hp fic: decay of your golden city (harry/hermione)
Title: decay of your golden city
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Harry/Hermione
Word Count: 1,706
Rating: PG-13
Summary: She keeps getting happier and he keeps slipping into darkness, and there’s nothing she can do to stop it.
A/N: Written for the Impromptu (im)Prompt-a-thon over at crickets' LJ. The prompt was strangers.
This is the first sign.
It's the day after the war. The three of them fall asleep huddled together in one of the Gryffindor dormitories because it's become habit. She wakes up with Ron's arm curled around her stomach and his breath against the back of her neck. She exhales slowly with a smile and feels warm all over. It's the first time in years that she doesn't need to worry.
Her eyes flicker to the window and she sees Harry, hunched at the window, eyes glued to the destruction below - blood stains on the grass and shards of glass which no one had the energy to clean yet. She can tell he's not rested though he slept through the night (she watched him through most of it - afraid if she blinked he’d disappear).
Harry looks so cold where he is.
She knows that this is her cue to check on him, but the sight feels so foreign to her now. She wonders if this is one of those times where Harry needed to figure things out on his own because only he would have the answers.
She's making excuses.
This is sign one. They're drifting apart.
---
There are too many funerals to attend. Fred's comes first. Then Snape's. Then, other less important deaths. Harry attends them all. Hermione and Ron are there beside him even when Ron grumbles about having not known most of these people and Hermione is inclined to agree. There's something about the way Harry throws himself into these funerals, refusing to skip any one that unsettles her.
The last one is the most trying. Lupin and Tonks are buried seaside three weeks after they die. They are laid to rest beside Tonks' father - his grave still fresh - only patches of green covering it.
At the other funerals, Harry remains stoic - the picture of poise to some, while to others, it appears that he is just pacing himself. Self-preservation is a trait they had all picked up along the way.
This funeral, though, is different.
Harry's eyes stay trained on Teddy, watching the child sleep peacefully against his grandmother's bosom. Hermione sees his fists clench. And there's emotion, clear as day, written across his face. The type she can no longer name.
He leaves discreetly before the caskets kiss the dirt.
Hermione can only watch.
---
There are rumblings in the paper that the "Chosen One" has saved himself a stool at the Leaky Cauldron. Harry brushes them off one Saturday, claiming that they have nothing better to report about now that the war is over.
That night Hermione peels him out of the booth in the back.
"Told you it wasn't a stool," he mumbles, his breath smelling like firewhiskey and gin.
He pukes all night into the next morning and it's not the type of hangover she can cure with magic.
"Didn't anyone teach you not to mix Muggle alcohol with the magical stuff?"
"No, Hermione, they didn't," he mutters against the toilet seat. Hermione flinches because it was exactly the wrong thing to say. He didn't have anyone to teach him those sort of things, nor time to learn the trivial rules anyways.
She smooths a hand over his back and his breathing hitches. "Are you okay, Harry?"
"Nope," he says simply. He turns towards her, glasses askew, flashing a lazy smile.
"I'm sorry," she whispers, pulling him towards her so that he can rest his head on her lap. His hand clutches her knee and she threads her fingers through his hair.
"Not your fault," he says before he drifts off to sleep.
---
Later in the afternoon, Harry wakes up and promises Hermione he won’t do that to her again. Hermione feels the strangest need to tell him he’s not a burden, but buries it. Instead she shoves the paper in his face. The Daily Prophet has printed a hasty retraction.
They pretend it has nothing to do with the threatening owl Hermione may or may not have sent the editors.
---
"You should give it another go with Ginny," Ron suggests, and his prodding has become embarrassing even for Hermione. Somehow Ron thinks that the only way Harry will stop drinking is if he starts sleeping with Ginny again. (Although, she doubts Ron knows they actually slept together because if he did, his head would have exploded).
Which is just stupid as far as Hermione is convinced because Ginny has no idea what Harry’s going through.
“That’s the point,” Ron says later that night when Hermione finally lets her feelings on the matter be known. “He needs someone around who knows better than to try and understand.”
Hermione gapes at the logic, feeling as though it was a shot taken directly at her.
She makes Ron sleep on the couch, while she stares at the ceiling wondering when she had to start trying to understand Harry.
