Everything you recognise belongs to JKR and Ure. This is a rip-off or an adaptation, to please myself, of Ure's gentle bawdy frolic 'You win some, you lose some'. You have been duly warned.
Chapter 8 It's not earth-shattering
'Cheer up!' said Terry. 'We all tarred with the same brush … nothing to be ashamed of.' He raised his voice slightly. 'Take an entire regiment to satisfy that one.'
Harry pushed him out of the way and reached across, with an air of disgruntlement, for a plate. His performance on Saturday evening had scarcely done very much for his self-esteem, and Terry's attitude, just at this moment, was not helping. He could do without all the silly jokes and innuendo. 'Put a sock in it!' Harry, losing patience, gave him a shove. Terry twitched an eyebrow.
'Bit touchy,' he said, 'aren't we?'
Friday evening, Harry stayed indoors. He lay sprawled in unwashed apathy on a bed that hadn't made since the last change of sheets, a week ago. A sense of failure hung heavily upon him. He was obviously some kind of sexual inadequate; he had to be, to have screwed it up with doing-it-all-the-time-with-anyone Daphne. It would be common property by now, girls, like Daphne and her flat mates, always splashed it about.
He needed to go to Auntie Loveday's. He wanted to see Hermione. How could that help? He couldn't very well talk his predicament to her. If he saw her, she would certainly sense his mood (She always did), then, very likely, she would badger the unfortunate event out of him. He wouldn't like that. He'd better stay put. But, he couldn't help thinking, wistfully, that just the sight of her would've brighten him up.
Terry, coming home at ten o'clock, seemed surprised to find him there. 'Not out on the razzle?'
'Does it look like it?' said Harry. He still hadn't fully recovered from his disgruntlement. It was doing nothing for his sense of humour.
'What's the problem?' Terry eyed him sympathetically. 'You don't want to let it worry you, you know. I tell you, that Daphne girl's a man-eater. She gets through men like other people get through chocolate bars. She'd have put the frighteners on Casanova, never mind you.'
His pride didn't like that. Harry narrowed his eyes, automatically defiant. He hadn't fancied her (Oh, you lousy filthy stinking liar, Harry Potter). She's too easy (and may you be forgiven).
Terry smiled, 'Poor old Daphne! Must be losing her touch. First me, then you … nothing but one disappointment after another. She ought to try Kevin. He'd give her what she wanted - and some.'
'Kevin?' Harry was sceptical. 'You must be joking!'
Terry shook his head. 'Don't let looks deceive you … dead straight, our Kevin.'
'How do you know? Are you sure?' (He sounded like Ron.)
'How do you think I know?'
Harry hunched a shoulder. He hadn't the faintest idea how Terry knew and neither, at that moment, did he very much care. If Terry were right, then so much for Sally-Ann and her penetrating insights. The nicest one of all?… I'd feel safe with Kevin … She'd be in for a shock.
'I don't make mistakes about things like that … can't afford to. Can't afford the waste of time. Unlike Daphne, this boy doesn't believe in proceeding by trial and error.' (Wasn't Terry full of himself? What's that?)
Harry looked at him. Uncertain; suddenly wary.
'Not only that --' Terry seated himself, thoughtfully, on the edge of the bed -- 'one doesn't care for rejection. A bit of fight is one thing; but an outright slap in the face --' He was watching Harry as he spoke. Harry arched away slightly. 'Rejection,' said Terry, 'is bad for the soul. Which is why, had I been Daphne, I wouldn't have touched me with a barge pole - and why, contrariwise, being me, I wouldn't lay even the discreetest of fingers on our Kevin. Much as I like to. He may give the impression of being a nice little number, but believe you me --' He broke off. 'What's the matter?'
'Nothing.' Harry swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. 'Nothing's the matter.'
'Then why are you sitting there looking like some outraged virgin?' (Was he still a virgin? He was not sure he wasn't.)
He could hardly say that he wasn't sitting there looking like some outraged virgin. If that was the way he came across, then that was the way he came across - and maybe it was not so far from the truth. Maybe he did feel a certain sense of outrage. If not outrage, at any rate grievance. All that guff Terry had given him way back at the beginning - our group is lousy with flaming poufdahs. Those were his exact words; Harry could still hear him saying them. Look at that old Kevin Entwhistle … Talk about a cover-up job! He'd get every right to feel aggrieved. If people couldn't even have the courage of their own convictions - (he should talk! What about that he couldn't tell Hermione his recent pursuits?).
'I take it,' said Terry, 'that you had twigged about me? I mean … it's not exactly news?'
