July had blurred by in blue skies and warm afternoons and waiting by the pond's bank for him. On his birthday her family had gathered in the living room and sang Happy Birthday to You in cheery voices whilst she'd mouthed the words with comical conviction.
The cake was decorated in Gryffindor colours and the iced lion on top had roared loudly anytime anyone dared to take a slice. She ate all afternoon, but now she forgets the last time food had tasted of anything other than bile.
This year Hermione didn't opt for the practical approach and Ron didn't dismiss the useful choice of present. It had been her idea, way back in April when she, Ron and Hermione had been sure he would win the position of Quidditch captain. It was an emerald-coloured wood square not unlike a chess board made to imitate a tiny Quidditch pitch. It came with enough pieces to duplicate two teams who could be bewitched into changing uniform colours. The contraption, which they had once seen in a corner of a small shop on Diagon Alley, was ideal for working out game plans as the players hovered obediently above the pitch on their tiny brooms or chased a near-invisible snitch.
She had been unfazed by the celebrations and the cheer and the cake, but she couldn't ignore his face as he opened his presents.
Those eyes, and oh Merlin, how was she supposed to stop feeling like this when he had looked at her like that?
Many days later, when the streamers have been cleared away and the house is quiet, she sits on the top stair, in the dark, with a small wooden figure cradled in her lap. The figure is a tiny witch with long, flame-coloured hair and a Weasley smile. She is part of a set of three he had been given for his birthday to go onto the miniature Quidditch pitch.
Sitting at the top of the stairs with wet eyes, she feels foolish and young and alone. Only hours ago, saving her counterpart from laying side by side in the box with a miniature him had seemed perfectly reasonable.
She muffles her sobs with the back of her hand.
Nothing changes.
At school, supper in the Great Hall is loud and boisterous, and the common room is warm and safe and feels like a home-from-home. After the Sorting Hat sorts with its same wry humour, Dumbledore speaks about the importance of friendship and loyalty and standing together through difficult times. Either no one notices or everyone else is pretending too.
Across the table Hermione lifts her eyes and smiles warmly. It is a reassuring smile, a mother's smile. Hermione had given the same smile that morning in the lake and again on the train because she had been gripping the edge of her seat so tightly her knuckles turned white. Hermione had passed the same smile across the breakfast table on a million evenings just like this one. Only it wasn't.
The table is crowded and her thigh is pressed against his beneath the table. She is trying to block out everything, including the steady pounding of her heart and Dumbledore, who is watching them as though he knows about everything: the attic and her hatred and that tiny burning feeling that is getting bigger with every breath.
She wants to look over at him but she doesn't. She wants to know if he can feel the fire beneath her skin. She wants to know if the clattering of plates and the cheery voices makes his flesh itch and his fingers crave touch and warmth and her.
He shifts his weight and she is lost. Now it is Seamus's thigh she can feel, hard and warm and pressed close as if he is trying to reach out with it. But it is no good, because without him she is losing herself again. She falls and fades and lowers her eyes as sounds and people weaken into colours and murmurs.
And if she was listening she would hear Ron and Hermione start to bicker across the table about timetables or exams or how much of a pig he was when he ate. And if she were listening she would hear Neville joke that nothing changes, and she would look up and scowl or mutter a reply.
Everything changes, he murmurs solemnly.
She isn't listening.
In September, Ron organises a party for Hermione's eighteenth birthday. She sees the glimmer of hope in his eyes as he talks about the four of them having a good time again. Her brother remembers the summertime with fondness and naïvely longs for an era that has since passed.
Across a crowded common room they avoid each other expertly. He slumps on one of the armchairs with a drink and pretends not to be watching her from the corner of his eye. She perches in the windowsill and drinks enthusiastically from a bottle wrapped in brown-paper when it is offered by Seamus.
She enjoys the fierce kiss of alcohol in her throat, swigging more to wipe the sight of Parvati Patil putting her hand on his arm and more to drown his interested smile. And in the months to follow she will always blame him for everything that comes next because her Harry would've known… He would've seen Seamus offer her a hand and though he might've allowed him to lead her across to the portrait hole, he would've stopped them from sneaking through the corridors and down the stairs and out into the blustery evening.
