The Journey Home
Title: The Journey Home
Rating: R
Word Count: 7,523
Pairing: Harry/Hermione
Summary: Seven years after Harry's disappearance she sees him walking a Muggle street alone.
Warnings: there's nothing to deserve the R really, just sort of a somber, more mature theme.
The suitcase latches snapped smartly shut beneath Harry's fingers. He couldn't really carry a trunk full of his posessions around everywhere he went, but it was alright since he didn't imagine he would need school robes or his telescope. He didn't pack any robes at all, really. Godric's Hollow wasn't wizarding, there wasn't any need. Jeans, t-shirts, clean underwear and socks. And tucked in the middle, one curiously light, seemingly transparent Invisibility Cloak.
Harry paused, looking out of the attic window at the flurry of life below. Even if she hadn't been part Veela, Fleur Weasley would have been considered a beautiful bride. And while not many would have said the same for Bill; no one could deny what Fleur had announced at his bedside. Bill was braver than most men and wizards ever to grace the world with their presence, and while his rugged good looks were now obscured by gruesome scars, his new wife was beautiful enough for them both.
From his remote vantage point, Harry could see it all. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were dancing happily together, surely lost in the memories of their own wedding and possibly hopes of those yet to come. Remus and Tonks looked slightly awkward but happy as they refused to dance, but stood by the edge of the floor all the same. Harry couldn't imagine Tonks embodied the grace necessary to be a good dancer, and he was almost positive that Remus was grateful for this. Ginny was dancing with Fred, the two of them spinning wildly through the crowd at a pace all their own, making a merry mockery all of the serious couples. And, in a much more secluded area, Harry could see a nervous Ron running his hand through his shock of shaggy hair as Hermione tugged gently on a stray curl. Harry knew what he was saying to her. In fact, he knew exactly what was being said, as he'd let Ron practice getting it all out with him just over an hour ago. Harry wasn't sure if he was happy for them or not, since it seemed that every new relationship these days was shrouded in the impending doom of the second war. Even if they managed not to kill each other, there were plenty of other things to consider, things that were unfair yet out of your control, Harry thought bitterly, forcefully keeping his eyes from Ginny in her charade. This was it. Hermione wasn't moving away, she wasn't slapping him across the face as Ron had feared. If he had tried very hard to spot it, Harry might have even seen her leaning subtly toward Ron. In fifteen seconds, each of their lives would become more complex when they finally kissed, but Harry didn't want to watch that.
Instead he pulled a slightly crumpled note from the back pocket of his jeans, smoothed it as best as he could, and laid it on his pillowcase. Leaving like this, with a note that wasn't a real goodbye, made Harry feel a pang of guilt in his stomach. He knew that if he tried to reason with them, eventually he would find himself with company for the journey and Harry wanted to do this by himself. After all, it was his parents' graves he was going to find, not a Horcrux. No matter how helpful and kind everyone wanted to be, for this Harry preffered to be alone.
Suitcase and Firebolt in hand, Harry made his way stealthily downstairs and out the kitchen door. He crept along the side of the Burrow opposite the garden, knelt near some bushes to fasten the case to the broom, and just as Mundungus Fletcher came around the corner to take a quick piss; the boy called Harry Potter flew off into the dusky twilight, leaving only the sound of crickets in his wake.
The wind whipped down the dark deserted street of Muggle London and past a thin man with dark shaggy hair, the collar of his jacket turned up and shoulders hunched against the cold. A particularly strong gust blew him a bit off balance and too close to one of the cars parked at the curb. The shrill cry of the car’s alarm pushed his nerves over the edge and he whipped, oddly enough, a small wooden wand from his coat pocket to stand on guard. But nothing came. No sound, no sudden appearance of an unforeseen enemy, nothing. Even the streetlamp overhead was out, causing the dark night; already void of moon and stars; to achieve the pitch black stillness of a windowless room.
After a minute passed uneventfully, the shadowed man tucked the wand back into his coat and continued on his way. ‘It’s just nerves,’ he thought to himself. ‘Hold out a little longer and you’ll be safe, everything will be fine.’
He wasn’t far from his flat now, just two blocks. ‘Nothing happens in two blocks. Nothing has happened any other night that you walk home from work, and nothing will tonight.’ Four blocks was not a long way to walk, in fact, and very little ever happened between the quiet little café and Number 8 Macklin Street. Occasionally he’d spot a neighbor or their cat, rarely there would be a small crowd of inebriated tourists leaving a theatre or a pub, but mostly Harry Potter was alone for his walks home and he liked it that way.
Some people might go so far as to call Harry dull. Some had in fact, but kindly not to his face. It wasn’t normal for a twenty-four year old man to be so plain. He wasn’t quite what you would call tall, but he wasn’t short either. He was thin, but it was a lithe sort of body; something similar to a long distance runner rather than an American footballer. His thick dark hair was wildly unruly, and though girls often teased that he’d be much more handsome if only he would comb it in the mornings, Harry insisted that he did. This was true of course. After his shower Harry would wipe the steam from his bathroom mirror, shave, and drag a rather ornate wooden comb through his wet hair, matting his fringe down over his forehead. Before he’d even left the house it would be impossible to tell he’d even bothered, but if one looked carefully they might glimpse something hiding under the tangled fringe. They might glimpse a peculiar scar, shaped like a lightning bolt etched into Harry’s forehead.
His co-workers at the café speculated about Harry’s scar. Deirdre, the obnoxious but beautiful waitress, thought it must have been from a car accident - she swore her cousin Albert had something similar from when a windscreen shattered down on his face. Simon, who worked in the back baking biscuits and bread in the early hours of the morning, figured it was probably from some sort of satanic cult. What did they know about the young man, anyhow? For all they knew, he was a devil-worshipping sadist who kept to himself, except for all of the meetings he must go to where they branded new inductees with similarly shaped scars.
But both Dierde and Simon were wrong. Harry’s scar had a much darker and sinister origin even than Simon’s ungainly prediction. Harry kept the real story of his mysterious scar to himself, as he did with most things.
Funnily enough, it was the sight of this scar that stopped a young woman in her tracks that night. The timing had been impeccable; the brunette had looked up just as a gust of wind blew Harry’s hair back from his face; and there under the grimy fluorescent light of the solitary working streetlamp, she saw it. “Harry?” she called, just loudly enough to be heard on the silent street. “Is that you?”
Harry Potter had started at the sound of his name, and now he was looking madly around like an animal trapped in the headlamps of a roaring automobile. The brunette stepped into the street, crossing near to Harry.
Any icy lump formed in the pit of Harry’s stomach as he recognized the bushy curls of the shadowy woman. “Who?” he called, turning his back on her and quickening his step. “No, I’m sorry, you must be mistaken.”
“Harry, stop!” she cried. “I know it’s you, just stop!” But Harry did not stop. In fact, he broke into a sprint, barreling as fast as he could away from the small woman with the soft voice. He rounded the corner and was less than fifty paces away from the door to his flat when - CRACK! - there she was, standing in front of him, her arms crossed and a peevish look on her stern face.
Harry didn’t have enough warning to stop. He crashed into her at nearly full force, knocking the two of them to the ground and soliciting an angry yelp from the girl.
“I -” he gasped, his lungs burning slightly as he gulped in the chilly night air. “I’m sorry, Hermione.”
“You should be,” she snapped, struggling to her feet and groaning at her soaked-through clothing, for Hermione had landed in a puddle. She too pulled a wand from the inside pocket of her coat, pointed it at herself, muttered “Assiccare,” and instantly her clothing was once again moisture-free.
Harry was wet too, but he didn’t do the same thing. “Come on,” he said, motioning to the door ahead of them. Hermione nodded and followed him, up the flight of steps and through another door, into a small flat. Harry flicked on the lights and shut the door behind them, bolting no less than four locks and sliding a thick chain into place. Harry waved his hand at the sofa, on which sat several copies of newspapers from the past week that he had yet to recycle. Instead of following Hermione to the seat, he turned his back on her and shuffled into another room, emerging a few minutes later in a different change of clothes.
She was reading the paper, only her small hands visible at its edges and her legs peeking out from beneath, and Harry couldn’t help but smile. “Anything interesting?” He asked, avoiding the couch again in favour of a small kitchenette.
“No,” she called. “I’ve read it already really,” and Harry was not surprised.
“Let me,” she said, pointing her wand at the teakettle Harry had moved under the tap, and instantly it was heavy with water and whistling with steam. Harry didn’t say anything, but he rummaged through a cabinet and pulled out two mugs and a selection of teas.
She rifled through them and pulled one out, steeping the bag in the West Ham mug Harry had passed her. “Thank you,” she said, and her teabag flew into the bin across the room, not spilling a drop.
Harry sighed.
“We should talk,” Hermione said seriously, walking back into the modest living room.
“Yeah.”
“Why aren’t you doing magic anymore?”
Harry shrugged.
“Do you still have your wand?”
Harry nodded.
“Are you going to talk to me at all, or is this a purely one-sided conversation?”
Harry sighed. “I don’t know what you want me to say to you, Hermione.”
