Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition Season 8

Chudley Cannons

Practice Round: So Beautiful

Keeper Prompt: Pyrrhic

Word Count: 1015

This is an AU where the Final Battle suffered a few more losses than in canon...

Harry, a couple butterbeers in hand, wearily made his way to the top of the Astronomy Tower – one of the few structures, ironically, that had not been reduced to rubble in the Final Battle a week ago.

Everyone else that had survived was gathered downstairs, but Harry couldn't stand sitting there any longer. He'd just needed to go somewhere away from the others, away from the cloying grief that was suffocating them all. He didn't exactly have the fondest memories of the Astronomy Tower, but there weren't many other intact places to go around the school, and he hadn't felt much like visiting the dungeons.

He paused at the top step, finding someone else was already there. Hermione turned her bushy head of curls toward him briefly, blank eyes only meeting his for a moment before facing forward again.

When she made no motions to shoo him away, he moved to the edge to sit next to her, drew his wand, and after tapping the tops of the bottles to open them, offered one to her wordlessly.

She took it, and as Harry took a small first sip, she took a long drink of her own. Harry watched as she gulped down at least half of the butterbeer before stopping, but she didn't look at him again when she was done.

Harry despondently stared out at the still lake, and the ruins of the rest of the castle. For some reason, he'd thought being up here would make him feel a little less closed in.

"I feel… wrong."

Harry looked up sharply in concern. Hermione's head was tipped back, and she was staring at the stars, seemingly complacent, but Harry could see her fingers were clenched so hard that her knuckles were white around her bottle of butterbeer.

He hadn't expected her to speak to him at all, since she hadn't spoken a word to anyone since the battle. If she hadn't said something now, he wouldn't have let her get away with it much longer, but he was glad she'd talked first.

"Why?"

Her lids closed slowly, and he wondered if she would respond at all.

"Sometimes, I feel happy," she whispered, at last.

"That's okay," he told her, with much more calmness than he felt.

Her eyes flashed towards him, burning with anger and tears.

"No, it's not!" she cried the words out through sobs. "It's – I s-should be sad."

Harry began to regret just a little that he'd achieved the reaction he'd been aiming to get, but he knew she needed this, so he sat, quietly, and let her continue.

"I'm – I loved him, and he's gone, and I was useless," she curled a hand in her hair, against her scalp, as if she were going to rip it up. Harry watched, carefully, but she didn't start tugging it out.

"I should've – I could've done something," she sobbed, head falling forward to rest on the rail. "I can't be h-happy; it's my fault."

As soon as those words had left her mouth, Harry knew he needed to cut in. He'd fallen into that same spiral of thinking after Sirius' death, and he couldn't let Hermione do the same.

"No," he said, sliding closer to her and wrapping an arm around her trembling shoulders. "No, no, it's not."

He couldn't see her face, but he could tell she was shaking her head.

"You were fighting Dolohov, remember?" he asked, but didn't bother to wait for an answer. "You weren't free yet when he – when he went to save his brothers. There wasn't anything you could've done, Hermione."

She'd curled her head in to rest on his chest as he spoke, and he felt her tears slowly seeping into his shirt. He didn't mind.

"I know," she croaked, "I know – logically, I know that, but…"

Harry waited again as she tried to calm herself enough to speak again.

"I still feel guilty," she admitted. "And I'm happy, sometimes. Not that he's – just, in general."

"That's okay," Harry said, "we did win, you know. And you do have more than the emotional range of a teaspoon – it's alright for you to feel more than just sad all the time."

He'd been aiming for a joke and thought he might have accomplished it, but it was hard to tell. Hermione only sniffed and made a sort of strange, hiccoughing sound that might have been an aborted laugh.

"Yes, but Harry," she said, "at what cost?"

He sighed and rested his cheek against her hair. She wasn't wrong. They had won, but they had lost even more. Percy and Fred had lived, thanks to Ron, but they'd lost so many more: Remus, Tonks, Bill, Molly, Angelina, Lee, Colin, Lavender, Hannah, Neville, Flitwick, Seamus, McGonagall… and so, so many more. When all had been said and done, over half of their side was dead.

They'd won, somehow, but at such a horrible cost that there were more Death Eaters going to Azkaban than fighters left who'd fought for the Light.

"We're not losing anyone else," Harry said, firmly, with more confidence than he felt.

Hermione shifted against him, and he felt her eyes on him, but he didn't look down.

"Harry, you know you can't – "

"I know!" he shouted, feeling guilty when she flinched. He hadn't meant to say it that loudly, and he lowered his voice as he continued, "I know, Hermione, but I just…"

He just couldn't let himself think that anyone else was going to die. Not now.

He knew there were at least a dozen from the DA and the Order in St. Mungo's still, and he knew there was a chance they might not all recover, but for now, he just couldn't handle the thought of it.

"Alright," she said, softly, relaxing against him again. "Nobody else."

Harry breathed out slowly and closed his eyes on the view of the rubble beneath them for just a moment.

"We're all going to be okay," he said, perhaps more for himself than for Hermione. "And – and we're all going to be happy sometimes, too."