(Not a) Love Story
Author: biggrstaffbunch
Title: (Not a) Love Story
Challenge: Limbo, Post-Hogwarts
Summary: This is the story of you and the man you love, in a period of war and blood and trying to keep afloat in the middle of all the pain. But this is not a love story. [h/g angst/drama]
Rating: NC-17
Genre: Angst/Drama
Notes/Warnings: This is for wild_magelet
- - -
This is not a love story.
Rather, this is the story of a limbo for lovers, the story of chaos and devastation and hanging in the balance as everything around you is going to pieces. This is the story of watching the good die young and finding peace among the wreckage, and keeping your head above the drowning, crashing waters all the while. This is a story about a girl and a boy and a war.
But this is not a love story.
- - -
It begins on a blustery night in the throes of January, the first month of a new year.
It is the start of a year that you know will bring no reprieve. Times grow darker by the day as the third greatest Wizarding War begins in earnest, more people disappearing and dying with each passing moment. Refuge becomes impossible to find as blood turns against blood, friend fights against friend, and enemies take up old rivalries with eagerness. There is no safe harbor and even the heroes themselves have gone into hiding, leaving behind the ones they love to deal with the trenchwork.
The only thing left for the abandoned souls to do is to live, and although you can do that, it's getting harder to figure out what the point is, when you're not even allowed to help save the world you're supposed to be living in.
You and your mother are doing the best you can on your own, with your brothers all gone working on Ministry missions in an endless, tireless cycle of covert, dangerous operations. You've stopped looking at the family clock, but your mother watches it like a hawk when she's not tut-tutting around you, her eyes flickering to each hand, which points, quite needlessly, to Mortal Peril. Your needle sometimes strays towards Brokenhearted, but you steel your nerves and push thoughts of him from your mind.
This is not a love story.
This is not a love story, and so you do not dream of him, even if letting yourself remember his face would calm your ravaged brow in the midst of your dark, restless nights. You only spare him a thought when the moon is high and full, heavy in the sky, and you know his journey will be easier by the pale glow of moonlight.
Home from Hogwarts for the holidays now, watching the snow dust the ground like cold, unforgiving diamonds, you sit by the window of Order Headquarters. You fold your legs close and blow soft puffs of air against your knees, just to remind yourself that you're alive. There is something muffled and still in the air, a sense of the calm before a raging, violent storm. The window is cold against your forehead and you think of ice skating along your veins, of futility and victory and everything in between.
You helped your mum do the dishes tonight, trying not to notice how the dinner table has been reduced from nine to two, and the boisterous maleness has diminished to the quiet intensity of ladies in waiting. When she dismissed you, you came upstairs, intent on an early night in the company of your thoughts and a small fire burning merrily in your fireplace. Walking past the empty rooms of Grimmauld Place, the lingering memories of old ghosts leered at you, flashing smiles that disappear like smoke into the thin, freezing air. You shivered, thinking nothing would ever get you quite warm again.
This is not a love story, and so you do not remember his arms around you, strong and reassuring. You only think how it's funny that you can't quite recall the way his hands used to rest on your waist.
You have been sitting by a window for the past five months, eyes faraway and focused on some distant point in the future when all your dreams may come true. Or when all your dreams may turn to dust, you're not sure which. Right now there's no way to tell for sure, and the uncertainty feels like some sort of twisting, writhing animal in your gut. Tonight is no different than other nights, if quieter, lonelier. Twenty-four hours a day for the last hundred and fifty-plus days your eyes have strayed towards the window, watching, waiting. Wondering.
This is not a love story, because when he finally appears on the horizon, you almost do not recognize him, and when you do, you hold yourself back, pressing fingertips against the glass. It wouldn't do to run out so fast, to admit defeat so easily. The minutes tick by and you think how bad an idea it is to see his face again, to be in his presence and not kiss him. You shouldn't, because he has left you and you have left him, and it would be somewhat wrong.
It would also be somewhat right and you go to him anyway.
- - -
"Harry, what--" you start, and that's as far as you get, but that's okay, because you're not sure what you would've asked anyways. Words lead to actions, and you'd rather actions lead to words, any day.
