Aftermath

Loss

Hermione was sleeping. A veritable non-event, it was true, but to him at that moment, it was, indescribable.

With curfew just ended, Harry had stepped out a bit, tired of the restriction of the house, and returned to find her lying on the sofa beneath the window, bathed in the burnished gold of the morning sunlight.

She was clad only in a camisole and pyjama bottoms with her long, bushy hair in a very messy ponytail and curled up in the squashy cushions of the sofa for what clearly looked like comfortable sleep. Her breathing was slow and rhythmic, though occasionally hitched by something in her dreams that seemed rather pleasant so far. Her body was relaxed, though her brow was slightly furrowed and her cheeks lined by the sticky tracks of earlier tears. Under the light of the sun her brown hair was streaked with gold and long, honeyed eyelashes on heavy lids shut out the cruel reality of the outside world.

When last was it that he had seen her like this, he could not tell, but there she was and he had not the heart to disturb her. Neither of them had slept probably since... and now she was just, in a word, peaceful. He stood then, carefully surveying her, recording her appearance for fear it would slip away in another instant, before finally moving over to shut the blinds above her.

It was a clear morning out, with wisps of clouds visible here and there in the pale blue sky. The rich green earth was sprinkled in light dew, the last of the mist slowly departing, and had just soaked his toes and pyjama bottoms accordingly. It was also rather cool, as it had been throughout the war, with each morning seemingly mocking them. Now they could enjoy it though, but she did not.

His hands halted their progression over the lace though when he stared down at her again. So little had really changed between this morning and the day before, but then so much had. And strangely, his mind ran it over again, like some eerie, internal playback.

Hermione was crying.

Pooling at the corners of her eyes, the salty liquid glinted as it blazed tracks down her face where it shook loose unto her clothes with the shudder of her sobs. Her bushy brown hair was wild about her head, a few stray strands sticking to her face with her tears, which every now and then were wiped away as she dried her tears. Somehow or the other, she had managed to cocoon herself into her black dress robes and this was how she lay with him on the floor in what had once been Ron's room at the Burrow.

The funeral had ended hours ago, just in time for curfew. A solemn affair on a bright day of clouds like billowing white sails, a deep blue sky and sweetly singing birds Ron should have lived to see.

The sun was now disappearing beneath the horizon in brilliant colours of orange, hot pink and violet and a silence was descending over the countryside. As it went though, it had a haunting effect of leaving the bright orange, zooming Chudley Cannon poster covered room strangely bland and the pair leaned against the bed on the floor looking rather out of place.

Harry was numb to this though.

He was only aware of the silence; Hermione's echoing sobs, the unnatural sticky warmth of her forehead under his palm and a slightly hollow feeling in his chest. It hurt more than losing Sirius and Dumbledore had. It felt like someone had stuck a knife in his chest and continued to twist it until they tore his heart to shreds and left him cold. He could not cry, not anymore, his tears had stopped flowing the moment they had commanded Ron to his finally resting place. But Hermione would cry for the both of them, she had the strength to do that.

This was not the way he had intended for them to begin their lives after the war. Not with Ron dead and he and Hermione left crying on the floor of his room with his family. As a matter of fact, he had not really thought much of life for him after the war.

He had usually thought of Ron and Hermione marrying and having a lot of children like Ron's parents. Or maybe one, he was not sure of what Hermione would want; he had never really thought of what Hermione would want.

He had thought of Ginny marrying some famous Quidditch player and living a comfortable life somewhere close to home, Mrs Weasley would never allow them to move far.

He had thought of Neville opening a horticultural shop somewhere in Diagon Alley or becoming a Herbology teacher like Professor Sprout.

He had even thought of Luna Lovegood taking over The Quibbler from her father and finding a Crumple-Horned Snorkack.

But not this, he had never thought of something like this.

Suddenly, Hermione stopped crying and sat up and looked at him. Brown eyes puffy and red, her face flushed, hair damp and wild, she gave him her most piercing gaze and then asked, "What are we going to do now?"

She sniffled a bit and then looked down at her hands.

He did not know what to tell her.

He had been thinking that same thing for all of the three weeks they had spent at St Mungo's. Two weeks of that time was for recovery, one was probably just to get over the shock.

Lupin had told him that he had done enough, that the Order had the upper hand now so that he should rest. A Ministry of Magic official had advised them that it was best to remain there until they had prepared the Burrow for their arrival, and that they would be out of the reach of the reporters. They could not deal with those reporters now, not now.

A soft moan from the sofa beneath him cut into his reminiscence and he dropped his hands from the curtain.

