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What to Say
Chapter Two: Everything and Nothing
"Words were everything and nothing with them."
Harry once found a picture in Remus' wallet of Harry as a baby. It was a still one, a muggle one, and Harry knew that it was taken by his mother.
In the picture, Harry is only about nine or ten months old, and he's sitting on a blanket spread out on the grass of what looked like his parent's backyard. His eyes aren't on the camera, but just a bit above it, focused on something over it. And he's smiling. That mouth-open and on-the-verge-of-laughing kind of smile.
Harry knows he's staring at his mother there.
He had stolen the picture from Remus, knowing the werewolf would know, and not feeling guilty in the slightest, something that still had him wonder at sometimes.
But Remus never said anything about where he figured the picture had gotten to, so Harry never said anything either. He just horded it away, and when days became too heavy to even think he would pull it out and sneak a long look, imagining what his mother looked like behind that camera.
And now, sitting at the dining table of the Burrow in the wee hours of the morning, Harry couldn't tear his fingers from the image before him, laid out on the tabletop.
He had not turned on any lights in the dining room, but the window above the sink let in the beginnings of blue as the day slowly approached.
Harry and the Weasleys, along with Hermione and a few others Harry couldn't be bothered to remember at the time, had moved to the Burrow from Grimmauld Place the day after they received the news of Dumbledore's capture. They planned to stay the night before moving out and going on the run for a few weeks, changing safe houses every few days, just to be cautious.
They were preparing to leave this morning, but Harry had not slept, not since he had laid crying in Hermione's lap in the privacy of the attic. Now, he sat at the dining table, fanning his fingers across the image, and he could almost imagine the feel of the grass beneath his fingertips.
It was then that he heard the slight tread of footfalls coming slowly down the stairs. There was only one person he knew that could be up at this hour.
When the figure stopped just inside the doorway to the dining room, Harry kept his back to the threshold and closed his eyes. His lip quirked up in a small smile. "Morning, Hermione."
The person shifted their footing, and then started walking around to stand across from Harry on the other side of the small table. Harry looked up and saw Hermione looking at him, still clad in her pajamas, her hair wild about her shoulders and face. She smiled slightly, and then pulled the chair out to sit. She sat facing the window and closed her eyes to the dim blue light of the outside.
"Merlin, it's early."
Harry chuckled softly, then looked across to the muggle clock Arthur had set up on one of the kitchen shelves. "It's 5:15."
Hermione winced. "I don't think I can retrain my body for any later time. I'm just doomed to insomnia." She turned her body so that she could rest her arms across the table and lay her head upon them. "I came down for coffee."
"We're out."
"Shucks." Hermione's voice was slightly muffled from her pajama-clad arms.
"Do you want some tea?" Harry still had not put away his photo, and wondered if Hermione had even noticed it.
She opened one eye to peer at him. "I think…no. Maybe I'll just get packed and try to catch a nap."
They both knew there was no getting back to sleep for Hermione, but neither of them said anything.
There was silence in that dining room as Harry fingered the edge of the photograph and Hermione breathed silently into the warmth of her arms across the table. Harry took the moment to look at her, and for the first time, noticed how accustomed he had come to her face. But if he really looked hard enough, he could see the small, shallow hole on her left cheek left by a chicken pox scar. And he could see the light brown beauty mark just above her right temple. And he could see the lone freckle that planted itself just below her right eye.
Hermione herself was rather ordinary, when her personality was not taken into account.
But then, Harry would look at her hair, and suddenly he was reminded of his mother's garden, a garden he was sure he couldn't possibly remember at that age. And yet, looking at that shade of brown, he just knew what that garden looked like, without even having to think about it.
And when Harry would look at her smile, suddenly, he could smell his father's cooking, and imagine what his parents looked like in the kitchen, smearing food over each other's noses and laughing, before finally trying to actually cook it. Harry doesn't even know how he can remember what his father's cooking smells like, but he always does, when he sees Hermione smile.
And he doesn't even need to close his eyes to imagine what hers look like, to see those deep brown irises (plain by any other extent) and know that he will always be moved by them. Because when he really looks at her, really sees those eyes, he can feel the heat of the fire as his parents laid with him on the rug before the fireplace. Rocking him to sleep when he couldn't bear to be away from them.
Harry couldn't fully comprehend how Hermione could shift his senses so. Harry couldn't understand how Hermione felt so much like Home to him.
He looked back down to the picture in his hand, the worn and tattered edge brushing along his fingertips.
It was so unreal. Exchanging these trivial words with Hermione at the break of dawn, the danger of invasion creeping up to nip at their heels as they readied to flee.
It's 5:15 in the morning and there they sat talking about tea and coffee after Harry had spent an innumerable amount of time wailing his soul out into Hermione's hands.
Yeah. Unreal.
"Do you believe there's a God, Hermione?" Harry hadn't even known he'd spoken the words until he heard her shift across from him.
"Excuse me?" Harry saw Hermione lift her head up from her arms to stare at him.
He set the picture down on the table and Hermione saw the image for the first time. She squinted, confused, then leaned further across the table to look at it, her body turning to face Harry across the tabletop.
"I said," Harry's voice drew Hermione's attention back to his face. "'Do you believe there's a God'?"
Hermione was silent for a moment, then leaned back in her chair to stare at Harry. "Why are you asking me this Harry?"
Harry shrugged half-heartedly and looked back down at the picture, his hand unconsciously moving to finger the corner again. "I don't know exactly. I think it's just…something I've always wanted to ask you."
Harry heard her soft breathing for a few moments, before her voice drew his head back up to look at her. "I can't."
Harry furrowed his brows. "What do you mean?"
