Cry

Disclaimer: I don’t own Harry Potter and co., they all belong to the lovely JK Rowling. I just do this to avoid less pleasant things, like homework.

Note: I’ve always wanted to write one of these post-OotP fics. So here it is. To be honest, I’m not sure how long it will be. I don’t plan very well, and I don’t write ahead much. This is only the second fic I’ve posted on the net, so all feedback, positive or not, would be much appreciated. Oh—this isn’t a songfic, I just think those two lines (from Cry by Mandy Moore) fit the story well.

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It was then that I realized, that forever was in your eyes

The moment I saw you cry

Hermione sighed and pushed the thin coverlet off her body, tangling it in her legs. She turned onto her side and stared blankly at the illuminated clock on her bedside table. Four minutes to midnight. A hot summer breeze blew the pale pink curtains at her windows out slightly, and Hermione shifted to her back once more, putting her hands behind her head. Oddly, she could still make out the delicate white furniture, stacks of books, and open Hogwarts trunk perfectly. She guessed it was because she’d barely closed her eyes all night. She watched herself in the mirror above the dressing table across the room. Her face looked tired, but her brown eyes were still awake and alert. Her long curly hair was draped over her one shoulder in an attempt to keep cool, and she wore a white tank top and a pair of light blue boxer shorts. With another sigh, she kicked the blanket off completely, pushing it down to the very foot of her high, Queen sized bed. She flipped over onto her stomach and fixed her stare this time on the cushioned headboard of her bed.

It was no use. It had been months since she’d last seen Harry, yet she simply could not stop thinking about him. He’d gone through something terrible, far worse than anything that had happened before. And that, Hermione thought, was saying something. Harry, in his short fifteen years, had suffered more than all the other people Hermione knew combined. He’d lost his parents before he could talk, been made to live with emotionally and physically abusive relatives, battled the most evil wizard alive thrice, seen a friend die and a deadly enemy return to power. And now he had lost the person closest to a father he’d ever known, Sirius Black. Hermione shut her eyes tight and Harry’s face as she had last seen him floated into her head. He was trying to smile for her and Ron’s sakes, for Mrs. Weasley and Lupin and everyone else who had come to greet them at King’s Cross. But before he followed his uncle away from the group, he had turned and given her one last look. His features were lined with pain, and his normally bright green eyes were dark with it. She had been unable to do anything but look back at him over her mother’s shoulder, silently telling him she wished she could be with him and hoping he understood.

Hermione exhaled softly. She’d go to him. She’d catch the Knight Bus to Little Whinging and be back before her parents woke in the morning. It wasn’t something she’d normally do, Hermione admitted. But tonight she felt different. The annoying little voice of reason had not come to her. Without a second thought, she slid out of bed and threw open the lid of her heavy Hogwarts trunk. She dug around until she found the leftover gold from the last Hogsmeade trip in the pocket of a black school robe. Counting it quickly in her hand, she climbed up on the window seat and pushed it all the way open with a grunt. She stared out the gateway to freedom for a moment. She’d never climbed out a window before. She stuck one leg through first, straddled the sill for a moment then pulled herself out the other side.

“Oof!” She landed with a crunch in the hedge growing outside her window. Grimacing, she brushed the leaves off her arms and legs and tried to fluff the plant back into its neat hedge shape. Her mother was a fanatical gardener and Hermione was sure she’d notice a flat spot in the bushes. She never had understood how anyone could be so passionate about plants. She pulled her hair back and straightened her clothing. It was cooler outside than in her room. With one last glace up at her parents’ bedroom window on the second floor of the large, peach-colored Victorian house, she hurried to the street corner and stuck out her wand hand.

She was nearly knocked off her feet when the three-story purple bus screeched to a stop in front of her. There was a wooshing sound like air going out of the tires and a tall, skinny boy jumped out in front of her. She looked up slowly.

“Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard. Just stick out your wand hand, step on board, and we can take you anywhere you want to go. My name is Stan Shunpike, and I will be your conductor this evening.” The skinny, pale boy shoved the grubby paper he’d been reading from back in his jacket pocket and looked at her expectantly. “Well?” he asked, dropping the posh accent. “Wha’re ya waitin for? Never been on the Knight Bus before?”

