indication of what is Harry and the promises. Is everyone happy now? *teasing smile*
Just to make it clear, Harry is dead to the Wizarding World. There was a will reading which doesn't activate unless Harry is dead. He is currently stuck in a limbo which allows him to interact with Hermione at certain points. He fades away but he can still see and hear her, he just can't go to her because he basically needs to `recharge' before he can be seen again. Once he can be seen, he becomes temporally corporeal which allows him to make love to Hermione, have a shower and so on.
Looking for two fics! (I don't know if they are the same ones though)
I think Harry tells Hermione that Angelica, Katie and Alicia treated him as their dress-up doll for first year. I remember that Hermione thought it was funny and sweet.
Harry and Hermione are together and Ginny admits to Hermione that the girls have seen Harry naked/undressed through a peep hole in the Quidditch changing room thanks to Angelica (I think) charging them a gallon for it. Hermione is aghast because she's didn't know about it. Ginny tells her that Harry doesn't know because he would have quit on the spot. Hermione starts thinking about how she would get to see Harry naked because she was the only one who hadn't seen him. (I think the peeping started when Harry was in 1st year).
If anyone knows of these stories, please let me know. Any hints can be extremely helpful!
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