Chapter IX
Unbearable
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the shirt on my back and a winning smile. Please, keep your eyes on the smile, since like I said all I'm wearing is the shirt on my back.
Author's Note: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. If you haven't read it yet, you really should, and not just because it'll help you make sense of what's happening in this fic. From here on out (from the last chapter on out, actually) Time is the Fire will be following the second half of Hallows pretty closely. Don't worry, obviously there will be some major differences, too, and everything will be tied together soon enough, I promise you.
Once again, thank you all for the kind reviews! They give me the will to soldier on when the writing's particularly tough. Sorry for this chapter's brevity, but the next one's a beast, so don't worry, you'll have your fill of reading with the next update.
Oh, and cajuncoffee—I'd love to see that flowchart!
Soundtrack Note: Harry in Winter from the Goblet of Fire soundtrack. Give it a listen, it's one of my favorites.
"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
-Douglas Adams
Merlin, he was an idiot.
An idiot for kissing her, and an even bigger idiot for marching off into the middle of a freezing cold December's night without so much as bothering to put on a cloak first.
Scratch that. The worst that would come of the whole cloak thing would be him freezing to death. That didn't seem so bad, when contrasted with the prospect of returning to the tent after he'd kissed Hermione.
Why had he done that?
He knew the answer, of course. The woman he loved had been crying, sobbing, not ten feet away from him, and he'd just… reacted.
It was only then, shivering ceaselessly, looking up through frosted breath at the Evening Star, that he realized that every nasty thing the murdering bastard Severus Snape had ever said about him was true. He did have a Messiah Complex, always had to be the hero, had to rush in and fix things…
It was the only explanation for it. He'd seen her in tears, and been compelled to save her from her sorrow. He'd swooped in, put his arms around her the way he'd seen Ron do, the way he'd always wanted to…
He'd put his arm around Hermione loads of times, but not in what seemed like ages. Not since he'd come to recognize the true depth of his feelings for her. And the moment he had felt her resting there against him… he'd lost it.
He'd leaned in and kissed her… and she had kissed him back.
And instead of the thrill that should have been shooting down his spine, he felt only disgust and self-loathing.
He'd taken advantage of her. He'd known how torn up she was inside, how hurt and confused she had been by Ron's abandonment of them, how desperate she must be feeling for comfort and human affection. He'd known all that, and he'd kissed her anyway.
He was worse than Voldemort.
Well, alright, no, he wasn't, he could acknowledge. That might be taking things a little too far.
He was at least a Malfoy, though.
The thought left him with a bitter taste in his mouth.
He was half-convinced she'd hex him the moment he dared step through the flaps again. If she did want to hex him, he'd let her; he deserved it. But more than anything he feared what he would see when his eyes met hers. She would be distraught, he knew; one best friend putting the moves on her after the other, the one she'd really loved, had skipped out on her. She'd be feeling ashamed and guilty and confused, and she shouldn't have to—it was his fault, he had been the one to bring this all crashing down on her.
He should have just sat there and let her cry. It was the lesser of two evils.
The moment he'd gotten close to her… it was like his brain had just shut down. He'd been so stupid, so childish and inconsiderate of her feelings, thinking only of his wants, his needs, not even considering how the kiss might affect her. He'd ruined whatever tattered mess had remained of their friendship, he was certain.
He wouldn't have been surprised if she'd already left by the time he'd returned to the tent.
But she had remained. Fortunately, though, she was asleep, or at least pretending to be asleep, and he was grateful for the opportunity to completely avoid their problems at least for the night.
More than anything, he dreaded looking into her eyes come morning.
So he too lay down in his bunk, for the second day in a row crawling into bed without staying up to keep watch.
Since when had Death Eaters become the least of his worries?
The thought of remaining awake to agonize over his mistake over and over again for the next several hours did not appeal to him. But he was uncomfortably aware of the fact that it wasn't just him in the tent, should one of Voldemort's cronies stumble onto their location. He had to protect her as well.
Where was that protective instinct an hour ago, Potter? The voice inside his head sounded disturbingly like a sneering Draco Malfoy. He felt like he was going to be ill. Nevertheless, he forced himself out of bed and took up position in the tent entrance. It was for the best. He would not have been able to sleep, anyway, he told himself. Whatever it was that had granted him such a good night's rest yesterday had not deigned to repeat the favor.
He kept guard until the sun was well up. When Hermione rose, she took over the watch wordlessly and he shuffled off to bed, grateful to delay the inevitable and finally get some rest.
Needless to say, he dreamt about her.
It was the damn locket. Whenever he wore it, he had the worst dreams.
Like most of them had been of late, this one was about her. He was chasing after her, as she fled him through a field of bodies. The sky overhead was red and stormy, and all around him was a lifeless wasteland. He looked down at some of the corpses as he pursued her, and felt absolutely no emotion when he recognized them—Sirius. Ginny. Neville. Dudley. Moody. Fred. George. McGonagall. Dumbledore.
They were all dead. And in the dream, he knew that it was because of him. He had killed them.
She was running up a slight hill, now, and looking back over her shoulder at him, terrified. She ran into the open arms of a figure there, and he could see clearly now that it was Ron, arms wrapped around her protectively, his stance firm, ready to fight for her.
With a snarl, he raised his wand at the redhead.
"Crucio…"
He awoke with a start. Hermione was still keeping the watch, and he'd doubted he'd gotten more than an hour or two of sleep.
Not that he wanted any more, now.
He had to do something, and soon, or things were going to completely fall apart, even worse than they already had. He resolved, then, to grasp at straws, to suggest again what seemed to him the only unexplored avenue left to them.