---
George and Angelina marry six months after the final battle. That's Angelina - Fred's ex girlfriend. It's weird enough without Aunt Muriel dropping dead (very loudly and dramatically) during the reception.
Harry and Hermione floo to Harry's to give the Weasleys some space. They make tea and try to avoid talking about what just happened. Hermione pretends not to notice Harry adding the contents of his flask into his cup. He's stopped drinking in public, but all it's done is made him better at facades.
"In my experience, weddings always bring death," Harry finally says after the alcohol has loosened his tongue.
"You've only ever been to two," Hermione points out. He grins and it's glimpse into who he was. It's gone as fast as it came. Bitterness working it's way onto the corner of his face.
"All I needed to see," he shrugs.
---
There was a time she thought about it.
Two, actually.
The second time she doesn’t count because it was when Ron had run away and they were alone in that tent. Broken and lonely and so very tired, bounded by misery. She wanted to hurt Ron. She wanted to feel something. But she didn’t do anything because it was wrong and the whole quest they were on was a pilgrimage to do right.
The first time was at the Yule Ball, when she realized it didn’t take fistfuls of hair gel and hours in front of the mirror for him to see her. That was before everything really went to hell for him, and she had time to forget it.
Now she thinks about it all the time - wondering what she was thinking.
---
Ron proposes two years after the final battle. She doesn’t even think before her mouth spews out yes. It’s how it was meant to be.
Harry throws them an engagement party. No one notices that Hermione spends half the party watching Harry toss back a bottle of champagne and leave before dessert is served. It’s all abrupt exits these days.
She keeps getting happier and he keeps slipping into darkness, and there’s nothing she can do to stop it.
---
There’s another wedding in the spring which they all must attend - a Ministry official in Harry and Ron’s office is the lucky bride. The sight of floral arrangements and decorated arches makes Hermione giddy for her own ceremony and not even Ron’s irritability or Harry’s grave indifference can dull her mood.
Something goes terribly wrong and one of the doves explodes into a ball of feathers instead of being transfigured into gold sparks.
“That’s three, soon-to-be-Mrs. Weasley,” Harry whispers in her ear, sending a chill down her spine. It takes her a second to know what he’s referring to.
“Birds don’t count,” Hermione says defiantly.
Harry twirls the white feather in his hand, staring at it intently, as though his mind is someplace far away. “Of course they do.”
---
Tom owls Hermione late one night to tell her that Harry is there.
It’s the third anniversary of the final battle.
“They all bought him rounds when he got here,” Tom says when she arrives. “He didn’t turn down a drink. Said it was his obligation. But I don’t think it’s good for him to be out like this tonight of all nights, you know?”
Hermione can only nod. Harry is not in his usual booth but propped up in a stool, among a group of celebrators, raising their glasses in a toast to the dead.
“You can’t be seen like this,” she whispers in his ear, “Don’t you know who you are?”
“I’m Harry Potter,” he says boldly as he throws back what’s left in his shot glass. The crowd cheers, “hear, hear” loudly at that. Harry moves from his stool so that he is standing in front of Hermione, peering down at her as if she’s never been seen. "The more prevalent question is who are you?"
He's drunk, so she can pretend her face has been blurred by alcohol, but deep down she knows exactly what he means.
The crowd is large and because of that they’re pressed together in a way that once wasn’t awkward. Now, he's too close for comfort. Lips grazing her cheek, with each venomous word and fingers clenched around her tiny wrist. She hears him sigh.
"Harry," she says softly.
“Please,” he begs, the tone changing completely. His nails dig into the flesh of her arm, not painfully but not comfortably either. He presses his lips to the side of her face and she inhales sharply.
This is a second chance. To fix him. To save him. It’s what she’s supposed to do. But when she looks into his eyes all she sees is pain. It's a life she no longer can bare to live.
"I'm sorry," she says, eyes closed
He nods wordlessly against her cheek and it’s as though he’s suddenly sober.
She feels him slip away into the crowd.
She worries she won't recognize him when he returns.
---
Three weeks later the Prophet runs a story about Ginny and Harry eloping.
Over tea with the Ron and Hermione, Harry says that this way no one needed to die. The boys laugh, one honestly and one bitterly (though they both appear the same).
