Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of his wonderful little friends. The only thing that is mine is this sad little plot. Anything recognisable belongs to Ms. Rowling who I hope never finds out what we're doing to her innocent little creations. (Hehehehe!!) (Wow I used the word 'little' in every sentence—creepy)
Chapter 1
Painful Memories
The swift wind swirled around her body—tossing her robes and lifting tendrils of hair off her back and into the breeze. It was getting colder—fall was fast approaching and the girl pulled her robes more tightly around her frame, a desperate attempt to provide protection from the cold surrounding, but it was far more difficult to block out the chill within. The girl sighed loudly—fighting to hear her own voice over the roaring of the repetitive gusts, and before she could stop herself, a single, uncharted tear made its way down her face and into the current. The memories invaded her mind so suddenly that she had no defense from them.
The room was warm, with an almost orange glow emanating from the crackling fire in the hearth—Why is it that the memories are always unnaturally warm?
Hermione sat still and stiff on the overstuffed sofa of her flat, her hair was in a tight, neat bun on the top of her head—to wear it down was impractical and childish, adults are far too sensible to have their curly mane flying about haphazardly. Across the room a man worked diligently in the kitchen, he seemed to have no problem with letting his hair fall this way and that. "Of course," Hermione chuckled lightly to herself "he never could really control it to begin with." She silently scolded for such an immature thought.
The man in the kitchen worked industriously, a little too efficiently, but still in earnest, as he prepared the meal that she would remember forever. He had planned it all out, up to the kind of candles he would use on the dinner table—nothing would go wrong tonight and for the rest of their lives. Harry smiled inwardly at the thought of spending his life with Hermione, his best friend and...wife. Suddenly the word sounded foreign and strange when used in comparison with her, but Harry shook his head, supposing this to be a trick of 11 years of her being just a best friend—besides, dinner was ready.
He called her to the dining room and she rose, on cue, from her creamed cushions. The table was set meticulously, everything symmetrical and in its place. A voice inside her head giggled, "So orderly, so...Harry." But the second it escaped her subconscious lips another more distant, more suspended voice screamed, "NO! This is not the way he is! He used to be fun and spontaneous and adventurous! Why are you letting him be like this? Why are you letting yourself become this?!" She quickly dismissed the voice, forcing it, with more difficulty than usual, into the back of her mind—so far away that she couldn't hear her own desperate screams.
Everything went like clockwork as each meal was served and consumed in the allotted time that Harry had worked out five weeks prior. Everything seemed to be timed to perfection, and in the mind of Harry Potter, things were certain to fall precisely into place before the night was done—his persistent egotism was his greatest weakness.
In Hermione's mind, however, things were not going at all the way she wanted them to. She should be happy about tonight, right? She should be ecstatic about the prospect of being loved unconditionally; of being safe, and secure in her match. But something deep within her knew the truth—the truth that she didn't want just to be safe. She didn't want just to be loved—she wanted to love, to be in-love with someone. To feel a love so intense that it would make her soar and feel that even magic wasn't the most magical thing in life. Anyone with half a genuine interest in Hermione's emotions would be able to see her doubt written plainly in every aspect of her face. It escaped Harry. And it was this fact that troubled Hermione the most. Someone had once told her that her face was as readable as an open book-that to know her was like being in the presence of a living version of The Cat in the Hat—triflingly easy to read. So why the fuck can't he see it!?
"Because he's to damn interested in himself to even pay attention to the women he has convinced himself that he loves." The nasty voice had once again escaped the confines of its deep imprisonment—a good sign that Hermione was slowly loosing control of her usual detached composure. Outwardly there was no change, at least none that Harry could recognize.
It can then be surmised on his part that Harry had no hint as to the fate that would await him that evening as they finished the last of their tiramisu. He remained blissfully unaware.
Harry sat across from her, occasionally glancing at her features over a bite—Gods! She was beautiful. She wasn't at all the girl he remembered from that first day on the Hogwart's Express. Her hair, though still curly, was always kept in a tight knot on the top of her head (a suggestion Harry had made to her one day, as he believed that the long flowing ringlets gave her juvenile look), her skin was creamy with a slight flush at her cheekbones that made her look inspiringly British. She was short and lean with long legs, but she kept that hidden, also at Harry's suggestion, under sensible dress suits—tonight she was not in her truest form. She sat across from him in a black cocktail dress that was far too tight and was cut in a fashionable hem that made her resemble a cheap whore in his opinion. Harry dismissed this, though, as something that could be thrown away at the first opportunity he had to speak with her. Instead he placed his fork carefully down upon the small china dish in front of him and snapped for a house-elf to come and take away the plates—Hermione wasn't done, but that didn't matter, she shouldn't eat too much anyway.
The look on his face said it all—this was it, he was going to do it. He was so bloody predictable as, a moment later, he moved from the chair at the other end of the table to the one next to her. She fervently scooted her own chair back a bit—a sub-conscious effort to distance herself from him and the inevitable turn of their conversation. Harry, though, surprised her, as instead of beating around the subject for ten minutes, he got straight to his point.
