A feeling of trepidation came upon her suddenly when she raised her hand to turn the door handle of her flat. It wasn't necessarily a surprise to feel it rise within her now, it had been creating a nest for itself in the back of her mind ever since she had first left for work in the morning. A creeping fear that she had refused to let grip her, pushing it back until it became a tiny knot of agitation. Now, standing in front of her door with her hand out and not yet touching the handle, that fear had expanded, seizing control of her body and rooting it in place. She was afraid. Afraid that everything she had experienced from the night before and this morning had instead been a rather vivid memory of a too-sweet dream, raising her hopes beyond comprehension.
She was afraid that Harry hadn't been real.
So now she stood, unable to move and staring at her shaking, outstretched hand. Her thoughts spiralled, if she didn't open the door then she wouldn't have to face her fear head on. For each moment she remained frozen, what had only been a little knot of fear, loomed large within her head, growing impossibly big and overpowering her usually triumphant logical brain.
Just then, a soft click made its way to her ears as the door to her flat swung open of its own accord. She was suddenly forced into facing the monster that her fear had become. Her eyes darted into her flat as her body remained fixed in place, looking for any sign of him.
"Are you going to come in or stand outside forever?"
Harry rounded the corner from the kitchen into the hallway she was staring down and Hermione was unable to keep herself back. Dropping her bag on the entry rug, she dashed towards him, her body slamming into his as he lifted her up and stumbled back to keep his balance. Wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face against his chest, she felt him sigh into her hair, breathing her in. Everything else seemed distant, as though she was someone else in her own body, when compared to the thundering beat of her heart pulsing above the steady beat of his own through his skin. She closed her eyes and counted along with his heartbeat, feeling his physical presence firm against her and finally allowing her fear, shrunken now to a tiny speck, to breathe its last.
"I never thought it was possible to miss your hugs as much as I did, but now, experiencing it again has me never wanting to take them for granted." Harry had set her down but still kept her pressed against him, absently tangling his hand in her hair while he spoke.
"I missed you, Hermione," he spoke quietly and paused for a long moment before uttering under his breath, "...gods I missed you."
That was all it took to shake Hermione over the edge of her volatile emotional state. Hermione leapt back, pushing his hands away as her face twisted in pain and rage.
"Missed me?" she hissed, her voice dangerously low as she stared at him.
Harry's body language had shifted the instant that she pushed away from him. His shoulders dropped, his hands started clenching and unclenching, and his face seemed to melt as it was replaced with a look of such intense weariness that he appeared to have aged several years. He didn't move or flinch as she spoke, but his shoulders remained square and his jaw was set as if he was preparing to take a hit.
Hermione continued, "You missed me Harry, did you?" Her voice stayed low, but there was heat beginning to form in the words. "Two years," she spat, "two years, and you have the audacity to say that you missed me."
She had taken a step towards him, her finger pointing at him across the distance. "I'm not sure if you noticed that, or if you found a new best friend, a new family, maybe started a new life! All the while you were gone from me! Maybe the time slipped you by, and when you found it convenient, you decided to pop in for a visit, is that it?!" She had begun shouting, advancing on him until she was close enough to reach him as her voice rose in volume. Her hands were waving around and her curly hair seemed to stand on end more than it ever had.
To his credit, Harry still hadn't taken a step back from her, simply taking her words head on without speaking, letting them hit him and sink in. In his eyes there was a coiled sadness that churned beneath the emerald swirls, but she was too angry to notice.
"Tell me Harry, did you even consider how anyone would feel? How I would feel? Or did you only think about yourself?! You left us!" Hermione felt her throat close on her words but forced them out in her anger, even when she knew that she was being harsh. "...you left me."
Unwanted tears escaped from her eyes before she could hastily swipe them away with the back of her hands. She took a deep breath and tried to compose herself to growl out between gritted teeth, "You. Left. Me." Punctuating each word with a finger jabbed into his chest, she finally squeezed her eyes shut and broke down, allowing her sobs to escape.
