Practice makes Perfect

Epona

Rating: G
Genres: Romance
Relationships: Harry & Hermione
Book: Harry & Hermione, Books 1 - 5
Published: 28/09/2004
Last Updated: 28/09/2004
Status: completed

Hermione agrees to help Harry find something in the student store cupboard, though through Hermione’s growing bad mood, lack of wands and the evident lack of space in the store cupboard, they run into a few problems… Should probably rate this R since the sweetness would be dangerous to your health.

Chapters

1. In the search for Kelpie Hoof....

1. In the search for Kelpie Hoof....

Disclaimer: None of these characters belong to me… you should know that by now… the amount of times I actually go on about it… ‘It’s not fair… WHY can’t I own Harry Potter?... If there is a god, he is TRULY evil…’

Summary (Mostly for my benefit): Hermione agrees to help Harry find something in the student store cupboard, though through Hermione’s growing bad mood, lack of wands and the evident lack of space in the store cupboard, they run into a few problems… Should probably rate this R since the sweetness would be dangerous to your health.

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“I’m sure it’s in there somewhere, Harry.”

“Well, I can’t find it.”

“You’re just not looking hard enough… it’s definitely in there…”

“Hermione, I’m telling you, I can’t find it.”

They had been doggedly searching for well over half an hour for one bottle of Powdered Kelpie Hoof, milling around in the crowded students store cupboard in Gryffindor Tower where potion supplies, spare quills, bottles of Ink and other much needed necessities that students commonly ran out of were kept. The last ten minutes had seen Harry frantically searching at the back of the cupboard, eyes squinting through the dim light at the tiny labels of the jars of strange potions and materials, while Hermione surveyed him, arms folded, looking increasingly moody. Harry was very keen to find the Kelpie Hoof in a hurry; his stomach was rumbling uncontrollably, the dust was irritating him, and his head had begun to hurt with the loud directions Hermione had been shouting at him for the past five minutes. Everyone else had gone down to dinner, leaving the two of them quite alone, with no one to suffer Hermione’s wrath but him.

With an impatient sigh, that wrath was inflicted upon Harry as she barged roughly into the cupboard after him, violently giving her wand a rough shake to light it. Harry immediately jumped backwards from her the moment she entered the cupboard. Messing with an angry Hermione was worse then trying to poke a Hippogriff with a chicken bone.

“I always have to do everything myself, don’t I? Can’t even find a damn Kelpie hoof….”

She began to grumble under her breath as she searched the shelves for herself, though Harry fought with himself as to whether to tell her that he had already looked there twice. Instead, he decided to take the submissive approach. Maybe he could calm her down, and they could look together.

“Hermione… please calm down… I’m sorry, okay?”

She span around suddenly, threatening to knock a few bottles off the opposite shelf. They wobbled and tipped, and Harry shot out a Seekers hand to catch them before they fell. Looking back up at Hermione, he could see that she was fixing him with a beady eye, her eyebrows narrowed and her face looking, as far as he could tell in the dim light, sulky.

“Look, I’m sorry… I know you’d rather be down there having dinner with Ron instead of helping me… “

Her expression softened slightly, however, she did not lose her moody pose. Her arms were still firmly on her hips, and her soft lips were still in that unmistakable frown.

“You can go… if you want to, Hermione… I’m sure I can find it on my own…”

To his surprise, she sighed, instantly dropping her angry demeanour and even showing a faint smile.

“It’s okay, Harry… I said I’d help you. I want to help you. I’m sorry I was short with you.”

“No problem.”

She smiled warmly at him, which he returned with a friendly grin. Turning to the shelf behind him to continue looking, feeling pretty proud of himself with the air of someone who had just prevented a natural disaster, he begun to notice the light in the cupboard beginning to dim even more. He made to pull out his wand to get some light on the subject, though it wasn’t there. Thinking he’d probably left it outside, he turned to go and get it.

However, as he turned slowly towards the door, there was the obvious sound of creaky door hinges, and a loud slam, which sent dust flying towards them. They were clouded in a sheet of chalky dust, and in the haze of coughing and waving their arms tentatively around them so as not to knock any musty glass jars off the shelves, they came to the realisation that they had evidently been shut in.

“How did that happen?” coughed Hermione, pulling her bushy hair from around her eyes. “There was no one there to shut it was there?”

“Don’t know…”

Harry walked over to the door, laying a hand on the handle to push it gently open, but it would not budge. Feeling slightly confused and wondering whether a good old panic was in order, he tried again, harder this time. Still, it would not open.

