Name: Chris
Title: Breathless
Genre: Angst/Romance
Rating: T
Summary: It never should have happened. Fred should still be here, with the girl who loves him. The girl I should not be falling for. [Harry/Hermione, mentions of Fred/Hermione Post DH, AU as of OOTP.
Based on Livejournal's 30Breathtakes table prompt 'wind in your hair.'
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all related trademarks are property of JK Rowling, Scholastic, and Warner Brothers. Besides, if it were mine, then I'd be JK Rowling and I hate her a little too much right now to want to be her. :p
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"Where the hell have you been?" Harry shouted
"Chamber of Secrets," said Ron.
"Chamber-what?" said Harry, coming to an unsteady halt before them.
"It was Ron, all Ron's idea!" said Hermione breathlessly. "Wasn't it brilliant? There we were, after you left, and I said to Ron, even if we find the other one, how are we going to get rid of it? We still hadn't got rid of the cup! And then he thought of it! The basilisk!"
"What the-?"
"Something to get rid of the Horcruxes," said Ron simply.
Harry's eyes dropped to the objects clutched in Ron and Hermione's arms: great curved fangs, torn, he now realized, from the skull of the basilisk.
"But how did you get in there?" he asked, staring from the fangs to Ron. "You need to speak Parseltongue!"
"He did!" whispered Hermione. "Show him, Ron!"
Ron made a horrible strangled hissing noise.
"Merlin, Ron," a voice, that turned out to be George, piped up. "Get a drink of water before you start fighting, would you?"
"Ha ha," Ron replied. "Where's Fred?"
"Yeah. Aren't you guys supposed to be setting up defenses in the hallways?" Harry asked him.
"We are." George shrugged. "Or we're going to. Fred remembered something he needed to do first."
Hermione looked up in alarm. "What?"
Fred popped up around the corner. "This." He spun Hermione around-she dropped one of the fangs she was holding causing Ron to grimace-and kissed her firmly.
"Oi, enough of that," George took hold of his brother's arm and pulled him away. "There'll be time for all that later."
Hermione smiled a little goofily. The idea of Fred coming to find her for a kiss in the midst of battle must have seemed very romantic. Harry and Ron merely rolled their eyes.
"Come on," Ron balanced the load in his arms and pulled Hermione by the elbow after him and Harry in the opposite direction.
Out of the corner of his eye Harry saw a red blur and, thinking it was Ron, looked up just in time to see Fred pull Hermione to him for another quick kiss. "I forgot to tell you something," he said. "Go get 'em," he added and dashed back off around the corner.
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The cold in the air, a biting nip that stole the breath, was uncharacteristic for late spring. Even in England, where the weather always leaned on the cooler side, it was considered chilly. But somehow it fit for the particular occasion.
The crowd stood solemnly in small clusters around the deep hole that would soon lodge the young man they were all mourning too deeply to say. In the center was a larger group, primarily red haired, standing around carefully arranged folding chairs. In the front four seats were George Weasley on the aisle, his sister, Ginny's, hand on his shoulder from her place behind him, Hermione Granger, one of the lone non-redheads in the group, pale and stoic, clutching the hand of the Weasley family matriarch whose other hand clasped her husband's on the other aisle.
The remaining four Weasley boys, Ginny, and assorted significant others stood silently just behind the chairs with the children making up the first row. Each of them remained silent, not even making noise with their tears, as they paid their respects to their fallen brother.
Fred Weasley was gone. Like so many of his friends, he had died in the battle to bring down the wizarding world's greatest evil, Lord Voldemort, at Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It was a careless loss that had stunned everyone when the news touched their ears.
Harry Potter watched over his Ginny's head as the long wooden box was lowered into the ground silently by the wands of the two gray haired Wizards from the Ottery St. Catchpole Funeral Home. He had only been to three funerals in his 17 years-all in the past year. The first one he had attended, for Hogwart's Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, had been packed so tightly there was no room for any seats. With all the admiration and respect Dumbledore had earned during his long, achievement filled life, wizards and witches had come from all over the world to pay their final respects. This was in addition to the 1,000 plus Hogwarts students and staff.
The second was for Remus Lupin and his wife Nymphadora Tonks-Lupin, both of whom had also died in the already battle, leaving their newborn son behind. Harry tossed a look over at his godson in his grandmother's arms. Teddy was normally a very happy baby. He giggled constantly and, taking after his mother, was a Metamorphogus, and changed the short fuzz on his head and his eyes different colors like a rainbow. That funeral had been smaller, made up of close friends and a few of Tonk's coworkers from the Ministry of Magic, and louder. It seemed like everyone there had been crying. But oddly enough, it wasn't as unexpected as Fred's. As an Auror, Tonks had put herself in danger on a daily basis-just like she did with the Order of the Phoenix. Remus had been a member as well, but many people had been expecting to hear of his untimely demise for some time due to his unfortunate fate of being a werewolf. Oh no, people at their funeral missed them, but they weren't crying for them. Not really. They were crying for little Teddy who had to grow up without his parents.
Harry's wasn't sure if the last one, or first rather, counted or not. It was more of a memorial. When Voldemort had killed Cedric Diggory almost four years earlier, the air of Hogwart's Great Hall had been filled with a stifling sadness. Everyone knew Cedric, liked him, respected him. And he had been needlessly slaughtered before he even reached his graduation. The official funeral was held at the family home before school ended so few of them got the chance to attend.
And if Cedric's didn't count, then Dobby the house elf's makeshift service in Bill Weasley's front yard certainly didn't.