Hermione knows better.
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Harry/Hermione
Word Count: 1,706
Rating: PG-13
Summary: She keeps getting happier and he keeps slipping into darkness, and there’s nothing she can do to stop it.
A/N: Written for the Impromptu (im)Prompt-a-thon over at crickets' LJ. The prompt was strangers.
This is the first sign.
It's the day after the war. The three of them fall asleep huddled together in one of the Gryffindor dormitories because it's become habit. She wakes up with Ron's arm curled around her stomach and his breath against the back of her neck. She exhales slowly with a smile and feels warm all over. It's the first time in years that she doesn't need to worry.
Her eyes flicker to the window and she sees Harry, hunched at the window, eyes glued to the destruction below - blood stains on the grass and shards of glass which no one had the energy to clean yet. She can tell he's not rested though he slept through the night (she watched him through most of it - afraid if she blinked he’d disappear).
Harry looks so cold where he is.
She knows that this is her cue to check on him, but the sight feels so foreign to her now. She wonders if this is one of those times where Harry needed to figure things out on his own because only he would have the answers.
She's making excuses.
This is sign one. They're drifting apart.
---
There are too many funerals to attend. Fred's comes first. Then Snape's. Then, other less important deaths. Harry attends them all. Hermione and Ron are there beside him even when Ron grumbles about having not known most of these people and Hermione is inclined to agree. There's something about the way Harry throws himself into these funerals, refusing to skip any one that unsettles her.
The last one is the most trying. Lupin and Tonks are buried seaside three weeks after they die. They are laid to rest beside Tonks' father - his grave still fresh - only patches of green covering it.
At the other funerals, Harry remains stoic - the picture of poise to some, while to others, it appears that he is just pacing himself. Self-preservation is a trait they had all picked up along the way.
This funeral, though, is different.
Harry's eyes stay trained on Teddy, watching the child sleep peacefully against his grandmother's bosom. Hermione sees his fists clench. And there's emotion, clear as day, written across his face. The type she can no longer name.
He leaves discreetly before the caskets kiss the dirt.
Hermione can only watch.
---
There are rumblings in the paper that the "Chosen One" has saved himself a stool at the Leaky Cauldron. Harry brushes them off one Saturday, claiming that they have nothing better to report about now that the war is over.
That night Hermione peels him out of the booth in the back.
"Told you it wasn't a stool," he mumbles, his breath smelling like firewhiskey and gin.
He pukes all night into the next morning and it's not the type of hangover she can cure with magic.
"Didn't anyone teach you not to mix Muggle alcohol with the magical stuff?"
"No, Hermione, they didn't," he mutters against the toilet seat. Hermione flinches because it was exactly the wrong thing to say. He didn't have anyone to teach him those sort of things, nor time to learn the trivial rules anyways.
She smooths a hand over his back and his breathing hitches. "Are you okay, Harry?"
"Nope," he says simply. He turns towards her, glasses askew, flashing a lazy smile.
"I'm sorry," she whispers, pulling him towards her so that he can rest his head on her lap. His hand clutches her knee and she threads her fingers through his hair.
"Not your fault," he says before he drifts off to sleep.
---
Later in the afternoon, Harry wakes up and promises Hermione he won’t do that to her again. Hermione feels the strangest need to tell him he’s not a burden, but buries it. Instead she shoves the paper in his face. The Daily Prophet has printed a hasty retraction.
They pretend it has nothing to do with the threatening owl Hermione may or may not have sent the editors.
---
"You should give it another go with Ginny," Ron suggests, and his prodding has become embarrassing even for Hermione. Somehow Ron thinks that the only way Harry will stop drinking is if he starts sleeping with Ginny again. (Although, she doubts Ron knows they actually slept together because if he did, his head would have exploded).
Which is just stupid as far as Hermione is convinced because Ginny has no idea what Harry’s going through.
“That’s the point,” Ron says later that night when Hermione finally lets her feelings on the matter be known. “He needs someone around who knows better than to try and understand.”
Hermione gapes at the logic, feeling as though it was a shot taken directly at her.
She makes Ron sleep on the couch, while she stares at the ceiling wondering when she had to start trying to understand Harry.
