The Unbreakable Promise
By Avaxius
Summary: Harry keeps his word to Hermione. After all, he had made an unbreakable promise. H/Hr, Romance and Drama, one-shot. Short little drabble for you all.
Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter.
Author's Note: Hehe. Right. I hope you enjoy. :)
~ooOOooOOOooOOoo~
"Avada Kedavra!"
Harry closed his eyes.
He expected it to hurt.
He expected to feel sweet oblivion washing over him; experience first-hand as his life slipped out of his body. He awaited the encroaching pain with an almost sick sense of anticipation, half-heartedly assuring himself in some hazy corner of his mind that it wouldn't be too bad — it was faster than falling asleep, right?
He expected to feel something.
The eldritch green beam of death struck his body and Harry felt himself falling.
Falling, falling, falling…
But there was nothing.
Only the regret-filled thoughts of a bushy-haired brunette briefly flashing through his mind before everything went black.
~ooOOooOOOooOOoo~
And then, there was something.
A sensation of him lying on some surface — soft and brittle, like soil; yet simultaneously as hard and unyielding as granite.
He flexed his limbs, testing if they were still functional.
They were.
Harry lifted his face out of the ground, blinking rapidly and attempting to make sense of his surroundings. An irritated puff of breath resulted in a brown clump of something flying out of his mouth to land about a metre away.
Re-arranging his glasses to sit properly upon his nose, the wizard sat up and looked about himself.
He was in a clearing, of sorts — it was circular; partially surrounded by tall, well-groomed pine trees and elegant garden ornaments. The lawn itself was highly maintained and better described as a lush expanse of pure green. The sky far above was blue, and not a single cloud was in sight.
The visage would have been beautiful, if not for the dark, brooding house, lurking not fifty metres away in the distance.
It was a simple, four-story manor. The walls were darkly coloured, elegantly constructed from a mixture of stone and wood. The windows were opaque, resulting in it being impossible for anyone to peer inside.
It radiated a near tangible atmosphere of dread, death and sadness, seeming to suck in all the gaiety of its surroundings. It also resulted in Harry somehow feeling a distinct sense of longing.
Leading up to the house was a long, dead-straight path; paved in little granules of what Harry thought was gravel and lined by many small statues and figurines.
Along said path strode a male figure, quickly covering the distance between the manor's opulent front entrance and Harry himself.
The figure raised its wand.
"You! Identify yourself!" shouted a familiar voice.
Harry, his wand half-drawn from long-ingrained battle instincts, froze as it registered in his brain.
The other man reached the clearing, his wand unerringly pointed at the teenager-turned-soldier's heart.
"Neville?"
It was a mistake. He should have fully drawn his wand.
A bowling ball-sized globule of purple light impacted Harry's chest before he even had time to react; the air rushing out of his mouth with a wheeze as his body crumpled bonelessly to the ground.
The face of his long, long term friend eventually appeared in his limited line-of-sight.
It was older, Harry noticed immediately. It was also more weathered; grim, hard lines and the occasional scar. The baby fat of before was long gone, leaving only a warrior behind.
Brown eyes stared down at Harry, their emotionless depths betraying nothing.
Despite all of this, Harry still could see elements of the Neville he knew.
The almost unnoticeable quirk of his eyebrow as his jaw worked. The slight yet no less repetitive shifting of his weight, from his left foot to his right, as the former got too tired — the flying accident, back in their very first lesson of Hogwarts, had had more far-reaching consequences than first envisioned.
The downed wizard attempted to move, his face displaying relief and not a little annoyance.
"Neville? Why did you hit me with that?" Harry sighed. There was no reply. "Can you help me up?"
He sure got helped up, all right.
The older man gestured with his wand; it was the slightest possible flick of his wrist, barely enough to register as a movement.
Harry felt himself get lifted into the air by some invisible force.
Neville then seized him by the back of his collar and unceremoniously dragged his captive all the way to the residence's entrance.
For the entire journey, Harry had — again — attempted to move, but to no avail. His limbs just refused to operate; as if the connections between them and his brain had been completely blocked.
A blindfold was roughly placed over his eyes and Harry sighed again, resigning himself to his momentary fate.
After some indeterminable amount of time — the young adult thought that Neville had just made six left turns in a row, but he couldn't be too sure, as a result of not being able to see — his old dormmate stopped moving.
It appeared that they had arrived at wherever Neville was taking him. Finally.
