A Summer of Reflections

DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J. K. Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Author’s Notes: Originally I had planned on doing a one-shot story about Harry’s sixteenth birthday, but something else happened entirely (as things so often do) when I actually sat down to write it. So here is the first chapter of a brand new story from me, one that has not been posted anywhere else before now. Imagine that! LOL… Enjoy!

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Chapter 1

Harry Potter gazed into the gilt-framed mirror before him wondering if sixteen looked any different than fifteen.

The thirty-first of July it may be, a day of recognized celebration for the first time he could remember, but it didn’t take long for Harry to concede that certain things had not improved by a mere matter of age.

It was the same bright green eyes that stared back at him through the filmy surface of the mirror, the same untidy hair that rested atop a small-framed body, and the same scar – still the only remarkable and sometimes, for Harry, loathsome thing about his appearance – that peeked through that messy black mop which was as stubborn as ever about being combed straight. He hadn’t grown any more that he had noticed; his clothing was still the same size. And he didn’t suddenly appear any older. He certainly didn’t look any wiser.

Harry wagered sixteen sounded better than fifteen did (though not better than seventeen did – when the bells of freedom would toll and he would be able to escape the Dursleys at last).

But no, Harry reckoned he was the same old Harry, as far as outward appearances were concerned.

Yet underneath that false teenage – almost adult – front, if one looked hard enough into those deep green eyes, the remnants of the last five years could be seen residing heavily in that sixteen year old body.

Ever since owls had pelted his aunt and uncle’s house in Little Whinging, since the day Hagrid had arrived on his eleventh birthday bearing his acceptance letter to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, since Harry had learned he was a wizard; his life had never been the same.

Of course, there were obvious pluses to being a wizard. (The fact that his detestable cousin, Dudley, was scared stiff at the sight of him being one of Harry’s favorite reasons. And poor Dudley hadn’t changed, not even after Harry had saved his life the previous summer.) Being able to transform animals into water goblets, fly on a broomstick, and levitate large objects with the flick of a wrist was not your average kids’ stuff. Of course, there was also that added bonus of Wizarding school keeping Harry far, far away from the Dursleys for most of the year.

Luckily though, this summer had been the shortest one yet with his aunt, uncle, and cousin, much to Harry’s grateful relief. If he’d had to hear Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia state how proud they were that their "Ickle Diddykins" was Junior Heavyweight Inter-School Boxing Champion of the Southeast for the second year running one more time…

True to her promise that she would see him "really soon," Hermione had arrived on his relatives’ doorstep along with Ron, Lupin, Moody (who Harry never wanted to ride in a car with again, even though Mad-Eye had been driving a normal Muggle vehicle), and Tonks only three weeks into the summer holidays. The Dursleys, of course, had been just as happy to see him go as Harry had been to leave them.

"Harry, what are you doing?" Hermione’s voice broke into his thoughts.

Harry could see her behind him in the mirror, just across the room near the open doorway, her reflection kneeling next to an old cushioned chair covered in a dust cloth.

They were in Buckbeak the hippogriff’s room – a bedroom at number twelve, Grimmauld Place that had once belonged to Mrs. Black, Sirius’s mother – searching for a letter that Lupin had assured them Sirius had left there before he died. So far they’d come up with nothing more substantial than some old receipts from Madam Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions and business cards from Flourish and Blotts in Diagon Alley. There had also been several yellowing newspaper clippings, some old Wizarding magazine subscriptions, and lots and lots of Droobles Best Blowing Gum wrappers.

There was very little furniture left in the room, so there had not been much for Harry and Hermione to search. The bed had been removed, the marks on the floor still prevalent where it had once stood, and all that remained was a few small tables and chairs, a dusty old wardrobe with some (Harry assumed) moth eaten clothes in it, and a large roll-top writing desk similar to the one in the downstairs drawing room. And of course, there was the claw-footed mirror Harry was standing in front of which, like everything else in the room, was half-draped in sheets that had once been white. There were also two closets: a walk-in one that had been completely emptied of whatever contents it had once held, and another that, for the life of them, Harry and Hermione could not open.

