Share the Rain, part 2
Because I'm slack, I'm only now posting the second part of this HP fic which really isn't so long as to merit three posts, but oh well. The first part can be found here, and there will be one more part, soon.
Again, this is a dark and angsty fic, and contains language, sexual themes, and death. It's still Ron/Hermione, but there are H/Hr and R/H overtones, especially in this part. R-rated; feedback appreciated.
Share the Rain: Part Two, by Lady Goodman
Hermione cuts her hair alone in the Prefects’ bathroom. Snip, snip. Harry is back and she can see him soon. She needs to look pretty for Harry.
Using the blunt scissors that she stole from home, she snips the locks under her left shoulder, pulling the hair taut and enjoying the peculiar feel of slicing the fibres. The glide of the blades sends shivers down her spine.
When she has finished cutting she brushes the fallen hair off her clothes. The fine strands are everywhere, all over her skin. She unbuttons her blouse to brush the tiny hairs from her bra and her stomach. She thinks of Ron’s hands running over her body and stops suddenly. She thinks of Ron, inside of her, and does the buttons up again. She will shower, and then go see Harry. Maybe the water will cleanse her stupid emotions away, make her feel good and clean again.
Ron paces. He needs to see Harry before she does. He wants to beat her to it. He needs to go now.
He had been awoken in the pre-dawn light by Professor McGonagall’s arrival. She brought news tempered with lots of concerned looks and glances around the empty room. His body was stiff from sleeping upright and Hermione had arched an eyebrow at him from across the room, fully dressed already. How had he not woken when she’d moved out of his grasp? Professor had said they could see Harry after breakfast, hours away. Gryffindor began to stir as Hermione sashayed over, pressed Ron against the wall, hovered just short of kissing him and whispered, “You go to breakfast, and don’t you speak to anyone about last night.” Despite appearances she hadn’t showered; he could smell himself on her. It struck him that he didn’t want to break her at all; that urge had been satisfied, or maybe only until night time again. He doesn’t know where she went next. He had bathed and gone down to breakfast to preside like a good Prefect. He always serves his duties while she neglects her place. Seamus Finnigan had leered at him over the toast and Ron had wanted to punch his face in. The students were talking. The students seemed to know, or maybe they were just talking about Harry. He doesn’t care. She will.
Hang it, he’s got to see Harry. See him now, before she gets there. McGonagall said they could skive DADA. He’ll go now. He will.
“Oh,” Madame Pomfrey says quizzically, trying to look behind him for his girl-shaped shadow. “Is Miss Granger coming?”
“She went to class,” he says, and thrills in the lie against her.
Madame melts away after leading Ron to the curtained bed where there is Harry, half-asleep, cleaned up, looking rueful but triumphant as always after one of these ritual battles.
“Mate,” Ron says, then stops. What now? Tell me all about it, Harry. What did he try this time? Were you scared, Harry? Is the Dark Lord really dead, Harry?
Yeah, right. Ron sits next to the bed and quietly hands Harry his glasses. Harry tries to smile, but fails.
Ron doesn’t want to look at Harry’s pale face, so he stares around the infirmary, and doesn’t notice Harry watching him.
“What have I missed?” Harry says tentatively.
“You know the castle stops without you.”
Harry blinks, and Ron realises the unintentional sarcasm. “No, it’s true. Her-Hermione and I waited up almost all night.”
Harry doesn’t change at the mention of her name, but Ron almost choked on it. He focuses on the potion flasks that litter the bedside table.
“You fucked her, didn’t you,” Harry says.
The colours of the glass bottles blur in Ron’s eyes. “It wasn’t like that, but, yeah…”
The silence threatens to stretch into forever.
“Just as long as you two are happy,” Harry says out of nowhere. It’s such an obvious lie that Ron doesn’t bother to call him on it. Harry doesn’t care for either of them at all, and what’s more, he knows that they are far from happy.
One of the potions is bright red and Ron explodes.
“Bloody hell, Harry, would it kill you to get involved once in a while?” He stands up, bangs the wall and doesn’t feel it.
Harry sits up in the bed with an effort. “Touché, Ron. Do you want to know where I’ve been? What I did?” It’s a shadow of sarcasm but it inflames Ron and he feels the same passion as when he stirred Hermione last night.
“Tell me if you want. What I want doesn’t matter, but, damnit, talk to me or something instead of just lying there. Ask me if I worried. Tell me you were scared. Tell me you-oh, anything!” He sits down again, because his raw energy is too much for this tiny cubicle in a tiny room.
