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lynzie914title: it’s a small crime and I’ve got no excuse
fandom: harry potter
characters/parings: hermione/harry (background hermione/ron and harry/ginny)
rating: r (warning for cheating and r-rated sexual situations.)
word count: 3065
summary: That’s all they are. Thoughts. A fantasy. Hermione has known how this story will end since sixth year (maybe before that). She had read the last chapter, the epilogue, and Harry and Hermione may be standing side by side but there is a red head on each of their arms. There’s no point in trying to change that. (Set post DH, but with a different ending.)
a/n: somehow I’m being sucked back into the hp fandom but its been so long, I apologize for lack of canon knowledge and anything that might be off. (my brain retains nothing anymore.) written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
youcallitwinter's wonderful prompt: he will meet you on the nape of your neck one day, on the surface of intention, word becoming act.
Sometimes she finds herself thinking about Harry. (His hands, his wild hair, his wide green eyes and the way he smiles at her when she’s said just the right thing.)
She thinks about her and Harry. The two of them. Together.
She thinks about what would have happened if the world was different. If they would be friends. If they would be—
That’s all they are. Thoughts.
A fantasy in her head when she is done with her work and her mind wanders off on its own path. (Her mind is always moving, always wondering, always restless, incapable of turning off.)
It’s a fantasy in her head, different sometimes, familiar others. But that’s all it.
A fantasy. Thoughts.
Hermione has known how this story will end since sixth year (maybe before that). She had read the last chapter, the epilogue, and Harry and Hermione may be standing side by side but there is a red head on each of their arms.
There’s no point in trying to change that.
Harry and Ginny will take James and Lilly’s place in the world. The golden couple that people admire, with bright fiery hair and wide green eyes and a love that is greater than any war.
And Ron—
Ron made Hermione an honorary Weasley years ago, long before they (he) realized why the argued so much. He invited her to his home for summers and the two of them would spend time together, playing games and groaning about the summer heat. And sometimes his hand almost grazed her, like he was reaching out for it. But it never touched hers. Not for years.
Hermione knows how this story ends.
She’s read it cover to cover.
--
Slughorn compared her to Lily Evans once.
The brightest witch of her age of course, so skilled for someone not of the magical world.
There is a backhand in it, an almost compliment; because what would have happened if she had only been born and bred in the right home, with the right family? How much better, how much stronger, would she be? If only. (His sighs and slights are silent, but still there.)
But she accepts the compliment with a smile. Preens under the weight of it.
Lily Evans was a muggleborn, the smartest in her class, and the savior the wizarding world though she never got the credit.
Harry was the boy-who-lived. His mother was the woman who had put herself between him and Voldemort and destroyed what was left of the man, leaving only the monster behind. She was a war hero though she has no medals to show for it.
And Hermione doesn’t have red hair or green eyes or an outgoing personality, but she would put her body in front of Harry’s to stop a green light every damn time.
She would put her body in front of his and save his life.
(She would put her body in front of his any time he asked.)
--
Sometimes Harry will stare at pictures of his parents like they will tell him something he does not already know.
Hermione sits beside him, looks at Lily and thinks: Ginny doesn’t look like her at all.
But these are bitter thoughts, petty and ridiculous, because the magazines and the Quibbler talk about Harry and Ginny becoming the new James and Lily. Carbon copies of his parents, who will get to live out the life they didn’t. No one else does.
Harry is not with her because she looks like a woman he doesn’t remember. He is not in love with Ginny for her long red hair or fair skin.
Hermione says nothing, keeps her bitter and petty thoughts to herself, and just sits by his side.
--
Sometimes Harry shows up at her door. His hair a mess (more a mess than usual anyways) and sometimes with his clothes soaked because he likes to walk in the rain instead of just apparate. (She casts a drying spell on him and call him an idiot, but she always invites him in.)
Sometimes Ginny is in tow, or Ron comes with him. Or Ron is already in her apartment, sitting at her table winning a chess game she’s only half participating in. But sometimes Harry comes alone.