She raised her arms and weakly pounded her fists against his chest as he stood there, taking it all. She continued, barely intelligible through her crying, "You left me– like– like you took a part of me… with you– but left me to– to…"
Hermione felt strong arms wrap around her, trapping her arms between their bodies as her forehead fell against his chest. Her whole body shook with sobs and her hands curled up, gripping his shirt as if trying to anchor herself to reality through the contact with him. Her words came out blubbering and wet from tears, but she gained in steadiness as she went on, "I mourned you Harry– we all did. But, I couldn't move on even when everyone else told me to." Hermione shifted her right hand to press against his chest above his heart, "I searched for you Harry. I needed you."
When she pulled her head back to look up into his eyes, she opened her mouth again but in that moment his lips covered hers and her mind was wiped of any coherent thoughts. It was over almost before it began and left her eyebrows climbing into her hairline and her lips parted in surprise.
Several seconds of silence rang out, the stillness of the moment a complete contradiction to the thoughts and emotions raging within her. Harry kissed me, she managed to form, only to have it cause a new wave of confusion and feelings that she didn't know how to define. The taste of him on her lips kept interrupting her efforts at getting her thoughts straight.
Hermione let her eyes focus back on Harry and saw his unwavering gaze looking down at her. She felt as if he was looking through her, somehow staring into the deepest part of her through her eyes. She couldn't take how naked it made her mind feel when she couldn't even see all of what was going on inside her head herself, and turned away from him with her arms crossed.
"Hermione–" Harry began.
"Don't you dare Hermione me Harry James Potter," Hermione interrupted as she spun back around, her cheeks still flushed red from their kiss. "You don't just get to waltz back into a witch's life, apologise, and then kiss the life out of her! Do you even know what that does to a woman!?" Hermione had flung her arms up and raised her eyebrows in exasperation. She shook her head to try to straighten her thoughts but was failing at it and getting herself more frustrated. Suddenly, her stomach rumbled quietly, and a memory came into view inside her tumultuous mind. Something flipped inside her and a gleam entered her eyes.
Harry opened his mouth to say something but Hermione cut in before he could, "Have you eaten yet?" She paused to let him blink questioningly from the tonal whiplash until she continued, "I'm rather in the mood to get Chinese takeout right now, what do you think?"
Harry had to clear his throat before he could get anything out in reply, but when he did, Hermione noticed a gleam in his eye. "Chinese… right, I'm starved," he said, mouth forming his lopsided grin.
Hermione waved her finger at him and turned to walk towards the door, attempting to hide a smile of her own trying to creep onto her face, "Don't think this is even remotely over, I just need some time to process and happen to be craving some noodles." She looked back over her shoulder as she slipped on her shoes, seeing Harry's mouth waver as he unsuccessfully tried to to stop his own smile.
"I wasn't thinking that at all, wouldn't want to get in the way of one of your cravings, after all, not even a war and the threat of a dark lord would dare try that," he said with a mostly straight face as he pulled his shoes on and opened the door, looking back at her. She noticed that his eyes were sparkling in a way not unlike how Dumbledore's had.
Hermione, whose face had finally regained its natural colour after her yelling, reddened again at the mention of the rather embarrassing moment while they had been on the run during the war. It had been a tough week with no leads and both of them were still mourning Ron's abandonment, when she was overcome with a desire for ice cream. She had spent the entire day begging Harry to let her go to a Muggle store in order to buy a pail of ice cream when he finally relented. He refused to let her go alone, grumbling the whole time. When they had gotten back to the safety of Hermione's wards and the warm tent, she had immediately grabbed a spoon and started digging in, sending Harry into a peal of laughter that only grew in intensity as her face grew redder and redder between spoonfuls. That night had resulted in a memory of joy and weightlessness, when the burden laying upon them both had been lifted for a short while by something so silly as her food cravings.
