the death of facebook/steve irwin, oh emo, EMO.
OH HAI. Remember me? Yeah, I need to get better at this whole updating thing. I haven't yet gotten the hang of it. HUH. SUGGESTIONS? And saying that I don't suck big time is not a suggestion, because I ALREADY KNOW THAT. K? K.
But, college is in full swing and it's CRAZY y'all. I mean, I think all my professors had some sort of anti-Jolene meeting and decided it best to make my year as difficult as humanly possible. Jesus went too, because we haven't been getting along too well lately. I SWEAR IT. God hates me and MY EMO TEARS. It's sad. Really.
Anyways, I've been getting adjusted to college once again and moving into my new apartment, which is TOTALLY AWESOME. I have a KITCHEN. Alright, to be fair, I share this 1100 sq. ft. of delicious apartment space with three other girls, but it's still crazy how much space we have. It's just CRAZY. However, in the beginning, we had a bit of a plumbing issue. I don't really WANT to go into it, but let's say it involved water and leakage and carpets being redone and legal issues and just a STICKY SITUATION in general.
I would have updated sooner, but we haven't been able to get on an internet connection because A)Comcast bites B)Everyone has been smart in my apartment complex and encrypted their connection. However, after a week of waiting, someone idiotic enough came along and now I'm TOTALLY stealing their signal, which is so wonderfully-named "Piss-Fuck". Cute, huh? I THOUGHT SO.
Anyways, I would take pictures of our super-cool apartment, but my camera hates my life, so it's not uploading pictures. Me and technical things are NOT getting along this week.
Anyways, since I've been deprived of internet, I had to use my computer for other things. Thus? FANFIC. Really, really shitty fanfic written about concepts that have been used 1209837532498345 times. For real. I counted. But, for reals, I was thinking, "Hey, I remember this really cool ship I used to like about some kind of reluctant-hero boy with angst issues and this bossy, less-than-perfect-even-though-she-wants-to-be-so-so-desperately girl with frizzy hair that I used to like. Together. I like them together, most perferably in a sexual fashion. I need to write about them." And so... this came out. I don't really know how to explain it other than a ranty-rant about how much I love the Harry/Hermione ship and how INCREDIBLY BITTER that I still am about the whole HBP... thing. I don't know. I have problems.
thermodynamics/evolution/laws of science
so in the end it happened slowly and organically, but honestly, had they had time to think or ponder or deal with things? she doesn't think so, she's even done some math (180x7=1260 days, half of which were in life-threatening situations/fights/menstruation; this of course was not an adequate amount of time) and she's concluded that she simply didn't have time to deal with real feelings and the consequences that these sort of situations brought on, and so really, really now, she was hardly to blame for lack of initiation. and, honestly, she was a rational being. then was neither the time and place for such... things.
she tells herself to breathe. breathe breathe breathe breathe. breathe! she tells herself to breathe and she walks to work, trying not to think about what a stupid girl she's been for so long.
~~~
he goes to godric's hollow a few years after the war. he doesn't find much. a cookbook. porcelain figurines. a family tree that links him to malfoys/weasleys; like he thought: nothing of real importance.
he stands in what he thinks might have been the kitchen at one point in time. he stands and stands and stands and wonders what the hell he's just standing there for. he thought that seeing the place would spring up some sort of innate generational pull to do something about everything. everything; this life, his career, his friends (or, what was left of them), his... whatever.
but he just stood there, and he didn't realize that he had been just standing there, silently, his feet pushing dust and debris and soot around the floor until he heard her voice from the back.
"harry? harry? you, uh, ready to leave?"
she doesn't like it here, he can tell. he can tell from the way she moves her lips in strange patterns, like she forcing herself to squelch the weasley from springing from her lips, like she is trying very hard not to revert to a frank, blunt state-of-being. like she is trying very hard not to be herself.
he shrugs his shoulders. "i think i'm, um, gonna... spend... the... night."
her lips tighten. her body tightens in general. everything about her restricts, like she is recoiling, like she is cowering, like she is retreating. "you mean, here?" she frowns. "you're going to spend the night here?" the last part is hardly a question. she knows the answer.
he pretends like he is inspecting the walls, but in reality, he just wants to avoid her eyes. "yeah. i guess. you don't have to stay. if you don't want to." this doesn't mean that she ever wanted to, and he knows it and he knows she knows it.
