Disclaimer: All characters belong to J.K.Rowling, I'm just borrowing them!
Pairings: Harry/Hermione
Rating: PG
Author's Note: This is my first attempt at fan fiction, I appreciate any comments or suggestions but please be gentle with me! I hope you all enjoy the story.
What was . . . and what could be
Chapter 1 - Dark Times
Outside Number Four, Privet Drive, it was raining, and it was raining hard. It fell in great sweeping waves, tinted yellow by the soft glow of the street lamps, and spattered against the window where Harry Potter sat and watched it quietly. Harry felt a great turbulent mixture of emotions as he sat and watched the rain, every so often running one hand along the famous lightning-bolt scar on his forehead absent-mindedly. So much had happened, so much was still happening that he had no idea about, cut off here in the Muggle world, and he was still trying to process it.
Sirius is gone.
On some level he had accepted that his godfather was dead, fallen into that dreadful veil of death deep within the Department of Mysteries, but he often found himself forgetting. He would find himself tempted to send Hedwig off to Grimmauld Place just for a reply berating him for making contact, but then he would remember that he was gone and the hurt would come back anew. The hurt was deep inside him, twisted around a great fire of anger that was directed at one man. One man who was responsible for it all.
Voldemort.
The Dark Lord. You-Know-Who. He Who Must Not Be Named. The one who was responsible for causing all of the pain in Harry's life: killing his parents and robbing him of a normal childhood, plotting and executing several attempts to kill Harry himself, causing the pain, suffering and death of his friends and those he cared for the most . . . and what hurt and scared Harry the most, marking him as his nemesis and condemning him to a prophecy where only one of them can survive.
This fact had been weighing heavily on Harry's mind ever since the night Dumbledore had explained it all to him, promoting intense feelings of rage and fear inside him. He was fifteen years old, almost sixteen, and it was very possible that he would not see out his teenage years. Harry was a brave young boy and had faced many dangers - had even duelled with Lord Voldemort himself - but this was something altogether different. He had always believed that, no matter how strange and often dangerous his wizarding life had been, he would at least have a long and interesting life to look forward to. Now he was forced to face the brutal fact that there was a good chance this was not so.
There was a sick, hollow feeling in his stomach and he sighed loudly. Hedwig hooted softly from her cage and Harry smiled, raising his arm out to her. She flew over to him and he stroked her soft white plumage.
"Don't worry Hedwig," he said. "I won't let anything happen to you. At least I can make sure of that."
He turned back to the window to watch the rain again as he continued to stroke Hedwig. It was three o'clock in the morning and the only sounds in the house were the rumbling snores of Vernon and Dudley Dursley, but Harry didn't hear them. He was too occupied with his thoughts.
He had not told Ron and Hermione about the prophecy.
He wasn't even sure how he was going to tell them. He would have to, and soon, as he couldn't keep this from his two best friends for long. They deserved to know. They had been through so much together, were such a huge part of each other's lives, that they had to be told that he might not be around much longer. He could picture the look of horror on Ron's face when he told him, so pale he might be mistaken for one of Hogwart's resident ghosts, but Harry did not want to think about what Hermione's reaction might be. It hurt him too much. Sitting next to his window at three in the morning, watching the rain and thinking about all the changes in his life the past year had brought, Harry was beginning to acknowledge that the biggest change was still happening. It was something that he had hidden even from himself, telling himself that it couldn't be right and pushing it aside as he concentrated on Voldemort and the work of the Order of the Phoenix. Somewhere along the line, he had stopped wanting to be just Hermione's friend.
The feeling now was so strong that he felt somewhat guilty with himself that it overrode what he supposed he should consider to be more important - the prophecy, Voldemort, the possibility that an attack could come from any time - and instead he found his thoughts and feelings coming constantly back to her. He couldn't think of how or when it had started. He thought that perhaps it might have been around Valentines Day, and his disastrous time with Cho Chang. It had been little things at first: noticing when she tried something new with her hair (and he and Ron had had to laugh when it soon returned to it's normal bushy state after a matter of hours). How her smile would always seem to lift him from whatever dark thoughts he was troubled by. How incredibly brown her eyes were. But then it was other things . . . noticing just how beautiful Hermione really was . . . how her robes could no longer conceal the curves of her body . . . how she made him laugh . . . her honesty, bravery and confidence in her friends . . . and most of all, as the months had passed and his feelings had increased, he had realised how just being around her made him, well, happy. Even during those final weeks of the school term, and the horrific showdown within the Ministry of Magic, where all of Harry's feelings of anger had taken centre stage, those other feelings had been there. Pushed to one side as usual, but they were there. He would not forget the terror and gut-wrenching despair he had felt when the Death Eater had sliced blue fire across her chest and sent Hermione crumpling to the ground. In that instant his feelings for her took over, and his need to escape the Department of Mysteries had seemed unimportant. When Neville had told him she was alive, well . . . Harry couldn't think of any other time in his life when he had been so relieved. There were some things that came close, but nothing that could touch upon that moment.
