Songfic, based on Dar Williams' song "The Beauty of the Rain," from her latest CD by the same title. This fic has been running its way through my head ever since I heard the song for the first time. All lyrics belong to Dar Williams, distributed by Razor & Tie Direct, L.L.C., 2003. No infringement of copyright is intended. No money, profit, or wage is garnered from the use of Ms. Williams' fantastically beautiful lyrics.
Hermione/Ginny, Hermione/OC, second person Hermione POV, which is unusual for me. I don't use second person much, and my Hermione/Ginny is usually relegated to Ginny's POV, so this is something new all around. Rated R.
* * *
(And you know the light is fading all too soon)
on a day is gray and cool and chilly, and you've spent most of the afternoon scribbling away at three six-foot rolls of parchment in the library by the time she comes and finds you. Her smile is nothing less than a sparkle lighting her milky-redhead's face, and you lean over the books about the first Giant uprisings in India to kiss her hello. She is small and tousled, damp and windblown from Quidditch practices, the ends of her hair still wet from the shower. Her robes are dry, though, warm and dry and you bury your face in them, breathing in her scent and the smell of clean black fabric.
She kisses you again, tasting like rainwater and hunger and pumpkin juice, and asks you dutifully how your day was. "Boring," you reply, and it's not a lie. You do like research, you like learning new things, but too many Giant uprisings in one day are enough to make you wish you'd never heard of Giants, much less their uprisings. She grins when you say that, and praises you – "Glad you finally noticed there's more to life than research, Hermione" – and then suggests that you go for a walk.
"In the rain?" you ask doubtfully, glancing outside. Water is still streaking the windows, making little mazes on every bit of glass, but she smiles and takes your hand and something about the sweet, open look on her face convinces you that you can run between the drops.
(You're just two umbrellas one late afternoon)
when she holds the end of her robe over your head so at least the top of your head stays dry, and she looks so silly yanking up the hem of her robe that you have to laugh and swat her small white hands down. Your laughter turns to teasing and your teasing turns to kissing, at first soft kisses standing in the middle of the Quidditch pitch, which of course no one is using because it's pouring right now, and then deeper, hungrier, and you have to back her against one wall of the school so that you can dive into her mouth. One hand crinkles itself in her soft red hair and the other is fumbling against the functional black robes. She's gasping lightly against your lips, soft and urgent little whispers, but you want more, right now, and before either of you know it you're hauling her back into the building and up to your private Head Girl room. Doors lock, silencing spells are cast, robes shed and then you can dive into her, nuzzling the places where her skin is freckled and the places where it is pale and the soft bush of metallic red strands between her legs.
(You don't know the next thing you will say)
but it seems appropriate to say whatever comes into your head, and so you do. "I love you," you whisper with a softly indulgent smile, and she grins back at you, sleepily, small and dreamy tucked into your shoulder. Your very own little Sleeping Beauty, except that it's her hair that's red as the rose, and not her lips.
(This is your favorite kind of day)
– quiet and peaceful, the kind of day when you can ignore in good conscious your coursework and hers, your report on the Giant uprisings, friends and Quidditch practices and Head Girl responsibilities. Six months ago, before all this, before her, you would have said that a really good Saturday consisted of getting ahead on your coursework, or maybe sharing a Triple-Strength Butterbeer with Harry and Ron after a day at Hogsmeade. But somehow nothing you could have imagined before prepared you for this – complete and utter relaxation stealing through your stomach, settling your stress-aching muscles for the first time in days, a gentle haze filling your brain. You couldn't even begin to worry about coursework right now, because
(it has no walls),
the depth of your happiness when you're with her. It's not really happiness, not really relaxation – but despite all your top grades in primary school before you came to Hogwarts, you can't think of a good word for how she makes you feel. There aren't any words. There's just red hair, and a warm bed for the two of you, watching
(the beauty of the rain)
while you nap together.
She wakes you an hour or two later with gentle touches across your stomach and light little nibbles at your ears. It tickles and she smiles triumphantly, teasingly, when you finally blink and ask how long you slept. She kisses your mouth before moving down your body, kissing your shoulders, your fingers, your breasts, fingers sliding against heat and wet until you come again. It's like a drug, and you can feel lassitude stealing through your body until you are lulled to sleep by the beating of her heart and the patter of the rain, and
(how it falls, how it falls how it falls).
