The Mirror

Dedication: To Inell who gives me the inspiration to write and the confidence to post.

Disclaimer: All the characters belong to J.K. Rowling; I just play with them when she’s not looking

Warnings: There’s some Harry/Lavender in the beginning before we get to the pumpkin pie goodness. No, I’m *not* a fan of the Harry/Lavender pairing, but it’s necessary to the story. There’s also Ginny/Neville which is *not* necessary, but which simply happens to be a pairing that I like. It never gets graphic and it’s not in every scene, but it is still there. There is also Draco/Hermione friendship. It never moves beyond friendship, but Draco is semi-nice and semi-redeemed and a *very* important character in the story. Consider yourselves warned.

A/N: This is my first portkey fanfic and I’m thrilled to be here! But since this *is* my first time, posting this fic is going to be mostly trial and error, so if something screws up, please be patient with me.

Section 1:

Voldemort was dead.

The night air was thick with owls flying to every corner of the globe to spread the glorious news. Complete strangers embraced in the street, weeping tears of joy. Rivers of Champizzle (a rare and expensive wizard version of champagne invented by Irving the Inebriated where the fermented bubbles were multi-colored and took the form of mini-fireworks in the bottle) were poured and distributed in every household as the whole of the wizarding world lifted their glasses to toast the ultimate triumph of the Boy Who, Once Again, Lived.

Of all the celebrations that raged across the wizarding world, none was more joyous than the one held at Hogwarts. When Dumbledore, by special permission of the Ministry of Magic, presented Harry with the Order of Merlin First Class during the celebratory feast, the cheers of the student body had been enough to make the ancient walls of the venerable castle tremble. Students, teachers, and even ghosts rejoiced. Peeves swooped through the halls cheering without pulling a single prank. Filch tied a new, scarlet ribbon around Mrs. Norris’ neck. The Bloody Baron was actually seen to smile. The castle fairly glittered with smiling faces and radiant joy, and all the painting of angels in the castle congregated in the Great Hall to sing Hallelujah in heavenly harmony.

And at the center of it all, blushing and embarrassed as usual, was Harry Potter, the hero. Ever since he had stumbled back into Hogwarts that morning, bruised and bloody but with a triumphant gleam in his eye and the pieces of Voldemort’s wand in his hand, Harry had not been left alone for so much as a second. A constant plague of owls followed him everywhere that he went, bearing messages of congratulations, adulations, and even offers of marriage. The reporters, likewise, descended like a swarm of locusts. None of them were brave enough to defy Dumbledore by breaching Hogwarts, but they sent an unceasing stream of owls begging for Harry’s story. One reporter offered Harry anything he had, up to and including the entire contents of his Gringotts vault or his first-born child, in exchange for an exclusive interview. Colin Creevey, with his usual puppy dog devotion to Harry, had appointed himself Harry’s personal secretary, and was busy sorting and categorizing all the notes and packages that Harry had received.

Not surprisingly, the common room of the Gryffindor tower was a scene of absolute chaos. The house elves, led by the positively ebullient Dobby, had crammed every flat surface other than the floor with food and drinks of every description. The feast (which lasted for five hours) had ended three hours before, but the Gryffindors were nowhere near finished in their celebrations. After all, the Gryffindors had a double reason to celebrate. Harry’s triumph was, of course, enough reason for the house party to end all house parties, but the story of his engagement was enough to turn it from an astonishing victory to a perfect fairy tale.

Yes, Harry Potter was engaged.

It had actually happened months before. Harry had fallen in love with Lavender Brown midway through his sixth year. At that time, the situation with Voldemort seemed to be worsening by the hour, and Harry had been terrified that if any Death Eaters discovered his attachment to Lavender, both she and her family would be in danger. Determined to protect her from the same fate as his parents and his godfather, Harry convinced Lavender to keep their engagement a secret. Only the Gryffindors in their year, whom Harry trusted beyond a shadow of a doubt, knew the truth.

But now that Voldemort was eliminated, it was safe to let the secret out. Lavender had been the one to expose it when she flew into Harry’s arms in a perfect transport of pride and joy right after he had received his Order of Merlin. Colin’s camera had captured the exact moment where Lavender’s lips met Harry’s. Industrious lad that he was, he had already taken orders for over fifty copies of the photo from the student body, and was negotiating the picture’s release to the Daily Prophet.

The Gryffindors, in grand Gryffindorian tradition, had determined that the situation called for an immediate engagement party. Dobby even managed to smuggle in a few bottles of alcohol for the use of the whole house, and a special bottle of Champizzle from his own possessions, for the sole use of Harry Potter and, as he insisted on referring to Lavender, Harry Potter’s Miss. Dobby had given the bottle to Harry with many winks and nudges in between bone-crushing hugs dripping with tears of adoration.

Lavender was in her element. She positively adored the spotlight and as the newly revealed fiancée of the savior of the wizarding world, she knew that she had the admiration and envy of every witch under the age of fifty, and most particularly every witch at Hogwarts. She glowed from all the attention, and never tired of showing the dazzled Gryffindor girls the beautiful diamond ring that Harry had given her. She recounted the story of how he had proposed thirty times in the span of an hour, and looked more than willing to recite it thirty more times, if not more. She looked up every now and then to catch Harry’s eye with a brilliant smile, and blow him a kiss. Harry, inevitably, would blush violently and then grin back.

Harry’s hand instinctively grasped the locket that hung around his neck. It had been a Christmas present Hermione had given him the year before. The small gold oval was engraved with the image of a lion and held inside it a pair of reversible sketches. One set showed his mother and his father, as they looked in photographs that Harry had of their last year at Hogwarts. If pressed on, though, the hidden latch flipped the sketches over, revealing sketches of Harry and Lavender. For over a year, Harry had kept the locket on him at all times. Although he arranged the images so that they would show his parents, he had always taken comfort in knowing that even if his love for Lavender had to be hidden, it was always close to his heart. Tonight, for the first time, he was wearing the locket with the images of himself and Lavender facing the front.

Harry was happier now that they were with only Gryffindors. The scene in the Great Hall had been overwhelming and Harry had never been fond of being the center of attention. In the familiarity of the Gryffindor common room, Harry could finally allow himself to relax. He reveled in the new-found luxury of being able to stare at Lavender as much as he wanted without worrying about anyone getting suspicious, and drank the dozens of bottles of butterbeer that his friends pushed on him while they slapped him on the back and told him that they always knew that he could do it.

He felt sore and tired and overly full and slightly drunk and absolutely wonderful. He was surrounded by people that he cared about, who cared about him and who he could love as much as he wanted without worrying that his affections would be used against him. The shadow that had hung over his head and influenced his every decision for the past seventeen years was finally eradicated. It felt marvelous to be so free.

A soft smile played over his lips as he scanned the crowd. There were bursts of bright red hair all over the room. Fred and George gotten Ron to give them the Gryffindor password, and had used the secret tunnel from Hogsmeade to Hogwarts to sneak all the Weasley brothers in for the party. Even Percy had removed the stick up his arse to join in the celebration. Ever since Harry’s fifth year, when Percy had sided with the ministry instead of his family, his relationship with Harry had been tense, even when he came back to his family, apologizing, a year later. Now, finally, the last remnants of tension seemed to have faded away. His voice, inevitably, had been pompous when he congratulated Harry and Lavender on their engagement and wished them “conjugal happiness” in their future together, but his smile had been warm and sincere and he had actually hugged Harry, whispering in his ear a small apology for having ever doubting him. The very last bits of Harry’s old resentment had melted away, and he had hugged Percy back.

At the moment, all the Weasley siblings seemed happily occupied. Fred and George had rigged up a music system and were busy playing DJs to the noisy crowd. Charlie had gathered a crowd of wide-eyed first years around him as he dazzled them with dragon tales. Bill was dancing with Ginny while Percy held what looked to be a fairly serious conversation with Neville Longbottom. Ginny and Neville had been dating for a little over a year, and Neville looked positively terrified. Harry hid a smirk as he imagined the inquisition Percy was putting Neville through as he decided whether the bashful boy was good enough to date his baby sister. Meanwhile, Ron had smuggled in Luna, and the two of them were busy snogging in a darkened corner. Harry grinned as he saw them all so happy. The Weasleys had been his family ever since that first day at King’s Cross station when he asked Mrs. Weasley for directions. Knowing that his triumph made them so happy made his own happiness all the greater.

Instinctively, his eyes sought out the other person who had been there for him since the beginning. Hermione might not have been his friend from day one, but even before Halloween of his first year, he had known that she was someone he could count on, no matter what. It was impossible for him to forget his first encounter with her. She took one look at him, and fixed his glasses. And in all the years that he had known her, she had always found a way to step in and fix his problems. Always. He never could have defeated Voldemort without her. Hell, he never could have *survived* so long without her. A slight frown passed over his face as he remembered that he hadn’t had a real chance to talk to Hermione since he had gotten back to Hogwarts earlier that day. As he scanned the crowd for her, he mentally resolved to pull her aside once he found her, give her a hug, and thank her for all that she had done for him.

The slight frown grew deeper when he couldn’t spot her. Harry had a trained seeker’s eye, and never had any difficulty finding someone in a crowd, especially Hermione. After all their years of friendship, he knew her so well that even if he couldn’t see her face or her trademark bushy hair, he’d recognize the way she stood, or the way she moved, or even the way she gestured when she spoke. He’d never had any difficulty spotting her before, not even in the packed Gryffindor stands during a Quidditch match. It bothered him when he couldn’t find her right away. It bothered him even more when he came to inevitable conclusion that he wasn’t able to find her because she wasn’t there. A brief bolt of panic shot through at the thought that she might be missing before he forced himself to relax. Voldemort was gone, and he would never have to worry about someone snatching his friends just to hurt or bait him ever again. Despite that, however, it still bothered him that Hermione wasn’t there. Where on earth could she be?

Noticing that Ron and Luna had, thankfully, come up for air, Harry shouldered his way over to his friend.

“Have you seen Hermione?” he asked.

Ron looked around, bewildered. “Isn’t she here?” Despite his worry, Harry had to hide a grin at Ron’s question. There had been a time at the beginning of sixth year when Ron could tell him at any moment exactly where Hermione was within a radius of half a meter. Ron had decided that he was in love with their bookish best friend, and nearly drove the girl crazy following her around all the time and begging her to go out with him. It was funny to think about it now (especially since Ron turned bright red whenever anyone mentioned it) but at the time, it had looked as if the famous Gryffindor Trio had been on the verge of dissolution.

Hermione had flatly refused to go out with Ron, saying that she didn’t care for him in that way and that she wouldn’t jeopardize their friendship by trying to turn it into something that didn’t stand a chance of working. When he didn’t give up and stubbornly refused to listen to her logical, carefully detailed explanations, she simply stopped speaking to him, saying that until he was capable of seeing reason and talking sense, she had no interest in anything that he had to say. Harry had spent a few uncomfortable months stuck in the middle of it before Ron finally gave up. Although the three remained friends, the tension didn’t completely drain away until Ron got together with Luna. After that, their friendship had returned to its former strength.

“I don’t see her anywhere,” Harry answered.

“I think I saw her duck out about twenty minutes ago,” Luna volunteered with a dreamy expression on her face as she cuddled closer to Ron.

“Why would she want to leave the party?” Harry asked, bewildered.

Luna raised a single eyebrow. “She didn’t say, but that’s probably because I didn’t ask. No one did.” There was nothing accusatory in her tone, but Harry seemed to hear something of a reproach in the way she had phrased it. Harry found himself wondering, as he often did around Luna, if there was actually something she knew that the rest of them didn’t, or if she just gave off that impression.

Shaking off that thought, Harry returned his focus to the problem at hand: finding Hermione. Once he gave it some thought, he realized that tracking her down would be fairly easy to do. He rummaged around in his pocket until he found what he was looking for. The old piece of parchment looked even more battered than it had when Harry had received it from the Weasley twins four years before, but it was still just as effective when he tapped it with his wand, reciting “I solemnly swear I am up to no good.” Instantly, the detailed map of Hogwarts flashed onto the page, complete with the tiny dots of the people in the castle. Practically everyone was in clumps, obviously showing the parties that were raging over the castle. In contrast, the dot that read Hermione Granger was alone and seemed to be walking through a part of the castle that the Marauder’s Map had labeled “Deserted rooms; very dull.”

Harry lifted his head and opened his mouth to speak to Ron, but Ron smiled and cut him off. “It’s okay; I know what you’re going to say. Go track her down and make sure she’s alright. I’ll cover for you if anyone is looking for you.”

“Thanks, mate,” Harry replied with a grateful smile. Even though he knew it was no longer truly necessary, Harry still felt that same paranoid need to be certain that his friends were safe at all times. Ron understood that.

“Better take your dad’s cloak, so you won’t get mobbed in the hallways,” Ron suggested with a wink. “Anyone sees you out there and you’ll just get dragged into another party.”

With a nod, Harry slipped over to the dormitories, grabbing his father’s invisibility cloak out of his trunk. He headed back to the common room portrait hole with the cloak and the map firmly clasped in his hands. Over the heads of the crowd he caught Ron’s eye, flashed him a smile, and then wrapped the invisibility cloak around himself. As he escaped through the portrait hole, he cast a quiet lumos spell, and followed the path on the map that would lead him to Hermione.

A/N: Big thank you to the lovely people who left me reviews! I replied to all of them (I just adore portkey; it’s so user friendly!) so go check out my responses on the reviews page if you’re interested. I am going to try to keep replying to all of them as they come in. This is my first try at Harry/Hermione and I want you all to know just how much all the encouragement is appreciated!

Section 2:

Hermione had crept through those same halls as silently as she could manage not long before. Of course, considering the celebrations that were going on around the castle, it was doubtful anyone would have noticed if a galloping horde of hippogriffs charged through the hallways, but she still forced herself to step softly and stick to the shadows as much as possible. She didn’t think anyone had noticed her slipping out of the Gryffindor House party, (after all, if anyone had noticed or cared that she had left, they would have come after her already) but she didn’t see the need to take any chances. She had loitered around the portrait hole for a full five minutes before she was satisfied that no one was coming after her. The absolute last thing she wanted was for someone to find her. In order to do what she had been aching to do, it was essential that she be alone, and undisturbed.

Besides, she knew that if anyone saw her, they would drag her to one of the celebration parties and she would rather drink undiluted bubotuber puss than spend another moment pretending to celebrate. She had forced herself to be smiling and happy all day long, and for most of the night as well. The next person who ran up to her and said, “Isn’t it wonderful?” was going to get a sock in the jaw. She couldn’t bear to pretend to be smiling and happy any longer. She couldn’t hold up that joyous façade when her entire world was crashing down around her. But exposing her true emotions to her well-meaning friends wasn’t an option, so she needed one final fix of her secret addiction so she could pull herself together. Once she’d spent a few hours in her hidden room, she’d be able to put back on her smiling mask.

Hermione was fully aware that coming back to the room was a sign of a weakness in herself that she despised. She had always prided herself on her strength and the force of her determination, and she hated the dependence that she had formed on that hidden room. But at that moment, she was feeling weak and tired and horribly beaten down and she needed the comfort the room could offer her one last time. Just one last time, and then she’d say goodbye to it forever. Besides, she had earned it, hadn’t she? After what she had done just that morning, hadn’t she won the right to take a little comfort for herself where she could find it? Saving the wizarding world wasn’t something your average school-age witch had to do every day, and there should be some sort of reward or compensation for that, shouldn’t there? After all, it had taken her years to track down the spell that she and Ron had used that morning, and then weeks to prepare herself for the actual casting.

Ever since Harry had told her of the contents of the prophecy they had battled over at the end of their fifth year, Hermione had been avidly searching for ways to turn that information to their advantage. Since only Harry could defeat Voldemort, plans that called for several people to attack Voldemort at once or for anyone else to strike the fatal blow had to be discarded. Evidence had piled up on several fronts from a variety of seers and prognosticators that implied that the final confrontation between Voldemort and Harry would be one on one.

Hermione, along with Dumbledore and the rest of the Order of the Phoenix, had been worried that Harry on his own simply wasn’t capable of permanently destroying a force as potently and powerfully evil as Voldemort. It wasn’t that Harry wasn’t strong; it was more that Harry wasn’t ruthless. Voldemort would not hesitate to use any manner of dark spells and enchantments at his disposal to win the final battle. He had no scruples about playing dirty. Harry’s magic, as powerful as it was, wasn’t anywhere near as versatile as Voldemort’s.

Ron had actually made a joke about it, saying that all they needed to do was divide Harry neatly into thirds. If Harry could split himself up into three parts, then he could have one part block all curses that Voldemort would send out, and another part concentrate on removing the shields Voldemort had erected around himself to make himself invulnerable, while the third part would be able to actually cast the killing curse, and finish off Voldemort for good.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t possible. At least, it wasn’t possible through traditional means. So Hermione started digging around in the nontraditional spells. It had been shortly after Christmas when she found it. The spell itself was exceptionally old, and came from the earth-based, wandless, untrained brand of magic that had been prevalent in the Middle Ages. Schools for witchcraft had been few and far between in those days, and witches and wizards who had lacked the resources or opportunities for formal training in magic had been forced to find their own ways to use the power that pumped through their veins. The spell that Hermione found allowed several casters to pool their spirit into one vessel that would go out to do battle. In short, if Hermione was willing to place her soul in Harry’s hands, he could literally take her spirit into battle with him. And since she would become a part of him for as long as the spell lasted, her consciousness would be able to take part in the battle itself. And that was precisely what she had done.

When she revealed the spell to the Order of the Phoenix, the members had debated for weeks over who would be used to combine themselves with Harry. The first instinct of the older members was to combine Harry with their most powerful casters. Melding Dumbledore with Harry would give the boy the benefit of all of the Headmaster’s strength and experience. Combining Snape with Harry would give Harry access to a darker side of magic, and the ability to cast dark spells without endangering his conscience.

But in final analysis, Hermione and Ron were the only possible choices. In order for the spell to be effective, all the people involved had to have complete trust for each other. If any of the casters held back any part of themselves from the merging, it would cause the whole process to self-destruct. There were even instances were it had caused the death of the casters. Such a spell was not to be taken lightly, and such a trust could not be forced. Even if they had had years to work on it instead of the limited timeframe they were allowed, Harry and Snape would not have been able to work past their distrust for one another. And Harry’s confidence in Dumbledore had been severely damaged at the end of fifth year, when Harry realized just how much Dumbledore had kept from him.

The only two people on earth that Harry trusted completely, without reservation and with his life, were Hermione and Ron. And it had worked. With the power and ability of three people inside him, Harry was able to break his way through everything that Voldemort tried to use against him, and the Dark Lord that had been the terror of every decent wizard for the past quarter of a century was defeated at last.

Despite the fact that it was Hermione’s spell that had made Harry’s victory possible, Hermione knew that Harry would receive all the accolades for the final defeat. It wasn’t Harry’s fault. Given his preferences, Harry would have chosen anonymity any day over the unrelenting fame he had always had. But it *wasn’t* his choice. The wizarding world liked to have a hero, and Harry had fit that role ever since he was a baby. It wasn’t surprising that the newspapers were very eager to give him undivided credit for the defeat of the Dark Lord.

Hermione didn’t begrudge him the spotlight treatment he would receive. She didn’t want medals or prizes or her name and picture splashed across the papers. All she asked for herself was that she be allowed this one indulgence, one last time. She had played a role in the defeat of Voldemort; surely she deserved some kind of reward for that. And the only reward that she wanted was to be able to spend just a few more hours in that forgotten room at the end of the corridor. Realistically, what would be the harm in her going there, just this one last time?

Finally, she reached her destination. A quick scan of the hallway confirmed that no one was there to see her. She raised her wand and a muttered spell made the doorway appear in front of her. Hermione slipped inside and eagerly shut the door behind her. Moments later, the doorway disappeared leaving behind an innocent looking stretch of perfectly empty wall. Hermione had charmed the door to invisibility months before. This particular part of the castle had been unused for years and there was little likelihood that anyone would be wandering around there in the first place, but Hermione was always the type to take precaution after precaution, just to be safe. When she was in this room, the last thing she wanted was to be disturbed.

Once the door was closed, Hermione immediately rushed to the shadowy corner that held her prize. Every time she came back, she always worried that it would be gone, that Dumbledore would have taken it away. Sometimes, she wished that he would. She knew that her addiction to it wasn’t healthy. But she knew she could never give it up on her own. Not yet. Unconsciously she held her breath, and then released it in a sigh of relief as she saw that it was still there. The famous Mirror of Erised.

She had been startled and intrigued when she had come across it for the first time, nearly a year before. Harry and Ron had told her about it, of course. It had been an essential part of Harry’s adventure with the sorcerer’s stone during their first year. But she had never seen it, herself. She recognized it instantly, less from Harry and Ron’s descriptions (they had both been far too intrigued by what the mirror showed them to pay much attention to mundane details like the mirror’s size, shape, decoration, etc.) than from the reading she had done on it. The myths and legends surrounding it were astounding.

The sheer quantity of people who had wasted away in front of it, unable to leave behind that vision of the thing they wanted most, was high enough for the mirror to qualify as an object of dark destruction. It was saved from that label by a technicality. The compulsion the mirror created to stay, and watch, and never walk away, *could* be overcome. There was no physical force that held a person in place in front of the mirror. All a person had to do was make the choice to walk away. As was so often the case, the defining factor lay not in the magic that the mirror held, but in the ability of all the people who encountered it to make the choice for themselves. Someone with a truly strong will could look into the mirror, see what it held, and leave it without a backward glance. The people who perished in front of the mirror were not forced to stay there; instead, they *chose* to remain, preferring the world they imagined to the actual world they lived in. The mirror was not directly responsible for that fact that some people were unable to let go of their dreams.

