Relationships

After the war...

There were survivors.

There were bodies.

There were relationships. There needed to be relationships, to keep everyone whole, together, to keep them from breaking all over again like so many mirrors spread over too many days in the dust.

Whole. Whatever that means.

R-e-l-a-t-i-o-n-s-h-i-p-s.

1.) The conventional. "I love you, you love me! Let's get married and have lots of pretty children whom we will raise to be perfect little angels with blue eyes and bouncing blonde curls that glisten in the sun and everything will be flowers and bunnies." The conventional was a thing of the past, a myth, something for faytales and first years.

2.) The unexpected--un·ex·pect·ed [unnik spekted]--adj: coming as a surprise, see unexpectedly, unexpectedness, or Harry Potter and Ron Weasley.

Sometimes Hermione wonders how she didn't see them coming. Best friends from the start, red hair/black hair, dormitories, sweaters, fighting and not bathing next to each other on the field, and sharing pup tents as they tried so damn hard to survive. Sometimes Blaise wonders if the Harry Potter and Ron Weasley dynamic is the unexpected or if the truly unexpected thing is that Hermione didn't notice.

3.) The absurd. So easy to see, the Draco and Pansy, still engaged, as though their parents and fortunes were still in tact to approve. It is stupid.

He is in love with Blaise. In love with Hermione. In love with them both.

And she speaks French all the time now, because she wants to get as far away from Hogwarts and as far away from England as she can, but that isn't happening with Draco, because they're all back at Hogwarts.

That was the natural way of things when the last mark (dark green sinister sparks, you know the type) fell from the sky and the thunder finally stopped; the lightning was done burning white hot against young teenage flesh.

To go back to Hogwarts.

In the end, go back to the beginning and collect something. It's not two hundred dollars. It's something indescribable, but Pansy can't see it as they start rebuilding walls and mailing letters. There are no teachers left. None, no one or two strange, out of place, characters to survive. There are zero professors. So they (the survivors in their relationships) have agreed to try to pass that something on to future generations.

Harry, Defense; Hermione, Arithmacy and Transfiguration; Charlie, Care of Magical Creatures and (if Neville can't hold on to that something) Herbology; Draco, Potions and Ancient Runes; Blaise, History and Astronomy; Ron, Headmaster; Ernie, Charms; Neville, (if he can keep breathing just a few more days) Herbology; and Cho, Muggle Studies.

As a union of relationships, they have eloquently decreed: screw divination.

Live for the goddamned day.

4.) The dysfunctional.

Please choose the correct option...

a.) Harry and Ron.

b.) Hermione and Blaise.

c.) Draco and Pansy.

d.) Blaise and Draco and Hermione.

e.) Charlie and Cho.

f.) Cho and Ernie.

g.) Charlie and Neville.

h.) all of the above.

5.) The complete. Blaise and Hermione, who barely know each other, are as close to whole as a shattered window, but it's all they have.

Somewhere, in what was probably, at once upon a time (otherwise known as a tense reality of partially figmented inter-house disunity), the Hufflepuff common room, Blaise and Hermione have notched out an existence.

Staring at the ceiling at night, they talk. In code.

"My favorite color is sepia."

"My favorite word is 'epitome'."

"Sometimes the rain burns."

The thing about their code is that they understand it perfectly; it is grammatically correct and quirky. It envelopes Draco too, who likes to interject at the most intimate moments with an, "I'm horny. Let's shag."

To which Hermione replies, "Have you broken it off with Pansy yet?"

"No," chorus Blaise and Draco, knowing full well the answer, the huge rock still on her finger, knowing the way Draco had made a promise once when they were scared and alone and cold in a nasty pup ten pitched on mud, and they all know it's a lie of a relationship.

But it is still a relationship. Even without sex. Part of a different code.

6.) The broken.

Cho cries in her sleep, cries for Cedric and for Viktor, who she only met once when Hermione was too busy yelling at Ron to see that she had a man of great potential right there. She doesn't know she cries, doesn't realize that when she brushes her hair she's just a little too forceful, doesn't see the places where her nails bite her palms when she's just trying to stop the swaying music in her head...lalalalalalalalalalala...this is not a love song...lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala...not a love song......