All that time spent alone in the woods, in the tent, in the cold and the snow; Hermione and Harry are used to being alone together.
Sometimes it’s the easiest part of her day. The part that makes her sink into her couch in relief and finally relax.
(She thinks about the forest sometimes. The tent.
She thinks about Harry and how things were, his hand in hers, caressing it, holding it tightly like he was terrified she would disappear too. She thinks about how things could have been, if he had done more than just hold her hand, if they had done more than just stare longingly at each other, seeking comfort. If one of them hadn’t always looked away.
She thinks about what would have happened if Ron hadn’t been able to find them again, if it was just the two of them going on alone.
This of course is a ridiculous thought, Ron was always going to find them. They needed him to find them. Somewhere it was all written down in a book, probably by Dumbledore himself.)
Harry shows up late sometimes, when he should be at home in bed and she’s in her night clothes, up too late going over her work. Her night clothes are Muggle, unlike Ginny’s or Ron’s, the summer heat will get to her and she’ll wear shorts and t-shirts and forget that a wave of the wand is all she needs to be cool.
Sometimes he stares at her legs (too long until someone looks away) but he never says anything. His hand never moves. He never—
She’s thinking too hard again, of course.
Letting her mind wander when she shouldn’t.
Focusing on all the wrong things.
--
Ron proposes after one of the weekly Weasley dinners.
His palms are sweaty as he takes her hands in his and he gets down on one knee and promises to love her forever and to try to fight with her less and to make her happy. He says all the right things.
Harry is across the room, standing next to Ginny.
She knows exactly where he is in the room, the couch he is standing by, and she can imagine what he’s doing (rubbing at his hair and trying to push it out of his eyes, fixing his glasses even though they don’t need fixed; doing anything with his hands) as he waits for her answer.
Hermione thinks she shouldn’t be so aware of him, know so much about him.
Not when she has Ron on his knees in front of her.
--
Harry shows up at her door again, alone.
She prefers it that way. (Some part of her will always belong to the tent in the woods, some part of her soul, of her heart. She does not know how to get it back. She probably wouldn’t try to if she did.)
Hermione offers him tea and as she makes it, she catches him staring at one of Ron’s shirts that he had left behind.
She wants to tell him he stares too much and doesn’t talk enough.
That he stares too long and never does anything.
That he should stop staring and just—
She gives him his tea instead. Just like he likes it, bitter and overly hot. She doesn’t say anything she was thinking. (Not out loud.)
They talk about little things, their days at work, about how Harry had run into Neville and how Hermione had ran into Luna and how after everything that had happened, she still didn’t know how to talk to the other girl.
They talk about the little things until they don’t.
“If I asked Ginny to marry me, do you think she’d say yes?” Harry asks.
He’s staring at the ring on her finger. The heavy ring with a red stone that she still sometimes forgets to put on in the morning. She’ll start to remember with time of course, she knows she will.
“Of course she will.” Hermione fakes a smile. It shouldn’t be false, but it is. She doesn’t know how to make it real.
She knows Ginny will say yes, that it’s only a matter of waiting on her part, and Ginny’s patient enough, understands Harry enough to know he needs time. (Ginny talks to her sometimes.)
“Do you think I should ask her?”
He takes her hand in his, like they used to once upon a time in a forest or in a tent, only this time he is cradling her ring, staring at it like it might disappear.
“I…”
(Maybe it wasn’t just Harry who never said enough, who only stared too much.)
“I would have gotten sapphires.” He says, not waiting for her answer, “You always liked blue.”
It’s almost like an ‘I wish’ left hanging the air, never to be completed.
She wishes he was brave enough to say it outloud.
--
Sometimes Hermione catches herself staring at her hand, at her ring, but she is not thinking of Ron.
(She is a terrible person, she thinks late at night when Ron is asleep beside her and Harry is in his own apartment far away, and she is thinking about dark hair instead of red.