Hermione had known all of this history years before she ever laid eyes on the famous mirror. She had approached it knowing the danger that it represented. As she stepped closer, she had known that she shouldn’t, she had known that it was wrong, and she had known that it was dangerous, but she had not hesitated to seat herself in front of the mirror and stare into its depths.

She had gasped at the image that she saw the first time. Of course, on some level, she had expected it. She knew that the mirror reflected not the viewer’s face, but their deepest, innermost desire. Hermione had always known that her deepest, innermost desire was to love completely and be loved completely in return. Accustomed to relying on her brain to lead her safely through any situation, Hermione had come to be afraid of any situation that required her to depend upon something as unreliable as her heart. Loving freely was difficult for her, which led her to fear that she would never be able to love someone enough to earn their love in return. Although she was fully aware of this fear of hers, she was, nonetheless, unable to do anything to stop it.

So she wasn’t surprised when she saw herself reflected in the glass, wrapped in the arms of a boy who was looking at her with love and adoration clearly written on his face. She wasn’t surprised to see her own blissful expression, or the deep, abiding love in her eyes as she leaned back against her beloved. She knew that the image of love that she saw was what she wanted more than anything in the world. And she knew that she wanted it because she was afraid it was the one thing she would never be able to have.

The identity of the boy holding her had, at first, come as a bit of a surprise. Her feelings for him had been repressed for so long, she had actually managed to convince herself that they didn’t exist. It was a lie, of course. Her love had only grown stronger through the years that she tried to deny it. When she looked into the mirror, she was unable to pretend any longer. Her love was real and lasting and it would not go away, no matter how much she wanted it to.

The mirror had given her two surprising revelations: the first was that she was capable of loving someone wholly and completely with nothing held back. In truth, she already did. The second revelation was more painful: her fear of not being loved in return had become a reality. It was not a possibility that the image she saw in the mirror would ever happen in real life. As much as she might adore him, Hermione knew that she had no chance of ever winning the love of Harry Potter.

A/N: Again, thanks for all the wonderful reviews! I replied to them all, but there were a few repeating questions that I thought I should answer here, so everyone can see my responses. First of all, a lot of you were wondering what on earth Harry is doing with Lavender in the first place. Hopefully, this section will clear up the questions about that. Let me just say, though, that Harry is a teenage boy, and as with all teenage boys, the organ that makes his decisions for him is found considerably south of his chest. Another question that popped up a lot was what Harry would see when he looked at the mirror, so you all need to know that Harry’s not going to look into the mirror. At all. Not now, not later in the story, not at any point. In fact, the next section is the last appearance of the mirror in this story. After that, it won’t show up again. Harry *will* figure out how Hermione feels about him eventually, but he’s not going to see the truth in any piece of glass. Other than that… well, other than that, you’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you? *grin* Enjoy!

Section 3:

Hermione discovered the mirror midway through the second term of her sixth year at Hogwarts. The timing coincided almost exactly with the beginning of Harry and Lavender’s secret engagement. It wasn’t entirely coincidental. For a sizeable chunk of the first term of sixth year, Hermione had found herself feeling like a fifth wheel with all of her friends in committed relationships. Realistically, she had known that her friends would end up in relationships sooner or later, but still, it hurt quite a bit more than she had expected.

Hermione had never been terribly good at making friends. Her bossy manner and aggressively studious ways meant that most people immediately classified her as intimidating or dull. As a friend, she actually had quite a lot to offer, but very few people made the effort necessary to find that out. For a long time, it hadn’t mattered. Hermione had never been one to put much stock in universal popularity. Most of the students respected her and very few teased her, and usually that was good enough for her. As long as she had Harry and Ron, Hermione had never minded that she didn’t have scores of friends. Besides, as much time as she had to devote to keeping Harry and Ron alive and passing their classes, she had never had much time for other friends. The two that she had filled her life so completely that she had never felt the need for much of anything outside of their close-knit friendship.

It had been something of a rude shock to discover that both boys wanted to find girls with whom they could have something more. While she was pleased that her friends had found girls to make them happy (especially Ron who had driven her crazy for half the summer and the first two months of school with his pointless pursuit), it was depressing to discover that her company was no longer important to her boys, now that they had girlfriends to occupy their time. Without them, her days had become horribly empty. She had needed something that she could do to fill up her time.

At first, she tried to pass the time with schoolwork. The library was, as always, her home away from home. Although her course load was not, technically, large enough to absolutely *require* a Time Turner in order to be able to complete all her work, there was no denying that it should have been enough to keep her very busy. Unfortunately, though, she had gotten so fully in the habit of efficiently managing her study time that not even her beloved books could fill all the hours of the day.

Next, she tried picking up a hobby. A random chance showed that she possessed a surprising knack for sketching. Applying herself with her typical determination, she researched drawing techniques and used talent spells to show her how to progress. As a result, she became very competent with charcoal and paper in a remarkably short period of time. Her sketches, charmed like wizard photographs to move but not to interact with the viewer, were beautifully detailed and startlingly expressive with an element of softness and warmth to them that came, for once, not from Hermione’s analytical mind, but from her romantic and affectionate heart. Sketching became a stress-reliever for her; it served as a way to release her emotional anxieties and get her feelings out. When she didn’t have homework or a book in her hand, she was now often found with a sketchpad, loving to take down quick sketches of the Gryffindor common room and all of her friends. Once she presented Ginny with a birthday present of a beautifully drawn and carefully framed portrait of her and Neville, Hermione’s portraits became very highly in demand, especially for couples. And at that point in Hermione’s sixth year, it seemed like everyone but her was in a couple.

Ginny and Neville had started the love-fest in the summer before Hermione’s sixth year. After their experiences in the Department of Mysteries, Dumbledore had encouraged Luna and Neville to spend time in Grimmauld Place with the Order of the Phoenix, to make sure that they hadn’t been too harshly traumatized by the experiences they had undergone. Neville, grateful for the excuse to get away from the boredom of his grandmother’s house, had practically moved in.

Ginny and Neville had always gotten on well together. When Ginny was still a shy first year, she had been too intimidated to approach most people for help on her schoolwork, but Neville had always been so gentle and unassuming that she had never minded going to him with questions. Without him, she never would have passed Herbology. They became a bit closer after Neville invited Ginny to the Yule Ball in her third year. Hermione, the only person in whom Neville felt comfortable confiding, knew that the shy boy harbored a bit of a crush on the red-haired girl, but that he was afraid of acting on it. He was convinced that if word got back to Ginny’s brothers that he was interested in their baby sister, George and Fred would use him for bludger practice and Ron would never speak to him again. It wasn’t until that summer, in the limited confines of the hidden house, that Neville had finally worked up the courage to ask Ginny out. She said yes.

They were a surprisingly sweet couple. When they were in a room together, Neville simply couldn’t take his eyes off her. He watched her with palpable adoration as if he found it impossible to believe that someone so perfect actually wanted to be with him. Neville was the prototype of the considerate boyfriend, constantly showering her with tiny gifts, relishing the opportunity to do anything to make her smile. Ginny, for her part, was overwhelmed at being, for the first time in her life, the center of someone’s world. As the youngest child, she had spent most of her life feeling like she was a step behind everyone else, and that they all knew things, had things, experienced things that were quite simply out of her reach. With Neville, she was no longer on the outside looking in. Everything they shared as a couple was special and personal and sparklingly new. He had never had a girlfriend before and was so sweetly eager to learn everything she could teach him about how she liked to be kissed, and touched, and held. Loving Ginny had given Neville a sense of confidence and self-worth, and loving Neville had given Ginny a sense of peace.

Ron, seeing the effects of their relationship on his formerly timid friend and his formerly restless sister, had decided that he needed one of those for himself. Hermione had been, in Ron’s estimation, the obvious choice. Everyone expected the two of them to end up together, anyway. Elderly relatives, eager for a family wedding, were in the habit of writing in and asking Ron if the two of them had gotten around to setting a date. Hermione was smart, pretty, and already used to having him around all the time. She got along wonderfully with his family and was already aware of all of his bad habits. Best of all, he felt completely at ease around her. He never stuttered or stammered or blushed fiercely around Hermione the way he did around other girls. Convinced that he and Hermione were meant to be, he started an all-out campaign to win her heart. It took Hermione months to convince him that they weren’t destined to be anything but very good friends. It probably would have taken longer if Luna hadn’t tricked him into a kiss at the Halloween Feast.

Harry, seeing his best friend so happily in love, had decided to try it out as well. In the aftermath of Sirius’ death, Harry had been desperate for any affection he could get. It shouldn’t have been so surprising that Harry and Lavender would fall in love. Lavender, in the manner of most teenage girls, seemed to fall “desperately in love” with someone new every season. In the years that they had spent as roommates, Hermione had often teased Lavender about her string of boyfriends, asking after the newest “flavor of the month”. That she would fall in love with Harry Potter, hero of the wizarding world and star of the Quidditch team who just so happened to be both in her year and in her house was no real surprise. Truthfully, it was surprising that it hadn’t happened earlier. And once Lavender set her eye on a boy, she never experienced even a moment of doubt that he would fall in love with her in return.

To those who knew him best, it wasn’t such an enormous surprise that Harry fell in love with Lavender, either. Lavender was really strikingly pretty, in the utterly feminine way that Harry had always found easy to appreciate. Harry had been raised by the Dursleys to believe that his life would always be cold, drab, empty and unemotional. Up until his eleventh birthday, he had honestly believed that he was unlovable and undesirable, and that there was never any chance that anyone would want him. Thanks to Hogwarts and the support of the friends he had found there, Harry had grown somewhat more accustomed to the idea that he was actually deserving of love, but when a pretty, popular, vivacious girl smiled at him and flirted at him and so obviously showed that she wanted to be with him, Harry was, instinctively, dazzled. Lavender was considered quite a catch in the Hogwarts circles, and Harry had been on cloud nine when he realized that she truly wanted *him*.

Lavender initiated Harry into a world of physical pleasure that exceeded even his wildest expectations. Harry had always been far too shy to initiate anything more than rather awkward kisses, but Lavender experienced no such shyness and took great pleasure in teaching Harry just how good it felt to touch and be touched. Lavender stayed at Hogwarts over Christmas break, and Harry lost his virginity to her on Christmas Day. After that, with the aid of his Firebolt and his invisibility cloak allowing him to avoid the trick stairs, it was an easy matter for Harry to fly into the sixth year Gryffindor girls dormitory and spend countess long afternoons learning all the deliciously satisfying ways to love Lavender. Once Harry proposed, the two of them seemed to feel some sort of obligation to play out the roles of randy soon-to-be-weds who couldn’t keep their hands off of each other.

Parvati, blissfully happy in her own relationship with Dean, didn’t mind being barred from her room on certain afternoons provided that the same privilege was extended to her on other days, and Hermione, always the understanding best friend, made herself scarce as often as was necessary so that the couples had privacy to be together. But even Hermione couldn’t spend all of her time in the library, and hanging out in the common room with Ron and Ginny, even with her sketchbook to keep her occupied, became much more difficult than it had been in the past since both the Weasleys acquired significant others. Hermione got along excellently with Luna and Neville, and the two couples always did their best to make Hermione feel welcome and included, but it was impossible for her not to feel that she was intruding on their time together. She needed a new hobby, one that got her out of Gryffindor tower all together.

Exploring Hogwarts was a way to pass the time. Striking out on her own, she started to spend her spare time learning the castle. She told herself that she was happy exploring and finding parts of the castle that had been abandoned long ago. She even tried to convince herself that her adventures were just as enjoyable alone, and that she didn’t miss her friends as she poked around the dusty corridors. Borrowing the Marauder’s Map, she became as familiar with the ins and outs of Hogwarts castle as any student had been in the history of the building. The original Marauders (and their modern day equivalents in the Weasley twins) had mostly been interested in exploring the school to find secret passage that led *out*. Hermione, always the eternal learner, was far more interested with what lay within. Between the map, the knowledge she had picked up about the building in Hogwarts, A History, and her own highly developed sense of logic, she was soon able to figure out every nook and cranny in the whole of the enormous castle. It was in her explorations that she found the room that held the mirror.

When she first saw the mirror, she had planned to look into it once to satisfy her curiosity, and then never return again. But once she caught a glimpse of what the mirror showed her, there was no denying its appeal. Hermione had wanted Harry for what felt like an eternity, and the chance to see herself in his arms was too much of a temptation to ignore. The image was especially potent as each day drove home to Hermione just how little chance she had of ever making her dream come true. The more deeply Harry became involved with Lavender, the more often Hermione visited the mirror. Though her will was strong enough to make her walk away from it every time, she could never quite fight the urge to return.

The mirror became her guilty secret. She rationed her visits to it carefully, calling into play her famous self-control. She didn’t want anyone to grow suspicious and follow her to the abandoned classroom. She only went when she was certain that no one would be looking for her: during free periods when everyone would simply assume that she was in the library, early in the morning before anyone else was awake (Hermione had always been an early riser), or late at night when she simply couldn’t sleep. She kept rigid control over her visits, never allowing herself to go more than three times a week, and never for more than an hour at a time. But even though she managed to restrict herself, she couldn’t bear to give it up entirely. And tonight of all nights, when Harry had announced his engagement and Hermione truly had to give up all hope of her dream coming true, she simply had to stare into the mirror one last time.

Just as she had so many times before, for so many hours before, Hermione seated herself in front of the mirror. She knew she shouldn’t do this. She knew that it would hurt even more than it had hurt all those other times. But this was the last time, she promised herself. She would look at her dream one last time, and then she would say goodbye to it. She blinked rapidly to keep the tears from clouding her eyes as she stared at the image of herself, blissfully smiling, wrapped in his arms. The tears, released from her eyes, streamed down her face unnoticed and unchecked.

“Harry,” she whispered, as her fingers traced his image on the cold glass. “Oh, Harry.”

That was how Harry found her.

A/N: I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to respond to the reviews today! It’s been a bit crazy; I just now managed to grab some dinner. I’ll be heading over to reply as soon as I get this posted. I did take a minute to read the reviews and want to thank everyone for sending them! I’m really overwhelmed (and incredibly flattered) by the response this has gotten. Thanks especially to Eli for pointing out the typo in part 3. I’m going to try to upload the correction along with this, so hopefully it *should* be fixed now. For those of you who are suffering from the angst… well… I hate to disappoint you, but things are going to get worse before they get better. I appreciate your patience! Okay enough rambling, (hey Jane, can I be treasurer?) on with the show!

Section 4:

Harry initially had a smile of triumph on his face when he opened the door to the room and started to walk inside. It wasn’t easy getting into a room that had no visible door, but Harry had managed it. It helped, of course, that he had the Marauder’s Map showing him where the door was supposed to be. It also helped that Hermione’s primary objective had been to conceal the door instead of block it; breaking through locking charms, especially Hermione’s locking charms, would have been far more difficult. Still, it had taken a bit of effort to get in, and Harry was feeling rather pleased with himself as he pulled off the invisibility cloak and stepped into the room, until he caught sight of Hermione.

Harry’s first impulse when he saw Hermione crying on the other side of the room was to charge over with wand drawn and hex to China and back whatever it was that was making her cry. He couldn’t bear it when she cried. Then he noticed the object of her attention and stopped dead in his tracks. His view of it wasn’t very good; it was all the way across the room from him and angled so that he saw more of the back of it than the front, but he still recognized it instantly. The Mirror of Erised. He had often wondered what happened to it after Dumbledore moved it from its last home. Apparently, Hermione had found it.

“Hermione, what are you doing here?” Harry asked, his voice soft so he wouldn’t startle her. It didn’t do any good. She jumped anyway at the sound.

“Harry!” she squeaked as she rose quickly to her feet. “You nearly scared me to death.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry said, stepping closer to her. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” He frowned when she stepped away from him, retreating further into the shadows of the room.

“You shouldn’t be here. You’re… you’re missing your own engagement party! Lavender will be wondering where you are. Merlin, Harry, *everyone* will be wondering where you are.”

Harry tried to step closer again and sighed in frustration when Hermione kept stepping away. “Where are we, anyway?” he asked at last.

“One hundred years ago, this used to be the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom,” she answered. “But Patty Ash messed up a spell in 1892. Instead of banishing her chameleosprite, like she was supposed to, she ended up multiplying it by a thousand. Naturally, that was too many to fit into the cage, and they burst out, taking over the classroom.”

“What’s a chameleosprite?” Harry asked, smiling to himself. When Hermione went into lecture mode, she forgot everything else, including her attempt to avoid Harry. He managed to step closer to her, and then closer still, without her even noticing.

“Honestly Harry, don’t you do any outside reading? A chameleosprite is sort of like a pixie, but more annoying. They love to make chaos and since, once they’re outside of their cages, they can change their appearance to blend with their environment, they’re very hard to catch. It takes ages to get rid of them, so the classes were switched to another room while the professors cleared them away. By the time they were all gone, everyone had gotten used to the new classroom. This room has been abandoned since then. It still has some protection spells up, though. I think that’s why Dumbledore chose to put the mirror in here.”

“Why are you crying?”

Hermione jumped when she saw that Harry was standing right next to her. She tried to turn from him, but he put his hand on her shoulder, turning her to face him, using the other hand to gently wipe the tears from her cheek.

“It’s… it’s nothing,” she insisted, pulling away from his touch. “I’m just a little emotional. That’s all.”

Harry nodded slowly. He knew that she wasn’t telling him the whole truth, but he hoped that he get her to open up by agreeing with her. “I guess I can understand that,” he said, at last. “I think we’re all a little emotional. Makes sense, actually. It’s hard to believe that it’s all over.” Hermione flinched at his words, and Harry wondered why.

“Silly, really,” Hermione stated. “We should be celebrating. Especially you. You should go, Harry. Lavender will be looking for you.”

“The fire whiskey has made its rounds. Lavender was three sheets to the wind when I last saw her. Everyone was. It will be awhile before anyone realizes that I’m not there.”

“You should be drinking, too,” Hermione stated, continuing to avoid his eyes. “Why aren’t you celebrating?”

“You disappeared,” Harry answered, trying to force his voice to sound casual. There was no reason for Hermione to know about the bolt of panic that raced through him when he realized that he couldn’t find her. “When I checked the Marauder’s Map, you showed up in a part of the castle I didn’t recognize. I was worried.”

“I didn’t disappear,” she said lightly, pulling away from him again, “I just sort of slipped out. You know I’m not really the party type. I didn’t think anyone would notice. After all, it’s not my engagement party.”

“But it’s your victory celebration, too,” Harry replied, trying to make her smile. “We defeated Voldemort, Hermione. Isn’t that something for you to celebrate? That’s the whole reason that I can *have* an engagement party in the first place. Lavender and I don’t have to sneak around and hide anymore. I don’t need to worry about whether a Death Eater will attack her just because I care about her. Voldemort and his pathetic followers will never be a problem for any of us again. And it’s thanks to you.”

“Thanks to *you*,” Hermione corrected him. “You’re the hero; you’re the one who defeated Voldemort.”

“And I couldn’t have done it without *your* spell,” Harry insisted. “They should build statues in your honor. No, even better, they should write *books* in your honor!” Harry grinned. “I can just picture it: ‘Hermione, A History’. Will you make me stand in line for an autographed copy?”

“Nah, I’ll put one aside for you. You’ll be too busy traveling the world with Lavender to wait in my line.” Hermione smiled a little as she said it and Harry smiled back, relaxing a bit. He never knew quite what to do with himself when Hermione cried. Thus he was caught completely off guard when Hermione threw herself into his arms. Winding her arms around his neck, she stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear.

“I’m glad you’re happy, Harry. You have no idea how glad. And if I did anything at all to make that happiness possible, then that makes me gladder still.” She dropped down from her toes and buried her face in his shoulder, resting her body against his.

Hermione held onto him hard. Harry didn’t know quite how to respond, but he held her back. Holding onto Hermione always felt right, somehow. Ever since he was eleven years old, turning to her had never led him astray. He heard her mumble something into his shoulder and pulled away slightly so he could ask her to repeat it.

“Didn’t quite catch that,” he said, nudging her head off of his chest. “Care to repeat—” The words died on his lips when he saw her face.

She was crying again. Silent tears were streaming down her face and she made no attempt to stop them or hide them this time. The look in her eyes was something he had never seen before. Something he couldn’t describe and certainly couldn’t understand. She looked him straight in the eye and smiled, and he wondered why the sight of his best friend smiling like that made him feel like his heart would break.

“I said, ‘hang on tightly, let go lightly,’” she answered.

Harry’s forehead creased with confusion. “I don’t understand…” he began, but Hermione cut him off.

“You don’t have to understand, Harry. It’s a lesson that I taught myself.” Her smile grew more brilliant, but he heard her voice break slightly on the last word. “You know how eager I always am to learn.” She shook her head as if to shake off the momentary weakness and whisked a handkerchief out of her pocket. As she dabbed at her eyes, Harry was surprised to see all the redness and puffiness disappearing along with the tears. Moments later, there was no visible sign that she had cried at all. Even the handkerchief was dry.

