"This is really nice."
"I know! We should do this more often."
"I like you like this."
"Like what?"
"The way you're acting"
"I'm always like this."
"Well then I'm sure I'll enjoy seeing this side to you more often."
"You see me everyday I told you I'm always like this."
"You just seemed to be more at ease for some reason, you couldn't care less."
"I guess you bring that out in me," she said turning over to face him.
"I've missed you Hermione."
"I haven't gone anywhere Harry," she looked at him puzzled.
"Well it seems that way, or maybe it's been me," Harry looked back at her earnestly.
Hermione sighed, "Let's just be for a moment."
"Yea, just be," Harry's voice sounded far away.
After their overly dramatic fight earlier, Harry and Hermione decided that they would spend the rest of the evening together, as Harry had pointed out it had been awhile since it was just the two of them.
They were now situated on the floor of the common room, well Harry was anyways. Hermione had jumped on the couch first and sprawled out on it, Harry didn't even bother attempting to move her, and instead he grabbed a pillow and propped up his head under it and lay down beside her on the floor.
Hermione tried to convince him to share the couch with her, but he refused, so she leaned over the edge of the couch and looked down on him as they talked.
"Talk to me Harry," she had said.
"What about?"
"I don't know just what ever you feel like, there are too many times I'm yakking your ear off, and the only times you ever talk about how you feel is when your tried and cranky and then it's not always in the nicest way," she'd said matter of-factly.
Harry laughed, "Gee thanks Hermione, and you're so kind."
He rolled over on his back; put his hands behind his head, "what do you want me to say?"
"I don't know, the last time we had a heart to heart about you was after… well you know…" she trailed off; she didn't want to be blunt and say `after Sirius died'.
Harry knew what she was talking about though, he sighed, "I know. I guess there hasn't been too much happening to me, I have he occasional nightmare, but it isn't Voldemort caused, its just bad memories coming back to haunt me, or fears for the future."
Hermione tried to look into his eyes but he was far away, his voice continued, "its coming Hermione, he's coming for me, I know it, and I'm not sure if I should meet him head on or wait. Waiting is horrible, waiting to die is the most agonizing thing a person can ever do." His voice choked a bit.
Hermione got off the couch and crawled over to him, "Harry don't say that of course you're not going to die, and wreak your living streak," she attempted at humor, Harry tried to smile but she could see the worry lines etched across his face.
She crawled closer to him, and then put her hands on either side of his head so she was looking down on him, "Harry look at me… common look at me."
Harry who'd been averting his gaze met hers straight on. His eyes showed the suffering and torment he'd kept hidden so many times before, "Harry your not going to die, you've faced evil many times and you will defeat it, good always wins, got that? You can't die, if you can't die for the rest of wizarding kind needs you. You can't die because of me, I need you Harry." Her voice had stared out strong but ended in a whisper.
Harry was trembling beneath her, "Oh Hermione," he whispered. Then sat up and pulled her on to his lap so he could embrace her, they sat together rocking back and forth, all the while she heard him murmuring, "If you only knew…"
././././.
"I knew this would happen! I bet he tied her up to keep her from coming here!" Draco muttered fiercely under his breath.
It was the first time he could ever remember that he'd been stood up! Draco Malfoy stood up! It was such a ridiculous oxymoron that when he'd first thought of it he'd burst out laughing.
But as he looked at his pocket watch again, and it read 9:38 he knew he'd been stood up.
`Maybe she thought I said 9:30?' he'd tried to make the situation seem better then it was.
`Or maybe she just didn't want to come, because the girl who can remember random facts about history, sure can remember what time to meet a person', the rational but brutally honest part of his, mind said.
"This is stupid, ok in five minutes I'm out of here and she better explain herself tomorrow," he said looking at his pocket watch.
"Draco? What are you doing here?"
Draco turned around quickly, then gave a half smile, "Well well look who it is? Ms. Parkinson has decided to grace me with her presence after so long?"
Pansy smiled, or attempted to, all her smiles were coy half smiles, none were sincere.
"You didn't answer my question Malfoy," she said as she walked over to him, exaggerating her hip swinging walk.
"Would you like me to say I was waiting for you?" he said with a wink.
Pansy laughed, she and Draco had an unusual relationship, it was based of flirtations but everyone assumed it was always more.
In response to his wink she licked her lips slowly, "It would be awfully sweet of you."
Draco chuckled, "Sorry to break it to you Pans, I wasn't. In fact I was just leaving. Why are you here all alone?"
"Who says I'm alone?" she retorted.
"The invisible nonexistent person accompanying you?" Draco said as he started to walk away.
Pansy started to glare but couldn't help but laughing, "Oh Draco again your wit astounds me, so who were you waiting for?"
Draco sighed, "it doesn't really matter she didn't show up," he started to walk away towards the door.
