Last Words

Author's notes: Many thanks to Liss, Shannon and Maria for their excellent beta skills. This one's for them. The fic was originally written for the Serendipity challenge on LiveJournal.

Hermione

She can't do more than stare.

She can't fix this with a spell no one's heard of. She can't find the answer to it in the library.

Dead is dead, after all.

The desire to change what was hadn't helped Cedric, hadn't helped Sirius. It hadn't helped Dumbledore.

And it won't help Ron, because now Ron is dead, too.

Heart clutching in her chest, Hermione makes no outward sign of her grief. There is no sound to be made. Anguish, she's come to find, has only silence.

Her eyes flutter shut, blocking out the reality of the caskets before her. This way she can see him that afternoon, that single, horrid, blood-soaked afternoon. She'd been so proud, fighting along side him. The wizard with the struggling marks, showing their peers magic the likes of which none had ever seen. While she and Harry had searched for Horcruxes, and pored through histories of the founders looking for artifacts, Ron had practised. He'd perfected.

And in the end, he'd outshone them both.

And in the end, it had been nothing more than a stupid accident that had stolen him from her. If he'd fallen one way, fallen another, he'd have endured an injury, but not a fatal one. But fate had not been with him further than that. Knocked from behind by a fleeing Death Eater once the battle had ended, Ron had pitched face first onto an Auror's prone and lifeless form; fallen and taken her wand straight through the chest, puncturing his heart.

On this cold, grey afternoon, Hermione has only one comfort left her. She was holding him when he died. Hers was the last face he saw, her words of love and Harry's triumph the last he heard.

Eventually, she hopes, she will be able to live with that.

Harry

They're lying side to side. It seems best. Apart from the twins, Ron and Ginny were the closest of the Weasley children. More friends than brother and sister once they'd moved past the bickering, and Harry knows Ron would never forgive him if he'd let his sister's grave stand alone. They'd had their bumps, their rows, but underneath it all, the love between them was a real and palpable thing. Ginny'd told him that often enough.

Ginny.

Harry wrenches his eyes away from Ron's headstone and finally focuses on hers. Or tries to. The sheen of tears obscures his vision. His mind's eye sees her, wild hair flying around her as she fought, her face hard and blazing with determination. They'd fought that battle side by side, their petty argument forgotten as the curses flew. Fought together until he'd seen a flash of red in the distance, felt the prickle, and had left her to fight alone, ignoring her calls. And he'd returned hours later, victorious, with barely the strength to crawl.

Returned to find Hermione cradling two red heads in her lap, rocking mutely. He didn't remember anything after that. Nor, he knew, did she.

The sound of a levitation spell rouses him from the past. He forces his eyes open, staring as the dual caskets rise then disappear into the ground. A soft, slight hand slips into his and he clings to its warmth.

With a flick of his wand, the wizard transfers the mounds of earth to cover their final resting places. The monster gives out a final roar of despair and then stills, falling eternally silent.

Nearly shaking with emptiness, Harry turns away from the newly covered graves and pulls Hermione into his arms. He needs her to tether him, as she's always done; one look at her pale, tear-soaked face tells him she needs him in much the same way. Quite apart from the rest of the mourners, they cling to one another. Thoughts run pell mell through Harry's head in that moment. It should be me in there. It should be Ron comforting Hermione. It should have been me. They did so much, they all deserved a long life after. What is it with you two? Harry physically jerks at the last, knocked off centre at Ginny's unexpected voice in his head, an unwanted reminder of their argument. But this is not the time, or the place.

"Harry?"

Harry looks down at his best friend's face, stomach clenching at how lost her voice sounds, how drawn her face. He shakes his head at her, touching their foreheads together.

He doesn't reply. He can't. And he knows that, with Hermione, he doesn't need to.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A year later

Harry held the letter for a long time while Gregor nattered on from his chair in front of Harry's desk. None of his words registered. His assistant, of course, would not have recognised the handwriting. He'd handed the stack of post to him with no more than a passing mention.

To Harry, it had been as if the building imploded.

