Author's Note:
Written for the Assignment 2 of Hogwarts School and Witchcraft and Wizardry Forum.
Muggle Studies: Play That Funky Music
Task #2: 8-Track: Write about something that makes traveling more enjoyable.
No warnings apply.
Disclaimer: I do not own the world of Harry Potter, nor its characters.
Word Count: 2837
It depends a little on where you are going, but a trip is often better when you make it with a friend.
In Australia there was heat and blaring car horns and a sense of inescapable melancholy in the car. It was the Ford Anglia that took them further into the city, not a luxurious car by any means, but one that would get them where they needed to go.
Harry sat in the back of the car, a pillow wedged beneath his head and the window, and listened to his friends bicker.
"Mind the hedge," Hermione said, with a teasing lilt. "Wouldn't want to run it over, would you, Ronald?"
"Oi," Ron said mildly, though there was a hint of red to his cheeks.
"Not that you've ever hit anything before, of course. You're an excellent driver."
Part of Harry felt left out. He hadn't gone with Ron and Hermione when they went to bring her parents back, and he had been too numb at the time to care much about being left behind. It was only a week or two after the war. Ron had needed something to take his mind off Fred and funerals full of fireworks, and Hermione wanted to go home. Harry had spent a listless few weeks floating from room to room in Grimmauld Place, turning down Kreacher's offerings of cottage pie and lasagne while he ignored the letters that piled up on the doormat.
Now he was fully aware that he had missed things. Ron and Hermione had spent a long time out here together, after all. Not long in the grand scheme of things, and not long like nights in a tent could be, not long like moments spent standing before a gravestone could feel, but still long. There must have been small jokes and comforts offered between them while they navigated the clumsy path of convincing the Grangers not to be too mad.
The melancholy stuck to Harry's skin like sweat. There was a break in the conversation as they weaved down a street. Hermione put her hand briefly over Ron's on the gearstick, squeezing his fingers with a lost look on her face. Harry felt like an intruder, but in the next minute he met Ron's eyes in the rear-view mirror, and he was being smiled at, and suddenly there was nothing intrusive about his presence. It was an involvement, a pulling-in of his person, much the way that buckets are retrieved from deep wells, and soon the steady hauling on the rope had him rising out of that sticky melancholy, joining in with Hermione's teasing.
The Grangers' had bought a house in Australia, though Harry wasn't sure which part of Australia they were in even as they drove through it. He had never been very good at Geography, and then Hogwarts had come along with its strange curriculum and he had forgotten all about things like Physics and Design Technology. He remembered one thing from his lessons, one thing that popped into mind as Ron tipped his head back and snorted with laughter, earning a stern 'watch the road!' from Hermione.
An object attracts another object in direct proportion to their combined mass and inversely related to the square of the distance between them.
Harry couldn't ever imagine McGonagall asking him to recite such things while toads turned into tea cosies on her desk.
But he remembered it, and it made him think.
Outside of the Granger's house, which was a four-bedroom house with a pool and a spacious garden (dentists were on a pretty hefty salary), they stopped to peer up the driveway. Ron left the car idling. Hermione fidgeted in her seat, uncharacteristically quiet, and stared out of the window. It didn't seem like she was inclined to get out, but she was stubborn by nature, and there was very little chance that she would back away just because she was feeling nervous or scared.
"Hermione?" Ron said.
"I'm thinking," Hermione snapped. "It's early, that's all. We told them we'd get here in the afternoon, and it's barely past twelve. They might not be ready for us. I don't want to just barge in."
Ron put his hand on her shoulder this time, his face creasing up in concern. "They're your parents. They'll want to see you even if you arrive two weeks before you're meant to."
But that clearly wasn't the answer Hermione was looking for. The nice thing about their friendship, Harry thought, was that even if one of them was bumbling around, not sure of what to do, the other one of them usually had an answer to hand. So he leaned forward and met Hermione's eyes in the wing mirror, smiling as best as he could.
"Know any good ice cream spots around here?" Harry said.
Hermione released her bottom lip and smiled tentatively.
Ron met his eyes in the mirror again and gave him a quick grin. The car was already idling, so all they had to do was back out of the driveway, peeling away from the Grangers' house, with all its pots and quaint prettiness. The melancholy peeled away too.
They didn't find any ice cream, but they did find crepes. Harry had never had a crepe before, although once when he was in London he saw a stall selling Yorkshire Pudding bowls stuffed with meat, gravy and veg, and he almost tripped in his haste to join the queue. That was almost a crepe, if you asked him.