Ernie is not in love with Cho. They have a broken relationship.

Never to be consummated, just dry kisses here and there, when Charlie is tending Neville, to whom his heart belongs, and when Hermione is mopping up Pansy, whom she shares eye pencil with.

At night, all of Cho's words run together and she makes new ones as she and Ernie sing under their breath, talking, laughing quietly--as though they will be punished for ruing the sanctity of Neville's problem.

The problem without an answer. True? False? Answer in a complete sentence.

Cho thinks love is the answer.

Blaise says potions.

Draco makes potions.

Charlie gives Neville potions.

Neville still shakes.

And Cho and Ernie stay up late, too late, in Blaise's Astronomy Tower, making up words...warlust, battleorified, lovesong, hopeinglesslessless, lovecure, potionbrokerbroken, lovestory, love...and maybe they're in it.

7.) The I-need-you-so-much-it-hurts.

Harry. Ron. Hermione.

Beyond. Enough. All.

8.) The loving.

Harry is in love with the notion of being in love. He hopes he and Ron are wide-eyed, anxious, still surprising each other at random will, not bored after too many days of seeing each other first off, and not too tired after days of lessons and hormonal teenagers to remember the unexpected spark.

Nineteen years old, they are still hormonal teenagers and Harry hopes they stay this way even when they aren't able to...well...yeah...that line of thought should stop...

Ron knows he loves Harry. Always has, always will, the end.

He knows he loves Hermione too.

In a different way, in a hold your hand, make you breakfast, listen to you, and prod you at inopportune moments sort of way, but not in the epic way he loves Harry, in an expectant way.

Hermione loves Harry. Hermione loves Ron. Hermione loves Blaise.

She loves Blaise in the way he has become her favorite color, in the way that at breakfast the passing of cereals and milks is a waltz, in that way she lets him hold her, in the way that if he ever left she would just have to let him go.

But Blaise will never leave because they are in this for keeps now.

And Draco would kill him if he left, because Draco knotted himself in this too.

It's a triangle. It's okay. It's a ridiculous polygamy relationship. It's love.

Pansy is Draco's fiancée and she's putting the ring on the pillow with a piece of parchment imprinted by pink gloss, strawberry, and a late birthday gift. She will miss him and his giggling and flipping hands. She will miss; above all, Blaise's levelheaded: "What do you mean you're 'getting married', that's absurd." She'll miss Hermione's: "No shit, you don't love him."

Pansy wants France, so that is where she's going.

Cho finds the ring before Draco, looking for that potion for Neville in his room.

But Draco is never in his room anymore. Cho goes hunting and calls out, "Draco! Where is the potion?"

"Chest."

It's not Draco talking, it's Charlie, and he is so pretty and nice and everything she wants, but she smiles at him and says, "Narniaport?"

Charlie squints and blushes. He is not Ernie... But she loves him anyway.

It's funny, so funny, all loving, all jumbled, all cracked, and broken.

Ernie finds the potion and gives it to Neville, whom he loves like a brother because they are so similar--so blundering and tripping, both so ambiguous and carefree. It doesn't make sense: he and Cho, Cho and Charlie, Charlie and Neville, but it doesn't have to--it is a love.

9.) The confusing. See 'the loving'.

10.) The downright silly.

"She's gone Draco," says Cho, standing in the door to what was once the Hufflepuff common room. Her oriental majesty is all silhouette and shadow, no way to see her crinkling eyes and tired laugh lines.

Draco is bathed in a glow. Not of sex. Hermione won't have sex; she will not be part of an extra-marital anything, even though, technically, Draco and Pansy are extra-pre-marital.

Even though Hermione already is, there is nothing she can do about it.

"Gone?" Draco does not understand.

But Blaise does and he lunges forward, wrapping broad arms around Draco furiously, holding the pale solider as he sees Hermione's nostrils flare and her chapped lips form the word: "Pansy?" Not a question, even though it is punctuated as such.

