Forty-Nine
Day: 1571; Hour: 14
Hermione stands in the middle of the Ministry lobby in a swirl of people. There is yelling, cheers, laughter, and people rushing to leave work early. Celebrations have begun, and a boy is handing out free copies of the Prophet, bold lettering exclaiming the war's conclusion. The Minister is grinning on the front, waving to cheering people.
But Hermione also sees the two men scowling against the wall. She sees the woman drawing her wand, and tenses, only to watch her show it to her friend. She watches the reporter running toward a group of Aurors, and waits for the jets of color. She hears screaming, and has to stop herself from reaching for her wand. She sees a little girl crying, expecting the dance of an orange band as she is rushed to safety, but it's only her mother.
"It doesn't feel like it's over, huh?"
She glances over at Dean, at the patch covering his left eye, and she shakes her head. "No."
"But it is. They wouldn't have said it wasn't if it wasn't. You know Lupin's paranoia. If he thought there was even a little bit of a possibility, he would have never told us. We got them this time. We won." He sounds like he's trying to convince himself more than her. "Has it hit you yet?"
We won. Won. Won? Because it's over. Because they are still alive. "No."
Dean shoves a hand into his pocket. The left, so he can reach across for his wand with the right if he has to. And only if he absolutely has to, because he was there when they saved a fake Ron and were given post-war suspension. When Seamus died for her, when Seamus and Justin both died in a mission that was for nothing. When they helped to bring a Death Eater into the Order and exposed everything.
But they still won. Right? Won. Won. The word sounds and feels foreign. Does it make her a winner? Over, she tries. It's over.
She draws the books and pamphlets closer to her chest, Living With Being a Survivor peeking out from above Why We Shouldn't Be Afraid to Seek Help. There's also a listing of funeral services in the pile, contact information for transitionists at St. Mungo's. The warmth of McGonagall's hug has left Hermione's skin, and she tells herself again – it's over.
"Time."
"Always."
Day: 1571; Hour: 16
She is back in the white house, one of the few left standing. Lupin had mentioned her Flooing to the Burrow, and when Hermione had remained silent, he had given her a Portkey and some searching look that flickered his gaze between eyeballs she didn't raise. He had given her another Portkey to the Ministry for when she decided she was ready. She just needs a little time to try and sort out her thoughts. To try and get rid of the shock that's making her head fuzzy.
She'll have to go to the Burrow tomorrow for a belated birthday at Molly's insistence. Two days from tomorrow she will leave the Burrow for her home. Lupin has told her they are moving her parents back then, and she doesn't even know what to do with herself at the thought of finally seeing them, hugging them, having them be solid shapes she can reach out and touch. Once she is able to move her eyes away from them, she will go to the library and get as many books as she can about the mind, prisoners of war, and ways to heal. She doesn't care how long it takes – she'll save Ron, in the way she failed to do before. She doesn't care if she has to research and fight for it every day for the next twenty years. She isn't going to lose her best friends. They are right in front of her, and no one can take them from her again.
She has nothing to pack. She has a few belongings at Harry's home, but if she would have died, it wouldn't have been more than two boxes. She is still wearing a set of pajamas from the hospital, her own shorts and Harry's shirt too stained and ruined to wear again. She keeps the orange strip from her father's old shirt, though, shoved into the bottom of the wand slot in her holster.
The book from her meeting sits on the counter, opened to the first chapter, but she's too busy staring out the window. Staring at nothing but coloring leaves and an old rubbish pit. The house is somehow scarier without any other occupants or the thickness of war. Everyone else has gone home to their own beds and family, and she is the one left to wait. She could go to the Burrow or back into the Muggle world, but she's not in the mindset to handle either. To handle much of anything at all. In her head it is the list of names, and she thinks tonight is when she will fall apart.
"Granger?"
She sucks in a breath, like waking from dreams. She pulls herself out of her thoughts, looking over her shoulder and into the living room "Yeah?"