she bites her lips, looks off to the side. her arms are crossed tightly across her chest, as if she wants nothing to go into and out from her lungs, her heart. he thinks he sees tears springing up, but then he knows he is wrong. that is only part of the whole mirage, of how he thought it would be like when they finally. they finally. final. finish.
he wishes he could cry when she says that she will bring some blankets later on and that she's going to spend the night at their place, not here, this place kinda ("to be honest-- don't be upset, harry!") gives her the creeps. she kisses his mouth and pulls away quickly, and walks away.
he stands in the kitchen and stands and stares at the floor and thinks about how there will be no blankets tonight. instead, there will be an owl tomorrow morning explaining that she's done some thinking, and dear harry, dearest harry, you don't care for me anymore. this must end.
yes, indeed, he thinks. yes, this must end. this all must end.
~~~
she makes dinner that night and after he's done, he goes into the living area and lets out the largest belch she has ever had the displeasure of witnessing.
"hey!" he yells from his spot on the couch. "good one, eh?"
she giggles, she really does, because she loves him and because he's such a goof. but, she thinks as she washes their dishes and while he comes in later to help her dry them.
he burps again and she rolls her eyes in false-agitation and he laughs whole-heartedly.
she puts the dishes away. sighing wearily, she puts her hair up and thinks about how much happier she might be if she knew that she wasn't going to fuck the guy who had just set world-records for belching.
she sighs.
~~~
he has bad dreams often. he's never really been a journal sort of person, so sometimes at three in the morning he'll get up and start writing a letter. it will begin like this:
dear ron and hermione,
and then, somehow, he thinks, goddammit, what the hell is he thinking? ron doesn't need this and won't know what to do with it. ron is a complete idiot about these sort of things, and it took him twenty-two years to figure that out, and he's going to put that knowledge to good use. and, he'll be damned if he ruins hermione's apparent calm that she's had ever since she's moved in with ron. so. so.
he pulls out a cigarette and smokes it in the starkness of his bedroom (a mattress on the old kitchen floor) before revising his letter. when he is happy with it, he folds it up and throws it on the ground. he thinks about taking a walk in the woods, getting naked, burning something, smoking a pack of cigarettes in one sitting, thinks about doing all these things concurrently. in the end, his thoughts lead to sleep and for once, he doesn't dream.
~~~
she receives the letter at work, and, at first, it looks like a lazy managerial write-up and for a second, she almost throws it right in the trash. put then, she catches his scratchy penmanship and she catches herself, just barely. she opens the letter and inside she reads:
dear hermione,
hey, it's harry. sorry i haven't kept in touch. life's been busy. i moved into godric's hollow. me and ginny broke up. i'm really fucked up right now. if you could come see me sometime soon, i'd appreciate it. if not, don't worry. hope life is treating you well. you deserve it.
love,
harry
p.s. don't tell ron i wrote this.
when her secretary asks her where she's going, she doesn't even reply. her mind is elsewhere and it takes all her mental ability to put her fingers in the right slots in her gloves.
~~~
when she shows up, she strides in, hermione-like, removing her gloves while she rattles off, "first off, harry potter, your grammar is atrocious. after all those hours of studying i forced you into, i expected better." she stops, and finally looks at her surroundings and this catches her.
he laughs at her. "oh hello, hermione. good to see you too."
she doesn't reply, she just looks around, her eyes slanted, as if she's not quite sure what she's seeing. deep lines form at the edges of her mouth, her already thin lips nearly disappearing into her mouth.
"i..." she starts, her words deliberate and calculated.
"think it's a piece of shit?" he offers, his lips twisted in a cynical smile, sliding his hand in his pockets and leaning against (he thinks) a cabinet.
"No," she snaps, not looking at him; she simply puts her bag down and then clears her throat. "i.... love it." she says this as if it pains her greatly, and as if she doesn't really want to discuss it.
he stands there and stares at her. he stares at she inspects the walls, her mind working, her ideas churning, her calculations running, he could see it, see it like the dust swirling in the air in front of him, like the moth crashing into the stark light above him.
he stares and finally he says, "you're lying."
she looks at him for only the briefest of seconds and raises one of those eyebrows that he has gotten used to and has missed terribly over the past few months. it basically means that he better shut the fuck up or she is going to throw some verbal-thrashing down. after awhile, snappily, she says, "well, if we're going to fix this up, we'd better start early tomorrow morning. we're going to need plaster and new cabinets and primer for sure... hell, i'd say we should probably rip out everything except the support beams and the foundations..."
she wonders into the next room and he stares at her retreating figure as it turns darker and silhouetted and suddenly he finds himself genuinely smiling for the first time in a long, long time.