Lupin, of course, had not told them what was in this letter they were searching for or why it was so important they look for it. They only knew that, whatever it was, the document was supposedly sealed in a purple envelope with the Black Family Crest stamped upon it.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione had been doing what they could to help out as far as the Order was concerned, but they’d been assigned to measly, unimportant tasks (such as this) ever since they’d arrived. Harry wanted to be involved, wanted to know what was going on with Voldemort and the Death Eaters, but – just as last year – they were keeping him pretty much in the dark about everything. Mrs. Weasley said he wasn’t old enough. Lupin said he wasn’t ready. Moody said it wasn’t his job. But Harry hated being excluded, especially after the things Dumbledore had told him little more than a month ago.

Not wanting to let his thoughts linger on Dumbledore’s words too often these days, Harry was trying to concentrate on the positive fact that he had been rescued from the Dursleys earlier this year. The summer had been fairly quiet thus far and this evening his friends were throwing him a birthday party, the first he would have in his entire life. He was trying very hard not to complain too much.

"Harry, are you listening to me?" asked Hermione for a second time.

"No."

While Harry conceded that being sixteen had done very little for him, Hermione on the other hand looked like she was growing into the idea rather nicely (and she still had nearly two months to go before her sixteenth birthday). It wasn’t that she had changed all that much in the short time they’d been apart, only the fact that Harry was noting subtle differences that he hadn’t quite perceived before in her. There was something decidedly more feminine about her, Harry had discerned upon her arrival at the Dursleys’ – and he was noticing it now too as he gazed at her reflection in the mirror. She was a bit taller perhaps, though if she was taller than Harry it was only by a mere millimeter; or maybe it was the way her jeans hugged her hips a little more than they had before; or the fact that her hair seemed a little less bushy, her mouth a little fuller, her cheekbones a tad more pronounced…

Whoa boy! Harry had to stop his thoughts before they wandered any farther or he’d be heading into dangerous territory.

Hermione, obviously aware of him staring at her through the mirror, came to stand beside him. She was looking at him with quite an amused expression on her face.

"You know, if you stand there long enough, your head just might deflate a little bit," she joked, holding her thumb and forefinger about an inch apart for his inspection.

Harry rolled his eyes in her direction.

"I wasn’t admiring myself in the mirror," he said quite unnecessarily, aware that Hermione knew him better than that.

"Then what were you admiring?"

Harry’s gaze turned immediately from the Hermione in the mirror to the one standing rather closely next to him.

Hermione’s eyes dropped instantly away and her cheeks turned pink.

"We should probably go back downstairs. Fred and George should be arriving with your cake soon," she mumbled, starting to move away from him – but Harry grabbed her hand, halting her retreat, though he didn’t quite know why.

"We’re supposed to be looking for that letter," said Harry, making something up – though it was the truth – to cover for his sudden boldness. He had to admit he rather liked the feel of her warm fingers in his as he found his thumb stroking her hand.

Hermione inhaled sharply, looking down at their hands before returning her eyes to his.

"I don’t think Sirius left it up here," she said quietly, and Harry thought her voice sounded a little too breathy.

"You’re right," agreed Harry, but neither of them moved toward the door.

Instead, they stood together in front of that old mirror for an indeterminate amount of time, hands intertwined and eyes locked with each other’s, until Harry finally turned away from her, moving over to say good-bye to Buckbeak.

Hermione stayed in front of the mirror, twisting her hands – now empty of Harry’s – with an odd expression on her face.

The truth was – moments like these had been happening between them ever since they’d arrived at Grimmauld Place for the summer. It was strange the way they would brush against each other, almost intentionally though certainly not, when they were reaching for something, like a spoon at dinner or a quill when they were studying in the drawing room. Harry found Hermione’s eyes on him more than usual these days (which could have been because his eyes were turned toward her more often as well), but instead of the worried look he’d seen there so many times before, and so frequently in the past year, he caught her staring at him pensively and often serenely, as though looking at him had a calming affect on her.

