Prompt fic for Keira-House-MD the 350th reviewer of my WIP. Her prompt was:
The saddest word in the whole wide world is the word almost.
He was almost in love. She was almost good for him. She almost stopped him.
I. Hogwarts
Exams were over, and Hermione Granger had pinned her Head Girl badge to her robes for the last time. Hogwarts was awash in late June sunshine, turning the greens of the forest and the grass to their most vivid hues, dazzling off the lake.
They'd done it. She lay by the lake, watching her best friend Harry - laughing and carefree - as he chased his girlfriend Ginny Weasley to catch a snitch in a two-on-two game of Quidditch, Weasleys versus Potters. Harry's younger sister Rosie was only a fifth year but she was marking Ron pretty well.
"Happy?" Tom asked.
"Almost," Hermione replied, leaning back against him. "Half happy but – it's going to be so strange leaving. I'm scared."
He looked down at her, dark eyes distant.
"Scared?"
"Of the future… leaving here. We haven't talked about it much. Aren't you?"
"No," he said with that strange tone she didn't like, but he didn't elaborate. "Let's just enjoy today."
"Alright," she agreed, and he took her hand, his creamy skin looking pale against hers.
He was a still an enigma, this boy of hers. And he was hers, despite all the odds – the years of academic rivalry, the house tensions, his untouchable beauty, his life before Hogwarts, his reluctance to let anyone in. Even her, even now.
Despite the tests he'd set, tests she'd aced over and over before he'd accepted the inevitable, overwhelming thing between them.
He shared so little of himself, and like any mystery it made her yearn to solve him.
"You suit your name, you know," she said.
He stiffened.
"You think I suit the name Tom?"
"No, not – I mean it's yours, so yes, but no I meant your surname. You are a riddle I want to decipher. Unravel."
He smirked.
"It's better than Granger," he agreed and she rolled her eyes, punching his arm with her free hand. He leant down and captured her lips in a kiss, demanding and authoritative and questioning.
"Is everything alright?" she asked when he'd pulled away and left her breathless and dizzy with want for him. "You don't seem quite yourself."
He didn't reply; just lay back on the blanket spread out by the lake, its merry red tartan a bright splash against the grass. The only cloud in the sky scudded past the sun, casting a shadow over the forest.
"If I wanted to leave, now, would you come with me?" he asked.
"Leave Hogwarts?" she deflected, rolling onto her stomach to look at him properly, confused.
"No. Britain. The expected route. Convention."
"Maybe," she said. "I'm not sure. I don't really like hypothetical questions. What are you asking?"
His eyes were intense now, and sharply focused on her, hungry and assessing.
"I'm asking you if you're in love with me, I suppose. Isn't that what you Gryffindors believe? Recklessly abandoning everything for love?"
"You've told me before you don't believe in love," she said.
"You are so busy being yourself, Hermione, I think you underestimate how extraordinary you are. Perhaps you've taught the loveless abandoned boy how to love after all."
"Yes," she said. "If that were true, then I would come. But it's not, at least not yet. And I might be a Gryffindor but I don't think I've ever really been reckless."
"Come here," he said, pulling her against him possessively, earnestly, and she wondered at the strange effect this day was having on him, at his unreadable mood.
"If you're going somewhere," she said, "would you stay? If I asked?"
"Maybe," he said. "For a while at least. You are… tempting. And you are mine."
.
.
.
"Are you ready?" Ginny called from the dorm next door.
"Almost," Hermione answered, staring at her reflection. The red dress floated down over the slender body, high at the front dipping down in a low v-shape at the back. It a daring dress, a dress she'd have never worn before she'd seen herself reflected in him, seen her own capacity for beauty and grace.
It was emergency red, fire-engines and flashing lights and alarms and it was the colour of growing up and endings and love and desire.
"Wow," Ginny said from the doorway. "Tom's going to have a heart attack and jinx all the other boys not to look at you."
Hermione rolled her eyes.
"Not this again."
"Sory. I was only teasing. He is, however, waiting outside the Common Room."
He hated waiting. She hoped it hadn't made him grumpy. Tonight – their very last in the castle, the night of the Leavers' Ball – tonight had to be perfect. She turned to admire Ginny, who'd clashed aubergine purple robes with her flaming hair to amazing affect, looking quite glorious.
"You look so beautiful Gin. I'm just – I'm so sad, you know?"
