Fic: "A Mother and a Wife" (Harry/Hermione) for angeldemorte
Author:
Recipient: angeldemorte
Title: A Mother and a Wife
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s): Harry/Hermione
Warning(s): Harsh language, angst, explicit scenes of sexual nature, questionable consent bordering on non-con.
Summary: There was no question about it. Hermione was perfect for him. As perfect as it could ever get. His baby girl needed a mother - her own had died during her birth - and there was no one else in the world he would even consider. She was perfect, but whether she was able to fill in the hole the war and Ginny’s death left behind, whether she could deal with a shadow of a man that Harry had become, and whether she could ever become more than just a mother to Harry’s child was a much harder question.
(Some of the things the requester asked for no fluff or vanilla, H/C , forced marriage, possible questionable consent, angst if nothing else, and a semi-happy ending).
Word count: 7,380
A/N: I definitely went out on a limb with this one. I have not written a het pairing in about two years now, I think, and I have never written Harry/Hermione. When I saw this pairing on the list of the requests (among the familiar and comfortable slash, which was the only thing I volunteered to write in my own form) I decided to try something new and broaden my horizons. I hope it’s at least a little like what you wanted. I tried very hard to include the things you wished, but forgive me if I have not delivered exactly what you hoped for.
Special thanks: To the wonderful mod! She made it so easy for me, and for so much understanding and support, I cannot thank her enough.
The marriage was had created a lot of negative buzz in the Wizarding World. The famous Harry Potter had re-married, and not four months since the death of his wife and the birth of his daughter. It seemed despicably inappropriate, but it was Harry Potter after all, and for saving the world, they made allowances. They didn’t question it but at their own dinner tables, shrugging and dismissing it as a mystery they would never crack, or one they perhaps didn’t want to, for fear of tarnishing his perfect image in the world’s eyes.
Harry had asked Kreacher to please withhold all and any newspapers that came to the house from him or his new wife. He didn’t want to know. He simply did not care. He knew what they were thinking. He saw the looks they gave him at work, quizzical and ready to accept any excuse, no matter how flimsy, to make the situation less bizarre. He didn’t offer any. There were a few single fathers as well as mothers at work that looked at him with sad understanding, pity almost. He supposed the rest were lucky for not being able to understand.
He loved Ginny, and it wasn’t for the lack of it that he had married so soon after her death. She was the light that had led him through many dark places in his life. She was beautiful, loving, and caring. Being able to start a family with her - he considered that reward better than any other for the life he was forced to live before Voldemort fell. After all the people he had lost during the war, she was alive and well and waiting for him to fulfill all their dreams. Finally.
But not for long. As incredibly unfair as it seemed, Harry had to make peace with it. It was kind, he thought, of whoever decided these things, to at least make an exchange with him. Leave him a beautiful little girl, looking so much like his mother and hers - bright red hair and green eyes. If not for her, he would have grieved and remained in limbo perhaps until the end of his days, but for little Lily’s sake, he could not. For her sake, he had to learn fast how to be both a mother and a father, and, though he loved her more than words could describe, the only thing he learned fast was that he could not be everything to her. He could hardly be anything.
*
She stared at him, her eyes sad, but did not reply right away. Had he asked her this just a few months ago, or even before he was married or even engaged, she would’ve laughed at him. Her whole life she could not have imagined they would be standing where they were, him saying what he was saying. He was prepared to make a sacrifice and he was asking her for one, as well. His eyes held no hope for them, but there was room for it down the road. And there, in the middle of the cemetery, where the girl’s glorious dream lay buried, he offered the woman a chance at a new one.
“I… I don’t know, Harry. You know this is not the right time or the right reason.” She looked down.
“I love you, Hermione,” Harry stated flatly, and took a step toward her. His voice carried no emotion, but she knew he meant it. “With time, I can learn to love you in the right way. It would take us both a lot of time for this to feel perfectly right, but… This is as right as it’s ever going to get for the two of us. What is there for us, really? What else is there?”
She continued to look down.
“I know it makes sense. I know there is nothing better for me, and if not now, eventually we would have come to this conclusion. But…” Her voice started to break. “But I had dreams, Harry! This was not the way this was supposed to happen!”
“Of course it’s not!” he snapped, but, seeing her eyes fill with tears, softened. “Of course it’s not the way it was supposed to happen. It was him that was supposed to propose to you, not me. And if me, then years from now, when we both would be wanting it, and not on his grave. He probably had it planned since his first year at Hogwarts, or at least for sure since the fourth, It would’ve been romantic and perfect, and in the perfect world, Ginny and I would’ve attended your wedding, and our children would’ve grown up together, like siblings. But they are both gone, the people who were supposed to make all our dreams come true. And I can’t wait until it feels perfect and right. I need you now, Hermione. Lily and I need you now.”
She looked at him, and for the first time realized how much he had changed from the boy she knew. The war and the deaths it brought left a mark on him, and Ginny’s death delivered the final blow. She was moved to tears when she looked into his eyes - once so lively and full of hope, now dull and lifeless. He was hardly twenty-four, but his tired eyes suggested he could’ve lived many life times. The six years after the war, he was a different man. Almost a boy still, planning his wedding with Ginny, waiting for Ginny to finally exchange her Quidditch life to one of a correspondent for the Prophet to be able to settle down once and for all, and waiting eagerly on her growing stomach. He was living the life he deserved, finally, and Hermione found all her happiness in his.
Their school days seemed centuries away. For her, life after Voldemort’s, and Ron’s, death, was a blur of overworking, grieving, forgetting, and moving on to a whole lot of the same. Harry and her have grown closer in the last few years than ever - Ron’s death, in a sense, left them nobody but each other to share all the things long past. Even if he had Ginny, Ginny was not there with him all those years of fighting and losing and winning, but Hermione was.
She thought about her dreams of her big wedding and a wonderful, big family. Their children would’ve all had bright red hair, and they would all have been boys. They would have been little geniuses with Ron’s sense of adventure and gift of getting into trouble. After Ron’s death, even if he died in the war still a boy so many years ago, she acted much like his widow. She spent a lot of time with his family, helping out Mrs. Weasley around the house and spending a lot of time with Ginny and Harry. She had come to a realization that she would never be a wife or a mother. Even the thought of it did not feel right to her. Her chance had come and died.
Now, her feelings were the same. She did not want to get married. If it wasn’t Ron, it wasn’t right, and that philosophy was rooted deeply within her. But Harry needed her, and as his best friend who would die for him in a split second as Ron had, she saw that she could do nothing but what was right. She saw Harry wither away every day, desperately trying to be everything for his little girl, but she needed a mother. Harry would not survive the constant strain.
It didn’t matter what she did or did not want. Or him, for that matter. Harry’s fait was always to live for someone else’s sake, and if she didn’t live for him now, then for whom?
“You want me to be your wife.” It was a statement rather than a question. A bushy-haired girl who could never even think of Harry in that way within her still could not believe it and wanted to laugh at the statement.
“I want you to be a mother to my child.”
There was no ‘and’, and that small detail alone silenced the bushy-haired girl with its harsh reality.
*
“A separate room?”
The moment she had asked for it, she regretted it. There was something that appeared behind Harry’s eyes that she did not recognize. It was anger, or rather rage. Built up and hidden, but there all the same. She knew, of course, that the anger and bitterness of Ginny’s death and the end of his fairy tale was bound to be there - anybody who deserved it as much as Harry would be on the brick of insanity when life threw something like that at him after all he had been through, but she didn’t really realize how much Harry wasn’t her Harry anymore until she saw it for herself.
“There is a spare room on the other side of Lily’s. Both of us could have access to her easily and quickly. We’d get me a connecting door too.” She was almost scared at his blank stare. “Please, Harry, don’t look at me like that.” She reached out to take his hand, but he took a step back. “You yourself have said that it would take us some time to get used to this.”
“You’re not even trying, Hermione!” he snapped, turning away. “It’s our wedding night, you know.”
