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He asks her while they’re both at the Burrow. It’s ten to midnight on Christmas Eve, solemn and silent, and they have both been sat just outside the back door for a very long time, watching as snow drifted down and down, endlessly, trying to reignite light in a world that no longer holds it.
“I want you to come with me,” he says, so softly his voice might as well be one of those falling flakes, stolen from above and lost in white just as quickly.
But she’s always listening for him, so of course she hears it.
“It will hurt you,” is all she can think to reply, because of course it will. She has been pointing out the obvious to him for nearly eight years, though; she’s hardly going to stop now.
He doesn’t say anything, just tilts his gaze upward.
“I hate seeing you hurt,” she adds.
His lips twitch up a bit at that. “I’m always hurting, Hermione. I want to see them. I need to. You don’t have to come.”
“Harry—”
“I’m sorry,” he says, sharper, louder. “You can’t stop me. I’ll be back by morning. But I need to...I need to do this.”
“You can’t go alone.” Which means she is effectively agreeing to go with him, of course. What else can she do?
It’s all very complicated, is the thing. It will hurt Harry, of course it will, but perhaps he’s right and this is something he needs. But it will hurt Hermione too, and there is a part of her that can’t stand to repeat the year before. A part of her that thinks it was easier to see Nagini’s attack on Harry than see him collapse before his parents’ grave.
Selfishly, she wants to stay here, where she knows Harry will be safe, but it hasn’t ever been so simple, has it? I’m always hurting, he said.
It’s been months since that last battle, but it’s been even longer since the last time she saw Harry really smile. Death wraps around him, always, an age-old companion he cannot shake. He became its Master, as the legend goes.
But Hermione gets the feeling that Death has more power over Harry than Harry has ever had over him.
It started with his parents.
And it ended with Harry.
“You’ll come, then?” he asks, and his tone is not quite hopeful, but it is something very close.
Silently, she nods, and then they are rising together. She reaches out, securing his hand in hers. Even after all this time, he never likes to Apparate on his own.
A deep, steeling breath. She meets his eyes and tries to smile, but it falters as she sees the emotions in those green depths.
She pictures Godric’s Hollow, and spins.
They land heavily and stumble into each other, and though Harry stiffens and moves as if to pull away from her, Hermione holds his hand more tightly still, keeping him close.
“No hiding this time,” she reminds him quietly, and he nods, already turning to look towards the memorial of his family.
He pulls her along, and she lets him, thinking that midnight must have passed some time ago by now. As far as she knows, Harry hasn’t been here since last Christmas, but he leads her as if he has traced these paths every single day for the past year. Perhaps, in his head, he has. She knows he thinks of it often, after all.
They pass through the kissing gate to the cemetery, and, this time, they do not need to search. They reach the grave in solemn silence, and then both stand before it, stiff and quiet. If not for the sudden crushing of her hand, she may have wondered if Harry was even seeing it at all.
“It’s not really fair,” he mutters, almost as if to himself.
She steps a little closer to him. “I know,” she whispers. “I’m sorry, Harry.”
He reaches forward, then seems to think better of it, his hand falling back to his side. “Hi, Mum,” he says, awkwardly, painfully. “Dad.”
The wind whispers around them, cold and cruel.
“It’s Christmas Eve,” he continues. Stops. Checks his watch. Amends with, “Christmas.”
Gently, Hermione runs her thumb across the back of his hand, and he takes in a deep, shuddering breath.
“I wanted to stay,” he says, and his voice is quiet and broken but stronger, somehow, than it has been all night. “I wish I had stayed.”
His hand slips from Hermione’s, and he drops to his knees, shivering. Now, his hand brushes against the stone, his head bowed before it. He makes no noise, but she knows he is crying, as surely as she knows he is her best friend.
“I’m sorry,” he’s saying. “I’m sorry.”
Whether the words are for her or for Lily and James, Hermione suspects even he doesn’t know. Cautiously, she kneels down beside him, not touching him but staying close enough that she could.
“Harry,” she says, but he doesn’t seem to hear her.
