Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed! You all boost my spirits... and persuade me to write more.
This chapter is a break that I took from the heaviness of the plot while writing. It is a short deviation from the plot, and nothing important to the plot happens in this chapter. It's just sugary fluff. Beware: high sugar content.
See Chapter 1 for Disclaimer.
They sat, completely dumbfounded. Neither knew what to say. They just sat there, Hermione propped against the pillows, and Harry, sitting in a chair next to the bed, his hand resting on her ankle. On the little spot that had foretold both of their futures. Occasionally they would look up at each other, but quickly blush and look down again. Everything Dumbledore had said was just too much. The silence was unbearable, but neither had the courage to break it. They didn't have to, however, because Madame Pomfrey came bustling back in.
"Well, now, we have had a bit of a shock, you are both alive. Oddly quiet, but alive. Speaking of quiet, I wonder if now I'll be permitted to take care of my patients in peace." She was again talking absentmindedly to herself, not even looking at Harry and Hermione. Startled back into reality, Harry noticed the location of his hand. He quickly pulled it away and sat stiffly as if nothing had happened.
"Hmm," she rambled, turning to face them. "Now, then Mr. Potter, you yourself have been through more than you should have been, and it is not proper to have you sitting here in that chair, you should be in bed." With that, she Transfigured the chair, and Harry found himself sitting in a hospital bed a few feet from Hermione's. With Harry a little bit father away, Hermione found herself able to speak again.
"Madame Pomfrey, it is a little bit cold, may I have a robe?" Hermione looked down at her nightgown. She had forgotten how light this gown was. Madame Pomfrey nodded. Hermione sat up the rest of the way, and pulled her legs out from under the covers. She tried to get up, but didn't have the strength.
"Oh no, dear, don't get up. I'll help you. You shouldn't do anything on your own,, get someone to help you. You need to reserve your strength." The mediwitch came over and supported Hermione's lithe frame as she gingerly put her weight on her feet. She trembled and would have collapsed, had Madame Pomfrey not been holding her up. After a few seconds, she steadied and Madame Pomfrey bustled over to a cabinet. She pulled out a robe, as white as everything else in the infirmary. Hermione just stood there in her nightgown, using the side of the bed to hold herself up. Harry looked at her, transfixed. He, too, hadn't realized how light her gown was. Madame Pomfrey returned with the robe, and, throwing a disapproving look at Harry, put up a magical curtain between the two beds. He blushed again. After several minutes, Madame Pomfrey came over to Harry's side of the curtain to give him a robe and to look over his injuries. She then waved the curtain away.
"It would be the decent thing to do to leave the curtain up, but you will have visitors in a half an hour, who wish to see you both. Now, if you ask me, you shouldn't have visitors, you need your rest..." she rambled on, as she left the room.
Harry looked over to see Hermione, sitting in her bed, propped up on pillows again. She, like he, was wrapped in a robe, and the sheets covered her to the waist. Her ankle was no longer visible. This seemed to lift a burden from them both. There would be time to talk it through, but they both knew that with people coming to see them in a half hour, this was not the time. They didn't want to be emotional wrecks when their loved ones came in.
Hermione shifted in bed. She weakly lifted a hand to her mass of curly hair. She muttered a cleaning spell, but her hair felt terribly knotted and awful. By the time she could brush it again, it would be one big knot. After all, Madame Pomfrey had told her not to do anything, to reserve her strength. She did not care how she looked, it was just that it was so knotted. She settled back in bed. It would have to wait. She wasn't strong enough to wrestle it into a braid, even. At least braided it would not get tangled further. She sighed. When she got out of the hospital wing, she would have to spend hours trying to get the knots out of it, at least a week's worth of tangles, knowing she'd be in the infirmary at least a week. There was nobody that she could ask for help... unless...
"Harry," she said. She knew he'd say no, it wasn't exactly a normal request. She smiled to herself. It really was funny, asking her best friend, who happened to be male, to braid her hair for her.
"Yeah?"
"Umm... this is going to sound so strange, but... well, my hair is in terrible knots, and it's only going to get worse, and I'm not strong enough to take care of it."
He looked at her quizzically. She wasn't going to ask him... no.
"Can you... can you just put it a braid for me? That way, it won't knot any more, and when I'm better I can take it down and brush it properly."
He looked at her. His expression was unreadable. "I can't even manage my own hair. And yours is much longer. And I'm not good with braiding. Last time I tried to braid, it was rope, and it wasn't pretty." He ran his fingers through his own tousled hair.
"I know, I'm sorry I asked. It was rather odd to ask you. I'll ask my mum to do it when she comes in." She smiled.
He looked over at her. "You need it braided because it's knotted?"
