Chapter Seven.
Mostly Broken.
"To have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered."
-Oscar Wilde
London. 2003.
Harry sat up in his bed, sweat moving slowly down his forehead and between his shoulder blades. The scream had choked out in his throat, the way that years of bad dreams had trained him to react. He cast his eyes around his room, and just for a small moment didn't realize that he wasn't in New York. When finally he calmed down he lay against the soaked sheets and closed his eyes, though he knew that he would not sleep again.
When the sun finally came up he stared out the window at the early morning noises of a city coming to life. He sat up when he smelled coffee. He strolled from his bedroom to the kitchen where he found Ginny making coffee. She waved to him and turned back to finish.
"I've got eggs on the table, but you know I'm no cook so if you don't like them compliment me anyway. It'll make me feel better." She said.
Harry sat down and devoured what were possibly the worst eggs he had ever had, before he sat and drank the worst coffee he had ever had, and the whole time he smiled like an idiot. Ginny told little jokes, he had forgotten how funny she could be.
"How was the guest room?" He asked, "Not too stuffy I hope."
"It was fine." She smiled, "Thanks for letting me stay over. I don't think I had it in me to face her right this moment."
"Yeah." He rubbed his head, "I know the feeling."
"So, our talk." She paused, "It was good."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." She cocked her head, "I'm not saying that I'm ready to storm the breech into a new relationship with anybody, but yes. It was good. I feel better."
"Glad to hear it."
"So how's the breakfast?"
"Great."
"Because I made it and I think it tastes like rubbish." She pushed her unfinished plate of eggs next to his clean plate, "So, yeah, no offense if you didn't like it."
"I'll never tell." He smiled.
Her face grew serious, the warmth shut out for a moment, "So, you're in love with Hermione?"
"I don't know." He shrugged, "Okay, no I do know. Yeah. I'm in love with her."
"So why not do something about it?"
"Because I don't really trust her not to hurt me again." He shook his head, "How fucking pathetic is that?"
Ginny snaked her hand across the table to rest on top of his. He looked up and met her eye and saw the strength there, the warmth that had made it's return, "It's not pathetic. It's natural. We're all afraid of giving one person every ounce of ourselves, because once given it is a powerful weapon against us. But we can't let that fear rule over us. We can't."
"I know." He sighed, "But I need time, Gin. I'm so terrified of what she is and what her and I might mean."
"Everyone hurts each other, Harry. If you don't expect that by now, you're fooling yourself. We hurt everyone we ever love in one way or another. Pain is part of the process."
"Isn't that a little jaded?" He smiled.
"Life is a little jaded, Harry." She smiled back, "We just have to actively look for the diamonds in all these lumps of coal. It's our lot in life."
"Find you bliss, and whatnot?"
"Something like that." She winked, "And listen, I know that I'm the last person in the world to give you relationship advice, seeing how badly I've botched every single one of mine, but believe me, sometimes it's worth seeking out."
New York City. 2002.
"I'm leaving for Boulder." Neville said.
"What?" The digital ghost of Ginny's voice answered.
Neville was standing on a corner, one finger jammed in his ear against the city noise the other ear had a cell phone against it. On the other end of the line was Ginny Weasly, and everything in between them was cell phone static and small, sad unrequited things. Neville moved under an awning to try to afford himself a better buffer against the toxic noise of city living.
"It's a town in Colorado." He said, "I'm going to be out there for a few weeks."
"Something good popped up?"
"Yes. Sort of." He shrugged even though she couldn't see it, "Just reports, but it might turn into something."
"Will you send me your new mailing address?"
"I..." Neville sighed, "I don't know."
"Why?"
"Because it's now or never for me right now, Gin." He waved his arm around, "I keep reading the letters you send, looking for that one letter, the one I really want you to send, and I know it isn't coming and that's killing me."
Ginny was silent for awhile, "I... I don't know what to say."
"I know."Neville rested his head on the crook of his arm, "I know."
"Tell me what you want me to say."
"Tell me that you love me, like I love you." He whispered to her, "Tell me that, one time and I'll never ask for anything else ever again."
"I... I can't."
"I know that too."
London. 2003.
Harry cleaned up the table while Ginny talked at length to him about the ways in which she had botched her chances for happiness. He winced every time his mind connected his unique fingerprint to her consequences.
"And I haven't spoken to him since." She slumped in her chair, "And I regret that. Becauce I think I could love Neville. I really do. But I was..."
