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Author’s notes: “See, the funny thing about writer’s block is you write the whole time. It’s just that you think everything you write sucks…” From the wise words of the wonderful John Rzeznik. What? You don’t know him?! Where have you beeen? Goo Goo Dolls, duh. LoL Sorry. I’m just still having a bad case of writer’s block and I thought that might clear up the view of my dilemma… In other words, sorry this took so long again…

It’s the heart, afraid of breaking,

That never learns to dance

It’s the dream, afraid of waking

That never takes the chance

It’s the one, who won’t be taken

Who cannot seem to give

It’s the soul, afraid of dying

That never learns to live

When the night has been too lonely

And the road has been to long

And you think that love is only

For the lucky and the strong

Just remember in the Winter

Far beneath the bitter snow

Lies the seed, that with the sun’s love

in the Spring

Becomes the Rose

--Amanda McBroom, “The Rose”

It was there. Right before her. The school too fearful to allow her in when she needed it the most.

The girl who didn’t communicate with her, left her, at a time she needed to talk.

The guy who was ruining her entire life when all she wanted was a hand.

Why should she want to save any one of them? Why was she risking herself for those who obviously didn’t care?

She wondered if her legs were still there.

A sudden clap of thunder helped conclude they were, indeed, still useable, because she jumped about a foot in the air. A steady fall of rain began to splatter against the trees and lake and building, plastering her already wet hair and clothing to her trembling body.

Merinah was very in tack with her inner eye, so it was odd she didn’t know he would come so many days before. But she hadn’t known until right then. She didn’t know until she felt him behind her.

She turned slowly to face him, shivering from her head to her toes, in both the actual cold of the rain and the horror penetrating from his body.

“Erina,” he hissed in a voice worst than anything Merinah had ever experienced. “My daughter…”

She was scared. She was horrified. Every hair on the back of her neck stood on end. But she lifted her strong eyes up to his yellow slits and said in such a cool, calm voice, “Lord Voldemort. My pain in the a**.”

He laughed and he laughed, a sound that resonated through her soul and back, taking a bit of her along the way. He closed his hand around it, whispered an incantation, and the strong, audacious daughter was his once again to have and to use, to kill and to destroy.

And Merinah Gattes was no more.

She always felt it in her bones. Danger was a mist that swirled about her brittle skeleton and whistled through the cracks and fractures still healing, brushing and aching like salt against an open wound.

She felt the danger in her bones, and she knew it in her heart.

Professor Minerva McGonagall was a frail and somewhat bitter old woman of seventy. Her life had been but disastrous disappointments consecutively. You couldn’t blame her for a sharp tongue or narrow, scowling eyes. But you had to admire her undaunted determination.

All her life, ever since she’d been only four years old, she’d seen death and loved ones dead. She’d seen students she’d taught and loved brushed out of existence in a single moment. Life was a hard punch for her to take, but she took it and bit back at it.

You could call it perseverance, I suppose.

So, yes, she was bitter. Yes, she was strict. And yes, she was alive and well intact with the world.

The world wasn’t going to touch her again.

She threw back her bed covers so suddenly and bolted out of bed like she was twenty rather than an arthritic seventy. He was here. She could feel it.

She stopped suddenly in mid-step. No, she suddenly realized. They both were there.

The first thought that zipped through her alerted mind was Hermione, before she’d run from the room and flew down the stairs toward the place her bones were telling her an evil beyond even death lurked.

Harry was aching. The poor wizard was aching both inside and out. He watched Hermione’s body shuddering in sobs and felt her pain. The blood trickling down his neck tickled his skin and made him want to sneeze somehow. And he heart was beating awfully fast…

Yes, he was hurting all right. He just wasn’t sure where to pinpoint the pain, Hermione or himself.

Closing his eyes and concentrating in extinguishing the flames burning through his neck, he didn’t realize Hermione had stopped crying and was kneeling down next to him again until she touched his shoulder.