She rolled her eyes. She shouldn't have brought it up, now she'd have to go through logistics. "Yes, because it will keep it from knotting more-"
He thought it through. Did he even want to try? He had said he would help her. "Hermione, I can't braid, but I can brush." It had kind of just come out. After he said it, he halfway wanted to take it back, but the rest of him screamed to just do it. "I'll brush it out for you."
She eyed him. "Seriously? It's knotted, it won't be easy, I'm fine with letting my mum do it."
But he had already offered, and now, no matter how much he wanted to, he wouldn't back down. "I can do it. Do you have a hairbrush?"
She glanced over at a small side table. On it were small personal items, all white. Harry got up, as he was much stronger than Hermione, since he had been protected in the battle. He took the hairbrush from the table, and looked at Hermione. He needed to figure out how to do this. He couldn't find another chair to sit next to the bed, because he wouldn't be able to reach her hair. He realized the only way was for her to move up on the bed and for him to sit behind her. He helped her to move forward, and sat down on her bed. He placed her pillows on his lap, so that she could lean her back against the pillows while still sitting up. She relaxed onto the pillows, still partially sitting up. He took the hairbrush in his hand, and looked at the mass of curls before him.
Sensing his tentativeness behind her, she giggled slightly. He was obviously trying to figure out the math involved in brushing a woman's hair. He had never done this before, and had no idea whatsoever about how to begin.
"Uh, Hermione... what... how... uh... where do I start?" He searched over her hair, as if looking for a You Are Here arrow.
She laughed. "Harry, there is nothing mathematical about brushing hair. You just do it. You pick a place, and start. It's really OK if my mum does it."
But he was unwilling to back down. This was a challenge, unique from any other that he had ever undertaken. It was odd to think of his best friend's hair as a challenge, but to him, it was. He finally just decided to start in the middle of the back of her head. Not wanting to hurt her, he gently touched the brush to her curls. He kept his other hand on his lap. He quickly realized, however, that he was getting nowhere fast. He stopped to look at his hand configuration. She giggled again.
"Harry, if you're going to brush my hair, just brush it. Brush with one hand, and use the other hand to hold the hair, above where you're brushing. It helps smooth it out a little, and it keeps it from hurting when you hit a knot. You really don't have to do this."
"No, it's OK." He held the brush in his right hand and laid his left on her head. After a few minutes of clumsiness, be began to get the hang of it. He noticed as he worked on it that her plain, curly, brown hair shone in the light. There were stands of gold and red. By some impulse, he stopped brushing for a minute, to just touch her hair. "So soft," he murmured.
"You say something?" Hermione asked. She was quite comfortable, leaning back against the pillows on Harry's chest.
"No," he answered. "Just, it's curly is all."
After a few more minutes of brushing, he decided that he wanted to try to braid it, partially because he now knew how much trouble knots were, and partially because he wanted an excuse to keep his hands in her hair. It took a while, and he got his fingers tangled in her hair several times (not that he was complaining), but eventually he got her hair into a single thick braid that went halfway down her back. He immediately felt the loss of the feeling of being able to run his fingers through it. It was so strange to him. Hermione's hair had never held interest to him. He'd never known how it felt, and never wanted to. But for some reason, now he was feeling withdrawal from it. He put a hair tie on the end of the braid and sighed.
"Done?" she asked. "Thank you."
He saw that she was still leaning on him, and he climbed out from behind her, propping her back up on the pillows as he did. But he didn't want to go back to his bed. He sat down next to her, on her bed. There was something that he needed to ask her.
"Hermione, your scar. Did you know...?"
"No, I didn't. I didn't know it was a scar at all. I always thought it was a birthmark, and I never paid attention to it. It is so odd, now that I think about it." She poked her ankle out again. "Yours and mine are practically identical." This time, it was her who reached out a hand. Her hand trembled as his did, and she reached out and touched his scar, the one that had made him what he was. He closed his eyes at the gentleness. Once again, they felt warm, and the pink aura returned. "So strange," she whispered. She took her hand away and put it on her own lap. "I never read about this happening. The books always said that if the other person was scarred, the scars would be similar, but still have different characteristics. Yours and mine are identical."
He opened his eyes, and looked into hers. His eyes were startlingly green, yet warm and inviting and kind. Hers were loving and caring and deep. He felt himself lose thought as he stared into her eyes. She melted against the pillows, and they just sat there silently, absorbed. Neither of them moved. It was perfectly peaceful, and at that second, nothing mattered. Everything was right in the world.
Author's Note: My chapters have been painfully short. I apologize, and the next story will not be that way. This story is completed, and I am making only minor edits for posting.