“Ron,” Harry says, restrained through clenched teeth. “It doesn’t matter.”
“But-” he draws his chair closer.
“Why don’t you tell me something. Like, why you fucked her.”
“Geez, Harry, I told you it wasn’t like that!
“Then what was it like?”
“I don’t bloody know! I wanted to, okay.”
“Did she?”
“Yes? It doesn’t matter now, does it? We did it. That’s all. It’s not important now.”
“You’re fucking clueless, Ron.”
“You’re fucking annoying, Harry.”
Suddenly, somehow, it is alright. They are grinning at each other. Harry puts his hand on Ron’s shoulder and Ron shudders inwardly at the grazes on his knuckles.
“Ron, be good to her. Don’t take things out on her. Just don’t. If you ever hurt her…”
He is speaking quickly, and Ron is not listening, but instead realising that the rueful and triumphant face was really only wan and tired and so very, very pale. Ron softly kisses the rough scratch of Harry’s knuckle and everything changes.
Hermione doesn’t look for Madame Pomfrey, but marches into the infirmary like she owns the place. In the far corner she can see Ron sitting close to Harry and the scene looks so intimate that she almost turns away, until she sees Harry motion to Ron as if he knows she’s there.
Harry whips his hand away, breathes, says, “What are you doing, Ron?” so softly, as if he’s admonishing a small child. Then, louder, “What do you want from me?” There’s a strange look in his eyes, of bafflement mixed with fearful knowledge.
“I… I don’t know. I don’t know what I want from you. I didn’t know what I wanted from her, either.” Finally he allows himself to voice his confusion.
“I wanted nothing from you but the friendship that you’ve stopped giving me.”
Ron draws a sharp breath, Harry continues.
“I’ve got no answers, you know.”
Ron does know it, too. He also knows the impossibility of ever being close to Harry in any way; that’s all he wanted, he decides, to be close, but Harry is too far away. Understanding this somehow brings Harry back a little. He gets up to go and sees Hermione, all hair and cheekbones, looking on from the door with dismay written everywhere on her body. When he looks, she changes her expression to the knowing look that usually maddens him, but he can’t resist throwing a triumphant grin, as if he’s not confused inside, and her face falls as he leaves the room.
Hermione doesn’t want to go to Harry now, but he’s seen her. She walks forward slowly, and as he holds out his arms she can’t believe he’s offering that solace. Mindful of pains and scars, she buries her nose in his clean flannel pyjamas. He strokes her hair so softly, the way she’s always wanted him to. He’s always known. She supposes that he’s doing it now because it’s all he can do for her; can she do anything for him?
“Why’d you cut it, Herm?”
She doesn’t answer. He hasn’t been properly cleaned up; she can smell earth and rain on him. It rained on them all last night, and there’s no sunshine, not even this morning.
“Did he hurt you?”
“Not last night,” she pulls away reluctantly, and finds the hard, unfeeling armrests of her chair. He looks at her and she knows he knows everything and she feels ashamed. She clams up.
“Ever?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Did you want to do it?” He looks at her, hard. “If he forced you, I’ll-.”
“No, I did want to… I think. Yes, I did. But I wanted…” The non-sentence hangs in the air. But he knows, of course he does.
“Look at me, Hermione.” She looks. “Come closer.” She does.
She wonders what comes next. Touch me? She wishes she could say it to him. She has leant forward, and without thinking he grabs her chin and presses his lips to hers. She doesn’t try to pull away, but neither of them can make the shadow of a kiss anything more. Harry pulls back and sighs.
“I don’t love you, Hermione.”
“Don’t say my name,” she whispers.
“I don’t want you… especially not now that you’ve been with him.”
Her eyes snap up. Harry has discovered the thrill of malice. She hopes it wasn’t her influence.
“Good, because you’d only treat me like he does. You with your self-absorbed saviour complex! At least he and I know what we want, even when we can’t have it.”
“I know what I want,” he says dangerously, “and I’ll get it, you’ll see.”
“Maybe, but I won’t care!” She flies out of the infirmary and Harry sinks down onto his pillows. Strands of her escaped hair are on his bed sheets, and his grazes are open and bleeding.
