When she's eleven, she steps through a barrier into another world, and at first, she's not sure it's any different than the world from which she came. The sight that greets her, after all, is hardly foreign. People cluster on a platform before a large, scarlet red train that billows smoke. It's nothing she hasn't seen before. There are many trains exactly like this one in Kings Cross Station, but the golden letters etched across the train's body that read THE HOGWARTS EXPRESS remind her that she knows nothing of this world, only what she's gleaned from the books her parents purchased for her.
As she's standing on the platform alone because the barrier separates her from her parents, she looks around her, wide brown eyes taking in the scene before her, her quick mind already hard at work processing everything.
Somehow, amidst the chaos, her eyes find his and warm, chocolate brown meet cold, slate grey. Their eyes meet for only a fleeting moment, but somehow she's struck by his eyes. His eyes, they're a beauty of the complex, indescribable sort. They swirl and shift and transition faster than even she can read them, and she's a fast reader so she's really sort of surprised. His eyes are a million different shades of grey, and she can't even begin to decipher all the different colors. They're so seamlessly intermixed that each shade seems to blend with another to form one color.
Their gazes separate, and the next time she sees him, he won't look at her with simple curiosity and wonder. A sneer will grace his features, a haughty smirk too, and he'll look at her as if she's less than him. She won't let herself believe for a second that he's right.
She steps onto the train, and immediately finds herself on the ground, crushed beneath the weight of another person. The young boy helps her up, and she notes his sweaty palms and nervous demeanor. His eyes, light brown, easily convey his fear. He's not so much of a mystery. He's scared and terrified, and he can't find his toad. She endeavors to help him, unaware that this will be the first in a long line of incidences in which she aids him. She's also unaware that the nervous little boy will grow into a strong and assured young man who will lead a rebellion during the darkest days of her time. She doesn't need to know that though. She's just content to be needed.
She helps Neville look for his toad, running and out of compartments, asking the passengers if they've seen a toad. In the process, she walks into their compartment.
She notices the boy with the messy red hair and freckles first. His eyes are blue, clear blue. She imagines that, if they were the water pools of a pond, she'd be able to see the plants and fish at the bottom. His eyes are clear.
He's just as transparent with a large grin and a smudge of dirt on the side of his face.
Frustration is clearly written on his face as he tries to change the color of his rat. She criticizes his attempts at magic, beginning their path toward enmity which unknown to her, will eventually fork to become a friendship of the most beautiful sort.
The other boy's eyes are green, his gaze obscured by broken and smudged glasses. The glasses don't fit him well and make his face look so much smaller and more youthful, but when she looks passed the too-big glasses and into eyes the color of emeralds, she sees tired worn eyes that look far too old to belong to an eleven-year-old boy.
She knows who he is, of course. She read about him in a book, and the lightning-bolt-shaped scar emblazoned across the center of his forehead, is a dead giveaway.
He's Harry Potter.
He's only eleven-years-old, yet the whole of this world, the world she's just become a part of, views him as its savior, its hero, a small wavering beacon of light that one October night pierced the darkness leaving the whole world awash in light and joy. She wondered how it felt, to mean so much to thousands of people across the world, most of whom you had never met. She could not fathom meaning so much to so many, being such a symbol of joy, salvation, light, and hope when the people she knew didn't even see her.
She was invisible.
He was the opposite.
From what she could understand, he was the most well-known person in the magical world, and she wasn't even sure he understood what that meant. She wasn't sure what it meant either.
She'd figure it out though. He'd figure it out too, and they would stand together, facing the world and all its evil. She'd never leave his side.
His eyes are dark and brooding, or so she hears.
She doesn't look at first. She's determined not to.
She won't be one of those girls, one of those mindless, tittering girls who can't take their eyes off him just because he's a celebrity.
Looking back, she's not sure how she managed to ignore him as long as she did.
In the months he spent at Hogwarts, his face graced the covers of a multitude of magazines. Girls fawned over him. Boys idolized him.
He's Viktor Krum. He's a phenomenally talented Quidditch player. He's a bold and daring seeker who would stop at nothing to catch a flying, fluttering gold ball. He's all anyone could talk about, and it's like, "Harry Potter, who?" It's almost like people forgot they attended school with the savior of the magical world.
Then, despite her best efforts, one cold rainy day in November as she sits snugly ensconced in books and words and stories, she notices him. She really, truly looks at him for the first time, and it's almost like she's a teenage girl.
She notices the strong line of his jaw, firmly set in an unsmiling expression. She notices the slight bump in his nose. She assumes he's been hit by one too many bludgers. She'd be right, but how's that surprising? She's Hermione Granger. His eyes are dark. They were right, but they don't seem too brood. They seem more pensive than anything. She'd think he has little to brood about. After all, he's one of the best-regarded Quidditch players of the age if she recalls what Ron's said correctly. He's wealthy, and he has the entire female population fawning after him. No, he doesn't have much to brood about.
"Excuse me," he says, "Could I borrow that book?"
His voice comes out strong and deep, a rumbling timbre that sends shivers running down her neck and sends butterflies fluttering in her stomach. She nearly kicks herself, because she promised herself she wouldn't be one of those girls, but she hands him the book anyways.
