Confrontation
The constant drone of rain hitting earth echoed around the square outside of number twelve, Grimmauld Place; unkempt lawns and sidewalks lay flooded and abandoned. Sullen, depressed and angry inhabitants of the grimy area cursed the unrelenting weather for disrupting their ways of life and trapping them within the confines of their battered homes. It had not once ceased to rain since Harry Potter's arrival the prior week, and it was now July 30th; only an hour away from his 16th birthday.
If the neighbours were angry and depressed, no words could describe the thin, black-haired teenage wizard's current state as he lay upon an old mattress watching but not truly seeing the raindrops bombard the window. Every night was the same for Harry at Grimmauld Place; he spent the days in the relatively quiet, if somewhat tense, company of his best friends, Ron and Hermione. But when night fell and the other residents of the house went to bed, he retreated to the one room that both comforted and angered him.
Sirius' bedroom had fallen into even deeper disrepair since its sole occupant was killed the previous June in a fierce battle at the Ministry of Magic. The one window was dirty and cracked, allowing sounds from the outside world to filter in as well as the cold of the night. Black tattered curtains hung off of their rings and swayed lightly in rhythm with the wind; reminding Harry of the fluttering veil his godfather had fallen through. However, as much as this dark room and the memories associated with it haunted him, he never failed to take his place on the mattress when night and silence fell. He did not have to endure Hermione and Ron's awkward attempts at normalcy here; he experienced that more than enough throughout the course of the day. Ron seemed to feel that Harry should be left alone to his own devices, and that their interference would only send him over the edge once again. Hermione, for once, seemingly agreed with Ron and only spoke about generic topics that Harry neither knew much nor cared about. The resulting conversations between the three of them were filled with long, uncomfortable silences that never plagued them before this summer. No one was aware of this hideaway of his; therefore he was rather shocked when he heard a gentle knock on the closed door and an even softer voice call out.
"Can I come in, Harry?" He started and stared at the door for a few moments before the voice's words registered and he recognized the anxious tone as Hermione's. Immediately feeling annoyance toward her for finding his spot, he crossed the room and roughly pulled open the door to find her darkened eyes and worried expression staring up at him.
"What do you want?" he spat more viciously than was called for. She crossed her arms protectively and raised an eyebrow before answering in a less than warm voice.
"I was going to tell you something important before you attacked me for even trying to talk to you," Hermione hissed. Harry felt his anger subside and curiosity take its place momentarily before she added, "But apparently you still don't care about what anyone else has to say." His indignation returned full force at her afterthought and he wondered if she only sought him out to lecture him about his recent behaviour.
"Come here to tell me off, Hermione?" asked Harry in a sarcastic voice as he leant against the wooden frame of the door. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment before opening them and focusing on him with a much calmer look.
"No, but that doesn't mean I appreciate you blocking me and Ron out completely. That's a different matter altogether, though, tonight I came here to-"
"What d'you mean 'blocking you and Ron out?'" he heatedly interrupted.
"You know perfectly well what I meant by that," she countered coolly. "I know you're not the most open person, Harry, but really, closing your best friends out is not the right way to go about this all."
Harry's jaw clenched and he stood up straighter as he ground out in a deathly quiet tone of voice, "You have no right to come in here and tell me what's right and what's wrong." He pushed off of the door frame entirely and leant closer to her. "I think you should leave now, Hermione; Ron will be waiting for you to report back to him about this little exchange."
"Do you honestly believe Ron put me up to this?" Hermione snapped with an incredulous look upon her face. "I didn't even want to talk about this in the first place!"
