Knitting

Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me, sadly. It all belongs to the wonderful (yet painfully slow) writer, JK Rowling.

The first few lines are from Chapter 13; Detention with Dolores, on p. 250 of The Order of the Phoenix.

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“I’m going to bed. Tell Ron for me will you?”

“Oh, no,” said Hermione, looking relieved. “if you’re going that means I can go too, without being rude. I’m absolutely exhausted and I want to make some more hats tomorrow. Listen, you can help me if you like, it’s quite fun. I’m getting better, I can do patterns and bobbles and all sorts of things now.”

Harry looked into her face, which was shining with glee, and surprisingly found that he was vaguely tempted by this offer. As much as he wasn’t really the knitting sort, he figured that it would be sort of fun, bar the knitting. Besides, he never really got to spend time with Hermione that often, and thought that this might be a good opportunity to do so.

“Er… sure… okay. Why not?”

“Really?”

Her face brightened even further, as her smile grew to the corners of her deep brown eyes. Harry chuckled lightly.

“Yes. REALLY.” He said, with an amused smirk lingering on the corners of his mouth. With a relieved sigh and grin to match, she sprang to her feet a little more vigorously that she normally would have done, gathering up her books and inks and trying to balance them all on one arm while she faced Harry gleefully.

“Okay, that’ll be great! And, uh… thanks, Harry…” She smiled, blushing ever so slightly. Harry raised an eyebrow in question.

“What for?”

“Well… you know Ron would never take an interest in anything I like… he’d find it boring. I’m glad I can share something with someone… for once…”

With that, she threw him a warm smile, and hitched up her books and inks precariously; Harry could see one of the Ink bottles about to fall on the floor. With a quick movement, he managed to catch the falling bottle with a smirk to Hermione.

“You almost dropped this… do you want me to hold anything?”

Shaking her head softly so as not to drop anything else, she smiled at him again.

“No, that’s quite alright. You go on up… I’ll be fine. Thanks for asking.”

“If you’re sure-”

“Yes, I’m fine, really. I’ll see you tomorrow then, okay?”

She turned to saunter, almost dreamily off to the Girls Dormitories, and Harry suppressed a little chuckle. He’d never really seen Hermione act this way… so… girlish. He’d always know her to be the practical one, who would watch as the other girls did the silly little girly things like giggling at boys and fussing with their hair, and she would normally just sigh, or tut impatiently and let out ratty comments that clearly suggested that he did not agree with the silly traits of the other girls. However, here she was, floating dreamily away to her dormitory, with a pretty wide smile on her tanned face, her deep chocolate eyes lit up like stars. Half mystified, half amused, he shrugged and made his way up to his own dormitory, deciding that he had stood and stared after Hermione for quite long enough.

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The next day passed in a hectic haze of busy work. Ron seemed very sleepy after last nights little party, and spent the day in a sort of coma, falling asleep at every available moment and leaving little pools of drool in his wake. Harry’s hand was still smarting painfully, and he had to endure a whole Quidditch practice with his best snitch-catching hand in poor condition. Every time he made to clamp his hand around the tiny golden ball, the cut burst open and with a yelp of pain he had to withdraw his hand, leaving the little winged snitch to flutter speedily away and Angelina to berate Harry for not catching it.

He figured that he must be losing quite a lot of blood from the gash, because he noticed in the shower room this morning while brushing his teeth, that he looked paler than usual. His raven black hair seemed to stand out a lot more, as did his scarlet-coloured scar. He felt weaker, and seemed to fall asleep faster than usual last night, feeling exhausted by the end of the night, then woke up the latest of his dormitory, feeling totally fatigued and frumpy. As he sat around the common room now, as the lights outside the window dimmed lower, he felt his head getting droopy and his bottle green eyes getting heavier. Urging himself to keep awake, he looked around the room, wondering where Hermione was. Ron was already asleep, he had stayed outside after Quidditch practice today to try and catch up on his Keeping skills, and it had supposedly taken a lot out of him. Harry suspected that he was still tired from the night before, but did not ask him of it.

A small noise from the Girls dormitories shook him out of his stupor, and he looked around the common room to find the source of the disturbance. It was almost empty save for a few first years and the Creevey Brothers, fidgeting and fiddling with their camera. Scouting around, he came upon a mass of bushy brown hair and a bright smile as Hermione made her way towards him, balancing a large pile of wool reels in her arms, a few stray needles poking out here and there. Standing up, he took a few from her with a friendly smile, which she returned, relieved.

“Thank you, Harry. Now… I don’t suppose you know how to knit, do you?”

“Nope. I’m afraid not.”

She smiled at him kindly, and pulled out two large knitting needles, one covered in numerous green hoops. She handed these to him and pulled out the reel of wool to go with it, and placed it carefully beside Harry’s feet.