“Charmed,” she said, answering his unspoken question. Harry smiled slightly and wondered how she always knew what he was thinking. Was that a spell also, or did she truly know him better than anyone else?

“Wipes away all sign of tears along with the tears, and then dries itself,” she continued. “It even repairs smudged eye shadow or running mascara. It’s almost a pity I don’t wear make-up. It would be so handy.”

“Hermione, why did you come here? Were you… were you looking for that?” he gestured over at the mirror.

“Looking for it? Not exactly. I already knew it was here,” Hermione answered, choosing her words carefully.

“You’ve been here before, then?”

Hermione looked as if she was considering lying, but finally decided on the truth, instead. “Yes,” she stated, deliberately keeping her answer short.

“Does it always make you cry like that?” Harry questioned gently.

“The mirror can’t hurt me, Harry,” Hermione replied, once again selecting her words with great care. “You know that better than anyone.”

“The mirror shows you your heart’s desire,” Harry stated, trying to force Hermione away from her careful answers. “Why would seeing your heart’s desire make you cry?”

“Because the thing that I want most is something I can’t have,” Hermione answered, her voice barely audible even in the silent room.

“I… I don’t want you coming back here anymore,” Harry said. “I won’t ask you what you saw in the mirror if you don’t want to tell me, but whatever it is, it can’t be good for you if it’s making you cry.”

“I won’t be coming back here,” Hermione reassured him. “This was the last time. I guess I just wanted to… say goodbye to it, in a way.”

“Promise me,” Harry insisted, almost surprised at the urgency in his voice. He was haunted by the memory of what Dumbledore had told him about the mirror and the number of people who had wasted away in front of it. He’d do anything in his power to make sure that that didn’t happen to Hermione.

“I promise,” she replied, smiling sweetly at him. “Just let me get my cloak; it’s right over there; and I’ll never come back here again.”

“I’ll get your cloak,” Harry offered, crossing the room to gather it up.

He resolutely avoided the temptation to sneak a peak into the mirror as he pulled Hermione’s cloak off of the floor. The mirror *should* reflect him exactly as he was, at that moment. After all, he had defeated his greatest enemy, avenged his parents, and announced his engagement to the girl he loved. How could he be anything less than perfectly happy? But still… he didn’t look. If he wasn’t perfectly happy, then he’d be better off not knowing.

“You shouldn’t look back,” he stated firmly as he crossed the room and handed Hermione her cloak.

“Right,” Hermione answered, more to herself than to Harry as she watched him, fighting back the urge to cry. “No looking back.”

A/N: I got all the reviews replied to, woohoo! Wow, 114 reviews! I’m overwhelmed that people are enjoying this story so much! Thanks, thanks, and thanks again to all the lovely people who have taken the effort to review this story. It’s much appreciated. So here’s part 5 with the long-awaited entrance of Draco. (Part 6 will explain how they became friends, so don’t worry if their relationship seems a bit confusing at first!) And also in this section… well… Hermione’s going to make a decision that I’m pretty sure most of you are *not* going to like. Please bear with me? I promise it will all come out right in the end. Special thanks this time to H_HrFan for pointing out the typos in the last chapter. I’m thinking of coming up with some sort of reward system for the first person to alert me to any typos. Any suggestions?

Section 5:

It took nearly twenty minutes, but Hermione finally managed to convince Harry that she didn’t want to go back to the party. He didn’t believe her when she said that she was just tired and wanted to sleep, but when she repeated it without backing down, over and over again, he had no choice but to give in. Reluctantly, he walked her to her door and said goodnight before heading back to Gryffindor tower under the shelter of his invisibility cloak. Hermione let out a sigh of relief as she gave the portrait the password and entered her common room.

“And what did Potty do this time?” a drawling voice asked as the portrait clicked shut behind her.

“It wasn’t his fault,” Hermione replied automatically as she crossed over to the couch and collapsed onto it next to Draco, closing her eyes.

“Yes, you always say that,” Draco answered. “And I never believe you. Why do you think that is?”

“Because you’re naturally suspicious of everyone and never believe anything anyone tells you?” Hermione suggested with her eyes still shut.

“Very funny. Here, turn around and let me get your neck.” Obediently, Hermione turned, pushing her hair out of the way to give Draco access to the back of her neck. He gave the most amazing massages she had ever had in her life, and she wasn’t about to turn the
opportunity down. Merlin knows she’d take anything she could get at the moment that stood any chance of helping her relax.

“Why did I have to wait so long to find out how good you are at this?” she purred as his talented hands started working the tension out of her neck and shoulders.

“Maybe because you only recently became perceptive enough to appreciate my charming, charismatic nature?” Draco suggested, conversationally.

“It’s possible,” Hermione conceded. “Of course, it’s also possible that it’s because you were a brain-washed, prejudiced, close-minded, ignorant, arrogant arsehole for the first sixteen years of your life, which rather got in the way of us becoming close friends.”

“Yes, there’s that,” Draco agreed, amicably. Hermione smiled and closed her eyes as she leaned further into the massage. Her friendship with Draco was as unexpected as anything that had happened in her life, including discovering she was a witch. After all, little girls dream of being powerful witches and casting spells all the time, but before it happened, Hermione would never have dreamt that she would become friends with Draco Malfoy. In fact, she would have wagered every knut she had that she and the blond-haired Slytherin would despise each other to their dying days. After all, he spent the first five years of their Hogwarts education being absolutely horrible to her at every possible opportunity. But then sixth year rolled around.

It seemed like everything that Hermione took for granted in her life during the first five years of school changed when sixth year started. First Ron spent months trying to convince her that they were destined to be together, then he fell in love with the Ravenclaw who he constantly claimed drove him batty. (Of course, he had often said the same thing about Hermione, which led her to wonder whether Ron had a certain penchant for girls who showed a sort of talent at driving him up the wall.) Harry had gotten together with Lavender. Ginny had gotten together with Neville, and Hermione had become friends with Draco. Hermione smiled as she leaned back into Draco’s magic touch. Yes, she was most definitely glad that she had become friends with Draco. His neckrubs, his late night chats with her, his essential and unmistakable *Draco-ness* had become as essential to her as anything in her life.

Draco hissed sympathetically as he felt the tension in her shoulders.

“Violins aren’t this tightly strung, Granger. You want to tell me what happened?”

“Since when did you become Miss Lonelyhearts?”

“What?”

“Never mind. Muggle thing. Mmm, right there.” Hermione moaned as Draco’s hands worked out a particularly vicious knot in her shoulders. “Damn, you’re good at this.”

“Of course I am,” Draco replied. Hermione didn’t have to see him to know that he was smirking. “I’m good at everything. Whereas you’re not even good at changing the subject. I know you’re upset, and I know why. Are you planning on talking to me about it, or not?”

“What makes you so sure I’m upset?” Hermione hedged.

“Hmm, let’s look at the evidence. Instead of attending the party of the century, you’re moping in here with me. The boy you’re in love with has just announced that he’s going to marry someone else. That charmed handkerchief that you’re so proud of is in your hand instead of your pocket, and if you’ve been using it, that means you’ve been crying. Your neck and shoulders are so tense that I doubt you can even turn your head. And, the clincher, you have dust on your shoes, which you couldn’t have gotten from any of the usual parts of the building. Filch keeps them too clean for that. You went back to the mirror, didn’t you? And since you and Boy Wonder came from that direction, alone, with your handkerchief still in your hand, I’m guessing he found you there.”

“If you already know the answers, why bother to ask the questions?”

“Because I want you to talk to me.” This time his voice wasn’t arrogant or smug. It was soft and sincere: the tone he only used when they were alone. “Come on, Granger. You’ll feel better if you get it off your chest.”

Hermione turned and settled herself in his arms, resting her head on his shoulder and closing her eyes. All her remaining tension drained away as she listened to the rhythm of his heartbeat.

“You know, you’re my best friend, Draco. Is not that strange?”

“As strange as the thing I know not,” Draco replied, and Hermione could hear the smile in his voice. ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ was a favorite for both of them, and they quoted it all the time, changing the lines to suit their purposes. “It were as easy for me to say that you’re my best friend. And that’s why you’re going to tell me what’s wrong.” Hermione shook her head and hid her face in his shoulder. A sudden, wet warmth blossomed on his shirtfront and he knew she had started crying again. Draco, showing surprising understanding, stroked her hair softly and let her cry herself out. When she finished, she began to talk.

“It’s over,” she whispered.

“Of course it’s over,” Draco replied. “Voldemort is dead.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Hermione sighed, snuggling closer. “I meant my friendship with Harry. It’s over.”

Draco was genuinely surprised to hear her answer. Along with most of the school, he had imagined that the bond that held the three Gryffindors together was unbreakable. “Why would you say that?” he asked, at last.

“Because I can’t do it anymore.” Hermione’s voice rang with a quiet, despairing acceptance that Draco had never heard from her before. The strong willed Gryffindor had never been the type to admit that there was anything that she couldn’t do. It showed how much loving Potter had broken her down, Draco thought, that she’d even be capable of thinking that anything was beyond her abilities. Meanwhile, Hermione continued. “I can’t just stand by and watch while the boy I love with all my heart lives happily ever after with someone else. It was different when we were fighting Voldemort. Then, Harry needed me. I could help him, keep him safe. But Voldemort is gone now and Harry doesn’t need me anymore, and it…” her voice cracked slightly, “it hurts me every single time I look at him. I can’t do it anymore.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Let go,” she answered with a wistful smile. “Let go of all my hopes that he might learn to love me someday, and let go of the place that I held in his life. It isn’t necessary anymore, anyway.”

Hermione pushed herself up out of his arms and sat up on the couch. The charmed handkerchief was still in her hand, and it only took a few seconds for her to wipe away all the evidence of her most recent outburst of tears. When she spoke again, her voice was brisk and businesslike.

“I filled a role in his life, I think. I was the problem-solver, the voice of reason, the one he could count on to back him up and help him out of any situation he found himself in. But he doesn’t need that anymore. The ultimate problem has been resolved and he doesn’t need a bookworm to solve his puzzles for him anymore. I was also the one he could count on to believe in him and care about him no matter what happened. But he has Lavender to love him unconditionally now, and he doesn’t need me for that anymore, either. I was the one who helped him with his schoolwork, but he’s nearly done with school now. He used to come to me for advice on matters of the heart, but he’s engaged now so he doesn’t need my help with that anymore. Really, all the things that I used to do for Harry don’t need doing anymore. At least, they no longer need to be done by me.”

“So, what now?”

“Now I simply stop being there. Harry doesn’t need me in his life anymore, so I’ll take myself out of it. As busy as Harry is these days, it’s possible he won’t even notice. And even if he does, school will be over in a few months. Once we’re finished here, I shouldn’t have any trouble finding somewhere to go that will take me far away from all of this. And maybe in a few years, I won’t be in love with Harry anymore and I can come back to England and try to be his friend again. Or maybe we’ll discover that without the constant danger and adventure, we don’t have much in common, after all. Either way, I’ll be through with it.”

“Do you honestly think it will be that easy?” Draco asked, gently.

“I never said it would be easy,” Hermione retorted. “I just said that it was what needed to be done.”

“Oh, Granger,” Draco sighed. “You should have followed my example and just not fallen in love in the first place. It would have saved you from all this trouble.”

Hermione managed to crack a smile at that. “Yes, but by the time we became good enough friends for you to teach me that lesson, it was already too late.”

“It’s never too late!” Draco protested, grinning at her, happy that he’d gotten her to smile. “Marry me, and I’ll teach you everything you need to know.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “You do realize that that’s the second time you’ve proposed to me this week, don’t you? Honestly, Draco, you’re worse than Ron was last year!”

Draco gave an exaggerated shudder. “Perish the thought! No, Granger, I’d never follow you around like an over-eager house elf. I leave that to red-haired twits with no concept of personal dignity. If I were in love with you, I’d find a much classier way to show it.”

“Ah, but this brings us back to the point: you’re *not* in love with me.”

“Yes, and you’re not in love with me. That’s why we’d have the perfect marriage! Admit it, we’d be terrific together! With my clout and your reputation, I’d probably be Minister of Magic in less than ten years. We’d be rich, successful, powerful and universally respected. You’d have my money behind you to start up any charity or social action organizations that you wanted, and I’d have your integrity to make my image squeaky clean. We enjoy each other’s company, never argue, and will probably still like each other fifty years down the road. Our children would be brilliant *and* gorgeous and within three generations, our descendants could probably be running the world. What’s not to like about this picture?”

Hermione was laughing by the time he was finished. “Tempting, as always, but I’m afraid I’ll have to pass. I’ve always rather dreamt of marrying a man that I love with all my heart.”

Draco leant over and pressed a soft kiss on her forehead. “Maybe it’s time you started dreaming of something else,” he said gently.

“Maybe,” she replied with a sad, soft smile. “Maybe.”

A/N: I’m tired, headachey, and all-out drained at the moment (it’s been an… odd day) on top of which I’ve been trying to log on to portkey for the past three hours, so forgive me if I come off as a little crabby. Big thanks to my reviewers. (Sorry I didn’t get a chance to reply to all of them, but see sentence above re: odd day.) I knew the last chapter would raise some eyebrows, so I really appreciate everyone who’s giving my Draco a chance. And for those of you who had trouble accepting the idea of Hermione and Draco as friends, I hope this chapter clears up some of your questions! I’m warning you now: the chapter is almost entirely flashback to how Hermione and Draco became friends to explain the progress of their relationship. If Draco and Hermione as friends really bugs you or if you don’t like reading parts that don’t include Harry then you can skip this without missing too many threads of the plot. I would, however, really love it if everyone at least gave it a try!

Section 6:

Hermione thought of Draco’s words as she lay in her bed that night, waiting to fall asleep. [Maybe it *is* time that I started dreaming of something else,] she admitted to herself. [Dreaming of a life that I could have with Harry is getting me exactly nothing but a broken heart.] Hermione couldn’t help but smile as she remembered all of the times that Draco had lectured her on that exact point. With all her other close friends wrapped up in relationships of their own, Draco had truly become her confidant over the past year and she couldn’t imagine anyone being a better or more supportive friend. As much as it amazed her that they were friends in the first place, she could no longer imagine her life without him. She was glad that she didn’t have to. Their friendship had become one of the most important ones in her life, in spite of its somewhat unconventional beginning.

Draco had seemed oddly subdued when he returned for sixth year. He was no friendlier than he had been before, but he no longer insulted the Gryffindors to their faces, and was no longer seen sniggering about them behind their backs. When he saw Harry or Ron or Hermione anywhere near him, he simply turned and walked the other way. Hermione had been wary at first, afraid that this was the calm before the storm, but when several months of school passed without incident, she finally started to relax. She was no longer worried that Draco was involved in some conspiracy to catch her or her friends with their guards down, but she still didn’t understand his behavior. And Hermione hated it when she came across something she didn’t understand.

Long after she had stopped watching Draco with suspicion, she continued to watch him with curiosity. And that was how she came to notice something highly peculiar. Draco’s behavior towards Gryffindors wasn’t the only thing that had changed.

He was ignoring the Slytherins, as well. For Draco to ignore Gryffindors was unsettling. For Draco to ignore *Slytherins* was cataclysmic. Before sixth year, in all the years that Hermione had known him, she could count on one hand the number of times she had seen him when he wasn’t surrounded by a crowd of underlings. At a minimum, it was Crabbe and Goyle, but at most, he had been known to have the entire Slytherin house flanked around him. He had always been a leader amongst his housemates, and had enjoyed his status and the authority it gave him over others. For him to isolate himself from his adoring public was about as likely as Snape actually wearing Neville’s grandmother’s dress, the way Neville had pictured it on his boggart in third year.

But there was no arguing with the evidence. Draco spent a minimum of time in meals, usually just grabbing something off the tables to take with him somewhere else, and when he did sit down to eat, he sat by himself. He no longer surrounded himself with his lackeys in the hallways or during classes. Most of the time, he was seen on his own. And he had started spending more time in the library. Lots more time. It was in the library, in fact, that he and Hermione finally had The Talk.

Snape, with his usual malicious glee, had assigned the Potions class to write a foot of parchment on a particularly rare infusion used in many higher-level potions. Of course, there was only one book written that gave any detailed information on the infusion, and the library only had one copy. Hermione had gone straight to the library after class, skipping dinner. She knew that once her fellow students realized that there was only one copy, it would be nearly impossible to get a hold of the book, and she wanted to complete the assignment before the rush began. She was nearly through jotting down the notes she would need when she heard someone clear their throat to get her attention and looked up into Draco Malfoy’s stormy gray eyes.

“Yes?” she asked, warily. She wasn’t going to be rude without provocation, but just because he hadn’t been particularly provoking to her so far that year didn’t mean that she trusted him.

“Do you think you’ll be needing that book for much longer?” he asked, politely.

“Not much longer,” she answered. “Probably fifteen minutes or so.”

“Do you mind if I wait?” he questioned, gesturing to the chair across from her.

She shrugged. “Go ahead.” She returned her eyes to her book and her notes but snuck glances over to him every few seconds, watching as he dug around in his bag and pulled out the Arithmancy homework.

She tried to concentrate on her Potions notes. She tried very hard. But it was just so much more interesting to sneak glances over at Draco and try to figure out what he was up to. Of course, being the compulsive student that she was, she couldn’t help but glance at his Arithmancy problem set. Even upside down, it was easy for her to see what he was working on, and when she saw the mistake he was making, it was such second nature for her to coach her friends through their homework assignments that she spoke before she could catch herself.

“It’s not balancing because you forgot to insert the infinity sign in the third step,” she blurted out.

Draco looked up with a surprised expression on his face, but he quickly masked it. “You’re right,” he replied, coolly, returning his focus to the problem. “Thanks.”

It was the ‘thanks’ that finally broke Hermione’s resolve. It was all well and good to resolve to let sleeping dragons lie, but she just couldn’t ignore this when she knew that the old Malfoy would have hexed *himself* before thanking her for anything. In a sudden burst of temper, she threw down her quill.

“Will you tell me *what* is going on here?” she demanded in her bossiest tone.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replied, his voice surprisingly polite.

“*This*!” she replied, gesturing between the two of them. His expression remained blank. Hermione let out a sigh of frustration. “Why are you here?”

“I needed that book to write my Potions assignment,” he answered. “It’s the only book that gives a detai—”

“A detailed analysis of the infusion for our assignment. Yes, I know,” Hermione cut him off. “But that doesn’t explain why you’re here.”

“Where else would I be?”

“The Slytherin common room, where I heard Professor Snape say that there are three copies of this book.”

To Hermione’s surprise, a flash of pain crossed Draco’s face. It disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, but it was there long enough for her to notice it.

“I’m not welcome in the Slytherin common room at the moment,” Draco replied. His voice was as polite as it had been since he’d entered the library, but Hermione could hear that it was considerably more strained.

Now it was Hermione’s turn to look confused. “I-I don’t… not welcome? But… but why? And since when?”

Draco’s response was to push up the left sleeve of his robe and unbutton the cuff on his shirt. He rolled the shirt up to the elbow and laid his arm flat on the table, with the forearm facing up. The white skin was completely unmarked.

“That’s why,” he answered quietly. “When I went home this summer, I was supposed to get the Dark Mark put there. I refused. The majority of my housemates have taken exception to my decision.”

Hermione reached out a tentative hand in spite of herself and ran a gentle finger over Draco’s arm. If there was a concealment spell on his skin, she should be able to feel the traces of it. But there was no spell.

“Why?” she asked again.

“Because my father has gone mad,” he answered calmly. Hermione’s eyes widened. Whatever answer she had been expecting, it hadn’t been this. “It’s been taken care of, of course. He’s been placed in a quiet, exclusive, exceedingly private sanitarium where the records are very carefully sealed. As far as anyone in England knows, he’s hiding out somewhere in France.”

“I-I’m sorry about your father—” Hermione began, but Draco cut her off.

“No, you’re not.” Her face flushed at being so easily caught in a lie. Draco was right; she wasn’t particularly sorry. Lucius Malfoy had done a rather appalling number of horrendous things in his life and the thought of him safely locked up where he couldn’t hurt anyone anymore brought her no small measure of comfort. “There’s no need for you to be,” Draco continued briskly as he rolled down his shirtsleeve and re-buttoned the cuff. “I’m not particularly sorry about it, myself.”

“How did it happen?” Hermione asked carefully.

“His beloved Dark Mark,” Draco spat out. “Think about it, Granger. The Dark Lord has, at all times, so many enchantments and spells to keep himself immortal and keep himself safe that the sheer power needed to keep them active should take every ounce of energy that he has and then some more on top of that. Haven’t you wondered how he manages to do it?”

No, actually, she hadn’t wondered. But she was starting to wonder now. Draco was right; the spells that Voldemort had purportedly cast on himself were powerful defenses against assault, but they required large amounts of power, in exchange, to function properly. Even *half* of them would be more than the average wizard would be able to maintain at a time. Of course, Voldemort was far more than average, but he was still mostly *human*. Even he had his limits.

“The Dark Mark holds many purposes,” Draco explained. “First and foremost, it ties all of his follows to the Dark Lord. He can use it to sense them, to summon them, and, if necessary, to control them. It allows him access into their thoughts and their dreams, when he chooses. But the link goes two ways. The Dark Lord is capable of using the link not only to enter the minds of his followers, but also to extract elements from them into himself.”

“Are you saying that he extracts their power?”

“Precisely.”

