Chapter Text
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This was coming.
Ideally, she’d like to retell this story one day with a bit of wistful fondness – you know, the kind that tugs at the back of your throat and you can say things like, “It was hard, but I made it!” or “I don’t regret any of my choices…” because those are the kinds of things one does, Hermione thinks, when you’re trying to avoid the reality at hand.
Instead, she is knee-deep at a Victory Party that she does not want to be at. She’s lost Harry already, found Ginny, then lost her too – Ron is now with her, cornering her over the balcony of someone’s ballroom and they are finally hashing it out. She has already decided that she hates these things.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Ron still accuses her, and there’s no heart behind it. He is flushed and smells like scotch and they are, she suddenly remembers, at one of the Wizengamot member’s summer homes. Because it’s that sort of thing.
“I am,” she admits. Her dress is sticky from her wine in the beginning. The gauzy fabric is trying to pretend to be tulle. She bought the dress on whim, on sale and just never worn it until tonight. She does not feel pretty. She rubs her eyes. “But I thought we talked about it.”
“You talked about it.” Ron grips the railing to remain steady. “I just stood there and let you talk to me –”
She rolls her eyes. “You’re equally complacent in all of this, Ronald. Don’t be pissed at me because your mum is mad that we no longer subscribe to the gossip standards.” She takes a step back, leaning against the wall across of him. Her hands rest flat into the brick. “I’m not going to be a part of your tantrum.”
“You’re a bitch, you know,” he says, then tired. She watches as his shoulders sag and he rubs his eyes. You see, she wants to say. You see. But she doesn’t. “And I’m a bastard,” he agrees, and this is the new Ron, the one that’s joined the Auror program with his demons. “I just feel like I didn’t get a chance, you know, and that you’re sort of holding a lot against me? Meanwhile, everything else is fine.”
You’re redirecting, she thinks. “Everything else is not fine,” she murmurs. She turns her head. Behind her, the party grows louder. She listens to someone’s laugh roar across the room. Wonders if she should go and save Harry too.
“Then tell me –”
Hermione interrupts him easily: “You want me to be fine,” she says. “And I’m not and I’m okay with not being okay.” Her mouth twitches and she shrugs. “We’ve made out twice and all you can think about is fitting me into some mold that I am very clearly not ready to be in – you deserve someone to meet you halfway in whatever you need and I am so not that.”
This is not what she planned to say. Of course, of course there are pages upon pages of rationalizations in her journal. She has even practiced in her mirror. She can even be romantic. It’s silly: they have kissed twice, only twice, and suddenly, it was about constructing an ending for the two of them that was nowhere near sensible. Hermione told no one. It does something to your psyche; people telling you things like, “finally!” and “the two of you, you match so well –” when it was nowhere near the kind of truth that Hermione need to here. What would Harry think also haunts her in her dreams, something that cuts differently, harder, than the white noise.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and immediately regrets it, sighing and straightening off the wall. She squares her shoulders, meeting Ron’s gaze. “I’m sorry that we can’t talk about this like two friends, you know? That we can be mad, but promise to move past it – I’m sorry that you didn’t that part of us is good enough to respect too.”
The world has stopped moving for me, she wants to say. But she doesn’t. The bite behind her words are enough. She tries to smile, but doesn’t. Her palms smooth over her dress.
“I’m sorry,” she says again.
Ron closes his mouth. They end on a whimper.
Her childhood home sits at the end of a neighborhood.
Her parents weren’t astronomically wealthy, they were comfortable, and with hopes that Hermione would pursue university at some point, there are plenty of arrangements made should anything had happened to them. Hermione has not touched the money or talked to the family lawyer. This is part of her acknowledge guilt.
It’s still summer, weeks after her explosive breakup with Ron, according to everyone but her and Ron, and she has taken a step back from the social circle of the year, according to everyone but her, to really deal with things. She has two breakdowns: one where her neighbor comes to see her and say, “did your parents finally retire?” as if that were the plan all along, as if Hermione did not decide to take that away from them under the guise of protecting them. She does not remember what she says, but Harry shows up just after the second, hand in hand with her favorite flowers from the grocery store and sushi, mostly, because it was the only thing he could think of.
“Sorry,” he even says, and they are standing in her parents’ kitchen, staring at each other. He grins sheepishly. “I thought it might be something you’d like?”
It’s sweet and she doesn’t know how to handle it. “Yeah.” Her laugh’s a little watery and she refuses to cry in front of Harry. “I like sushi.”
“You seem worldly,” he says, and she has to blink because she thinks he’s lost it. She does not think of herself as worldly or anything else.
“Worldly?” She still points out. “That’s first for me.”
