Love Like Winter

by empathapathique

He was her savior, a bloody angel with bloody hands, a soothing touch, and so much pain in his eyes that she ached with the need to protect him, take him into her body—protecting him with her own—and never let him go. DHr Not HBPcompliant.

Title: Love Like Winter

Author: Empath Apathique

Word Count: 6,316

Disclaimer: I'm not JKR, so no, I don't own Harry. Don't sue me.

Rating: R

Warnings: Angsty with sexual innuendos and dark tones abound.

Summary: He was her savior, a bloody angel with bloody hands, a soothing touch, and so much pain in his eyes that she ached with the need to protect him, take him into her body—protecting him with her own—and never let him go. Not HBP-compliant.

Author's Note: Written in response to the 'winter' challenge issued at dhrdarkhorse over at LJ. Credit to the AFI song for the title, and a big hug to luckei1 who listened to my groaning over this and made it wonderful, and to attica who, for once, did not have to resort to threats to remind me that I don't suck.

- - - - - - - - -

She always thought of him when it snowed. In her mind, they were one in the same. Cold and wet and constantly placed in a category that, perhaps, suited both, though could not attest to their individual beauty. Just as snow was one of those things that happened in winter, he was one of the reasons why people warded their homes and cringed whenever they heard the floorboards creak at night. These were dark times for the world, and he was simply one of those who made them darker.

But that wasn't what it was all about. Because, even though snow was just one of those things that happened in the winter, sometimes it snowed in the spring, too.

And now, though spring was right around the corner, frost was still in the air.

"Come on, Parvati. It's freezing out here!"

"I'm coming, Lavender."

"Well, get a move on it. You know how much I hate winter. All this cold air is drying out my skin."

Hermione listened to the exchange between the two women, her head titled to the side and a thoughtful expression on her face as she watched. The café waitress rushed outside, taking the movement of her head as indication that she needed something. Hermione shooed the woman away, assuring her that yes, her tea was fine and no, she would not like a table indoors. She was just fine outside, in the cold. She turned her attention back to the two across the street, standing in front of the display window of the local tailor. The taller, complaining, blonde—Lavender—was stamping her foot in a petulant manner, and the darker one—Parvati—was casting her evil looks. Parvati quickly wrapped up her conversation with the acquaintance who'd stopped her and marched down the street with her friend.

She marveled at how much they'd grown, how time had molded the girlhood cuteness the two had been born with and transformed it into the beauty they possessed now. They were easily recognizable, and Hermione wondered if she was as well. Both had been too distracted to look her way, but, if they had, would they have recognized her? Would they have blinked, and rubbed their eyes, thinking they were seeing things, placing a face and a name on some hapless stranger to whom it didn't belong? She wasn't the kind of beauty to attract attention for beauty's sake alone; she wasn't even beautiful. Not like them, anyway. Six years was a long time, but could she have truly been forgotten? Erased from the minds and memories of everyone she'd known and laughed with and loved? Like the snow and ice that settled into the land in winter but then, in spring, melted away? She'd said so before—spring was right around the corner. If she were truly as transitory as an icicle, or a snowflake, had she melted away like one too?

Hadn't they thought of her as they unpacked their things when they'd returned to Hogwarts for their fifth year of schooling and she hadn't been there? Hadn't they thought of her as they'd lain in their beds and whispered; as they said goodnight, realizing that there wasn't anyone around to shush them, or that there was one less somebody to say goodnight to?

She had known them, once, and they had known her. But perhaps they didn't want to know her anymore.

"Casualty of war," he had said. "No one wants to remember those they've lost unless they were important. People on the fringes are best forgotten. It's easier that way."

Was that it, then? Had he told her the truth that night so many lifetimes ago? She thought of him, a mixture of white and black and grey in her mind. She thought of the person—the boy and the man—that he was. Of course he'd told her the truth. He never lied. Not to her.

He told her everything exactly as it was, exactly as it had happened. And if she hated him, then well, she was just going to hate him. It wouldn't make him need her any less, or ever even consider letting her go.