Making vague nodding motions in what he thought were appropriate places, Harry stared at his own name, written in the hand that had corrected so many of his essays in that long-ago time. In the time when they were three together, not two apart.

In the time when thinking of Hogwarts brought smiles rather than sorrow.

After what seemed an age, Gregor stood and flounced out of the room (there was no other word for the way his assistant moved), finally leaving Harry alone.

On an exhale, Harry pulled the letter from its envelope and began to read.

Dear Harry:

I just wanted you to know that I'm back in London. All those roads lead back home, it seems.

Love from,

Hermione

It took three tries to get through the short few lines. It was quite difficult to read through rapidly blurring vision and an assault of memories. Setting the parchment down, Harry glanced around his bare, barren office. Unlike his the members of staff, his workspace was as impersonal as a telephone box. Not one picture, portrait, or personal item occupied space in this room. Or in his home. Absently, his hand touched the small locket around his neck. The one thing he retained. The one thing he could not let go. The locket. The lock of flame-red hair within. It kept her with him, kept her real.

Kept him from going down paths he'd rather not.

Eyeing the sheaf of parchment Gregor had left behind, Harry set the letter aside and returned to work. Staying focused on work had kept the past at bay before, he would trust it to do so again.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Hermione told herself she wasn't looking at the windows. She was merely stretching her back after several hours' hard unpacking. She was checking that the curtains were hung straight. She was taking an inventory of what she had yet to do.

She was not looking for a return owl.

"You're being ridiculous," she chided herself and reached up to draw the drapes. Her fingers had just closed on the heavy material when a small cloud started moving in her direction. Not a cloud, though. An owl. A very familiar owl. Hermione watched, transfixed, as she grew closer and closer, finally swinging the window open to let her in.

"Hedwig," she said softly, stroking the snowy owl's back before removing the letter she bore. "How is he? All right?"

Two expressive amber eyes met hers and she nodded once. "I expected as much. I'm glad you're still with him."

Hedwig hooted once in indignation then pecked Hermione lightly on the ear, as if happy to know that she'd returned.

"Are you to wait for a reply?" Hermione asked, not wanting to unroll the parchment with company, even owl company. Hedwig merely clicked her beak once, gave a mournful hoot, and took off, back out through the open door.

Hands shaking, she unrolled the parchment, knowing what she'd find inside.

I can't.

With a sigh, she rolled the parchment back up and set it on the pile of rubbish. Because that's what it was. Rubbish. He wasn't about to shut her from his life a moment longer...not if she had a say.

And Hermione Granger always had a say.

~ ~ ~ ~

The knock stopped him mid-sentence and he marked his place on the four-foot parchment before looking up. Gregor stood there, grinning smugly at him. "You forgot you've a two o'clock appointment, haven't you?"

Harry leaned back in his chair and set about rolling up the scroll from the prying eyes of whomever had come to sell him something this week. Or, more to the point, what they wanted him to announce to the wizarding world that he'd bought.

Gregor and he, it seemed, were going to have to have yet another discussion about the screening process.

"All right, then," he offered up a half-smile. "But I didn't forget, I've just been trying to wade through this report for the past hour and lost track."

"Course you did, Harry," he grinned back. "Shall I?" He indicated the outer office with a nod of his head. When Harry nodded back, Gregor swung to door wider to allow entrance.

Harry managed to keep his jaw from dropping, but only because he was suddenly unable to move. The last time he'd seen her had been at the...had been a year ago. Giving himself a mental prod to unfreeze his body, he moved to stand, whether to escort her into a chair or out of the office, he wasn't sure. It didn't matter, however, because she was seated in the chair across from him before he could do more than brush the creases from his trousers.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, resuming his seat and doing all he could not to glare.

"Haven't I ever told you about the mountain and Mohammed?" she asked in return, smiling brightly.

Harry leaned back in his chair, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. "No, but I get the reference. Didn't Hedwig deliver my note?"

"Yes, she did, Harry. She's still as beautiful as ever, by the way. But if you think you're going to get away with a mere two words after a year of not talking, after," she paused, "after everything that came before it, you'd best sit down and think again."

Almost against his will, the corner of his mouth twitched, "I am sitting down."

