A/N: Hmm, so this is inspired by the song "You Will You? Will You? Will You? Will" by Bright Eyes, which is made up of the brilliant mind of Conor Oberst, who I am in love with. I still have "I'm Ready, I Am" to finish up, but I haven't been listening to The Format lately, and therefore haven't been inspired for that story. I think this story is a little AU, but eh, it's not really out thereee, so oh well!
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, or the lyrics used in the story.
--
"What am I to you, Harry?" Hermione cried.
"You're Hermione, you're my best friend, you're my confident, my lifeline, the person who keeps me grounded! You're my life, everything and more!"
"Oh, bullshit!" Hermione cursed. "Best friends don't fuck their best friend, and then go out on the town shagging everything with tits, a pussy and two legs!"
"What are you talking about Hermione?" Harry took a step closer to her to wrap his arms around her.
"Don't you DARE come near me Harry Potter!" Hermione shouted, backing up until she almost toppled over the couch. "You act like I'm some ignorant little bitch! Don't think I don't see you when we're out with friends… don't think I don't see you and some whore sneak off to a corner… don't think that you fool me like you fool everyone else."
"What am I your property? " Harry spat back at her. "Am I not allowed to be with other women?"
"You FUCKED me Harry! You took my virginity, and with that my soul! I love you, and you told me the same!"
"It was the heat of the moment," Harry said back. "The odds that we were going to survive that battle were slim to none. We both didn't want to spend what we thought were going to be our last moments in pain, in depression and hurting. I never indicated that it would be for the rest of our lives… We were seventeen."
"Oh? Then why do you keep coming back, even five years later?" Hermione motioned to the once tidy living room that had been disturbed during their lovemaking. "I feel like I'm a book on a shelf to you! You've read me once, so now I'm just something you take down when you need something to go back too." She broke down at this point. "And I let you come back! I stay here so that you are never alone… so you always have some stability in your life. But I don't know how much longer I can do that for you Harry, I really don't.
"Being with you is like a dream… I may have you every night, or every other night, but you're always gone in the morning. I can't seem to grasp onto you for more than the night. But then… but then you
always come back, like a re-occurring dream that never leaves. You never leave my mind during the day, and then that night, it's another dream. And it's becoming torture for me, my dreams are starting to give way to nightmares.
"Hermione…" Harry started.
"No! I once thought you were the love of my lifetime. Are you? I've had so many doubts these past years. That summer before seventh year… when you were over, and you helped me clean out the attic, and you kissed me… I wish we were back there now, when things were so simple. When you kissed me, it's like you opened a whole new book for me, but there's been so many twists and turns, and it's taken me so long to figure out that I may not get my happy ending with you, that I may have it with someone else, or maybe not at all."
"What are you saying?" Harry asked, looking and sounding as if he was trying to hold back tears.
"I've put in for a transfer away from here… I'll be going to stay in Sydney."
"Australia?"
"Yes… I found that I was rather fond of it when I went for my parents."
"Australia?" Harry repeated.
Hermione gave him a small, sad smile. "Yes, Harry. Australia."
"You can't go!" Harry exclaimed, suddenly full of determination.
"I am," Hermione shrugged. "I leave tomorrow."
"Were you ever planning on telling me?" Harry whispered dangerously.
"No, I wasn't, actually," she stated simply. "I was actually hoping you wouldn't find out… I had instructed no one to tell you where I was after I left."
"So if I hadn't come here, I would have never known?"
"No, you wouldn't."
"I'm not letting you go."
"You don't have a choice."
"You can't go! I need you! I love you, I want you. You keep me grounded, you're my confident, you're the most important person in my life!"
"Sometimes you need to let go of something that's hurting you, instead of killing yourself trying to hold on… and right now Harry, I'm dying trying to hold on you to you. Goodbye, Harry." Hermione waved her wand and everything was suddenly gone. She patted her pocket to make sure everything was there, and
when she was satisfied that everything was there, she walked up to Harry. She traced his scar down to the side of his face, and he nuzzled into it. Softly, she touched her lips to hers, in a bitter farewell kiss. Then she turned around, walked out in the crisp sunlight, leaving Harry in an empty living room, the door open, and his head spinning.
…6 months later…
"Mate, I can't go on without her!"
Harry James Potter was a right mess… at least mentally. Outwardly, he looked like he was fine. However, if you knew him, you could tell his hair was messier than usual, his eyes were not the once brilliant shade of emerald they once were, but a duller forest green and he had taken up the habit of biting his nails.
"Harry," Ron Weasley said. "It's only been six months."