He blushes, shrugging. “I mean,” he says. “You travelled a lot, you know? And I realize I haven’t really asked you about any of that, what you did on your summers and what you like to do – like do you speak any other languages? Do you want to learn anything? Is there anywhere you haven’t been?”
Hermione is uncomfortable with attention. She tries to smile, but grimaces, turning so that she can pretend to deal with the sushi and plate it. “But I wouldn’t call myself worldly,” she mumbles. Her mother, however, speaks – spoke, she tells herself – French and Spanish and spoke beautifully. She wonders if she remembers. “I speak passable French. My German’s okay too.” She tugs at her hair, staring at the open container of sushi in front of her. Her fingers start to braid it.
He doesn’t ask anything else, but his expression is clouded and she feels his hesitation. Instead, Harry comes to the counter to stand alongside her. He nudges her and she exhales, louder than she intends to. She feels her face flush in embarrassment.
“There’s a lot I don’t know about you.” Harry shakes his head. “What can I do?” He asks quietly, and her heart is in her throat, full of guilt. She can’t bring him into this.
You have your whole life ahead of you, she wants to say.
“Don’t worry about me.”
Harry scoffs. “It’s a bit late for that, you know.” She meets his gaze, ready to glare. He arches a brow. “And yes, Ron told me. Or yelled? I’m not quite sure. Gin called him an ass and Molly isn’t talking to either of us.”
“That’s –” She blinks. “What?”
“It’s not important,” he answers. Shrugs. His hands shove into his pockets. “Ron ships away for Auror training, Ginny wants to play Quidditch and date all the people, and I don’t want to be a part of whatever direction life is going right now – including dating Ginny, getting married to Ginny, and fighting more dark wizards.” He’s grinning and her heart jumps a little. Her brow furrows and he reaches forward, pushing her stray curls back. “I know, I know. A lot to unpack.”
“Yeah,” she says. “There’s that.”
“I’m not quite ready to talk about it, you know? It all kind of hit at once and honestly, Hermione, I’m over it all. Everyone has a plan and I don’t and I think I’m okay with that? Also the only thing that really made any sort of sense was coming to find you and making an awkward attempt at buying sushi?”
She laughs a little, eyes watery. “Allergies,” she lies, and he rolls his eyes, even as she swipes at them. “I just – I don’t know what to do right now?”
This is the most honest she’s been with anyone, outside of maybe Professor McGonagall and the Ministry appointed mind healer that she told off. No, no, my feelings do not belong to you. No, no I am not strong or okay. That is something she keeps to herself. For a lot of reasons.
But then there’s Harry, her best friend Harry, standing right in front of her, looking at her and meaning it – he’s too earnest, she wants to tell him. His hand falls from her face to her arm, his fingers sweeping up and down as if to reassure her. She bites her lip and tries to swallow. No, she thinks, no, no, no. Then his hand moves from her arm to her shoulder, pulling her into a half-hearted hug.
“Let’s start by eating,” Harry says.
It might be four in the morning when they find their way to the backyard. The sun rises in an hour and the lawn chairs have acquired a year’s worth of dirt, so Hermione grabs a tablecloth from the linen closet and they sit in her mother’s garden. Summer smells nothing like she remembers it to be, but she cannot, sadly, remember any summer she’s really, truly spent at home and in her own space.
There is too much to do. She does not know how to think of it yet: does she put the pictures away with the clothes, or is as simple as locking her parents’ rooms and hoping for the best. Does she want to keep this house? Is that a choice she should make? She thinks about the financials and the numbers that she is supposed to call, the same, solemn expression that her father wore when he pulled her aside, out of her mom’s range, and held her hand to say: “Hermione, if anything were to happen to us –”
Guilt is a funny choice. Her head is starting to hurt.
“I want to go to Australia,” she admits, finally, out loud and the lack is sleep is clinging to her eyes. She is sitting up and her knees are resting against to her chest. “I don’t think I’m brave enough, but I want to go and I want to see –” She stops herself. “No,” she says. “It’s silly.” She tries again. “I think I want to go to Australia.”
“Would you come back?” Harry asks. He remains lying on his back next to her, his eyes closed and his head resting on his arms. His breathing is even. Her expression falls. “Stop making that face,” he chides.
“I’m not brave enough,” she repeats.
“I think you are.”
She shakes her head, looking away. “No,” she says. “I’m not. There’s a chance that I might not be able to fix them, break the charm, or all of the above.” She swallows, closing her eyes. Her chin drops to her knees. “Professor McGonagall – Headmistress,” she corrects, “thinks that I should come back to school, finish the year, and utilize my Ministry connections to see if I could make an honest attempt.” She could say I performed the charm, I could figure it out. But she doesn’t. It remains easier to talk around it.
