"In This Moment"
Summary: In a little tent. In the woods. There is Them. Harry/Hermione. DH fic.
Mystic25
A/N: This was something that would not leave me alone until I wrote it down. It's set during DH while they are on the run. It does become AU with the timeline of how long they were out there. This does boast of H/Hr if you don't wish to proceed please don't.
A/N#2: I know, all I write for the HP camp is DH fics of these two, but I find the post war thing fascinating and beautiful because it leaves so many possibilities.
Rating: T for imagery
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"You're my best friend."
-Hermione Granger
"Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince"
"Children, lift up your voice…"
-"O'Children"
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
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There is blood on his hands that isn't his. And she is screaming – it travels on the air like its being held with invisible hands.
"It's alright Hermione," He doesn't know what he is doing.
Neither does she.
She is trembling, and shaking.
He feels it as he grasps her legs- they are slick with sweat and he is barely able to hold to them.
She screams again when pain threatens to tear her in half. His name is mingled up in that scream.
"It's okay," Harry reaches for one of her hands across the cot. "You're alright."
She throws her head back in agony. Blood and fluid streak the single blanket on the cot like a river.
Harry holds her legs apart and reaches with one hand. "Hermione," his hand grasps her knee. "I can feel it, you're almost there."
Her face is terrified.
"Take my hand," Harry reaches for her free hand. Their fingers grasp over sticky blood that has left a tattoo of a handprint on her knee.
She breathes in a Morse code of pants, fingers digging so hard into his she feels his bones grating against each other.
"Harry-" She is trying to breathe and talk. But the pain won't let her do both. It seizes her and makes her insides roll.
"You can do this Hermione!" Harry's heartbeat is ringing in his ears, pulsating in his eyes. Her grip is crushing, but he does not loosen their hold.
Her shaking rattles the old wooden cot she is lying on like it would break apart any moment.
She is like a ghost fallen in a bath. Only her eyes retain their depth of color – the rich deep brown of earth.
"Hermione," it's to this Harry focuses on. "Look at me, you can do this!"
Hermione breathes like she will explode. Sobs escape her breath. The pain is insurmountable. She wants it to stop. Harry is wrong. "I can't-"
"Yes you can!" Harry's voice reaches over her noise of pain.
She wants to tell him to leave off; that this is too much. But he doesn't let go of her hands, and continues a litany of reassurances.
A wave of pain as deep as trench breaks into her and she screams and grips his hands like she is falling. Blackness closes in on her. But then in another moment, it is gone and she is flung back down onto the thin pillow gasping like a drowning man thrown back onto shore.
A high pitch wail blots out her gasping.
"Hermione-"
She raises herself on her elbows and sees him holding to a mass of red and pink – tiny limbs flailing, crying into the tent.
Harry holds it up and cradles it in the crux of his elbow, afterbirth sticking to the wool of his sweater. He is staring at the tiny thing like it has been conjured. His eyes raise up to hers. "It's a boy."
Hermione's eyes go wide. She gasps a noise of wonder and shock.
Harry sits on the barest edge of the cot and she pulls herself up into a sitting position.
He hands her the tiny baby.
It mewls as she settles it against her.
Hermione's hands roam the newborn, touching little closed eyes, and tiny fingers, stroking is head with the pad of her thumb.
Harry strips off his sweater and wraps it around the infant. He is breathing as hard as Hermione. He shivers in his tshirt. The smell of blood is thick on the sheets, her legs, his hands, the baby-
It is all so surreal.
His wand is lying there on the camp table beside the cot. There is a spell he knows- he's seen her use it- that will remove all these stains and blood.
But he does not use it.
He lifts her up, together with the baby and moves them to his cot. Her legs and feet are bare and caked in fluids. But he merely pulls the blanket up over them.
And she does not object . She is too exhausted, too speechless to care.
He drops to the ground beside her, trying to wipe the drying blood and fluid off his hands on his jeans.
She grabs one of his hands and stops his movement. Exhaustion writes a story upon her face. "Thank you." A smile breaks from the exhaustion like a shaft of sun emerging from a storm cloud.
She bends down to kiss him, deep and warm and their tears intermingle until they pull away.
Harry moves and kisses the new thing . His eyes are open, revealing them to be a brilliant green – the color of an emerging spring after a bitter winter.
The color of everything Harry wants to show him when the world is finally free again to live the way it's always meant too.
Harry is sorry for hurting Ron, and he knows that Hermione is too. He is sorry for hurting Ginny. They weren't things to be swept up like rubbish and forgotten. They do love them.
But he loves Hermione too, he's always loved her. She is the best friend he's ever had.
And him – only ten minutes old – he will never be sorry for him.
He drops his head into her lap and feels her lips press a kiss there, her hand stroking the short hairs on the back of his neck.
They do not know what will come tomorrow.
But they haven't known for a while.
They only know right now.
And right now they are alive.
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End
R/R please.
Mystic