"You're not the one being left behind," her friend pointed out. "So stop feeling so sorry for yourself and go and find your boyfriend."
.
.
Tom's eyes darkened to an impossible midnight blue-black as his eyes swept over her, and then his ruthless mouth was against hers, pressing his body against her, the sharp jut of his hips, the unrelenting hardness of his body making her dizzy and weak with longing.
"Later," she gasped. "We've got to go and open the ball you prat."
"I'd rather skip it," he muttered, leaning his forehead against hers. "I don't feel particularly inclined to share you in that dress."
"You could use a little work on your compliments," she teased. "Have you ruined my hair?"
"No," he assured her. "You look exquisite. Come on then, let's go and be the perfect Head couple one last time."
It was a strange choice of phrase, but she didn't pick him up on it. After all, they were the picture-perfect postcard romance of the year. The top students, Head Boy and Girl, Gryffindor and Slytherin – the whole school watched their romance, the teachers smiling fondly – even the Headmaster had seemed pleased. Tom, she'd learned, gradually, eventually, was (despite his charming and sociable front and occasional propensity for the dramatic) intensely private.
They walked down the stairs into the Entrance Hall, her hand resting lightly on his arm, and she saw the upturned faces admiring and envious and she could see the truth in his words. This part was play-acting; a public face for a school where there were eyes everywhere.
It was nothing to do with the complicated chess games of their relationship, the wanting and the lonely tears and the desperation for someone who'd never been shown a scrap of affection and had to learn from scratch how to give it. This was nothing to do with the screaming fights and cold silences and the days when he seemed a thousand worlds away, or the days when he was too much there, demanding and present and all-consuming. Or those rare and perfect days when she could see the warmth was there, the days when his touch was gentle and his eyes soft and she knew she wasn't mad – despite what her friends had told her, later apologised for and renounced – for believing that this was something real.
.
.
It was a perfect evening. The food was delicious, the Great Hall beautifully decorated, people's parents tripling the numbers so it didn't feel empty. Hers hadn't been able to come, and in truth she'd been relieved; it was easier to keep them separate than spend the evening answering their questions and looking after them.
Harry's were there though, and she'd given him her invite so his handsome Godfathers could come instead. They were recounting memories of their own days, Sirius and James egging each other on to tell stories that couldn't possibly be true, Remus laughing and joining in. Ron and his parents, whose looks of disapproval were dissipating with the wine, and Neville and his, who'd been at school with Harry's and worked with Sirius and James in the Auror office, made up the rest of the table.
Tom, who hadn't met any of them, before was relatively quiet during the meal, watching and listening, and charming Lily Potter and Molly Weasley and Alice Longbottom when expected, but he had his façade on.
She took his hand under the table when his jaw clenched as the adults reminisced about their own glory days.
At times like these her Muggle background felt starkly apparent, and she could only imagine how amplified that was for him. She knew he'd found his family, but all he'd said was they hadn't been interested.
How anyone could refuse their own child – especially a handsome, brilliant one – baffled Hermione and it made her ache all the more to compensate for the bleakness of his childhood.
"Alright?" she whispered.
"It's all so… Gryffindorish," he murmured back. "I'm actually looking forward to dancing."
Right on cue, Dumbledore stood and the Hall fell silent. His speech was short but poignant, and had more than one student in tears by the end.
"And with that, this year's Head Boy and Head Girl and the Prefects will open the dancing!"
She stood, nervously, and followed him down onto the floor as the seated parents and ex-students applauded – and some whistled and banged the tables – and the music started.
Once they were dancing, though, she felt utterly safe in his arms, and she forgot the watching people and let him lead her in the twirling, traditional dance. Gradually other people joined as the second song began, but Tom just held her closer, and they danced together until Sirius Black cut in, stealing her away for a dance and then it was endless – Professors and friends and even the Headmaster himself until her feet ached and she collapsed back down at the table.
Tom was talking to the Malfoys and Theo Nott, she saw, his face inscrutable and cool, and she wondered again at the strange lure he held for people who seemed to her eyes quite unpleasant. Draco Malfoy, she knew, had tried to bully Tom when they'd arrived at Hogwarts. But now he treated Tom with a sort of sycophantic awe that she knew both irritated and pleased her boyfriend.
At last, it was time for the final dance and Tom claimed her hand again, and held her tenderly, and she could feel the lag of the champagne and wine on her thoughts, and thought this is perfect, this is real.
