The Sound of a Kiss

Genevieve

Rating: NC17
Genres: Drama, Romance
Relationships: Harry & Hermione
Book: Harry & Hermione, Books 1 - 5
Published: 04/11/2004
Last Updated: 08/01/2006
Status: paused

Sometimes, a kiss is just a kiss. And sometimes, just sometimes, it can change your whole life. Two years after leaving Hogwarts, Hermione Granger is learning that life isn't something that follows a study plan. Sequel to "Afterwards".

Chapters

1. untitled

2. Author's Note

3. Chapter Two - Looking Backwards

4. Chapter Three - Standing Still

5. One Step Forward

1. untitled

The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer ~ Oliver Wendall Holmes

~*~*~*~*~

Amidst the fear and sorrow that rules all their lives, there is one truth to which Hermione Granger has always clung. For the last ten years, this fact has been her touchstone. Whenever she has doubted herself and her place in the order of things, it has been her mantra.

She knows Harry Potter.

She knows Harry perhaps better than she knows herself. She knew the story of his life long before she became part of it. She studied his past long before she became entwined in his future. From the very first moment they met as children, she has prided herself on her ability to look into his eyes and see his heart. But now, as she sits in the kitchen of 12 Grimmauld Place, her pulse pounding in her ears, she is suddenly afraid that this is no longer the case.

Perhaps I just misheard him. "I’m sorry, what did you say?"

Harry looks at her with a stranger’s eyes. "I said that this isn’t your battle any more, Hermione." His voice is as flat and emotionless as his gaze.

No, she hadn’t heard wrong, and she isn’t imagining the way he is looking right through her, rather than at her. She stares at him, her eyes frantically searching his, but there is nothing there to be found. His eyes are empty, almost hollow. For the first time in their friendship, she truly has no idea what he is thinking or feeling, and the realisation shocks her into a horrified silence.

As though from a long way away, she hears a throat being cleared. Turning her head towards the sound, she sees that Ron is frowning, his gaze darting from her to Harry and back again. "Hermione, you can’t say that we weren’t expecting this to happen one day."

Grateful for the excuse to look away from Harry, she fixes Ron with a piercing glare. "So, you’re perfectly fine with Harry going off God-knows-where by himself?"

Ron looks puzzled. "He won’t be by himself, Hermione. Moody and Remus are…"

"You know what I mean, Ron. I mean going off without us." Her voice cracks on the last word, but she doesn’t care. Harry is watching her - she can feel the weight of his gaze as surely as she can feel the worn tabletop beneath her fingertips - but she keeps her eyes trained on Ron. "I can’t believe you’re going to let him do this!"

Ron reaches across the table, perhaps to take her hand, but she quickly leans back in her chair, folding her arms across her chest. He sighs, then shakes his head. "It’s not my decision to make." He glances quickly at Harry, his normally bright blue eyes dark with apprehension, reminding her that Ron never did master the art of hiding his feelings. "It’s not yours either, Hermione."

"But I…"

"When you’ve both finished discussing me as though I’m not here," Harry interjects coolly, "I might actually be able to finish telling you what’s likely going to happen?" Despite the harshness of his words, his expression is calm, almost blank. Unlike Ron, he has learned to mask his feelings all too well.

Ron shoots him a rueful look. "Sorry, mate."

Hermione says nothing. She can hardly bear to look at Harry, let alone trust herself to speak to him. She uncrosses her arms and presses her hands flat on the kitchen table, splaying her fingers wide. She stares unseeingly at her unpainted fingernails as Ron and Harry continue to talk, the sound of their voices weaving haphazardly around her, fading in and out like an badly tuned Muggle radio. Taking several slow, deep breaths, she stares at her hands and tries to make sense of the riot of emotions whirling around inside her heart and her head.

It’s being in this room that’s making me feel like this, she thinks desperately. That must be it. Five years previously, it had been here in this kitchen that her relationship with Harry had been irrevocably changed by a kiss. And two years ago it had been here, in this very same room, that she’d been confronted by the very real possibility that that kiss had meant an awful lot more to her than it had to Harry. This room obviously holds far too many memories, that’s why I can’t think clearly. That must be it.

"…might have to leave tomorrow morning, but I won’t know for certain until Moody hears from Dumbledore."

The word tomorrow rudely jerks her back to awareness. She looks at Harry, a sense of panic tightening her chest. "Tomorrow? You might be leaving as soon as tomorrow?"

It seems to take him an eternity to reply. When he finally does answer, she wishes that it had taken much, much longer. "It’s possible, yes."

Hermione opens her mouth to speak, but no words will come out, although her mind is howling like a banshee. He’s going somewhere I can’t help him, somewhere I can’t protect him. Something inside her feels as though it’s crumbling away, smashed into a thousand little pieces. Somewhere he doesn’t need me any more.

"Surely you remember what happened last time you went off gallivanting with Moody?" It’s a cheap shot and she knows it, but desperation has made her reckless.

Harry shrugs. "That was two years ago." His gaze locks with hers for a fleeting moment, then he looks away, as though he can no longer bear to meet her eyes. "Things change."

Her heart gives a painful lurch and, almost before she knows what she’s doing, she abruptly rises from her chair. Her eyes are burning. Her stomach feels as though she’s swallowed a handful of baby snakes. She has to get out of this room before she throws something or screams at the top of her lungs. She has to get away from a Harry who looks at her as though she is nothing more to him than just another member of the Order.

That was two years ago. Things change.

She pushes back her chair almost violently, the legs scraping against the hard floor, scarcely aware of Ron’s surprised exclamation of, "Hey, steady on!"

"I’m going home." Her voice is shaking almost as much as her hands.

"What?" Ron gets to his feet. "You can’t go home, not yet."

"Why not?" She is looking at Ron as she speaks, but his answer is not the one she needs to hear. Please, Harry. Please ask me to stay. Please tell me you still need me. Please tell me that you remember. But Harry says nothing, and his silence is like a knife in her heart.

Ron is staring at her as though she has lost her mind. "Why not? You heard Harry! He might have to leave tomorrow!" He lifts his hands, then lets them drop to his sides. "We should be here if he -"

"I’m tired, Ron." It pains her to realise just how true those words are. She is so tired of pretending that she and Harry are just friends, tired of pretending that nothing has ever happened between them. At twenty-one years of age, she’s tired of waiting for her life – for their lives - to actually start.

Bewildered, Ron glances imploringly at Harry, as though asking for backup, but Harry just shrugs. "It’s okay, Ron." He lifts his head, his eyes meeting hers as he speaks, his tone offhand. "I don’t mind."

His words are softly spoken, but they hit her like a slap in the face. Feeling the warm sting of tears pricking her eyes, she forces herself to smile at Ron, resolutely not looking at Harry. "See, Ron? Harry doesn’t care if I’m not here or not."

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Harry’s head jerk up as though he’s been hit with a Stinging Hex. "That’s not what I said," he shoots back swiftly.

She picks up her wand and slides it into her hip pocket with a slow, deliberate movement, then turns to give him a cool look. Her heart is pounding. "Close enough." His gaze narrows as the sting in her words hits home, but she quickly turns back to Ron. "I really am tired, Ron. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?"

Ron glances from her to Harry, his brow furrowed, and she can’t help thinking that he couldn’t look more bewildered than if she and Harry had spent the last five minutes speaking in a foreign language. Finally, he simply nods unhappily. "Sure."

Turning on her heel, she walks out of the kitchen. No one calls after her. No one comes after her, and the silence only makes her feel worse. She knows that running away is foolish, that she is letting her emotions get the better of her. She knows that she should just take a deep breath and go back to the kitchen. She should go back and let Harry tell her more about how he and Remus and Moody intend to temporarily vanish from the face of the earth to implement The Order’s latest plan. She should go back and smile bravely and pretend that she is supportive of a plan that might take Harry away from her as soon as tomorrow.

But she can’t, not tonight. Tonight she feels wrung out, as though the strain of the last ten years has finally caught up with her, her energy totally spent. She knew this she has no right to feel this way, not when it’s Harry who has always shouldered the heaviest burden imaginable, but tonight, she feels as unwanted as the friendless eleven year old girl she once was. Tonight, she has given as much as she has to give.

She walks swiftly through the house, instinctively avoiding the living room, knowing that Remus and Authur Weasley are deep in conversation there. One look at her face would announce that something was wrong, and she simply doesn’t have the energy to duck any pointed questions. As she grabs her coat from the hall cupboard, she thinks again of the way Harry had looked at her, his eyes cold and empty. As she Apparates back to her flat, a new mantra begins to taunt her.

She doesn’t know him anymore.

~*~*~*~*~

The ancient art of Apparation requires discipline and concentration, and that one of the golden rules is that the witch or wizard attempting said Apparation needs to be focused on the task at hand. They shouldn’t be bristling with anger, and they definitely shouldn’t be on the verge of tears. Such distractions can make for disastrous results, as evidenced by many unpleasant and thoroughly chronicled incidents in the records of the Department for Magical Mishaps.

Hermione knows all this. So when she unexpectedly kicks her toe on the coal scuttle next to the fireplace, having missed her intended mark by almost two feet, she doesn’t know what makes her angrier – the fact she has just ruined her perfect Apparation record, or that she knows exactly why she ruined it.

"Damn and blast!" Her toe throbbing, she takes a hobbled step away from the fireplace, only to find herself staring into the reproachful gaze of her cat. Crookshanks is stretched out on his usual chair in front of the fire, his disgruntled expression making it quite clear that her noisy arrival has disturbed a particularly enjoyable nap.

"Sorry," she says flatly, "but it’s been a bad night." Crookshanks’ yellow eyes glow briefly in the dimly lit room, an almost-human expression of sympathy softening his flat little face, then his striped eyelids flutter shut once more.

Hermione looks around her flat. It is, rather depressingly, exactly how she left it this morning. Shrugging out of her coat, she flings it over the back of the nearest armchair - earning herself another disapproving look from Crookshanks – before heading for the kitchen to make some tea. She isn’t pinning much hope on her mother’s old adage that a ‘nice cup of tea always makes you feel better’, but it will at least keep her busy for a few minutes, particularly as she always makes tea the Muggle way, something that never fails to amuse Ron and Ginny. They don’t quite understand why she doesn’t just use magic, and Hermione has given up trying to explain that she finds the ritual of boiling the kettle and steeping the tea leaves strangely soothing.

Harry understands, though. He knows what it’s like to live between the Magic and the Muggle worlds, to feel though you’re living two lives at the same time. He understands that every time she visits her parents’ world, even if it’s just by making tea the way her mother taught her, it makes her feel closer to them. Hermione shakes her head, both irritated and dismayed that she is once again thinking of Harry, then halfheartedly begins to go through the mechanics of making tea. Not surprisingly, however, she finds no comfort in the familiar ritual. There’s nothing she can do to banish Harry – and their last conversation - from her mind.

Tonight Ron had looked at them as though they were speaking another language, and Hermione can’t say she blames him. After all, there is one rather important thing that she and Harry have neglected to tell Ron. One rather important thing? Sinking into the nearest chair, she puts her elbows on the kitchen table and buries her face in her hands. More like one bloody great big secret, one that is slowly but surely suffocating her.

She tries to swallow the sudden lump in her throat, telling herself that no good can come of wallowing in self-pity, but it’s too late. A vivid flood of images and sounds and sensations has already begun to seep through the cracks in her carefully constructed denial, and she is suddenly swamped by an almost unbearable longing to remind herself that it did actually happen, that she didn’t imagine it. She has spent the last two years trying to stop herself from doing this very thing, but tonight her resolve is depleted, her willpower on shaky ground. Taking a deep breath in a vain attempt to steel herself, Hermione closes her eyes and lets herself remember what happened the night that Harry and Moody returned from the dead.

~*~*~*~*~

2. Author's Note

Author’s Note:

Firstly, thank you so much for the feedback and encouragement. As a relative newbie to this fandom, I appreciate it more than I can say. Also, many thanks to Lissanne for her wonderful beta work.

Secondly, one thing about Chapter Two. It is a flashback chapter, and takes place two years earlier than Chapter One. It may raise more questions than it answers, but I promise that I will answer every question by the end of the story.

Cheers, and thanks for reading!

Jen

3. Chapter Two - Looking Backwards

Chapter Two

To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing - Anonymous

~*~*~*~

Harry is missing.

It doesn’t seem right. How can three little words make her feel as though someone is sticking hot pins into her stomach? After all, she’s said them to herself a hundred times – at least - since the Order lost contact with Harry and Moody two days ago. One would think that those words would have lost some of their power by now. She says them aloud, wondering if perhaps this time she will actually believe them. "Harry is missing," she whispers unsteadily, and something inside her splinters in two.

Opening her eyes, she stares unseeingly at the peeling ceiling. She is sprawled on one of the twin beds in Fred and George’s old room at The Burrow. Last night, as she lay awake for the second night in a row, she found herself vaguely wondering whether her temporary bed had belonged to Fred or George, but it had been hard to make herself care about the answer. It’s hard to care about anything for the last two days except the very real and very frightening fact that she has no idea if Harry is dead or alive.

Kicking the sheets off her legs, she glances at the wristwatch lying on the bedside table. It’s early, not yet seven a.m., and already uncomfortably warm. The windows are wide open, but there is no breeze to stir the heavy summer air. The pillow clings to the back of her damp neck as she rolls over onto her side, and she can’t help wishing that Mr.Weasley’s love of Muggle appliances ran as far as air-conditioning. The thought of casting her own Cooling Charm is tempting, but it’s not usually something one does when one is a guest in someone else’s house, particularly when she knows Mrs. Weasley will attend to it after breakfast, just as she does every morning. Besides, when Hermione thinks of Harry and what might be happening to him right now, the heat doesn’t seem to matter that much.

She had arrived at The Burrow early Thursday morning, leaving home as soon as she’d received the owl from Ginny, something her parents had gently tried to dissuade her from doing. Her father had suggested that perhaps it would be better to wait for a proper invitation from Mr and Mrs Weasley before landing on their doorstep. Stricken with fear and desperately trying not to let it show, Hermione had just looked at her mother and said that she needed to be at The Burrow. Thankfully, her mother had understood. She’d taken one look at her daughter’s face, quietly shushed her husband when he would have protested further, then offered to help pack an overnight bag.

Hermione shifts restlessly on the slightly lumpy mattress. She had the feeling that her mother had understood a little too well. Her hug of farewell had been accompanied by a whispered, "I’m sure he will be all right," a soft reassurance that had left Hermione both blushing and close to tears.

She sighs heavily, knowing that she really should get up, get dressed and get herself downstairs. Mrs.Weasley will already be in the kitchen, no doubt creating yet another breakfast huge enough to feed them all ten times over, despite the fact that healthy appetites are in short supply. But as soon as she goes downstairs, Hermione thinks, she will be forced to begin yet another day of not knowing if Harry and Moody are alive. Another day of seeing her own fear mirrored in everyone else’s eyes. Perhaps if I just stay in bed, the waiting won’t hurt so much. Mulling over this rather unGriffyndor-like thought, she rolls onto her back and gazes around her temporary bedroom. It’s more of an attempt to distract herself than anything else, but the visible remnants – teenage posters and comic books and battered furniture – of the room’s previous occupants are simply more reminders of just how much has changed in their lives, and a hot scratchiness tightens her throat.