"Then why are you all bothered about it?" he queried, his voice rising with every word. "Do you really need to know everything about me? Can you not deal with not knowing how I'm feeling at every moment in time?" Feelings were flowing unchecked, words and sentiments that were previously bottled up all spilling out in a rush of emotion. "Is it so important for you to find out why I act the way I do, or even why I have a bloody scar on my forehead that everyone gawks at? How about not understanding why Voldemort decides to come after me every year, or why I'm friends with you and Ron?" Harry was shouting and breathing heavily by the time he finished; his heaving chest was only inches away from Hermione, who had uncrossed her arms and was staring at him with parted lips and a shocked demeanour. The silence in the room was deafening and only broken by his loud and unsteady breathing as he stared at Hermione, waiting for a reaction. The fire burning in her eyes was not quenched by the forming tears; a solitary drop escaped and slowly slid down her flushed skin as she fixed him with a look of mingled fury and despair. She irritably swatted it away and stepped so close to Harry that they were nearly plastered together and their eyes were almost level; his breathing hitched in his chest and he shut his eyes tightly, wanting desperately to erase the image of her tear-filled eyes.
He opened his eyes and tried to step away from Hermione; her close proximity was making him irrationally uncomfortable, and the dangerous gleam in her own eyes suggested an impending explosion on her part. His back hit the door frame with a quiet thump before he was able to move more than an inch, though, and he could've sworn he saw the corners of Hermione's mouth twitch. She tilted her head to one side and seemed to consider him for a long moment without speaking. When she finally did reply, it was in a voice hardly above a whisper.
"When it comes to you, Harry, I do have to know everything. You obviously don't understand why, but maybe one day you will." Her eyes lingered upon his face with a distinctly disappointed glint before she stepped back into the corridor and turned in the direction of the stairwell. Harry merely stood in place, his brain seemingly unable to process her parting words or move in any way; all he could do was watch her slowly descend the old stairs.
"I was going to tell you something important before you attacked me for even trying to talk to you."
"Hermione, wait!" he called, his brain unfreezing and allowing him to move out into the hall and meet her halfway down the stairs. She turned abruptly and fixed him with a startled expression, clearly not expecting to see him again until morning. "You said you were going to tell me something important; what was it?" Harry curiously noted the speed with which her appearance changed at his question; her eyes widened, both ears visibly twitched, and a faint blush began to form and spread. He even ventured to ask if she was feeling all right after she was silent and gaping for a full minute.
"What? Oh, yes, I'm fine," Hermione distractedly replied. "I was going to tell you that I - er - heard that there was going to be an important Order meeting tonight!"
Harry was taken aback by the sudden increase in volume her voice took on; he peered apprehensively over her shoulder in search of any woken house occupants. "But," he began slowly and refocused, "we're not in the Order, Hermione; you know that…" he trailed off and watched her blush deepen under his gaze. Harry vaguely suspected Hermione was either feeling ill or dishonest, judging from the rapidly changing colour of her face and overall unease she was displaying.
"Of course we're not," said Hermione with a shaky laugh and sideways glance, "but I just thought you'd want to know; I mean you seemed so angry last summer about not knowing anything, I sort of figured we could, well, spy on the meeting." She said this all without taking a single breath and looked at Harry expectantly when she was finished.
"You want us to spy on a group of people, a secret society so to speak, which contains Aurors who are experts at surveillance and tracking?" Harry questioned, worried for Hermione's sanity; perhaps Ron was right before, maybe she was mental after all. Since when was he the rational one? "Not to mention the fact that we spent last summer constantly trying to get some information on the Order, only to be denied and scolded nearly every time." Hermione was now staring at a cracked floorboard as though it was a fascinating passage from her Transfiguration textbook. Harry impatiently waited for her to reply, but she continued to study the ground in silence. Giving up, he growled in frustration and said in a low voice, "I won't ask you again, but when you want to tell me the truth, find me." He brushed by her and headed straight for his and Ron's bedroom on the next landing without looking back.
Once he reached the dark confines of the shared bedroom, Harry fell onto his mattress and lay unmoving, staring at the dull ceiling as his conversation with Hermione played on a loop in his mind.
"I was going to tell you something important before you attacked me for even trying to talk to you."
"I know you're not the most open person, Harry, but really, closing your best friends out is not the right way to go about this all."
"When it comes to you, Harry, I do have to know everything. You obviously don't understand why, but maybe one day you will."