Hermione smiled at that, but her face grew serious almost at once. "Harry, I..."

He broke her off with a raised hand. "Not here. Not now."

Silence stretched as they regarded each other; the non-verbal communication that had served them so well in the past clearly hadn't lessened in the slightest over a year's distance.

I don't want that here.

I won't let you go without a fight.

I can't talk about it now.

When then? Have you talked to anyone?

No one would understand.

Harry broke eye contact first, sitting forward and rummaging through the papers on his desk for a spare bit of parchment and a quill. A moment later he'd risen from his desk and walked around to her, thrusting it into Hermione's hands. She gave his home address a cursory glance before nodding and leaving his office without another word spoken.

The ghost in the corner of Harry's office dropped his head into his hands. Ron watched as Harry took his seat again and tried to pretend nothing was different.

He was never going to get out of here.

"Nothing?" his sister asked, suddenly at his side.

"Not a bloody thing," he spat back, irritated.

They left without another word, leaving a confused Harry staring at the place they'd been just seconds before.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Harry paced around his lounge, staring intermittently at the fire and the door, wondering which method she'd use to arrive. Wondering if she'd arrive at all. He gave an actual bark of laughter at that. Of course she would. In the dictionary under "tenacious" it said "see Granger, Hermione Jane."

He was so intent on the fire, he almost didn't register the knock at the door. When he did, he shook his head. It was the one thing they'd always had in common. Raised as Muggles, they still reverted to Muggle behaviours. Ron and Ginny had never understood why they still felt along the inside wall when first entering a dark room or held their hands under taps to wait for the hot water.

Ron and Ginny...he broke that thought off before it could fully form. He still missed them so much, he could still hear their voices sometimes, as clear as he had.... Harry swallowed down the pang even thinking those names created in his stomach, and crossed to the door and opened it. "Hello," he said simply. "Listen, Hermione, I really don't see the need..."

She cut him off with a look. "Well, I do. And if it's all the same, I'd rather not explain it to you in your doorway." The look did not fade in intensity. If anything, it grew rather more unyielding the longer he stood there. Finally, he acquiesced as he always did. On a sigh, he stepped aside to grant her entrance and closed the door behind her.

Her cloak was lying across his sofa when he joined her. She was surveying the Spartan lounge, her finger to her chin. "Not much of a decorator, are you?"

Harry shrugged. "No need to be, really. It's just me and me."

"Your offices were a bit bare as well, weren't they?"

"If by bare you mean not littered with pictures and things, then yes. It's where I work. I don't need the distraction." Only by force of will did he keep his hands from the locket.

Apparently finished with her perusal of his house, Hermione lowered herself into one corner of the sofa, clearly intending to stay a while.

"Make yourself at home," he said sardonically, choosing a chair across from her.

"This isn't a home. This is a few rooms with a roof on it."

Harry didn't reply, he merely raised and eyebrow at her and settled back on the chair and crossed his legs, surveying her blurrily over the rims of his glasses.

"Harry, we need to..."

Without a word he got up and stalked over to the fire, staring at the flames. "No, Hermione. We don't. We don't at all."

He felt the warmth of her fingers on his arm before he registered her presence behind him. Something about them seemed to burn straight through the wool of his jumper to the cold skin beneath it. Something about them made him want to be warm again.

But he never would be. Not again. He didn't...

He tried to wrench his arm from her grip, but she was one step ahead of him. Before he could breathe, she'd dug her fingers into the wool and tugged, spinning him to face her. Her left hand kept its grip while her right rose and cupped his cheek. He flinched as though burned.

"Don't," his own voice was alien to him for a moment. His eyes met hers. Met and held as he made the connection. The sound that had issued from his lips was that of Harry, a scared child locked in a cupboard, calling out after a nightmare.

Calling out to no one, because no one would come. Just like now.

"When are you going to stop torturing yourself? When are you going to forgive yourself for living?"

Brought back to himself by her question, he glared down at her and pulled his arm from her grip. "You're one to bloody talk, Hermione. You were out of England before the dirt settled over...over their... Cutting all..."