Being at The Burrow has always reminded her of summer holidays and the lazy sound of buzzing bees. Watching the boys play Quidditch until it was too dark to see. Eating strawberries until she felt as though she would burst. Being at The Burrow has always made her feel happy and safe. But not this time. This time, all she feels is afraid.

And snappish too, she admits unhappily. The house seems unbearably overpopulated, even with Fred and George now living in the flat above their shop. The stifling heat has only made everything worse - voices are shriller, tempers are shorter, the waiting harder. And the waiting is indeed the hardest part of all. This feeling of utter helplessness is more painful than anything she could have ever imagined. She feels sluggish and heavy - as though the weight of her grief is pushing her to the ground - and a thousand years older than almost nineteen.

Her eyes fill with tears and she dashes them away. Her throat still aches after yesterday’s crying. She’s not sure she’s got the strength for any more tears. Hermione puts one hand over her eyes, her fingertips trembling against her damp eyelids. This can’t be happening. This can’t be how it ends. It just can’t. Not after everything we’ve been through, not before I can tell him how much - She can’t finish the thought. It feels as though the walls of her chest are closing in on her heart, squeezing it painfully.

Three years ago, she and Harry had shared a brief but memorable kiss, then made an optimistically adolescent pact not to let it change their lives or distract them from the ‘bigger picture’. For the most part – the occasional weakening of resolve notwithstanding - that pact had held fast. Somehow, she had managed to get through the last two years of Hogwarts without embarrassing herself by doing anything foolish such as telling Harry she’d decided she’d made a mistake by saying they needed to wait and would he mind kissing her again? She had buried herself in her books and her exams and the Order and the daunting task of keeping Harry alive, and that had almost been distraction enough. Almost, she muses sadly, thinking of all the times she felt as though her heart had been sliced in two, as though half of her had somehow gone missing without her noticing.

Her heart leaps into her throat at the sound of footsteps pounding along the corridor, and she barely has time to sit up in bed and throw back the covers before there is a frantic burst of hammering on the bedroom door. Her voice doesn’t seem to want to work, but that doesn’t matter. Ginny erupts into the room without waiting for an answer to her knock, flinging the door open so hard that it smacks with a resounding bang against the wall behind it. "They’re alive."

Alive. Hermione opens her mouth to speak, but she is suddenly, horribly afraid. Ginny’s eyes are puffy, her face pale, and Hermione is afraid that she has simply imagined the word she wants so desperately to hear. But Ginny is smiling and her eyes are glittering with tears of relief, not sorrow. The hard shell of fear around Hermione's heart begins to crack, helping her find her voice. "How do you -"

Ginny beams at her. She looks as though she might break into a spirited jig at any moment, and Hermione feels her own feet begin to twitch with the same urge. "Fawkes arrived a few minutes ago with a message from Dumbledore."

"Oh!" Hermione’s sigh is a whispery sound that seems to come up from the soles of her feet. She feels as though she’s been holding her breath for days. Never before has she appreciated the truth in the Muggle cliché of a weight being lifted from one’s shoulders as she does at this moment in time. She suddenly feels a hundred pounds lighter, as though she might just float right up to the ceiling she has spent so many hours studying. The scratchy feeling at the back of her throat turns into a tickle, a tickle that immediately threatens to become a shout of joy. However, mindful of Ginny’s shrewd gaze, she hastily swallows the impulse and instead clambers quickly out of bed to stand on legs that aren’t quite steady.

As she begins to look for her clothes, she tosses one question after the other at Ginny. "Are any members of the Order downstairs? Has anyone talked to Harry? How are we going to get to Grimmauld Place?"

Suddenly Ginny is standing beside her, close enough to put a gentle hand on her shoulder. "They’re not at Grimmauld Place."

"Where are they?" Hermione asks automatically, her blood icing over as she realises the all-too-likely answer. Please, not that. I couldn’t bear it. Not again. "Not St. Mungo’s?"

Ginny squeezes her shoulder, a reassuring gesture from a close friend who – like Hermione’s mother – seems to understand a little too well. "They’re at the Ministry. Apparently Madame Bones has requested a full debrief from both of them." She makes a face, instantly looking more fourteen than almost eighteen. "They could be there for hours, Dad said. He’s just left for the Ministry himself."

Torn between heady relief and bitter frustration, Hermione bites back a weary sigh. Once again, it seems as though there is nothing to do but wait.

~*~*~

Arriving at The Burrow just after two o’clock that afternoon, Mr. Weasley is promptly set upon by his wife, his two youngest children and their houseguest. Reeling under the onslaught, he pleads for clemency, at least until ‘a man’s had the chance to have a cup of tea and a sit down’. His wife promptly begins to bustle - Hermione knows she will forever equate that particular word with Molly Weasley – about the kitchen, her wand little more than a blur as she starts the kettle boiling and flings several crumpets underneath the griller.

"Sit down, Arthur," she says briskly, "and take off those silly boots. How you can walk in those things, I have no idea."

Despite her anxiety to hear about Harry, Hermione finds herself sneaking a peek beneath the table at Mr. Weasley’s feet. He is wearing a pair of steel-capped Muggle boots, the kind usually worn by construction workers, and the sight makes her smile. "They’re called Blunderstuns, I think," Mr. Weasley confides in a conspiratorial whisper, catching her eye. "Excellent support for the arches," he adds with a weary grin.

Hermione returns his smile, then glances at Molly Weasley, who is busily setting out several brightly coloured mugs on the kitchen bench. Darting a look at Ron and Ginny, she sees her own frustration in their eyes. They won’t be able to get anything worth knowing out of Mr. Weasley while Mrs. Weasley is within earshot.

After half an hour spent drinking tea she doesn’t want and making small talk she knows she won’t remember, Hermione feels like smashing her brightly coloured mug to the ground. She likes Molly Weasley very much – her smothering tendencies notwithstanding – but she’s never wanted to see the back of someone so badly. To her great relief, Mr. Weasley, finally picking up their increasingly desperate sign language, comes to their rescue.

"I think I may have seen a few of the chickens outside the coop on my way in, my dear," he says casually to his wife, who immediately slips off her apron, shaking her head at him.

"For goodness sake, why didn’t you say something earlier? They’re probably halfway to the Cleary’s house by now." Muttering something under her breath about ‘those wretched birds are more trouble than they’re worth’, Molly leaves the kitchen at a brisk pace.

"Works every time," Ginny chuckles. "It’s a good thing those bloody feather dusters won’t come to anyone else."

"Language, Ginny," her father says absentmindedly, watching the still-swinging kitchen door. After a few seconds, apparently satisfied his wife has left the house, he turns to Hermione. "They’re both fine. They’re at the Ministry now, but will probably make their way to Grimmauld Place later this evening."

The knots in the pit of Hermione’s stomach loosen slightly, but it’s not enough. "Please, Mr. Weasley," she pleads softly, "what happened?"

He hesitates, his kindly gaze sliding sideways to his daughter, then back to Hermione. "I’m not sure I should –"

"Come on, Dad," Ron interjects cajolingly, "you know we’ll make Harry tell us everything as soon as we see him." He gives his father a bright smile. "You’d actually be helping him out by telling us now, you know, so he doesn’t have to do so much talking tonight."

Ginny’s hand goes to her mouth as if to smother a giggle, and Hermione makes a mental note to buy Ron a box of chocolate frogs as soon as possible. That was a piece of smooth-talking worthy of the great Fred and George Weasley.

Mr. Weasley’s lips twitch with a hint of a smile and then, after another glance toward the kitchen door, he pushes aside his empty plate and leans his elbows on the table. "They were just about to leave Romania," he begins in a hushed tone, "when they encountered a particularly nasty group of Death Eaters. I don’t have all the details as such, but our boys were under strict orders to keep a low profile, so they tried to beat a hasty retreat." Mr. Weasley shrugs. "Best laid plans, as they say."

Despite the heat of the day, a cold finger of dread trailing down Hermione’s spine, making her shiver. Mr. Weasley leans across the table, his voice dropping to a rough whisper. "The Death Eaters had other ideas, as they usually do, and eventually Harry and Moody found themselves pinned down in an old steel factory. They had their invisibility cloaks, of course, but the building had been charmed in such a way that they couldn’t get out while wearing them. Devilishly clever idea, I have to admit," he adds, almost as an afterthought. "Anyway, they managed to give the Death Easters the slip, but they were stuck in there for almost two days before they were able to reverse the charm. The Death Eaters had posted a watch outside, you see. It was a pretty hairy ordeal, from what I can gather."

Ron glances at Hermione and his sister, then ventures a puzzled, "Why didn’t they just blast their way out? Harry and Moody could take on a dozen Death Eaters with their eyes closed."

Mr. Weasley smiles indulgently at his youngest son. "I’m sure they considered it, Ron, but that wouldn’t have exactly been low profile, would it?"

"I guess not." Ron drums his fingers on the tabletop, then looks at his father. "Still, they got out of it okay, didn’t they?"

"They’re both fine now."

Something about the way Mr. Weasley says ‘now’ makes Hermione’s heart do an odd little jig. "What do you mean now? Were they hurt?"

Mr. Weasley hesitates and Hermione feels her hands curl into tight little fists, her fingernails digging into her palms. "Please tell us, Mr. Weasley," she whispers pleadingly. "It can’t be any worse than we’ve been imagining."

Arthur Weasley sighs heavily. "I guess you’ll find out soon enough." He glances at them each in turn as he speaks, his tone gently reassuring. "Harry took a rather nasty curse to the shoulder, and Moody’s lucky he’s still got his one good eye."

Hermione tries to speak, but there’s an egg sized lump in her throat. She hopes she doesn’t look as horrified as she feels. Ginny looks stricken, and Ron’s complexion is alternating between bright pink and pale grey.

Mr. Weasley looks around the table. "Cheer up, you lot. The healers at St Mungo’s took good care of them and they were both back on their feet within an hour or so. As I said, they’re both perfectly fine now."

Deep in thought, Hermione gnaws at her bottom lip as she considers Mr. Weasley’s last words. She knows that healers would have done their best to banish the physical pain, but she also knows that sometimes the deepest scar a curse leaves behind is the ones you cannot see.

The slamming of the front door makes her jump and she gives Mr. Weasley a hasty, smile. "Thanks, Mr. Weasley," she says quickly. "We were just so worried…"

Reaching across the table, Arthur Weasley gives her hand an awkward pat. "Think nothing of it," he says soothingly. "I know what it’s like to have to sit and wait for news of a loved one."

His choice of words makes Hermione’s face grows warm, and she is absurdly grateful to Mrs. Weasley for choosing that moment to fling open the kitchen door. "Only four eggs between the lot of them," she complains cheerily to the room at large. "Bloody hens. More trouble than they’re worth."

~*~*~

It’s four o’clock in the afternoon before they receive another message from Dumbledore, but it’s finally the message Hermione has been waiting to hear. If they wished to travel to Grimmauld Place this afternoon, Harry and Moody would join them there in a few hours.

"Ginny, dear, send an owl to your brothers. They’ll probably want to join us."

Ginny grins. "Which brothers did you have in mind?"

"What?" Momentarily flustered, her mother shakes a finger at her. "Don’t give me any cheek today, it’s far too hot. You know perfectly well that I mean Fred and George." She waves Ginny away, then turns to Hermione. "Your parents won’t mind if you come along, will they?"

"They’ll be fine with it, I’m sure," Hermione smiles politely, not bothering to remind Mrs. Weasley that she is almost nineteen years old and therefore responsible for her own decisions. She knows that to Mrs. Weasley, she – along with Harry and the Weasley children – would always be a child to be protected and guided. That’s just the way it was at The Burrow, and it was oddly reassuring - when it wasn’t incredibly irritating, of course.

Mrs. Weasley nods and smiles, her gaze quickly sweeping Hermione from head to toe. "You may want to change then, dear, if we’re going into the city." She looks over Hermione’s shoulder, then frowns. "You’re not wearing that old thing, Ronald Weasley," she says briskly, moving away to presumably badger Ron into a more suitable outfit. Looking down at her faded t-shirt, denim shorts and well-worn trainers, Hermione sighs. Grimmauld Place is hardly the cultural centre of London, but perhaps Mrs. Weasley has a point. She doesn’t really fancy the prospect of meeting Harry – and Moody, she adds hastily – looking like she’d gotten dressed in the dark.

Speaking of which…She frowns, running an experimental hand through her hair as she climbs the stairs to her temporary bedroom. After two sleepless nights combined with several days’ relentless humidity, she knows without looking that her hairstyle rivals that worn by the infamous Medusa. Her stomach filling with butterflies whose existence she doesn’t want to acknowledge, let alone analyze, she pays a quick visit to the bathroom, splashing cold water on her face and dampening her hair until it’s more curls than frizz. Pulling her hair back into a loose ponytail, she hurries back to her room to study her meager supply of clothes with an unhappy eye. It’s far too hot for jeans, and yet wearing a girlish summer dress might make it look as though she’s dressed up especially for the occasion. Oh, this is absurd, she finally tells herself, exasperated. He’s seen you a thousand times, what does it matter what you’re wearing?

Doing her best to ignore the fact that her hands are shaking, she dresses quickly in a flaring knee-length skirt and a short-sleeved knitted top, an outfit she usually wears when she goes to the cinema with her parents. After slipping her feet into a pair of flat sandals, she looks at herself in the mirror. Her face looks pale and pinched, her eyes still slightly puffy, her hair its usual nondescript self. This is absurd, she thinks again. Why on earth am I worrying about these things? It’s just Harry.

Hermione turns away from the mirror, knowing that it’s not ‘just Harry’, and it hasn’t been ‘just Harry’ for a very long time. One would think she’d be used to this by now, but something has happened to her over the last two days. She knows it’s ridiculous, but she can’t shake the feeling that when she sees Harry this evening, everything will have changed. That he will look at her and somehow he’ll know exactly what she was thinking and feeling about him while he was missing. That her face will somehow be as good as a signed confession.

"Come on, Hermione," Ginny calls from the other side of the closed door. "Mum’s waiting in the kitchen. Dumbledore’s cleared us to travel by Floo, but only if we make it snappy."

"Sorry." Picking up her leather backpack from the floor, she crosses the room to open the door. "I just needed to – uh -" Ginny quirks a dark red eyebrow at her, and Hermione feels her face grow hot. "I just wanted to do something about my wretched hair," she finishes hurriedly. "I didn’t want to go to Grimmauld Place looking like a banshee."

Ginny’s answering smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes, and Hermione feels an unwelcome and all-familiar pang of guilt. The spectre of Ginny’s long-term crush on Harry never completely leaves her thoughts, and she suspects it is the same for Ginny. She opens her mouth to speak, to explain – how or what, she doesn’t know – but Ginny is already turning away. "You look nice," she replies lightly, hooking her own knapsack over her shoulder. "Let’s go downstairs before Mum sends out a search party."