She is a terrible person she thinks, when she decides the story was written all wrong. That the ending should be changed.
She is a terrible person she thinks far too often.)
Hermione thinks about the way Harry holds her hand, has always held her hand, his hands calloused but so careful. She thinks about the way his skin feels against hers.
She thinks about Harry and his wide green eyes and how they lock with hers across the room and if only they were closer, if only he was right in front of her she would take a step forward and—
These are just thoughts of course.
Distractions.
Cold feet maybe, she tells herself on some days. But how can it be cold feet when she’s had these thoughts for so long?
(She thinks she’s a terrible person.
But it doesn’t stop her from thinking about the boy with wide green eyes and wild black hair.)
--
She waits to hear news of Harry and Ginny’s engagement.
She’ll hear it, she knows, she won’t witness it.
Harry is private, he would not do it in front of the Weasley family no matter how much he loves them. And he will not take her to a restaurant and do it there, not when he is forever the-boy-who-lived and it’ll make the front page.
She waits and she waits and she waits.
Hermione doesn’t hear anything. Harry does not show up on her doorstep with champagne in one hand and Ginny’s hand intertwined with the other.
Ron catches her smiling and she doesn’t have an answer for why she is.
--
The four of them go out to dinner, because their schedules are busy and soon Ginny will be off touring.
Hermione sits across from Ron and Harry across from Ginny and the two of them end up next to each other. His leg brushes hers as he reaches for the menu and his arm brushes her when she reaches for the butter. They mutter apologizes to each other, as conversation continues between the four of them, but they don’t stop.
Somehow, skin keeps touching skin, and Hermione can’t stop thinking about it.
She can’t stop thinking about different scenarios in which it could be happening. Ones that don’t involve restaurants or Ginny or Ron.
Harry’s thigh grazes against her, ends up leaning against it, but he does not look at her. He laughs at something Ginny or Ron had said instead.
Hermione’s mind goes fuzzy and she has trouble focusing on what everyone else is saying.
(It’s just a fantasy in her head. Thoughts.
But what happens when you realize you want them to come true?)
--
Hermione reads The Beetle and Bard too many times. The pages start to wear and the ink fades and Ron gives her questioning looks whenever he sees it.
(Ron wants to forget that year. Wants to forget and move on and pretend. And Hermione can’t. Maybe she should want all those things too, maybe she does somewhere in the back of her mind.
But want and can’t are two different things.)
She reads it over and over again. The stories change from what the author originally intended she is sure. Somehow they all seem to star and boy (who isn’t really a boy at all) with dark hair and green eyes and a girl with dark brown hair and even darker eyes who can’t look away from each other.
They transform in her head and become something new.
She thinks she can’t rewrite the ending to her own story, but she can change the stories in this one book in her head. Make it into something different, something new.
--
Harry shows up at her door again.
Ginny is gone for her first game of the season and Ron is at work, stuck with the late shift because he may be a war hero but he is still a rookie.
He’s looking at her differently, or maybe he’s looking at her the same, but when she looks back, Harry doesn’t look away.
He stares and he stares and never turns away.
She makes tea to keep her hands busy because they need to be busy and he watches. She hands him his cup and his hand grazes her and there is a buzz in her body that Ron has never been able to produce.
(And it’s unfair to Ron, it’s all so unfair to Ron. She isn’t even wearing his ring. It’s on her bedside table, forgotten again in the morning and it seemed unimportant to put it on so late, when she wouldn’t even be seeing him.)
“Harry…”
She doesn’t know what she wants to say. There are words tight in her chest that have been trapped there for so long she doesn’t know how to let them out. She just knows she wants to say them.
There’s only so much thinking you can do. Even Hermione Granger has her limits.
“I’m not going to ask Ginny to marry me.” Harry says.
It should be out of the blue, out of context, but it’s not.
Their eyes lock and it makes all the sense in the world.
“Are you sure?” She asks.
“It wouldn’t be fair to her, not really.” He says.