~~~
it's the fifth day when she finally gets a note both from her workplace and from ron, not simultaneously, but close. when the one from work comes, she looks somewhat nervous but then puts it hurriedly away in her hung-up coat pocket. when ron's comes, she frowns like she is just very irritated in general and then says a quick spell and watches the note evaporate in a poof of yellow smoke.
he watches all this happen from the corner of his eye and finally, after a few minutes pass, he says quietly, "hermione? you can, um, leave if you want to."
she just shakes her head and starts to patch another section of the living room's wall, her lips pursed. "i want to stay."
they stay quiet for the rest of night, working while moths hit the charmed lightbulbs overhead.
~~~
they are so drunk so drunk so drunk oh shit that's her good sweater oh well she's so so so drunk and she loves it!!!
she watches him over the corner of her eyelids before bursting out laughing as he tries to swallow some of the noodled chinese food they ordered in and it just falls down his chin in a sloppy eager mess. they laugh and laugh so hard she snorts and then there they go again! laugh laugh laugh.
finally they are so drunk, they are actually sort of sobering up, like the alcohol content in their bodies has reached the utmost limit and now it can do nothing but go the opposite direction. they are lying on the floor of the now fully patched downstairs bedroom, her head on his stomach, and she's drinking a mixture of... something containing vodka and tonic water and some kind of fruity... something (oh shit she doesn't care, it feels hard and scratchy and so so good going down). she looks at the ceiling, where the trees outside are drawing patterns on the moondrenched ceiling. itching her nose languidly, she asks, "soharry, can i ask you a'question?"
"yeahsure," he responds and he rests in his hand on the crown her her head, on his stomach.
"why'd you'n gin bre' up?" and instantly she regrets it. she's so drunk she can regret things. oh shit take another drink another scratchy drink.
they are very quiet for a real long time and then he says, his voice surprisingly sober and suddenly she realizes that he might not be as drunk as she suspects him to be; "it was a good break-up. it was real... uh, natural. i dunno." he takes a sip of his drink and they are quiet. the tree scratches at the window and outside the room they hear the electric buzz of the light bulbs and the plinking of the start of rain.
she wants to do many things. she wants to bury her head in his stomach, so she can hear the vibration of the liquor in his stomach sloshing around, so she can press her ear against the main artery there, hear the stirring of his blood. she wants to integrate herself into him, into his very lymph nodes, into his very muscle tissue. she wants to be an organ, a part of him that makes him function.
a part of him that he cannot live without.
she finds she is crying and she knows somehow it has very little to do with the fact that she is drunk. "did you love her, harry?"
she can feel his body suspend at her question, if just for a second, like his body stopped, completely stopped, did not want or know how to work. then, he retracts his hand from her head and says, "do you love him?"
she gets up and goes into the kitchen and she cries, cries so hard, she doesn't know what to do.
she is hermione granger and she is a rational being and she is very very very very drunk and she was the top in her class and fought in the war and she is beside herself for reasons she doesn't understand. hermione granger can solve this problem. she can deduce her troubles and come up with four rational solutions for them.
she is hermione granger.
how she has forgotten that lately.
~~~
they are painting now, painting a subdued sage-green color all over the kitchen, and he thinks it looks real pretty.
her face is covered in green paint and her hair is frizzy and she hasn't showered in three days.
"scratch my nose," she says to him, lifting her hands to as if to show that they are, in fact, covered in paint and she cannot accomplish this task unaided.
somewhere in his brain, scratching her nose translated into kissing her on the lips. when he pulls back, she frowns with great accomplishment but he can see the look in her eyes, like she wants to cry and wants to smile and wants to slap him.
"now... the nose," she snaps at him, in her fashion.
he scratches her nose.