She feels a little stupid because she isn't sure if she imagined his voice or not, and there is only silence to greet her. She sees him, though, walking out of the hall and into the living room, his eyes finding hers before dropping to the floor.
"Hi," she whispers, and winces at herself.
"Hey."
"What are you doing here?" This is a stupid question, because she had been there to watch his house burn to the ground, and he doesn't have anywhere to go either.
She wonders how that felt. If he could have even taken a moment to recognize what exactly was falling apart in the flames. She also wonders if he thought of it as a monument of his past with all its dark and light reminders, or he held it closer to him as the last of things that was his. Maybe it was something like her trunk, with memories now turned into the wisps of thoughts that will fade with nothing left to remind you of them. Something precious that other people might not understand, but that you did and couldn't care what they thought of it.
She's sorry that he lost it. She's sorry they lost a lot of things. More than she'd like to think about, but felt anyway because sometimes empty spaces can construct a giant that sits on your chest when you open up your palms to see what you managed to keep.
"I have a few things I have to take care of."
"Oh."
"I saw your pamphlets by the door. Are you leaving?" he asks, unclasping his cloak and walking to put it on the table.
"No. Not until tomorrow."
He nods, and she drops the pretense of reading, scratching her forehead. "Your water is boiling, Granger."
"What? Oh." She stands, moving toward the stove. "Are you happy?"
"Happy?" For a moment he looks haunted, through the gloss of tears covering her eyeballs before she blinks it all away.
"I think I should be happy. But I'm not."
He looks down at the floor when she glances back at him, his jaw clenching and his tongue sweeping his cheek. "Why aren't you happy?"
"I don't know. I try." She practiced smiles in the mirror not an hour before his arrival, like the memory of movement in her face could ease the emotion into her chest. "I just don't know how to feel. And I don't know where to go from here either."
"No one does."
"But the fact that everyone else feels the same way doesn't change how I feel right now."
He nods and looks up at her, taking the teapot from her hand and setting it down on a cool burner. "Maybe you should stop trying to feel anything, and just feel what you feel."
"I know. I know, but you know me."
"I do." He reaches out to turn off the stove. "Life is quick. Everything is fleeting. All we have in life are moments, Granger. You have to learn when to hold on and when to let go."
"Do you know when to?"
He shrugs a shoulder, reaching out a finger under the hem of her shirt to graze the skin of her hip. "I don't know. I do what I think is best for my life and I hope it works."
"And if it doesn't?"
"There's the fallout. And life starts all over again - just in a different way."
She reaches out, skimming fingers up his forearm. Everything feels strange tonight, but she blames it on their lives now. On what they have been through, and on the dismissal that it's over when they all still feel punched in the gut and war-minded.
"Do you have anywhere to be tonight?" he asks, stepping forward, reaching out his other hand to thumb her bottom lip.
"No," she whispers.
"Good." He moves his hand to cup her head and kiss her, and she chastises herself for the flip in her stomach when he does.
I'm in love with you, Draco Malfoy. How's that for a fallout? She would like to ask, but it is not the time for that, and she doesn't know when it will be again.
He kisses her like he is trying to rob her air, pressing into her as he presses them back. She grips the sides of his neck, exploring his mouth before twining her tongue around his. Her hands move to travel all over him; under his shirt, over his head, down his back. He cups her bottom and pulls her against him, grinding himself against her stomach.
He pulls back fractionally, giving just enough space to yank her shirt over her head. His mouth is back on hers before the fabric clears her arms, and he leaves it there, too impatient to touch her skin instead. She pulls her one arm out, quickly moving it to rub his shoulder, and shakes her arm violently to get the rest of her shirt off. Draco's hands desert her stomach for her breasts at the movement, his tongue running along her bottom lip before dipping into her mouth. She reaches down to shove her hands under his shirt, the pads of her fingers feeling the rough hairs under his bellybutton, and his stomach tightens as he bucks forward. She goes down further to his belt, her hands shaky as she pulls the strap from the buckle.
