Message in a Bottle

I was hoping you would write to me a message in the stars,

There were times when the stars were all we had. I, sitting under a thick blanket and still freezing, looking up at the vast night sky, meticulously naming all the constellations. And you, miles off, in a thin sleeping bag on dew covered ground, looking too at the heavens and only wanting to find the Dog Star and send a prayer to your patron mutt. The stars were our telegraph system, relaying our unspoken messages through the cosmos. And though we never saw the secrets splayed out on a giant storyboard we knew, me through woman's intuition and pure common sense, and you through a mysterious sense of male protectiveness. I'm not rightly sure how either of us heard those sacred thoughts, but oft times they were the very food and drink forcing me to breathe.
As if the stars themselves were not enough,

You gave me everything I could ever have desired. A library was built, I spent profitable days in there hiding from my demons, and insomnia created nights surrounded by the books confronting those very beasts. The house was hung in amazing and rare silks, but I have never cared for the material aspects of this life, and the over sized bed was meant for the likes of royalty, but it was never warm and I keep finding myself sleeping on the floor next to Jamie's bassinet, the floor is far more practical. Our bank accounts bulged, but I had to take a job to occupy my idle hands and overly busy mind. My jewelry box has more gems than the royal family's combined collections, but I have to turn my wedding band over and let the diamond cut into the palm of my hand so I remember that I am married.

I had everything. Everything except you.
And I awaited your arrival here from some place very far.

That was me. Sitting in the kitchen, juggling recipe cards from Molly, and a toddler, trying to make dinner for when you got home. A nice family dinner, something you never had as a child, something I thought, maybe, you'd appreciate. I'd have my face all done up, Jamie calmed down, and a fire in the grate when the owl came to explain to us, once again, why exactly it was you'd be in the field for another month. The homeless shelter and I were on first name terms, but at least the food never went to waste.
As if I couldn't feel your constant touch.

I know your holding my hand as I walk to the bank, as I pick Jamie up from primary school. Are you aware of the fact your daughter is in first grade? I can feel a warm hand on my shoulder as I pick out little pink booties for Alivia, my goddaughter. Fred had to be made godfather to Ron and Stephanie's daughter because somebody couldn't be there. Did you even know Ron was going to be a father? How about the fact that Oliver Wood just made the British International Team and took them to the Cup? Quidditch used to be your favorite thing; it was your passion, now you hardly even remember what a Quggle is. No matter, even as I read the newspaper and learn of each of these developments in turn I can still feel your warm, tickling breath on the back of my neck, your broad hand massaging the kinks out of my stressed neck.

It's almost as if you're here occasionally.
Why did I think that you'd send thunder?
To wake me from my slumber.
When anytime I open up my eyes....

Opening my eyes is a chore. Its hard enough answering all of Jamie's questions without actually telling her the truth. Questions like--Where is my daddy? He's going to come home someday soon sweetie. Do you love Uncle Draco? Where did you get a fancy idea like that sweetie? Did Fred and George tell you to ask that? Everyday is a challenge, I suppose I knew these questions were on the way, but it never particularly hit home until she was pulling on my skirts and asking them with that wide eyed innocence you never had. The first time I met you I was impressed, I kind of thought you'd be like the books said. The books called you a hero. After I got to know you I saw those eyes as something more than the vapid eyes of our savior, they were practically lifeless orbs. I think I only started seeing our salvation in their emerald depths after they began to shut me out. It was hard, your eyes were hard, but you were becoming a hero. I really wish you hadn't.
There you are - loving me like crazy.

The letters, when they come, are short, to the point, brief, and at best only ripped three times from long flight paths. I used to wonder where you were posted. I've stopped wondering now, curiosity hurts too much. I read those letters over and over to myself, and they are the lullabies that put me to sleep. Needless to say on the days when the post comes I do not spend the night in the library. I've kept every one you've ever written me, from the time since the war started and we were foolish seventeen year old lovers, glassy eyed and walking baskets of hormones. I was too smart, you were too brave, and we were just too darn perfect. The letters are in a neat bundle at the bottom of my trunk, under the most precious of my library, in a place where I will not be tempted to look. No temptation could cause me to move all those books in vain, only to find barely legible and hurried letters read so many times that there are acid burnt holes from the tears and the parchment has been held reverently so many times its delicate as silk. You always sign them with Love Harry.
There you are - though I am unaware.