~*~*~

When I die, Hermione thinks darkly, I shall leave instructions for, "Here lies Hermione Jane Granger, who wasted most of her life waiting for Harry Potter" to be engraved on my tombstone.

It’s just after eight o’clock and the last remnants of daylight grasp at the sky like long, pale fingers. Hermione shifts restlessly, trying to ease the tension in her arms and shoulders. Her elbows are pressed against the rough wood of the windowsill, her nose inches from the smudged glass. I really should clean this room, she thinks vaguely, then shrugs. After all, what difference does it make? She’s the only person who uses this room – a makeshift study that was once Buckbeak’s room - and her visits to Grimmauld Place are sporadic at best.

When the doorbell finally rings, Hermione holds her breath, waiting – she realises with a start – for Mrs Black to begin her usual shrieking. But Mrs Black’s portrait is long gone, her loyal servant Kreacher long since in the service of Narcissa Malfoy, and there is nothing to hear but the violent pounding of her own heart.

She makes her way slowly down the stairs, noticing everything and nothing all at once. The wood of the balustrade is smooth and cool beneath her fingertips, unlike the peeling windowsill upstairs. The stairs creak beneath her every step, a ragged, high-pitched wheeze of age and decay. The sound of voices grows louder as she descends the stairs and she quickly traces the source of the noise to the kitchen. She walks quickly along the hallway, the soles of her sandals rasping on the well-worn carpet runner, then reaches out a faintly trembling hand to push open the kitchen door.

The room is filled with people and noise. Too many Weasleys in the way, she thinks uncharitably, then is quietly ashamed of herself. Her stomach churning, she gazes about the room, looking for the person who has occupied her every thought – sleeping and waking – for the last two days. For a few seconds, all she can see is the back of Moody’s grizzled head, and she wonders if she will have to resort to standing on tiptoes. Suddenly Moody steps aside to greet Kingsley, and she finds herself staring at Harry.

Just looking at him makes her heart ache. Exhaustion is etched on his face. He looks more tired than she’s ever seen him, and over the years she has seen him look as though he’s gone weeks without sleep. Dark stubble roughens his usually smooth jaw and she knows she’s never seen those circles beneath his eyes.

She watches as he lets Mrs. Weasley hugs him tightly, then shakes Mr. Weasley’s hand. Ron and Ginny are standing a few feet away, chatting happily with Tonks, and Hermione can only assume they managed to say their hellos before the senior Weasleys took their places. Wiping her suddenly damp palms on the front of her skirt, she pushes her way into the room, her gaze trained on Harry.

"Hermione!" His eyes lit up when he sees her, and the sight of his smile does very strange things to the pit of her stomach. More butterflies? Oh, dear God.

"Harry!" His grin widens and she suddenly doesn’t care that they are surrounding by Weasleys and the rest of the Order. Closing the distance between them in record time, she flings her arms around his neck and hugs him tightly. "I’m so glad to see you." Pressing her check against his, she closes her eyes and inhales the scent of soap and night air and warm male skin. "Everybody’s been so worried." I’ve been so worried, she wants to say, but the words get caught in her throat.

Harry chuckles wearily, and she feels the echo of his laughter rumble through her own chest. "I was rather worried myself."

She pulls back, suddenly uncomfortably aware of the hard warmth of his body against hers and the fact that his hands are on her hips. "You look terrible," she says teasingly, hoping to diffuse the sudden tension she can feel swimming around them. He didn’t, of course. Dressed in a dark green t-shirt and faded black jeans, he’s the best thing she’s seen in a very long time, but her self-preservation instincts are far too ingrained to resist such an easy target.

"Really? I thought I was looking better." He gives her a bright green wink that does nothing to distract her from the hollow exhaustion in his eyes. "You should have seen me before the Ministry let me have a shower."

Over her laughter, Hermione hears the sound of Fred and George arriving – deliberately late for greater dramatic effect, of course – and being greeted by the growing crowd of visitors. Mr and Mrs Weasley move away, obviously wanting to welcome their sons. The press of people ebbs and flows, and Hermione suddenly feels penned in. "This place is a madhouse!" she exclaims as a nudge from Kingsley Shacklebolt’s right shoulder almost knocks her sideways.

Dipping his head, Harry puts his lips close to her ear. "So what else is new?"

Later, Hermione can’t decide exactly how it happens. Certainly, it’s due to yet another accidental shove in the back from a fellow member of the Order, but perhaps it’s also deliberate on her part - her subconscious finally winning out over her self-control. However it happens, one minute she is laughing with Harry, a decent foot of empty air between them, then the next minute she literally lurches back into his arms. Still laughing, she lifts her chin as Harry leans down to speak to her, and her mouth brushes against his in a feathery, accidental kiss that almost stops her heart.

His bottom lip catches on hers, giving her a lightening quick taste of his mouth. Heat floods her veins, bubbling under her skin, burning her from the inside out. Her heart pounding, she jerks her head backwards, horrified that everyone in the room will have seen them, terrified that Harry will be looking at her with disappointment.

But no one else seems to have noticed, thanks to the crush of people surrounding them, and Harry is not looking at her with disappointment. But he isn’t looking at her as though he’s just been zapped by Muggle electricity, either. He’s just smiling at her the same way he’s smiled at everybody else in the room tonight, then someone - Fred, she thinks – reaches through the crowd and grabs his arm, drawing him away. Her mouth still tingling, Hermione stands and watches Harry jokingly wince as George and Fred slap him hard on the back, then as he laughs with Ron and Ginny at something Ron is saying. Her heart pounding and her pulse racing, she stands and watches as Harry doesn’t spare her another glance, and then Hermione Granger does what no Gryffindor should ever do.

She runs away.

~*~*~

Hermione has always liked this room. She liked it when it was Buckbeak’s hideout, and she liked it even more when Buckbeak had returned to Hagrid’s care at Hogwarts. Harry had had the room cleaned, then dragged in an antique desk and chair, a bookcase and two ancient but comfortable settees. "This is yours to use whenever you need it," he’d told her, his eyes dark and serious, and the unspoken invitation in his words had made her heart soar.

Yes, she’s always liked this room. Tonight, however, she feels as though the four walls are closing in on her. "Idiot." She glares at herself in the oval mirror hanging on the wall above the desk, then turns to glare out the window, just as she did during her vigil that afternoon. "That’s what you are, a complete and utter idiot."

"Is that directed at you or at me?"

She slowly turns, already embarrassed by her impulsive flight from the kitchen. "I didn’t see you there."

Harry gives her a look that quite plainly says ‘obviously’, then shoves his hands in the pockets of his baggy jeans, as though he doesn’t quite know what to do with them. "May I come in?" he asks finally, breaking a silence that is well beyond the danger of becoming awkward.

She leans against the windowsill, her palms pressed hard against the rough wood. "Of course. It’s your house." As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she wishes she could take them back. What is wrong with me? "How’s your shoulder?" she asks hastily.

He steps into the room, his movements as graceful and economical as always. "It stings a bit, but it’ll be fine."

"Is it still a mad crush downstairs?" she asks, carefully keeping her tone light.

"Not so much. Ron and the twins have just gone out to buy some Butterbeer." Closing the door behind him, he studies her for a few seemingly endless seconds, then asks the question she least wants to hear. "What’s wrong?"

Knowing there’s no answer she can give him that will make this situation any less awkward, she retreats behind a simple, "Nothing’s wrong."

"I’ve been talking to Ginny," he says pleasantly, the casual tone of his voice decidedly at odds with the determined gleam in his eyes.

Hermione forces herself to give him a cheery smile. "That’s nice."

Harry’s eyes never leave hers. "She told me that you’ve hardly eaten or slept for the last two days because you were so worried," he takes a few slow steps toward her, and Hermione’s pulse flutters, "which makes me wonder why you’re up here when Moody and I are downstairs."

Making a mental note to give Ginny a short, sharp slap on the backside the next time she sees her, Hermione shakes her head and forces another smile. "Oh, don’t mind Ginny. She’s exaggerating - you know how she is."

He doesn’t return her smile. "Yes, I know," he says quietly, taking another step toward her, "but that doesn’t explain why you’re hiding up here."

"I’m not hiding," she shoots back with more force than she intends, then takes a deep breath. "Look, I’m fine. Perfectly fine."

She can see the frustration in Harry’s eyes. "Tell me what’s wrong."

They stare at each other, and Hermione is struck by the painful irony of the situation. Three years ago, she had cornered Harry in this very house, in that very same kitchen, and forced him to have this very same conversation. The only difference is this time, she is the one looking for a quick escape. "I just had a weird moment." She waves a dismissive hand. "Forget about it."

Harry’s lips firm in a stubborn line she recognizes all too well, and she realizes with dismay that he is not going to let this go. "What kind of weird moment?"

The windowsill is digging into the small of her back, heightening the sense of being trapped. She doesn’t want to talk about this, not here, not now. "Forget about it," she says, pushing herself away from the window. "Let’s go downstairs."

Harry shakes his head. "Not until we’ve sorted this out."

Feeling more than a little besieged, Hermione’s temper begins to fray. "It is sorted. You and Moody are back, safe and sound, and I’m very happy to see both of you."

Harry raises his eyebrows, looking utterly unconvinced, and Hermione’s temper frays even further. She thinks of his complete non-reaction to their accidental kiss and her patience suddenly snaps. "Look, if you can’t work it out for yourself, Harry," she retorts, "then there’s really no point in telling you."

His gaze narrows and she instantly regrets her brief lapse into the cold, hard truth. Smoothing one hand down the front of her shirt, she takes a few steps around him, edging toward the door. "Come on - everyone will be wondering where you are."

"Is it because of what happened downstairs?"

The softly spoken question stops her in her tracks and the hesitancy in his voice reaches deep into her heart, stripping away what remains of her resolve. "In a way." Hermione closes her eyes for an instant, feeling like a tightrope walker about to take that first step into thin air, then half-turns to face him. "Do you ever think about it, Harry?" The words feel heavy on her tongue. Awkward. "The last time, I mean."

He looks at her for a long moment and she is once again filled with the urge to flee, to run away before he can answer and she is forced to face the unpleasant fact that he doesn’t…

"Yes." His answer slices through her insecurities like a hot knife through butter, his voice filled with a quiet conviction that quickens her pulse. "Do you?"

Her heart hammering against her ribs, Hermione takes a second step out into thin air. "Yes, I do." And while we’re being painfully honest…"More than I would like, actually."

Harry frowns. "What’s that supposed to mean?"

God save me from wounded male pride. "It means that our …" her face grows hot, but she forces herself to go on, "…that it obviously meant – means - more to me than it did to you and I’m an complete and utter idiot for letting it affect my -"

Closing the distance between then with one long stride, he wraps his hand around her upper arm and turns her around to face him, his fingers digging slightly into her skin. "Is that what you really think?"

"I don’t know what I really think, not anymore." She stares at him for a long moment, all her feelings and hopes and fears bubbling up inside her, then shakes her head almost helplessly. "I thought you were dead," she finally whispers, the last word a half-sob that snags in the back of her throat.

Something dark flickers in his eyes. "I almost was." She opens her mouth to speak, then suddenly his hands are on her shoulders, pulling her closer, and he is kissing her, kissing her so hard that her knees actually buckle.

For a few seconds, she freezes. She can’t think, can’t move. All she knows is that his mouth is on hers and her hands are pressed flat against his chest and she can feel the frantic beat of his heart beneath her palm. When his tongue brushes against her bottom lip she pulls away, her heart keeping the same frantic beat as her thoughts.

"This could be a bad idea," she whispers, but her objection sounds weak even to her own ears and she knows that she hasn’t convinced herself, let alone Harry.

"Actually, I think it’s a bloody brilliant idea," he mutters, his voice roughened by the same desire that is making her toes curl. He kisses her again, hesitantly at first, then with a fierceness that chases every coherent thought from her head. He tastes of tea and mint and a dark, spicy warmth that has haunted her dreams for three long years, and she wants nothing more than to sink into him, lose herself in the heat of his mouth. When his tongue curls around hers, a fluttering, almost nauseous sensation unfurls low in her belly. For the first time in her life, Hermione feels a rush of pure lust burst through her veins, and it’s as terrifying as it is intoxicating.

Pulling her mouth away from his, she buries her face in the crook of his shoulder. "Harry," she whispers unsteadily, unsure if she’s pleading for mercy or asking for more. Turning her head, she presses her lips against the warm, smooth skin of his throat. Her whole body begins to hum with a delicate hunger, her senses filling with the lemon-soap scent of his hair, the salty taste of his skin.

A shudder goes through him, then his hands slide down the length of her back, pulling her closer. She feels him – hard and urgent – pressing against her belly, unfamiliar and almost shocking, and her mouth goes dry, her blood roaring in her ears. The gentle kiss they shared on the night of Harry’s sixteenth birthday party has done little to prepare her for this onslaught on her senses. This is something entirely different. It’s okay. It’s Harry. It’s just Harry, she tells herself once more, this time in desperation. But there is nothing ‘just’ about the way he is making her feel, or the effect she is obviously having on him. This is serious and adult and something they shouldn’t be doing, not now, not here. But then his hands are cupping her face, lifting her mouth to his, his kiss hot and deep and desperate, and she is lost. Pushing aside all thought of decorum or appearances or willpower, she curls her arms around his neck and kisses him in the way she has never truly dared to let herself imagine.

His hands tighten on her hips as another shudder ripples through him, then she feels her feet leave the floor. The room blurs around her and, before she can even blink, they’re sitting on one of the old couches, then Harry is kissing her again and everything’s in slow motion but happening so fast that her head is spinning. They tumble backwards together onto the couch, her feet tangling awkwardly with his, his jeans brushing against her bare legs. They end up half-sitting, half-lying on the settee, the worn upholstery hard against her back, her suddenly aching breasts pressing against Harry’s chest, her flimsy summer skirt riding up dangerously high on her thighs.

We shouldn’t be doing this, she tells herself, then frantically tries to remember exactly why they shouldn’t as Harry curls his hand around the nape of her neck to gently tilt her head backward, his mouth literally devouring hers in a kiss that she feels everywhere. All her clothes suddenly feel two sizes too small, as though the heat of her body has caused them to shrink, and her lungs don’t seem to want to work properly. Kicking off her sandals, she instinctively lifts her hands to Harry’s chest, but any thought of pushing him away flees when she feels the heat of him beneath her palms. Her fingertips begin to itch with the urge to slip beneath the soft cotton of his t-shirt, tingle with the need to feel his skin.

Their legs tangle briefly as Harry shifts his weight, then his knee suddenly presses between her thighs. A glorious sensation - hot, liquid pleasure - washes over her, pooling low in her belly, and she tears her mouth away from his with a ragged gasp. Her pulse is pounding everywhere - in her fingertips, her breasts, between her legs - the thrum of desire in her blood growing heavier and faster with every beat of her heart.

"Harry, this is insane, everybody’s downstairs, we can’t…" Even as she whispers the words against his lips, she knows she doesn’t want to leave this room.