She pulls her head away and drops it to his shoulder, his mouth finding her ear, trailing kisses to her neck to suck the skin. Her fingers work at his button and then his zipper, and she gets a glimpse of his tensing jaw and red mouth before she yanks his pants and boxers down to his knees. He pulls her up and toward him again, wiggling to get his trousers to his ankles to step out of them, rigid against her stomach.
"Draco."
"What?" He sounds as breathless as her.
She shakes her head, gripping the back of his neck. "I just felt like saying your name."
His lips pull back into a grin, a breath of laughter on her lips before he kisses her back, keeping her trapped between himself and the counter. It's probably going to leave a bruise, she's digging in so hard, but she can't remember how to care. She pulls up his shirt, pulling harder when he doesn't take his arms away from her so she can remove it. He mutters something about there being too much clothing, and yanks it over his head himself, flinging it somewhere to his left before wrapping himself around her again.
He thrusts his tongue in and out of her mouth, and it takes her a second to catch on and follow, smoothing the sharper edge of need. His hands press into her skin, sliding up her back to unsnap her bra. He continues upward, wrapping his hands around her shoulders and leaving her mouth for her neck. She breathes heavily into the hair at the side of his head, deserting his chest and stomach to remove her bra herself, and he bends his head to kiss the top of each breast.
"I need..."
"What?" he whispers, deep and lost somewhere in her neck, his tongue moving gently over the small burn scar there. She feels powerless, but completely devoted to the sensation.
"You."
He groans and nips at her throat, raising his head to look at her. She doesn't think she'll ever get used to how he looks when he's turned on. There's something about the sight alone that makes her ready for more, let alone everything else he's so skilled at doing. She's always lost to how beautiful he can be, for her, in these moments.
She pushes up onto her toes, kissing him twice, three times. Then he's back from wherever he had been to think just then, and takes what he wants from her. His blunt nails scrape down her back to her bottom, hoisting her up against him, and she wraps her legs tightly around his waist. His length presses against where she needs him the most, but her pajamas block any success there. His mouth burns a path across her cheek, the hair on his face chafing her skin. She reaches up to rub her palms against the growth he has acquired during his hospital stay, searching for his mouth.
"You can shave it later."
"If you're lucky," she pants out, and he pinches the back of her leg before kissing her again.
She presses her legs tighter around his hips as he begins to walk, and he wraps his arms around her for more support. She slides her hands up his shoulders, his neck, and buries them in his hair. He moans when she curls her fingers, pulling his hair tight in her fists, and kisses her harder. She yelps against his mouth when her shoulder hits painfully against the frame of the door.
"Shit. Sorry." He apologizes in a rush, keeping his head forward now, and she takes the opportunity to rediscover the sensitive areas of his neck.
"Lightening bolts."
"What?"
"Bing...well, I guess they don't really bi-"
"Shut up, Granger." He only moans when she bites his neck in retaliation, and she smiles at the hum beneath her lips.
He sets her down in the closest bedroom and pulls away from her, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. He holds out his hand, wiggling his fingers at her, and pulls her between his legs when she takes it. He's slow to pull her pajama pants down, and then has the nerve to stop when they're low enough for him to know she's not wearing any knickers.
Draco looks up to give her a wicked smile that makes her heart palpitate in a very unhealthy way, and leans forward to press his mouth to her stomach. He grabs her hips, keeping her still when she starts to squirm, kissing and flicking his tongue against her skin. He grazes his teeth to the band of her pants, sucking along the edge as he slides his hands down to hook his fingers in the waist. She runs her fingers through his hair, looking down at him, and feeling strangely affectionate. The moment feels more personal to her than she thinks he could possibly realize, though she doesn't know why.
He pulls them down, his mouth following the trail over her pelvis and thighs until he can bend no further, and he leaves her to kick them off her ankles. He slides his hands back up her thighs, pressing a finger into her, and she sucks in a breath, swaying forward. She looks down at him, at the darkness of his eyes as he sucks his finger into his mouth.
"God," she whispers, reaching down from his hair to cup his face and kiss him.
