The Two Who Lived

 

 

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One year ago today. Three hundred and sixty-five complete days since the final fall of Lord Voldemort. And of those whose lives helped bring that end, at the cost of their own.

The small—and now squid-free—lake on the now-quiet grounds of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was a barely rippling sheet of silver under the pale summer moonlight, the faint wisps of fog above it contributing to the image in eighteen-year-old Harry Potter’s mind of an extremely large Pensieve—much like the one that once stood in Professor Dumbledore’s office—and maybe it was; his mind certainly had enough going through his mind for such a thing to be possible.

(It would have been nice if it could have been that simple—to simply remove whatever thought from your brain that you wished, no matter how horrible, to set it aside indefinitely...)

It looked so much like one that Harry suppressed the almost-mad urge he had to lean forward and touch it, for fear it would actually pull him into the tides of his memory... what had happened here a year ago was still clear enough in his mind that no Pensieve was necessary... standing here, he still felt the familiar tuggings of sadness on his mind, the side effect of the far more acute memories.

If it hadn’t been for the fact that he’d been in the lake a handful of times (most notably the TriWizard tournament during his fourth year, but that wasn’t something he particularly wanted to reminisce on), he might have sworn the lake actually wasa Pensieve. After all, far stranger things had happened at Hogwarts... many of them seemed to do so of their own accord when Harry himself had been around.

He leaned forth no closer, but did focus his gaze on the green-eyed reflection that stared back at him. A tall, somewhat gangly and bespectacled young man of eighteen stared back, the distorting effect of the light ripples on the pond’s surface for just a moment giving the impression that a far younger Harry Potter, one still in his first years of school at Hogwarts, was looking back instead.

It was the scar on his forehead (as well as the obvious that he knew how old he was) that dissipated the illusion of the past—or rather, the remnants of the scar. All his young life, the scar had been part of him, a legacy of Lord Voldemort’s reign of darkness, a legacy that was most prominent for Harry in the murder of his parents as an infant, in which he’d received the mark from Voldemort... which had been far less than he’d wanted to give Harry that night. Every time, when Voldemort (in one form or another) would show strong signs of a new rise to power, or came near, that scar would sear like the shock from an oversized one of Hagrid’s Blast-Ended Skrewts. It had also, unlike most scars, never showed any signs of fading, either.

That was, until a year ago.

It was with a vague sadness that he’d, a few months ago, first truly noted the scar’s fading presence—despite its origins, it had been a part of him for as long as he could remember, something that had become seemingly forever intertwined with him: within a few months, it would be gone forever. It was what always reminded him of the necessity to remove Voldemort forever—the scar itself was an unfinished attempt, to kill Harry, and every time that scar burned, he knew there was yet his own unpleasant unfinished business which needed tending.

But that wasn’t the main source of the sadness: with Voldemort’s destruction, here on this very campus, a year ago, a part of Harry had been taken away. Not the scar, but something far worse... the result was that while one scar was at last fading away to nothing, no longer needed—a new one had formed, terrible enough he'd gladly have kept the first in its place.

Was it him, or for a moment—had he seen a familiar pale freckled face there, a person standing beside him...

Maybe this lake wasn’t a large Pensieve, but a large Mirror of Erised.

No. It was an illusion. And Ron hadn’t been—this wasn’t where it had—

He couldn’t finish the thought, and only his face looked back at him from the water.

His eyes were so focused on the scar that he at first didn’t notice the sudden intrusion of a new presence in the reflection. A figure in Muggle clothing (a thin sweater and baggy jeans), which raised up a hand and aimed it at his back, as if clutching a wand...

“Petrificus Totalus.”

Harry jumped around to face the subtly grinning face of a woman his age with (only somewhat controlled) brown hair. Never minding the fact that if her spell had actually worked, as would certainly have been the case had she been really trying, he shouldn’t have been able to jump at all.

“Not funny.”

