"Harry's Lullaby."
Mystic25
Summary: Hermione searches for Harry when she knows he shouldn't be alone. Post DH2.
Rating: M for language and sexuality.
A/N #: I've just discovered this song by Nickelback, and it is so moving, that I am working into several fics. Also, I am in a "Post DH" mood a lot, because it was such a phenomenal ending.
A/N #2: This is done without apology. It is, however, done with what I feel could very well be a reality.
Disclaimer: Jo Rowling made these wonderful characters. The lyrics belong to "Lullaby" by Nickelback.
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"Hold a true friend with both your hands."
- Nigerian Proverb
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It's cold. A breeze has come upon what was supposed to be the ending of winter and the start of a spring. But, Mother Nature must not have gotten the memo because she whistles this wind into a song that blows around the few stragglers who mill through the tall buildings from their cars and out into the sidewalk.
The lights were twinkling in the darkness that had enveloped the city. There is laughter from those buildings with their flashing signs. Happy laughter, drunken laughter, sometimes both combined into such a thick swirl it almost can be felt escaping outside when the doors to these establishments open.
Light spills through the doorway when one pushes from one side as she pulls from the outside.
There is a rush of air, and a moment of being startled by the tall man with dark eyes.
"Sorry mate," the 'mate' dies on the man's lips when he sees that the person in front of him.
"It's alright," she says, offering him a smile that placates strangers just met.
The man smiles in return, his is slower, not leering – but there is a flicking of his eyes down her slender frame, and back up to her face."Care for a drink lovely?"
A glass clatters behind them, breaking against the bar, there is an echoing laughter, thick as maple syrup, and drunk. It breaks the man's mood, or it tries too. But, he hasn't backed down.
"I'm fine, thank you." Hermione smiles at him again, and pushes inside, feeling his eyes on her as she steps away from him. He does not follow her, but she is glad when he disappears on the other side of the door.
The air inside is stiff and warm, smelling of ale and fried foods. Her gray overcoat and scarf are too heavy in this atmosphere. She unwinds the scarf from her neck and tucks it away into a little beaded back, seemingly small, across her shoulder. She had yet to remove the charm from it, finding it too useful, much better than a bulky rucksack. She digs into the bag's cavernous hole and pulls out a small black phone. There is barely a bar registering on the screen, but she dials the number anyway, pressing the thin thing up to her ear.
The phone rings inside her head, like a whisper over the loud clatter and drunkenness of the bar. It continues to ring, once, twice. But after the fourth ring, she has turned so that she was facing the zinc topped bar top, seeing a lone figure at the end of it, set off by one chair from the rest of the crowd who either seem to know each other, or are too drunk to care that they have completely invaded each other's personal space.
She replaces the phone back into the bag and makes her way across the sea of waitress, patrons and people – over to that zinc topped bar.
The figure that has isolated themselves from the boisterous others is leaning over the bar, phone pressed to his ear.
Hermione places a hand to his shoulder, and he raises his head, and turns him to her.
"Hermione-" Harry closes off the little outdated cellphone that he owns, and sets it back down on the bartop. "Thought I might have lost you- this place is a little piss poor for reception." His zip up black hoodie is rolled up at the sleeves, but he hasn't taken it off. His hair looks barely combed, and there is a thin coating of stubble on his face. "No matter, you're here now anyways." He offers her something resembling a smile, it was warm enough, friendly enough. But, it was so thinly painted on that it seemed it would crack at the slightest wrong movement.
Hermione watches Harry turn back to the bar, still wearing this look.
"Harry-" she says this at the same moment the bartender, a curvy woman, dressed all in black, with a lot of thick black hair braided into a long tail down her back approaches them.
" 'Can I get you?" she ask of Hermione.
Before Hermione can answer Harry raises his head to the woman "Stout ale for the lady," he answers for her "and same from before for me," he taps the rim of a shot glass, still full of dark colored spirits, sitting beside an already empty one.
"Comin' right up," the woman smiles at Harry. She is older, but no more than a few years, and she is watching him with a bit more than casual interest, because he wasn't a 10 year old boy anymore.
"Can mine just be mineral water please? " Hermione corrects to the woman, undoing the sash of her overcoat, and sliding it off to reveal her pink ribbed sweater and jeans.
"Not a problem," the woman smiles both at her and Harry, longer at Harry, and Harry returns the look, watching her go, noting the way her hips swing as she walks.
But that look only lasts for a second before he is playing with a finger to the rim of his still full shot glass.
Hermione slides into the empty barstool beside him. "Harry," Hermione is perched on her elbows to him, inches from his elbows, peeking out from his rolled up sleeves. "What are you doing?"