Then Harry is grabbing you, hauling you close so that your body is tight against his, your arms wrapped around his waist and his arms like steel bands around your shoulders. Your tongue is already curling around his when your mouths clash, and he tastes like melted snow and moonlight and the smoky, bitter bite of ashes. Kissing him, Gods, you're kissing him and it's that much closer to paradise, one step away from the precipice of hell you've been teetering on all summer and fall and winter.
You suck at his bottom lip, biting it gently in greeting before letting his dry, chapped lips cling to yours. The hot scrape of his stubble reminds you sharply, jarringly that this is the present, because it's never been like this before, older and darker and the desperation startling you. It's been so long since you've felt anything, and the way Harry's hands feel tunnelled in you hair, the way his tongue laving your neck pulls something aching from the pit of your stomach, scares you.
You break away with effort, gasping in great lungfuls of air as the inferno of his touch winds down to a tiny little brush fire along your skin. "We can't have this," you say, more to yourself than to him. Harry knows better than you do why you can't have this, but you say it again, your voice soft.
Just to remind yourself, because after so long staring out windows, you almost got used to believing that some sort of resolution would come with his arrival. You should know better.
He's just back to retrieve some sort of locket that is buried within all the boxes in the attic. That's where you found him, after pounding downstairs to see where he'd gone. Ron and Hermione are in the kitchen getting coddled by Mum. Your brother and his girlfriend should be busy with food and nagging for quite a while. Time enough to do what you shouldn't and what you must.
You drink in Harry's features, greedily tracing his jaw and lips and the firm lines of his arms with shaking fingertips. "Are you alright?" you ask, but really, you know the answer. His cloak is ragged and torn, his skin bruised and glistening with snow, and there is a cut above his left eyebrow. He looks tired, worn, defeated.
"I'm fine," he breathes, looking in your eyes, and then despite all his efforts, and your own, he grabs you again, presses you against the attic wall and kisses you deeply. And you kiss him back, even though you know you won't want to say goodbye after this, and that he will not be able to stay. You kiss him back even though tomorrow is anything but assured...because tomorrow is anything but assured.
The frantic rythym of his heart beats against your palm, and then you lock your hands around his neck and let his hands clumsily pick you up. He lays you on the dusty old mattress on the floor, and he undresses you with care, and if it isn't all that you imagined it would be, it's not the horror stories your girlfriends have all whispered about either. The way his teeth and tongue and lips feel on your skin can never be described fully, like the light wash of a cleansing, driving rain, or the melting heat of chocolate. There is a twinge, and then the thick, full feeling of being completely whole, friction skittering through you until a tiny white light explodes into a supernova of sensation in the pit of your stomach.
Neither of you speak, not because words are not needed, but because words would stop the rolling of your hips, the blissful loss of sanity in this pocket of limbo between some sort of heaven and some sort of hell.
When it is over, the snow is still falling, the war is still raging, and there is the imprint of a locket on the small of your back. He does not say he loves you, but he does say "Thank you," and with an indescribable look, he is gone, walking shakily down the stairs as you clutch your blouse to your chest.
The door slams and you get up. If this was a love story, you'd probably weep over words left unsaid, or the joy of what you've just experienced. Instead, you wipe the blood that has blossomed against your thighs and sit back down by the window.
Locked in this grim tower of frustration and need, plastered to the glass and looking down at the world below.
- - -
You still feel the echo of Salazar Slytherin in the chambers of your heart, and closer to the surface, the silbant hiss of Tom Riddle's voice, telling you to do all sorts of horrible, wrong things. Worse still, you can taste the tang of rooster's blood, feel the pull in your chest when Riddle started taking your soul out, silky bit by silky bit. The childish horror and all-consuming pain of knowing you'd killed innocent roosters, injured innocent classmates. You can still feel it because it is with you every day, and will likely only die with Voldemort, if ever.
In a love story, the heroine would be smart and brave and would overcome her hangups and her past. But even though you're smart, you only pretend to be brave, and the things you have done and gone through lurk in every crevice of your pinched, defensive face.
