Disclaime: i do not own harry potter nor will i ever
unbeta'd. All mistakes are my own
He isn't sure when he first felt it. The feeling of a monster wrapping around his chest in a unrelenting grip. Perhaps in was in the Ministry, seeing Neville so close. The urge to push the other Gryffindor away was nearly overwhelming, but then something crashed behind him, and he was helping to move her to a different spot.
He loathed leaving her for the briefest of seconds before a battle for a war he never wanted to be in, dragged him away and into the dodging of curses.
He forgets the monster. He is numb. He is angry. He wants to shout and scream and break one of Dudley precious toys. He wants to cover his ears. To top the never ending voice of Sirius and Cedric who blame him. The whisper and shout "If only you were quicker", "If only you were James", "If only you had died instead".
There voices were like a mantra. Over and over, until he knew with utter certainty they were true. If he had died - at the Department of Mysteries, at the graveyard, in his nursery - they would be alive, and he would have quiet.
But they were dead and the screaming in his ears only seemed to get louder.
His arrival at the Orders Headquarters made him remember to feel, and the monster in his chest roared back to life.
None of them had sent him a letter, a blasted note with anything on it. He felt more than heard his words he said to them. The way his chest seemed tighter and lighter than it had been in months.
He knew he was being admonished for his words, but nothing chastised him so as looking up to see tears running down Hermiones' face. It is only than that he seems to deflate, and he hates himself more than ever.
It takes him four days to leave his room. To have enough courage to apologize.
He heads for the library, the one place Hermione would be without fail. However, he feels himself falter at the handle. Surely, she wouldn't want to see him. He knows how much hate he had for himself afterwards, Godric knows how she was feeling. He is nearly ready to turn around and find Ron or Ginny, someone who would take his apology easier, but the handle twists under his hand, and than he is on the floor, under a pile of books with a bushy lock of hair in his mouth.
Hermione stands up so quickly, that Harry can barely wonder if she dipped her hair in strawberries, before she is offering him a hand and helping him up.
Her hand is yanked out of his grasp before he is even fully up, and she is mumbling apologies, hurriedly picking up her books, and looking to make as quick as of escape as possible.
It quite a few calling of her name until she actually looks at him. Her eyes, the same dark brown he has seen for the past five years, are rimmed in red and purple. And the monster is there vowing to hurt whoever made her like this.
"Hermione? What's wrong?" She lets out a little squeak of a laugh, a cross between disbelief and despair on her face.
"I ignore you all summer, after-after what happened, and you ask me whats wrong?" She lets out that squeaky laugh again, before becoming somber. "How are you, Harry, truly? I should have been there, Harry. Oh, I can't even imagine how you feel.-"
"Then, why-" he cuts her off, "- didn't you? Why didn't you write? Why didn't Ron? Or anyone?" He can feel his chest tighten, the feelings coming back full force. Hermiones' face falls, and she looks to the floor, ashamed.
"He asked us not to. Said you needed time alone. I was a fool to listen-"
"Who?" He stops her again, "Who told you I needed time alone?"
She looks at him as though it were obvious, "Dumbledore."
Harry never really understood what the beginning of the end meant but he thinks he does now.
The train to Hogwarts is quiet. No one speaks, not even Hedwig makes a chirp.
Yet, when Harry looks up to Hermione squished between Neville and Ron, all Harry wants to do is scream.
Hermione hates his potions book. Thinks he should throw it in the fire and be done with it.
The selfish part of him keeps it, purely because she looks at and talks to him every day because of it.
When Professor Slughorn takes the lid off of the potion, Harry in his fixed place next to Hermione, doesn't smell anything out of the ordinary.
She is glaring at his book. Harry has to bite his cheek to keep from laughing. The pure hatred she has, for a book of all things, never fails to make want to laugh. And sometimes he does. And she will look up at him, with a small and confused smile, before shaking her head and going back to her work.
His monster seems sedated most of the time. However, that is more likely because Ron found two new friends on Lavenders chest, leaving Harry and Hermione together more often than not.
He seems to learn so much about her when Ron is gone. How she loves strawberries with powdered sugar, and hates mustard.
She talks to him for hours, marveling over what she learned that day and how it was simply fascinating.
Harry doesn't find her voice annoying, not the way he used to. He finds himself listening to her get excited over something that happened hundreds of years ago.
It with her that things don't seem to be all doom and gloom.
The Headmaster is dead, and he knows what he must do.
Hermione is there, unfailingly, undoing and redoing his tie until it is perfect.
Its the first time the monster wants him to kiss her, but she is dragged away by bridal party before he can.
He hates the tent. The constricting feel of it. Hermione keeps them alive with wards and a infinite number of places to go.
And when Ron leaves in a storm, Harry can't help his relief, but that is soon tarnished by the monster when it is two days later and Hermione is still crying.
He wants to kiss her when they dance, but holds off, he doesn't want their first kiss to happen when they're still tears drying on her cheeks for another man.
He is covered in blood, sweat, and tears. He is shaking, walking through the rubble.
Everything is dark. The bright sun in the sky is merely a flicker to him. One that disappears completely when he goes in search of a bed.
He stumbles upon her, literally, with her back to the wall and feet stretched out in front of her.
He finds himself collapsing next to her, not caring on whether his bed is made of stone or feathers anymore.
And when she looks at him, taking his hand in hers, he doesn't hold himself back.