Looking back on it, he could see that he probably ought to have twigged; but the fact was, he hadn't (Talking about the gullible).
'If you mean,' he said coldly (caused by embarrassment of his own naiveté.) 'If you mean did I know you wanted to screw Kevin, then no, I didn't.'
'Oh, now, come on!' Terry laughed. 'Don't go all po-faced and moral majority on me.' (Didn't Terry go moral minority on him?)
'I'm not.' He resented that. Just because he was a bit slow on the uptake, that didn't mean he was any tight-lipped prude. 'I don't give a damn who you want to screw.'
'So long as I don't try it on you?'
'Yeah, It's just not a scene I happen to go for.' (Why should he feel apologetic?)
'How do you know?' said Terry. 'Ever tried it?'
'No,' said Harry.
'Really? You amazed me! Allow me to say that you don't know what you're missing.'
'Some things,' said Harry, 'I don't mind missing.'
'You mean to tell me you have no natural curiosity?'
'Only in certain directions.' (Hermione was the proof.)
'And this isn't one of them?'
This most certainly was not one of them.
Terry leaned towards him, 'How can you be so sure?'
'It's just one of those things --' prudently, Harry removed himself from the bed - 'that I feel, instinctively, that wouldn't do a thing for me.'
'Well, all right, you don't have to pick up your skirts and go running off in a panic … I'm not forcing myself on you.' (As if you could.)
'I don't advise trying it,' said Harry firmly.
'Why not?' Terry regarded him quizzically, 'I could seduce you if I put my mind to it. Make no mistake about that.' (I'd like to see you try! Maybe not.)
'I told you already … I'm not interested in that scene. I thought you said you didn't like rejection?'
'I don't.'
'Well, then. Why ask for it?'
'Have you ever been wanting someone and not being able to have them?' (So what was he supposed to be? Flattered? Why was his life always contrary? The one he wanted he couldn't have. The one who wanted him he wouldn't give it to)
'You don't know what it's like,' said Terry.
Oh, don't I ? thought Harry. He reflected, rather sourly, on the woman that he wanted and wasn't able to have. -- Hermione. Terry should tell him he didn't know what it was like.
'I do flaming know what it's like!' he said.
'Then why won't you let me?' said Terry.
'Because I told you … it's not my scene.'
'What does that matter? All this crap about it's not your scene? What's not your scene? You want medals? You want their bits of tin saying you've been a good boy and played their false morality games? You want their approval? Is that what you want?'
'I want no one's approval,' (not entirely true. He valued Hermione's opinion very much.) He said, 'I think I ought to tell you I'm getting really bored with this conversation.'
'Then why go on with it? Why won't you give in and let me?' said Terry. 'Why are you being all mean and prissy? Anyone would think I was making unspeakable demands. All I'm asking for is a bit of love.'
'All you're asking for,' said Harry, sternly, 'is a bit of sex.'
'So what's wrong with that? Is there a difference between what I am asking for and what you had been asking all those rubbish girls for?'
Harry frowned. He did ask for, more or less, only the One Thing from them. But --
'There does happen to be a slight difference: unlike what you are doing now, I've only asked the seemingly willing parties. I didn't accuse them of being mean and prissy when they'd proved unwilling.' And he didn't see why he should be accused of being so.
'Don't be so censorious.'
'I'm not being censorious! I'm just saying you shouldn't accuse me of being mean.'
Terry made a noise of disgust.
'Some people,' he said. 'are just so trivial it's pathetic.'
***
Next morning, Harry woke up and lay for a few minutes, wondering how he felt. On the whole he decided, he didn't feel anything very much. Certainly he wasn't going to nurse any grudges if Terry wasn't. Not that he could see why Terry should. He, after all, had borne no grudges against Sally-Ann or Mandy - well, perhaps just passing grudges. Nothing lasting. He had always accepted it was their right to say no. Provided Terry played the game according the same rules there wasn't any reason why they have to fall out, or even part company if it came to that. He didn't hold it against the guy for trying: just so long as he didn't persist.
The door opened and Terry came in.
'Hi. Here!' he tossed an envelope on to the bed. 'See how that grabs you.'
Harry picked it up. His stomach promptly performed a double somersault. It bear the crest of auror training course.
'You opened yours?' he asked.
'Yup. Offered a place for September … look, if I've got through the damned thing I'm bloody sure you have. Stop pratting about and get that envelope undone.'
He hadn't realised until this moment, just how much it meant to him, how much depended on it. All the difference between achievement and non-achievement…
'Well, go on!' said Terry, 'open it!'