“You don’t think you can?” She thinks she knows what Harry is really trying to ask. He even touches her arm. “Go back to Hogwarts?”
“I’m not going to go back to Hogwarts, Harry.”
Out loud, the words carry a lot more weight then she intends. She listens to the rustle of fabric next to her and Harry is sitting up again. He leans into her and she leans back, out of habit.
“I know,” he says, and her shoulders sink back with relief. His fingers are in her hair again, smoothing over her scalp and then dragging along the crown of her forehead. “I know,” he repeats and her eyes remain closed. “I would be more surprised if you did – I don’t think I could go back either. I actually don’t think many of us from our class are going either. Neville might be the only one that is going with the intention of staying.”
Hermione bites her lip. “That makes sense.”
There is a lull in the conversation. Her eyes open slowly and she looks across the garden to her mother’s roses. They glow underneath the lights of the neighboring house, swaying with the summer breeze. Her mother loved her garden, she thinks. Or did she? She hates that her mind is trying to continue to train itself not to remember.
Harry’s hand stills in her hair and she reaches for it, bringing it to her and her knees. She folds over his hand like a lifeline, pressing her fingers into his palm and clutching their hands to her chest. She moves her gaze from the roses to a large, wide oak tree.
“One summer my dad tried to build me a tree house,” she says idly. Her voice feels a little scratchy. “I wasn’t particularly good at making friends my age –” She laughs and shakes her head. “As you know,” she adds. “But I did like being outdoors. Especially during the summer. There’s something to summer nights, I guess.”
“Fair,” Harry agrees and part of her is way too aware that he is listening, letting her keep his hand too close to her. “I did like them too,” he shares. “It was the only time I really wasn’t bothered when I had to live with… my mum’s sister.”
Neither of them make mention that Harry’s aunt has taken a step back from Aunt Petunia and Petunia to my mum’s sister, as if to forfeit any sort of ownership to his family. She wonders if that’s the advice she should take.
Harry clears his throat. “What happened to the tree house?”
“I had my first real burst of magic,” she answers quietly. She looks up at him, shrugging. “I don’t remember if I was climbing up to hide in the tree or if I had fought my mum. But the tree house wasn’t finished and dad told me that I couldn’t go up there until it was – he had been working a lot around that time, they were going to move me to another school and they had just opened their practice and it was a lot, I suppose…”
She trails off because the memory is incredibly visceral: the wood exploded, the nails hit the house, and her mother had said to their neighbors weakly, “John isn’t really the best at being crafty!” and that was the end of Hermione climbing into trees.
“It must have been scary.”
“Terrifying,” she says softly. She could tell him about other times too, broken glass and crying neighborhood boys and girls, the ones that went that Granger girl is evil because little boys and girls can be just as mean and cruel.
Harry leans in, kissing her forehead. It happens too quickly for her to think of it as anything but; her shoulders still square and relax.
“Tell me something else,” he murmurs. Maybe, suddenly. He feels like he’s carrying too much weight. “Anything,” he adds and her fingers are moving into his jumper, picking at imaginary lint in the dark no less.
This, there, is why Harry is here and Harry is staying. A million cruel, uneasy feelings rise to the surface and she thinks back to the stupid party and her stupid breakup with Ron – how can someone’s life be decided by one kiss, she had wanted to say, but the time was neither here nor there. She is closing chapters, she thinks instead.
Her mind moves too, moves back into the house with boxes that sit upstairs, in her bedroom and in her parents’, the boxes that are filled with other treehouses that Harry has never known about. Or asked, she tells herself.
“Like what?” Her voice fills with her exhaustion. She manages smile a little, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “I think all I’ve done is try and talk you off.”
“How about I go first?”
She blinks. Harry shrugs.
“I want to be honest with you,” he says as if to explain everything. He shifts away from her to move directly in front of her, taking both of her hands and pulling them to rest against his calves. He’s awkward as he sits cross-legged and she’s embarrassed, suddenly wildly aware of their proximity.
This is Harry, she thinks. This is just Harry.
“Okay,” she tells him slowly. “Okay, you can go first.”
Hermione watches him curiously. Harry steels himself. Sits straighter. Shoulders back. He’s taller and she thinks something stupid like when did he get so tall, too talk, and really, it’s all so ridiculous that she’s struggling to maintain a timeline when she doesn’t need to. There’s no plan either. All she knows is that Harry is serious, watching her seriously, and that whatever he is about to drop on her is something that he’s been holding onto.
He has these tells: his mouth wrinkles into a slight frown, he can’t directly look at her but still attempts to, and along time ago, he was even angry with her because he was always going to be honest with her anyway. So when he squares his shoulders again, she steels herself to wait, ignoring his hands as they squeeze her own.
