Today's entrance into the tropes!series is a break from SWAC to bring you the following trope: Shipping! You won't find a single genre of fanfiction that has more followers, detractors and writers than the romance story between two characters that never stood a chance in canon. For a lot of people, the shipping thing actually defined their entry into fanfiction. A friend of mine was once told "Take character A & character B and have them fuck each other. That's fanfiction.". There is literally no bigger genre, trope or category in the fanfiction world than this one.

So now we get to a classic of the genre in the HP community: The Harry/Hermione ship. There are entire sites devoted to this ship (portkey, anyone?), there are more fanfics of this pairing than there are of the Harry/Ginny ones and you literally cannot read HP fanfiction for longer than ten minutes without encountering at least a reference to it.

This is a result of a writing session that started at 11pm and finished at 9am. It's in first person perspective, was written as the author pretty much went back & forth between this and one or two HP fanfics that used this ship as a main plot device. For the record, I am totally biased since this is my one and only ship of choice. I don't give a shit about relationships in fanfics in general, but I will, when given a choice between a story that says Harry P/ Hermione G and/or Harry P/ Ginevra W, go for the H/HR one first. There is literally no other ship in no other fandom anywhere that I ascribe to except for this single one.

But honestly? Writing a fic about it is a peculiar experience. In first person perspective, it's bloody insane. I'm never doing that again.

Now to the story. What I was trying to do was play Harry as completely straight and as close to the canon version as I could get. As a result, he's not a nice person and it shows. It's pretty much the stage where he realises that he's in love with his bushy-haired best friend. But here's the rub-they're in the tent. Ron's gone. They're both at their wit's end when they realise what they feel for each other. I tried to make it as bleak & depressing as I possibly could because fuck sunshine & unicorns and screw the epilogue with a tungsten-tipped warhead.

The angsty bastard and the bossy girl getting together is not a smooth ride at all. To portray it as such is to do the flaws and uniqueness of the characters a huge injustice. They're both stubborn, passionate & vicious in their own ways and are incredibly thick when it comes to standard human emotions. Ship Canon Harry and Canon Hermione and the pairing becomes the stuff of bloody legends. I can totally see both of them turning violent at the drop of a dime. They're both anti-social, isolated and persecuted by the world in general with crappy childhoods that didn't see much in the way of positive emotional development. Add sex, hormones and kids into that mix and the world around them won't like what's happening to it. Rowling probably didn't want to have those two end up together because having the epilogue open with "platform 9 and ¾ was on fire" may have sent the wrong message.

This fic tries to captivate the corrosive bleakness of the funk they find themselves in and the turmoil they feel when Love strikes two people who know they've never really felt anything like it before. If it'd turn into an actual fic, bear in mind the ending of book seven. This would not be a happy ending for the pair. They may still be together and alive by the end of it, but the damage Harry's sacrifice would have inflicted on Hermione would've been immense. That is if she didn't decide to follow him into the clearing to confront Voldemort. Compared to their canon counterparts, the two'd end up as bitter, tainted souls hiding the sheer despair of what they'd seen and what they'd done behind the mask of a placid husband and wife couple. Yeah, not much in the way of sunshine & rainbows, though love does have its place in it.

TL;DR: I tried to write this to be as depressing and/or angry as I could. Not sure if I succeeded.

It's written from Harry's POV only. Sorry, but trying to write it from Hermione's POV'd probably the fastest path to braindeath at this stage.

By the way, contains some real vague descriptions of sex. It has one instance of the word tits in it, that's about it. Just so you know.

I am a blind man. So very, very blind as to what was right in front of me all along. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

I spent so long looking for a way to have a family to call my own. Friends that wouldn't think me a freak. A future that didn't look like it ended with me in a coffin. A life.

And honestly? I found all that and more. Right now, though, I find myself glad that I've thrown it all away.

I've had time to think, see. Six years of my life spent fighting the good fight, day in, day out. And for what? All I have to show for it right now is a mouldy tent that reeks of cat's piss, some outdoorsy furniture and a bed where my former friend was sleeping away the morning. And what did I pay for it? Everything I had spent so long building up, gone in an eye blink.

Hmm, maybe I should start from the beginning. Trust me, I need to for this.