He torn it open quickly. Relief washed over him in a great debilitating wave. The number of times he had laughed at Hermione - got mad at Hermione - lectured Hermione for taking things too seriously, for attaching too much importance -
'What did I tell you? If anyone was going to get through, you were. Do I get a reward,' half joked Terry, 'for being the bearer of such glad tidings?'
'What?' Harry looked up, abstractedly. 'What's the time?'
'Ten past eight, why?'
He threw back the bedclothes.
'I've got to go to Wychwood.'
'At ten past eight?'
'I want to catch Hermione before she leaves for home.'
'Telephone her.'
'No.' he wanted to be there, to see her reaction when he gave her the news. It would mean as much to her as it did to him. Firmly, he removed Terry from his path and began collecting up scattered articles of clothing from the floor. Terry watched him for a while.
'No hard feelings?' he said, at last.
'Last night? Forget it.'
'You mean you're not start to take umbrage and start screaming you want out?'
'I might,' said Harry, 'If I was as small minded as you accused me of being.'
Terry grinned.
'For that, I apologise.'
'So you flaming well ought.'
Harry went across to the wash basin.
'You must admit,' said Terry, 'it was a fair try.'
'Waste of time,' said Harry, 'I did warn you.'
'Ah, well! You win some, you lose some… what are you doing this evening?'
'Nothing I know of.'
'Feel like coming to the Quidditch match? I'll treat you.'
Harry turned and looked at him.
'It's all right! Scout's honour - no string attached, no funny stuff. Strictly a business arrangement. You can do the same for me next time.'
'OK,' said Harry 'You're on.'
***
He caught Hermione as she was sitting down to breakfast with Auntie Loveday. Fortunately there were only the two of them. Uncle Richard was away on business (Not that he wouldn't enjoy Uncle Richard's laughs), the Prick was back at his art history books, and Hebe safely incarcerated in her progressive boarding school in the depths of Surrey.
'Harry! How nice!' Auntie Loveday looked up with a smile and invitingly patted the empty chair at her side. She always greeted him as if he were one of the family, which by now, in spite of sunken baths and low-slung coffee tables, not to mention the acres of white carpet, he almost began to feel he was. 'Have you eaten? Then come and sit down - Hero, be a pet and run down to the kitchen and ask Mrs A. if she'd mind rustling up some more bacon and eggs. I'm sure Harry could do with some, couldn't you?'
He certainly wouldn't say no. Bacon and eggs would be most welcome after the super-hot chilli beans the last time he ventured out of his staple food.
He didn't tell Hermione his news while Auntie Loveday was there. He kept nearly doing so and then at the last minute stopping himself: it was too important to be blurted out over bacon and eggs.
They had reached the toast and marmalade stage before Hermione, elaborately casual, said: 'Did you come round for any special reason, or --?'
'Got something to show you.'
'Something to show me?' He nodded. She stared at him, her eyes alight with a mixture of eagerness and apprehension. 'About your assessment?'
'Could be,' he said.
'Well!' Auntie Loveday laid down her napkin. 'I must be making a beeline, I'm due at the Cancer Research Campaign in half an hour.' She pushed back her chair. 'I'll leave you two to get on with it.' (Wasn't she a real pet?)
The minute Auntie Loveday had gone, Hermione (Hero) stopped eating toast and marmalade and said, 'Harry?' He pulled the letter out of the back of his jeans.
'Read this.'
Nervously, she took it from him. Her face had suddenly gone very pale. It was always fairly pale (except after a French summer holiday), but not it was even paler than usual. Slowly, she unfolded the letter. He watched her as she read it. He watched the colour come flooding into her cheeks: the warm, bright pinkness of pleasure.
'Harry!' for a moment, he thought she might be going to jump up and come round and fling her arms about him and kiss him, as she had once before, on the day when Voldemort was defeated. Indeed, for a moment he was almost sure that she was going to; but then, at the last second, it seemed as if something (What?) held her back (Couldn't she tell how much he needed it?). She gave a little laugh - almost embarrassed - and dropped her hands to her toast and marmalade (Lucky them!).
'You frightened me … I thought it was going to be bad news, when you wouldn't say in front of Auntie Loveday.'
'I wouldn't have come if it had been bad news.'
'Wouldn't you?' she raised her eyes; very serious. 'Wouldn't you really?'
'I would,' admitted Harry (nothing could stop him coming as long as she let him. Coming! What was he thinking?), 'After all, you were the one who had been always taking bad news from me, the prophecy …'
She laughed again; not embarrassed any more.