She laughs and it’s probably a bit cruel out of context, but all she can think of is Ron on his knees with a ring in his hands and Harry across the room as she said yes.
She thinks that Harry’s always been a better person than her at heart. Even at his angriest, he was a better person.
(Hermione was always thinking about the wrong things when the right things were standing right in front of her.
She wanted what she could not have.
She wanted everything.
She wanted—)
Harry kisses her. He moves forward, takes the step she always thought she would be the one to take, and kisses her. His hands find hers and he pulls her closer as he lips slide over hers and she sighs into the kiss, grips tighter to keep standing.
She’s almost afraid to close her eyes because this could so easily be just another fantasy, but she does.
--
Harry tastes different than Ron. Ron tastes of strawberry and cake and sweetness that makes her teeth ache sometimes. Harry tastes like the tea he likes so much.
His hands move so much faster, pulling at her waist to bring her closer, pulling at her clothes. He sighs and mutters under his breath (‘fuck’) but they don’t speak.
They are closer than they have ever been before, but they do not talk, they do not shatter the illusion.
He does not lead her to the bedroom, instead he lowers her down on the couch. The same couch they have sat on side by side so many times before, that she reads The Beetle and the Bard on and thinks of happily-ever-after’s that are made up only in her head. The same couch where his knee used to touch hers, his hand used to graze hers, and she thought that was the only piece of him she would ever get.
Harry is above her, his lips on her neck, and she sighs into his ear. Because God, if this wasn’t what she had always wanted but would never say out loud.
God, if this didn’t feel like a dream. (She had had this dream before.) But his hands are rough against her skin as he peels away her clothes until there is nothing left. And his chest is soft against her lips and he hisses when her teeth graze just the right spot.
This is no dream, no fantasy.
This is thought made reality.
And it is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wr—
“Oh.”
But he is inside her, he is part of her, and Hermione can’t find anything wrong about that.
(Tomorrow, she’ll be the terrible person she knows she is. She’ll go back to being her and dealing with reality.
Today, today she will live in the fantasy world they have built accidently. They will change the end of the book one kiss at a time.)
--
Harry stays the night, the two of them wrapped up together, a throw blanket around them. He holds her tight, like she might disappear, and she holds back, her nails in his arms, because she’s always been just as afraid that he might disappear.
Harry sleeps with his face in her neck, his lips grazing her skin, and she thinks she never wants it to end.
Hermione thinks this is them, back in the forest, back in the tent, just the two of them. That maybe, that had never really changed.
That maybe the fantasy had been everything that had come after.
Harry’s arms tighten around her and Hermione thinks.
This time they are more than just thoughts.
fandom: harry potter
characters/parings: hermione/harry (background hermione/ron and harry/ginny)
rating: r (warning for cheating and r-rated sexual situations.)
word count: 3065
summary: That’s all they are. Thoughts. A fantasy. Hermione has known how this story will end since sixth year (maybe before that). She had read the last chapter, the epilogue, and Harry and Hermione may be standing side by side but there is a red head on each of their arms. There’s no point in trying to change that. (Set post DH, but with a different ending.)
a/n: somehow I’m being sucked back into the hp fandom but its been so long, I apologize for lack of canon knowledge and anything that might be off. (my brain retains nothing anymore.) written for
youcallitwinter's wonderful prompt: he will meet you on the nape of your neck one day, on the surface of intention, word becoming act.Sometimes she finds herself thinking about Harry. (His hands, his wild hair, his wide green eyes and the way he smiles at her when she’s said just the right thing.)
She thinks about her and Harry. The two of them. Together.
She thinks about what would have happened if the world was different. If they would be friends. If they would be—
That’s all they are. Thoughts.
A fantasy in her head when she is done with her work and her mind wanders off on its own path. (Her mind is always moving, always wondering, always restless, incapable of turning off.)
It’s a fantasy in her head, different sometimes, familiar others. But that’s all it.
A fantasy. Thoughts.
