Harry Potter Fic: when we were young (and ageless) 4/5
notes: for anythingbutgrey, who literally handed me back my HP love, lol. ♥
when we were young (and ageless)
harry potter ; harry/hermione ; 3,307 words ; unrated
they say it’s just that simple. nobody comes and asks them: if the kids are just alright. spoilers for the deathly hallows. au.
-
4
When morning hits, there is nothing but ash. It clutters the small stone road into the village. There are houses and half-houses that line the fence; a roof stops and sinks inside one of the houses, moaning as they start to walk closer to the entrance.
“This is not a good idea,” Hermione whispers. There is a sign that dangles over their heads as they pass, underneath and into the village. It might’ve said >welcome, but the name is long since gone.
“Keep walking,” Harry tells her.
They waited through the night. The screams were patient: it was one, two, three and four, sometimes a name, sometimes the high, pitch laughter that weaves her stomach into knots. She closest to Harry and thought of her parents, of the Weasleys, of all their friends and tried to keep her eyes closed as tight as she could.
“What are we looking for?” she asks. Without thinking, she curls her hand in Harry’s arm. They are both wandless; they sit at the bottom of her bag, next to her books and what’s left of the bandages she has.
“I don’t know,” Harry says.
“Harry -”
“I don’t know,” he breathes angrily. He pulls her closer and she almost trips. They listen to another house start to fall apart, from within. Wood, she decides, sounds exactly like bones. It’s a crack and it’s here and there, eerie and almost too eager. She tries not to think about it.
They pass another house and then another, come to stand along a row of shops. There is a body in the middle of the road, spread and tied to what looks to be like an iron plan. Hermione stops, even as Harry tries to tug her forward. Her eyes are wide and her heart starts to race.
Her hand pulls away from Harry’s arm and she walks slowly, carefully to the body. She isn’t thinking about moving anymore. When she kneels by it, nothing but the dirt stirs, staining her at the knees. Her fingers brush against it - the man, she thinks. It’s a man, no older than her father, perhaps even Remus. His eyes are open and glassy, his mouth stretched quietly into the strangest of smiles.
“Hermione,” Harry says from behind her.
“He’s smiling,” she murmurs.
“Hermione.”
“Don’t you think it’s rather odd?” she asks. “The man is smiling and he’s dead. We both know why he’s dead, Harry. I’ve never - I don’t know what to even think anymore.”
She feels Harry’s hand over her shoulder, closing tightly into it. His fingers dig into her coat. It’s getting warmer, suddenly, but it’s been such a long time since either of them have paid attention.
“We should go,” Harry says quietly. There is urgency in his voice and she picks up on it, maybe too easily. But she can’t bring herself to move and when she leans over the body, her hands brush the man’s eyes close. Behind her Harry lets out a shaky sigh.
“He’s the only one here.” Her hand reaches back for Harry’s. It covers his as she stands and when she turns to face him, she squeezes it, prying it away from her gently. “I just thought - he’s the only here Harry, that we see, and it’s only proper, I suppose.”
“You’re not making any sense,” he murmurs.
“I would want someone to stop for me.”
She says it and it pulls at everything inside of her - every fear, every impossible worry that she’s been trying to keep to herself as much as possible. She doesn’t give anything away though; her expression is drawn into seriousness as still as she keep it.
“It’s not impossible,” she says, looking down, then up again. Her hair falls into her eyes and she tries to shrug. “I just thought - I would want someone to stop for me.”
Harry looks at her funny, maybe even with some expectations. His mouth quirks and then he shakes his head, rubbing his eyes. He takes a step forward and then another, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. He draws her into him and she lets him, her head dropping against his shoulder. She can feel his mouth move into her hair and then listens to his sigh; there’s still a little of uncertainty, and of awkwardness, it’s still them and yet, it’s been the two of them out here, alone and trying to make some sense of it.