He started to walk away, an she suddenly felt angry. Why wasn’t he trying to understand her when all she did now was for his sake? He was so desperate to get back into the usual flow of things he didn’t even stop to think that it simply could not be that easy.
“Are you listening to yourself?” she shouted after him, causing him to stop in his tracks and look back with surprise. “I haven’t been married to you a day and I have barely had a month to get used to the idea of it all, and you already want me to start trying? I am trying, but I don’t want to sleep with you, Harry! I don’t want to sleep with you and imagine his face, and I don’t want to know you would be imagining hers!” She saw how taken aback he was and calmed her voice. “Harry, I know. Believe me. It would be easier for me too to just pretend you’re him and pretend to live a normal life and pretend to be happy, but I cannot pretend so much. And…”
She didn’t want to say it, but he needed to hear it. She felt cruel and heartless, but it needed to get into the open.
“I know you think that by putting me in her shoes I could replace her in your mind, but I can’t. I will never be her, Harry, and I will never be ok with that illusion. You needed my help and I am more than happy to do anything in this world for you. Anything but that. We must keep our sanity.”
“I am not insane!”
The pain in his eyes burned her more than she could’ve ever imagined. He was desperately looking for comfort, but she was not able to provide that at such a price. She loved him, but she could not ignore her own feelings and pains completely and allow him to take comfort in her body. It would make her feel cheap and useless.
“Harry, I’m - “
“Tell Kreacher to arrange the room,” he said quietly and Apparated.
She curled up on her bed that night and really let herself cry for the first time in a long time. This was her wedding night. This was now her life. Unwilling to put herself through the most horrible emotional pain possible, she now wondered whether she forever barred herself from ever being Harry’s wife. If until the end of her days, she would remain just a mother to his child.
*
Lily was more than Hermione could wish for. She was nervous of having no maternal instinct or practice with any sort of child, but Lily cried very rarely, and never without a reason that was easy to discover. At night, whenever woken up by the baby, Hermione always found Harry already there. He had explained to her that a mother has a special psychological connection with her child, and could hear when the child cried, even very softly, when a father could not. Hermione could hear the hint in his voice, and was always met by the same accusing stare when she ran to Lily in the middle of the night, only to find Harry already there.
“She had been crying for some time,” he said to her once, not looking at her, when she rushed into the room in the middle of the night. “She seems to have cried herself hoarse.”
“Harry, I’m sorry. I really didn’t hear.” She reached out for her, but he turned away, not allowing Hermione to take her. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I can’t help it. I am a light sleeper, but she cries so quietly I just cannot hear her.”
“How can a mother not hear her own child cry?” he asked her quietly after a long pause during which Lily had quieted down and seemed to fall back asleep. “A mother and a child have a bond, and - “
“Harry.” Hermione was frustrated. They have had this conversation a few times before, and the fact that he still brought the whole “mother-child bond” up scared her at times. She realized that he honestly forgot the fact that she did not bear his child, or, as she thought sometimes, that she was not Ginny. “The things you’re talking about are biological. I cannot just acquire this bond by deciding to become Lily’s mother. I did not give birth to her.”
Harry put Lily back in her cradle and was now standing by the window. Through the darkness in the room, Hermione could see his shoulders sag as he listened to her. It was heart-breaking to see him in such a state. It was often that he was confused, depressed and sometimes almost completely non-responsive. Even healers could not help him. She had spoken to one that she knew, and he said that after a tragedy such as Harry’s it was natural to become slightly unbalanced. He added, however, trying to put it as delicately as he could, that since it was Harry Potter and his emotional trauma was greater than perhaps any wizard’s alive, his mental health was highly as risk of fast deterioration. He had warned her that if Harry did not soon start the healing process, the strain on both his mental and physical health could be overbearing.
She walked up to him and put a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off. Since Hermione had moved in and their talk that night, Harry avoided her contact. He was civil and caring to a point, but usually closed up inside himself, going from home to work to Lily and back almost automatically. He did not seem to be making any efforts to heal at all. And if there was one thing she knew, it was that nobody in the world could help Harry through this unless he allowed for it to happen.
She was more insistent this time, needing desperately to hold him and give him what comfort she could, and perhaps get some herself. Back when they were just best friends, they could not live without it, and she was determined to make Harry better. She placed her hand back on his shoulder and turned him around to face her. He stared at her, pain flooding his eyes, and she smiled at him.
“I’m here, Harry. Right here. I wish you would see that.”
What happened next she didn’t quite see coming. He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to him, his lips crashing down onto hers. She gasped, which only allowed him full access to her mouth. At first, she felt weak and confused. She wasn’t as much standing as he was holding her upright by binding her to his body, but eventually her brain started working again. It told her that this was the first real kiss that they shared, and it also told her that she could feel it at the bottom of her stomach as a burst of adrenaline. But it’s wrong, a little voice whispered at the back of her head. She saw a flash of red hair and pushed Harry away so violently he stumbled backwards.
The look on his face was one of pain and betrayal, but she knew she would’ve betrayed him much worse if she allowed him to continue. But she now saw that perhaps a gentler approach was needed in this case. She did not mean to imply that he disgusted her, but her violence did not seem to suggest anything else. Interestingly enough, this kiss, so full of passion and need had shown her that she could want him. That perhaps their relationship would not always be platonic and awkward. But she screwed it all up again.
“Harry, I’m sorry.”
He threw her another fiery look and stalked out of the room. She heard him kick something outside the door and then the house fell silent once again.
*
She tried to speak with him in the next month, but, amazingly enough, he managed to avoid her every single time. He left early for work and came back late, he took Lily inside his room and locked himself in when he wanted to spend time with his daughter, and he even went as far as not getting up at night and waiting for Hermione to. Even though she knew he was awake, she could do nothing to persuade him to talk to her.
What she had done seemed to wound him so much that he could not even look at her. He communicated with her through notes and Kreacher, and by the house elf’s countenance, she could see that Harry was so mad that it even extended to him.
After two months, she could stand it no longer, and even though he started to show his face around the house and be polite and civil to her once again, in whole she felt to him like a perfect stranger. At first, it made her depressed. She tossed and turned at night and as a friend, she felt horrible, but at as a wife, she felt like a complete failure. But days weaved into weeks, and those into months, and eventually, the feeling of indignation started to show itself inside of her. After all, she did not feel like she had done anything wrong. He practically forced his kiss onto her, knowing well enough she did not feel ready yet to take their relationship in that direction yet, and was mad because she did not pretend to feel something that was not there.
Him punishing her was unjust. But even more so was him thus punishing himself along with her. The marriage was a hard step for both of them, but if nothing else, it should have strengthened at least their friendship instead of completely shattering it. Her best friend Harry would never have done anything like this to her. In fact, even the husband Harry would not have. This was the shadow of Harry - confused, lost, drowning in self-pity and pain, and unwilling to help himself or let anyone else help him.
But she could only do so much. Eventually, she too went back to her life as it was before her marriage. She surrounded herself with work, though considerably less than before becoming a mother, and started frequenting the Weasleys again, where she was always welcome not only for herself, but to bring news of Harry, who seemed to shut himself away from all his connections, and especially from Ginny’s family, after her death.
It was not what she imagined her marriage life would be, but it was a life similar enough to her previous one, except with the addition of Lily, who made her days brighter. She grew to love Lily as she imagined a mother loved her child, and though the situation with Harry was weighing upon her, Lily provided her with the comfort and love she lacked.
The more she saw Harry around the house, however, the more she felt drawn to him. She had a lot of time to study the little things about him that never mattered to her before. The way he ran his hands through his hair unconsciously and automatically, leaving it much messier than before. The way he sang to Lily sometimes under his breath songs that she was sure he made up himself. And even the way he would always drink his tea without taking the spoon out of the cup, it practically poking him in the eye and him not even noticing. Sometimes she found himself thinking how attractive he really was, which were thoughts that never entered into her mind before. She was surprised to find herself blushing if she encountered him shirtless in the hall, or admiring the way his shoulder blades moved when he put his shirt on on the way out the door.
