Two Years Later...
Disclaimer: As I'm not making any money from this, chances are that I don't own the chatacters
"Livin' my life in a slow hell,"
('You got that right.')
"Different girl every night at the hotel."
('Well, not so much that part.')
"I ain't seen the sun shine in three damn days.
Been fueling up on cocaine and whiskey,"
('No to the cocaine, but 'fire' whiskey, on the other hand...')
"Wish I had a good girl to miss me,"
(''Does' she miss me?')
"Lord I wonder if I'll ever change my ways.
I put your picture away,
Sat down and cried today.
I can't look at you while I'm lying next to her."
('This guy's good!')
"I put your picture away,
Sat down and cried today.
I can't look at you while I'm lying next to her."
Harry's head snapped around as the song was cut short by the radio beeing shut off. He saw Susan Meyers, his girlfriend of a year and a half, standing next to it across the room, wearing a pair of shortie pajamas, her hands on her hips. Harry turned back to the window, absently rubbing his right side, knowing full well what was coming next.
"What are you doing?" Susan asked.
"Thinking."
"Why is it you're always thinking when I'm waiting for you in the bedroom?" Harry shrugged.
"Dunno."
"Harry, what was the point of us coming here if we aren't going to sleep together?" She saw his slight cringe at the mention of them being intimate. "Is it so terrible for you to think of me in that way?" she added in a hurt tone. Harry shook his head and looked back at her.
"I've just got a lot on my mind right now," he said, then turned his head forward again and looked down at the half picture in his hand. Hermione's image smiled up at him, then looked to the side and said something and laughed towards the torn edge of the paper. Harry watched as a hand that he knew to be his own came into view and wrapped around her shoulders. He remembered the day this picture had been taken. It was before the last battle and all the arguments he and Hermione had had afterward. He had hammed it up as much as possible for Colin this day, and Hermione had joined in soon afterwards, as the picture now showed her crossing her eyes and making fish faces. Harry chuckled quietly to himself at the sight.
"What's so funny?" came Susan's voice from his right shoulder. Harry moved to hide the picture from her, but she grabbed it out of his hands before he could get it out of sight. Her jaw went slack as she looked at the picture, then clenched tightly as she raised her angry blue eyes to his face and threw it back at him, turned, and stormed away.
"Sue, it's not what you think," Harry began.
"Oh, no?" she cried, spinning on her heel to glare at him. "Then tell me, why are you carrying a picture of that girl around with you?" He noticed her voice was rising with every word. "Is she the reason that we've never made love 'once' in the entire eighteen months that we've been together? Why you only hold my hand or kiss me when 'I' initiate it? And even when you 'do' kiss me, you make it overly short! It's like you think being with me is some sort of chore!" By now she was positively shrieking and Harry was sure that everyone on the floor could hear her. "I won't have it!" She hurried out of the room and came back a minute later, her overnight bag in one hand and her shoes in the other. She was still in her pajamas, but had thrown her coat over them. "I will not sit around waiting for you to figure out what you want. Good-bye, because we're 'through'!" She yanked open the door and slammed it shut behind her so hard that the pictures rattled on the walls.
Harry could only sigh in defeat, but he knew that she had been right. He 'had' only touched her when she initiated it, not on his own, and any time he had kissed her, there had been absolutely no spark, no emotions going through him whatsoever.
"Well, since I was unable to show her any affection, maybe it's better that she left," he said out loud to the empty room. He turned and headed to the bedroom, still rubbing his side, and rolled his green eyes when he saw what she had done to his things. He pulled his wand out and began summoning his clothes and toiletries to himself, then put them back into his bag neatly.
"For a Muggle, she managed to scatter my stuff pretty far in such a short time," he muttered to himself as he closed the clasp, and taking off his glasses and laying them on the bedside table, he turned to collapse onto the bed. He got right back up though, when he smelled the perfume that she usually wore strongly on the covers. Harry wrinkled his nose. He hadn't much cared for the scent, but didn't say anything out of concern for her feelings. He stripped the bed down and flopped onto the fortunately fragrance free mattress.
He tenitively sniffed the pillows and when he smelled only the cotton cases, pulled them both to him and tucking one under his head and propping the picture of Hermione on the other, he stared at her image until he could no longer keep his eyes open and drifted off to sleep. His last thoughts before losing conciousness were, 'I wonder how Hermione is and what she's doing right now.'