His captor knocked on a heavy-sounding door. Soon, once again, they were moving; presumably into another room.
"What is this, Longbottom?" questioned a cold, female voice suddenly. It echoed around the room, denoting that the space was rather cavernous.
Harry, however, suffered no resultant deficiencies to his hearing and instantly recognised the high tones — modulated and warped by the years but no less familiar — of her.
The black scrap of cloth was ripped off his eyes.
Thus with the blindfold gone, Harry blinked multiple times and took in the blurry expanse of grey above him — it seemed his glasses had been removed at some point earlier.
"Another imposter, my lady," murmured Longbottom. Judging by where his voice came from, the bound man guessed that his old friend was kneeling.
Harry felt his brows furrow at that. Neville never kneeled.
A sigh. "Another one? Morgana almighty. I don't think they shall ever learn…"
"No, my lady," came the quiet response. Harry craned his neck and just about managed to catch a glimpse of Neville — amazingly and rather shockingly — in a kneeling position so low his brow nearly touched the floor.
He was, from his position, unable to see her, however.
"Be gone, Longbottom, before you fall out of my favour."
It was a command; harsh, sharp and brooking no argument. Neville, intelligently, did not offer any resistance; quickly striding to the door and vacating the room.
Harry suddenly fell to the floor, somehow landing flat on his face despite having previously been facing straight up.
"So. Another imposter, hmm? I wonder what I shall do with you…killing the impersonators does get a bit repetitive…"
The released man got his hands beneath him and shoved himself into a standing position.
The other figure hmm'd again. "Shall I send you back in pieces? Or maybe in cubes? Triangular prisms, perhaps…"
Harry squinted at the vague silhouette. "Hermione?"
She made a gesture with her arm. He felt something imprint themselves rather roughly upon his nose.
When the room suddenly snapped into razor-sharp clarity, Harry realised that she had found his glasses for him.
With his vision restored, he took in her appearance.
She was dressed in a skin-tight, black material, which hugged her curves and covered both her upper and lower body. Her hair was down, cascading down behind her in loose ringlets. Her wand — vine; dragon heartstring and ten-and-three-quarters long. Awfully 'springy', whatever Ollivander had meant by that — had fallen to tap thoughtfully against her leather-clad thigh.
Harry's gaze trailed up to her face and his heart abruptly jumped into his throat.
Cherry-red lipstick instantly drew his eyes to her lips, which were currently half-pursed in deep thought. Her eyes, her beautiful, chocolate brown eyes, were older than he remembered. More mature; more experienced.
Harry could also see a certain glint in them, though, that literally screamed danger.
Consequently, he resolved to be on his very best behaviour.
"So? Out with it."
"With what?" Harry immediately questioned. His head tipped to the side in confusion.
He knew it was a mistake the split-second her eyes flashed; her wand stilling infinitesimally in its tapping motion.
"Your claim. Your assertion. Your last words, stranger, so choose wisely! Many made the mistake of coming before the infamous Dark Lady Blackmoor, pretending to be him—"
"Pretending to be who?" Harry enquired, though he knew exactly who Hermione was talking about.
The short stick in her grasp was suddenly pointed directly at the space between his eyes.
"—when I know that my Harry is dead! Dead, as in gone! Passed away! Went and kicked the bucket, whatever! So, unless you want to die with that pathetic question as your last words uttered on this plane of existence, out with it!"
Hermione was breathing hard by the end of her rant, but her wand remained pointed at him; steadier than a gyroscope.
He only knew what a gyroscope was because of the darkly dressed beauty before him.
Harry was also aware that he had — at most — seconds to live. So, he chose his next words purposefully.
"I will be back, Hermione. Through thick and thin, through slimy Slytherins and filthy Filch himself, I will come back to you."
The wand, if possible, became even steadier; her expression freezing and resultantly displaying an odd mix of rage, grief, frustration, guilt and — most of all — hope.
Then it wavered, the tip vibrating like a dragonfly's wings. And then it dropped, her arm slapping loudly against her body.
Harry chanced a step forward.
She did not immediately eviscerate him on the spot.
It seemed that quoting his second-year self — a younger Harry had whispered those very same words to a petrified-but-not-unaware Hermione, back when he had been forced to leave her frozen form in the Hospital Wing — had succeeded in convincing her of his identity.
He took another step forward.
"You see, Hermione? I promised you, did I not? I came back."