It was slow and gradual, but she found herself thinking back on the first time they kissed - the feel of his lips, the passion and the connection that passed between them in that one moment. On the other hand, it seemed to her that Harry simply did not see her as he went about her day to day life. She was like a couch to him - there as if she had always been there, and it would not matter a bit if she was to disappear and be replaced with something that could fulfill her purpose just as well.
Cruelty was not a trait that she knew Harry to have. At his worst, he could not even manage a Cruciatus Curse without his conscience stopping him just in time. It puzzled her, but she simply could not talk to him. He spoke when spoken to, but did not let the conversation get to anything even remotely personal. Whenever she brought up their marriage, he would find an excuse to leave, leaving her feeling as if he did not acknowledge that their marriage even happened at all.
And so they lived. It was six months since the incident, and Hermione finally gave up the case for lost. She reasoned with herself that it didn’t matter either way whether she ever married Harry or not, for her life was just the same. She had the same pain, the same memories, and the same freedom. Lily was a bonus that made her life better. She started to give up on the hope that she could expect anything more from her life.
*
Kreacher rarely entered her room, so when she opened the door and found him on the doorstep, she was immediately afraid of bad tidings. She knew he disliked her, and he rarely brought her any good news or followed her orders at all. Harry seemed to have given him leave to not communicate with her if he did not wish to, and Kreacher complied gladly.
“I have a message from the master,” Kreacher mumbled in his nastiest of tones, not looking up at her, and walked into her room. She closed the door and waited eagerly for the bomb to drop. “In a week the annual Charity Ball in master’s honor shall be held, and he advises you to be ready to accompany him. Of course,” Kreacher continued in a fake tone of respect, looking up at her with a sickening, crooked smile, “I have advised master that mistress would not be ignorant of such an event, knowing that the master attends it ever year and the importance of it. I advised master that as Kreacher’s last mistress who cared immensely for the master, the new one would already be ready - her robes picked out and all arrangements made for their arrival and the other duties usually taken upon by the mistress fulfilled, but the master insisted I remind the mistress anyway.”
Hermione looked at Kreacher, wanting to kick him as hard as she could. She could feel the sinking feeling in her stomach at what he said. Of course she had forgotten about the ball, but how could she? It was originally Ginny’s idea to start it to honor the surviving veterans of war and Harry, and to raise money for the families horrible affected by the war - the orphans, the families who lost their main bread-bringer and the like. Harry was a sort of an organizer for the event, or at least its main benefactor, but Hermione remembered how Ginny used to laugh with her about how she ended up with all the invitations and organization of the event, Harry never being able to get anything quite right and forgetting to invite half the honorary guests.
“My duties?” she finally asked slowly. “You mean organizing the event and inviting the guests? You expect me to do this? When I only find out about this now? Why did Harry not tell me this before? There is no way I can get any of this done now.”
She sank onto the bed and looked at Kreacher with almost desperate hopelessness. She didn’t expect sympathy or help from him, of course, and anything he would be able to do for her now was too little too late anyway.
“The mistress before never used to forget. But master knew. Master is wise. Master get Kreacher to do everything. All mistress have to do is come with master and take all the credit.”
With that, Kreacher hackled under his breath and exited the room. The overwhelming feeling of relief was overpowered by an overwhelming feeling of offense. Harry knew she would forget. She felt offended that he would assume the worst of her, but felt that she had no right to feel that way because, in accordance to his expectation, she did indeed forget. But instead of talking to her and reminding her, perhaps working with her on this, he got Kreacher to do what she was supposed to, and added humiliation to it by expecting her to take credit for it in the public’s eye. Pretend to be a good wife when in fact she was a horrid one.
Tears ran down her face like waterfalls when she stepped into her fireplace and departed for Diagon Alley to shop for her dress. She was a failure in every sense, but she would at least do the little she could and show up with Harry with her head held high and looking stunning and worthy to be by his side, if that is what he wanted.
*
She missed having a girlfriend to help her prepare for the ball. She decided to talk to Harry as soon as she could about getting a female house elf who would not despise her as much as Kreacher did and help her with the girl things. She settled on a light blue dress, plain but becoming. It showed just the appropriate amount of cleavage, hugged her at the waist and the skirt flowed out like a petal at the bottom. She straightened her hair and put it up in a complicated, though seemingly simple, bun, and contented herself with that.
This night would be about Harry. She was a war veteran as well, of course, but she felt more like a decoration than anything else, and wanted to be presentable but out of the spotlight. She did not have the chance to talk to Harry about Kreacher’s announcement, and she didn’t know what she would say anyway. If she was to accuse him of thinking low of him, she knew he would point out that his expectations were proven right, and if she blamed him for failing to communicate with her… Well, she hardly knew what went on in Harry’s head. It was probable that he did not see the reason for him to communicate to her something that she should have remembered by herself, and she didn’t have much of a defense against that.
She apparated to the ball alone, her knocks at Harry’s door going unanswered. It was about ten minutes later that she felt a hand grab her hand rather roughly and practically drag her to the entrance of the hall where the first guests were starting to arrive. She threw a sideway glance at him and found her staring at her, but the moment their eyes met, he looked away. She wanted to hope that he appreciated her décor, waited for a compliment or any sign of approval at all, but he remained silent.
The next hour and a half were spent with meeting and greeting, false niceties and a lot of small talk. Every second person complimented her on the choice of location and the decorations, which indeed were stunning, and all she could do was swallow the lump in her throat that was getting increasingly bigger, and award every compliment with a huge smile.
The line of faces and smiles that passed in front of her blurred. Not everyone stopped to talk, for the attendance was so large, eventually she and Harry were simply unable to continue greeting every guest, and, with Harry still holding her hand almost painfully tightly, she was escorted into the ball room.
Kreacher had outdone himself, but she hardly even noticed. All she wanted was to leave. She felt exposed. The looks that the people gave her were mostly less than understanding. They didn’t seem to judge Harry, but it seemed to her that they were under the impression that she was the one that tricked him or convinced him to go through with this marriage for selfish personal reasons, and she felt like screaming at them, running away from them, and simply crawling into a hole away from their stares and judging looks.
She looked over at Harry and saw the hollowness of his look. He wasn’t there with her. He was far away, perhaps at the ball a year ago where Ginny was by his side and they danced the night away among the people they loved. He said hello and nodded at the guests automatically as they passed, and they in turn greeted him with caution and were sure to move on quickly. It was no secret to anyone that Harry did not wish to be there.
When the first set of waltzes finally started, Hermione looked over at Harry hopefully. Ginny had taught him how to dance in preparation for their wedding, and he seemed to love it. But he followed the couples on the dance floor with the same blank look, and seemed to pay no attention to her by his side. After the first two waltzes, she freed her hand from his slackened grasp and moved away from him, making her way towards the balcony and solitude. Glancing back, she could’ve sworn she saw his eyes following her, more than aware, but it was perhaps just an illusion, because a second later it was the same unseeing look.
A new waltz started and she hastened through the dancing couples, and was surprised when she bumped into someone barring her way. She looked up in surprise and saw the one person she did not expect to see and, in all honesty, the existence of whom she had forgotten due to everything that happened to her in the last year. But there was no mistaking the towering, stout figure, the piercing eyes and the hooked nose.
She had not seen Viktor Krum for over three years now, and they did not part on the best terms. She wrote to him during her sixth year in reply to his very forward and passionate letter that they were not meant to be and that she had feelings for Ron. She wrote him that if not for Ron, she could not imagine ending up with a better person. With this in mind, Viktor approached her after the war, offering himself now that Ron was gone, but she told him that with the exception of Ron she wanted no one. She could only imagine now how bizarre and painful it would be for Viktor to find out about her marriage.
But he did not seem mad. He smiled and bowed, as charming as always, and extended his hand to her.
“Oh, I don’t think so, Viktor,” she said awkwardly, looking down. “I’m here with my husband. You know that.”