He grabs the back of her thighs, pulling her forward to straddle his lap, and tearing himself from her mouth in favor of her breasts. She would like to tell him that she does not need any more foreplay, please, but it feels too good to resist, his hands kneading and his mouth hot. She grinds down against him, wondering how she should go about getting him inside of her, but this seems initiative enough for him.
He falls back onto the bed, bringing her with him, and she seeks out his mouth. She runs her hand down his torso, but he rolls them over before she finds what she wants.
"Impatient tonight?"
"Yes," she admits. "Patience later."
He laughs huskily, and it's one of the best sounds she's ever heard. He nods his chin toward the headboard, and she props herself on her elbows to crawl back under him. She kisses his shoulder, watching his back flex with his movements, and the rise of his bum over the crease of his back.
He stops her with a hand to her ribs, and leans down to kiss her. She loves this. Kissing him and being with him - even when she's angry with him, she loves this. No matter what happens, or how this ends, she knows she will not regret ever starting this with him. He has made her feel things she didn't know she could, physically and emotionally, and she could never find it within herself to ask for a second of it to not have happened. He is her stronghold, her battle, her ally. He is the moment she holds onto, even after she lets him go. Every cocky, brooding, annoying, angry, sarcastic inch of him.
He rolls them over again, his hand fumbling blindly for the headboard before gripping it and pulling them up. He leans against it, pulling her mouth to his, a hand under her arm to pull her off his lap for a moment, and another on himself to guide him in. She closes her eyes, moaning with him as he grips her hip and she sinks down, seated fully on top of him.
A harsh breath against her face makes her open her eyes, releasing the breath she had been holding as well. He gives up his control, letting go of her hip and raising open hands. She entwines her fingers with his, feeling the strength under his palms as she lifts herself and then sinks down again. She starts slow, because she feels too much in this moment that she can't voice, but that she wants to show him somehow.
He leans his head forward when she comes back down, and she rests her forehead against his, staring into deep grey until it's all she can see. They exchange breath, and when she tightens her hands on his, he tightens right back, lifting his hips to meet her.
"I love you, just so-" And this is when he lifts his chin, kissing the words from her mouth.
Day: 1572; Hour: 11
The sun shines red on her eyelids but she does not wish to open them, afraid of having to actually remove herself from the bed. Draco had kept her up all night, only a few stolen hours of sleep before one of them would wake the other up again. Her body is so exhausted that it feels like it must have only been ten minutes ago that she last woke him up, his pace maddeningly slow as he did all the things she liked. He had given her a long, slow, deep kiss that stole everything from her but him, and then, Happy Birthday, and he laughed at the width of her eyes and grin.
She finally opens her eyes, frowning at the empty side of the bed. His body indent is still in the sheets and pillow. It smells like him too, she notices, when she buries her head in the spot his had been. There's a loud bang from somewhere outside the door, a string of curses, and then several more bangs. Hermione jumps, launching herself from the bed and wrapping the sheet around her. She grabs her wand from the bedside table, useless, and checks both sides of the hall before running toward the kitchen.
Draco is red-faced and scowling at one of the cabinets, a pot raised in his hand, and his wand in the other. "Draco?"
She tries to gain control over her breathing and heart, and lowers her wand.
"There's a rat."
She stares at him, biting her lips, but she can't keep the laughter from her voice. "Didn't you live in the dungeons?"
"We never had rats." He sneers at her, slowly lowering his rat-crushing weapons. He drops the pot back on the counter, raising his hand to his now scruff-free face and rubbing at his cheek.
"Let it be. We-"
"I'm not having rats in my house, Granger. I've dealt with your house-elf rants, but rats is where I draw the line."
Hermione glances up at the cabinet and then back to his wandering eyes. She sniffs at him, and pulls the sheet tighter. "Your house?"
"Yes. Lupin decided to...gift me this spectacular shit-hole for turning my house into a pile of wreckage. Thankfully, I have another home. Unfortunately, my mother also lives there. Between the rats and the hovering, I can hardly decide."
