Breaking Point

Breaking Point

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, although if I did I wouldn't be writing fanfiction now would I? They are the sole property of J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Press, Bloomsbury Publishing, and Warner Bros.

A/N: Yet another angsty one-shot from me. I wrote this several months ago, but never got around to typing it up. I tend to write everything down in large volumes of notebooks. A bit of a small humorous moment from me to break the tension. I had about 5 different versions of this fic, so I hope you all like it.

Thanks to: The entire Wonky/HOAF crew for helping me get through the good times.

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Breaking Point

The air was think and heavy inside Number 12 Grimmauld Place. The mood upon the household was somber, for lack of a better word. Only a month had passed since the disastrous raid of the Department of Mysteries. The very raid that sacrificed the life of Sirius Black, Harry Potters infamous godfather.

Simply being back here, in Sirius’ house, was enough to cause Harry’s heart to ache dramatically. While spending the first few weeks of summer at Privet Drive, Harry found it remarkably easier to forget about those events of help numb the pain. But every nook and cranny of this dreary house was another painful memory of his godfather.

The minute that Harry had walked back into Grimmauld Place for the first time since Sirius’ death, everyone tried their best to console him. He stood in the foyer, a lump rising in the back of his throat. He brushed a quick hand over his face, not wanting to appear weak or distraught in anyway.

He stepped through the dark threshold, feeling every pair of eyes upon him. An emotional Mrs. Weasley was the first one to break the ice, so to speak. “Harry dear,” she muttered, enveloping him in a bone-crushing, but rather relieving hug. “It’s good to see you. I do hope you’re alright.”

“I’m fine,” Harry lied, breaking off the hug. He looked over her shoulder and saw his best friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, along with Ron’s younger sister Ginny, standing at the foot of the staircase, watching him closely with pained expressions. Talking to them was one of the last things that Harry felt like doing, but the staircase was the only way he could go if he wished to go straight to the room he stayed in last time. He didn’t think he could take the pitying looks from each of them.

Taking a deep breath, he walked towards the staircase, hoping that no one would stop him. However, he always had an unfortunate crutch of seriously underestimating his friends. And sure enough, Hermione had laid a gentle hand on his shoulder as he tried to walk past her. “Harry, I.”

“I don’t want to talk, Hermione,” he grumbled moodily, shrugging her hand off of his shoulder. He bounded up the stairs, barely picking up his feet, causing an array of bangs and noises as he did so. He slammed the door to his room shut behind him, making those downstairs jump.

Hermione turned to Ron, a look of hurt upon her face. She couldn’t imagine what Harry was going through, although she did her best to try and understand. And each and every time, Harry kept pushing her away. Well, not anymore, she thought determinedly. It’s about time that Harry stepped off his “Nobody Understands Me” pedestal. Holding her head up eye, she swept past Ron and Ginny and began following the path that Harry had taken a moment ago.

Ron looked at her incredulously. “Where are you going?” he said, his brow disappearing beneath his infamous coif of Weasley hair.

She stopped in her tracks to glance back at him. “To snap him out of things. It’s about time that somebody did. Are you coming with me?”

“And listen to him blow my bloody ear drums out?” Ron asked her. “I’ll leave that task up to you, Hermione. Besides, he’d much rather hear it from you than me.”

Hermione flashed him a quick look of annoyance and continued traipsing her way up the large staircase. Blood was pounding in her ears as she narrowed the space between her and Harry. Oh, I hope this works.

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Harry threw himself on the hard floor, pulling his knobby knees to his chest after he did so. He surveyed the high-ceilinged room with mounting disinterest. Briefly catching his eye was a small portrait of a hippogriff in flight. He watched it’s progress mildly, remembering the moment him and Hermione and ridden on the back of Buckbeak the hippogriff in the midst of rescuing Sirius from being sent back to Azkaban prison for the second time. In any case, he vaguely registered the sound of muffled footsteps nearing closer.

The door to his room shook slightly as a knock forcefully echoed throughout the house. He firmly ignored the knock, clearly despising any company at the moment. Another knock sounded, and yet Harry continued to not pay it any attention.

“Harry, can you please open the bloody door!?”

“I said I didn’t want to talk,” Harry growled at the door.

“I heard it, but I don’t believe it,” Hermione’s voice said irritably from behind the door. Both of her hands were now placed firmly on the door. “Harry,” she said a bit softer this time. “Please let me in.”