"It does matter, despite what people in our house are saying, I like you this way, you're a nice guy, " she grabbed his arm preventing him from leaving, "I want to give this girl a good talking to, for standing you up."
"How do you know if it's a girl?" Draco said mockingly.
"Draco you don't know how to have fun, relax nor do anything that happy people consider normal, I don't think you could handle hiding in a closet or coming out of it or whatever it's called," Pansy remarked.
Draco laughed and shook his head, "oh Pansy."
"Oh Pansy what?"
"nothing, I'll see you later on," Draco said as he left the Astronomy Tower.
"He gets more unusual everyday," Pansy muttered to herself, before leaning on the windowsill.
"Miss me?"
Pansy felt arms of her boyfriend encircle her from behind, "Of course not."
././././.
"Chocolate frog?"
"No thank you, you know I'm beginning to wonder how we all aren't 2000 pounds? It seems as though all we're ever doing is eating candy from Honeydukes"
Harry laughed, "You have a point, I'm not sure, maybe there's a slimming spell on them?"
"I doubt that," said Hermione as she reached across Harry's midriff to grab the box.
They were lying side by side, Harry was still on his back, Hermione was on her stomach.
Harry tried to ignore the feeling of her arm reaching across him, and her soft chest rubbing against his arm.
"I can't seem to reach the box," Hermione said with a giggle.
Harry fought back a groan, "Umm let me get it," and he turned away from her to get it. "Here you are," he said lying back down handing it to her.
"Another Dumbledore," Hermione sighed and pitched the card.
"Notice how that's all everyone seems to get?" Harry pointed out.
"Yea, it is strange,"
The two lay silently, there was an unsettling air about them, ever since before, when Hermione had eased up on her grip around Harry's neck and had mumbled an apology and lay down on the ground beside him.
Harry had mentally be kicking himself in the pants for not making a move, but then he'd question why he'd wanted to make a move to kiss her, she was his best friend and had never implied that she liked him as more.
Hermione spoke into the silence, "would you like to be on a card?"
Harry shook his head from his thoughts, "huh? Oh why would I want that?"
"I don' t know, just made sense when I thought it, you will you know, who would be stupid enough not to?"
"You should get a card then," Harry pointed out, "you've done as much work as I have, if you hadn't helped me all those times I'd be dead."
"I don't want a card," Hermione whispered.
Harry turned to his side to face her, "What do you want?" he whispered back.
Hermione swallowed, `I wonder what he'd think if I were to…'
Her thoughts were cut off by the chiming of the clock, marking the hour at ten.
Hermione's head snapped upwards away from Harry's face as she looked at the clock.
"Are you going to meet him?" Harry's voice sounded quiet and far away.
"I messed up big time, he won't be there I'm over an hour late, I hope I didn't disappoint him, but whatever he wanted to meet about he can tell me tomorrow," Hermione reasoned with an attempt at a smile.
"Sure Hermione, whatever you say," Harry said as he got up.
"Now what's that suppose to mean?" Hermione said she stood up fast, hands on her hips.
"Common Hermione, you think he was asking to meet you about project stuff? Where did he ask you to meet him, the Astronomy Tower? Oh yea you're really going to discuss DADA at 9 at night in the Astronomy Tower," Harry's voice had started low and calm but had quickly risen.
Hermione looked at Harry angrily, "Harry you're acting like a jerk! You don't know his motives! You're acting like you're jealous or something, maybe he does like me! That isn't so much a crime!"
"Hermione it's Draco Malfoy! I'm not jealous, but there's no way he likes you!"
Hermione looked like she'd been slapped, she looked like she was about to yell right back at him, instead she shook her head and turned away from Harry, she sat down on the couch her face in her hands, her shoulders were shaking.
Harry felt awful, he didn't mean for what he said to come out the way it did, but it had happened and now she was crying.
Harry knelt down in front of Hermione, and tried to pull her hands away, while apologizing.
But when he was able to remove her hands from her face he saw that she was laughing!
"What?" was all Harry could think to say.
She was laughing so hard that no sound was coming out.
Then she tried to speak and was able to rasp out, "…bloody soap opera," before dissolving again.
Harry caught on; Hermione was right, breaking out into a sudden pointless fight about relationships then resolving it before it had ended.
He started to laugh as well.
Hermione was laughing so hard that she couldn't sit up straight and leaned her hands on Harry's shoulders, Harry was leaning his forehead on her knees.
When they'd calmed down, Harry chuckled, "oh Hermione what would I do without you?"
"Curl up and die?"
"Most definitely"
/./././././.
`I like him, I like him not, I like him, I like him not'
`Of course I like him! I wouldn't be his friend if I didn't!'
`But do you like him more than a friend?'
`Damnit I don't know!'
Hermione was sitting in the Room of Requirement at one of the window seats that had appeared when she first walked in over an hour ago.