“Er…actually, no,” she said timidly. She held out the silver sickles to Stan. “This is all I’ve got.”

He narrowed his eyes and glanced past her at her parents’ house. “You ain’t supposed to be out here, are you?”

Hermione frowned at him. “I just got an owl from my muggle aunt in Little Whinging. My three year old cousin is making his dirty nappies fly around the room and she doesn’t know what to do. My uncle is the wizard, and he’s on duty tonight at St. Mungo’s. My parents are muggles too, it was no use waking them and I didn’t want to.”

Stan made a face. “Well, I don’t envy her, tha’s for sure,” he said. He took the silver from her and ushered her inside. “We’ve got a full house tonight,” he told her, pushing her to the back. “Wizarding weddings, they’re uncontrollable.”

Hermione didn’t need to be told. Lounging on the squishy beds on either side of the aisle, young witches and wizards were hexing everything around them and holding something that looked suspiciously like firewhiskey. Stan ducked as a jet of yellow light came straight for his head. “Oi, watch where you’s pointing tha!” He glared at the giggling witch dressed in green who had cast the spell. “They’re all rotten, all of them,” he muttered. “Here we are, then,” he said, still a little sullenly. He motioned to the last bed on the right side of the bus. “And you’re going to Surrey, righ?”

Hermione nodded. “Thank you.”

“No problem, mate.” He turned and made his way back to the conductor’s chair, cursing and shaking his fist at a wizard who had turned his uniform pink.

Twenty minutes later, Hermione was thrown to the floor as the Knight Bus screeched to a halt. She groaned and picked herself up.

“Little Whinging!” came Stan’s voice from the front of the bus.

Hermione made her way to the door, feeling glad the wedding party had gotten of at Diagon Alley ten minutes ago.

“Hope the nappies aren’t too messy!” Stan said cheerfully.

She smiled. “Thanks,” she told him. “See you later.” She stepped out onto the curb and glanced around. In the dim light from the headlights, she spotted the Privet Drive street sign a few blocks down. With a wave to the driver, she turned and hurried down the street. It was very…clean here. Every lawn was perfectly manicured, every car sparkling, every dead leaf swept away. Mum would like it here, she thought absently. She turned on Privet Drive and stood in front of number four. She circled around the side of the house, and found Harry’s window quickly. It was the one with marks on the sill where Harry’s uncle had had bars installed three summers ago. She remembered fleetingly that the bars had come off when Ron and his brothers had come to rescue Harry and take him to the Burrow before their second year.

She put one hand on her hip and stared up at the window on the second floor. Suddenly it hit her how ridiculous this was. What would she have thought if she had found Harry or Ron in front of her house without any notice whatsoever? It was almost midnight. Harry probably wasn’t even awake. How was she supposed to get up there? Would he even want her to come up? He hadn’t responded to her last owl. Maybe he didn’t want to see her. She was beginning to panic slightly when a very familiar head appeared at the window. A very surprised looking Harry was staring down at her.

Disclaimer: Again, I own nothing except Aunt Petunia’s purple flowers. And maybe not even those. It might be a subconscious memory.

Note: So sorry for the supershort chapters. I think I write really slow. Also, I’m miserably sick. But summer school is now over (yay!) so I’ll have more time to write.

“Hermione!” he whispered just loud enough for her to hear.

She opened her mouth, but no words came out. She seemed to have forgotten how to speak. She stared up at him like a deer caught in headlights. “Why can’t you say anything?” she cursed herself mentally. She realized her mouth was still hanging open and closed it.

Harry didn’t wait for a response. “Climb up on that ledge there and on the window frame,” he told her. “I’ll pull you in.”

Wordlessly, she obeyed. Harry’s aunt’s bushes were just as prickly as her mother’s. She picked her way over them gingerly and managed to avoid a repeat of earlier that night. Careful not to step on the perky purple flowers growing along the side of the house, she pressed her fingers into the narrow nooks formed by the rows of bricks and put one foot on the ledge three and a half feet above the ground. Pushing up with that leg, she grasped the top of the window sill and lifted herself up. She looked up at Harry, who nodded encouragingly.

“Just step on the sill and pull yourself up, just like that again.”