The rest of the Burrow was still asleep, even the ghoul had given it a rest, in the silence her moan seemed to echo.

Hermione was stirring but did not wake. She turned instead, onto her left side, turning her face into the sofa and twisting just that much to get comfortable but also allowing him a view of a scar she had unfortunately acquired during the war. It was only once they were out of that graveyard that he noticed the still bleeding wound that led to it.

He moved closer to her on the sofa, watching as the light captured and warmed his pale skin, and then hesitantly sat down. Even more hesitantly then, he reached out to her and carefully traced the crescent shaped outline to where it stopped just above the pyjama waist line.

He did not want her to have that scar; it was his entire fault that she had that scar.

But there were other scars too.

Like those newspaper stories they had managed to read in the hospital in their last week there. Someone had managed to get them a few and they found, rather to their disappointment, that they were all the same. All printed two days after the event as they had been awaiting confirmation that he had lived in the first place, and then also because they were just that afraid that the Death Eaters would get them.

The Daily Prophet ran bold, "A Prophecy Fulfilled: Harry Potter Defeats the Dark Lord!" and followed it with, "The Chosen One Victorious: Showdown at Dawn!" It made him think of those old American Muggle westerns Dudley sometimes watched, seeing as he would look at anything anyway.

The Evening Prophet continued his titling then with, "Boy-Who-Lived becomes Man-Who-Triumphed!"

Perfect, a new moniker to haunt him to his grave.

The Quibbler, in classic fashion, was the only one who failed to actually run an entire story on him. In fact, under the banner, "Conspiracy in the Mist: The Ministry's Secret Weapon!" he was briefly mentioned somewhere in the middle in connection to some obscure power-sapping disease to explain the fact that the trio were still missing from view.

This earned them his lifetime subscription and he cancelled Hermione's subscriptions to the previous two. It would hurt her to read them when they all acted as if he had defeated the Dark Lord alone, and even completely disregarded Ron's death. It was best for her that he had to do it. She may not like The Quibbler, but she could learn.

Witch Weekly went with tradition as a woman's magazine, with a headline that earned a brief smile from Hermione, "Harry Potter: Boy-Who-Lived Reinvents Knight-in-Shining-Armour!"

Seeing her smile again, though only briefly, was wonderful. But her smiles never stayed if and when they came; there was another more pressing concern. As he drew down her top to cover the scar, promising to teach himself a proper spell that may remove it, he slipped into his thoughts again.

He failed to notice the slight quiver of an eyelid as Hermione peered curiously up at him from her vantage point on the sofa.

Their third night there, significantly rested, Harry rose from his bed and wandered down the darkened corridor to Hermione's room.

He found her lying under the light of a silvery white moon, staring blankly out at the night sky. She looked as lost as he felt, as lonely as he was, and all the same, as if she was relieved that it was all over. They had survived the war, Ron had not suffered, the remaining Death Eaters were being rounded up, they should not be sad.

And yet they were.

That was when he first thought of it.

Now that it was all over, that he had fulfilled the prophecy and saved the Wizarding world, what exactly was he to do? What were they to do?

He had not had an answer then.

The reporters had finally gotten to them at the funeral today. They had been everywhere, staring and recording and snapping their photographs. For the first time in possibly ever Harry found himself wishing they were still under the government control. He could almost see the headline now, "Harry Potter Grieves in Arms of Muggle-born Friend!" followed by a no doubt sordid tale of secret affairs and love in the midst of war that would make Rita Skeeter proud.

Mrs Weasley and her remaining sons were furious. Losing Arthur and Percy was difficult enough, but now that Ron was gone too, could they not just bury him in peace? She eventually just broke down and had to be comforted by Ginny and Fleur, various other Weasley family members looked either indignant or grieved, and Hermione shook so much that he had to hold her.

They had always been so welcome with the Weasleys, but this was a family grief. No matter what they had told them, he and Hermione were not really part of the family and so they clung to each other.

And then he thought of it again.

And now Hermione had given voice to his thoughts, "What are we going to do now?"

He tried to form words to a reply but found that none would come. Nothing he could think of would fit, and he dared not say that he had never really thought of his future when it came to the aftermath.

She was not the smartest witch of her generation for nothing though.

She interpreted his silence and replied simply, "Oh," and after a moment turned her head away to the window.

Now he had a multitude of replies and tried to give them all at once, surprised at how loud his voice sounded in the silence.

"It's not what you think... I just... I never really had much to hope for... that's not right... I was doing this for you all... I didn't need to think past what was at hand or I would never..." and then he gave up. She had risen from the floor and was walking to the window.

When she got there she stood for a time just staring at the deepening twilight and then said, "My parents want me to go with them to France... I think I should..."

