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Sharp silver bit at his eyesight. The blades, scissors she’d picked up just for this occasion, mirrored a truth he was not yet willing to see—his reflection laid bare and blurred. He’d somehow avoided it for months on end. Despite the wobbling distortion, the lack of meat and the way depletion and battle-worn consumption filled the gaunt crevices of his face was clear as day; clear as silver reflected in high morning light.
Three years of creeping in and out of safe houses. Three years of tobacco wafted in dark corners. Three years of exposed bone.
The scrimmages were few and far between. But when they came, they came like eddying water. Whirlpools of dust, smoky dark magic, screams that barely registered over pulses flooding through ears. And panic-induced flitting eyes; would he ever be able to enter a crowded space without his eyes searching for her catch? Without blood squeezed to flutters in his chest until she enters his line of sight?
Last night he dreamt of nothing. And when he woke, he was a nothing in a dream. He was curled around warm limbs. Not much different than before, except there were no expectations for loss. No stiffening for a blow that might come and reduce him to scattered particles. There was only the now.
The now, the now, the now.
What a glorious implication. What a wondrous idea. So teeming with oxygen that it was as if it had morphed into a sentient being. The now was an old friend. One he’d spent days snickering and whispering with when he was just a boy with the world in his hand.
Back then, he treated his blooming violet of a world with disregard. He didn’t notice it was shriveling until it had already curled in on itself and scratched him raw with its dried form.
He spent years distraught, with an aching hunger for destruction. And still… he held his dried violet with care, he didn’t dare move his tremulous fingers. He didn’t dare for fear that they’d close –feeble and rigid from disuse– without his consent.
And his world would be left to pulverized petals.
He grabbed the blades from her hand, the feel of them hit his fingers like ice. He nearly flushed at the sound of his own sharp inhale. He’d been so surrounded by the warmth of her these past few weeks, the warmth of their shared bed, the warmth of crackling wood in a home that would never change because they claimed it as theirs.
She didn’t even notice his dramatics. Her hands ran down her tresses over and over again as she worried her lip. Those caressing hands looked so soft, so easily breakable. How had he never noticed before?
He was convinced his mind refused to process her fragility. Despite the relentless fear that she’d be taken from him, he never thought of her as soft and small. It was all he ever noticed now, and it always moved him to the precipice of weeping.
In fact, he nearly wept as they noshed on a shared plate of chips a few days ago. The sight of her lithesome fingers eagerly grabbing and lifting food to her mouth made his eyes water to the point that he had to feign interest in the window views. That couldn’t be normal.
She sat in front of him on a conjured stool.
She’d barely said a word since she sat down. It was a curious thing. Usually when her nerves were most exposed she’d warble and fill voids with her endless chatter.
At last, she spoke on a shaking exhale, “Did you know, there’s a story about a boy… He held strength that could topple columns of stone. But he kept that strength in his hair.”
She wasn’t looking at him, she’d turned her head toward their open window. Always open, was that window. The humming vibrations of everflowing life was a sound he didn’t think he’d ever tire of again.
He angled to her right. He thought he’d like to suss out the size of her eyes, if they were wide with apprehension or hazed with placidity. She was looking down, a soft frown on her face.
“He was tricked by a woman who pretended to love him to help her own hide. She conspired to have his hair cut. To take away his strength so he’d face defeat.”
He nearly laughed. There was no pretending to love Hermione.
“Consider yourself a thespian? Is this your roundabout way of throwing me to the hounds?” He muttered.
He knew she’d never. He knew their lifelong twining had been decided in low murmurs, in his inhales of her exhales, in the folding of their bodies, in the smoldering tangling of their tongues during times of respite and desperation
Her eyes shot to him in surprise. She exhaled a quiet laugh. “Achilles cut off a lock of his hair when Patroclus perished.” She swallowed.
He knew what she was trying to say the same way he knew when she was on the precipice of a breakdown, the way he knew the moment her gasps would evolve into breath-stealing clenches.
Strength was but a thing of the past. She was going to let it go. She was going to embrace those moments when tight fists would grip the fabric of his shirt as she soaked it in salted sorrow. She was going to close her eyes and angle her face towards the path of a breeze and feel nothing but release. She was going to tangle her limbs in soft textiles for hours on end and feel reprieve.
He set the blades to hover next to him and pulled her hair behind her shoulders. She shivered at the contact and sighed when he placed a soft peck on her neck.