"Over their graves, Harry. You can say it." She stayed where she was, watching him as he started to pace. "Yes, I left England. But not to cut ties; rather to strengthen them. We...we had plans, Ron and I. Silly, I know, to make plans in wartime, but we made them just the same. We were going to see the world. Australia, Mozambique, Outer Mongolia."

Harry faced her, raising an eyebrow. "Outer Mongolia?"

Hermione smiled, it was soft and sad, but she smiled. "We were feeling a bit ridiculous that night. We made a list," she shot him an I-dare-you-to-comment-on-that look and he remained mute, but the corner of his mouth twitched. "So, once the funerals were over, I took the first Portkey out of England and visited them all. We took our trip around the world, but with him here," she laid her hand over her heart, "rather than beside me. And...and I was able to say goodbye."

Wordlessly, Harry reached into his shirt and drew out the locket, showing it to the first pair of eyes not his own since she gave it to him.

Hermione frowned and moved closer, taking the locket in her fingers and examining it. "She'd be pleased to see you wearing this. Took her months to find the one she wanted."

Harry goggled at her. "You knew about it? About what she put inside of it?"

Frowning, she looked up into his eyes, a catch in her throat at how near they were. "Of course I knew. She was my best female friend. We told each other..." Hermione paused, seeming to take a steadying breath, and moved away. "We told each other virtually everything."

A year's distance hadn't lessened his ability to read her and his arm shot out, taking her firmly by the elbow. The heat of her skin seeped into his hand through her jumper and for the first time, he did nothing to tamp it down. Forgetting everything else he meant to say, he pressed for the one thing he'd never been able to ask.

"What didn't you tell her?" Harry actually blinked when the question left his mouth, not recognising his own voice.

The moment stretched on forever. Brown eyes met green, searching and finding, a lock's last tumbler clicking into place.

Her voice, when she finally broke the silence, was clear, soft, and without guilt. "The same thing you never told her, Harry. The same thing I could never tell Ron."

Trusting what he saw in her eyes, what he felt radiating from her, Harry did the only thing he could at that moment. He lowered his head and kissed her.

It was nothing short of explosive when his lips finally touched hers. Later he would be amazed that windows hadn't shattered all over London from the force of it.

The shock took only moments to ebb; the thrill lasted quite a bit longer. Before he realised either of them had moved, his hands were buried in her thick hair and hers were clutching at his jumper. How long had he wondered about the feel of her hair? How many times had he let his eyes linger on it while pretending to study, wondering if the curls made it coarse... The guilt speared through him again and he jumped backwards. He'd watched her, yes, with Ginny's hand in his.

Hermione nearly lost her feet at Harry's sudden retreat. "What? What is it?" She raised confused eyes to his.

Her voice was low and breathy, causing all sorts of small explosions to go off all over his body. But he denied them as he denied everything else. He wasn't certain what he expected her to do when the stony expression once again took hold of his face. But it wasn't anger.

"Oh for God's sake, Harry." One hand ploughed through the curls he'd had a fistful of moments ago before both hands rose to the heavens. "How long are you going to let the guilt consume you? Are you going to deny yourself a life, love, happiness over what neither of us had any say in? We knew it then, by your kiss I know that you know it now. We don't choose whom we fall in love with, Harry Potter. It just happens. Even when we think we're in love with other people. Or try to tell ourselves we are."

Harry's face remained blank and hard, but inside his emotions were a whirlwind. He'd loved Ginny, he had. But not with everything he was, not like he... Hearing her say it at last, knowing he couldn't deny it...at least to himself...any longer. He'd loved Ginny, but not as much as...not as much as he loved Hermione. He knew it, but he couldn't...he couldn't....

Oblivious to the mental anguish coursing through him, Hermione growled and put both hands on his shoulders and forced him onto the couch. "Sit down." It was on the tip of his tongue to throw a retort at her, but if he opened his mouth, he'd reveal himself.

"I know you and Ginny argued the night before the battle," she held up a hand to stop him from interrupting, even though he'd made no move to do so. "She told me that morning, before it all went to hell. What you don't know, what she never knew, is that Ron and I did as well. Ginny was never the jealous sort, not really. She was too pragmatic for that. Ron," a wistful smile played across her lips, "was. Bottom line is, they both knew."