Hermione has known how this story will end since sixth year (maybe before that). She had read the last chapter, the epilogue, and Harry and Hermione may be standing side by side but there is a red head on each of their arms.
There’s no point in trying to change that.
Harry and Ginny will take James and Lilly’s place in the world. The golden couple that people admire, with bright fiery hair and wide green eyes and a love that is greater than any war.
And Ron—
Ron made Hermione an honorary Weasley years ago, long before they (he) realized why the argued so much. He invited her to his home for summers and the two of them would spend time together, playing games and groaning about the summer heat. And sometimes his hand almost grazed her, like he was reaching out for it. But it never touched hers. Not for years.
Hermione knows how this story ends.
She’s read it cover to cover.
--
Slughorn compared her to Lily Evans once.
The brightest witch of her age of course, so skilled for someone not of the magical world.
There is a backhand in it, an almost compliment; because what would have happened if she had only been born and bred in the right home, with the right family? How much better, how much stronger, would she be? If only. (His sighs and slights are silent, but still there.)
But she accepts the compliment with a smile. Preens under the weight of it.
Lily Evans was a muggleborn, the smartest in her class, and the savior the wizarding world though she never got the credit.
Harry was the boy-who-lived. His mother was the woman who had put herself between him and Voldemort and destroyed what was left of the man, leaving only the monster behind. She was a war hero though she has no medals to show for it.
And Hermione doesn’t have red hair or green eyes or an outgoing personality, but she would put her body in front of Harry’s to stop a green light every damn time.
She would put her body in front of his and save his life.
(She would put her body in front of his any time he asked.)
--
Sometimes Harry will stare at pictures of his parents like they will tell him something he does not already know.
Hermione sits beside him, looks at Lily and thinks: Ginny doesn’t look like her at all.
But these are bitter thoughts, petty and ridiculous, because the magazines and the Quibbler talk about Harry and Ginny becoming the new James and Lily. Carbon copies of his parents, who will get to live out the life they didn’t. No one else does.
Harry is not with her because she looks like a woman he doesn’t remember. He is not in love with Ginny for her long red hair or fair skin.
Hermione says nothing, keeps her bitter and petty thoughts to herself, and just sits by his side.
--
Sometimes Harry shows up at her door. His hair a mess (more a mess than usual anyways) and sometimes with his clothes soaked because he likes to walk in the rain instead of just apparate. (She casts a drying spell on him and call him an idiot, but she always invites him in.)
Sometimes Ginny is in tow, or Ron comes with him. Or Ron is already in her apartment, sitting at her table winning a chess game she’s only half participating in. But sometimes Harry comes alone.
All that time spent alone in the woods, in the tent, in the cold and the snow; Hermione and Harry are used to being alone together.
Sometimes it’s the easiest part of her day. The part that makes her sink into her couch in relief and finally relax.
(She thinks about the forest sometimes. The tent.
She thinks about Harry and how things were, his hand in hers, caressing it, holding it tightly like he was terrified she would disappear too. She thinks about how things could have been, if he had done more than just hold her hand, if they had done more than just stare longingly at each other, seeking comfort. If one of them hadn’t always looked away.
She thinks about what would have happened if Ron hadn’t been able to find them again, if it was just the two of them going on alone.
This of course is a ridiculous thought, Ron was always going to find them. They needed him to find them. Somewhere it was all written down in a book, probably by Dumbledore himself.)
Harry shows up late sometimes, when he should be at home in bed and she’s in her night clothes, up too late going over her work. Her night clothes are Muggle, unlike Ginny’s or Ron’s, the summer heat will get to her and she’ll wear shorts and t-shirts and forget that a wave of the wand is all she needs to be cool.
Sometimes he stares at her legs (too long until someone looks away) but he never says anything. His hand never moves. He never—
She’s thinking too hard again, of course.
Letting her mind wander when she shouldn’t.
Focusing on all the wrong things.
--
Ron proposes after one of the weekly Weasley dinners.