“Any sort of verbal response over three words would be welcome.”
“I don’t know why I don’t use magic, I just don’t like to unless I need to. My wand is in my coat,” Harry said, jerking his thumb towards the bedroom and taking a sip of his tea.
Hermione stared at him, then into her own mug, then at the coffee table littered with gum papers and a remote. The silence was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable. Harry got up and padded back to the kitchenette, bringing with him a bag of day-old biscuits that Simon had made. They were really six days old now, but Harry took one anyhow and passed the bag to Hermione, who took one too.
Each chewed in their silence for a minute, but after another mouthful of tea, Hermione spoke.
“These are awful.”
“Yeah. They’re a little stale. Sorry.”
“It’s no worse than Hagrid’s were.”
If Harry had had anything in his mouth, he would have gagged. “No.”
Hermione reached for the coat she’d taken off before sitting down, and Harry blinked at her, startled. “I’m cold.”
Harry smiled. Hermione was cold so often when they were at school; often leaving him and Ron to their impatient waiting while she piled on cloaks and scarves and mittens and hats over her school robes before setting one toe out of the oak front doors. Harry got up and walked to the electric thermostat, cranking it high even though he was plenty comfortable.
“You don’t have a fireplace,” she commented, staring at the corner in which she obviously thought one belonged.
“No.”
“Is it so no one could reach you, even if they knew where to look?”
“No. You’ve reached me, haven’t you?”
“After seven years,” Hermione snapped, her voice hardening for the first time since they entered Harry’s residence. “I won’t deny that a quick Floo wouldn’t have been more convenient.”
“Yeah. Well, I don’t have a fireplace. The flat didn’t come with one and I didn’t care, so I don’t have one.” Harry fussed with the gum papers for a moment. He could hear the ticking of a wall clock in the kitchen.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Hermione whispered, her voice genuinely angry. Harry looked at her for the first time, really looked at her. The old Hermione wouldn’t even let Ron say ‘shite,’ but this was not the old Hermione. Her unruly curls were the same, but her eyes seemed deeper now, a much darker shade of hazel than Harry had ever noticed before. She had a long scar running just along her jaw line on the left side of her face, and he didn’t know what it was from. Her lips were thinner, more like Professor McGonagall’s small line of a mouth.
“Here,” he said, his throat raspy. “I’ve been here.”
“You left the wedding and came to Covent Garden?!”
“No. I left the wedding and I went to Godric’s Hollow. I went around there and I found the ruins of the house and I found my parents’ graves and then - and then I found some people who knew them, Hermione. And I spent a week there talking to people who kept saying “Oh, you do look so like your father!” and “It really is a pity!” but then I couldn’t take the - the - positively suffocating weight of what they’d sacrificed and what I was supposed to do anymore so… so I left.”
For a while neither of them moved. The kitchen clock ticked off the seconds, and Harry couldn’t help but feel that it was a countdown. This was all some sort of perverse countdown until one or the other of them really got angry and just exploded. The kitchen clock was a time bomb.
“Without a word?” Hermione wiped a stray tear forcefully with the back of her hand.
“Without a word.”
“Well, bully for you, Harry. Bloody bully for you.”
“Yeah.”
Hermione stood up and walked into the kitchenette. He could hear her banging through cupboards until finally she paused in the doorway, a bottle of scotch in her hand. “I’m having a drink.”
“That’s fine.”
“Do you want one?”
“No.”
“Have a drink.” She splashed a bit of scotch into the dregs of Harry’s tea.
“Okay.”
“Do you have any idea what’s been happening while you’ve been away?”
Harry stared at his scotch and took a sip before speaking. It burned a little, but it felt good. “I know some things.”
“Like what?” Hermione snapped, taking a gulp of her own drink. Harry had expected that she would cough, but she didn’t. This wasn’t Hermione’s first time drinking scotch.
“When they attack Muggles, or when there’s some phenomenon that doesn’t have a good enough explanation, I know something’s happened.”
Hermione snorted. “Brilliant. I’m so glad you kept yourself well-informed Harry.”
“What am I supposed to do, take the Daily Prophet?”
“Why not?”
“Good idea. An owl lurking around the flat every morning wouldn’t draw any attention at all.”
“Where’s Hedwig?” Hermione asked suddenly, her voice concerned.
“I let her go when I left Godric’s Hollow.”
“You let her go?”
“Yeah.”
“She just flew off and never came back?”
Harry did not respond. He could hear the electric heater rumbling and ticking away, but so far he hadn’t noticed any change in temperature, and Hermione was still wearing her coat.
“That just doesn’t sound like Hedwig,” Hermione sighed, leaning against the window and looking down on the dark street. It had begun to drizzle outside.
“She followed me,” said Harry glumly. “She followed me here and she wouldn’t go away for weeks. But I didn’t let her in, so eventually she stopped coming back.”
Hermione didn’t move. Harry could sense that she had tensed, but she didn’t turn around. Finally she took another sip of scotch and sighed. “That’s horrible, Harry.”
“I know.”
“No, that’s really horrible. Hedwig loved you and you kept her shut outside this window.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
Harry grimaced, struggling for the right words. He knew they wouldn’t come, he knew they didn’t even exist really, so he found some that would do. “I didn’t want a reminder.”
“Of what you were leaving behind?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
That was it? That was all this new Hermione was going to say to him? She wasn’t going to yell at him for hurting Hedwig, who had indeed always been loyal to him even when she was angry. She wasn’t going to accuse him of leaving her behind; of leaving all of his friends behind in order to go be a coward in a plain flat in Muggle London?
“Hermione?”
“Yes?”
“How did…” his voice trailed away. “How did you get that scar?”
Hermione turned, leaning back against the windowsill and thrusting her chin into the air in defiance of any shame. “It was a warning,” she said. “When you left and no one knew where you were, Lucius Malfoy tried to question me and when I didn’t have the answers he gave me this.” She ran her fingers lightly over the scar, starting at the tip of her chin and running them all the way back to her throat.
“A warning for what?”
“To tell them where you had gone, what you were doing. Or else suffer.”
“But you didn’t know.”
Hermione almost laughed. “You think that stopped them? You think the Death Eaters believed that? Harry, you don’t have any idea of what’s been happening these years, so don’t pretend that what you did - leaving like that - don’t pretend it was all for the best. You don’t get to be self-righteous. Not when people have died.”
Now Harry was grateful for his scotch and tea. She had been right to insist on drinks. People had died? He knew that some must have. On a deeper level, he knew that he was putting lives in danger by leaving the Burrow that night. But then Harry had thought he would be back. Five days, tops, he had decided. They’d probably find him before then even, and take him back home to be put under the watchful eye of the Order.
But it hadn’t taken five days for Harry to absorb what Godric’s Hollow had had to offer him. They weren’t so much memories as they were cautionary tales of horror. The Muggles hadn’t known what had happened to the Potters, not really. They all thought it was a bad gas leak, a terrible explosion when one of them had tried to start a fire in the living room. But then she had come to him.
Harry had been staying in a small bed and breakfast, one with a fondness for cats and lace that reminded Harry of sickeningly sweet Dolores Umbridge. He was in bed, but he was not asleep, when someone knocked on his door.
“Come in,” Harry had called curiously, reaching for his wand where it lay on his bedside table and tucking it under his pillow. The door had opened to show a woman. She had long dark hair and looked, to Harry, to be around the same age as Remus.
“Hello Harry,” she had said, closing the door behind her with a quiet click. “I’m Imogen Ollivander. I knew your parents.”
“Harry?” asked Hermione, shaking him from his memories. She’d taken off her coat now, and thrown it back onto the sofa. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
“I didn’t mean that it was your fault that people died,” she sighed, her voice edged in guilt.
“But it is.”
“No.”
“It’s my fault that everyone died, Hermione. From my parents to Sirius to Dumbledore - they’re all my fault.”
Hermione sat down and kicked off her left shoe and then her right. “No, it isn’t,” she said, rubbing her knobbly hand-knitted socks against each other.
“I should have done something; I should have stopped it all.”
“Could you have, Harry?” Hermione’s tone wasn’t menacing, but the question itself was a double edged sword. “You were the Chosen One, or that’s what you led us to believe at least. And then you vanished without a word and weeks and months and years of searching for you turned up nothing, so do you know what we all assumed? We assumed you were dead Harry.”
“I wasn’t dead, I was -”
“Hiding.”
Harry gritted his teeth. “Yes.” He’d forgotten Hermione’s ability to wear on his nerves. “At first I was just hiding.”
“And then? You weren’t hiding for seven years.”
“And then it became my life, Hermione. She was right, Imogen was right, there is a life outside of the magical world and it isn’t any less of a life no matter what anyone wants to say,” Harry snapped, finishing the last of his mottled scotch in a gulp.
“Imogen?”
Harry had said the name without even thinking first, but now as it fell from Hermione’s mouth, Harry could almost see her there, standing in the fireplace-less corner and smiling at him with her silvery eyes. “Imogen Ollivander,” he whispered. “She - I met her in Godric’s Hollow.”