These were almost better though. Harry had a sweet tooth that touched his toes, and the whipped cream and chocolate filled a hole in his stomach. They walked along the street, crepes in hand, and compared flavours while Ron tried hard not to get his all over his shirt.
"I've been driving you two around for hours, so my hands are all numb," Ron complained. "I feel like I've got Skrewt claws for fingers."
"Skrewts have talons, I think," Hermione mused.
"Skrewts have every sharp thing sticking out of them," Harry pointed out, wiping a bit of chocolate off his lip. "I think Hagrid would find a way to give them a chainsaw on each leg if he could."
Hermione laughed around a bite of crepe, dusting the last of it off her fingers. Ron gave them both a look like he thought they were mad, shaking his head, but he didn't ask what a chainsaw was. It might have been one of those things that Arthur had inexplicably tucked away in the corner of the shed.
"Okay," Ron said, as he threw away the wrappers and clapped his hands. "What next? More food? Or something else? Or back to the car?"
Hermione's expression flattened out again at the last suggestion. She cast wildly about for something to do and brightened when she spotted something across the street. Harry was dragged halfway across the road before he could even open his mouth, and by the time he thought to protest, she was pulling him inside a store, her small fingers cool and firm against his wrist. Ron caught up to them easily, his long legs providing him ample ammunition against the distance.
The bell above the door rattled rather than chimed. Inside there was a musty quality to the air, and the light through the somewhat dusty windows was oily and warm. It turned everything sepia-toned. The store was packed with shelves and racks, all of it boasting strange knick-knacks and endless pieces of clothes.
"The way you legged it, I thought you'd seen a library," Ron said.
"It's a vintage store!" Hermione exclaimed.
In essence, it was a big charity shop. Harry poked around while Hermione drifted off to look at the books. He found Ron flipping through a box of old vinyl's.
"Muggle music, right?" Ron asked. "Reckon we can get the car to play any of it?"
Harry grinned. "I'm pretty sure those won't fit. But these might."
He reached around Ron and plucked a plastic container of cassette tapes off the shelf. There were plenty of albums that he didn't recognise, but a few soft rock songs stood out to him. He handed the ones that he liked the look of to Ron, who prodded the small holes curiously.
"D'you think Hermione will like them?"
Harry cocked his head, a small smile curving up his cheek.
"Shut up." Ron nudged him, red-cheeked. "I just want to cheer her up. She's been really down, and she hates that things can't be like they used to be. I wish we didn't have to come here. But it's her family."
"There's not much we can do about it," Harry murmured, glancing across the shop to where Hermione had gathered a small stack of paperbacks. "I don't know what music she likes, but Sirius told me you can't go wrong with a little rock 'n roll."
By the time they managed to drag Hermione away from the books and over to the counter, Ron had amassed a small collection of random trinkets. He draped an obnoxiously bright, lime green feather-boa over his neck and scrunched up his nose. "Muggles actually wear this stuff?"
"Oh, you don't get to say anything about Muggle fashion. I've seen some of the Wizarding Robes they sell in Gladrags." She zeroed in on the cassettes Harry was paying for, her eyes narrowing. "What's that?"
"I want to see if it'll work in the car, or if the car will eat it," Harry said. When the cashier looked at him oddly, Harry smiled awkwardly and said, "It's an older model," as though the Ford didn't have teeth.
The car did not turn back towards the Grangers house. Ron drove them towards the beach instead. Harry leaned over, forgoing the seatbelt while Ron yelled about safety and gripped the wheel tightly.
"I trust you," Harry said, with a teasing little smile.
"You say that like you didn't dangle from the car door while we were a million miles up in the air," Ron snapped back, but his grip on the wheel eased. "Put your weird pebble songs on."
Hermione covered her mouth with her hand, laughing. "You know what rock and roll is, Ronald. Even wizards have rock and roll."
Indeed they did, but it was nothing quite like this. Harry put in the cassette and jammed the dial up. The noise made Hermione laugh brightly, shaking her head to clear it, and Ron swore viciously as he tried not to jerk the steering wheel in shock. Harry sat back, grinning as an electric guitar rang through the air. He could swear the windows were vibrating. Hermione sang along, their voices mingling as they practically ripped the words apart, neither having a great grip on the lyrics.
Ron stopped swearing eventually and joined in, making up his own words. It had the added effect of making Hermione collapse into giggles while Harry mimed playing the drums in the back-seat.