“No!” he shouted, taking Hermione by surprise. Can’t people understand the need to be alone? Apparently not, he thought bitterly. “Just leave me alone, Hermione. I’ve had enough of this! ALL of this! You don’t understand what I’m going through and what I feel inside.”

“That’s because you won’t give anyone a chance to understand or even try to understand,” Hermione’s voice was now beginning to shake. She was now meeting Harry’s shouts and yells with a few of her own. “You’ve been completely shut off from the rest of us since it happened. I understand how much Sirius meant to you. I understand that you’re fed up with having to be everyone’s hero. I understand a lot of things.” Her face was vividly scarlet and her usually warm brown eyes were welling with hot tears. “But I want you to understand that there is no way in bloody hell that I’m going anywhere!” She pound hard on the door.

An uneasy silence grew between them. Harry hung his heads down in his hands, took a deep shuddering breath, and exhaled. He knew that she was right, as usual, even though it pained him to admit it to himself. Leave it to Hermione to administer a good talking to. However, a small part of him admired her for coming up here to speak to him, to try to get him to open up. But it was her determination that caused Harry to seriously reevaluate everything.

Hermione stood on the other side of the doorway, listening for any response, any sign at all. To be honest, the lack of such was disturbing. She sagged her entire weight upon the door, resting her forehead on it as well. Silent tears were flowing down her face, not caring if her emotional wall came crashing down before her this very moment. It was the least of her worries. Most of her attention was focused on Harry and his worries, although that wasn’t too big of a stretch for her.

Harry lifted himself off of the floor and began to pace around the room slowly and silently. He rubbed his scar absentmindedly with confusion. His mind began clicking frantically; not unlike a puzzle gathering up it’s pieces and fitting them together. All of these years, the pieces were directly in front of him all along, begging to be noticed. He had built up the puzzled from the start, since he was eleven years old. Now, his hand was outstretched towards the final piece, waiting to be completed.

His hand was on the doorknob, shaking madly with nervousness. Harry opened the door to talk to Hermione. However, he got more than he bargained for at that particular moment.

Hermione, whose weight had been entirely supported by the door, fell dramatically as defined by the laws of gravity. With lack of grace, she fell dropped face forward on top of Harry, a look of mingled shock written across every line on her face. She wasn’t the only one feeling the repercussions. Harry could hardly formulate a response to this sudden turn of events. It was hard to believe that one moment they were shouting at one another and the next, they were on the ground with her lying firmly on top of him. His mouth began opening and closing repeatedly as if he couldn’t quite say the words that he was meaning to say.

“Er-Hermione?” he stammered, unable to move a muscle. He could feel her squirming uncomfortably.

“Yes?” she questioned rather breathlessly. Her mind was running a marathon in sloppy and jerky circles.

“Would you-er-I mean,” Harry continued stuttering, his thoughts quickly drawing blanks. He placed his shaking hands on her hips, unsure of where else to put them.

“Yes?” she asked more firmly than before.

“Er-would you p-please get off of me?”

Hermione blinked, looking down at Harry’s reddened face. Bracing herself steadily on his shoulders, she slowly straightened up and spared Harry from being crushed. “Sorry,” she muttered embarrassedly.

Harry was still lying on his back on the cold, dusty floor. He was staring up at the ceiling now. “S’okay,” he mumbled. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine.” Turning his head to the side, he looked into Hermione’s comforting brown eyes. “Everything is my fault.”

She kneeled down next to him and reached out a placatory hand. “Not everything is your fault, Harry,” she said softly. “Sirius died by V-Voldemort’s own cause. You can’t help but go out of your way for those you love.”

“You all could have died, Hermione,” he said stiffly. “This was a battle all my own and I dragged you into it. Why did you come along? You could have let me go all by myself.”

Hermione bit her lip nervously. She was silently debating herself, but it proved fruitless. It was too late to turn back now. “Because you can’t help but go out of your way for the one you love.”

Unbeknownst to himself, Harry’s jaw dropped. He continued to stare at her for the longest time, trying to establish whether she was being serious or not. She held her own ground determinedly by looking into his searching eyes for any sign that may betray the fact that he had the same feelings for her as she did for him. Tears began to well up again with every passing moment of silence.

“Okay, I understand,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “I know that this must seem strange for you, Harry. I get that you don’t feel the same way, but let me get a few things out of my system before I leave you to yourself.”

