Thanks to all the reviewers!!! Please do review. I love to read them. This is a short chapter, and I apologize. I'll get the next one up soon.
See Chapter 1 for Disclaimer.
Another uncomfortable silence fell between them. They both stared wordlessly at the book for a few moments, each mentally begging the other to say something, to break the heavy silence. Hermione tried to process it in her head. She tried to read Harry's emotion through his face, but it was to no avail. Maybe letting him read it was a mistake. She knew that she wouldn't have been able to easily hold that secret from him, but she also knew that he might not have been ready to learn it. After all that shock, she had gone and let him know that they were destined to fall in love and get married. Another bombshell. She beat herself up mentally. It would never even happen now anyway, because he was going to be so mad at her and embarrassed over the whole thing that he would never talk to her again. Tears welled in her eyes. She couldn't look at him.
Across from her on the bed, Harry sat, stunned. At first, he couldn't process it. Slowly, it came to him. Realization washed over him. Gradually, almost indiscernibly, the corners of his mouth turned.
Hermione heard little, hushed sounds through her tears. He's crying, she thought to herself at first. Crying that he was supposed to fall for a girl like me. Tears that had been at the brink spilled over onto her cheeks. But inside her, something didn't make sense. Harry crying at this? He had never been an overtly emotional person, at least in that sense. Sure, he'd had a temper, but the only time she'd heard him cry was when he was... oh, no. When he was pouring his heart out to her, when he thought she was unconscious. She cried quietly.
The sounds she was hearing, however, grew louder. They had began as just tiny noises, but they were escalating. She listened. The sounds didn't seem like crying, though. They came, light and bubbling, to her ears, tickling her eardrums. She sat, perplexed as to what the sound might be. It sounded like laughter- but it couldn't be. Could it? She lifted her tear-stained face to look at Harry.
The corners of his mouth were turned upward in a slightly lopsided smile. And he was chuckling. Chuckling, of all things. Her eyes burned from tears and confusion. A million thoughts ran impossibly fast through her head. He's laughing at me. Laughing at the whole idea. The two of us together is a joke. It's hard for me to think of it that way too, but I don't find it funny. He's laughing to hide his feelings. He doesn't want to come out and tell me how horrible it would be to be married to me. The thoughts ran so fast that she hardly even could analyze them. She saw him laughing, harder now, and her tears flowed freely. He was practically hysterical.
"You... book... you thought... had me scared... I thought... death... and it was... marriage!!! And you... upset... scars... disclaimer... Hermione Potter!!! Scared me... no... bloody... reason!!!" he managed to force out in between laughs.
Hermione looked at him harshly. Her stare was filled with confusion and a simmering anger. She didn't even have a clue what he was saying, he was so hysterical. But she did know that he was obviously laughing at her, and not with her. Her face burned.
He tried to stop to breathe several times, but was unsuccessful. Finally, he partially tamed his laughter. Still grinning and chuckling, he looked over at the increasingly red Hermione. He became a tiny bit more solemn upon seeing how upset she was, but he still had small laughs escape him. There was clearly a misunderstanding on both sides. Either Harry didn't see the seriousness of the situation, or Hermione didn't see the humor, but as it seemed, both were true. Harry, his self-control weak, burst into another round of laughter. Hermione boiled over.
"You find it funny!" she started, furiously. "Funny that anybody would ever be fated to marry me. You don't want me to see your horror. It would be so horrible to be married to me that you won't even say it. You find the whole thing funny. And also, there's the minute detail of, oh yeah, the fact that now, our friendship is destroyed, because we found out. The marriage thing isn't going to happen, and it wasn't going to happen anyway, but our friendship is ruined, and you find that amusing!! I can't believe that I tried to give my life for you, you pretended to care, and now you feel I'm not even good enou--"
"Hermione Granger Potter. Has a bit of a ring to it." He broke in, interrupting her rant. He spoke evenly, having managed to control his laughter, at least for the moment.
She stopped, breathing heavily from her burst of anger. She was outright confused now. Her face was red still, but she turned, eyes burning, to look at him.
"Ron would be the best man, Ginny the maid of honor. Dumbledore would perform the ceremony in the Great Hall, because there's nowhere else in the world it could be."
Some of the flush faded from her face. Completely perplexed, she looked him in the eye. What was he doing? Hadn't he just been laughing at the idea? Where was he going with this?
"Got your attention," he said, softly. "I don't find it funny that I was fated to marry you. I'm not trying to hide horror. Our friendship is not destroyed, and it's not ruined. And never say that you're not good enough."
She was still confused, but she was relieved. And touched. He hadn't been laughing at her, and he had just paid her what she assumed to be a compliment. Her eyes watered, but she stopped crying. But she still wondered.
"What... what were you laughing at, if it wasn't me?"
He smiled. "I wasn't laughing at you at all. I was laughing at the way you had presented the whole thing. You had this look of terror on your face, and the book kept giving me disclaimers, and you really had me scared. I thought it was going to say that one or both of us was going to die, or he world was going to self-destruct, based on all of the lead-in. And what was it? A wedding announcement. Yes, it was a wedding announcement for you and I, which did shock me, but it still was a wedding announcement. And I had been expecting some sort of death certificate. You had me so scared, and it was nothing! I found it hilarious that you thought that this would change everything, and how serious you were."
She looked down. "It does change everything." He voice was quiet and still trembling slightly. "That book said we were destined to be married. There's no way we can go forward now, with our friendship the same as always. And we messed up destiny, because now we'll never be the same."
His voice quieted again. "Nothing can change destiny, Hermione. Nothing changed it for my parents, and nothing can change it for us. If that was our fate, then it will happen." He grinned. "Do you find the idea of marrying me to be so grotesque that you would try to change fate to get out of it? We've come this far. Do you really hate me that much, Granger?"
She didn't answer. She simply smiled and hit him with a nearby pillow.