Hermione rushed out of the flat's open door before her body betrayed her even further by releasing the hold she barely had over her suppressed smile. She stood at the open hallway's railing to look out into the golden light of the sunset over London, letting the cool evening breeze caress her overly warm face.
"Want me to side-along you?" Harry spoke behind her.
"Harry don't be silly, you haven't been here in two years, I'll side-along you so grab my arm already," Hermione rolled her eyes and held out her arm as she turned to face him.
Harry stepped close and rather than grabbing her arm, wrapped his around her waist, securing her tightly against him and causing Hermione to let out a small noise and colour rise to her cheeks again. He nodded that he was ready to her and she glared at him without any heat, picturing the alley nearest the Chinese restaurant that Anna and her often got takeout from. A twist and crack later, they disappeared from the empty hallway.
…
After an awkwardly quiet meal consisting of buttered noodles and stir fry vegetables, Hermione and Harry sat at her kitchen table with the remains strewn in between them. Hermione was staring down at a noodle at the bottom of her noodle box as she idly stirred it around, when she abruptly spoke out loud.
"Harry," she said quietly, "will you tell me why you left?"
Harry, who had been staring at a loose piece of Hermione's hair hanging down in front of her face, stared at her with wide eyes looking like he was a deer caught in headlights. When he hadn't spoken for almost a minute, she looked up from her box to see Harry's pained expression as he looked out at London's dark cityscape. The lights of the city were shrouded and dimmed by the heavy rain.
For a moment she considered telling him to forget it, that he could talk about it when he felt comfortable. She couldn't count the amount of times she had said those very words over the course of their relationship, resulting in him never sharing much unless she really did push him. She quickly decided though that this wasn't a question she just wanted the answer to, or had asked to help him process things himself. No, she needed an answer. For her.
Harry spoke then, still not looking at her, his voice deep and steady, "Do you remember the night I left?"
The skin around Hermione's eyes tightened in pain before she answered. "For a while I was grateful for the nightmares from that night," she said with her eyes focused on the chopsticks in her hand. "I believed there had to be a clue that I was missing, something to tell me where you had gone or why in that memory. But when the months dragged into years, they still didn't stop. I hated that dream for tainting my memories of you, it was hard to remember you without the haunted fear-filled look in your eyes."
She noticed that Harry had turned to look at her while she spoke, a knowing light within them. "It's funny how two people could be so tortured by the same moment, just from different perspectives," Harry said wryly and with a bitter laugh. "Hermione, I need you to know something before I explain why I left, though I understand if you would find it hard to believe."
Hermione stilled her restless hands and let her eyes be absorbed into his look of sincere desperation.
He continued, "You, Hermione, have been on my mind since the minute I left Hogwarts that night after the battle. Both day and night, whether in nightmare, daydream, or passing thought, you dominated my mind. You were the reason why staying gone was a torturous choice I had to make every second of every day, and ultimately, you were the reason that I decided to return. The pleading look I saw in your eyes on that night, desperate to reach me even as the coat I had unknowingly charmed to restrain you dropped to the floor… that look became a serrated knife in my gut, and the handle was too soaked with blood to pull it out. But every movement, every thought, twisted it, pushed it, nudged it… bringing me to my knees."
Harry stopped there, sighing and running his hand over his face before he began again.
"What I'm trying to say is that I don't want you thinking I didn't– don't care. I won't ask for forgiveness, but I hope you will hear me out now when I try to explain why I left."
Hermione could feel a tear slip down her face at his description of how hard thinking about her had been. When it reached her chin, she let it fall and gave Harry a teary smile, "Well I did ask you didn't I? When have you known me to turn down an answer after I've asked?"
She had so much that she wanted to say to respond to him. She could feel the reassurances and questions bubbling up inside her, but she forced herself to leave it at that and let him walk her through what he was going to say.
Harry gave a smile at her small attempt to lighten things, but it was a small smile that didn't reach his eyes. He got up abruptly then, screeching the chair back and standing. He started pacing back and forth across the small width of her dining room floor.