That night she dreams of twilight walks by the lake, quiet afternoons spent whispering and giggling in the library. Never once does she imagine herself hanging off his arm looking like a vision in blue silk.
Somehow, even as she experiences the most intense pain of her life, she notices his eyes.
Chocolate pools meets steel orbs once again.
It's different this time.
His eyes don't hold the usual condescension and mocking she'd expect. She is, after all, writhing in pain on the lush and presumably priceless carpet that pads the floor of his sitting room. He 's not wondering how they could let her inferior blood taint the floor. That look in his eyes is the same as the one she sees whenever she looks in a mirror, the same look that's been permanently etched onto Harry and Ron's faces, looks that people as young as them should have never had to wear.
He's scared. So fucking scared.
And it shakes something in her, shakes her to the core, because she realizes that they, their side, the Light, aren't the only ones suffering.
It's a fucking war, and it's not beautiful or glorious or anything like that. It's bloody and ugly and symbolic of everything that's wrong with the world.
Death, it's indiscriminate. People are dying on all sides, across all lines, and here are the Malfoys, prisoners in their own once-glorious home that's been taken over by Lord Voldemort and overrun by Death Eaters.
Then, his gaze slips away and falls to the ground. He doesn't make eye contact, and as a new wave of pain takes over, burning her nerves and running through every muscle in her body, and she forgets he's even there.
She doesn't know that she'll survive. She doesn't know that he'll survive. Heck, she doesn't know that any of them will survive this, but she holds on in the hopes that she might see the other side.
She pulls away, and his blue eyes are sparkling with excitement and happiness.
She almost forgets that their castle, their home, is about to come tumbling down around their feet.
She almost forgets that theirs more than him and her.
She almost forgets that they're in the middle of a war, in the middle of a battle, a battle destined to shape the future of their world for years to come.
She almost forgets that they have a job to do, that because of one lost toad and a troll and some unknown twists of fate, she's walked into a role requiring far more responsibility than most teenagers can dream of.
The screams fade out of her consciousness. She stops seeing the bright flashes of light as curses fly across the room, swiftly incapacitating their victims. She doesn't notice the falling bodies.
For some reason, in those moments, as selfish as it may seem, she forgets about everything but her and him and everything between them.
They step apart, smiles on their faces, something bright and promising fluttering in their hearts. She thinks they have a beautiful future ahead of them, and for a second, she sees herself with him. She sees them with a family and a home and the life little girls are supposed to dream of. It's beautiful.
She doesn't see it coming. She doesn't see that the pain of loss will tear them apart. She doesn't realize that this delicate and beautiful thing hanging between them will soon break.
It's over, almost as quickly as it had started.
She's alone, sitting under the shade of a tree on the shores of the lake.
Ron's with his family. Fred's gone. They need to mourn. Hermione can't intrude on that. She may be Ron's... well she's not sure what she is. She knows they're caught somewhere in the middle of that gap separating friends and something more. She's sure they'll work it out, but not right now. He needs to be with his family.
She's not sure where Harry is, but she knows he's okay, physically at least. She's not sure his emotional scars will ever heal. She hates that he feels responsible, hates that he thinks he's at fault for the deaths of all the people around them, because it's not true and he's saved so many more than he's "killed."
She sits there under the tree and looks at the sky, looks at the grey blanket of clouds covering the sky. She spots the smallest break in the clouds that allows a faded ray of light to struggle through the grey, the dark. The clouds are thick and heavy, the greys blending and mixing. She can't see the boundaries. The colors merge and form one.
Then her eyes fall on the castle, the only place she'd ever been able to really, truly call home. Entire towers have been decimated. The stone walls crumble. She knows for a fact that the halls have been singed and burned by raging fire. Centuries-old paintings, suits of armors, and other treasures will never be recovered. The dungeons under the lake have caved in. They're unrecognizable, simply masses of rubble.
The war's over now. Voldemort's gone, but the fight, the struggle, they're not done yet. They still have to rebuild the shattered pieces of their world, and she can't help but hope that everything will be better than it once was.
She's torn out of her reverie by the soft sound of footsteps on the soft green grass.
Her eyes meet his, and she searches for something in them. She's not sure what she's searching for so she doesn't find it, but she does sense the complete and utter devastation held in his eyes as they blaze the same color as stormy skies.
"I'm sorry," he says simply before walking away without another word, leaving her to stare at his retreating back.
She's not sure what he's apologizing for. He has so much to apologize for: Dumbledore, his torment, standing back and doing nothing. She's not sure what he's apologizing for.
She doesn't know, and yet, for reasons she can't explain, she forgives him, and it's as simple as that.
She's staring into his eyes, and she's never seen his usually hard and cold grey eyes look so soft. She's not sure how this could've happened, but she's not sure it matters.
All that matters is him, her, and this, whatever this thing between them is.
"I love you," he murmurs, and suddenly, it all becomes clear.
He leans over and plants a gentle kisses on her lips, and her eyes fall shut.
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Edited: 5/25/11; 8:28 EST