She didn't hate him, though. Not anymore. She'd never wanted him to let her go, either. She didn't want to be alone. Besides, she'd come to terms with what he'd done to her baby, her beautiful blonde and blemished baby girl.

But who cared about all the wrong he'd done to her, to the world? He was his own kind of angel, her kind of angel. He'd saved her. However the price for her salvation had been far too high. She was still paying for it now; she would continue to pay every single day of her life. But to question the things one could not change was a sure sign of heading down the road to madness.

After years of torture and abuse, no matter how much she'd cried, pleaded, and prayed for it, insanity had not struck her yet; and now, Hermione did not wish it to any time in the near future. Some things in life did not make sense. She had accepted that. She embraced that. The only way she was able to live was if she believed that. Things in this world did not make sense. People, and their actions, did not make sense. One could only be thankful for what one had, hope for what one wanted, and lament briefly for what one lost. Excessive grief could lead to madness as well.

I.

The first year, while Harry and Ron were studying for O.W.L.s, she was being raped over and over again. She spent the year screaming, crying out for mercy from whichever god would hear her pleas; she was not saved. She hated everyone, including him. He was young and stupid and he watched as they abused her form. But she would later learn that he was waiting, too. Waiting for his chance—his turn—which they would never allow. Not yet. He was too young to sully himself with the likes of her, and they were too enthralled with the softness of her skin to share. Though, as he would learn, after it was too late, it was the waiting that would consequently lead to the incurable addiction that he would have for her—and only her—for the rest of his life, resulting in the ultimate sacrifice. Himself.

- - - - - - - -

There was a loud guffaw of laughter, and Hermione looked up from her tea when a group of men exited the door of the café. It was another former schoolmate—Terry Boot, she believed his name was; a Ravenclaw—and a few men she didn't know. She stared at Terry, willing him—with every fiber in her being—to look at her, to remember. He turned his head her way, his eyes catching hers for a second too long, allowing Hermione to hope, just for a moment, that someone remembered her. Then, one of his companions said something to him and he turned away as they all laughed again. Before Hermione knew it, they were walking away from her and out of her sight, just as Lavender and Parvati had moments before.

Hermione stared back down at her tea, tiny little cracks appearing in the brittle parts of her heart. What point was there in being alive if no one remembered you? There was no comfort in being remembered by a man who was dead.

"What about you, then?"

"What about me?"

But Terry Boot had looked at her. He'd looked at her. He had to know her, to remember her—even if it was just a little bit. Though, she'd been getting strange glances from lots of people on the street. It was freezing outside and yet she'd chosen to sit out on the front patio instead of inside the warm café and enjoy the heat. That was probably why Terry had looked at her, too. Because he thought that she was mad.

II.

She spent the second year screaming and crying just as with the first, only now praying for madness to relieve her of the harsh reality in which she lived. They'd had their fill of her body, and contented themselves with slowly killing her so no one ever would. He was still young and stupid; he still watched. Only now, she watched him, too. There was something different in his eyes—in his soul—from in all the others. Before long, her solitary purpose for living was simply to look into his eyes, to see the anger, outrage and longing that she saw within those picturesque grey orbs. Toward the end of that year, when the addiction that had taken root deep inside him caused the waiting to be too much for him to bear, he touched her. She let him touch her and, for a moment, for an hour, she was saved. It all went downhill from there.

- - - - - - - -

"Why didn't you forget me?"

Hermione Granger was the dirty little secret of the Second War. The girl school children whispered about in the halls, a real life tale of a real life girl who actually had been snatched away from her bed under the cover of the night. A scary story to tell all the frightened, unruly children so they would listen, learn. Propaganda for one cause or another, equally shocking and satisfying to both.

She was the poster girl for both causes. A face, a name; a reason to fight, for both the darkness and the light.

They dedicated their crusades to either her memory—which wasn't actually her memory; just the falsified image needed to rouse the public—or to her destruction, the fallacious impression represented by those of the light all the reason those who stood against them needed to rally the masses to their cause.