He thoroughly believed there was more to what Hermione wanted to speak to him about; surely someone as sensible and logical as her would know how impossible it is to spy on an Order meeting, let alone one occurring in the middle of the night. There was something to be said about her behaviour on the staircase; Harry had rarely seen Hermione so…flustered over a seemingly simple question of his. Avoiding his eyes, blushing, shiftily glancing about, twitching ears, even; she was acting just as he had around Cho in prior years. Harry sat bolt right up in his bed with his jaw hanging on its hinges and his vision momentarily blurring in a whirl of emotion. She was behaving the same way he did when he fancied Cho. Did that mean Hermione fancied -
"Harry?" He jumped out of his skin at the sound of Hermione's whispered voice and whipped his head around to face the doorway, where he could clearly make out the silhouette of a visibly anxious girl. She tentatively stepped into the pitch black bedroom and cast a wary glance at Ron's bed before hurriedly motioning for Harry to get up. He scrambled off of the mattress as fast as humanly possible and unsteadily made his way toward her, head still spinning with confusing and conflicting thoughts. Hermione turned and lead him out into the empty corridor and shut the door behind him before she took a deep, steadying breath and faced him with no small amount of nervousness showing. Truth be told, Harry felt rather light-headed himself under her intense stare.
When it became apparent that she was waiting for him to speak or do something, he croaked, "So - er - you wanted to talk again?" Silently cursing his unreliable vocal chords he awaited her answer.
"I lied before," Hermione said simply, shrugging with an awkward half-smile. "There really is an important Order meeting happening, but that's not what I went to Sirius' room for. Now that I think about it, suggesting we spy on the meeting was quite pathetic, wasn't it?" Harry offered a small grin, one he hoped was encouraging and prayed wasn't mocking in any way. Hermione seemed to take heart as she continued, "But after our less than warm and friendly conversation, I just…got scared, I suppose. No, not of you," she said as Harry opened his mouth to apologize, "but of how you might react to what I wanted to say. You see, it's…" she trailed off and went back to staring intently at the floor. Harry felt as though his heart was vainly attempting to beat its way out of his chest as he stared blankly at the back of her neck. Part of him desperately wished to hear Hermione say what he thought she was going to, but another part was dreadfully terrified about what he'd have to say in return. He wasn't even sure himself what he felt for her; he had never given it much thought in the past. An abstract, far away part of his brain registered that this is how Cho must've felt being on the receiving end of his affections. Before he could even begin to contemplate his emotions, Hermione was speaking again.
"It's rather personal, and it doesn't involve anyone else, not even Ron," she said in a quiet voice, but with her eyes on his instead of the floor. "I've just been having a nearly impossible time with it lately and I think I might honestly go mad if I keep it all to myself." Hermione took another large breath before her shaky voice said, "I think - no, that's another lie, sorry - I do fancy you, Harry." Her hands were jammed into the pockets of her pyjama trousers and her shoulders tense, but she never broke eye contact. Somehow hearing her say it directly made it all the more real for Harry. All the more frightening as well, but in a good way, he thought. And as he too stood with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders tensed up, Harry realized that nothing truly needed to be said at this time. Leaning in slowly with his fists tightly and nervously clenched in his pockets, he saw surprise flicker in her eyes before he shut his own and tentatively pressed his lips to hers.
The reaction was immediate and astounding to Harry; his lips tingled, his hands shook, and his entire body felt lighter than it ever had. There were no tears messily falling onto his face, no muffled sniffling coming from the girl he was kissing this time; only quiet breathing and perfection in every sense of the word. Hermione pulled away slightly and Harry opened his eyes to her dazed expression; one he was quite sure he mirrored. A smile was rapidly forming upon her face, and he felt a similar grin stretch his own features. Once again, no words were needed between the two of them as Hermione turned and returned to her room and he opened the door to his bedroom, the smile still plastered on his face. He moved across the room with a definite jaunty quality in his step and climbed into bed. One look at the clock showed it was one minute past midnight; his 16th birthday had come and gone, but he had spent the moment in the best possible fashion.
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Author's Notes: So…I'd appreciate any reviews greatly; this is my first attempt and any feedback would help immensely. Thanks for taking the time to read!