One Morning in February

One Morning in February

Harry’s never paid a whole lot of attention to Valentine’s Day.

He remembers it from grade school: girls giggling, boys stealing candy, everyone sorting colourful little cards into piles on their desks, proclaiming with pride precisely how many they’d received.

Everyone except him.

His first and only Valentine involved green pickled toads and Dark Lords. He’s never been quite sure who to thank for those lyrical stylings, but he rather imagines a chat with some residents of the Slytherin dungeons would be a good place to start.

So it’s not surprising, really, that a dreary morning in mid-February finds Harry’s brain occupied with tricky maths (if Hufflepuff loses to Ravenclaw by 90 points, and Ravenclaw beats Slytherin by 120, then…), ignoring images that linger from last night’s new take on an old dream, and performing a search and seisure mission on the best bit of bacon on the Gryffindor table.

In other words, it’s a morning like any other.

***************

Hermione doesn’t like what Valentine’s Day is, a day of flowers and chocolates and giggling. So much silliness. But she likes what it could be, a day to give love to someone who needs it, without asking anything in return.

It’s been a hard year, their fifth year, and she certainly knows someone who could use a little care. So she stays up late one night and scratches out a card, in quiet secret behind her bed curtains. No hearts or flowers, no rhyming words, no X’s and O’s. Just a simple, I think you ought to know that you’re loved.

She doesn’t sign it.

She tells herself it’s because anonymous words have more power, that it’ll be dismissed so easily, otherwise – oh, it’s just Hermione.

Not because she’s worried about the response, or that she has any sort of secret hopes that could be dashed by the wrong reaction – no, not at all.

This isn’t about her. It’s about him, and what she knows he needs to hear.

****************

With the bacon battle long over, Harry picks up his bookbag and heads down the hall to Charms. He slides into his seat between Hermione and Ron, fishes out his quill, and pulls out his textbook.

He makes a mistake, and it’s just that, not fate or any other such nonsense; he pulls out the wrong text, his Divination one. A book he doesn’t need until late in the afternoon, when the trio’s reduced to two boys fighting sleep in a hot tower room. He’s shoving it impatiently back in his bag, grumbling under his breath, when he finds the unexpected.

He slides it out from between the pages, reads it once, twice, three times, before looking around. He thinks, maybe, it’s for real this time – there’s not a Slytherin in sight, after all. His eyes roam the faces of his classmates, finally resting on one in particular. She’s not looking at him, but staring into a Charms book as if it’s the most fascinating thing on earth.

He’d have no trouble believing that to be the case, for this particular face, if its cheeks weren’t distinctly flushed and its ears more pink than anything.

Harry folds the stiff parchment carefully, tucks it back into his bag, down between two books where there’s no danger of wrinkles.

He tunes into Flitwick with part of his brain, the part that knows how to strike that delicate balance between paying attention and looking like someone the professor should call on. The rest is busy, as always, but not with computing Quidditch stats or banishing nightmares.

He’s loved. And he doesn’t have the first clue what to do about it.

********

A/N: Thanks to Stacy and Shayla for betaing.