She was presumed dead by those who cared for her, fought for her. She was kept in the dungeons and basements and beds of those who hated her; who fought to eradicate all those like her from the face of the earth; an early, secret triumph of darkness over light.

But it was never a true memory—a remembrance—of her. It was just the half-truths of a dark time told by those standing on either the black side or the white side of the line. And, despite everything that had happened, she found herself standing somewhere in the middle, in the grey section where black and white seemed to mix into a dull shade of gray that, not surprisingly, reminded her of his eyes. And, not surprisingly either, she found herself there with him.

III.

The third year, they moved her; put her with him. He'd looked at her and she'd looked at him, and like the sun and the moon and the magic in her blood, it was there. The grey sky she saw in his eyes was a soothing balm to her soul. He touched her. It wasn't right, it wasn't wrong. They had a problem from the very beginning, from that time—that night—not so long ago. It was okay, though. He had promised it would be okay. Later, after she found out what happened to Perdita, she'd count this promise as his first lie. Only now she knew it wasn't, though. He never lied. Not to her.

- - - - - - - -

Hermione rose from her seat.

If no one remembered you, then were you alive at all? Did you exist? Could a life be measured in all the eyes that knew your eyes, knew your face? Was that really what it was all about?

It seemed like it. No one knew her, and she felt invisible, not even alive at all.

But she was alive. She had to be. He'd breathed, killed, and died so she could be alive. But what did breathing—seeing the little puffs of steam that your breath turned into before your face—really mean in terms of "being alive"? It was one of the most basic indications of life, however living in a world where no one knew you—could truly see you—didn't make you alive. It didn't even make you a ghost.

She began putting on her gloves, then checked her pocket to make sure that the tiny slip of paper was still there. It was. Hermione released the breath she hadn't been aware she was holding. She pushed in her seat, and the wretched server rushed outside into the cold again and asked her—again—if there was anything that she needed. Hermione declined and told the woman that she was leaving, all the while feeling rather perturbed by all the attention this woman who didn't know her at all was giving her. In a way, she supposed, it was sweet to find someone so kindhearted and caring. She was the nicest person Hermione had met in months.

It was everyone else in the world that bothered her.

"Take care, ma'am," the woman said to her.

"I will."

"They say there are still some of You-Know-Who's followers about," she said in a conspiratorial whisper, looking around to see if anyone had heard her. They were alone on the front patio.

Hermione nodded. "I'm aware."

"You shouldn't be traveling through these parts alone. It's getting late."

"I'll be certain to be careful. Thank you, again, for the service." She gave the woman what she hoped was a polite smile and turned away, trudging down the same path Lavender and Parvati and Terry had traveled before her. She put her hands in her pockets, the small, folded slip residing in her right pocket a comforting presence. For now, at least, it gave her purpose.

The sun was beginning to set, and she watched the shadows move in the dark alleyways between buildings.

Death Eaters.

She'd bet they would remember her.

Hermione didn't know much about what had happened during the War. She'd spent most of it locked in dungeons and basements and being abused. She knew that the Light won, though. He'd told her that with his dying breath. What she had learned about the War before then was gleaned from bits and pieces of conversations brought to her through floors and walls. Tales of Harry Potter and the Order and Death Eaters—Lucius Malfoy—on the run. She always paid special attention to the latter.

When it had first happened, in the third year, she'd viewed being moved to Malfoy Manor as the end of her life. She was certain—despite the way he looked at her and she looked at him—that she would die there. That Lucius Malfoy would chew her up, spit her out, and bury her body in the rose garden out back. She thought that perhaps he would help, too. Though Hermione had only once seen Lucius Malfoy during her stay at the Manor. It was when she was first brought in. He'd looked at her, and then at her slightly distended belly. He'd asked her who she'd been so stupid as to allow to lay with her without using a contraceptive charm. She didn't answer, and he'd smacked her once; twice; before throwing her into the dungeons. She heard his clipped tone through the floor as he gave out orders to his staff to prepare for his departure. The next time she awoke, she was in a bed, a warm body spooned behind hers. Looking back on it now, that night had sealed their fates. He'd told her, as he held her, that he would protect her. It was the moment he had decided he would not rest until he saw her free.