There's the Ginny Weasley you were supposed to be: outgoing and bright and genuinely happy. And there's the Ginny Weasley you are, sharp and brittle and taped up, all shiny on the outside because that's about as deep as anyone really ever bothers to see. Now you're caught between the girl you could have been and the woman you're going to be, and every minute is making the difference.
Harry knows how it is. Once upon a time all your dreams rested upon him saving you, and then when he finally did, you realized it didn't make a difference. He can't be your savior any longer, and perhaps it kills him a little to know that. It is why you could love him, though...the fact that with you, he is just a man. Not a hero.
He belongs to the world, though. He is not just yours. He has a past, a duty, and when you come down to the Gryffindor Common Room and see him lying on the couch, you know that he has never been in love with you and might never get the chance to be, either. He likes you very much, though, and for now, it will do. Just to be with him, a woman instead of a frightened little girl, in the area between love and hate; that's all you want.
Because this is not a love story, and you both have journeys to take before you can erase history and make a new future for yourselves. It's the difference between falling flat on your face and rising to the occasion, and if you're going to be able to stand up long enough to even take a step forward, you need his help.
You end up in his arms in front of the fireplace, heat on your back as you sit in his lap, the hard ridge of his erection digging into your skin. You writhe and sigh into his neck as your hips undulate over his, and he throws his head back against the couch, his breath coming in labored gasps. His hands slip under your shirt to palm your breasts, fingers hot and dry. Your hands tangle in his hair, tug his face closer to kiss you messily, warmly, as you grind your hips against his zipper, against his erection. He gives a strangled gasp, and two months must have been two months too long, because suddenly there is a sticky, wet spot spreading on the front of his trousers.
You frown, still too unsatisfied to laugh, and his hands cup your bum for a moment before snaking to the front of your thighs and anchoring you in place. His lips pluck at yours, slowing the frenzied, unrefined pace of your previous necking, as his fingers slip up the band of your knickers and rub at your folds. You arch and cry out without sound as his fingers take slow, dragging circles around your clit, as they dip into your center and play a tune deep within you. You rotate around his hand and mewl, grabbing his shoulders, and through the curtain of your hair, the dazed look you see on his face finally makes something break within you.
You laugh as you come, hysterical giggles that break waves against the rush of pleasure wrapping your limbs in a warm haze. You giggle against his neck, giggle in his hair, giggle against his chest, and eventually, his hoarse chuckles add to the air. You're both laughing now, sweaty and smelling of sex, because the only alternative is crying. This moment is yours and you just want to keep it, safe and unsullied by truth. It could be love, if you let it.
But this is not a love story. There is no tragic ending. There is no happy ending, either, because when he finally gets up, he tells you that another Order member has died, that you may be next, that anyone may be next, and he can't give you what you want. The smile on your face disappears and his eyes darken. Nothing has changed (everything has changed) and everything is the same (nothing is the same). He knows you're not a little girl anymore and yet he still doesn't seem to understand that all you want is him, not the Boy-Who-Lived or even a guarantee for the future. Too much has happened for you to think you're not affected by your past, but that doesn't mean you have to keep living in it.
You tell him, your voice curt, that he obviously has no clue what you want, and he doesn't have to say goodbye for you to know it's the last time you may ever see him again.
- - -
The final battle happens in May and flowers are swaying in the morning breeze when the sky suddenly turns red and Death Eaters swarm the field.
Your wand is waving in a spectrum of light, dizzying patterns of swishes and flicks and slices through the air, knifing through the smoke with a bright, searing glow of intense color. You throw curses and hexes you aren't positive you've ever even learned, and even as triumph soars through your body, lifting your higher, moving you faster, every dead body that falls to the ground keeps you anchored to the earth and the dirty battlefield.
This is not a game. This is not practice. This is not a war fought in recollections and newspaper articles and death tolls. This is death come to play and your eyes catch Harry's for one split second before you are on the ground, dodging a curse and throwing one of your own into thin air. The terror in his eyes catches your breath and makes you roll onto your back, panting at the rumbling sky.
This is not a love story and you may die.
The thought staggers you beyond belief, the horror choking you and making your limbs freeze in a sudden, skin-tingling, body-rumbling spasm of fright. And then Harry's hand is around your wrist, tugging you up sharply, throwing you against a tree and shielding you with his back.