Her shoulders shook, her wand arm now hanging slackly at her side. Her face could only be described as a movie screen; the entirety of her emotional story flitting across it at a pace too fast to be interpreted.
This continued for about five minutes; the wizard seeing no sign of it stopping any time soon.
"What happened to yo—" Harry cut himself off with a shake of his head. "Never mind. Just, please. Say something. Anything."
He was now close enough to Hermione to see the individual freckles upon her beautiful face. They had faded somewhat — probably because of her not spending a lot of time in the sun — but they were present nonetheless.
"You left me."
Harry flinched at her cold, this-female-is-pissed tone. It seemed that his best friend had finally regained control of her emotions.
"I'm sorry," he replied, ducking his head, because he had no other excuse.
Expectedly, it wasn't enough; for Hermione's eyes flashed again and anger returned to her face.
She strode towards him, thankfully choosing to poke him in the chest with each point she made — just like she did when they were younger, and he had been acting like a git — rather than hex him into non-existence.
"You left me. You left me, Harry! After all we'd been through, after all we'd done, you just up and left me. Just like that. Did I really mean so little to you?"
Hermione's voice cracked at the end of her sentence; tears — repressed and held in for years — finally spilling down her cheeks. Harry stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, hating himself and hoping against all hopes that she wouldn't acquaint him with the business end of her wand for his behaviour.
His gambit paid off, though, because his best friend crumpled against him, burrowing her head into the crook of his neck as racking sobs tore through her body.
Harry rubbed his hands in soothing circles on her back, muttering full-hearted apologies and platitudes directly into her ear.
Eventually her bawling reduced to the occasional sniffle. Inhaling slightly, he continued his ministrations, savouring the smell of dusty parchment, ink, jasmine and something else.
It smelt wild; uncontrolled and untameable — how a scent associated with such adjectives, Harry had no clue, but those were the only words able to deal the smell sufficient justice — just like the force of nature that she was.
Harry instantly loved it.
Taking a deep breath, he noticed that he would never get sick of her scent.
Hermione reluctantly pulled back, her brows furrowing cutely. She stared deeply at him, disbelief warring with hope in her caramel-brown gaze.
She raised a hand to cup his cheek. "Is it you, Harry? Is it really you?"
He clasped the hand upon his cheek within his own, squeezing softly. With his other, he brought the woman closer to him.
"Yes, Hermione. I made an unbreakable promise — I had to come back. No matter what the consequences were."
Hermione beamed a smile so wide that it seemed to banish all the dreariness and gloom of the room, lighting up his entire world.
She squealed like a teenager and threw herself forward, attempting to squeeze him to death.
Harry returned the embrace with equal vigour, dipping his head and savouring the whiff that went into his nose as a result.
"Harry?" she then whispered into his shoulder. "What do you think of…of me?"
Despite how she had worded it, Harry immediately understood.
"I do not care one whit at all about this 'Dark Lady' business, Hermione," he asserted, nuzzling her neck with his nose. She shivered slightly in response. "You could literally be Morgan Morgana, the first Dark Lady herself, and I could honestly not give a single shit about it."
Hermione giggled as the tension leaked out of her frame. She moulded her body fully against him, settling into a more comfortable position.
There was a lengthy silence, one which Harry was content to let rest.
Soon, though, he made a decision.
Gathering his courage, he pulled back, but only far enough so he could stare into her eyes. Their noses bumped softly into each other; witch and wizard breathing practically the same air.
"I really am sorry, Hermione," he whispered, tucking a strand of brown hair behind her ear. "I never should have done that to you."
She opened her mouth, probably intending to argue against his statement.
Smiling fondly, Harry covered it with his own and deftly cut off her opening salvo of reasoning.
After three whole minutes of pure bliss, Hermione disengaged — almost passing out from a lack of oxygen — and narrowed her eyes at him.
"You shall not leave me behind ever again, Harry Potter, " she commanded, almost glaring at him; her arms sliding possessively around him. Harry meekly nodded, himself having no inclinations to do that at all.
The image was somewhat ruined by her puffy lips, however. He swooped in to steal himself another kiss.
"Never again, Hermione. Never again."
Finite.
~ooOOooOOOooOOoo~
Author's Note:
10/09/2020: Oh, I'm just cackling away to myself. Tee-hee.
Please leave a review or drop me a PM if you enjoyed. Alright, that shall be all for now.
Ta-ta.
Avaxius