Disclaimer: First, I do not own Harry Potter (obviously). That credit belongs to the loffly and talented J.K. Rowling. Got that all cleared up? Good.
Author's Notes: I wasn't planning on writing this, but I saw this challenge and was creatively bitten by the plot bunny :) Thanks goes to Nitya for giving me loffly feedback and Kristina for being incredibly nice and uploading this for me, because my Control Panel is wonky.
Summary: "Ever since Sirius fell beyond the veil, all Harry felt was this absolute emptiness in his mind, body, and especially his heart. Part of him was lost, and he felt like it would never be recovered. Nobody cared that he was falling deeper and deeper into an abyss." Well, apparently someone did care. Based on the "Little Bits of Paper" challenge in the H/Hr Forum. 6th year. One-Shot.
Bits and Pieces
It was one of those days that made Harry Potter believe that everyone in the world was intent on making his life as miserable as possible. There were so many people on the edge of thier seats, waiting for him to fail, to quit, to give up and die trying. Those people didn't know what it felt like to have the weight of the world resting heavily on your shoulders, grinding you firmly into the ground. None of them knew what being The-Boy-Who-Lived felt like. Ever since Sirius fell beyond the veil, all Harry felt was this absolute emptiness in his mind, body, and especially his heart. Part of him was lost, and he felt like it would never be recovered. Nobody cared that he was falling deeper and deeper into an abyss.
Draco Malfoy was just one such person who neither knew or cared about Harry's well-being. Hell, the furthur he dug himself into the ground, the happier Malfoy was bound to be. His reason for antagonizing Harry was only to push him closer to that edge. Normally it was Harry who always seemed to get the better of him with his never-ending victories in Quidditch matches against the formidable Slytherin team. He always tried to brush of any provocation with a laugh and a roll of the eyes. But lately, Harry was dangerously close to that edge, waiting for the right moment to let out all of his frustrations on someone. Malfoy had certainly picked the wrong moment to pick a fight, but in the end, it was he that was gloating with glee.
A few insults and a Potter-administered black eye later, Harry was given detention. And Malfoy? Well, he was sent up to the hospital wing, whinging as loud as a young Mandrake. It happened to be Harry's second detention within a week, a feat he wasn't surprised of, considering all of his spouts with Professor Umbridge in the previous year. Nevertheless, he was still angry and frustrated with it. Detention was one experience he never wanted to repeat. Although, this year was a bit of an improvement from the rather painful sessions with "The Toad," as the Gryffindors had taken to calling her.
He strolled into the empty common room, still fuming that he was punished because of self-defense and retaliation. Once again, the world was stacked up against his favor. Life was never fair. If it was, his parents would be alive. Sirius would be alive. Voldemort never would have come to power. And Harry would finally know the meaning to Dumbledore's odd, cryptic statement after the events at the Department of Mysteries. How exactly could his heart have saved him there. It was his heart that led him to the Department, ultimately ending in his godfather's death, was it not? Was his heart also responsible for Hermione's near-death experience? Or the other magical effects that his other friends suffered? Was that it? How was he supposed to know? If Dumbledore was less ambiguous and vague, he wouldn't be in this mess. He wouldn't have suffered quite as much.
Harry let out a yell of frustration and kicked a trash can from nearby, forcing it's contents to spill out across the floor. Shreds of old parchment, fragments of crumpled quills, and candy wrappers from Honeyduke's sweet shop poured out in all directions. He stared down at the mess he caused, his breathing still ragged from the emotions pumping in his bloodstream. Even from afar, he vaguely noticed a few pieces of familiar handwriting. It was absolutely minscule and neat as a houseelf-prepared bed. That's Hermione's writing, Harry thought to himself, crouching down to examine the papers more closely. There seemed to be over a dozen bits of paper that Hermione had written on. He looked closer and saw distinctly that it had been one piece of parchment that clearly was torn up. His first thought was to believe that it was an assignment that Hermione was not pleased with. However, with one more glance at the pieces, he knew that he was instantly wrong. The sight of his own name written down in Hermione tidy writing caught his eye more than once.