She glances over her shoulder as she exits the room and through the haze of Parvati's exotic perfume, knows she has disappeared.
Her feet dangle over the edge of the wall, trainers scuffing stubbornly at it whilst the cold stones make her bum go numb. She wishes she were alone now because all she can see is green whether her eyes are open or closed, and all she can feel is passion.
Do you want? Seamus murmurs in his thick accent, holding a packet of Muggle cigarettes in her direction expectantly.
And she does want, more than cigarettes and cheap drinks and stolen kisses. What she wants could quite possibly kill her so instead of voicing these fears she lights the small white stick and inhales quickly, over and over and over, praying for a painless end.
Seamus laughs at her when she coughs and teases her for going so fast. Without taking his eyes from hers, his hand finds its way to her leg and he tells her her new haircut looks nice. And maybe it is the drink or the smoke or the thought of him touching someone else, but she is suddenly kissing Seamus so hard she can barely think straight.
Do you think I'm pretty? she whispers breathlessly.
I think you're beautiful.
She is the one being kissed this time, but softer because his hand is making circles upon her thigh and is begging to go higher and deeper. Tell me again, and this time her voice is fragile and pleading in the darkness.
You're so beautiful, Ginny. And this time she will let him do whatever he wants as long as he tells her she's beautiful, and as long as he lets her be, and she closes her eyes and fall back into a musky attic memory.
It is not like fucking in the attic.
It is hard and fast and over with so quickly she is left dizzily wondering if it had ever happened. She knows though, because she wasn't quite ready, and it hurt a little, but she didn't stop.
And now she feels raw and filthy. This is her punishment. And she lets herself be punished as much as they want because oh to feel wanted and beautiful for a moment is worth every ounce of self-humiliation.
Her school skirt becomes loose and she has to put a stitch in it.
She spends two afternoons a week with Sybill Trelawney, disappearing on silk cushions and in the bottom of cups of tea. She is a cynic and bites her knuckle with laughter whenever the bug-eyed professor begins to warble about the Grim or destiny…but somewhere amidst the incense and meditations and trying to predict the future, she finds a small sense of belonging.
On a Monday and a Thursday and a Friday she makes a connection.
Professor Lupin, Remus, resides in a tiny cluttered room on the third floor for a purpose that is lost on nearly all of the population of Hogwarts. She goes there three evenings a week and he reads to her from dusty volumes or teaches her spells and techniques that are supposed to save their lives.
Sometimes they just talk, in low tones, about times past. About Sirius and about James, about summers at the Burrow or the holidays or anything that isn't the war and Harry Potter.
He comes into this room twice a week and it reeks of his presence. She sees the book he has been reading in the common room, open pages splayed facedown on Remus' mahogany desk. She notes a tatty bit of parchment covered in his boyish scrawl. She wraps herself in the checked blanket for warmth and thinks about his body pressed against her back.
He can smell her on the blanket.
Her presence lingers against his flesh: in the morning when his mind is somewhere between her mouth and her stomach; in the afternoons when he sees her carrying books across the grounds; in the evenings when he is like this.
He trains hard. He has never been strong or fit in body and supposes that he never will be, but after hours of perfecting spells and counter curses, sit-ups and running are the only training he can lose himself in. He runs through warm September evenings, into blustery October, rainy November, and icy December.
On a Monday and a Thursday night he makes himself hurt. For every thought he shouldn't have he runs an extra lap of the Quidditch pitch. Soon, just seeing a flash of her fiery ponytail makes him ache.
In October she stops flying, Gryffindor loses at Quidditch to Ravenclaw and Susan Bones lets him walk her out into the darkness.
She forgets the art of conversation and instead finds expression in a series of looks, most of which are scowls. When Parvati asks her if she's seen him she smiles a wry little smile and shakes her head.
