home is where the heart is (and you hold mine)

fate took a shotgun and torch to our plans (before dancing on the ashes)

Chapter 10

fate took a shotgun and torch to our plans (before dancing on the ashes)

Hermione breathed out carefully at the reply, something she would've taken as completely firm if it weren't for the fact that she knew most, if not all, of Harry's tells.

His eyes immediately became vacant, his tone was listless, and his shoulders hunched in way that told him that there were memories – the harsh, distasteful ones – swarming his head like a mass of angry wasps. They stung him incessantly until he just gave up, shutting himself down to escape from them, and even then, they didn't really stop.

She had been working since their first year to understand Harry, trying to gain more insight to his thought process, because his emotions were always on overdrive, heightened to a point where there was no emotion that Harry didn't feel strongly. They reared up at the slightest provocation and when they just become too much, it was as though they weren't there at all.

"Sometimes, I feel so much, I feel nothing at all... so many things to discern so it's all there, wanting to do something and then... then I don't know what to do. Nothing can make sense, when they all run rampant like that."

Hermione knew, she knew from the 5 years she had spent being a friend, a sister, to Harry, working with Harry to show him a healthy coping methods for his trauma, that he hid his dark thoughts in the very back of his mind. He hid them until they were squashed into an impossibly tight corner, wrapped in cold iron chains, and they were to never be heard from again – except, whenever they did come out, when they slipped out from their confines, he drew back just like he was going now and God, Hermione was so tired of running into more layers and layers of armor.

She told herself to have more patience – to be patient because the trauma that Harry had been through was extensive and it needed to be worked through carefully – but she was so tired of running into the layers that surrounded Harry.

It was so many layers that every time Hermione got through a single one, two more came back up because everything was just so fucked up. Harry was pregnant for God's sake – wizards had the fucking possibility of carrying children – the father of the babe was the Dark Lord, through some strange happenstance, which really did nothing to help the situation.

Carrying a child while Harry was in the situation that he was in – being forced to fight the Dark Lord – wasn't safe but carrying said Dark Lord's child was even worse. Also, because the reason for a good portion of Harry's trauma derived from the Dark Lord, once again the father of Harry's child.

Hermione had her doubts – honestly though, who wouldn't? – about Voldemort, about everything that surrounded their outlandish plans, but Harry needed the magic to be able to keep the child. And God knows that Harry didn't have the heart to kill an innocent child, not when he'd seen it's magical core already, not when he already had been death, had seen suffering and killing the child would sure break Harry's heart. It would shatter him.

Besides, the child was her godchild, hers, and Hermione, despite her doubts, would do her best for that child because Harry loved this child, and it was obvious. It was so obvious that even a blind man could see it, and she'd be damned if this good thing, this one truly good and pure thing, was taken away from them – from Harry, from Ron (the loveable prat was in love with the thought of being an uncle) and her.

That child was theirs and she would fight tooth and nail so that it could live.

So, she rolled her shoulders as though she was preparing for battle and took Harry's hands into hers. "Harry..." Hermione exhaled carefully. "Why won't you talk to them? I just... All I need is an explanation, please."