"Six months of hell!" Harry exclaimed. "She won't answer my letters! She won't even read them; they come back unopened. She won't answer my phone calls; she keeps changing her number. I can't even find her bloody flat, I think she made unplottable or something!"
"You tried looking for her flat?" Ron asked, but Harry kept on ranting.
"I thought it'd be easy at first. She wanted to leave? Fine, I wouldn't let my life be affected by it. I mean I'd take that last piece of advice she told me in that note and even prove the last part wrong…"
"Note? Mate you never told me about a note."
The morning after Hermione left
Harry woke up the next morning, next to some nameless face in his bed. He stretched for his glasses, but heard the crunch of parchment instead. After finding his glasses and putting them on, he read the lone message on the yellowing parchment.
"Go explore those other women, and the geography of their bodies. But in the end, there'll be only one map you need… You're a boomerang, you see, you'll come back to me."
He immediately crumpled it up, and threw it across the room, where it fell behind his dresser.
The morning after Hermione left
"How do you know it was from Hermione?"
Harry looked at him. "Who else could it be, Ron?"
"One of your crazy fans?
"So I took her advice. For the first three months, I went around shagging every girl that threw herself at me – "
"Surprised you didn't get and STD…" Ron muttered to himself.
"The fourth month, I found that something was missing. So instead of shagging every girl, I fucked the ones that had something similar to Hermione, whether it was something in her name, her eyes, her hair… but none of them could compare to her." Harry sighed. "The fifth month is when I started drinking; holing myself up… and well you know the rest. And here I am now, trying to find her… and I need your help. I need you to tell me where she is."
Ron's voice suddenly went high pitched. "I haven't a clue what you're talking about!"
"You're lying!"
"I don't know where she could possibly be!"
"Liar."
"Fine, you're right. I do know where she is but she made me swear not to tell you. Said you needed to find her on her own."
"How could you pick her over me?" Harry yelled. People began to look at the pair of friends that were yelling in the middle of the pub.
Ron, rolling his eyes, put a few pounds on the table, grabbed Harry by the arms, and apparated them back to their flat that they shared. He pushed Harry down on to the couch in a sitting position, and stood towering over him.
"Listen, you fucking asshole," Ron growled. "I am not choosing her over you, even though I probably should be. She's my best friend too, alright? And you, oh you fucking hurt her. You know how many times she came crying her heart out to me?"
Ron didn't wait for an answer, but instead kept going on. "No. You fucking don't. So let me enlighten you. Every single time she saw you sneak off with some tramp, she'd run away. God, when it was at the club and you were some fucking some girl, in public no less, it was like a repeat of first year, but ten times worse! Except you were the troll, and I was the one who had to save her and make sure she was alright. Have you ever seen Hermione cry? Of course you have. Have you ever seen her sob so hard that she makes herself sick and pass out? No. I've seen that, and it tore my heart out every time. So excuse me if I don't just write out on a piece of paper where her house is. I don't need more visits ending with her falling asleep on my couch, tears still falling from her eyes even as she sleeps."
Harry sat there, astonished. "I never… I never knew."
"Of course you fucking didn't know!" Ron bellowed. By now, his face, ears, and neck were red. "She wasn't going to let you know! She LOVED you! She was willing to sacrifice her happiness for you. But would you have even cared? NO!"
"OF COURSE I WOULD HAVE CARED!" Harry stood up, pushing Ron back into the wall. "I LOVED HER!"
"GREAT WAY OF BLOODY SHOWING IT!" Ron yelled back. "Because last time I checked, shoving your dick in every girl's vagina WASN'T A WAY OF SHOWING SOMEONE YOU LOVED THEM." And you wouldn't have cared Harry! What would you have done? Say, 'Oh thanks, me too.' And then left her for some blonde bimbo with fake tits and a fake tan and fake blonde hair?"
"No! I would never do that!" Harry screamed, tears streaming down his face.
Ron punched the wall, leaving a hole. "Yes you would! Harry don't deny it, you were never ready for a permanent relationship, why would Hermione be any different?"
"Because she was Hermione. She fixed my glasses, and made fun of me when got angry at quills when they snapped. Because she knew that I liked mixing tomato and chicken noodle soup, and always made it for me on cold winter nights, and when I was sick. Because she liked my hair untamed and wild. Because her eyes would turn yellow when she was playing with Crookshanks, a muddy brown when she was upset or dissatisfied, a clear, intense brown when she was determined, dark brown, almost black, when she was mad, chocolate brown when she was enjoying herself, a honey brown was she was pensive or reading a book, and when she was in the sunlight, they'd turn gold. And when she'd look at me… they'd get green specks in them. Because she bites her lip when she's mad, thinking, shy, embarrassed, or trying not to laugh. Because she never worried about her nails, her hair, her clothes, her make up. Because she knew that she didn't need to dress up to be beautiful, that beauty lies in the way you help others, which is why she makes a wonderful Healer. Because I could show up at her doorstep at three in the morning, and she'd take me in. Because I'm bloody hopelessly in love with her, and if I go any longer with out her, I'll die… I just won't be able to go on."
