Legends

Hermione stepped out into the field near her small house, admiring the large, luminous moon that hung low in the sky.

George sat on the front steps of their house, taking in her profile as it soaked in the moonbeams that cast velvet shadows on her face.

As he watched her rock on her feet, he wondered at how they had both ended up there. The road to their life together was paved with cobblestones of blood, tears, and misery, it seemed sometimes.

She had been cast-off after the war, after the world was finished with their heroes. She had been sentenced to a sort of strange celebrity, loved, hated, and feared all at once.

But what had bothered him the most was how unaffected she was by it. Ron had raged fiercely, protecting their privacy with curses and threats. Harry had retreated into silence, rarely letting anyone in outside his personal circle of friends.

But Hermione had merely glided through it all. Everyone cosseted her, talking about how wonderfully she was taking it all.

George knew better.

As Hermione began to pace back and forth, he recalled how they had gotten together.

It had been a night like this, only much more noisy, and at the Burrow. Everyone was over for a nice dinner, and he remembered Hermione talking with Harry, holding a glass of wine. She had wandered back and forth the entire night, chatting, laughing, just like everyone else.

He stepped outside to get away from the cacophony and stumbled onto Hermione staring at the large moon.

He made his way over, said his hellos, and they stood there for a while, letting the rich night make the silence comfortable.

"What's so interesting about the moon?" he asked, finally.

"It's a harvest moon," she replied, almost dreamily. He waited for the rest, waited for the inevitable barge of information that would pour from her mouth.

Nothing came.

And that's when he knew that something was wrong.

So he waited, not making a sound. Hermione began to fidget, looking at him nervously from the corner of her eye, but he merely enjoyed the view, both of the sky, and, to his surprise, Hermione.

My, she had grown.

And he still waited.

Finally, she burst out with an angry, "What?! What are you waiting for?"

George merely looked at her blankly. "I'm waiting," he said neutrally, "for Hermione to come back and tell me what the hell a harvest moon is."

She scowled. "I'm right here."

He looked at her from the corner of his eye. "No, she's not," he said flatly. "Hermione would have told me what a harvest moon was, because she knows I'm an idiot and don't know these sorts of things. Then I would have made a wisecrack, she would have made a witty remark, we'd banter, laugh, and then go in and one of us would torment Ron. Instead, she's gaping like a six year old at me, as if I'm the smart and mysterious one."

Hermione's eyes flashed with rage. "I'm exactly the same."

George snorted. "No, you're not. Because if you were, you wouldn't be so offended. The Hermione I know, the one I care about, wouldn't care, because she doesn't get that angry when someone says something about her personality that she know's not true. You look like her- just as cute, really- but you're not her."

He walked off, a bit disgruntled, before a wee, soft voice caught his attention.

"You- you think I'm cute?"

He had spent the rest of the night comforting her, letting her sigh and cry, but more importantly, laugh and chatter on, about life in general. They had fallen asleep beneath the swollen moon, and he had awoken just before dawn, his arm around her shoulders and her hand, grubby with dirt and tears, fisted in his shirt.

He remembered their first kiss; a pure accident, in the dark, George stumbling and Hermione catching and their faces smashing together. He remembered the first time they held hands; at nightfall, Hermione getting lost and George groping for her and her deciding not to let go. Memories seemed to mesh together as he smiled. Blood and tears and misery, to be sure, but paved together with smiles and laughter and love.

He got up and walked over to her, putting his elbow on her head, which he knew irritated her to no end. She pinched him in the side, and for a moment, they laughed quietly, the moon eating their chuckles.

"I'll be inside," he said, stooping down to gather her face in his hands and kissing her soundly. She nodded, kissed him back, and watched him start back towards their house.

"You know," she said suddenly. He turned around and looked at her.

"In China," she continued, "there's a legend. A woman named Chang Er took a special pill to become a fairy, so she could fly away and escape her husband. They say there that you can see Chang Er in the Harvest Moon, which happens to be when the moon is at it's fullest and brightest."

George smiled. "Are you going to fly away from your husband too?"

"No," she said nonchalantly. "You see, I'm rather fond of mine. Besides," she added with a small grin of her own, "in other cultures, the harvest moon marked a time for... much more fun things to do with one's husband."

George took off for their bedroom. As he got into bed and slid under the covers, he stared into the moon, now high in the sky and lighting up their room.

He realised that for every important moment in their life, it had been shining on them.

It was rather lucky indeed.

Fin