Chapter 2:

Update: A really good video to watch is '101 Reasons to Ship Harry & Hermione' on YouTube by tennisgirlxoxo

When everyone showed up at Privet Drive to take Harry to the rebuilt Burrow, tension was high, everyone knew that there was a very strong likelihood that they would be attacked by Death Eaters and they could die. Ron came in second, after Hagrid, and hugged his best mate, Hermione came in afterward, and hugged Harry as well, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek before letting go for the others to enter. Both were reminded by their sort-of kiss last year.

At Bill and Fleur's wedding, Harry noticed Ron looking heatedly at Hermione and knew his friend was starting to have real feelings for Hermione, Harry himself loved Ginny, but until Voldemort was defeated, he didn't want to put Ginny in any more danger than she was already in. And then the Death Eater's attacked the wedding.

Then the Death Eaters attacked the coffee shop, and Harry watched as Ron brushed at a smudge on Hermione's face before she Obliviated their attackers and the worker.

At Grimmauld Place when Harry was trapped in the vision of Draco being forced to torture one of the Death Eaters Hermione had Obliviated earlier, the sound of Hermione's knock on the bathroom door snapped him out of it, And when he woke early the next morning thinking about Dumbledore and Horcruxes, he climbed the stairs to Sirius' room, seeking distraction. Hermione's yelling Harry's name alerted him that she and Ron were awake and searching frantically for him, when he called Hermione up to show her the picture and letter his mother had sent to Sirius, they also found out who R.A.B. was.

Infiltrating the ministry, Hermione was almost sobbing before she finally produced her patronus, She used the feeling of when she first woke up from being petrified in second year and saw Harry and Ron's faces again.

When Cattermole's wife ran up to Ron and kissed him, she felt a moment of satisfaction of the horrified look on the woman's face when Ron turned back into himself.

Every time it was her turn to put on that horrid locket, Hermione felt as if it were whispering to her, comparing Ron and Harry to each other, bringing up every mean word Ron had said to her in first year, until he and Harry had rescued her from the troll, every time he blamed her cat of trying to kill his rat in third year, Harry hating her for turning in the Firebolt, Ron hating her for going to the ball with Viktor Krum in fourth year, being the messenger between Harry and Ron when Ron thought harry had entered the Tournament on purpose, Ron and Lavender's entire relationship. Every feeling was revisited as if it were the first time and the doubt stayed with her long after she took it off.

When Ron left, forcing her to choose between him and Harry, she hated that Ron had made her choose, he should have known that she would have stayed with Harry, they had to find all the Horcruxes. Every horrible thing Ron had said was added to the previous things whenever seh wore the locket.

Harry watched Hermione cry when Ron left, he knew that Ron had just inadvertently broken her heart, even though they both knew it was the locket's doing, sending feelings of hopelessness. Not knowing if it would help, he stood and walked over to her, holding his hand out while the radio burbled out static music. She took his hand and stood up, letting Harry take off the poisoned necklace and watching as he threw it on the bed. He took both her hands in his and moved them towards the clear space in the middle of the tent, Harry started swinging their hands towards and away from them, twisting to the music. A smile slowly pulled at Hermione and she began dancing to, starting to laugh a bit as Harry twirled her under his arm, then twirling under her arm, they leaned on each other now, dancing slower, swaying in circles mostly as the music faded back into white noise. They pulled back and it was almost like they were back in the abandoned room in sixth year, escaping from Ron and Lavender. They looked at each other and the smiles faded away.

Moving closer again, chest to chest, face to face. lips touched without either aware of having moved, chapped lips, rough whiskers, hot tongues, smooth sliding.

With a sigh, it ended.

"It can't happen again," Hermione whispered, "It's why Ron left."

It was funny, Ron's suspicions came true only because he left.

So they didn't let it happen again. Until they did.

At Harry's parents graves, Hermione knelt in the snow to conjure a wreath, white flowers blooming in the frigid cold, and they stood there, leaning against each other until they met Bathilda Bagshot, who turned into a snake, and tried to kill Harry.

