The first time she remembers taking his hand was in his sleep. She was eleven, bushy-haired and trembling and she held it so tight, for so long she made her hand go numb. It feels like that now. Waiting for him to wake up.
She sees his life pass by in snapshots. Tangible yet so far away. She sees him, of course. Pictures hang on the wall, meticulously arranged by a red-headed girl whose eyes are far too empty, far too much like her own. She sees him smile. She sees him hold his son. She sees him laugh. She sees him with his wife. But there is no picture of her.
She is part of a different lifetime, of a different photo album. The types of photo albums you don’t bring out to show your guests. She is interwoven in between threads of blood and silver stags. She is pressed in-between words of a story that was never told. She is trapped in a lifetime that is not his anymore. She is sowed in a quilt of time that no longer exists in his eyes. Their red and gold thread is not acceptable for display. They cannot show the curses and the dripping blood and the salty tears and the lipsagainstskin and flesh against flesh to the world. She is kept in a photo album in a dusty old box in the attic.
So they smile and ask, please pass the potatoes and exist in between the thank you’s and how are you’s. They are no longer making patterns all across the map, they are static and still and their photo collection grows in a pretty little album with flowers that are not covered in crimson and poison.
She fears, at times, that she is stuck in a world that has ceased to exist. But then again, she’s almostsure that he is too. She walks up the stairs laughing at a joke that Ron has just told, but all she can see is his life passing by in pictures that she does not quite recognize. Whereas she was once embedded in the middle of a circle, she is now perpetually on the periphery.
She cannot touch the pictures like she could touch his hands as he slept and she prayed to a god she didn’t even believe in, and this pains her the most. She’s tried in moments of weakness to run her hand against them but she is blocked by a piece of glass.
There it is, she thinks, the great Harry Potter’s life immortalized in pretty scrapbooks and framed pictures along the stairway and she doesn’t even recognize half of them.
But there is one. There is one that she recognizes too much. It is dimly lit and faded and it welcomes her each time she walks into Grimmauld Place. He is in the centre, with the sort of smiles that heroes have, and she is beside him and it was taken in a moment of weakness as she yawned and rested her chin against his shoulder, exhausted from trying to research a locating spell, her hand lightly brushing his. She remembers everything then.
(Not that she could forget).
Cold nights, and laughter that lit the air, and hand on hand, and lips on lips and tears streaming down, and songs they only know how to sing. She remembers everything from the warm sweaters on Christmas morning, to pumpkin pie, and laughing for joy. She remembers sitting by the fire, and she remembers the plain buttered toast, and she remembers the lake, she remembers screaming herself hoarse for a game she never cared about, she remembers holding him tightly as his tears turned to ice, she remembers hands intertwining with her own. And it’s more beautiful than anything she’s ever seen. So she lives with all the photo albums and frames that seem like blank pages to her – and she hates blank pages – because of that one. She’ll always have one.
Harry/Hermione - Periphery
She sees his life pass by in snapshots. Tangible yet so far away. She sees him, of course. Pictures hang on the wall, meticulously arranged by a red-headed girl whose eyes are far too empty, far too much like her own. She sees him smile. She sees him hold his son. She sees him laugh. She sees him with his wife. But there is no picture of her.
She is part of a different lifetime, of a different photo album. The types of photo albums you don’t bring out to show your guests. She is interwoven in between threads of blood and silver stags. She is pressed in-between words of a story that was never told. She is trapped in a lifetime that is not his anymore. She is sowed in a quilt of time that no longer exists in his eyes. Their red and gold thread is not acceptable for display. They cannot show the curses and the dripping blood and the salty tears and the lipsagainstskin and flesh against flesh to the world. She is kept in a photo album in a dusty old box in the attic.
So they smile and ask, please pass the potatoes and exist in between the thank you’s and how are you’s. They are no longer making patterns all across the map, they are static and still and their photo collection grows in a pretty little album with flowers that are not covered in crimson and poison.
She fears, at times, that she is stuck in a world that has ceased to exist. But then again, she’s almostsure that he is too. She walks up the stairs laughing at a joke that Ron has just told, but all she can see is his life passing by in pictures that she does not quite recognize. Whereas she was once embedded in the middle of a circle, she is now perpetually on the periphery.
She cannot touch the pictures like she could touch his hands as he slept and she prayed to a god she didn’t even believe in, and this pains her the most. She’s tried in moments of weakness to run her hand against them but she is blocked by a piece of glass.
There it is, she thinks, the great Harry Potter’s life immortalized in pretty scrapbooks and framed pictures along the stairway and she doesn’t even recognize half of them.
But there is one. There is one that she recognizes too much. It is dimly lit and faded and it welcomes her each time she walks into Grimmauld Place. He is in the centre, with the sort of smiles that heroes have, and she is beside him and it was taken in a moment of weakness as she yawned and rested her chin against his shoulder, exhausted from trying to research a locating spell, her hand lightly brushing his. She remembers everything then.
(Not that she could forget).
Cold nights, and laughter that lit the air, and hand on hand, and lips on lips and tears streaming down, and songs they only know how to sing. She remembers everything from the warm sweaters on Christmas morning, to pumpkin pie, and laughing for joy. She remembers sitting by the fire, and she remembers the plain buttered toast, and she remembers the lake, she remembers screaming herself hoarse for a game she never cared about, she remembers holding him tightly as his tears turned to ice, she remembers hands intertwining with her own. And it’s more beautiful than anything she’s ever seen. So she lives with all the photo albums and frames that seem like blank pages to her – and she hates blank pages – because of that one. She’ll always have one.