A/N: I must like the taste of my words. Let me eat them, since this was supposed to be a one-shot and here I am adding a part two. Haha. I just had this idea of making a second part where we get to see the other side of the coin: a "what if it was the other way around?" scenario. Needless to say, the idea took hold of my imagination and here we are. Cheers!
~
The cloudless, sunny day seemed to mock Harry with its beauty. Surely on a day like today, the weather should have reflected the despondent condition of his heart.
It had been two weeks, two whole weeks since last he had been here. For a true Gryffindor, it had taken longer than he would have thought to gather the courage to come back here. Then again, things might have been very different if he hadn't been so cowardly all those years ago.
The smell of fresh cut grass floods his nostrils as he walks across the lawn towards the small marker at the top of the hill. Appropriate, he thinks, as that was one of her favorite smells. It was a beautiful collection of hillocks just within sight of the ocean. A quiet and peaceful place where he could perfectly well picture her stretched out and reading a book in the shade of a tree. Her father had purchased it ages ago, for a summer home he had said, but everyone had agreed that it made a perfect place of rest for her now.
He had been in his office at HQ when he had gotten a frantic floo call from Ginny. There had been an accident, Ron was driving Hermione around London and another driver had run a red light…..
He rushed to the scene as fast as he could. There were muggle police officers and emergency personnel everywhere. Ron was sitting on the ground and yelling at someone who was lying on their back. Begging them to wake up. His heart had gone cold when he saw the EMT shake their head and take Ron by the hand. A whine of panic started in his head. No no no no no no. This can't be real. The paramedics were trying to get Ron into an ambulance as his head was bleeding, but Ron refused to leave her side. Harry had had to intervene before Ron pulled his wand and started hexing people.
He wasn't sure now how he had ever kept a level enough head to handle the tricky transfer of her body into wizard custody, or to get the kids pulled from Hogwarts for a week, or to help her parents with funeral arrangements. Maybe he had reverted to his old habit of forcing everything deeper inside, ignoring it until a time when he could properly take it all in. Maybe it just hadn't sunk in yet that she was gone. Walking up the hill, it was all too real to him now.
The funeral had been a small, family affair. Her parents couldn't bear any of the pomp that the Ministry had wished to take part in. He had sat in the front row between a weeping Ginny and a stone faced Ron. The entire time Harry could feel his sorrow being swirled around by an even larger burden of guilt.
Guilt not because she was gone, but guilt because of what she took with her.
He had called her weeks before, wanting to talk to her about his and Ginny's latest fight. Wanting to hear her calming voice explain how he should have listened a little more or been willing to give just a little more. To vent to her like he so often did about how it wasn't fair that things seemed to have to go Ginny's way all the time. That it wasn't fair that she couldn't understand the things that he didn't want to talk about with his wife.
That there were things that he would only talk to Hermione about.
She opens the door and kisses him on the cheek, but when he sees her eyes he's no longer at her home in Ottery St. Catchpole.
He's in a tent somewhere in the woods. There's a song on the radio and he wants more than anything just to see her smile. He twirling her around and they both give in to the laughter and the silliness of it all. Before the song ends, before the reality of their surroundings can take it away, they're standing there together. There's so much affection in her eyes and warmth in his chest. His heart and his head are arguing. Screaming at one another.
This is the way it should have been all along!
She's not yours to hold! You love Ginny!
He wants so badly to give in, but he can't bring himself to betray Ron and Ginny. He can't summon the courage to follow his heart and to hell with the consequences.
For once in his life, Harry Potter was a coward.
But here they are again. Just like then it is just him and her. He sees the same affection he saw then and this time he catches it: he sees the fear that he never caught before. The same fear that made him walk away all those years ago. The same fear that lead them to walk the path they've been on for so long now. He sees it and he can't stand it any longer. He refuses to live the life he has been gifted with in fear any longer.
He leans in and he kisses her and she tastes better than he ever could have imagined. Her lips are a drug and it only takes the first touch to have him hopelessly addicted. His hands roam her wild hair and her scent floods his senses and pushes him over the edge. He forgets completely who he is and why he came here and gets completely lost in the woman underneath him. The one who stood by him for so long, whose voice was so present in the back of his mind and whose calming influence had always driven away his nightmares.