"Don't leave," she whispered against his shoulder. His arms tightened around her, but he didn't reply.
I love you, she thought. But she didn't say it.
.
II. Summer
.
They found a flat, a few streets away from Diagon Alley and moved in together. She took her job at the Ministry, in the Department of Magical Creatures, and he began an apprenticeship with a curse-breaker.
She told herself she wasn't jealous of his job, which seemed more glamorous and exciting than hers.
"What you're doing is worthwhile," he told her on the days when she got so bored of endless filing and the subtle prejudice against her heritage. "And it's not forever. But I fear they will see your birth before they see you. Make them understand."
And then he'd recount some of the amazing things he'd seen that day, of the extraordinary magic he learned and she –
She wondered if the life she'd planned was actually going to suit her.
"Just leave," he said in September, when he found her crying because yet again her proposals had been laughed at. "We'll find another way. Everything in this world rests on the power of a name, so make them know you. Make yourself so they can't not listen."
.
.
He started to travel more and more, shooting to prominence in his field more quickly than even she'd believed possible, she who respected and knew him better than anyone. He went to Egypt and all over North Africa and he wrote letters saying Today in the tomb of xx I found this and that and it sounded amazing.
But sometimes when he was there it felt like he wasn't, quite. He was obsessively researching something he wouldn't share with her.
They began to fight.
He told her she was limiting herself. That she could be so much more. That she was majestic, and stop being scared and make them see.
She told him some of the things he says about power are immoral. That his absence when he was away was hard enough but his absence when he's presence is becoming unbearable.
That she wasn't sure she knew him any more. That he was a hard man to love.
But she stayed.
.
III. Autumn
.
One day they fired her. Well – they not fired her, exactly. Budget cuts, they explained. Her work was too controversial.
She nodded coldly and walked out, finally understanding what Tom had been telling her.
You let them underestimate you. Make them see.
He was away, again, and she spent two days sitting in their flat thinking about her options, her anger cold and seething and dangerous.
When he came home he took one look at her and said, "Did they - ?"
"Yes," she said. "Is it my blood? Or me?"
"It's not you. Don't be ridiculous. You know why."
"How did you know? You warned me. How did you know?"
"I was in Slytherin, Hermione. They didn't hesitate to teach me the 'correct order' of things early on." His voice was bitter with hatred and she wondered at it, at what they could have done.
And then, days later, she said, Alright. I'm ready. Let's go.
.
.
They traveled, learning and exploring and pushing at boundaries. Gradually, he unraveled more and more of himself to her. Of his early life, of the hideous cruelty of the Slytherin boys when they'd thought he was Muggleborn, of how he'd had to learn far more quickly than anyone else to defend himself, of finding out he was the Heir of Slytherin and the Chamber, of the great serpent nestled beneath Hogwarts, of taking the Slytherins down there and frightening them into complete submission.
They stood eyes clamped shut, the basilisk's breath on their faces…
He told her how he'd hated Muggles and all they stood for, believed in their unworthiness, except she'd continually proved wrong what smarmy idiots like Nott and Malfoy said behind closed doors. He told her, whispering as they lay with winds from the desert blowing over their bare skin, how he'd hated her for that, and gradually, eventually, grown to admire her for it. For her guts in standing up to the world they'd both been thrust into, ignorant and unknowing.
.
You are my only equal, he said once. I thought I would rule alone but you – you make me better. You are logical in ways I am not. together… Together I truly believe we could do anything.
And being with him, opened up to her, was raw and glorious and he was more than she'd ever thought – more ambitious and more talented and hungrier and she ripped him open until there was nothing left to hide and –
And he said, You are magnificent. Show me again.
And she was swept away in the majesty of his plans, of him, of everything they saw and learned about.
.
Being with you, he said, is the only thing that's ever made me feel alive. We will be immortal.
And she laughed and quoted, Is there no change of Death in Paradise? Does ripe fruit never fall? And she said, I don't want to be immortal - it stops you living.
They would learn and learn and one day they would go back, glorious and powerful and no one would dismiss her. Never again.
Do you love me? She asked once, when he was nearly asleep.
Almost, he muttered, and it was enough.
.
She learned dark magic as well as light; power is about balance, she told him when he looked surprised. But she never used it. She wanted to be prepared against it.
(Just in case).
.
And one day when they were sitting having coffee in Turkey he said, "I killed my father and grandparents."