'Well, You didn't have difficulty after all, did you?'
He grinned happily.
'Seems not.'
'Have you told the Weasleys?' (Surely she ought to know by now, he always put her first.)
'Not yet, haven't had a chance.'
'Or McGonagall? Oh, Harry, you must tell McGonagall! She'll be so pleased.'
'You tell her.'
'Why don't you come home with me this weekend? We can celebrate.'
For a moment, he was tempted. The prospect of spending a weekend with Hermione, Mum, and Dad was certainly enticing. He could floo the Weasleys from the Granger's and see their reactions to the news. They would be riotous to hear he'd made it. And Ron - he would do his bits and pieces. And McGonagall wouldn't make a fuss, she never did. She probably just said 'Mr Potter, well done. Of course, I never had any doubts.' That would be all, and it would be enough.
'The problem is I've already kind of gone and arranged to do something else … I said I'd go to the Quidditch match with Terry.'
'Terry?' said Hermione. He had the feeling she wasn't impressed. (Why?)
'Yeah, Um' it was just one of those things. He'd done it now. To change his mind at this stage would look like rejection. 'I could come next week.' He said. (Now the difficult part began.)
'I can't go next week. It's the end of year mooting**.' Her tone was cool and accusing. How could he have forgotten about the mooting. It was the biggest thing in her study. He had known for weeks.
'How about the week after?' he asked.
'You'll have to have told them by then'.
'But I still could come home.' He urged. (Come on, Hermione, don't be upset.)
'Yes, I suppose so.' She fiddled for a moment with the small silver ring she wore on the little finger of her right hand. 'If you're not doing anything else - next week, I mean if you're not going to the Quidditch with Terry … would you like to come to a party?'
He hesitated, instinctively cautious.
'Who's giving it?' For all he knew, it could be the Prick, having a break from his art history books.
'Martin Redshanks. He just got into the Gray's Inn* for Bar Vocational Course. Actually he's the one I'm marshalling***, at the end of year mooting**.'
'Yeah, I know,' said Harry. 'You told me.' She'd told him about ten times, which was what made it even more unforgivable that he hadn't remembered.
'It's a sort of celebration,' said Hermione. 'Everybody's coming.'
'What, everybody in your class?'
'The whole school … everybody and their friends.'
'Why don't you come, you could meet them all.'
'I might.' In general, he liked the idea of being at a party with Hermione, but he wasn't too sure that he liked the idea of being with her at this particular one. She would be surrounded by her cronies from LSE; he would be the outsider - the gatecrasher, (the one without super brain). It would put him at a disadvantage, and he was already at quite enough of one where his relationship with Hermione was concerned. He didn't fancy adding to it.
'I'll think about it,' he said. 'I'll let you know.' Upon seeing her expectant look, he nearly promised right there that he would definitely come. (Was he whipped? He wasn't even her boy friend, nowhere near it.)
'You could bring a friend, if you like,' she said.
'All right.'
He pushed his plate away, the half-eaten toast still upon it. 'Are you going up to the station?' (Mum and Dad insisted Hermione using muggle transportation before her nineteenth birthday.)
They walked up to Hampstead Heath. Along the bank of the misty ponds weeping willows were dipping in the clear water. (They could come here have a swim in the mixed bathing pond. ) He walked with her talking quietly, then turned right out to the station. He waited while she bought her ticket.
'I'll call you about the party.'
'All right.' Hermione hesitated. 'Are you absolutely certain you can't come home this weekend? I mean … just going to the Quidditch match --' She looked at him, rather wistfully. 'Couldn't you get out of it?'
He could get out of it; no problem about that. He wasn't under any obligation. Terry didn't own him. Just because he's said he'd go, didn't mean that he had to go. Anyone could have a change of heart.
'It's not that I couldn't,' he said, 'It's just that --'
'Don't worry.' Hermione stooped to pick up her bag. 'It's not earth-shattering.'
He called after her, as she disappeared into the car: 'I'll send McGonagall an owl… I promise.' (Don't be upset …)
******
A.N.
* Gray's Inn -- one of the four institutions, the Inns of Court School of Law in London, which provide the vocational stage of the barrister training.
** Mooting -- holding mock trials
*** Marshalling -- shadowing a judge.
on the razzle -- enjoying yourself, visiting bars and dancing, etc
wouldn't touch sth with a barge pole -- used to mean that you certainly do not want to buy something or be involved with something
flaming -- used to add force, especially anger, to something which is said