"We don't have time for this," he says savagely. Then he leaves a fierce kiss upon your lips, tongue swiping once more against yours, and you wish you tasted of something other than tears and dust and blood. On his mouth you only taste resolution and the summer breeze, and when he spins away, curses flying around him in a vortex so strong you can't tell whether it's the curses making his eyes glow or the magic from his wand, you stay pressed against the tree. You shake. His whispered words, quick and breathless against your temple, echo in the silence of your lilting, receding world.
"Don't die," and it's not a promise nor a threat, and you take some refuge in the implications and broken fear of his voice.
You're not afraid all a sudden, and you're not hopeful, but you're alive and that's all that matters right this second.
Each moment becomes about staying alive, no matter what the consequence. You step on bodies, on faces, kick men while they're down to make sure they're alive. A Slytherin you've had class with since you were eleven hurls a curse at you and you send a curse right back that breaks her neck. She falls to the ground, innocence long lost in her glassy eyes and beauty faded to death. You are not sorry.
But you spare a moment to shut her eyes as you race on to the next death, the next battle, the next friend or foe.
When the war is over and the smoke has cleared, you trudge home, your arms around one of your older brothers and your head hung low. You don't even raise your eyes when you hear someone whisper that Harry is alive; the relief is expected, but so is the lack of desire to speed off and make this victory only about his freedom.
You were eleven when Voldemort trapped you between innocence and adulthood, fifteen when Harry Potter kept you balanced between love and lust, and sixteen when you finally realized you could have it all only if you just stayed the precarious edge, kept in the middle so as to not tip any scales.
You have earned this freedom from the scales and the weights, from the burdens of memories and duties and loves you can't shake. You have earned Voldemort's death, and the way your soul doesn't feel like someone else's for once, and you have earned the right to be with Harry without having it be about touching and kissing and fucking. You have earned this outcome, and you stop on the hill, looking at the sun rise.
Harry comes home eventually, and his hand is cool and steady in yours. You only smile once, before turning and leaving him behind. Then you look over your shoulder give a shy smile.
This is not a love story...but maybe one day it could be.
--finis---
Title: (Not a) Love Story
Challenge: Limbo, Post-Hogwarts
Summary: This is the story of you and the man you love, in a period of war and blood and trying to keep afloat in the middle of all the pain. But this is not a love story. [h/g angst/drama]
Rating: NC-17
Genre: Angst/Drama
Notes/Warnings: This is for wild_magelet
- - -
This is not a love story.
Rather, this is the story of a limbo for lovers, the story of chaos and devastation and hanging in the balance as everything around you is going to pieces. This is the story of watching the good die young and finding peace among the wreckage, and keeping your head above the drowning, crashing waters all the while. This is a story about a girl and a boy and a war.
But this is not a love story.
- - -
It begins on a blustery night in the throes of January, the first month of a new year.
It is the start of a year that you know will bring no reprieve. Times grow darker by the day as the third greatest Wizarding War begins in earnest, more people disappearing and dying with each passing moment. Refuge becomes impossible to find as blood turns against blood, friend fights against friend, and enemies take up old rivalries with eagerness. There is no safe harbor and even the heroes themselves have gone into hiding, leaving behind the ones they love to deal with the trenchwork.
The only thing left for the abandoned souls to do is to live, and although you can do that, it's getting harder to figure out what the point is, when you're not even allowed to help save the world you're supposed to be living in.
You and your mother are doing the best you can on your own, with your brothers all gone working on Ministry missions in an endless, tireless cycle of covert, dangerous operations. You've stopped looking at the family clock, but your mother watches it like a hawk when she's not tut-tutting around you, her eyes flickering to each hand, which points, quite needlessly, to Mortal Peril. Your needle sometimes strays towards Brokenhearted, but you steel your nerves and push thoughts of him from your mind.
This is not a love story.
This is not a love story, and so you do not dream of him, even if letting yourself remember his face would calm your ravaged brow in the midst of your dark, restless nights. You only spare him a thought when the moon is high and full, heavy in the sky, and you know his journey will be easier by the pale glow of moonlight.
