The Day the World Changed

Chapter 3 - Promises Made and Promises Broken

Harry was sitting in a hard metal chair staring at his hands. Hermione couldn't stop staring at them either. Even though he'd washed them at least twenty times since that morning, all she could see when she looked at them was the blood that clung to them as he clutched at Ron.

Oh, God. Ron, she thought as she moved to take the teapot from the stove, and quickly set it down on the counter before the empty feeling inside caused her to lose the ability to grip it in her hands. She brought her hand up to cover her mouth and prevent a whimper from escaping. Oh, God, what am I going to do without you? What are we going to do?

It had taken hours to deal with the details of the Burrow. Harry and Hermione had held Ron's body between them until the medi-witches came to take him away. Even had they gotten there, soon, there was no way they could have done anything to help him. Lucius Malfoy was nothing if not thorough. He had cast a spell on Ron's blood keeping it as thin as possible so he would bleed out far, too quickly to make any kind of aid useful.

Ron had gasped his last breath holding tightly to the hands of his best friends as they tried not to weep too heavily before he slipped away from them. He couldn't speak to them, but they kept on talking to him--telling him that everything was going to be fine and how he was going to be up on his broom in no time playing Quidditch and pestering Hermione about her bookishness. Even after his lagging breaths had stopped, Harry and Hermione held onto his hands whispering words of comfort that they could only hope reached him from beyond whatever veil he had passed through.

Draco was completely hysterical and had to be sedated just so they could move him away from the glass barrier surrounding the Burrow. After the medi-witches forced him to take enough sleeping draught to put out an army, he continued to say Ginny's name in a heart wrenching half gasp, half whisper that tore Hermione up inside. His anguished wail was still echoing in her head two hours after Remus forced her to take Harry back to their makeshift sleeping quarters.

As neither Harry nor she had anywhere else to live, they had set up some rooms within Grimmauld Place as a temporary suite. They'd been living there since moving out of Hogwarts a few months prior, and it couldn't have been more convenient as the briefing room and Order meetings took place just down the hallway. They didn't have much time to make it their own, but the space still took on their individual traits as a home inevitably does, even without much effort. It was their home. It was also a sight safer than if the she and Harry had attempted to find a place to live on the outside. So within the walls that Sirius had once considered a prison, there were many nights when Harry and Hermione were able to pretend that they were almost normal people, living in a lousy but safe and therefore acceptable apartment away from the worries of Voldemort and Death Eaters.

Nothing felt safe or acceptable, though, when they finally walked through the doors and into their tiny living room and kitchen that night. The silence was echoing all alone the passage ways, screaming at the two of them. And Harry's hands seemed to touch everything and nothing and fill the room with memories from the day.

When she managed to control her emotions, Hermione picked up the teapot and poured two cup full. One for her and one for Harry. She steeled her hands against any tremors and walked over to Harry's chair.

"Here," she said. "Have a cuppa." He wordlessly took the cup, but simply set it down on the end table beside him. She watched him, and then, with a sigh, moved back to the kitchen counter where she set her own cup down and turned her back to Harry, his hands, and the memories they evoked.

"He's gone," he said in an icy, empty voice after several minutes of total silence.

"I know," she answered without turning around. Somehow she was determined to hold herself together for just a few more moments. That awful empty sound that she heard in Harry's voice was threatening her as much as the images that continued to flash before her eyes.

"They're all gone," he continued in that toneless way of speech. "Ron. Molly. Arthur. Ginny. All of them. He's taking them away from me one by one. My parents, Sirius, Neville, Hagrid. One by one by one until they're all gone."

"Jesus, Harry. Stop it," Hermione turned again to face him. Somewhere along his litany of names he had gotten up and moved to the one boarded up window in the room. He stared so hard at the wood, that she was almost certain that he was seeing something beyond it.

"How long can this bloody hell go on?" he demanded suddenly, sounding angrier than Hermione and seen him in years. He spun around and looked wildly at her blank face. "Can you tell me that? Can you? How long will I have to watch Voldemort rip to shreds ever piece of the life I've been trying to build for myself?"

"What do you want me to say, Harry?" she said spreading her hands palm up towards the air, the frustrations of the day finally getting to her as well. She let the exasperation and the exhaustion color every word she let loose. "Just what is it you want me to tell you? Do you want me give you the same line we threw Ron over and over again this morning? That everything's going to be ok? Do you? Is that what you want, Harry? Is it?"

