Harmione Short Stories

Present to Future: Part Two

Meanwhile: The night before. (Harry's Perspective)

"I don't care if you think it's a hare in the bushes. I want you to call for me. Please." I begged. I could not lose another friend or have her hurt.

She walked up to me and hugged me . This one was soft and gentle unlike her more popular suffocating ones. "I will, Harry." she assured me.

I pulled back, holding her shoulders, and gazed into her chocolate brown eyes. "Promise me?"

"I promise." and with that, she went outside.

I went over to my bed and lied down. Unable to sleep from worrying about Hermione. "Get over yourself Harry!" I told myself. "She's not called the brightest witch of our age for nothing." I stared at the ceiling tossing and turning. I played the argument from the morning that Ron left over in my head.

Flashback:

"If you've got something to say, then spit it out." I told him.

"Alright I'll spit it out. But don't expect me to be grateful now there's another damn thing we've got to find." he said with anger.

"I thought you knew what you signed up for." I asked him.

"I thought I did too."

"Well look, I'm sorry but I don't quite understand. What part of this isn't living up to your expectations? Did you think we were going to be staying in a five star hotel? Finding a Horcrux every other day? You thought you'd be back with your mum by Christmas?" I asked him.

"I just thought after all this time, we would have actually achieved something. I thought you knew what you were doing. I thought Dumbledore would have told you something worthwhile. I thought you had a plan." he snapped.

"I told you everything Dumbledore told me, and in case you haven't noticed we have found a Horcrux already." I justified.

"Yeah, and we're about as close to getting rid of it as we are to finding the rest of them, aren't we?" he asked as if it was as easy as that to destroy it.

Hermione intervened. "Ron, please take the Horcrux off. You wouldn't be saying any of this if you hadn't been wearing it all day." she tried convincing him, but he just pushed her out of the way causing tears to come out of her sad eyes. It hurt me to see Hermione like that.

"Do you want to know why I listen to that radio every night, do you? To make sure I don't hear Ginny's name. Or Fred. Or George. Or mum."

"You think I'm not listening too? You think I don't know how this feels? No you don't know how it feels." I was thrown off in disbelief.

"Your parents are dead, you have no family." He yelled. Ron's words cut through my heart with each passing moment.

"No. Ron. You don't mean that." I said to him.

"You're damn right I do!" he yelled again.

The argument between us was getting very heated, very quickly. Ron had just rubbed it in my face that I don't have any parents; no one to take care of him. Hermione and I believed that it was the Horcrux. It had to be. Hermione tried to get them to stop fighting.

"Hermione!" Ron said firmly. "Let's go." she looked at him in disbelief.

"What?" she asked. Did he really just ask her to ditch me?

"I said, Let's go." he repeated through clenched teeth.

"Ron..." she started, her eyes welling up with tears.

"It's either me, or him." he said hastily.

"Ronald please! You can't be serious-" her eyes were begging him to not leave. She took a short breath and continued. "This is Harry!"

"Me. or Him." he looked at her with stone cold eyes.

Present Time:

I decided it was enough of torturing myself by replaying the conversation or, fight back in my head. I slowly drifted off to sleep and woke up to angelic singing. I sat up in my bed, rubbed my eyes and put on my glasses.

I poked my head out of the tent to see a crying Hermione singing what I recognized as the song he used to sing with her mom. It hurt my heart to see her like this. I walked up to her, my feet crunching the frozen snow. "Hey 'Mione." I smiled softly.

"Hey Harry." she quickly wiped her cheeks upon seeing me; obviously trying to hide her crying. I sat down next to her, leaning my back against the same tree.

"How are you feeling?" she asked me, sniffling.

"I should be asking you that. I'm sorry you had to sacrifice so much for me." I really was.

"No Harry. I would do it all again in a heartbeat." she admitted to me. I smiled, but I was sad inside knowing that I was partly the reason she was sad.

"Where are we now?" I asked quietly.

"The Forest of Dean. Came here once with Mum and Dad. Years ago." she sniffled. "It's just how I remember it. The trees, the river, everything. Like... nothing's changed." she met my gaze before sadly adding "Not true of course. Everything's changed." I nodded. "If I bought my parents back here, they wouldn't remember any of it. Not the trees. Not the river." she paused, tears filling her eyes. "Not even me." I softly tilted her chin so she laid her head on my shoulder.

She cried. She just cried and it hurt me so much to see her this way. "Hermione, like I said before, we have each other. I owe you many lifetimes for not leaving me, and even if I didn't, I'd still have done the same for you." she wiped her tears.

"I wish to stay here Harry. Grow old... with you." she lifted her head off my shoulder and looked into my eyes.

"Do you really mean that?" I asked her. Why would anyone want to stay with me? Spend a lifetime with me?

"I do." she replied, her voice cracking.

"Then... I hope you won't hate me for what I'm going to do." I said.