“Let’s go,” he says finally. He makes a fist around her jacket sleeve and tugs her forward, away from the man. Her heels drag a little and then she starts to walk too, leaning back into him.
They’re quiet as they walk through the village. Hermione tries to keep her focus straight ahead; there is no other way around this village, a few miles off and they’ll hit the water again, and stretch of cliffs that will swallow you up if you’re there for long.
It’s getting colder, she thinks. She feels her mouth move, but there’s no apparent sound. Against her, Harry manages a nod. They come to the edge of the shops and Hermione tries not to listen to the glass that seem to pile underneath their boots instead of stone and dirt.
Then there’s a laugh.
(They had a conversation, not a real one but one nonetheless, the night before, one Hermione chooses to accept but not remember. Harry, slumped against a tree, watched with a heavy gaze as the dark mark, slowly, thoughtfully, climbed into the sky. The village was on fire and Hermione watched horror-stricken, swallowing her urge to throw-up and sob.
“I reckon this is it,” Harry said. He stayed behind her and she could not bare to turn around. Her eyes were burning and she was shaking, still listening. “He wants me, and it’s going to be me ‘n him facing off, you know? There’s nothing I can do about it, nothing you can do about it, nothing Dumbledore could do about it and nothing my own mum could do. I bloody get it. I finally bloody get it. I guess this what everyone was waiting for.”
“Shut up,” she said quietly.
But he managed to keep talking, completely and suddenly unaware of her presence. It was then that Hermione turned around, not quite to face him, but not quite to look away.
“ - I dunno, Hermione, I mean, I shouldn’t be okay with it but then everybody’s here and depending on me -”
“Shut up,” she snarled, her hands curled into fists. Her nails dug deeply into her palm and she cannot be too loud. They did not know who was close and who was watching.
And Harry had stopped, not for her, but the loud cheer that erupted from the village. Someone was weeping close by, somewhere in front of them in the trees, but Hermione did not look. It wasn’t important then.)
They run. Harry first, Hermione after; she catches up and passes him, her legs somewhere feeling inexplicably long. The glass and dirt crunch and snap and she leads, weaving them through a row of houses back into the other end of the village. There is a cry:
“Crucio!”
Hermione stumbles and there is a flashes of green that flies by her head. She falls to her knees and Harry is at her side, grabbing at her arm, trying to get her to stand again.
“Come on,” he breathes, “come on!” And from behind him, over his shoulder, the Death Eater stands.
She cannot tell who it is, man or woman or even someone they simply went to school with. It doesn’t even matter; they’ve been spotted, not recognized and that there is even more dangerous. She looks up at Harry and for a split second, she considers hiding him and charging forward.
“Hermione,” Harry pulls at her arm. But there is something in her that cannot move and as the Death Eater gets closer, she can see the figure clearly now. Gone is an trace of a face; half wears a broken mask, the other exposes a face of scars, skin pulled from the mouth, the nose, and behind the ear. She is horrified, but caught, there memories, too many memories of what happened to her in the Ministry and then, alone in Malfoy Manor. Her eyes flash and somehow, she cannot feel herself shaking.
The Death Eater raises a wand. Hermione reacts.
She doesn’t remember pulling out her wand. It’s in her hand and she throws herself forward, right in front of Harry, throwing her hand out to curse the Death Eater. She is calm, maybe too calm, and a tremendous sense of awareness settles over her.
From her wand, a dark, violent light throws itself towards the figure. It hits the Death Eater at the shoulder, spreading across the figure’s chest and then the hip. There is a low, thick cry, raw like some kind of animal. It makes her shudder and step back, pressing into Harry as they watch the Death Eater fall back into the ground.
There’s no sound. The body twitches. The arms fly up and down, the fingers casting themselves over some glass. She guesses glass by the way the light hits everything. There’s a whimper too, but neither Hermione nor Harry move forward to see.
Her hand is calm. “Let’s go,” Harry says softly.
They don’t look back.
They don’t talk for miles.
Hermione walks ahead.