“I knew your parents.” The eyes of the strange witch held the same glint of moonlight as her father’s had, as though she could see more than any normal person could; see pieces of his soul just by looking him in the eye.
“My parents?” Harry had asked, dumbfounded and suddenly self conscious in his burgundy and gold striped pyjamas.
“Mmm,” was all Imogen had said as she removed her cloak and laid it over the back of an armchair by the window.
“Did - did you go to school with them?”
“Yes.”
“Were you a Gryffindor too, then?”
“Yes.”
“So you knew Professor Lupin, and Sirius and,” Harry faltered momentarily, “and Pettigrew too?”
Imogen’s eyes darkened. “Sirius Black was my fiancée,” she said plainly.
“What?” Harry gaped. “But no; I mean, no one’s ever said anything to me about -”
“Well, the only people who knew are dead, so it’s hard for the word to get around,” Imogen laughed, though Harry could still sense the bitterness behind it.
“Sirius never told me either though.”
Imogen blinked, startled. “I heard that he had escaped, I heard it on the television, but you’ve spoken to him?”
A pang of sorrow struck Harry in the chest. She’d seen it on the telly that a murderer was on the loose, same as he had seen the summer before his third year, but the rest she must not have heard. “Yeah, I’ve spoken to him. He’s, um, well he’s dead now though.”
The look on her face was enough to make Harry ill.
“Who is Imogen Ollivander?” Hermione asked again, more insistently, and the memory of the horror-struck woman was replaced by the new Hermione, peering curiously at Harry. “Are you feeling alright?”
“I’m fine,” Harry lied, reaching for the bottle of scotch and adding some more to his tea-free mug. “She was Ollivander’s daughter, she went to school with my parents.”
“And she lives in Godric’s Hollow?” Hermione asked, confused. “But we searched the whole town; there were no traces of magical households at all.”
“I dunno where she lives,” said Harry. “She just came to my room where I was staying one night.”
Hermione’s eyebrows rose sharply. “She came to your room?”
Harry glared at her. “It wasn’t like that, Hermione, so don’t act shocked at something that never happened, alright? We talked, like you and I are talking right now.”
“Alright!” Hermione declared defensively, arms folded across her chest as she leaned back in her seat. “But she said that this was the right life for you, Muggle London?”
“She didn’t tell me to come here, if that’s what you mean. She doesn’t know where I am and I don’t know where she is. We haven’t spoken since that night.”
“But it was her who told you that it would be a good idea to run away?” Hermione’s voice was sharp again.
“Not in those words, no.”
“I’m just trying to figure it out, Harry. I’m trying to understand why, when you were so determined to fight Voldemort and save the world, you turned your back on us. I’m not blaming you for it, but yes I am looking for someone to blame because that is what you do when your husband is dead, you find someone to whose fault it is and you blame them.”
Harry felt his stomach sink to his ankles. It wasn’t what he was thinking. Hermione had… she’d married Krum or something, or Cormac McLaggen. “You,” he choked, hoping against hope that she had a better answer than his feeble attempts, “you got married?”
“I did.” Hermione asked, her face slack and her eyes so blank that for an instant she looked petrified. “Aren’t you going to ask to whom?”
Harry didn’t need to ask now, he knew her answer.
“Ron and I got married last year. But he’s dead now; he was killed on the job because he was an Auror, Harry. The Death Eaters killed Ron.”
Harry wanted to vomit. He couldn’t look her in the eye, he didn’t think he ever would be able to again, but she just kept going.
“And Arthur, Bill, Charlie and Percy too. The only Weasleys left are the twins and Ginny and Molly.” She was taking a sick form of satisfaction in this, watching as Harry grew paler by the second. He got up and walked straight into the small loo off the living room, where behind the closed door Hermione could hear him retch.
He could see it, just like Mrs. Weasley’s boggart. In his mind’s eye he could see each of their funerals, he could imagine the garden at the Burrow turned into a small cemetery littered with the closest thing he’d ever had to family. He was sick again.
Harry wiped his hand across his mouth and stood shakily on the black and white tiling of the bathroom floor. Mechanically he turned the taps, washing his hands and face and brushing his teeth, purposely letting his mind fall slack.
When he opened the door, Hermione was at the window, her forehead pressed against the cool glass and her arms wrapped around her waist.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
Saying nothing, Harry shuffled past her into the kitchen, drying his hands on the back of his jeans as he went. In the kitchen he ran the taps as well, filling the tea kettle again and setting it on the stove. He stayed in the kitchen, hoisting himself up to sit on the small space of open counter and staring down at his smudged socks. He heard a door click shut but didn’t move to look. If she had gone that was fine, if she was in the loo that was fine too. ‘Maybe she’s puking as well,’ Harry thought, hopefully.
The teakettle whistled its impatience and Harry slid down to fetch the mugs. He rinsed them first, poured hot tea in both just in case she hadn’t gone, and went back to sit on the couch. For what seemed like an hour he stared at the feeble flickering shadows of a streetlamp illuminated tree outside, not wanting to move.
Ron was dead.
This time the pain was duller, more hollow, almost surreal. He took a sip of the hot tea and let it burn its way down to his stomach, trying to register that he’d never see his best friend again.
“We got married on your birthday last year.”
Harry jumped in his skin and spluttered more tea, coughing as Hermione stood immobile in the doorway, her hair pulled back and her eyes red and puffy.
“It was nice,” she continued. “It wasn’t large, of course. Weddings aren’t anymore; they’re a secret now so that they aren’t ambushed.”
“Weddings are ambushed?” Harry said, his brow furrowed.
“Not all of them. Not if you’re on the dark side. But if you haven’t declared your allegiance to him then you don’t tell many people, and you don’t do it publicly. Big gatherings aren’t a good idea, I’m sure you understand why. Professor Flitwick let us have it at Hogwarts, in his office. And Arthur was alive still, he was the one who bonded us, and it was over in ten minutes and we all Flooed back to the Burrow straight away, but it was nice. I wore blue silk.” She was pressing her knuckle into the doorlatch absentmindedly. “Ron wanted to have a baby right away,” she sighed, smiling. “But I didn’t because I thought about Fleur and how she has to raise Charlotte on her own.”
“Bill and Fleur had a baby?”
“Two,” Hermione nodded. “But Greyback got Etienne.”
Harry grimaced.
“I wish we’d done it now though. I wish I had a pudgy little baby that was his and mine. A sweet little baby to love.” She moved to the sofa, this time sitting close to Harry and laying her head on his shoulder. “And I love you Harry, but I wouldn’t have named it after you like Ron wanted.”
A snort escaped him, and a smile. “Harry or Harriet Weasley. Not amazing.”
“Maybe for a middle name.” Hermione pulled back, looking at him. Her eyes searched his face, thinner and more angular, and she ran her fingers up to trace his scar. Harry shivered involuntarily. “I’ve missed you, Harry,” she whispered. “We all have.”
Feeling his cheeks flush, Harry shifted slightly, staring into his tea. “I missed you too.” It was awkward to say out loud, but not a lie.
“Tell me what happened.” Her voice was soft, pleading, and sorrowful. Harry felt a tug in his stomach and knew he would not resist her, not tonight. “Tell me about Ollivander’s daughter.”
“Dead?” Imogen breathed. Harry gulped, wishing he could undo it, take back what he’d said.
“Yeah. A little over a year ago, there was a big battle in the Department of Mysteries, with Death Eaters, and Sirius came to try to save me but he…” Harry didn’t quite know how to phrase that a whispering piece of drapery had been Sirius’ demise. “He got hit with a spell that knocked him through a veil and he died.”
“Oh,” she said simply.
“She came to my room,” Harry began, looking Hermione in the eye and wanting to cringe at the pain behind her stare. “In Godric’s Hollow, the last night that I was there she came to see me. She lived nearby at the time, and she’d heard that Lily and James’ son had returned to see their graves.”
Hermione slid her hand into Harry’s empty one, his other cradling the mug of tea close to his mouth.
“I had wondered,” Imogen admitted with a sad smile. “I thought maybe he might come looking for me, but a year after he’d escaped I gave up hope. I didn’t leave any clues as to where I went; there was no way for him to have found me. But,” her dark hair covered her face as she looked at her hands, folded somberly in her lap, “I didn’t think that he’d died.”
“I’m sorry,” Harry mumbled, at a loss for words.
“I’ve missed so much it seems, but maybe,” she smiled. “Maybe it’s for the best.”
“She knew my parents, and Lupin and Sirius,” Harry continued, entangling his fingers with hers and holding on tightly. “They were all friends at school, but Imogen didn’t join the Order of the Phoenix, her father wouldn’t allow it.”
“Where did you go?” Harry asked curiously. “I mean, where did you go so that no one could find you? And why?”
Imogen looked up at him, her silvery eyes understanding more than they let on. “I was here. Not in Godric’s Hollow, but nearby.”
“But if you were here then -”
“I just stopped, Harry,” she interrupted, her smile brightening a little. “I stopped being a witch. The day they sent Sirius to Azkaban, I just decided that if things were this awful - if my friends and my family were being killed and were killers themselves - if Voldemort was going to rule and the world was so terrible, I didn’t want a part of it. I didn’t want to watch everything and everyone I loved inevitably fade away.”
