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sarkaTitle: The Girl Who Looked at the Ocean
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Harry/Hermione (yes, you read that right)
Summary: The ocean calms her when she thinks she can go on no longer. Its vastness is soothing and she loses herself in the waves, breathing in rythm with the tide.
Warnings: Character death, angst/darkfic, mental illness, suicide.
Author notes: All![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hildigunnur's fault. And yes, Icelanders, this was partially inspired by the song.
Endless gratitude goes to:jazzqueen for the beta.
Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling. I make no money of this.
Other: Mum; If you're reading, this one is safe.
Sometimes when he wakes up in the dark of the night, Hermione is not sleeping next to him. At first he went to look for her, but he always found her sitting in front of the fireplace watching the ocean through the window, and by now he turns the other way and goes back to sleep.
He sometimes wonders if the past would be less insistent on disrupting the present if they took down the picture that hangs over the fireplace in a big gilded frame. Yet the mere idea of it makes his throat constrict and his heart ache, and no matter how many times he finds himself or Hermione captivated by a past that seems like a distant memory, the picture hangs, unmoved, in its spot in the living room, reminding them that life is frail and that there used to be three of them.
There are times when he resents Ron, because the space that Ron left somehow seems much bigger than Ron himself used to be, and this space resides between him and Hermione, a vast ocean of silence and sorrow and what-if’s.
Ron was uncomplicated, but the emptiness left when he died is anything but.
---
Strangely enough, the thing that Hermione remembers best about the day Ron died is the odd quality of the light and the sounds of battle.
She knows she saw him fall while defending Harry’s back but she can’t remember seeing him land.
All she remembers is the sound of his body hitting the ground and the fact that the first thing she thought afterwards was that the light felt odd, like the world was only two-dimensional.
She didn’t feel the loss until two days later.
She still feels guilty.
---
Harry remembers the day in vivid detail. He remembers the shock of realization, thinking “this is it” once he stood there on the grounds of Malfoy Manor, watching his loved ones fight the forces of darkness. He remembers every movement he made, every spell he cast, every curse he sent. He remembers advancing into the house, searching for and eventually finding the adversary he was looking for.
He remembers every word they spoke; Voldemort realizing for the first time that he might not survive, and in that moment he remembers himself casting the spell that ended the Dark Lord.
He distinctly remembers hearing the thud of a body falling to the ground behind him, somewhere in the middle of all this, and thinking that he must get this over with before more people died defending his back.
He remembers watching Voldemort die, and surprising himself by muttering “Be at peace” into the gloom.
And then he turned around and saw who it was that had died and his world ended
---
Hermione is watching the ocean again because it has always fascinated her and the ocean view from their house is magnificently beautiful and the wind has picked up now so that the tops of the waves are white and it’s just lovely.
She’s always loved the ocean but she isn’t sure why. It’s something about the way it’s so old and so wide and so big and how if something gets lost into the sea it is kept there for a thousand years beneath the gray roiling surface and nobody even knows about it anymore.
When she was nine she went on a holiday with her parents to the seaside and found a message in a bottle.
There had been a beautiful poem in the bottle but she can’t remember it anymore.
Sometimes she feels like she’s forgotten all the beautiful things she ever knew.
---
Harry had never thought past Voldemort’s downfall. His imagination didn’t stretch very far past the idea of reprieve for himself and safety for his loved ones. He feels pretty sure that if he’d tried to imagine the world without Voldemort, he’d have imagined it without the ever-present threat of Death Eaters, without the fear working its way into their daily routines, a world where violence wasn’t needed.
He never would have envisioned a Wizarding World still torn apart by inherent prejudices, full of malice and discontent and disposessed Death Eaters seeking revenge on whoever they imagined had slighted them.
He tries as hard as he can to keep the threat out of his personal life, hoping for a refuge in his own home, but finding none in a life that was never meant for him.
He’d promised, and promises to a dead man are hard to break.
---
Sometimes Hermione thinks that Harry is keeping something from her, something important, something she should know, something that really matters, but she can’t bring herself to care.
She’s a different person now, someone who sits at home and waits for her loved ones to return, not someone who steps out into the world and makes things happen. Enough things have happened by now, there’s no need for any more.