"Did you want me to? To forget you?"

"Tell me why."

"No."

IV.

The fourth year, she had been alone. He had to leave for school in the fall—"It's not fair! It's not fair!"—however he had left her with a promise and she'd held on to that. But Lucius Malfoy wasn't one for running, and soon, when he'd returned to England to fight, they'd moved her again. They had taken her away from him, from the heart—the soul—that he'd awoken within her with a touch to her cheek and the conviction that she was beautiful and human and deserved so much better than what she got. It'd been dark, and thoughts of him were a cold comfort. He wasn't aware of the move at first; he was furious when he found out. There was nothing he could do, though. He still managed to see her once, twice. He would always promise—"Next time, love, next time"—and she would always believe him. Until Perdita. Until they had told her what he'd done.

- - - - - - - -

The last time she saw her baby she'd had a head of blond fuzz, brown eyes and a red blemish on her cheek. The mark would be permanent; not that Hermione could know that then. She'd only spent a few moments with the child before Lucius Malfoy had snatched the baby out of her arms forever. He'd been there when it happened. There'd been shouting after his father had taken the baby, then, suddenly, nothing. She'd asked for the baby—for him—every day afterwards from the elder Malfoy, the only one she still saw. As the weeks passed and the bruise faded from his cheek, the elder finally took "pity" on her and told her what the other had done. He told her that the baby was dead, that his son—her lover, her angel; the one who'd saved her, was still saving her —had killed her.

But she didn't hate him. She couldn't. Not anymore.

Hermione took the slip of paper out of her pocket and looked at it. Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, it said. You'll be able to find it.

He'd given this to her before he died, too.

She checked the street sign of the corner she was standing on, and then asked a passing couple if she was traveling in the right direction. It was a quarter-mile north, she was told. She'd asked a man and a woman, the two dressed undoubtedly for a night on the town and certainly more than a little involved with each other. The woman curled her lip in revulsion at the mention of the street, asking Hermione, rhetorically, what she could possibly want there. The man gazed at her sympathetically and told her to take care. You couldn't miss Grimmauld Place, they told her; dirt, grime and shadows only a few of its identifying characteristics. Apparently, it wasn't a place where one exactly wanted to find themselves at night, either.

She began walking north, the paper that he'd given her pressed tightly within her palm.

Hermione didn't know what had made him change, why he'd killed the baby he'd sworn to protect with every beat of his heart. She remembered lying in bed with him, her tummy swollen with life and he lying beside her, his hands spread out against the expanse of her stomach as he whispered words of love and salvation against her skin. Whether his change was caused by his father or her was unknown to Hermione. It seemed to be the general consensus of the voices she heard through the floors and the walls that it was she. She spurned him, though. Showed him—with every word, touch, and kiss she bestowed onto him—that she hated him.

She wasn't the only one who was angry with him, it seemed. The voices all whispered and mocked him whenever he came around, spouting words of "bad seeds" and the lack of respect the younger generation displayed towards their elders. They spoke of insurrection and the new caution with which they stepped, the filthy dalliances young folks used to occupy their time sure to be the downfall of them all. For once, Hermione didn't care what they said about him. She was too busy crying, screaming and cursing him to the pits of hell for how he'd wronged her. He never admitted to what they said he'd done to Perdita, though he never denied it either. It was odd, because he was usually very straight forward with her, though she was familiar enough with him to recognize his blatant dismissal of her hysterical claims as a sign that she was stating something so obvious he needn't dignify her with a response.

Of course he still talked to her, touched her. He had too, needed too; and on some base, hellish level, she needed him to touch her, too. Even if his words hurt and she hated herself afterwards every single time, she needed it. Because pain, in whichever form it came, was always welcome. It stopped her from feeling numb. And she hated him a little more for that, too. It was because his stupid touch to her cheek and fucking conviction that she was beautiful and human and all the other shit that he'd told her, that she no longer wanted to feel numb. Because even after what he'd done to her baby, something within her still pushed on, refusing to give in.

