Title: Remember Tomorrow
Author: Ice Princess
Disclaimer: I don't own anything created by J. K. Rowling or any of the people involved in making up anything that I haven't.
Summary: With Harry dead by Voldemort's hand, what can an emotionally-deprived Hermione do about it? (Hermione's POV)
Pairing: H/Hr
Rating: PG
AN: I got this idea from reading a fic...can't remember by whom, but it was to the ever-annoying tune of Dido's Here With Me. It never really captured what I was really hoping for from what I'd read in the summary. So I'm going to take a stab at something similar—okay, it's similar to my least-favourite of the overused storylines but for once I'm gonna be a person who doesn't use a song... Also, I got the idea for the title while walking the hallways at school one day and pondering the importance of each day. And every little thing we do. And the things that we'll do tomorrow which are directly affected by what we did today. It's a weak attempt at amateur philosophy. However, I made that up to be a saying and didn't know at the time that it's actually the name of a band I've never heard of. So no credit to them :P Also, this is my first HP fic (but not my first fic), but bear with me since I don't happen to own any of the HP books, having had to borrow off my cousin.

"Remember Tomorrow"

I had never really very much interested in the things that my parents had ever advised me on, except for the importance of brushing at least two times a day to keep my teeth strong, healthy and pearly white. After all, it was worse to have bad teeth when your face is already so plain, right? Being the daughter of two dentists wasn't ever easy, but it always helped to know how to pretend I was paying attention. It never ceased to amaze me how much they would talk endlessly on just about any topic in my presence, but become startlingly silent whenever I wasn't around.

One of the things I had remembered from my mother's constant jabbering, however, was a "saying" that she had come up with one day. It was spontaneous and had startled me when she suddenly told me. I had actually been telling her about the upcoming N.E.W.T.S. and how important it was that I study ten times harder than I usually would. Instead of telling me I shouldn't be stretching myself to the limits like that, she'd simply said, "Remember tomorrow." Being only 16 years old at the time, I had never fully understood what she'd meant by that. Not until I was put into a situation where it truly mattered.

I remember telling Harry that being clever or hardworking wasn't as important as a lot of other things. Who really cared if you topped your Transfiguration class in semester 1 of your 4th year? Or if you topped your whole year in your O.W.L.S. the year after? What does it really matter that I could do all the Arithmancy homework in my head, whilst the rest of my class had to do everything on parchment or were left counting their fingers? It doesn't mean anything, that's what. Not then, not now, not ever. Sure, it meant something at the time, but now that I look back on my achievements, the things that I've done and compare it to the things I haven't, I feel like I've let myself down. In fact, the only thing I could look back on with pride was the fact that I had experienced so much with Ron and...Harry.

No, it doesn't matter anymore.

I never thought I was capable of falling in love; especially when I thought that knowledge was more important and took priority over loving and being loved in return. It sounds so clichéd, but there's nothing I can do about it. I can't claim to have tears pouring down my face because I've "lost love". Because I haven't. Although Harry is dead, his love is still here—not physically, but with the knowledge that he'd loved me, fully and completely, comes the realisation that this is what really mattered and fulfilling a purpose such as that is so much more important than anything else I've ever had in my life.

The fact of the matter is, Harry is dead and I can't mourn for him because he's not really dead. Neither in my mind nor in my heart. What I really hope to do is to bring him back. He'd served the wizarding world for years in protecting them from Voldemort and he'd paid the ultimate price because of it, even though he'd never really gotten anything in return except for some unwanted fame and unflattering media.

Being the Boy-Who-Lived wasn't easy. But loving him was.

Now is the time for me to pay my debt to the wizarding world to sculpting me into the person I am today and shaping the way my life has evolved. To do that, I've decided that giving the world Harry Potter with blood pumping through his veins and life in his being was nothing short of a fair repayment to my debt.

Raising the dead isn't easy. Believe me I know. Every single waking moment finds me buried in books, looking for answers while Harry lays waiting, buried in his grave instead of under a blanket, enjoying the simple pleasures of sleeping in on Saturdays after a tiring week's work. Book after book after book, the hope of finding the right spell dims, but just remembering what my mother told me has kept me going.

"Remember tomorrow," she'd said. I never gave up because I believed that it was telling me that what I couldn't achieve today could very well happen tomorrow. I didn't realise how wrong that interpretation was until much later on in life.

Years of research had come up with nothing. Not even unicorn blood mixed with the Elixir of Life could've saved him now, I'd thought, just about ready to give up until I remembered what I couldn't discover today could very well happen tomorrow. And so it became a cycle, one I couldn't prevent myself from getting completely sucked into, the gravity of my mother's words too strong for me to allow myself to let go.

I held on, I'd survived the death of the physical form of the only pure, real love I'd ever experienced, and I didn't have anything to fall back on. It was either that or being a Juliet. But I knew in my heart that I could never kill myself because of his death. Not only would he not want to have become the cause of my demise (after all, he did die so that the rest of us could survive in a world where enough horrors roamed without a dark wizard like Voldemort terrorising it), I would have had to have been in a pretty bad place to have done it. But I'm not. Because hope has been floating me for so long that I wouldn't be able to subject myself to that, even if I wanted to. So I thought I could bring him back instead. Taking back his last and most noble deed to a society who never truly cared.

There was nothing and no one who could have convinced me otherwise—except one person.

All throughout school, we'd looked up to him (not only because he had always been a rather tall man) and had trusted in his wisdom and had always been our Newton's First Law of Motion in times of crisis (or not-so-crisis), being the gravity in our lives which had the ability to bring us back down to earth. Dumbledore was always a mentor, never seen in our eyes as wrong or mistaken or angered. He was never biased and was always the one they could turn to and trust in completely.

So I shouldn't have been surprised to find that Dumbledore had been the one who'd guided me into realising the true meaning of my mother's saying.

That isn't to say I'm any better or worse off with this...epiphany, but you could say that I am now able to accept Harry's death and know that there is no possible way of giving life to a person who had died years ago. Also, I know now what I've lost. I've lost him, physically, and though his love lingers, I cannot hope to know how much until I realised how much of his love I really have lost.

I can no longer see the glint in his eye whenever he comes up with something brilliant. The way he reacts to sudden noises. No longer can I laugh when he sleeps through all three ringing alarm clocks. The way he and Ron never run out of things to do, say or get in trouble for. The way he never has trouble befriending anyone he meets. And especially, the way he looks at me. That's something I can't ever explain, not in words. Never.

So then what IS the real meaning of, "Remember tomorrow"? Well, it is that no matter what happens tomorrow, you still had today. Regret is the worse and most useless thing you'll ever experience.

I can't regret wanting to bring him back, I can't regret drowning myself in misery. I loved him with all my heart, but that doesn't mean I was ever superhuman. Everyone has their weaknesses. Harry was mine. And he's the one I'll always remember, tomorrow.

THE END