Current mood:	good
Current music:	ryan gosling, put me in a car

it'll be all i ever ask of you
This is a little bit of Potter. It's something I just pounded out in like half an hour; I wanted to write some Potter and the old!new story is going nowhere.

Blame it on meegzi31 and her Ryan Gosling-pushing ways. I'm in lurve with this song.

You can also blame Alfonso (and Dan and Emma) and their total understanding of the pumpkin. I'm in lurve with him.

And this is only pumpkin if you squint (well, you don't have to squint very hard). Pre-pumpkin, possibly. *g*



[Potter, 'Put Me In a Car']

What she remembers most clearly is the look on Ron’s face.

That same look he’s been giving her since first year; that amalgamation of ‘is she mad?’ and wondrous respect. Except this time, the silence oppressive despite the clanging of the cars and chug of the engine, the look on his face seems magnified, multiplied several times over. It is distorted and seems to be screaming even though his mouth is closed.

It’s just the three of them, sitting, leaning towards each other in that car, door charmed shut, ignoring the inquiring looks from classmates walking by, as Harry haltingly told them about Dumbledore’s words and the prophecy.

Either him or me.

They’re both staring at her, they have been ever since she broke the silence of his pronouncement with an ordinary, everyday, conversational, ‘That’s fine.’

‘That’s fine,’ she says again, her voice strong and clear, not looking away from Harry, his eyes greener than she’s ever seen them. ‘Because I have no intention of letting you go.’

She pauses, resolution coursing through her veins, her face calm. She thinks she should feel something - hysteria, or terror, or something but she doesn’t. She speaks calmly and with almost a slight smile on her face, feeling absolute certainty deep in her bones. There is nothing there but what is. And all that is, is this.

‘So it’ll have to be Voldemort.’

She leans back, looking away from Harry, past Ron’s stunned face to the passing green. She knows it sounds ridiculous, looks ridiculous, others would laugh, a sixteen-year old witch, not even begun her NEWTS, taking on Lord Voldemort. But Harry and Ron say nothing, seeing her face, simply settling into the silence, watching the sky become darker and feeling Hogwarts draw nearer.

She wonders where her certainty comes from, why her chest doesn’t hurt or ache, why her eyes don’t water and there’s not a lump in her throat. She just heard her best friend has to defeat the darkest wizard in a century, or die. And she feels nothing.

Just the vague sense of things sliding into place into her head, a whisper of ‘of course.’ She didn’t know for sure, but, looking back on it, it only makes sense. Of course.

Suddenly, it seems like she’s always known, like she’s been preparing for it since the end of first year and ‘he’ll keep trying to come back,’ Halloween night and seeing Harry swinging around on that great troll, that first train ride and wondering why he didn’t just charm his glasses.

Always. She’s always known.

She remembers all those times, every time, seeing Harry in danger, his hands, arms, reaching out for her. Her hands reaching out for his instinctively. Something inside of her insisting they stay together, stay connected; they would be fine if they were together. They’d outrun it or outcurse it or outthink it, or simply survive it.

She remembers standing, frozen, watching, simply watching Harry and Sirius die. They were dying, right there in front of her, that night, the night they went back and saved him, and all she could hear was a vague whine in her head, her body paralyzed.

That was the moment, she thinks, standing there, wanting to scream and be sick and hold on to the Harry with her, feel his heart beating and lungs breathe, while the other one died by the lake. Wondering if she grabbed him and held on tight enough, when the other one stopped breathing if she could keep the one with her alive. Then he rushed forward and saved himself and Sirius and they both kept breathing.

She felt sick and weak with relief and that was the moment she swore to herself that she would do anything to protect him, to keep him with her. She’d never freeze up, despair eating at her soul, paralyzing her, again. She will keep her head and her wits and do anything, anything, to keep him safe.

And she will.

She jumps slightly as the train lurches to a stop, blinking, the memory of that night by the lake replaced with Ron opening their compartment door, laughing at something Seamus has said. Harry’s knuckles are white, hands clenched and hanging by his sides and as she looks at him, she feels that fierceness, that protectiveness, well up inside her again.

Nothing is going to happen to him. She won’t let it. Even if that means killing Voldemort.

She stands up and follows Ron and Harry out into the corridor, joining the crush of their schoolmates, and in the chaos, she finds one of Harry’s hands with her own.

She slips her hand into his and turns her head as he looks at her and laces their fingers together.

She looks into his eyes and smiles slightly, the cacophony of classmates and carriages slipping into the background. All she can feel is his hand in hers and all she can see are his eyes and she knows, she knows, that he believes her, that he has to, because she is telling the absolute truth.

‘It’s fine,’ she says, again, and tightens her grip.



Hermione - Then kiss me goodnight and it'll be all right.