11A/N: I'm SORRY! I know I should be updating E.C., but I'm in such a rut... I'm hoping that this little oneshot will help blow the cobwebs out of my mind a little. Please review—it really motivates me to write more! And if you get a chance, hop over to and check out my stories 'Feather and Stone' and 'Sight-Reading Spencer.' The url to my ficpress page is in my homepage here on ffnet!
Everything comes and goes
Pleasure moves on too early and trouble leaves too slow
Just when you're thinking you've finally got it made
Bad news comes knocking at the garden gate
Knocking for you, constant stranger
You're a brute
You're an angel
You crawl
You can fly, too
It's down to you
It all comes down to you.
-"Down To You," Joni Mitchell
Down To You
"He hesitated? You're certain? Absolutely certain?"
"Bloody hell, Hermione! Of COURSE I'm certain! I had to watch it, remember?" Harry asked, scowling. Hermione relented a little, putting her hand on his shoulder. When had Harry gotten so tall? He had always seemed like a younger brother to Hermione (despite the fact that she was not quite a year older than him), and it startled her that he had grown up so quickly, without her noticing. The protective urges she felt towards him, however, had not changed in the slightest. She didn't want to upset him anymore—
But she had to know. She had to.
Luckily, Harry continued without necessitating an urging comment from his friend. "I think—Merlin, 'Mione, I don't think he was going to do it. He was this far from taking Dumbledore up on his word, when the others burst in." He shook his shagging head, his face a jumbled amalgam of confusion, disbelief, barely subdued rage, and depression.
Hermione grimaced and reached up, pulling her best friend into a tight hug. As she pulled away—her parents were calling for her from the other end of the platform, she kissed his cheek fleetingly, as she had at the end of their first year. "I have to go now," she said.
"Okay." There was a petulant sort of dimness in his words—he sounded like a disappointed three-year-old and looked like a man. "Write me?"
"Of course." She chewed her lip for a moment, and then kissed his cheek again, giving him one last hug. He held onto her like he would never let her go. "I love you, Harry. You're my best friend. Be strong, be good, don't do anything stupid, and write me back."
She fled quickly, hiding her damp eyes from his sight.
She was wracked with guilt. No matter which way she turned, there was some reminder of one of them. Her life revolved around those three—and now... she shook her head, hands over her face as she lay in bed. Beside her, the gleaming digits on the clock changed to 3:02. It was the twenty-ninth of July, now. Two days until she and Ron joined Harry. Two days.
How many days had it been since she last saw him? It surprised her when she realized that it had been exactly a month. The twenty-ninth of June, she had passed him in the hall. He had refused to meet her eyes, though she called his name. She, thinking that he had finally decided to end their misbegotten romance, ran back to Gryffindor tower, sobbing. That was before Harry gave she and Ron the Felix Felicis.
And now? Where was he now? Trekking through the Forbidden Forest? Hiding in the house at Spinner's End, or with the Lestranges, or perhaps in Malfoy Manor?
He had hesitated.
She always knew there was hope for him. That was why she had held on for so long, despite the fact that she was betraying her best friends—her brothers—so deeply, despite the fact that they had to keep up those cruel façades when in public, despite the fact that she knew she would never be accepted in his world... despite the fact that loving him hurt more than anything she'd ever felt before.
Theirs had been a tentative courtship, conducted in secret; they had constantly been glancing over their shoulders or pausing to listen for approaching footsteps, casting spells to ferret out—no pun intended—anyone who might be eavesdropping. He had been tentative, never really dropping his mask, always putting on a brave, nonchalant, icy face. It had hurt her to discover that he had entrusted his feelings so much to Moaning Myrtle, that travesty of a girl, instead of to her.
Not as badly as it had hurt to discover that Harry's constant suspicions were correct, though. He had put Madam Rosmerta under the Cruciatus—he had poisoned Professor Slughorn's wine!
He was a Death Eater.
She bit her trembling lip, wrapped in the tender embrace of darkness. How could he...
No. How could she?
How could she have betrayed Harry and Ron so? How could she have betrayed Dumbledore, and Tonks, and Lupin, and the Weasleys, and Sirius's memory? How could she have been so selfish?