She files that information away for later, and feels oddly like she just discovered a bit of treasure she'll keep proudly and away from the sight of others. It's where she keeps all the things he's trusted her enough to tell her, and also the things he doesn't know he tells her, like how his voice softened on mother.
Hermione laughs, shrugging, and his eyes catch her shoulders. "It's not bad. You have to fix it up, though."
Color. The only bits of it are scattered fabric and the watercolors still hanging in the living room. Scrubbing, too, for the dirt and dust, and the places where blood stains the floor. Holes to patch, things to replace, and maybe leaving all the windows open for a week to blow out the way the air seems thicker.
"I was rather content to watch it rot." He steps carefully around the puddle of tea on the floor, and hesitates with his wand over the table before he sets it down.
She watches the predatory edge to his eyes and step with caution, but she still leans into him when he grabs her arms. "It has potential."
"You see potential in everything."
"I think it could be beautiful."
He snorts, bending to brush his lips up the curve of her shoulder. "That's a lot of work, Granger."
"So? Fix the roof, maybe some new carpeting, some furniture. You definitely have to paint. It's always bothered me, the blankness." Ever since she first came to this house with Lupin. When she walked down the hall and saw Draco out of the prison cell and in her world, on her side.
"It would take years to-"
"I'll help."
His lips pause, the heat of his breath. His fingers are curling harder into her arms, but she doesn't think he notices. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. "No yellow." Ba-dumb, ba-dumb.
She smiles, skimming her fingers over the hair at the back of his head. "What, green?"
"Of course."
"Red."
"Then I'll have to get elves so I can complete the whole Christmas look." She tugs his hair for the sarcasm, and he bites her ear in response.
"I like Christmas. Red and green. It makes me happy. Maybe I'll paint your room pink..." She trails off when he raises his head to glare at her. "No? Not pink?"
"I think I'll go with blue." She blushes, and he smirks in the kisses he presses to her jaw before pulling up to look at her.
"I'm going to the Burrow." She tells this more to his searching hands than to him.
"Right now?"
"Soon. Molly wants to do this whole...belated birthday thing." She shifts on her feet, and she thinks the awkwardness must radiate up from her blood, through his hands, and into his knowledge.
"Oh."
"I have to Portkey to the Ministry, and then Floo... If you had been there before, I would ask you to Appar-"
"I'll take you."
"You've been there?"
"No, I was just going to bring us out into the middle of the ocean, drop you in it, and Apparate back here before I fell in myself."
She purses her lips at him, and he reaches up to grab the tangle of sheets in her fist. He yanks on them and she clutches them tighter. His eyebrow hikes, his eyes meeting hers as he yanks harder. "We already covered what I would do if you murdered me."
"Right. Slippers." The sheet gives way, and his eyes rake down her body as she clasps her hands. He looks over her shoulder toward the dining table.
"Will you stay?"
"Here?"
"When you bring me to the Burrow... Will you stay?"
His eyes snap back to hers, and the intensity she finds there makes her fidget. She reaches up a finger, running it down his nose, and his fingers clench around her hips. He shrugs a shoulder, pulling her against him. "Yeah. Yeah, I'll stay."
Day: 1572; Hour: 12
"I think I'm going to write a letter to the Finnigans every year. Just to tell them what I'm doing with my life. Do you think they'll like that?"
She glares at him when he shoves the box of crackers between his side and the armrest. "If they reply back with several hexes charmed to the parchment, no. How the hell should I know, Granger?"
She frowns, plopping next to him on the ugly couch, securing the towel to her head. "I just thought it might bring them...some sort of comfort. To know that a part of him lives on. Lives through someone else."
"So what happens when you do nothing for a year? When you get too busy to save the world. What will you tell them then?"
"I-"
"You're setting yourself up for failure, Granger. Because no matter what you do, or how great you make your life, you're never going to feel like it's good enough to make up for his life. For any of their lives."
