Disclaimer: Nope, not mine. I wish they were. . . Oh, the fun we'd have!
A/N: This fic can be read as a companion piece to my other story "How Strange."
Last Dance
By WitchyWays13
"You look beautiful." Harry whispered into her ear. His freshly shaven cheek was pressed against hers, and his hands found the small of her back. Her arms wrapped around him in a tight embrace. Hermione rested her chin against the shoulder of Harry's dress robes and smiled.
"Oh?" She said coyly. "Don't I always?" He grinned, and they swayed a bit to the song floating through the cool summer night. Hermione was dressed in a simple white lace gown, her usually bushy hair as sleek and sophisticated as the night of the Yule Ball. It was hard to believe, she mused, that it had been ten years since that night. A lifetime ago.
"Remember the Yule Ball?" Harry asked. Hermione was shocked: had he read her mind? "When you came down the stairs? I could barely keep my eyes off Cho Chang, until I saw you. You never looked prettier, until tonight."
"You're making me blush, Harry." She reached up to tuck a tendril of hair behind her ear. He looked deep into her brown eyes; she had never seen such a blazing look in them before.
"I mean it. Every word, Hermione." He rested his hand against the side of her neck, touching his thumb to the edge of a thin silver scar that ran across it. A reminder of how he had almost lost her to the deranged Bellatrix Lestrange. Harry knew as well that an even more emotionally painful scar existed on the inside of her left arm: the word "Mudblood," carved with such ferocity no Essence of Murtlap was able to fully erase it. It didn't matter, not to him. She was still Hermione, blood status an outdated and pointless subject in the post-war world.
Hermione couldn't tell what Harry was thinking, as one hand found her neck and caressed it. He bent his head down to kiss her, gently. So this was what he was looking for? She thought, smiling against his lips. The kiss only lasted a few seconds, but for the both of them seemed to last forever. As they broke apart, Harry caught a flash of ginger hair in the corner of his eye.
Ron, nattily dressed in brand-new dress robes, grinned widely at his new bride. "Don't let Harry have all the fun, love." He said to Hermione, putting his hand against her waist and pulling her towards him. A second ginger-haired apparition appeared: Ginny, radiant at nearly seven months pregnant. She beamed at her husband and reached for his hand. Harry took it, and he and Hermione walked to opposite ends of the dance floor.
As the next song started up, the dance floor began to fill in once more. Harry pressed his hands against Ginny's stomach, feeling his child move within. Ginny leaned in to kiss him, and Harry looked past the roomful of people. His eyes connected with Hermione's as she peered over Ron's shoulder.
An unspoken love passed between them, something intangible yet very real. It was a love they had shared for thirteen years. It was a love they could not share with their Weasley spouses, only they could know what it meant. It was memories of another dance, in a freezing tent on a December night seven years earlier. When their lives had changed, and they realized the love that was uniquely theirs.
End