“Dolohov,” she says finally. They’ve stopped again, back in the woods, closer to the cliffs than either of them intended to. Someone will be looking for them now, she guesses.
Harry stares at her, poking at the fire he’s made outside of the tent. They sit together, side by side, mostly so that neither of them have to look at each other yet. She fidgets though. Then she sighs.
“I looked it up,” she admits, “after we were in the Ministry with the others. I wanted to know. I didn’t think I could do it.”
“M’not judging you,” Harry murmurs.
Hermione barks a laugh. She shakes her head. Her legs curl underneath her and she adjusts a blanket over her knees. There is a bed inside that neither of them have used yet. She can’t remember the last time she has really wanted to go and sleep.
“It’s all right.”
Harry pokes the fire again. He has his hand wrapped around a large branch they found by the water while they were setting their protection spells. He looks at her and smiles sadly.
“It’s not,” he says. “None of this is.”
“We are past that point,” she mumbles, shaking her head.
“I know - I thought, I guess, that you and I and Ron would be well into our seventh year by now. Christmas at the Burrow would be over, we’d be back, and I’d be worried about kissing Gin and winning the Cup.”
Her heart twists a little. It’s funny, really, thinking about it; they were never meant to be kids, she wants to say. She doesn’t want to take that away from him either. She knows that he’s always known. He just won’t say it out loud. This is Harry, after all.
“And now?” she asks softly.
He looks at her and then leans into her, kissing her forehead without the slightest of hesitation. She sort of freezes anyway. Her hand rises to curl around his arm and she finds herself leaning into him.
“Now,” he says, “I feel a little too old to be thinking about the Cup and kissing Ron’s sister. I feel like in another world, another time had I just been Harry Potter, just a normal boy with parents - maybe Ginny and I would made some kind of absolute sense. I don’t know how to believe in absolutes anymore, Hermione.”
It breaks her heart, hearing him this way. She brushes her fingers against his face, and then against his jaw, not even trying to think about it.
“We’re all worse for wear,” she says quietly.
“You’re still here,” he says, and it’s not about curses, it’s not about the days that have already gone by, what they’ve missed and what they still need to do. She can feel it, feel something, and it’s somehow sensible and remarkable all at the same time.
“I’ve changed too.”
He nods. “I know.”
She smiles wistfully. “I wish too, you know, that we could back at school with the others, that Ron hadn’t left - there’s some sort of feeling that comes with the three of us, a whole us against the rest of the world, you know? And I can’t help but wonder too, had it not been now what would happen when we’re older - would we still be us, are we really going to get any better? And then, I think about you and I -”
She stops, growing serious. She pulls back from him, but turns. She readjusts herself so that she can sit and still see him. The fire throws heat at her side and she tucks her hands into her lap.
“I don’t want to leave you,” she tells him.
His mouth curls slightly. He shakes his head. “I know,” he says.
“No,” she murmurs. “I don’t think you do.”
For the first time, in a very long time, she feels herself pull at these feelings; old and new, they seem completely at ease at climbing to the surface. She studies her hands for a moment.
“I need you too. Part of it is that you’re my best friend, that you’re going to know things about me that no one else knows, that I’ll be able to tell you things that I can’t tell anyone else. It’s all part of it, you know. But part of it too goes beyond that -” she swallows and smiles a little to herself. “I reckon I’m not making any sort of sense, right?”
“No,” he says softly. “I understand.”
She looks up and he shrugs. There’s no smile and maybe, had this been a completely different moment of time, there might’ve been. They might’ve been able to sit much, much closer.
She doesn’t wait for him to move.
Her hands frame his face and she watches him, still serious, still quiet and even waiting, maybe. This isn’t his move to make though and she finds herself leaning closer. Her lips touch his forehead first, lingering as he laughs softly. She can’t imagine him smiling.