Hermione looked away from him, brushing away a few tears on her sleeve from her now reddened face. “In the back of my mind, I’ve always believed that I feelings for you…non-platonic feelings,” she added hastily, seeing his puzzled face. “Believe me, I thought I was absolutely mad for thinking like that. ‘There is no basis for it,’ I kept telling myself. You wouldn’t believe how many times that I have had to mentally kick myself for entertaining those thoughts.”

She shifted slight, now looking at him strangely with widened eyes. “It wasn’t until last Christmas when I started to follow my mind and heart. Seeing you with Cho Chang was torturous for me. At one point, I even compared it to being hit by the Cruciatus Curse. Of course I hid my feelings about her by pretending that I only wanted you to be happy, that’s why I kept helping you along in that relationship. However, the entire time I couldn’t help picture myself in her position. All I wanted then was to have you look at me the way that you used to look at her.”

Harry was now sitting up on the floor, watching the tears drop from Hermione’s face and onto the ground. He wasn’t sure what to think of all of this. Hermione’s revelation triggered something deep inside of him. He didn’t say anything the entire time, but let her continue to vent and release all of the emotional tension and frustration from her system.

“There has never been anyone else for me,” she said, still straining to take a deep breath. “It’s always been you, Harry. It’s always been you for me.”

He closely examined her emotionally stricken face. At that moment, everything felt so far away from his reach. During Hermione’s proclamation, he could feel himself mentally egging her on to let it all out. He was tired of seeing her so buttoned up tight, her feelings always conveying ambiguity. Harry had often found it hard to interpret her feelings at times, that any sign such as this was definitely refreshing.

The alarming amount of silence drove Hermione’s emotions to the breaking point. She turned away from him and fell to the floor dramatically, crying hard in earnest. Her loud sobs echoed strangely around the room, tearing Harry’s heart to pieces. He crawled across the floor to sit down next to her. She glanced sideways at him with her teary-eyed face and threw her arms around him tightly.

Harry had no idea what to do or say to Hermione. The situation was strange enough without an emotional teenage girl who had just proclaimed her love for you sobbing in your arms. However, Harry felt that something needed to be said.

“Hermione, don’t do this,” he said softly. Hermione was covering her face, trying to stifle the loud sound of her crying. “You haven’t had time to listen to my side of the story before reacting.”

She made a strangled sort of sound before carrying on. “I don’t need to hear it, Harry,” she said, her voice scratchy and thick. “Your silence told me all I needed to know.”

Harry raised an eyebrow. “For once, I think you may be wrong there.” He grabbed the tip of her chine and drew her face upwards to look at him directly in the eyes. The sight of his brilliantly green eyes made her shiver. “There is no person alive that has been with me through as much as you have. And despite anything that I have said or done to hurt you, I…” words failed Harry at that point. Tension was at its highest peak possibly, waiting to be fully exorcised.

Hermione seemed to understand, at any rate. Her movements closer towards him were jerky and hesitant. They were so close to each other at that point, that Harry could feel her breath upon her face. He could see each and every glistening teardrop clinging to her skin. It was difficult to pull away or hold back from what was clearly inevitable.

The room was still and silent, except for the small creak of the door and the scurrying of footsteps from downstairs. In any case, Harry and Hermione didn’t seem to pay any of these small sounds any attention at all.

All thoughts slipped away from them both in a rush, when all of a sudden Hermione’s lips began gently pressing against Harry’s. Her hands slowly slid across the floor to hold his. Sure, Harry had kissed twice before this, but this kiss was way out of his league. The platonic innocence of last summer wasn’t there, nor was the desperation that was felt between Harry and Cho last Christmas under the mistletoe. It was something barely describable. All he knew at that moment was Hermione and how he loved every little thing about her-the way her shoulder slumped when she studied, the way she constantly spouted off information like a human encyclopedia, and most recently the way she derailed Harry’s train of thought by delivering one hell of an eye-opening kiss.

Hermione pulled away from the kiss somewhat reluctantly, nearly bursting out with laughter at the wide-eyed look on Harry’s stunned face. It was exceptional magic to render someone else virtually speechless. It certainly raised Hermione’s ego a few notches (not that she needed the extra burst).

Harry grinned. “The next time you wish for me to be quiet…do just that.”

She laughed and leaned in closer towards him, unable to resist another attempt to kiss him again. She found him hard to resist in every aspect and one taste of his was most definitely not enough. All in all, they both felt cathartic.

The pair had reached a new point in their relationship: the breaking point. The point between the unresolved tension and the resolution. The point in which their foundations of friendship were crushed forever and new foundation of love was built up in its place. However, it’s a different situation when the love was there all along without ever realizing it.