She didn't want to die.

But it was a lie to say that she only allowed him into her arms because she wanted him to hurt her. All the years they'd spent with him watching her and she watching him had caused her to grow dependent on him. He was a murderer and a Death Eater, though that didn't change a thing. For, whenever she felt his heart beating under her cheek—felt his breath on her neck—nothing else mattered. She remembered everything and nothing at all, hated and loved him all at once. Sometimes, when he'd been gone for months, she would listen to the voices through the floors and through the walls and she'd hear about what he had done, people he had killed. Sometimes, she knew the people; others, she didn't. And she'd promise herself over and over again that she would never, ever let him touch her again.

She didn't keep her promises.

"Tell me."

"Why?"

When she saw him again, everything proceeded the same way—always. Her hateful words and his angry glare and then he would touch her and she would touch him and before she knew it she'd be sobbing in his arms as he pushed in, in, in to that special place that only he could reach. The special place that kept her pushing forward, from giving up. Just for him.

She could find out that he'd murdered Harry Potter with his bare hands, and still nothing would change. She'd take those same bloody hands—now stained with the blood of a boy she'd called her best friend—and hold them within her own, kiss each palm; cry out in pleasure when he shoved them into her core. They were beyond murder, beyond death. He'd killed her baby—their baby—and still they kept going. Because. Just because.

She didn't call it love. Honestly, Hermione didn't know what love was. She remembered the fanciful romances in the fairytales her mum would read to her as a girl, and the soft brush of her mother's finger against her forehead as she promised her that one day she'd find a man who'd love as all the kings loved their queens. She'd been young then, ignorant of all the agony the world could bring. Nonetheless, she was pretty sure that what they had wasn't the kind of love her mother had told her about They weren't a king and a queen on their thrones, or even the couple whom she'd asked for directions before. They were what they were. Neither he nor she had enough time on their hands to find the reason why.

One thing Hermione did know was that she needed him. Like breath, like mercy. He was her savior, a bloody angel with bloody hands, a soothing touch, and so much pain in his eyes that she ached with the need to protect him, take him into her body—protecting him with her own—and never let him go.

V.

In the fifth year, things had changed. They had moved her—again; again!—in an effort to get rid of her. Something had been happening in the world, and apparently it hadn't been good for the Dark Lord. She'd been in a new place, bleeding and broken from old wounds and new wounds as people—new people—beat her and raped her and killed her a little bit more. She hadn't screamed. She hadn't cried, or cried out. Not for God, not for him. But he had found her; he'd kept his promise. He'd taken her away.

- - - - - - - -

The night he'd rescued her from that godforsaken warehouse in Bucharest, she was so numb—so dead—that she'd hardly been able to make out his voice. When she was able to, all she recognized was his tone, the hard angry edge in his voice that she had never heard from him before. There'd been fighting, and blood, but before she knew it, she was in his arms. She hadn't hated him since.

When he realized that they'd been followed, he'd left her on the small, dark stoop of an abandoned store and told her to wait for him. As soon as she heard the scuffling traveling down the road—towards her—she ran. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she acknowledged that she should wait for him, because he'd kept his promise. She didn't look back.

After all, she was running away from him, too. From everything, herself included.

"Because I want to know. I want to know why you didn't forget."

A pause. "Because I couldn't."

Somehow, she managed to make her way out of Romania and into a backwater town in Hungary. She'd stayed there for awhile, lived with an older woman named Olga who'd taken her in when she'd found her unconscious in the street. She got a job at a local pub, played the role of the unfortunate amnesiac and tried to forget a world of magic and monsters where fifteen-year-old girls were kidnapped from their beds and held prisoner in the name of a cause that made absolutely no sense. She got a new name—Hajna, they called her—a new town, and a new language. It didn't help her to forget.

Only, he hadn't forgotten her, either. A promise was a promise, and he always kept his promises. He showed up at her job four months later.