“Um… Hermione… don’t mean to worry you or anything… but I think it’s locked itself. Don’t suppose I could borrow your wand?”

“What?” He turned to look at her when he heard the clear note of panic in her voice. “What do you mean, it’s locked itself?!”

“I mean exactly what I said, Hermione… it’s locked itself. Hogwarts does tend to do that now and again you know.”

Hermione rushed as quickly as was possible in the small dingy cupboard over to the door, where she threw her weight against it, just as Harry had just done. When it didn’t move, she let out a frustrated growl and wrung her hands frantically. Harry didn’t understand why she didn’t just unlock it with her wand.

“It won’t move! It won’t even budge! What are we going to do now?”

“Why can’t you use your wand-?”

“Oh, don’t be silly, Harry,” She snapped. “You can’t use a wand to unlock this cupboard… otherwise there’d be first-years in here running amok! Why do you think we have to ask permission to use this cupboard?”

“Oh…”

She sighed impatiently, folding her arms vigorously across her chest. Backing away slightly, Harry sank to the dusty floor, laying his arms across his knees with a sigh. He thought he’d gotten rid of Hermione’s bad mood, but apparently not.

“I’m sorry…”

Then again…

“It’s okay. I know this isn’t the ideal way to spend your dinnertime… sitting in a cupboard looking for Kelpie Hoof…”

With a friendly smile at him, she moved over to sit closely next to him. There wasn’t much sitting room in the cramped old cupboard, so they had to use the most of the space they had and leaned against each other, trying to take up as little space as possible.

“Why don’t they make these cupboards bigger?” He said randomly, starting up a conversation. If they were going to be in here all lunch, then he jolly well wasn’t going to spend it in silence. To his surprise, she laughed softly. She seemed to have gotten over her moodiness.

“Maybe it’s so only one person can fit in, so that things like this wouldn’t happen.”

“Good point. You have an answer for everything.”

“I know. They don’t call me bookworm for nothing.”

Harry stared at her. He knew that people used to call her bookworm in lower years, Ron regularly called her a bookworm twice daily. Though he thought all that had stopped. Hermione had turned into a much nicer, prettier looking person, and Harry figured that people would oversee the overly enthusiastic love of books to see the nice Hermione. Not that he minded her love of books of course.

“People don’t still call you that, do they?”

Hermione smiled serenely.

“Not so much anymore, but yes. I do get called Bookworm sometimes. I can see why though… I don’t get upset over it anymore. That’s just who am I suppose…”

But she did not look like she meant it. Her face was suddenly downcast, as if remembering all the times someone had called her by that name. Harry felt immediately sorry for her.

“I don’t think you’re a bookworm, Hermione. Sure, you love books, but that’s not all who you are… right?”

She nodded slowly, though her eyes still cast a downtrodden expression. Harry saw that he was going to have to elaborate. Obviously it did still hurt her when she thought that was the only way people saw her.

“You’re still not convinced… are you?”

She sighed wearily, and looked up at Harry, trying her best to look indifferent, though the look behind her eyes stayed the same. Broken, upset.

“Honestly, Harry, you don’t have to try to cheer me up. I know that I’m a bookworm… I just have to face it that’s all. It’s not like I’ll never find someone who thinks I’m attractive or anything anyways… I’ll just have to put up with it until then.”

“What do you mean by that?”

She smiled patiently at him.

“You know what I mean, Harry. I mean, how often do the boys talk about girls at night in your dormitory?”

Feeling slightly as though he was betraying the others by telling Hermione this, he ploughed recklessly on. He’d do anything to make Hermione feel better.

“Every night, I suppose… give or take the occasional night where we eat loads and have really violent pillow fights.”

“Exactly. And how many times do you hear my name crop up in their list of girls who they like?”

“Um….”

She did have a point. He didn’t really hear Hermione mentioned much in their dormitory at night, though it was most likely because they did not appreciate the threat of Harry and Ron beating ten tonnes of pulp out of them if they ever even thought about less-than-honourable intentions towards Hermione. It was almost like she was their little sister, and they her big brothers, but for some reason, Harry knew that wasn’t the reason why he was doing it, as he just didn’t feel that way towards Hermione, like a brother. Sure, he loved her as much as he would love his family, but he didn’t really feel like she was family to him.

She nodded almost satisfactorily, as she always did when proving a point. Harry was determined not to let it drop so easily.

“But you know… that’s only because I’ll beat ten piles of crap out of them if they say anything bad…”

She smiled, showing sparkly white teeth, which had obviously been passed down from her dentist parents.