You love being with her, you love sex with her, you love making love with her. You love the way her hair curls under your fingers when you push it off her neck so you can kiss her, and you love the way those three freckles on her hip make a perfect little triangle. You love to slide your tongue over her body because you know that's what she likes best; she likes your fingers, too, pushing inside her slowly at first and then faster, but she really likes it when you lick her and bring her to a slow, rolling orgasm. You love knowing that about her. You love her confidence, the fact that even though she's a year younger than you are, she loves you and isn't afraid to say it.
You love her too.
(And there's nothing wrong but there is something more)
but you don't know what it is. Maybe it's just that you're scared. You're scared because you're leaving Hogwarts soon, in just a few months, and you're supposed to get a job and do something real, something real in this world that has become your own over the past seven years, but you have no idea what. What if you don't make it? What do you do? What if you have to go back to the Muggle world – oh, it's so strange, to say Muggle and realize that that's you, that's your parents – and then what? What would Mum and Dad say if they knew?
You scold yourself, reminding yourself that they were pleased when they got your letter all those years ago, and that they at least tried to understand, that they're your parents and they'd do the same now. But what if they don't? What if they don't even begin to understand, because this – this being in love, this being in love with Ginny, and she's a girl – this is all just some part of a world that isn't theirs?
Ginny doesn't understand when you try to explain, because she's grown up in this world, and she doesn't question the fact that you're a girl. "I know you are," she says patiently. "Who do you think I am, my brother?" She tries, but she doesn't get it,
(and sometimes you wonder what you love her for,)
because she's not even listening to you.
(She says you've known her deepest fears)
but this is your deepest fear, and how is she supposed to know it if she won't even listen?
You can feel yourself pulling away from her, and she looks sad when she sees you in the Great Hall or on her way to class and you do nothing more than wiggle your fingers listlessly at her. Sometimes she looks like she wants to say something, more than hello, more than how are you, something to make things right, but she never comes up with anything. Instead you move on your parallel tracks, side by side, sharing friends and a dinner table and a Quidditch team and house loyalty, but never anything more. No more kisses, no more quiet touches, and you find that you miss her.
On the day after the Gryffindor Quidditch team beats Slytherin, you're sitting in your room, books surrounding you in a broad, neat semicircle, rain pounding on the stone roofs and the Weird Sisters crooning away on the WWN. Between the drums, the bass, and the thunder, you almost miss the knock on your door. "Come in," you say, and one brown eyebrow arches up when you see the chocolate-colored eyes and mane of red hair peeping around the door.
She's shy at first, formal and stiff, asking about coursework and your preparation for the N.E.W.T.'s, and you're surprised to find that you're the one reaching for her, your hands yanking on her robes, your fingers pulling impatiently at zippers and buttons and hooks, baring her body to yours and to the deep crimson sheets on your bed. The decision to trust is made without thinking,
(cause she's shown you a box of stained glass tears)
and you can see that she's missed you as much as you've missed her. She cries a little when her small athletic body shakes with orgasm. The single torch on your wall turns her tears into drops of sunset-colored liquid, glassy and smooth on her freckled face.
(It can't be all),
too easy to get back together, but it is and that's all there is to it. She rolls you over onto your back, trembling lips sucking at your nipples, shaky fingers cupping your mound, and you cry out with the thunder when she thrusts inside you, carefully at first, and then with more urgency. After a while you stop seeing and then you cease to hear, and the only thing left is touch and kiss and sensation in this room with the rain shaking the trees outside.
(The truth about the rain)
will always remind you of her, visceral memories that tug at your senses, the scent between her legs, the sharpness of her teeth when she nips at your bottom lip, the quick fluttering sound of her fingers combing through your hair. Her fingers are delicate between your legs and after a while the orgasm lifts your body up and then sends it back to earth, slowly,
(how it falls, how it falls how it falls.)
You don't know what she wants. You don't know what you want either. After all, she's still got another year of school, and then you can live together, or not live together; you can continue to see eachother, or not see eachother; you can plan on building a life together after Hogwarts, or else you can move on and never think about a red-headed girl with fingers like pale matches again. You tell her that you don't know what to do, and she looks at you with serious brown eyes that blink quickly like a doll's and says that it's your decision. It's your life.