“Here. I set up this one for you last night, thought you’d like that colour…”

She smiled, and Harry spotted a faint tinge of pink in her coloured cheeks. He couldn’t help but smile back.

“Okay… uh…” she shook her head, slightly flustered and Harry once again felt that Hermione was being a bit more girly than usual.

‘Maybe this is what she’s like when she’s relaxed? I just never noticed…’

Awkwardly, Hermione moved closer to Harry, and took hold of the knitting needles that Harry was holding. Harry felt her body heat adding to his own, and immediately thought that the room had become quite stuffy all of a sudden. He would go and close the window in a moment.

“Okay…here’s…. here’s what you do…” She carefully slid her hand down and rested it on Harry’s, to guide him. Her hands were very soft, and she had a very light touch. They kind of gave out a sort of tingle when she touched his own hands, which surprised Harry slightly, though he did his very best to hide it. He continued to try to concentrate on the lesson.

“You go under-” She gently brought Harry’s hand around to get the needle underneath the first loop and pushed it through ever so softly. “-around,-” Here she took Harry’s other hand in her own, sending a tingle down through it, and brought it round with the free strand of green wool to wrap around the needle. “-down, -” Pulling it down carefully, she brushed her fingers along Harry’s thumb, almost like she meant to do it, Harry thought. “- and back up,-” Again, she pushed the needle softly through the loop, and Harry watched as her fingers grazed his, controlling the wool daintily. “- and off.”

She pulled the wool off the loop and smiled serenely at him, her hands still lingering on his. Harry stared at them for a minute, under the pretence of trying to work out everything she had taught him. He could feel her eyes on him, and he felt slightly light-headed for a second.

‘Must be all that blood lost… it’s probably just rushing from my head because I’ve been sitting here doing nothing…’

“Do you get it?” She asked, her eyes warm and friendly to match her smile. “Or do you want me to show you again?”

“I think you’d better show me again, Hermione,” He said, as he realised he hadn’t really been paying attention the first time. “I don’t think I quite got that…”

After a second and a third knitting lesson from Hermione’s guiding hands, Harry felt he was able to knit reasonably well on his own for a while, and so they sat quietly next to the fire, needles clicking. It was silent for a while, so that Harry could concentrate on getting it right, and he found that he got into the rhythm of; ‘Under, around, down, up and off’ quite easily. It was a comfortable silence, unhindered by background noise, for the common room was devoid of any other students by that time; the sky had turned an inky black and the candles floating about the common room were growing brighter.

“So, do you like knitting then, Harry?” Hermione asked, halfway though a knobbly purple elf hat with a pink heart knitted into it. She wasn’t kidding, she was getting better. Harry looked down at his own strange creation; a mixture between a scarf and a large hole, and pulled a face.

“Yeah… it’s fun, though I don’t think I’m very good at it.”

She giggled softly, which was very un-Hermione like, and moved over to sit beside Harry, peering gently over his shoulder at what he had knitted.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say you weren’t very good at it… you just need more practice… here.”

Lightly, she took Harry’s mangled square of knitting from him, grazing his hands as she did so, and again, Harry felt the tingling feeling. He shook his head, half wanting to get rid of the notion that it was because Hermione had touched him, and half thinking that it was through lack of blood to the head. It earned him a funny look from Hermione.

“What’s the matter?”

Harry peered at her face, and felt his eyes begin to droop a little. He was very tired, and it was getting late, however he had every inclination to stay. He was rather enjoying himself sitting here cosily with Hermione.

“Oh, it’s nothing… I’m just not feeling well lately… a bit drowsy… you know…”

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah, Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Good,” She arranged her legs to sit beside her on the sofa, and sat closer still to Harry, who again realised that the room temperature was very warm. He’d forgotten about opening the window, but now that he was comfortable, and Hermione was trying to show him something, he figured it could wait. “Let me just tidy this up for you…”

Harry looked on with interest as she masterfully picked up all the loose stitches that he’d dropped, and busily began working the needles, clicking them almost noisily. She smiled wistfully as she worked, and Harry watched, as her deep brown eyes focused on the scrappy piece of knitting as she worked, her tanned cheeks tinged with a slight pink blush. After a while, she sighed and dropped her needles onto her lap, and Harry noticed, with some surprise, that she had finished.

“There. It looks a little bit tidier now.”

“Thanks, Hermione.”

“No Problem.”

She smiled at him with a warm smile, her eyes looking slightly tired and dreamy. As Harry resumed knitting, somewhat slower than Hermione had, Hermione watched his hands for a while, as he resumed the rhythm he’d managed to attain before.

‘Under, around, down, up, off. Under, around, down, up, off. Under, around, down… up…. Off. Under… around… hey, why is she looking at me like that?’

He felt her eyes on him, but did not let on as he resumed his knitting, the needles clicking gently every so often. For a while, she sat and watched his face like he had to her not moments before, with a gentle, wistful smile on her pretty mouth. Harry continued with his knitting for as long as he could, he didn’t mind Hermione looking at him, but his curiosity as to why she was doing it was bugging him.