He let out of quick puff of air that was a grunt of a laugh. "You have no idea what's going on, 'Mione," he spit out her nickname. "You have absolutely no bloody clue. What is it that I want? My life is a series of wants that I can never have, Hermione! I want a mother. I want a father. I want to wake up and not be afraid of finding another friend dead on the ground. I want to know that there will be a tomorrow worth fighting for! I want to know that the world that I once looked up to isn't counting on just me to save the bloody day when all I want to do half the time is tell it to piss-off. Jesus Christ!" He turned away from her just went she saw the tears start to leak out from the dark lash of his tired green eyes. "And it doesn't matter what I do because everything is so--so--fuck all!" He swiped his hand through his unkempt hair to try and hide the tracks running down his face.

He started to head towards his own make-shift room, but she couldn't let him go like that. She couldn't watch him walk away from her when neither of them was sure what was going to happen the next day. She couldn't let him walk away already berating himself for yelling his frustration and hurt at her. Not when she ran the risk of hearing that awful emptiness creep back into his voice like it had earlier. Hermione grabbed his right wrist and tugged, forcing him to face her.

"Don't you dare walk out that door, Harry Potter. Don't you dare. Yes, you want. Yes things are all fucked up. Yes people are looking to you to be some sort of leader. And yes no one but you could possibly know just how shitty all that is. Yes. But Christ, Harry, you are the Boy Who Lived. You're not the Boy Who Lived Only to Ruddy Martyr Himself in Silence. Talk to me! Scream at me. Spit at me. Do whatever you want just don't shut down and turn into that robot I was listening to a few minutes ago. Feel something, for Christ's sake!" She was shaking with the struggle to keep from breaking down herself. "Do you forget that I've lost just like you have? I've put the people I love at risk, too, and that didn't turn out all that well either, did it? I want you to talk to me, dammit! TALK TO ME!" Hermione shouted her last demand so loudly, Harry rocked his head backwards.

Somewhere in the middle of her diatribe, Hermione found herself wrapping her arms around Harry, trying to force him to stay with her bodily if he wouldn't do so emotionally. Her shaking became so violent that she could barely force to words from her mouth. "Please, Harry. Please. Tell me what it is you want, so I can at least pretend that you're not going to leave me, too."

There was a long pause and it took a moment for her to realize that she wasn't the only one shaking anymore. Harry pulled her even closer to him and finally let out some of the sobs that he had be struggling so hard to keep inside. They clung to each other desperately trying to keep all the monsters that they had learned were real at bay.

"I--I--want," he choked out between wracking sobs, "I want someone to hur--hurt as much as I do! I--want to stop fee--feeling this hurt!"

Harry pressed his face into her should clutching her to him so tightly she thought her ribs would start to crack. And in a voice she almost didn't hear, he whispered, "It should have been me."

Hermione straightened and ripped herself out of his grasp so intense was the force of her anger. She grabbed the sides of Harry's face between her palms and forced him to look her straight in the eyes. "Don't you ever, ever say that again, Harry. Ever!" She shook her hands once so that he could see how serious she was. "When I looked at that projection today and saw that blood on Ron's jumper, all I could think was how everything was gone. How the trio was over, and that nothing would ever be the same again. How there were so many things that we had all left unfinished. This--this thing with Lucius Malfoy--it's all a game to him. It's a sick twisted crap shoot. It could have been any of us lying there this morning. You, me, Remus. He had a point to make and he fucking made it! But don't think for a second that I'm going to let you believe it should have been you lying there on the ground any more than it should have been Ron. We all take risks in this war, and we all pay for them. All of us! Draco and Ginny were in love and they took a chance and paid for it. When we were still in school, Sirius took risks and paid for them. It's what happens in a war, Harry."

Hermione let her arms slide away from his face as she stepped away from him and wrapped her arms around herself trying to fight the cold that was suddenly threatening her entire body. "Today I lost one of the last two people on this planet who give a good goddamn about me. Am I going to have to fear that the last one is going to ride off in some half-cocked, blaze of self-pitying, self-satisfied glory, only to leave me behind as well? Am I?" The cold finally took hold of her and she dropped to her knees. "Is that the way I'm going to have to pay? With everyone who's ever mattered to me?"

She dropped her chin to her chest and let the tears fall, continuing to repeat the word "everyone" over and over again. When she felt strong slender arms gathering her up she stiffened for a moment but was quickly soothed by the warm hand she running up and down her back.

"I won't leave you, 'Mione. I won't ever leave you," she heard him say chant into her hair where he had buried his face, almost as if saying it enough would make it true. Even if it was a promise he could never be sure he could keep, the words meant something to her. She knew that if there was any way on earth, Harry wouldn't break his promise to her.

That was one thing that this hellish war could never change. Hermione knew that Harry would never lie to her.