"Why was she writing about me?" Harry thought blankly, quickly collected every last fragment of parchment. His curiousity was going to get the better of him one of these days. But he wasn't thinking about that now. He let it override his anger as he began to slowly piece everything together one by one. As things were beginning to click into place, he discovered that it was a letter...a letter addressed to none other than Viktor Krum. Harry's face paled. Now, he knew that this was wrong. What if it was a love letter of some kind? His mind immediately brushed off that notion. If it was a love letter, than why would his name appear several times throughout the course of it? Harry knew that he should stop right here and put it back in the trash can where it belonged, but something inside of him was telling him exactly the opposite. Just what did Hermione say to Krum about him? Well, he was about to find out as he found the missing piece of the letter and put it in it's rightful place.
Viktor-
What you are asking of me is next to impossible. We've been friends for so long and to have something like this hanging between us is unbearable, I know, but I'll deal with it. I know you said that I should pretend to hide my feelings anymore, but no matter how much I want to tell Harry the truth, I can't, because that's not how things are. Harry doesn't feel the same way about me as I do about him and I know this for a fact. And before you ask me, no, I didn't hear this from him directly, but I can simply tell. If he really did, he never would have agreed to a date with Cho Chang.
So, what if I did decide to tell him? What exactly do I say to him? "Hi, Harry. I know we've been best friends for the last 5 years , but I somehow conveniantly forgot to tell you that I love you?" I can already picture in my mind how he would react to that piece of news. He's got enough on his plate at the moment without me silently pressuring him to love me the way that I love him. It's really not an option for me, Viktor. I have no regrets about staying in my position of platonic best friend. I've been doing that ever since he and Ron saved me from that mountain troll over Halloweeen in our first year. I can't keep constantly hoping that one day he'll finally notice me and accept that I do love him. Even Ron, who is as tactless as any teenage boy has noticed! Why not Harry? Is it because he's too daft, as I tend to believe at times? Or isn't because he feels nothing. I'm usually inclined to go with the latter, as you very well know.
The truth is that I can't tell him and I won't tell him. I'll take a leaf from Ginny's book and simply give up on him, because I won't be the one waiting in the wings, waiting for him to get a clue. I appreciate the sentiment on my behalf, Viktor, but it's something that I just can't do.
Sincerely,
Hermione
Harry sat of the floor of the common room, still peering down at the contents of the letter. He wasn't quite sure where to go from there. How was one to react when they're knee-deep in this kind of situation. Hermione loved him...He found it rather hard to fathom that idea. Not because he thought it was ludicrous or completely laughable. But because it was a feeling that he's long sinced harbored subconsciously for quite a long time. After the Cho fiasco, Harry felt his mind drift onto Hermione during the most random of times(from sitting through the exams, to thinking of her hand-knitted houseelf hats the moment he saw Dobby). Sometimes he would hear her voice in his head, telling him that he was doing something inately wrong. In a way, she began to develop into his voice of reasoning, his conscience. Harry never put the pieces together, literally, until this very moment. The letter was an eye-opener, to say the least.
At the most inopportune moment, Hermione came bounding into the common room, her bushy hair in complete disarray and her face showing apparant distress. She spotted Harry immediately and said, "There you are, Harry! I heard what happened with Mal--" Suddenly noticing the amount of liter in the room and the fact that Harry was in front of a very recognizable piece of parchment. Her eyes grew wide. For once, she was unable to think logically. "Wh-where did you get that?" She continued looking at the room, anywhere but directly at Harry, and noticed the overturned trash can. She instantly knew what had happened.
"I-er-" Harry stammered, picking himself up off of the floor and distancing himself away from the letter as far as possible. His mind felt as if it had dealt with yet another dull Divinations lesson. "It was in the trash..." he muttered slowly. "I kicked the bin and everything came spilling out, obviously."
"And you just happened to piece together that letter?" she asked him nervously, still staring at the torn bits of parchment. "I guess I can't pretend now, can I?" Hermione gave a dry sort of laugh, that fell still a moment later. "I never sent that letter, because I couldn't. Everything just felt...too real to me. Everyday I wanted to tell you what I felt, yet I could never bring myself to do so. Up until I recieved another letter from Viktor, I was willing to put everything behind me. I was willing to give up something that I had never wanted so more in my entire life. But you already knew that reading the letter, right?"