"Unresolved on other points." He contributed.
"Yeah."
Harry turned around and sat down, "Maybe you should try to talk to him. Do you still have his phone number?"
"Yeah, but... I don't know. What would I even say?"
"Ask him to coffee." He shrugged, "Tell him that you want to see him. I have no idea. I suck at this sort of thing." He indicated his apartment, "Second time I've had a beautiful girl in my flat over night since I came back, and both times nothing happened."
"Point." She punched him softly in the arm, "Also, gross."
"There you go, I'm gross now." He smiled, "You ought to at least talk to him. Where's he at these days?"
"He works out of Hogwarts now." She rested her forehead on her hand, "He does work for the green house. I'm told that he's a year or two away from teaching."
"Sounds like you've been keeping tabs." He said accusingly.
"Girl's got to have hobbies" She said weakly.
"If you're interested enough to follow his career, I mean to even know that sort of thing, exactly why don't you love him?"
"I do love him." She smiled, "But I'm too afraid that he'll turn me down or hurt me."
"Look at us, we are in the same boat." He smiled and shook his head, "We should've done this years ago. I could really have used a friend in misery."
"It does love company." She added.
"It does at that."
* * *
Yorkshire. 2003.
Ron walked in from his morning run to find Luna reading the directions on the back of a box of pancake mix. She kept furrowing her brow, as if she was having deep problems with the numerical order of the instructions. Ron grabbed an apple from the counter and sat down behind her at the table.
"What's shakin' gorgeous?" He said through mouthfuls of apple.
"I can't figure out at what point this stupid thing wants me to flip the pancake. I always see the cooks and stuff flip the pancake, but this just says to add water and milk."
"I don't think it's meant to be a cook book, dear. Just a handy list of ingredients."
"Well, that's dull."
Ron walked up and put his arms around her waist. He kissed her neck and she leaned into him, "I think I can live without pancakes." He said.
"Good." She added before she spun around, "Because I wasn't going to make you any, anyway."
He smiled as she kissed him.
London. 2003.
Harry had walked Ginny out with the promise that she would try to talk to Neville if he tried to speak with Hermione. He stood in the overcast London street smoking his second cigarette while trying to think of what he could even say to the woman that had owned his heart for longer than he really wished she had. In two days he had had two very good friends mention her name at the heart of his issues in life, and for once he was beginning to see the trend of thought.
He paced a little, thought about everything he wanted to say and do and finally stopped dead in his tracks. Standing in front of him, as if out of thin air, were Draco and Amber.
"Malfoy?" He squawked out.
"Harr-Bear." Draco said in response.
"What're you two doing here?" Harry asked while Amber gave him a hug.
Draco smiled and presented an empty hand, "I was going to dramatically hold out the note you sent me, but I left it on the kitchen table."
"Wow." Harry smiled, "The note thing would've been cool."
"I know." Draco beamed, "So are you going to show us up to your home away from home, or are the wife and I going to have to live out of our suitcases on the sidewalk from here on out?"
"Of course." Harry smiled, "Come on up."
* * *
Draco was walking about the flat, giving himself the non-guided tour, while Harry and Amber drank coffee in the kitchen. Amber had immediately poured out the pot that Ginny had prepared and made another of far better quality. Draco's mug sat steaming at the empty spot where he was supposed to be sitting.
"I don't think I've ever been in you flat before." Draco announced as he walked in and took a seat, "It is very Harry."
Harry cocked his head to the side and gave Draco a sly grin, "Is that a insult or a compliment."
"It's both." Draco smiled back, "So, how bad have things gotten that you need me to fly all the way out here to bail you out?"
"Malfoy, you have no idea."
"That bad, is it?" Amber asked, "Draco said that you might have to confront some of your demons out here."
"And I did." Harry answered, "I'm still hale and whole but maybe a little worse for the wear."
"Care to expound?" Draco asked as he picked up his coffee, "Or do I have to beat it out of you." He turned to his wife, "Sometimes you got rake him over the coals to get anything out of him."
"I've noticed." She screwed up her eyes in silent laughter, "But sometimes I thin that that is half the fun."
"It's no big deal really." Harry cut in, "I've had two, count that out on your fingers, I can wait..."
Draco threw some napkins at him, "Smart ass."
"But seriously, I've had two very difficult conversations, and I'm fairly certain that I've got at least two more ahead of me before I can say I'm done patching things up."