But she draws back too, instead, just to look at him again. His eyes are dark and it’s easy to let herself assume that he’s not entirely here. Not here, not now, and Hermione lets her mouth brush over his. Her eyes are open and her lips open lightly; they are dry and cracked and Harry’s taste slightly like ash. It brings the odd memory back of early and then he starts to lean into her.
It doesn’t matter who deepens the kiss. She lets her fingers slide over his cheek and her tongue brushes into his mouth. He makes this sound, low and maybe desperate and she sighs too, back and into his mouth. There’s no taste but warmth and then there’s Harry’s fingers in her hair, pulling her closer to him.
They twist awkwardly and then she feels herself sliding back into the ground, over dirt as the blanket pulls at her legs. He isn’t on top of her but flanks her side as she digs her fingers into his jacket. The kiss becomes heavier and Harry’s mouth stick as he draws his teeth over her lip. When he bites, she gasps and her hip presses up against his.
“We should -” he’s breathing heavily into her, panting almost. He only pulls back so she can see his eyes and it’s then, there she realizes her heart is racing. “I should - check on the area,” he manages.
“Yeah,” she nods. “I - yeah.”
Harry scrambles off her then, too quick to really let her react. He grabs her by the arm too, helping her up and to her feet. The blanket drops between them on the ground. There is dirt in Hermione’s hair, a few leaves, but doesn’t try to pull it out.
They watch each other, and maybe, just maybe there is something else to be said, something larger, something stronger; the words aren’t there yet but Hermione doesn’t know how to touch them quite yet. Her fingers ache and she thinks back, briefly to earlier, but it just seems too easy to stop here and let everything else just be.
She nods, then. Harry looks away first.
The bed is hard. There is a candle on a small table, but the back the tent and she watches quietly, listening to the sounds outside and in the woods. Harry’s still outside too with the wand. She’s barely had time to even process that, she thinks.
Turning on her side, Hermione pulls at her bag. She slides her hand inside, rummaging through the books and the clothes. Her nails catch on one of Harry’s jumpers and tries to remember whether she needs to do another cleaning spell.
She pulls out a photo though, folded, and then drops back onto the bed. Her lips purse and she lets out a small, muffled laugh. It feels odd, she remembers, all of this. Rest, Harry had told her. There is still dirt in her hair and it feels exceedingly impossible to think of anything else.
Hermione opens the photo.
It’s her mum, her dad, frozen in some simple moment. She was sixteen and it was the top of the summer, a holiday that they had to put off until Hermione came home for a few weeks. She remembers laughing, remembers her father keeping them up into the late hours of the night, trying to catch a film that he hadn’t seen since university.
“I miss you,” she says out loud. Her voice is soft and even. “I really miss you, mum and dad.”
It sounds so far away, all of the sudden, as if she had already completely separated herself from her life, at home. There’s so much, really, that she doesn’t know how to share, that she doesn’t even know if she wants to share with anyone here.
“I think it’s best,” she murmurs. Her fingers brush against the photo. “ - if you stay there … I suppose you’d understand if I had told you. I don’t know. I don’t regret it.”
She stops and listens. She can hear the trees rustle, outside. They catch the candlelight at the end of the bed, the branches as the spread against the canvas and flank her from the outside.
“You might even be angry at me,” she adds. Her fingers tremble against the photo, over her mum’s face, smiling. She watches them, pausing as they flex and move entirely on their own. Her nails scrape then, over the edge as she catches the photo into a fold. It’s the curse, she thinks and then waits for that sensation of apologies. Nothing rises, nothing falls; it’s an uneasy feeling, as if she were separating from herself in this quiet moment. Perhaps it would be different if Harry were here. Her fingers don’t even move to her mouth.
There is a thought though, again or maybe it’s been waiting; the curse was easy. The curse fell from her almost passively, naturally and without any sort of change or denial. It makes Hermione sit up and look around, out into the empty tent. She doesn’t hear anything. She begins to wonder if she’s lost her mind.
Suddenly, everything seems so entirely still.
Her fingers pull into a fist. The photo settles, alone in the bed.