His palms are sweaty as he takes her hands in his and he gets down on one knee and promises to love her forever and to try to fight with her less and to make her happy. He says all the right things.
Harry is across the room, standing next to Ginny.
She knows exactly where he is in the room, the couch he is standing by, and she can imagine what he’s doing (rubbing at his hair and trying to push it out of his eyes, fixing his glasses even though they don’t need fixed; doing anything with his hands) as he waits for her answer.
Hermione thinks she shouldn’t be so aware of him, know so much about him.
Not when she has Ron on his knees in front of her.
--
Harry shows up at her door again, alone.
She prefers it that way. (Some part of her will always belong to the tent in the woods, some part of her soul, of her heart. She does not know how to get it back. She probably wouldn’t try to if she did.)
Hermione offers him tea and as she makes it, she catches him staring at one of Ron’s shirts that he had left behind.
She wants to tell him he stares too much and doesn’t talk enough.
That he stares too long and never does anything.
That he should stop staring and just—
She gives him his tea instead. Just like he likes it, bitter and overly hot. She doesn’t say anything she was thinking. (Not out loud.)
They talk about little things, their days at work, about how Harry had run into Neville and how Hermione had ran into Luna and how after everything that had happened, she still didn’t know how to talk to the other girl.
They talk about the little things until they don’t.
“If I asked Ginny to marry me, do you think she’d say yes?” Harry asks.
He’s staring at the ring on her finger. The heavy ring with a red stone that she still sometimes forgets to put on in the morning. She’ll start to remember with time of course, she knows she will.
“Of course she will.” Hermione fakes a smile. It shouldn’t be false, but it is. She doesn’t know how to make it real.
She knows Ginny will say yes, that it’s only a matter of waiting on her part, and Ginny’s patient enough, understands Harry enough to know he needs time. (Ginny talks to her sometimes.)
“Do you think I should ask her?”
He takes her hand in his, like they used to once upon a time in a forest or in a tent, only this time he is cradling her ring, staring at it like it might disappear.
“I…”
(Maybe it wasn’t just Harry who never said enough, who only stared too much.)
“I would have gotten sapphires.” He says, not waiting for her answer, “You always liked blue.”
It’s almost like an ‘I wish’ left hanging the air, never to be completed.
She wishes he was brave enough to say it outloud.
--
Sometimes Hermione catches herself staring at her hand, at her ring, but she is not thinking of Ron.
(She is a terrible person, she thinks late at night when Ron is asleep beside her and Harry is in his own apartment far away, and she is thinking about dark hair instead of red.
She is a terrible person she thinks, when she decides the story was written all wrong. That the ending should be changed.
She is a terrible person she thinks far too often.)
Hermione thinks about the way Harry holds her hand, has always held her hand, his hands calloused but so careful. She thinks about the way his skin feels against hers.
She thinks about Harry and his wide green eyes and how they lock with hers across the room and if only they were closer, if only he was right in front of her she would take a step forward and—
These are just thoughts of course.
Distractions.
Cold feet maybe, she tells herself on some days. But how can it be cold feet when she’s had these thoughts for so long?
(She thinks she’s a terrible person.
But it doesn’t stop her from thinking about the boy with wide green eyes and wild black hair.)
--
She waits to hear news of Harry and Ginny’s engagement.
She’ll hear it, she knows, she won’t witness it.
Harry is private, he would not do it in front of the Weasley family no matter how much he loves them. And he will not take her to a restaurant and do it there, not when he is forever the-boy-who-lived and it’ll make the front page.
She waits and she waits and she waits.
Hermione doesn’t hear anything. Harry does not show up on her doorstep with champagne in one hand and Ginny’s hand intertwined with the other.
Ron catches her smiling and she doesn’t have an answer for why she is.
--
The four of them go out to dinner, because their schedules are busy and soon Ginny will be off touring.
Hermione sits across from Ron and Harry across from Ginny and the two of them end up next to each other. His leg brushes hers as he reaches for the menu and his arm brushes her when she reaches for the butter. They mutter apologizes to each other, as conversation continues between the four of them, but they don’t stop.