“I feel like—I feel like I left something behind.” He stops, swallowing thickly. “I don’t know how to get it back.”
Now, he turns to look at her, eyes bloodshot, cheeks wet. Carefully, she reaches forward and wipes his tears away with her thumb.
“This was a bad idea,” she murmurs.
He shakes his head. “I miss them.”
He doesn’t mean his parents, not entirely. He means...Sirius. Remus and Tonks. Fred. Lavender Brown. Little Colin Creevey, who was really not so little anymore but was still too young.
He wasn’t the only one, she thinks.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she says firmly. “I couldn’t have lost you too.”
“Why?”
It is a childish question, one he is unable to hold back. His eyes are wide and earnest. Too young, she thinks.
“Because you’re important to us,” she whispers. “To me. You know that, don’t you? Harry? We love you.”
And there it is: the briefest hesitation, a pause that says no, he doesn’t know.
But he says, “I know,” and then, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” she says quickly. “You don’t need to be sorry, Harry. I’m not going anywhere. Let’s...let’s talk to them. All right?”
For a moment, he simply watches her, and then he gives a jerky nod and turns to face the stone before him.
“The war is over,” he says quietly. “But you know that already, I s’pose. I know...I know you said...but I miss you. And Sirius. And Remus. I’m glad—glad you’re all together again and all, but I still…”
Hermione reaches over to take his hand again, entwining their fingers.
“This is so strange,” he mutters.
She studies him carefully, then asks, “Does it help?”
“I don’t know.”
She doesn’t know what she could possibly say to that, so she just holds his hand a little tighter. They stay there for a while, silent, and then he lets out a small sigh, breath puffing out in front of his face
“Maybe we should go,” he mutters, but he doesn’t make to stand.
Hesitantly, Hermione turns her gaze towards the grave. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
“They must be really proud of you,” she whispers.
She doesn’t need to be looking at him to see the wry twist of his lips.
“Maybe,” he says. “I can’t exactly ask, can I? Not anymore.”
Anymore.
It hits Hermione, suddenly, in a way it never quite has before. Of course Harry’s parents died a long time ago. Just over seventeen years ago, now.
But he saw them, only months ago. Talked to them. Was so close to being with them, finally, after all this time, and then lost them all over again.
“I think they would’ve liked you,” he says after a moment. “I wish you could have met them.”
His voice is hollow. Desolate.
She tries to smile, but it doesn’t seem to come and the attempt at movement just winds up causing an ache in her cheeks. “Me too,” she says. “They seem wonderful.”
“Yeah.” His free hand ghosts over the stone, as if he is trying to find some sort of warmth in it, one he surely knows isn’t there. “Thanks for… Thanks for coming with me, Hermione.” He looks up at her now, but his hand remains poised above his mother’s name. “I know I must seem…”
“You don’t seem anything bad, Harry.” She leans in a little closer, relishing in his heat, the proof that he’s still here, still alive. “You’re just grieving. It’s normal.”
“But you—”
“It’s okay,” she says firmly. “Really. This is for you, not me. And...and if having me here helps, then I’m glad I came.”
“They were with me,” he murmurs. “They walked me to my death. I thought...I thought, maybe…” He stops, inhaling sharply. “I guess it’s a bit stupid,” he manages, laughing, but it is an empty sound. “But I sort of thought that if I hadn’t had to come back, I would’ve stayed. I almost did, even knowing…”
Her throat tightens as she listens, but she’s careful not to grasp his hand any harder than she already is, though the instinct to hold him against her so he can’t leave her again is nearly stronger than the logical part of her that is saying he’s already hurting and she doesn’t want to hurt him more. It’s likely he hasn’t even considered what staying would have meant for everyone else. After all, he made the choice to walk into the Forest all on his own, never even stopping to consider another possibility. Maybe, on some level, they all knew, but Hermione has never really believed that there’s only one way to do things.
Swallowing back the pain that is building up within her, Hermione finally says, “It’s okay, though, Harry. Nobody can blame you for wanting to get away from everything. It wasn’t fair to expect so much from you.”