Her wand is at her feet.
Outside, Harry watches.
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when we were young (and ageless)
harry potter ; harry/hermione ; 3,307 words ; unrated
they say it’s just that simple. nobody comes and asks them: if the kids are just alright. spoilers for the deathly hallows. au.
-
4
When morning hits, there is nothing but ash. It clutters the small stone road into the village. There are houses and half-houses that line the fence; a roof stops and sinks inside one of the houses, moaning as they start to walk closer to the entrance.
“This is not a good idea,” Hermione whispers. There is a sign that dangles over their heads as they pass, underneath and into the village. It might’ve said >welcome, but the name is long since gone.
“Keep walking,” Harry tells her.
They waited through the night. The screams were patient: it was one, two, three and four, sometimes a name, sometimes the high, pitch laughter that weaves her stomach into knots. She closest to Harry and thought of her parents, of the Weasleys, of all their friends and tried to keep her eyes closed as tight as she could.
“What are we looking for?” she asks. Without thinking, she curls her hand in Harry’s arm. They are both wandless; they sit at the bottom of her bag, next to her books and what’s left of the bandages she has.
“I don’t know,” Harry says.
“Harry -”
“I don’t know,” he breathes angrily. He pulls her closer and she almost trips. They listen to another house start to fall apart, from within. Wood, she decides, sounds exactly like bones. It’s a crack and it’s here and there, eerie and almost too eager. She tries not to think about it.
They pass another house and then another, come to stand along a row of shops. There is a body in the middle of the road, spread and tied to what looks to be like an iron plan. Hermione stops, even as Harry tries to tug her forward. Her eyes are wide and her heart starts to race.
Her hand pulls away from Harry’s arm and she walks slowly, carefully to the body. She isn’t thinking about moving anymore. When she kneels by it, nothing but the dirt stirs, staining her at the knees. Her fingers brush against it - the man, she thinks. It’s a man, no older than her father, perhaps even Remus. His eyes are open and glassy, his mouth stretched quietly into the strangest of smiles.
“Hermione,” Harry says from behind her.
“He’s smiling,” she murmurs.
“Hermione.”
“Don’t you think it’s rather odd?” she asks. “The man is smiling and he’s dead. We both know why he’s dead, Harry. I’ve never - I don’t know what to even think anymore.”
She feels Harry’s hand over her shoulder, closing tightly into it. His fingers dig into her coat. It’s getting warmer, suddenly, but it’s been such a long time since either of them have paid attention.
“We should go,” Harry says quietly. There is urgency in his voice and she picks up on it, maybe too easily. But she can’t bring herself to move and when she leans over the body, her hands brush the man’s eyes close. Behind her Harry lets out a shaky sigh.
“He’s the only one here.” Her hand reaches back for Harry’s. It covers his as she stands and when she turns to face him, she squeezes it, prying it away from her gently. “I just thought - he’s the only here Harry, that we see, and it’s only proper, I suppose.”
“You’re not making any sense,” he murmurs.
“I would want someone to stop for me.”
She says it and it pulls at everything inside of her - every fear, every impossible worry that she’s been trying to keep to herself as much as possible. She doesn’t give anything away though; her expression is drawn into seriousness as still as she keep it.
“It’s not impossible,” she says, looking down, then up again. Her hair falls into her eyes and she tries to shrug. “I just thought - I would want someone to stop for me.”
Harry looks at her funny, maybe even with some expectations. His mouth quirks and then he shakes his head, rubbing his eyes. He takes a step forward and then another, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. He draws her into him and she lets him, her head dropping against his shoulder. She can feel his mouth move into her hair and then listens to his sigh; there’s still a little of uncertainty, and of awkwardness, it’s still them and yet, it’s been the two of them out here, alone and trying to make some sense of it.
“Let’s go,” he says finally. He makes a fist around her jacket sleeve and tugs her forward, away from the man. Her heels drag a little and then she starts to walk too, leaning back into him.
