A/N disclaimer: The dialogue between the woman and Hermione is based off S2E3 of Sherlock by Steven Moffat.
Can I also say, this is NOT a Harry/Hermione fic. She's just the only one I felt I could write from the POV of for this fic.
I sit in the plush but uncomfortable and much too big armchair. There's that empty feeling inside me. You know the kind. Like when your better half leaves you to go live halfway across the world. Or when everything you've worked for, spent hours and hours on every day, suddenly goes to waste. Or when the only person you've ever trusted with your deepest secrets turns against you and spills them all. That one. Like nothing will ever be the same, and you've just lost something you personally held most dear.
I turn my head wearily to the left. It's a small movement, but depletes the minimal strength I have left in me. My husband, Ron, sits just as still as I do, his chest barely rising and falling with his shortened breaths. I shift my eyes and they blur him out, focusing instead on the raindrops decorating the large windowpane, the clouds outside oppressive and melancholy. The steady patter of water on glass drowns out of my accustomed ears, and I become aware of my own shaky breathing. My trembling hands. My aching eyes. The salty water staining my cheeks.
"Why are you here?"
My attention is brought back to the young, formal witch sitting infront of us. Her expression is unreadable. She looks at the two of us blandly, but I sense a sadness in her eyes. She knows, but won't say. Because she doesn't feel it. She was never there. She's young. Maybe not even born at the time. We should have asked for an older witch, more our age. She would have understood.
Behind this young witch, I notice a small painting of a castle. From my angle of perspective, it's no smaller than a thumb nail. It's insignificant in this colourful room, but holds my intrigue. The colours swirl around on the canvas and I lean imperceptibly forwards in my chair. There's the mountains. The lake. The owlery. The grounds.
I recognise it instantly. It's Hogwarts. The majestic glory of the turrets and towers and walkways is flaunted in oil paints across the tiny square. A few seconds later, an owl glides across the surface of the picture, a movement that is not out of place on a magical painting. I think of Hedwig. It's not her, definitely, but brings me small comfort that I and my two best friends had once been part of that grandeur.
A question rings in my ear, rebounding from different corners of my mind before a coherent meaning is formed.
"Do you want to hear me say it?" My reply is dry, my voice not my own. Ron says nothing. I look at him. The same water stains his cheeks, but he's been strong.
As strong as Ron, who only ever had the emotional range of a teaspoon, could ever be.
My heart jumps, my breath hitches. I remember that time infront of the fire in the warm and inviting Gryffindor common room. We had sat in the familiar orange plush armchairs, laughing about his first kiss. Thirty eight years ago.
"Yes."
Her voice breaks me out of my reverie. What does she mean, yes? Then I remember. She wants me to say it. It.
"You do read the papers, I presume?"
She nods.
"And watch telly?"
She nods again.
It infuriates me. Why doesn't she say anything? She's the therapist, so shouldn't she be helping me out here? Why does she have the right to question me? My anger eradicates rational thoughts from me for a while. My deranged mind stirs up hate for everything I can see in front of me.
Why am I even here? This isn't helping me. I look to Ron, to see his reaction to this melancholy meeting. His face is blank: still passive, but etched with the lines of old age.
The lights dazzling on the roof are much too bright. They agitate me further. They are instantly switched off with a flick of my wand. We are plunged into a sombre greyness, the absence of light taking some of my self-consciousness with it. I feel the urge to speak again, anger bruising my words.
"You know why we're here!" it bursts into the small room, the grief and emptiness all spilling out of me like an overflowing waterfall.
"You need to get it out," is all she says.
Tears prick and escape my eyes again, betraying the resentment I'm feeling behind my external (and, perhaps, involuntary) fury. I shudder uncontrollably, my now very old body unable to hinder the flow of peripheral emotions. I used to be strong for Ron. But this... this is just too much. Now I understand what the therapist was saying. I need to get it out.
"I'm here becu..."
