Disclaimer: I do not own the characters in this story, they belong to J.K. Rowling. I also do not own the lyrics I use at the start of each chapter, they belong to The Cinematic Orchestra from their song "To build a home"
Author note: I need a beta reader!
There is a house build out of Stone.
Life goes on. And people too. It is in the human nature that we force things we don't want to remember, to the back of our minds. And so the horrors of our past are forgotten. Still, it will be the things that we most treasured once, that cannot ever be forgotten.
How many time had passed since he last left Hogwarts? Harry didn't know. He was numb inside. He still remembers the day Voldemort was defeated like it was yesterday. And the happiness he felt at that moment. It was misplaced happiness, it was more like relief. Knowing that it all wasn't for nothing, but the price was too high, so he was relieved it was over. But he never could, or wanted to do it all over, because there was nothing that could change this. It was set in stone, years ago, even before he was actually born. There was nothing that he could have done to prevent all those people from dying. And that made it even worse. Blaming himself, that was something he could live with. But this..
After Harry defeated Voldemort, he searched for Ron, Hermione and Ginny. It didn't surprise him that they did not participate in the loud cheering and clapping around them. It was weird, seeing people hug, and high-five each other, while all the bodies from the people they loved were a few metres away.
The four of them searched for Fred, and Tonks, and Lupin, and sat beside them. And they cried. Silently. Tears streaming down their faces and the pain in their chests so horrible that they couldn't even let out a whimper.
After a while the other Weasleys joined them, and the Great Hall became a bit more quiet, while other people noticed the family sitting there, they went searching for their own loved ones.
And within ten minutes the Great Hall was dead silent. The only thing you could hear was the silent crying of hundreds of people. It was almost two in the afternoon when Professor McGonagall stepped in front of the remains of the large table at the end of the Great Hall. All eyes focused on her.
And without one word about what just happened, she started to order people to send messages to the hospitals, she ordered Kingsley to inform the Muggle prime minister, and send about 20 people to the Ministry of Magic to get as much help as possible.
You wouldn't think that, after what happened, there was such a thing as going on.
Where were they supposed to go? And when? And how?
Harry was in no way capable of apparating and didn't feel like it either.
Now that he thought of it, he can't remember how they got out of there eventually.
The most logic thing was going with the Weasleys, but Harry couldn't. And Hermione couldn't either. So Harry bought her a house, in the middle of London. He knew she would like it there after a while.
And he bought himself a house too, just north of Cambridge. They explained to Ron how a phone worked one more time and this time he listened carefully. When they felt like it, they would call. But right now they needed time to get themselves somewhat together.
Or die, at that moment neither of them cared.
They lost a part of themselves they would never get back.
Harry only saw Ginny briefly the day he left, she was in her room and sat at her desk, where she looked at old photographs of her family. Harry didn't want to look. He couldn't comfort Ginny. He had no idea how and he didn't want to. He had enough trouble with himself. So she turned around and looked him in the eyes. They held onto each others eyes for a while and then she turned around again.
And Harry left.
The first few weeks he stayed in his apartment. He sat in his chair and watched tv, and he wrote. He wrote letters. To Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Sirius, to Dumbledore, Tonks, Lupin, Dobby, even Hedwig and Snape. To everyone. Some of them were just little notes. And others were full size letters. Filled with things he never got to say. But he never send them. He threw them in the fire after he was done. But the writing helped.
It helped so good that after eight weeks, he called up Hermione and told her to write letters. She understood where he was going and so she began to write too. He didn't call Ron, or Ginny, because he knew they both wouldn't like this way of dealing with problems. But it helped him, and it helped Hermione. So Ron didn't have to know.
Ofcourse the press wanted to know all about the Golden Trio and their victory.
But the Golden Trio didn't want to talk. Later on they found out Mc. Gonagall had explained the whole story to the media. Something they never thought she would do. But Harry thought she didn't want people to think too bad of the main characters.
So he wrote her letters too.
He isolated himself for a year. And then the doorbell rang.
It was Hermione.
Her eyes were hollow, her hair was thin and hung greasily around her shoulders. She was so skinny.
He pulled her inside and locked her into his arms. They slumped against the door and sat on the doormat for an hour before Hermione could finally speak.
"I called my parents to ask if they knew where Crookshanks was." She sobbed into Harry's shoulder.
He was very confused for a moment but Hermione was crying so loudly he just waited for her to explain.
"Harry, I couldn't do it. I couldn't deal with it."
Me neither. He thought. "It's ok." He whispered into her hair.
"Harry, I wrote, just like you said but I did it differently."
"What do you mean Hermione? It's ok if it didn't work, it just worked for me so I thought you might wanted to try it." He said, wiping away some of her tears.
"Harry, you don't understand. I tried to forget what had happened, I created a new reality for myself. I did bad things, Harry." She looked at him in complete anguish.
He scooped her up in his arms and carried her into his living room, where he put her on the couch and sat beside her, still holding her.
"What did you do, Hermione? It's ok."
"I obliviated myself, Harry." She almost chocked on this sentence.
Harry looked at her better, and noticed her arms, they were full of bruises.
He picked up her hand slowly and touched one of the larger ones.
Hermione yanked her hand away in pain.
He didn't need to ask is she did this to herself, because he knew she did.
And there was no way he was ever letting her go home again.
After another panic attack, and a lot of soothing words from Harry, Hermione calmed down enough to tell him exactly what had happened.
Being the extraordinary which she is, Hermione studied the many forms of wiping someone's memory away. And she found out that, except from the overall spell "Obliviate" there were other spells that wiped away only certain memories. But in order to do that, you must catalogue your memories and basically name them to get the spell to work. For example, if you want to erase every memory you have about a certain person, you must simply say the spell and add their name in it.
But Hermione is smart, so she created some kind of barrier in her mind, so that if something should go wrong, she could retrieve the memories. Remember what I said about pushing memories to the back of your mind? That's exactly what Hermione did. She made sure that the memories wouldn't be triggered by the sound of someone's name or anything.
She did this very subtle at first, and so she wiped away memory after memory, while never having to deal with them. Making her believe that she was going back to Hogwarts in September for her fifth year. But because she worked part time in a coffee shop in London (she thought a job would be good to clear her mind, and the smell of coffee calmed her down), she was obligated to move out of her parents home earlier.
She was almost done packing and was ready to go to King's Cross, when she noticed Crookshanks was missing. She tried everything and vaguely remembered something about him being with her parents. So she called them. But ofcourse they didn't recognize her. And that did it, that triggered every memory she had so carefully pushed away. And so she broke down and had come here, to him, the only one that would understand.
After she finished talking, Harry simply nodded, pushed himself aside of Hermione and held her until she fell asleep.
From that moment on they lived together, but still separated. Harry helped Hermione with dealing with her memories and he tried to keep herself from doing bad things, so to speak. But they did everything on their own for a while. Their friendship would never be the same again, although the roots were still there, so they started over and after a while they really started living together.
Ron didn't know.
Untill he also decided to show up at Harry's door.