They’re quiet as they walk through the village. Hermione tries to keep her focus straight ahead; there is no other way around this village, a few miles off and they’ll hit the water again, and stretch of cliffs that will swallow you up if you’re there for long.
It’s getting colder, she thinks. She feels her mouth move, but there’s no apparent sound. Against her, Harry manages a nod. They come to the edge of the shops and Hermione tries not to listen to the glass that seem to pile underneath their boots instead of stone and dirt.
Then there’s a laugh.
(They had a conversation, not a real one but one nonetheless, the night before, one Hermione chooses to accept but not remember. Harry, slumped against a tree, watched with a heavy gaze as the dark mark, slowly, thoughtfully, climbed into the sky. The village was on fire and Hermione watched horror-stricken, swallowing her urge to throw-up and sob.
“I reckon this is it,” Harry said. He stayed behind her and she could not bare to turn around. Her eyes were burning and she was shaking, still listening. “He wants me, and it’s going to be me ‘n him facing off, you know? There’s nothing I can do about it, nothing you can do about it, nothing Dumbledore could do about it and nothing my own mum could do. I bloody get it. I finally bloody get it. I guess this what everyone was waiting for.”
“Shut up,” she said quietly.
But he managed to keep talking, completely and suddenly unaware of her presence. It was then that Hermione turned around, not quite to face him, but not quite to look away.
“ - I dunno, Hermione, I mean, I shouldn’t be okay with it but then everybody’s here and depending on me -”
“Shut up,” she snarled, her hands curled into fists. Her nails dug deeply into her palm and she cannot be too loud. They did not know who was close and who was watching.
And Harry had stopped, not for her, but the loud cheer that erupted from the village. Someone was weeping close by, somewhere in front of them in the trees, but Hermione did not look. It wasn’t important then.)
They run. Harry first, Hermione after; she catches up and passes him, her legs somewhere feeling inexplicably long. The glass and dirt crunch and snap and she leads, weaving them through a row of houses back into the other end of the village. There is a cry:
“Crucio!”
Hermione stumbles and there is a flashes of green that flies by her head. She falls to her knees and Harry is at her side, grabbing at her arm, trying to get her to stand again.
“Come on,” he breathes, “come on!” And from behind him, over his shoulder, the Death Eater stands.
She cannot tell who it is, man or woman or even someone they simply went to school with. It doesn’t even matter; they’ve been spotted, not recognized and that there is even more dangerous. She looks up at Harry and for a split second, she considers hiding him and charging forward.
“Hermione,” Harry pulls at her arm. But there is something in her that cannot move and as the Death Eater gets closer, she can see the figure clearly now. Gone is an trace of a face; half wears a broken mask, the other exposes a face of scars, skin pulled from the mouth, the nose, and behind the ear. She is horrified, but caught, there memories, too many memories of what happened to her in the Ministry and then, alone in Malfoy Manor. Her eyes flash and somehow, she cannot feel herself shaking.
The Death Eater raises a wand. Hermione reacts.
She doesn’t remember pulling out her wand. It’s in her hand and she throws herself forward, right in front of Harry, throwing her hand out to curse the Death Eater. She is calm, maybe too calm, and a tremendous sense of awareness settles over her.
From her wand, a dark, violent light throws itself towards the figure. It hits the Death Eater at the shoulder, spreading across the figure’s chest and then the hip. There is a low, thick cry, raw like some kind of animal. It makes her shudder and step back, pressing into Harry as they watch the Death Eater fall back into the ground.
There’s no sound. The body twitches. The arms fly up and down, the fingers casting themselves over some glass. She guesses glass by the way the light hits everything. There’s a whimper too, but neither Hermione nor Harry move forward to see.
Her hand is calm. “Let’s go,” Harry says softly.
They don’t look back.
They don’t talk for miles.
Hermione walks ahead.
“Dolohov,” she says finally. They’ve stopped again, back in the woods, closer to the cliffs than either of them intended to. Someone will be looking for them now, she guesses.
