Wow!!! Thank you so very much for the overwhelming review response for the last chapter. To wake up and have fifteen reviews in one day is a truly amazing feeling. Please, please continue to review, I really love to receive them.
See Chapter 1 for Disclaimer.
Not believing what he had seen, he did what any logical human being would.
He blinked.
Hard.
He opened his eyes, slowly, half expecting it to be gone, half wishing that it was, but at the same time, praying that it was still there.
It was.
Love. He had never felt it or seen it as plainly as this. He had taken so much time, trying to consciously figure it out, that complex emotion that he was convinced he had none of. He had thought he had loved Hermione, thought that it was the right thing to say when she was lying there unconscious. It came from his heart, but in his head, he knew that love was still out of his grasp. One must be loved to know loved, he thought. He had been loved, as a baby, but he couldn't remember the feeling. He looked deeper, and saw everything he had been trying to find, all there, in her eyes, in that moment.
Love was... care and worry and kindness and strictness and laughter and beauty, all at the same time. He felt sincerely humbled, and for once, he did not have the tough shell he had been wearing forever. The feelings and emotions that coursed through him were very uncharacteristically Harry. Where was the cynicism, the humor, the fervor? He had no idea, he just knew that he felt very, very vulnerable, but somehow, he felt safer than he ever had in his life.
"... and I'm not just leaving you here like this. You'd better snap out of whatever you're in, and start thinking, because... are you even listening, Harry?"
The sounds began very softly, and crescendoed to the point at which Harry could hear her. Her voice had drifted into existence once again. No, he hadn't been listening.
"Harry?" She looked at him. "Earth to Harry!"
He blinked and let out a breath that he hadn't noticed that he had been holding. "Hermione... I--"
He really had intended to talk to her. He knew what he wanted to say, and he was actually going to say it. But, obviously, that was not what the fates intended. Harry was interrupted by a sound that could only be equated to the crack of a whip. Harry and Hermione both jumped, and whipped their wands out, lighting fast. Whoever had just Apparated would get a rather unpleasant surprise.
Wait a second.
It's not possible to Apparate on Hogwarts grounds.
Harry and Hermione seemed to come to that realization at the same time, and they both spun around, looking for whoever, or whatever, had caused the noise.
"Harry Potter!"
Harry whirled around at the very familiar voice, and was knocked flat on his back by a very forceful blur. He instantly recognized what had hit him. He sighed and relaxed back. He should have known.
"Dobby. What on earth are you doing here." Harry sat up slightly, rubbing the back of his head. His voice was not a question, not a demand, not a threat. It was a tired statement. A tone that said that he really felt that he didn't actually want to know, but was asking all the same. Harry certainly had nothing against Dobby, but Harry really did think that this particular house-elf had the absolutely worst timing on the face of the earth. Just as it had been a bad time to have a house-elf in his bedroom five years ago, he was sure that this was not the best time to be interrupted by one. He was actually going to tell Hermione. He really was. He sighed again, and waited for the house-elf's explanation.
"Dobby had to find Harry Potter, sir. Dobby had heard that Harry Potter was unhappy and somebody told Dobby that Harry Potter was at the lake. Dobby came here to stop Harry Potter from drowning himself, sir. Harry Potter has been too kind to Dobby, sir. Dobby could not let Harry Potter drown himself in the lake."
How ironic, Harry thought. "So you were trying to save my life?"
"Yes, Harry Potter, sir, Dobby wants to save Harry Potter's life."
"Dobby. What did I tell you about saving my life?" Harry said it seriously, but with a little humor in his voice. He thought back on all of Dobby's previous escapades to save Harry's life, all of which ended in disaster.
Dobby's huge saucer-like eyes grew even larger, if that was possible. After becoming close to the size of platters, Dobby's eyes turned away from Harry. "Harry Potter told Dobby not to try to save Harry Potter's life ever again, sir." With that, he abruptly began to whack his head on a nearby rock.
"Dobby, no!" Harry ran over, and physically restrained Dobby from punishing himself.
"Dobby means no harm to Harry Potter. Dobby thought that Harry Potter was going to drown himself, sir! And Dobby didn't want that to happen! Harry Potter came to the lake, sir, and Harry Potter was not going to return! But Dobby knows, Harry Potter told Dobby to not save Harry Potter's life anymore, but Dobby did it anyway, and Dobby must be punished!"
"No, Dobby!" Hermione rose from her place on the rock and came over to Dobby. "You don't have to punish yourself, anymore, Dobby, you know that. You are free, you work for pay, you don't belong to anyone, and you don't need to punish yourself!"