“She,” Harry searched for an articulate way to phrase it, but found none. “She ran away.”
“Ran away?” Hermione felt a knot of guilt form in her stomach for accusing Harry so blatantly.
“Yeah. She said that she wouldn’t watch the people she loved become memories.”
“But it would still be happening,” Harry reasoned, staring at Imogen intently. “People would still be suffering, you just wouldn’t be there.”
Imogen inclined her head to the side thoughtfully. “But would it be better or worse to watch it all happen? It was selfish,” she admitted. “Very. And I’m a strong woman but Harry, you understand loss as well as I do. They were my friends and your parents; he was my fiancée but it sounds like you knew him well too. You know how deep a wound the death of a loved one can make, murdered by the hands of someone they trusted.” Her eyes pleaded with Harry not to judge her, but all Harry could think of was Dumbledore, and how he had trusted Snape, how his parents had trusted Peter, and how Sirius had trusted… him.
“She’d lost nearly everyone she loved, Hermione.” Harry’s voice was strained, the beginning of tears starting to prickle the edges of his eyes. “She’d watch them all die at the hands of each other, and she wondered -”
“When does it happen to me?” Imogen asked, her face contorted in a blend of fear and hurt. “When do I die, or worse, when does someone die because of me? I’m not a murderer Harry, but I don’t know if I could live knowing that someone I loved was dead because of something I did; or something I tried to do but failed.”
“Harry, you wouldn’t have failed,” Hermione murmured, running her warm hand over his shoulderblades and drawing him close, pulling him into her arms as he finally let out a sob. “You won’t fail.”
“So I was weak, so I left it all behind,” the older woman continued, her voice hard with bitterness. “I ran away from everyone who loved me so that I wouldn’t have to watch them die. And don’t think that there haven’t been times when I’ve regretted it - there have been, dozens of them. But I’m better this way, I’m better when I’m not a part of that world, being manipulated by evil against all that I loved.”
Harry’s mind was spinning. She was right. Wouldn’t he, too, be better if he wasn’t being used by Voldemort? Every bad thing that had happened in nearly two decades could have a line drawn straight to Harry as the cause. It was he who Voldemort was using; he who Voldemort had come after the night Harry’s parents died, the night Sirius died. He hadn’t been able to save them or Dumbledore, and with a terrible twist of his stomach Harry realized that he wouldn’t be able to save anyone else either when the time really came. What if he was unable to save Hermione or Ron or Ginny? What if they all died?
“Tell me how,” he whispered into the dark room. “Tell me how to disappear.”
“And she sent you here?” asked Hermione, her sad hazel eyes staring into Harry’s as he wiped the last of his tears on the shoulder of his t-shirt. “Imogen sent you to live in London?”
“No,” he said, a smile starting at the corners of his lips. “When I was little, Aunt Petunia took Dudley to see a play once and left me at home, so I always wanted to go to Covent Garden and see them all without him.”
Hermione smiled too. “Have you?”
“Yes,” Harry whispered, not looking away. “Nearly every one.”
Hermione could imagine this new Harry, sitting in a theatre with a program rolled tightly in his fist, the lights of the stage illuminating his face. “I’d like to go with you, sometime.”
“I’d like that.”
“I can’t pretend that I think your choices were right.” Hermione’s face looked pained with guilt. “I understand why you made them, but this isn’t a life Harry; living alone and hiding yourself in a tiny bare flat just so you might not have to feel pain isn’t a life for you to live.”
“You’re asking me to come back then; to go see the damage I’ve done first hand?”
“No. I’m asking you to do what you were meant to do.” The determination behind Hermione’s eyes was fierce, unyielding. “You can’t be happy here,” she continued. “You might not be miserable but you’ll never be happy either, and that’s what I want for you, for me, for everyone we love. I want us all to be happy again. And I know in my heart that it’s you Harry; you are what can bring that back. You won’t fail,” she finished in a hushed voice. “I believe in you.”
“But what if -”
“I die?” Hermione said, her voice unintentionally blunt. “It wouldn’t be your fault. That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be sad or you wouldn’t miss me, but no one would blame you for my death. No one will blame you for Ron’s death either, or any of the others, because you didn’t kill them, Harry. Voldemort did. Voldemort is the reason people are in pain, not you. You never planned these things, you never wanted them to happen; he did. You might share a connection with Voldemort, but it’s that connection that makes you the only one who can stand up to him. You’re connected, but you aren’t the same man. And I think you’re smart enough to know the difference,” she chided gently, taking his hand in hers again.
Harry nodded slowly, letting her words sink into him. The kitchen clock ticked its way forward, but now Harry felt as though it were a countdown towards their goodbye. As if she had been thinking the same thing, Hermione glanced down at her watch. “It’s late,” she sighed. “Very.”
“Sorry,” Harry apologized, getting to his feet and pulling her up with him.
“I stayed because I wanted to,” Hermione said simply, slipping her sock clad feet back into her shoes and reaching for her jacket.
“Hermione, I really am sorry.” Harry closed his eyes, not wanting to see disappointment on her face. “I’m sorry for everything that happened.”
“I won’t ask you to come back and save me,” she murmured, pulling him close. Harry wrapped his arms around her and felt more at peace than he had in years. “But I will miss you. If you ever need me,” Hermione fished a Muggle pen from her coat pocket and grabbed Harry’s hand. “This is where I am.” She scrawled an address on his palm and capped the pen. “Think about it,” she said, a blush creeping onto her cheeks as she turned to open the door.
Harry’s hand rested on her shoulder and she paused, eyes closed and breath still in her chest. He kissed her softly on the temple, lips brushing her skin gently with a sharp intake of breath. Harry felt excitement tug at his heart. Her hair smelled of lavender, her skin smelled of soap, and he thought for a moment that he could almost smell magic; he could sense that she was a witch.
Hermione pulled the door open and descended the covered stairs, pausing at the bottom and holding her hand out to the rain, turning it over and letting rivulets of water pour from her fingers before smiling at him briefly and spinning on the spot.
With a loud Crack! she was gone, but Harry heard her words echo in his head one last time. “You won’t fail. I believe in you.”
In less than a minute he had jerked on his trainers, grabbed his coat from his bed and pulled out his wand. Staring at his palm and concentrating as hard as he was able on Wilkie Twycross’ irritating insistence of ‘Destination, Determination, Deliberation,’ Harry spun in a wide circle.
Crack!
It was raining in Oxford as well; sheets of pouring rain drenching Harry as he made his way up the path to a small cottage with a light on in one window. He knocked on the door and waited.
Hermione opened it, her eyes wide and bright.
“I need you,” Harry admitted, and Hermione opened the door wider, inviting him inside.
Few women in this world are as lucky as Hermione, destined for the love of two great men. She sits in the darkened theatre next to the second; a man who is neither tall nor short, thick nor thin, and watches as he absentmindedly rolls his program up and holds it tight in his fist.
Tonight is their first night out together since the birth of Iris, who is beautiful and at two months has a thick, unruly head of raven hair and deep, wide-set hazel eyes. Hermione crumples her own program slightly, thinking about the sitter whom she does not trust with such precious possessions as the only child of the man who saved the world. There are wards on the small cottage, and two Aurors stationed there as well, but when it is her own daughter at stake Hermione Potter will trust no one other than herself and Harry.
He’d started his journey the night he arrived on her doorstep; throwing himself into the research she’d done over the past seven years, outlines and ideas on what Horcruxes might be, places they could be hidden, how they could be destroyed. Together they had arranged covert meetings, never letting anyone know that Harry had returned. She had even managed to acquire two without anyone noticing. The locket had been stolen by Dung and sold long ago, but under threats of death he was able to find its owner and persuade them to part from it. Zacharias Smith had left England for Versailles; his parents using an old family connection to barter his safe passage, and with him the details of Hufflepuff’s cup. It had been recovered sometime after its theft from Hepzibah, returned to the Smith family, and interned at one of Gringott’s highest security vaults, believed to be little more than a family heirloom.
At no point was the journey easy, especially after the Death Eaters learned of Harry’s return, but together he and Hermione had gone into hiding, living mostly as Muggles and constantly moving across most of Europe. But three years later they faced off, a dramatic battle between The Chosen One and the Dark Lord that decimated a seaside village. Hermione had not been present. Harry’s skill at magic may have rusted in his seven years away, but in the four after he had improved beyond measure, and managed to contain his incredibly clever and pregnant new wife inside their home. If Hermione had been honest with him, she would say that she hadn’t tried as hard as she was able, for she knew that he would return to her. Three weeks later while Hermione gave birth to a sweet pudgy baby, Harry found what he had been fighting for; his daughter.
Without a word she slips her hand over his, and by the weak lights from the stage their eyes meet. In each other they have found something that neither thought possible. Here is a love that is so deep and fierce and fighting that it could not be realized until it had to struggle to survive. And now, after the journey of it all, Hermione finds her home in his emerald eyes, in his understanding gaze.
