Disclaimer: I own nothing.
A/N: A slightly longer chapter for you this time. Almost there!
VIVAASA
By: carpetfibers
One year, Day 221
She does not expect the knock on the door; she does not expect to find the person behind it. He is little changed from her memory. He is older and angled, but still vulnerable and angry. He was always needy when they were children, desperate for affection and love and kindness, and she fed off of that need, warm in its permanence and confident in its depth. Theirs was a friendship of give and take, position and purpose, and when she walked away those many months ago, he let go her with barely veiled tolerance. He took her departure as betrayal then, and his green eyes, centered behind dark frames no longer circular in shape, tell her he is angry still.
"Hermione," he greets her.
"Harry," she can barely whisper. He slides through the front door before she can close it, and he takes in her living room with two piercing glances. She sees the disappointment in his shoulders and the confusion in his lips. She hears his questions without their voicing, and she knows he can never understand the ease with which she could walk away. She was a witch once, she remembers. She was a witch- and she is a witch- but she doesn't need it any longer. It has taken too much from her, and she wants to live selfishly for a small while in her life.
"So this is where you live," he says.
She wishes she was wearing something other than an old sweater and jeans. She feels small and self conscious, and he never used to make her feel that way. "Yes."
"You haven't been answering my letters," he tells her. "You stopped nearly two years ago."
"I've been trying to live my life," she explains. "I've been trying to move on-"
"Move on?" he repeats, anger finally mixing in his tones. "We're not your enemy, Hermione- I'm not your enemy. What is there to possibly move on from?"
She wants to answer; she wants to explain, but no amount of words or reasoning will be enough she knows. He has been without a family for too long to understand her loss. He re-made his family, he re-built his life starting with the day of his eleventh birthday, but she's only just begun that journey. "The day you discovered you were a wizard was the day you began knowing who you were, Harry. All that time at Hogwarts- those seven years- were seven years in which you got your answers. You know who you are, but I'm still trying to figure that out. Am I just a witch? Or am I something more- where can I be happy?"
"Just a witch. . . Hermione, you're so much more than just a witch. You're a brilliant witch! You're my best friend and there are so many who love you and miss you, and instead, you've holed yourself up in this tiny place away from all of us. I don't understand." He speaks softly, and she closes her eyes, feeling herself weaken at the gentleness. "You're all alone here, and you don't have to be."
His hands find her shoulders and she opens her eyes, staring up at him. His lips run parallel to her crown, and she wishes for their younger days where heights were matched and she could pretend equality. "I haven't been alone, Harry."
His fingers tighten, and he glances away. "Ginny's left me, you know."
"I know." She always read his letters, always memorized his words. His happy moments and less happy moments, and while she never lifted a pen to reply, she always read. "Things happen as we grow up. We change- our hearts, they change."
"She said that I didn't love her the right way." His thumbs make gentle circles across her collar bone, and her own fingers clench too tightly in her fists.
"Did you love her?" she asks, knowing the answer already.
"I did," he admits to the past tense. "I used to, and now, I miss her, but it's a shallow feeling, and it's nothing compared to missing you."
"Harry-" she tries to start, not having any words to prepare, but his fingers on her throat and the warmth of his hand against her cheek force her to pause. "Please, you know that-"
"You were my best friend, and somehow I missed it- how important you were to everything. I didn't realize it until you left, and now- Hermione, you don't have to choose between these two lives. You can have both."
There was a time where she might have welcomed those words. There was a time, a brief time, where her heart clenched and hurt when he treated her as the pal, as the friend, as the non-entity, without gender or sex or appeal. If things had been different, if her parents hadn't died, perhaps she would have let that blossom into something else. Perhaps, but-
"I love him, Harry." She cannot change the state of her heart; she hasn't the courage or will power to try otherwise.
His hands slip away from her, and she shivers in their absence. He pulls back and shrinks against the doorway. He stares with eyes she holds too dearly, and in them she sees understanding. He can't understand, not really, but she nearly cries from the attempt.
"Come back," he says again as he leaves, and she stares into the empty door frame for too long, wondering how to answer.
Maybe or someday, or-
"Soon."
End Day 221