Harry lifts his head, his mouth faintly reddened, his breathing just as ragged as hers. "I…" He stares at her for a few seconds, then shakes his head, looking as though he’s just been on the receiving end of a rogue Bludger. "I’m sorry," he mutters unsteadily, his eyes glittering behind his glasses. "I shouldn’t have…"

"Don’t," she whispers, not wanting to hear an apology. For two whole days she has faced the very real fear that he could be dead. In the last forty-eight hours, she has lived a whole lifetime of her very worst nightmare, and now he is here and safe and breathing and warm and very much alive. Her heart feels as though it has only just started beating again after two days spent packed in ice, and she simply can’t bear for him to regret anything that has just happened between them. "Don’t you dare be sorry."

She watches the smooth column of his throat work as he swallows hard, then he bows his head and presses a gentle kiss to the corner of her mouth. "I’m not sorry," he murmurs, his lips grazing hers, his words are little more than a whispered sigh fluttering across her mouth, "but maybe we should stop."

Lifting one hand to his face, she brushes a few strands of jet-black hair back from his damp forehead with her fingertips, knowing she is about to take that last step out into thin air. Holding her breath, she gently slides his glasses down his nose, her fingers trembling against the thin metal. Her gaze locks with his as she drops her hand over the side of the couch and carefully places his glasses on the floor. "I don’t want you to stop," she hears herself say, her voice that of a breathless stranger, "I want you to lock the door."

Harry’s eyes darken, a kaleidoscope of emotions flickering across his face. "Are you sure?" His voice is low and rough, the words pronounced a little too carefully, as though it is an effort to speak.

"Yes," she whispers, slowly sliding her hands up his arms to smooth her palms over the curve of his shoulders. Despite the solid warmth of the muscles beneath her hands, she can’t believe that this is happening. Perhaps she is still lying on Fred’s – or was it George’s – old bed, and this is all a dream. "Quite sure, actually."

He closes his eyes for a moment as though he, too, is having trouble believing this is real, then he waves his hand toward the door. She feels the soft whisper of magic rustling through the air, hears the click of the lock. Harry turns back to her, takes her face in his hands, gives her a tiny smile, then his mouth covers hers in a kiss that steals the breath from her lungs.

Hermione is almost nineteen years old. She knows how her body reacts to sexual stimulus. She has read books and magazines, both Wizard and Muggle, on the subject in question. More importantly, she has also read about the very human need to reaffirm life after a near-death experience. She is under no illusions about the circumstances that have led Harry and herself to this room. She knows all this, but when Harry cups her breast, his fingertips brushing lightly over her nipple through the soft material of her knitted top and bra, she also knows that books and cleverness and knowledge count for nothing. Not when it comes to this.

She hadn’t known that the feel of Harry’s tongue in her mouth could make her insides turn to liquid heat. She’d never realised that the hesitant touch of his hand on her breast could make her want to laugh and cry at the same time. When he slides one hand slowly up her calf, his Quidditch-roughened fingertips stroking the back of her knee, she grabs two handfuls of his t-shirt and buries her face against his shoulder. "Harry…"

For a few seconds, all she hears is the harsh sound of their breathing, then the low rasp of his voice washes over her, making her shiver. "Are you still sure?"

Hermione closes her eyes. Despite her earlier assertion, she’s suddenly not sure at all, but she slips her hands beneath his t-shirt and slides her hands over smooth skin and hard, lean muscle. The feel of him under her hands – solid and warm and enticing – is strangely reassuring. It’s just Harry. She trails her fingertips down his stomach and he inhales a sharp breath, making her smother a smile as well as her answer in the softness of his t-shirt. "Yes, I’m sure," she whispers, sliding her hands around his waist. Feeling emboldened and ridiculously shy at the same time, she strokes her hands up his back, lightly scraping her fingernails across his shoulder blades before trailing them down the hollow of his spine.

Muttering something that sounds very much like her name under his breath, Harry slips one hand beneath her bottom and pulls her against him, his mouth seeking and finding hers once more. When she wriggles restlessly beneath him, he shifts his weight once more, then he’s lying in the cradle of her thighs. His body is hard and urgent against hers, that mysterious ridge of hard male flesh rubbing and teasing exactly where she is soft and aching, and a quiet moan rises up in the back of her throat.

They twist together on the battered couch - a slow yet desperate dance - until Hermione feels as though she is drowning, her body awash with a dark, sweet hunger, every kiss and touch pulling her deeper and deeper. Kissing her fiercely, Harry rocks his hips against hers, once, twice, then again, and again, and the hard little knot of heat between her thighs grows heavier and hotter and tighter and she can’t believe she can be feeling like this when they’re still wearing all their clothes, and she wants to tell him to hurry, to go slow, anything but stop making her feel what she’s feeling. Her skin starts to prickle everywhere, starting at the soles of her feet and traveling up the backs of her legs. "Kiss me again," she whispers. "Please kiss me again." Harry’s mouth covers hers in an urgent, almost desperate, kiss. His hand is underneath her shirt, cupping her breast, his palm rubbing the soft cotton of her bra against her nipple, sending arrows of sensation outward and downward and everywhere.

Winding her arms around his neck, she arches up against him in wordless supplication, her body instinctively seeking, demanding. His mouth hot as he kisses her neck, Harry runs his hand up the back of her thigh, making her skin quiver. His fingertips stroke the curve of her bottom just beneath the lace of her underwear and Hermione wriggles beneath him once more, tightening her thighs around him. Harry inhales sharply, then begins to move against her once more, rolling his hips in slow, deliberate thrusts. The ache between her legs tightens almost unbearably, and she clutches at him, her fingers digging into his shoulders. For a few glorious yet agonising seconds, her whole body teeters on the edge of something wonderful and a little frightening, then a strangled gasp slips from her throat as everything swells and flutters and unravels in a soft flurry of pulsing heat.

"Oh!" She arches her back and lifts up against him, frantically trying – needing - to prolong the sensation. But the pleasure soon becomes a tingling kind of pain and she finds herself slumping backwards, her heart pounding, her skin damp beneath her clothes.

What seems like an eternity later, she hears Harry say her name. "Hermione?"

She knows she should answer him, but speaking seems to require more energy than she has to spare at this point in time.

"Hermione?" he says again, one hand brushing the hair back from her damp forehead just as she had earlier done to him. The tender gesture draws her out of her languor, and she slowly opens her eyes to find him gazing at her with an expression that can only be described as quiet awe. "Are you okay?"

She smiles at him lazily. "I’m absolutely fine." It’s perfectly true. She feels very different, but she also feels more like herself than she has for weeks, perhaps for months.

Harry drops his hand to her shoulder, then traces her collarbone with his thumb, his gaze following the movement rather than meeting her eyes. "Was that, uh, did you -" He breaks off, his face flushed, and Hermione feels her heart stumble and fall even further. Curling one hand around the back of his neck, she draws his face down to hers and kisses him softly.

"Yes, it was," she whispers against his lips, "and I did." She bites her bottom lip, not quite able to believe she’s saying such things. A small measure of embarrassment comes flooding back, reminding her that she is lying on a couch with her best friend and he has just given the most intense physical pleasure she’s ever experienced in her life.

"Oh." Harry closes his eyes, his throat working as he swallows hard. "We don’t have to do anything else," he finally says softly, darting her a quick glance, his thumb now toying with the exposed strap of her bra. "Did you want to go downstairs?" It’s obvious what he wants, but Hermione knows that he will do whatever she decides, and she knows that she has never loved him more.

"I want to stay here," she says softly, trailing her fingertips along the waistband of his jeans. One last step into the unknown.

His eyes grow dark as he gazes at her, and she suddenly feels as though he is looking right into her soul. For a few seconds, there is an utter stillness about him that sends a heated shiver down her spine, then he bows his head to hers. She opens her mouth to his kiss, running her hands over his hips, under his shirt, stroking his sides and the finely sculptured muscles of his chest and stomach, knowing that she will never grow tired of touching him. When she presses her thumbnail experimentally against his nipple, he groans into her mouth then lifts his head, abruptly breaking their kiss.

They look at each other for a long moment - a question asked, an answer given – then he traces the curve of her breast with his fingertips, the light touch burning through the thin knit of her shirt. "Your skin is so soft," he whispers, his mouth warm as he kisses the side of her throat, his hands slipping beneath her shirt to stroke her stomach. Hermione closes her eyes as pure sensation overwhelms her, conscious only of Harry’s hands on her and the overpowering urge to feel his skin against hers. She tugs at his t-shirt, literally peeling it up over his stomach, willing him to get the hint and take matters out of her hands.

He does. She hears the faint whoosh of fabric against skin and opens her eyes, her mouth drying at the sight of him. She has been swimming with Harry and Ron several times over the years, and has seen Harry dressed in little more than baggy shorts many a time. But this isn’t the same. This is very, very different, because just looking at him makes her stomach quiver and her breasts tingle.

Holding his gaze with hers, she touches his chest, tracing her finger over every ridge and hollow, amazed at the subtle strength of his finely etched muscles, fascinated by the contrast between the silky, dark hair and boyishly soft skin. Smoothing her hand over the curve of his right shoulder, her eyes are drawn to his newly acquired curse scar, a thin but vivid line running from his collarbone to his top of his bicep. "How’s your shoulder really?" she says softly, brushing it lightly with her thumb.

"It stings a bit," he murmurs, his lips twitching with the hint of a smile as he offers her the same answer he gave earlier.

She nods slowly, staring at the thin, still-pink scar, hating the sight of it but knowing that it could have been so much worse. Her throat aching with the unshed tears she thought she’d banished hours earlier, she lifts her head and brushes her lips over the scar, wishing it was really possible to kiss pain away.

Harry lets out his breath in a shaky sigh. "Feels better already."

"Good," she whispers, sliding her hand across his flat belly, her fingertips dipping beneath the waistband of his jeans. Harry’s breath catches in his throat, his stomach muscles trembling under her touch. Her heart hammering so loudly she’s positive the whole household can hear it, she skims her fingertips over his belt buckle, then finally touches him where he is hard and urgent, marveling at the heat of him through the demin of his jeans.

Harry closes his eyes, his hand tightening almost painfully on her thigh, her name on his lips a ragged plea. "Hermione…"

"I know," she says shakily, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to his collarbone, letting her teeth scrape his warm skin, tasting him with her tongue. Suddenly Harry’s hands are little more than a pale blur in the dimly lit room, and she feels the warm evening air brushing against the bare skin of her belly. She closes her eyes again as Harry tugs her shirt up and over her head, her heart once more beginning its mad contradictory dance of apprehension and excitement. It seems foolish, given what they’ve already done, but she feels as though she is about to bare so much more than just her body. She trusts Harry more than she trusts anyone, but her hands still shake as she slides her hands behind her to unclasp her bra, wishing she’d had the foresight to choose a prettier one, wishing that she wasn’t blushing, wishing that Harry would take pity on her and stop looking at her breasts or say something or kiss her, anything to distract her from the fact that she has just tossed her bra onto the floor and is lying half-naked in his arms.

As though hearing her thoughts, Harry slowly lifts his eyes to hers. He doesn’t say anything, but his expression clearly betrays his unspoken thoughts, and Hermione feels her face grow even hotter. Giving her a lightening-quick, faintly nervous grin, he pulls her into his arms, and the feel of his bare chest against hers does very odd things to the pit of her stomach. It seems to have a similar effect on Harry - she feels a shudder go through him, then he kisses her hungrily, tasting her mouth with his lips and his tongue until they’re both breathless. When she feels his hand sliding up her thigh and underneath the hem of her skirt, she closes her eyes, wondering if it is possible to expire from nervous anticipation. Then he hesitantly touches the damp heat between her legs, his fingers stroking her through the thin cotton of her underpants, sending a jolt of pure sensation zinging through the still-tender flesh, and she knows there are other, more pleasurable, ways to die. "My God, Harry…"

"I know," he mutters, echoing her words, then he kisses her again, gently this time, his fingers hooking over elastic and tugging downward, sliding soft cotton over heated skin. Hermione automatically lifts her hips, then feels the brush of warm air over her bottom and other places and she still can’t believe they’re doing this, then her hands reach for Harry’s belt buckle, her trembling fingers fumbling with the button fly of his jeans. Burying her face against Harry’s smooth shoulder, she slips her hand under the elastic of his boxers. The silky line of hair from his navel to his groin fleetingly teases her palm, then her fingers curl around the rigid length of his erection, finding smooth skin stretched tight over stiff, pulsing flesh. Oh, my goodness, she thinks dazedly, momentarily rendered incapable of a more original thought.

Harry murmurs something under his breath, the words sounding more like an invocation than a curse. "Hermione, please…" he whispers harshly as he arches into her touch, and the feel of him in her hand snaps her back to one of life’s more unavoidable realities.

"Wait, we have to - "

"I know. Can you - "

"Harry, I need my wand," she cuts him off as she gives him a despairing look and gently eases her hand out of his jeans, "and it’s in my backpack."

He closes his eyes, his chest shuddering as he exhales heavily. "Where’s your backpack?" His voice sounds slightly strangled.

"It’s downstairs," she says unhappily.

Harry kisses her damp forehead, then lifts his head to gaze down at her, his gaze sweeping over her face, lingering on her lips. "Tell me the charm," he murmurs, laying his hand flat on her stomach.

Feeling inexplicably shy, Hermione puts her lips to his ear and whispers the incantation taught to every female Seventh Year student at Hogwarts. Harry repeats the words, his brow furrowed in concentration, and she feels a brief glow of warmth flare deep inside her. Her pulse fluttering like the proverbial Snitch’s wings, she hooks her thumbs into the waistband of both his jeans and boxers. Vaguely wondering just what has happened to the prim and proper Hermione Granger she knows so well, she slowly slides the bothersome items down and out of the way. "You’d better kiss me again, I think," she says unsteadily as she gives him a tremulous smile, not quite knowing where to look.

An answering smile tugs at his lips, then he does as she asks, kissing her fiercely, his lips demanding, his tongue deep in her mouth. Her skirt bunches up around her waist but she barely notices. Her world has narrowed to the feel of Harry’s body against hers, the taste of his mouth and the rigid length of his arousal pushing against her thigh. When the sleek tip of his erection nudges the aching flesh between her legs, she instinctively arches up, her whole body tensing with anticipation and no small measure of fear, the blood pounding through her veins. Now, Harry, please, now.

She bites back a gasp as he enters her, slowly filling her. Oh, my God. She feels her inner muscles clench around him, as if in shock at such a sudden, complete intrusion. He presses deeper, and a brief, sharp twist of pain makes her want to jerk away, but she lies still, trying to focus on the harsh sound of their ragged breathing. Harry kisses her forehead once more, then he begins to move, very slowly, the muscles in his arms straining, and the pain is gradually replaced by a slow, tender feeling of invasion that has her digging her fingertips into his shoulders. He bows his head, putting his mouth to her ear, the brush of his lips making her shiver. "I’m sorry," he mutters thickly. "Did I hurt - "

"Don’t you dare be sorry," she tells him for the second time that night, and she means it. On the rare occasions she allowed herself to imagine anything approaching this particular moment, it was always sweet and tender and romantic. The reality may be awkward and slippery and painful, but it’s also a hundred times better than she could have ever imagined. Harry gives her a crooked smile and her throat tightens, a wave of longing that has nothing to do with sexual desire washing over her. You love him too much, a tiny voice whispers, and Hermione curls her arms around Harry’s neck, raising her mouth to his kiss, banishing the tiny voice to a far corner of her mind.