“But why would they let him do that?”

“Because they don’t know it’s happening,” Draco answered.

“But how do *you* know?” Hermione asked.

“Because my grandfather was the very first person to take the Dark Mark.” Draco replied. “In 1949, Octavius Malfoy became the first Death Eater.” Draco looked over at Hermione as if he expected her to make some kind of comment, but for once the girl had been shocked into silence. With a mirthless grin, Draco continued.

“They had been in Slytherin together,” Draco explained, “and the Dark Lord had been very careful to cultivate Grandfather’s friendship and support. Those years immediately after his graduation when the student known as Tom Riddle disappeared? He was staying with my grandfather for rather sizeable chunks of them. As far as I can tell, he would travel for months at a time, gathering whatever information he could find on dark arts and unknown enchantments to find ways to strengthen himself, and then he’d come back to Malfoy manor and tinker in his laboratory until he had mastered whatever new technique he had discovered. The Dark Mark was an idea he picked up from a hag in Siberia. My grandfather was his test subject. How much do you know about the anatomy of magic in the human body, Granger?”

Hermione, startled by the sudden question, didn’t know how to answer.

“Where is the ability to perform magic located?” he asked, clarifying.

“In the brain,” she replied. She had researched the idea thoroughly when she discovered that she was a witch. The idea that magic was stored in the blood was rubbish, dating back to the middle ages when doctors thought *everything* from health to temper to sanity was found in the blood. The truth was far more practical. The average, muggle human uses an amazingly small percentage of the brain. Muggle scientists have spent years trying to discover what the rest of the brain was for, since it wasn’t put to use. The magical community did not have such questions. They knew what those supposedly unused portions of the brain were for: they were the source of magical activity.

“Exactly,” Draco concurred. “So in the early 1950s, the Dark Lord started experimenting with his ability to access my grandfather’s brain through the Dark Mark. When he realized that he could use it to plant thoughts in my grandfather’s head, he decided to see if he could *pull* magic through the link as easily as he could push it. When he first started siphoning magic from my grandfather, I imagine he was doing it mostly to see if he could. When he discovered that it was possible, he realized the opportunities that lay in front of him to collect quantities of power within himself that he never would have been able to achieve on his own. It wasn’t until years later that he realized some of the consequences of this power drainage.”

“Insanity?” Hermione guessed.

Draco gave her a tight smile. “Five points to Gryffindor. You figured that out very quickly.”

“Well, it does make sense,” Hermione replied. “Pulling power directly from someone’s brain is bound to do damage, over time. Insanity is the most logical result.”

“And look at the examples,” Draco continued. “The Death Eaters that you’ve come across have all been downright pathological, haven’t they? My father, my Aunt Bellatrix, Karkaroff, and Barty Crouch, Jr. Barking mad, all of them. Pettigrew is a bit less unbalanced than the others, but that’s because he had a stretch of nearly thirteen years when the Dark Lord wasn’t pulling power from him because he assumed the man was dead. And I believe the only reason that Snape has escaped with his sanity intact is because he’s too accomplished at Occlumency for his brain to be violated without him being aware of it.”

“But how do you know all this?” Hermione couldn’t stop herself from asking.

“From my grandfather,” Draco answered. “Since my grandfather was the first to take the Dark Mark, he was the first to lose his mind. For most of my childhood, he was locked up in a side wing of the manor with padded walls, and was seen only by house elves. When I was seven, I jumped on a house elf right as he was magicking himself into my grandfather’s room, and I was taken with him. After that, I used to visit him all the time.”

An almost nostalgic smile crossed Draco’s face as he remembered his grandfather. “He was mad, of course. Utterly and completely mad, but still fascinating. Octavius Malfoy was not a stupid man, he was just too power hungry for his own good. He thought that Tom Riddle would be his ticket to influence and control, and so he allowed himself to be used. By the time he figured out what his ‘good friend’ had done; and he *did* figure it out eventually; the damage was irreversible. But he wasn’t a violent madman, and he told fascinating stories. I was left on my own a good deal of the time growing up, so I ended up spending a lot of time with him. I know now, of course, that all the stories he told me were fairly accurate accounts of actual exploits of himself and the Dark Lord, but at the time, I thought they were all fairy tales. He told me what the Dark Lord had done and how he had been driven mad, but he was extremely emotional on that point, and his story never made any sense. I didn’t put the pieces together until the same thing started to happen to my father.”

“What then?” Hermione asked, leaning forward. In spite of himself, Draco smiled at her eagerness. Her eyes were wide with interest and she didn’t even notice that she shifting closer and closer to a boy she wouldn’t have touched with a broomstick an hour before.

“Then I realized it was nonsense,” Draco answered. “The whole lot of it. Voldemort, Death Eaters, the Dark Mark… they’re the delusions of a madman leading lots of other madmen. He promises his followers fortune and power and influence and all he’s going to deliver to them is ranting, raving lunacy in a room with padded walls, quite possibly guarded by Dementors. Why on earth would I want that for myself? I may be very many unpleasant things, Granger, but not even you have ever called me a fool.”

“So you’ve joined the Light side?” Hermione asked, eagerly.

“Granger, I’m on no one’s side but my own,” he replied, coolly. “I want Voldemort defeated because he’s a menace to society, but I’m staying the hell out of it. My only interest is to restore the Malfoy name and fortune. Just because we’re living in an age of heroes and villains doesn’t mean that I’m either one. I’ll stand on the sidelines and watch it all play out, and on the bloody morning after, when the battlefield has cleared, the wizarding world will need people who get by with their wits to rebuild it, and that’s where I’ll come in.”

Hermione started to open her mouth to reply, but shut it again moments later. She wanted to argue with him, wanted to convince him that he should join the Light side and fight for truth and goodness and virtue and… and puppies, and house-elves, and she could just *picture* him laughing at her so hard that he’d fall out of his chair if she even suggested it. He wasn’t going to be a good guy; it was as simple as that. But he didn’t seem to want to be a bad guy either.

“And the rest of the Slytherins?” she couldn’t help but ask.

“The rest of the Slytherins are either fools following a lost cause, or pragmatists like me who are staying out of it. They won’t stick their necks out for me, and I wouldn’t expect them to. I wouldn’t stick my neck out for them, either. When the battle is over, they’ll be behind me. I don’t need them till then.” Hermione sat back as she processed all of this information. A few moments later, she gasped and abruptly pulled her chair away, blushing furiously.

“Took you that long to realize you were sitting close to me?” Draco asked, obviously amused. Hermione’s deeper blush confirmed his suspicions. “You can sit as close as you like, you know,” he said, surprisingly gently. “I won’t hurt you.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because you’ll be a useful ally to have, Hermione Granger, and I never hurt people who could prove useful to me later on.”

“You don’t have any trouble admitting that a mudblood could be a useful ally?”

“Granger, the one ultimate lesson that I learned from my father was that everything he taught me was wrong. I don’t give a damn if your parents are wizards, muggles, or chimpanzees; you’re the most powerful witch in the school, you’re guaranteed to be Head Girl next year, and you’ve got a good enough head on your shoulders to realize the value of coming to a cease-fire with me.”

Hermione gave him a long, contemplating look. Whatever she saw, she obviously approved of, because she extended her hand. “Ally?” she asked.

Draco clasped her hand in his and shook it firmly. “Ally,” he answered. He was rewarded with a dazzling smile.

“I’m done with this now,” she said, handing over the Potions book he’d been waiting for.

“Great,” he replied, accepting it. “Once I finish taking my notes down, want to go over the Arithmancy problem set? We can double check each other’s work.” Hermione didn’t answer right away. After all, dinner would be over soon, and all of her friends would be heading back to the common room. She had planned to join them, knowing she’d be done with her potions notes by then. Yes, she had planned to sit with her friends and work on her arithmancy while Ginny cuddled with Neville and Ron challenged Harry to chess and Harry refused so he could sneak upstairs and neck with his girlfriend… Hermione’s smile returned as she focused on Draco, and accepted.

And thus a friendship was born, a friendship that blossomed quietly over the months that followed. They didn’t spend much time together outside of the library and never really sought each other out, but barely a week went by when they didn’t find themselves at the same table tucked in the corner, studying together. Draco would joke that there were conveniences to the silent treatment his house was giving him: it meant that no one bothered him or sought him out. Hermione would smile and try to tell herself that she, too, was pleased that none of the people in her life seemed to notice that she no longer studied alone.

Their friendship wasn’t something they really acknowledged or even talked about, with each other or with anyone else. (Hermione hadn’t dared tell Harry and Ron anything more than that Draco was being polite now and for mercy’s sake to just accept it and not provoke him because she didn’t want them getting into trouble for starting fights.) It didn’t have any strings attached. He didn’t worry that she only pretended to like him because of the size of his daddy’s vault, and she didn’t worry that he only liked her because she helped him with homework. They enjoyed each other’s company and respected each other’s intelligence and began to genuinely care about each other outside of the boxes they’d been placed in through years of prejudice and habit.

When they were named Head Boy and Head Girl, it gave them an excuse to ‘go public’ with their friendship and spend time together, visibly getting along, while they were in the public eye. They got a few stares at first when other students saw them actually talking *without* their wands drawn, but newer gossip soon made them less noteworthy. Harry and Ron, predictably, never grew fully accustomed to it but, thinking she was just making the best of a bad situation so she wouldn’t jeopardize her position as Head Girl, chose not to make a fuss but to simply take a watch-and-wait stance. They’d *watch* the ferret closely whenever they saw him *near* their Hermione, and they’d *wait* for her to tell them that he’d dropped the polite act and reverted to gittiness, meaning she’d finally allow them to beat him up. Sadly, that hadn’t happened yet (though they continued to hope).

Meanwhile, Hermione just changed the subject whenever either of them brought Draco up, and took a very private satisfaction in having found such a friend just when she needed one. She’d need Draco more than ever in the months to come. She’d need his help, his support, and his unstoppable ability to make her laugh as she slowly and painstakingly deleted herself from Harry Potter’s life.

A/N: Let me start by saying how much I appreciate all the feedback I’ve gotten. A lot of it has been enormously positive, and I’m incredibly flattered by the warm reception this fic has gotten! Some of the reviews have been less positive, and they’ve been almost exclusively focused on the Draco issue. I feel like I owe you all an apology. This is my first Harry/Hermione piece and it just didn’t occur to me that having Draco as Hermione’s friend would upset so many people. It was thoughtless of me, and I am very sorry! I’m reposting part 1 with a warning of the friendship so anyone who starts the fic from this point on will go into it forewarned. For those of you who have been with this from the beginning, I’ll repeat the same thing I said to everyone in my reviews: I’m grateful to everyone who stuck around this long even though they don’t like the idea of Draco being Hermione’s friend, but if you’re not convinced by now that the friendship is plausible, then maybe now’s the time to stop. I don’t want any of you to feel obligated to keep reading the story if the Draco/Hermione friendship is really bothering you. If you want to stay on and keep reading the story then that would be great, but you all need to understand that Draco’s going to continue being an important character in this story, and it won’t be possible to skip the parts with him and still understand what’s going on. I promise I have other H/Hr WIPs that I’ll post once I’ve wrapped this one up, so there will be other chances to read my stories that *don’t* have Draco in them in the future. Okay, time to step off my soapbox. Special thanks to H_HrFan who sent me a lovely e-mail with some corrections the last part needed. The changes are being uploaded along with this. And without further ado, on with the show!

Section 7:

It started so gradually and innocuously, Harry didn’t even notice, at first. Looking back on it later, he was surprised to realize that Hermione had been so subtle. While Hermione was unquestionably a girl of manifold virtues, many of which Harry had very real reasons to appreciate, subtlety had never seemed to be one of them. She had always seemed so direct, so straightforward, so incapable of holding anything back or hiding anything that she felt. Or so she had seemed to Harry. It is possible that he underestimated her. But whether she was exceptionally subtle, or whether he was exceptionally oblivious, the fact remained that Hermione succeeded in the weeks following the battle in gradually, piece by piece, and with exquisite care, removing herself from Harry’s life.

It started the day after the celebrations. Harry, of course, was still mobbed by people who wanted to hear from him exactly what had happened. Their ‘right’ to hear the biggest news story in sixteen years straight from the hero’s mouth superseded even the reporters’ fear of the Hogwarts headmaster. After consultation with Dumbledore, Harry agreed to a single press conference where he would answer questions *one time only*. Reporters flooed into Hogwarts from all around the Wizarding world to be there for the event, and the Great Hall was standing-room only as Harry Potter, flanked by his professors, his fiancée, and his ever-faithful sidekick, Ron, told the world how he had become, yet again, The Boy Who Lived. Hermione, claiming that she didn’t feel well, insisted on paying a visit to Madam Pomfrey instead of attending the press conference. By rights, she should have been conspicuous in her absence. Alas, she was not.

For the first time in his life, Harry found himself actually enjoying being in the public eye. Oh, he hated the spotlight as much as ever, but with the undivided attention of every newspaper journalist of note from all seven continents focused on him, he finally took the long-awaited opportunity to recognize everyone who had helped him in his final battle. Dumbledore and the Hogwarts professors, the Weasleys and the members of D.A., Sirius and James, Lily and Lavender, and many others all were acknowledged for the roles they played in helping to shape Harry into the person who was able to defeat Voldemort. He was thrilled to have the chance to make sure that everyone would finally get the credit they deserved.

In Harry’s opinion, no one deserved it more than Hermione. By his standard of measuring, she was even more responsible for the defeat of Voldemort than he was. Not only had she practically invented the spell that allowed her to help him, she had also risked her sanity and her soul to merge with him. She earned hero status by the nobility of her actions, not to mention the fact that she had also warranted at least *some* attention of the more academic persuasion for the sheer complexity of the spell she had crafted. Harry, wanting her efforts to be appreciated, made an honest attempt to bring up her role dozens of times during the conference. It didn’t do much good. In the prepared statement he made to open the conference, he listed all the things that she had done, but once the statement was concluded and the floor was open for questions, it became obvious that no matter what he said about Hermione, the reporters would chose not to hear it.

No matter how conscientious they may be, newspaper people are still newspaper people, and they always want a story that will sell papers. Harry, in any situation, was good copy. Dumbledore, as his mentor and as the headmaster who had guided him through his education, was newsworthy as well. Ron, as the loyal best friend who had stood by him through the years, caught a fair share of attention. Several reporters latched onto the concept of The Noble Dead, obviously preparing to write their articles from the angle of the influence on Harry from his parents and godfather, all of whom had died to protect him. And of course, all the reporters adored the Lavender angle; a secret fiancée who stood by her man even though they didn’t dare make their relationship public was exactly the sort of thing every newspaper reader wanted to hear about.

There was simply no place in this for Hermione. Ron filled the loyal friend slot and was positively thriving in the attention his actions had warranted. He told anyone who would listen what he and Hermione had done. The ‘woman in his life’ role was filled by Lavender who clung affectionately to Harry’s arm, eagerly answering all the questions directed at her, and agreeing to an exclusive interview with Witch Weekly to discuss her plans for the wedding, now that the date was finally set. The role of the intellectual who had helped Harry prepare for the final battle and who had worked to craft the necessary spells was, of course, delegated to Dumbledore. (The reporters did not care that Dumbledore made very few comments on the matter. The ‘wise guidance from the aged headmaster’ angle appealed to them too much to let it go.) With all the credit being placed on everyone else’s shoulders, Hermione’s role was extraneous. And since she wasn’t there to speak for herself, she was easily put aside.

Harry didn’t so much as lay eyes on Hermione until that evening. The press conference had lasted for hours and had been followed, not surprisingly, by another feast. (Harry had the sneaking suspicion that Dumbledore simply liked throwing feasts and was using the large number of press people still persistently hanging around as an excuse. He saw the way that the headmaster eyed the special treacle tart that the elves only made on feast occasions. But on the other hand, Dumbledore was certainly justified in turning the occasion into an event. After all, the reporters were guests of the school, and as headmaster, he could hardly allow the visitors to starve, could he?)

Harry, sick to death of the noise and chaos, snuck away as soon as he got a chance and headed back to the dormitories, hoping to find some peace and quiet. Maybe he could find Hermione and have that talk with her, like he had planned the night before. He had yet to really thank her for what she had done. Besides, he still wanted to find out what she had seen in the mirror that had upset her so completely. As her best friend, surely he was entitled to that information. It wasn’t easy to get Hermione that worked up and Harry was determined to get to the bottom of it.

The scene he found when he entered the portrait hole exceeded even his highest hopes. The common room was practically deserted, with only a few groups of students sitting around, chatting quietly or working on their homework. Harry’s eyes lit up as he spotted Hermione tucked away in a corner, quizzing a first year on Potions ingredients.

“So… what’s the difference between aconite and wolfbane?” she questioned the timid student whose name, Harry was fairly certain, started with an M. Mandy? Mary? Something like that.

“Um, wolfbane is the poisonous one?” the girl guessed.

Harry, standing to the side out of view, couldn’t hold back a smile at the look on Hermione’s face. He’d seen that look so very many times, when Hermione quizzed him and Ron. It was her how-can-I-explain-this-so-it-finally-sinks-in-without-sounding-condescending look. “Well Marsha, you’re not wrong, but you’re not *completely* right, either,” Hermione stated, tactfully. “Wolfbane *is* poisonous, but so is aconite.”

“Mainly because they’re the same thing!” Harry interjected cheerfully, plopping down on the sofa next to Hermione. Harry winked at the girl, discomposing her completely as she blushed violently and dropped her notebook.

“Harry, don’t tease,” Hermione scolded. “You know perfectly well you used to have trouble with the same thing. You would always get ingredients’ names mixed up.” Harry merely grinned unrepentantly at Hermione, reveling in her lecturing tone. After being fawned over all day, it was wonderfully refreshing to have Hermione scold him, just like always. He slid an arm around her shoulders affectionately, giving her a gentle squeeze. He could always count on Hermione to make him feel grounded, which Merlin knew he needed after that monstrous press conference. He didn’t notice the way that she tensed at his touch, or how she immediately pulled away, on the pretext of picking up Marsha’s notebook, so that Harry’s arm dropped back to his side.

“That’s because Snape’s a greasy old bat who doesn’t *want* his students to know the right answers, so he never bothers to tell us anything but what we’re doing wrong,” Harry replied, winking at Marsha again.

“*Professor* Snape, Harry,” Hermione corrected automatically, handing the notebook back to Marsha.

“Alright then, *Professor* Snape is a greasy, overgrown bat,” Harry teased. Marsha, still furiously blushing, got a fit of the giggles over this and started laughing so hard, she couldn’t breathe. As much as Hermione wanted Marsha to stay with them to act as a buffer between her and Harry, she couldn’t help but take pity on the girl after a minute. She certainly knew what it was like to get flustered by Harry Potter. Sympathetically, Hermione suggested that Marsha go get a drink of water so she could pull herself together, a suggestion that the girl eagerly embraced, rushing away quickly.

“Alone at last!” Harry exclaimed dramatically, slipping his arm back around Hermione’s shoulder while leaning his head back against the back of the couch, kicking his feet up onto the coffee table, and closing his eyes. He let out a sigh of pure contentment. “Hear that?” he asked, his eyes still closed.

“Hear what?” Hermione asked.

“Silence,” Harry breathed, blissfully. “Peace and quiet at last. Isn’t it wonderful?”

“Mmm,” Hermione murmured, noncommittally, trying not to let herself melt into his arms, especially when his hand started absent-mindedly stroking the hair that lay on her shoulder, under his fingers.

“I’ve been waiting for this all day,” Harry continued. “Just to be able to sit around and not worry about cameras snapping in my face or reporters constantly harassing me with ‘Harry, how do you feel?’ ‘Harry, what’s next for you?’ ‘Harry, do you feel vindicated?’ ‘Harry, have you ever considered a career in modeling?’ ‘Harry, where—’”

“Harry, where on earth have you been?” an unmistakable voice called out from the portrait hole. Hermione pulled away from Harry like he was on fire. Harry frowned slightly as he opened his eyes, looking at her with a confused expression on his face, but quickly turned his focus to his fiancée who was approaching.

“Lav, what are you doing here?”

“Looking for you, silly,” she answered breezily, seating herself on the sofa next to him and latching on to his arm, tugging on it playfully as she tried to pull him to his feet. “Everyone still has loads of questions for you, and Witch Weekly wants a picture of the two of us for the article they’re going to do on me.”

“Listen love, I’ve been answering questions and having my picture taken all day long. I was kind of hoping that I could have some time to just sit around and relax. I haven’t been able to talk to Hermione all day, right Hermi—” Harry cut off abruptly when he turned and saw that Hermione was no longer there. She had taken advantage of his momentary distraction and had slipped away to help a table of fourth years who were working on transfiguration essays.

“Hermione’s busy anyway, and I *promised* Witch Weekly that they could have another picture with just the two of us. Just do this for me, please?” Lavender smiled up at Harry before rising up on tiptoe to plant a small kiss on his neck, whispering in his ear, “I’ll make it up to you later, love. I promise.”

Harry couldn’t help but enjoy the way that Lavender was pressing up against him and he felt his resolve to stay in the common room crumbling. He glanced over to Hermione, hoping to catch her eye, but she seemed to be fully focused on the fourth years she was helping. Maybe Lavender was right, and she didn’t want to be bothered. And really, what would a few more pictures hurt?