Home from Hogwarts for the holidays now, watching the snow dust the ground like cold, unforgiving diamonds, you sit by the window of Order Headquarters. You fold your legs close and blow soft puffs of air against your knees, just to remind yourself that you're alive. There is something muffled and still in the air, a sense of the calm before a raging, violent storm. The window is cold against your forehead and you think of ice skating along your veins, of futility and victory and everything in between.
You helped your mum do the dishes tonight, trying not to notice how the dinner table has been reduced from nine to two, and the boisterous maleness has diminished to the quiet intensity of ladies in waiting. When she dismissed you, you came upstairs, intent on an early night in the company of your thoughts and a small fire burning merrily in your fireplace. Walking past the empty rooms of Grimmauld Place, the lingering memories of old ghosts leered at you, flashing smiles that disappear like smoke into the thin, freezing air. You shivered, thinking nothing would ever get you quite warm again.
This is not a love story, and so you do not remember his arms around you, strong and reassuring. You only think how it's funny that you can't quite recall the way his hands used to rest on your waist.
You have been sitting by a window for the past five months, eyes faraway and focused on some distant point in the future when all your dreams may come true. Or when all your dreams may turn to dust, you're not sure which. Right now there's no way to tell for sure, and the uncertainty feels like some sort of twisting, writhing animal in your gut. Tonight is no different than other nights, if quieter, lonelier. Twenty-four hours a day for the last hundred and fifty-plus days your eyes have strayed towards the window, watching, waiting. Wondering.
This is not a love story, because when he finally appears on the horizon, you almost do not recognize him, and when you do, you hold yourself back, pressing fingertips against the glass. It wouldn't do to run out so fast, to admit defeat so easily. The minutes tick by and you think how bad an idea it is to see his face again, to be in his presence and not kiss him. You shouldn't, because he has left you and you have left him, and it would be somewhat wrong.
It would also be somewhat right and you go to him anyway.
- - -
"Harry, what--" you start, and that's as far as you get, but that's okay, because you're not sure what you would've asked anyways. Words lead to actions, and you'd rather actions lead to words, any day.
Then Harry is grabbing you, hauling you close so that your body is tight against his, your arms wrapped around his waist and his arms like steel bands around your shoulders. Your tongue is already curling around his when your mouths clash, and he tastes like melted snow and moonlight and the smoky, bitter bite of ashes. Kissing him, Gods, you're kissing him and it's that much closer to paradise, one step away from the precipice of hell you've been teetering on all summer and fall and winter.
You suck at his bottom lip, biting it gently in greeting before letting his dry, chapped lips cling to yours. The hot scrape of his stubble reminds you sharply, jarringly that this is the present, because it's never been like this before, older and darker and the desperation startling you. It's been so long since you've felt anything, and the way Harry's hands feel tunnelled in you hair, the way his tongue laving your neck pulls something aching from the pit of your stomach, scares you.
You break away with effort, gasping in great lungfuls of air as the inferno of his touch winds down to a tiny little brush fire along your skin. "We can't have this," you say, more to yourself than to him. Harry knows better than you do why you can't have this, but you say it again, your voice soft.
Just to remind yourself, because after so long staring out windows, you almost got used to believing that some sort of resolution would come with his arrival. You should know better.
He's just back to retrieve some sort of locket that is buried within all the boxes in the attic. That's where you found him, after pounding downstairs to see where he'd gone. Ron and Hermione are in the kitchen getting coddled by Mum. Your brother and his girlfriend should be busy with food and nagging for quite a while. Time enough to do what you shouldn't and what you must.
You drink in Harry's features, greedily tracing his jaw and lips and the firm lines of his arms with shaking fingertips. "Are you alright?" you ask, but really, you know the answer. His cloak is ragged and torn, his skin bruised and glistening with snow, and there is a cut above his left eyebrow. He looks tired, worn, defeated.
"I'm fine," he breathes, looking in your eyes, and then despite all his efforts, and your own, he grabs you again, presses you against the attic wall and kisses you deeply. And you kiss him back, even though you know you won't want to say goodbye after this, and that he will not be able to stay. You kiss him back even though tomorrow is anything but assured...because tomorrow is anything but assured.
