Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing.
Harry x Hermione. This shipper's going back to her roots.
P.S. Can you tell I had a Literature exam recently?
There is a couple maybe seventeen paces away. You can tell they are a couple not so much because of their actions – although their chairs are pushed quite close together as they concentrate on their books – but because of their looks. Every so often the girl's eyes come up, and there is pure love in them. Then, when he thinks she can't see him, the boy watches her. His face is a depth of feeling you have rarely experienced. And that's what starts the uncomfortable thrum in your chest.
It's a stomach ache. It aches in the way that beauty does when you can't reproduce it; summer-evening gentle with mosquito-like persistence, a pounding in the back of your brain. You have fallen from your focused little pedestal many times, but this is the hardest to get up from. This ache stays with you, a reminder that no matter what you are there is so much you are not. It's funny, the things that stay imprinted on your mind like childish handprints – your attachment to characters in whatever form is surprisingly limited, given the circumstances. Instead you fall in love with real people - uncomplicated, happy people – with their smiles and the lines around their face and their voices like a balm on your soul.
Sometimes you can almost feel their voices cooling your angry skin – patches of insecurity like rashes being soothed, for the moment, by the drenching wash of smooth tones. There are so very many people you have fallen in love with, for the smiles that reach their eyes and their hair like shiny laughter. The pretence that your own shortcomings can be effaced that way is futile, but you hold on to those precious moments where the trauma of not being enough is muted bass, hiding almost-erased in the background.
You love him differently. Your love for him is not an ache, or a tremor. It is a pulse of fire which can be consuming but can also be warm, a comfort pure in the background of your heart. You have fallen for his eyes conscious of the flint they contain. You know he can be oblivious, annoying – that he jumps into things without thinking about the consequences. You know the funny, stupid little habits which make him a person, not a picture.
And now, as he sits beside you in the library, his tongue sticking out slightly as he labours over Charms homework, you know that you wouldn't have it any other way. The side of your mouth quirks up as you are reminded of a poetry book your parents gave you for your tenth birthday. It was confronting, especially when one remembered what happened to the poet – but also comforting. It reiterated so many of your own views and beliefs. And so you idly quote "perfection is terrible. It cannot have children."
He looks up, a dash of concern in those chocolate eyes. "You okay, Hermione?" He is usually careful to use your full name, and certainly would never stoop to calling you Hermy like the irritating (but lovable) Ron.
"Yup, fine. Just thinking of poetry."
"Ooh, what poet?" You wonder whether he just wants to be distracted from his Charms homework, but you have also seen him develop an interest in Muggle poetry ever since you gave him a book of Eliot for his birthday.
"Plath." You say shortly.
He sighs. "Wasn't she the one who stuck her head in an oven?" he says with furrowed brows.
You nod. "She wrote some good poems, though. And I have to sympathise with the pressures she faced as a woman in that society."
"Wait, that quote… it's that one about models… hang on…" He chews on his pen.
You wait as asked.
"The Munich Mannequins!" He looks like he's just won some sort of prize, and in that moment you fall more in love with him than perhaps you ever have been. He takes an interest in the things you do and say, listens to you talk for hours about things he doesn't understand without complaint, values you, recognises you. Tears spring to your eyes at the thought.
"That's right," you say trying fiercely not to sob. "Orange lollies on silver sticks."
"Modelling is a stupid industry." He says. "Fancy paying someone to not eat enough and walk around in ugly clothes no-one will ever wear."
Having collected yourself and started checking a charms exercise, you look back up. "You're quite right, you know."
"I know," he says with a chosen-one smile, but you catch him bite his lip. He's never serious when he does that, no matter what others may say. A younger redhead jumps into your head and you find yourself mentally fighting for him, again.
"There's one I like by her," he comments softly. "It has a phoenix in it."
You smile at his magical-ness shining through. "Lady Lazarus."
"Mmm."
"Did you find the eating men bit a bit alarming though?"
He jumps. "Eating men?"
Finger to your lips, you quote wryly. "Out of the ashes, I rise with my red hair/ and eat men like air."
"Aaah. Perhaps not my favourite?" He raises an eyebrow.
You grin. "Well, I'm sure there are lots of girls who would love to eat you." It's a quick comment, sharp and blustery.
He pauses a moment. "Creepy. More chosen-one stuff."
"You should blog about your issues." You look up and catch his chuckle. This Muggle-based banter comes so easily to the two of you it would be a shame to waste it. You are so in tune that he catches your joking tone immediately, and without questioning the improbability of obtaining a network-enabled computer at Hogwarts, runs with it.
"Too many people would read it."
"That is the point of a blog, in case you haven't noticed? For people to read it?"
"Merlin, I'm sure the death eaters would enjoy it." He smiles, a wry twist of his face, and then something that sounds surprisingly like a giggle comes in your direction.