“It iz hardly vrong to dance,” Viktor replied, continuing to extend his hand. “Besides, I see your husband haz left you all alone, and it iz a pity that such a beautiful young lady should vonder around ze room vizout a partner.”
She hesitated but finally complied. Perhaps he was right after all. This ball was held to celebrate the lives of those who has survived as well as those who did not. She came out of the horrible war alive, and she had something to celebrate, not wonder around the room forsaken, depressed and alone. She was scarred perhaps beyond repair, but alive and living in a world free of evil and fear - free of Voldemort. She deserved at least one dance. She deserved a smile, a kind word and affection. Harry did not wish to provide her with any of those, but there, in front of her, stood someone who did. And she wouldn’t be cheating with just one innocent dance. And damn them all if they thought it mattered to her if they judged her on this too, knowing her history with Krum.
She allowed him to wrap his hands around her, though perhaps more tightly than was proper and bring her closer to him than she was comfortable with. But this was as good as it would ever get for her - this one dance with a person in whom she inspired passion just as she was, no matter what.
She smiled and let herself enjoy the dance. He was saying something, leaning so close to her face she could fell his breath on her skin, but she let all of that go. He held her and he danced with her. He wanted to be there, and he wanted to hold her, and he wasn’t imagining or wishing anyone else in her place. It was true that she did not feel anything but friendly affection for him, and she would make that very clear were he ever to cross the line, but she decided to allow him just this once to make her feel loved and wanted and admired.
The dance ended too soon, and Viktor seemed to open his mouth to ask her for another one when her hand was roughly snapped out of his. Hermione was shocked at Harry’s expression of jealousy, rage and mutiny. It was more emotion than she ever thought he was capable of anymore. It was as if the fire that had gone out within in was finally re-lighted so violently it went from ashes to a fiery tornado in a second.
“Harry, we were just - “
“If I may have a word with my wife, if you don’t mind,” Harry growled under his breath to Viktor, ignoring Hermione’s attempts to speak and dragged her off the dance floor.
He was really hurting her and she was scared. The gentle boy she used to know would never hurt her, especially intentionally, but she could have expected anything from the broken man he was now. He dragged her out of the hall into the dark corridor and continued dragging her onwards through the empty mansion in which the ball was held, turning corner after corner blindly in the darkness. She tried to calm him and explain herself, but he did not seem to hear her at all.
Finally, when the music from the ball room could not longer reach them, he spun around so suddenly she bumped into him and would have sunk onto the floor if he didn’t grab her roughly by the shoulders to keep her steady.
“So, I suppose he could give you much more than I ever can, huh?”
His voice was quiet. She knew if he shouted and raged, he would burn out soon and she could reason with him - she had seen her mother do that enough with her father, who was easy to provoke to fly into a rage, and just as easy to calm down - but the quiet fury that was in possession of Harry warned of danger.
“Harry, we were just dancing,” she replied quietly, choking up a little but pushing on, trying desperately to make him calmer. “He is an old friend - “
“You mean an old lover,” he barked at her.
“Harry, my god, I was fifteen when we dated for just a few months. You know I never really had any feelings for him,” she pleaded with him, but something inside her was stirring. Her own indignation and hurt that she carefully stored away in the last few months was boiling within her. She tried so hard to contain it, to not say anything that would provoke Harry further, but did not seem to be able to control herself. “Well, what does it matter to you?” The words came flying out of her mouth so suddenly she wished she had her hands free to block her own mouth, but it was too late. “You’ve barely noticed my existence in the last few months. You’ve treated me worse than you would a pile of garbage! And… perhaps he can give me much more than you ever can.”
That seemed to be the last straw. Of all the things she could have said, it seemed she said the worst possible thing. But the irony remained that hind vision is always 20/20, and even so it is good for nothing. Harry growled something incomprehensible and threw her against the wall in a quite literal meaning of the term. She could barely realize how hard she hit it and how much it hurt before his hands were traveling down to her dress and practically ripping it in half in one swift, violent movement. She whimpered and tried to say something in protest, but his lips were already covering hers.
It was evident that he did not intend to be gentle. She was his and he was going to let her feel that. His mouth was rough, biting mercilessly down on her lips, and his hands were holding her hands against the wall so hard he was cutting off the circulation in both of them. His mouth did not remain on hers for long. Suddenly, she found that she could breathe again, his mouth on her neck, sucking in too much skin and biting hard enough to leave bruises.
She could hardly stand out of fear and suddenness of it all, but she had nowhere to fall. She was pinned against the wall, and she could feel his erection on her leg, pressing painfully and growing.
“Harry, please, let me go. Not like this, not now. Please.”
He was deaf to her pleas. She gasped when she felt his hand in between her legs and squealed and jumped when two of his fingers penetrated her suddenly and roughly. And she knew her body was responding, even though her mind was screaming and protesting. It was too violent, too rough, too…
She did not even feel him fumble with his zipper, and it was a shock to feel his erection free against her leg. She looked into his eyes, but they were clouded with anger mixed with passion. Passion for her. She knew well enough that he was imagining no one in her place. He would never act thus towards Ginny. The jealousy and the passion that was in his eyes were all for her. He didn’t hear her but he saw her. Perhaps for the first time he really saw her.
He entered her roughly, causing her to slide up the wall, her feet practically leaving the floor. She bit her lip and gasped loudly, knowing that he would not stop now, pleas or no pleas. The next push was even more violent, and her gasp was only silenced by his lips. He let go of her hands and wrapped his around her waist, and all she could do was hold on to him for dear life. Hitting him or trying to push him away would be useless, and she knew that. He was taking what was his and what he was entitled to.
Feeling her hands around his neck, Harry whispered something, and Hermione was shocked to fall back onto a bed, and, glancing quickly around, she realized they were back home in Harry’s room. She felt as if she was in a trance. All she could hear was Harry’s breathing and her own. Somewhere in the background she heard Kreacher singing an extremely boring and off-tune lullaby, but it seemed miles away.
Harry was going faster, more desperately, and her body, at least, was responding to him. His climax was like an electric line connecting them together, it went from him straight into her and exploded so violently she arched her back and dug her nails into Harry’s back. It seemed to her that the world went dark, and when she opened her eyes again, she could see Harry’s face above hers, breathing heavily. He was still in her, but not moving anymore.
“Harry…”
She didn’t know what to say to him. She didn’t know what she felt. He forced himself onto her, but her body exploded and entangled with his - openly and willingly. She wasn’t even quite sure how mutual the act had been. She remembered saying no but she knew perfectly well that her body said no such thing.
She stared up into his eyes, and could finally recognize them. They were the eyes she remembered - filled with human emotion as opposed to a blank stare. And they were full of tears. She could see the confusion in his eyes. He looked as if he just came out of a deep sleep or trance.
“Hermione, did I…” He seemed unable to find the words, or perhaps just say them. “Did I… hurt you?”
She wasn’t sure herself, if she thought about it. She didn’t feel violated in any sense of the word. She felt desired and wanted. But she felt many other things she just could not make sense of yet as well.
“I want to be your wife,” she said after a long silence, making a decision. What she felt and what happened likely was better let alone. If she analyzed it too hard, she may lose the little hope that she had now. “I want to be your wife, not only a mother to your child.”
He stared at her for a long time before a crooked, unsure smile appeared on his lips and he nodded. He opened his mouth to say more, but she silenced him with a shake of her head. She needed to think now. To figure things out.
He fell asleep holding her tightly, but she lay awake, listening to Kreacher’s off-tune lullaby, it sounding very sad and melancholy to her all of a sudden. They had a long road ahead of them. There was a lot of healing to be done on both sides, a lot of learning, and a lot of repairing of burned bridges and trust. She didn’t know if they could do it. The future lay foggy and uncertain - she didn’t know anything, really, but she was willing to try again. To be a wife, to be a mother, and to build a new dream. One less glamorous and more realistic, but one that could be attained and one that ultimately would bring them both where they needed to be. Where that was, she could not say, but the realization itself was a start.