"Then what?" Amber asked, "I mean, are you coming back to New York at the end of all of this?"
"I don't know." Harry rubbed his chin, "I really do love that city, it's as much a part of me as anything else in my life..."
"But?" Draco added.
"But." Harry said gravely.
Amber looked back and forth between them, "Is this some kind of wizardy telepathy that we mere mortals can't vibe to?"
"No." Draco grinned, "I think it's called guy talk. Or at least that's what I've heard."
"So what's 'But'?" She asked.
"This is his home." Draco said softly, "Just like Brooklyn is yours."
"But I don't live in Brooklyn. I live with you." She paused, "In Manhattan."
"Yeah." Harry said, "But Brooklyn is a cab ride away for you. A walk if you're feeling ambitious. This is a little different."
"I'll grant that." Amber stated rationally, "But Draco isn't packing up to come back here."
"He has you, though." Harry said, "I don't really have something as powerful as love holding me down anywhere."
"Oh!" She slapped her forehead, "But you think you have that here. Is it that one girl... Harmony?"
"Hermione." He and Draco corrected.
"So is it her?"
Harry sat staring at the wall for a beat before he let a small smile develop on his face, "It's complicated."
Amber put her hand on his, "Oh sweetie, it always is. You think dealing with all the hocus pocus was easy for me?"
"I wasn't suggesting-" He began.
"If you think there's a chance for something with this girl, something real, something special, you have to make that leap. You just have to." She reached over and squeezed Draco's hand, "It is so worth it. So worth it."
Harry smiled, "I'm glad you guys came out here."
"What're friends for?" Draco said.
"Keeping a balance against the number of enemies." Harry smiled.
* * *
In a neat stack exactly four feet from the bed Harry slept on was a stack of letters. They had been written to him over the course of five years, they were all from Hermione. Most had not been read before the night he had decided to fly to London, but there were two letters which he had read and re-read a dozen times in those years. One was the first letter she sent him, before he had even moved out of London. The other one was the letter that had brought him back.
The first letter read;
Harry,
There is some logic to the thought that what happened between us is my fault. I acknowledge that. I'm not trying to make this more difficult than it is, because believe me I know how hard it is for you. It's hard for me. I'm going to say this, because you said it to me, and I think you deserve at least this much from me.
I love you, Harry. I think that I always have, in my own way. But everything that's happened. Me and Ron, you and me. Sex complicates things, I think. I don't even know what I'm doing anymore. I barely know who I am. For so many years I defined myself as your best friend and Ron's girlfriend, that now, this moment as I sit here writing this, I have no idea who I am.
Ron hates you, and he hates me and it's not fair to me that I have to be caught up in it. Ginny stalks around the flat like a woman without a purpose and I think to myself, "I shouldn't have had sex with Harry." And I know how that sounds, I know. Because I needed that so badly, I needed to feel you there after all this time. And when you told me that you loved me. When you said those words.
I exploded inside, Harry. I had wanted so badly for that to be true. I had spent so many nights wishing that I would hear that from your lips. And when it was spoken I was so amazingly overjoyed, and we got carried away. That's what we did.
Because look at the mess we've left for ourselves. Is that the future you want? Having to fight all the time, waking up every day knowing that a struggle was ahead of you? Because that's what we're standing in line for. What happened between us, it was wonderful and I'm so happy it happened, but it was a mistake. It was a mistake that we shouldn't have made, and that I wish you hadn't let me make.
Remember that night when I was standing in the rain and you told me to go home? I was so mad at you, Harry. I couldn't believe you would just reject me out of hand like that. But this morning I woke up and I realized that I wish you had done that same thing a week ago. I wish you had had the strength to turn me away again. I sound horrible, but I need to say these things.
And I can't say them to your face.
I love you, it makes it hard to speak logically, to think straight. I can't see you anymore. I can't manage it. I don't have it in me to go back, but I don't like what lay ahead. Sometimes I wish one of us would just leave.
I'm sorry, Harry. I am so sorry.
-Hermione.
It was this letter that harry found himself reading that night before he went to bed. Because this letter held all of his worst fears about trying to pursue something with Hermione. It was the wellspring from which all of his years of exile and pain had come from.
In the time since he read her letter begging him to come home he had read through the other ones. They had varied in tone, from caustic to apologetic. Some were borderline love letters, others had been more like hate mail. And nearest the top of the stack, where the most recent letters were kept, they were mostly tear filled admissions of guilt and shame. And each and everyone of them was written with the same inscrutable code of semi insanity. Filled with frenetic sentences, incomplete thoughts and in some instances, actual panic.