Ron has never heard a gunshot before. He is out by the lake and the loud crack sounds like someone Apparating next to him. He jumps out of his skin and a flock of birds fly upwards from the Forest, magical birds fleeing something beyond their comprehension. Instinctively he knows that the sound meant danger, but not for him. Thoughts fly through his mind as he runs for the Forest, not because he is brave, but because there’s nowhere else for him to go.
Hermione has heard a gunshot before, only once, and this one brings the same unnamed fear into her chest. Her heart literally stops for a moment and her skin stiffens and crawls. Today that fear has a name: Harry. She is in the library, where she has hidden all day, covering her work scrolls with aimless journal scribblings. The shot sounded terribly near; have the windows collapsed? Everyone is at dinner, so she scrambles over her belongings and runs out down the stone steps.
It doesn’t surprise Hermione that Ron is there, his vibrant red hair incongruous with the stone of his body, frozen over a black mess on the ground. He turns when he hears her and he pushes her back, saying, “No, don’t look,” and she says, “Look at what?” stupidly, thinking to herself even as she says it how stupid it sounds. He’s trying to be gentle but she pushes him away and the sight of Harry’s surprised eyes, the gun lying inches from a pale hand with grazed knuckles, and the blood everywhere, the matter of his body everywhere, burns into her eyes forever.
“Is… is he dead?” says Ron, the dumb one this time, and she rounds on him.
“Of course he’s fucking dead! And it’s your fault. It’s all your fault!” She punches him blindly, hurting him even, but he barely notices. Later he will find the purple bruises in the softness of his belly.
“Leave off! It’s not,” but he lets her hit him again and again.
“You went for him! You made a move, you shouldn’t have!”
“Why not? Why can’t I EVER have what I want?”
“You selfish idiot! You don’t know what you want! You freaked him out, you killed him!”
“You killed him too! You went after him. I know you did. You were just pissed I got there first!”
“He went after me, actually. But he didn’t want you,” she says triumphantly.
“Nor you!”
Her face crumples. “And he’s dead. My God, he’s DEAD!” She screams into the forest and howls with utmost pain as darkness begins to fall. He grabs her as she tries to hurt the trees, herself, him; he pins her wrists and holds her to him in a parody of comfort as she scratches at his cheek. She subsides and lets him keep her, and slowly he drags her up to the castle, wondering who is keeping him held up, both of them so in shock, in despair, in total anguish, that they collapse on the front steps and gasp for breath, on the verge of hysterics as the rain starts to fall.
Again, this is a dark and angsty fic, and contains language, sexual themes, and death. It's still Ron/Hermione, but there are H/Hr and R/H overtones, especially in this part. R-rated; feedback appreciated.
Share the Rain: Part Two, by Lady Goodman
Hermione cuts her hair alone in the Prefects’ bathroom. Snip, snip. Harry is back and she can see him soon. She needs to look pretty for Harry.
Using the blunt scissors that she stole from home, she snips the locks under her left shoulder, pulling the hair taut and enjoying the peculiar feel of slicing the fibres. The glide of the blades sends shivers down her spine.
When she has finished cutting she brushes the fallen hair off her clothes. The fine strands are everywhere, all over her skin. She unbuttons her blouse to brush the tiny hairs from her bra and her stomach. She thinks of Ron’s hands running over her body and stops suddenly. She thinks of Ron, inside of her, and does the buttons up again. She will shower, and then go see Harry. Maybe the water will cleanse her stupid emotions away, make her feel good and clean again.
Ron paces. He needs to see Harry before she does. He wants to beat her to it. He needs to go now.
He had been awoken in the pre-dawn light by Professor McGonagall’s arrival. She brought news tempered with lots of concerned looks and glances around the empty room. His body was stiff from sleeping upright and Hermione had arched an eyebrow at him from across the room, fully dressed already. How had he not woken when she’d moved out of his grasp? Professor had said they could see Harry after breakfast, hours away. Gryffindor began to stir as Hermione sashayed over, pressed Ron against the wall, hovered just short of kissing him and whispered, “You go to breakfast, and don’t you speak to anyone about last night.” Despite appearances she hadn’t showered; he could smell himself on her. It struck him that he didn’t want to break her at all; that urge had been satisfied, or maybe only until night time again. He doesn’t know where she went next. He had bathed and gone down to breakfast to preside like a good Prefect. He always serves his duties while she neglects her place. Seamus Finnigan had leered at him over the toast and Ron had wanted to punch his face in. The students were talking. The students seemed to know, or maybe they were just talking about Harry. He doesn’t care. She will.