~~~
ron finally comes over for a visit, but he is in the back of the house, patching up the walls in the hallway that lead to the basement (oh shit that will not be fun to clean up). he can hear muffled voices and the sound of arguments barely kept back, as if they were being stifled only through extreme awkwardness, like there is a sense of dread at the awkwardness of this conversation.
he hears, "yeah, well, i wasn't ever as smart as him" and "what if we moved out to the city?" and "ron, don't be like that" and etc., etc. Finally, after a long time, he hears the front door close as if it were trying to decide whether to behave or be naughty and slam shut. he waits. he waits and waits and waits, standing with his scafold in his hand, and after a minute, he realizes he's been holding his breathe and that he needs to attend to his lungs. the sounds in the other room are normal-sounding and odd, like when you wake up in the morning and hear regular-world noises, like coffee-makers, or clocks ticking, or the creak of floorboards.
he stand still for so long, his bones are aching and he relizes that his muscles are on the verge of a spasm. when he finally moves, he finds himself steering helplessly for the kitchen, finds his steps are placed and orderly and calculated and automatic. something has taken over his brain. something mechanical has invaded his being and he cannot stop it cannot cannot cannot.
he cannot stop himself from walking into the kitchen and saying, "hermione, i love you i love you i love you iloveyou and i've always known that, i always have, but you forget sometimes what you know, like algebra and stupid simple charms and grammar."
he kisses her and he kisses her for only a second before he realizes that she is crying. she is crying and unresponsive, like a bag of sand in his hands, growing thinner at the places he holds her.
he pulls back and she just stands there, tears rolling down her face, but her mouth is set in a line, a thin line, swallowing her lips.
she wipes her eyes unceremoniously and says, "harry, you've ruined my life, you've ruined it. it's not you're fault but fuck you just the same. fuck all of this, harry. oh, i'm sorry." she gathers her coat on the coatrack and doesn't bother to say goodbye or go through any of those traditional ceremonies that people grow so accustomed to that they will stand awkwardly and shift awkwardly for hours if they do not occur.
"i hope i was more than a grammar lesson to you, harry potter," she mumbles over her stubborn tears, her voice surprisingly clear and sensical.
~~~
days, months, weeks go by. he works harder now, putting up shelves and laying down floors and building and polishing furniture.
he hears nothing from her for weeks.
he finds that he cares, he cares, he cares, and the more he works, the more he cares, and he can't figure it out, even though he wishes he could.
~~~
she sits at her work table.
she goes through her paperwork.
she answers inquiries and writes up proposals.
when she goes home to her new apartment, she gets out a stiff drink and thinks of the tinkering of new rain, the smell of his shirt, and the way his eyes shone differently before the war. she thinks about a time before she went home and had beer in her refrigerator and before she had fucked ron and before she had fucked anyone at all and realized that although she had thought that now, now, after the war, things would be much simpler, things were not. things never get simpler.
things are inclined towards disorder. it's a law of physics and she believes this. she obeys these sorts of laws.
but whatever. now it's just her and her stiff drink and her missing him.
she misses harry potter. because she's always missed harry potter, even when he was standing next to her, his lips on hers.
~~~
one day, he is in his kitchen. the new kitchen, the one he finished with her, except for the furniture. he basically just tore out a piece of paper from witch's weekly and copied and pasted it into his kitchen. but still, his new kitchen, and suddenly he sees something on the horizon, a dot, a speck. he ignores it at first, because he is just feeling apathetic towards things in general nowadays. he drinks his coffee and watches the speck and takes sip after sip of his coffee, letting it burn his throat, scalding, damaging.
and then, he knows, he knows, he knows. he can see that her big, fluffy hair is pulled on top of her hair and spraying every which way out the back of her head. her face is pinched and closed-off, because it's late fall and cold in lower Britain and really not a desirable day at all to be outside. hands deep inside her pockets, she strides towards the house in thick, heavy strides, like a woman like her would. a woman. woman woman woman. man and woman.
grown up? them?
he goes outside and finds her walking towards him through the garden, making sure she doesn't crumble the external roots of the pumpkins, making precise movements and when he reaches her, she says, "now before we start anything, you must know that i've done some things and said some things i regret and want to take back and i am not a perfect person." she looks in straight in the eyes when she say this, unflinching, and he does not flinch either, he just stares at her. they stand in cold silence for awhile and then she shrugs her shoulders and continues, "and i want you to know that i don't regret ron or anything that we had, because i loved ron, i really did, but not the way i.... i love you, harry."
a slight smile grows at the edges of his mouth. "okay."
"okay?" she states back, looking at him thoroughly, inspecting every line and etch on his face, investigating the scar on his cheek as if it might give credence to what he is saying.