I can't do it. I just... can't. Because saying something like this out loud connotes acceptation; the fact that I've come to terms with this and moved on. So much time has passed, yet not much has changed since Voldemort died. Yes, there was a revolutionary change in society. Yes, there were no more Death Eaters or dark wizards to fear. And yes, there was no more segregation between the blood types. But our friendship? The battles we fought? My Hogwarts years?
They were all still fresh in my memory. The best years of my life – the teenage years in which I had met my best friend and Ron – would forever be etched into the foreground of my mental consciousness. Because how can one simply forget?
"What happened, Mrs Granger?"
Granger. The name I was referred to as when I was at Hogwarts. It brings along another surge of memories: a glistening cascade of golden sparks in the pool of other, insignificant experiences cluttering my mind. The time when there was a troll in the dungeon, in which I met the two best people in the world. Then the chess game, deep inside Hogwarts, where Ron sacrificed himself for me and Ha-him. And when the three of us entered the bowels of Hogwarts in search of the basilisk, inadvertently and unknowingly destroying a horcrux in the process. Then there was the time when I saved Buckbeak with him, and his godfather. 'You have your mothers eyes,' Sirius had said, almost forty years ago now. He would be seventy three now, had he lived. As would have all the Maruaders.
And then we'd seen what we thought was James's patronus, his dad. I remember the look of contentment on his face, as he had felt protected by his father. And then the scheming Barty Crouch had come along, entering him into the tournament. He'd fought valiantly, but I still remember the pain carved into his face when he returned from the graveyard via portkey. The eventual realisation that Voldemort was, once again, at large.
So many deaths had followed. So much commotion and unrest in the wizarding population. And the last of his family, Sirius, was then ripped from his life. So lonely and so broken, he had continued on his quest. The discovery of horcruxes drove him through the testing times that followed. The three of us, alone and together. In the forests. In the ministry. In Gringotts. We had stuck together.
And then there was the eventual victory. The end of it all.
These years are seen flicking through in my mind within two seconds, a record played so many times that the words and ideas come seamlessly flowing through the various currents of consciousness. The sudden heaving of emotion within me brings about a fresh wave of tears, ebbing without constraint. I let them fall – because what otherwise can I do?
Ron remains silent. I knew this would happen. He'd never be able to cope with a tragedy this profound. I think of Hugo and Rose, and I'm sure that for the next few months they will notice drastic differences in their father, which will eventually thread away. But even then, after years and years, the sadness I see now like an orb beneath his dark eyes will remain persistent. The lines of laughter surrounding his mouth will eventually deepen, but due to age rather than happiness. His best friend, the only friend that initially took him for what he was that first day on the Hogwarts Express, is –
"Mr Granger?"
I see the woman look at him, but he glances away towards the diamond-dotted window pane. He's not ready to face it yet. I will have to speak.
"Ha- uhm..." How can I possibly say it? How can I admit it to myself, to my husband... to the world? The words choke in my throat, a bubble threatening to burst and smother me with such overwhelming emotion that I fear I will be unable to articulate further.
The room seems to press in on me. I can smell the woman's perfume. I can see the bright blue primroses arranged neatly in a vase behind her. I can feel the hard wood of the armrest under my right hand. I can hear the steady pattering of water on glass to my left.
And I can taste the despair, anger, and ultimate defeat on my tongue as I stutteringly grind out the next words.
"My – our best friend, the Boy who Lived..."
I take a deep, trembling breath. Then another.
And another.
I tuck a stray hair strand behind my ear.
I swallow my tears.
I drown out the sounds of Ron's racking sobs next to me as he shakes in his chair.
My eyes are drawn to and focus on the picture of Hogwarts on the opposite wall. It grows larger in my vision, obliterating the woman and this room from my perceivable surroundings. It gives me strength to finish what I began.
"The Chosen One. Harry Potter is... dead."
This is just a prologue/first chapter, the next chapter will have Harry and his kids before this incident, and then finally Harry's death from his own POV
reviews will totally make my day :)