Harry stares at her, poking at the fire he’s made outside of the tent. They sit together, side by side, mostly so that neither of them have to look at each other yet. She fidgets though. Then she sighs.
“I looked it up,” she admits, “after we were in the Ministry with the others. I wanted to know. I didn’t think I could do it.”
“M’not judging you,” Harry murmurs.
Hermione barks a laugh. She shakes her head. Her legs curl underneath her and she adjusts a blanket over her knees. There is a bed inside that neither of them have used yet. She can’t remember the last time she has really wanted to go and sleep.
“It’s all right.”
Harry pokes the fire again. He has his hand wrapped around a large branch they found by the water while they were setting their protection spells. He looks at her and smiles sadly.
“It’s not,” he says. “None of this is.”
“We are past that point,” she mumbles, shaking her head.
“I know - I thought, I guess, that you and I and Ron would be well into our seventh year by now. Christmas at the Burrow would be over, we’d be back, and I’d be worried about kissing Gin and winning the Cup.”
Her heart twists a little. It’s funny, really, thinking about it; they were never meant to be kids, she wants to say. She doesn’t want to take that away from him either. She knows that he’s always known. He just won’t say it out loud. This is Harry, after all.
“And now?” she asks softly.
He looks at her and then leans into her, kissing her forehead without the slightest of hesitation. She sort of freezes anyway. Her hand rises to curl around his arm and she finds herself leaning into him.
“Now,” he says, “I feel a little too old to be thinking about the Cup and kissing Ron’s sister. I feel like in another world, another time had I just been Harry Potter, just a normal boy with parents - maybe Ginny and I would made some kind of absolute sense. I don’t know how to believe in absolutes anymore, Hermione.”
It breaks her heart, hearing him this way. She brushes her fingers against his face, and then against his jaw, not even trying to think about it.
“We’re all worse for wear,” she says quietly.
“You’re still here,” he says, and it’s not about curses, it’s not about the days that have already gone by, what they’ve missed and what they still need to do. She can feel it, feel something, and it’s somehow sensible and remarkable all at the same time.
“I’ve changed too.”
He nods. “I know.”
She smiles wistfully. “I wish too, you know, that we could back at school with the others, that Ron hadn’t left - there’s some sort of feeling that comes with the three of us, a whole us against the rest of the world, you know? And I can’t help but wonder too, had it not been now what would happen when we’re older - would we still be us, are we really going to get any better? And then, I think about you and I -”
She stops, growing serious. She pulls back from him, but turns. She readjusts herself so that she can sit and still see him. The fire throws heat at her side and she tucks her hands into her lap.
“I don’t want to leave you,” she tells him.
His mouth curls slightly. He shakes his head. “I know,” he says.
“No,” she murmurs. “I don’t think you do.”
For the first time, in a very long time, she feels herself pull at these feelings; old and new, they seem completely at ease at climbing to the surface. She studies her hands for a moment.
“I need you too. Part of it is that you’re my best friend, that you’re going to know things about me that no one else knows, that I’ll be able to tell you things that I can’t tell anyone else. It’s all part of it, you know. But part of it too goes beyond that -” she swallows and smiles a little to herself. “I reckon I’m not making any sort of sense, right?”
“No,” he says softly. “I understand.”
She looks up and he shrugs. There’s no smile and maybe, had this been a completely different moment of time, there might’ve been. They might’ve been able to sit much, much closer.
She doesn’t wait for him to move.
Her hands frame his face and she watches him, still serious, still quiet and even waiting, maybe. This isn’t his move to make though and she finds herself leaning closer. Her lips touch his forehead first, lingering as he laughs softly. She can’t imagine him smiling.
But she draws back too, instead, just to look at him again. His eyes are dark and it’s easy to let herself assume that he’s not entirely here. Not here, not now, and Hermione lets her mouth brush over his. Her eyes are open and her lips open lightly; they are dry and cracked and Harry’s taste slightly like ash. It brings the odd memory back of early and then he starts to lean into her.