I met Ron at the tender age of eleven. We were kids being sent off to a special school to learn magic. I really didn't care much for him. He was every inch the kind of boy that I disliked back in primary school-loud, brash, happy, not very smart. I'd seen plenty of his type before. Bullies to the man in the end. Not as bad as Malfoy turned out to be, but the red-head looked like he was on the fast track for it back then. But he had brothers who were alright and a sister that harboured a crush on me, so I decided to stick around.

That'd been a mistake I'd come to thank myself for making. For, if it hadn't been for him, I would've never had the excuse for approaching a buck-toothed, bushy-haired bookworm that went by the name of Granger. She would've never been threatened by a troll, me & Ron would've never turned up to save the day and she would've just become another anonymous face in the crowd, looking on as Potter once again spat death in the face and tried to survive the experience. Maybe she would've ended up tutoring me in some random subject at some stage, but I doubted we'd have become friends.

And I, like an utter idiot, accepted that friendship at face value and never looked any further than that. For, you see, I already had a plan to get myself a family; the Weasleys. The youngest daughter was hopelessly infatuated with me, her brothers took me in instead of pushing me away and their mother, well, mothered me. It was all so easy to just wriggle into the giant family and make myself at home. What can I say? I up and killed a man with my bare hands by the end of that year, I needed some comfort. Who was I going to turn to? The Dursleys? The fuckers barely fed me as it was.

My plan took shape in the summer before second year; I'd spend as much time as I could with Ron and his siblings and gradually responded to ickle Gin-gin's interest to fan the flames, as it were. I barely noticed my brunette friend tagging along, really. She nagged, worried about homework and generally rode herd on us so that we could worry about fun things, like quidditch and dangerous monsters trying to kill us. Saving Ginny by the end of that year didn't hurt the plan either, bien au contraire. But the victory'd been a bittersweet one, what with Hermione ending up in the hospital wing. I dropped by as often as I could, though I didn't know why at the time.

Summer that year was, apart from the Dursleys, great fun. The leaky cauldron, the burrow... happy memories all around. So what if a mass murderer was after me? Between Malfoy and Voldemort, that queue was already getting pretty long. But that was also the year when the first chink in my plan appeared. I was on track with my 'instant family just add romance' idea, but the way Hermione kept butting heads with Ron was driving me up the wall. What was she thinking? Didn't she realise that making an enemy out of his first male friend would end up doing to their friendship? That, and I felt empty, hollow after acting like someone my age towards her for so long. She'd done the right thing, yes, but she had done so behind my back. It was around that time that I realised that she genuinely cared for me in a non-adventure/suicide by idiocy-related fashion. And something I'd never felt before started stirring in my chest. About the only thing I noticed back then was that, as the year progressed, Ginny looked less and less appealing to my eyes. In my defence, affectionate feelings is not my forte. Faking it? Yes, I am a past master at acting like I'm happy, sad, excited etcetera. Actually experiencing these feelings? Take a fucking guess.

Plus, we travelled time to save a wrongfully imprisoned convict and defeat an army of demons together. That's a special bond in anyone's book, right there. Says something that, while exciting, that wasn't the bit that brought us the closest.

No, that honour went to year four. I shall forever remember that year as the point at which I realised the value of having a plan B. Why? Because Ron got jealous and, in a fit of pique, trashed three years' worth of friendship in the blink of an eye. Everybody else followed suit, shunning me and making me wish that I'd found a way to keep the basilisk alive so that I could teach these ungrateful fucks a thing or two about the value of loyalty.

Hermione, however, stuck by my side. You'd think that I'd be clued in by now, but no, mister Brain had other ideas. In my defence, I was a fourteen-year-old boy who was about to face horrors that regularly killed highly skilled magical athletes (mathletes? Meh, whatever), so I still didn't pay as much conscious attention to her as I should have. This was also the point where I discovered just how incredibly attractive she'd turn out to be in a few years. Ron came back, but I'd received the message loud and clear; either bend over backwards to avoid a repeat or have an alternative handy. Ron was just fourteen at the time, so cut him some slack. Dude was probably worried I'd drag him into a wacky lethal adventure to do with the tournament, which is ironic because guess what happened? And he came back too, don't forget that. But I remembered the lesson well.

Year five? Fuck year five, I'm skipping it. About the only good thing to happen that year was the DA. That, and discovering just how hot an angry Hermione could be. Nothing else really positive happened that year. Me? Suck at spellcasting? Eat shit Bellatrix.

