I'll Wait For You Forever...

"Every night, it's the same dream. I'm standing in the streets...it's dark, and though there are people all around me, I'm more alone than I have ever been. And then he comes. It's the same shadowy figure, and I can't see him clearly, yet I know he's a male...I've always known...I don't know how...he comes toward me, and then stops abruptly.

'Tell me you love me,' he whispers. The voice is so...familiar...and at the same time the most foreign sound to ever reach my ears.

'How can I love you,' I whisper back, 'when I don't even know you?'

And then he laughs, and reaches for me, and his touch is the only thing that changes...sometimes it's malicious...he wants to hurt me...at times it's so soft...almost as if he's inviting me to make love...I'm scared of him...and they're so real...at times I don't know if I'm awake or asleep..."

"When did you say these dreams started, Ms. Granger?"

"I don't remember exactly, doctor...I'd say after the War...when the Weasleys were murdered...when Harry disappeared..." a few tears dropped from Hermione's face.

Dr. Skanovich handed Hermione a tissue. He always had them ready when he had appointments with her. She'd never gotten over the losses she'd experienced throughout the Final Battle. Voldemort had killed the entire Weasley family and most of her old schoolmates. Her fiancé, Harry Potter, disappeared. Most assumed that Voldemort had finally killed him, though no body was ever found. Dr. Skanovich was convinced that so many losses in such a short span of time, when she was so young (after all the War had begun when she was a mere fifteen years old), triggered most of her nightmares and bouts of depression.

"Alright, Hermione...that's all the time we have for today. I'll see you same time next week, okay."

The young woman nodded. Then grabbed her purse and left the office.

Hermione couldn't figure out what was wrong with her. It had been seven years since Harry had left for the Final Battle. She remembered that day as vividly as if it had occurred only moments ago.....

"Harry, don't go..." she begged, holding onto his robes, tears streaming down her face. "Stay here with me...we'll leave the Wizarding world and live as Muggles until this is all over..."

"Hermione, you know I have to go..." he answered softly, wiping the tears from her face. "Dumbledore needs me...the Ministry needs me. This is my destiny...This is why I lived..."

"So you can give him chance after chance to finish you off?! Harry you're only eighteen...we're engaged...we should be planning our wedding and our lives together..."

"I swear to you that when I come back, after Voldemort has been defeated, I'll be yours for eternity. I don't know how long I'll be gone...but promise you'll wait for me? I don't know if I could keep my will to live unless I knew I had your beautiful face waiting for me when I come home..."

Hermione threw her arms around him and held him tightly. "I love you Harry Potter. And I'll wait for you. I'll wait for you forever..."

But the battle had ended after only a few months. Voldemort was killed. And Harry never returned home...

She had waited for him in their flat for a year and half. Hoping that he'd just been injured, unable to find the strength to come home to her. She waited, and waited and waited. And she soon gave up the hope that her lost love was alive. After that, Hermione exiled herself from the Wizarding world almost completely. Dr. Skanovich and her room mate, Ginny Weasley (the only survivor) were the closest she'd come to her former life of Magic. Ginny, too, had withdrawn from the Magical Community. The girls lived as Muggles in a small apartment in a small country town. They assumed that the rural country was as far as they could get from all things that haunted them. Though she didn't need to work, as Harry's entire fortune had been left to her after they officially pronounced him dead, Hermione chose to save that money...just in case. She and Ginny worked in a small roadhouse bar every night and got along well with their neighbors.

"What'd the doctor have to say?" Ginny asked when Hermione returned home.

"Same as usual...it's the losses...post traumatic stress...all that bullshit," Hermione grumbled as she dropped onto the couch.

"What do you think it is?"

"I don't know, exactly...but those dreams I keep having...they aren't just dreams or nightmares. They're too real. They mean something...that man...he's real...and they keep getting more and more detailed...it's like he's getting closer..."

"You don't think it's Voldemort...the spirit of him, anyway, do you?...Is it a Death Eater?"

"No...he's too close to me. I can feel it when he's in my dreams...I know him...Sometimes I think it's Harry's ghost, coming to tell me to move on...but there are times when he seems he wants to hurt me...physically, emotionally...and it can't be Harry..."

"I wish I could help you 'Mione...but I don't know what to say..." Ginny sighed, taking her friends hand.

"Thanks, Gin," Hermione offered a weak smile. "But I don't know what to say either."