Recipient: angeldemorte
Title: A Mother and a Wife
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s): Harry/Hermione
Warning(s): Harsh language, angst, explicit scenes of sexual nature, questionable consent bordering on non-con.
Summary: There was no question about it. Hermione was perfect for him. As perfect as it could ever get. His baby girl needed a mother - her own had died during her birth - and there was no one else in the world he would even consider. She was perfect, but whether she was able to fill in the hole the war and Ginny’s death left behind, whether she could deal with a shadow of a man that Harry had become, and whether she could ever become more than just a mother to Harry’s child was a much harder question.
(Some of the things the requester asked for no fluff or vanilla, H/C , forced marriage, possible questionable consent, angst if nothing else, and a semi-happy ending).
Word count: 7,380
A/N: I definitely went out on a limb with this one. I have not written a het pairing in about two years now, I think, and I have never written Harry/Hermione. When I saw this pairing on the list of the requests (among the familiar and comfortable slash, which was the only thing I volunteered to write in my own form) I decided to try something new and broaden my horizons. I hope it’s at least a little like what you wanted. I tried very hard to include the things you wished, but forgive me if I have not delivered exactly what you hoped for.
Special thanks: To the wonderful mod! She made it so easy for me, and for so much understanding and support, I cannot thank her enough.
The marriage was had created a lot of negative buzz in the Wizarding World. The famous Harry Potter had re-married, and not four months since the death of his wife and the birth of his daughter. It seemed despicably inappropriate, but it was Harry Potter after all, and for saving the world, they made allowances. They didn’t question it but at their own dinner tables, shrugging and dismissing it as a mystery they would never crack, or one they perhaps didn’t want to, for fear of tarnishing his perfect image in the world’s eyes.
Harry had asked Kreacher to please withhold all and any newspapers that came to the house from him or his new wife. He didn’t want to know. He simply did not care. He knew what they were thinking. He saw the looks they gave him at work, quizzical and ready to accept any excuse, no matter how flimsy, to make the situation less bizarre. He didn’t offer any. There were a few single fathers as well as mothers at work that looked at him with sad understanding, pity almost. He supposed the rest were lucky for not being able to understand.
He loved Ginny, and it wasn’t for the lack of it that he had married so soon after her death. She was the light that had led him through many dark places in his life. She was beautiful, loving, and caring. Being able to start a family with her - he considered that reward better than any other for the life he was forced to live before Voldemort fell. After all the people he had lost during the war, she was alive and well and waiting for him to fulfill all their dreams. Finally.
But not for long. As incredibly unfair as it seemed, Harry had to make peace with it. It was kind, he thought, of whoever decided these things, to at least make an exchange with him. Leave him a beautiful little girl, looking so much like his mother and hers - bright red hair and green eyes. If not for her, he would have grieved and remained in limbo perhaps until the end of his days, but for little Lily’s sake, he could not. For her sake, he had to learn fast how to be both a mother and a father, and, though he loved her more than words could describe, the only thing he learned fast was that he could not be everything to her. He could hardly be anything.
*
She stared at him, her eyes sad, but did not reply right away. Had he asked her this just a few months ago, or even before he was married or even engaged, she would’ve laughed at him. Her whole life she could not have imagined they would be standing where they were, him saying what he was saying. He was prepared to make a sacrifice and he was asking her for one, as well. His eyes held no hope for them, but there was room for it down the road. And there, in the middle of the cemetery, where the girl’s glorious dream lay buried, he offered the woman a chance at a new one.
“I… I don’t know, Harry. You know this is not the right time or the right reason.” She looked down.
“I love you, Hermione,” Harry stated flatly, and took a step toward her. His voice carried no emotion, but she knew he meant it. “With time, I can learn to love you in the right way. It would take us both a lot of time for this to feel perfectly right, but… This is as right as it’s ever going to get for the two of us. What is there for us, really? What else is there?”
She continued to look down.
“I know it makes sense. I know there is nothing better for me, and if not now, eventually we would have come to this conclusion. But…” Her voice started to break. “But I had dreams, Harry! This was not the way this was supposed to happen!”
“Of course it’s not!” he snapped, but, seeing her eyes fill with tears, softened. “Of course it’s not the way it was supposed to happen. It was him that was supposed to propose to you, not me. And if me, then years from now, when we both would be wanting it, and not on his grave. He probably had it planned since his first year at Hogwarts, or at least for sure since the fourth, It would’ve been romantic and perfect, and in the perfect world, Ginny and I would’ve attended your wedding, and our children would’ve grown up together, like siblings. But they are both gone, the people who were supposed to make all our dreams come true. And I can’t wait until it feels perfect and right. I need you now, Hermione. Lily and I need you now.”
She looked at him, and for the first time realized how much he had changed from the boy she knew. The war and the deaths it brought left a mark on him, and Ginny’s death delivered the final blow. She was moved to tears when she looked into his eyes - once so lively and full of hope, now dull and lifeless. He was hardly twenty-four, but his tired eyes suggested he could’ve lived many life times. The six years after the war, he was a different man. Almost a boy still, planning his wedding with Ginny, waiting for Ginny to finally exchange her Quidditch life to one of a correspondent for the Prophet to be able to settle down once and for all, and waiting eagerly on her growing stomach. He was living the life he deserved, finally, and Hermione found all her happiness in his.
Their school days seemed centuries away. For her, life after Voldemort’s, and Ron’s, death, was a blur of overworking, grieving, forgetting, and moving on to a whole lot of the same. Harry and her have grown closer in the last few years than ever - Ron’s death, in a sense, left them nobody but each other to share all the things long past. Even if he had Ginny, Ginny was not there with him all those years of fighting and losing and winning, but Hermione was.
She thought about her dreams of her big wedding and a wonderful, big family. Their children would’ve all had bright red hair, and they would all have been boys. They would have been little geniuses with Ron’s sense of adventure and gift of getting into trouble. After Ron’s death, even if he died in the war still a boy so many years ago, she acted much like his widow. She spent a lot of time with his family, helping out Mrs. Weasley around the house and spending a lot of time with Ginny and Harry. She had come to a realization that she would never be a wife or a mother. Even the thought of it did not feel right to her. Her chance had come and died.
Now, her feelings were the same. She did not want to get married. If it wasn’t Ron, it wasn’t right, and that philosophy was rooted deeply within her. But Harry needed her, and as his best friend who would die for him in a split second as Ron had, she saw that she could do nothing but what was right. She saw Harry wither away every day, desperately trying to be everything for his little girl, but she needed a mother. Harry would not survive the constant strain.
It didn’t matter what she did or did not want. Or him, for that matter. Harry’s fait was always to live for someone else’s sake, and if she didn’t live for him now, then for whom?
“You want me to be your wife.” It was a statement rather than a question. A bushy-haired girl who could never even think of Harry in that way within her still could not believe it and wanted to laugh at the statement.
“I want you to be a mother to my child.”
There was no ‘and’, and that small detail alone silenced the bushy-haired girl with its harsh reality.
*
“A separate room?”
The moment she had asked for it, she regretted it. There was something that appeared behind Harry’s eyes that she did not recognize. It was anger, or rather rage. Built up and hidden, but there all the same. She knew, of course, that the anger and bitterness of Ginny’s death and the end of his fairy tale was bound to be there - anybody who deserved it as much as Harry would be on the brick of insanity when life threw something like that at him after all he had been through, but she didn’t really realize how much Harry wasn’t her Harry anymore until she saw it for herself.
“There is a spare room on the other side of Lily’s. Both of us could have access to her easily and quickly. We’d get me a connecting door too.” She was almost scared at his blank stare. “Please, Harry, don’t look at me like that.” She reached out to take his hand, but he took a step back. “You yourself have said that it would take us some time to get used to this.”
“You’re not even trying, Hermione!” he snapped, turning away. “It’s our wedding night, you know.”