Ron inspected his best friend of eleven years. Harry was sitting on the couch; face in hands, and with his elbows on his knees, keeping him somewhat upright. Harry then looked up at him. Ron couldn't recall a time when Harry had looked this broken, this… defeated. His eyes were cloudy, there were bags under his eyes, and tear marks down his face. Through the eleven year of knowing him, Ron had never seen Harry cry.
Turning quickly, Ron found a spare piece of parchment, and a pen. He wrote down Hermione's address quickly, and said, "Here. Go."
"Wh – what?" Harry stuttered.
"I believe you. You love her. Go get her and bring her back to good ol' England where she belongs… with you."
"I could kiss you right now, you know that," Harry joked, wiping his face off.
"I'd really rather you not, if you don't mind…" Ron smirked.
Harry threw the Floo Powder into their fireplace, but before stepping in, turned around and said, "Oh, and Ron?"
"Yeah?"
"This never happened."
"What never happened?" Ron looked at him, confused before going into the kitchen to find leftovers.
Harry shook his head, and shouted the address that Ron had given him.
Australia
Hermione awoke to a thump in her living room. Grabbing her wand out of a secret compartment out of her bed, she crept out into the living room. Seeing a man standing in front of her fireplace she whispered "Silencio" and "Petrificus Totalus" in a rapid succession, and smiled as she heard the man fall to the floor. She walked over to the light switch, and turned it on.
"Harry?!" She screamed. "What in the hell are you doing here? Oh right, you can't talk or move." She canceled the spells, and waited with her arms crossed in front of her.
"Bloody hell woman, did you have to sneak up on me?" Harry questioned as he rubbed his rug-burned joints.
"Oh, excuse me for being alarmed that someone might be BREAKING into my house, maybe next time I'll welcome them with tea and crumpets, and ask them to watch the daily news with me!"
"Okay, okay, no need to get snippy."
"What are you doing here?!"
"Returning to you," Harry said simply.
"Returning to me?" Hermione looked at him, confused.
"Yes… I love you Hermione, I've figured out how my book goes," he explained. Hermione gasped at his remembrance of what she said so many months ago. "This book… it's full of mistakes and cross out words and edits. It's full of nameless faces that don't matter, and never will. But it's also full of love, love for you, love that we shared, love that I took for granted. And I need to return to you."
"You hurt me Harry. Six months ago, when I left England, I meant every word I said in that flat."
"I know…"
"What made you think that you could come here, asking for my forgiveness, saying that you're returning? For all you know, I could have been married with children."
"Because if you don't forgive me and let me into your life again, then this books all lies, if you don't my plans will all ruined, if you don't I'll start drinking like the way I did before. And if you don't, well I just, I just won't have a future anymore." Harry whispered.
By this point, tears were streaming down Hermione's face. "I don't know, Harry, I'm just so scared…"
Harry came up to Hermione, and cupped her face in his hands, wiping away her tears. "I wish I could erase the past, erase your hurt, and do things right. But I've never been known for doing things right, I've never been known for being rational. I'm known for being stubborn, and never admitting I'm wrong. But I am right now, and I'm pleading for you to forgive me. Our books, let's just throw them away and create a new one together. Let's start a novel with blank pages that can be filled in with tender moments, silly laughs, stupid fights, and great make up sex –" at this point Hermione laughed a little. "I love you, Hermione. And I never want to let you go."
"I love you, too Harry… I could never stop loving you, not even with millions of miles in between us."
Harry gently pressed his lips to hers in a sweet kiss that signaled a new beginning.
You will return to me.
You will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will.
You? Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will. You, you will.
A/N: Hope you enjoyed it. I kind of just sat down and wrote it all at one time, so I hope it's readablee. And I know the ending is kinda of ehhhh, but if I had done what I wanted to do (which was have Hermione in a serious relationship, and not want to give it up just for Harry, but agree to be friends with Harry, and then it end up realizing that it was Harry she really loved and not this other man and blahblahblah...), but that would have meant more chapters, and I wanted to finish this tonight & for this story to be a oneshot.
Now I might do a series of oneshots with Bright Eyes songs, and just continue on this fanfiction story so that there's several chapters, but we'll see where that goes, hmm ;) Reviews are nice, please & thank you!