It doesn’t matter who deepens the kiss. She lets her fingers slide over his cheek and her tongue brushes into his mouth. He makes this sound, low and maybe desperate and she sighs too, back and into his mouth. There’s no taste but warmth and then there’s Harry’s fingers in her hair, pulling her closer to him.
They twist awkwardly and then she feels herself sliding back into the ground, over dirt as the blanket pulls at her legs. He isn’t on top of her but flanks her side as she digs her fingers into his jacket. The kiss becomes heavier and Harry’s mouth stick as he draws his teeth over her lip. When he bites, she gasps and her hip presses up against his.
“We should -” he’s breathing heavily into her, panting almost. He only pulls back so she can see his eyes and it’s then, there she realizes her heart is racing. “I should - check on the area,” he manages.
“Yeah,” she nods. “I - yeah.”
Harry scrambles off her then, too quick to really let her react. He grabs her by the arm too, helping her up and to her feet. The blanket drops between them on the ground. There is dirt in Hermione’s hair, a few leaves, but doesn’t try to pull it out.
They watch each other, and maybe, just maybe there is something else to be said, something larger, something stronger; the words aren’t there yet but Hermione doesn’t know how to touch them quite yet. Her fingers ache and she thinks back, briefly to earlier, but it just seems too easy to stop here and let everything else just be.
She nods, then. Harry looks away first.
The bed is hard. There is a candle on a small table, but the back the tent and she watches quietly, listening to the sounds outside and in the woods. Harry’s still outside too with the wand. She’s barely had time to even process that, she thinks.
Turning on her side, Hermione pulls at her bag. She slides her hand inside, rummaging through the books and the clothes. Her nails catch on one of Harry’s jumpers and tries to remember whether she needs to do another cleaning spell.
She pulls out a photo though, folded, and then drops back onto the bed. Her lips purse and she lets out a small, muffled laugh. It feels odd, she remembers, all of this. Rest, Harry had told her. There is still dirt in her hair and it feels exceedingly impossible to think of anything else.
Hermione opens the photo.
It’s her mum, her dad, frozen in some simple moment. She was sixteen and it was the top of the summer, a holiday that they had to put off until Hermione came home for a few weeks. She remembers laughing, remembers her father keeping them up into the late hours of the night, trying to catch a film that he hadn’t seen since university.
“I miss you,” she says out loud. Her voice is soft and even. “I really miss you, mum and dad.”
It sounds so far away, all of the sudden, as if she had already completely separated herself from her life, at home. There’s so much, really, that she doesn’t know how to share, that she doesn’t even know if she wants to share with anyone here.
“I think it’s best,” she murmurs. Her fingers brush against the photo. “ - if you stay there … I suppose you’d understand if I had told you. I don’t know. I don’t regret it.”
She stops and listens. She can hear the trees rustle, outside. They catch the candlelight at the end of the bed, the branches as the spread against the canvas and flank her from the outside.
“You might even be angry at me,” she adds. Her fingers tremble against the photo, over her mum’s face, smiling. She watches them, pausing as they flex and move entirely on their own. Her nails scrape then, over the edge as she catches the photo into a fold. It’s the curse, she thinks and then waits for that sensation of apologies. Nothing rises, nothing falls; it’s an uneasy feeling, as if she were separating from herself in this quiet moment. Perhaps it would be different if Harry were here. Her fingers don’t even move to her mouth.
There is a thought though, again or maybe it’s been waiting; the curse was easy. The curse fell from her almost passively, naturally and without any sort of change or denial. It makes Hermione sit up and look around, out into the empty tent. She doesn’t hear anything. She begins to wonder if she’s lost her mind.
Suddenly, everything seems so entirely still.
Her fingers pull into a fist. The photo settles, alone in the bed.
Her wand is at her feet.
Outside, Harry watches.
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