Rating: R
Word Count: 7,523
Pairing: Harry/Hermione
Summary: Seven years after Harry's disappearance she sees him walking a Muggle street alone.
Warnings: there's nothing to deserve the R really, just sort of a somber, more mature theme.
The suitcase latches snapped smartly shut beneath Harry's fingers. He couldn't really carry a trunk full of his posessions around everywhere he went, but it was alright since he didn't imagine he would need school robes or his telescope. He didn't pack any robes at all, really. Godric's Hollow wasn't wizarding, there wasn't any need. Jeans, t-shirts, clean underwear and socks. And tucked in the middle, one curiously light, seemingly transparent Invisibility Cloak.
Harry paused, looking out of the attic window at the flurry of life below. Even if she hadn't been part Veela, Fleur Weasley would have been considered a beautiful bride. And while not many would have said the same for Bill; no one could deny what Fleur had announced at his bedside. Bill was braver than most men and wizards ever to grace the world with their presence, and while his rugged good looks were now obscured by gruesome scars, his new wife was beautiful enough for them both.
From his remote vantage point, Harry could see it all. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were dancing happily together, surely lost in the memories of their own wedding and possibly hopes of those yet to come. Remus and Tonks looked slightly awkward but happy as they refused to dance, but stood by the edge of the floor all the same. Harry couldn't imagine Tonks embodied the grace necessary to be a good dancer, and he was almost positive that Remus was grateful for this. Ginny was dancing with Fred, the two of them spinning wildly through the crowd at a pace all their own, making a merry mockery all of the serious couples. And, in a much more secluded area, Harry could see a nervous Ron running his hand through his shock of shaggy hair as Hermione tugged gently on a stray curl. Harry knew what he was saying to her. In fact, he knew exactly what was being said, as he'd let Ron practice getting it all out with him just over an hour ago. Harry wasn't sure if he was happy for them or not, since it seemed that every new relationship these days was shrouded in the impending doom of the second war. Even if they managed not to kill each other, there were plenty of other things to consider, things that were unfair yet out of your control, Harry thought bitterly, forcefully keeping his eyes from Ginny in her charade. This was it. Hermione wasn't moving away, she wasn't slapping him across the face as Ron had feared. If he had tried very hard to spot it, Harry might have even seen her leaning subtly toward Ron. In fifteen seconds, each of their lives would become more complex when they finally kissed, but Harry didn't want to watch that.
Instead he pulled a slightly crumpled note from the back pocket of his jeans, smoothed it as best as he could, and laid it on his pillowcase. Leaving like this, with a note that wasn't a real goodbye, made Harry feel a pang of guilt in his stomach. He knew that if he tried to reason with them, eventually he would find himself with company for the journey and Harry wanted to do this by himself. After all, it was his parents' graves he was going to find, not a Horcrux. No matter how helpful and kind everyone wanted to be, for this Harry preffered to be alone.
Suitcase and Firebolt in hand, Harry made his way stealthily downstairs and out the kitchen door. He crept along the side of the Burrow opposite the garden, knelt near some bushes to fasten the case to the broom, and just as Mundungus Fletcher came around the corner to take a quick piss; the boy called Harry Potter flew off into the dusky twilight, leaving only the sound of crickets in his wake.
The wind whipped down the dark deserted street of Muggle London and past a thin man with dark shaggy hair, the collar of his jacket turned up and shoulders hunched against the cold. A particularly strong gust blew him a bit off balance and too close to one of the cars parked at the curb. The shrill cry of the car’s alarm pushed his nerves over the edge and he whipped, oddly enough, a small wooden wand from his coat pocket to stand on guard. But nothing came. No sound, no sudden appearance of an unforeseen enemy, nothing. Even the streetlamp overhead was out, causing the dark night; already void of moon and stars; to achieve the pitch black stillness of a windowless room.
After a minute passed uneventfully, the shadowed man tucked the wand back into his coat and continued on his way. ‘It’s just nerves,’ he thought to himself. ‘Hold out a little longer and you’ll be safe, everything will be fine.’
He wasn’t far from his flat now, just two blocks. ‘Nothing happens in two blocks. Nothing has happened any other night that you walk home from work, and nothing will tonight.’ Four blocks was not a long way to walk, in fact, and very little ever happened between the quiet little café and Number 8 Macklin Street. Occasionally he’d spot a neighbor or their cat, rarely there would be a small crowd of inebriated tourists leaving a theatre or a pub, but mostly Harry Potter was alone for his walks home and he liked it that way.
Some people might go so far as to call Harry dull. Some had in fact, but kindly not to his face. It wasn’t normal for a twenty-four year old man to be so plain. He wasn’t quite what you would call tall, but he wasn’t short either. He was thin, but it was a lithe sort of body; something similar to a long distance runner rather than an American footballer. His thick dark hair was wildly unruly, and though girls often teased that he’d be much more handsome if only he would comb it in the mornings, Harry insisted that he did. This was true of course. After his shower Harry would wipe the steam from his bathroom mirror, shave, and drag a rather ornate wooden comb through his wet hair, matting his fringe down over his forehead. Before he’d even left the house it would be impossible to tell he’d even bothered, but if one looked carefully they might glimpse something hiding under the tangled fringe. They might glimpse a peculiar scar, shaped like a lightning bolt etched into Harry’s forehead.
His co-workers at the café speculated about Harry’s scar. Deirdre, the obnoxious but beautiful waitress, thought it must have been from a car accident - she swore her cousin Albert had something similar from when a windscreen shattered down on his face. Simon, who worked in the back baking biscuits and bread in the early hours of the morning, figured it was probably from some sort of satanic cult. What did they know about the young man, anyhow? For all they knew, he was a devil-worshipping sadist who kept to himself, except for all of the meetings he must go to where they branded new inductees with similarly shaped scars.
But both Dierde and Simon were wrong. Harry’s scar had a much darker and sinister origin even than Simon’s ungainly prediction. Harry kept the real story of his mysterious scar to himself, as he did with most things.
Funnily enough, it was the sight of this scar that stopped a young woman in her tracks that night. The timing had been impeccable; the brunette had looked up just as a gust of wind blew Harry’s hair back from his face; and there under the grimy fluorescent light of the solitary working streetlamp, she saw it. “Harry?” she called, just loudly enough to be heard on the silent street. “Is that you?”
Harry Potter had started at the sound of his name, and now he was looking madly around like an animal trapped in the headlamps of a roaring automobile. The brunette stepped into the street, crossing near to Harry.
Any icy lump formed in the pit of Harry’s stomach as he recognized the bushy curls of the shadowy woman. “Who?” he called, turning his back on her and quickening his step. “No, I’m sorry, you must be mistaken.”
“Harry, stop!” she cried. “I know it’s you, just stop!” But Harry did not stop. In fact, he broke into a sprint, barreling as fast as he could away from the small woman with the soft voice. He rounded the corner and was less than fifty paces away from the door to his flat when - CRACK! - there she was, standing in front of him, her arms crossed and a peevish look on her stern face.
Harry didn’t have enough warning to stop. He crashed into her at nearly full force, knocking the two of them to the ground and soliciting an angry yelp from the girl.
“I -” he gasped, his lungs burning slightly as he gulped in the chilly night air. “I’m sorry, Hermione.”
“You should be,” she snapped, struggling to her feet and groaning at her soaked-through clothing, for Hermione had landed in a puddle. She too pulled a wand from the inside pocket of her coat, pointed it at herself, muttered “Assiccare,” and instantly her clothing was once again moisture-free.
Harry was wet too, but he didn’t do the same thing. “Come on,” he said, motioning to the door ahead of them. Hermione nodded and followed him, up the flight of steps and through another door, into a small flat. Harry flicked on the lights and shut the door behind them, bolting no less than four locks and sliding a thick chain into place. Harry waved his hand at the sofa, on which sat several copies of newspapers from the past week that he had yet to recycle. Instead of following Hermione to the seat, he turned his back on her and shuffled into another room, emerging a few minutes later in a different change of clothes.
She was reading the paper, only her small hands visible at its edges and her legs peeking out from beneath, and Harry couldn’t help but smile. “Anything interesting?” He asked, avoiding the couch again in favour of a small kitchenette.
“No,” she called. “I’ve read it already really,” and Harry was not surprised.
“Let me,” she said, pointing her wand at the teakettle Harry had moved under the tap, and instantly it was heavy with water and whistling with steam. Harry didn’t say anything, but he rummaged through a cabinet and pulled out two mugs and a selection of teas.
She rifled through them and pulled one out, steeping the bag in the West Ham mug Harry had passed her. “Thank you,” she said, and her teabag flew into the bin across the room, not spilling a drop.
Harry sighed.
“We should talk,” Hermione said seriously, walking back into the modest living room.
“Yeah.”
“Why aren’t you doing magic anymore?”
Harry shrugged.
“Do you still have your wand?”
Harry nodded.
“Are you going to talk to me at all, or is this a purely one-sided conversation?”
Harry sighed. “I don’t know what you want me to say to you, Hermione.”