She can’t envision anything that could make her care about the present. The war is over and their victory has nothing to offer her, the promise of a brighter future broken before it could even begin.
The future is full of grief, but the past still holds some questions that have never been answered.
---
The guilt is the hardest part to bear.
The suspicion that he might have done something differently, some minute detail that could’ve changed the course of events that day, even that is a lighter burden than the overwhelming guilt and the sense of betrayal.
Harry wants to remember, but he also wants to forget.
He wants to go out with friends without the crushing feeling of leaving someone behind. He wants to play Quidditch without the memories weighing him down. He wants to make a life in this world without remembering that someone else is dead. He wants the future, whatever it may bring, and he wants to keep the past where the past belongs.
---
Her grief is too vast to be encompassed in her soul, and she feels it spreading out through the house, down towards the sea, frothing on the tops of the waves, waxing and waning with the moon, poisoning the very air she breathes.
She feels like she’s being crushed under a great weight, her heart wounded and bleeding, bitterness running through her very veins, her days full of memories and her nights full of torment.
The past is her only refuge, and she pulls her memories around her like a protective blanket, trying with all her might to salvage the details of her fading recollections of the three of them together and of the two of them alone.
She doesn’t know why Harry married her. She isn’t sure what would be worse; if he did it because he loved her or if he did it out of a sense of obligation.
---
Harry loves Hermione. That’s why he protects her, that’s why he doesn’t force her to face the present, that’s why he hasn’t told her yet that the Death Eaters have regrouped and found a new leader in an old schoolfellow of theirs.
He watches her every day as she sits in the living room, lost in her own memories, mindlessly staring at the ocean, her body angled just so, so that the large photograph of the three of them on their graduating day is never out of sight.
He can’t remember what he was thinking when the photograph was taken, but he’s smiling in it, and surreptiously watching Ron put his arm around Hermione and the adoring glances that pass between the two of them. He has a feeling that their happiness has something to do with his.
---
The vastness of the ocean beckons to her, enthralls her, seduces her, and she starts taking long walks in the surf, forgetting about waterproofing charms for her boots and warming charms for her cloak, returning home wet and chilled to the bone.
She knows she’s wasting away, that the nightmares are taking over her life. Her mind is full of darkness. She’s scared to go to sleep, knowing that she’ll wake up terrified of the dark and the night and of Harry who’s sleeping beside her.
The ocean calms her when she thinks she can go on no longer. Its vastness is soothing and she loses herself in the waves, breathing in rythm with the tide.
There’s comfort in knowing that the ocean is big enough to encompass her sorrows.
---
Harry has thought about telling Hermione about the problems the wizarding world is still facing, in the hope that one of them might get her attention and give her something to work on, but when he returns home at night to find Hermione still sitting on the couch where she was sitting when he came down in the morning his hopes seem as fragile as his wife, and every time he decides to do it tomorrow.
And then one night he wakes up, unusually uneasy about Hermione’s absence from their bed. Without thinking, he makes his way downstairs, the stairway creaking and his bare feet freezing on the wooden floor in the hallway leading to the living room.
He stares confusedly at the empty space on the couch, and even more confusedly at the empty space on the wall above the fireplace. It takes a few seconds to register that there’s a draft – an icy cold wind sweeping through the hallway, and then he notices the figure in white, down on the beach – no, in the surf, wading deeper. A figure carrying a large gilt frame.
Harry stares out the window for what seems like an eternity, rooted to the floor, watching Hermione make her resolute way out to sea, until he can’t see her anymore.
Then he goes and closes the front door.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Harry/Hermione (yes, you read that right)
Summary: The ocean calms her when she thinks she can go on no longer. Its vastness is soothing and she loses herself in the waves, breathing in rythm with the tide.
Warnings: Character death, angst/darkfic, mental illness, suicide.
Author notes: All
hildigunnur's fault. And yes, Icelanders, this was partially inspired by the song. Endless gratitude goes to:
jazzqueen for the beta. Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling. I make no money of this.
Other: Mum; If you're reading, this one is safe.