"Right, Hermione, I think that we should get married."That's it? That was all he had to say! He hadn't even tried to build a moment or anything; he had just assumed that whatever way he asked her she would answer affirmative—her years of composure were officially gone, that had been the last straw.
"That's it? That's all you have to say?" she asked bluntly.
He was clearly awestruck (he too was incredibly readable); whatever he had expected her to say, it certainly had not been that. His reply was as composed as he could manage.
"What do you mean 'that's it'? What else where you expecting me to say?"
"Well," she thought for a minute. "I was expecting you to show at least some sort of emotion, not act as though you were negotiating the contract of a client you were expecting to win!" The last part had been said a bit louder than she had anticipated, but she found that instead of simply being astounded by his disconnected proposal, that she was now angered...no, furious. How dare he just assume that she would crumble into his arms at the first offer she got!
Now Harry looked a bit peeved too and Hermione found that she could no longer contain the biting voice from within."What Harry," she asked in livid, mock concern, "am I ruining all of your perfect plans for the evening?" She spat the word 'perfect' at him hoping to Gods he would take it as a personal insult and choke on it.
His anger was now evident, and it was only his state of astound at her behavior that kept him from coming up with any reasonable reply right away. His speechlessness was soon overcome as he found himself angrier with her than, in the back of his mind, he felt he should be.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" he screamed at her. "Screw the plans—I thought this is what you wanted from me. In all the time we have been dating you always seemed perfectly satisfied with the inevitable turn of this relationship! It's not like you didn't know this was coming...you sure as hell did! And now all of a sudden you are acting like I am the most vile thing in the world and how bloody dare I to try and propose to you!" He spewed the last words at her with such force that she physically stumbled from her chair as the truth in his words hit her like a bludger. He was absolutely right; she hadn't ever given him a reason to believe she didn't expect them to marry. She herself had used the phrase "Once we're married" countless times to her friends and to Harry himself—Gods, I'm such an idiot!
The thoughts weighed heavy on her shoulders and all of the sudden Hermione felt defeated and very, very tired. "You're right," she stated simply as she sat down in her chair gingerly placing her face into the palms of her hands. "You're right, I have never given you reason to believe that I didn't want to marry you and for that I am—every minute that ticks by—increasingly sorry." Her voice was shaking and fatigued.
Harry was again astounded by her quick transformation and the fact that she had just apologized, as he took the chair that he had been sitting in and scooted it a bit closer to her own before he resumed the sitting position. "It's all right Hermione," he crooned, gently smoothing her hair back from her forehead, "I accept your apology and am still ready to make you my wife."
A low snort emitted from between her clamped hands, quickly followed by a wave of chuckles. Hermione lifted her head out of her hands and looked at Harry with the greatest amount of pity and amusement in her eyes—how could anyone be so dense? She shook her head and then grabbed his hands from their resting-place in his lap. "Harry, dear, you don't understand. While I am sorry for my outburst—you must understand that it was the result of five years of repressed feelings—I am still not going to marry you." At this point Harry tried to pull his hands away from Hemione's grasp, but she would not let him go—he would hear what she had to say. "No, listen to me—for once in your damn life! Harry I'm sorry that I led you on, but I can only say that I didn't mean to and wasn't even aware that I was doing it. I thought that this was what I wanted, but it isn't...I knew it wasn't right, but have just been suppressing any part of me that felt that way. I wanted you to be happy—I still do, but...but, not if that means sacrificing my own happiness and myself. I won't let my spirit die for the person that you have become!" By the end of the speech tears were streaming down her face—she knew that the person he was in their youth was gone, this man before her would never understand the reasoning behind her actions. He would call her selfish and horrible (which he did seconds later as he ripped his hands from her grasp like she was a piece of filth).
She so desperately longed for Harry Potter—the Harry Potter that saved her from the troll, that laughed with her in the Gryffindor common room, and that saved Cedric Diggory's body form the grasp of the Dark Lord. It was in this desperation that she lunged at him, wrapping her arms so tightly around his torso that she imagined he would have trouble breathing. He was too stunned to fight at first, and she was glad that she could hold him—after all it was only the mind that had changed, not the body. She cried hard into his shoulders, breathing in every inch of him and then sobbing it back out in short pleads, "Please, no...just hold me like this...Harry please...please, be the boy...the boy from Hogwarts...the boy I loved."
At her final words he jerked back, pushing her away from him so that she fell to the ground. She stared up at him through flooded eyes and for the first time she could see that he too had been crying—for what reason she would never fathom. Now, however, his face was flushed with a mixture of hurt, anger and disgust. "No, Hermione, you didn't love me. That boy is gone—gone forever!" And with that he turned heel leaving her lying in a heap on the floor, tears racking her body over and over again.
A/N: Ewww, Harry turned into such a prat. I do apologize to all of you who love Harry, I do too (despite the above caricature); it's just that it's so much more fun and melodramatic if Hermione has all this adult-type baggage. Well, I'm done—hope you liked and Thanks For Reading! Please review.