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A/N: Written for the Harmony Out of the Ordinary fest 2026. Prompt was ‘star crossed lovers/tragic/doomed romance’. Loosely inspired by ‘Come Away With Me’ by Norah Jones.
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It was tough, watching another woman get her heart broken.
She made a futile effort to brush the unruly hairs from out of her face, but the wind soon returned them. The world must have shared her sympathy because the pregnant, grey clouds chose that moment to start to rain. A few fine drops, barely heavy enough to register, but she was sure that was only the start of it.
Too far away to hear the words, there was no doubt about what was happening. It was all in the body language. She’d watched him stride towards her after Dumbledore’s funeral, picking his moment carefully, when Ginny was stood by herself on the shores of the Black Lake. Hermione watched from just outside the Castle entrance, so far away that the two of them were about the size of her thumb, but all the same she’d know her flame red hair and his outline anywhere.
She saw him wring his hands, and struggle to meet her eye.
Hermione braced herself, her fingers curled into fists, breath stuck in her chest.
---
The bare, soft soles of her feet padded lightly on the rough stone floors. She shivered in the cold night air, regretting that she had left her dorm in only a nightshirt. Despite summer being around the corner, it was hardly mid-thigh weather, and she could feel goosebumps on her arms and legs. It had taken so much effort to leave her bed that she’d been afraid, if she stopped to dress properly, she would find another excuse to chicken out.
Gryffindor Tower was shadowed and silent, perhaps practicing for tomorrow morning when the students would file outside to say goodbye to the headmaster and then to the school itself.
Who knew what would happen after that?
Which was precisely why she was out of bed. She didn’t want to leave the future to chance.
Dumbledore, dead. Voldemort, functionally immortal. Harry, vulnerable.
It was no understatement to say that things were looking very bleak. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in him. In every contest, Harry had come out on top so far, but … the stakes were so high, and their list of allies and resources was getting smaller with every passing day. Meanwhile, their labours had only grown. It did not take a genius to know Harry would go after the Horcruxes.
The trouble was he would walk that path to his death, willingly, if she let him. Blind to his other options.
She stole into the boy’s dorm, but only after cracking the door open slightly and checking the others were all asleep. Looking around, it wasn’t difficult to find Harry’s bed. The other boys had all decorated their spaces, with posters or plants or, she noted, pin-up calendars.
Harry had always lived a more spartan life. He’d never had much to call his own.
It seemed so unfair that he might die and leave so little behind.
She could change that, if he let her.
Heart hammering in her chest, she considered turning back. Could Harry ever take her up on her offer? It seemed impossible. He was too brave and too noble. She knew there was no way he could have come up with a plan like hers on his own. It wasn’t in his vocabulary.
She was awfully afraid that she would extend him this lifeline and that he would look her in the eye and she would only see disappointment. She didn’t know what she was more afraid of; a violent death hunting the Horcruxes, or his silent censure. That she’d have to live for the rest of her days knowing she had failed to live up to the woman he’d thought she was.
For a long time, she wavered there, the fingertips of one hand lightly touching the drawn curtains of his bed.
If she didn’t at least try, she knew she’d live to regret it.
The drapes pulled aside quietly, revealing him sleeping on his side, one arm tucked beneath his pillow. He didn’t snore, but his face was screwed up in a scowl, and she nearly reached out to run her fingers gently through his hair to soothe him.
Before she could get cold feet, she climbed up onto the mattress, tugging her nightshirt down, and closed the drapes behind her. She knelt there, her weight pressing down on the bed, causing him to shift slightly.
He stirred, slowly at first, a bleary recognition sparking in his eyes. “Hermione?”
“Shh,” she whispered, and placed her finger against her lips. He sat up, the covers falling from him, revealing his bare chest and the hint of a line of dark hair above the waistband of his boxers. On any other day, she would have traced the outline of his muscles with her eyes, would have had to keep herself from reaching out and tracing them with her fingers.