Clinging to him in a stolen world of hands and lips and breathless discovery, she soon realises that one doesn’t need magic in order to lose time. Neither of them knows what they’re doing, but somehow that doesn’t seem to matter. They began to move together, hands stroking and clutching, their ragged breaths the only sound in the room. She grips his shoulders tightly, hooking one leg around him as he moves against her, each thrust of his hips burying the thick length of him deeper inside her. Ignoring the lingering discomfort, she tentatively lifts her hips, trying to match his body’s rhythm, and she knows she’s done something right when Harry sucks in a hissing breath and mutters something that sounds like ‘you are bloody amazing’.

He bends his head to kiss her breast and his mouth is gentle on her skin, and she wants him to stop being gentle but she’s too embarrassed to say the words. Then he kisses her breast again, his mouth closing over her aching nipple and he is no longer gentle, tasting her with his tongue and his teeth and she has to bite her lip to stop herself from crying out. Closing her eyes, she wraps her arms around his neck and lifts herself up to him once, then twice, taking him deep inside her, discomfort slowly turning to a slowly burgeoning warmth that tickles the hollow of her womb.

Suddenly Harry buries his face in the crook of her neck, his words a gasp wrung from his throat. "Hermione, I can’t…"

"It’s okay," she whispers, running her hands down his sweat-dampened back, holding him close. His whole body grows still, his spine rigid with tension, then he shudders against her, a broken groan rumbling deep in his chest. Hermione tightens her arms around him, one hand cradling the back of his head, amazed at the feeling of his flesh pulsing inside hers, at the wet warmth that fills her.

He lets out a long, shaky breath, then slumps into her arms, the weight of his body pressing her into the couch. She can feel his heart pounding violently, and it seems to take an eternity for his breathing to return to normal. Finally, just when her embarrassment threatens to return at full strength, he kisses the top of her head and eases his body away from hers slightly. Giving her a faintly sheepish smile, he leans across her, one long arm reaching down to the floor, coming up a few seconds later with her knitted top and his glasses in hand. After slipping on his glasses, he drapes her shirt across her bare breasts in an awkward but endearingly chivalrous gesture that makes her heart do a funny little jig, then props himself up on one elbow to gaze down at her.

Hermione doesn’t speak. She recognises the look on his face all too well – he wants to say something but he is choosing his words carefully. Finally, he swallows hard, then threads one hand through her hair, slowly pulling it free of its ponytail. "On the second day, I began to believe that we might actually die," he says in a quiet, almost conversational tone, twirling a strand of her hair idly around his finger. "I started thinking about everything that I would miss, everything that I would regret leaving undone and unsaid." His eyes meet hers. "You would have been my biggest regret."

Speechless, she can only stare at him.

"I mean everything, not just this," he continues slowly, his hand skimming over the curve of her bare shoulder, "even though this was - " he stops, apparently momentarily lost for words, a faint tinge of colour reddening his face. "That didn’t feel wrong to me, Hermione," he finishes with a rush, his bright green eyes glittering behind his glasses.

His words send a shock of recognition through her. Three years ago, after they’d shared an unexpected kiss, he’d said exactly the same thing to her. Feeling foolishly close to tears, Hermione gives him a shaky smile and the same answer she’d given him three years ago. "Me neither."

Harry strokes one long finger along her jaw, then lifts her chin, not letting her look away. "So what happens now?"

She gazes at him, seeing her own uncertainly reflected in his eyes. They both know what seems very simple inside this room will probably be very complicated outside it. "I don’t know."

~*~*~*~*~

Two years later, sitting alone in her kitchen, Hermione’s eyes fill with tears. They’d barely had time to catch their breath before they’d heard Ron and the twins’ noisy return, then hardly enough time to dress - with fumbling fingers and shaking hands – and hurry downstairs before Dumbledore had unexpectedly arrived. He’d announced that three veteran Aurors had just been killed on yet another supposedly routine mission, then whisked Harry and Moody away to places unknown, at least to Hermione.

Two weeks later, when Voldemort began to target the families of Hogwarts’ Muggle students, Hermione’s parents had been convinced to make Dumbledore their Secret Keeper and go into hiding. A month after that, when the killings began in earnest, Dumbledore had once more spoken to Harry about that damned Prophecy. Hermione doubted she would ever know everything that had been said between them, but the day after that conversation, Harry had sought her out in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place, stealing a rare moment alone with her. "I can’t do this to you," Harry had told her, his eyes begging her to understand, to argue with him, to tell him that he was wrong. "They’ve told me that they don’t know where I’m going to be on any given day and that I can’t let anything or anyone distract me from my training." His voice had cracked with anger. "I refuse to hide the way I feel about you, but you deserve more than sneaking around and hiding in bloody corners." Despite being swamped by an unhappy feeling of inevitability, Hermione had simply kissed him and said she understood. There had been no tears – she had kept them until later that night, when she was alone and had no idea where Harry had been taken by the Ministry Powers That Be.

And so it had begun – their great relationship amnesty – but every hour of every day, the heat between them was there, simmering just below the surface, and most of the time it was enough to know it was there. And other times - only every other day - it broke her heart in a dozen different ways.

Hermione rubs her hand across her wet eyes. During the last two years, there has been many times when Harry has grown careless and let her see the raw hunger in his eyes, when all it would have taken would have been one word or touch from her to bring him to his knees and to her bed. But stubbornly, stupidly, she had wanted to be more than a pleasurable distraction. She had wanted to be more than comfort, more than just an escape. She had wanted him to be sure. So now here they are, two years later, stuck in a holding pattern of desire and denial, a situation that is becoming increasingly ridiculous and emotionally draining with every passing day. A situation for which she would dearly love to blame Harry – it would make things so much easier - but she knows it’s not as simple as that.

When she hears a soft pop of Apparition, she doesn’t bother to look up. She already knows who her visitor will be. "So much for knocking first," she mutters quietly under her breath, then finally lifts her head to give Harry a wan smile. "Hi. Fancy a cup of tea?"

~*~*~*~*~

4. Chapter Three - Standing Still

Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets. ~ Paul Tournier

~*~*~*~

When she hears a soft pop of Apparition, Hermione doesn’t bother to look up. She already knows who her visitor will be. "So much for knocking first," she mutters quietly under her breath, then finally lifts her head to give Harry a wan smile. "Hi. Fancy a cup of tea?"

Harry blinks, then glances at the teapot on the table as if taken aback by her matter-of-fact greeting. "No, thank you." He walks slowly into the room, shrugs off his cloak and drapes it over the back of the nearest chair, his movements measured and precise. "I’d rather have a conversation with you that doesn’t end with you rushing out of the room." He glances at her, his expression guarded. "That is, if you don’t mind."

His manner is painfully polite, and the distant look in his eyes makes her heart sink. "Harry, I…" she starts to say, then stops herself, pressing her lips together. She can’t just start blathering away about her muddled feelings, not when Harry’s head is obviously too full of the Order’s latest plans to think about anything else, not when she still doesn’t have the faintest idea of how to even begin to make things right between them.

The dull beginnings of a headache stirring into life behind her temples, Hermione looks down at her half-empty teacup. "I’m sorry," she offers, tapping her fingernail against the rim of her teacup. "I was tired."

Harry snorts. "Bollocks."

She lifts her head, intending to defend herself with a swift retort, but the words die on her lips. Standing much closer to her than she realised, Harry is glaring at her as though he can’t decide whether to throttle her or kiss her. Dressed in his customary black, he looks pale and weary and dangerously attractive, and her little kitchen suddenly feels very crowded.

Taking a deep breath, she does her best to sound as though she’s not on the brink of having a mild panic attack. "Bollocks that I’m sorry, or bollocks that I’m tired?"

"Both." He raises one dark eyebrow, but otherwise his expression doesn’t change. "You’re angry with me."

It’s a statement, not a question, and Hermione hastily takes a sip of the tea she no longer wants, wishing he would sit down, wishing he would stop looking at her like that. "Everything’s not always about you, Harry."

He frowns. It’s not a real answer and they both know it. "I never said it was -" he breaks off and glances downward, the stern set of his features softening. Crookshanks has wandered into the kitchen - his sleep disturbed for the second time that night - and is now winding himself around Harry’s legs like a furry orange pretzel, purring loudly. "Hello there," Harry murmurs, reaching down to stroke one hand along the length of Crookshanks’ spine, instantly sending her cat into yet another bout of leg-rubbing ecstasy.

Hermione narrows her eyes at her pet. Traitor, she thinks darkly, trying to douse a foolish flicker of envy. Surely it wasn’t normal to be jealous of one’s cat?

Still patting Crookshanks, Harry lifts his gaze to hers, a faintly accusing look in his bright green eyes. "You expect me to believe that you went rushing out of Grimmauld Place the way you did because you were tired?"

Curling both hands around her teacup, she returns Harry’s gaze steadily. "Yes."

An odd, almost wounded expression flashes across his face, then it’s gone, as though she imagined it. "So you’re perfectly fine, you’re not angry with me, and you only left because you were tired."

Hermione resists the urge to cross her fingers. "That’s right."

He doesn’t say anything for quite a while, just trails his hand down the length of Crookshanks’ back over and over again. Finally he mutters, in a voice so low she can hardly hear him, "Don’t you ever get sick of this?" He doesn’t look at her as he speaks.

She frowns. "Sick of what?"

Harry straightens up - much to Crookshanks’ obvious disappointment – and slips his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. "Pretending that it never happened."

She stares at him, vaguely aware that she is gripping her teacup so tightly that it’s in danger of shattering in her hands. This is the closest they’ve come to discussing That Night since they decided to ‘wait until the war was over’, and her stomach once again feels as though she’s swallowed a dozen baby snakes. "I’m not pretending, Harry." She manages a smile, but her face feels frozen. "I was tired. I wanted to come home. End of story." She pushes away her teacup with a jerk, the china saucer scraping against the wooden tabletop, then starts to rise to her feet. "And, if it’s okay with you, I’d actually like to get some sleep now."

"Running away again?"

The words pierce her heart like a splinter sliding beneath her skin. She gets to her feet and pushes her chair neatly under the table, gripping the back of it with trembling hands. Torn between anger and the uncomfortable knowledge that his accusation is all too justified, she lets anger win out. "That’s rich, coming from you."

His eyes flash with irritation. "What’s that supposed to mean?"

Hermione’s heart is pounding. She knows that she is only making things worse, but she is suddenly filled with the urge to push him, to crack the seemingly impenetrable shell he’s built around himself. "Look me in the eye and tell me that you’re not secretly excited to be going off on another Boys’ Own Adventure with Moody and Remus?"

Harry stares at her, his eyes glittering with more emotion than she’s seen him show in weeks. "How can you ask me that?"

"How can I not?" she shoots back. She can’t quite able to believe she’s saying these things, but she can’t seem to stop. It’s as though someone has charmed her tongue and is making the words fall out of her mouth, as though everything she’s kept herself from saying over the last two years are welling up inside her, forcing their way out. "I’ve known you too long, Harry. You may not want to admit it, but we both know that there’s some part of you – deep down – that thrives on danger. And let’s face it, anything would be more exciting than just hanging out at Grimmauld Place with your old school chums, right?"

He flinches as though she’s slapped him, and Hermione’s face burns with shame. "I didn’t mean -"

"Forget it," he says flatly, his gaze drifting away from hers.

An awkward silence envelops them, and Hermione knows with a sickening certainty that the distance between them has just grown wider. To her horror, she feels the hot prickle of tears behind her eyes. She grips the back of the chair a little tighter, vaguely noting that the smooth wood is cool against her palms. "Why are you here, Harry?" she finally asks in a small voice, not knowing if she’s ready to hear the answer but too tired of wrestling with her feelings to care.

He glances at her, looking almost startled by her question. Leaning back against the edge of the kitchen table, he stares down at his feet. "Moody would like you to come back to Grimmauld Place." He runs one hair through his hair, then his eyes meet hers once more. "He and Remus need to speak to you."

It takes a few seconds for the full implication of his words to sink in but when it does, a hot, hollow sensation wells up in the pit of her stomach. "So that’s why you’re here?" She almost winces at the sound of her voice, so thin and reedy. "You’re running an errand for Moody and Remus?"

He rubs the back of his neck with one hand, an old habit dating from his first muscle-straining Quidditch-playing days, and Hermione has the sudden feeling that he is choosing his words with care. "No," he says eventually, "I just offered to save them having to send you an Owl." His eyes lock with hers. "I’m not here as their message boy."

Releasing her white-knuckle hold on the kitchen chair, Hermione wraps her arms around herself, hating the surge of pure relief that rushes through her. She hates that she cares so much about what he thinks of her. She hates that he has such power over her. And sometimes, just sometimes, she hates that she loves him so much.

"Hermione?"

With a start, she realises that Harry is waiting for her reply, his gaze watchful. She fumbles hastily through the cotton wool of her thoughts for the thread of their conversation. "Why do they want to see me?"

Their eyes meet as he hesitates just long enough to for her to realise that he does know, then his gaze flicks away, one shoulder lifting in a half-shrug that is anything but casual. "I’m not entirely sure."

Not entirely sure? What utter rot. Hermione, the daughter of dentists, fights the urge to grind her teeth and instead narrows her eyes. "I thought this wasn’t my battle any more?" Harry flushes at the reminder of his earlier words, but refuses to be drawn, and her already frayed temper suddenly frays a great deal more. "Fine. Be like that. Bloody well be Harry ‘I’m so bloody mysterious’ Potter. I’m going to bed. Come on, Crookshanks."

Scooping up her cat, she stalks out of the room. She knows that she is merely proving Harry’s point about running away, but she also knows she is about to lose the battle with her tears. Damn you, Harry, why couldn’t you have just left well enough alone?

Even as she thinks this, Harry is again following her, close on her heels as she strides into the living room. "Hermione, wait."

"You can tell Moody and Remus that I’ll see them in the morning." Crookshanks squirms in her arms, a sure sign that she’s squeezing him too tightly, and she loosens her grip with a silent apology. "Surely whatever they want to say can wait until then."

"I need to talk to you too." He sounds annoyed, but there’s something else in his voice as well, an unspoken plea that almost stops her in her tracks. Almost. An hour ago he was treating me like a familiar but dull piece of the furniture, and now he wants to have a heart-to-heart? It would have made her laugh if it didn’t make her so angry.

"You can wait until the morning, too," she tosses sharply over her shoulder. She’s never spoken so rudely to anyone, let alone Harry, but she knows that if she stops walking, if she looks at him, she will be lost. "I’m going to bed."

"This can’t wait."

"Oh, come on, Harry, waiting is what we do best, remember?" Her voice is thick with unshed tears. "After all, that’s all we’ve been doing for the last couple of years, remember?" Her whole body is gripped with the urge to flee, to put as much space between them as humanly possible, but when she feels a gentle hand on her shoulder, her feet suddenly seem to be glued to the carpet.

"Hermione, please." His voice is soft and beseeching and much too close for comfort. "I need to talk to you."