"okay," he restates and then again he kisses her and this time she responds, fully, her hands tugging at his sweater and she tastes like earth and cotton and notebook paper and he doesn't contemplate these things, but he just knows them, for once for once for once.
they go inside and make coffee.
fine
But, college is in full swing and it's CRAZY y'all. I mean, I think all my professors had some sort of anti-Jolene meeting and decided it best to make my year as difficult as humanly possible. Jesus went too, because we haven't been getting along too well lately. I SWEAR IT. God hates me and MY EMO TEARS. It's sad. Really.
Anyways, I've been getting adjusted to college once again and moving into my new apartment, which is TOTALLY AWESOME. I have a KITCHEN. Alright, to be fair, I share this 1100 sq. ft. of delicious apartment space with three other girls, but it's still crazy how much space we have. It's just CRAZY. However, in the beginning, we had a bit of a plumbing issue. I don't really WANT to go into it, but let's say it involved water and leakage and carpets being redone and legal issues and just a STICKY SITUATION in general.
I would have updated sooner, but we haven't been able to get on an internet connection because A)Comcast bites B)Everyone has been smart in my apartment complex and encrypted their connection. However, after a week of waiting, someone idiotic enough came along and now I'm TOTALLY stealing their signal, which is so wonderfully-named "Piss-Fuck". Cute, huh? I THOUGHT SO.
Anyways, I would take pictures of our super-cool apartment, but my camera hates my life, so it's not uploading pictures. Me and technical things are NOT getting along this week.
Anyways, since I've been deprived of internet, I had to use my computer for other things. Thus? FANFIC. Really, really shitty fanfic written about concepts that have been used 1209837532498345 times. For real. I counted. But, for reals, I was thinking, "Hey, I remember this really cool ship I used to like about some kind of reluctant-hero boy with angst issues and this bossy, less-than-perfect-even-though-she-wants-to-be-so-so-desperately girl with frizzy hair that I used to like. Together. I like them together, most perferably in a sexual fashion. I need to write about them." And so... this came out. I don't really know how to explain it other than a ranty-rant about how much I love the Harry/Hermione ship and how INCREDIBLY BITTER that I still am about the whole HBP... thing. I don't know. I have problems.
thermodynamics/evolution/laws of science
so in the end it happened slowly and organically, but honestly, had they had time to think or ponder or deal with things? she doesn't think so, she's even done some math (180x7=1260 days, half of which were in life-threatening situations/fights/menstruation; this of course was not an adequate amount of time) and she's concluded that she simply didn't have time to deal with real feelings and the consequences that these sort of situations brought on, and so really, really now, she was hardly to blame for lack of initiation. and, honestly, she was a rational being. then was neither the time and place for such... things.
she tells herself to breathe. breathe breathe breathe breathe. breathe! she tells herself to breathe and she walks to work, trying not to think about what a stupid girl she's been for so long.
~~~
he goes to godric's hollow a few years after the war. he doesn't find much. a cookbook. porcelain figurines. a family tree that links him to malfoys/weasleys; like he thought: nothing of real importance.
he stands in what he thinks might have been the kitchen at one point in time. he stands and stands and stands and wonders what the hell he's just standing there for. he thought that seeing the place would spring up some sort of innate generational pull to do something about everything. everything; this life, his career, his friends (or, what was left of them), his... whatever.
but he just stood there, and he didn't realize that he had been just standing there, silently, his feet pushing dust and debris and soot around the floor until he heard her voice from the back.
"harry? harry? you, uh, ready to leave?"
she doesn't like it here, he can tell. he can tell from the way she moves her lips in strange patterns, like she forcing herself to squelch the weasley from springing from her lips, like she is trying very hard not to revert to a frank, blunt state-of-being. like she is trying very hard not to be herself.
he shrugs his shoulders. "i think i'm, um, gonna... spend... the... night."
her lips tighten. her body tightens in general. everything about her restricts, like she is recoiling, like she is cowering, like she is retreating. "you mean, here?" she frowns. "you're going to spend the night here?" the last part is hardly a question. she knows the answer.
he pretends like he is inspecting the walls, but in reality, he just wants to avoid her eyes. "yeah. i guess. you don't have to stay. if you don't want to." this doesn't mean that she ever wanted to, and he knows it and he knows she knows it.
she bites her lips, looks off to the side. her arms are crossed tightly across her chest, as if she wants nothing to go into and out from her lungs, her heart. he thinks he sees tears springing up, but then he knows he is wrong. that is only part of the whole mirage, of how he thought it would be like when they finally. they finally. final. finish.
he wishes he could cry when she says that she will bring some blankets later on and that she's going to spend the night at their place, not here, this place kinda ("to be honest-- don't be upset, harry!") gives her the creeps. she kisses his mouth and pulls away quickly, and walks away.
he stands in the kitchen and stands and stares at the floor and thinks about how there will be no blankets tonight. instead, there will be an owl tomorrow morning explaining that she's done some thinking, and dear harry, dearest harry, you don't care for me anymore. this must end.
yes, indeed, he thinks. yes, this must end. this all must end.