Tonight, though, she felt too sick with anticipation to think about it.
“It’s very late.” There was an odd note to her voice, a hoarseness, that might have been to do with the sudden aridity of her mouth. “Don’t wake the others.” His hands reached outside the bed to the table where his glasses lay. She watched him open the arms and slide them onto his face. The ghost of a blush graced his face as he took in her appearance.
He relaxed back against the headboard, and studied her with concern, “What’s wrong?”
“Everything.” Somehow, he’d already brought her to tears, “I don’t want you to die.”
Suddenly uncomfortable, he looked away. “Well, me either. But we don’t always have a choice.”
“Except you do.”
He let out a little derisive laugh, “Neither can live while the other survives, remember. Only one of us gets to walk away.”
“Why?” It was petulant, “Because some stupid orb says so? It doesn’t even make any sense. You are both living, both surviving. Don’t,” she choked up, “don’t let it become self-fulfilling.”
“Even if I did walk away, he’d never let me go. I don’t see another way.”
She hesitated, the moment she was afraid of was drawing near. “I do. I’ve been thinking about how to keep my parents safe, about altering their memories and sending them off to Australia …”
He looked up at her, expecting her to continue, but she must have struggled with the next part for too long, because he nodded. “That … I’m sorry you have to do that. But I think that’s the right choice.” It was his turn to struggle. “Are you … you’re going with them?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, even quieter than before. “That depends.”
He deflated slightly. It was hard to know whether he was relieved she was considering it or disappointed she might leave. “I think that’s the right call too. You should go, be with them.” His voice was gentle.
A silence stretched out, all her carefully prepared arguments abandoning her in the moment.
Unable to take it any longer, she blurted the words out. “Come away with me.”
His eyes widened in surprise.
“In the morning, after the funeral. Let’s run away together. I thought … I could learn the Fidelius charm. Be your secret keeper. All we have to do is keep the secret that you are Harry Potter. And then go away, far away. We’d give up magic and live as Muggles. Voldemort could never find you, not even if he was in the room with us.”
“Could you …” he swallowed, “Could you give that up for me? Magic?”
How little he understood. “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t give up for you.”
The enormity of the statement seemed to be too much for him to handle, and rather than deal with that right now, he asked “What about the others? What about Britain?”
“I – we, can’t take any of them too. It only works if we go in secret.” The more people who knew, the greater the danger, and the higher the odds they wouldn’t even make it out of the country. Her plan relied on the two of them charming her parents and catching the first plane going anywhere else, before anyone could stop them. It wasn’t just Voldemort she was worried about. They’d have to avoid the Order too.
“But, without me-“ She placed her finger against his lips this time. Somehow, they were softer even than she had imagined.
“They don’t deserve you; they haven’t earned you. They never saved you when you needed them, why should you save them now? If England has to fall to see you safe, I won’t even lose sleep over it. Voldemort can have it.”
She moved toward him on her knees and he blinked in shock as she put one leg over him. Her parted legs caused her nightshirt to ride up her thighs, and she had to use one hand to pull it down and hold it in place. Delicately, she sat down, the bed sheets between their bodies.
With a shaking hand, she reached out to caress his face. Finding all the courage she had ever possessed, she whispered to him “Maybe I don’t deserve you either.” The only answer was his hot breath on her skin, and she leaned forward and pressed her lips gently against his. Her body trembled, in fear of rejection and in rapture as his lips moved softly against her own.
Despite her position straddling him, only the thin summer blanket and his underwear between them, the kiss was surprisingly chaste. She was ashamed to find herself crying. Cho had shown her exactly what not to do and, here she was, making the same mistake.
He must not have minded, because his hand slowly rose up her arm, soft and gentle, until it settled against her back, his wide palm flat against her shoulder blade.
He pulled back slightly with dark and troubled eyes, “But … what about Ron?”
“He’ll have to fend for himself, this time. He’s got his family, he’ll be okay, probably.”
