Summary → After the great battle of Hogwarts, Hermione allowed herself to sigh.
Status → Complete (oneshot).
Category → Gen (if you want, it could be pre-HP/HG)
Rating → PG-13.
Spoilers → HP & The Deathly Hallows (it doesn't considers the cannon!last battle, as well as the epilogue).
Main characters and/or Ship → Hermione Granger & Harry Potter.
This is the first time that I'm translating one of my fics (the original in Portuguese), so if you find any grammatical error or misused vocabulary, I would be immensely grateful if you let me know! (and I know there are mistakes, I just do not know to correct them...)
After the battle of Hogwarts, after the dead had been counted and the injured sent to the hospital wing, after embracing friends and consoling Mrs. Weasley, after all that, Hermione allowed herself to sigh.
Sitting on the first step of the staircase leading to the main entrance of the castle, the girl - if anyone can refer to her that way, after all she had gone through - had a privileged view of the battlefield.
The green grass was stained with red in several places. Green and red, the colors of the war - the two most used spells in this madness: the curse of death and Stupefy. The eyes of the boy who survived once more and the color of blood – of both friends and enemies that fell during their journey.
Hermione was sure that, for many nights, she will only see scenes in green and red as she closes her eyes to receive Morpheus in her arms, until the enchanted dust of the Endless was deposited on her mind. She would never forget the feeling of seeing those colors coming out of her own wand.
Long ago, she would never imagine herself capable of producing a curse of death, after all, to achieve such a feat is necessary to desire the death of another person and Hermione was nothing but a fierce defender of life - whosesoever. But she was wrong. Only when the ugly face of war has been shown to her is that Hermione could truly understand what she was capable of.
War is war. Your life or that of your enemy – the life of your enemy or that of your friend. The choice is really simple to make, but the feeling that stays afterwards is the emptiness, the horror of realizing that with just two simple words you can make someone disappear: someone who may have believed in intolerance, but that had a father, a mother, even maybe wife and children who will mourn for his lost life. It was the feeling of deleting permanently a piece of history that could have been from the list of possibilities.
She sighed again.
She almost envied those who could never create a death curse, not even to save their own lives - Ron, for example, never could... Most of the Death Eaters couldn't, either - not that they weren't dangerous, after all there are easier ways to kill someone...
Avada Kedavra, between the three unforgivable curses, is the one that requires more power. Words and intent aren't enough, it is necessary to channel the magic for it to enter deep enough in the other person so that his soul may be removed by force. It’s not a nice feeling.
And Hermione would have to live the remaining of her life with the knowledge that she was capable not only of the intent needed to make the words avada kedavra become deadly, but also of the necessary power. She feared that he could not control her power with her ethical sense.
A shadow came up behind her and Hermione had to concentrate not to draw her wand and attack the newcomer. But the smell of him was known and she felt her shoulders relax when Harry sat down beside her.
The two fell silent for a while staring at the garden of horrors that once guarded what could be called memories of childhood adventures if they were to be compared to the horrible memories of the night that was finally over.
He hit his left shoulder on hers right:
“Everything Okay?”
She looked at him incredulous and Harry had the decency to appear embarrassed by the question itself.
Green eyes found brown - eyes that held the secret of shared pain, of so many misadventures lived together and of the capability of being anything and everything. Of the power that flowed through their veins.
At that moment Hermione was sure that Harry would be the only one who would understand her. All the terrors of that year were spent together, and that way they remained, even when Ron left.
“You were awesome in battle, Harry.”
He blushed at the compliment and she loved him more than ever for it: when you see a man who killed as many people as you in a bloody battle field just a few hours ago blush because of a mere compliment, your faith in humanity is restored. Hermione was not stupid enough to think that everything would be fine, but part of the void that she felt was been filled by the soft and warm feeling of friendship for that boy.
“You too, Hermione.”
Neither mentioned the Unforgivable Curses that the other had thrown, but they knew: Harry had seen Hermione cast a Cruciatus against Bellatrix when the Death Eater had fellen - and she had allowed herself to smile briefly when she saw the pain of the woman who once had her at the tip of her dagger.
Hermione knew that Harry had bewitched Lucius with an Imperius to make him take a false message to Voldemort and that, before removing the spell, made him disrobe of the cape and mask that guaranteed his protection and anonymity, while making him kneel at Ginny’s feet and apologize for what happened in the Chamber of Secrets, as she kicked him and Harry held the spell to allow the girl her little revenge.
They knew that they were capable of casting the killing curse, and could see their powers reflected in one another's eyes.
How could life be normal again? Harry broke the silence:
“So you and Ron...?”
It was her turn to blush, that had been a mistake.
“Actually, I think it was just despair, Harry... Adrenaline does strange things to us, doesn't it? I just hope he understands.”
“The risk of dying too.” He said laughing and thinking about Ginny.
Both knew that the Weasleys could never be what they needed. How could they be? While they were fighting, Ginny was in school serving detention with Hagrid (not that the school was a sanctuary that year, but it still was a place with authority figures that took the war from the shoulders of the youngsters most of the time). And Ron, well, Ron had abandoned them. Hermione still wasn’t sure she could forgive him for that. Now that the hard time had passed, the resentment left a bitter taste in her mouth.
“Has anyone fetched Snape's body?”
“Headmaster Snape, Harry.” She corrected him, annoyed. Some things, apparently, never change.
"He never was my headmaster, Hermione, even if I now respect him for what he was willing to do and sacrifice."
Another vestige of the war: they had noticed that no one was sacred and no one was all evil, except perhaps the Dark Lord, but Hermione still had her doubts, she was almost sure that a good psychiatrist could have prevented Tom Riddle from becoming Lord Voldemort.
“The headmaster asked one of the rescue teams to search the Shrieking Shack. They must have already found the body by now.” Hermione wasn’t sure, but neither she had any intention of getting up from where she was to help anyone.
“You know, I feel bad for him. Now he would be finally free to live without having to comply with both Headmaster Dumbledore’s and Voldemort’s will... And all that time he spent protecting me only to discover that I would probably die in the end. He should have survived.”
Hermione looked at the Whomping Willow in the distance. She agreed with Harry, but...
“I don’t know, Harry. Actually, I think it was a relief for him to die. I have a feeling that the professor didn’t expect to survive this battle, and if he had survived, he couldn’t live a normal life. He spent too much time pretending to be someone he wasn’t...”
“Yeah, he has spent almost his entire life fighting.” Harry added. Both knew the addendum that was on the tip of the tongue of the other: "as we did." Will they one day be able to have a normal life after spending the entire adolescence in the midst of a war in which they were two of the main characters?
Hermione sighed again and they exchanged a sad look.
Green eyes stared at the bloody lawn.
Hermione could see the similarities between Harry and Voldemort, but to her the differences were so great that it seemed ridiculous the chance of him one day becoming something like the monster they had finally defeated.
But life would never be normal for them both. Not with so much power that the air practically vibrated around them. Hermione felt a pang of fear: she only felt the air tremble that way around the late Headmaster and the Dark Lord.
Green eyes met hazel again. She could see in him the fear of being unable to contain himself. The fear that she would not be able to contain herself. She knew she could never abandon him. She felt that he would never leave her too, after all only they could understand each other. They were weakened by war, but, even so, they were more powerful than any wizard could imagine.
At that moment she vowed, before the bloody fields, among the colors of the war, that she would help him remain sane and that she would do the impossible not to succumb to her own darkness.