Hermione's voice was beginning to break, Harry had noticed to himself. He had often seen Hermione on the verge of tears, but this felt so raw and emotional, that he could hardly look her directly in those brown eyes of hers. Harry was completely at a loss for words. The atmosphere inside the common room was thick with tension and abrupt silence. He shifted around uncomfortably, carefully finding his voice so that he could speak.
"You're wrong," he said simply, still staring at his feet.
A look of blank confusion crossed Hermione's face. "Wrong about what?" she asked him, unable to register how exactly this statement factored into this conversation.
"In your letter," Harry continued, finally lifting his head to peer into her face. "When you said that I don't feel the same way about you as you do about me. And for the first time, you're actually wrong about something, Hermione."
Hermione's eyes grew wider than before when she discovered Harry with the letter. Her ears couldn't possibly believe what he was saying right now. She didn't think she could be this happy again with someone telling her that she was incorrect. "You're not joking around are you? Because, if you are then---"
"No joke," Harry interrupted plainly. "I realize now that I have never been more wrong about something in my entire life thus far. I always had the impression that no one cared at the world was out to get me for some reason. I was too daft to realize where my heart was already leading me to. Ever since Sirius died, I had felt nothing but emptiness. I feel it every second of every hour of every day. I don't feel that right now, Hermione. Every time I'm with you, from doing something so simple like talking to you or more like developing a plan to keep me alive for just one more year, I haven't felt that emptiness. It's been that way for the longest time, but I never knew what that meant...until now. I--g-genuially like you and there is nothing that you can say that can stop me from continuing to do so."
This was much more than Hermione could have ever asked for, much more than what she was expecting to hear from Harry. Her inital thought was of a few awkward comments and one lousy rejection sentance. It wasn't like Harry to be so eloquent-almost waxing poetic-at all. It was a side of him that she wanted to continue to see more of. It was a side of him that was rarely, if not ever, seen.
"I never knew..." she said softly, her voice barely audible over the loud talk of students inching thier way closer to Gryffindor Tower.
"I never did either, Hermione," he admitted aloud. "I was too thick to see what was right in front of me all this time. I'm just surprised that you felt this way."
For the first time during the conversation, Hermione smiled. setting off a warm glow in Harry's insides. "Life has it's little surprises sometimes. Some a bit larger than others." She carefully began inching her way closer towards Harry.
Unlike his previous interlude with Cho, Harry didn't feel that sense of worry and foreboding when Hermione stepped closer towards him. Instead, he was feeling rather hopeful and anxious of what was to come. And he could only hope that this kiss from Hermione would be dry and nothing compared to a human hosepipe. Oh, would he not want to relive that moment. Re-do it, maybe...but definitely not relive it.
"What's all this?" came a booming voice from the portrait hole. Both Harry and Hermione instinctly broke apart from each other, not wanting to be caught doing that they obviously shouldn't be doing in public. The two of them turned to look in the direction of the voice and saw Ron standing there looking perplexed at all the rubbish surrounding the common room.
"Er-nothing," Harry said, trying to avoid telling Ron what had really been going on. "Just a bit of a spell gone wrong, really. Nothing to worry about."
With a quick wave of her wand, Hermione quickly made the rubbish vanish with a slight pop! Harry looked at her in amazement. She always seemed to find a quick and simple spell to solve all matters. Harry thought that if, given the choice, she would have figured out this messy situation sooner without it leading to accidentally snooping and such. "But that's the only way we learn, isn't it?" Harry thought. He wouldn't take these moments back and re-do them for the world. Everything was resolved now and things were going to be less complicated. That is, until the next mystery comes along that needs a trio of Gryffinfors to solve and get into dangerous situations for. Instead, he was just content with being in the here in now.
Honestly, who would have thought that a day would start off so completely hopeless and empty could end up being one of the most fulfilling days that Harry had ever encountered? He couldn't help that think, in a way, that those bits and pieces he discovered in that pile of rubbish helped to open in eyes, that Hermione had somehow saved him from falling into that dark abyss he often longed to drag himself into. Those bits and pieces were more that Harry ever could have hoped to find in such a state. He recovered from that dark place, pulling him down there furthur. And in the end, Dumbledore was right all along. It was his heart that saved him.