“Alright, Lav,” Harry replied in a resigned tone. “Lead the way.” Lavender beamed at him as she led him to the portrait hole and he gave her a weak half-smile in return. It made her so happy, so how could it not be worth it? Besides, he could always talk to Hermione later. Once all the fuss and excitement had worn off, he’d have plenty of time to sit down and have his anticipated talk with his best friend.

He had no way of knowing that it would be over a week before the fuss and excitement finally started to die down. He couldn’t have known that things would never really go back to the way that they had been before. He had no idea that Hermione was going to do everything in her power to make sure that she was never alone in a room with Harry. And he certainly had no way of knowing that his long talk with Hermione would be a long, long time coming.

A/N: You know all of you who believed (or maybe just hoped) that Harry needed (or deserved) to be hit in the head to make him finally see what’s going on? Well… this is where your wishes come true. It happens toward the end of the section and yes, there’s a cliffhanger, (this is *me*, after all,) which means that you’ll have to wait till the next part to see exactly how he reacts, but the metaphorical bludger to the head is there, nonetheless. I hope you all like it! Enormous thanks, as always, to the lovely people leaving me reviews. I literally just walked in the door a few minutes ago, so I haven’t had a chance to reply to all of them, but I promise that I will!

Section 8:

To Harry’s enormous relief, it only took a week or so for the hubbub to finally start to die down. Even with Dumbledore’s great love of feasts and celebrations, Hogwarts was still a school, and exam time was closing in. The professors were complaining about not having enough time to review with the students, and even the students were beginning to grow tired of the constant indigestion from too much rich food at all hours. Hogwarts slid comfortably back into its usual routine. Harry was delighted, believing that everything would go back to normal now that the fuss was over, and that everything would be precisely as it had been. He had reckoned without Lavender.

In spite of the fact that Harry and Lavender had been a ‘couple’ for over a year, the truth was that they weren’t in the habit of spending much time together. Harry had been so paranoid about anyone finding out about their relationship and passing word along to Voldemort that he barely spoke to Lavender when they were outside of Gryffindor tower. Even there, he kept their interactions very low key. The bulk of their ‘together’ time occurred when they could sneak away to the girls’ dormitory, alone, and since they were young and in love, when they finally got each other alone, talking wasn’t the main item on the agenda. When Harry thought of Lavender, he thought of warm kisses and gentle touches and a soft voice moaning his name while she whispered that she loved him. To him, Lavender was warmth and passion and a blessed escape from the constant pressures of the outside world.

She wasn’t someone he could really *talk* to. A big part of that was because she had so many pleasant things she could do with her mouth other than talk when they were alone, but that wasn’t the only reason. The truth was, Harry always had the slightly uneasy feeling that he was with Lavender under false pretences. His Lav was a sweet girl, but there was no denying that she was just a teensy bit… not flighty exactly, of *course* he didn’t think his fiancée was flighty, but… inattentive, perhaps. She noticed people when they put themselves out to be noticed. Harry Potter from the Cupboard Beneath the Stairs wouldn’t have caught her attention in the least. It was Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived that she noticed.

It wasn’t just a question of the fame; if she only cared what the public at large thought of him them she’d have turned on him in fifth year like Percy did; but it was a factor of what the fame represented. She believed that he was a hero. She *loved* him because he was a hero. The boy she loved was brave and selfless and noble and valiant; he was the knight on the white horse and she was the princess with whom he’d find his happily ever after. His sensible side (which always sounded like Hermione) told him that she’d still love him, without the shining armor, but the overpowering voice of the insecure part of him (voiced by Uncle Vernon) made Harry unwilling to risk his relationship with Lavender by pushing the envelope of the hero image Lavender had of him.

Harry was more than a bit scared that if she discovered what he was really like; if she knew that he was moody and impatient and a little immature at times, if she knew about his temper tantrums and the way that he sometimes took his anger out on his friends, if she even had a remote idea of just how *scared* he was that he wouldn’t be good enough, that he’d let everyone down become The Boy Who Died and Condemned Us All to Slavery Under Voldemort’s Iron Boot… if she knew all that, then maybe she wouldn’t love him anymore.

He told himself that it wasn’t cowardice to hide parts of himself from her, it was just… good boyfriendly behavior. What was so bad about wanting her to think well of him, and wanting to show her his best sides? They had such precious little time together; he wanted to spend it as pleasantly as possible. Wasting the time by burdening her with his fears and his doubts and his petty insecurities would do nothing but make them both uncomfortable. This way, Harry got to spend their time in pure comfort, while Lavender got to spend it with a boy who was everything she had always dreamed he would be. His friends were there for him when he needed to vent his fears or aggressions. Lavender was there when he needed to be loved. And that was their relationship for more than a year.

This grew… complicated after the press finally decamped. Without them there to distract his fiancée, Harry soon discovered that it took enormous persuasion to convince Lavender to ever leave his side. During meals, during classes, in the common room; whenever she *could* be close to Harry, she *was*. When Hermione stopped spending time with Harry and Ron, Lavender filled in the gap so completely and so effusively that instead of the space seeming empty without Hermione, it seemed full to overflowing. Lavender seated herself in Hermione’s spot at the table during meal times. She joined Ron and Harry around the fireplace when they played their marathon games of wizarding chess. If she could have gotten away with it, she would have slept at night in his bed. She *did* try to sneak into his shower on one memorable occasion. As luck would have it, she snuck into the wrong shower and gave Neville Longbottom the shock of his lifetime.

Harry would remind himself that he loved her. After all, she had stood by him all year long. She had been there for him, in his arms, to hold him and kiss him and make him feel loved when the rest of the world seemed to be falling down around his shoulders. She had shown him loyalty and support, and given him the affection he had always craved. She was everything he had always wanted, wasn’t she? Of course she was. How could he ever want anything more than her love?

Alright, so it would be nice if she gave him a bit more time to himself. He was thrilled that they could finally start planning their wedding, but honestly, it wasn’t as if he really knew the difference between different shades of ivory in the first place. Why did Lavender feel the need to ask his opinion on every little detail? Her ecstatic parents had willingly agreed to foot the bill for anything she could possibly want, and he knew that he’d be happy with whatever she picked out, as long as it made *her* happy, so what else mattered? Did she really need to interrupt his studying time to ask him how wide the ribbon should be on the bridesmaid’s bouquets? The N.E.W.T.s were coming up, and studying shouldn’t be taken lightly, especially since for the first time in years, Hermione hadn’t prepared a study schedule for him.

Hermione. For the first time in as long as he had known her, Harry felt a twinge of uneasiness at the thought of long-time best friend. He tried to tell himself that he was being silly. He knew Hermione practically better than he knew himself, and he certainly had reason to know that she carried the concept of loyalty further than anyone he had ever met. She’d never given him even the slightest cause to doubt the depth and sincerity of her friendship for him, and she never would… Or would she? Because while it was possible he was just overreacting, it certainly *seemed* like Hermione was going out of her way to avoid him lately.

It wasn’t just the study schedule, although that certainly threw him for a loop. No, it was more than that. It was the way she seemed to suddenly prefer studying in her common room instead of in the Gryffindor Tower. It was the way she brought books with her to meals and sat off to the side a bit, not really joining in the conversation unless someone specifically asked her a question. It was the way she made excuses not to attend Quidditch practices anymore, saying that he didn’t need her there to keep an eye out for foul play now that Voldemort was gone. No, he didn’t *need* her there, he replied when he confronted her over why she stopped attending, but he *liked* having her there, and he had thought she liked being there. Her only reply was a brief smile and a hurried excuse that she really *had* to run, and that she’d talk to him later.

But she didn’t. She barely talked to him at all, and even when she did, he was usually the one who initiated it. It rubbed him the wrong way. Hermione had always been there for him. She had stood by him and cared for him even when he was damn near impossible to care about: during the Triwizard Tournament when only she believed that he’d been entered against his will, during fifth year when he was constantly moody and temperamental and snapped at everyone who tried to talk to him, and throughout the summer before sixth year when all he wanted to do was sit around and brood over how he had caused Sirius’ death. She had given him her friendship and her affection when he was at his most unlovable.

But now, when *everyone* loved him, she couldn’t seem to be bothered to give him any of her time and attention. In spite of the way that everyone seemed willing to worship him as some sort of living God, without Hermione’s friendship and support, he found it very hard to feel like a hero. Had she only stood by him all those years because she knew that he needed her to? Did she not want to be near him anymore now that the battle was over? Had he outlived his usefulness as her friend?

The thoughts were unbearable. He had spent years anticipating the peaceful sleep he would get once Voldemort was defeated, but it didn’t come. Instead of nightmares of red eyes and green light, his dreams were haunted with brown eyes always turning away from him, and a warm, familiar touch drifting further and further out of reach. He’d wake up frustrated and angry and more scared than he wanted to admit that Hermione was slipping out of his life for good.

One night, the nightmares left him so rattled that he couldn’t go back to sleep. Pulling on a sweater and grabbing his slippers, he headed down to the common room to come up with a plan of action. *Something* had to be done. He couldn’t stand for things to go on as they were for much longer. His instinct was to march across the castle and pound on Hermione’s door until she let him in so they could talk it out, but even in his half-asleep state, Harry knew that was a bad idea. His Hermione was a bit of an insomniac so there was the chance that she’d be awake, but if she had managed to nod off for a few hours of sleep, she wouldn’t take kindly to being awakened. He and Ron had learned that lesson the hard way, years before. No, whatever he needed to discuss with her would have to wait until morning.

He sat brooding on one of the squishy sofas and tried to come up with a plan of attack. Pity that Hermione was so much better at coming up with a plan than he was. He smiled a bit to himself at the thought of Hermione giving him tutoring sessions in how to get her to talk to him. Then the thought clicked with something in his mind, and his expression brightened. The next day was Sunday, and he had overheard some third years saying that Hermione had scheduled an hour or so in the morning with them right there in the common room to help them with their studying. He’d pull her aside once the tutoring was done, and they’d have it out, once and for all. She wouldn’t be able to get away from him without causing a scene, and she wouldn’t have the excuse of needing to rush off to class to get away from him. Content with his plan, Harry trudged back upstairs and finally managed to fall peacefully and dreamlessly asleep.

He slept well. Far too well. The past few nights of nightmares caught up with him, and he slept far later than he had imagined he would. When his eyes finally slid open the next day, they blinked lazily in the direction of the clock, only to open wide in panic when he managed to read the time through the blurriness of his without-glasses vision. It was noon already. Bugger.

Throwing on his clothes faster than he ever had before in his life, he bolted down the stairs at top speed, only to discover that it was too late. The third years were poring over a book that he recognized as one of Hermione’s, but Hermione herself wasn’t there. Slumping against the steps, Harry was trying to plan another time when he’d be guaranteed a chance to talk to Hermione when something caught his eye.

An inconspicuous piece of parchment slipped out from between the pages of the book that one of the third years was holding and started to drift down to the ground. Before Harry even realized he was moving, he was on the other side of the room, catching the parchment before it hit the ground.

The third years jumped, startled at the sight of The Harry Potter appearing suddenly at their table, but didn’t give them more than a moment to recover from the shock before he flashed them a slightly shaky smile as he held up the parchment.

“I saw this fall out of the book,” he explained. “Is it one of yours?”

The girls shook their heads. “This is Hermione’s book,” one of them answered. “She must have been using it as a bookmark. Oh no!” she squealed, suddenly nervous as she turned her attention back to her friends. “Do you think I made her lose her place?”

“I’m sure she won’t mind,” Harry hastened to assure them. “Hermione always remembers where she left off in a book, whether she uses a bookmark or not.” The girls, relieved at his assurance, returned to their work, while Harry stumbled over to a couch and seated himself heavily, still cradling the parchment in his hands.

What he had told the girls was the truth; Hermione had a knack for remembering exactly where she left off in any book, even if she had read three others books since then. Because of that, she rarely used bookmarks. Really, she only used them at all because people who didn’t know her well believed them to be the perfect gift for her. Lavender had given her a beautiful one of embroidered silk for Christmas one year and Hermione used it often so that Lavender would know her gift was appreciated. The fact that Hermione didn’t actually *need* a bookmark was never mentioned.

But Hermione never used spare bits of parchment as bookmarks. Why should she? She didn’t need them. If a blank piece of parchment was shoved into one of her books, then that just meant that she had needed a place to store it or hide it from someone, and the book was the easiest place to put it at the moment. (Harry, though he didn’t know it, was absolutely right. Hermione had been hiding the parchment from Draco when she shoved it in the book and was, at that moment, tearing apart her room trying to remember which book she had used to hide it.) Since there was no reason why Hermione would want to hide a blank piece of parchment, Harry knew there must be something more to it. Grabbing a discarded quill off the table, Harry dipped it in ink and tried to write on the parchment. Just as he expected, it didn’t work.

It wouldn’t take the ink. It simply wouldn’t. The drops of ink that came off the quill as he attempted to write on the parchment slid off like drops of water across a piece of glass. They glided off and spilled onto the table top underneath, but they did not leave a single mark on the parchment itself.

Harry’s curiosity was an essential part of his personality. He simply didn’t like leaving mysteries unsolved, or stones unturned. If a piece of parchment was charmed against being used, then that meant that it was in use already, and that its original content was hidden by a spell. Logically, Harry knew that if Hermione had charmed her parchment not to show its contents, then that meant that it held something that she wanted to remain secret. But when Harry’s logic conflicted with his curiosity, he always gave in to his irrepressible need to get to the bottom of things. Showing him a charmed piece of parchment was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. It made him charge.

It took him nearly half an hour before he finally managed to break through the enchantments on the parchment. Everyone else in the tower had gone down to lunch, and the common room was deserted. Hunger was starting to gnaw at Harry’s stomach as well, and he was getting angry and frustrated that he hadn’t been able to break through the charm in less time. He was Harry Potter, after all. He was the Savior of the Wizarding World. How could a piece of parchment defeat him so easily? With his pride injured and his stubbornness awakened, Harry attacked the parchment with renewed determination, and finally met with success.

Harry stood shock still as he stared at the revealed image on the piece of parchment. He didn’t know what he had been expecting (honestly, he hadn’t given it much thought) but he certainly hadn’t been expecting *this*.

The drawing on the parchment was really remarkably beautiful. He recognized Hermione’s skillful rendering and the part of his brain that was still functioning acknowledged that the portrait was truly excellently done. Hermione’s face in the image looked lovelier than he had ever seen it, lit up as it was in an expression of absolute bliss. He’d never seen her smile like that, not even at him. But in the picture, she *was* smiling at him. The picture-Hermione nestled in picture-Harry’s arms was smiling at him with love and happiness practically pouring out of her radiant expression, and picture-Harry was looking at her with a look of love that burned in the charcoal-rendered eyes. As Harry watched, his picture-self moved a hand to caress picture-Hermione’s face, turning it towards him and pulling her into an achingly sweet kiss. Picture-Hermione responded eagerly and seemed to glow with happiness as she wrapped an arm around his neck, pulling him in closer to kiss him back.

Harry forgot to breathe as he watched the desperately tender way that picture-Harry and picture-Hermione touched and kissed each other. The love between them was tangible, and it literally took his breath away. He’d never seen anything so beautiful before in his life. He couldn’t take his eyes away. He could hardly bring himself to blink. And he certainly couldn’t focus his senses enough to hear someone walking up behind him. He wasn’t even aware that someone was there until he felt the parchment being pulled out of his hands. Then and only then did he manage to tear his eyes away, and look up into the brown eyes of his best friend.

Hermione.

A/N: Wow. Just… wow. It’s been less than twenty four hours since I posted part 8, and I’ve gotten *75* reviews just for that chapter, not to mention the reviews for other parts that have come in today, as well. I’m… a little overwhelmed, to tell the truth. I only expected to get about 75 reviews total for the entire story! I’m immensely flattered that people are enjoying this story enough to want to let me know what they think, but I’m a bit intimidated as well. I hope my story continues to live up to everyone’s expectations! And speaking of expectations, I’m falling woefully behind mine in not getting all the reviews replied to before posting the next section. Hopefully this weekend will give me a chance to get all caught up. Please don’t think I don’t appreciate the reviews just because I don’t reply right away!

A/N 2: Brace yourselves, one and all, because this is where the *real* angst comes in. There *will* be a happy ending when I finish with the story, but we are *not* at the end yet. I appreciate everyone’s patience!

Section 9:

“You should have left it alone,” she said, her face turned to the piece of parchment while her finger softly stroked against it. “It was charmed for a reason, you know. I always told you that your curiosity would get you into a sticky situation someday.”

“Hermione, I don’t understand. Where did that drawing come from?”

“You do understand, Harry.” Her voice sounded so *normal*, it was unnerving. It was the same tone she used when he asked her for help on a potions question set and she told him that he already knew the answer, if he would just think about it. The fact that she was using that tone now made it seem even more unreal. She turned her face to look at him.

“You’re just in denial. You’ve seen my drawings before, and you know perfectly well that it came from me.”

“But how… why… what does it mean?”

“It means I’m in love with you, Harry. I have been for the longest time.” Her voice was still perfectly calm and steady, but now he could hear the strain behind it, like she was holding back tears by sheer force of will. That same tension was evident in her shoulders and in the lines of her jaw. Her eyes, usually her most expressive feature, were deliberately blank.

“You’re… you’re what?”

“I’m in love with you,” she repeated calmly. “I’m sorry you found out like this. Truthfully, I’m sorry that you found out at all. I hadn’t planned to tell you.”

An unexpected bolt of hurt shot through him. “Hermione, how could you keep something like this from me?”

At last, something flashed in her eyes, but it was gone as quickly as it had arrived. “Because of this,” she answered, and stepped closer to him. For a single, dizzying second, he thought she was going to kiss him. Before he had a chance to decide whether the resulting adrenalin rush was fear or anticipation, she reached for the locket that hung around his neck, caressing it gently. She popped it open and stared at the pictures inside. The picture of Lavender was giggling as she blew a kiss to the picture of Harry. Hermione clicked it shut with a sigh. “You made your choice and I wasn’t it. What would you have had me say?”

“How long have you felt this way?” Harry asked.

“I’ve had feelings for you ever since fourth year,” she answered matter-of-factly. “But I knew you weren’t interested in me like that, so I tried to ignore them. I tried to convince myself that all I felt for you was friendship, and that if I spent all that time thinking about you, it was just because I was worried about you, with Voldemort and everything else. But then I stumbled across the Mirror of Erised.”

Harry gasped in realization. That night, when he had found Hermione in the abandoned classroom in front of the Mirror. She had been crying. He had told her that whatever she saw in the mirror was obviously upsetting her, and she had agreed. She had said it hurt… oh Merlin, she had said it hurt because it showed her what she could never have. With her usual intuition, Hermione easily picked up on the direction of Harry’s thoughts.

“When you found me in front of the mirror during your engagement party, I said I was saying goodbye to it, remember? I had finally realized that no matter how patiently I waited and no matter how desperately I loved you, you were never going to love me back. I haven’t been back since you found me there. I’ve kept my promise. But I made this drawing to remember it by. Every time I looked into the mirror, this,” she picked up the parchment and held it up so he could see it, “was what I saw.” She tapped the parchment gently with her wand and Harry fought the urge to protest as the picture vanished once again. Hermione rolled the parchment gently, sliding it into her pocket.

“It was charmed so that no one could see what it truly held but me, but you’ve always been able to break through all my barriers, haven’t you, Harry?”

“I… I don’t know what to say,” Harry replied shakily.

“I know this makes things awkward,” Hermione stated softly. “I’m sorry for that. You need some time to get used to this. I’d better go.” Turning swiftly, she started to head for the portrait hole.

“Hermione, wait!” With his seeker’s practiced skill, he managed to grab her arm before she ran away. She jumped as if she had been stung but Harry’s grip was firm and he refused to let her go.

“Wait for what?” Her voice was considerably colder than it had been just moments before, and considerably less steady. She was close to breaking down and they both knew it. That was why she was so desperate to get away. But Harry had no intention of letting her go until they had resolved the issue. A sick sort of panic was washing over him at the thought that this might be the end of his friendship with Hermione. Her friendship, her help, and her support had literally saved his life more times than he could count. He couldn’t imagine his life without her in it. He didn’t *want* to imagine a life that she wasn’t part of. He had an irrational fear that if he let her go in this one instance, he’d never get her back. The thought was unbearable. Instinctively, he tightened his grip.

“You’re hurting me.” Her gasp of pain startled him out of his fears. Horrified at how tight his grip had become, he released it immediately.

“I… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to; I mean, you know I’d never hurt you. I just wanted… That is to say, I… We should… talk? Yes. We should talk. I can’t let you go like this.”

“You can and you will.”

“No! I know that look on your face. Merlin, Hermione, I know *you*! You’re going to go up to your room and you’re going to cry and it’s going to be because of me and I can’t bear the thought of that. You’re my friend, I don’t want—”

“If you tell me how much you value my friendship, I swear by the saints above and the demons below, I’ll scream,” she hissed, her desperation driving her directly into anger. She looked like a cornered lion: fierce and desperate and surprisingly beautiful. “I don’t want your *friendship*, Harry, I want your *love* and you can’t give it to me! That’s what hurts and nothing you can do can change that. Can’t you see that?”

“Please, Hermione, please just tell me what it is that I need to do to make this right,” Harry pleaded.

“There is nothing you can do.” Her voice this time was less harsh, but equally intense. “You can’t make this go away and you can’t undo what has been done. The only thing that would take the pain away was if you loved me back, and you *don’t*. Nothing you could say can change that, and nothing you can do can stop it from hurting.”

