Fear and Love
Hermione tears down the empty corridors as best she can through the tears in her eyes.
Why did she say that? Why? Jealous? What the hell was she on about?
Em should be jealous, but she doesn’t think he is. But why shouldn’t he be? Gilderoy is a brilliant man with thousands of accomplishments that he’s lauded for the world over. Everyone wants to be him, whether they’re academically inclined or jocks- he’s a legendary dueller, daring and strong, and he always knows just what to do with all his experience and wit. And so handsome! Why in the hell shouldn’t Em be jealous?
But the thought never occurred to her until now. Not consciously. Maybe it should have, but Em is just… jealous isn’t a word that belongs in the same sentence as Em. That would imply that someone else has something he wants, or is something he wishes to be. Em… Em floats through life without ever knowing that sting. He’s like his own solar system with his own gravitational field. He doesn’t compromise. He has no give. You can take him or leave him exactly as he is, no more, no less. Em thinks of himself in much the same way a wild animal does: need comes to him in fatigue, in hunger, in thirst- not in personal failure.
She wanted him to be jealous. It would prove that he isn’t so perfect, that he’s just a kid like her and he has flaws, that he gets self-conscious just like her no matter how brilliant and brave and unshakeable he is.
And, to her horror, she can’t run from it anymore- she wanted him to be jealous that Lockhart paid attention to her.
But when she said that—
YOU’RE JUST JEALOUS!
—the confusion on his face was so earnest it couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. Em isn’t jealous. Not one lick. The sun doesn’t want for the love of the planets that orbit it. He’s as incapable of insecurity as he is of coveting her attention, and never was that clearer to her than now.
She’ll never be as good as him. She’ll never be good enough for him. She’s just a stupid, insecure, jealous, scared little girl orbiting him with everyone else. Maybe that’s all she’ll ever be.
The only problem with this conclusion is Arthur.
Arthur, who Em tries for.
Arthur, who Em wants for the love of.
Arthur, who Em orbits.
Hermione can’t understand it. She knows he’s brilliant- almost enough to keep up with Em, but half of that’s familiarity and shared experience, she can tell. Academic brilliance is not who Arthur is. Arthur’s the guy on the sports field, the guy introducing his knuckles to people’s heads in some weird noogie bonding ritual, a man of the people, a physical force and not one to be reckoned with. Arthur has the same unignorable presence of a freight train. Em’s a scarecrow with an aversion to physical contact and a gentle soul. He puts no stock in Arthur’s easy power or leadership, but he orbits him anyway. It doesn’t make sense.
How Em can act disappointed in her for admiring the values she admires in him in another man, and not be jealous, she can’t comprehend. And then- then! To say she’s wrong to be impressed by a man for his pretty smile, when he looks at golden-haired Arthur like- like-
Well, like he’s the sun.
Arthur isn’t a stupid jock. She knows that. He’s a brilliant boy and a brilliant friend. But Gilderoy’s more than brilliant!
…Isn’t he?
Yetis aren’t capable of human speech. The only subsect that is lives in Alaska, not the Himalayas.
Werewolves aren’t savages by principle, and their instincts are animalistic, not malicious, under the full moon. They don’t corner people in telephone booths.
The cry of the Banshee isn’t of a frequency audible to the human ear.
He’s a fraud, Hermione.
…No. Someone would’ve noticed. He wouldn’t have just been allowed to publish lies without evidence, there are people to check that, experts.
You didn’t check, a quiet little voice in her head tells her. You didn’t bother. You could’ve, but you didn’t.
Because he has a pretty smile, Em’s voice sneers, and it echoes in her head, hurting her heart each time.
Hermione squeezes her eyes shut and sinks down on a step, pulling her limbs as far into herself as she can. She wants to disappear. She’s so stupid. So mind-bogglingly stupid. She just believes what people tell her without even thinking, as long as it sounds nice and someone handsome tells her. She’s as pathetic and pretentious as everyone thinks. She has nothing to be proud of, she’s just one of the mindless crowd, following, regurgitating, nodding and smiling and living and dying without having any effect on the world whatsoever. And she had the gall to think she was better than that. What a stupid little girl!