Hermione closes her eyes for a few seconds, her whole body going slack at the feel of his hand on her shoulder. She can’t remember the last time he touched her like this, touched her deliberately, not just an accidental brush of the hand or nudge of the shoulder. His hand curls around the curve of her shoulder, the tip of his thumb grazing her collarbone, bared by the round neckline of her shirt, and a tremor shoots down the back of her legs.

Crookshanks seizes the opportunity afforded by her sudden stupor to leap from her arms, but she barely notices. "There’s no point," she says, unable to keep the misery from her voice. His hand tightens on her shoulder, and she feels herself being slowly turned on the spot. She doesn’t resist. She can’t. Her whole body feels boneless. Heavy.

His eyes glittering behind his glasses, he gazes at her intently. "Why not?"

The best way to keep him alive is to keep him focused on the fight ahead. You can’t allow anything to distract him, or yourself, she tells herself desperately, but this time her well-worn mantra doesn’t work. This time, she hears herself saying something quite different. "Because everything’s such a mess."

He shakes his head. "That’s not an answer."

She takes a deep breath, trying desperately to ignore the fact that the heat of his hand on her shoulder seems to be creeping across her skin, warming her blood. "There’s no point, Harry, because you’ve made it quite clear that there’s nothing I can do to help you. There’s no point because it’s obvious that you and I don’t want or need the same thing."

"This is unbelievable." His voice is low and rough as his hand tightens on her shoulder and, for a frightening instant, Hermione sees in his eyes the impulse to shake her. "Do you have any idea what the last two years have been like for me?"

"Of course I do," she says with fierce indignation, "it’s been bloody awful. The war -"

"I’m not talking about the war," he shoots back in a tight voice, his hand dropping from her shoulder. "I’m talking about you and me."

She stares at him, her heart pounding so loudly that she wonders why he can’t hear it as well. "What are you - "

He cuts her off. "I’m talking about having to spend the last two years pretending that what happened between us wasn’t the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me."

Hermione’s thoughts scatter, her resolve crumbling like a Muggle child’s sandcastle. Her hands are pressed flat against her thighs, but she still feels them trembling. "I don’t think we should talk about this now."

He mutters something under his breath, then fixes her with a piercing stare. "I do."

Hermione’s mouth goes dry, her stomach feeling as though she’s swallowed a dozen pepper imps at once. She used to think that facing Voldemort was the most frightening prospect in her life, yet somehow the fear of telling Harry the truth about her feelings has become the monster inside her head. When did I become such a coward? she wonders unhappily. She’s been hiding from this for so long that it’s become ingrained, almost second nature and Harry, for the most part, has seemed content for it to be that way. But now he’s saying all these things and everything is being turned on its head and it’s terrifying.

Harry is watching her carefully, and something he sees in her face makes his expression soften. He touches her on the forearm, then nods to the nearby couch. "Can we sit and talk for a while?" The ghost of a smile plays about his lips. "I promise to be on my best behaviour."

Oh, God, she thinks in despair, this is very bad. Her skin is still tingling from the feel of his hand on her arm and he’s making jokes about the couch and this is such a bad idea, but she’s so tired of running and hiding and lying to him and lying to herself. She lets Harry led her to the battered Chesterfield couch, settling herself in a corner and clutching a cushion to her chest like a child’s security blanket. When Harry looks as though he’s about to speak, she beats him to the punch, saying the first thing that pops into her head because she doesn’t know if she’s ready to hear what he wants to say and maybe because - deep down – she really is a coward.

"What did Ron say when you left to come here?"

Harry is sitting forward on the couch, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands loosely linked. "Surprisingly little." He looks sideways at her then, his gaze searching her face. "He knows, doesn’t he?"

She swallows hard, considers a dozen different while lies, then takes a deep breath that does nothing to steady her nerves. "I’m not sure about anything else," she begins hesitantly, the truth feeling rusty on her tongue, "but he knows what happened at your 16th birthday party."

He frowns, but it looks – she thinks, she hopes - more like an expression of confusion than of anger. "How?"

She takes another deep breath. God, why is this so hard? Because it’s Harry, she thinks, answering her own question, and nothing is ever simple when it comes to Harry. "I told him."

He looks at her as though she’s suddenly become a distant cousin of Fluffy and grown another head. "What? When?"

"Just before lunch on the first day we all spent at the Burrow after the end of sixth year." She knows that she sounds as though she’s supplying the answer to an exam question – something she suspects happens more often than not - but the day in question is burned rather deeply into her memory.

Harry’s puzzled frown becomes one of concentration. "The first day of holidays after the end of sixth year…" he mutters. "Wasn’t that - " he stops abruptly, his face turning a dull red as realisation dawns.

"- the day you and I weren’t really on speaking terms because the previous day I’d had to watch Cho Chang give you a passionate farewell kiss while standing right in the middle of the Great Hall," she says, finishing his sentence for him. The day after I had to sit and pretend that I didn’t care that you were being snogged to within an inch of your life by the one person who always seemed to have the power to make me feel like an unattractive dullard who didn’t deserve to be seen with you. Even now, four years later when it should be – when it was – ancient history, the memory of that day still has the power to make her squirm. Even though it had been obvious to everyone – especially Cho – that Harry wasn’t a willing participant, it still had the power to sting.

Looking more than a little sheepish, Harry shakes his head. "I’m sorry."

Oh, Harry…She bites back the sudden urge to laugh, suspecting that it would come out as a hysterical giggle. "Harry, it was years ago. I think you can stop apologising now." She manages a weak smile. "I know it wasn’t your fault – I was there, remember?"

He doesn’t return her smile. "Why did you tell Ron?" A shadow flickers across his face. "Did he ask you out?"

"What?" She throws him a quick glance, both startled and pleased by the unmistakable note of jealousy in his voice. "No, nothing so scandalous. He found me crying and asked me what was wrong."

"What did you tell him?"

"Only a little." She glances at the fireplace, wishing she could blame the merrily crackling fire for the heat in her face. "He guessed the rest."

"What did he say?"

Hermione digs her thumbs into the embroidered cushion in her arms, trying to focus on the feel of rough fabric and delicate seams against her skin rather than the almost nauseous churning in the pit of her stomach. "Harry, it was years ago. Does it really matter?"

His gaze is unwavering. "Yes."

She wants to refuse but perhaps, she admits reluctantly, he needs to hear this as much as she needs to tell him. Taking a deep breath, she fixes her gaze on the small spot of carpet between her feet and begins to tell him about the one of the most awkward conversations of her life.

~*~*~

"What’s the matter?"

She turns away from the sound of Ron’s voice, wishing she was holding Crookshanks so she could hide her face in his fur, wishing she’d picked a better place than the Weasleys’ backyard to give in to her tears of frustration and hurt. "Nothing, I’m fine," she says hastily, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

Ron looks somewhat offended. "I’m not an idiot, you know. Unless Mum’s had you peeling a sack of onions, you’re upset about something."

Her tears hopefully eradiated, she peers up at Ron from her cross-legged position on the warm summer grass. "I’m fine, really, I am."

He takes a seat on the ground beside her, folding up his long legs awkwardly. At almost seventeen, he’s already taller than his father and almost as tall as Bill. "Must be something pretty bad. I mean, you only cry when you get really mad, and not even the fake wand thing last week made you that mad. Not that I thought it was funny," he adds hastily." I swear I didn’t know George had swapped it."

She shakes her head. "It’s Harry."

Ron tosses her an easy grin. "So what else is new?"

"Not just Harry," she mumbles thickly, distracted by her damp eyes and nose and wishing she’d thought to tuck a handkerchief into her pocket this morning. "It’s about me as well."

"You and Harry," he repeats almost absentmindedly, and then his whole body seems to stiffen. "You and Harry." He slowly turns his head to look at her, his bright blue eyes locking with hers. "What about you and Harry?"

She actually feels the palms of her hands grow damp. Oh dear, this is very bad. "I, uh, we, well - "

They stare at each other for a few seconds, then she sees the realisation hit him like a Stunning Spell. "You and Harry," he says flatly as he looks away. "Right."

Hermione feels faintly sick. "It’s not what you’re thinking."

He doesn’t look at her. "I doubt that very much."

The misery in his voice makes her want to reach for his hand, but she knows that would also be a very bad idea. "I’m so sorry, Ron. I shouldn’t have said anything."

His jaw tightens, and there is a decidedly belligerent note in his voice. "Why not?" Reaching down one long arm, he pulls up a several bright green blades of grass from the lawn with an almost vicious flick of his wrist.

"Because, uh - " She stops, suddenly realizing that the truth would drive a stake right through the heart of their friendship. They both know the reason she shouldn’t have said anything, even if neither of them is willing to say it out loud. "Because there’s really nothing to tell you," she says in a rush, unhappily wishing the ground would rise up and swallow her whole.

Resting his elbows on his knees, he hunches his shoulders, his gaze focused solely on the long blade of grass he’s slowly shredding between his fingers. "So…you and Harry," he says in a hollow, sing-song voice.

She blinks, the warm pressure of impending tears pressing behind her eyes. "Don’t, Ron."

"How long has this been going on?"

"Nothing is going on, Ron."

His expression has a stubborn set to it that she knows only too well. "How long, Hermione?"

She sighs, defeated. "Since his 16th birthday party, I guess."

A look of pure shock flashes across Ron’s face. "What? You mean for the past year you two have been - "

"No!" Taking a deep breath, she closes her eyes for a moment. Why didn’t I just fob him off with a lame excuse and escape inside the house? "We haven’t been doing anything, Ron. I told you, nothing’s going on."

Looking both unconvinced and unhappy, Ron stares at an unseen point on the horizon. "So, what happened at his birthday party?"

Hermione says nothing. Ron darts a quick glance at her, then looks away once more, as though he can’t quite bear to see her face. "Must have been good, whatever it was. He seemed almost cheery when he told us about the prophecy about old You-Know-Who."

She knows she should be angry with him for saying such things, but his snide words do nothing to disguise the misery in his voice, and it’s all she can do to stop herself from patting him on the shoulder. "It wasn’t like that."

"Then what was it like?"

"It was just a kiss," she says, knowing that the truth of the matter – that it was so much more than just a kiss - will hurt Ron much more than a lie. "Actually, it was hardly a kiss at all." She hesitates, hating the fact that she feels the need to trivialize one of the most important events in her life and yet knowing that she must. "It was more of an accident than anything else," she adds softly.

Ron opens his mouth as if to toss back a scathing reply, then seems to think better of it. He takes a deep breath, then goes back to studying his hands, the blade of grass having been reduced to a few dots of green confetti. "And is that how Harry saw it? An accident?"

Again, she says nothing. She can’t. Nothing she says now will make this any better. Ron mumbles something under his breath, then turns his head to stare at her. "Why didn’t one of you tell me sooner?"

"I didn’t tell you," she begins slowly, careful not to use the dreaded ‘we’ word, "because nothing really happened. And nothing has happened since then." Reaching out a tentative hand, she touches his arm, gratified that he doesn’t pull away. "I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want anything to change between the three of us."

Ron doesn’t answer. He glances quickly at her hand on his arm, then bows his head to morosely study his feet once more. Feeling beyond awkward, Hermione withdraws her hand as discreetly as possible and they sit in silence for what feels like a long time. Finally, Ron clears his throat. "Well, I guess that explains it," he mutters, still staring at his feet.

"Explains what?"

"Why Harry stopped watching Cho when we started Sixth Year," Ron says gruffly, "and started watching you."

She feels a flush of colour rising up in her face. "Rubbish."

"I guess Cho noticed too," he goes on, ignoring her retort, "and that’s probably why she snogged him on the last day of school, to show him what he’d been missing all that time." He blinks, his gaze wandering over her tearstained face. She can almost see the cogs whirring in his head. "Is that why you’re crying?"

She shrugs, picking aimlessly at the seam of her jeans with her fingernails, wishing Ron had picked a different time to suddenly develop an insight into the female psyche. "It’s a little more complicated than that."

"How?"

Hermione smiles sadly. "If I could explain, it wouldn’t be complicated."

~*~*~

When she finishes speaking, Harry stares at her for a long moment, then frowns. "Then what happened?"

"Mrs Weasley called us in for lunch and Ron avoided me for the rest of the day." It had actually taken the better part of a month for Ron to look her in the eye, and several weeks into their last year at Hogwarts before things between them had begun to feel normal again. To a casual observer, it would have seemed as though everything was the same between the three of them. It wasn’t, of course. Nothing had been the same from the moment she and Harry had shared that first kiss at Grimmauld Place.

"The first day we spent at the Burrow after sixth year finished…" Harry stares at his linked hands for a moment, his brow furrowed, then he looks at her. "That was the same day he accidentally broke my nose while we were playing Quidditch."

Guilt tugs at Hermione’s conscience, and not solely due to the less-than-subtle hint of accusation in his voice. Trust Harry to put unerringly his finger on yet another secret millstone hanging around her neck. "Yes, I know."

A kaleidoscope of emotion dances across his usually stoic face. "I guess it obviously wasn’t as accidental as I thought."

Privately she tends to agree, but she certainly isn’t going to say that out loud. "He didn’t mean to do it, Harry, not consciously," she says briskly, hoping she sounds more confident in her words than she feels. "He was absolutely horrified, don’t you remember?"

"Funnily enough, what I remember most is all the blood." Leaning back on the couch, he tilts back his head to stare at the living room ceiling, his fingers now toying with the cuffs of his long sleeved t-shirt. "Why didn’t you ever tell me that he knew? I understand why you didn’t tell me straight away, but why not tell me later?"

Hermione is very glad that he’s looking at the ceiling rather than at her. "Because things were already – uh, well - awkward between you and me, and I didn’t want to make it worse by bringing Ron into it."

"But I could have talked to him about it - "

Inwardly blanching at the thought, she shakes her head. "Trust me, Harry, that would not have been a good idea."

"Why not?" The irritation in his voice is plain to hear but before she can speak, he’s already answering his own question with surprising accuracy. "Because you didn’t want to hurt his feelings any more than you already had?"

"Partly."

Harry glares at the ceiling, as though it too has been keeping secrets from him. "What about your feelings? Or mine, for that matter?"

It’s all she can do not to squirm in her seat, and she stretches one hand down to stroke a purring Crookshanks as he curls himself around her legs, the solid feel of his furry warmth beneath her hand instantly reassuring. "I really don’t want to talk about this tonight."

"See, this is what I don’t understand," he mutters, sounding very much as though he is gritting his teeth, "Our best friend used to fancy you. He probably still fancies you." He finally stops staring at the ceiling, and turns to look at her. "Why do we have to keep pretending that he doesn’t?"

Sometimes, Hermione thinks wearily, there really is a very good reason for not rehashing the past, and this would be one of those times. "He may have had a crush on me at school," she states in a firm voice, hoping that the Muggle myth about lightening bolts striking down bare-faced liars doesn’t apply to those who deliberately understate the truth. "Trust me, he doesn’t fancy me any more."

"How can you be so sure about that?" Suspicion glitters in his bright green eyes. "Or shouldn’t I ask?"