"That's not—"
"Yes, it is. You're never going to feel like you made it worth it, Granger. Your friends are still dead and you have to accept that. It's not about the life they could have had, it's about the life you have. We're fucked up enough. There's a reason the Ministry sent letters to the families about how to deal with us. No loud sounds, no sneaking up, no quick movements. We're all screwed. We're all screwed up in the head now and everyone knows it. The most we-"
"I'm trying to be happy," she whispers, and there's something heavy against her chest again. He stares at her long enough for her to feel awkward.
"And some days you're going to be angry, and other days you're going to have one of your breakdowns. You'll hear and see shit that isn't there, you'll throw curses at trees, and you're still going to be afraid. You're going to be afraid of even more shit now. That's not going away. We can't ever be normal after this, and you're not going to have some brilliant life when you wake up tomorrow. But it doesn't mean you're wasting it. It doesn't make their sacrifices mean any less."
"I know." Her voice cracks, and she clears her throat. He leans back in the couch, his shoulder pressing to hers. "I know. Nothing is... I have to make it worth it for myself, though. I'm...accepting that it's never going to be good enough to make up for them being gone. But I'll never stop trying to make it good enough for me. That's what I mean. And that's for them, too. It's all I can give them."
There are different kinds of losses. Some you can take like a collision that knocks you down, and after awhile, you stand and take a step, another, another. You leave it behind there, something in you changed, and it's something you look back upon with a sadness that rages forward but reaches you gently and gentler the further you go. A darkness you can't help but always sometimes search for in the madness behind you, but where grief is eased by years to become something wistful, with nostalgia and regret.
Sometimes there isn't a loss you can accept and move on from. Where loss is some underwhelming assembly of letters to describe what has been ripped out and stolen from you. Sometimes it is something you live with, like a knife to the chest that you can't pull out without dying from it. You walk, you breathe, you live, and you carry it around with you; an ache in the chest, a hole filled with sharp, hard things, and an emptiness hollowed out around the heart.
But you live. And if you try really hard, you can find some peace, and you can carry the beautiful things with you too.
She lifts her chin. "What about you?"
"What about me?"
"The future. Hap-"
"Today I'm going to suffer through the Weasleys. I might buy a television. Tomorrow I'm going to see my mother. At some point I'm going to start fixing this house. I might even invite Potter to help, as long as there is an abundance of alcohol. Considering the events of last time, I gather I'm going to see you naked in several colors and shag you in every room. One morning I might wake to being suffocated by slippers. One day I might fall into a war mentality and kill you while you're planting marijuana in my backyard aga-"
"How many times do I have to tell you, it wasn't-"
"I might buy some clothes. At some point-"
"I meant the real future. Beyond the next couple of weeks."
"There are some semblance of plans, but I know about as much as you do for that, Granger. Nothing."
"And you're okay with that?"
"It's fucking glorious."
She bites her cheek, unwrapping the towel from her hair with a shrug. "I guess we'll figure it out."
"Eventually." The cracker pauses on its way to his mouth, and she glances up to meet his eyes, realizing that she had been staring at it rather intensely.
His eyes narrow and he pops it into his mouth, chewing slowly. She smiles sweetly at him, and his eyes squint even more. "You know what would make me happy right now?"
"You'll have to earn it." She gives him a look and he reads it clearly. "Jesus, not that. Are you already trying to kill me? As irresistible as I must be, Granger, the last twenty-four hou-"
"Irresistible? I had no intentions on that anyway. I simply thought-"
"Mhm. I see your still unnamed 'blood pressure illness' is acting up again."
"That's because you make me angry."
"Is this supposed to be something new?"
"Give me the crackers, Malfoy."
"You have to earn them, I said. You have to work for happi-"
She dives for them.
Hour: One
She can hear his footsteps behind her, and then his...shoes by her leg. She can't remember him in any footwear outside of his boots. The glass door slides farther away from her, and he takes the spot it leaves open, dangling his legs out the door with hers. She looks up at his face, his eyes staring into the trees. She almost can't believe it. That the war is over and that he's still here.