She’s pushed all her friends away. The only friends she’s ever had. She’s thrown them away in a matter of days for some liar with pretty teeth. They’ve gone through so much together, but it only took one poser to tear them apart- that’s her fault. They all tried to tell her how stupid she was being, but she wouldn’t listen. She just had to keep being stupid.
And now she’s mad at Em. Screaming at him, accusing him of random things that aren’t even true and she knows it. Because, what? He’s smarter than her? He doesn’t think of her like she thinks of him? Because she’s such a mess she can’t even admit that she’s the cause of all her own problems? She’s a disgrace. She deserves so much worse than his disappointment.
You’re not half as smart as I thought you were.
“Hermione?”
Hermione chokes down a sob like it’ll make her sound less pathetic. She’s hit with a sudden wave of deja-vu.
“What are you doing here? Last time you sent Arthur,” she mumbles into her knees. It’s barely coherent, but she doesn’t much care if he hears.
She feels him sink down beside her more than sees or hears it. He’s always terribly quiet when he’s not being ridiculously clumsy. So, like, 20% of the time.
“Tell me what’s really wrong,” he begs in the gentlest voice she’s ever heard. And it’s just horrible, because he does care about her. He’s too nice not to. She is a silly little thing to care for out of pity and obligation. Here he is after she’s been horrible to pick her up and make sure she’s alright to keep spinning around him, safe in his orbit, because she certainly can’t be entrusted to herself.
Hermione curls into his chest without a word and cries herself stupid. And Em sits there and holds her, brushing a hand over her hair and pressing his cheek to her head and murmuring softly. Safe again, she feels better.
Eventually even her tears fail her, and she’s left feeling empty and brittle like a dead leaf.
She almost lets herself fall asleep there. She knows Em would look after her. She doesn’t know what he’d do, where and how and when she’d wake up, but she knows it would be the best place and time to do so, and she’d feel looked after and well-rested and loved. He’d make it so she was right where she should be.
“You’re perfect,” she whispers brokenly into his chest instead.
He starts shaking, and for a horrible moment she thinks she’s made him cry. Then she hears the laughter.
“I’m so- I’m sorry, sorry… I’m not laughing at you, Mione. That’s just the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard,” he cackles. She snaps back and hits him indignantly.
“You are! You never do anything wrong! You’re not scared of anything! There’s nothing you don’t know! You never feel like you’re not enough because you’re always enough! You’re PERFECT!” she hurls accusingly, hitting him all the while.
He just laughs harder with every word she says. Laughs until tears spring into his eyes. Tears of laughter- but they might be a little sad, too. They might be very sad if he thinks about it.
“Ohhh, Hermione,” he breathes finally, pulling her back into his chest. She feels him shake his head and swallow, and she just knows what he’ll look like now, staring off into the distance like he can see the whole world and everything that’s ever happened in it right in front of him, but he can’t do anything about it.
“Don’t say I’m your favourite. That’s Arthur,” she mumbles preemptively.
“Arthur doesn’t count. And you are my favourite,” he argues, “But that wasn’t what I was going to say.”
She waits.
“Well say it then.”
“I’m trying to think how,” he admits, sounding very far away. “I’m trying to think of an example of when I did something wrong, when I was scared, when I wasn’t enough, but there are too many to pick from.”
Hermione pulls back to look at him, as much as she doesn’t want to, and she’s shocked to find it’s because he sounds small and she wants to fix it. That’s something she was just dead certain wasn’t possible, and here they are, roles reversed, her wanting to take care of him just because someone needs to.