“If I was someone else, you’d wouldn’t be able to respond, you know.” Hermione Granger slid the wand into a pocket and folded her arms across her chest, and she looked very much the forever-studying (when she hadn’t been hanging around with Harry and Ron, of course) bookish girl who had been one of Harry’s two closest friends at Hogwarts—only now minus the books, of course, and the slightly oversized front teeth. She’d lost those their fourth year here, indirectly thanks to a hallway confrontation (yet another) between Harry and Draco Malfoy, in which she’d been caught in the poorly-aimed crossfire.

Perhaps seeing the look on Harry’s face, Hermione’s lips tightened—but she said nothing. Harry looked away from her, his eyes turning back to the lake. Her eyes followed his gaze to the shimmering water, then, with only some degree of hesitation, she sat on the grass next to him. Others might have left him alone at this point, but if there was one thing Hermione Granger didn’t do (aside from fail any classwork or exams) it was abandon a friend she perceived in need. She was just as stubborn as Harry was when it came to leaving friends behind.

Maybe that was why they were both here, he decided.

“I saw you in the Britain semifinals last month,” Hermione said after a moment, referring to the recent high-level Quidditch competition Harry had taken part in. After his graduation from Hogwarts, the England national team had jumped at the chance to snatch up the famed Gryffindor Seeker for their own ranks, and Harry, deciding it would be a good way to get his mind off of recent events and a way to not be sitting around a year before he found something to do, hoping a position as an Auror opened somewhere, accepted the offer. Both the Weasleys and the Grangers (the Dursleys having, since they’d decided he was perfectly of age and free of the obligation Dumbledore’d placed them under so long ago, taken their chance and kicked him out at last) had offered to take him in for the summer. But Harry’d felt he simply couldn’t face the Weasleys that soon after what had happened, and Hermione... well, if there was anyone taking the loss of Ron as hard as the Weasleys and Harry, it was certainly she... and at that time Harry didn’t think he could handle the grief of someone else compounded with his own. It was like what had happened after the death of Cedric Diggory, only far worse in its intensity, for Harry—the guilt wasn’t for merely a fallen comrade, but for the best friend of more than a third of his life.

Oh, he’d been tempted to join the others at their invitation, certainly. After all, their grief was (technically) the same, and sometimes it was often comforting to go through grief with someone who knew what you were going through...

No one could have known what I was going through.

Only because you wouldn’t let them, a little voice shot back, sounding faintly like Hermione.

But he still hadn’t, and soon the England team had gone on the road, far away from Hogwarts and Britain—sweeping its competition in nearly every game, thanks to its new addition. The Weasleys, Sirius, and Hermione had sent an occasional owl post, but Harry seldom allowed himself the time for more than a quick, polite response. If any.

But now, he’d grown tired of running. And if he hadn’t returned now, he might as well never have. Part of him had painfully strained against it, but not enough to still the necessity of a trip back to Hogwarts.

It was July 31 again. In the eyes of the world he was now a man, and a year ago he’d lost his best friend.

Happy birthday, Harry Potter.

“Really,” Harry said disinterestedly, not meeting her eyes directly, but instead those of the vaguely rippling silvery Hermione that looked back from the lake. Behind him he heard the sound of an exasperated sigh, and soon came the sound of a splash and murky droplets on his glasses, the water rippling so strongly from her stone's entry that any reflection was impossible to make out, and therefore any pondering that would distract him.

“Hermione—“

“At least it got your mind away from that lake,” she said, thinly concealing another sigh of pained exasperation she’d used so often on Harry and Ron.

“I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.” He used the corner of his sleeve to wipe off his lenses.

“Either way what still happened hurts, Harry. But this way you won’t face it alone.”

He stuck the frames back on his face, then stared back out at the once-again flat lake surface. “Some things you ought to face alone.”

“So you can sit here and drown yourself in them? Nice try. You may think you have to, Harry Potter, but you’re the only one who ever thought you had to take the entire world on your own shoulders.”