She almost felt like smiling when he reached up to run his hand through his hair. This picture of him was one she'd seen many times before. During late nights in the common room during their sixth year after Sirius had passed away and while she sat reading, he would pace and run his hand through his hair. The night before each trial during the Goblet of Fire contest, he would pace and run his hand through his hair in front of the fireplace while Ron and Hermione sat on the couch watching him. During hopeless and cold nights on the run, Hermione would catch him pacing and running his hand through his hair when she went to relieve him of his shift on watch. Each time and without fail, he would turn at some point to look at her with his eyes boring into hers, a question asked in silence. There hadn't been a single time when she had failed to answer that question whether she knew it or not. This time wasn't any different.
Harry turned just as she knew he would, eyes seeking and finding hers in that desperate way they always did. She had to blink back tears before she could properly focus on him.
"I'm here Harry," she answered the unspoken question verbally for the first time. Her words floating across the distance between them, words that she had only ever spoken with her eyes, her presence, and her loyalty, but never out loud.
Hermione saw Harry visibly soften and take a deep breath at her words, it was then that he began speaking, resuming his pacing at the same time.
"My childhood growing up with the Dursleys had been… messy. And loveless. It affected me in ways that will persist for the rest of my life. It took me a long time to see that. All the way up to my eleventh birthday, my purpose, my goal and direction, had been to survive. Each day had been a waking nightmare, not to mention the nightmares that came while I slept. Don't get me wrong, there were always days that were better than others, but I lived in fear that it wouldn't be long before the other shoe dropped."
Hermione had pulled her legs up onto her chair and was hugging her knees to her chest.
"I know you met them briefly Hermione, probably seemed like they could do no harm, scared as they were of magic– still are I assume. The beatings were bad when I was young, but they felt worse after I had been to Hogwarts and learned about magic. Knowing I had the power to hurt him back at my fingertips but wasn't allowed to use it, forced to endure the pain at the hands of my uncle, it made it all worse. But all of this is besides the point really. I began to feel like a normal kid at Hogwarts, or as much a normal kid as I could be under the circumstances. I don't think experiencing life-threatening events is especially normal, but I had friends suddenly, and people who really cared about me. You, Hermione, were the first person to hug me, really hug me. Other than when I was a baby I suppose. I know that might sound crazy but it's true."
Harry briefly stopped his pacing to move next to her and reach for her hand, squeezing it in his own. She looked up into his eyes and caught how they had misted over, causing the wet tracks on her own cheeks to flood anew. He moved his hand to cup her cheek softly, and she found herself leaning into him and closing her eyes briefly. He resumed his pacing after a minute, and she missed the warmth of his hands.
"I felt like I had a life at Hogwarts, in the magical world, it gave me an escape from the horrors of my life with my relatives. But that day in Dumbledore's office, after Sirius had passed when I learned about the prophecy, felt like that new life, that hadn't lasted nearly as long as I wanted it to, was torn apart. Ripped to shreds before my eyes, as I was told by the most powerful wizard I knew that my life would be forever tied to that of a madman. Before that, my direction and my purpose had revolved around escaping from my relatives and living as normally as I could with my best friends. After that though, there was only one purpose for me, forced into my hands without choice. To win the war or die trying… or both.
"Hermione the prophecy consumed me, or at least it consumed my future," Harry said. He screwed his eyes shut at those words, pressing on them with the heels of his hands.
She had been sitting quietly with her chin resting on her knees and her eyes wide, but her mouth parted as understanding dawned on her.
"Oh Harry…" she whispered softly. Hermione let her feet down and stood to walk closer to Harry, who was leaning against the back of the armchair with his hands down by his side. She reached for one of his hands and took it in both of hers. "You thought you would die, didn't you?"
She was looking up at him now, her eyes running over his scar. "All this time… I thought you knew– knew that you wouldn't… die…"
Her thumbs caressed the back of his hand, her movements slow as she stood up on her toes to brush her lips over his scar. She heard his sharp intake of breath when her lips pressed to his skin and felt him shiver at her warm breath along his forehead.