"But your uncle – in the papers?"
"I framed him."
His face was shuttered and blank and she - she stared.
"Why?" she asked, eventually.
"He deserved it. He abandoned my mother, abandoned me. He was… not a good person."
She nodded.
"Alright. I mean. It's not alright but – I don't know. Can you explain it a bit more?"
She wanted a justification.
She didn't leave. [It was too late, anyway. She'd been fucking a murderer for years now. And she, sort of, almost, understood.]
And she wasn't surprised. She's always wondered at his darkness, his raw and ruthless ambition, the ice of his anger, the length he could hold onto a betrayal before acting on it.
.
When he killed again, though, then she did leave.
No artifact is worth someone else's life. This is too far!
Am I not enough? He screamed, face twisted in fury.
Almost, she said, but no. The man you could be - he would be enough. You are enough, but you aren't you any more.
.
.
IV. Winter
.
.
Five grey years passed without him. He sent her things, never with a letter – little artifacts from different places, and every time she put a silver pin in the map on her wall. He was going north, slowly but surely. Down through Africa, up South America and from North America he'd crossed to Scandanavia.
She wondered what he'd find. Whether he'd killed again. But she knew his anger had dissipated; she'd known when the little bundle of dried herbs told her he was in Zimbabwe with a great n'anga they'd heard rumours of. And the lapis lazuli that said Chile, the cocaine (a joke, probably) from Bolivia, the feather from the Amazon, the little traces of him that she hoarded and kept and tried not to cry over.
He was almost perfect.
There was no one else. She tried, of course. She dated and dated, until it seemed pointless and worthless and she threw herself into her work.
She didn't make the same mistake again; the meek little Ministry clerk was long gone. Gringotts didn't have the same prejudices as the Ministry. She started there, leapfrogging rapidly up the ranks, building a reputation for being glamorous, well-traveled, brilliant, frighteningly efficient.
(Just frightening, some said).
After five years, he stopped sending her traces of him. Nothing came for a whole year.
People started to view her differently. They looked up when she entered a room, shut up when she talked in meetings, asked especially for her assistance. Six years after she left, she was the most well respected expert on wards in Britain, and called in to consult for the Ministry, traveled with the curse-breakers to tombs and ancient houses and –
It was almost enough.
.
V. Spring
.
And then the postcard came from a tiny Greek island. When she touched it his writing appeared.
You were right; there's a better way.
And then, days later, I love you.
She rejoiced. But she didn't go to him. She had made her life, she'd cracked this world open. She was Hermione Granger and they knew her name, respected her name.
Six months passed before she heard from him again.
A letter. The longest she'd ever had, filled with the stories of his travels, of what he'd learned, pages of intellectual explanations, and news of a chalice. A chalice that granted eternal youth.
A chalice he'd found.
But I have not drunk from it, Hermione, for I have learned that the beauty in this life is how temporary it is. And to live forever alone is no longer a goal I understand in myself. I have laid the demons of my past to rest; death will not conquer me.
I almost made a Horcrux. You remember what that is? More than once. But then I went to Japan and I learned an Ancient magic, one I have dismissed all my life and I saw you, saw what you have achieved and I saw that I was wrong, that there is a path to do the things we talked of, the wreak the changes our society needs. Together.
There is only one place left I want to visit. A village in Nepal.
My desire for absolute power has waned in these years, and now – you are the better strategist and your name is golden. You will wield the power, perhaps even become Minister, and I will be free to push at the boundaries of magic and make myself immortal in my great works. You told me once that greatness comes in balancing light and dark and together we are great. But I have learned that too, a hard lesson.
You are the cornerstone that keeps me balanced, you are like the earth and only in being rooted to you can I become the man I should be.
Come to Nepal, and meet me and we will travel together again for this last stretch. I am not a good man, Hermione. But I am yours.
Tom
She looked at the address he'd written underneath, and the time and date, and she wrote a letter, the first of its kind.
I am taking July off.
And then three weeks later the postcard he'd sent from Greece turned blank.
Just before she left, bag in hand, for the International Portkey Office, she wrote on it, I'm almost there.
This was tricky! I like to undermine clichés and the almost one is something that particularly interested me - after all, it's as hopeful a word as it is sad.
I hope you liked it.
And come and find me on Tumblr - cocoartistwrites. I love hearing from you all so much, it gives me life and inspires me so much.
Please review!