The Light

Epilogue

I have missed you all so so much it is unbelievable! I didn't anticipate how big of a reception this fic was going to get, nor how massive a part of my life it was going to become. I noticed a few of you had questions about what happened next: what happened to Hermione Granger in the original timeline? What happened with Avery and Hermione?

I wrote this as Bliss, a kind of sequel to TL but decided that I might as well upload it at the end here as well as a separate fanfiction, because it answers a lot of questions you may have had. I suppose this is a thank you for sticking by me, for committing to a fanfiction that I had no idea what was happening or where it was going the majority of the time!! You inspire me daily guys.

Admittedly, this focuses more on the relationship between Hermione and Avery as it develops after the war, although the other characters are in here too. When I introduced Avery, I never anticipated an original character of my own creation would receive such a warm response but I can honestly say it means the world to me!! As someone who wants to publish one day, I'm using this entire experience to learn all that I can about world-building and character-building and you have helped me so much with that. But as much as this is about their relationship, it's also about the effects of war, the way we heal each other's brokenness and the incendiary power of hope, and love. I feel like these things are very important at the moment.

So, here it is, perhaps an unconventional couple, but one that survived all the torment and tribulations I put them through in my last fic. I hope you like it.

Epilogue

Sometimes I have the strangest feeling about you. Especially when you are near me as you are now. It feels as though I had a string tied here under my left rib where my heart is, tightly knotted to you in a similar fashion. And when you go, with all that distance between us, I am afraid that this cord will be snapped, and I shall bleed inwardly. –Charlotte Bronte

November 1981

It was really quite impossible to think of a time before Frederic Avery. Though she tried, and sometimes she tried often, the smug Slytherin always seemed to permeate through every memory he was absent from, like water devouring a piece of paper.

There was no keeping him out, though Hermione found she didn't mind it quite as much as she thought she might.

He was always there, usually silent; a statue of strength and resilience, a tree with its roots planted so deeply and firmly in the ground, no tornado could uproot it.

Of course, when this observation had been made, one could never have predicted that it would take more than a tornado. Nobody could've predicted Hermione Granger would be the one to uproot him.

He was a tall boy, with broad shoulders and a resounding chest that never seemed to fall. His face was marble, effortlessly sculptured, painstakingly carved. It nearly always wore the same expression of impatient boredom, though Hermione found the patience (or fury) to wring from him a rare droplet of a smile from time to time. His eyes were dark, his hair black, and it was as though he was allergic to warmth for it seemed to roll over him in strictly eluding waves. That being said, there was something eminently warm that lingered in those dark eyes when Hermione Granger held him, or kissed him, or even forced a laugh from his bow lips.

It took time for people to melt around him. The world could not seem to understand why they fit together so perfectly, or how they managed to love one another in full.

For she, on the other hand, was a resounding sun. Though plain in appearance, there was something blinding about her, something which made your eyes ache and forced you to squint if you stared for just a second too long. Her small body was perpetually tense and alert, and yet there was an undeniable softness to her very existence. She seemed to exhale compassion, breathe the gentle lull of consideration. Everything she did, she did passionately; she let it consume her.