Hang it, he’s got to see Harry. See him now, before she gets there. McGonagall said they could skive DADA. He’ll go now. He will.
“Oh,” Madame Pomfrey says quizzically, trying to look behind him for his girl-shaped shadow. “Is Miss Granger coming?”
“She went to class,” he says, and thrills in the lie against her.
Madame melts away after leading Ron to the curtained bed where there is Harry, half-asleep, cleaned up, looking rueful but triumphant as always after one of these ritual battles.
“Mate,” Ron says, then stops. What now? Tell me all about it, Harry. What did he try this time? Were you scared, Harry? Is the Dark Lord really dead, Harry?
Yeah, right. Ron sits next to the bed and quietly hands Harry his glasses. Harry tries to smile, but fails.
Ron doesn’t want to look at Harry’s pale face, so he stares around the infirmary, and doesn’t notice Harry watching him.
“What have I missed?” Harry says tentatively.
“You know the castle stops without you.”
Harry blinks, and Ron realises the unintentional sarcasm. “No, it’s true. Her-Hermione and I waited up almost all night.”
Harry doesn’t change at the mention of her name, but Ron almost choked on it. He focuses on the potion flasks that litter the bedside table.
“You fucked her, didn’t you,” Harry says.
The colours of the glass bottles blur in Ron’s eyes. “It wasn’t like that, but, yeah…”
The silence threatens to stretch into forever.
“Just as long as you two are happy,” Harry says out of nowhere. It’s such an obvious lie that Ron doesn’t bother to call him on it. Harry doesn’t care for either of them at all, and what’s more, he knows that they are far from happy.
One of the potions is bright red and Ron explodes.
“Bloody hell, Harry, would it kill you to get involved once in a while?” He stands up, bangs the wall and doesn’t feel it.
Harry sits up in the bed with an effort. “Touché, Ron. Do you want to know where I’ve been? What I did?” It’s a shadow of sarcasm but it inflames Ron and he feels the same passion as when he stirred Hermione last night.
“Tell me if you want. What I want doesn’t matter, but, damnit, talk to me or something instead of just lying there. Ask me if I worried. Tell me you were scared. Tell me you-oh, anything!” He sits down again, because his raw energy is too much for this tiny cubicle in a tiny room.
“Ron,” Harry says, restrained through clenched teeth. “It doesn’t matter.”
“But-” he draws his chair closer.
“Why don’t you tell me something. Like, why you fucked her.”
“Geez, Harry, I told you it wasn’t like that!
“Then what was it like?”
“I don’t bloody know! I wanted to, okay.”
“Did she?”
“Yes? It doesn’t matter now, does it? We did it. That’s all. It’s not important now.”
“You’re fucking clueless, Ron.”
“You’re fucking annoying, Harry.”
Suddenly, somehow, it is alright. They are grinning at each other. Harry puts his hand on Ron’s shoulder and Ron shudders inwardly at the grazes on his knuckles.
“Ron, be good to her. Don’t take things out on her. Just don’t. If you ever hurt her…”
He is speaking quickly, and Ron is not listening, but instead realising that the rueful and triumphant face was really only wan and tired and so very, very pale. Ron softly kisses the rough scratch of Harry’s knuckle and everything changes.
Hermione doesn’t look for Madame Pomfrey, but marches into the infirmary like she owns the place. In the far corner she can see Ron sitting close to Harry and the scene looks so intimate that she almost turns away, until she sees Harry motion to Ron as if he knows she’s there.
Harry whips his hand away, breathes, says, “What are you doing, Ron?” so softly, as if he’s admonishing a small child. Then, louder, “What do you want from me?” There’s a strange look in his eyes, of bafflement mixed with fearful knowledge.
“I… I don’t know. I don’t know what I want from you. I didn’t know what I wanted from her, either.” Finally he allows himself to voice his confusion.
“I wanted nothing from you but the friendship that you’ve stopped giving me.”
Ron draws a sharp breath, Harry continues.
“I’ve got no answers, you know.”
Ron does know it, too. He also knows the impossibility of ever being close to Harry in any way; that’s all he wanted, he decides, to be close, but Harry is too far away. Understanding this somehow brings Harry back a little. He gets up to go and sees Hermione, all hair and cheekbones, looking on from the door with dismay written everywhere on her body. When he looks, she changes her expression to the knowing look that usually maddens him, but he can’t resist throwing a triumphant grin, as if he’s not confused inside, and her face falls as he leaves the room.