There were others to come soon enough. Over fifty people had lost their lives in the ancient castle the same night as Fred, Remus, and Tonks. Many of them had been people Harry knew-the majority comprised of his friends and classmates from school. Like Colin Creevy, who had always admired Harry and stayed behind to fight despite not being old enough. But he snuck back to stand beside his hero and ended up as another senseless casualty.
The magical tossing of dirt onto Fred's coffin seemed to be the last straw for the eerily quiet service. Mrs. Weasley began sobbing loudly against her husband's chest while he whispered soothing words into her hair. As if taking her cue, many of the other guests started crying openly, not bothering to conceal their tears any longer. Harry squeezed Ginny's hand when she groped for it in front of him.
His eyes were drawn to Hermione and George. The two of them were closer to Fred than anybody; George being his twin and Hermione his girlfriend. Eyes had been drifting towards them throughout the service, more so now than ever. Harry knowing them both the way he did, it was difficult to imagine that this would be the place either of them would break down. This kind of pain was too personal to just put out there for the world to see.
Out of the corner of his eye, Harry noticed the crowd starting to form into a line. Familiar faces, cloaked in grief, waiting for their turn to speak to the family gathered around the grave. That was when Harry was suddenly struck by the realization that he as considered, as an extension, a part of the Weasley family and that he'd be having people coming to him saying they were sorry the way they were to Percy and Charlie.
Oliver Wood was one of the first ones in line. Harry had long become accustomed to seeing a serious, determined, expression on the face of his former Quidditch captain. Seeing him look so somber while he clutched the hand of Katie Bell tightly in his much larger palm seemed almost normal. It was becoming a regular occurrence of late, Katie and Oliver. 'Good for them,' ran through his head. Hopefully, some good would come out of all of this and they would finally realize just how short life was and stop dancing around each other the way they had been for as long as he'd known them.
Crouching down out of the way of the people behind him, Oliver talked in hushed tones to George. The seated man nodded silently as Oliver talked, choking out a scratchy thanks before his friend's hand clapped him on the shoulder. Katie, having stood behind Oliver while he talked, bent to give George a quick, but tight hug, before doing the same to Hermione.
Harry shook hands. He said thank you and nodded at everyone that passed by him with their condolences. He walked slowly to the grave, marked by a tall gray stone, with Ginny and wrapped an arm around her shoulder when the tears couldn't be constrained. When Ron had an attack of sobs that drew her attention he didn't know what to do, preferring to step to the back of the tight circle of the family and watch as she and his mother calmed him.
That was when he noticed Hermione.
The service had disbanded, some people had already departed, opting not to stay for the wake Mrs. Weasley had ready in the house. The family had moved closer to the plot under the old willow tree at the edge of the yard. Even George had risen from his chair and was touching his hand to the marble slab in front of him. He kept looking down at the packed earth below him as if he expected his brother to come popping out in typical Fred fashion, declaring it to be the punch line of an elaborate joke. Alicia Spinnet, George's one time date for Hogsmeade weekends at Hogwarts, came up behind him and slid her finger through his in silence.
But Hermione remained seated, statue like, not moving except for the occasional blink of her dull brown eyes. He made his way over and sat beside her in George's vacated chair. "How're you holding up?
Hermione kept looking straight ahead, the cool breeze sending her hair dancing around her tired face. She made no move to suggest she even noticed the ringlets hitting her face, keeping her hands folded resolutely in her lap. She looked, for a moment, like the prim and uptight schoolgirl he'd known her to be once upon a time. When she finally spoke, her voice was flat and she sounded uncharacteristically unsure of herself. "It doesn't seem quite real just yet. Does that make any sense?"
He nodded. It wasn't surprising to be honest. When he had stumbled back into the Great Hall and seen the cluster of redheads at the far end of the room he had known at once what had happened, but not who until his eyes lighted on Hermione on the floor a few feet away, back against the wall, white as death. "It makes a lot of sense."
"I knew you'd understand," she whispered. Harry followed her eyes. He deduced that George had to be directly in her line of vision, one hand on Fred's tombstone and the other in Alicia's. From this vantage point the wound of George's missing ear was plainly visible, barely concealed by his copper hair. It seemed so unfair-in all too selfish way-that the two boys, who had always been so close to being exactly the same, had ended up on such different ends of the outcome.
And if it seemed unfair to Harry, he could only imagine what was running through Hermione's head. After all, Fred had been her boyfriend-the one she had been planning her future around for almost three years. Things must have seemed so off to her. She liked things a certain way-her way-and any variation was frowned upon heavily.
"Would you promise me something, Harry?"
"Course," he replied. It certainly wasn't as if she had to ask. Hermione, or Ron for that matter, cold ask him to walk through hell and get them an ice cream and he'd do it without a second thought. Just like he knew in his core they'd do for him.
"Promise me, Harry," she turned and looked straight into his eyes, the familiar determined glint he'd long associated with Hermione, "that you won't leave me. I don't think I could bear to lose anyone else."
His eyes ticked over to Hermione's parents, the only people dressed in Muggle clothes and not the traditional black wizard's robes, talking with Professor MacGonagall just feet away from the Weasleys. Until the day before, the Grangers had been in Australia, confounded by their daughter to think they were completely different people with no knowledge of who she was. Now she had them back, only for them to be on the fringes of her life. They had no clue what her life had been comprised of since she was eleven years old. Hermione was honest, but he doubted they knew all the times she' risked her life, her place at school-how many times she'd been seriously wounded. He wondered fleetingly if they even knew that they were at the funeral of the boy their daughter was in love with.
"You don't ever have to worry about that, Hermione." Harry placed his hand over her small ones-like ice from immobility- in her lap and squeezed. "I think it's safe to say you're stuck with me, and Ron, for life."
She gave him a weak smile, her eyes clouding with tear. "I hope so."
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