His words hit her like a slap in the face. Furious with him for the tawdry implication and herself for letting him make her feel as though she needs to explain herself, she tosses the cushion to one side and scrambles inelegantly off the couch, startling Harry and sending Crookshanks stalking from the room in a orange-coloured huff. "I think you should go."

Harry hastily gets to his feet, a stricken expression etched on his pale face. "I’m so sorry, Hermione. I shouldn’t have said that."

Once again, she feels foolishly close to tears. "You’re right, you shouldn’t have, and I really think you should go."

Looking more flustered than she’s seen him a long time, he runs an agitated hand through his hair. "I don’t want to go anywhere until we’ve talked about this."

And here we are, right back where we started from, she thinks miserably. "I think you’ve said enough for one night."

"Hermione -"

"Don’t." She holds up one hand, gratified to see that it looks rock-solid, quite different to the violent fluttering of her pulse and the unsteady hammering of her heart. "Just don’t. I’m going to bed."

"This is ridiculous." He takes two steps toward her as he speaks, and she instinctively takes a half-step backward. His gaze narrows. "Why do you do that?"

Hermione links her hands behind her back, twisting her fingers together. "Do what?"

"Cringe when I come anywhere near you."

"I don’t cringe –"

"You’re still worried about violating one of your damned unwritten rules, aren’t you?"

"My rules?" She glares at him. "When did they become my rules?"

He suddenly looks ten years older, the broad line of his shoulders slumping as if in defeat. "They’ve always been your rules, Hermione," he says softly.

She sucks in a sharp breath. "You were the one who said you didn’t want to sneak around and hide in corners. You were the one who said we needed to pull back."

"I know. But I didn’t realise that it would turn into a case of ‘all’ or ‘nothing’, that we’d go from one extreme to the other."

"That’s not true," she protests, but even as she denies his words, she knows he’s right. They went from best friends to lovers to two people who had no idea how to behave around each other, and she has the awful, dreadful feeling that it was – is - all her fault.

"Isn’t it?" Harry looks as unhappy as she feels. "You can barely bring yourself to touch my hand, let alone hug me or kiss me on the cheek the way you used to do before we -" He breaks off, his face flushed.

"Before we slept together," she says, giving him a brittle smile.

The words hang in the air between them, and Hermione feels her pulse spike dangerously. He takes one, two, three slow steps toward her, then they stare at each other for a long moment, the crackling of the fire the only sound in the room. When he lifts his hand to her face, his palm warm against her cheek, her heart feels as though it’s about to burst out of her chest. "I don’t remember doing much sleeping."

Heat bursts into life beneath her skin and she jerks away from his touch. "Please don’t," she whispers desperately.

"Why not?"

"Because I can’t do this." She wraps her arms around herself. "I can’t casually discuss that night as though we’re discussing the weather or the Quidditch results." She hesitates, uncomfortably aware that her voice is wavering. "You were right, Harry," she finally whispers unsteadily. "I’m sick of pretending it never happened."

"Then let’s stop pretending."

She stares at him. "What are you saying?"

His hand is suddenly tugging at hers, coaxing her arm back down to her side. "This isn’t how I want things to be between us." He threads his fingers through hers almost gingerly, as though worried about her reaction. "I don’t know what I thought would happen, but I never wanted it to be like this."

Hermione sucks in a deep breath, hoping it will cool her heated thoughts. "Then why didn’t you say something?" she demands, pulling her hand away from his. So much for cooling her thoughts, she thinks darkly. "For God’s sake, Harry, it’s been two years! Two years during which you were apparently perfectly happy for things to be the way they were!"

He grabs her hand again and holds it fast. "I was the one who said we needed to pull back. It seemed only fair that you were the one who set the ground rules." His eyes search her face, as though looking for the answers she’s not giving him with her words. "I didn’t realise that it was all wrong until it was too late."

Hermione opens her mouth to speak, then closes it again. What can she say? She can’t argue with him, because he’s bloody well right. It all went wrong and now it’s a huge mess and she’s afraid that it really is too late.

"Why did you really leave tonight?" he asks softly, staring down at their entwined hands. "And don’t tell me you were tired, because we both know that’s not the reason."

Trying not to notice that his thumb is making slow circles on the back of her hand, she shrugs. "I had to get away."

He lifts his eyes to hers. "You had to get away from me."

"Yes." The word is little more than a whisper.

An almost inaudible sigh escapes his lips, and it’s all she can do to stop herself from pulling him into her arms. "Why?"

There’s a lump in her throat the size of an orange. "You know why."

His hand tightens around hers. "I want to hear you say it."

Her thoughts begin to blur with panic. "You’d already made the decision to go with Moody and Remus, and I didn’t think you needed my help packing."

Harry looks less than impressed by her feeble attempt at levity. "Hermione…"

"Fine, I’ll tell you. I left because you were planning to vanish with Moody again, and even though you nearly died the last time, I knew that there was nothing I could say or do to stop you from leaving -" She breaks off, swallowing the rest of her words, hoping he hasn’t already seen ‘leaving me behind’ in her eyes. "I couldn’t stop you leaving the last time, and this time isn’t any different."

He shakes his head. "This time is different."

Hermione swallows hard, but that orange sized lump is still in her throat. Harry suddenly seems to be standing much closer - she can smell the familiar scent of lemon soap and warm skin. "Why is it different this time?"

"Because everything is different now," he says simply.

Again she finds herself opening her mouth to speak, then closing it again without saying a word. She suspects she looks rather like a confused goldfish, but she truly has no answer to that statement. "What are you saying?" she finally asks.

"I’m saying that we should stop pretending. I’m saying that I was wrong. I’m saying that I’m sick of waiting for the right time to be together." She stares at him, speechless once more. "What if we don’t win this war?"

Dismay helps her find her voice. "Don’t say that."

"Listen to me." He leans closer, taking her other hand in his. "What if this is it? What if there is no afterwards?"

She can feel her mouth trembling. It makes her voice sound shaky. "You remembered."

His lips curve in a rueful smile. "I remember everything you’ve ever said to me from the moment we met."

She closes her eyes, feeling the warm sting of impending tears prickling behind her eyes. "I didn’t tell you the whole truth about tonight," she whispers. It suddenly seems very important that she tell him this particular secret. "The truth is that I left because I didn’t think you needed me anymore."

He makes an odd sound that is halfway between a laugh and a snort. "I need you, Hermione. I need you so much that sometimes it frightens me."

She opens her eyes to gaze at him in disbelief, not quite able to reconcile this Harry with the one who had looked straight through her in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place earlier this evening. "Then why did you – why were you so- " She stops, feeling somewhat light-headed, struggling to think of a polite way to ask, "why were you acting like a complete and utter prat?"

Thankfully, she doesn’t have to resort to such bluntness. "It wasn’t anything you’d done," he says quietly. He releases her hands as he speaks, and she’s vaguely aware of circulation returning to her fingers. She hadn’t realised he was holding onto her so tightly. "It was a combination of a lot of things, and some of them were about you, but it wasn’t anything that you’d done, trust me." His gaze locks with hers. "I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that."

She would dearly like to fling her arms around him, but her thoughts are still darting in a dozen different directions. Most of those thoughts are questions she suspects he can’t – or won’t – answer, but she needs to at least try to get this straight in her head. She needs to get this straight in her head. "Did you have an argument with Ron before I came into the kitchen?"

"No."

Realisation dawns like a bloody great light bulb going on inside her head. "You had an argument with Moody and Remus, didn’t you?"

"Not exactly an argument." He manages to sound evasive and earnest at the same time, and Hermione can’t help but admire such a skill. "Let’s just say that a few strong words were exchanged."

"Anything to do with why they want me to come back to Grimmauld Place?"

"Maybe."

Biting back a sigh, she puts her hands on her hips and frowns at him. "That’s not an answer, Harry."

"I know," he offers her an apologetic half-smile, "but until you come back to Grimmauld Place and speak to them, it’s the only answer I can give you."

She nods slowly, the nervous, churning sensation in the pit of her stomach returning as she takes a mental step backward, trying to see the whole picture. Trying to see what he’s not telling her. "Are you leaving me – and Ron - behind because you want to keep us safe?"

His smile fades. "It’s not as simple as that."

"It is as simple as that. Ron and I have been fighting at your side for the last ten years. We’re not helpless children who need to be protected."

"I know that."

"Then explain to me why we can’t go with you."

"There’s more than one way to fight at someone’s side, Hermione."

"That sounds like Remus talking, not you." He shrugs and says nothing, and Hermione can literally feel him slipping away from her. "Ron and I were put in Gryffindor for a reason, Harry."

Amusement dances in his eyes. "As if the Sorting Hat would ever put a Weasley anywhere else but Gryffindor."

"That’s nit-picking and you know it. You know what I mean."

They stare at each other for what seems like an eternity, then he lifts his hands, as if in defeat. "Ron understands that I have to do this," he finally says, a note of despair straining his voice.

She can’t stop the words that rise up in her throat any more than she can stop breathing. "Ron isn’t in love with you."

He stares at her, his eyes finally alive, no longer those of a stranger. Over the last ten years, she has forced herself to speak only of friendship and loyalty. She and Harry have never talked of love. They have never allowed themselves the luxury. She sees the memory of their one night together burn in his eyes, and a heat that has nothing to do with the nearby fireplace creeps across her skin, dancing up her spine, prickling her scalp.

"Do you ever think about it, Hermione?" His voice is rough and dark and makes her think of things of which best friends have no business thinking, things like the heady combination of cool sheets and warm flesh. Things like the taste of his mouth, the smell of his skin and the feel of him inside her.

She has a scant few seconds to appreciate the fact that he’s repeating her own long-ago question, then he lifts his hand to her face, his fingertips grazing her heated skin in a soft caress that chases the thought from her head and coaxes a breathless answer from her lips. "Yes."

"So do I." He brushes his fingertips along her collarbone, the light caress sending a flurry of goosebumps across her skin. "Some days I can’t think about anything else." The longing in his voice makes her heart flip over. He is looking at her with such passion, his sea green eyes almost black in the half-light, and all her words flee in the face of the naked emotion on his face. "Some days," he adds in an unsteady whisper, "I can’t look at you without wanting you."

Her heart suddenly feels as though it might sprout wings and fly right out of her chest. Speechless, she brings her hands up his face, no longer able to resist the temptation to touch him, to feel his skin against hers. He watches her through half-lidded eyes as she traces the contours of his face with trembling fingertips, exploring the hard curve of his whisker roughened jaw, teasing the cleft of his chin with her little fingernail. When she strokes one finger along his bottom lip, he makes a thick sound of frustration and grabs her wandering hand. "Don’t."

She knows that there are still far many secrets between them, but the rush of blood beneath her skin is intoxicating. She’s been thinking so hard about so many things for so very long. At this precise moment in time, all she wants to do is feel. "Why not?" she whispers, brushing her thumb across the warm skin of his palm, a silent challenge to echo her words.

His hand tightens around hers. "Because today is one of those days."

~*~*~*~*~

5. One Step Forward

Chapter Four

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost. ~ G.K. Chesterton

~*~*~*~*~

"Do you ever think about it, Hermione?" His voice is rough and dark and makes her think of things of which best friends have no business thinking, things like the heady combination of cool sheets and warm flesh. Things like the taste of his mouth, the smell of his skin and the feel of him inside her.

She has a scant few seconds to appreciate the fact that he's repeating her own long-ago question, then he lifts his hand to her face, his fingertips grazing her heated skin in a soft caress that chases the thought from her head and coaxes a breathless answer from her lips. "Yes."

"So do I." He brushes his fingertips along her collarbone, the light caress sending a flurry of goosebumps across her skin. "Some days I can't think about anything else." The longing in his voice makes her heart flip over. He is looking at her with such passion, his sea green eyes almost black in the half-light, and all her words flee in the face of the naked emotion on his face. "Some days," he adds in an unsteady whisper, "I can't look at you without wanting you."

Her heart suddenly feels as though it might sprout wings and fly right out of her chest. Speechless, she brings her hands up to his face, no longer able to resist the temptation to touch him, to feel his skin against hers. He watches her through half-lidded eyes as she traces the contours of his face with trembling fingertips, exploring the hard curve of his whisker-roughened jaw, teasing the cleft of his chin with her little fingernail. When she strokes one finger along his bottom lip, he makes a thick sound of frustration and grabs her wandering hand. "Don't."

She knows that there are still far too many secrets between them, but the rush of blood beneath her skin is intoxicating. She's been thinking so hard about so many things for so very long. At this precise moment in time, all she wants to do is feel. "Why not?" she whispers, brushing her thumb across the warm skin of his palm, a silent challenge to echo her words.

His hand tightens around hers. "Because today is one of those days."

She freezes, her bravado faltering in the face of such honesty. Pulling her hand out of his grasp, she takes a half-step away from him, even though she knows it will take more than a mere foot of air between them to stop the churning in her stomach. But his hand recaptures hers in less than a heartbeat, and she can't help but think of the ease with which she's seen him snare many a recalcitrant Snitch over the years. “It's always one of those days,” he adds softly, lifting his other hand to her face. His eyes are dark and hot with an unmistakable hunger - for her, only for her - and she feels an answering rush of heat flare into life beneath her skin. The comforting sounds of her home - the crackling of burning wood in the fireplace, the muted noise of distant Muggle traffic - fade away until all she can hear is the blood thrumming through her veins, the soft rush of breath in and out of her lungs.

It is, she realises with a silent start, a familiar but long-forgotten sensation. After the Triwizard Tournament in their fourth year, she had often dreamed of being suspended in darkness, unable to speak or see, her arms and legs lazily drifting. It has been a long time since that particular memory has haunted her sleep, but she has never forgotten that feeling.

But this is not a dream, and that weightless sensation is now infused with a sexual hunger that makes her ache down to her very bones, her whole body humming with the need to touch and to taste and to feel. All she has to do is step closer, lift her face to his. One tiny step, and everything will change all over again. One hint of invitation from her, and the memory of his bare skin against hers would no longer be just a memory. Her throat tightens with both fear and longing, squeezing her voice into nothingness.

She struggles to find the right words, a task made all the more difficult by the warmth of his gaze as it flutters from her eyes to her lips. Then he lets out his breath in a soft sigh, both of his hands falling to his side. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel as though you had to - ” he stops, suddenly looking so boyishly awkward that it makes her heart ache. “I just wanted to make things right between us.”

“Before you left with Remus and Moody.”

“Yes.”

“In case you didn't come back.” The words come out in a whisper, as if that will somehow make a difference. As though she can keep him safe by refusing to admit the truth out loud.

Harry's hand tightens on hers, but his gaze doesn't waver.

“Yes.”

She feels as though she might be sick. She feels as though she might cry. She feels far too many things all at once, her head spinning as though she's just been flung from a Muggle roundabout, and then she is suddenly furious, with him, with herself, with everything. Completely frustrated by the utter foolishness of it all. She wants to shout at him, to yell until she's red in the face. She wants to shake him, hit him, push him against the wall and kiss him until the only thoughts in his head are of her.

