Dawn Has Come
Night had fallen in all its sinister glory. Stars shot across a crystalline onyx sky, flickering dimly in a beautiful sadness. And with the night, Hogwarts had fallen as well.
Hermione Granger and Harry Potter stood in a lonely, cold cemetery filled with weeping willows and the harsh blooms of cattails. The smooth grey stones of the graves before them were faded and pricked with black spots of moss, but fresh plots of soil waited to received the warm corpses, wet with blood and death.
A heavy silence had emerged between them, broken only by the quiet whispers of sadness that seemed to fall from the sky as invisible rain.
The grief flourished, magnolia petals of woe borning inside his soul. He had to speak the name of the friend so dear to him, the boy who had saved his life.
"Ron," Harry said in a choked voice, his fingers running over the name lightly engraved into the dark stone, "He...he jumped in front of me. He DIED to save me."
Hermione wrapped her arms about her waist. "He would have saved me if he'd lived. Now. . . God, Harry--" her voice choked. "Now I'm drowning."
"You're not the only one," Harry said bitterly, his tone brimming with liquid anguish. "I've been drowning my entire life, Hermione. I've always had to be the one to save the world, to defeat the Dark Lord! I just want to have a normal life, Hermione. To have friends. To...live." He looked up at her, face streaked with tears. "To love."
"To love?" Hermione repeated bitterly. "What's love, Harry? What did it do for Ron? For Ginny? For Dumbledore?" Her cloud of pale brown hair shifted as she ran her hands down to touch her slender neck. "There's no such thing as love, Harry."
A fierce passion suddenly sparkled in Harry's deadened eyes. "No, Hermione," he said firmly, taking her cold hands in his own. "No. Don't say that. Don't give up hope. There will always be love, as long as we believe in it." He paused, pain apparent in his features. "Didn't you love...Ron?"
". . . Ron?" Hermione repeated, a strange look crossing her face. She looked down at their entwined hands, and a pearled tear dropped to her lips. "I thought I did. But, Harry. . ." she whirled away to touch the gravestone in front of her. "I was young. I was a frizzy-haired girl. What did I know about love?"
"But I...I always thought..."
"Harry," she said, sighing sadly. He watched as the moonlight danced across her silken hair. "I didn't love Ron. I could never love Ron. He was my friend, one of my best friends. But...it was only raging hormones and lust." She looked up, gaze shining with unshed tears. "I've never known love."
"Neither have I," Harry said softly. "There was Sirius, but I was just my father's shadow in his eyes. And Ginny just saw the hero in front of the scared little boy. The Dursleys. . . Hermione, they hated me."
"And now it's too late," Hermione said woefully. "Everything has gone, Harry. Everything we've held dear...Hogwarts, Ron, Ginny, Dumbledore! Torn from us by the merciless claws of Death!" She looked up at the starry sky. "They're up there now, watching us." A sigh spilled from her lips, caressing the lonely night. "Oh, Harry, why couldn't Death have taken me, too?"
He laid his fingers on her arm, surprised at the cool silk of her skin beneath his own. "Because I need you," he said in a hoarse whisper. "I need you, Hermione. You're all I have left." His grasp on her arm tightened. "Please don't ever leave me."
"You know I shan't leave you."
"Do you promise, Hermione?" he asked in a husky whisper. "Do you promise?"
She looked up at him, tears shining in her eyes. "Oh, Harry! I promise!" She fell quiet. "But you...you must never leave me, either."
"Of course not," Harry said, smiling weakly. "Best friends stay together. Always."
"Are we best friends, then?" she asked quietly, a faint note of derision underscoring her words. "Is that all I am to you?" She raised her pale, star-like face to the sky, studying the ebony fall of the clouds. "Or could I ever. . . "
". . . Could you ever?" Harry repeated softly.
"It's nothing," she said, looking away.
"Hermione," he said softly, brushing his fingers against her soft cheek. "You're everything to me."
She looked up at him, hope shining through the darkness of her jaded eyes. "Really, Harry?"
"Of course," he found himself saying, the words torn from his throat just as life was ripped from Ron's body. But Ron wasn't in his mind as he leaned over, and found his lips meeting Hermione's petal-soft ones, his hand running through her hair, her body crushed to his in a handful of velvet.
Their mouths explored each other hungrily, longing to grow familiar with this beautiful, strange new world existing in their embrace. Their souls entwined as passion rose between them, its scarlet flames erupting in the crystalline night.
As dawn shot pale rays into the grey sky, Harry and Hermione looked up from their embrace on the wet grass. "Dawn has come," Harry whispered, tracing her cheekbones with the back of his hand. "And we've found something, Hermione. Together. We've found the dawn together."