While Harry slept, and whimpered, and sometimes cried out, Hermione had to listen to it all while standing guard outside. She dreaded the moment when Harry woke and found that she had accidentally broken his wand.

The few hours that she didn't stand watch, Hermione sat at Harry's bed and held his hand, wiping the sweat from his forehead and neck with a cool rag, and once, near morning, she did the thing they agreed wouldn't happen again. She put her forehead to his and kissed him.

"No. . ." Harry moaned against her lips. Hermione gasped, thinking he was awake, and he was, though barely.

"Harry, it's all right, you're alright!" She cried, shaking his shoulder gently.

he kept moaning and saying 'no' and she kept telling him it was alright until his green eyes finally opened.

Harry watched the silver, nude, red-eyed version of himself and Hermione snog while Ron stood, seemingly empty, and then he struck, and the locket was destroyed.

Then Ron returned and with the locket destroyed, and Hermione was furious and she didn't know why, but she was shouting things at Ron and she didn't know what she was saying, and then she was silent for hours, curled up on one of the chairs with her arms wrapped around herself.

They went to the Lovegoods and learned about the Deathly Hallows, then escaped, and Harry, who always had trouble abstaining from Calling Voldemort by name, slipped up and they were carted off to Malfoy Manor. Hermione was tortured and through it all, she could hear Ron and Harry, though mostly Ron, screaming her name.

She had to help them escape, Harry had to kill Voldemort. But she was screaming and there was a burning and prickling and tingling that wouldn't stop and she was screaming and then it stopped for a moment, and there was only the burning in her arm that radiated out to her fingernails and up to her chest, and there were faint words, and a yell, but it wasn't her. It wasn't her. Harry and Ron were there suddenly, wands somehow in hands, and they were yelling too, though it wasn't like the way she had been, or the other person a moment ago. And then she was jerked upright, s prick at her throat, but she hardly felt it through the other burning numb pain.

A scream, not hers, and she was flung aside, and more pain, all over, and a crushing weight on top of her, and there was another sound of pain, similar to the one from earlier. She was being dragged, large hands, rough, vice-like, and she cried out when it unleashed another wave of burning in her arm. And then she couldn't breathe, but then she could and she finally, blessedly, let darkness cover her eyes.

Hermione was awake, and there was white gold, and she started squirming, trying to get away. that hair had been there with the pain. But then the voice, coming from the white blonde, it was melodic, and nasally, and feminine.

"Eet es, moi, 'Ermione, Fleur Weasley, soit en paix, be at peace," The voice said quietly.

Hermione settled down again and when she woke later, there was red, red but no black.

"Harry," the voice that spoke was a whisper, barely heard.

"It's alright, 'Mione, you're safe, we're with Bill and Fleur, Dean went home already, but Luna's here, and Ollivander and the goblin who told Bellatrix," Hermione flinched, "That the sword was a fake," The voice talked. Harry, what about Harry? Is Harry safe?

"Harry's alright, he's pretty sad about Dobby, he died while getting us all out, but he's buried near the garden and Harry made a nice headstone," The voice was Ron. Ron has red hair. Ron is talking to me.

There was a pressure on her hand, the one that wasn't simmering with pain. Ron must be holding my hand.

"Water," she croaked, and there was a glass rim at her lips and cool water slipping down her throat.

Plans were made, They would break into the Lestrange's vault and find what the madwoman was so worried about.

They were flying on the back of a blind dragon, over London and over the countryside clinging to the spinal ridges. They dropped into the black, freezing water and clambered ashore, burns stinging from the water and air. They sat at their new campsite, cleaning their wounds and drinking juice, they ended up laughing hysterically at their escape, breathless and giddy at the acquisition of another Horcrux.

Harry wasn't Harry at that moment, he was Voldemort, and he was furious.

In Hogsmeade, they were saved by Aberforth Dumbledore, and were secreted away by Neville to Hogwarts and the Room of Requirement. They learned what had happened while they were gone, there wasn't a single person in the room without some kind of bruise or injury.

Harry went with Luna to Ravenclaw Tower to see the Diadem,

Ron blurted something about a bathroom, and dragged Hermione along with him, through another of the randomized exit holes.