“Any sort of verbal response over three words would be welcome.”
“I don’t know why I don’t use magic, I just don’t like to unless I need to. My wand is in my coat,” Harry said, jerking his thumb towards the bedroom and taking a sip of his tea.
Hermione stared at him, then into her own mug, then at the coffee table littered with gum papers and a remote. The silence was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable. Harry got up and padded back to the kitchenette, bringing with him a bag of day-old biscuits that Simon had made. They were really six days old now, but Harry took one anyhow and passed the bag to Hermione, who took one too.
Each chewed in their silence for a minute, but after another mouthful of tea, Hermione spoke.
“These are awful.”
“Yeah. They’re a little stale. Sorry.”
“It’s no worse than Hagrid’s were.”
If Harry had had anything in his mouth, he would have gagged. “No.”
Hermione reached for the coat she’d taken off before sitting down, and Harry blinked at her, startled. “I’m cold.”
Harry smiled. Hermione was cold so often when they were at school; often leaving him and Ron to their impatient waiting while she piled on cloaks and scarves and mittens and hats over her school robes before setting one toe out of the oak front doors. Harry got up and walked to the electric thermostat, cranking it high even though he was plenty comfortable.
“You don’t have a fireplace,” she commented, staring at the corner in which she obviously thought one belonged.
“No.”
“Is it so no one could reach you, even if they knew where to look?”
“No. You’ve reached me, haven’t you?”
“After seven years,” Hermione snapped, her voice hardening for the first time since they entered Harry’s residence. “I won’t deny that a quick Floo wouldn’t have been more convenient.”
“Yeah. Well, I don’t have a fireplace. The flat didn’t come with one and I didn’t care, so I don’t have one.” Harry fussed with the gum papers for a moment. He could hear the ticking of a wall clock in the kitchen.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Hermione whispered, her voice genuinely angry. Harry looked at her for the first time, really looked at her. The old Hermione wouldn’t even let Ron say ‘shite,’ but this was not the old Hermione. Her unruly curls were the same, but her eyes seemed deeper now, a much darker shade of hazel than Harry had ever noticed before. She had a long scar running just along her jaw line on the left side of her face, and he didn’t know what it was from. Her lips were thinner, more like Professor McGonagall’s small line of a mouth.
“Here,” he said, his throat raspy. “I’ve been here.”
“You left the wedding and came to Covent Garden?!”
“No. I left the wedding and I went to Godric’s Hollow. I went around there and I found the ruins of the house and I found my parents’ graves and then - and then I found some people who knew them, Hermione. And I spent a week there talking to people who kept saying “Oh, you do look so like your father!” and “It really is a pity!” but then I couldn’t take the - the - positively suffocating weight of what they’d sacrificed and what I was supposed to do anymore so… so I left.”
For a while neither of them moved. The kitchen clock ticked off the seconds, and Harry couldn’t help but feel that it was a countdown. This was all some sort of perverse countdown until one or the other of them really got angry and just exploded. The kitchen clock was a time bomb.
“Without a word?” Hermione wiped a stray tear forcefully with the back of her hand.
“Without a word.”
“Well, bully for you, Harry. Bloody bully for you.”
“Yeah.”
Hermione stood up and walked into the kitchenette. He could hear her banging through cupboards until finally she paused in the doorway, a bottle of scotch in her hand. “I’m having a drink.”
“That’s fine.”
“Do you want one?”
“No.”
“Have a drink.” She splashed a bit of scotch into the dregs of Harry’s tea.
“Okay.”
“Do you have any idea what’s been happening while you’ve been away?”
Harry stared at his scotch and took a sip before speaking. It burned a little, but it felt good. “I know some things.”
“Like what?” Hermione snapped, taking a gulp of her own drink. Harry had expected that she would cough, but she didn’t. This wasn’t Hermione’s first time drinking scotch.
“When they attack Muggles, or when there’s some phenomenon that doesn’t have a good enough explanation, I know something’s happened.”
Hermione snorted. “Brilliant. I’m so glad you kept yourself well-informed Harry.”
“What am I supposed to do, take the Daily Prophet?”
“Why not?”
“Good idea. An owl lurking around the flat every morning wouldn’t draw any attention at all.”
“Where’s Hedwig?” Hermione asked suddenly, her voice concerned.
“I let her go when I left Godric’s Hollow.”
“You let her go?”
“Yeah.”
“She just flew off and never came back?”
Harry did not respond. He could hear the electric heater rumbling and ticking away, but so far he hadn’t noticed any change in temperature, and Hermione was still wearing her coat.
“That just doesn’t sound like Hedwig,” Hermione sighed, leaning against the window and looking down on the dark street. It had begun to drizzle outside.
“She followed me,” said Harry glumly. “She followed me here and she wouldn’t go away for weeks. But I didn’t let her in, so eventually she stopped coming back.”
Hermione didn’t move. Harry could sense that she had tensed, but she didn’t turn around. Finally she took another sip of scotch and sighed. “That’s horrible, Harry.”
“I know.”
“No, that’s really horrible. Hedwig loved you and you kept her shut outside this window.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
Harry grimaced, struggling for the right words. He knew they wouldn’t come, he knew they didn’t even exist really, so he found some that would do. “I didn’t want a reminder.”
“Of what you were leaving behind?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
That was it? That was all this new Hermione was going to say to him? She wasn’t going to yell at him for hurting Hedwig, who had indeed always been loyal to him even when she was angry. She wasn’t going to accuse him of leaving her behind; of leaving all of his friends behind in order to go be a coward in a plain flat in Muggle London?
“Hermione?”
“Yes?”
“How did…” his voice trailed away. “How did you get that scar?”
Hermione turned, leaning back against the windowsill and thrusting her chin into the air in defiance of any shame. “It was a warning,” she said. “When you left and no one knew where you were, Lucius Malfoy tried to question me and when I didn’t have the answers he gave me this.” She ran her fingers lightly over the scar, starting at the tip of her chin and running them all the way back to her throat.
“A warning for what?”
“To tell them where you had gone, what you were doing. Or else suffer.”
“But you didn’t know.”
Hermione almost laughed. “You think that stopped them? You think the Death Eaters believed that? Harry, you don’t have any idea of what’s been happening these years, so don’t pretend that what you did - leaving like that - don’t pretend it was all for the best. You don’t get to be self-righteous. Not when people have died.”
Now Harry was grateful for his scotch and tea. She had been right to insist on drinks. People had died? He knew that some must have. On a deeper level, he knew that he was putting lives in danger by leaving the Burrow that night. But then Harry had thought he would be back. Five days, tops, he had decided. They’d probably find him before then even, and take him back home to be put under the watchful eye of the Order.
But it hadn’t taken five days for Harry to absorb what Godric’s Hollow had had to offer him. They weren’t so much memories as they were cautionary tales of horror. The Muggles hadn’t known what had happened to the Potters, not really. They all thought it was a bad gas leak, a terrible explosion when one of them had tried to start a fire in the living room. But then she had come to him.
Harry had been staying in a small bed and breakfast, one with a fondness for cats and lace that reminded Harry of sickeningly sweet Dolores Umbridge. He was in bed, but he was not asleep, when someone knocked on his door.
“Come in,” Harry had called curiously, reaching for his wand where it lay on his bedside table and tucking it under his pillow. The door had opened to show a woman. She had long dark hair and looked, to Harry, to be around the same age as Remus.
“Hello Harry,” she had said, closing the door behind her with a quiet click. “I’m Imogen Ollivander. I knew your parents.”
“Harry?” asked Hermione, shaking him from his memories. She’d taken off her coat now, and thrown it back onto the sofa. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
“I didn’t mean that it was your fault that people died,” she sighed, her voice edged in guilt.
“But it is.”
“No.”
“It’s my fault that everyone died, Hermione. From my parents to Sirius to Dumbledore - they’re all my fault.”
Hermione sat down and kicked off her left shoe and then her right. “No, it isn’t,” she said, rubbing her knobbly hand-knitted socks against each other.
“I should have done something; I should have stopped it all.”
“Could you have, Harry?” Hermione’s tone wasn’t menacing, but the question itself was a double edged sword. “You were the Chosen One, or that’s what you led us to believe at least. And then you vanished without a word and weeks and months and years of searching for you turned up nothing, so do you know what we all assumed? We assumed you were dead Harry.”
“I wasn’t dead, I was -”
“Hiding.”
Harry gritted his teeth. “Yes.” He’d forgotten Hermione’s ability to wear on his nerves. “At first I was just hiding.”
“And then? You weren’t hiding for seven years.”
“And then it became my life, Hermione. She was right, Imogen was right, there is a life outside of the magical world and it isn’t any less of a life no matter what anyone wants to say,” Harry snapped, finishing the last of his mottled scotch in a gulp.
“Imogen?”
Harry had said the name without even thinking first, but now as it fell from Hermione’s mouth, Harry could almost see her there, standing in the fireplace-less corner and smiling at him with her silvery eyes. “Imogen Ollivander,” he whispered. “She - I met her in Godric’s Hollow.”