“There was a time when I woke up every single day of my life and lied to Arthur. I lied to everyone, my friends, my family. Everyone. Every day. Because I was scared. Even when my secrets got people hurt, I didn’t tell. Even when people I loved died, I didn’t tell. Even when Arthur looked at me and trusted me with all of him, I didn’t tell. He told me all of his secrets, and I was too scared to tell him who I was. Sometimes I still wonder why he ever forgave me. Sometimes I wonder why I forgave me. And every now and then I have to do it again.”
Hermione shakes her head a little. She feels like she’s watching something impossible. Lying… Em wouldn’t lie. Why would he lie? He couldn’t, anyway, he’s terrible at it, as soon as he said nothing was wrong last year when he yelled at Hagrid they all knew something was. Lying every day? Lying to Arthur? What was so important? What could scare Em? Hiding, it just… it isn’t like him.
“There was one time I did something stupid and my friend got blamed. Even when he died I was too scared to say anything. Another time I didn’t listen to my father figure and he got hurt badly- well, that happened all the time actually. I got loads of people hurt."
Em’s hands creep up hesitantly to his scarf and he grips it in an uncharacteristically uncertain show of vulnerability. As he continues to speak he unwraps it. He’s never done that before.
“When I was really young there was this guy in my village. He hated me. Me and this other girl, especially. He thought we were the devil’s children. My mum always said to be careful around him. It was really stupid- one day we were playing and I turned a leaf pink with magic. She said that was her favourite colour, pink like the sunset. And that guy, he saw.”
Something chokes out of Hermione as the scarf finally comes loose and she sees his neck for the first time. It’s beaten ugly. Ugly where he should be beautiful. It’s cruel. It's hard to look at, like a little bird someone's stepped on. Something that should never know the hatred of permanent violence broken viscerally by it and marred with proof.
“He grabbed me by the neck. She was so scared, but I- I was scared too. I screamed. I yelled at her as she was about to run. I said, ‘help me!’. And she stopped. She would’ve been fine if she’d just kept on running. But I asked her for help. And she was brave. She ran at him. She barely came up to his waist. He slammed her into a rock and crushed her skull, and she died while I watched."
Hermione gasps like she's watching it happen before her eyes. A tear rolls down her cheek, still cold from selfish sobbing. Em's voice is so gentle she could float on it, even as his words make her want to drown.
"Maybe I could’ve helped her, but while he was choking me I forgot I had magic. I forgot everything except fear and pain. I was too scared to die alone, and after that, I was too scared to ever ask for help again.”
“...That wasn’t your fault,” Hermione chokes out breathlessly. Her eyes sting with even more tears, and they’re worse this time. They burn.
“Yes it was, Hermione. Yes it was. But I didn’t mean it,” he whispers, guiding her back into his arms. It’s strange without the cushioning of his scarf, so integral to his persona. “I was scared.”
🧣
Merlin closes the door quietly behind him, slipping his shoes off and padding across to his and Arthur’s bed.
“So?” Arthur rumbles, voice low with tiredness, “Should I prepare to get expelled for excessive honesty by proxy?”
“What?”
“How’d it go with Lockhart?”
“Oh yeah. I forgot about him.”
“You what?”
Merlin sinks into bed beside him, closing the curtains and setting the charms with a wave of his hand. Arthur sets about helping him out of his scarf.
“Wasn’t just me, remember? Hermione stayed too. We had a talk.” he sighs, running a hand through his curls. One of Arthur’s joins it there and Merlin lets the last of his tension seep out of him, like it always does when Arthur does that.
“She thought I was perfect,” he mumbles.
“Perfect?" Arthur snorts, "She doesn’t know you at all.”
“That’s what I said. Well, I quickly cured her of that misconception, and a few others. I’m pretty sure she’s ferreted Lockhart out now.”
“Hallelujah, at last.”
“I’m a bit worried about her retribution, actually. Now that she knows he duped her and lied about all those ‘accomplishments’ of his, I fear for the guy.”