“Are you ready?”
“No.” She snorted, and as his lips curved up at the sound a manic sort of giggle broke free. He moved to get a good look at her. Her eyes were crinkled at the end, two crescent moons stared back at him as she smiled.
“Nervous?” He smirked.
“Yes.” She chuckled.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go to a professional? There must be someone still in business around here.”
“No. I want to get it over with and I want you to do it.” Her eyes were pleading, bright and wide, sincere.
He nodded and grabbed the blades out of the air.
Her chest rose with a deep inhale, collarbones protruding heavenward before relaxing with the release of a breath. “Okay. I’m ready. Get it over with, please.” Her hands flapped in a rapid release of tension.
He grabbed hold of the hair on her right side, pulse quickening at the feel of how thick it felt in his hand. All of a sudden he felt like a twat at the way grief swelled within him, at the thought of losing those tresses. How many times had she laid against him as he wrapped the ends of her hair around his finger, or stretched a tendril to capacity only to watch it spring back into place.
Get it over with, she said. The loss of hair was nothing in the face of the loss of…
He knew it would be uneven, it might be choppy. So did she. He’d try his best all the same. He split the half of hair that he held into another half then eyeballed eight inches from the tip up, ending right above her shoulders. He cut right there. The sound of scissors splitting hair was all that could be heard.
It dusted softly onto the floor. Her offering. Her grief, her wrath, her spite, her remorse; it spread, silently expelled over weathered oak. He could feel her energy pulling his way, any moment she’d be tempted to look.
“Don’t move.” He murmured.
He stayed working on that chunk of hair, trying his best to form some semblance of uniformity. And as he worked his way over the rest, he found the unruliness of her curls to be quite forgiving of his lack of skill.
It was nearly an hour later that he let the blades go, an hour filled with the chorus of her huffs and sighs and hums and his stay stills and almost dones.
His fingers twitched until he ran them over and through her shortened locks—the feel of them silken and weightless. He then conjured a mirror and handed it to her.
She held it up with shaking fingers, her lips softly parted, her left hand instinctively coming up to feel the ends. Through the years she’d begun using taming charms. While before her hair looked so alive it might catch fire, now her coils still sat unrestrained yet with a sense of control–falling sleek and smooth. She grabbed the scissors and snipped away at some of the front pieces, leaving ringlets soft and tousled, framing her face.
Her neck, slender and delicate, was now accentuated. It pulled the eyes to follow the trail of soft contours and sharp edges that made up her décolletage.
He placed his chin on her shoulder. Their eyes met through the mirror. She was beautiful. He smiled, soft and warm. It was hard for him to speak certain sentiments out loud. He wasn’t raised to exalt his emotions, to pass them so easily along to others. He knew she understood this, and when her eyes met his own, full of want and adoration, her cheeks turned the lovely shade of crimson he so loved pulling from her.
She turned her head to the side to face him, he turned his own. Her smile grew as their faces hovered only inches from each other. He leaned forward and captured her mouth with his own.
He sent her off for a shower and vanished the hair strewn along the floor, minus one lock that he tied off with a conjured ribbon. It was placed in the book that brought them together: The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
He stood there with nothing to do. He’d been dancing on the edge of survival for so long that he didn’t know how to exist when it was a given. He gravitated toward the window as he did so often, needing to witness the evidence of life, the proof of banality. Some days he worried he was dreaming, he had to constantly tell himself it was real. Some days he couldn’t leave their flat. Some days nothing mattered. Some days everything did.
The soft click of a door prompted him to turn around. Hermione was glowing, flushed pink from hot water. He walked toward her, filled with want, with the need to inhale the lingering scent of soap and warm skin. He grabbed her face and kissed her firm and quick before embracing her and burying his face in her neck.
She rocked them back and forth for a bit then asked, “Are you ready?”
He nodded. She pulled back and intertwined their fingers. They’d walk down Diagon, picking up where they left off yesterday–clearing debris from war-torn buildings, removing the rot to make way for the repair of broken foundations.
Their magical stores would be depleted by the end of the day. And they’d make the laborious walk, blurry-eyed and muscles burning, to the nearest food shop where they’d convene to sit and talk and dream.
When they made it outside he tucked a few strands behind her ear. The wind caught her hair, sending pieces flowing behind her. He was entranced by its fluidity as it moved; healthy, sunlit and alive.