Mourir

Black is many things. Many symbols, many feelings in a texture, many emotions in a tangle. It is a robe, a quill tip, a book, a bracelet, a barrette, a hat, a glove, a jellybean. Black is the night sky. It is something that pulses in the veins, something that backs and forwards all around you.

It is night, metaphysical and real.

~*~

"Tell me a story, Mummy."

"Which one do you want to hear?"

"I want to hear all about that David Copperfield, Mummy, and that Elizabeth Bennet, oh, and that Duke Orsino is very interesting, though rather thick."

"Alright, honey. How about a little Pride and Prejudice, then you head off to the land of nod. Alright, dearie?"

"Alright, Mummy."

~*~

"Get up, you lot! You're going to be late, and the year hasn't even started yet." A shrill female voice sounded up the flights of stairs.

His pillow was much more inviting.

"Come on, now!"

Five minutes later, his father was at the side of the bed :

"Your brothers are already up. Come on, now. Is this any way for a future First Year to behave?"

"Yea, Dad. I know it is unacceptable for any human being to get a decent night's sleep if he chooses." He gets up.

"That's me lad."

~*~

I am many things, but I am not a good Tube rider. I fussle and fugget, till I am nearly paranoid that everyone wants me off the train.  They give me a certain, very posh Londoner glance with glassy eyes and sneering eyebrows.

Is it that unusual to have an owl in the train?

~*~

"Has anyone seen a toad, a boy named Neville has lost one?"

Those were the first words I heard you say, weren't they? Funny looking at it now, the past. It becomes so bloody amusing, so like a game I once played at Primary School (Mum made us go), though I forget its name.

You have a load of people, you give them a complicated map to reproduce, and only one person can look at it for a short period of time. Before the game begins you draw a small piece of paper, and are told that if you get a dot on it, you have to sabotage the map making.

Your group can convict you, if they think you have a dot, and if you must sit out for the rest of the time (which was even more boring than telling you this, believe me).

But, at the end of the game, you find out. (This is one of those important life lessons, so listen well)

There were no dots.

No dots.

There are no dots.

~*~

Melodrama encases like a glove. It fits her perfectly sometimes, and then she finds it too tight, or maybe it is too hot for gloves (because she is only Victorian in some of her thinking), or maybe she just plain doesn't feel up to it.

It is certainly coming now, as sure as cold in winter requiring a real glove.

She wants to yell. To scream:

"Do you see me? Do you actually know I am here? Or are you just pretending there is something there in this seat, but really isn't? CAN ANYBODY HEAR ME?

...Does anybody care?"

Does anyone?

~*~

The firelight is like melted sunshine in the windowed tower. It was a milkily dark night, and she was alone in the Common Room.

"Yesterday…all my troubles seemed far away…"

She knew there was a reason she liked the Beatles. 

But still, it is not enough.

~*~

"You know, things were a lot better when you weren't around."

The wall doesn't answer.

"I beat my brains out trying to figure out why you seem to care, and, well, if you do, and I just don't know and it drives up the bloody proverbial wall. You taught me that word, you know. Proverbial. Damn. You taught me too much. It makes me think of you, and then try not to think of you, until I'm in a bloody whirlwind.

You make me into a bloody whirlwind."

~*~

She knows she likes him sometimes-too much. Too overwhelmingly. Some people she likes steadily, like Viktor, or Harry, or Professor McGonagall, but him she always wants to leave alone until he speaks in a certain tone, and gets a certain look in his eyes that makes her want to-but never mind what she wants.

Because that isn't important, anyway.

~*~

"You're too much, you know.

The curtain of her bed gives no reply

"You make me want to do things I don't want to, like help Harry get into Hogsmeade or dance in a rose garden, or spend all the sunlit hours with you in a classroom, where I feel closest to the you I wish you were all the time. I wish you always were doing things like taking those slugs for me. Only me.

You make me want to care about something besides house elves."

~*~

It's cold. She shivers and automatically brings her cloak a little closer around her arms. It's a day for automatics. A day for movement like an iron pole. The humor died long ago, and now the gentle sadness is left.

Except with him. Never with him.

"You alright, Hermione?"

"Yes," a small sigh (her mother used to ask that question often), "I'll be fine, Ron."

"It's going to be ok, you know."

"It will be. But that doesn't mean it is right now."

That was in their Sixth Year.

~*~

It's Seventh Year now (a year of change, she says), and the lightening clouds are still hovering around them.

Quiet nights by the Common Room studying are less common, and more tense. It's hard to see that look on Harry's face. It's hard to see the shadows under their eyes. Hard to see the strain, beating done as heavy as Hogwarts' stone walls.

Classes are harder, work is harder, sleep is harder to find, Quiditch harder to concentrate on, mysteries harder to crack, life harder to live.

~*~

A penny for the old guy

It is the last night. This is the calm before the maelstrom.

Notice how few faces there are left, listen to how little is said, feel the tiredness and the pain in every aching muscle, see the sadness in their eyes, walk around here and be saddened.

Regard the red haired young man walking over to the bushily brown haired young woman. Decide that if their eyes weren't maybe so tired, there would be a light in them, their would be hope, or maybe happiness, or maybe even love.

Watch how awkward he is around her, and also know how skilled he is with a wand, and how those two don't add up to any logical reason. Inference that this must not be logical, but must be emotion. Become aware of how these two seem to love blindly.