How could she have dared even look at him as a human being? How could she have thought that his icy eyes were the most beautiful thing she had ever seen? How could she have let him hold her hand, or touch her lips with his own? How could she have craved his taste? How could she still miss him and fear for him now, when she knew that he had tried to kill Dumbledore, he had intended to kill Dumbledore? How could she?
She could—because he had hesitated.
But not soon enough. Either way, Dumbledore was still dead. Harry's anchor was gone, and neither she nor Ron nor anyone else in this world was strong enough to hold him down. She knew that he had loved that old man like he had loved Sirius, like he would have loved his father—she knew how much it had cost him to watch the headmaster fall from the tower. He had lost a small piece of his soul then, a piece that matched that lost after fifth year. Slowly, Harry was dying of pain.
And she was in love with the boy who was helping murder him.
She gritted her teeth, throwing off her blankets in a fit of rage, and beat at her pillow with her fists, screaming incoherently at it. The silencing charm on her bedroom allowed her at least that much. Alternately, she pictured his face on the soft, white fabric, then Voldemort's, and then her own. All her enemies. All Harry's enemies.
Why couldn't it be as easy for her as it was for Ron? Sure, he sometimes suffered from a surfeit of envy, but despite his covetousness, Ron Weasley most definitely deserved the Most Loyal Friend in the History of Life award. He knew which side he stood on instinctively, and never lifted a foot to move, though he might waver internally. She, on the other hand, stood between the two armies, her heart the rope with which they played tug-of-war. And the worst part was, neither knew it.
Well, he knew. But only him. No one else knew how very close Hermione Granger, the Golden Girl of Hogwarts, had come to falling into darkness. She had been so entranced by him that, had he asked, she gladly would have followed him into hell.
Exhausted from her tantrum, Hermione collapsed back, lying half on the bed and half off. Moonlight silvered the lines of her room, the Muggle room that he would have hated—the Muggle room that fascinated Ron so much, as anything Muggle did.
What am I supposed to do?
Part of her wanted to pack up, run out of the house, and go look for him. She wanted to make sure that he was all right—she wanted to be with him, to love him, to care for him and scold him and kiss him—
But the rest of her screamed in protest at the very thought. Her loyalty belonged to Harry, who was so strong and yet so terribly vulnerable—who loved her so much, who depended on her to be there and ready with a plan or some brilliant insight—who carried the fate of the world on his shoulders.
She imagined his face, the paleness of his skin emphasized by his messy black locks, that livid scar on his forehead, his eyes the color of the curse that had killed so many—she compared it to that cold façade that she held so close to her heart in the middle of the night. As the minutes ticked by until her departure, she weighed them. As the sky outside brightened, she contrasted them. As her heart broke, she gazed at them.
And she chose.
He had hesitated—
But it had done no good.
She rose and pulled on a pair of jeans and a tee, preparing for a day of shopping. She had convinced her mother that they should go to London today, to visit the Muggle shopping districts and Diagon Alley. There were some things they would need on the search for the Horcruxes, and she knew better than to expect Ron and Harry to think of such mundane things as Instant Cleaning Solution for their clothes, a medi-kit, enchanted ponchos, and misdirectors for safety. They would bring wands and books of hexes and enough changes of underwear to last them about a week, and then they would turn to her, wondering where they had gone wrong and what they could do to fix it. She smiled at the thought, but it wasn't untouched by bitterness.
It had done no good, she reminded herself sternly. He had chosen his path—she had chosen hers. Period.
A tapping at the window caught her attention. Perplexed, Hermione went over and opened it to admit a worsted gray owl who limped badly and was missing quite a few feathers. She untied the note from his foot; he nipped her hand with painful gratitude, and flew off. Frowning, she watched it leave, and then unfolded the note.
They'll attack him on the night of his birthday at his house in Surrey. Be gone by then.
I'm sorry.
There was no signature—but she didn't need one. She recognized that elegant hand. Tears pricked at her throat as she held the letter against her lips, remembering the taste of his mouth.
He had hesitated.