Susan Bones, her light-coloured top visible in the darkness arches her back against the tree and her mouth makes a shape that imitates a whimper. She knows that feeling, she knows that mouth, wet and wanting and burning into her flesh. From the common room window she forces herself to watch the scene below.
Susan is neither the first nor the last girl to be pressed roughly against that tree.
Ginny… The sound of her name makes her shiver, makes her uneasy in her own skin. Dean has a lovely smile. She wants him to kiss her and touch her until she forgets about green eyes and forbidden desire.
Dean Thomas likes it when she is on top. Seamus likes it when she says his name over and over. And sometimes they both like her to be underneath and quiet.
By November his beautiful eyes are ashen from sleepless nights, the Great Hall is slowly emptying of children whose families are too afraid to let them remain at school and she has taken to disappearing for long hours, only to return glazed and unsteady.
In an empty common room he sets up his miniature Quidditch pitch and makes the tiny flame-haired witch fly around it at an uncontrollable pace.
The next girl might be the one who makes him forget that Ginny Weasley has spoiled him with her love and her friendship and her You're a prat and her smile and her Harry, don't stop, ever.
It wasn't to make herself feel better, she emphasises to no one in particular. That wasn't the point. Her arms are flung wide, appealing to the sky, the ground, anything that would listen. The point was (and here she stamps her foot childishly) that he had promised.
She wishes she can pretend that sometimes, if only for a moment, she forgets about him. But whilst it is easy to whisper the wrong name when fumbling in the dark, it is hard to make the truth disappear.
She isn't upset though. She isn't. She is so furious her cheeks burn with it. The point was that he had promised. And too many people let him get away with things because he is Harry Potter.
They don't even fight anymore. Why bother? Why let him know that he fuels not only her lust, but her passion as well? Harry Potter is better off not knowing how much power he has over her.
But he knows.
How can he not when they spend their entire existence trying to avoid each other? For long weeks she refuses to look at him in the common room or at dinner and he barely utters her name. Ron is bemused by the fact he now only says your sister or her. Or she.
She notices the change in him. Of course. She was never naïve enough to think that he would stay the same, stay her Harry after everything that had happened. Was she?
He started holding hands with Parvati Patil way back in September, not long before he began leading girls out to that tree in the grounds, and tonight they sit, closer than ever, curled together and whispering. And maybe it is the lull of the ochre fire or the way they create a perfect tableau entitled in love, but her eyes won't be drawn away from them, kissing and touching, her in his lap.
The Weasley in her wants to break his nose.
She wants to make him bleed before starting in on her. Wants to scratch a thick black line through the title they've given themselves and write in huge black letters: LIAR, underlining it six or seven times. Dumbledore wouldn't believe THAT would he?! Her fingernails dig into the cover of the book she has been pretending to read all evening as she reflects that the volume is probably too light to cause any real damage anyway…
This is when he looks up. Parvati's lips tickle against his throat, she giggles when he swallows hard. Across the common room for the first time, literally in months, their eyes meet.
Love me. Something whispers.
Her eyes are stormy. Not with that electric passion he is fond of, with thunder, yes, but murky and wet and filled to bursting with tears. Her lids are heavy but she doesn't blink.
This time he is pretending he hasn't noticed the rain.
Ginny, calm down!
Hermione is trying, with her most patient voice, dressed in new powdery-blue pyjamas and slippers once again, to understand her friend's tears.
She doesn't speak. In fits of fury she throws things around (not really wanting to break anything – what Weasley would? – except maybe herself) mumbling incoherently through the anger.
Ginny, stop!
Her hands sweep across the dresser sending flurries of parchment into the air like feathers. In the next breath she has upturned her chair and with curse-words, no longer breathy whispers, she begins piling her things harshly as if preparing for a bonfire.
First are her magic books – which she longs to tear to shreds – and then her broomstick, Chocolate Frogs, a box of potions, enchanted photographs from the summer. Various trinkets and jokes from the twins' shop, hand-me-down dress robes that had been some aunt or cousins, and finally her wand. She knows she has no matches. Hermione isn't aware.