He started to walk away, an she suddenly felt angry. Why wasn’t he trying to understand her when all she did now was for his sake? He was so desperate to get back into the usual flow of things he didn’t even stop to think that it simply could not be that easy.
“Are you listening to yourself?” she shouted after him, causing him to stop in his tracks and look back with surprise. “I haven’t been married to you a day and I have barely had a month to get used to the idea of it all, and you already want me to start trying? I am trying, but I don’t want to sleep with you, Harry! I don’t want to sleep with you and imagine his face, and I don’t want to know you would be imagining hers!” She saw how taken aback he was and calmed her voice. “Harry, I know. Believe me. It would be easier for me too to just pretend you’re him and pretend to live a normal life and pretend to be happy, but I cannot pretend so much. And…”
She didn’t want to say it, but he needed to hear it. She felt cruel and heartless, but it needed to get into the open.
“I know you think that by putting me in her shoes I could replace her in your mind, but I can’t. I will never be her, Harry, and I will never be ok with that illusion. You needed my help and I am more than happy to do anything in this world for you. Anything but that. We must keep our sanity.”
“I am not insane!”
The pain in his eyes burned her more than she could’ve ever imagined. He was desperately looking for comfort, but she was not able to provide that at such a price. She loved him, but she could not ignore her own feelings and pains completely and allow him to take comfort in her body. It would make her feel cheap and useless.
“Harry, I’m - “
“Tell Kreacher to arrange the room,” he said quietly and Apparated.
She curled up on her bed that night and really let herself cry for the first time in a long time. This was her wedding night. This was now her life. Unwilling to put herself through the most horrible emotional pain possible, she now wondered whether she forever barred herself from ever being Harry’s wife. If until the end of her days, she would remain just a mother to his child.
*
Lily was more than Hermione could wish for. She was nervous of having no maternal instinct or practice with any sort of child, but Lily cried very rarely, and never without a reason that was easy to discover. At night, whenever woken up by the baby, Hermione always found Harry already there. He had explained to her that a mother has a special psychological connection with her child, and could hear when the child cried, even very softly, when a father could not. Hermione could hear the hint in his voice, and was always met by the same accusing stare when she ran to Lily in the middle of the night, only to find Harry already there.
“She had been crying for some time,” he said to her once, not looking at her, when she rushed into the room in the middle of the night. “She seems to have cried herself hoarse.”
“Harry, I’m sorry. I really didn’t hear.” She reached out for her, but he turned away, not allowing Hermione to take her. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I can’t help it. I am a light sleeper, but she cries so quietly I just cannot hear her.”
“How can a mother not hear her own child cry?” he asked her quietly after a long pause during which Lily had quieted down and seemed to fall back asleep. “A mother and a child have a bond, and - “
“Harry.” Hermione was frustrated. They have had this conversation a few times before, and the fact that he still brought the whole “mother-child bond” up scared her at times. She realized that he honestly forgot the fact that she did not bear his child, or, as she thought sometimes, that she was not Ginny. “The things you’re talking about are biological. I cannot just acquire this bond by deciding to become Lily’s mother. I did not give birth to her.”
Harry put Lily back in her cradle and was now standing by the window. Through the darkness in the room, Hermione could see his shoulders sag as he listened to her. It was heart-breaking to see him in such a state. It was often that he was confused, depressed and sometimes almost completely non-responsive. Even healers could not help him. She had spoken to one that she knew, and he said that after a tragedy such as Harry’s it was natural to become slightly unbalanced. He added, however, trying to put it as delicately as he could, that since it was Harry Potter and his emotional trauma was greater than perhaps any wizard’s alive, his mental health was highly as risk of fast deterioration. He had warned her that if Harry did not soon start the healing process, the strain on both his mental and physical health could be overbearing.
She walked up to him and put a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off. Since Hermione had moved in and their talk that night, Harry avoided her contact. He was civil and caring to a point, but usually closed up inside himself, going from home to work to Lily and back almost automatically. He did not seem to be making any efforts to heal at all. And if there was one thing she knew, it was that nobody in the world could help Harry through this unless he allowed for it to happen.
She was more insistent this time, needing desperately to hold him and give him what comfort she could, and perhaps get some herself. Back when they were just best friends, they could not live without it, and she was determined to make Harry better. She placed her hand back on his shoulder and turned him around to face her. He stared at her, pain flooding his eyes, and she smiled at him.
“I’m here, Harry. Right here. I wish you would see that.”
What happened next she didn’t quite see coming. He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to him, his lips crashing down onto hers. She gasped, which only allowed him full access to her mouth. At first, she felt weak and confused. She wasn’t as much standing as he was holding her upright by binding her to his body, but eventually her brain started working again. It told her that this was the first real kiss that they shared, and it also told her that she could feel it at the bottom of her stomach as a burst of adrenaline. But it’s wrong, a little voice whispered at the back of her head. She saw a flash of red hair and pushed Harry away so violently he stumbled backwards.
The look on his face was one of pain and betrayal, but she knew she would’ve betrayed him much worse if she allowed him to continue. But she now saw that perhaps a gentler approach was needed in this case. She did not mean to imply that he disgusted her, but her violence did not seem to suggest anything else. Interestingly enough, this kiss, so full of passion and need had shown her that she could want him. That perhaps their relationship would not always be platonic and awkward. But she screwed it all up again.
“Harry, I’m sorry.”
He threw her another fiery look and stalked out of the room. She heard him kick something outside the door and then the house fell silent once again.
*
She tried to speak with him in the next month, but, amazingly enough, he managed to avoid her every single time. He left early for work and came back late, he took Lily inside his room and locked himself in when he wanted to spend time with his daughter, and he even went as far as not getting up at night and waiting for Hermione to. Even though she knew he was awake, she could do nothing to persuade him to talk to her.
What she had done seemed to wound him so much that he could not even look at her. He communicated with her through notes and Kreacher, and by the house elf’s countenance, she could see that Harry was so mad that it even extended to him.
After two months, she could stand it no longer, and even though he started to show his face around the house and be polite and civil to her once again, in whole she felt to him like a perfect stranger. At first, it made her depressed. She tossed and turned at night and as a friend, she felt horrible, but at as a wife, she felt like a complete failure. But days weaved into weeks, and those into months, and eventually, the feeling of indignation started to show itself inside of her. After all, she did not feel like she had done anything wrong. He practically forced his kiss onto her, knowing well enough she did not feel ready yet to take their relationship in that direction yet, and was mad because she did not pretend to feel something that was not there.
Him punishing her was unjust. But even more so was him thus punishing himself along with her. The marriage was a hard step for both of them, but if nothing else, it should have strengthened at least their friendship instead of completely shattering it. Her best friend Harry would never have done anything like this to her. In fact, even the husband Harry would not have. This was the shadow of Harry - confused, lost, drowning in self-pity and pain, and unwilling to help himself or let anyone else help him.
But she could only do so much. Eventually, she too went back to her life as it was before her marriage. She surrounded herself with work, though considerably less than before becoming a mother, and started frequenting the Weasleys again, where she was always welcome not only for herself, but to bring news of Harry, who seemed to shut himself away from all his connections, and especially from Ginny’s family, after her death.
It was not what she imagined her marriage life would be, but it was a life similar enough to her previous one, except with the addition of Lily, who made her days brighter. She grew to love Lily as she imagined a mother loved her child, and though the situation with Harry was weighing upon her, Lily provided her with the comfort and love she lacked.
The more she saw Harry around the house, however, the more she felt drawn to him. She had a lot of time to study the little things about him that never mattered to her before. The way he ran his hands through his hair unconsciously and automatically, leaving it much messier than before. The way he sang to Lily sometimes under his breath songs that she was sure he made up himself. And even the way he would always drink his tea without taking the spoon out of the cup, it practically poking him in the eye and him not even noticing. Sometimes she found himself thinking how attractive he really was, which were thoughts that never entered into her mind before. She was surprised to find herself blushing if she encountered him shirtless in the hall, or admiring the way his shoulder blades moved when he put his shirt on on the way out the door.