“No, I mean … I thought you and Ron, were…”
Confused, she replied, “What? No. I was never … I care about him as a friend, yes, but nothing more.”
“Then, why were you so angry with him this year?”
“Because he hurt me. I thought he cared for me, only for him to get with Lavender the second she offered, but he kept on acting like I meant something to him … I never wanted him like that, but I still felt angry because I felt like I’d fallen for a trick. Like he was playing with me, like he thought poor, ugly Hermione Granger would be grateful for his attention, even while he was kissing some other woman. It was stupid, to feel upset when I realised I didn’t have something I never even wanted.” She struggled to keep the hint of desperation out of her voice. Some of her behaviour had been petty this year, and in hindsight, she doubly regretted it, if that was what caused Harry to reject her offer. If that made him think her feelings for him were anything but true.
His mouth opened wordlessly.
“Please,” she begged, not too proud. “Please. I need you to choose to live. To choose me. I can’t go without you, Harry.”
His voice croaked in the darkness. “Why not?”
She had come so far, and all but told him anyway. All that was left was to voice it. “Because I love you, Harry.”
His mouth found hers again, lips parting slightly, and she kissed him greedily, her fingers running through his hair.
---
He never read the newspapers, although he knew she sometimes did.
She told herself it was to stay one step ahead in case they ever came looking, but every time she closed a paper she would sigh with relief that the war was very far away.
Not that life had been easy, moving to Australia. They had settled near to her parents, although she had decided it was safest for them all if they didn’t make contact. Sometimes, she would see them about town, and they would smile politely to each other, but it was enough to know they were safe.
Of more pressing concern on arrival, neither she nor Harry had any sort of Muggle education beyond primary school, and having given up magic to hide amongst the normal people they had been left with very few choices for how to make a living.
Fortunately, it seemed that Harry’s skill on a broom had transferred to surfing. They spent their days out on the waves, or with their feet buried in hot sand, teaching people how to surf. Harry did most of the actual surfing, tanning in the golden sun. Although he had more success persuading her onto a board than a broom, she spent most of her time running the business. She had no complaints, doing taxes and the accounts by hand was a damn sight better when you got to do them wearing a bikini and drinking ice cold drinks in paradise.
Sometimes, they found themselves looking out at the horizon and wondering, but at the end of the day they would go to sleep together, tangled in each other’s arms and in those moments, it could never touch them.
Some nights, when it rained, she would listen to the drops on the tin roof, her body tucked up against his, her head laid on the inside of his arm and one of his hands resting gently on her hip.
Theirs was a modest life, but she revelled in the fact it was one people would never have guessed for her. Bookish Hermione, throwing it all away for love, living in a converted container by a beach, and spending her days doing nothing but relaxing.
They had each other, and for that she could manage anything.
---
There, she thought, as she watched Ginny’s shoulders slump ever so slightly. She wondered if there had been a moment like that for her. A moment when an observer could tell.
She envied Ginny her heartbreak. At least Ginny could look herself in the eye and say she had tried. At least Ginny had her heart broken by him and hadn’t inflicted it on herself.
Hermione closed her eyes and allowed herself to inhabit the dream again. To imagine that she hadn’t just stood there, outside the curtains of his bed, with her heart in her mouth and her head cast down. That she’d had the strength to help him throw off his burdens and choose to live. That she hadn’t been too frightened to learn he could never turn his back on everyone counting on him, not even for her.
Too frightened to learn what he felt for Ginny might have been real. Too doubtful that he could leave one woman for another like that.
That she hadn’t, with self-doubt and self-loathing in her heart, turned around and silently gone back the way she had come to her cold and empty bed.
She’d never know, now, whether she could have turned him from this path.
Feeling brittle and feeble, she imagined again she had pulled aside the curtains and felt the texture of his lips with hers.
She imagined the beach, where the sand was hot enough to burn, and the rain on the roof above their heads.
Imagined living without a broken heart.