It's hard to know you're watching over us, and half the time we don't realize it. Yes, it's us now. I told Jamie. I answered those questions. She's thirteen, a Third Year, a lion to boot; though I hoped she might be destined for the less dangerous paths of either Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff. She's wanted to know for two year why the other children all knew her. Why the Potions' Master tested her limits so often. She wanted to know why the Slytherins snicker at her and why the Gryffindors part in the halls for her. I think she was hoping for something other than the answer she got. I think she would rather you have died than to have lived but never made it home for Christmas. She doesn't understand that you're watching, doesn't comprehend your unique form of protection. Sometimes I don't think I understand either.
There you are - when my heart is doubting.

There are times when I think you're leading a double life again, like you were doing during seventh year. One face for class--a brave brooding boy who just knew he could save the world. A terribly different boy in bed where he sobbed piteously into my shoulder and prayed to gods he knew weren't listening. Maybe you've found something in a young auror you weren't getting from motherly me. I hope not, and I pretty much doubt it, but one can't keep their heart from pondering. I think I've got it figured to a tee now, you've married me, but you're wed to your work. At least you won't be having any children with the killing curse. Oh the irony.
Even there you are.

Yes, there you are...in happily moving photos on the mantel, in frames lining the wall. But mostly your in the memories, the memories I see in my restless sleep, the memories I regurgitate when I see couples stroll past the shop window in Diagon Alley, but your in the memories strongest when I tell Jamie stories over roasted marshmallows as she comes home for Christmas. I like having a full house at Christmas, so does Molly, and some how we end up splitting the holidays between the houses. I get Christmas Eve with all the drinking, she get Christmas Day with all the hangovers. I've told Jamie our legacy; the amazing Gryffindor Trio, she and Alluvia are particularly fond of the story about the Sorcerer's Stone. I think if Ron and I had told them sooner, when they were seven or so, they would have had mock mazes with tiny chess boards and dyed water. They're like that, get along great. But I think they'd be star struck to meet you. It's kind of perverse when your own daughter wants your autograph.
I was wishing for a miracle and waiting for a sign.

There is one thing I pray for when I blow out the birthday candles. There were thirty-three last September, can you imagine not seeing your spouse for fourteen years? I have one wish that I ask of those stars that used to connect us so, I half thought they might be a little tender because of our previous history within their twinkling arms. I lose and eyelash I make a wish, I go to sleep (which is rare) I say a Hail Mary, I find myself searching for four leaf clovers, and taking to Venus. I was never superstitious until I fell in love with you.
As if each breath I take is not a gift.

There was a moment, just barely more than a heartbeat, when my life flashed before my eyes. You were my blessing; I was your curse. I saw it all...the subtle touches to each other's arms when we didn't quite know we were in love, the batted eyelashes and rolled eyes when people made foolish assumptions, and then finally that first kiss when speculation became history. The hugs that became hands in back pockets, the slow dances that became long kisses, and the first time that became every night afterward. It's strange, but I saw time slow, surpassing the bonds of quantum theory, every jot of my life frame by frame. The first moments with my parents, remembering little details I could possibly never have know if it hadn't been for the fact I thought I was going to die. But after my parents every scene after is of you...you on a broom...you cursing at a chess board...you plotting with the twins...you holding me...you cradling me in one arm...you...you...you. I still see nothing but you.
And I was acting just as if the way you gave your life for mine.

Oh, you're not legitimately dead, not by legal, medical, or heart wrought meaning. You're only dead to history. Its like at Dumbdlore's funeral something broke in you, a heartstring snapped or something else equally foolish, and you volunteered for the reserve forces. Its almost ironic that the old man didn't die at the hands of evil, but he was 167 years old, what did you expect, he had it coming and I watched him embrace it. No, you didn't care, he was the fourth father you'd lost and you cracked. Instead you decided to be the man doing the leaving. You left a nineteen year old wife of three short months, a wife carrying a child in an already showing tummy, and a wife who pleaded with you not to go, a wife who threatened all kinds of torture. Maybe in your twisted mind you're making my burdens lighter. You coward.
Didn't have my foolish heart closed.

I've never dated anybody except you. I've never let myself fall in love, because it's hard to fall in love with a second man when you're still in the process of falling for the first. My heart hasn't sped up at the sight of a man, apart from Ginny's son Thomas, since you left. There is simply no one who makes me shiver in warm chords the way you do, no body who ever twirled my hair around a casual finger the way you did, and no one who ever made me quite so comfortable in myself. You always made me feel good enough for you, I was more than the smart chick, more than the Mudblood, more than the beaver, I was Hermione Granger, and I was all yours. I would give away the world to feel so alive again.
What did I think could cause this hunger?