It depends a little on where you are going, but a trip is often better when you make it with a friend, and music loud enough to sink your teeth into.
When they reached the beach, it was starting to get dark. Not the kind of eat-you-up dark that soon filled up with stars, but the kind of grey evening dark that made everything a little colder and filled you up inside with some strange sadness. Harry stood on the end of the boardwalk and felt like he had lost something, but he couldn't remember what it was. They watched the sea crash against the shore and listened to the gulls overhead.
"I reckon it won't be so bad," Ron said, putting his hands in his pockets.
Hermione sighed. There was no use in pretending that the conversation hadn't steered around to Mr and Mrs Granger. Harry stood beside her, and Ron stood on her other side, and they watched the sea.
"Come on," she said suddenly. "Let's go down on the sand."
She scrambled off the edge of the pier, kicking off her shoes. Her socks followed, and Harry had barely set one foot on the sand before Hermione was off, sprinting towards the waters edge. Ron yelled something, chasing after her, and Harry paused for a moment with one shoe off, listening to their wild laughter. He smiled, slow and steady. It always took him by surprise, the way his heart ached as though he missed them, when they were right there with him.
Down by the water, they dipped their toes into the sea. It was warm, a shock to Harry's system that made them tease him. Ron produced the feather boa from the beaded bag they carried everywhere, grinning triumphantly when they both broke down in fits of laughter. Harry kicked water at them, and Hermione fell back on the sand, gasping for breath when her laughter ran its course. Harry stayed in the ocean a bit longer while Ron sat beside her, the feathers tickling her nose when he slung an arm around her, both of them burying their feet in the sand.
"I think they're definitely ready for us now," Hermione said.
The light mood didn't drop away entirely, leaving them cold, but that old melancholy stole over them. Harry waded out of the sea and sat in front of them, the sun warming the back of his neck, casting his shadow over their knees. Hermione folded her arms over her chest and shivered slightly. The wind didn't carry that cold, Scottish crispness that swept over Hogwarts, but it still whipped all around them, teasing her frizzy curls and playing with the lapels of Harry's jacket.
"They were so mad at me," she said, sighing. "I can't be mad at them for it, either. I erased every memory of me, and I changed their names and their pasts, and I gave them new dreams. It wasn't a standard memory charm."
It was a lot to change about a person. Harry thought about what he'd do if it were his kid that came to him and changed his memory again, and said that there had been a war while he lived a cushy life far away from it all.
"I tried to explain it," Hermione continued. "I told them about the war, and how we needed to hunt down the Horcruxes. I didn't tell them everything, of course, but it seemed pointless not to share it now that it's all over. I thought it might help if they understood why I had to do it, but they were just even more angry."
There was no real way to fix it. It was the sort of wound that wept and took its sweet time to close. Harry gathered up handfuls of sand and let it fall through his fingers, the soft scratchiness against his palms a calming, soothing sensation.
An object attracts another object in direct proportion to their combined mass and inversely related to the square of the distance between them.
"You're in the same boat," Harry said. "You both want things to go back to the way they were, but there's a lot of stuff in the way. I think that means more than blame or anything else."
You're the same shape, he wanted to say. There's the same mass here, this mass of feeling, and it'll collide and it will be awful and painful but the wound will stop weeping in the end. He didn't say it, though. It sounded too philosophical for his tastes. They would check him for an Imperius.
"Yeah, all that equal ground stuff," Ron said, nudging her. "Harry's right. And so am I, of course. It'll work itself out, Hermione."
"And we'll be here the whole time." Harry shrugged. "We've got plenty of it."
Plenty of time was a luxury, and Harry was never going to stop luxuriating in the lack of a deadline, the lack of an expiration point on his life. Death wasn't chugging towards him like a scarlet train anymore: it was waiting for him, peaceably, in a station where the platform was empty and the smoke churned out white. It was keeping the engines warm.
Hermione smiled at them. It wasn't timid or hesitant or unsure. It was a breath of peace. The last rays of sunlight dipped down beneath the sea. Harry built a little mound of dry sand while Ron and Hermione bickered gently over the feather boa, and when it was time to leave, they left without a word. They gathered their shoes and traipsed back to the car. The music that came on was still roaring, but Ron turned the volume down and let it sink into them instead of lifting them up. The car rolled away from the beach, and towards the Grangers house.
It depends a little on where you are going, but a trip is often better when you make it with loud music, a feather boa, and your two best friends.