It's your life, and that scares you too. This isn't the life you planned to have, when you were little and watched Mummy and Daddy celebrate their anniversary every year with a kiss and a bottle of champagne. There are so many things you need to discover about this world, and you wonder if you're ready for that.
(But when she gave you more to find)
you went out and you asked questions, you researched, you wondered whether it was okay for a girl to be in love with another girl in the wizarding world, or if it didn't matter, if it was really okay. And you find that it might be okay, but it's still not a good thing, and you're not ready to live in a difficult life, you're not brave enough, you're not strong enough. You wonder briefly why you're in Gryffindor if you're not brave, but it doesn't matter, because you're not. You can't do this, and when she asks you if you've thought about what will happen when she gets out of school
(you let her think she'd lost her mind.)
She looks horrified when you say that. First horrified, and then scared, and then finally, when it's all over, just sad. Shoulders droop and red hair wilts like a dying rose and she seems to shrink, but when she leaves your room you watch her, walking with small squared shoulders, as if to prove that she's just fine. You don't learn till later that she went back to her dorm room and cried for the rest of the evening.
(And that's all on you.)
You know it is, and it's wrong. You think maybe you did the wrong thing, but you don't know what to do, you don't know how to help her. She doesn't want to see you, her dormmates have made that perfectly clear, as has her brother and Harry, both of whom are stuck playing courier between the two of you. You're
(feeling helpless if she asked for help)
which she certainly isn't. She lets you know, coldly and firmly, that she doesn't want your help, that she doesn't need your help. And you're scared for her, you're so sorry and would do anything to make it up to her, but more so, you're
(scared you'd have to change yourself)
and you're not ready for that.
You leave Hogwarts that spring, on a warm June day that stays free of all clouds and rain for the big Leaving Feast. You say goodbye to Harry and Ron, to Padma and Parvati, to Neville and Luna and Professors Dumbledore and McGonagall, to everyone except her. Your grades and N.E.W.T.'s are excellent, and you can go nearly anywhere in the world and get a job. You choose Brazil, where you join a team of mediwizards doing research in the jungle, where it rains almost every day.
In time you meet another wizard, a nice young man who went to school in Brazil and has a rich South American accent. He also earned top O.W.L.'s and N.E.W.T.'s in school and has a special interest in Divination as a side interest, although he admits cheerfully that it's neither a precise nor reliable branch of magic. He kisses you, and you kiss him back. He asks if you would like to sleep with him, and you say yes. He takes you to the depths of the rainforest one day and sinks down one knee in the soft rain-filled earth and asks you to marry him, and you say yes. You build a small home together in the rainforest where he proposed to you.
(And you can't deny this room will keep you warm)
because you're happy, you both are. You love him, and you enjoy your life together. Marriage leads to children, and you add on to the house that you built together. They learn to appreciate magic, books, medicine, and ecology. They grow up in a climate full of rain, and
(you can look out of your window at the storm).
Sometimes it thunders and you remember sex and thunder so long ago, until one of your children cries, afraid of the boom and the light, and you go to comfort him.
(But you watch the phone and hope it rings)
– you have a phone now, because your husband is a Muggle-born too, and both sets of your parents much prefer to contact you by phone rather than by owl post these days. You're not sure if she knows how to use a phone, considering that her father was still calling it a fellytone when you left Hogwarts, but you make sure that both your owl post and your phone number are listed in all the wizarding networks, so that she can find you if she wants. If she wants. It's a big if, and you don't dwell on ifs. But you know that
(you'll take her any way she sings, or how she calls)
ifs, ands, or buts. If she someday finds her way back into your life.
Meanwhile, you tuck your children into bed, and kiss your husband, who is heading out with a team of mediwizards to excavate a new section of the jungle. Another storm is sweeping up, and you sit in your living room with an old wizarding photograph album on your lap, watching
(the beauty of the rain)
and remembering a girl, years ago, who loved rain because it reminded her of the flame-haired girl she loved.
(how it falls how it falls how it falls)
(end)