Gripping his hand firmly enough that it surprised him, she pulled him (despite his superior size) several meters back from the shore to sit at the base of the Memorial Willow, the one planted after graduation last year. It had been the last time he’d really seen Hermione, and she’d looked in decidedly worse physical shape than she appeared to be now—still recovering from the trauma to her head that had been an ironic byproduct of the act that had saved her life.

Either way, both of them had their scars from that night. Some reunion this was so far.

“How’s your head?” he asked, trying not to replay the scene of its injury in his mind, and not entirely successful. The three of them—he and his friends—in the stronghold of the Dark Lord. Voldemort’s focused Killing Curse, directed right at the immobile Hermione. Harry dazed and bleeding, on the floor of Voldemort’s chamber, Ron diving to intercept the green flash aimed at Hermione—knocking her, unconscious against the wall, out of the flash's path—

She smiled weakly, touching part of the crown as though some pain had awakened in it. “It still hurts, from time to time... but that’s usually when I’m thinking too hard,” she added, putting on a wry smile.

“I really could have talked to you after graduation,” Hermione continued, squeezing Harry’s hand affectionately, looking at him in a knowing way Harry wasn’t entirely sure how to translate. He looked down in surprise at it—not because it was an unusual act for her, but because in this context it was unexpected. “No one needs to go through pain alone. He was my friend too, Harry.”

And a little more, Harry thought, though he didn’t say it to Hermione, wondering why the omission should bug him, even if only a little. Maybe because that even now, after he was gone, any sort of omissions on her part considering hers and Ron’s relationship brought back the memory of the annoyance on Harry’s part caused by more stubbornly-motivated instances like that on the part of his two friends.

During fifth year (and also in fourth, for that matter) it had become painfully obvious Ron and Hermione had begun to see each other in a far different manner than that of friends, and by the end of their sixth year they’d no longer made any attempts to hide it. Not that Harry had minded, though—relief eclipsed any reservations he may have had. But everyone had expected him to mind. After all, with Hermione went the closest female relationship he’d ever had and anyway, hadn’t Harry always gotten the best of everything out of their group? They all expected he, not his sidekick, would 'get the girl.' In their eyes he was the hero, Ron the loyal sidekick, and heroes were supposed to get everything.

But Harry was happy for his friends, and he certainly didn’t feel ready to make any sort of attempt at romance even if he’d felt otherwise. Besides, he thought, if his love life was anything like his other track records at Hogwarts, such an endeavor would probably have wound up fatal for him in the end. He didn’t have a lot of time for, or want the trouble of, pining over some girl he barely knew and found out later wasn’t everything he’d hoped. (Not a second time, anyway, he amended as the brief image of a certain Ravenclaw Seeker flitted unhappily through his brain.)

But Ron and Hermione had finally seemed to overcome any obstacles—just in time for Voldemort to make his return, and in a rather big—and nasty—way.

“It’s not your fault Ron died, Harry,” she said quietly, and Harry flinched outwardly at the d-word; he still couldn’t bring himself to say it in connection with his former best friend. It still didn’t feel right—but then, he never expected (or even really wanted) it to. “And if anyone should feel guilty, it’s me—he died stopping Voldemort from killing me. And I know it sounds callous, but after a year of dwelling so much on it, it's clear: it did serve a purpose.  If Ron hadn’t intervened, you wouldn’t have had the time you needed to strike back... and I’d be dead, Harry. We all would have died.”

Either way—he would have lost one of his friends that day. How different would it be, he wondered briefly, if it had been Ron who survived instead of Hermione? If all of them had died? Or better—if all three of them had lived, and they could sit here now, a year later, reminiscing on the dream trio going through a heroic grand finale-to-end-all-finales to their seven years of misadventures? Surviving the tumultuous downfall of Lord Voldemort and the near-destruction of Hogwarts and remembering it (physically) unscathed over hot butterbeers at the Three Broomsticks while munching bags and bags of Every Flavor Beans? The image was so welcoming for a moment Harry was certain he was staring into the long-gone Mirror of Erised again, and closed his eyes to block the mirror-like lake from his vision.