Year six was when everything went even further downhill. Plans A and B flew out the window courtesy of Ron's sudden attraction to Hermione, a potions book and a boiling frustration that's been simmering beneath the surface for years. Hermione had a go at me every other hour. I had a go at her right back. She went and kind of hooked up with Ron while I took Ginny for a test drive. Bye bye virginity, hello plan C (aka plan A version 2.0). Then Dumbledore died, sanity was restored, plan C got put on the backburner and we were off camping.

Which brings us to year seven. This year. Late autumn in the forest of Dean. The first snows have already fallen, the cold season's looking like a right record-breaker. Ron left us a week ago. Ginny's fucking every male she can get her hands on in some fit of revenge, methinks (thank you map) and I'm sitting on the edge of the bed and staring at the girl that's sleeping beneath its covers, wondering about what I've just done.

If you'd asked me at any point in time of the last six years who my choice for love of my life was, it'd have been about any other girl but her. Funny how things work out, huh?

Now, I can no longer kid myself into thinking Ginny'd be enough for me.

All the worldly goods I'm not carrying on me have probably been confiscated by now, vault included. Without the Weasleys to speak for me, I'd never get them back if I survived, victorious or not.

Nobody knows where we are, what we're doing and how to assist us.

Ron, even if he does come back, probably won't be staying for that long after I've had a talk with him. If he survives, that is.

The Dark Lord wants my head on a silver platter and has the numbers to get it done.

I've screwed the pooch big time. I'm dead. Extremely dead. I will never have a future. I will never have a family. I will never live to see my next birthday. I have the life expectancy of a patient suffering through the final stages of terminal lung cancer.

And I don't give a shit. Because I just found out that I don't want any of that, never did. I don't want a life. I don't want a family. I don't want a job. I don't want to live to see myself go wrinkly and grey.

I want her!

I am in love with Hermione Jane Granger, my best and now probably former friend in the whole wide world. We're so fucking screwed it's not funny.

It all started yesterday morning. She was bawling her eyes out as she sat at the table, her tears smudging the ink on the parchment in front of her. Every now and then, she'd sniffle. I could almost hear the Ron, Ron, why Ron she keeps repeating in her sleep, over and over again.

And I've had it up to here with this bullshit. When we're on the move, she's okay. It's like the old days back in fifth year-I just have to look her in the eyes and I know exactly what she wants me to do, where we're going to go and how we're going to get there. We're synchronised at a level beyond basic speech, we anticipate each other's moves and what we cannot anticipate we pre-empt with the ease of long practice. To fill the silence, she plies me with anecdotes concerning her research-the hallows, horcruxes, what Riddle got up to after World War 2- she spouted off information left & right. I let her. She needed the distraction.

The trouble invariably starts as we're setting the ward line. She hesitates, lingers and fumbles as she's casting the spell. That shit's dangerous-wards are an incredibly precise combination of charms, enchantments and sometimes even runes that backfire spectacularly should you mis-cast them even in the slightest.

Cooking time's okay, but she randomly starts crying at the oddest bloody times... Honestly, I'm starting to wonder if I could actually have a shower by suspending her from the ceiling feet pointing upwards and showing her a quidditch magazine.

Then, there's watch time. She probably doesn't realise it, but she dozes off more often than not. Merlin knows the number of heart attacks I'd gotten when awakening to an empty tent and the pained moaning of my best friend coming from the dark forest because she fell asleep on watch duty and got mugged by yet another Ron-related nightmare.

If I have to go through this charade during the rest of this bloody hunt, then I'm quitting and handing myself over to Tommy-Boy. Watching her waste away like this... I'd rather die. I never thought that there'd come a day where I wished Cho was around. She was slightly less soggy despite her boyfriend ending up six feet under courtesy of Voldemort, with yours truly playing a peripheral role, and would probably find a more entertaining way to pass the time than mope in her cereal.

The date was day eight of Ron deciding to pull a Pettigrew on us. Autumn was on its way out the door and Winter was coming. I've barely had any bloody sleep and she hasn't either. I look at the mug of luke-warm coffee in front of me. Then, I look over to Hermione. Cup. Hermione. Cup. Hermione. Ah, fuck it. It's not like I'll get any peace by ignoring her. I've been ignoring her for five days straight now, hoping against hope that she'd cry herself out, sit down and be the Hermione I knew and, uh, cherished back in Hogwarts. I stood up and went over to her.

"Hey bushy." I said, running my hand through her frizzy hair. "We need to talk."