Harry felt like his heart was breaking. Hermione was close to tears and it was all his fault. “I can’t stand the thought that you’re in pain because of me.”

Hermione finally looked up at him and her face softened. He looked hurt and bewildered and horribly upset and she was bitterly sorry for the whole mess. If she hadn’t been so weak, if she hadn’t drawn the picture in the first place, there would have been nothing for him to find, and Harry could have continued in blissful ignorance, oblivious to her feelings, as usual.

“It’s not your fault,” she insisted. With great effort, she composed herself so she could continue. “You’ve done nothing wrong. It’s… unfortunate that it had to happen like this, but it’s too late to change anything now. You’re in love with Lavender and I’m in love with you. It hurts, yes, but I’ll get over it. All you can do for me right now is let me go so I can start to move on.”

“But I don’t want to let you go,” he whispered.

“It’s not your decision. You’ve made your choices. This one is mine.” And with that, she pulled out her wand, mumbled something that Harry couldn’t hear, and disappeared.

In his panic, he thought that she had disapparated. It wasn’t until he heard the footsteps racing up the stairs that he realized what had happened, and by then, he could hear that she had reached the top, and he knew it was too late. In spite of himself, a wry smile of reluctant admiration crossed his face. Hermione knew him so well.

She knew that if she just ran for it, he’d immediately run after her. Hermione was fast, but Harry’s speed wasn’t limited to a broomstick. He had excellent reflexes and would be only a few steps behind her if she bolted. If she ran out the door, he’d follow her, and he’d catch her. Even if she ran for the girl’s dorm, as long as he managed to be only a few steps behind her then he’d be able to prevent her from getting away. They both knew that as soon as he set foot on the stairs, they’d dissolve away into a sheer slide to prevent a boy from accessing the girl’s dormitories. If Harry stepped on it before Hermione reached the top, Harry wouldn’t be able to go up, but Hermione would have no choice but to slide down to him. So since she couldn’t run and since she refused to hex Harry, no matter what the circumstances, Hermione did the only thing she could do to get away from him.

It wasn’t possible apparate or disapparate in or out of Hogwarts. Hermione had told him so a million times. But he always forgot. Hermione knew that he would forget. After all, no one knew him like Hermione. She knew that if she could make herself invisible long enough to get to the staircase, he’d assume she had disapparated and she’d be able to get upstairs before he could run after her. The floo channels in the dormitories were usually heavily warded (mostly to prevent horny teenagers from open access to shared sleeping arrangements) but as Head Girl, Hermione had complete floo access to any fireplace in the castle. From the girls’ dormitory, she’d easily be able to floo to her Head Girl’s quarters. Harry would have bet galleons to knuts she was already there.

Running up to his own dormitory, Harry grabbed his Invisibility Cloak, and his Firebolt. The window wasn’t really designed for exit via broomstick, but Harry wasn’t the best flier Hogwarts had seen in a century for nothing. Within moments, he had managed to get himself out the window and over to castle tower that held the Head Girl’s room. As if she had known he’d fly after her (which she probably did; she was always able to anticipate him) the curtains over the window were tightly drawn and tingled slightly with the magical signature that he recognized as a silencing spell. If he knew his Hermione, there was probably a detection spell up as well, just to make sure she didn’t open the window until she was certain he was gone.

Wrapping his cloak firmly around him to avoid detection, (Snape, or even McGonagall would *crucify* him if they found him trying to fly his way into a girl’s dormitory room, *any* girl’s dormitory room) he waited at her window, hoping against hope that she’d give in eventually and let him in.

She didn’t. Hours passed, and the afternoon trickled slowly by, but the curtains didn’t so much as twitch, and neither did Harry. It wasn’t until the sun set completely and the night air started rolling in that Harry finally gave up, flying back to his dormitory window. Once he landed on the ledge he let his broom clatter to the floor and climbed on to his bed, lying motionless with his eyes wide open, dazed to immobility from a mixture of confusion and pain.

A bewildered Ron, puzzled over why neither of his best friends had shown up for dinner (and more than a bit aggravated from having to interrupt a very pleasant during-dinner-cuddle with Luna to explain to Lavender a dozen times or more that he didn’t *know* where Harry had gone) barged in, his mouth already half open to question Harry, but took one look at him and realized that this wasn’t the time for questions. Instead, Ron pulled the curtains shut around Harry’s bed and told everyone that Harry was catching up on missed sleep. The absolute silence coming from Harry’s bed was enough to convince everyone that this was true.

Inside the darkness of his bed, Harry lay perfectly still while he tried desperately to convince himself that everything that had happened since he woke was just a bad dream. In the course of one day, he’d overslept, found some parchment, made a discovery, and lost his best friend. It didn’t seem real. It *couldn’t* be real. It had to be a dream. Just a dream. Harry lay there wide-awake for hours, trying to convince himself that he was dreaming.

Sleep was a long time coming.

A/N: Let this go down as proof of my love for each and every one of you, because if I wasn’t so concerned about disappointing you by not posting a new chapter, I’d probably be asleep by now! We’re moving offices at work, and today was the last day of an endless week of packing, (we’re supposed to report to the new office, which we haven’t been allowed to visit, on Monday morning,) helpfully punctuated with e-mails every day telling us that they changed their mind *again* about how the divisions should be organized. And it’s been snowing. Exhausted doesn’t begin to describe how I feel, and yet here I am. Posting. I hope you all like this chapter! I also hope it’s coherent since I’m *not* at my peak proof-reading abilities at the moment. If anyone catches typos, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know!

Section 10:

Hermione exhaled a sigh of relief when she felt Harry finally leave. He had sat outside her window for hours. Hermione had been tempted half a dozen times to open the curtains just long enough to yell at him that he was wasting his time, but she always managed to restrain herself. No matter how quickly she opened and shut the curtains, he’d still be able to see her, and the last thing she wanted was for him to see her cry.

Of course, in her hurry to cast her silencing charm to block Harry from the sound of her tears, Hermione had made a slight error. For a silencing charm to be fully successful, it must operate on four closed walls. Any open windows or doors will let the sound out. In Hermione’s room, the closed walls around her were sealed against sound by her silencing charm, but she had been in such a hurry to cast the necessary spells that she hadn’t fully closed her bedroom door, which led to the head’s common room. This meant that when Draco entered the Head’s Common room shortly after lunch, he could clearly hear Hermione inside her room, crying as if her heart had just been destroyed.

Hermione didn’t hear Draco enter her room. She didn’t even realize it when he seated himself next to her on the bed, until she felt his hand gently stroking her hair. But even when she realized, she couldn’t stop herself from crying. The tears had been building for far too long for her to be able to hold them back anymore. She sobbed without restraint and without anything held back while Draco continued gently, silently stroking her hair.

Eventually, the sobs softened and slowed, and finally stopped. Wordlessly, Draco handed her his handkerchief, which she accepted gratefully, carefully mopping away her tears.

“That was rather impressive,” Draco said, attempting to lighten the mood. “I didn’t know that a woman of your size had that much water in her.”

“Well,” Hermione replied with a sniffle, “I do always try to exceed expectations.”

“Others try, love,” Draco corrected. “You succeed.” Hermione’s smile in return was watery at best, and soon dissolved into a grimace of pain.

Without another word, Draco kicked off his shoes and climbed fully onto the bed so he could gather Hermione in his arms, settling her body against his and tucking her face into the crook of his neck.

“What did he do this time?” Draco muttered. He’d intended the question to be rhetorical, but Hermione never could sit quietly while people accused Harry of wrongdoing.

“It wasn’t his fault,” she insisted. Her lips were centimeters from his neck, muffling her speech to the point where he felt the vibration of it more than he heard it, but he knew what she said, nonetheless. It was what she always said.

“Alright, this time I *really* don’t believe you,” Draco argued half-heartedly. He hated the way that Hermione defended Potter even when it was obviously tearing her apart, but he knew that she’d grow more passionate in his defense the more Draco tried to make her see the truth, and he didn’t want to upset her by turning this into a real row. The poor girl was upset enough as it was. He wasn’t about to make it worse.

Hermione shook her head and squirmed in his arms. Draco let out an exasperated sigh and tightened his grip around her. If she thought he was going to let her go when she so *obviously* needed to be held just so she could start an argument over how Saint Potter was an innocent lamb who couldn’t *possibly* be responsible for anyone’s pain, then she had another thing coming. Fortunately, she seemed content with rearranging herself so that her cheek rested on his chest instead of pulling away entirely.

“It really wasn’t his fault,” she insisted, her voice coming through clearly now that there was nothing blocking it. “It was mine. I did something stupid.”

“Stupid? You?” Draco repeated questioningly, shifting her slightly so that she’d lie more comfortably against him. “Not possible.”

“More than just possible,” she argued, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a scroll of parchment and her wand. A quick tap and simple phrase later, she handed the parchment to Draco who looked at it with surprise mingled with acute sympathy pains. She’d never told him exactly what she saw when she looked at the Mirror or Erised, but he didn’t need to ask to know that this was it.

“And here I thought you were doing so well,” Draco murmured, mentally berating himself for not having seen this coming. “Oh Granger, I thought you were going to try to leave this behind. Why didn’t you tell me you’d drawn this?”

“I knew you wouldn’t approve,” Hermione replied embarrassment clear in her tone. “I know I shouldn’t have drawn it, but I just couldn’t help myself. I kept it blank except for when I was sure I was alone.”

“How did Potter find it?” Draco questioned, trying to sort out the sequence of events.

“Remember when you knocked on my door this morning to see if I was ready to go down for breakfast?” Hermione asked. Draco simply nodded in response. “I was looking at it then,” she explained. “But I got flustered when you said you were coming in if I didn’t come out. I vanished the picture and shoved the parchment into the closest book I could reach, hoping you wouldn’t notice. It turned out that was the book I leant to the third years I tutored after breakfast.”

“That would explain why you were tearing your room apart before lunch,” Draco responded. “Potter found it?” Hermione nodded. “He broke the charm?” Another nod. “And the two of you finally had it out about your feelings for him?” Hermione nodded one more time and snuggled closer, wrapping her arms around Draco’s waist and clinging to him tightly. Draco planted a kiss on top of her head and slid his hand under her hair to rub at the tense muscles of her neck.

“How did it go?” he asked carefully.

Draco’s answer was a sudden wet spot on his shirt. Apparently, Hermione had not run out of tears after all, especially when she was reminded of her confrontation with the love of her life.

“Not well, then?”

Hermione stifled a broken chuckle. “He said he doesn’t want to lose my *friendship*.”

Draco snorted. “Wanker. Sod your feelings, as long as *he* gets to remain comfortable, is that it?”

“Draco…” Hermione replied warningly.

“I’m defending *you*!” he protested. “Don’t I get to insult the idiot if I’m doing it to defend you?”

“No,” she answered simply. “You don’t.” Draco grumbled something under his breath that sounded vaguely like ‘spoilsport,’ but his grumblings were contradicted by the exceedingly gentle hands massaging her neck and cradling her close against him.

“Speaking of defending me…” she stated hesitantly a few moment later. Draco perked up immediately.

“Do I get to beat him up?” he asked eagerly.

“No!”

“Please?”

“Draco, no! How many times do I have to tell you that—”

“Alright, alright,” Draco cut her off before she could go on another one of her rants. For someone who had just had her heart broken, she really was surprisingly overprotective of the idiot who did the breaking. “No insulting him or beating him. So what *can* I do to defend you?”

“Well…” Hermione hedged. Draco redoubled his caresses, trying to help her relax. It sort of worked. “Harry didn’t seem too… fond of the idea of giving me the time and space I need to get over him.” Draco bit his lip hard to keep from giving in to the urge to say that it was because Potter was a selfish bastard who didn’t *want* Hermione to get over being in love with him. “So if you could… I don’t know… stick close for a while? He’ll be less likely to try to talk to me if you’re there.”

“You can count on it,” Draco promised. “I’ll be there for you.”

Hermione let out another broken chuckle. “It’s the end of the world; I’m turning to Draco Malfoy to protect me from Harry Potter.”

Draco laughed softly. “Well, if this is a sign of the apocalypse, then I can’t think of anyone I’d rather spend it with than you.” Hermione sighed and nestled closer, and Draco could feel some of the tension releasing from her body as she cuddled into him.

“Stay here till I fall asleep?” she asked around a yawn.

“I’ll stay till you wake up,” Draco promised. Glancing down at the lines of her face, he saw her lips curl up slightly in a smile as her eyes drifted shut. A powerful wave of protectiveness washed over him and he placed a soft kiss on top of her head.

“It’ll be alright, Granger,” he whispered, as soothingly as he could.

Hermione opened her eyes and twisted her head so she could look up at him. “How?” she demanded. “How will it be alright?”

Draco shrugged, looking slightly embarrassed. “I don’t know. I’m just trying to be comforting. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to say to weepy females?”

Hermione managed a weak smile. “Best not to say anything,” she stated. “You wouldn’t want me to accuse you of lying later on, after all.”

“I just want to be able to say something to take the pain away,” he replied with almost painful sincerity.

“I don’t think there *is* anything you can say that’ll do that.”

Draco pondered this for a moment before smiling as a new idea occurred to him. “Marry me?” he asked hopefully.

In spite of herself, Hermione laughed. “Alright, so I was wrong,” she conceded. “That *does* make me feel a little better.”

“Is that a yes, then?”

“No, Draco.”

“But it made you feel better?”

“Yes, Draco.”

“So what else should I do?” he asked eagerly.

“Just hold on to me for now,” she answered, she sighed, letting her eyes slip shut again.

“I can do that,” he replied softly. “I can do just exactly that.”

And he did.

A/N: Believe it or not, I was going to try to reply to all the reviews today. But since portkey is being persnickety, it doesn’t look like that’s going to be possible. I just hope I’ll be able to get this part posted tonight! Thanks as always to my lovely reviewers. I’m sorry if anyone was offended by part 10. I promise, Draco will *not* end up with Hermione. As much as *he* likes the idea, Hermione is head over heels for Harry and, for better or for worse, can’t imagine being with anyone but him. Lucky for her, I still have a few tricks up my sleeve and there will be a happy ending for H/Hr by the time I’m through with them. Of course, since we’re not at the end (current forecasts have the conclusion in part 17) there’s no reason for things to be happy yet! Yes, this chapter is another lovely helping of angst. I hope you all enjoy it!

Section 11:

Harry woke up the next morning from disjointed, disturbing dreams that he didn’t clearly remember and immediately began to brace himself for seeing Hermione again. Despite how well he knew her, he simply wasn’t sure how she would respond to what had happened the night before. After all, he’d never really seen her in love. How would it make her act, now that her secret was out? Would she miss class? It took something serious to make Hermione miss class, but it wasn’t entirely unprecedented. Maybe she would lock herself in the girls’ toilets to cry the way she had when Ron hurt her feelings first year. Or maybe she’d yell and scream the way she had fourth year when she and Ron fought over the Yule Ball. Harry knew that his actions had hurt her. He had, unknowingly, been as cruel as Ron had been first year, and as oblivious as Ron had been to Hermione’s feelings in fourth year.

The troublesome part was that there was no real way to tell what Hermione would do, meaning there was no real way to prepare himself. Harry, no matter how hard he tried, never understood the ways that girls behaved. Hermione had always been the one to help him in the past. She had been a veritable translation key for every girl he had ever dated. Even now, his instinct was to go to Hermione and see if she could explain the situation to him, and tell him what he should say and do. Without the benefit of her advice and support, he found himself feeling hopelessly lost. The best he could do was mentally resolve to himself that however Hermione chose to handle it, he would be there for her. She was his best friend and he would not let that go, no matter how upset she was, no matter how she yelled or screamed. With this resolution firmly in mind, he headed down to breakfast.

He believed that he was ready to deal with her tears or her screaming. He was prepared for her to make a scene, or to run away to avoid one. What he wasn’t prepared for was what he found. Hermione was seated at the Gryffindor table with the Daily Prophet spread out in front of her, eating eggs while chatting a bit with Ginny, looking for all the world as if nothing at all had changed. It was disconcerting. He had braced himself for all sorts of reactions, but he had never thought to anticipate a complete *lack* of reaction. When she caught sight of Harry, she smiled at him with a bland hello, and returned her focus to her paper.

Harry approached her cautiously, attempting to sit down next to her, but she was quick to point him down to the other end of the table where Lavender was seated with her bridesmaids, poring over what looked to be a stack of wedding invitations, and waving for Harry to join them. Harry refused to be so easily dismissed, and stepped closer to her, saying that he really wanted to talk to her about what had happened the previous day. Hermione merely gave him a surprised look and told him that nothing had happened the day before that needed to be discussed, and that he really should be going to join Lavender. Bewildered, Harry left.

Thus was born The Confession That Never Happened. Hermione flatly refused to ever discuss it again. With a grace and dexterity that not even the Golden Snitch could match, Hermione dodged every attempt Harry made to talk to her, or to get her alone. He could only watch helplessly as she slipped further and further away from him. And as simply and gracefully as that, Hermione removed herself from his life. Harry looked about himself to discover that a friendship that had spanned nearly seven years and countless near-death situations had somehow ended.

Hermione didn’t openly snub him when she saw him. As far as he could tell, no one even noticed that she had ended their friendship, other than himself. He noticed it every time he found himself turning around (at least a dozen times a day), expecting her to be beside him, as she always had been, to discover that she wasn’t. It wasn’t like before, when he just *suspected* that she was avoiding him. Now he knew it for a fact, and Hermione no longer made any excuses not to spend time with him. She simply stopped being there.

When Ron asked why she didn’t come to Quidditch practices anymore, she informed him that she was tutoring younger students for their end of term exams, at McGonagall’s request and that the chosen times for the tutoring sessions, by some unfortunate coincidence, conflicted with Gryffindor’s practice schedule.

When Ginny complained that Hermione was never in the Great Hall for meals anymore, Hermione brought up the study group she had with Ravenclaws in the evenings, where they would order a tray of sandwiches from the kitchen and study in one of the library’s back rooms for the upcoming N.E.W.T.s. She claimed that she did her other homework during breakfast and lunch times to make up for all the evening time she spent studying.

When Neville, who counted on Hermione to help him get through his classes, mentioned that she showed up to class just before it started and left immediately after it was over to avoid any discussions beforehand or afterwards, and in addition, spent the class periods taking copious notes during classes that prevented her from holding any kind of conversation, she said that Dumbledore requested that she and Draco patrol hallways in between periods, and that she needed the notes to prepare for the N.E.W.T.s.

And when Dean, wanting a portrait of himself and Parvati, complained that she was never in the common room anymore, she replied that she was busy with her duties as Head Girl. None of this sounded odd to anyone else. It was no surprise to any of them that Hermione would devote a considerable amount of time to her duties as Head Girl, and to her studies. Harry seemed to be the only one who noticed that her duties and studies only *recently* took her away from the rest of them, and that she was getting in the habit of leaving them, leaving *him* most of all, and not coming back.

And if he saw her walking with Malfoy one more bloody time, talking to him and turning to him with her questions and her comments, then Harry didn’t believe he should be held responsible for what he might do. In her attempt to distance herself from the Gryffindors, Hermione seemed to have made the decision to spend all her spare time with Malfoy. The obvious friendship between them was impossibly hard to stomach. Harry still shuddered whenever he remembered one particularly desperate attempt to talk to Hermione about a week after The Confession.

At first, when Harry realized that Hermione absolutely refused to talk to him alone, he had been determined to give her time to work through her feelings and come to terms with… whatever it was that girls had to come to terms with. Harry didn’t understand any of it, really, but he knew that he had to give her some time. So he did. He gave her a week. Then it started to sink in that her absence wasn’t a temporary thing. She wasn’t just taking a few days to pull herself together; she was taking herself out of his life. Permanently. She was leaving him, and she wasn’t going to come back. At that thought, all plans to ‘give her time’ or ‘let her adjust’ disappeared from his head. Hermione was a part of him that he was *not* going to give up.

She had gone for one of her late night visits to the library and Harry had followed her, wrapped in his invisibility cloak which was practically a necessity for him by that point, if he wanted to be at all inconspicuous. He was convinced that one of the reasons that Hermione was able to so effectively avoid him was that she could hear him coming from a mile away thanks to the damn fan club following him everywhere he went. By hiding in his invisibility cloak, she wouldn’t know that he was there, and he’d be able to finally get her alone and talk some sense into her. He waited for her outside the library for what felt like hours, but eventually was rewarded by the sight of her walking out, alone.

“Hermione,” he called out, grabbing her wrist as she walked past and dropping his invisibility cloak at the same time.

Hermione instinctively shrieked when she felt an invisible hand close around her wrist, but not for nothing was she one of the most prized junior members of the Order of the Phoenix. Training had become instinct and at the first sign of attack, she immediately drew her wand. She had it halfway raised into cursing position before she realized it was Harry holding on to her.

“Merlin, Harry, don’t do that! I could have hexed you!”

“I-I didn’t mean to scare you,” he stammered, unaccountably nervous now that he finally had her undivided attention. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

Hermione’s face hardened into an unemotional mask. “What is there to say?”

“We can talk about anything!” Harry blurted out. He didn’t know exactly what he was saying; his plan had mostly focused on getting her alone and talking to her; he hadn’t put much thought into what he would say when he got to that point. The words rushing out of him in an only slightly comprehensible flood as he kept talking, desperate to hold her attention, to keep her there with him, to keep her from walking away.