Sometimes when he wakes up in the dark of the night, Hermione is not sleeping next to him. At first he went to look for her, but he always found her sitting in front of the fireplace watching the ocean through the window, and by now he turns the other way and goes back to sleep.
He sometimes wonders if the past would be less insistent on disrupting the present if they took down the picture that hangs over the fireplace in a big gilded frame. Yet the mere idea of it makes his throat constrict and his heart ache, and no matter how many times he finds himself or Hermione captivated by a past that seems like a distant memory, the picture hangs, unmoved, in its spot in the living room, reminding them that life is frail and that there used to be three of them.
There are times when he resents Ron, because the space that Ron left somehow seems much bigger than Ron himself used to be, and this space resides between him and Hermione, a vast ocean of silence and sorrow and what-if’s.
Ron was uncomplicated, but the emptiness left when he died is anything but.
---
Strangely enough, the thing that Hermione remembers best about the day Ron died is the odd quality of the light and the sounds of battle.
She knows she saw him fall while defending Harry’s back but she can’t remember seeing him land.
All she remembers is the sound of his body hitting the ground and the fact that the first thing she thought afterwards was that the light felt odd, like the world was only two-dimensional.
She didn’t feel the loss until two days later.
She still feels guilty.
---
Harry remembers the day in vivid detail. He remembers the shock of realization, thinking “this is it” once he stood there on the grounds of Malfoy Manor, watching his loved ones fight the forces of darkness. He remembers every movement he made, every spell he cast, every curse he sent. He remembers advancing into the house, searching for and eventually finding the adversary he was looking for.
He remembers every word they spoke; Voldemort realizing for the first time that he might not survive, and in that moment he remembers himself casting the spell that ended the Dark Lord.
He distinctly remembers hearing the thud of a body falling to the ground behind him, somewhere in the middle of all this, and thinking that he must get this over with before more people died defending his back.
He remembers watching Voldemort die, and surprising himself by muttering “Be at peace” into the gloom.
And then he turned around and saw who it was that had died and his world ended
---
Hermione is watching the ocean again because it has always fascinated her and the ocean view from their house is magnificently beautiful and the wind has picked up now so that the tops of the waves are white and it’s just lovely.
She’s always loved the ocean but she isn’t sure why. It’s something about the way it’s so old and so wide and so big and how if something gets lost into the sea it is kept there for a thousand years beneath the gray roiling surface and nobody even knows about it anymore.
When she was nine she went on a holiday with her parents to the seaside and found a message in a bottle.
There had been a beautiful poem in the bottle but she can’t remember it anymore.
Sometimes she feels like she’s forgotten all the beautiful things she ever knew.
---
Harry had never thought past Voldemort’s downfall. His imagination didn’t stretch very far past the idea of reprieve for himself and safety for his loved ones. He feels pretty sure that if he’d tried to imagine the world without Voldemort, he’d have imagined it without the ever-present threat of Death Eaters, without the fear working its way into their daily routines, a world where violence wasn’t needed.
He never would have envisioned a Wizarding World still torn apart by inherent prejudices, full of malice and discontent and disposessed Death Eaters seeking revenge on whoever they imagined had slighted them.
He tries as hard as he can to keep the threat out of his personal life, hoping for a refuge in his own home, but finding none in a life that was never meant for him.
He’d promised, and promises to a dead man are hard to break.
---
Sometimes Hermione thinks that Harry is keeping something from her, something important, something she should know, something that really matters, but she can’t bring herself to care.
She’s a different person now, someone who sits at home and waits for her loved ones to return, not someone who steps out into the world and makes things happen. Enough things have happened by now, there’s no need for any more.
She can’t envision anything that could make her care about the present. The war is over and their victory has nothing to offer her, the promise of a brighter future broken before it could even begin.
The future is full of grief, but the past still holds some questions that have never been answered.
---
The guilt is the hardest part to bear.
The suspicion that he might have done something differently, some minute detail that could’ve changed the course of events that day, even that is a lighter burden than the overwhelming guilt and the sense of betrayal.
Harry wants to remember, but he also wants to forget.
