Gone

Gone

She sat in the last cushioned chair in the row, writing furiously into a gold notebook. Surrounded by shelves of fashion and foreign affairs magazines, the young woman looked frantic, and, in fact, she was.

People around her discussed calculus, government, art, but this girl wasn't interested in that. She sat in this muggle library as a way of hiding, and a way of reconnecting with her roots, but not to chat about Californian affairs.

Her writing slowed, and her pen moved off the page. As the clock struck seven, her gaze began to wander, and the man who sat behind her at the window, unnoticed, looked up surreptitiously.

Hermione Granger gathered her things, gave one last look at the shelves, and began walking out of the library. She tripped out the automatic sliding doors, at the place where the carpet met stone, and dropped a few notebooks.

-Bugger- she thought, and bent to retrieve the items. Made more difficult by her pencil skirt, she found it nearly impossible to reach her favorite pen, which had rolled under the drinking fountain. As she straightened up, she became suddenly alert, inwardly cursing herself for letting her guard down. She knew without having to see him that the man was watching her from outside the next door, and she decided to let him think she didn't know he was there.

-Just ignore him- she clenched her teeth. She reached her car and got in, glancing at the picture on the dash. It was moving, and in it was herself and another young person, a young man, with black hair and startling green eyes.

-Oh Harry. If only you were here with me now...-

She pulled out of the lot and onto the road, looking in her rear view mirror. The man from the library was following her, of course. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but she could never see him clearly enough to place it.

She decided to try and lose him on the streets, knowing that in Thousand Oaks there was really little chance of that. She knew that the Wizard Protection Program, which she had been in since Harry died defeating Voldemort, couldn't really afford to move her again. Everywhere they sent her, this man followed, but no one knew who he was or how he found her, or why only Hermione could see him. He was always there, she said, a slightly threatening presence who never did anything but follow.

As Hermione turned onto the busier main street, she decided she'd had enough. She was 22, she was a witch, and she hated this place. She hadn't seen Harry's grave since that day, and by Merlin, she needed to. She pulled off the road, and walked into the empty construction site, and... she was gone.

When she reappeared moments later, she was at Godric's Hollow. She wound her way through the nearby town to the cemetery, and stopped in front of a plain marker. Harry Potter 1980-1999.

She felt, rather than saw, the man.

He'd been able to track her all the way to England. She jumped slightly as the hand slid onto her shoulder, but the touch was so familiar...

His arms wrapped around her waist, and his head went to her shoulder as she allowed herself to cry. She didn't know who this man was, but it felt so right, him holding her...

"Hermione...I love you..." Her eyes snapped open.

"Harry!" She whirled around... and he was Gone.