The frantic rythym of his heart beats against your palm, and then you lock your hands around his neck and let his hands clumsily pick you up. He lays you on the dusty old mattress on the floor, and he undresses you with care, and if it isn't all that you imagined it would be, it's not the horror stories your girlfriends have all whispered about either. The way his teeth and tongue and lips feel on your skin can never be described fully, like the light wash of a cleansing, driving rain, or the melting heat of chocolate. There is a twinge, and then the thick, full feeling of being completely whole, friction skittering through you until a tiny white light explodes into a supernova of sensation in the pit of your stomach.
Neither of you speak, not because words are not needed, but because words would stop the rolling of your hips, the blissful loss of sanity in this pocket of limbo between some sort of heaven and some sort of hell.
When it is over, the snow is still falling, the war is still raging, and there is the imprint of a locket on the small of your back. He does not say he loves you, but he does say "Thank you," and with an indescribable look, he is gone, walking shakily down the stairs as you clutch your blouse to your chest.
The door slams and you get up. If this was a love story, you'd probably weep over words left unsaid, or the joy of what you've just experienced. Instead, you wipe the blood that has blossomed against your thighs and sit back down by the window.
Locked in this grim tower of frustration and need, plastered to the glass and looking down at the world below.
- - -
You still feel the echo of Salazar Slytherin in the chambers of your heart, and closer to the surface, the silbant hiss of Tom Riddle's voice, telling you to do all sorts of horrible, wrong things. Worse still, you can taste the tang of rooster's blood, feel the pull in your chest when Riddle started taking your soul out, silky bit by silky bit. The childish horror and all-consuming pain of knowing you'd killed innocent roosters, injured innocent classmates. You can still feel it because it is with you every day, and will likely only die with Voldemort, if ever.
In a love story, the heroine would be smart and brave and would overcome her hangups and her past. But even though you're smart, you only pretend to be brave, and the things you have done and gone through lurk in every crevice of your pinched, defensive face.
There's the Ginny Weasley you were supposed to be: outgoing and bright and genuinely happy. And there's the Ginny Weasley you are, sharp and brittle and taped up, all shiny on the outside because that's about as deep as anyone really ever bothers to see. Now you're caught between the girl you could have been and the woman you're going to be, and every minute is making the difference.
Harry knows how it is. Once upon a time all your dreams rested upon him saving you, and then when he finally did, you realized it didn't make a difference. He can't be your savior any longer, and perhaps it kills him a little to know that. It is why you could love him, though...the fact that with you, he is just a man. Not a hero.
He belongs to the world, though. He is not just yours. He has a past, a duty, and when you come down to the Gryffindor Common Room and see him lying on the couch, you know that he has never been in love with you and might never get the chance to be, either. He likes you very much, though, and for now, it will do. Just to be with him, a woman instead of a frightened little girl, in the area between love and hate; that's all you want.
Because this is not a love story, and you both have journeys to take before you can erase history and make a new future for yourselves. It's the difference between falling flat on your face and rising to the occasion, and if you're going to be able to stand up long enough to even take a step forward, you need his help.
You end up in his arms in front of the fireplace, heat on your back as you sit in his lap, the hard ridge of his erection digging into your skin. You writhe and sigh into his neck as your hips undulate over his, and he throws his head back against the couch, his breath coming in labored gasps. His hands slip under your shirt to palm your breasts, fingers hot and dry. Your hands tangle in his hair, tug his face closer to kiss you messily, warmly, as you grind your hips against his zipper, against his erection. He gives a strangled gasp, and two months must have been two months too long, because suddenly there is a sticky, wet spot spreading on the front of his trousers.
You frown, still too unsatisfied to laugh, and his hands cup your bum for a moment before snaking to the front of your thighs and anchoring you in place. His lips pluck at yours, slowing the frenzied, unrefined pace of your previous necking, as his fingers slip up the band of your knickers and rub at your folds. You arch and cry out without sound as his fingers take slow, dragging circles around your clit, as they dip into your center and play a tune deep within you. You rotate around his hand and mewl, grabbing his shoulders, and through the curtain of your hair, the dazed look you see on his face finally makes something break within you.