He'd sat down at the bar and ordered a whiskey, not even bothering with a glamour for his hair and eyes. Hermione had fixed him the drink, then asked for a break; went out to the alley out back hoping that a breath of fresh air would dull the sound of her blood rushing in her ears and slow the staccato rhythm of her beating heart. He followed her, of course. Backed her up against the alley wall, a hand on either side of her head. He put his face to her neck and breathed in the smell of her skin. He bit her, kissed her.

Hermione touched her neck, to the very spot where his lips had touched that night. She'd never been more frightened in her life. Not even the night when they'd first taken her had she been so afraid. Nevertheless, she she'd never wanted him to hold her more in her life than in that moment, either.

He brought her down in so many ways, though lifted her up in so many more. Be it love or something else, it was something that she couldn't live without, an intolerable ache pulsing from her head to her loins when he wasn't near.

He had promised, over and over again, to never let her go. In the end, she promised to never allow him to let it happen.

VI.

The sixth year, he died.

- - - - - - -

She hadn't seen him much after he'd rescued her. He'd taken her to this tiny little cabin in the middle of nowhere and left her, went to go fight in the War. He returned every so often, usually every two months, and usually half-dead. He told her things, little things. She listened, of course, though she hardly wanted to hear the tales of his battles.

She'd asked him, once, when he would let her go. He hadn't responded at first. He hadn't even looked at her. Though that night, as she drowsed and he stroked her hair, he told her that he would. He told her, "soon." He told her, almost teasingly, that she should go see Harry Potter when he did.

Odd, Hermione thought. She'd assumed he'd been joking when he said it; but the paper in her pocket screamed otherwise.

Only the first five letters appeared on the street sign for Grimmauld Place. The rest were ruined by either rust damage or something else Hermione didn't care to know.

Hermione stood at the corner and looked down the street. It was dark, cold, and decrepit. She didn't take another step.

"Why not?"

Why was she doing this, anyway? Because he had told her to? She was free; she didn't have to do a thing he or anyone else said ever again. Finally, after years of cringing in fear at every sound, voice, and touch, after missing out on so much of her life, after losing her family, she was free. Why was she listening to the dead Death Eater son of another dead Death Eater? This was her time, her life. He was dead and she was alive and God, it'd happened months ago. Why did it still hurt?

"You know why."

Hermione felt a crippling pain in her chest, one far greater than that caused by any torture those wretched people could inflict onto her, or that of her old friends from her old school not remembering whom she was. She put a hand to her chest and breathed, deep, hard, and raw, tears springing to her eyes as she felt all of the grief swirling within her as it continued to throb in a painful, unsteady rhythm.

Christ, she missed him. Every single moment, she missed him. With every single step, thought, and breath, she missed him. She felt like she would die if she never felt his skin beneath hers again.

She wasn't dying though. She wanted to—God, how she wanted to sometimes—but it wasn't happening now. And you know, that was the most surprising thing about it all. Even after he'd died, that place deep inside of her—that place that only he could touch—was still pushing her forward, not allowing her to give up.

Unbidden, twin tears fell from her eyes, making twin tracts down her cold, numb cheeks. She titled her face towards the dark, grey sky and watched for a moment as snow slowly made its way down to the earth. She closed her eyes as the wet flurries fell onto her cheeks. He'd done this once; lain spread eagle in the snow with his face to the heavens and his back to hell. A mixture of rain and hail had been falling then, beating and washing him of sin. Red had colored the ground beneath him in a growing arc, blood smears fading from his cheeks; his hair losing the rusty brown color his blood had tinted it with and returning to the muted blond for which he was so well known. He'd been dying then, the how and why unknown.

Hermione had stood at the window of the cabin where he'd put her and watched. The tick, tock, tick of the clock behind her was an incessant reminder of how long he'd lain there without moving. It'd been nearly four months since she'd seen him last, and a part of her was afraid that he wasn't real, that he was simply another one of her imaginings brought on by too many nights spent alone. But, finally, he moved, coughed, a trickle of blood dripping from one corner of his lips and down the side of his face. She'd gone to him then, tried to save him with everything and nothing that she had.