It's only when it's over and they're panting and staring into each other's eyes that he sees the look of shock and renewed fear written on her face and remembers just who he is.
He's Harry James Potter.
He's married to Ginevra Weasley Potter. With whom he has three children.
He's lying here with Hermione Weasley.
He frantically tells her that they'll talk about this. That sometime soon, when he can think straight, they'll figure out what this means.
He knows what he's done. He knows that they're about to ruin two families. That they've broken the trust of their two closest friends and spouses. That the potential is there to rip their entire lives apart. He knows and it makes him sick to his stomach to think of how he would ever explain this to anybody.
What makes him feel even worse is that none of it is enough to change his mind. That it doesn't stop him from quietly drafting the divorce papers with a private lawyer. It makes him the worst sort of person there is, the same kind of person that would have disgusted a younger version of himself, but if he's honest with himself then he knows that this is the person that he really was all along.
He never belonged to Ginny Weasley.
He reaches the small headstone underneath a beech tree. He takes a seat and just sits there. Staring at the name etched into the stone.
Hermione Jean Weasley
A Mother and a Friend.
He reaches into his pocket. The other reason it took him so long to come back here is because he had been searching for something in the Forbidden Forest.
He pulls out two things: a thick envelope and a small stone.
He had spent two weeks in torturous arguments with himself, going over and over the risks and rewards that using the stone would have. Greater men than he had been driven mad by it. But he was so desperate to see her, just one more time. He turns it over once, but before he can turn it a second or a third time, a small voice speaks in the back of his mind.
Harry, you know this isn't right. You promised.
He had sworn he would never go looking for it and yet here he was, about to use it for his own selfish purposes. Not that he hadn't been selfish before…
He rears back and throws the stone over the cliff into the ocean below. Never to be seen again. He puts the envelope at the bottom of the headstone, taking a deep breath to prepare himself to say what he needed to say.
"I'm sorry, Hermione. I'm sorry that I couldn't be brave one more time and that I walked away all those years ago. No one could ever take your place in my heart." He feels the cool breeze blow against the hot tears escaping his eyes. "There's so much I wanted to say to you, so much I could have shared."
He reaches out and touches the stone. Not that he wasn't used to having things snatched away from him, but somehow the hurt of knowing that she had her own divorce papers in a file with his name on it, hurts worse than anything he had ever experienced in life before. She had come to the same conclusion he had. Then again, they had always thought so much alike….
"You know I'm not much of a writer, but it's all there." He looks at the envelope, her name sprawled across it in his handwriting. He still can't believe she'll never again finish one of his sentences or lecture him on being more organized or laugh at one of Ron's drunken holiday antics. He feels like he's half the man that he once was. That a large part of who he was rested in the soil beneath him.
"I won't be scared anymore." He pushes himself to his feet, looking one more time at her name. He closes his eyes and listens to the wind blow through the branches of the beech tree. He imagines himself sitting beneath a different beech tree, with a bushy haired, brown eyed girl sitting next to him with her nose in a book. "We could have had ages…years…." He chokes on his own words.
"I love you Hermione Granger. Always have and always will."
He turns and walks away, while he still has the strength to do it.
This was just the first step. There were many more to be taken and some of them were going to make the trip to the Forbidden Forest seem like a cakewalk. But a conviction flooded his heart. Maybe he was a terrible person for doing what he had to; maybe the truth should have died with her…..
But the real truth was that the truth of the matter between him and Hermione had never, and would never go away.
It was nice to pretend that the warmth of the sun was the warmth of one of her bone-crunching hugs.
~
A/N: I don't normally do author's notes after a story, but a couple of you had said, and I acknowledge that the Harry and Hermione in this story are far from saintly. That what they do is selfish and cowardly and ultimately destructive of everybody else in their lives. I recognize that, in fact, that's meant to be a part of the story. I'm sorry if that offends anyone. I never meant to come across as making it all seem "okay" or that Harry/Hermione didn't realize exactly what they were doing. In fact, I wrote it quite the opposite. That they know exactly what they're doing and do it anyway. That's not me saying that it's morally acceptable, but that that's the darker side of human nature and the terrible power that love in its many facets can have. There's a reason Dumbledore called it the most "powerful and terrible" force in the world. Anyways, just thought I would save the trouble and address that issue here. Love all my readers and the insightful reviews you always have!