Somehow, skin keeps touching skin, and Hermione can’t stop thinking about it.
She can’t stop thinking about different scenarios in which it could be happening. Ones that don’t involve restaurants or Ginny or Ron.
Harry’s thigh grazes against her, ends up leaning against it, but he does not look at her. He laughs at something Ginny or Ron had said instead.
Hermione’s mind goes fuzzy and she has trouble focusing on what everyone else is saying.
(It’s just a fantasy in her head. Thoughts.
But what happens when you realize you want them to come true?)
--
Hermione reads The Beetle and Bard too many times. The pages start to wear and the ink fades and Ron gives her questioning looks whenever he sees it.
(Ron wants to forget that year. Wants to forget and move on and pretend. And Hermione can’t. Maybe she should want all those things too, maybe she does somewhere in the back of her mind.
But want and can’t are two different things.)
She reads it over and over again. The stories change from what the author originally intended she is sure. Somehow they all seem to star and boy (who isn’t really a boy at all) with dark hair and green eyes and a girl with dark brown hair and even darker eyes who can’t look away from each other.
They transform in her head and become something new.
She thinks she can’t rewrite the ending to her own story, but she can change the stories in this one book in her head. Make it into something different, something new.
--
Harry shows up at her door again.
Ginny is gone for her first game of the season and Ron is at work, stuck with the late shift because he may be a war hero but he is still a rookie.
He’s looking at her differently, or maybe he’s looking at her the same, but when she looks back, Harry doesn’t look away.
He stares and he stares and never turns away.
She makes tea to keep her hands busy because they need to be busy and he watches. She hands him his cup and his hand grazes her and there is a buzz in her body that Ron has never been able to produce.
(And it’s unfair to Ron, it’s all so unfair to Ron. She isn’t even wearing his ring. It’s on her bedside table, forgotten again in the morning and it seemed unimportant to put it on so late, when she wouldn’t even be seeing him.)
“Harry…”
She doesn’t know what she wants to say. There are words tight in her chest that have been trapped there for so long she doesn’t know how to let them out. She just knows she wants to say them.
There’s only so much thinking you can do. Even Hermione Granger has her limits.
“I’m not going to ask Ginny to marry me.” Harry says.
It should be out of the blue, out of context, but it’s not.
Their eyes lock and it makes all the sense in the world.
“Are you sure?” She asks.
“It wouldn’t be fair to her, not really.” He says.
She laughs and it’s probably a bit cruel out of context, but all she can think of is Ron on his knees with a ring in his hands and Harry across the room as she said yes.
She thinks that Harry’s always been a better person than her at heart. Even at his angriest, he was a better person.
(Hermione was always thinking about the wrong things when the right things were standing right in front of her.
She wanted what she could not have.
She wanted everything.
She wanted—)
Harry kisses her. He moves forward, takes the step she always thought she would be the one to take, and kisses her. His hands find hers and he pulls her closer as he lips slide over hers and she sighs into the kiss, grips tighter to keep standing.
She’s almost afraid to close her eyes because this could so easily be just another fantasy, but she does.
--
Harry tastes different than Ron. Ron tastes of strawberry and cake and sweetness that makes her teeth ache sometimes. Harry tastes like the tea he likes so much.
His hands move so much faster, pulling at her waist to bring her closer, pulling at her clothes. He sighs and mutters under his breath (‘fuck’) but they don’t speak.
They are closer than they have ever been before, but they do not talk, they do not shatter the illusion.
He does not lead her to the bedroom, instead he lowers her down on the couch. The same couch they have sat on side by side so many times before, that she reads The Beetle and the Bard on and thinks of happily-ever-after’s that are made up only in her head. The same couch where his knee used to touch hers, his hand used to graze hers, and she thought that was the only piece of him she would ever get.
Harry is above her, his lips on her neck, and she sighs into his ear. Because God, if this wasn’t what she had always wanted but would never say out loud.