And cry for them, because they might not get a chance to show it.

~*~

"Hermione, are you alright?"

"What do you think, Ron? I'm tired, nervous, scared, and for bloody sake quit asking me if I am bloody alright because I AM NOT AND HAVE NOT BEEN FOR A LONG TIME."

"Hermione, it's alright to be scared. It's alright to not be alright."

"You go ahead and say that, Mr. Cool-headed-Weasley."

"Hermione, it's not like that."

"What is it then? Do you not care about this anymore?"

"No, Hermione….I…uh-er…I…"

"Well, what is it?"

"Hermione, it's being…" He trailed off for a moment, "calm."

"Calm? You're calm?" Her voice had quieted.

He sat beside her and leaned over and looked into her eyes (still so bloody bright after all these years). "I not afraid of death."

She looked up, slight shocked that this was the same Ron of Third Year. "And why is that?"

"Because I've lived all a human can. I've had a great family, wonderful friends who love me, been in love for years…It's all a life can offer, really."

"You're in love?" Her eyes had trouble not seeming desolated, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I didn't know. And because I'm telling you now."

"Who…" Hermione tried to calm herself, "Who is it?"

"You ought to know, Miss I-Know-Everything."

"Lavender?" A glare told her no. "Padma?" Still another glare. "Fleur?" She was thankful for that glare.

"You really don't know?" He seemed hurt by this.

"No, I'm afraid I don't. I guess I don't know everything."

~*~

It is morning now. The storm rises with the falling clouds receding.

Harry finds them together, sleeping on one another's shoulder. This doesn't surprise him. He knew they would figure it out someday. It almost makes him smile.

"Get up. He's coming."

Hermione's eyes open groggily, then Ron's. They instantly break apart, and Harry is puzzeled. He would have figured…but no matter. No time for thinking of such things now.

"We've got to go."

~*~

They are standing in a line. Ready, eager, grim, and determined. They will face him. They will win. They have to defeat him.

"Hermione," Ron whispers at her side, and she thinks he will say something about the defence spell, or ask a question on how to prevent something.

"What is it, Ron?"

"You know when you asked who I was in love with someone and you couldn't figure who?"

"Of course I remember." What a time to bring this up now!

"Well, the truth is I hoped you would know….because…" He was having difficulty saying this, she discerned. "Because it's you." Came so softly she wasn't quite sure she had heard him correctly.

"Pardon?"

"It's you." This time there was no mistake. Her eyes widen in shock, jaw falls open, and for a minute she can't look at him.

"You mean that?"

"Yes, I do."

She turned to him slightly, and smiled a little smile for him. For love. For what should and could have been. For nights they could have had sipping tea in the kitchen of the Burrow. For plays and films she would have made him see together. For growing old together. For children laughing, for hearts breaking, for grandchildren that would have been on his knee.

"Ron, when this is over…I'll….I'll.." She turns to him.

"You don't feel the same." It sounds more like a statement than a question.

"I can't. Not right now." She is starting to weaken. If he keeps looking like that, in a minute she will…

"Be on your guard!" Harry yells over the crowd.

~*~

He came quick and furious, erupting all over like a volcano. The ranks were battered, but not broken. The wards, for the most part, held firm, and repelled him back.

Harry went forward. It was his duty, it was his destiny. It was what he was made to do.

And, if he could win, Voldemort could not.

~*~

The world seemed drowned in sickness as she ran. She wanted to find him. She had to tell him. It would be over now, it would be alright now. The smoke would clear, the field would be replanted, Quiditch would be played here again, students would learn and love and laugh here again.

She found him by the lake. He was alone, battered and bruised by too many Crutacious Curses. He looked so hurt and forlorn, and it couldn't be that he was still only eighteen. He had to have aged a hundred years.

"Ron," she went down slowly beside him, "Oh, Ron…" She started sobbing.

"Hermione," the word seemed parched from his cracked lips.

"Oh, Ron, you can't die on me now. It's over, Ron. Harry defeated him. Voldemort. It's all going to be alright now. You're going to get well, and then I am going to tell you the truth, which is that I love more than books, more than Crookshanks, and sometimes, more than life. And you're going to propose to me, and I'm going to say yes, and we're going to live Happily Ever After, with grandchildren and tea, and we're going to grow old together, and be in love forever…and…Ron, say something."

"We will." He smiled a contented smile.

And closed his eyes.

~*~

Dreams were sweet now, he thought. He had died in so many ways, emotionally, almost physically, and now he had won out. When he kisses her, he still thinks of everything he had almost lost, of everything he had been about to lose, everything he had to suffer to get what he had. He had to die so many times, by a sneer or a smile from her not given to him, that he is happy to be born again.

He loves her now, so much it is woven into him like a thread into a blanket.

It has not been taken by the blackness. Night has gone where old winds blow, and now light is here-metaphysical and real.

Fini.

~*~


 A/N Um…Hi. This is all the melodrama I have felt in my life, compacted into a fic. Please tell me what you think (be honest, without being mean please). I always like constructive criticism that is very specific (IE telling me a certain phrase has a grammar error, no "In general your grammar is crap…" please.  That stuff annoys me.)

An explanation is that Mourir is the French verb meaning "to die".

Thanks for reading, and please make my day and review!

Have a great day!

~marzoog~