His eyes are distant, though, not seeming to register her words at all.
“When I was small,” he says, “I used to think that my parents were really as bad as my aunt said they were.” He shudders. “I didn’t want to, but I didn’t know any better. Any time I talked about them, she would tell me again. I thought, for a while, that they hadn’t wanted me either.”
“Harry…”
“I wish I had known.” His hand falls, landing in the powdery snow. He doesn’t appear to feel it. “Sooner than I did, I mean. I know...I know they weren’t perfect, but at least I would’ve…”
Only because she has been his friend so long does Hermione know anything about his childhood at all. He speaks of it so rarely, all she and Ron have been able to gather has been from brief glimpses of his family at the end of the school year, from the gifts they never sent to him. She doesn’t know what it was like for him.
But she does know that it’s affected him. That it still does.
She lets out a long breath, then leans forward and embraces him. He stiffens, but only for a moment, and then he’s hugging her back, trembling slightly and not because of the cold.
They stay like that for what feels like a very long time, but Hermione knows it is only really a few minutes before he pulls away from her again. His longing gaze is caught by the grave once more, and for a moment she is frozen, watching him, wishing she knew the words to take that look out of his eyes.
She pulls herself up, eventually, and offers a hand down to him.
“Come on,” she whispers. “Let’s go home, Harry.”
He looks up at her, but doesn’t take her hand.
“Home,” he says softly. Wistfully, not quite sad but something quite close to it.
Pained, she swallows. “It’s cold,” she tries again. “Let’s get...get back to…”
But he doesn’t appear to be listening to her at all, searching her face for something she isn’t sure he’ll ever find there.
“Home,” he says again, a little louder. “Yeah, okay. Right.”
With what seems to be a great effort, he places his hand in hers. As she hoists him to his feet, she can’t help but ask, “Is that...okay?”
“Yeah,” he mutters. “Yeah. ‘Course it is. Home’s wherever you are, isn’t it?”
The winter wind stings at her eyes. She blinks rapidly. “Harry, I…”
He looks away from her suddenly, cold-flushed cheeks searing in the dark. “I just mean…I mean…”
“N-no, it’s okay,” she tells him quickly, twining her fingers between his. “I feel the same way. You and Ron… Of course I…”
“Right,” he mutters, but before she can say anything he has pulled his hand away from hers. With the other, he brings out his wand and, with an intense look of concentration on his face, summons a bouquet of flowers before setting them to rest in front of the grave.
“Did you practice that?” she asks.
“Yeah.” He shivers, straightening and wrapping his arms around himself. “Nothing else to do, is there?”
Hermione looks down, studying the flowers. They are mostly white, though some seem to hold a slight tinge of pink. “What are they?”
“Peonies,” he says, so quiet she almost misses it.
Hermione doesn’t really know a lot about flowers, but she thinks she does know the myth about this one, about the healing deity Paeon who Zeus turned into a flower in order to save his life. She’s not sure if that symbolizes something, though, so she asks, “Why?”
He sighs, like he was hoping she wouldn’t say anything. “They’re apology flowers. But...my aunt used to grow them, too. Whatever I think of her, my mum loved her.” Hesitantly, he meets Hermione’s eyes again. “I think, though...usually, you give them to people you want to say sorry to.”
“I don’t think you need to be sorry, Harry.”
“I am, though.” He takes a step back from the grave, but doesn’t drop her gaze. “Sorry for all of it. When...when I saw them, I thought—they weren’t much older than...than we are. And I thought...I thought it was—odd, that’s all.”
“Odd,” she repeats.
“Yeah. And...and unfair too, isn’t it? That they got so little time, and I still…”
He doesn’t finish, but she doesn’t need him to. The look on his face says more than enough.
Before she can stop herself, she is reaching out to him, grabbing his arm, and spinning them on the spot.
They appear from where they left earlier. He seems momentarily surprised, but it doesn’t appear to last. There is no anger, though. Just tired resignation.