God, if this didn’t feel like a dream. (She had had this dream before.) But his hands are rough against her skin as he peels away her clothes until there is nothing left. And his chest is soft against her lips and he hisses when her teeth graze just the right spot.
This is no dream, no fantasy.
This is thought made reality.
And it is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wr—
“Oh.”
But he is inside her, he is part of her, and Hermione can’t find anything wrong about that.
(Tomorrow, she’ll be the terrible person she knows she is. She’ll go back to being her and dealing with reality.
Today, today she will live in the fantasy world they have built accidently. They will change the end of the book one kiss at a time.)
--
Harry stays the night, the two of them wrapped up together, a throw blanket around them. He holds her tight, like she might disappear, and she holds back, her nails in his arms, because she’s always been just as afraid that he might disappear.
Harry sleeps with his face in her neck, his lips grazing her skin, and she thinks she never wants it to end.
Hermione thinks this is them, back in the forest, back in the tent, just the two of them. That maybe, that had never really changed.
That maybe the fantasy had been everything that had come after.
Harry’s arms tighten around her and Hermione thinks.
This time they are more than just thoughts.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2014-07-05 02:25 am (UTC)WE COULD HAVE HAD IT AAAAAALLLL.
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Date: 2014-07-05 04:43 pm (UTC)ROLLING IN THE DEEEEEPPPPP.
(I need to get my self a HP icon again. ugh. i can never just stay with what i have.)
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Date: 2014-07-06 02:21 am (UTC)HP ICON!
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Date: 2014-07-05 06:29 pm (UTC)I LOVE how sad and wistful and hopeful this fic is. Where you get both that sense of ennui, and stasis, of having been stuck in a place long enough for it to have become a habit hard to break, and the constant transgressions related to the same in Hermione's mind, because that's the only real private space that she has, given not only her relationship with these two boys, but also the fact that she's essentially a war hero, so everything that they do seems both; so 'problem of three little people doesn't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world' and yet bigger than they are, precisely because of who these particular three people are. But for Hermione, it's always Harry and Ron without the titles, and maybe she should be a better person, the upright hero that everyone thinks she is, maybe Harry should be the hero that everyone thinks he is, but they're not, because they do silly, common things like falling in love with your (other) best friend and cheating on people who love them because they're so consumed by their own love, and they're not heroic at all in that, there's no glory in that particular story, and yet they live it out anyway, because that's the real story, that's how it actually goes.
I adore everything about Hermione's characterization; the moments of insecurity and jealousy and her being aware of it the whole time. The correlation of Harry and Ginny to James and Lily and how they've always been living out the stories pre-written for them, a destiny that was already inscribed before they had a say in the matter, and Hermione rejects that, the easy way, this surface approach to destiny of two people who may look alike, as if they're doomed to repeat the same story over and over. I love the meta-angle of the whole fic, the acknowledgment of the story which is already out there and which both of them are actively rebelling against. They're not only fighting their feelings, they're fighting to change something that precedes their feelings and of course Hermione is the one to challenge the narrative, because she's the one who reads the most, she's the one most aware of the tropes, and she's the one who refuses to be contained just because the alternative is messy and unheroic.
Also the quiet comfort that Harry and Hermione always share, how they, almost inevitably seem to end up alone together when they really shouldn't be (which is, of course, canon) and how slow and gradual their actual movements towards something else are, where their moments are built up more by the atmosphere than any concrete actions, which is so beautifully written, and visceral. The language-use is gorgeous because of all it manages to convey in a fic where the primary motivation is Hermione's thoughts and the things that these two don't say. It was beautiful and hot and basically everything in between, and you actually made ridiculously fantastic use of the prompt, for which you deserve mad props.
That maybe the fantasy had been everything that had come after.
WHO ALLOWED YOU EVEN.
/goes off to cry
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Date: 2014-07-10 02:25 pm (UTC)This was so beautiful ♥
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Date: 2020-01-04 03:25 pm (UTC)