“Thank you, Harry. But whatever you say, I know I’m just not attractive enough to have a place in boys conversations like the other girls do.”

Harry let out an involuntary snort. Sure, the other girls would flirt and grin and perhaps even flash (Harry had his fair share of that, thank you very much) and worm their way into boys’ hearts, but Hermione was in no way unattractive. Her somewhat bushy brown hair had thinned out slightly from last year, leaving soft, chocolaty brown curls that framed her face and fell halfway down her back. To compliment that, her deep brown eyes had always been pretty, wide and with long, curly eyelashes that no amount of mascara or eyelash curlers could ever perfect. She didn’t need make up or skimpy clothes to make herself look pretty, you could tell she had a nice figure, and part of the fact that she chose not to flaunt it to the world made her more attractive in Harry’s opinion… not that he fancied her or anything of course…

She looked at him sideways, and Harry realised that he had indeed snorted out loud.

“What was that for?”

“Oh… didn’t mean to do that. But yeah… you aren’t unattractive, Hermione. You’re very pretty. More so than most girls infact.”

He could see the traces of a smile lingering on her soft lips, but she still stared at him questioningly.

“Harry… if I’m so pretty, how come I’ve only ever been asked out once? How come no one from my own school wants to go out with me? How come I’ve never kissed anyone?”

“You haven’t?”

“Okay, Harry, don’t rub it in.”

“Oh… sorry… I’m just a little confused that’s all… I thought you and Viktor Krum would’ve…”

At this, she looked away, her eyes casting the downtrodden look again. Harry had the feeling that he wasn’t doing very well at cheering up Hermione… then again, he wasn’t good with upset girls.

“No. I didn’t kiss Viktor.”

There was something about the way she said it that led Harry to believe that there was more to it than what she was making it out to be. He also suddenly realised how much he really wanted to know.

“Um… can I ask why? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want…”

In the dim light, Harry cast a faint glance at her through his messy black bangs that fell loosely over his face. She looked almost shy, her pretty brown hair falling over her face to hide the faint pink tinge that had crept up along her features.

“It… well… it was me. I was too scared to.”

Harry’s eyes threatened to widen, before he stopped himself. Why should he be surprised at that? Hermione was a very proper person… she obviously had a reason to be afraid of kissing Krum. He sat silently, wondering whether he should urge her to continue, but found, as she carried on, that he didn’t have to.

“I always wanted my first kiss to be special… and whenever he made to kiss me… well… I just didn’t want to. And I always thought first kisses were supposed to be where you wanted to kiss the person you were meant to kiss…It just didn’t feel right with him. I always thought that…”

She broke off, and Harry could see by taking a quick glance through his bangs again, that even in the dim light of her wand, her face had turned a bright crimson. However, his curiosity had been peaked, and he tentatively urged her on.

“You thought that…?”

She gulped, Harry heard rather than saw her do it, and turned her neck so that her face was facing forwards and she was leaning on Harry’s shoulder.

“I always thought that I would share my first kiss with someone I’d known since we were kids… like a best friend or something. But both my best friends are you and Ron and well…”

Harry’s eyes did widen this time, and he turned his head as far as he could without leaning it right into Hermione’s face.

“Well, what?”

She laughed, surprisingly and made to turn away from him. Harry wished she wouldn’t. He wanted to talk to her face, not her shoulder.

“You wouldn’t want to, would you? I mean… maybe Ron would… but… I… don’t really… feel like kissing Ron all that much…”

It was Harry’s turn to blush as he thought on what Hermione had said. The truth be told, he wouldn’t say that he didn’t want to, it was just that he had never really thought about it before. He’d never really seen Hermione as that kind of girlfriend material. He now suddenly wondered why.

“Well… how do you know?”

She span around at him with such force that the creaky, weak old shelves around them wobbled and shook, and fixed him with a wide, questioning eye.

“What?”

Harry gulped. It was much easier just to think it rather than say it.

“Well… you know… I wouldn’t really say that I don’t want to kiss you… I… um…” blushing profusely, he looked down, his jet black bangs falling over his glasses, hiding his face. He spoke the next sentence so quietly that if they weren’t in a small crowded space, they wouldn’t have heard it. “Wouldn’t say no…”

He felt rather than saw Hermione smile, the warmth it sent throughout the tiny room was palpable.

“Really?”

“Really.”

He chanced a shy glance at her through his hair, and was greeted with the sight of a beaming Hermione. He grinned back, almost as happily as she threw her arms around him as animatedly as she could without knocking over anything and wrapped his arms around gently around her in response.