~~~
she makes dinner that night and after he's done, he goes into the living area and lets out the largest belch she has ever had the displeasure of witnessing.
"hey!" he yells from his spot on the couch. "good one, eh?"
she giggles, she really does, because she loves him and because he's such a goof. but, she thinks as she washes their dishes and while he comes in later to help her dry them.
he burps again and she rolls her eyes in false-agitation and he laughs whole-heartedly.
she puts the dishes away. sighing wearily, she puts her hair up and thinks about how much happier she might be if she knew that she wasn't going to fuck the guy who had just set world-records for belching.
she sighs.
~~~
he has bad dreams often. he's never really been a journal sort of person, so sometimes at three in the morning he'll get up and start writing a letter. it will begin like this:
dear ron and hermione,
and then, somehow, he thinks, goddammit, what the hell is he thinking? ron doesn't need this and won't know what to do with it. ron is a complete idiot about these sort of things, and it took him twenty-two years to figure that out, and he's going to put that knowledge to good use. and, he'll be damned if he ruins hermione's apparent calm that she's had ever since she's moved in with ron. so. so.
he pulls out a cigarette and smokes it in the starkness of his bedroom (a mattress on the old kitchen floor) before revising his letter. when he is happy with it, he folds it up and throws it on the ground. he thinks about taking a walk in the woods, getting naked, burning something, smoking a pack of cigarettes in one sitting, thinks about doing all these things concurrently. in the end, his thoughts lead to sleep and for once, he doesn't dream.
~~~
she receives the letter at work, and, at first, it looks like a lazy managerial write-up and for a second, she almost throws it right in the trash. put then, she catches his scratchy penmanship and she catches herself, just barely. she opens the letter and inside she reads:
dear hermione,
hey, it's harry. sorry i haven't kept in touch. life's been busy. i moved into godric's hollow. me and ginny broke up. i'm really fucked up right now. if you could come see me sometime soon, i'd appreciate it. if not, don't worry. hope life is treating you well. you deserve it.
love,
harry
p.s. don't tell ron i wrote this.
when her secretary asks her where she's going, she doesn't even reply. her mind is elsewhere and it takes all her mental ability to put her fingers in the right slots in her gloves.
~~~
when she shows up, she strides in, hermione-like, removing her gloves while she rattles off, "first off, harry potter, your grammar is atrocious. after all those hours of studying i forced you into, i expected better." she stops, and finally looks at her surroundings and this catches her.
he laughs at her. "oh hello, hermione. good to see you too."
she doesn't reply, she just looks around, her eyes slanted, as if she's not quite sure what she's seeing. deep lines form at the edges of her mouth, her already thin lips nearly disappearing into her mouth.
"i..." she starts, her words deliberate and calculated.
"think it's a piece of shit?" he offers, his lips twisted in a cynical smile, sliding his hand in his pockets and leaning against (he thinks) a cabinet.
"No," she snaps, not looking at him; she simply puts her bag down and then clears her throat. "i.... love it." she says this as if it pains her greatly, and as if she doesn't really want to discuss it.
he stands there and stares at her. he stares at she inspects the walls, her mind working, her ideas churning, her calculations running, he could see it, see it like the dust swirling in the air in front of him, like the moth crashing into the stark light above him.
he stares and finally he says, "you're lying."
she looks at him for only the briefest of seconds and raises one of those eyebrows that he has gotten used to and has missed terribly over the past few months. it basically means that he better shut the fuck up or she is going to throw some verbal-thrashing down. after awhile, snappily, she says, "well, if we're going to fix this up, we'd better start early tomorrow morning. we're going to need plaster and new cabinets and primer for sure... hell, i'd say we should probably rip out everything except the support beams and the foundations..."
she wonders into the next room and he stares at her retreating figure as it turns darker and silhouetted and suddenly he finds himself genuinely smiling for the first time in a long, long time.
