Saying the Words

Saying the Words

It's not easy when your best friend is the saviour of the wizarding world. It's even harder when your other best friend is the woman you love.

You've never spoken of it to anyone. You don't know how, and even if you did, how do you know that it's really love? How do you know that what you feel for her is not some result of the loneliness you've felt since Harry became so distant?

You want to tell her; sometimes, late at night, when she rests her head on your shoulder and cries over war, and death, and Harry, you want to say the words. Those three little words that are so impossible to say aloud. I love you.

You can't remember ever saying it to anyone. You don't, really, when you have five older brothers. Who would you say them to? You remember your mother telling you that she loves you, when you were a child, and you would tell her back, but that's a different kind of love - maternal love - not like this.

That was back when you were a child, for you are one no longer. Childhood means innocence, purity, naivety, and you have none of those things anymore. How could anyone have seen what you have seen, and still be innocent?

You are an adult now, feeling adult emotions. Hate. No child ever feels hate, even though they say it. But you hate this war, you hate the people who have destroyed your best friend, and most of all you hate your own loneliness.

Maybe that's all that this 'love' is. A result of the aching loneliness that has slowly grown inside of you since people started avoiding your company, and your best friend deserted you.

Harry's gone. Not in a physical sense, but the part of Harry that was once Harry is gone. The smiling part of Harry, and now all you have left is an empty shell. This war has taken the positive part of Harry from you, and you cannot stop yourself believing that it has gone forever.

That is what Hermione cries on your shoulder about, among the death and the horrors of war. Your lost friend. You hold her, wrapping your arms around her sobbing body, breathing in her perfume and the smell of her hair, and you want to say the words.

You want to so badly, but you can't. You remember, back in fourth year, when Neville asked her to the Yule Ball, and the way she looked at him for so long afterwards. Not with disgust, or regret, but a strange kind of pity. You don't think you could ever bear to have her look at you like that.

You can't remember when this feeling started, actually. You suppose that it was back when you actually realised that she was a girl, not just a friend who happened to be female. You can remember the feelings of jealousy you had when you saw her with Viktor Krum, and you don't know why you ever realised what that jealousy meant. Eventually, when you had realised, you would watch handholding and shy kisses, and wish that you were him. You would wonder if that wishing was slowly killing you.

Of course, that's stupid, you tell yourself. Emotions can't kill you. But then you think of Harry, and you realise that, actually, they can. Emotions can kill you. Constant fear and pain and aching loneliness can kill you. Eventually you will become what Harry has become: empty and emotionless, because it hurts too much to feel anything.

Yet you can't get away from these feelings, and you can't escape the war. Hermione and the war are both part of the wizarding world, and without this world, you are lost.

You try to decide what Harry would do in your situation, because Harry is bold and brave and beautiful, and always seems to know what to do. But you are so unalike, and you realise that the part of Harry that felt anything is gone, so you give up trying to imagine. Harry is lost, and it's forever. You would bear the load if you could, but you can't. You are weak, and helpless to decide your own fate.

All you can do is sit at night with your arms around the woman you love, and try to say the words.