After about five minutes she yawned gently, bringing a dainty hand to her mouth to stifle it. Pulling out her wand, she Accio’ed her own knitting over to her, and sat close to Harry, taking up her knitting again and making the needles click noticeably faster than Harry’s.

“This has been fun, hasn’t it?”

She said it breathlessly, almost tiredly. Her eyes were also beginning to droop and the colour in her cheeks was becoming brighter and more pronounced.

“Yeah, it has. To be honest, I didn’t really think knitting was my thing, but it is quite fun, isn’t it?”

She nodded in assent as she stifled another yawn, this time her head drooping lower onto her chest as she carried on knitting. Harry glanced over to her.

“You’re not too tired, are you? We can stop now if you want…”

“No, no… I’d rather stay down here… it avoids the other girls giggling and talking all night long.”

“Oh… okay.”

Yet her head still drooped lower onto her chest.

Harry continued on with his knitting, doing his best to stifle a few yawns himself. His eyes were growing terribly heavy, and he had trouble keeping them open. Shaking his head softly he trudged on with his distorted piece of knitting, the clicking of the needles becoming a sort of surreal lullaby to him, and he didn’t even notice that his were the only pair clicking.

With a soft thud, a head of bushy hair landed suddenly on his shoulder, and looking through the fly away strands of curls, he could see that Hermione had fallen asleep. Her eyes were lightly shut and Harry noticed for the first time, just how long Hermione’s eye lashes were. They fanned out prettily beneath her closed eyes as she slept, and her dainty red lips opened and closed a few times, breathing softly and steadily. Smiling, Harry gently lifted the arm that was underneath her so that she wouldn’t get uncomfortable, but as he freed his arm from under her, she brought her own delicate arm around to hug Harry around the chest, burying her face into his side.

Harry’s face burned red hot at this unconscious act. He was sure Hermione had not meant to do it, she was asleep, but the feeling he got at this kind of contact was strange. The tingling feeling had come back, but it was stronger and more pronounced. Absent-mindedly, he brought his free arm around her and hugged her softly, laying his head upon hers gently. He felt the warmth of the glowing fire pressing in on his eyes and as he drifted off to sleep, he brought his other hand around her, so he was hugging her with both arms, his hands and fingers fiddling with a long strand of soft brown hair. The piece of messy green wool he had been working on moments before dropped to the floor, as his breathing became steady and his eyes drooped…

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Harry was the first to wake up the next morning, and as he stretched out one long arm, he found that the other was restrained by a sleeping Hermione. Chuckling softly as he remembered, he gently woke her.

“Hermione? I think you should wake up now…”

Stirring softly, she made an incoherent noise, as if she wanted to refuse, and held Harry tighter. The tingly feeling grew again.

“Come on, Hermione,” He gently laid a hand on hers and squeezed it softly. “People will be coming down for breakfast soon…”

Eventually she woke up, and as she sat up she blearily rubbed her eyes with her dainty hands in a very cute manner. Harry smiled.

“Good morning, Hermione, did you sleep well?” He said with a light chuckle.

Looking up at him, she looked confused for a second. Then, with the realisation of why and how she got there, she smiled sheepishly.

“I’m sorry I used you for a pillow, Harry…”

“No problem.”

She grinned, and yawned tiredly, holding her hand to her mouth. Picking up some of the things they were using, Harry found the scrappy piece that he had been working on last night, and with a smile, held it out to Hermione.

“Can I keep this?”

She smiled at him, her eyes tired yet warm.

“Of course you can, that’s your first square… or… er…” She looked at it sideways, trying to find a word for it. Harry grinned. “Shape… of knitting. You should be very proud, Harry.”

“Well, you did most of it,” Harry grinned, helping her to balance her knitting things in her arms to take back up to her dorm. “I guess you could call it a joint effort.”

She laughed. “Yes, I suppose so.”

There was a moment of silence, where they smiled at each other, a content feeling washing over the both of them. Harry felt that he had learned more about Hermione last night than he ever had before, and was quite looking forward to next time.

“So… when is my next knitting lesson then?”

She giggled, cocked her head. “Anytime you want, it was fun sharing it with you. And Besides, you make a good pillow, I got a wonderful nights sleep…”

She blushed, and Harry grinned happily.

“Thank you, Harry,” She said sheepishly, almost whispering. “Ron would never do anything like this with me… thank you.”

She stepped closer to him and looked up at his face, which he mirrored with a smile. Reaching up, Harry’s eyes widened slightly when she brushed his lips ever so softly with her own, and as she moved away, he was left with an almost dazed expression.

“See you in class, Harry.”

And with that, she rushed away to her dorm, leaving a happy Harry to saunter back off to his.

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