Life Equates Change (Harry/Ron/Hermione, PG, Harry Potter)
Title: Life Equates Change
Author: Mimic
Characters/Pairings: Harry/Ron/Hermione. OT3.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: JK Rowlings owns the characters of Harry Potter, I just think I can write them.
Notes: This makes me want to scream "ANGST!" a lot. Set five years after the end of the war. It can be post or pre-HBP, I think, but leaning towards post. I'm of the belief that there needs to be more OT3 fic in the world.
Feedback: Anything is appreciated.
Word Count: Just tops 500. Yay!
It had been five years since the end of the war, and Harry found himself yet again standing on the field where the final battle took place.
He still found it odd that they called this the final battle when there were so many that came after.
There was the time spent hunting down the rest of the Death Eaters, and there were the personal battles that went on behind closed doors as everyone tried to put their lives back together.
Those were the battles that were still going on.
It was a strange sense of vertigo that he got standing there where he had cast the finishing spell.
He had taken a life, many lives, on that day, and the memories still haunted him. It was no comfort that in doing so he saved millions, billions, of people, or that it was the Right thing to do.
The smooth wood of his wand felt hot and wrong under his fingertips as he raised it in front of him. He could feel the emotion rushing back. The burning hate he felt for Voldemort, the pain of losing everyone around him, the nagging worry of not knowing who was alive or dead, and then the overwhelming sense of duty rushed through his veins that caused him to scream those two words.
“Avada Kedavra,” he whispered, and his arm fell back to his side as his vision blurred with tears.
He stood there for an untold time staring at his feet, and wishing there was more than dead grass and burnt soil beneath them.
So many things had changed, but none of the ones that he wanted to. He still carried with him all the confusion and guilt he had as a teenager. All he had learned was how to hide it from the world.
Even then there were some people he could never hide from.
There were two cracks of apparition in the distance, one softer than the other.
The crunch of big, clumsy feet, and the scurry of small, quick paced ones. He wondered if they had always been this obvious, or if he was just too entwined with both of them not to see them for who they were.
He relaxed his shoulders as Ron’s arm wrapped around them, and smiled faintly when Hermione pulled him towards her chest by the waist. He could feel Ron’s other arm falling into place at her lower back. And suddenly they were fitted together as perfectly as they were at school.
Some things he never wanted to change, and he was always surprised that they didn’t.
He melted further into them both, and was thankful they never expected him to touch them the way they did him. He was sure they would disappear, leave, slip away from him if he did.
Everyone else he loved that purely had gotten nothing but a grave, in the end.
He still wished. He wished more than anything he could show them how much they meant, how much they had done for him.
But then, they already knew, and they had each other.