There's something very embarrassing about realising just how much of an idiotic coward one has been, she thinks as she looks at him, studying the features she knows as well as her own. For so many years now, his has been the voice in her head, the face in her dreams, his words haunting her nightmares. Neither of us can live while the other survives…I always knew I'd have to face him in the end. For the longest time, she has known that every time she says goodbye to him, it could be for the last time. It's something she has long accepted, but tonight the thought is unbearable. Unacceptable. Her heart is hammering and she is almost sick with nerves, but her decision is suddenly very simple. “You can tell Remus that I'll come to Grimmauld Place first thing in the morning.”

He nods, a faint frown pinching the skin between his dark eyebrows. “Not tonight?”

“It's late, Harry.”

His frown vanishes, his long-practiced non-committal expression firmly back in place. He nods again, then takes a step backwards. “So you said earlier.” Still so painfully polite, she thinks sadly. Still telling me what he thinks I want to hear. “And you're right. It is late.” He gives her a crooked smile. “I'd better go and give Remus your message.”

“Send an owl.”

“What?”

“I said, send an owl.” Her heart in her mouth, she reaches out and catches the sleeve of his jumper between her fingers. “Stay with me.”

He stares at her with such obvious disbelief that she's not sure whether to be flattered or insulted. Neither, she decides swiftly. She's wasted so much time on pointless over-thinking. She can't bear to waste another second. “Please, Harry.” She curls her hand around his forearm, the heat of his skin warming her palm through the thin cotton of his jumper. “I'm not sure I'm brave enough to ask twice.”

The smooth, pale skin of his throat works as he swallows hard. “You're one of the bravest people I know.”

“Not when it comes to this.” Putting her hand on his chest, she closes her eyes and inhales deeply. She can smell the clean scent of his skin, the lingering smell of cold night air on his clothes. She wonders giddily if the curve of his neck still tastes like lemon soap and salt, then opens her eyes and her lips and her heart. “I want to stop pretending. What do you want, Harry?”

“What I've always wanted.” He puts his hand over hers, splayed over his heart. “You.” She closes her eyes as he bows his head, his mouth seeking and finding hers in a slow, sweet kiss.

It's not exactly how she remembers. It's so much better than that. Two years of denying - and remembering - what was between them has only served to sharpen her senses. Her hands twist in the front of his jumper as his mouth covers hers, tiny sparks of heat spiking her blood as she inhales the spicy heat of his mouth. When the cool metal rim of his glasses presses gently against the side of her nose, she shivers. Honestly, who would have thought such a thing could be erotic? She almost smiles at the thought, but then his mouth moves on hers, his lips gently coaxing, demanding, and the impulse flickers and burns away to ash in the heat of her blood.

One of his hands cups the back of her head, the other curving around her hip, drawing her closer. His tongue brushes against hers and her body arches of its own violation, her hips lifting in a helpless, mute appeal. He groans, a rough sound of pleasure that vibrates through her mouth and her throat, then the hand on her hip tightens and urges her even closer. Suddenly the hard, hot shape of him is pressing against her belly, sending a shock of arousal skittering through her like lightening. Obeying an instinct stronger than conscious will, she rises up on her toes, pushing, seeking, wanting to feel him against her, wanting the rigid thrust of his body where she is aching, burning, dying inside.

He lifts his head and presses his forehead against hers, his chest heaving beneath her hands, his heart hammering beneath her palm. Her breath quivering in her lungs, she touches her lips to his and whispers one last question, rejoicing in the subtle tremor that ripples through him. “I guess this means you're staying?”

~*~*~*~

Ridiculous to feel shy, really, she thinks dazedly as her sensible bra falls to the floor to join her blouse and her skirt and her knickers. Harry's clothes are already there, removed by her own shaking hands. After all, this isn't the first time we've done this. It shouldn't feel like the first time. Oh, but it does. Every touch, every kiss, makes her skin blush with a warmth that owes as much to awkwardness as it does desire.

They are in her bedroom, lying side by side on her bed, legs entangled. The flowered duvet is rumpled beneath them, pillows made askew by awkward elbows and hands. His glasses are on her bedside table - he'd flung them there after knocking them against her nose for the third time - and she can't help but feel faintly grateful. It's somehow easier to be bold - to touch him, kiss his smooth skin - when she knows he can't quite see her.

He brings both hands up to cup her breasts and gently scrapes his thumbnails across the stiffened nipples. She closes her eyes as sensation shoots from her breasts to her groin, making her body arch instinctively. Digging her fingers into his shoulders, she lifts her face to his, wanting the reassurance of his kiss. She opens her eyes just in time to see a shaky smile tugging at his lips, then his mouth covers hers, his tongue brushing against hers in an erotic dance that turns her bones to liquid heat.

Harry skims one hand down her side as he kisses her, caressing the curve of her hip, long fingers splayed over her bare bottom. His touch seems surer - more confident - than she remembers. Perhaps it's because they're older now; perhaps it's something more. She has no idea if he has been with anyone else during their time apart, but she will not ask. The thought sears her soul, but she will not ask. Not tonight.

When he lifts his head, she presses a kiss to the faded scar on his shoulder, tasting the salt of his skin on her tongue, then pulls back to study him. He watches her with dark and serious eyes, the soft light from her bedside lamp throwing his familiar features into sharp relief. When she can no longer bear to meet his eyes - her heart is pounding as though it might burst - she begins to touch him, wanting to rediscover and explore. His pale skin is stretched tightly over finely drawn muscles, a fine dusting of dark hair on his chest, under his arms, trailing over his flat stomach. He's still too thin, but he's more than beautiful to her. Lean muscles quiver as she scrapes her fingernails lightly down his stomach. When she wraps her hand around him, marveling at the velvety heat of him, the breath seems to leave his body in a soft hiss. “Hermione…”

He shifts his body then, finally pulling her hard against him and rolling onto his back as he takes her with him. Their legs tangle together, the fine hairs on his thighs scraping against her skin in an erotic caress that makes her body flushed and restless. She feels his erection - that secret, hot flesh, so hard and urgent - pressing against her thigh and she feels instantly feels wicked and wild and totally out of control.

He slips a hand around the nape of her neck and takes her mouth in a demanding kiss that steals the breath from her lungs. His mouth is soft and hard at the same, his lips determinedly coaxing. When his tongue slips between her lips to taste and caress, she wants to weep from the sheer sensual joy of it. When it is over, he stares at her, his eyes roaming her face as though trying to memorize her features. “Did you mean what you said?”

Her stomach flips over. She knows what he's asking, knows that her earlier words - Ron isn't in love with you - and all their implications are still hanging between them. She bites her lip, afraid, so afraid of so many things. What she feels. What lies ahead. Afraid that he will never feel even half of what she feels for him. In the end, though, there's only one answer she can give him. “Yes.” She touches his mouth, his chin, feeling the rasp of his whiskers beneath her fingertips. “I've always meant it.”

His eyes burn into hers and she can't believe that this is the same man who looked right through her only an hour earlier. The knowledge that he has not told her how he feels is sitting like a stone at the bottom of her heart, and she is suddenly gripped with the need to give him a reason to be silent. Holding his gaze with hers, she trails her hands down his chest, skipping her fingertips lightly over ribs and muscles and smooth, warm skin. Touching her lips to his, she whispers unsteadily against his mouth. “Kiss me again.”

He does, and then his hands are suddenly everywhere - touching, teasing, tempting - his mouth following the trail his hands are blazing. Her blood is on fire, her skin shivering at every touch. He mutters her name against her mouth - a guttural warning - then he rolls over, pinning her beneath him, the glorious weight of him pressing her deep into the mattress. When his fingertips brush the inside of her thigh, she shudders. When he presses his palm against the growing ache between her legs, a soft whimper of need bubbles up inside her throat. Digging her fingers into his upper arms, she arches into his touch, her hips lifting off the bed, demanding, pleading. Reaching for her hands, he holds them above her head, pinning her beneath him as he lowers his mouth to her breasts.

Oh, My God. She wrenches her hands free to clutch at his shoulders, then to slide them down his sweat slicked back. Gripping his hips, she pulls him against her as the burning ache between her legs grows hotter and fiercer. His erection is taut and heavy, pushing against her, rubbing, demanding. She wraps her legs around his hips in urgent invitation, her whole body shaking with the furious need to feel him inside her. “Harry, please…”

Cradled between her thighs, he needs no further urging. His mouth is hot on her neck, his hands slipping beneath her bottom to lift her up. There is an instant of sweet, agonized anticipation, her skin almost crackling with sensual energy. All too soon - not soon enough - he takes her mouth in a devouring kiss and presses himself to her, burying his heated flesh deep in the embrace of her body with a single thrust. It's different to the first time - her flesh is slick and waiting - but it still shocks her. She cries out, burying her face in the crook of his neck, her thigh muscles straining as she tightens her legs around his hips. He moves again, filling her, pressing deeper, and she sucks in a sharp breath, her body almost overwhelmed by the feel of him.

He stills instantly, his breath hot and unsteady in her ear. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” She lifts her hands to his face, threading her fingers through his hair, pulling his mouth down to hers for a kiss. “Don't stop.”

In the half-lit room that suddenly feels too warm, they twist together on her rumpled bed for what feels like an eternity, remembering and discovering. The scent of him, the solid heat of him against her, the ragged sound of his breathing - all things that have both haunted and sustained her for the last two years - fill her senses. His forehead pressed against hers, he holds her hips hard, pushing her higher and higher until she is almost senseless with need. She listens to her breath as it comes in short gasps, her heart crying out silently with every fevered thrust of their bodies.

You love him too much.

She closes her eyes, overwhelmed by the swell of emotion that floods her heart, and she can no longer swallow the cry of protest that is burning her throat. "I can't bear the thought of losing you." She gasps out the words as they writhe together, every urgent thrust stealing another breath from her body. "I can't bear it."

His heated gaze seems to burn right through to her soul. “Don't say that,” he mutters fiercely, putting his mouth on the curve of her damp shoulder, his tongue warm on her skin.

”Promise me.” She slides her hands around his neck to bring his mouth down to hers. He pulls her harder against him, his body invading hers afresh in a tender assault. She kisses him hungrily, tasting the salt of her sweat on his lips, her words as foolishly hopeful as a schoolgirl's crush. “Give me your word that I won't lose you.”

His eyes darken as desolation wars with desire. “You know I can't.”

The pulsing warmth between her legs grows hotter, more insistent, overriding the last shreds of her control. She slides her hands through his hair, digging her fingertips into his scalp as she jerks her hips up against his, urging, demanding. “Then give me something else.”

Something inside him seems to snap. He looks at her with something wild glittering in his eyes before he begins to move, burying himself deep inside again and again with long strokes that makes her gasp with greedy pleasure. The liquid heat in the pit of her belly starts to trickle through her veins and she closes her eyes, feeling the familiar tremors burgeoning to life in the hollow of her womb.

With an unsteady hand, he reaches between their straining bodies, down to where the thick length of him is buried so deeply. He touches her there, once, twice, then again and again, touching her with long, slow strokes that call the blood to the surface of her inflamed flesh. A quiver rushes up the back of her legs, her muscles tensing as the dark, heavy knot of sensation deep inside her tightens almost unbearably, then unravels in a rush of heat.

His name tears from her throat in a hoarse cry as the first wave of release hits her. Harry kisses her, swallowing her gasp of pleasure as she wraps her arms around his neck, aware of nothing but the fierce throb of her release. Her head falling backwards, her fingernails digging into his shoulders as she lifts her hips, her body calling to his as he sinks into her again and again. He whispers her name when he finally shudders against her, the pulse of his flesh hot and deep inside her.

When he whispers her name a second time, it sounds like a promise.

~*~*~

The huge yawn almost cracks her jaw in two, but at least it brings her back to life. She doesn't know how much time has passed, but she belatedly realizes that the mattress is dipping behind her. Opening her eyes, she sees Harry rising from the bed and blinks, confused. “What is it?”

“It's okay.” He gives her a quick smile as he pulls on his jeans, then leans down to kiss the top of her head. “Go back to sleep.”

“Are you going back to Grimmauld Place?” She hears the panicked note in her voice, and wishes she could blame it on being half asleep.

Harry drops to sit on the bed beside her, lifting a hand to brush the hair back from her face. “Not without you, and it would take a braver man than me to drag you out of a warm bed.” He smiles again. “No, I just have to let Remus know we'll be there in the morning.”

She stifles another yawn. “I'd forgotten about that.”

“So had I.”

Their eyes meet in a look of sudden understanding, and she feels a rush of heat creeping up the back of her neck. She still feels heavy and languid, the soft skin of her thighs still damp and slightly tender, and she is aware of him with every single inch of her body. His eyes darken as he looks at her, and she feels her mouth go dry. She wants him back in this bed more than she can say - her skin is tight and hot with the memory of his hands on her - but she simply says, “How do you feel?”

He cups her face with one hand, his thumb brushing gently across her lips. “Better.”

Turning her head, she presses a kiss to his palm, then to his wrist, savouring the beat of his life's blood - so strong and alive - against her lips. “Better than when?”

The corners of his bright green eyes crinkle as he smiles down at her. “Better than ever.” He drops a lingering kiss on her mouth, making her pulse spike, then gets to his feet. “Go to sleep. I'll be back in a minute.”

She watches him as he leaves the bedroom, torn between admiring the supple lines of his naked back and worrying if it's safe to use Hedwig. She frowns, then dismisses the second thought. Harry is more than capable of sending a simple owl.

Letting out her breath in a long, soft sigh, she shifts her legs experimentally, pointing her toes and stretching her muscles. Funny how doing - well, that, she thinks with sudden and quite laughable primness - can make you feel as though you'd run a marathon. Her body feels ten times heavier than usual, her heartbeat ten times as loud, the blood in her veins as though it has been replaced with warm treacle. There isn't, she muses sleepily, a cheering charm invented that could make her feel any better than she does at this very moment.

She closes her eyes and rolls over onto her side, burrowing her head into her pillow. It feels very odd to be lying naked in her bed, feeling the brush of cool sheets against her bare skin. She can't remember ever climbing into bed without bothering with her pyjamas, but then tonight has been a night of many firsts.

Once again, time seems to blur around the edges, and it seems like only seconds later that the mattress shifts behind her. She holds her breath as Harry stretches out behind her, his long legs tangling with hers. It takes several seconds for them to adjust to each other - knees and hands not quite knowing where to go - and she can't help being pleased by the thought that this is not something he is in the habit of doing. She wriggles backward slightly, and hears him sigh as her body fits into the curve of his. His hand slides over her hip, coming to rest on her stomach as he pulls her closer, arranging his long limbs so his body is cradling hers. The heat of him begins to seep into her skin, warming her right down to her bones. The steady thud of his heart beats a soothing tattoo against her spine, and her eyelids are suddenly very heavy.

She's drifting towards the delicious oblivion of sleep when he speaks. His voice sounds very far away, even although she knows that his mouth is just a whisper from her ear.

“Hermione?”

“Yes?”

His hand brushes aside the tangled mass of her hair, then she feels the brush of his lips on the back of her neck, the soft kiss sending a flurry of goosebumps dancing across her skin. “I mean it, too.”

She lies awake in the darkness long after he's fallen asleep, smiling through her silent tears. If she dreams when she finally sleeps, she doesn't remember.

~*~*~

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