His eyes widened and shot to hers, his composure cracking. He made a small sound, his voice a mixture of disbelief and shock. "What?"

"They knew. They'd talked about it. Ron told me. You know how he was, Harry. When he was angry, his mouth usually got ahead of his brain. He told me, shouted it at me actually." Her eyes closed and she heard his voice ring through her head as clearly now as it had then...

You love him, Hermione and he loves you. I know it, so does Gin. The row had gone on another twenty minutes, accusations and denials flying like curses in the empty common room. There'd been no resolution, both of them too tired to carry on with the row, deciding instead to table the discussion for another time. But their time had run out the next day. Ron had had the last word, though. As he lay dying in her arms. She gave her head a slight shake, clearing the past to make room for an uncertain future.

She took a deep breath, gambling that future on a hope that Harry would believe now what she couldn't tell him then.

"You never asked me what Ron's last words were."

His mind still going in seven different directions, he looked at her. "Because it was none of my business."

"He was your best friend, of course it was your business." She walked towards him, dropping onto the couch beside him and taking his hand. He could see the tears gathering in her eyes and a fleeting thought punched through the inner turmoil. He never wanted to see her cry again.

When he found it, his voice was low, harsh, but tinged with hope. "What were they?"

Hermione smiled up at him and raised her hand, placing it on his cheek gently. "He said," she swallowed hard, a single tear falling from her lashes. "He said 'Make him happy. I think he can be now, if he'll let himself.'"

Taken aback, his eyes sought hers and found them. "I thought..."

"That'd he'd have said he loved me? That bit came right before. But his last thought was about you, just as his life had been up to that point. He knew he was dying, knew Ginny was already gone. But he wanted you, he wanted us, to be happy. It's taken me a year away to realise just what he was trying to say to me." Her throat worked hard, and another tear followed the first.

Tears Harry had refused to shed for a year coursed down his face freely and unacknowledged. A low, almost primal moan wrenched itself from his throat and echoed through the silent room. Blindly, he reached for her, pulling her to him and holding her fiercely as though suddenly terrified she'd disappear.

"I want..." Harry broke off, unable to breach the last chasm. Unwilling to hope...

"What? What do you want, Harry?" Her brown eyes pierced his, and when he read the same hope, the same emotions in hers that he knew were radiating from his, he found the strength to jump.

"You, Hermione. It's always been you."

As they came together in a kiss, not the passionate and almost desperate one of moments ago, but a soft caress that eased the last of the raw grief that had consumed them both, two restless souls finally relaxed.

"About bloody time," Ron muttered to Ginny. "I was beginning to think we'd be stuck here forever."

She laughed and looped her arm through his. "He always was a bit on the stubborn side, wasn't he?"

Harry broke from Hermione's embrace and looked around. "Did you hear something?"

She blinked, confused. "No, why?"

Harry smiled, knowing what he heard, and shook his head. "It's not important. Thank you," Harry said, looking over her shoulder before he turned his attention back to her mouth, and tugged her fully into his embrace.

"For what?" Hermione said.

"No problem," Ron said at the same time, and Harry could hear the smile in his best mate's voice before it faded away with one last message. "Make her happy."

A true smile lifted the corners of his mouth, this one reaching his tearfilled eyes more than any other had since the Voldemort's defeat. "I'll tell you some other time." He cleared his throat then grinned at her, the pad of his thumb smoothing over her lower lip. "Right now, there's something else a bit more pressing on my mind."

His laughter proving contagious, a smile bloomed across her face. "Which is?"

"I love you." He felt more than heard the reaction his words had on her, the way she melted into his arms as if a lifetime of tension had left her in a whoosh.

"I love you, too, Harry. Now. Forever."

When their lips met again, Harry felt hope spread through him. For the first time in his life, Harry saw forever as something to look forward to - as a bright field of possibilities rather than a bleak and solitary eternity to dread. "Forever," he echoed, sealing the vow with a string of kisses that lasted a lifetime.

~fin~