He turns his eyes up to her, there are a startling green against the almost muddy backdrop of dim lighting in the bar. "Fancied a drink," his voice is a bit heavy, like he has already 'fancied' a drink before she came. He throws back the shot and slams the glass back down on the bar, facing her with the same fluid movement.
Hermione has known Harry for so long, knows many things about him that he barely knew about himself. But, it was a foreign concept seeing him in a bar, a regular Muggle bar, drinking his darkness down in shot glasses. He looked like he hadn't been sleeping, he had sounded the same way when she heard him on the other end of the line a few hours ago.
"Why did you call me?" Hermione hadn't used a regular Muggle cellphone in so long because he has been right there with her for almost an entire year, along with Ron – and Ron didn't use cell phones. But the war had ended, only two weeks ago. But, there had been many things that had pulled them from seeing each other. Rebuilding Hogwarts, press conferences, and, funerals, endless funerals.
"Cause I'd look like a prat if I drank solo Hermione," Harry says this even though his voice already sounds thick as honey with what he had been drinking before she came in. "Kind of liked the company, you know?"
"Where's Ginny?" Hermione asks him, it's not accusing, it's just searching. Ginny was his girlfriend. They both knew that.
"With her mum and dad, settling the arrangements for tomorrow," Harry says this a bit quickly, like he's trying to rip this Band-Aid of a statement out to get it over with quickly. His eyes are as heavy as his voice with this statement. "Where's Ron?" There is no accusation in his words either, only searching, tiredness.
"I expect here's there too," Hermione says. "Getting everything ready."
There is just the slightest look of incredulousness on Harry's face at Hermione's answer. "You expect? You mean, you don't know?"
"We had a bit of a row last night -" Hermione says this with exhaustion. "Ron's just been through a lot, and he said some things," Hermione says this with sadness, and a sigh that mirrors it. "I'll see him in the morning, sort it out then."
The gaps between Hermione's words are painful, Harry can hear them, but he doesn't say anything to that pain, because he is overloaded with his own pain and pain meeting pain was like bone meeting bone, it would only hurt them both.
The waitress is back, she sets a full shot glass down beside Harry, along with a second. "On the house love." There is something about Harry that is sad to her, a bit lost. And, she had worked here long enough to not judge someone who needed release.
The mineral water is placed in front of Hermione, and she, eyes it for a moment, but does not pick it up, instead turning back up to the other woman. "Can I change my mind about that stout ale?"
The woman does not judge this sudden change either, merely picks up the green bottle of mineral water and hides it back behind the bar, before filling a pilsner glass overhead with the ale on the tap, setting it before Hermione a moment later.
Harry eyes her full glass, then her, the incredulous look back. "Since when do you drink Hermione?"
Hermione picks up her glass, and stares back at him. "Since when do you?"
The silence that hangs in the air is almost painful, bleeding.
He raises his shot glass up to her. "To Fred."
Hermione nods, raising her own glass "To Fred."
Their glasses meet with a clink and each drink – Harry throwing back his shot, Hermione taking a healthy swallow of her ale, feeling it's warmth sliding down her throat, and up her face.
Harry watches in amusement at the look on her face. "You alright there Hermione?"
Hermione gives him an unladylike hand gesture, which makes him smile more. The alcohol in his system has given him an artificial high, and he allows himself to ride it. To climb higher and higher, so the bottom would be that much further away.
"You could never handle your spirits 'Mione," Harry's words slurred more, he never called her 'Mione; what the bloody hell kind of name was that?
"You're not exactly doing such a bang up job of it either Harry," Hermione notes with a little amusement at Harry's slurred speech. She is allowing the warmth of the bar and the night and the proximity of a friend to chase away the heaviness for a while, because it would always be there, waiting.
"'S'because I'm drunk Hermione," Harry pointed out, blatantly, with an exaggerated smile. "I'm not supposed to be handling it." He reaches across the bar for her ale glass before she realizes what is doing and swallows from it.
"Harry," Hermione takes her glass back from him. "I think you've had enough." She sees him blink at her sluggishly at her suggestion, before another slow smile comes to his face. Then, it vanishes behind his ducked head.
Harry's watches the still full shot in front of him, but he does not pick it up. "It doesn't hurt – dying." He is back to playing with the rim of the glass. Then his eyes, red rimmed, verdigris, translucent, raise up again. "It feels like nothing –" His eyes are lost, somewhere sad, where he is remembering. "You feel nothing, and its forever." He stutters a smile like a dying engine. "That's why I did to Fred."
Hermione feels something constrict in her, she lays a hand his arm, over where he has rolled up his sleeves. "Harry-"
"That's what I did to all of them," Harry's voice is still slurred, but it's piercing. "I made them feel nothing."