"Harry Potter." You raise both eyebrows in mock-surprise. "Are you giggling?" You've nearly finished your Charms, and besides, this is much more fun.
"Just the idea," the words catch, breathy, between barely-suppressed laughter, "of a death eater reading a blog."
You picture it yourself, a black-robed, stern-faced individual seated on a desk chair, cape billowing around them as they scroll through the latest offering with interest. It is so domestic, so tame, that soon you are both laughing. "Do you think they're like that all the time?" You manage to ask between giggles.
"Like what?"
"Well…all black, and stern, and…evil."
"I don't know." Suddenly Harry is serious, and you see the weight of your quest come crashing back onto his shoulders like a ton of bricks. His eyes flicker and change. "I suppose it has become so integral to their identity that they can't abandon it very often."
"But we know they have families…don't they go play in the park, or make Christmas cookies?" Unconsciously you match his sombre, softer tone.
"Maybe." His eyes are far away now. "Do you think they have time for that kind of thing?"
You need Ron now, to bring him back without taking this whole thing too seriously. As it is, seeing the boy you love ache like this…you sigh and reach for his hand. What comfort you have will have to do.
You squeeze and he squeezes back, and the vice in your chest tightens almost imperceptibly. You feel as if you might cry at how much you love him, want him, need him. "I'm sorry," you say, because it's all you can give him. "I didn't mean to remind you."
"Hey, it's okay." Even now, he is comforting you. "It's not like we can really escape it." This time his wry twist of the lip is sour, jaded.
"Good," you say, and he looks up, surprised.
"Good?"
You purse your lips in a know-it-all way that has been familiar to him since first-year. "You said 'we.'"
He smiles with a depth you don't often see. "Well, you won't leave me alone, will you?" he says jokingly. But his eyes catch on yours, hooking you in.
"Never," you answer, and it is a vow like no other.
Eyes holding his, you find yourself in stasis. You are both calm and tense at the same time, bathing in the cool familiarity of his gaze and also wondering if this is something different.
"Never," he whispers, and it is a promise, and you don't know where you are going but you keep falling, falling into those eyes as they capture yours and surround you with a calm that is different, like the eye of a tornado….different because it holds something you don't know, have never seen and might never see again if you can't seize it in this moment.
You are moving in, you think. Moving closer to him, like a buoy in the storm – but the storm is him and it tosses around you, throwing you closer together and pulling you apart. His eyes are all you can see – and then suddenly, his lips are on yours.
You kiss him with everything you have, which is a lot of pent-up feeling. The storm is there still – it is in his eyes, which you imagine you can see although yours are closed. It is in his hands, which come around to hold your back as much as he can. It is in the way he pulls his chair towards yours, hopeful and despairing and caught up in everything you can be together. Mostly, it is in your linked mouths which need to know the other.
You draw back, opening your eyes with all the slowness of a sleepless first-year. For a breath your eyes are caught together. Then you look quickly around the library, wondering if anyone saw. There are some second-years in the corner gaping, and the librarian looks up to meet your gaze. Suddenly flushed, you lift your hand to your lips and feel them tingle.
"Hermione – was I – did that…did you want that to happen?" You examine his eyes for clues, but all you can find is childlike earnestness. You consider saying "no" – which would not be the truth, of course – to save face, to protect this quest. You consider saying "no" because of the backlash you'll get from two redheads with equally fiery tempers. You consider saying "no" because you're unsure and insecure.
But in the end – as much as you kissed him, he also kissed you. In the depths of your stomach, you are sure he felt that storm that pulled you together and did not quell even when your lips locked – the storm that needed him and you, you and him. You are sure that he must feel the same way you do.
So you reach out to trace his forehead, the feather-light touch making him flinch like your finger burns. Then – "yes", you say, and he relaxes, the area of his face in touch with your skin increasing and sending a shiver down your spine. The connection is tangible reminder that it is you two against the world so often. You hesitate, and then ask slowly "did you?"
"Oh, Hermione, of course!" His face breaks out into a smile like winter sunshine. He reaches out a hand to cup your face, shaking his head like you should have known better but he's unsurprised you didn't. "It's always been you."
"Really?" Now you are surprised. "Not Cho, not.."
"No," he shook his head. "There are a lot of reasons I wasn't sure about this, not least because I don't like putting you in danger. But it was always there – and eventually, I suppose, it becomes undeniable."
"You're right, there are so many reasons we shouldn't do this," you feel him pull away, "but I want it more than anything." He relaxes slightly, but remains guarded.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm never sure about anything, Harry. But for this, I think I can make an exception." And then your arms are around his neck and your head is on his shoulder and he is hugging you like he never wants to let go.
"So the darkness shall be the light," he says suddenly, sillily, in the space between breaths.
You sigh, a liquid sound which sends ripples running down his spine like music. "and the stillness", you whisper, "the dancing."