"Is it love, then?"

Hermione began making her way down the street, her pace slow and measured. He'd died that night, pure and white in a circle of his own blood on the snow that always reminded her of him. Never had he looked more like a fallen angel to her as he had in that moment, dead and bleeding though somehow pure, somehow cleansed.

He'd known that he was dying, had gone to her because he was. With one hand, he'd managed to reach into his robes and pull out his wand. He gave it to her. With the other, he pulled out the tiny slip of paper she was currently crushing in her palm. He hadn't said much, just looked at her with the same pained look she'd always managed to see in the grey sky of his eyes and she'd cried for him, over him, and prayed for just one chance to protect him as she pleased. To save his life as he had saved hers.

He died not twenty minutes after he'd arrived.

Number Twelve Grimmauld Place was just as beaten up as the rest of the houses on the street. Hermione raised her hand—trembling and shaking as it was—to the worn wood of the door and knocked. At first she heard nothing, and she shut her eyes and cringed, something within her furling into a painful knot. She shouldn't have come here, she told herself. She shouldn't have come. She was so stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

She didn't care about a stupid place pushing her fucking forward. She wanted to drop into a hole and not come out until the world was no longer a place where fifteen-year-old girls were subjected to the worst of evils in the world and young, stupid boys weren't so young and stupid. She didn't want to come out until he came back to her.

By this point, Hermione was near tears again, and just as she was about to turn away from the door, never to return again, she heard the quiet padding of feet as someone approached. There was laughter, then a deep reprimanding tone, and her blood ran cold. Run, something within her urged, though Hermione stood rooted to the spot, some intangible force preventing her from moving. She couldn't breathe for a moment, and just when she seemed to get control of herself enough to turn her head, the front door swung open.

There stood an older, leaner, and impossibly scruffy looking Harry Potter in a pair of boxer shorts and a tee, yawning and scratching the back of his head. He looked at her, blinked, then looked at her again. She opened her mouth to say something—anything—however was abruptly disrupted by a loud squeal from within the house. A small child appeared by his side, a muff of curly blonde hair covering her head and a blood-colored blemish marring her left cheek.

Oh, God.

She wasn't even aware that she was swaying on her feet until the ground seemed closer than it ever had before. Before she could even feel thankful for the reprieve from consciousness, she found herself in Harry's arms. He was hugging her then, whispering words she couldn't understand over and over again into her hair. She felt frozen, so many things running through her mind at once that it felt as if she wasn't thinking at all. The first identifiable thought that managed to penetrate the haze was that she was being held by someone that wasn't him. Harry smelled like soap and breakfast and something she couldn't identify. He didn't smell like him.

"Is it love?"

Harry pulled back and looked at her, his hands still wrapped securely around her back. "He said you'd come," he told her. She felt a small, warm hand on hers and looked down. Wide grey eyes stared back into hers.

He didn't respond.

She began to cry.

Harry released her completely, his eyes knowing as he watched her. "We've been calling her 'Dita'."

"Draco?"

Hermione nodded. Perdita. Her baby.

"Is it love?"

She cried a little harder, understanding now. She'd thought he hadn't answered because he hadn't known, either. But he had known, and he knew that she did, too—whether she realized it not.

And it was, you know. It was.

It was like winter; cold and harsh and painful in the barren field it left the world. Yet it was necessary. Spring couldn't come until winter had passed. It was simply another part of the cycle.

It was love.

A flurry of snow fell onto her nose and, as if she hadn't already been thinking of him, she thought of him more. This was what he'd meant, she realized, as Harry guided her into the house, Dita's hand on hers. She whispered his name as Harry closed the front door, and just like that, she was in a new place with new people and a new life.

This time, though, she didn't want to forget.

She'd promised him before that she wouldn't allow him to let her go, and she'd hold on to that promise for as long as it took for him to grab hold of her again, too. He'd saved her, and she was going to save them. For him.

Because. Just because.

It was love.

-fin

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