He wants to go out with friends without the crushing feeling of leaving someone behind. He wants to play Quidditch without the memories weighing him down. He wants to make a life in this world without remembering that someone else is dead. He wants the future, whatever it may bring, and he wants to keep the past where the past belongs.
---
Her grief is too vast to be encompassed in her soul, and she feels it spreading out through the house, down towards the sea, frothing on the tops of the waves, waxing and waning with the moon, poisoning the very air she breathes.
She feels like she’s being crushed under a great weight, her heart wounded and bleeding, bitterness running through her very veins, her days full of memories and her nights full of torment.
The past is her only refuge, and she pulls her memories around her like a protective blanket, trying with all her might to salvage the details of her fading recollections of the three of them together and of the two of them alone.
She doesn’t know why Harry married her. She isn’t sure what would be worse; if he did it because he loved her or if he did it out of a sense of obligation.
---
Harry loves Hermione. That’s why he protects her, that’s why he doesn’t force her to face the present, that’s why he hasn’t told her yet that the Death Eaters have regrouped and found a new leader in an old schoolfellow of theirs.
He watches her every day as she sits in the living room, lost in her own memories, mindlessly staring at the ocean, her body angled just so, so that the large photograph of the three of them on their graduating day is never out of sight.
He can’t remember what he was thinking when the photograph was taken, but he’s smiling in it, and surreptiously watching Ron put his arm around Hermione and the adoring glances that pass between the two of them. He has a feeling that their happiness has something to do with his.
---
The vastness of the ocean beckons to her, enthralls her, seduces her, and she starts taking long walks in the surf, forgetting about waterproofing charms for her boots and warming charms for her cloak, returning home wet and chilled to the bone.
She knows she’s wasting away, that the nightmares are taking over her life. Her mind is full of darkness. She’s scared to go to sleep, knowing that she’ll wake up terrified of the dark and the night and of Harry who’s sleeping beside her.
The ocean calms her when she thinks she can go on no longer. Its vastness is soothing and she loses herself in the waves, breathing in rythm with the tide.
There’s comfort in knowing that the ocean is big enough to encompass her sorrows.
---
Harry has thought about telling Hermione about the problems the wizarding world is still facing, in the hope that one of them might get her attention and give her something to work on, but when he returns home at night to find Hermione still sitting on the couch where she was sitting when he came down in the morning his hopes seem as fragile as his wife, and every time he decides to do it tomorrow.
And then one night he wakes up, unusually uneasy about Hermione’s absence from their bed. Without thinking, he makes his way downstairs, the stairway creaking and his bare feet freezing on the wooden floor in the hallway leading to the living room.
He stares confusedly at the empty space on the couch, and even more confusedly at the empty space on the wall above the fireplace. It takes a few seconds to register that there’s a draft – an icy cold wind sweeping through the hallway, and then he notices the figure in white, down on the beach – no, in the surf, wading deeper. A figure carrying a large gilt frame.
Harry stares out the window for what seems like an eternity, rooted to the floor, watching Hermione make her resolute way out to sea, until he can’t see her anymore.
Then he goes and closes the front door.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-18 07:50 pm (UTC)You know how fussy I'm towards imagery in fics but you really write beautiful imagery. Like this passage:
"Her grief is too vast to be encompassed in her soul, and she feels it spreading out through the house, down towards the sea, frothing on the tops of the waves, waxing and waning with the moon, poisoning the very air she breathes."
So yeah, blame me all you can for this fic. I'm very happy to have inspired such a great fic.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-20 06:51 pm (UTC)This story was such an enormous... something. I'm glad to get it off my chest.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-18 08:01 pm (UTC)*sniffle* Sad, so sad.
Like it very much, nonetheless.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-18 10:37 pm (UTC)Same here :)
Beautiful, beautiful prose...it almost seems like poetry in places. The end...that got me.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-20 06:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-20 06:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-18 08:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-20 07:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-20 05:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-20 07:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-22 10:55 am (UTC)You're writing is amazing... It's hard to believe you're first language isn't English. Also, I second hildi on the imaginary bit. You do that so well.
(Also, jazzqueen is having me ask you, what kind of beta is she?)
Thank you for the story. :)
~Sarah