"Well, you see…," she folded her hands atop the table, "It's like this, Harry. I can't believe that there's a God. If there were a supreme power over everything in this universe then it would have a supreme power over me, which, in essence, would render me powerless. And that goes against everything I believe about the importance of choices. It would make my existence insignificant. It would make my decisions of no consequence. And I know," she closed her eyes, exhaled a breath into the still air, "I just know that that kind of thinking would make me careless, make me apathetic. And in this world, I can't afford to live like that. For my sake. For your sake. For everyone and everything I know. I can't."
Harry stared at Hermione in complete wonder, his fingers having long stilled their motion against the picture. There was a moment in which he thought he had lost his breath, before his lips quirked up in a small smile, and a soft chuckle escaped him. "Merlin, Hermione, I don't know how you can talk like that."
Hermione cocked her head a moment, but waited in silence for him to continue.
Harry drew in a large breath and exhaled it in a loud sigh, leaning back in his chair, the image left forgotten on the tabletop. "How do you speak like that?"
"Like what, Harry?" Her voice was soft, yielding.
Harry ran a hand roughly down his face. "So…so…" He looked at her. "I don't know. Like every word means something, I guess."
Hermione smiled slightly. "Well, for me, it does."
Harry snorted faintly. "I wish I could use words the way you do. Why can't I speak like that?"
"Because you don't need to, Harry."
Harry looked at her then. "What do you mean?"
"You don't need words, Harry." Hermione leaned back over the table to plant her arms over the surface. "I think," Hermione paused, contemplating. "Well, I think your way of communicating is on such a higher and deeper level that using words would demean that. You know?"
Harry shook his head silently.
"It's like…you connect with people through so many more meaningful ways. Sight. Touch. Feeling." She smiled. "Magic. I think that's so much more powerful than being able to use words. There's no possible way for you to communicate than the way you've always done it. If you put it to words…" She shrugged, turned her head to look out the window again. "Well, the importance would be lost on all of us."
And that idea, that knowledge that words weren't necessary with them, for Harry, it meant that things weren't as hopeless as he'd imagined.
He had been taught that words meant everything, that words were everything. Words were the only thing Harry ever thought he had in common with others. You could feel words. You could understand words. Greetings, farewells, secrets, promises, declarations, concealments, knowledge, encouragement, advice, threats, spells.
Anything that needed to be known could be found in words.
When Harry had been told the truth about his magic, on that cold, dreary night when Hagrid had come barging through the door, he had reveled in the realization that he had a voice in this world.
Harry could hold onto that. A voice.
Everything he ever said in his life he said with the knowledge that words were a gift.
When Ron had thanked him for making it to his sudden wedding, in the middle of a war, barely scraping by with his life:
"Anything for family."
When he and Ginny were hiding tucked in a ditch, ready to ambush a group of Death Eaters on the grounds of Hogwarts:
"I'll cover you."
When he spent his twenty-first birthday in the basement of Grimmauld Place, sharing seventy-three year old scotch with Sirius:
"I love you. You know that, right?"
When Dumbledore had stormed through Death Eaters and trolls and giants and worse to rescue Harry on that night that still haunts his nightmares:
"Thank you. God, thank you for everything."
When he had first found the picture of himself in Remus' wallet:
"I miss my parents."
When Luna, Ron and Neville were out for the count, Bellatrix slowly waking from unconsciousness, Lucius Malfoy lunging at him with wild, crazed eyes:
"Avada Kedavra"
When Harry had spent that day lying in Hermione's lap, leaking the grief of too many years into her welcoming hands:
"I'm glad it was you."
But now, sitting here with Hermione, where words would only debase what he felt, Harry found that looking at her almost made him want to cry again.
He dropped his head to the table, held it in his hands, and Hermione was taken aback for a moment, reaching across suddenly, then stopping at the sight of his shaking shoulders.
"God," Harry slowly shook his head in his hands, and Hermione bit her lip, wanting to hold him again.
"I just hope there's still time."
Hermione stopped, staring at him. She pulled her arm back slowly. "Time for what, Harry?"
Harry lifted his head, and Hermione saw how he was ready to let himself break.
He closed his eyes, breathed in deep, wanting to never breathe back out. Maybe he would slip away into a place where he didn't have to do this, didn't have to wake up every morning feeling like this. "Time for everything. Anything."
He opened his eyes, looked at her. Her hair and eyes and face. "Time to go Home."
Hermione stood up, and before Harry even realized she was moving she was kneeling down next to him, looking up with eyes pleading for her Harry to come back into the world. She grasped his hand, and Harry was surprised to find that she was shaking, too.
It was then that he saw how Hermione wasn't nearly the steadfast rock they all took her for. And he wanted to shout at himself for loading all this baggage on her when she must have been hurting just as much. There was no mistaking the redness of her eyes, the thinness of her cheeks, the brightness that was Hermione now gone and fled.
And he wondered if she cried herself to sleep nights as well.
But she wouldn't cry now, not when Harry needed her so much. So she breathed deep, held tight to his hand, and wouldn't let him look away from her eyes.
"We've still got time, Harry. There's always time to go Home." She couldn't understand why it was so hard for her to swallow, why breathing was so difficult now. "And I'm always…always ready to go with you. Anywhere. With you Harry, anywhere."
Harry saw the first reluctant tear break the hold of her heavy eyelashes and stream it's way down her cheek. He wanted so much for her to never cry again. But she was smiling. She was smiling. Somehow, suddenly, Harry knew that it wouldn't be the last time he got to see it.
"We can go home, Harry." And she meant it. She meant all of it. Everything she never put into words, because he knew anyway.
She was always ready to go home with him.
And two years later, when the evil that was Lord Voldemort was banished from the magical world, that's exactly what they did.
Harry and Hermione. Home.