She can still hear the echoes of his voice in her ear, strained and choked, and begging for something more than the moment could have given them. He had said it on the crest of a goodbye, but it had only fueled her more. Like a second heart that formed over a year ago, behind her own, throbbing those emotions into her blood with every frantic beat.
She had tried to fight it, to ignore it, had felt him try to rip it out of her himself. Sometimes it feels like losing, and other times she is positive they have won. She doesn't know the name for what they are, or how it happened, or where they'll go. She doesn't have a clue, but she thinks this might be okay, because she has him. Somehow, in this monster of war that has stolen so much from her, it gave her back this. The one thing she thought it never could.
She looks over at him, that spark of grey, and grins wildly. It's the insane grin, the pleased grin that freaks him out and that he doesn't like. But she thinks maybe he likes it anyway, because he shakes his head and turns his face away, but she can see the corner of his mouth hitch and then rise, rise.
She looks down at her boots, at her knees, and then up at the trees. At the colors swinging across the sky, shivering at the chill wind that promises the coming of winter. She would be lying if she said she isn't still scared. She would be lying if she said she knows what to do with herself at all. We're all scared, Granger.
"Where do we go now?"
He waits on silence, because he knows she doesn't mean the literal destination. She doesn't mean the Burrow, the birthday dinner, the crazy dining table shoved full of red hair. She means the casualty list, her dead friends, her need to draw her wand at a flicker of shadows. She means moving on, and healing up, and learning how to live without war. She means him, and her, and the stone in her bark. She means the survivors, and her parents, and the entire world. She means the future. That big, rushing, open space of time, and wounds, and possibilities. She means about not wasting it, about life, about choices, about freedom. She means after the fallout.
He shrugs a shoulder, sniffs, and pushes himself off the ledge and to his feet. The wind snags his hair, blowing it up into dancing strands. The sky is a light pink and orange beyond his shoulders, stuck in that moment where it could be sunrise or sunset, but it's beautiful and perfect all the same. He grabs her hips, and his eyes are like the stones again, beneath the running water in her backyard. For a second she is a child; soaked in her Sunday dress, twirling, twirling, twirling as the world moved on and she laughed, cheeks stretching in the sun.
"Anywhere we want."
She grabs his shoulders, and he hauls her off the edge and to her feet, grunting like it takes a lot to do so. She glares at him and he smirks, his body relaxed as he tugs her against him and warms her cold lips with his own. His thumb skates her cheekbone, always the one with the scar, and his smile is crooked when she grins at him.
When does life begin again?
After the fallout, when you wake up, when you realize that you are still alive. Do you shake out your bones, do you memorize the pulses of your blood? Do you ever stop feeling like you're still in it, like you'll never get out of it?
Maybe you hide from it. Maybe you keep it hidden under your skin, because it's easier than facing it, because facing it is acknowledging what you have lost to get there. Maybe you throw it away, because you're afraid, and it might kill you or restore you, but you don't know. You can't know.
Maybe it starts when the smoke begins to clear from a battle, when dawn lights up the faces of her side. Maybe it's when Draco wakes up in a hospital bed instead of never waking up at all. When Ron will finally realize that she is really there, and when Harry finds that he no longer has to be a hero because he has finished what he was born to do. When George flips the sign to Open on his and his brother's shop, when Dean paints a face of someone he loves that isn't dead, when Lavender climbs her mountain in Asia.
Life is a circle. It is a war. It builds, climaxes, ebbs out of the fallout, and then builds again. Every night someone goes to sleep to the end of the world, but one morning, they wake up. They shake out their bones, they realize they have survived. They begin again, that human struggle for peace, that desperate reach for happiness.
Hermione thinks it begins now. Draco's fingers twisted in the fabric at the back of her shirt, as they stand there like the last solid structure in the entire world. She knows that the world can never be a place that finds true peace – but she can, they can. The war is over, and they have won. Life stretches out before them, waiting for them to make it worth it. Some elusive happiness there to overwhelm them.
And Hermione knows, with the Burrow waiting for them, and Draco's cold nose against her cheek, his breath warm on her neck, that this is the beginning.
fin.