The final few days at Hogwarts had been so hard. Not only were his grief and rage running high, but realisation had dawned on him and he knew at that moment what he knew now. Every time they had been alone together he had had butterflies in his stomach and found it hard to speak to her - he was sure she had thought this was because of what they'd just been through - and other times when they hadn't been alone their hands had brushed together by accident and Harry had felt something like electricity run up through him. He was sure that he had blushed fiercely, and didn't know if Hermione had noticed or not. On the platform at King's Cross, after promising that they'd both see Harry soon, she had hugged him. He had savoured every moment of it, the feel of him against her, the smell of her hair, the way that holding her like that had just seemed so right . . .
He sighed once again and Hedwig flew back to her cage. Harry continued to watch the rain, which was now accompanied by the odd flicker of lightning. Soon enough the thunder began to rumble. He thought about it all, and about the feeling that tingled in his heart whenever he thought of her. And then he was sure.
He was in love with Hermione Granger.
Harry scratched his head thoughtfully. Even though he yawned with tiredness he knew he could not sleep. His back was beginning to ache from sitting at the window though, so he crossed to the bed and lay down. This, he thought, wasn't something that a boy his age should be expected to deal with. He shouldn't have to deal with Dark Wizards that wanted to kill him, but he had to. And, Harry thought to himself, he probably shouldn't have to deal with changing feelings for a girl that was one of his best friends. But he had to. As he lay on the bed and the thoughts whirled round his head, he realised something else though. He did not want to deal with Voldemort, or the Order, or the loss of his godfather, or the horrible fact that he was destined to duel to the death with the most powerful Dark Wizard in history. He wished he could make all that go away. But when it came to Hermione, that was something he certainly did want to deal with, no matter how nervous he felt about it. Harry had done a lot more growing up during the last few months than even he realised, and he was sure of one thing. He was in love, with a girl who was his best friend, and there might be the possibility of the two of them being something very special. And if, as Harry's worst fears told him, he was not going to live a very long life, then he was determined to take that chance while he could.
He rolled onto his side and stared at the wall. Thinking about her had made one thing very clear.
"How in Merlin's name am I going to tell her?" he whispered to himself.
How exactly did you go about telling your best friend that you wanted to be her boyfriend? Harry considered himself hopeless when it came to girls anyway . . . he hadn't known what to say to Cho at all, mostly lots of "Ers" and looking at the ground which wouldn't be much use with Hermione either. She'd probably just give him a concerned look and ask if he was feeling ill. And what if . . . what if he came out with it, and it ruined everything? What if it confused and upset her, and made her not want to be friends anymore? He needed his friends at Hogwarts and felt sure he would need them even more this coming year, so was it really worth risking that for the chance that she might . . .
Harry rolled over onto his other side and realised, miserably, that there was no-one he could turn to for advice. This is something, Harry thought, that I could have talked to Sirius about, he would have helped . . . but Sirius wasn't around anymore, and Harry pushed away fresh hurt at the thought. He couldn't think of anyone he could talk to about this. He had seen his cousin kissing a girl once, but Harry would rather eat slugs before asking Dudley for advice about girls. He couldn't ask any of the other boys in Gryffindor, as they'd gossip about it and then the whole school would know, Hermione included. There was Hagrid, he supposed, but Harry could just picture them in Care Of Magical Creatures, Hagrid winking at him and nudging him, saying "You tole 'er yet Harry?" in his whisper that was loud enough for the whole class to hear. He wouldn't mean any harm by it, but Hermione was the cleverest witch in the school by far and it wouldn't take her long to figure it out.
Then of course, there was Ron.
Ron should be the one talked to about this, Harry supposed. He was, after all, his best friend. They were supposed to tell each other stuff like this. Ron was the only one Harry had divulged everything to - there were some things he hadn't told Hermione - and in turn Ron had told him a lot of things Harry knew he wouldn't want the rest of the school to know. They were best friends, that was how it worked. And, Harry thought, something as important as falling in love with someone should be something you discussed right away. The only problem was the fact that it was Hermione. It was the one thing they had never discussed, and the one thing Harry had not asked Ron about, and that was how Ron felt about Hermione. Harry was sure that Ron liked her, had liked her for a very long time. He was probably in love with her too. There were things that Harry had picked up on from the both of them that made him realise it, and he hadn't wanted to press Ron about it. Now though . . . well, he might have to. A small part of him was sure that Hermione felt something for Ron as well (and he hoped, guiltily, that it wasn't that strong) but he had a feeling that there might be something there for him, too. He hoped that he was right, and that when he told her how he felt she would return those feelings . . . but he would have to tell Ron first. Assuming that everything went as Harry hoped it would, he knew that he and Hermione would both be hurting Ron. But he would be hurting Ron the most, and he would hurt him even more if he didn't tell Ron first. If he told Ron what he was planning to do Ron might still get upset or angry with him, but at least he wouldn't have gone behind his friend's back.
Despite knowing that this was the right thing to do, it didn't make Harry feel any better. His feelings for Hermione were going to change everything, and he realised that he was about to risk the friendships of the two most important people in his life. Troubled, scared, alone, and in love, the Boy Who Lived eventually drifted off into an uneasy sleep that was haunted by whispering voices from behind the veil.