Hermione's eyes go wide. Draco hardens up; Pansy was all he knew, welcome to uncharted territory. Blaise keeps Draco in his arms, a shaking, undignified, blubbering bundle of confusion, lost, but at home in this grip, crying and shaking, and screaming like a cat.

"Cat?" mentions Hermione, calming Draco with a shaky laugh.

There now, there, there, there, it was all a dream, go back to sleep.

There are now harsh kisses, Blaise crashes into Draco, biting and nipping, years of growing tension and that something all built up and tumbling out as buttons are undone, rip, tears, scratching nails down lean backs, scars for tomorrow, don't touch Hermione like she's glass, she's not. Watch her, she's naked--looks chaste.

Until they see her eyes, need etched there, spread out on the yellow and black sheets, mismatched and glorious, and there is a pile of ripped jeans, two boys without shirts, touching and clawing, holding, necessary screaming.

It is strange, there is some lust for silk sheets, but none of them--none--would change a thing.

Draco speaks first. "Please don't ever leav---".

Hermione and Blaise slur their words together, pulling his head up by blonde hair to meet their gaze, serious with passion. "We won't."

Ever after.

11.) The tacit.

The three of them don't look up to see Cho walk away (they are too busy getting the games started), kicking the door shut, hands clasped behind her back, walking away with a coy sway of her hips. Black bob cut, severely chopped by Pansy, tiny little glasses, red shirts clingy in all the right proportions, this is the image she hopes to kill soon.

Charlie is behind her suddenly, hands around her waist, breathing each other in, heady and sensational, wonderful, and so warm. They are in a sort of love. The sort of love that accepts everything else.

Accepts that Ernie is Cho's 'best friend'.

And that Charlie and Neville shared a goddamned tent.

"Thank-you." It makes no sense at all. None. Zero. I love you.

They hold hands like sweethearts and let their feet carry them through the safe parts of the school, so empty and quiet, the ghosts of old moved out to make way for the ghosts of new. Feet take them to Neville.

Ernie is there, stroking hands, watering plants, administering, tending, and petting.

"He'll make it."

Light up eyes, light of my life.

So happy, thrills running down spines, Ernie goes to tell Ron and Harry, Cho and Charlie go to have sex. Victory sex. Slow and sweet. It makes no sense for them to celebrate the years of confusion now to come, but it makes sense to them to love with open arms, open hearts, eyes, mouths, cunts, love this, love me, silent pleadings.

Cho smiles the day Neville gets out of bed, holding on to Charlie's hand, she wears Pansy's old ring on the wrong hand. She presses back against Ernie; melting into each other, into something, into something, something, something, something...love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love is fucking beautiful.

And maybe someday the tacit will unravel and the breakdown will come.

Breaking. Cracking. Perfections in the dusty porcelain.

12.) The ori-gi-on-al.

Newness is shiny.

New school, school year, first years, nervous and anxious, not knowing they stand in the presence of giants. But they remain-- they are it.

Opening banquet scene. Harry and Ron are one and two. Hermione at the side, she and Blaise talk in their luxurious code. "All of this is for the sake of art," and her eyes twinkle as she sees the little ones, touches her belly, looks to that ceiling (took her three weeks to re-enchant properly).

Blaise nods and says singularly, "Kingdom."

And Draco is the only one who understands, kissing Hermione on the back of her neck, asking Harry to pass the salt.

"I can't, Cho has it." Harry gestures to Cho; she is smiling, wide and broad, so happy, too happy to wish the other shoe would drop. Her eyes sparkle with delirium and she hisses in Ernie's ear.

"Sodiumbicaffeinate."

Whatever. Draco just wants his salt. "Prince," murmurs Draco and Blaise make the salt wander into Draco's hands.

"Welcome to our fairyta--no, it's not, is it?" asks Hermione.

Nobody gets it, but they all answer, loudly, "No, it's not."

After the war.

There were survivors.

There were graves.

There were relationships.

Not that these things this ever end, just a point, halfway through when everything stops.