It was slow and gradual, but she found herself thinking back on the first time they kissed - the feel of his lips, the passion and the connection that passed between them in that one moment. On the other hand, it seemed to her that Harry simply did not see her as he went about her day to day life. She was like a couch to him - there as if she had always been there, and it would not matter a bit if she was to disappear and be replaced with something that could fulfill her purpose just as well.
Cruelty was not a trait that she knew Harry to have. At his worst, he could not even manage a Cruciatus Curse without his conscience stopping him just in time. It puzzled her, but she simply could not talk to him. He spoke when spoken to, but did not let the conversation get to anything even remotely personal. Whenever she brought up their marriage, he would find an excuse to leave, leaving her feeling as if he did not acknowledge that their marriage even happened at all.
And so they lived. It was six months since the incident, and Hermione finally gave up the case for lost. She reasoned with herself that it didn’t matter either way whether she ever married Harry or not, for her life was just the same. She had the same pain, the same memories, and the same freedom. Lily was a bonus that made her life better. She started to give up on the hope that she could expect anything more from her life.
*
Kreacher rarely entered her room, so when she opened the door and found him on the doorstep, she was immediately afraid of bad tidings. She knew he disliked her, and he rarely brought her any good news or followed her orders at all. Harry seemed to have given him leave to not communicate with her if he did not wish to, and Kreacher complied gladly.
“I have a message from the master,” Kreacher mumbled in his nastiest of tones, not looking up at her, and walked into her room. She closed the door and waited eagerly for the bomb to drop. “In a week the annual Charity Ball in master’s honor shall be held, and he advises you to be ready to accompany him. Of course,” Kreacher continued in a fake tone of respect, looking up at her with a sickening, crooked smile, “I have advised master that mistress would not be ignorant of such an event, knowing that the master attends it ever year and the importance of it. I advised master that as Kreacher’s last mistress who cared immensely for the master, the new one would already be ready - her robes picked out and all arrangements made for their arrival and the other duties usually taken upon by the mistress fulfilled, but the master insisted I remind the mistress anyway.”
Hermione looked at Kreacher, wanting to kick him as hard as she could. She could feel the sinking feeling in her stomach at what he said. Of course she had forgotten about the ball, but how could she? It was originally Ginny’s idea to start it to honor the surviving veterans of war and Harry, and to raise money for the families horrible affected by the war - the orphans, the families who lost their main bread-bringer and the like. Harry was a sort of an organizer for the event, or at least its main benefactor, but Hermione remembered how Ginny used to laugh with her about how she ended up with all the invitations and organization of the event, Harry never being able to get anything quite right and forgetting to invite half the honorary guests.
“My duties?” she finally asked slowly. “You mean organizing the event and inviting the guests? You expect me to do this? When I only find out about this now? Why did Harry not tell me this before? There is no way I can get any of this done now.”
She sank onto the bed and looked at Kreacher with almost desperate hopelessness. She didn’t expect sympathy or help from him, of course, and anything he would be able to do for her now was too little too late anyway.
“The mistress before never used to forget. But master knew. Master is wise. Master get Kreacher to do everything. All mistress have to do is come with master and take all the credit.”
With that, Kreacher hackled under his breath and exited the room. The overwhelming feeling of relief was overpowered by an overwhelming feeling of offense. Harry knew she would forget. She felt offended that he would assume the worst of her, but felt that she had no right to feel that way because, in accordance to his expectation, she did indeed forget. But instead of talking to her and reminding her, perhaps working with her on this, he got Kreacher to do what she was supposed to, and added humiliation to it by expecting her to take credit for it in the public’s eye. Pretend to be a good wife when in fact she was a horrid one.
Tears ran down her face like waterfalls when she stepped into her fireplace and departed for Diagon Alley to shop for her dress. She was a failure in every sense, but she would at least do the little she could and show up with Harry with her head held high and looking stunning and worthy to be by his side, if that is what he wanted.
*
She missed having a girlfriend to help her prepare for the ball. She decided to talk to Harry as soon as she could about getting a female house elf who would not despise her as much as Kreacher did and help her with the girl things. She settled on a light blue dress, plain but becoming. It showed just the appropriate amount of cleavage, hugged her at the waist and the skirt flowed out like a petal at the bottom. She straightened her hair and put it up in a complicated, though seemingly simple, bun, and contented herself with that.
This night would be about Harry. She was a war veteran as well, of course, but she felt more like a decoration than anything else, and wanted to be presentable but out of the spotlight. She did not have the chance to talk to Harry about Kreacher’s announcement, and she didn’t know what she would say anyway. If she was to accuse him of thinking low of him, she knew he would point out that his expectations were proven right, and if she blamed him for failing to communicate with her… Well, she hardly knew what went on in Harry’s head. It was probable that he did not see the reason for him to communicate to her something that she should have remembered by herself, and she didn’t have much of a defense against that.
She apparated to the ball alone, her knocks at Harry’s door going unanswered. It was about ten minutes later that she felt a hand grab her hand rather roughly and practically drag her to the entrance of the hall where the first guests were starting to arrive. She threw a sideway glance at him and found her staring at her, but the moment their eyes met, he looked away. She wanted to hope that he appreciated her décor, waited for a compliment or any sign of approval at all, but he remained silent.
The next hour and a half were spent with meeting and greeting, false niceties and a lot of small talk. Every second person complimented her on the choice of location and the decorations, which indeed were stunning, and all she could do was swallow the lump in her throat that was getting increasingly bigger, and award every compliment with a huge smile.
The line of faces and smiles that passed in front of her blurred. Not everyone stopped to talk, for the attendance was so large, eventually she and Harry were simply unable to continue greeting every guest, and, with Harry still holding her hand almost painfully tightly, she was escorted into the ball room.
Kreacher had outdone himself, but she hardly even noticed. All she wanted was to leave. She felt exposed. The looks that the people gave her were mostly less than understanding. They didn’t seem to judge Harry, but it seemed to her that they were under the impression that she was the one that tricked him or convinced him to go through with this marriage for selfish personal reasons, and she felt like screaming at them, running away from them, and simply crawling into a hole away from their stares and judging looks.
She looked over at Harry and saw the hollowness of his look. He wasn’t there with her. He was far away, perhaps at the ball a year ago where Ginny was by his side and they danced the night away among the people they loved. He said hello and nodded at the guests automatically as they passed, and they in turn greeted him with caution and were sure to move on quickly. It was no secret to anyone that Harry did not wish to be there.
When the first set of waltzes finally started, Hermione looked over at Harry hopefully. Ginny had taught him how to dance in preparation for their wedding, and he seemed to love it. But he followed the couples on the dance floor with the same blank look, and seemed to pay no attention to her by his side. After the first two waltzes, she freed her hand from his slackened grasp and moved away from him, making her way towards the balcony and solitude. Glancing back, she could’ve sworn she saw his eyes following her, more than aware, but it was perhaps just an illusion, because a second later it was the same unseeing look.
A new waltz started and she hastened through the dancing couples, and was surprised when she bumped into someone barring her way. She looked up in surprise and saw the one person she did not expect to see and, in all honesty, the existence of whom she had forgotten due to everything that happened to her in the last year. But there was no mistaking the towering, stout figure, the piercing eyes and the hooked nose.
She had not seen Viktor Krum for over three years now, and they did not part on the best terms. She wrote to him during her sixth year in reply to his very forward and passionate letter that they were not meant to be and that she had feelings for Ron. She wrote him that if not for Ron, she could not imagine ending up with a better person. With this in mind, Viktor approached her after the war, offering himself now that Ron was gone, but she told him that with the exception of Ron she wanted no one. She could only imagine now how bizarre and painful it would be for Viktor to find out about her marriage.
But he did not seem mad. He smiled and bowed, as charming as always, and extended his hand to her.
“Oh, I don’t think so, Viktor,” she said awkwardly, looking down. “I’m here with my husband. You know that.”