“We don’t have to talk about… that… if you don’t want to,” he stammered, trying his very best to be tactful by not directly naming was he was sure would be a sensitive topic. He was unaware of how much he hurt her by tiptoeing around mentioning her confession, as if it were something horrifying that was best forgotten or pushed to the side.

“I mean, I understand that you don’t want to talk about that,” he blundered on, “but we can talk about anything! Really! Like… um… Quidditch! I can always come up with something to say about Quidditch, right? Or we could talk about class. You always liked talking about class. Or the N.E.W.T.s! That’s what you were studying for just now, right? Or you could tell me about your day, or complain about Snape, or remind me to study more. We could go down to the kitchens; you know how happy Dobby gets when we go down there. He keeps giving me socks, every time I go. I think I’ve gotten twelve pairs of socks from him in the past week, alone. And he could probably give us some of that chocolate cake that they served with dinner. It’s your favorite, right?”

“It’s not that easy, Harry,” Hermione interrupted. Her voice had that sad, strained quality to it that meant she was holding back tears. Harry hated hearing that sound in her voice, but at least the unemotional mask had faded. That, at least, was progress.

“It could be,” Harry pleaded. “It could be exactly that easy. “We could just be friends again. Is that so difficult?”

And just when he started to think that he was getting through to her, he heard that hated voice from behind him.

“Alright, Granger? I heard someone scream.”

Draco bloody Malfoy with his absolute gift for showing up at the dead wrong time, and ruining everything for Harry. But this time, a heartsick pain moderated Harry’s annoyance at Draco. When he, himself, tried to talk to Hermione, all he could manage to do was bring her close to tears. But when Malfoy showed up, she smiled. As pleased as Harry was to see her smile, it only intensified his urge to turn Malfoy’s intestines into carnivorous snakes for being the one to cause it.

Harry had spent seven years sharing his troubles and his adventures and his life with Hermione. They had seen each other through death-defying situations that would have sent most people screaming to St. Mungo’s. They had been there for each other through the worst, most terrifying, most hellish experiences two people can share, and Harry had truly believed that he was as close to Hermione as it was possible for two separate people to be. She had put her soul on the line to protect him in his final battle against Voldemort, and Harry knew that if it had come down to it, she would have given her life for him without a moment’s hesitation. And he knew that he would do the same for her.

So why was it that when he tried to talk to her, all he could seem to do was make her cry, while Malfoy… Malfoy the prat, the egotist, the self-righteous, bigoted, narrow-minded, cruel, devious pain in their collective arses for the majority of their school years… how was it that seeing Malfoy made her smile when seeing Harry had only made her sad? Where the hell was the justice or even the logic in that?

Hermione was the only person in the world who truly made Harry feel like a hero. With everyone else, he always felt like a sham: like they expected more of him than he could ever hope to deliver. But when Hermione told him that she believed in him, Harry found it possible to believe in himself. The trust and friendship always evident in Hermione’s eyes when she looked at him had given him the courage to do everything that everyone else had always expected of him. When had that stopped? When had Hermione’s eyes changed? When had Harry stopped being her hero? And when the hell had Malfoy, of all people, started filling that role?

“Alright, Malfoy,” she answered softly. Draco stepped closer, putting his hand on her chin so he could turn her face to the light. It took all of Harry’s considerable self-control not to knock it away.

“Liar,” Malfoy said softly, spotting the tears swimming in her eyes. “You’re not alright.”

“I will be,” she answered with another weak attempt at a smile. “Soon.”

“Of course you will be!” Malfoy replied, unaware that Harry was mentally listing all the different curses he could use to make Malfoy’s hand rot away. “I’ll be there to make sure. Come on, I’ll walk you back to our rooms.”

“Hermione, wait!” Harry pleaded, grabbing for her wrist again. “I… I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Go ahead and keep talking, if you want,” Malfoy sneered in reply. “We just won’t be listening.” And with that, he extracted Hermione’s hand from Harry’s grip and led her away. Harry’s eyes followed her until she disappeared around the turn of the corridor. Hermione didn’t look back.

A/N: I’m not entirely certain this chapter makes any sense. I didn’t finish writing it until this morning, so I haven’t had the chance to read it over a dozen or so times and make sure that I like where it’s going. It looked alright to me just now when I gave it my final read-through, but I’m not fully awake at the moment, so I’m not certain I really trust my opinion just now. If any of it seems incoherent, I’d appreciate it if someone would let me know! Oh, and think good thoughts for me tomorrow; it’s my first day of work in the new building which we have *not* been allowed to see (leading us to guess that it must be really horrible if they’re that scared of what our reactions will be). Thanks to all my lovely reviewers! I’m trying to get them all replied to, but it’s still going to take some time. Thanks for your patience!

Section 12:

The cold weather melted into spring. Flowers bloomed. Birds sang. Harry was miserable. The wedding plans were coming along beautifully. The bridesmaids’ dresses were complete. The flowers had been ordered. Harry was miserable. Gryffindor had a clear lead on the Quidditch cup. The only match they had left to play was against Ravenclaw whose seeker was still far too green to be any real competition. Ron was on cloud nine. Harry was miserable.

Hermione hadn’t spoken to him in weeks. At all. And she hadn’t let Harry speak to her. He hadn’t realized how hard it would be not to talk to her. He’d always rather thought of himself as the strong, silent type. Growing up with the Dursleys, he had quickly learned that the best way to stay out of trouble was to be as small, quiet, and unobtrusive as possible. And then on the train to Hogwarts, he’d instantly become friends with Ron, who never had a shortage of things to say. Filling silences was something that Ron did, or maybe Hermione, but never Harry. So why was it he felt like he was going to burst from all the things he wanted to say to Hermione?

He wanted to tell her that Remus had started dating Tonks (and it had to be true love since he called her Dora and she let him get away with it). Hagrid was planning a trip to France and was trying to teach himself French, and it physically hurt Harry to think that he wouldn’t be able to share a quiet laugh with Hermione over Hagrid trying to speak with a French accent. Harry had gotten owls from half a dozen different ministry department that he’d never even *heard* of offering him jobs, and he wanted Hermione to help him look them up. Lavender wouldn’t let him have a groom’s cake of chocolate frogs, which he thought was bitterly unfair (after all, he didn’t particularly want petunias to be in the wedding flowers, but *he* hadn’t kicked up a fuss about it the way Lavender did at *his* suggestion), and he was certain Hermione would agree with him. He wanted Hermione’s thoughts and opinions on all of it. He wanted to see if he could phrase something in just the right way to make her laugh. He wanted to know what responses she’d come up with to make *him* laugh over the little annoyances in his life, the way she always did. He just wanted her, back in his life, where she was *supposed* to be.

He dreamt about her practically every night. He’d dream that he’d go down to the common room and she’d be there, smiling at him and waiting for him. He’d realize that all the distance between them was a mistake, or a misunderstanding, or that he’d imagined it all in the first place, and they’d curl up on the couch together while he told her every little thing that happened to pass through his head. He’d always wake up from those dreams with a sense of happiness and contentment matching the huge smile on his face that lasted as long as it took for him to realize that it had just been a dream.

He didn’t try to approach Hermione anymore. It didn’t take a genius to realize that anytime he got within fifty feet of her, Malfoy would magically appear at her side. The git seemed to have some sort of Harry-radar that let him know whenever Harry even *thought* of trying to talk to Hermione. As painful as it was to see Hermione avoid him, it was even more painful to see her turn to *Malfoy* to protect herself from him. To her credit, she didn’t make him watch it often. She knew his habits better than anyone and it was a fairly easy matter for her to avoid him altogether outside of classes.

He didn’t even see her at meals which, according to Dobby, she mostly took in her rooms, when she remembered to eat at all. She had the tendency to forget things like food when the year end exams approached, and he could only imagine how much worse than usual she must be since the year ends this time were the N.E.W.T.s. He hoped she was taking care of herself. He hoped she wasn’t pushing herself too hard. He hoped… well, deep down he kind of hoped she was as distracted and unhappy as he was, because then maybe she’d give up on this nonsense and let him be her friend again.

Until then, he’d continue to mope around and be miserable. He spent a lot of time being miserable. He ate, he studied, he slept, he played Quidditch, he snogged his girlfriend, and he was miserable.

He didn’t hide it well. Harry was good at a great many things, but acting simply wasn’t one of them. Everyone knew he was upset. The real speculation wasn’t on *if* he was upset but *why*. The newspapers claimed that the solitude of being a hero was getting to him, and blathered on nonsense about the eternal loneliness of great men. The professors thought it was the after effects of the battle and Harry’s confusion over what to do with himself now that he no longer had “Defeat the Dark Lord” on his to-do list. Most of the students thought he was simply moody. Ron thought he was nervous about leaving Hogwarts and facing the rest of the world. (No one knew for certain what Hermione thought. Whenever anyone asked her, she brushed off the question saying that she was sure that Harry was fine.)

Lavender was convinced that it was pre-wedding jitters and tried to cheer him up by being overly enthusiastic about the wedding herself, hoping to spur some interest in him by getting him involved in the proceedings. Her efforts had one effect: Harry might not have been happy, but he was certainly busy. Any time that wasn’t expressly devoted to classes or Quidditch was appropriated by his fiancée to go over the wedding arrangements. Harry’s days were filled with flowers, ribbons, invitations, RSVP cards, cake samples (Ron liked that part, and Harry would have been more than happy to turn it over to him if Lavender hadn’t *insisted* he do it himself), and music arrangements. Harry watched with a mounting sense of horror as the wedding seemed to take on a life of its own. Dreams about Hermione were interspersed with nightmares of being chased by a pit bull in white tulle with a garland of petunias around its head.

In a vague way, he wondered why he wasn’t more excited. This was his *wedding*, after all. He’d finally have a family: the one thing he’d always wanted. His wedding was supposed to be a dream, not a nightmare. Married couples always talked about their weddings as the happiest days of their lives. That was what he’d always imagined his wedding day would be.

He spent a lot of time looking at the locket Hermione had given him. The pictures of his parents had been taken from their wedding pictures, and they looked so happy. Every now and then, the pictures would turn to look at each other; every time their eyes would meet, their smiles would absolutely glow. There was no hint of nervousness or fear of the future visible in their expressions. The sheer certainty of the happiness they seemed to share wasn’t something Harry could ever remember feeling before. In fact, the only time he had seen anything that even resembled it was… but no, he didn’t allow himself to think about that.

For all the effort that Harry had spent on cracking the charm on Hermione’s parchment, he had spent ten times the effort trying to forget what he had seen. He wasn’t surprised that Hermione, as strong as she was, hadn’t been able to resist returning to the mirror over and over again if that was what it showed her. The image had been haunting its beauty, and the happiness, the peace, the *completeness* that radiated from picture-Harry and picture-Hermione made something in Harry’s heart ache every time he thought of it.

That was why he didn’t let himself think about it very often. It wasn’t real, it was just a picture. There was no way that anything could be that perfect in reality. There was no way that he’d get that look on his face, like a lost piece of himself had finally been found, just because Hermione lay her lips on his. And even though holding onto Hermione had always felt right for as long as he had known her, that didn’t mean that keeping her close, not letting her go, holding on to her for the rest of eternity would be the key to never feeling lost ever again.

It wasn’t real, he told himself, more times than he could count. It was just a picture. It *couldn’t* be real, because he was in love with Lavender. Yes, yes, he *was* in love with Lavender, of *course* he was in love with Lavender. He’d asked Lavender to marry him and she had said yes, and they were going to have the wedding of the century (whether he liked it or not). He’d given her his word and his ring and his pledge of honor to marry her and love her for the rest of their lives. And she’s said yes. At the time, he’d been *happy* that she’d said yes. And he’d be happy again, he was sure of it. As happy as his parents had been. As happy as he had seemed in that picture that wasn’t real, couldn’t be real, and would be soon (please Merlin, let it be soon) forgotten.

In a last-ditch effort to cheer Harry up and make him enjoy the wedding preparations, Lavender organized an engagement party at her parent’s estate. Surely, she thought, a night of good food and good music and spending time with all their family and friends would be just the thing to brighten Harry up. She even received special permission from Dumbledore to allow her, Harry, and a few other guests (namely Lavender’s bridesmaids and Harry’s groomsmen) to leave Hogwarts on the Thursday evening before the Friday night party and stay away until Sunday evening so they could have a long weekend to relax on the estate.

The estate was lovely. The Browns really were wonderful people. The party was a smashing success. Lavender was in her element, circulating around the room and accepting everyone’s congratulations and well-wishes for the future. Everyone seemed to be having a wonderful time. Harry was miserable. Ron found him hiding in the library about an hour into the party, slouched in a leather armchair with a copy of a book that he clearly wasn’t reading open on his lap.

“You’re reading ‘Hogwarts, A History?’” he asked in surprise when he looked over Harry’s shoulder and saw the heading on the top of the page.

Harry shrugged and blushed a bit. “It was the first thing on the shelves that caught my eye,” he replied, just a tad defensively.

Ron nodded affably and seated himself in an armchair next to Harry’s. “Nice digs,” he commented as he settled into the comfortable chair.

“Hmm,” Harry agreed, not really looking up from the book.

“Great party,” Ron tried again.

“Hmm.”

“Excellent spread; have you tried the little sandwiches with pink stuff on them?”

“Hmm.”

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on with you and Hermione, or do I need to tie you to that chair and read ‘Hogwarts, A History’ to you until you crack?”

At this, Harry actually did look up. “What?”

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on with you and Hermione, or do I need to tie you to that chair and read ‘Hogwarts, A History’ to you until you crack?” Ron repeatedly calmly, as if he’d asked Harry about the weather or his health.

“I told you what’s going on with me and Hermione,” Harry answered hesitantly. “She caught me going through her stuff, we had a big, blow-out fight, and now she’s not speaking to me.” That was the story he had told Ron the morning after the fight, and he had stuck to it in all the weeks that followed.

“Liar,” Ron replied succinctly.

“It isn’t a lie,” Harry protested.

“No, but it’s not exactly the truth, either, is it?” Ron retorted knowingly. “You found *out* something; something she didn’t want you to know. And I’ll bet I know what it is.”

“Ron, you couldn’t possibly—”

“She’s in love with you, isn’t she?”

“I… she… I…” Harry stammered, looking a bit like a fish that was enormously startled to find itself out of water.

Ron flashed him a quick smile. “It’s okay, mate, I’ve had my suspicions on that one for a long time. She never told me; I think she wanted to spare my feelings; but once I stopped insisting that she and I were meant to be together, I started seeing the signs. So you finally figured it out as well?”

“I… sort of found something of hers that made it clear,” Harry answered hesitantly. “That much of what I told you was true. And we did have a big fight about it.”

“And how did it end?”

Harry scowled. “It ended with her avoiding me like the plague, or haven’t you noticed? She said she needs time to get over this, and until she does, she can’t even be friends with me anymore. Can you believe that? After all these years, after all we’ve been through.”

“Is it really that hard to understand?”

“What?” Harry asked clearly astonished. Ron was supposed to be on his side. Wasn’t that the way that it worked? Women did ridiculous things that made no sense, but blokes stuck together and consoled each other by saying that it didn’t make any sense to *them*, either. “You mean you think she’s *right*?”

“Hey mate, I’ve been there. I was right barmy over her for a stretch there. It… hurt when she told me she’d never feel the same way.” A flash of pain crossed Ron’s face, but was quickly gone.

“Besides, look at us,” Ron continued, gesturing around them. “We’re sitting in your fiancée’s house. You know, the girl you’re going to marry? The girl who has practically spellotaped herself to your side since the engagement became public? Hermione’s in love with you, Harry. Do you really want to make her sit around and watch the two of you plan your wedding at all hours of the day?” Harry’s stomach twisted with guilt as Ron’s words sunk in. Lav had gotten rather *demonstrative* since the engagement became public. It hadn’t occurred to Harry to wonder how it made Hermione feel to watch that. Guilt was forgotten, however, with the next words out of Ron’s mouth.

“Maybe…” Ron suggested as delicately as he could manage, “maybe it really would be better if you just give her some space for now so she can get past this.”

Harry’s eyes snapped up to glare at Ron. “How could she be ‘better off’ if I leave her alone? I’m her best friend, aren’t I? If I’m not there for her, who will be?”

“She does have other friends, you know.”

“Who? Who’d be a better friend to her than me?”

“Not better,” Ron protested. “Just… different. You know she’s close to Luna and Gin, and they’re… you know. Girls. They’d understand this better than we would, anyway.”

“She doesn’t like girls,” Harry insisted. “I mean, yes, she likes Luna and Gin, but she’s always been more comfortable just being one of the guys; you know that.”

“Well…” Ron added hesitantly. “There’s Malfoy.” Harry’s only reply was a low-pitched, dangerous-sounding growl. Some of the color went out on Ron’s face, but not for nothing was he a Gryffindor. He continued. “You haven’t seen them at the prefect meetings; they’re friends, whether we like it or not. I tried to argue it out with Hermione once and got absolutely *reamed* about passing judgment without getting to know him, and blaming him for what his father had done, and a load of other stuff that I didn’t really bother to listen to. I let it go just to quiet her down, but I still kept an eye on him around her after that, just to be sure, you know.”

Harry slowly nodded his understanding, and Ron was very pleased to note that he was no longer growling.

“He… takes pretty good care of her, actually. He makes sure she doesn’t skip meals, and he talks to her when he sees she’s upset, and he even manages to cheer her up, most of the time. I talked to Luna about it.” Ron smiled softly as he thought about his girlfriend. Talking things over with her was always interesting; Luna’s perspective on things was absolutely unequaled. “And she really doesn’t think it’s an act.” And when Luna smiled up at him with that look of love and trust that she always used when she looked at him, and told him with such confidence that she knew he was far too good a friend to Hermione to stand in the way of a friendship that obviously made her happy, Ron had been quite willing to agree.

“They don’t make any sense as friends,” Harry protested with a mutinous scowl.

“You… think they’re more than friends?” Ron asked uncertainly.

“No!” Harry protested, harshly and instinctively. “She wouldn’t… she *couldn’t*… She’d never let that ferret-faced bastard lay a *finger* on her.” Harry’s vehemence faded quickly, replaced by a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Would she?”

“No! No, of course she wouldn’t,” Ron agreed quickly and placatingly. “She… she likes brunets!”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed, not quite sounding convinced.

“But…” Ron added hesitantly a few moments later. “I mean, would it really be so awful if they did get together?”

“Of course it would be awful,” Harry spat out. “It would be *Malfoy*.”

“Well yeah, I know, and I’m not saying I like him any better than you do, but she seems to get along with him well enough, and…”

“Spit it out, Ron,” Harry snapped. “Why are you pushing the idea of Hermione and Malfoy getting together?”

“Well, it would fix the problem, wouldn’t it?”

“What problem?”

“If Hermione got together with Malfoy, then she’d get over you.”

The words weren’t magical, Harry told himself. Ron hadn’t cast a spell; he didn’t even have his wand drawn. So there was no reason why those words made him feel like his insides had been frozen.

“No,” Harry croaked out moments later.

Ron opened his mouth to reply, but soon shut it again. Harry looked dreadful, like he’d just gone nine rounds with a mountain troll. Now wasn’t the time to try to make him see sense. Now was the time… to back away slowly and let Harry think. Ron picked a random book off the shelf and settled himself comfortably back in the chair. It was about the history of Russian sculpture, but Ron didn’t much care. He wasn’t sitting there for the sake of the literature; he was sitting there to be supportive of his friend.

The party continued on in its bright and sparkling glory in the main hall. The guests laughed and talked and danced and toasted each other with glasses of champagne. Silence reigned through the library. And Harry was miserable.

A/N: Moving is evil. Offices are evil. And allergies are most *definitely* evil. Grr. Argh. Today was our first day in the new office and I still haven’t stopped sneezing from all the moving-box dust. I tried telling them that since I was clearly allergic to work that I should be allowed to go home, but I don’t think they bought it. Ah well. I’ll try again tomorrow. Thanks to all my lovely reviewers! I responded to several today but, obviously, still have quite a few to go. Thanks for your patience! As for this part… I honestly don’t know if you all are going to lynch me after this, but I do have the sinking feeling that you won’t be pleased. Just keep chanting to yourselves “happy ending, happy ending, happy ending.” Yes, I know how the story ends. Yes, I know how I’ll get it there from here. And yes, I’ll be able to make it all happen by part 17 (assuming that none of what I have planned for parts 14, 16, or 17 takes more than one part each. Fifteen is already written). And now that I’ve terrified you all, on with the show!

Section 13:

Harry really did have the most appalling luck when it came to History of Magic exams. His fifth year was a particularly notable case when he had that horrifying vision of Sirius being tortured during his O.W.L. exam, leading to the disastrous battle in the Department of Mysteries. After that, he would have been quite content to avoid History of Magic altogether from that point on if it hadn’t been for Hermione. Why she wanted to take the subject through to the N.E.W.T. level was beyond him, but she had been adamant about it, leading to a screaming row between her and Ron. Hermione had been in tears by the time Ron stormed out and Harry, never able to bear it when Hermione cried, had promised to take the class with her just to cheer her up.

To his surprise, the class wasn’t really that bad in the two years that followed. Binns was still only slightly more engrossing than a flobberworm, and Harry was still more inclined than not to use the class time for a nice, long nap, but when he studied for the tests outside of class, he discovered that the material they covered was actually rather interesting. They had moved forward into more modern eras, and the accounts of the wizarding battles that had taken place within the past few generations.

