The Storm

I have no excuses.

*
Chapter Eleven



It had been six hours since they had left. Six hours and the storm had come back.

This one was hollow, though. The droplets were angry as the rain battered the windows and shutters of Sirius’ ancestral home, now Harry’s rightful property. Hermione tried to imagine legions of little black haired, green eyed children running through the cold, dark passages of the building and she found that she just could not.

Such brightness would never touch this place. Harry was sure to abandon it after the war, as it held such awful and spine-tingling memories. Which was sad, because it really was a magnificent place.

Hermione looked out the window, trying desperately not to think of the wizard that had awakened her in this very room, making her feel alive after so long. Maybe Harry would give her the house to live in. It wasn’t like she was going to have children anytime soon. She scoffed, a fleeting image of Lucius and Severus sitting on the ground, playing with their children filling her mind. Children she had bore them.

“Mione?” She turned suddenly at her name, only to find Harry silhouetted in the doorway. “What are you doing?”

“It’s raining again. It’s been raining all summer.” Hermione turned back to the window, and watched the rain lash against the pavement. The water was so clean, so calm, completely at odds to how she felt. Even though it was storming, the rain fell in gentle patterns against the ground. Hermione felt Harry’s presence behind her and looked up into the glass pane of the window, wishing to see blue eyes staring back at her.

“Have you been watching the rain?”

Hermione nodded at Harry’s strange question, wrapping her arms around herself. “I have. It has this strange effect . . .,” her voice trailed off and Harry’s eyebrows rose at the distinctly Luna-like impression Hermione was giving him.

“Have you been in need of some calm?” Harry asked after a heartbeat, his voice low.

Hermione sighed, leaning her head against the glass. She closed her eyes, noticing that for the first time she could feel how cold the rain was. It had always been hot, scorching waves of angry water falling from the sky. Now, it froze her to her very bones. She felt the cold clutch at her heart and knew that it was more the metaphorical. She felt different, her life felt different, this damn house felt different without her two dark wizards patrolling the hallways and chasing the shadows, stopping her heart in its perpetual beating, but for a different reason entirely.

Could it be that she loved them?

Her brow creased as the thought chased itself across her closed eyelids. Could she possibly love the two men that had turned her world upside down and completely remade her in their image?

A memory fluttered across her subconscious, a memory of Severus pounding possessively into her as Lucius watched, arms crossed over his chest, his eyes narrowed in indignation.

Maybe she had been too hasty in her approximation of her feelings.

“Hermione?” She slowly opened her eyes and took in Harry’s reflection in the glass. He was standing there with all the confidence and bravado that being so young and thrown into a life-or-death situation had given him. She regarded him, his ruffled hair, his haunted and hunted eyes, his tightened musculature threatening to spring at any second and she allowed herself a small, ironic smile. Gone was the winsome and carefree boy of eleven. He hadn’t had that tinkle of mischief in his eye for a while. Now he was a grown and deadened man. Ron was starting to adapt the same look, only his was born from aggression and dominance.

As for her, well, she was just whoring herself out to death eaters.

A small chuckle welled up from inside her and she closed her eyes again, turning around to face him. She slowly opened her eyes and allowed her irony to become a real smile.
“Yes, Harry, I have been in need of some tranquility. It’s been murder not knowing if you two were okay out there. Why wouldn’t you let me go with you?” She asked the last more to herself, as they both knew the routine answer he would give her. He sighed and shifted his weight to his other foot.

“We’ve been over this.” She nodded once and bit her lip.

“I know Harry.” Just then, the smell of stew drifted up from the basement kitchen and the two friends looked at each other. “Harry, is Ron down there cooking?”
Harry turned his head to the side, as if he could discern who was in the noiseless kitchen. “I believe so Hermione.”

The two friends looked at each other and then turned out of the room, racing down the hallway to stave off the impeding culinary disaster.

*

As it turned out, they had worried over nothing. Ron had become a fabulous cook. Harry and Hermione ate in stunned silence as Ron snickered into his stew, enjoying the looks of shock and delight on his friends’ faces.

Hermione was relishing in the delicious stew meat and the broth that practically melted down her throat. After having spent so much time making food for herself, eating by herself, then making food for Severus and Lucius, she had not looked forward to cooking for the boys. From Ron’s snorted laughter, she could tell that she had misjudged him in his regard towards helping around the home. The stew was unlike anything she had ever had, even if it did remind her strongly of Mrs. Weasely’s favorite get-together dish.

The bread wasn’t too bad either.

“Mum gave me some recipes for when we are stuck out in the field. Can’t have Harry making dinner if he’s fighting off death eaters,” Ron chuckled at his two friends, his heart warming when Hermione smiled beautifully at him.

“That is extremely mature of you, Ron.” Ron nodded at her, but inside he was screaming with joy. This is what he had wanted to show her, that he had grown and matured and that someday he would make a fit husband for her.

Gods, she had changed. She had this aura to her that Ron hadn’t seen in a very long time. Her eyes were alive and her skin practically gleamed in the dim light of the kitchen. She looked down to her stew and slowly raised the spoon to her lips. Ron watched, enraptured, as she drank down the broth that he had seasoned just right, a swell of pride filling his chest at the look of bliss on her face.

He had to make her his again.

As she finished her stew and got up to dump the bowl into the sink, Ron began to devise his plan. He had to show Hermione that he was a strong, capable, mature wizard. He had to show her just how much he had changed. He had always had the reputation of being oafish before, and he supposed he had earned that. He had been uncaring as to how others perceived him and he had lived only for his gratification. Hermione had changed that about him when they had been together, but after the break-up, he had gone back to being the same ogre that he had been. He had blazed a trail through a number of wanton women, Muggle and witch alike, but he found in the end that none even came close to holding a candle to his Hermione.

She turned from the sink and caught him looking at her. Heat rose into her cheeks as she thought about the kiss he had given her, in this very room. It was something she had always chastised him for, being aggressive and acting like a brute. There definitely was something brute-like about her death eaters, she surmised. Maybe she just really liked aggressive wizards, as she had always been a take-charge kind of girl.

She turned to Harry and then back to Ron. “I’m going for a lay down. I’ll see you two around.” She turned on her heel and left, the door swinging shut behind her.

“Ron,” Harry warned, his voice taking on the protective edge he was known to get.

“I know, Harry.” The green-eyed wizard stood up himself and dumped his bowl in the kitchen. He walked around to where Ron was still tackling his dinner and stopped before his best mate.

“If you hurt her again, I will fucking kill you.” Harry leaned down so he was close to Ron’s ear. “Slowly.” With that, the savior of the Wizarding world strode from the room, his back straight.

Ron took a minute, and then breathed out a long sigh. He looked down into his stew, suddenly not hungry anymore. He knew what he had done with Hermione was inexcusable, and he knew how much it had hurt her when he had gone through the women around him like water. He could come up with a hundred different reasons to justify his actions, but that was the old Ron. He knew what he wanted now, and he was not going to weaver from it. He wanted Hermione and was willing to give her anything she asked for. He even planned on telling her he would delay his dreams of marriage and a family for her to go study at University or have whatever job she wanted, as long as he could wake up beside her everyday.

He rose, dumping his bowl in the sink with the other two and began to do the dishes.


*


Harry seems protective over Hermione. Ron seems like he's going to get Hermione back. What will happen when these two find out about Hermione's dearest death eaters? Stay tuned!!