“I knew your parents.” The eyes of the strange witch held the same glint of moonlight as her father’s had, as though she could see more than any normal person could; see pieces of his soul just by looking him in the eye.
“My parents?” Harry had asked, dumbfounded and suddenly self conscious in his burgundy and gold striped pyjamas.
“Mmm,” was all Imogen had said as she removed her cloak and laid it over the back of an armchair by the window.
“Did - did you go to school with them?”
“Yes.”
“Were you a Gryffindor too, then?”
“Yes.”
“So you knew Professor Lupin, and Sirius and,” Harry faltered momentarily, “and Pettigrew too?”
Imogen’s eyes darkened. “Sirius Black was my fiancée,” she said plainly.
“What?” Harry gaped. “But no; I mean, no one’s ever said anything to me about -”
“Well, the only people who knew are dead, so it’s hard for the word to get around,” Imogen laughed, though Harry could still sense the bitterness behind it.
“Sirius never told me either though.”
Imogen blinked, startled. “I heard that he had escaped, I heard it on the television, but you’ve spoken to him?”
A pang of sorrow struck Harry in the chest. She’d seen it on the telly that a murderer was on the loose, same as he had seen the summer before his third year, but the rest she must not have heard. “Yeah, I’ve spoken to him. He’s, um, well he’s dead now though.”
The look on her face was enough to make Harry ill.
“Who is Imogen Ollivander?” Hermione asked again, more insistently, and the memory of the horror-struck woman was replaced by the new Hermione, peering curiously at Harry. “Are you feeling alright?”
“I’m fine,” Harry lied, reaching for the bottle of scotch and adding some more to his tea-free mug. “She was Ollivander’s daughter, she went to school with my parents.”
“And she lives in Godric’s Hollow?” Hermione asked, confused. “But we searched the whole town; there were no traces of magical households at all.”
“I dunno where she lives,” said Harry. “She just came to my room where I was staying one night.”
Hermione’s eyebrows rose sharply. “She came to your room?”
Harry glared at her. “It wasn’t like that, Hermione, so don’t act shocked at something that never happened, alright? We talked, like you and I are talking right now.”
“Alright!” Hermione declared defensively, arms folded across her chest as she leaned back in her seat. “But she said that this was the right life for you, Muggle London?”
“She didn’t tell me to come here, if that’s what you mean. She doesn’t know where I am and I don’t know where she is. We haven’t spoken since that night.”
“But it was her who told you that it would be a good idea to run away?” Hermione’s voice was sharp again.
“Not in those words, no.”
“I’m just trying to figure it out, Harry. I’m trying to understand why, when you were so determined to fight Voldemort and save the world, you turned your back on us. I’m not blaming you for it, but yes I am looking for someone to blame because that is what you do when your husband is dead, you find someone to whose fault it is and you blame them.”
Harry felt his stomach sink to his ankles. It wasn’t what he was thinking. Hermione had… she’d married Krum or something, or Cormac McLaggen. “You,” he choked, hoping against hope that she had a better answer than his feeble attempts, “you got married?”
“I did.” Hermione asked, her face slack and her eyes so blank that for an instant she looked petrified. “Aren’t you going to ask to whom?”
Harry didn’t need to ask now, he knew her answer.
“Ron and I got married last year. But he’s dead now; he was killed on the job because he was an Auror, Harry. The Death Eaters killed Ron.”
Harry wanted to vomit. He couldn’t look her in the eye, he didn’t think he ever would be able to again, but she just kept going.
“And Arthur, Bill, Charlie and Percy too. The only Weasleys left are the twins and Ginny and Molly.” She was taking a sick form of satisfaction in this, watching as Harry grew paler by the second. He got up and walked straight into the small loo off the living room, where behind the closed door Hermione could hear him retch.
He could see it, just like Mrs. Weasley’s boggart. In his mind’s eye he could see each of their funerals, he could imagine the garden at the Burrow turned into a small cemetery littered with the closest thing he’d ever had to family. He was sick again.
Harry wiped his hand across his mouth and stood shakily on the black and white tiling of the bathroom floor. Mechanically he turned the taps, washing his hands and face and brushing his teeth, purposely letting his mind fall slack.
When he opened the door, Hermione was at the window, her forehead pressed against the cool glass and her arms wrapped around her waist.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
Saying nothing, Harry shuffled past her into the kitchen, drying his hands on the back of his jeans as he went. In the kitchen he ran the taps as well, filling the tea kettle again and setting it on the stove. He stayed in the kitchen, hoisting himself up to sit on the small space of open counter and staring down at his smudged socks. He heard a door click shut but didn’t move to look. If she had gone that was fine, if she was in the loo that was fine too. ‘Maybe she’s puking as well,’ Harry thought, hopefully.
The teakettle whistled its impatience and Harry slid down to fetch the mugs. He rinsed them first, poured hot tea in both just in case she hadn’t gone, and went back to sit on the couch. For what seemed like an hour he stared at the feeble flickering shadows of a streetlamp illuminated tree outside, not wanting to move.
Ron was dead.
This time the pain was duller, more hollow, almost surreal. He took a sip of the hot tea and let it burn its way down to his stomach, trying to register that he’d never see his best friend again.
“We got married on your birthday last year.”
Harry jumped in his skin and spluttered more tea, coughing as Hermione stood immobile in the doorway, her hair pulled back and her eyes red and puffy.
“It was nice,” she continued. “It wasn’t large, of course. Weddings aren’t anymore; they’re a secret now so that they aren’t ambushed.”
“Weddings are ambushed?” Harry said, his brow furrowed.
“Not all of them. Not if you’re on the dark side. But if you haven’t declared your allegiance to him then you don’t tell many people, and you don’t do it publicly. Big gatherings aren’t a good idea, I’m sure you understand why. Professor Flitwick let us have it at Hogwarts, in his office. And Arthur was alive still, he was the one who bonded us, and it was over in ten minutes and we all Flooed back to the Burrow straight away, but it was nice. I wore blue silk.” She was pressing her knuckle into the doorlatch absentmindedly. “Ron wanted to have a baby right away,” she sighed, smiling. “But I didn’t because I thought about Fleur and how she has to raise Charlotte on her own.”
“Bill and Fleur had a baby?”
“Two,” Hermione nodded. “But Greyback got Etienne.”
Harry grimaced.
“I wish we’d done it now though. I wish I had a pudgy little baby that was his and mine. A sweet little baby to love.” She moved to the sofa, this time sitting close to Harry and laying her head on his shoulder. “And I love you Harry, but I wouldn’t have named it after you like Ron wanted.”
A snort escaped him, and a smile. “Harry or Harriet Weasley. Not amazing.”
“Maybe for a middle name.” Hermione pulled back, looking at him. Her eyes searched his face, thinner and more angular, and she ran her fingers up to trace his scar. Harry shivered involuntarily. “I’ve missed you, Harry,” she whispered. “We all have.”
Feeling his cheeks flush, Harry shifted slightly, staring into his tea. “I missed you too.” It was awkward to say out loud, but not a lie.
“Tell me what happened.” Her voice was soft, pleading, and sorrowful. Harry felt a tug in his stomach and knew he would not resist her, not tonight. “Tell me about Ollivander’s daughter.”
“Dead?” Imogen breathed. Harry gulped, wishing he could undo it, take back what he’d said.
“Yeah. A little over a year ago, there was a big battle in the Department of Mysteries, with Death Eaters, and Sirius came to try to save me but he…” Harry didn’t quite know how to phrase that a whispering piece of drapery had been Sirius’ demise. “He got hit with a spell that knocked him through a veil and he died.”
“Oh,” she said simply.
“She came to my room,” Harry began, looking Hermione in the eye and wanting to cringe at the pain behind her stare. “In Godric’s Hollow, the last night that I was there she came to see me. She lived nearby at the time, and she’d heard that Lily and James’ son had returned to see their graves.”
Hermione slid her hand into Harry’s empty one, his other cradling the mug of tea close to his mouth.
“I had wondered,” Imogen admitted with a sad smile. “I thought maybe he might come looking for me, but a year after he’d escaped I gave up hope. I didn’t leave any clues as to where I went; there was no way for him to have found me. But,” her dark hair covered her face as she looked at her hands, folded somberly in her lap, “I didn’t think that he’d died.”
“I’m sorry,” Harry mumbled, at a loss for words.
“I’ve missed so much it seems, but maybe,” she smiled. “Maybe it’s for the best.”
“She knew my parents, and Lupin and Sirius,” Harry continued, entangling his fingers with hers and holding on tightly. “They were all friends at school, but Imogen didn’t join the Order of the Phoenix, her father wouldn’t allow it.”
“Where did you go?” Harry asked curiously. “I mean, where did you go so that no one could find you? And why?”
Imogen looked up at him, her silvery eyes understanding more than they let on. “I was here. Not in Godric’s Hollow, but nearby.”
“But if you were here then -”
“I just stopped, Harry,” she interrupted, her smile brightening a little. “I stopped being a witch. The day they sent Sirius to Azkaban, I just decided that if things were this awful - if my friends and my family were being killed and were killers themselves - if Voldemort was going to rule and the world was so terrible, I didn’t want a part of it. I didn’t want to watch everything and everyone I loved inevitably fade away.”