“Let’s...let’s have some tea, shall we?” Hermione squeaks out, and he nods, breaking the contact with her and heading for the back door.
This late, everyone should still be asleep, but she can’t help making noise as she follows after him. Her hands are shaking, her mind moving a bit too fast. Anybody would think it was she who had just sat before her parents’ grave in tears; Harry’s gaze is as dull as it was earlier tonight, and he holds himself with a certain type of composure, one she has never quite seen from him before.
In all honesty, it scares her.
She knows what he is thinking. She doesn’t know the last time she’s ever really had to wonder about it, but sometimes...sometimes she wishes she could be ignorant, because his pain has always been worse, has always hurt more, and she doesn’t know what to do about now any more than she did when they were fifteen.
Too young, she thinks. Both of them. All of them.
He is the one who puts the kettle on, while Hermione sits at the table and watches him. When they were younger, this would have been beyond an imposition in their minds, but, by now, they have sat up at this table with each other or with any variety of Weasleys what feels like but surely could not be a thousand times. Hermione isn’t ready to find her parents yet—cannot even begin to imagine how she would face them, let alone tell the whole truth—and Harry is terrified of being alone, and so they have wound up here, trying to collect their pieces just like everyone else.
He sets a cup in front of her, startling her from her thoughts. She knows he has already put in milk and sugar. Nobody makes her tea as well as Harry does, she thinks, but she knows she always does his wrong because she always thinks he likes less sugar than he really does. He never says so, but she watches him put another spoonful in any time she makes it for him. He never even has to taste it first. Somewhere along the way, maybe she just started taking it as a given that he would add the third spoonful on his own. She thinks he likes the subtle control in it, anyway, knowing with all certainty that he is still the one who gets the final say.
Not that he doesn’t trust Hermione, of course, because she knows he does. But it is so much more complicated than all that, something instilled in him before he was even eleven years old, something nobody ever tried to rid him of in the years after. She knows, of course she does. It doesn’t make it ache any less.
“Thanks,” he says quietly.
She runs her finger over the rim of her cup, not meeting his eyes. “You don’t need to thank me, or apologize, or...or anything else.”
“I do, though.” She knows this, too, that he will not drop it until he has had his say. “It’s hard for you too. And everyone else. And I don’t even know what…” He stops. Inhales. Shakes his head. “I don’t really know what I feel. Sometimes I do, but other times there’s just…”
Nothing.
The dullness. The composure that is not really composure. A lesson learned long ago: You aren’t allowed to feel like this.
Sharply, she looks up at him. “You’re still you,” she says, each word sharp against her throat. “I know I can’t really understand, but I...I’m trying. I am, Harry. I promise I am.”
He sips his tea, as if thinking. She knows he is not.
As he sets the cup down again, he says, “I don’t want you to understand.”
She sees it coming, but it doesn’t stop the words from knocking the wind from her. Still, she tries not to flinch, tries to bear the weight of it, tries to remain strong and sturdy because Merlin knows Harry can’t anymore.
“I don’t care,” she tells him. “You can’t shut me out.”
His shoulders hunch, and his gaze falls. For a long moment, the only sound is his breathing, uneven, heavy, hurting.
And then, so quiet she might have missed it were she not listening—
“It was never this hard before.”
—but she is always listening for him. Of course she hears it.
“You never had the room to grieve,” she reminds him gently. “You need to...to let yourself. And we won’t go anywhere, Harry, I swear it.”
He lifts his head, just a bit. In the dim kitchen light, his eyes glisten with tears he doesn’t want to shed. Slowly, he blinks, and then swallows, but it does not go away. This is something deeper, Hermione knows. A wound that has been bleeding for seventeen years, and it just got deeper.
“I think about dying,” he blurts out. “All the time. I dream of it. I think about my mum’s voice and everything they said to me and I think about dying. I wanted to touch them. I just wanted to know they were there, but I...I…” He takes in a sharp, ragged breath. “I feel like half of me’s here and the other half’s there, and I don’t know how to fix it.”
“Maybe…” Hermione pauses, chest clenching. “Maybe you’re not supposed to.”