Dobby's eyes got even bigger. "Hermione Granger! Thank you, thank you, Dobby is free, but Dobby forgets sometimes, thank you. Hermione Granger, was you here like Dobby to stop Harry Potter from drowning himself?"
Hermione smiled warmly. "Sort of, I guess..." She thought to herself that it was not a bad metaphor. She really was trying to keep him from drowning himself in depression. Honestly, though, if she'd had to pick which of her friends she thought would end up depressed and withdrawn, it wouldn't have been Harry that she'd chosen. Harry's defense mechanisms in the past never included withdrawal; denial, anger, and humor were his ways of coping. She'd never seen Harry this way, and frankly, it had scared her.
All of the sudden, a huge smile broke across Dobby's face. His eyes became even larger than anyone thought was humanly possible, and had an odd twinkling characteristic. He got up quickly, and backed up. "Dobby understands! Harry Potter is not drowning himself and Hermione Granger is here to help Harry Potter not drown himself. Dobby will leave Harry Potter and Hermione Granger alone now. Dobby is sorry that Dobby interrupted, sir." With a blatant smirk and broad grin that oddly reminded Harry of the Weasley twins, there was another crack, and Dobby was gone before either Harry or Hermione could protest, or even work out what he had meant.
Harry chuckled slightly, and shook his head. "That's Dobby for you," he said. "Always a savior."
Hermione laughed. "Well, if that's what it took to get through to you," she answered, in a voice that Harry recognized as her famous know-it-all voice. "All I had to do was say your name, knock you over, speak about myself in third person, and tell you not to drown yourself? If only I'd known." She paused, and her voice then took on a more serious tone. "I'm glad though. Glad that somebody could get through to you. I was worried, Harry. I really was. I mean, you have been dealing with so much for as long as you can remember, and with direct death threats since you were eleven. You've always been able to deal with it in one way or another, and although I can't say all of your coping mechanisms were productive, they all helped you, and they were all characteristically you. Just sitting here and being absorbed in the grief... it's just not you. I... you... I was really scared for you."
Harry gazed out over the calmness of the lake. "Thank you so much. I... I know I've never acted this way, but I've never felt this way. I mean, I've always been angry with myself, like with Sirius. It's not that I'm not mad now, but I... it's just different... I feel like it was my fault, but it's not a tangible fury that I can get out by hitting things. I don't know. Just... thank you. The only reason I lived was that I felt I had reason to... and it was you that kept me alive. Literally, yes, you did save my life, but I didn't know that at the time. I think that my motivation to live was just to see all of you again, and to be able to see all of you in peace. You and Ron, Ginny, Mrs. Weasley, Fred and George, Remus, Tonks, Bill... all of you. You all gave me something to fight for. I guess that having motivation to live was what kept me alive. But once it was all over, I saw everyone. Yes, many of those people who were on my side lived, and I did see them all again, all alive and in peacetime. But so many didn't... I can't even imagine... I felt that it was my fault that they all had to die. And then after I found out that I lived only because you were willing to sacrifice your life to let mine go on, I felt guilty. Guilty that everyone died, and guilty that you almost did, because you care about me. And then the whole thing with you and your sacrifice and that book, and what it said about... about us. Of all of it, what hurt me the most was that I was hurting the people who I care about... no big surprise, I guess, that's what always seems to happen. But I went about like I always do when I'm upset, punched some things, had a few rows with people, tried to shut it all out and make fun of it, but it didn't work this time. I had this anger, but no matter what I did, it just got worse. I just... had no bloody clue, and I hate feeling like everything is out of control. I... I'm sorry, I'm rattling on."
"No, Harry, it's good. I'm here to listen. I always have been, and I always will be." She smiled at him.
He took a deep breath. She always had been, and she always would be. "You know that if you weren't, I would never have lived through seven years of school, forget the whole fighting evil thing." He laughed uneasily. Looking in her eyes briefly, he knew that this really was the moment. He opened his mouth to speak, to tell her everything he needed to.
But once again, he couldn't. He was interrupted by soft whistling, a mysterious, happy tune.
"Who the bloody hell is it now?!" Harry swore out loud out of frustration, more sharply than he'd intended to.
The whistling stopped, and a light, melodic voice laughed cheerily. "You truly are, in every way, your father's son," she said.
I'm not a Dobby fan, but I couldn't resist having him take one more crack at saving Harry's life. :) Please review.
-Menucha