~~~
it's the fifth day when she finally gets a note both from her workplace and from ron, not simultaneously, but close. when the one from work comes, she looks somewhat nervous but then puts it hurriedly away in her hung-up coat pocket. when ron's comes, she frowns like she is just very irritated in general and then says a quick spell and watches the note evaporate in a poof of yellow smoke.
he watches all this happen from the corner of his eye and finally, after a few minutes pass, he says quietly, "hermione? you can, um, leave if you want to."
she just shakes her head and starts to patch another section of the living room's wall, her lips pursed. "i want to stay."
they stay quiet for the rest of night, working while moths hit the charmed lightbulbs overhead.
~~~
they are so drunk so drunk so drunk oh shit that's her good sweater oh well she's so so so drunk and she loves it!!!
she watches him over the corner of her eyelids before bursting out laughing as he tries to swallow some of the noodled chinese food they ordered in and it just falls down his chin in a sloppy eager mess. they laugh and laugh so hard she snorts and then there they go again! laugh laugh laugh.
finally they are so drunk, they are actually sort of sobering up, like the alcohol content in their bodies has reached the utmost limit and now it can do nothing but go the opposite direction. they are lying on the floor of the now fully patched downstairs bedroom, her head on his stomach, and she's drinking a mixture of... something containing vodka and tonic water and some kind of fruity... something (oh shit she doesn't care, it feels hard and scratchy and so so good going down). she looks at the ceiling, where the trees outside are drawing patterns on the moondrenched ceiling. itching her nose languidly, she asks, "soharry, can i ask you a'question?"
"yeahsure," he responds and he rests in his hand on the crown her her head, on his stomach.
"why'd you'n gin bre' up?" and instantly she regrets it. she's so drunk she can regret things. oh shit take another drink another scratchy drink.
they are very quiet for a real long time and then he says, his voice surprisingly sober and suddenly she realizes that he might not be as drunk as she suspects him to be; "it was a good break-up. it was real... uh, natural. i dunno." he takes a sip of his drink and they are quiet. the tree scratches at the window and outside the room they hear the electric buzz of the light bulbs and the plinking of the start of rain.
she wants to do many things. she wants to bury her head in his stomach, so she can hear the vibration of the liquor in his stomach sloshing around, so she can press her ear against the main artery there, hear the stirring of his blood. she wants to integrate herself into him, into his very lymph nodes, into his very muscle tissue. she wants to be an organ, a part of him that makes him function.
a part of him that he cannot live without.
she finds she is crying and she knows somehow it has very little to do with the fact that she is drunk. "did you love her, harry?"
she can feel his body suspend at her question, if just for a second, like his body stopped, completely stopped, did not want or know how to work. then, he retracts his hand from her head and says, "do you love him?"
she gets up and goes into the kitchen and she cries, cries so hard, she doesn't know what to do.
she is hermione granger and she is a rational being and she is very very very very drunk and she was the top in her class and fought in the war and she is beside herself for reasons she doesn't understand. hermione granger can solve this problem. she can deduce her troubles and come up with four rational solutions for them.
she is hermione granger.
how she has forgotten that lately.
~~~
they are painting now, painting a subdued sage-green color all over the kitchen, and he thinks it looks real pretty.
her face is covered in green paint and her hair is frizzy and she hasn't showered in three days.
"scratch my nose," she says to him, lifting her hands to as if to show that they are, in fact, covered in paint and she cannot accomplish this task unaided.
somewhere in his brain, scratching her nose translated into kissing her on the lips. when he pulls back, she frowns with great accomplishment but he can see the look in her eyes, like she wants to cry and wants to smile and wants to slap him.
"now... the nose," she snaps at him, in her fashion.
he scratches her nose.
