Vault 712:
A Harry Potter Treasury
PenPatronus
Chapter / List Five:
20 Times Hermione's Heart Broke
1) The chess queen cuffed Ron across the head, and when he hit the board he landed on that same spot. Blood smeared across the black and white tiles as the queen dragged him off to the side.
Minutes later Hermione emerged from the purple fire and found Ron still lying quiet and motionless. It was then that she noticed the ache in her chest.
She knelt beside him. Her knees were shaking. With her right hand she combed through his red hair and with her left she rubbed the ribs protecting her heart.
Why did her chest feel like it had broken in half?
2) Gilderoy Lockhart was a fake and a liar.
Hermione wept as if he'd lied only to her. As if he'd lied about loving her like he'd declared so many times in her fantasies.
3) The look on Harry's face when Sirius flew away on Buckbeak…
It was like he'd been given a death sentence instead of helping Sirius escape his.
Hermione ordered her empathy to be quiet, and prayed that Harry's pain could hold off as well. They had to hurry.
4) The look on Neville's face when the green spell pierced that spider.
5) Screaming at Ron in the Gryffindor common room. Ron had the nerve to say that Victor wasn't good enough for her, and that triggered a bomb that had been building in her chest and stomach for weeks. When the bomb exploded, she was surprised that the entire castle didn't crumble.
"Next time there's a ball, ask me before someone else does, and not as a last resort!"
The louder noise was the silence right after. Why didn't Ron say anything? Why didn't he apologize and tell her that she wasn't a resort at all but beautiful and wonderful and that he was in love with her and kiss her…?
6) Harry clutching Cedric's dead body, refusing to let go. Dumbledore lifting him under the armpits like a toddler, and Harry swaying unsteadily on his feet like one.
She grabbed Ron's hand and they looked at each other.
Something in the world had shifted, and it would never fit the same way again.
7) It was dark when she woke up. At first she thought she was still in the Department of Mysteries but then realized that she was in the Hospital Wing. She squinted and saw Ron lying in a bed next to her. One of his arms was hanging off the mattress and under the sleeve of his pajamas was a thick bandage. Hermione wondered if that was where the smell of peppermint was coming from.
Someone whispered, "Hermione? Hermione, are you awake? Are you all right? Hermione!"
A face appeared above hers.
"Harry, where are your glasses?" Hermione was surprised at how weak her voice sounded. Her throat burned as if she'd swallowed gallons of briny water.
Harry sat beside her and Hermione gasped when a bit of candlelight caught his eyes. Tributaries of swollen red veins were popping out of the white, and a half-moon of bruise-colored tiredness almost reached his cheekbones.
"Oh, Harry…who? Who?"
She'd never been close to Sirius. In fact, she hadn't quite decided if she really liked the guy. He was reckless, impetuous, and irresponsible. He treated Hermione like a child and Harry like an adult.
But, as always, Hermione's heart broke when Harry's did.
8) Lavender had her stupid ankle wrapped around his, her stupid fingers in his hair, her stupid lips against his. He had his stupid arms around her stupid waist, and he was pulling her flush against his stupid body with all the urgency of a stupid drowning man.
Actually, Hermione's heart didn't break that time. It clenched into a fist and froze solid.
9) The Gryffindor Sixth Years got their gossip wrong. The rumor was that Ron was dead. When Hermione reached the Hospital Wing and Harry told her the real story, she didn't really believe that Ron was alive until she saw him breathing.
Her hands trembled when she placed them on either side of Ron's face and soaked up his exhales like sunlight.
The thousand frozen pieces of her heart melted when he said "Er-my-nee."
10) She hugged Harry with all of her might and fear and relief when he and Ginny joined her and the Weasley's in the Hospital Wing. She sensed an extra tenseness in him, an extra stoniness, but she figured it was because Greyback had injured Bill so badly.
"Ron—Dumbledore's dead," said Ginny.
Hermione suddenly felt homesick for the first time since she was eleven. She wanted to be a kid again, to crawl into her daddy's lap and have her mum stroke her hair. She wanted, for the first time since she was never-years-old, for wizards and werewolves and magic to only exist in stories where they were harmless.
"…and then Malfoy came through the door and disarmed him—"
Hermione clapped her hands to her mouth to keep the pieces of her heart from spilling right out onto the floor.
11) Hermione pressed her face against Kingsley's back and didn't care that she'd never even shook hands with the guy. Screams were on the winds rushing through her ears and green and red light surrounded her. The broom bucked like a spooked horse.
A body fell past them and disappeared into the Muggle neighborhood below. Moody.
She heard Fred scream "George!" She heard Hagrid's bellows, heard Tonks yelling spells and Remus cursing. And then there was only the wind and the thumps of Kingsley's heartbeats and the pulses of the thestral's bony wings.