---
George and Angelina marry six months after the final battle. That's Angelina - Fred's ex girlfriend. It's weird enough without Aunt Muriel dropping dead (very loudly and dramatically) during the reception.
Harry and Hermione floo to Harry's to give the Weasleys some space. They make tea and try to avoid talking about what just happened. Hermione pretends not to notice Harry adding the contents of his flask into his cup. He's stopped drinking in public, but all it's done is made him better at facades.
"In my experience, weddings always bring death," Harry finally says after the alcohol has loosened his tongue.
"You've only ever been to two," Hermione points out. He grins and it's glimpse into who he was. It's gone as fast as it came. Bitterness working it's way onto the corner of his face.
"All I needed to see," he shrugs.
---
There was a time she thought about it.
Two, actually.
The second time she doesn’t count because it was when Ron had run away and they were alone in that tent. Broken and lonely and so very tired, bounded by misery. She wanted to hurt Ron. She wanted to feel something. But she didn’t do anything because it was wrong and the whole quest they were on was a pilgrimage to do right.
The first time was at the Yule Ball, when she realized it didn’t take fistfuls of hair gel and hours in front of the mirror for him to see her. That was before everything really went to hell for him, and she had time to forget it.
Now she thinks about it all the time - wondering what she was thinking.
---
Ron proposes two years after the final battle. She doesn’t even think before her mouth spews out yes. It’s how it was meant to be.
Harry throws them an engagement party. No one notices that Hermione spends half the party watching Harry toss back a bottle of champagne and leave before dessert is served. It’s all abrupt exits these days.
She keeps getting happier and he keeps slipping into darkness, and there’s nothing she can do to stop it.
---
There’s another wedding in the spring which they all must attend - a Ministry official in Harry and Ron’s office is the lucky bride. The sight of floral arrangements and decorated arches makes Hermione giddy for her own ceremony and not even Ron’s irritability or Harry’s grave indifference can dull her mood.
Something goes terribly wrong and one of the doves explodes into a ball of feathers instead of being transfigured into gold sparks.
“That’s three, soon-to-be-Mrs. Weasley,” Harry whispers in her ear, sending a chill down her spine. It takes her a second to know what he’s referring to.
“Birds don’t count,” Hermione says defiantly.
Harry twirls the white feather in his hand, staring at it intently, as though his mind is someplace far away. “Of course they do.”
---
Tom owls Hermione late one night to tell her that Harry is there.
It’s the third anniversary of the final battle.
“They all bought him rounds when he got here,” Tom says when she arrives. “He didn’t turn down a drink. Said it was his obligation. But I don’t think it’s good for him to be out like this tonight of all nights, you know?”
Hermione can only nod. Harry is not in his usual booth but propped up in a stool, among a group of celebrators, raising their glasses in a toast to the dead.
“You can’t be seen like this,” she whispers in his ear, “Don’t you know who you are?”
“I’m Harry Potter,” he says boldly as he throws back what’s left in his shot glass. The crowd cheers, “hear, hear” loudly at that. Harry moves from his stool so that he is standing in front of Hermione, peering down at her as if she’s never been seen. "The more prevalent question is who are you?"
He's drunk, so she can pretend her face has been blurred by alcohol, but deep down she knows exactly what he means.
The crowd is large and because of that they’re pressed together in a way that once wasn’t awkward. Now, he's too close for comfort. Lips grazing her cheek, with each venomous word and fingers clenched around her tiny wrist. She hears him sigh.
"Harry," she says softly.
“Please,” he begs, the tone changing completely. His nails dig into the flesh of her arm, not painfully but not comfortably either. He presses his lips to the side of her face and she inhales sharply.
This is a second chance. To fix him. To save him. It’s what she’s supposed to do. But when she looks into his eyes all she sees is pain. It's a life she no longer can bare to live.
"I'm sorry," she says, eyes closed
He nods wordlessly against her cheek and it’s as though he’s suddenly sober.
She feels him slip away into the crowd.
She worries she won't recognize him when he returns.
---
Three weeks later the Prophet runs a story about Ginny and Harry eloping.
Over tea with the Ron and Hermione, Harry says that this way no one needed to die. The boys laugh, one honestly and one bitterly (though they both appear the same).
Hermione knows better.