~~~
ron finally comes over for a visit, but he is in the back of the house, patching up the walls in the hallway that lead to the basement (oh shit that will not be fun to clean up). he can hear muffled voices and the sound of arguments barely kept back, as if they were being stifled only through extreme awkwardness, like there is a sense of dread at the awkwardness of this conversation.
he hears, "yeah, well, i wasn't ever as smart as him" and "what if we moved out to the city?" and "ron, don't be like that" and etc., etc. Finally, after a long time, he hears the front door close as if it were trying to decide whether to behave or be naughty and slam shut. he waits. he waits and waits and waits, standing with his scafold in his hand, and after a minute, he realizes he's been holding his breathe and that he needs to attend to his lungs. the sounds in the other room are normal-sounding and odd, like when you wake up in the morning and hear regular-world noises, like coffee-makers, or clocks ticking, or the creak of floorboards.
he stand still for so long, his bones are aching and he relizes that his muscles are on the verge of a spasm. when he finally moves, he finds himself steering helplessly for the kitchen, finds his steps are placed and orderly and calculated and automatic. something has taken over his brain. something mechanical has invaded his being and he cannot stop it cannot cannot cannot.
he cannot stop himself from walking into the kitchen and saying, "hermione, i love you i love you i love you iloveyou and i've always known that, i always have, but you forget sometimes what you know, like algebra and stupid simple charms and grammar."
he kisses her and he kisses her for only a second before he realizes that she is crying. she is crying and unresponsive, like a bag of sand in his hands, growing thinner at the places he holds her.
he pulls back and she just stands there, tears rolling down her face, but her mouth is set in a line, a thin line, swallowing her lips.
she wipes her eyes unceremoniously and says, "harry, you've ruined my life, you've ruined it. it's not you're fault but fuck you just the same. fuck all of this, harry. oh, i'm sorry." she gathers her coat on the coatrack and doesn't bother to say goodbye or go through any of those traditional ceremonies that people grow so accustomed to that they will stand awkwardly and shift awkwardly for hours if they do not occur.
"i hope i was more than a grammar lesson to you, harry potter," she mumbles over her stubborn tears, her voice surprisingly clear and sensical.
~~~
days, months, weeks go by. he works harder now, putting up shelves and laying down floors and building and polishing furniture.
he hears nothing from her for weeks.
he finds that he cares, he cares, he cares, and the more he works, the more he cares, and he can't figure it out, even though he wishes he could.
~~~
she sits at her work table.
she goes through her paperwork.
she answers inquiries and writes up proposals.
when she goes home to her new apartment, she gets out a stiff drink and thinks of the tinkering of new rain, the smell of his shirt, and the way his eyes shone differently before the war. she thinks about a time before she went home and had beer in her refrigerator and before she had fucked ron and before she had fucked anyone at all and realized that although she had thought that now, now, after the war, things would be much simpler, things were not. things never get simpler.
things are inclined towards disorder. it's a law of physics and she believes this. she obeys these sorts of laws.
but whatever. now it's just her and her stiff drink and her missing him.
she misses harry potter. because she's always missed harry potter, even when he was standing next to her, his lips on hers.
~~~
one day, he is in his kitchen. the new kitchen, the one he finished with her, except for the furniture. he basically just tore out a piece of paper from witch's weekly and copied and pasted it into his kitchen. but still, his new kitchen, and suddenly he sees something on the horizon, a dot, a speck. he ignores it at first, because he is just feeling apathetic towards things in general nowadays. he drinks his coffee and watches the speck and takes sip after sip of his coffee, letting it burn his throat, scalding, damaging.
and then, he knows, he knows, he knows. he can see that her big, fluffy hair is pulled on top of her hair and spraying every which way out the back of her head. her face is pinched and closed-off, because it's late fall and cold in lower Britain and really not a desirable day at all to be outside. hands deep inside her pockets, she strides towards the house in thick, heavy strides, like a woman like her would. a woman. woman woman woman. man and woman.
grown up? them?
he goes outside and finds her walking towards him through the garden, making sure she doesn't crumble the external roots of the pumpkins, making precise movements and when he reaches her, she says, "now before we start anything, you must know that i've done some things and said some things i regret and want to take back and i am not a perfect person." she looks in straight in the eyes when she say this, unflinching, and he does not flinch either, he just stares at her. they stand in cold silence for awhile and then she shrugs her shoulders and continues, "and i want you to know that i don't regret ron or anything that we had, because i loved ron, i really did, but not the way i.... i love you, harry."
a slight smile grows at the edges of his mouth. "okay."
"okay?" she states back, looking at him thoroughly, inspecting every line and etch on his face, investigating the scar on his cheek as if it might give credence to what he is saying.
"okay," he restates and then again he kisses her and this time she responds, fully, her hands tugging at his sweater and she tastes like earth and cotton and notebook paper and he doesn't contemplate these things, but he just knows them, for once for once for once.
they go inside and make coffee.
fine