Current mood:	uncomfortable
Current music:	ryan adams and the cardinals, dear john

you're always mine when you're gone
This is...random and weird. A product of sleep-deprivation and the fact I can't give arianaeh my brain for a little extra storage space.

So what do I do, since there's really nothing to do, except send good vibes her way? Write ENTIRELY strange fic.



[Potter, 'A Thousand Houses Long']

He imagines postcards and ink stains, post boxes on street corners and no magic to speak of. He imagines them in a box, under her bed, close enough to touch; one after the other, sometimes separated by weeks, other only by days.

He imagines that box years from now, well-thumbed and yellow; Pablo Neruda and Margaret Atwood, salt-rose topazes and air unnoticed and necessary. He can more than imagine it - he can feel the card stock under his fingers, smell it, feels his chest contract with those months, years, apart, necessary but wrenching.

She can see it all too; and she knows he knows, he saw the flash in her eye, his lips near hers, his whispered, 'I can't...not. I'll be back. And you...I'll write.'

He saw the flash in her eye and felt her fingers tighten on his elbows. He saw it all playing out and she figures that's why he can't seem to understand why she's standing in his doorway now, key halfway to the lock and staring at him.

'Hermione? What? I'm-'

'Leaving?' she finishes for him, her eyebrows raised. Then she goes on, pushing past him in to his flat. 'I was thinking about it after you left and I just wanted to make sure you understood.'

He closes his door and turns around slowly, his eyes narrowing. 'You said it was fine. Which means?'

'Which means it's fine,' she says. 'It is. Just - I won't be waiting here for you when you get back.'

The silence that descends is thick, heavier than anything she's ever felt. He looks like he can't breath.

She says nothing, her face giving nothing away. She feels eerily calm, utterly decided as she looks at him; she can tell that that terrifies him more than anything.

'Why...Hermione, I asked you. And you said it was okay, that if that was what I needed to do...' he trails off, his voice getting quieter and harder with each passing moment.

'Again, Harry. If you feel like you need to leave, to be alone, that's fine. But I won't wait around for you.'

'I never asked you to-'

'No, actually you didn't,' she interrupts, her voice rising with each word. 'You just informed me that you were leaving. Assuming, I suppose, I'd wait for you, pining away while you wrote your bloody postcards and fucked anything that stood still long enough!'

'Hermione!' he says, closing the distance between them, tilting his head down to hers. 'Do you really think that's what this is about?'

She sighs, her jaw clenching as she stares at him. 'No. Not...I know that you aren't leaving simply to sleep your way around the globe,' she says, rolling her eyes. 'That's beside the point anyway.'

'My hypothetical affairs?' he says, a smirk in his voice. 'They're beside the point?'

She rolls her eyes again and steps away from him. 'Just listen to me for a minute. I get that you think you need to leave. I do. I've been tempted myself - our life...it's not perfect, Harry. And, yeah, there's a lot of stuff we need to deal with and work through and whatever other therapeutic cliche you can think of. But running away is not going to help and,' she says, holding up her hand when he opens his mouth, 'I know you don't think of it as running away. But. It is. Because when you get back, you're still going to have to deal with it. You're postponing, love, not fixing,' she finishes, quietly, her face back to calm, resolute.

She stares at him, waiting for something, but is not surprised when he just stares back.

'You can go. But I won't do that to myself; I won't be that person. I...we already wasted too much time. And, God, Harry. My heart will break. But I'll break if I wait. So...I guess that's my ultimatum. And I swore that I would never do this, but I never thought I'd love someone so bloody stupid either,' she says, her voice catching.

The silence from earlier is back, heavier each second and she can already feel her heart starting to splinter. She waits for what seems like several eternities. And she didn't expect this to help, but she hoped. When she feels she can't stand it anymore, she just nods and brushes past him, walking blindly through his door and down his front steps.

She doesn't hear the door open behind her, or him calling her name. She only stops when he finally reaches her, hand on her elbow and tears in his eyes. She can't seem to hear what's he's saying, but she doesn't think it matters.

Then his lips are on hers and her hand is in his hair and she knows they'll figure it out somehow.



Harry/Hermione - That’s where I belong and you belong with me.


Like I said, random, right? I'll tell you where it comes from - the old!new story. Which I am. still. working. on. Years (literally YEARS) later. This is what my Hermione should have done, but she didn't. So an AU of a fic that is not (and probably NEVER WILL BE. ARGH.) finished.

Wow, dude. I need sleep!