Are we the only ones left? she wondered. Did anyone else survive?
12) "I get it. You choose him."
13) Hermione's head was still reeling from Ron's words: "No! You can have me, keep me!"
Although Bellatrix was pulling her aside, Hermione caught Ron's eyes right before Greyback herded him around a corner.
Ron had always been an open book, and Hermione Granger was nothing if not a bookworm.
"I Love Hermione," was the title of his eyes.
She took comfort in the fact that he was directly below her while she flopped around like a fish out of water.
Through her own screams, she could hear his.
14) Harry was bleeding but he was moving and had her hand, and they were tripping through debris, and Percy was screaming a name and all she could register of the name was that it was one syllable. For a terrible moment she couldn't differentiate between the three redheads and she wondered if she and Ron's first kiss had been their last…
She hadn't braced herself for the impact. Not that anyone ever could, but she'd never considered what he meant to her, who he was, what he was about. She'd taken him for granted. She'd seen him just as a jokester, never taking anything seriously. He was just always there, as constant as the sun rising and just as ordinary. There like Hogwarts, there like the elephant foot in Grimmauld Place, there like the scar on Harry's forehead…like a rug on the floor.
She realized, when she saw his frozen eyes, that he wasn't just anything. He was something. He was special. He was joy. He was love. He was brave. He was a clever businessman and a talented Quidditch player, a dependable friend and a loyal son. He was moral and loyal and fun.
He was their morale.
Fred.
15) The pieces of her heart couldn't get any smaller so they just whipped around her chest like a tornado, slicing her up until she was numb.
She stared down at Remus and at Tonks, dead on the floor of the Great Hall.
"Goodbye," she whispered. "I'll miss you."
16) Ron held her hand, and she held Ginny's as they filed out of Hogwarts. A fog from hundreds of hot spells hovered above the castle. Only a quarter of the walls were still standing. Blood stained the grass and the lake boiled. The Quidditch pitch had burned to ashes. Hermione felt Ron's pulse in his hand and heard Ginny's breathing.
The survivors of the Battle of Hogwarts lined up along the stairs, and the light from the open double doors cast their shadows down the slope towards the Forbidden Forest. The shadows down there were moving, and it wasn't just the dementors. Hermione saw Hagrid emerge, saw the Malfoy's blond hair, the red in Voldemort's eyes.
And then there was no oxygen left in the world.
Hagrid held Harry's dead body in his arms.
Ron's hand tightened around hers. Ginny's went limp and slipped out.
"No!" Ron roared.
"No!" Hermione cried.
"Harry! HARRY!" Ginny screamed.
17) When they went to Australia to find her parents, they had to kidnap them for their own good. The fear in her mum's face and the anger in her dad's eyes was too much. A last straw on a mound of last straws.
She cried like a baby when they got their memories back and knew her.
18) The owl wasn't very specific:
"Accident on duty in Ireland—Ron is being rushed to St. Mungo's—come quickly. Kingsley."
Harry intercepted her the moment she Apparated into the hospital, practically tackled her to the floor. He was sweaty and shaking.
"He's ok now," he gasped into her hair. His voice broke. "He's ok."
19) She didn't know why Rose climbed the tree. James probably dared her to do it. She opened her mouth to tell her daughter to come back down when Rose slipped. Her red hair fanned out like wings. Her knees locked and her arms stretched out beneath her. She screamed, so scared, so scared…
Hermione raised what she thought was her wand. It was just a spoon. She had been cooking dinner in the kitchen. Her wand was sitting on the counter, useless.
"WINGARDIUM LEVIOSA!"
Later, when she asked him, Draco Malfoy had no explanation for why he'd been walking by or how he happened to glance over at the tree right when Rose fell from it.
Hermione and Ron sent him a Christmas card every year.
20) He was old—they were old, granted—but it still wasn't fair.
Luna hung seaweed and peacock feathers over the bed, claiming that the combination extended life (Ron had remarked that the smell was far more likely to prematurely end it.)
He'd been asleep for a good fifteen or sixteen hours and Hermione was nearly falling asleep on her shift. Her shift at his death bed. But she was awake and instantly at his side when he spoke her name.
"What is it? Are you ok? Are you all right? What can I do?" she fired off.
Harry blinked at her. "I have to pee."
His answer blindsided her, and Hermione laughed so hard for so long that the laughs dissolved into hiccups and then into sobs. She took his hands in hers and pressed her forehead against his chest, against the lightning-shaped scar there. When she was able to see again she looked into his eyes and told him she loved him.
"Love you so much," he answered. His eyes were glazed and his breathing hadn't improved. "So much," he repeated.
She was with him when he died. Hermione, Ron, Ginny, their siblings and friends and kids and grandkids and nieces and nephews were all with him when he died.
And, just as Harry had planned and hoped, the Elder Wand died with him.