"Harry?" She asked as if surprised to hear my voice. Ow, that's painful. Didn't realise that we hadn't actually talked to each other in almost two days. Her ever-so-sharp eyes catches my hidden wince. "Oh, honestly." She sighed. "What is it?"

Okay, time to channel dear old dad and be a bit more of an insensitive prat than usual. "Ron's gone. He's not coming back. And you're killing yourself."

Now I've seen a lot of things that'd scarred me over the years. Watching Hermione's expression as she realised that yes, I'd just pulled a Gryffindor conversation opener on her is in the top five of things I hope never to see again. Which is when she starts scowling. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Then we won't. Pack up, we're leaving."

"What? And where would we be going?" she asked me, flustered by the sudden change in direction this conversation was taking.

"I was thinking Spain, personally. Always wanted to visit Majorca..."

She laughed for the first time since Ron'd left. Okay, so it might be a bit on the hollow & bitter side, but I'll take what I get. "Oh please. Look, stop wasting my time. You have work to do, I have work to do."

Showtime. "Hermione..." I huff. "I'm being serious here. We should leave."

"What?" She asked, open-mouthed. "No way! I'm not leaving our friends behind to die, Harry James Potter! That's why I'm here, with you instead of with Ron."

"Then let's talk then."

"Talk about what, exactly?"

"The fact that you're not eating anymore, perhaps? That you get three hours of sleep a night? That you've been reading the same page since yesterday? That, night after night, you scream Ron's name in your sleep? The fact that you're slowly killing yourself? Pick one to start off with, please."

"Oh, as if you could talk locket-boy! How long have you been wearing that horcrux around your neck?"

"Three days."

"Then take it off!"

"No. Because if I take it off, you have to put it on."

She fell silent. "And why is that a problem?"

I roll my eyes. "Look yourself in a mirror and tell me that you can manage this thing for more than five minutes with a straight face, I dare you." More silence. "You're wasting away in front of me. Get some bloody sleep. Eat some damn food. Forget Ron until we meet up with him, okay? A few days' rest won't kill us."

Hermione looked at me with wet eyes before moving her gaze elsewhere. "Alright Harry. Have it your way. Some rest, then we can talk as much as you want to." The look she gives me as I walk over to the camping stove was one I'd never seen on her face before.

I don't rightly remember much of the rest of that day. We were both inside the tent enjoying the downtime a little. Hermione read through a Heinlein paperback and I wrote a few letters to people that were no longer with me. Cedric, Hedwig, Albus... Eh, I have weird hobbies. Plus, it helps keep my mind from falling apart.

Then nightfall came and I just sat there, looking at her. She was getting more and more uncomfortable, which was kind of the point. She absolutely hated it when people beat around the bush. Finally, she screeched "What?" at me.

"Are you ready to talk now?"

"No."

"Come on now. Something's bugging you and-" it's not all Ron "-it's not just Ron." I add, tacking the insight onto the end of that sentence. Where'd that come from? Pretty sure my mind was as heavily occluded as I could make it now.

My friend looked at me with a startled look. Ah, so something else was going on in that brain of hers."Your point?" I twitch my lips into a smile.

"You need someone to talk to. It really helps. I should know."

She's oddly silent once more, probably judging my sincerity and intentions. She had that uncanny ability to completely ignore any dodge you put in her way and head straight for the truth if she had the motive to do so. Lying never works for long when she and I are involved. Especially to each other. She narrowed her eyes, telling me that she suspected me of something. In truth, I probably am, but I don't know what I'm thinking with regards to her right now. Still, she gives a small nod and bows her head. "I'm scared, Harry." She says in a broken mewl.

Join the club.

Ron was the heart of our little trio. If life got you down? Ron'd make a wildly inappropriate remark, a crass joke or provide an insight that hinted at just how intelligent he actually was. He was never one for books, but if you told him what the information was and why you needed it, he had the uncanny ability to approach it from an angle that I'd never have thought of, not in a million years, and make it fit into the plan/puzzle/solution you were reading up on it for. If the going got tough? Ron was right there, either behind you or leading the charge. Needed someone to listen to your sob stories? Ron was always there, the shoulder to cry on or the man to snap you out of your funk via the power of either quidditch or chess.