He jerked away at her touch, expecting a slap in the face or a silver wand point staring him in the eyes. But Hermione just knelt there next to his quaking body until he opened his eyes and pulled his prone body up to a half-sitting position. He carefully lifted his eyes to meet hers, and he was relieved at the warmth coming from them.

Hermione moved quietly closer to him, slowly and carefully like he was an injured animal with a broken limb she was to tend. Harry shrunk back a bit, but the table leg forbid him to go all the way back. He was cornered and at Hermione’s mercy. He prayed she wouldn’t strangle him. He’d rather die from something other than his neck pains.

But she leaned close and bent down to examine his raw neck. With a cool and careful finger, she reached out and touched his wound. He winced and tried not to show how much pain he was in.

Hermione saw it, though. She gave him a gentle smile, her fury so suddenly gone it shocked him.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean… Come up to my room, I’ll clean your neck.”

Harry was more than mildly shocked at this subtle pronouncement of trust. So shocked he wasn’t so sure he trusted Hermione back. But he knew he had to trust her. He somehow knew, deep in his heart, she was ready to face him and maybe…just maybe…forgive him.

His heart fluttered up to his throat like it had suddenly sprouted wings, and he took Hermione’s outstretched hand.

She pulled him to his feet.

Hearing soft footsteps padding across the carpeted corridor, Minerva quickly ducked into an open, darkened room and peeked out the slit of a window. She felt quite childish, like she was a playing a game she hadn’t played since she was eight. But this wasn’t a game. This was a matter of life and death, and somehow, deep down, she knew it.

Carefully keeping flat against the wall, she watched as two dark silhouettes strode almost silently down the hall, almost looking as though they were sneaking about the castle. They looked like seventh years, and just as she was about to step out and give them a good scolding, the taller one stepped into the dim light of a candle lining the hallways.

Minerva had to actually stuff her fist into her mouth to keep from gasping. Because there, about five feet away from her, with blood dripping down his neck and a torn up robe hiding his figure, was Harry Potter.

And the one next to him was her own Hermione.

It took all her will to stop herself from stepping out there and admonishing them both like they were naughty students.

But she knew it was more than that, and she let them slip down the hall, thinking themselves unseen.

As soon as they were out of sight, Minerva bolted down the hall in the other direction, like she wasn’t more than ten years old, rather than seventy.

Because now she knew, knew for a fact, it was life and death.

Hermione’s life and Harry’s death, and her own liberation.

Hermione led Harry over to sit on her unmade bed and switched on a bedside lamp, which cast an oily orange across the room, highlighting Harry’s charcoal hair to an almost Weasley red.

She almost smiled at it.

But Hermione Granger was a businesswoman, both literally and figuratively. She hurried into her bathroom and took out a washcloth. She ran it under some warm water and squeezed the excess out.

She caught a glimpse of her reflection and wondered again on her own nature.

She had never been a trusting person, and here she was, inviting a man who promised one day to rape her into her bedroom. Not only in her bedroom, but at night too, a time when no one could hear her screams. Not only at that time, but he was sitting on her own bed and she had her back turned to him. Not only that, too, but she was wearing very little clothing…

I’m horribly insane, she realized. But it’s like the saying says, ‘better to have lived and loved than not to have loved at all.’ Or however it goes. Yes, the only way I’m ever going to be myself again, whoever that is, is if I face this rift in my past. In death or in life, it’s the only way.

With her heart feeling as though weighed down by stone, she entered the main area of her room again and went back to Harry. He looked just as she had left him, right hand clutched at his bloody neck, other hand free to wander about. It was now trailing the items on her nightstand, and she couldn’t help the little leer about the guilt of it all.

She cleared her throat and Harry looked up as she sat down next to him on the bed. The same warm feeling rushed through her as it had when she’d been younger and close enough to touch him.

She berated herself for not being seventeen anymore and pushed her mind back to the task at hand. Harry’s bright green eyes were staring closely at her face, and, though she tried, she couldn’t stop the hot rush that ran over her face.

