And Let Them Last by Herminia

Rating: PG13
Genres: Romance
Relationships: Harry & Hermione
Book: Harry & Hermione, Books 1 - 6
Published: 01/03/2007
Last Updated: 01/03/2007
Status: Completed

"She laughs, soft and low. What do they have to be afraid of? They’re just two teenagers in
a back bedroom. Beyond the next five—fifteen—forty minutes, they have nothing planned, no grand
designs. There are no guarantees, no mile markers in the unmapped expanse of the future – their
future."




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It starts with a single touch: her face buried against his shoulder, her tears falling into his
lap. A gesture of comfort in the face of insurmountable grief and fear and -and - and
*something* they cannot quite pin down - that lingers overlong. They write it off from the
first (or try to), afraid to embrace feelings that seemingly sprang up from nowhere. *Overly
emotional affairs - fune**rals.* They berate themselves for putting stock in something so
strange, so new, so against the rules. They're afraid of feelings that don't change the
facts.

(Aren't we all?)

And - when they can no longer deny “it” - they play it down, restricting themselves to stolen
glances and slight motions all but undetectable to the untrained eye. Just enough to confirm what
they're coming to place their trust in. Nothing more. There are entirely too many eyes in the
Burrow. Too many lives all tangled up into one horrendous mess.

And then there are weddings - another one of those showy occasions where feeling tends to get
the best of even the *best* of us.

Inside, away from the explosions of light and laughter, away from the calls for toasts to love
and life (“—and let them last!”), they make short work of the strictures and conventions that bind
them.

“Are you scared?”

(And who isn't, really?)

She laughs, soft and low. What do they have to be afraid of? They're just two teenagers in a
back bedroom. Beyond the next five—fifteen—forty minutes, they have nothing planned, no grand
designs. There are no guarantees, no mile markers in the unmapped expanse of the future - their
future.

(And *no one*, as we all learn in time, has a right to expect anything more than just the
here and now. Some of us learn sooner than others.)

Every pass - every *touch* - is dangerously out-of-bounds. They've numbered three for
as long as anyone cares to remember. Harry-comma-Ron-comma-Hermione-period. But while Ron gambols
on the lawn with the rest of the Weasleys and the Delacours and the newly christened
Weasley-Delacours, reveling in the momentary respite from life's paralyzing uncertainties, the
other two systematically go about breaking all the rules, rewriting history. The *don'ts*
and *shouldn'ts* that have governed the past days' and months' revelations are
recklessly brushed aside, reduced to the barest, simplest of terms. *Must**s* and
*needs* and *wants*, and skin and hands and tongues.

Just for this moment, they don't owe the world a thing.

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