Hermione sighs the constriction that goes up in her throat, and begins to rub the flesh of his arm.
He doesn't allow it, pulling away to raise his last shot glass, throwing back his head. But before the drink reaches his throat, he feels the glass taken from him.
Hermione takes the glass and sets it out of sight behind her own. Her hand is back on his arm, higher up on his shoulder, and this time she doesn't let him pull away before she squeezes it.
Well, I know the feeling
Of finding yourself stuck out on the ledge
And there ain't no healing
From cutting yourself with the jagged edge
I'm telling you that, it's never that bad
Take it from someone who's been where you're at
Laid out on the floor
And you're not sure you can take this anymore
He watches her hand, feels the pressure it places on him, a warmth spreading there. He has been avoiding the Wizarding community for two weeks. He knows he is their Savior. But, it is all still so new, all still so fresh from the battlefield that it is suffocating to be looked at, almost reverently. To be called to speak at this event, or that memorial. To have little children tug happily at his arm, want his autograph, to have their mothers hug him with cries of 'Thank you Sir, oh thank you!'
It was too much.
Because he could never let his guard drop, let himself feel the things that came as the aftermath of being a Savior. He had tried to ignore it, tried to smile through it all, push that feeling back down.
But, it had started to choke him, and he had left it to come here, to the lights of Muggle London.
The Boy Who Defeated Voldemort. Out among them, drinking to try and drown that feeling away. And no one cared, because no one had told who he was.
It was both a relief, and a hurtful thing. Because, everyone who knew, only cared about that Boy Who Defeated Voldemort.
No one cared about a 17-year-old boy named Harry Potter.
Harry looked across the bar behind Hermione's glass for his last shot, reaching out for it when he spotted it tucked behind her pilsner glass.
Hermione saw what he was doing, and both slid the shot glass further away from him and squeezed his arm tighter.
"Harry," Her voice was sigh, a sad thing. She knows he hurts, she knows better than anyone, knows he needs a release. But, she is unwilling to let it happen here, in a place where everyone will watch and make assumptions on things that they couldn't even begin to guess about.
Please let me take you
Out of the darkness and into the light
'Cause I have faith in you
That you're gonna make it through another night
Stop thinking about the easy way out
There's no need to go and blow the candle out
Because you're not done
You're far too young
And the best is yet to come
She slides her hand down his arm, until it reaches his. She grasps it and stands up, tugging on his arm. And, something inside her hurts a bit more when he doesn't even try to fight it off, and stands up at her tugging.
"Come on." She weaves them through the crowd of people, until they are opening the door, spilling light out onto the chilly air, standing hand in hand on the sidewalk.
Harry takes in a breath that smokes into the air, feels the pressure of Hermione's hand. But, the sidewalk disappears under his feet and he is tugged away from that lighted twilight and the next thing he knows he is standing in a small room, a hotel, with a maid-made bed with a white duvet and a spreading of Hermione's clothes draped over a dark red chair.
Hermione's hand has released his, and lamps are switched on, ending the darkness of the room with the 'clicks' of their switches.
Hermione has been staying here for the past three weeks. The little night table is covered with spell books, reversal spells on how to bring back her parents memory. Because she has yet to find one that will fully bring back the lives of her parents, to make them remember everything all at the same moment. She has thoroughly and completely removed her parents from her life, and now she doesn't know how to get them back.
But she isn't thinking of this as she takes Harry's hand again and leads him to the bed, and again he follows her so docile, its tearing at her.
Until he feels her pushing him down by the shoulders to get him to sit. He looks up into her face then, the hair covering parts of her dark eyes. "Hermione-"
"Shh," His hair is being pushed back by her hand for a brief moment, the same feeling he felt when she had done it outside their tent. The pressure is light and gone in half a second, and there is a sensation of her tugging his shoes off.
She leaves his socks on, because the room is still cold. She rises from her kneeling position and stands back up, feeling his eyes on her. "You need to sleep, Harry." She reaches for the toggle zipper of his hoodie, and unzips it to the gray t-shirt underneath, pulling the jacket off.
Again, Harry allows this, he is numb with alcohol and with pain in equal measure.
Hermione reaches up to his shoulder to push him to lie down on the bed. But, her movements are stilled when his hand grasps her wrists. There is the echo of war in his eyes, of the pain that came from the wounds of it. He is blinking rapidly to keep it all in, looking away, blinking harder. Trying to muffle it.
Hermione sits beside him on the bed, and takes his hands, squeezing them, hurting with him. She cares about the boy names Harry Potter, because he is all she sees, because he is there and sad, and lonely. Because he is her friend.