Hermione doesn’t want to go to Harry now, but he’s seen her. She walks forward slowly, and as he holds out his arms she can’t believe he’s offering that solace. Mindful of pains and scars, she buries her nose in his clean flannel pyjamas. He strokes her hair so softly, the way she’s always wanted him to. He’s always known. She supposes that he’s doing it now because it’s all he can do for her; can she do anything for him?
“Why’d you cut it, Herm?”
She doesn’t answer. He hasn’t been properly cleaned up; she can smell earth and rain on him. It rained on them all last night, and there’s no sunshine, not even this morning.
“Did he hurt you?”
“Not last night,” she pulls away reluctantly, and finds the hard, unfeeling armrests of her chair. He looks at her and she knows he knows everything and she feels ashamed. She clams up.
“Ever?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Did you want to do it?” He looks at her, hard. “If he forced you, I’ll-.”
“No, I did want to… I think. Yes, I did. But I wanted…” The non-sentence hangs in the air. But he knows, of course he does.
“Look at me, Hermione.” She looks. “Come closer.” She does.
She wonders what comes next. Touch me? She wishes she could say it to him. She has leant forward, and without thinking he grabs her chin and presses his lips to hers. She doesn’t try to pull away, but neither of them can make the shadow of a kiss anything more. Harry pulls back and sighs.
“I don’t love you, Hermione.”
“Don’t say my name,” she whispers.
“I don’t want you… especially not now that you’ve been with him.”
Her eyes snap up. Harry has discovered the thrill of malice. She hopes it wasn’t her influence.
“Good, because you’d only treat me like he does. You with your self-absorbed saviour complex! At least he and I know what we want, even when we can’t have it.”
“I know what I want,” he says dangerously, “and I’ll get it, you’ll see.”
“Maybe, but I won’t care!” She flies out of the infirmary and Harry sinks down onto his pillows. Strands of her escaped hair are on his bed sheets, and his grazes are open and bleeding.
Ron has never heard a gunshot before. He is out by the lake and the loud crack sounds like someone Apparating next to him. He jumps out of his skin and a flock of birds fly upwards from the Forest, magical birds fleeing something beyond their comprehension. Instinctively he knows that the sound meant danger, but not for him. Thoughts fly through his mind as he runs for the Forest, not because he is brave, but because there’s nowhere else for him to go.
Hermione has heard a gunshot before, only once, and this one brings the same unnamed fear into her chest. Her heart literally stops for a moment and her skin stiffens and crawls. Today that fear has a name: Harry. She is in the library, where she has hidden all day, covering her work scrolls with aimless journal scribblings. The shot sounded terribly near; have the windows collapsed? Everyone is at dinner, so she scrambles over her belongings and runs out down the stone steps.
It doesn’t surprise Hermione that Ron is there, his vibrant red hair incongruous with the stone of his body, frozen over a black mess on the ground. He turns when he hears her and he pushes her back, saying, “No, don’t look,” and she says, “Look at what?” stupidly, thinking to herself even as she says it how stupid it sounds. He’s trying to be gentle but she pushes him away and the sight of Harry’s surprised eyes, the gun lying inches from a pale hand with grazed knuckles, and the blood everywhere, the matter of his body everywhere, burns into her eyes forever.
“Is… is he dead?” says Ron, the dumb one this time, and she rounds on him.
“Of course he’s fucking dead! And it’s your fault. It’s all your fault!” She punches him blindly, hurting him even, but he barely notices. Later he will find the purple bruises in the softness of his belly.
“Leave off! It’s not,” but he lets her hit him again and again.
“You went for him! You made a move, you shouldn’t have!”
“Why not? Why can’t I EVER have what I want?”
“You selfish idiot! You don’t know what you want! You freaked him out, you killed him!”
“You killed him too! You went after him. I know you did. You were just pissed I got there first!”
“He went after me, actually. But he didn’t want you,” she says triumphantly.
“Nor you!”
Her face crumples. “And he’s dead. My God, he’s DEAD!” She screams into the forest and howls with utmost pain as darkness begins to fall. He grabs her as she tries to hurt the trees, herself, him; he pins her wrists and holds her to him in a parody of comfort as she scratches at his cheek. She subsides and lets him keep her, and slowly he drags her up to the castle, wondering who is keeping him held up, both of them so in shock, in despair, in total anguish, that they collapse on the front steps and gasp for breath, on the verge of hysterics as the rain starts to fall.