Idek if this is what you had in mind, but it is what just happened when I read the prompt. Hope you like.
“We didn’t plan ahead,” she whispers to him. The soft seaside breeze blows her awfully short curls back and she tastes salt in her tongue as she breathes in. The fabulous man at the salon said it would make her feel younger but it didn’t work and her world feels just as heavy now as it did before she cut off her hair.
Sydney is bright. Sunny but cold. It's vibrant and alive in ways she finds so foreign it's terrifying. She should wish to leave, but she believes having fought such a war allows her a certain amount of self pitying and she uses hers to stay in Australia and feel a foreigner, isolated. To sit out on the windy beach under the bright sun and feel loneliness. Taste the salt of the air on her tongue and sink her bare feet in the sand. To wait for Harry to slowly walk out of her parents’ house and sit next to her. He does it in silence, a pattern as well rehearsed as that habit she has of turning her eyes away from him when he looks at her across the dinner table.
Sometimes she thinks she didn’t leave Britain with Harry just to find her parents. They also did it because they are the ones who needed to find themselves the most. Because now he has no roots anywhere and because she erased hers. The more they hide away avoiding what they left, the deeper she feels the idea sinks in with her. They didn’t plan ahead.
“I know,” he whispers.
Ron wouldn’t understand.
“I thought it would be enough.” her voice is low, hollow. She feels the painful knot that forms in it as she tries to bite her lip and scrunch her nose to keep the tears from rolling down her cheek. “To win.” He rests his hand in the sand between them. “Not to lose.” She can’t meet his eyes so she meets his hand in the sand. Fingers closing in around his hand, the sand slipping away from between them the harder she squeezes. Her breath is harsh, her chest pressing in her heart. When she speaks again, her voice is broken and the tears in her cheeks.
“We didn’t plan ahead.” She squeezes his hand harder. “Hermione-” “I don’t know how to go back anywhere that’s not our tent in the forest.” She feels the sobs before she lets them out and she breathes in hard, her mouth open as she gasps for air to keep from crying. “What’s wrong with us?” A part of her wants to slap him. “Everything.” “Why?”
She lets a sob out before she breathes in one more time, eyes closed. She lets go of his hand and wipes her cheeks dry, sand all over them. She turns her head and their eyes meet.
“Because you had no idea what you were doing when you told Ron you loved me like a sister.”
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timeasmymeasure
Harry/Hermione - Haunted
Date: 2010-12-06 04:45 am (UTC)“We didn’t plan ahead,” she whispers to him.
The soft seaside breeze blows her awfully short curls back and she tastes salt in her tongue as she breathes in. The fabulous man at the salon said it would make her feel younger but it didn’t work and her world feels just as heavy now as it did before she cut off her hair.
Sydney is bright. Sunny but cold. It's vibrant and alive in ways she finds so foreign it's terrifying. She should wish to leave, but she believes having fought such a war allows her a certain amount of self pitying and she uses hers to stay in Australia and feel a foreigner, isolated. To sit out on the windy beach under the bright sun and feel loneliness. Taste the salt of the air on her tongue and sink her bare feet in the sand.
To wait for Harry to slowly walk out of her parents’ house and sit next to her. He does it in silence, a pattern as well rehearsed as that habit she has of turning her eyes away from him when he looks at her across the dinner table.
Sometimes she thinks she didn’t leave Britain with Harry just to find her parents. They also did it because they are the ones who needed to find themselves the most. Because now he has no roots anywhere and because she erased hers. The more they hide away avoiding what they left, the deeper she feels the idea sinks in with her. They didn’t plan ahead.
“I know,” he whispers.
Ron wouldn’t understand.
“I thought it would be enough.” her voice is low, hollow. She feels the painful knot that forms in it as she tries to bite her lip and scrunch her nose to keep the tears from rolling down her cheek.
“To win.” He rests his hand in the sand between them.
“Not to lose.”
She can’t meet his eyes so she meets his hand in the sand. Fingers closing in around his hand, the sand slipping away from between them the harder she squeezes. Her breath is harsh, her chest pressing in her heart. When she speaks again, her voice is broken and the tears in her cheeks.
“We didn’t plan ahead.”
She squeezes his hand harder.
“Hermione-”
“I don’t know how to go back anywhere that’s not our tent in the forest.”
She feels the sobs before she lets them out and she breathes in hard, her mouth open as she gasps for air to keep from crying.
“What’s wrong with us?”
A part of her wants to slap him.
“Everything.”
“Why?”
She lets a sob out before she breathes in one more time, eyes closed. She lets go of his hand and wipes her cheeks dry, sand all over them. She turns her head and their eyes meet.
“Because you had no idea what you were doing when you told Ron you loved me like a sister.”
She looks back to the sea.
She tastes salt again.