I saw him as what I believed to be a brother. Hermione had been in love with Ron for years. Or so she thought. I mean, if I have a hard time telling one of my emotions from another, how could others tell? She was probably in love with Ron in the same way I was in love with Ginny; there are feelings there, but I don't know what they are. Anger, rage, jealousy? That a good base for a relationship? Well, if the target of those emotions happens to be someone you're friends with and wouldn't mind waking up next to for the next century or so, then yes, according to Harry Potter and Hermione Granger these emotions were perfectly acceptable. Yes, yes, I know that there's barely any love there, but it is there. If I wanted to, I could settle with Ginny knowing that I'd come to love her in the fullness of time. Hermione could do the same if she wanted to.

If she wanted to. Apparently, she no longer did. Because she didn't see Ron as the heart of their group anymore. Which meant that the things that'd spoken to her inner voice? No longer applied.

Hence her emotional problems. She wanted to forgive Ron. She wanted the Ron from before they'd set off back. But she couldn't. Now she was coming to terms with the fact that Ron, the loyal, brave and courageous Gryffindor, had up and left. The one she'd come to love was gone and she couldn't cope with that.

Then there were her parents. If she survived, what'd she tell them? Sorry Mommy and Daddy for erasing your memories of me, giving you a fake identity and sending you off to live in Australia as you'd always wanted to do?

And Voldemort. She felt bad that she wasn't helping people she knew fight the good fight and stay alive that much longer. I could relate.

And, finally me. Which is when things took an interesting turn.

"What do you mean, me?"

"I mean you Harry! I can't figure out what you are to me!" She practically screeched.

Say what? "I'm Harry James Potter. You know, the friend that you've been loyal to for the past seven years?"

She scowled. "Don't say that. Ron-"

"Is off moping in the countryside. You, on the other hand, stayed."

Hermione shrugged. "I've got nowhere to go but forward." She said bitterly. Yes, bitter. What a nice way to describe this entire fucking mess of a conversation. "If Weasley thinks he can go back, well let him think that. I don't care"

"Much." I whispered.

"I don't! I don't care if he's alive anymore. I don't care if he's in Azkaban or a Death Eater camp or getting his face stuffed by Molly fucking Weasley." She breathed. "He's dead to me." She sighed again and ran her hands through her hair. "But I've not always been that good a friend to you either, remember?"

"You always had a reason, which is more than you can say for anyone else." I pointed out. "Whenever you did something, it was because there was little time or I wouldn't see sense until it was too late. Like with that potions b-"

"No more. I made my point last year." Ah, there came that pouty scowl of hers again. "If I have to repeat myself, Harry, you'll find out whether I've mastered some of the curses that were in there or not."

"Point being" Were my cheeks getting redder? "You've never truly abandoned me." Yes, yes they were.

"And that's just it, Harry. Why didn't I? That's what I'm having issues with."

This... wasn't making sense to me. "Beg your pardon?"

"Ever wonder why I never left?" She asked me with oddly intense eyes. There was worry, concentration and determination in there.

"Because you're a friend, perhaps?"

"So you can't really answer either?"

"No."

She nodded her head and stared at me in fear. Fear? What, had I failed some kind of litmus test to check if the horcrux'd taken over or something? Why is she-oh wait, she's standing up. She's coming over to me. She's bending over with that odd expression on her face.

"What are you to me, Harry James Potter?" She asked, breathing into my face. I just stare up at her in dumb confusion. "Let's find out together, shall we?"

She kissed me.

Kissing Cho'd been like having your face tied to a leaking garden hose.

Kissing Ginny'd been warm, fun and euphoric.

Kissing Hermione felt like drowning in a desert oasis.

My lungs felt inexplicably empty. My entire body went cold in shock before coming alive with the familiar spike of adrenaline and Serotonin that preceded trouble. At the same time, Part of my brain burst into song. I was a junkie scoring my first fix in weeks. An alcoholic wandering into a pub after two decades at alcoholics anonymous. A fallen Angel brought back into the fold. A cop finally catching that serial killer after spending years tracking the bastard down. A starving orphan finding food (and I know how that feels).

There was an explosion inside my head. Something that said 'hey, life's been pretty crap up until now, but I think we're on the up & up'. I loved it. I felt it recede. I wanted more. I deepened the kiss, pulling Hermione closer. Funnily, she didn't protest. The feeling came back with a vengeance.

I caressed her body. She ended up in my lap. My explorations got bolder. Hermione responded by shifting positions and moaning. I wanted to see more. I wanted to see her.

I didn't bother with accidental or deliberate magic. I just tore the garments off her as I went along. I'd reparo them later. Finally, skin. Even after three days without showering, she still smelled like a library in springtime.