Basilisk. Fangs. Ron kept muttering and then the two of them were in the first floor, girls lavatory and Ron was trying to speak Parseltongue at a sink. But then it was an icky slide and a horrid smell was wafting up from the depths.

Hermione kneeled over the Cup with a fang in her fist, and there was a tar-like substance filling the cup to the brim, and when she looked into it, she saw Harry, lying dead in the forest, and Ron, dead lying on rubble with a giant snake latched onto him. And she stabbed it, because she wouldn't allow her best friends to die, not now, maybe in a hundred years, maybe not even then.

It shrieked, and it sounded like her own screams and so she stabbed it again and it was silent,

Ron said something about elves and Hermione was kissing him, forgetting everything except the arms around her, and only stopping because Ron pulled away and Harry was looking ill,

Harry was watching his two best friends kiss and he felt weak, they were in a war, fighting for their lives, and they were snogging.

He also felt a bit jealous, he had once kissed Hermione like that, maybe twice, if the dream he thought was true, really was.

They broke apart when he yelled that they were in a war, and dashed off with him to the Room of Requirement and the Diadem Horcrux.

Fire was blazing and Malfoy and his goons were screaming, black smoke was choking the air and their lungs, Harry had grabbed Malfoy, Hermione and Ron had grabbed Goyle, the Horcrux and Crabbe were lost to the enchanted fire he had summoned and the two Slytherins were crouched in the corridor crying, their faces as soot-smudged as the Gryffindor's.

Fred was dead.

Hermione was crying.

Harry was crying.

Ron was screaming.

Percy was screaming.

George was wailing like he was dying too.

Snape was dead, his memories drifting out like smoke.

Smoke trapped in a bottle, waiting to be released and revealed.

The last of a man that loved someone so much.

Always.

Harry knew what had to be done.

A lamb sent to the slaughter indeed.

He passed the girl. On his way to his death. The girl with red hair.

And the boy. The boy who was the same as him.

On his way to death,

"I am going to die" whispered to a cold, golden ball that opened to reveal a stone.

A stone that was turned three times.

A stone that revealed the boy's parents, godfather, a man seen as an uncle and his wife who left behind a baby boy.

A baby orphan boy who didn't have any parents either. A baby orphan boy who would have a loving Godfather and a grandmother. A baby orphan boy who would grow up happy.

"Does it hurt? Dying?" he asked, a child's question.

"Quicker and easier than falling asleep," a comforting adult answer.

"You'll stay with me?" again, the child's question.

"Until the very end," a comforting adult answer

A green light and then a white room.

Far away, though not very far, three people felt the passing of a scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled, wizard. The red-haired boy and girl, and the brown haired girl, who felt empty, suddenly.

And even more empty when the enemy emerged, with the scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled, wizard cradled in the arms of the man who delivered him to his second home, and introduced him to a world he never imagined.

Harry Potter was dead.

And then he wasn't.

Chaos as the snake was beheaded, and the boy who was dead was alive again, and a mother went into battle to protect her child, and a boy with a camera was killed, and the boy that was dead but alive again faced the creature that wasn't a man.

And the boy-who-lived won.

There were deaths and funerals, but the sky's were light, and Muggles were subjected, sixteen years later to yet again, men and women in long dresses with sticks waving in the air, and owls flying in the day, and fireworks spelling out words such as 'POO.' And only a few children found out what happened when they went to a magical school.

Years later, a boy made his first trip to a magical school, and he was worried that he would be in a place where bad people had once come from, but his father took him aside and explained that good people can grow from bad places. And the boy was happy and left for his new life as the wizard son of Harry and Ginny Potter, with his cousin, the daughter of Ron and Hermione Weasley.

And he never knew that he might have been the son of Harry and Hermione Potter, because that was what could have been.

Finis

So that's the end! I'm going to post another one exactly like this, that's Rated M, because even though it's 37 extra words of a non-explicit, kind-of implied sex scene, I'm paranoid, so it'll be called 'What Could Have Been, M Version' and those thirty-seven words will be the only ones bolded (it'll be in chapter 2).

So that's that, hope you all enjoyed!

~Creelluka