They didn't speak for the rest of the afternoon. He had the foresight to suggest that they take a few hours' break from wearing the Horcrux, which he hung over the end of his bunk. He waited until after they'd eaten dinner; he thought she might be more persuadable than usual on a stomach full of spaghetti Bolognese and tinned pears.
"Hermione?"
"Hmm?" She was going over the book again. He knew she was throwing herself into her research; it was her way of coping with everything that had happened over the last few months. He wished it could be that easy for him; he should have brought his copy of Quidditch Through the Ages.
He cleared his throat, ready to make his pitch, but she interrupted him, asked him to identify a rune for her. It turned out not to be a rune at all, but Grindelwald's mark. He kept his eyes on the symbol, not having it in him to look at her right now, after what he had done to her. He knew she was trying to avoid getting into a real conversation with him. He didn't blame her; if she'd suddenly wanted to talk to him right now, he would've been afraid she wanted to talk about the kiss too.
He filled her in on what he'd learned from Krum at the wedding. He did not mention that he'd been too busy staring at her that day, dancing happily with Ron, to pay full attention to what it was the Bulgarian Seeker had told him.
He tried again.
"Hermione?"
"Hmm?"
"I've been thinking. I — I want to go to Godric's Hollow."
She looked up at him, but her eyes were unfocused, and he thought that she was probably still thinking about the mysterious mark on the book. He looked down at the floor, unwilling to meet her gaze.
"Yes," she said. "Yes, I've been wondering that too. I really think we'll have to."
"Did you hear me right?" he asked.
"Of course I did. You want to go to Godric's Hollow. I agree, I think we should. I mean, I can't think of anywhere else it could be either. It'll be dangerous, but the more I think about it, the more likely it seems it's there."
"Er — what's there?" asked Harry.
At that, she looked just as bewildered as he felt.
"Well, the sword, Harry! Dumbledore must have known you'd want to go back there, and I mean, Godric's Hollow is Godric Gryffindor's birthplace—"
"Really? Gryffindor came from Godric's Hollow?"
"Harry, did you ever even open A History of Magic?"
"Erm," he said, smiling for what felt like the first time in months: The muscles in his face felt oddly stiff. "I might've opened it, you know, when I bought it… just the once…"
"Well, as the village is named after him I'd have thought you might have made the connection," said Hermione. She sounded much more like her old self than she had done of late; Harry half expected her to announce that she was off to the library. "There's a bit about the village in A History of Magic, wait…"
She read to him, explaining that she thought Dumbledore would have expected him to make the connection, that it was the next logical place to look.
Godric's Hollow, Godric Gryffindor, Gryffindor's sword.
Harry did not want to admit that he had not been thinking about the sword at all when he suggested they go to Godric's Hollow. For him, the lure of the village lay in his parents' graves, in the house he'd narrowly escaped death in as an infant… in the house he would have come of age in, had Trelawney never made her prophecy, had Voldemort never been born.
What would his life have been like, he wondered, if he weren't the Boy-Who-Lived? If he weren't "The Chosen One"? He'd have grown up with parents, raised by people who loved him… he'd have known his godfather Sirius all his life… he'd have gone to Hogwarts not having to worry about Dark Lords and Heirs of Slytherin and Triwizard Tournaments and Horcruxes… maybe he'd even have confessed to Hermione how much he loved her the moment he realized it, and he wouldn't be in the dreadful mess he was in now…
"…we'll have to think it through carefully, Harry." She was sitting up now, and Harry could tell that the prospect of having a plan again had lifted her mood as much as his. "We'll need to practice Disapparating together under the Invisibility Cloak for a start, and perhaps Disillusionment Charms would be sensible too, unless you think we should go the whole hog and use Polyjuice Potion? In that case we'll need to collect hair from somebody. I actually think we'd better do that, Harry, the thicker our disguises the better. . . ."
He let her talk, nodding and agreeing whenever there was a pause, but his mind had left the conversation. Already he was dreading the prospect of standing so close to her, the two of them hidden together beneath the Invisibility Cloak as they practiced Disapparating for days. He was terrified of doing something stupid again, like put his hands on her bum, or grab her by the face and snog her again. Abruptly, he stood up and moved a few paces away from her, trying to make the act look casual; being close to her made him do stupid, idiotic things.
"Harry? Why won't you look at me?"
She wasn't the brightest witch of her age for nothing.
"You know why," he told her guiltily.
"Can we just—"
"No," he cut her off forcefully. "I really don't want to talk about it. I just need you to know I'm sorry, that I know I shouldn't have done that. Please don't make us go into it any more than that."
She looked then like she wanted to say something, but she stayed silent.
When she finally did speak, she said, "So the Quaffle then, that's the big red ball, supposed to get thrown through the hoops?"
He laughed, a hearty, genuine sound. He couldn't remember the last time he'd produced such a noise, so grim had the last several months been—ever since Dumbledore's death, really. He laughed, and he opened his mouth, and abruptly snapped it shut as he realized what he'd been about to heedlessly remark.
I love you, Hermione.
It would have been all the worse for not being a heartfelt confession, just a casual slip of the tongue. And he could see that she had seen his face change, had noticed his laughter die out and his skin go pale.
Being close to her made him do stupid, idiotic things, all right.
"I'll keep watch tonight," he told her gruffly, moving towards the entrance of the tent. "We'll start practicing for the trip to Godric's Hallow tomorrow."
"Harry—"
But he didn't reply. Couldn't reply.
He couldn't bear being so close to her. It was torture.
He could hear her trying and failing to hold back her tears. He steeled himself against the sound of it. No matter what, no matter how hard she sobbed, he would not go to her this time. He would not hurt her any worse than he already had.
If that was even possible.