“It iz hardly vrong to dance,” Viktor replied, continuing to extend his hand. “Besides, I see your husband haz left you all alone, and it iz a pity that such a beautiful young lady should vonder around ze room vizout a partner.”
She hesitated but finally complied. Perhaps he was right after all. This ball was held to celebrate the lives of those who has survived as well as those who did not. She came out of the horrible war alive, and she had something to celebrate, not wonder around the room forsaken, depressed and alone. She was scarred perhaps beyond repair, but alive and living in a world free of evil and fear - free of Voldemort. She deserved at least one dance. She deserved a smile, a kind word and affection. Harry did not wish to provide her with any of those, but there, in front of her, stood someone who did. And she wouldn’t be cheating with just one innocent dance. And damn them all if they thought it mattered to her if they judged her on this too, knowing her history with Krum.
She allowed him to wrap his hands around her, though perhaps more tightly than was proper and bring her closer to him than she was comfortable with. But this was as good as it would ever get for her - this one dance with a person in whom she inspired passion just as she was, no matter what.
She smiled and let herself enjoy the dance. He was saying something, leaning so close to her face she could fell his breath on her skin, but she let all of that go. He held her and he danced with her. He wanted to be there, and he wanted to hold her, and he wasn’t imagining or wishing anyone else in her place. It was true that she did not feel anything but friendly affection for him, and she would make that very clear were he ever to cross the line, but she decided to allow him just this once to make her feel loved and wanted and admired.
The dance ended too soon, and Viktor seemed to open his mouth to ask her for another one when her hand was roughly snapped out of his. Hermione was shocked at Harry’s expression of jealousy, rage and mutiny. It was more emotion than she ever thought he was capable of anymore. It was as if the fire that had gone out within in was finally re-lighted so violently it went from ashes to a fiery tornado in a second.
“Harry, we were just - “
“If I may have a word with my wife, if you don’t mind,” Harry growled under his breath to Viktor, ignoring Hermione’s attempts to speak and dragged her off the dance floor.
He was really hurting her and she was scared. The gentle boy she used to know would never hurt her, especially intentionally, but she could have expected anything from the broken man he was now. He dragged her out of the hall into the dark corridor and continued dragging her onwards through the empty mansion in which the ball was held, turning corner after corner blindly in the darkness. She tried to calm him and explain herself, but he did not seem to hear her at all.
Finally, when the music from the ball room could not longer reach them, he spun around so suddenly she bumped into him and would have sunk onto the floor if he didn’t grab her roughly by the shoulders to keep her steady.
“So, I suppose he could give you much more than I ever can, huh?”
His voice was quiet. She knew if he shouted and raged, he would burn out soon and she could reason with him - she had seen her mother do that enough with her father, who was easy to provoke to fly into a rage, and just as easy to calm down - but the quiet fury that was in possession of Harry warned of danger.
“Harry, we were just dancing,” she replied quietly, choking up a little but pushing on, trying desperately to make him calmer. “He is an old friend - “
“You mean an old lover,” he barked at her.
“Harry, my god, I was fifteen when we dated for just a few months. You know I never really had any feelings for him,” she pleaded with him, but something inside her was stirring. Her own indignation and hurt that she carefully stored away in the last few months was boiling within her. She tried so hard to contain it, to not say anything that would provoke Harry further, but did not seem to be able to control herself. “Well, what does it matter to you?” The words came flying out of her mouth so suddenly she wished she had her hands free to block her own mouth, but it was too late. “You’ve barely noticed my existence in the last few months. You’ve treated me worse than you would a pile of garbage! And… perhaps he can give me much more than you ever can.”
That seemed to be the last straw. Of all the things she could have said, it seemed she said the worst possible thing. But the irony remained that hind vision is always 20/20, and even so it is good for nothing. Harry growled something incomprehensible and threw her against the wall in a quite literal meaning of the term. She could barely realize how hard she hit it and how much it hurt before his hands were traveling down to her dress and practically ripping it in half in one swift, violent movement. She whimpered and tried to say something in protest, but his lips were already covering hers.
It was evident that he did not intend to be gentle. She was his and he was going to let her feel that. His mouth was rough, biting mercilessly down on her lips, and his hands were holding her hands against the wall so hard he was cutting off the circulation in both of them. His mouth did not remain on hers for long. Suddenly, she found that she could breathe again, his mouth on her neck, sucking in too much skin and biting hard enough to leave bruises.
She could hardly stand out of fear and suddenness of it all, but she had nowhere to fall. She was pinned against the wall, and she could feel his erection on her leg, pressing painfully and growing.
“Harry, please, let me go. Not like this, not now. Please.”
He was deaf to her pleas. She gasped when she felt his hand in between her legs and squealed and jumped when two of his fingers penetrated her suddenly and roughly. And she knew her body was responding, even though her mind was screaming and protesting. It was too violent, too rough, too…
She did not even feel him fumble with his zipper, and it was a shock to feel his erection free against her leg. She looked into his eyes, but they were clouded with anger mixed with passion. Passion for her. She knew well enough that he was imagining no one in her place. He would never act thus towards Ginny. The jealousy and the passion that was in his eyes were all for her. He didn’t hear her but he saw her. Perhaps for the first time he really saw her.
He entered her roughly, causing her to slide up the wall, her feet practically leaving the floor. She bit her lip and gasped loudly, knowing that he would not stop now, pleas or no pleas. The next push was even more violent, and her gasp was only silenced by his lips. He let go of her hands and wrapped his around her waist, and all she could do was hold on to him for dear life. Hitting him or trying to push him away would be useless, and she knew that. He was taking what was his and what he was entitled to.
Feeling her hands around his neck, Harry whispered something, and Hermione was shocked to fall back onto a bed, and, glancing quickly around, she realized they were back home in Harry’s room. She felt as if she was in a trance. All she could hear was Harry’s breathing and her own. Somewhere in the background she heard Kreacher singing an extremely boring and off-tune lullaby, but it seemed miles away.
Harry was going faster, more desperately, and her body, at least, was responding to him. His climax was like an electric line connecting them together, it went from him straight into her and exploded so violently she arched her back and dug her nails into Harry’s back. It seemed to her that the world went dark, and when she opened her eyes again, she could see Harry’s face above hers, breathing heavily. He was still in her, but not moving anymore.
“Harry…”
She didn’t know what to say to him. She didn’t know what she felt. He forced himself onto her, but her body exploded and entangled with his - openly and willingly. She wasn’t even quite sure how mutual the act had been. She remembered saying no but she knew perfectly well that her body said no such thing.
She stared up into his eyes, and could finally recognize them. They were the eyes she remembered - filled with human emotion as opposed to a blank stare. And they were full of tears. She could see the confusion in his eyes. He looked as if he just came out of a deep sleep or trance.
“Hermione, did I…” He seemed unable to find the words, or perhaps just say them. “Did I… hurt you?”
She wasn’t sure herself, if she thought about it. She didn’t feel violated in any sense of the word. She felt desired and wanted. But she felt many other things she just could not make sense of yet as well.
“I want to be your wife,” she said after a long silence, making a decision. What she felt and what happened likely was better let alone. If she analyzed it too hard, she may lose the little hope that she had now. “I want to be your wife, not only a mother to your child.”
He stared at her for a long time before a crooked, unsure smile appeared on his lips and he nodded. He opened his mouth to say more, but she silenced him with a shake of her head. She needed to think now. To figure things out.
He fell asleep holding her tightly, but she lay awake, listening to Kreacher’s off-tune lullaby, it sounding very sad and melancholy to her all of a sudden. They had a long road ahead of them. There was a lot of healing to be done on both sides, a lot of learning, and a lot of repairing of burned bridges and trust. She didn’t know if they could do it. The future lay foggy and uncertain - she didn’t know anything, really, but she was willing to try again. To be a wife, to be a mother, and to build a new dream. One less glamorous and more realistic, but one that could be attained and one that ultimately would bring them both where they needed to be. Where that was, she could not say, but the realization itself was a start.