Please stop…
This time the voice isn't full of pity or understanding: it's scared. Her hands freeze on the mirror she had wanted to lift high above her head and then bring crashing down to the floor. She catches Hermione's eyes, dark and filled with tears in the glass and freezes.
The tears fall freely now, washing over her like the rain had back in the summer. This time however there are no more screams, there will be no attic or kisses or begging him to let her in.
And this is when her knees give in, sending her to the floor without grace or poise or anything a well-bred witch should have. He's changed… She gulps in between sobs that aren't helped by an arm over her shoulders.
What she wants to say is: It's really over now, isn't it? He… Hermione…so much… Our Harry… MY Harry…
What she does say is this: Hermione… He's changed.
Hermione's voice is firm and even as she replies with heavy meaning, We all have.
She isn't the only one hurting.
In the darkness he sits alone and contemplates the future. He is surer now than he had ever been in his whole life: the war was going to be the end of him. Yes, it had been nice to pretend that he could love her and be happy and light and smiling forever. But reality is bleak.
Outside it is sunny, cold but bright, and inside…inside his mind there is no light anymore. He is lost without her. Oh, she thinks he doesn't realise? She thinks he doesn't see that look in her brown eyes every single day, that look she is trying with all of her might to hide from Dean or Seamus or Justin or whoever wants her in that moment, but he sees.
Sometimes he thinks that her eyes merely reflect his own. He, too, is lost and searching for something.
For those few summer weeks the darkness hadn't seemed so bad. She had saved him back then, saved him for a whole year or more without even trying or realising. And now… He was the hero, he had to be, and that was the only thing he was still sure of.
Without her the darkness is returning, is stifling, is filling his lungs with a thick black hatred. But with her…with her there would be a much worse fate. For everyone.
By December she has realised nothing is ever going to complete her like he did. He, of course knows the same, but doesn't object when Parvati starts calling herself his girlfriend.
The day before they are due to return to the Burrow for Christmas it snows. She watches from the common room window as Ron stuffs a handful of snow down Hermione's jumper and she squeals and chases him towards the river.
Luna and Neville make what looks to resemble a snow dragon with the utmost seriousness. For a moment Luna stops, as if engrossed in thought, arms out at her sides as she contemplates what must come next. The blonde girl begins to say something but flounders mid-sentence, turning with a curious look to meet her gaze. For a moment Luna's clear eyes see right into her heart, she waves and tosses her a sad smile before returning to the dragon purposefully.
Giggles provide a sudden soundtrack to the events outside, drawing attention from the window to the portrait hole. They fall through it, wet to the knees and laughing, whispering, about having some time alone before going home.
I want you so…
She drops her book to the floor.
Ginny! Parvati exclaims, having the modesty to blush for a moment before lifting her head high as though she hadn't done anything wrong.
Her eyes are shining in the dim light of the common room fire and her face struggles to stop from smiling. She is just like winter, she thinks with a bitter taste in her mouth. Cool and calm, mature, the sort of air that made grown men quiver with excitement and then…
Exotic beauty. Hadn't someone called her that once? With her long, dark curtain of hair, pretty eyes, full lips and the sort of body that he would beg for.
Harry made her glow.
She gulps and notices the change in her. Parvati Patil had always been one of the prettiest girls at school but now, with him, she shone.
In truth, with his arm around her and his name on her lips she had never looked more beautiful.
She was red and gold and blustery winds. She was fresh September air and flying on his broom and being exhilarated every moment of every day, forever.
Parvati reminds him of summer, with her exotic scent and her warm body and all of the heat she produced without even trying. But couldn't she also be winter? Cool and calculating, her perfection sometimes breeding haughtiness. He is a lucky git, he knows that.
He also knows that he prefers the autumn.
She wants to feel beautiful again.
Alone, she thinks of the fields beyond the Burrow, of weeping willows and wildflower crowns…of his taste…of freedom and flying and falling in love for the first time.
And what she remembers, even now, is his hands on her back, his soft, green eyes and the blush when he promised he'd never hurt her.
Authors notes:
This part is for Rachel, an absent friend, always present