Trying to ignore the war of emotions inside herself, she gently removed Harry’s hand from his neck and scrutinized the wounds she’d caused.

Harry flinched as the hot, wet cloth pressed against his neck and Hermione felt oddly like the horrible person in the room.

My gosh, he’s even tantalizing as a grown-up and evil wizard, she thought angrily.

She noticed she was angry, though, and immediately coated over the anger with the thoughts of reconciling with her excruciating past.

“I’m sorry I did this,” she told Harry quietly as she cleaned the cuts. “I didn’t mean it.”

“It’s…all right,” gasped Harry. “I deserve this and whatever else you can hit me with.”

Hermione deliberately avoided his eyes because she knew some of the old feelings she’d had for the Harry she had once known were resurfacing. She halfway craved it all; the other half of her hated every bit of it. But that part was tiny, infinitesimal even, and she knew it was perverse to fight everything that was happening.

“I don’t hate you anymore,” she said quietly, suddenly. “It’s hard to hate you when I can tell you’re as scrupulous as you once were.”

Harry’s face broke out of its stone mask and a tiny smile played across his pale lips. “You…trust me?”

Hermione sighed and determined his neck and not his eyes. “I’ve always been slightly paranoid, and it’s gotten me nowhere in life, Harry. You distrust and you lose out on the pleasures life’s got to offer. If I want to live, if I want to cherish every moment I’ve got left, even if there are only a few, especially if there are only a few, I have to let go of that paranoia, go face to face with my biggest fear.” She cautiously met his eyes and, just as she had expected, a blush painted her pale cheeks. “I have to forgive you.”

Harry’s smile widened a little, and she could tell it was his first in a long, long time. “Maybe…maybe if you can do that…I—I can go up to my fear.”

“And what’s that?” Hermione whispered, her breath caught up in her throat. Harry’s eyes had a strong hold on hers and she was somehow glued to them now.

“Myself,” admitted Harry, placing his hand against his chest as if emphasizing it. “Merinah…Merinah told me I’d never be free until I forgive myself…”

“She’s right, too, Harry,” said Hermione softly, still unable to move her eyes.

“But I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive myself…for what I did…to you…” Harry said slowly, painstakingly slowly.

Hermione was falling in love with him all over again, and this time she knew she wouldn’t be able to get out. She didn’t want to right then. She just wanted to be free of her hate, free of her own restraints, free to love the person she’d always loved. Her life had so many set limits that those things had never been in bound before.

They were now, and she wanted to cherish the moment like she had said she would if she’d only forgive.

Well, here was the forgiveness. It slowly slid off her tongue and rolled out of her lips. “I forgive you, Harry.”

His face seemed suddenly very close to hers. She wondered who was moving closer, Harry or herself. She suspected that neither had, that they just got closer together by magic.

She could feel Harry’s warm breath on her face now, his eyes were very close to hers.

She felt her eyelids fall shut on their own accord, felt Harry’s lips brush against hers. “C-Can I kiss you?” she heard Harry’s voice trickle into her ears.

She didn’t answer in words, but he must have known he had permission, because, in the next second, her lips were completely submerged under Harry’s, in a kiss that was both trembling in anticipation and vehement in a cause it had waited over five years to fulfill.

She had learned to cherish moments like these. She knew they would be gone in a second.

And this one was.

To be continued…

Oooh, cliffhanger! ;) Anyway, since this seems to have become my feedback section, I’d like to say some things about feedback here, if you don’t mind too much. I’ll feel better once I say this all:

I thank you call *very* much for all the good reviews you give me. It always makes me feel very good. I’m happy you seem to like this. :) It’s fun to write (sometimes) and a pain in the, er, bottom (*grins*) other times. I’m glad you like it though. I’m sorry I didn’t say this earlier, because it makes me sound unappreciative, which I’m not. I’m very appreciative. Very. Anyway, I just wanted to say that. Ah, I feel better now.

Now that I got that out, I’ll go on with my usual tradition: Feedback… Please? ;)