Before he could stop himself Harry replied, "What... no! You promised... y-you said that... that you wouldn't leave me."

The last part came out quietly as he realised how childish and selfish that must sound.

He began again.

"Oh... when... when do they want you to go?"

To his surprise she turned on him angrily, "Why are you in such a hurry to get rid of me? Is it that when I'm out of the way, your ever-present burden, you'll be finally free to run off to wherever you please? Silly, useless Hermione, packed off with her parents to France..."

A surge of anger flowed through him instantly and he snapped, "Don't be daft; I was trying to be a friend!"

"Some friend you are then, why don't you stop me, I would never let you leave when you made a promise to stay!" she shot back heatedly and then suddenly, alarmingly, began to cry again.

"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry... I just... I can't..." she stopped and walked back to where he still sat on the floor beside Ron's bed.

He opened his arms and allowed her to embrace him and cry into his chest.

"Fine, you don't have to go, we'll stay here," he told her as stroked her hair like Ron did at Dumbledore's funeral. He was not really sure of how to comfort her; this seemed to have worked before.

He swallowed as he thought of Ron.

Her voice was almost terrified when she replied, "No, not here, I can't stay here."

"What do you mean, Mrs Weasley...?" he asked but she rose away from him, leaving a curious, sudden sense of loss.

Her eyes looked strangely frightened as she said, "I can't stay here... we shouldn't... they have..."

She stopped and looked at him pleadingly.

He replied, "But Mrs Weasley, I mean, she won't let me... not now... not after losing Ron, and especially not after today."

"Then I can't stay here with you... I can't take this... I don't know what to do tomorrow or next week or any days after that, but I do know that I can't stay here," she told him.

He took a moment to think it all through and found only one reply, "Why?"

Her eyes seemed just that more frightened from moments before, "Why? Because there's too much of Ron... this is Ron's room, we're in Ron's house with Ron's family and Ron is not here... I don't want to be here if he isn't."

She started sobbing again and he drew her back into his arms.

The strange thing was, the moment she said that, he realised that he thought the same thing too.

Looking at her now he wondered if she even knew that he had spent half the night after thinking of an answer to that question.

For a reason as yet unknown to him, he needed to have one, but there were many others now anyway.

He needed it, for he did not want to see that pained look in her eyes again when she realised that he had none to give. He needed it for the strength to let her go off to bed alone when it always appeared to cause her physical pain to leave him. He needed it, to quell his own storm within. The one that raged on two sides, the former blaming himself for not arriving fast enough, and the latter reminding him that he could not have known, but begged the same question overall, "What are we going to do now?"

Suddenly, Hermione's hand reached up to his arm and he started. He had slipped off into a daydream and had not even noticed when she turned right over unto her back with a slightly worried look on her face.

He looked away to recover his expression and then said, "I went out for a walk, found you sleeping here... if Mrs Weasley had seen you, she would have been upset."

She seemed almost disappointed by his answer.

She turned her back to him and said, "I was worried about you, I woke up and you weren't in the room with Charlie, I thought... I..." and she could not finish.

He tried to turn her back to him, but she would not. If he wanted to continue this conversation he would have to do it with her back turned.

He took a moment before saying, "I'm sorry."

That got her attention. She turned her head back to look at him.

"I didn't mean to scare you... I mean, I begged you to stay with me and most of the time I'm... I'm always going away... wandering off." He said this all while averting his gaze, not wanting to see her expression when he said next, "But you see, I have a lot on my mind now... and yesterday... there is so much... I mean, with Voldemort gone, where do I go now? Can I still be an Auror? Can I play Quidditch? Can I just have peace? And Ron's not here... how am I... how are we supposed to go on with all our plans if Ron is not here with us? It's always been the three of us... we're incomplete when it's just two."

He knew he was trying to be strong for her, like he always did. But his heart was still raw from the wound of losing Ron and his voice broke in his speech. He was sure that he choked a few times too and this meant that Hermione was soon sitting up and gathering him in her arms so that his head rested just beneath her chin on her chest.

"Oh Harry," she began, "I didn't, I never meant to upset you, I just... yesterday I was sad, really sad... I still am too... but you don't have to worry about those things anymore, as long as we are together, like I promised you, nothing is going to hurt us."

Very much like a child, Harry asked, "Do you mean it?"

She tightened her arms around him a bit and said, "I think we're together forever Harry," and then after a pause, "No, I know it. Nothing is going to take me away from you. We'll hurt, we'll cry, but then we'll move on, like he would have wanted us to, and nothing, is going to stop me, from being with you."

Strangely, he believed her.