"Hermione-" Harry seeks her gaze, he does not cry, but his voice is close to breaking. "I can't-"
"Shh," She soothes him again, rubbing her hand down his neck, carding it up through his hair again, feeling the blinding thing that was choking him.
"They're gone because of me-" He is blinking like a fire trying not to die, trying to stay alive with heat and not let the cold in, the darkness, the pain.
She pulls him a little closer and holds him with an arm across his shoulder, her head pressed into the neck of her friend. "It's okay."
So just give it one more try to a lullaby
And turn this up on the radio
If you can hear me now
I'm reaching out
To let you know that you're not alone
And if you can't tell, I'm scared as hell
'Cause I can't get you on the telephone
So just close your eyes
Oh, honey here comes a lullaby
Your very own lullaby
Harry is gone into her warmth. He hears the lies she whispers to him, because it will never be okay. But, is not allowing himself to care about that, because he is in the warmth of a friend, who talks just so he can hear her voice, sits with him so her can feel her.
He pulls back from her and takes her face to his hands. She leans forward to kiss his forehead, solid and there and comforting, and his eyes close when he feels it.
He returns the gesture, and she mirrors his reaction. And when his lips move lower, to touch hers, she mirrors that too, feeling the pull of all the emotions behind it. There is a soft sliding of hands behind his neck, and he finds hers in her thick dirty blonde hair.
The kiss is lonely and searching, and they are not thinking of anything except this. Of something they didn't plan, but can only feel, only looking for a way to end the hurt.
He breaks from her, to pull the neck of his shirt up over his head, and she is helping him lift it by the hem. The cotton is gone and her sweater joins it in a puddle on the ground.
He is kissing her heavily as she is sliding out of the rest of her clothes, and he the rest of his. And this time it is he who is lowering her down onto the bed, throwing back the duvet cover. And she is following him; falling onto sheets, her hands trace up the bumps of his spine, making him shiver.
They are both inexpiernced in this, but, they let their hurt guide their hands, trembling at each new contact, molding to each other, trying to feel as much of the other as they could.
Hermione shudders when it finally happens, and when she is finally able to open her eyes, they meet his staring down at her.
The lamps are still on, and she can see his eyes through this light. They are no longer blinking it back. They are dripping the green from his eyes, hurting like it was its own being.
"Hermione" He whispers her name, and it bleeds this same hurt, it drops it like rain.
Well, everybody's hit the bottom
Everybody's been forgotten
When everybody's tired of being alone
Hermione reaches up to touch his face, wiping away what tears she could reach with her hand, and this is all it takes for him to break. He drops his head to her neck, and drowns out his tears with sobs.
Yeah, everybody's been abandoned
And left a little empty handed
So if you're out there barely hanging on...
Hermione's tears are sliding down the sides of her face as she strokes his neck, and kisses his hairline, over and over again, hearing each sob of his as a separate wound, holding to her dear friend, holding to him as tightly as she could.
Just give it one more try to a lullaby
And turn this up on the radio
If you can hear me now
I'm reaching out
To let you know that you're not alone
Harry eventually has no energy left to cry, and all he is aware of is a crushing pain in his chest, and a soft hand stoking the short hairs at the base of his neck. He is afraid he is crushing her, so he rolls to his side, facing her.
Her eyes are bloodshot and wet, and her face is lined with sadness so deep it was like a map to a haunted place. They are both such broken things. But, being broken together hurts less than being broken alone.
He cups her cheek and wipes her face with his thumb, she leans into the touch.
And if you can't tell, I'm scared as hell
'Cause I can't get you on the telephone
"Rest, Harry," Her voice is made of softness, and sadness, and comfort.
In the morning they will bury Fred Weasley. They will place such a dear friend into the ground, to not hear his laughter, or see his smile ever again. He will have to see the pain of Ron's face, and know that he caused it. That he took his brother from him. That it hurt so badly he also took Hermione from him; that his sister will hate him now.
"I love you Harry," she says it like a whisper, a lonely confession. But she cannot take it back, nor does she want to. Because, he was sad, and lonely; and, she can't help the way she cares for him. "That's what matters."
She slides herself over so that she is pressed against him, her face buried in his shoulder, feeling his heart beating outward against her chest. She inhales the scent of him against her.
"Sleep." Her breath is warm against his skin.
So just close your eyes
He slides a hand behind her back to draw her in closer, drawing the other to rest in her hair, cocooning her into him. Because he loves her too.
Oh, honey here comes a lullaby
He closes his eyes.
Your very own lullaby.
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End.
Before I go, all I will say is:
I feel that Harry and Hermione love each other too much to not want to be there when the other is hurting. And, once something like that is laid open, it can't just be reversed.
It wasn't about the sex, it was about the emotion.
R/R please
Mystic