She sees his composure crack, the way glass begins to shatter under pressure. First, there is the raw pain in his eyes, then the tears, then the sobs, a sound she has never heard before, and she realizes that even in the graveyard this is what he was trying to hold back, as if grief can be dammed up, as if a lifetime of pain can right itself with no release.
With the utmost caution, she scoots her chair closer to him, leaving her tea to sit on the other side of the table. She slowly sets her hand on the table before him, wishing it could be but knowing it is not enough, nothing is enough, they cannot walk away from this ever again.
In all the years she has known Harry, Hermione can count on one hand the amount of times she has seen him cry. There had been the graveyard, last Christmas. Then, this Christmas, in the same place, mourning the same loss but still it is something so new, something fresher and more painful, a loss neither of them can quite out a name to.
But this is different from that, even. It is loud. It is messy. He sobs and he sniffles and he whimpers, pushing into himself more and more, as if hoping the ground will rise up and swallow him whole. It’s more than likely, Hermione thinks, that any number of Weasleys can hear him now, but they won’t interrupt, won’t come running, not because they don’t care but because they do and they know, as well as Hermione does, that Harry needs this.
She presses herself close to him, until they are touching. As her shoulder brushes against his, his tears seem to come faster, his breaths growing shorter and harsher. He gulps for air, but it doesn’t appear to help, and then he turns towards her, trying to say something, and she shakes her head fiercely.
“I won’t go,” she whispers.
He lets out a sob, then falls into her, grabbing at her robes tightly, soaking her front with tears. She reacts immediately, drawing her arms around her and bringing one hand go stroke his hair.
“You’re not broken,” she soothes. “You’re still you. We’re not going anywhere.”
A year ago, a part of her yearned for this. Perhaps even before that. Maybe in fourth year, when he exited that maze clinging to another boy’s lifeless body and she knew, then, what he was thinking, as she knows what he is thinking now:
It should’ve been me.
But this is a selfish part of her. The part that knows that, no matter how many people die, she will always still be grateful that it wasn’t Harry. Will always be happier to see him alive than sad to see another person dead.
She cannot say this, of course. He’ll probably never be ready to hear that, and she’s more than okay with leaving this a secret. She can’t bring herself to find any shame in it, but that is her, and there are hundreds of millions of others who would almost certainly disagree.
They stay in the same position for what feels like a very long time, Hermione murmuring reassurance into the night, Harry’s tears soaking into her, from her clothes to her skin down to her bloodstream. She is alive with the pain of it, searing and aching but determined to carry as much as she can for him.
Eventually, his breathing evens again. Aside from the occasional hiccough or sniffle, he is quiet. His chest moves against her, his heartbeat a steady thrum beside her own pulsepoints. He says nothing, but he doesn’t need to.
“I’m right here,” she whispers, keeping him held close. “I love you, Harry.”
He doesn’t look up at her. She didn’t expect him to.
Gently, she brushes her lips against the top of his head.
“It’ll be okay,” she promises. “You’re home now. You’re not going anywhere.”
And when he pushes more tightly against her, she feels what he was saying before. Home. Here, in her arms. Here, hearts beating as one. Here, stained with blood and grief and pain but still here, here. With her.
She holds him until he begins to fall asleep, too exhausted to keep his eyes open any longer. With whispered words and gentle hands, she guides him to the next room, to the settee. He has always slept better on something like this than in a bed, she knows.
There is not really room for both of them, but he doesn’t let her go as she leads him to lie down. He doesn’t need to say anything now, either; wordlessly, she lies next to him, one leg thrown around him to keep her from falling off the edge.
She listens to his breathing, calmed by the reminder that he is breathing, he is alive, even when he no longer feels like he really is.
She is always listening for him, so when his eyes briefly flutter open and he says, barely more than a breath, “I love you too, y’know.”
Her lips twitch up a bit. “I know,” she whispers against his hair.
It is not okay yet. Maybe it never will be. But for now, they are where they belong. Together. Without a doubt, they are finally home.