She did as he said and stretched out a hand toward him. He grasped it and a tingle shot through her arm. His hands were so much bigger than hers, and his skin was smooth and warm beneath her fingers. “Give me your other hand,” he whispered, holding his own out to her. Normally, she would have said absolutely not, I am standing on a window frame two inches wide and eight feet off the ground, I cannot possibly let go now. But she took his hand without a thought. He pulled her up, letting go of her left hand and securing his arm around her waist. She held his upper arm with her free hand, and when he’d pulled her far enough she straddled the window and slipped off into the room. She looked down and felt a small jolt in her stomach. Suddenly, she remembered she was afraid of heights.

She turned to face Harry. His hand was still entwined with hers. He followed her eyes down and quickly let go.

She felt rather stupid, standing here in front of her best friend in her pajamas, having snuck into his room in the middle of the night. She realized she had yet to utter a single word. “Er…hello, Harry.”

He looked at her for a minute more. “Hermione, what the hell are you doing here?” She couldn’t quite tell if he was annoyed or thrilled. He rubbed his left arm with his other hand and motioned for her to sit.

“I…er…I wanted to see you,” she said, realizing all too well how lame that sounded. He would think she was crazy, taking the Knight Bus all the way to Surrey in the middle of the night just to see someone she’d spend two more years at school with. She sat gingerly on Harry’s bed, pushing away the rumpled bedclothes. The mattress was firm beneath her. She smoothed the soft blue comforter, suddenly feeling very self-conscious.

There was a pause. “Oh,” he said finally. His hand moved to his head, rumpling his already messy black hair. He looked awfully cute, Hermione thought suddenly. He wore only a pair of dark green pajama pants, which were slightly too big and allowed a few inches of his boxers to show over the top. His chest was bare, and Hermione noted entirely against her will that he’d filled out rather nicely. Who knew zooming around on a broomstick could do anything for someone’s pecs?

“So,” he said much more congenially than normal. “How was your holiday?”

“Oh, it was lovely,” she replied a little too brightly. “Not quite as exciting as Hogwarts, but it’s been nice at home.” She gave a little cough and tucked her hair behind an ear.

“That’s…that’s good,” he said. He was standing all the way across the room now, about eight feet from where she was perched on his bed.

She nodded and broke eye contact to look around the room. A wardrobe stood in the corner opposite the bed, with a Puddlemere United poster plastered across one door. She squinted at it and wondered if she recognized Oliver Wood as one of the figures zooming around excitedly on it. Next to the wardrobe, Harry’s Hogwarts trunk sat open. Either he was very late unpacking, or very early packing. His robes, Gryffindor ties, shirts, socks, pants and Quidditch robes were piled haphazardly in no discernable order. A desk covered with rolls of parchment, ink, quills and a few textbooks sat across from the wardrobe. Hedwig’s empty cage was on another table at the foot of the bed.

Hermione cleared her throat. It seemed a little insensitive to ask how his summer had been. “But is that part of the reason you came?” a little voice in the back of her head asked. “You want him to talk to you about Sirius.”

“How are your aunt and uncle treating you?” she asked, partly in defiance of the annoying voice. “Mad Eye hasn’t come swooping down on them, has he?”

One corner of Harry’s mouth turned up a little, but he didn’t look at her. “No,” he said. “I’ve still got hope, though,” he added. “I’d rather they treat me like crap if it means I get to see them turned into teapots. You have no idea how frustrating it is, Hermione, to listen to them snark about my parents, and to not be able to do anything about it. My aunt knows Voldemort is back. She knows. And she does it anyway.” He broke off abruptly and looked back at her. “Sorry.”

“No, no,” Hermione said softly. “I want to hear.”

He shook his head. “It’s nothing new. Nothing you haven’t heard before.”

“I haven’t.” She frowned slightly. “You’ve never told me about this, Harry. You never mention your aunt and uncle.”

“Yeah, well, they’re nothing to get excited over,” he said tartly. “You don’t want to listen to me complain.”

“You don’t have to worry about that with me!” she told him anxiously, all awkwardness gone. “I’m your best friend, Harry!”

There was a pause. “I know.” He took a few steps towards her.