And yet, there was another look in her eyes altogether at times – one that was anything but calm, and often unnerved him, when Harry caught it at unsuspecting moments. Just the other night, for example, at dinner, when he had found her giving him such a look – one that had reminded him so much of a fire waiting to be stoked – he’d been so startled that he’d dumped his entire bowl of scorching hot soup in his lap. (He had been rather lucky that he had not gotten burned!)

There were other things he’d noticed, too, when he found her eyes watching him. Sometimes she was biting her lower lip slightly; other times the brown of her eyes looked like warm chocolate melting in the sun; and still other moments, she would smile at him in such a way that made his insides feel like mush, and he would squirm and look away from her, not liking the discomfort he felt while somehow wanting to feel that way again.

Harry didn’t really understand what was going on between them. He wondered at it often, but tried not to reflect on it too much. He found, with a mixture of disappointment and relief, they shared many perfectly normal moments together, far more often than these odd little bursts of… whatever it was… And Harry was sure that nothing had really changed between them while still thinking that, somehow, something was different. It was rather like slipping on a favorite sweater all the time – a habitual, comfortable routine – and then realizing one day that the sweater was blue. And it was not as though the color had never been noticed before; it just had never been named.

"Harry?" Hermione’s voice broke into his wandering thoughts once more.

"What?" he asked, not looking at her. He was concentrating hard on Buckbeak’s feathers at the moment, which the hippogriff was fluffing up with his beak. Harry wondered if he had an itch and was about to touch him when one yellow eye swung around, glaring at him.

"Harry, do you think you could come over here for a minute?" said Hermione.

And Harry thought her tone sounded a bit odd, tentative almost. This time he did look at her.

"What is it?" he asked, backing slowly away from Buckbeak, still eyeing Harry with his beady gaze.

"Wait," said Hermione, holding out her hand when Harry was an arm’s length away from her. "Stop right there."

"What?" he asked as he watched Hermione stare into the mirror and then back at him, a very curious look in her eyes. There were tiny lines between her eyebrows, and he thought for a minute she was going to point at something.

But when Harry looked into the mirror, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Only dusty versions of them stared back; the dim room around them appeared even less inviting through the grimy, ages worth of filth covering the mirror’s surface.

Harry looked at Hermione questioningly, but before she could open her mouth to speak, he heard a familiar voice behind them.

"Hey, you two!"

Harry turned his head and saw Ron standing in the doorway.

"Any luck finding that letter?" he asked them.

Poor Ron appeared as if he’d seen better days. There were cobwebs in the tall, redhead’s hair, and the inch-thick dust littering his head and clothes made him look like an old man, far past his prime. There were still many rooms in the house they hadn’t scoured clean the previous summer, and Ron looked as though he’d just been through every single one of them.

"No," replied Harry. "No luck at all. You?"

"Zilch!" said Ron. "I thought I’d struck gold when I found a small crawlspace on the second floor behind some portrait of a mangy old dog, but the only things in there were a bunch of spiders and some old raincoats."

Ron shuddered when he said the word spiders and Harry smirked in Hermione’s direction. Ron’s fears hadn’t changed much over the years, though one would think after Aragog that tiny spiders in a dusty closet were preferable to giant-sized ones that liked to set their almost-as-large children loose on unsuspecting visitors.

"We’d better change and get downstairs," continued Ron, trying to wipe off his soiled shirt, his hands brushing his sleeves in disgust. "Dad just got here and Fred and George are expected any minute now. Ginny already went down to help Mum set the table."

Harry was exiting through the doorway after Ron when he noticed Hermione had not moved from where she stood in front of the mirror.

"You coming?" he asked, wondering at the distant look in her eyes.

"Yes… yes, of course," she said vaguely, but Harry was halfway down the stairs when he realized Hermione had not followed behind him.