Two

This chapter is dedicated to ferporcel and was originally written for her birthday.

Many thanks to Machshefa, Ariadne, and Melenka, who offered encouraging words and sound advice while I wrote.

Art kindly provided by Ferporcel

Hermione had been waiting for nearly three-quarters of an hour. She knew he was expected at the taverna that evening, and she had casually ridden between the town and his home, hoping that she could "happen" to meet him along the way.

Unfortunately, however, he seemed less a slave to schedule than he had been so many years ago. Sacrificing the pretence of accident to the honesty of intention, she had settled on the sun-warmed rock that sat across the pavement from the rutted dirt track and resigned herself to waiting.

She wasn't alone for long. A flock of friendly sparrows gathered around, twittering excitedly about the meeting that was to come. Laughing, she reassured them, but straightened in anticipation when a large crow reported with a harsh call that the man was locking his door and beginning to wind his way through the trees and fields towards them. More and more birds joined the waiting throng, chattering to one another and to her with... joy?

She forced herself not to watch for him. To give him the option of reacting privately, of turning away. Indeed, his steps paused when he first saw her, a chickadee told her, and he briefly closed his eyes.

But he never actually stopped, corrected a robin, and he seemed almost as relaxed as usual. Just... perhaps... more watchful.

When he stepped onto the paved road, her heartbeat raced and she felt momentarily as if she were suffocating. Half of her friends launched themselves into the air to greet him. She rose and turned to look at him fully for the first time in over twenty years and found her heartbeat slowing again, finding the rhythm it had gradually adopted over the past several weeks. Her breathing deepened, became even, and she noted absently that her exhalations seemed to be in time with the stirrings of the wheat in the fields behind him.

He gave a polite nod and turned to walk towards the village. Picking up her bicycle, she walked beside him, pushing it along the smooth road as they moved forward at a steady pace.

"We've kept your secret," she offered tentatively in greeting.

He grunted.

"I have no secrets, now." His pace never slowed.

Effectively silenced for the moment, she strode beside him. A bluebird settled on the handlebars of the bike, apparently enjoying the ride.

They passed through an olive grove in silence.

Then, "To what secrets were you referring?"

She looked westward across the fields, as if the memory she was relating was contained within the setting sun.

"Harry insisted that you be given the full honours of a fallen headmaster. You lay in state in the Great Hall while the others were buried. Finally, that last night, when Harry was keeping vigil alone, what we had believed to be your body reverted into its original form. Harry was sensible enough not to attempt to re-Transfigure the twig, but to fetch me to do it. It was laid to rest in a crypt near the forest. Harry sealed the tomb with the Elder wand... the last act that it will ever perform. He broke it and reburied it with Dumbledore that night. We...and the Unspeakables who protect this place...are the only people in the wizarding world who know that you still live and where you are."

The bluebird's song filled the silence that followed. They passed another field, waving to a woman who walked slowly through the rows, checking her crop.

"Thank you." His response was barely audible over the song of the bluebird and the rush of the breeze through the grain. Yet she heard it, and her heart was warmed by it.

They walked the remainder of the way into the Village in silence, surrounded by the sounds of the world around them.

*****

Every Friday, she came to meet him. He would nod, she would smile, and they'd walk companionably through the fields and orchards and vineyards to the Village. When they reached the taverna, he'd join the men and she the women. They'd spend their evenings with their friends, smiling, laughing, and listening, yet always watching each other. And always being watched by the others, who would smile and nod when they weren't looking.

Over the weeks, he'd learned about those who were important to her. The Weasleys, including her former husband and children. The Potters and their three children, one of whom was unfortunate enough to carry his name. Longbottom, Minerva, Kingsley... she'd told him about the Malfoys, too, when he hadn't resisted. It was... gratifying... to know that Draco had turned into a man one could respect, if not like, with a family of his own.

She hadn't chattered about the past... oh, no. Far from it. She'd spoken only when one of his infrequent verbal offerings had invited it. Most of their conversations had been limited to observations about the weather, their ever-changing, yet somehow eternal surroundings, and affectionate commentary on the state of things in the Village.

They never discussed magic, although he noticed she never used it. They never discussed the wizarding world at all, only mentioning past acquaintances...friends?...when the conversation prompted a story that flowed as the past inevitably does into the present.

By becoming part of the Village, by befriending the birds and the turtle that lived in the pond before the last field to home, she'd become part of him. He didn't know, didn't realise that it was happening until the Friday when he reached the road and she wasn't there. The birds awaited him with the news that someone had come for her, had taken her away, but that was all.

His usual calm broken, he'd hurried towards the Village, hoping that one of the others knew what had happened... where she had gone... when she would return...

Indeed, the Villagers were full of the tale. Hugo was ill, Antonio told him, speaking of the boy as if he were a friend, although they'd never met. He'd wanted his mum, so of course she'd gone, nodded Teresa, clutching her infant while watching her next youngest scurry around the taverna, tumbling and being righted by whoever was nearest. The man had come in the night, said old Silvio, adding a note of drama to the tale. A man in dark clothes, with a scar on his forehead.

The same scar as her tattoo, added Antonio excitedly, wondering if this man was, perhaps, The Foreigner's former husband, come to fetch her home.

Even the priest, who usually sat quietly, watching and not speaking, approached him, offering a sealed envelope. "She left a note," he said, then returned to his corner.

Sitting amongst the men in the sudden hush, he ran his thumb under the creamy flap, feeling the threat of its sharpness as he separated the seam and removed a single sheet.

S...

–H

Beneath her script, familiar despite not having been seen for decades, was another, less welcome scrawl.

I'll keep her safe.

H.P.

*****

The following weeks continued much as the years which had preceded them. He tended his garden daily, putting up vegetables and drying herbs for the winter. On Tuesdays and Fridays, he went into the Village, stopping in the taverna for news and conversation and the simple pleasure of being with the people who were part of his life.

The birds continued to meet him and accompany him on his short journeys to and fro, reporting on their lives and the lives of his friends. They chattered about Hermione's friends, too, as though she were walking beside him. They miss her, he thought. As do I.

There was nothing to be done about it, though. She would return when she returned; if she did not, she would not. Life would go on, and the Village would forget. The birds and the fields and the clouds would forget. He, eventually, would forget. Wouldn't he?

One Friday, as he prepared to leave for the Village, he heard a knock on his door for the first time since he had arrived, so many years before. He froze for a second, until an explosion of joyous twittering erupted through the dusty windows.

Striding forward, he flung open the door and stepped back, inviting her inside the cramped, dark space, hoping she was back to stay.

And she was.