The itch in the pit of my stomach has been steadily growing, gnawing away at me from the inside, and leaving a dazed mind in a body too smart to stop living. I long for the nights when Ron and Stephanie invite me over for dinner, when Ginny asks me to baby-sit, and especially when Jamie comes home on holiday. I like that feel of life in the house, it's as close as I can get to the sensation of having you home. I'm never quite satisfied, puzzles pieces are missing, like our home is incomplete, as though we forgot to install cabinets, but its not as simple as forgotten appliances. It's so much more, a stronger pull, a greater loss, it's you. You're lost.
Did I ever stop to wonder?

No, I always knew it was you. One kiss and I knew it was you and it was you forever. And it will always be you, regardless of the fact that you may presently be in the Amazon, I'm never going to give up on you, I'm not going to suddenly fall out of love. It doesn't work like that, I'm going to be in love with you...Harry Potter, until it hurts. But wait, it already does hurt, in fact it's the most painful and impure feeling in the universe, but I relish it. There is no stimulus on earth than that of love, rapture; it's the very thing that keeps me folding laundry, filing bills, singing in the shower. It's the most essential ingredient in the world, and not just to me, but to Ron, Luna, even Percy, to sixty billion Muggles, and then even to you. Yes you. I know you don't want to admit it, but you're just as in love, as capable of love, as in desperate need of love as I am. So stop fighting it and come home.
Why every time I open my eyes...

I see infinite reasons to give up, to stop being a mother and housekeeper, a teacher and best friend. But at the same time I have all these reasons to stop, but I have no reason, not a definite one, to drop love. I can't even formulate an equation of my life without your love in it, even if your love is little more than a figment of my imagination. I dream, in the nightmares, of what it would be to walk a day and not see your empty closet, a day without cursing the blasted ring on my finger, the last name on my mail. I will not grasp the fact that there is a distinct possibility in you suddenly quitting with the sparse owl and even rarer parcel. There may very well be a day when those exhibits of affection stop, but I'm not going to let that happen. You've got a daughter, you've got a life here, in London, and you've got me. Me, me, ME! I have to have faith that you're still tied to me, a faith that you will come home. Because you will come home, you have to, for me. For us.
There you are - loving me like crazy.
There you are - though I am unaware.

You do recall us don't you? It's a plural word, meaning people, more than one, and in this instant it means you Harry Potter, and your wife Hermione Granger-Potter. It's nearly self-explanatory. I cry dry tears that you think of this past world that you used to inhabit when you sleep at night, I tell Jamie, reassuringly; though she's fifteen, that someday her daddy will come home, and I lie myself into fruitless whorls of how you are racked with self-inflicted grief and sadness. You've got to be watching over us, you've just got to be.
There you are - when my heart is doubting.
Even there you are.

My dreams-there you are. My daughter's eyes and high cheek bones-there you are. My conversations I have with myself-there you are. The furious hope in my eyes-there you are. The extra tips to the post owls-there you are. My desk bulletin board-there you are. My trashy romance novels-there you are. My horoscope-there you are. My prayers-there you are. My ring finger-there you are. My bank account-there you are. My last will and testament-there you are. My unorthodox religion-there you are. My stray and rare thoughts-there you are. My kitchen-there you are. My diary-there you are. My weather blown mood-there you are. The vanity mirror near our bedroom door-there you are. In the soap operas I've become addicted to-there you are. My nightmares-there you are. My heart-there you are. My heart. You. There. In my heart. Still.
I was hoping you would write to me a message in the stars,

I've been waiting. I was starting to get impatient. Worried is more the word, I was frantic, a year since your last correspondence. I had stared reading the obituaries and taking blood pressure potions. We had a time, call it newlywed bliss, when we thought, actually at the time we thought we knew, thought we were planning, but they were no more than feeble road maps. We were going t start a big family, so you would never feel alone again. We were going to have romantic dances in the moonlight, so you could hold me and not answer the question 'What's wrong?' We were going to be together till death do us part, so you could emulate your parents. Instead we have one daughter who you've never seen, we caught pneumonia because dancing in the rain is cold, and anniversary means you've spent more than two years together.

I was waiting for romantic phenomena. I've found our miracle...
As if the stars themselves were not enough.

He's standing on my doorstep, wet from an early Easter downpour, looking daggers at the mud caking his shoes. I screamed, you smiled grimly, I pounce and Jamie runs down the stairs, utterly confused. This is that beginning the stories speak of. The beginning that happens even after the appropriate and more convenient, though painful, ending. Suddenly my heads no longer too heavy to hold up, my mascara isn't impervious to water, and I'm holding those stars in my hand.

You're standing on my doorstep.