“She,” Harry searched for an articulate way to phrase it, but found none. “She ran away.”
“Ran away?” Hermione felt a knot of guilt form in her stomach for accusing Harry so blatantly.
“Yeah. She said that she wouldn’t watch the people she loved become memories.”
“But it would still be happening,” Harry reasoned, staring at Imogen intently. “People would still be suffering, you just wouldn’t be there.”
Imogen inclined her head to the side thoughtfully. “But would it be better or worse to watch it all happen? It was selfish,” she admitted. “Very. And I’m a strong woman but Harry, you understand loss as well as I do. They were my friends and your parents; he was my fiancée but it sounds like you knew him well too. You know how deep a wound the death of a loved one can make, murdered by the hands of someone they trusted.” Her eyes pleaded with Harry not to judge her, but all Harry could think of was Dumbledore, and how he had trusted Snape, how his parents had trusted Peter, and how Sirius had trusted… him.
“She’d lost nearly everyone she loved, Hermione.” Harry’s voice was strained, the beginning of tears starting to prickle the edges of his eyes. “She’d watch them all die at the hands of each other, and she wondered -”
“When does it happen to me?” Imogen asked, her face contorted in a blend of fear and hurt. “When do I die, or worse, when does someone die because of me? I’m not a murderer Harry, but I don’t know if I could live knowing that someone I loved was dead because of something I did; or something I tried to do but failed.”
“Harry, you wouldn’t have failed,” Hermione murmured, running her warm hand over his shoulderblades and drawing him close, pulling him into her arms as he finally let out a sob. “You won’t fail.”
“So I was weak, so I left it all behind,” the older woman continued, her voice hard with bitterness. “I ran away from everyone who loved me so that I wouldn’t have to watch them die. And don’t think that there haven’t been times when I’ve regretted it - there have been, dozens of them. But I’m better this way, I’m better when I’m not a part of that world, being manipulated by evil against all that I loved.”
Harry’s mind was spinning. She was right. Wouldn’t he, too, be better if he wasn’t being used by Voldemort? Every bad thing that had happened in nearly two decades could have a line drawn straight to Harry as the cause. It was he who Voldemort was using; he who Voldemort had come after the night Harry’s parents died, the night Sirius died. He hadn’t been able to save them or Dumbledore, and with a terrible twist of his stomach Harry realized that he wouldn’t be able to save anyone else either when the time really came. What if he was unable to save Hermione or Ron or Ginny? What if they all died?
“Tell me how,” he whispered into the dark room. “Tell me how to disappear.”
“And she sent you here?” asked Hermione, her sad hazel eyes staring into Harry’s as he wiped the last of his tears on the shoulder of his t-shirt. “Imogen sent you to live in London?”
“No,” he said, a smile starting at the corners of his lips. “When I was little, Aunt Petunia took Dudley to see a play once and left me at home, so I always wanted to go to Covent Garden and see them all without him.”
Hermione smiled too. “Have you?”
“Yes,” Harry whispered, not looking away. “Nearly every one.”
Hermione could imagine this new Harry, sitting in a theatre with a program rolled tightly in his fist, the lights of the stage illuminating his face. “I’d like to go with you, sometime.”
“I’d like that.”
“I can’t pretend that I think your choices were right.” Hermione’s face looked pained with guilt. “I understand why you made them, but this isn’t a life Harry; living alone and hiding yourself in a tiny bare flat just so you might not have to feel pain isn’t a life for you to live.”
“You’re asking me to come back then; to go see the damage I’ve done first hand?”
“No. I’m asking you to do what you were meant to do.” The determination behind Hermione’s eyes was fierce, unyielding. “You can’t be happy here,” she continued. “You might not be miserable but you’ll never be happy either, and that’s what I want for you, for me, for everyone we love. I want us all to be happy again. And I know in my heart that it’s you Harry; you are what can bring that back. You won’t fail,” she finished in a hushed voice. “I believe in you.”
“But what if -”
“I die?” Hermione said, her voice unintentionally blunt. “It wouldn’t be your fault. That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be sad or you wouldn’t miss me, but no one would blame you for my death. No one will blame you for Ron’s death either, or any of the others, because you didn’t kill them, Harry. Voldemort did. Voldemort is the reason people are in pain, not you. You never planned these things, you never wanted them to happen; he did. You might share a connection with Voldemort, but it’s that connection that makes you the only one who can stand up to him. You’re connected, but you aren’t the same man. And I think you’re smart enough to know the difference,” she chided gently, taking his hand in hers again.
Harry nodded slowly, letting her words sink into him. The kitchen clock ticked its way forward, but now Harry felt as though it were a countdown towards their goodbye. As if she had been thinking the same thing, Hermione glanced down at her watch. “It’s late,” she sighed. “Very.”
“Sorry,” Harry apologized, getting to his feet and pulling her up with him.
“I stayed because I wanted to,” Hermione said simply, slipping her sock clad feet back into her shoes and reaching for her jacket.
“Hermione, I really am sorry.” Harry closed his eyes, not wanting to see disappointment on her face. “I’m sorry for everything that happened.”
“I won’t ask you to come back and save me,” she murmured, pulling him close. Harry wrapped his arms around her and felt more at peace than he had in years. “But I will miss you. If you ever need me,” Hermione fished a Muggle pen from her coat pocket and grabbed Harry’s hand. “This is where I am.” She scrawled an address on his palm and capped the pen. “Think about it,” she said, a blush creeping onto her cheeks as she turned to open the door.
Harry’s hand rested on her shoulder and she paused, eyes closed and breath still in her chest. He kissed her softly on the temple, lips brushing her skin gently with a sharp intake of breath. Harry felt excitement tug at his heart. Her hair smelled of lavender, her skin smelled of soap, and he thought for a moment that he could almost smell magic; he could sense that she was a witch.
Hermione pulled the door open and descended the covered stairs, pausing at the bottom and holding her hand out to the rain, turning it over and letting rivulets of water pour from her fingers before smiling at him briefly and spinning on the spot.
With a loud Crack! she was gone, but Harry heard her words echo in his head one last time. “You won’t fail. I believe in you.”
In less than a minute he had jerked on his trainers, grabbed his coat from his bed and pulled out his wand. Staring at his palm and concentrating as hard as he was able on Wilkie Twycross’ irritating insistence of ‘Destination, Determination, Deliberation,’ Harry spun in a wide circle.
Crack!
It was raining in Oxford as well; sheets of pouring rain drenching Harry as he made his way up the path to a small cottage with a light on in one window. He knocked on the door and waited.
Hermione opened it, her eyes wide and bright.
“I need you,” Harry admitted, and Hermione opened the door wider, inviting him inside.
Few women in this world are as lucky as Hermione, destined for the love of two great men. She sits in the darkened theatre next to the second; a man who is neither tall nor short, thick nor thin, and watches as he absentmindedly rolls his program up and holds it tight in his fist.
Tonight is their first night out together since the birth of Iris, who is beautiful and at two months has a thick, unruly head of raven hair and deep, wide-set hazel eyes. Hermione crumples her own program slightly, thinking about the sitter whom she does not trust with such precious possessions as the only child of the man who saved the world. There are wards on the small cottage, and two Aurors stationed there as well, but when it is her own daughter at stake Hermione Potter will trust no one other than herself and Harry.
He’d started his journey the night he arrived on her doorstep; throwing himself into the research she’d done over the past seven years, outlines and ideas on what Horcruxes might be, places they could be hidden, how they could be destroyed. Together they had arranged covert meetings, never letting anyone know that Harry had returned. She had even managed to acquire two without anyone noticing. The locket had been stolen by Dung and sold long ago, but under threats of death he was able to find its owner and persuade them to part from it. Zacharias Smith had left England for Versailles; his parents using an old family connection to barter his safe passage, and with him the details of Hufflepuff’s cup. It had been recovered sometime after its theft from Hepzibah, returned to the Smith family, and interned at one of Gringott’s highest security vaults, believed to be little more than a family heirloom.
At no point was the journey easy, especially after the Death Eaters learned of Harry’s return, but together he and Hermione had gone into hiding, living mostly as Muggles and constantly moving across most of Europe. But three years later they faced off, a dramatic battle between The Chosen One and the Dark Lord that decimated a seaside village. Hermione had not been present. Harry’s skill at magic may have rusted in his seven years away, but in the four after he had improved beyond measure, and managed to contain his incredibly clever and pregnant new wife inside their home. If Hermione had been honest with him, she would say that she hadn’t tried as hard as she was able, for she knew that he would return to her. Three weeks later while Hermione gave birth to a sweet pudgy baby, Harry found what he had been fighting for; his daughter.
Without a word she slips her hand over his, and by the weak lights from the stage their eyes meet. In each other they have found something that neither thought possible. Here is a love that is so deep and fierce and fighting that it could not be realized until it had to struggle to survive. And now, after the journey of it all, Hermione finds her home in his emerald eyes, in his understanding gaze.