“Ugh, don’t bother. Come on,” Arthur urges, pulling Merlin down by his scrawny chest. “Come on, come on.”
Merlin lets out an amused sound tinged with false exasperation and falls right into his husband, who spits out the thick black curls that have just whipped him in the mouth. His hand doesn’t stop its ministrations- in fact the other one comes up to join it, running through Merlin’s hair with deep appreciation. Merlin hums his own.
Even if he had as much trouble seeing in the dark as anyone else did, he would know exactly how far Arthur’s nose is from his, where his eyes are and how they’re half lidded with sleep and love. He would still know how Arthur’s mouth is twisted up against the pillow so his lips are always parted a little and how it makes one of his cheeks look bigger than the other, and how he’s about to make that little noise–
Arthur makes a sort of grumble-snuffle.
–That one. Merlin expects that anyone could spend as much time with someone as he has Arthur and know all these things, but the beauty of it is that no one has. No one other than he and Arthur can see the other half of their heart with their eyes closed, and then open them and see it still.
“Have I ever told you that I love you?”
Arthur pretends to think. “Hmm… I think once.”
“Yeah? When?”
“I’m recalling an outpour of desperate confessions in a German bunker somewhere in the south of France–”
“Shut up, I was probably horny.”
“If horny I-love-yous count then I think you might have even said it twice.”
Merlin gives a lazy gasp. “No.”
“Yes, I’m distinctly remembering some very horny I-love-yous, but those might have been screams of pleasure, my my, it’s hard to tell sometimes–”
“You are such a prat,” Merlin cackles quietly, slapping Arthur on the chest. He gets a low chuckle in return.
“I love you too.”
“Oh I wasn’t saying it now. I asked if I had ever said it-”
“You sneaky Slytherin bastard.”
“You love it.”
“I do.”
“You love me.”
“I do.”
“Well then I guess I love you too,” Merlin allows with a resigned sigh, snuggling in close to his husband and melting into him until they’re a whole again. He’d never tell Arthur, but life feels like the intervals between the time they spend curled into each other.
♥️
“What’re you lookin’ so glum for?” Arthur demands, poking Ron in the side the next morning while Merlin makes the bed. He insists he’s the only one who knows how.
“What’re you lookin’ so cheery for?” Ron retorts dejectedly. “It’s just another day without Hermione, isn’t it?”
“Oh, that. Em fixed that.”
“Woah, hey, hey, I didn’t fix-”
Merlin’s forced to snap his jaw shut and focus on staying upright as Ron flies past him out of the dormitories in his singlet and superman boxers.
Merlin turns his glare on his husband.
“What?”
“What was that?”
“I thought you fixed it!”
“I didn’t say–”
A suspicious series of THUDs and a familiar yelp sounds from the common room and Arthur takes the excuse to avoid his husband’s ire as the opportunity it is, going to investigate.
Ron’s on his arse at the foot of the stairs to the girls’ dormitory. The girls themselves are rushing out in various states of ready-for-the-day to see who tried to get up. Arthur covers his laugh with a cough and the girls’ giggles as Ron pulls himself up, looking sore. He freezes when he sees Hermione there, and after a second she shakes her head fondly with a little huff and heads back in to finish her daily battle with her hair.
She’s waiting for them all by the door when they come out for breakfast (after Ron’s stopped and put on some pants). Harry looks like the sun’s come out again. Arthur scoops her up and spins her once in a bear hug, making Hermione seem about the same weight as a couple of grapes.
“Blimey, is it good to see you,” Ron gasps with feeling. Hermione blushes.
“You just don’t like doing your own homework,” she accuses, but there’s no heat behind it. “I’m sorry I was so thick. Really, I…” she shakes her head and all her mass of hair echoes the motion belatedly. She glances sheepishly at Em. He shakes his head.
“I was pretty mean,” he concedes, slinging an arm around her in an easy motion and confirming that all is forgiven. And off they go to breakfast.