Title: Snow
Author: ianthe_waiting
Rating: T
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter books and their characters are the property of JK Rowling. This is a work of fan-fiction. No infringement is intended, and no money is being made from this story. I am just borrowing the puppets, but this is my stage.
Genre: Drabble
Warnings: Minor Angst
Summary: #67 – Snow. She would be the one to give him peace.
Word Count: 972 words.
Author's Notes: Drabble: a slice of fic in less than 1500 words. Suggested by liz_marier. This could, hypothetically, fit in the FEH canon.





Prompt 67 – Snow








Harry’s feet crunched into the snow as he walked, his hand wrapped about the woman’s at his side. He could see his breath in the air as he exhaled, and his face was numb with the cold of the late winter day. It had been a year since the Battle of Hogwarts, and Harry had returned to the castle just before Christmas, hoping to see Ginny. Unfortunately, Ginny was far too busy with her N.E.W.T.s to bother with Harry. Harry Potter was annoyed.

“It’s getting dark, Harry.”

Harry stopped walking, realizing that he had been pulling Hermione Granger around in circles about the castle and that they stood near the edge of the Forbidden Forest close to Hagrid’s Hut. Hermione had been staying at Hogwarts while the Ministry was making concessions to bring her parents home from Australia. Hermione had been the only person at Hogwarts that had the time to talk to him it seemed.

Harry turned to Hermione who was bundled up in her heavy winter cloak with one of her knitted hats over her wild curls. In the dim evening light, he could see her cheeks were red with cold and that her pink bow lips were quivering.

Harry sighed and pulled Hermione into an embrace, startling the young woman. When he felt her arms fit around his body, he spoke for the first time in hours of walking.

“Do you ever think of what the world would be like if Voldemort had not risen?” he asked in whisper, his breath rustling Hermione’s hair.

He felt Hermione shift against him. She barely came up to his chin and her feet slipped slightly in the snow so that her slight weight fell more fully against his chest.

“I…” she started, but her teeth were beginning to chatter. “I suppose, but what good is it now?”

Harry frowned and pulled away from Hermione to gaze down into her strange amber eyes. His icy right hand cupped her cool cheek, and slowly he smiled. However, Hermione did not smile back. Her brows knitted and her lips pulled away from her teeth. Harry wondered what it was she was seeing when she looked at him.

“We lost so many friends—just think if we had the means to go back and change it… We would never have to lose anyone,” he whispered.

Snow began falling again and each flake that fell against his bare skin burned.

Hermione began to shrug away from his touch, her lips curling in distaste. Harry, however, caught her again in his arms, lifting her feet form the snowy ground to press his face to hers. It was a gesture they shared often the year before when they searched for Horcruxes without Ron, but as Harry pressed his cold, unshaven cheek to Hermione’s soft skin, he could feel Hermione’s violent revulsion through her skin.

Harry could not understand it. How could Hermione be so repulsed by him? Or was it the idea that they could change the past for a better future? Couldn’t Hermione see how much he loved her, needed her?

When he kissed her lips, Hermione whimpered, unable to fight him, his embrace trapping her arms at her sides. A swift kick of a boot into his shin sent him falling into the snow, Hermione under him.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked after he removed his mouth from her sealed mouth.

Hermione’s eyes were wide as they stared up at him, her face as white as the snow under her.

“Are you angry?” he asked, his own voice letting some of his angry confusion through his words.

Hermione said nothing, but shook, her entire body quaked not just from the cold of the snow under her, but from what Harry identified as fear.

Harry’s emerald eyes widened behind his glasses, and quickly he rolled off her body. He knew what Hermione was thinking and remembering. She remembered the night after he was injured in Godric’s Hollow, and how he had insinuated himself to be allowed to kiss her, to touch her. She loved another, and he, not knowing it as much then, loved Ginny.

Hermione rose stiffly, brushing snow from her cloak, taking five paces from Harry toward the castle, her face turned up to the snowy sky. Harry sighed, rubbing a frozen hand through untidy black hair. He could only gaze at Hermione’s back and the way the ends of her hair curled against her cloaked back.

Hermione had always been the strong one, Harry knew, and for that he loved her more than he could ever let her know.

Even after defeating Voldemort, Harry felt dissatisfied, as if he were missing something important. The longer the time since that day in May, the more he felt like he needed to do something, and for that he would need Hermione’s help.

Rising from the snow, Harry moved to Hermione, gently embracing her back.

“I’m sorry.”

She said nothing, letting her face fall away from the snowy sky. Harry felt her breathing and body relax into his.

“Let’s go on,” he suggested.

Hermione hesitated to take Harry’s hand again, but when she did, she shivered. Harry watched her face all the while they walked back to the castle.

He would need her at some point. He would need her mind and her will. He would need to do something about the way he felt before he went insane.

Harry Potter hated the snow as it fell seemingly peacefully around he and Hermione. Harry resigned his life to never have true peace, and no clean clarity like snow on the mountains around the castle. He could not explain why he felt so disquieted, but he knew, just by holding Hermione Granger’s small hand, that she might be the only person to give him clarity and peace.