Harry took a deep breath and pushed off of the armchair to stand up straight. "Yeah I–" he choked on the words, pausing for a moment, but recovered quickly. "In the moments after the battle, when the adrenaline wore off and my thoughts had a chance to clear… I felt like I had died, and that I should've. You know how I get," he waved his hands in front of him.
Hermione nodded and squeezed his hand to keep going, looking up at his face encouragingly.
"I felt like everyone who had given their life in the battle should have been me. But it was more than that too. Like I said about the prophecy, during the years leading up to the battle, I had never let myself even consider a life beyond Riddle. So assured I was that I would never make it past our final confrontation, that when I arrived back on this side of death's door, alive when he wasn't… it broke me."
Harry gritted his teeth and shook his head, "It's hard to– to get across, to explain… It was like the compass that guided me, pushing me in the direction of my destiny, suddenly stopped. Missing its needle I suppose…
"So I left to find it again, to replace it if I could," Harry said. He looked at her then, really looked at her, and grabbed both of her hands and wrapped them with his own. Hermione felt as if minutes passed while she was lost within his eyes, an emotion burning within them that made her heart race. Her own thoughts were drowned in the moment.
Finally, Harry spoke again, "But I never found it. I never found what I was searching for, a new direction. All this time I had been searching for something new, something that had nothing to do with my current life. But that's where I was wrong, I never considered that my direction could be something I already had. That I didn't need to find it, but that it was something right in front of me all along."
He was smiling now, a beautiful smile Hermione thought, and she couldn't help but feel her cheeks warm being the sole recipient of it.
"You, Hermione, you are my compass' missing needle. And I'm sorry it took me so long to realise it."
Hermione was overcome with emotion. She blinked back tears and felt a knot deep within herself begin to unravel.
"Harry," she said, stepping so close that their bodies were a hair's breadth apart. "You don't know it but you've just described my life after you left perfectly. You have always been my direction, and I know it sounds horribly cheesy, but it's true. I meant it when I begged you to let me go with you into the forest. Experiencing the whiplash of letting a part of me walk off to be killed and then seeing you alive again during the fight, it made your leaving later that night even worse."
She was surprised at how steady her voice kept while a constant flow of tears streamed down her face.
"Harry, you are the missing needle to my compass as well," Hermione murmured while looking up openly to his face.
There was a time of silence while the two of them mirrored each other, both wearing tentative and warm smiles, both letting tears drip onto their shirts, and both lost in the other's eyes. It was Hermione this time who moved in first. Her eyes flickering to his lips and back up, she moved slowly, and he let her cross the distance herself.
A second later, Hermione felt their bodies press together and Harry wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her even closer. Hermione's hands slipped up to tangle within his hair of their own accord. The sensations overwhelmed her thoughts, and Harry's soft lips on hers stirred a heat deep within her.
Their kiss became heavier, fueled by desperate passion and an epiphany of long buried feelings. Hermione could feel Harry's hands grasping her waist, sliding up her back and down to feel up her backside. Subconsciously, she felt her hands smoothing over the muscles on his back that she hadn't known were there and she couldn't help herself from slipping a hand underneath his shirt to glide across his bare skin. Harry's responsive groan from the ministrations of her hands elicited a moan from her own throat, swallowed up by his mouth encapsulating hers.
She hadn't realised when they had moved but she suddenly found herself pressed against the doorframe to her bedroom with Harry's leg pressed in between hers. An odd noise escaped from her when his leg shifted to press against her core, and she broke their kiss breathing hard.
Harry paused in his movements and sought her eyes with the silent question she knew so well. Her answer to him was undeniable. Reaching to grab the front of his shirt, she pulled him unceremoniously into the bedroom. Harry's careless wave behind him slammed the door, closing the world off to the unbridled passion within that stretched on through the night.