“Oh, thank you, Harry… that was exactly what I needed to hear!”

“Heh… no problem, Hermione.”

She backed away, the grin across her face fading slightly, but still evident. Harry wondered what would happen next. What just happened? Did they say they wanted to kiss each other? What did it mean?

He looked back up at her to see her looking down at her lap. Did he do something wrong?

“I suppose… I’m not really afraid anymore…” she began, wringing her hands together, not as violently as she had done earlier, but enough for Harry to see that something was bothering her. “I just… well… I’m not quite sure how to…”

Harry knew he couldn’t help her on this one. Sure, he had kissed Cho Chang last year, but in his opinion, it was Cho doing all the work. He hadn’t really done anything. He was sure that he ought to have responded in some way to show her that he was alive, but he hadn’t. He had just stood there, not responding and shocked to even have her kissing him at all.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you there, Hermione.”

“What? I thought you and Cho-”

“Well, it wasn’t really me and Cho… it was more… Cho and non-responding Harry.”

“Oh.” She replied nonchalantly, but Harry could hear a faint giggle in her voice. He smiled, glad to have brought back some cheer into the tiny room.

“Yeah.” They lapsed into silence. Not an awkward silence, but a pensive, thoughtful one. One which two friends (now extremely close friends, Harry thought) could sit in silence and be comfortable. It seemed they were both thinking avidly about their situation.

“But you know…” Harry started after a short while. “I think they say that it’s supposed to come naturally… I mean… how else would you learn how to do it?”

“That’s very true.”

He looked up at her, startled to see her facing him. What was she expecting?

“But, I suppose it’s something you practice really… isn’t it?”

“Yeah… you’d have to practice it.”

“Otherwise, how would you get better?”

“Yeah… that’s true.”

They lapsed into silence again, contemplating, but not taking their eyes off each others faces. Harry was waiting with bated breath. He didn’t know what was going to happen next, but he had the strong feeling of lead filling his feet and legs.

“I suppose… we could… maybe practice it now?”

He looked up at Hermione quickly, his eyes widening and coming face to face with a frightened and red-faced, but determined looking Hermione.

“Well… I-I… suppose we could…”

“Yeah… we’ve got nothing else to do for a while… have we?”

“N-No..”

Shaking slightly, he tentatively moved as close to her as possible in the circumstances and raised his head to hers. He looked into her deep brown eyes and tried to smile. She smiled back, and Harry could see that she wanted him to do it. If he was honest with himself, he wanted to do it too.

“Okay…” she muttered as she positioned herself right in front of Harry, her hands falling down to cover his, which were lying on his lap. They were both kneeling down, their feet underneath them, and their knees were touching slightly. “Okay…”

She leaned towards him, and Harry shut his eyes and mirrored the gesture. It seemed like an eternity before her lips finally met his.

It wasn’t awkward, it wasn’t tentative either. It was immensely sweet, not overly passionate, but it wasn’t exactly chaste. From the moment their lips touched, they felt sparks, invisible sparks of chemistry and feeling flowing between them as they continued their embrace, becoming braver and bolder. Harry brought a hand up to cup Hermione’s cheek unconsciously, and laid one hand softly behind her head, gently pulling her closer. She returned the gesture by wrapping both arms around his neck, still firmly kissing him, and tangling her fingers in his messy, unruly hair. They didn’t seem to want to stop, but unfortunately, humans need air to function, and they were no exception.

They broke away, hands still in the same positions, trying to regain their breath, though Harry felt as if he’d been winded. His head was spinning as he looked at her pretty face, which was flushed with red, but plastered with a large, wide happy smile. He grinned back in response, just as happily.

“Wow.” was the first word out of Harry’s mouth.

“I know…” was the first out of Hermione’s.

“That was… really nice…”

“Yeah… It was…”

They lapsed into silence as Hermione leaned into him, resting her curly brown head on Harry’s chest, as Harry wrapped his arms lovingly around her, absent-mindedly playing with a long strand of soft hair. Something between them had changed… something told Harry that they had moved on in their friendship. Although, he told himself, we seem to have leaped over a few stages… shouldn’t we have done the whole fancying thing first?

He looked warmly down at Hermione, who had her eyes closed, revelling in just hugging Harry. I don’t think we needed to, he thought, as he watched her breathing slowly. They say love just hits you… I think that’s what happened here.

“Harry?”

He pulled away to look her in the face, and was rewarded with a beautiful smile.

“You know they say practice makes perfect?”

They never did find that Kelpie Hoof.

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A/N: That has to be one of the sweetest ones I’ve written… my teeth hurt!