I don't know if I was thinking at that stage. I don't think I was. All I wanted was to get closer and closer to Hermione. She was doing the same thing.

I'd had sex with Ginny last year. It was nice. Very nice. It'd sucked at the start, but we'd gotten better at it, two blind fools trying to navigate an art museum.

This was something very different. It was violent, painful and oh so satisfying, more tit-for-tat escalation than the physical expression of the love two people share for each other. There was simply too much of everything for it to be anything but the raw release of pent up emotions-the friendship, the dangers, the war, the eternal dancing around we were engaged in throughout our time at Hogwarts, all leading up to this point in time, all coming charging out of the gates at once.

I remembered the troll. I picked up the pace. Quirrell. She shifted around. Her petrified form in the infirmary. I bit her. Her mischievous smile as she showed me the time turner for the first time. She scratched me. The Yule Ball. I made her scream. Her patronus being conjured for the first time. She made me scream. Her injuries after the department of mysteries. The table collapsed underneath us.

It went on from there. We trashed the whole tent.

The squeals of delight were music to my ears. She enjoyed it! Ginny hadn't at first, but Hermione did from the word go. And my, wasn't she appreciative.

And then it came to an end in the same way it started. Silently, suddenly, unexpectedly. I felt the same shivering sting I had during the kiss and then ecstacy overcame me. It overcame her too, her intense brown eyes staring at mine right as the wave hit. They rolled into the back of her head as she moaned out loud.

We fell onto the bed, bodies entwined and kissing all the way. She didn't talk. I don't dare to.

The realisation of what she meant to me had struck. The ramifications were rippling through my view of the world, turning it upside down as everything I thought of as fact came into question. Then finally I realised what I wanted out of life. I wanted the girl in my arms. I wanted to grow old with her, have children with her, never leave her. I really didn't care if she reciprocated. Love grew in even the stalest soil. She'd come to love me in time if that's what it took. I was a very patient boy when I put my mind to it. I have earned the right to be selfish. But not to her. No, I had no right to claim her like that after everything we've done together. Again, do I care? No.

Is this what true love feels like? It's sick. Selfless and selfish at the same time. Plotting on how to ensnare her in your web even as you are passionately kissing her while the two of you were naked in bed. Manipulating her into choosing you. It was revolting and yet I wouldn't live without it now that I've found her.

Did she feel the same? That was a question I didn't dare ask, no matter the answer. Because if she gives me an answer, that's the answer. No takebacks, no changing your mind. I could sense that. If she really, truly loved me like I did her, what would we do? This was a war. Dying was ridiculously easy. If I lost her now, the world'd burn.

And if she didn't? Was I prepared for the long up-hill struggle of fending off suitors and nurturing her affection for me into something akin to what I feel for her? Could we keep on with this for a while, at least until the war ended? Or would I end up looking at Ron the same way Snape'd looked at my father? I didn't want to end up like that. Please Merlin no, I'd rather die by Voldemort's hand than live through that special kind of hell. As it stands, Ron and me are going to have words next time we meet. Abandoning his friends is one thing. Abandoning Hermione? He'd pay-but not too much. I highly doubted even Ron could've snored his way through that racket.

I just hoped she shared my feelings to a degree. I'd lost a friend today. She was either going to end up as my wife or as an acquaintance. I wouldn't let us go back to being friends ever again. Too much history, too long a wait. Fuck pretending this never happened. I'd hate for it all to have been in vain though.

I take a break from kissing and look into her eyes. Awe, wonder, fear and anger, all in one gaze. She detects my hesitation and puts a finger to my lips. "Talk later." She says as she offered up one of her tits to my mouth. She always knows what I am thinking.

No wonder I love her.

Epilogue of sorts:

"Harry?" A voice asks in the darkest depths of a tent weathering an early snow-storm. I smile despite the butterflies flying around in my stomach. The tone reassures me somehow.

"Yes, Hermione?"

"I love you." She says, the lingering surprise of the realisation still audible in her voice after nearly a day's worth of time to digest it.

"Love you too."

"What are we going to do?" She's crying on my chest. I can feel the warm tears trickle all over. It's strangely arousing, which makes thinking hard.

"I don't know, love. I just don't know."

I sit there in the early morning, listening to the love of my life sob and know that at least some of those tears are tears of relief.

We'd found each other. And while all wasn't well, I knew that one day it'd be spectacular.

A/N: And there you have it.