“I don’t want to be an Auror,” he says. I’m not going to look back, he doesn’t say. “You’re the first person I’ve told – but I don’t want to be an Auror. I don’t know what I want to be.” He laughs nervously, rubbing the back of his head. “Wild, right?”
Hermione forgets her hesitation, wide-eyed. Her admission escapes without her thinking. She is supposed to be the sensible one. “Then… then come with me to Australia,” she says.
It should feel like an invitation.
Harry convinces her to sleep. That is the right thing to do.
They share the bed in her childhood bedroom. It’s weird – you’d think there’d be residual feelings, given the proximity they have had for the last year or so. She remembers Ginny asking her point blank. You’re in love with him, she had said, maybe accused, but it felt more like an observation, gentle but self-aware and she hated every second of it. None of your business, she had wanted to say. She didn’t.
It’s still an odd feeling to wake up next to Harry in her bedroom. He is a lot longer than she remembers, his legs hanging off the side of her bed while her knees press into his thighs. His glasses are on the side table by her copy of Grimms’ Fairytales, the first copy that she had bought for herself with money from working the front desk at her parents’ practice the first early months of her summer.
“I can feel you staring.”
Harry’s voice is scratchy and Hermione leaves her mind, adjusting herself on her pillow. Her hands remain pressed underneath her cheeks.
“I just woke up,” she lies, and he probably knows, given how much she tossed and turn. She is not a heavy sleeper, but she is usually steady enough, even under strain. Her room still smells like some kind of vanilla candle and she hates it.
“I won’t ask you if you slept.” His lashes flutter. His eyes open and she watches him squint, adjusting to the room. “We should get food,” he says instead.
“That’s a good plan,” she agrees.
Harry yawns. He shifts his weight on the bed, turning closer. His arm drops over her waist and she flushes, ignoring the flutter of nerves that hit her stomach.
“I was thinking.” His mouth touches the crown of her head. Her teeth pick at her lip as she feels his fingers graze her hip too, just under her t-shirt. “And before you try to distract me with your hyper rationalizations –”
“Oof,” She tries to tease. “You really did spend too much time with me in a tent.”
Harry laughs, startled, and she grins nervously – genuinely, maybe for the first time. They meet each other’s gazes and she can feel the blush push against her face. “You know what I mean,” he says. He tucks some hair behind her ear. “But I – I think you should go.”
Her face falls. “Go.”
“Yeah.”
He pulls himself up, over her, leaning on his arm. Somewhere in between, he’s reached for his glasses and he slides them on, over his nose. “I think it’s important,” he murmurs.
“I would have to plan,” she counters, and she thinks boxes because it’s the easiest thing to do. “I have packing and then I have to look at costs.” She doesn’t tell him that she’s obsessed over this since the beginning, wondering how she would go and do it, what she would say, how she would say it – it’s all lived inside of her. “I would go the Muggle way,” she adds, almost embarrassed. “It would make the most sense.”
It wouldn’t, he doesn’t say. She wants him to say it. She wants him to say a lot of things, but it would just continue to give her reasons for excuses.
“I planned to go alone,” she says.
Harry never flinches. “I figured.” She stares up at him and his fingers brush her jaw. “Doesn’t mean that I’m going to let you go by yourself,” he says. I owe you, he doesn’t say. She knows it lives there, in the air between them, and she hates every minute of it.
“Harry –”
“You know what to do,” he says, and his voice drops. She immediately flinches, but he’s almost gentle, is gentle, and his hand moves to rest by her pair. There’s no accusatory expression, just sadness, and that, there, is something she cannot read. “The charm,” he starts slowly. “You’ve always known what to do.”
It’s an incredibly complex and selfish choice – this, then, there has always been the answer. It is what she prepared to say to him and Ron when she had, on the off-chance, explained to them what she did. They never pressed; she never when beyond a “I casted a memory charm on my parents for them to be safe from all of this.” It would be very easy to blame them too. To say things like, “You’ve never participated in my life!” even though it would have been easily pulled back into more of her choices.
“I’m not ready to do this,” Hermione says, tries to say with some kind of finality. She half-expects Harry to push or to even look at her with some kind of disappointment. He doesn’t.
“The charm,” he repeats, slowly even, “you’ve always known what to do –”
Her face contorts into something solemn. She forces herself to swallow. “Yes,” she says then. Not quietly. She shifts and sits up, her bones cracking with her jerky movement.
Harry sits up with her, turns and faces her. His hands drop to her leg and it’s almost as if he were holding her in place, anchoring her even. He remains gentle and she wants to hate him for it, hate him for the interest and the attention and the genuine, open concern that all she wants to do is hide from. Don’t come with me, she wants to say. Don’t come.
He’s serious though when he asks. “What do we need to do to get there?”
He is going to make her ask again.