Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
Harry
—
He asks her mum how to get onto the platform. She looks right at him, but doesn't see him. Her brothers are all leaving her and she is too miserable to care about the boy with no parents who needs a helping hand.
Later, she hears her brother telling their mum that the boy is Harry Potter, and her heart speeds up just a bit.
She wishes she had paid attention to him, wishes she had caught sight of his scar. She begs her mum to let her go see him and she gets a lecture, is told that Harry Potter is not something for her to goggle at in a zoo.
The train leaves, carrying Harry Potter and her brothers on it, and she runs after it, desperate to go with them, to get to Hogwarts. She isn't fast enough, though, and she is left in the dust, telling herself that a year is not all that long.
Her mum wipes the tears off her face and they go home to an empty house.
That night, she dreams of Harry Potter.
—
He comes for the summer. She keeps her door slightly ajar, and watches as he and Ron pass by, on their way up to Ron's room.
His eyes wander in her direction and it is only for a split-second, but she is sure that they make eye contact. She shuts the door quickly and leans against it, covering her mouth with her hands to stifle a giggle and conjuring up his face in her mind's eye.
He will break her heart someday.
—
He is there.
He is bleeding and his hands are covered in ink. He looks deathly pale. But it seems he has fared better than the giant dead snake beside him.
He tells her everything will be okay, and she believes him.
They meet up with her brother and that awful Professor, and when they get back to the girls' toilets, Myrtle tells him she would have shared her toilet with him, if he'd died.
You've got competition, her brother says, and he is lucky that she is too weak to raise her arms, because she would smack him if she could.
She thinks about the fact that she could have – would have – died down there, had it not been for him, and locks eyes with him, trying to convey everything without saying a word and embarrassing herself. He smiles reassuringly at her and she shivers, but not from the cold.
She knew he would come.
—
She doesn't know when, but sometime between her first year and her third, he stops being Harry Potter and becomes Harry.
And Harry makes her heart beat faster than Harry Potter ever did.
—
She spends the entire time watching him, waiting for the right moment to ask him to dance with her. But she is lacking in Gryffindor courage tonight, so she resigns herself to dancing with Neville.
She has a nice time – though her feet would say differently – and kisses Neville on the cheek before going up to bed.
She tells herself that she is over him, that she doesn't care if he ever sees her for more than his best mate's little sister.
And she is such a terrible liar.
—
They spend the summer trapped together at Grimmauld Place, and now that their bedrooms are closer together, she can sometimes hear him crying out at night, plagued by nightmares of a maze, a graveyard, and Cedric Diggory.
She wants to comfort him. She gets out of bed, and, one night, she even gets as close as his bedroom door before losing her nerve and retreating back to her room.
She wonders if her brother hears him, and knows that he must, but also knows that he probably thinks better than to say anything.
She doesn't understand boys.
—
Competition does come, eventually, but not from Mrytle.
She hates that Cho Chang is pretty and smart and a decent Quidditch player. She hates that he obviously notices all these things about Cho, too, but he can't pull his head out of his arse to realize that she is fairly bright, herself, and is really growing into her looks, and can fly circles around that stupid cow any day.
She hates that he looks at Cho the way he should look at her.
—
Dean Thomas is a nice boy.
He kisses her and she lets him, telling herself that this, surely, will help her forget about a boy she has loved since she was ten.
She has grown a lot over the years, but she is still a terrible liar.
But maybe Dean will get Harry's attention the way Michael Corner couldn't.
—
Hermione says he stares at her when he thinks nobody is looking.
She looks up from her book, and he is not looking at her, but it is different than it used to be, she can feel it, and she wonders if he can feel it, too.
She breaks up with Dean.
—
Gryffindor makes it to the Quidditch Cup Finals. She catches the Snitch out from under Cho's nose, and the victory is sweet, but his kisses are sweeter.
They spent lunchtimes down at the lake, and on the rare nights that they both are unburdened by homework or Quidditch practices or detentions or special meetings with the Headmaster, she sits in his lap on the couch and he plays with her hair absentmindedly while they talk.
And it doesn't matter to her that it took him six years to see what was right in front of him all along.
—
There is something in the air that night, and it leaves an unsettled feeling in the pit of her stomach.
When she finds out from Hermione that he left with Dumbledore and has instructed them to take the Felix Felicis, a part of her is not surprised.
What feels like days – but is only a few hours – later, she is clasping his hand in hers and leading him away from their Headmaster's limp form. Whispers and screams and sobs surround them as they walk, but she holds tight to his hand, to the only thing that makes much sense anymore.
They go to the Hospital Wing and he can't seem to look at her, and when he does, there is something in his eyes that she wishes she didn't recognize, but does.
The voice in her head whispers that this is the beginning of the end.
—
She has been expecting it since the day after their first kiss, but that doesn't make it easier. Still, she smiles and makes it through with most of her dignity intact. She tells him she understands, and when they get on the Hogwarts Express to return home, she makes a quick excuse that she is sure nobody believes before leaving their compartment in search for an empty one.
The train is not nearly as full as she remembers it being in September, and a vacant compartment is easy to come by. She does not cry, but merely stares silently at the wall opposing her, drowning in her own bitterness.
When the door slips open and a second person enters, she does not look up to see who it is. She knows.
She smiles and lets him wrap his arms around her.
I'm sorry, he says, and she nods wordlessly against him.
They sit in a silence they have long since perfected.
I kissed Hermione, he tells her, and she smiles.
It's about time.
He laughs softly and rests his chin on the top of her head.
You're better off without him, anyway, he says, and his voice cracks.
You're a good brother, she tells him with a sigh, but you're a worse liar than I am.
—
They are hiding something – they have been since they got to The Burrow – but she doesn't put the pieces together and realize what it is until it is too late.
He has avoided her eyes since the funeral, but he seeks her out after the wedding and comes to her bedroom tonight, once the guests are gone and everyone is in bed, and he looks nervous and expectant and hopeful, so she lets him in and shuts the door.
They talk and then he kisses her softly, and when he pulls away, she knows why he hasn't looked at her in a week. His eyes give away the secrets he needs to keep close.
She doesn't tell him not to do it, she doesn't ask him to let her come with him. He has to do it alone and she knows this, even though Ron and Hermione will probably never accept it and will be there, anyway.
She puts her lips to the shell of his ear and begs him to make love to her, and he does, and for the first time (and the last time), she knows what it feels like to fall asleep in his arms.
She wakes up in the middle of the night to a light kiss on her forehead, and he whispers that he loves her before pulling on his clothes and leaving.
She has waited for so long to hear those words, and now, she wishes he had kept them to himself.
She feels empty, and it is only the next morning, when she learns that the three of them disappeared into the night, that she realizes it is because he took her heart with him.
He won't come back.
—
The front page of the Daily Prophet exclaims: The War is Over!
She spends the day in bed with the covers pulled over her face and an Imperturbable Charm around her bedroom to block out Ron and Hermione's attempts to talk to her, and she wonders why she is the only one who realizes that the cost of freedom was just a little too high to be worth it.
—