Harry Potter And Bellatrix Lestrange

The girl glanced up and smiled sheepishly as she realized what she'd done. "I'm all right, thanks for asking. It's just… I've been staring at these pages, and the more I read the less I want to know. I never knew wizarding history could be so - so horrible."

Harry glanced down at the text he was reading, and grimaced when he saw that he'd opened the book to a page with a moving picture detailing how goblins had disemboweled their wizard prisoners in detail. "Yeah."

"Harry," Hermione began, only to fall silent when he looked at her.

"What?"

"It's okay, you know," she told him after a while of staring at him intently. "I know you're mad at me, you don't have to pretend to be nice to me."

"What are you talking about?"

She sighed and leaned forward, pulling the book he was shielding his face with down to look into his eyes. "I know you, Harry. I know you're trying to just bottle things up and go back to the way things were before. It… it doesn't work that way. I know you're trying to be nice to me so you can avoid hurting me, but-"

"You don't know me," Harry shot back acerbically, yanking his hands away from hers suddenly.

"I know." Hermione leaned back and stared down at her hands. "I thought I knew you, but when it really mattered, I didn't believe in you. I know you're angry, Harry. There's no way you wouldn't be, after what we did to you."

"How would you know?"

"I don't. I can't begin to imagine how much we've hurt you, but I know that you must be angry with us. Angry, disappointed, maybe you even hate us. And that's all right. We've given you good reason to." The brunette girl sighed and seemed to sink deeper into the chair cushions. "But you're trying to hide it. You're trying to stuff everything down into a dark corner of your mind and slam a lid on it. You did exactly the same thing when Sirius died; you refused to let any of us in to help you."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Harry stood abruptly and walked over to the window, his back turned to her. She could hear, though, that despite the forced calm in his voice he was struggling to maintain his composure. She was hitting close to the nerve, judging from the heave of his shoulders.

"This." Hermione gestured around her, even though she knew he couldn't see. "You're trying to be in control, you're forcing yourself to be nice to me. I don't know about you, but if it were me in your place, it'd be killing me inside if I had forced myself to be nice to someone who'd betrayed me and destroyed my life."

Harry gave a short, barked, hollow laugh. "You didn't destroy my life, don't get melodramatic, Hermione. You betrayed me, sure, but you didn't destroy my life."

"I beg to differ," she said, rising from her seat to stand behind her former best friend. "Because I didn't support you, they sent you to Azkaban. After all, if even your best friends believe you were guilty, then you had to be, right? Because I failed to believe in you, you lost everything."

"What do you want, Hermione?" Harry's voice sounded choked.

"For you to let go. You don't always have to be in control, Harry. You're angry, and we deserve it. So be angry. Yell at me. Scream that you want me dead. Hit me. Anything." Hermione hesitantly took hold of his shoulder. "When I came here, I came fully prepared to die for what I'd done to you. You gave me a second chance, and I can't tell you how grateful I am. But… we can't heal, we can't move past this, if you don't let go of the hurt. We both need this, Harry. Please. Show me how much we hurt you. Be angry."

"Did you really think I'd kill you?" Harry spun around angrily, causing her to lose her grip. "Do you really think so little of me? I forgave you, Hermione, isn't that enough? Why do you want to drag up everything that happened before?"

The girl almost shrunk back at the pained and angry look in his eyes. Then again, she'd been trying to pull this side of him out, so now it was time to face the music. "No, Harry, I never believed you'd consciously hurt anyone. You forgave me, that's true, but forgiveness without catharsis is meaningless. It's hollow. I know you can't truly forgive me without letting it all out. That's what I want. I don't want you to just forget the past and move on as if it never happened, because it did."

"I-" Harry took a deep, shuddering breath, before opening his eyes again. When he did, Hermione gasped in fear at the depth of emotion she could see, before his mental shields went back up. Only then did she register the pain from her upper arms where he'd gripped on to her in a vise-like death grip. They remained like that for a minute, neither saying anything. He was trying to get his emotions back under control, while she was waiting for the explosion she hoped she'd initiated.

"I can't," he finally hissed through gritted teeth. "I can't lose control. I can't afford to be angry."

"Harry-"

"You don't understand," he shouted. "I'm fighting a war against someone who's got almost a century of experience, someone who's more powerful than me, and the only way I'm going to win it is if I can outwit him. I can't afford to get angry and lose control, because if I do, people die !"

"You're going to win this, Harry," Hermione said quietly, tears forming in the corners of her eyes from both the physical and emotional pain. "Do you know why?" she took a shuddering breath. "Because you care for people. Because you have people who believe in you. That's something Voldemort doesn't have, and never will."

Harry suddenly let go of her and turned back around. "Like you believed me when I told you I was innocent?" he replied softly.

"No," Hermione answered in an equally quiet tone. "Not like that. Not like the public who hailed you as their savior, either. But like friends and family. Do you know why I believe in you? Why Xerina and the Count believe in you and follow you, despite all logic saying that you're bound to lose? Because you care for them more than you care for yourself. You always have. And despite everything we've done to you, you still care. And that's why we believe in you."

"Why? Why couldn't you have supported me like that back then? Where were you when I needed you?"

Hermione didn't need to see his face to feel the anguish rolling off of her former best friend in waves. She bowed her head in shame. "We were lost in our own little world. I guess we were more like everyone else than we wanted to believe. I always thought that when it came down to it, I'd stick by your side when it mattered, but I failed you in that. I let everyone else's opinion override what I knew. I let my respect for authority override my friendship with you when Professor Dumbledore announced that he believed you were guilty." She was having trouble speaking now, herself. Forcing herself to swallow the lump in her throat, she continued. "I failed as your friend, and I failed as your family. And for that, I'm so sorry."