The image remained, until he violently managed to shove it aside.

For years Harry had been known as “the boy who lived.” But never, not even after learning what it had truly meant, had that title seemed so rueful until recently.

Hermione continued to look silently at Harry, her eyes conveying the unspoken invitation that had always been there, even during her romance with Ron, when such an act might have raised a minor, fourth-year-Rita-Skeeter-garbage-like scandal. Stubborn as he often was, he’d not really often taken notice of the offer, let alone use it (never believing he’d need it)—in all that had been going on, he certainly didn’t want to be adding anything to the weight already on his friends’ shoulders... never minding that they were more than willing, and more objective than he in seeing he carried far more than was healthy—and therefore bore more lingering scars, why he’d disappeared when Ron died instead of seeking comfort with others with (though he wouldn’t necessarily have agreed) similar grief.

But something in her eyes for an instant made him feel the true weight of her words—about his own self-proclaimed burden, about how illogical it was for someone to carry so much on their own. And to fear letting others help you shoulder it...

She seemed to speak directly into his thoughts. “You’re my friend, Harry. Debt and compensation are non-issues—have been for a long time.” She exhaled once, slowly, and the flash in her expression at him was searching for a moment, for something Harry was surprised to see she’d ever be searching for. “If you’ll let me.”

In the end it may have been more for her sake than his, but Harry accepted the invitation at last, and rested his head on Hermione’s waiting shoulder. Without hesitation she wound an arm around his back, returning the squeeze of his hand. The summer wind and the soft splashing of the lake was all that spoke at that moment, as two friends broke down the walls of one of them, opening up to a new level of friendship that hadn’t been there before.

A door that had opened at a price that, had they been given another second to make the choice, they'd never had paid.

Harry looked at Hermione, and at that moment suddenly discovered a reason behind something he’d never thought about: why he’d not ever looked at her in the way Ron had. Unfailingly in seven long years, even where Ron had wavered, even when she was with Ron, to Harry she’d been unconditional, unwavering, objective, caring—and completely reliable. The grounded, logical presence he was, as the hero of the group, supposed to be, who kept him and Ron down-to-earth when it was sorely tempting to escape to Cloud Nine. To see her as more might’ve changed that which he treasured about their connection completely, and Harry would’ve given himself to keep that friendship unchanged. The very awareness that he could succumb to any sort of small pain or weakness, and not feel any sort of awkwardness at having her shoulder to rest on, which she equally freely offered... it was everything, and it was worth a hundred Cho Changs.

She’d been like a sister to Harry before almost anything else, and you never wondered about things like that with your sister—an unconscious, almost-built in instinct, which was never addressed or questioned.

But was it worth the loss they’d endured? Was there some other slap in the face that could have been used to open his eyes to this? He hated the thought of not having this renewed bond he and Hermione had, but even if he’d known about it—if there had been any way at all, he still would have rather had Ron back.

Though if this was fate’s way of some sort of compensation, he had to admit this was a far better attempt than most.

She smiled at him, and it was a pretty expression for her. “I think there’s something you ought to see, Harry. Feel up for a little walk?”

He was silent a moment, letting his trains of thought settle in somewhat comfortably. “Still haven’t mastered Apparating, eh?”

“It’s more interesting this way,” she said a little too quickly, quickly covering the flash of annoyance in her eyes, pulling Harry to his feet. He suppressed a smile; the perfectionist that still remained in his friend had little appreciation for the reminder of one major skill she’d not yet mastered. To this day he hesitated to ever bring up her failed stint in Divinations for fear of her response. “Besides, the corridors may not be the same as yesterday. I don’t think either of us is in the mood to splinch ourselves—”

“We’re going to the castle?”

“Just follow me, Harry.”