Each letter had been from her heart, and that made the ones filled with hate that much more unbearable to read. He got up and walked to the door, casting a glance at the letter on his bed before he closed the door and padded his way past the guestroom where the newlyweds slept. When he got to the kitchen he saw Draco sitting at the table drinking a glass of water.
"Malfoy?"
Draco turned his head in surprise, though upon realizing it was Harry he smiled, "Jetlag. It's a killer."
"I can see that." Harry pulled up a chair and sat down, "Amber still asleep?"
"She conked out a few hours ago."
"So, how have you been filling the time?"
"I watched some TV for awhile. I tried to read one of your books."
"Yeah?"
"Couldn't get into it." Draco shrugged, "Sorry."
"No big deal."
"Have you thought about what Amber told you?" Draco leaned back in his chair, "About going after Hermione?"
"Yeah. I have." Harry confessed, "Actually I've done little else."
"Which explains why you're up so early."
"I don't sleep too great mostly, anyway." Harry said, "Less so when I'm thinking about something major."
"I know." Draco propped himself on his elbows, "So?"
"What?"
"Hermione."
"Oh." Harry hung his head in his hands, "Oh."
Draco shifted uncomfortably, "Look, Harr... If it's not something that you..."
"I know, Malfoy."
"I'm not trying to pressure you into anything here. I'm just trying to help."
"And I appreciate that. I do. It's just hard." He sighed, "There's so much history there. If things went badly, if she didn't like what I turned out to be... I don't know."
"The world is filled with a million 'what if's, Harry. It's how it works. But just because something might, maybe happen if you do something doesn't mean you shouldn't."
"I feel like this is all happening too soon." He looked up, "Does that make sense? Like maybe all of this is just too sudden. I haven't even had a chance to digest the shit that I've sorted out in the last few days and now I'm losing sleep over what the next step is going to be."
"Yeah." Draco looked out the window, then looked back to Harry, "You know how sometimes when a window breaks it shatters but it doesn't fall apart?"
"Yeah. Like it gets all spider webbed. I've seen that happen."
Draco leaned back, "When I was a kid I did that. I tossed a rock at a big window in this abandoned house down the street from where I lived. I don't even know why I did it. It was the only window left in the whole house, I had no good reason to break it. I convinced myself that it was for the purpose of symmetry, but I mean, who knows why, right? I sure don't."
"This going somewhere?"
"I'm getting to it." Draco said defensively, "Point I'm trying to make is that the window shattered but it didn't fall out. It just sat in the frame all cracked up and whatnot. I knew, I wasn't dumb, I knew that if I touched it the whole thing would collapse. But there was a part of me that wondered, is it staying put because it's a deceptively strong pane of glass or because it's that one off thing where it's all just resting on top of each broken piece in the right way."
"And?"
"I touched it and it fell apart. I got cut really bad on my palm and my father yelled at me the whole time I was at Mungo's. It was a fucked up kind of day."
"Okay." Harry gave him a confused look, "And this means what?"
"I think that's where you are now. You and Hermione, what you were and what you could have been. You're a cracked up window pane that hasn't fallen apart. So you're looking at it and wondering if touching it would cut you or if it's a strangely strong pane of glass."
"There could be something to that." Harry said.
"Harr, we're all a shattered piece of glass. No one gets out of life without a few cracks, and we all fought a war before. We're fucked up and mostly broken."
"Wonderful." Harry threw up his hands and let his head rest on the table, "That's what I need to hear, thanks for the pick me up."
"Come on, man. Calm down. What I'm saying is that we're all these damaged, hurt miserable, mostly broken and pathetic slobs. We limp on, going from one place to another, leading these quietly dignified lives and we hope that everyone or no one notices us. But some people, and I think that you and her are this kind of person, some people have all these fault lines, and cracks, but they don't just limp on in quiet dignity. They put their lives back together with spello tape. Because they were always that one remarkably strong pane of glass. Get it?"
"How tired are you?" Harry asked without raising his head from the table, "Exactly."
"I was in and out the whole time I was just talking to you. I think I was just talking to stay awake."
"Ah." He lifted his head, "See now I'm worried."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Because a lot of that made sense to me."
"Wasn't my intention, buddy."