The Fallout by EveryThursday (reposted)

Eighteen

Day: 1431; Hour: 6

"How have you been doing? Really." Harry says this in a tone that reminds her he knows her too well for lies.

It is late, perhaps too late, and Ron had retired to the bedroom not ten minutes ago. He had complained loudly about the lack of curtains to block the early morning sun as well as the lack of a lock on the bedroom door. It made Hermione wonder just what sort of places the two were used to living in, and if there had been any bitter sort of resentment creeping up her throat it was torn away by the reminder of how well the night had gone. It was all nostalgia followed by stories of what they had missed since they saw one another last, and they all were very good at pretending that it didn't bother them not to have been there in the first place.

Hermione had felt an explosion of warmth inside her gut when she first heard Harry's voice behind her, and it had only grown and spread like fire inside her since. She had gotten so used to trying to forget, she hadn't really known the true measure of how much she missed them until she could once again see Ron's blushing face and Harry's sheepish grin. Suddenly she missed them all at once, beyond any need she had had before until it was a suffering ache, and it was at the moment they were standing in front of her. She could now touch them, and see them, hear them, smell them; a sensory explosion of their friendship, and she felt like she wanted to cry, laugh, scream and spin in circles while jumping until they sat her down and gave her a proper head exam.

"How is anyone doing?" She shrugs, knowing it is best to avoid this conversation because it only leads to very bad land.

Like the, why did you leave me, or maybe, more importantly, how, because she doesn't think she could have ever been the one to walk away first. She almost wants to ask those dark, icky questions that will not do for this time in their lives - what am I to you, and why is Ron the one, and what more could I do to be the better friend, and why wasn't I the one that was good enough? Why wasn't it me you wanted there with you? She wanted to know if this place between them filled with memories of the past would ever be filled up with something more, or if those memories would fade with the passing of different directions and all one would see is that dark, deep, unrelenting chasm she sometimes peers into while alone and feels inside her gut. She wants to tell him that sometimes it feels like she doesn't count, and she wants to be cruel and tell him it's because of him, and Ron a little too because Harry was the choice he made, and not her. She wants to admit she feels selfish, and she doesn't know if that's so wrong anymore.

And she also wants to grab him and shake him and demand for him to take her with him. Because she has heard the gossip, because she feels the shadows creep closer to her bed at night, because she knows what is coming and despite their presence she also knows they are not here to take her back with them. Even though it was always supposed to be the three of them, and she, unlike him or whoever makes up his mind for him now, has not decided on another way. He'll say something like, you're still fighting the war, and she'll say, but not with you, not really. Then he would say something like, Hermione, please, or that doesn't matter. And she would like to tell him that it does matter, it matters very much, because in all her thoughts and dreams and fear and circumstances of imagination and possible outcomes since she first met him until now, Hermione Granger has always lived or died standing next to Harry Potter and Ron Weasley.

She wants to ask him if he left her because he has other intelligent people to do her work for her, and why she was so replaceable; if someone else stands on his left while he has kept Ron so tight on his right; if it was always supposed to be him and Ron, and why it was; if she should just accept these things, and how.

"That's not what I asked," he says softly, flinching when he sips from his tea because he put too much sugar in it.

Hermione breathes two, three times, and gets hold of her mind. It is too easy to be hurt here, and much harder to be strong - she has never been willing to accept what is easy. Harry has enough without her adding to it. After war, that is when you are supposed to lick your wounds, and there would be years for that. Not now. They are still here, now, aren't they? And for her. That should say enough. And she loves them, and there would be no changing that. They were all doing what was best for the cause, or something, and if people's feelings got hurt it was trivial. Or supposed to be. Perhaps for those who don't have to feel them.