You laugh as you come, hysterical giggles that break waves against the rush of pleasure wrapping your limbs in a warm haze. You giggle against his neck, giggle in his hair, giggle against his chest, and eventually, his hoarse chuckles add to the air. You're both laughing now, sweaty and smelling of sex, because the only alternative is crying. This moment is yours and you just want to keep it, safe and unsullied by truth. It could be love, if you let it.
But this is not a love story. There is no tragic ending. There is no happy ending, either, because when he finally gets up, he tells you that another Order member has died, that you may be next, that anyone may be next, and he can't give you what you want. The smile on your face disappears and his eyes darken. Nothing has changed (everything has changed) and everything is the same (nothing is the same). He knows you're not a little girl anymore and yet he still doesn't seem to understand that all you want is him, not the Boy-Who-Lived or even a guarantee for the future. Too much has happened for you to think you're not affected by your past, but that doesn't mean you have to keep living in it.
You tell him, your voice curt, that he obviously has no clue what you want, and he doesn't have to say goodbye for you to know it's the last time you may ever see him again.
- - -
The final battle happens in May and flowers are swaying in the morning breeze when the sky suddenly turns red and Death Eaters swarm the field.
Your wand is waving in a spectrum of light, dizzying patterns of swishes and flicks and slices through the air, knifing through the smoke with a bright, searing glow of intense color. You throw curses and hexes you aren't positive you've ever even learned, and even as triumph soars through your body, lifting your higher, moving you faster, every dead body that falls to the ground keeps you anchored to the earth and the dirty battlefield.
This is not a game. This is not practice. This is not a war fought in recollections and newspaper articles and death tolls. This is death come to play and your eyes catch Harry's for one split second before you are on the ground, dodging a curse and throwing one of your own into thin air. The terror in his eyes catches your breath and makes you roll onto your back, panting at the rumbling sky.
This is not a love story and you may die.
The thought staggers you beyond belief, the horror choking you and making your limbs freeze in a sudden, skin-tingling, body-rumbling spasm of fright. And then Harry's hand is around your wrist, tugging you up sharply, throwing you against a tree and shielding you with his back.
"We don't have time for this," he says savagely. Then he leaves a fierce kiss upon your lips, tongue swiping once more against yours, and you wish you tasted of something other than tears and dust and blood. On his mouth you only taste resolution and the summer breeze, and when he spins away, curses flying around him in a vortex so strong you can't tell whether it's the curses making his eyes glow or the magic from his wand, you stay pressed against the tree. You shake. His whispered words, quick and breathless against your temple, echo in the silence of your lilting, receding world.
"Don't die," and it's not a promise nor a threat, and you take some refuge in the implications and broken fear of his voice.
You're not afraid all a sudden, and you're not hopeful, but you're alive and that's all that matters right this second.
Each moment becomes about staying alive, no matter what the consequence. You step on bodies, on faces, kick men while they're down to make sure they're alive. A Slytherin you've had class with since you were eleven hurls a curse at you and you send a curse right back that breaks her neck. She falls to the ground, innocence long lost in her glassy eyes and beauty faded to death. You are not sorry.
But you spare a moment to shut her eyes as you race on to the next death, the next battle, the next friend or foe.
When the war is over and the smoke has cleared, you trudge home, your arms around one of your older brothers and your head hung low. You don't even raise your eyes when you hear someone whisper that Harry is alive; the relief is expected, but so is the lack of desire to speed off and make this victory only about his freedom.
You were eleven when Voldemort trapped you between innocence and adulthood, fifteen when Harry Potter kept you balanced between love and lust, and sixteen when you finally realized you could have it all only if you just stayed the precarious edge, kept in the middle so as to not tip any scales.
You have earned this freedom from the scales and the weights, from the burdens of memories and duties and loves you can't shake. You have earned Voldemort's death, and the way your soul doesn't feel like someone else's for once, and you have earned the right to be with Harry without having it be about touching and kissing and fucking. You have earned this outcome, and you stop on the hill, looking at the sun rise.
Harry comes home eventually, and his hand is cool and steady in yours. You only smile once, before turning and leaving him behind. Then you look over your shoulder give a shy smile.
This is not a love story...but maybe one day it could be.
--finis---