Running Scared

The One Real Thing

He was walking along the beach it seemed. The sand felt coarse and rough against his bare feet but he trudged on. For what reason, he didn't know. All he knew was that he needed to find something,

He kept a light pace as he meandered along the shore before spotting it, or rather, her. She was dressed in a shimmery white dress and was facing away from him. He could spot her wild uncoiled hair blowing with the wind and a grin spread across his face. He never liked when she tied her hair up.

She seemed to be moving away from him and, before he knew it, he increased his speed to a jog in order to catch up to her. It felt like he was never going to catch her but he kept going with determination.

Eventually, it looked as if he was getting closer and more details of her came into view. He could spot the untamable curls of her hair and the brilliant sun-kissed tone of her skin that gleamed brightly under the sunlight. Her feet were bare like his and her white dress was flowing with the wind, giving her the look of an ethereal being.

After an eternity, he came to stand right behind her. He reached out and wrapped his arms around her waist before pulling her back to his chest. She turned around immediately, wrapping her arms around his own waist as she did so, before burying her head against him. The golden brown curls on her head were unmistakable but he didn't feel any surprise. He felt himself smiling before pulling her back to reveal her face. He needed to see her.

When chocolate brown eyes met his own emerald green, he felt his smile grow wider. A face he recognized like the back of his hand was staring right back at him and he couldn't stop himself from leaning his lips to hers anymore that he could stop himself from breathing.

Hermione woke first and immediately looked at Harry's face. When she found a contented smile on it, her heart soared in relief. He was dreaming and, from the looks of it, he was enjoying it. He was alive, he was safe, and he was with her. She listened as his heart beat perfectly in rhythm and sighed relaxingly against him. His scent wafted through her nose, giving her even more of a reminder that he was still alive.

Resolving to let him sleep and prepare breakfast, Hermione tried to tear her body away from him and nearly yelped in surprise when his strong arms pulled her back against him. Despite her resolution, the girl felt content as his arms wound themselves even tighter around her body. She allowed herself to not think too much into it and relaxed against him. Sleep returned to take her only moments later.
———
Hours later, Harry woke before Hermione. His body ached and he felt as if his head was being bludgeoned but the unfamiliar weight on his chest was what caught his attention first. Drowsily, he opened his eyes and looked down to find the unmistakable bushy curls of his dreams lying against him.

His surprise wore off quickly once the memory of the night before came back to him. He remembered pushing her out of the way of the lunging snake and taking the bite of it right on his neck. He was sure he was going to die but here he was, alive and well. She must have nursed him back to health. His body still ached but he was comforted by her presence and the sheer warmth emanating from her body.

She hadn't woken up yet and Harry allowed his thoughts to wander back to his dream. A soft smile adorned his face as he remembered how she looked. Her white dress made her look like an angel and the sun had given her skin a delicate golden glow. He kissed her in his dream, just like he had done in every one of them before that.

Somewhere along the way, his long held admiration for her had gestated into love. It hit him like a truck when he first realized the depth of his feelings for her but it was replaced quickly by a great sense of misery and acceptance. While his feelings for her had evolved, he was sure that hers hadn't. He would always be her best friend, nothing more and nothing less. Her heart, it appeared, belong to Ron.

He thought of Ginny and Cho, the two girls he thought he liked. Try as he might, he couldn't pinpoint when the crush on Cho or Ginny started. It was as if, one day out of the blue, he decided to like them. They made him feel normal in a sense but it was nothing to how he felt for Hermione. His feelings for Cho died right after she criticized him for always choosing Hermione over her and he couldn't have cared less. The feelings for Ginny, however, died a much slower death.

On the day he was set to leave for the hunt, Ginny had told him that he was never going to be truly happy unless he was chasing after Voldemort. At that moment, everything became clear to him. She had never stopped seeing him as the boy-who-lived, the chosen one, and all those other titles that he hated with a passion. He wondered how she could even say that about him after all he lost because of Voldemort. Did she honestly think he wanted to be marked by him, that he wanted to duel him? He was here purely because the fates willed it so, not of his own accord.

He remembered being miserable all through the hunt as Hermione and Ron inched ever so closer together, reminding him of the fact that he was losing her. Younger him was too much of an idiot to see what was right in front of him all along and had missed his chance with her completely. He wondered how he could have missed the obvious signs of his feelings for her. From since first year, he was willing to drop everything at a moment's notice to help her and he somehow hadn't thought to look deeper into his motivations.

Some of the most miserable years of his life were when he and her had lost contact. He thought about the incident in third year, her petrification in second year, and the argument over the book just last year. It felt downright foreign to him when she wasn't close at hand. At first he brushed it off as just missing his best friend but it quickly became too much to ignore.

Bill and Fleur's wedding had opened his eyes fully to what she was to him. He cursed himself for needing to wait so long to figure himself out but was nevertheless grateful that it happened when it did. Right as Bill and Fleur were declared bonded for life by the officiant, she had turned to him with teary eyes and a beaming smile. He remembered smiling back at her and feeling as if the truths of the world were revealed to him. He started dreaming of her shortly after.

Of course, it all went to shite when they took off on the hunt. Loyal as he was, he held himself away from her and watched as Ron tried to find his place in her heart. It appeared that the redhead was successful and he tried to remember when he'd felt a pain so great, so...destructive. He tried to tell himself that he was being unfair to them, that his feelings held no credence since he had only realized them recently. It was bullshit.

Just because he took too long to realize how he felt didn't mean that his feelings were no less credible than Ron's. Having never felt love before in his life, Harry remembered the times when he felt the closest thing to it. Almost all of them involved her.

The relationship between her and Ron was, nevertheless, developing quickly and his soul was being ripped apart by each meaningful touch and glance they shared. Then Ron left them. He thought of the all-encompassing rage he felt when Ron told him that he had no family, that his parents were dead. That rage promptly disappeared when the bastard left and was replaced by fear when he asked what Hermione was going to do. He nearly choked on his relief when she firmly declared that she would stay, that she had promised him. She chose him and he had never known such joy in his life.

The joy was short lived because Hermione wound up completely miserable and a total wreck. His joy turned to despair as he watched her become a shell of herself. On multiple occasions he barely stopped himself from telling her to leave because he couldn't deal with seeing her so distraught over another man. Selfishly, he held himself back. He needed her.

He readied himself for when she woke up. She would react in surprise and leave his arms quickly before retreating into herself again. She would barely say anything to him and drown herself in her tasks and research while he did the same. The distance between them, once so close, was now as far apart as the sun from the moon.

Harry blinked back his tears and swallowed thickly. He had a feeling Ron was going to return, most likely out of worry over him stealing Hermione from him, and resolved to prepare himself for it. He was never going to forgive the redhead for his final words when he left but he knew Hermione needed him back. Regardless of how he now felt, Hermione was what mattered the most.

When she shuffled in his arms and sighed in her sleep, he pushed his thoughts away and pulled her close. It stung, but he let himself relish in something he couldn't have. He was going to indulge in this momentary intimacy before it would end all too soon. They could spend the next hundred years like this and it would still never be enough for him.