It was a few days after her evening with Harry and she'd successfully avoided Draco, because she couldn't bring herself to face him, after standing him up.
But at the moment Draco was furthest from her mind, right now she was trying to figure out the fluttery feeling she got in her gut when she saw Harry run his fingers through his hair, smile, wipe his glasses, or his sparkling green eyes. It was worse when he said her name softly, brushed her arm lightly, gave her a one armed hug.
`I need someone to tell me what to do!'
"I hate him for doing this to me!" she cried out loud, jumping up from the window seat, and she paced across the room.
Hermione felt out of control with her emotions, it wasn't a feeling she was used to, she wasn't sure if she liked it or not. But she couldn't deny the fact that her best friend for almost half her life had a hold on her feelings and actions.
She then began to mutter out loud, "I wish he couldn't do that to me! But why do I love it when he does! For almost half my life there hasn't been a moment when he wasn't there, either physically or mentally in the back of my head!"
She was so caught up in her pacing and her mutterings, and since her head was down to the ground watching her feet darting around she didn't look up or notice when someone came in the room.
The person didn't say anything they just observed her from a distance, not wanting to defer her from her musings.
With a frustrated groan she went back to the windows that showed what would be the outside of Hogwarts had the room been with windows.
She leaned her head against the glass.
"All right," she whispered, "I do love him, it's too hard to fight it anymore, I really do…"
She then heard a soft click noise of a door shutting or was it opening?
Whirling around, she was greeted with the sight of no one standing there.
`I hope no one heard that'
`Oh well they wouldn't know who you were talking about'
With that thought, she went back to her declaration of love a few moments, ago.
She felt like yelling it from the rooftops, like telling everyone she knew, but at the same time she wanted to keep it a secret to herself, like a gift that she could take out and admire whenever she was alone. She was in love with Harry, her best friend, the Harry Potter! It was almost too unbelievable for her to wrap her mind around.
Hermione walked over to the table that had just appeared with a simple daisy on it.
Slowly she began pulling the petals off one by one.
When the floor by her feet was littered with white petals, she tugged at the last few.
"I tell him, I love him"
"I tell him not"
The last petal.
"I tell him, I love him."
././././.
Harry was breathing heavily, he'd just run from the Room of Requirement to the Gryffindor Tower.
`She loves him! Oh God this is horrible!' Harry thought in a panic as he lay down on his bed. `Of all the people she loves him?!'
It didn't even occur to Harry that Hermione could have been talking about him, a large part him hoped she was, but instead the first thing that popped into his head as he heard her whispering her confession was, `She loves Draco Malfoy?!'
It was pretty stupid of Harry not to realize that Hermione was most defiantly talking about him, but because she'd been talking enthusiastically about working with Draco on their project, Harry gave that more merit then it was worth.
He didn't know that Hermione was talking about how great things were with Draco to try to relive her conscious from standing him up the previous evening.
In the back of Harry's mind it could be there that she was talking about himself, but Harry had the tendency not to be self centered and to almost beat himself down at times.
Harry couldn't sit still, he got up and started to pace, but soon it seemed that the room couldn't contain him and he started to walk through the corridors then eventually he was outside.
`If you don't say anything to her, you'll regret it forever'
`You're probably going to die when Voldemort gets a hold of you, she'll never know how much you cared for her how much you loved her'
`What have you got to lose?'
All these questions and more kept going through a cycle in Harry's mind, over and over.
He knew how he felt, he knew it a long time ago, the question was would he let her know?
He stopped moving franticly and sat down in front of the lake, back resting against a large familiar tree.
././././.
`She's been avoiding me, she has some nerve, I should hate her… but why can't I stop thinking about her?'
`It's because she's the first person who's been a real friend and the person who has ever right never to forgive you?'
`Shut up! God this is so stupid I'm arguing with myself!'
Harry and Hermione weren't the only angst filled teenagers that morning; Draco Malfoy was having his own personal dilemmas as well.
Draco knew he wasn't in love with Hermione, but he knew his feelings for her were more than just friendship.
He really couldn't say if he was or wasn't in love, he'd never really experienced or received it in his life, or if he had he couldn't recognize it.
He did know that love was more than just looking at a person and wanting them, he knew it was more than a fluttery feeling in your gut.
But he knew that if he didn't have Hermione Granger in his life, then he would have no one.
She was his first real friend, a person that liked him for him, who tried to find the best in him after all he'd done to her in the past.
Draco knew what he had to do. He was never one for wavering in a decision; he was a Malfoy, trained to look at the situation and do whatever possible to make it favor his best interest.
But this was different, he wasn't looking out for his best interest, he was just looking for an answer, yes or no.
`I can handle whatever she tells me, it's better than not knowing how she feels too…'
With that last thought Draco headed to the Great Hall to find some Gryffindor who'd tell him where their bloody house was located.
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