I took my Power in my Hand—
And went against the World—
'Twas not so much as David—had—
But I—was twice as bold—
I aimed by Pebble—but Myself
Was all the one that fell—
Was it Goliath—was too large—
Or was myself—too small?
- Emily Dickinson
She’s haunted by the brush of his hand, fingertips ghosting over hers as they leave a clandestine meeting of teenage rebellion, so brief she thinks it couldn’t possibly be an accident.
The fabric of their relationship remains the same; this is only a dropped stitch between them before she hastens away from him and the other DA members trickling out of the Room of Requirement.
But she cannot help but to imagine the way his hand had felt against the pads of her fingers; calloused and warm and a shock like lightning. She can conjure only the spectre of that feeling, when she closes her eyes at night.
Until it happens again.
They’re walking together to the Great Hall, an oddity in itself, when she feels the curious slide of his fingertips down her wrist and nearly trips over her feet. The gentle exploration leads down to her palm and coalesces into a sure grasp of her hand.
“What are you doing?” she asks as fireworks dance their way up her arm, electrifying her heart and sending her pulse racing.
She can feel sweat beginning to slick her palm but she doesn’t pull away.
In answer he gives her hand a squeeze. “Conducting an experiment, Granger,” he says.
“And the hypothesis?” she swallows.
“Your hand would be nice to hold,” he says, running his thumb over her knuckles.
“… And the conclusion?”
“Well, you see, for it to be a proper experiment I’m going to need more than one data point,” he says, shifting his fingertips to interlock with hers. “But so far…”
“Yes?” she breathes as he begins to gently swing their joined hands between them.
“The initial results are rather promising,” he grins.
Over time their hands begin to wander — tucking hair, cupping jaws, ghosting hips.
She comes to know his hands intimately; thinks she would know them anywhere, from only a touch, like that first brush of skin in the corridor. Though she knows every freckle and burn mark of their landscape, she can still navigate the map of his palm in the dark, following his life line to his fate.
He traces letters and runes into the bare skin of her shoulder, touch featherlight; she almost has no idea what he’s trying to write, or if its meant to be intelligible at all.
Until she memorises the sweeping loop of his index finger, the only pattern that he ever repeats, and realises what he’s spelling.
It is an admission; a declaration; an oath.
A solemn promise he hopes to keep in one piece.
One day, in his palm, she traces the letters back. She knows when he’s sorted it when his fingers curl around hers, trapping them in a light grip, and he brushes his smiling lips to her knuckles.
It feel like her hands spend the next two years reaching out for his, groping blindly like they must be waiting for her in the dark.
She can count on one hand the number of times she’s found him in the ether.
Once in the summer, folding a daydream charm into the clutch of her hand like a tender hope for safekeeping.
Again, in the spring, clasped together as they held vigil over his poisoned brother’s hospital bed, like a prayer.
Then the last time, at a wedding, palms nestled against one another’s as they spun under a tent and twinkling lights, before they were rent apart and left reaching once again.
They are right back where it started; the same scorched earth where his lightning first struck. She is standing across the room when he emerges through the portrait concealing the passageway to Aberforth’s railway station, and he raises his large, freckled hand in greeting; then extends two fingers out in a salute toward her.
She feels again, then, that palimpsest of his hand brushing against hers, and her body hums with anticipation of the real thing — not the imprint left by his touch, but the touch itself — as she raises her hand to him in return.
When they are leaving the room they fall in step for just a moment, hands knocking together before she splits off to the left in search of the bathroom where one might find entrance to a chamber of secrets and he veers right, toward the corridor containing the secret passageway he has sworn to defend.
After only a few steps they both spare a glance back towards each other and freeze when their gazes meet.
Then she is rushing to clear the distance, jumping into his arms; his hands coming instinctively to wrap around her waist while already her fingers are curling into his flaming hair, cradling his head as she kisses him.
“I love you, Fred Weasley, ” she murmurs into his neck, lips pressed against the skin of his collarbone.
His hands skate up her back as he sets her feet back down on the ground before coming to rest on her shoulders. He gazes down at her fondly, the warmth and weight of his large, calloused hands settling her resolve and her nerves.
They can do this, she thinks, looking up into his hopeful eyes. They can end this. The sooner she can lay down her wand, the better.
She wants her hands free for nothing else but holding him, and she never wants to let go again.
“ The feeling is mutual, Hermione Granger,” he whispers back, brushing the backs of his knuckles against her cheek.
“Oi!” says a voice from behind them. Ron. Not a little impatient.
“There’s a war on!” adds Harry, as if now is not the time.
As if now is not exactly the time.
Fred kisses her one last time, hands reaching back down for hers, holding them between them like he is readying to make his own sort of unbreakable vow.
Then he is pulling away, fingertips extended out behind him for as long as possible before the contact between them breaks and she is left wanting once again.
When the world explodes around them, in those final moments where she cannot see nor hear nor make sense of anything at all, her hand reaches into the dark, seeking his in the ether, and finds only air.
When the air clears, after she has stumbled to her feet and through the wreckage, there is nothing to hold onto. There is only his hand — shrouded in a coating of dust, veins standing out against his freckles, dirt under his fingernails, knuckles articulated with longing — reaching out from the rubble.
For the rest of her life, Hermione Granger is haunted by the palinopsia of Fred’s outstretched hand; the phantasmic brush of his long fingers against the tips of her own, always just out of reach.
She finds she cannot escape the feeling of almost.