He’d never forget the day in sixth year when Hermione slipped an open book in front of him while they studied, pointing out a particular passage to him. The passage described a battle against Milanther, a Dark Lord who preceded Grindelwald, and detailed the particularly noble conduct during the battle of a young Auror named Richard Harold Potter. A grinning Hermione told him that Richard had been his great-grandfather. Harry had never really thought to look up the Potter side of the family; his grandparents were dead and he didn’t have any aunts or uncles so there didn’t seem to be much point; but seeing the Potter name in a history book and knowing that, whether they were there or not, he was still part of a family that he could be proud of, gave him a feeling of satisfaction and happiness and… and *belonging* that was unlike anything he had ever felt before. He found he rather liked History of Magic after that.

That is to say, he liked it right up until he skidded into the room to take his N.E.W.T. level History of Magic exam, moments before they closed the door. Merlin knows, he hadn’t *intended* to be late for the first of the exams that would, as Hermione had always told him, determine his career after Hogwarts. It had just… happened. Well, to be more accurate, Lavender had happened.

Lavender had pounced on him in the common room just before he headed down to dinner the night before, saying that she had something special planned for the two of them. She insisted that they needed a break from all the wedding planning and N.E.W.T. worries to just spend time together and had arranged the room into a perfect love-nest. She planned it all with exquisite care, from the three-course meal arranged picnic-style on a blanket spread over the carpet, to the slow dancing she’d insisted on afterwards to soft music from her wizard’s wireless, (it was good practice for their wedding, she had said with a smile that was just a little too bright to be as cheerful as she tried to make it seem), to the new silk sheets on the bed and the satin-and-lace lingerie she slipped into that would have made a dead man sit up and take notice.

After they made love, Lavender curled in his arms and started talking about their honeymoon, and what it would be like when the N.E.W.T.s were over, the wedding had gone off without a hitch, and they were finally starting their lives together. They had decided on a tour through Europe for a month, giving Harry a chance to visit all the places he’d never seen. Lavender snuggled up against him and whispered sweet words about kissing at the top of the Eiffel Tower, dancing till dawn at a club in Barcelona, and cuddling while they watched the sunrise over Rome. It all sounded wonderful; ideal, even; and Harry wondered why he couldn’t bring himself to feel more excited about it. His body was spent and relaxed from their earlier activities, the woman he loved was lying in his arms, and they were planning their wonderful future together, knowing that nothing stood in their way. So why did he feel so… incomplete?

Rather than try to figure it out, he had chosen instead to stop thinking entirely, pulling Lavender into another kiss. Surely her warmth and her love would satisfy him, like they always had before. He reached for her again and again, all night long, thinking every time that this would be the time that he recaptured that sense of ecstasy he was seeking. Every time fell short. He finally fell asleep from sheer exhaustion shortly after three in the morning… and continued to sleep until Parvati came banging on the door the next morning saying that she’d waited *more* than long enough to wake them, and didn’t Harry have a N.E.W.T. that morning, anyway?

Jumping immediately out of bed, Harry had thrown on his clothes from the night before and bolted out of the room, thankful that quills were provided by the examiners, meaning that he didn’t need to stop by his room. As it was, he barely made it to the exam room in time, flashing a grin at the examiner who gave him a disapproving look as he collapsed at a desk, working on re-catching his breath.

“The exam consists of three essay questions,” a wizard with a nasal voice droned from the front of the room. “You will have two hours to answer them, and we suggest that you monitor your progress so as not to run out of time.” The examiner continued on with something about an honor code while Harry settled himself in his seat and took a moment to glance around the room.

A subtle feeling of *wrongness* make him instantly uneasy long before he had a chance to figure out what, exactly, was wrong. A sinking feeling of dread followed after that as his eyes slowly scanned over the room and his mind processed what a part of him had already instinctively known.

Hermione wasn’t there.

“—and should you have any trouble with your quills, please raise your hand and one of the examiners will come to assist you,” the wizard concluded. “Are there any questions?”

Harry’s hand shot up.

“Yes, Mr. Potter?”

“Where’s Hermione?” he blurted out.

“Hermione?” the wizard repeated.

“Hermione Granger,” Harry explained, feeling his uneasiness grow with every second that passed. “She’s in this class, too. Do you know where she is?”

“Professor Dumbledore has informed us that Miss Granger will not be taking the N.E.W.T. at this location,” the wizard replied dismissively.

“But that can’t be right—” Harry tried to argue.

“I’m afraid if you’ll have to address that question to Professor Dumbledore,” the wizard interrupted. “*After* the examination. If there are no further questions?” No one else raised their hand, and soon the examination scrolls and quills were distributed, and the only sound in the room was the scratching of quill against parchment.

Harry mechanically worked his way through exam in a daze. Although it would later be found that he had scored very high, he would never be able to call to memory the questions that had been asked, much less the answers he had given. All he could think of was Hermione.

He was the first one to turn in his scroll and exit the examination room. The auto-pilot that had gotten him through the exam faded, and the look on his face was pure determination as he headed toward Dumbledore’s office, determined to get to the bottom of what was going on. For the moment, luck was with him. He ran into Dumbledore in the corridor outside the headmaster’s office.

“Professor Dumbledore!” Harry called out, catching the wizard’s attention. “I need to speak to you, sir!”

“Harry!” a voice called from the other end of the corridor. Harry recognized Ron’s voice, but didn’t turn. Finding out about Hermione took priority at the moment. Ron could wait.

“It’s about Hermione, sir,” Harry continued, cut off before he could finish by Ron’s voice.

“Harry, didn’t you hear me calling you?”

“Not *now*, Ron,” Harry hissed at his best friend before turning back to Dumbledore. “Like I said, sir, it’s Hermione. She’s gone, and I don’t—”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to telling you!” Ron interjected. Harry’s eyes sparked dangerously as he turned on his friend, ready to tell him off for interrupting him yet again. In response, Ron pulled out an envelope in front of him, like a shield.

It worked, oddly enough. Harry froze at the sight of that envelope, with his name on it… in Hermione’s handwriting. Forgetting that he had stopped mid-sentence, he grabbed the envelope and tore it open it, tugging out the neatly folded piece of parchment it held and reading quickly over the contents.

Dear Harry,

As much as I hate clichés, this is the only way I can think of to say it: by the time you read this letter, I’ll be gone. Far gone, as a matter of fact, and I won’t be coming back for quite some time. I’m sorry to drop this news on you with such short notice, but I just heard today. I got accepted into the Bankhead program early admission, and they’re willing to let me start immediately. They enclosed a portkey; I leave tonight. It’s a three year program and I very much doubt I’ll be coming home again until it’s over. Please be happy for me Harry; this is what I’ve always wanted.

I hadn’t intended to say goodbye through a letter, but perhaps it’s best this way. There isn’t really much we could have said to each other. Don’t blame yourself; you didn’t drive me away. The Bankhead program is the opportunity of a lifetime, and I really am very happy about it. If anything, all you affected was my decision to apply early admission. Yes, I will be missing your wedding. Yes, this choice was deliberate. I wish I could say that I’m sorry that I won’t be there for your wedding, but that would be a lie. I *am* sorry if the fact that I can’t be there hurts you. Please understand, I’m doing this for both of us. My feelings for you haven’t changed and it would just be too hard for me to stand there beside you while you marry someone else. You shouldn’t have to deal with that on your wedding day.

I’ll always be your friend, Harry. Nothing can change that. But I can’t be a very good friend to you until I sort through my feelings. It wouldn’t be fair to you, it wouldn’t be fair to Lavender, and most of all, it wouldn’t be fair to me. I’ll never be able to find happiness if I don’t learn how to let go of my feelings for you. I know it’ll take some time, but I promise you that I will work through this. When I do, I’ll come back to England, and we’ll be able to start with a fresh beginning and nothing in our way. I look forward to that day, Harry. But until that day comes, I must ask that you respect my wishes for you to keep your distance.

Be safe. Be happy. Try not to be too angry with me.

All my love,

Hermione

“What… when…” Harry stammered, dazedly, rocking slightly on his feet as if he had suddenly lost his sense of equilibrium.

“She came by last night to say goodbye,” Ron explained. “When I told her you…” Ron cleared his throat, “…weren’t there, she sat down and wrote this for you. I was going to give it to you this morning, but you didn’t come by the room before going to your exam.”

“I don’t understand,” Harry replied numbly. “What’s the Bankhead program?”

“Bankhead is a very prestigious school to train healers, Harry,” Dumbledore explained. “It is indeed an honor to be accepted. You should be very proud of Miss Granger.”

“But she… she hasn’t finished here,” Harry protested weakly. “How could she start a program without even taking her N.E.W.T.s?”

“She’ll take them there,” Ron interrupted. “That’s what the early decision means. Bill did the same thing when he signed on with Gringotts.”

“But she’s…” Harry tried, and failed, to keep his voice from cracking. “She’s supposed to be here. She’s… we haven’t made things right between us yet and I was… was supposed to have *time* and now… She *can’t* have left,” Harry insisted pleading, looking to Dumbledore. “Can she?”

“I’m afraid she can, Harry,” Dumbledore replied sadly. “And I’m afraid she has. She’s gone.”

A/N: I finally gave in and took some Tavist Allergy medicine which, with any luck, will keep me from staying up all night sneezing from another day in my all-too-dusty office. On the downside, I hardly ever take any medication, even over the counter, so it’ll probably knock me unconscious in another ten minutes or so. Hopefully I’ll be able to get this out first! Also, just so you all know, I have good news and bad news. The good news is, I got some real writing done today (I’ve decided not to even *try* to answer all the reviews just now; they will be answered, but finishing the writing takes priority for now) and managed to figure out how I’m getting past one of the major roadblocks to getting the story where I need it to be. The bad news is, the stuff I thought could be squeezed into one chapter (*this* chapter, to be precise) is taking more room than I thought. The estimate for chapters is now 18 if I get lucky, or 19 if I don’t. (Nineteen is more likely; things usually run longer than I expect.) And as for my second piece of bad news… well… I’ll have a second author’s note at the end to explain.

Section 14:

On the surface, nothing seemed to change after that. The N.E.W.T.s went on without interruption. The wedding plans progressed. The sun rose every day and set every night. Harry, along with all the other students at Hogwarts, went through his usual routines, and only those who were very close to him indeed even noticed that a light they had never even noticed, a light that had always just been there, had gone out of his eyes after Hermione left. There was only one thing that brought that light back in the weeks that followed and that thing, surprisingly enough, was Colin Creevey.

Colin, along with the rest of the wedding guests, had received permission to stay at Hogwarts from the time that the rest of the students left until Harry’s wedding two weeks later, but his mother was rather the clingy type apparently (not surprising, really, considering her sons) and had insisted that he and Dennis come home straight home, not returning to Hogwarts until the wedding day. Therefore, Colin chose the morning he was leaving on the Hogwarts Express as the perfect time to give Harry the graduation present he had been working on for so many weeks. When Harry came back to the common room after breakfast, Colin was waiting for him and hurried up to him immediately to press a large, wrapped bundle into his arms.

“What’s this, Colin?” Harry asked, forcing a weak smile as he accepted the heavy package, balancing it carefully in his arms.

“It’s a graduation present,” Colin explained proudly. “Go on, open it.”

Obediently, Harry untied the garish gold ribbon and pulled aside the wrapping paper, revealing a massive, leather-bound volume.

“It’s a photo album,” Colin piped up. “Copies of all the pictures I’ve taken of you, way back since my first year. I thought you might like to have it, to remember Hogwarts by next year.”

“I…” Harry’s voice became suspiciously choked up. “Thank you, Colin.”

Colin probably replied, but Harry didn’t hear him. He was too busy finding a seat for himself on the squishy couch and delving into his wonderful gift.

He knew that Colin had followed him around with a camera an enormous amount of the time since he arrived at Hogwarts, but he hadn’t realized that Colin had gotten *that* many pictures. Pictures of Harry flying. Pictures of Harry eating. Pictures of Harry with the Quidditch team, or with Ron, or with Hermione. Even in just the first couple of pages, there were so many pictures of Hermione, and Harry couldn’t help but smile at the sight of them. She had been so *tiny* back then, it was no wonder her large hair and large teeth had stood out.

There was second year Hermione helping second year Harry study. There was Hermione watching Harry and Ron play chess. There was Hermione standing in the background of a picture of Harry and Professor Lockhart, looking in their direction adoringly. There was Hermione, taking a firm grip of Harry’s hand and walking alongside him, scowling at the other students in the crowded hallway who were looking at Harry, the supposed Heir of Slytherin, with mingled fear and disgust. The pictures had a sizeable chronological gap, matching the time that Colin had spent petrified in the hospital, but Harry didn’t need pictures to remember what things had been like then. Hermione had been petrified as well and Harry hated his memories of the sight of her frozen still, unmoving, and utterly unresponsive, like her skin had been replaced with marble. No, he didn’t need photographs to remind him of that.

He much preferred to look at the next picture, where Colin had captured Hermione flying into his arms at the Leaving Feast after she (along with Colin, who must have grabbed his camera very quickly,) had been de-petrified. Harry could still remember just how it felt when she hugged him so tightly he could barely breathe as she babbled over and over again that she knew he could do it, knew he could figure it out.

And then there they were in third year, evident by Crookshanks’ presence in the pictures and, later, Hermione’s absence from them after Christmastime and the blow-up over Harry’s Firebolt. She still showed up in the background of some of them, sitting alone in a corner of the common room while he and Ron chatted together, or eating her meals with a book in front of her to hide the fact that she had no one to sit with in the Great Hall. Harry couldn’t help but wince when he looked at those pictures. She looked miserable: lonely and sad and positively exhausted. She had been doubling her days with the time-turner, Harry remembered, and had had to deal with Ron and Harry’s cold shoulder treatment on top of that. He hurriedly flipped ahead to the pictures at the end of the year, after they had reconciled. Her smile at the Leaving Feast when she was seated with Harry and Ron again was positively radiant.

Fourth year, and there they all were again, watching the students from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons arrive. Colin had gotten a picture of Ron gaping over Fleur Delacour that made Harry chuckle, and a photograph of Harry’s face the exact instant that Harry’s name came out of the Goblet of Fire. Harry had to laugh at the dumbstruck expression on his picture-image’s face.

It seemed like Hermione was in nearly every picture fourth year. It made sense. She was the one who stood by him and helped him in those horrible first months when everyone, Ron included, really believed that he’d put his own name into the Goblet. Colin had, apparently, even followed them into the empty classroom the night that Hermione drilled Harry in summoning charms over and over again until they were both confident that he’d be able to summon his Firebolt when facing the dragon. It must have been late at night when Colin joined them since both he and Hermione looked exhausted in the picture, but the summoning charm captured by the photograph clearly worked, and Hermione’s smile was wonderfully warm, even as she struggled to keep her eyes open. Her teeth had been shrunk by then, Harry realized, knowing that he hadn’t noticed at the time. He could see the change in her smile and wondered how it was possible he had missed it back then. Dragon to be faced in the morning or not, where was the excuse in ignoring such a beautiful smile?

There were pictures of the following morning as well, showing the dragon looking mightily put out as it tried to capture a Harry-shaped dot on a broom and (thankfully) failed, followed by pictures of Harry reconciling with Ron while Hermione cried over the pair of them. Ron was a regular feature in the photographs again after that, sharing space with Hermione, who had never left.

And then there were the pictures from the Yule Ball. Colin hadn’t been allowed to attend the ball himself as a third year, but he had gotten pictures of everyone in Gryffindor getting ready before heading down to the Great Hall. There were pictures of Harry and Ron, fidgeting uncomfortably in their dress robes (especially Ron, poor soul, in those awful second-hand robes) while the girls fussed and giggled and primped in front of mirrors. And since Colin stayed in the common room after the rest of them had left, he caught the moment Harry, himself, had missed. He had snapped a beautiful photograph Hermione coming down the stairs, looking every inch like a fourteen-year-old Cinderella, blushing and smiling down at Viktor who had come to escort her to the ball.

Viktor, the oaf, showed up in other pictures as well, most notably the ones from the Second Task. There he was, captured on celluloid as he fussed over Hermione, drawing her attention to the water beetle in her hair (ah, if only he had simply squished the bug; how much simpler their lives would have been!) and *trying* to draw her attention to him. Hermione, even in the pictures, would have none of it, focusing her attention on Harry, instead.

Harry remembered her saying that she had had feelings for him since fourth year. Did she have them then? Was that when they developed? Or had it been before then? In spite of himself, all the pictures from fourth year took on a special meaning as he examined Hermione’s expression in each of them, looking for signs of the love that she had confessed. When she hugged him in that snapshot, did she love him yet? Or when she got that hate mail thanks to Rita Skeeter’s articles and still plastered on a smile so he wouldn’t feel bad, did she love him then? In all those pictures when she stood by his side and helped him study, helped him practice for the final task, helped him laugh and relax for a stolen moment here and there, was that love in her eyes when she looked at him?

He flipped ahead, not particularly wanting to see the pictures from the Third Task and its horrific aftermath, wanting instead to see if Colin had managed to catch the moment when… yes. He had. There it was. The picture of Hermione saying goodbye to Harry and Ron at the station, and giving Harry a soft kiss on the cheek. She loved him then; he was sure of it. Instinctively, his hand slid up to his cheek, remembering the feel of her gentle kiss. Yes, she loved him then.

He had just turned the page to start leafing through the fifth year pictures when the interruption came.

“Harry, darling, have you been sitting here all morning?”

Harry flinched slightly as Lavender popped down next to him on the couch. He hadn’t realized how quiet the common room had gotten until he heard her speak. Her voice wasn’t unpleasant, but it was rather… loud.

“Erm… yes, I suppose so,” he answered hesitantly. “Colin gave me a photo album for a graduation present,” he added gesturing it in explanation. “I was just going through it.”

“It’s nice,” Lavender said brightly. “I wonder where he got the album? I was thinking of maybe getting something like this for our wedding pictures. It would have to be smaller, of course, and maybe in off-white? What do you think, Harry?”

“Hmm?” Harry asked distractedly, his eyes focused mostly on the page in front of him. “Off white? Sure.”

“Harry!” Lavender teased. “Are you even listening to me?”

“Sure I’m listening, Lav,” he lied.

“Good, because I wanted to ask you what you thought about adding pink ribbons to the groomsmen’s robes to match the ribbons on the bridesmaids’ bouquets…”

“Pink ribbons for the groomsmen?” Harry repeated, looking at her at last. “Sweet Merlin, Ron would kill me.”

Lavender laughed. “Ah, now I know you’re listening!”

“You didn’t mean it, did you?” Harry pressed.

“Of course not, silly,” Lavender giggled, leaning over to plant a kiss on his cheek. “As if I’d ever have Ron wear pink ribbons in our wedding! The color clashes so horribly with red hair. Just think of how the pictures would look! But enough about photos,” she stated, latching on to his arm and using it to pull him to his feet. “It’s time for us to be heading down to lunch.”

Reluctantly, Harry put down the photo album and let Lavender lead him down to the Great Hall. She made cheerful conversation during the walk there, but Harry didn’t hear much of it. He was thankful that conversation with Lavender rarely required him to do more than make sounds of agreement at carefully spaced intervals.

With most of the students gone and only wedding guests and professors remaining, lunch was an informal, noisy affair with everyone squeezing in together at the Gryffindor table and making plans for what they would do now that school was over. Harry spoke when he was spoken to, but remained distracted through most of the meal, his mind still on the photo album waiting for him upstairs. The last time he remembered feeling like this, he was a first year, unable to think of anything but returning to that mysterious mirror he had found that showed him surrounded by what he wanted most: his family. He didn’t allow himself to think of what it was that was in the photo album that he couldn’t find outside of it that he clearly craved so desperately. He just concentrated on eating quickly so he could get upstairs all the sooner.

Unfortunately, Lavender misunderstood. It was an understandable mistake. After over a year of sneaking into each other’s beds whenever they could find the chance for hurried, frantic, hungry shags where they used every silencing charm they could think of and dreaded the thought of being caught, she and Harry were finally free to be with each other as openly as they wanted. And now that school was out and the other students had left, the seventh year girl’s dorm was all theirs. (Parvati had moved into the sixth year dorm with Ginny to give them space.) For the two weeks until their wedding, they could spend all the time that they wanted exploring and enjoying each other to their heart’s content without anyone interfering or any fear of getting caught. So when Lavender saw Harry rushing through his meal, was it any wonder she jumped to conclusions?

She smiled when he rose to his feet, making weak excuses to go back to the dorms, and immediately followed after him, laughing softly to herself when she realized that he didn’t even know that she was walking behind him. Harry was the most aggravating person in the world to stalk under normal circumstances since was hyper-sensitive to the feeling of being watched. She was *never* able to sneak up on him, no matter how hard she tried… until now.

Harry’s mind was two years away, running through all the things that had happened in fifth year. What pictures would Colin have captured? Fifth year had been nightmarish at times (quite literally; he still remembered the dreams that Voldemort had planted in his head) but there had been some wonderful moments as well. Forming Dumbledore’s Army and feeling that rush of pride that his friends trusted him and believed in him so much that they were willing to join. Realizing how many friends he really had when so many students, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs as well as Gryffindors, went out on the line for him. The sparkle he didn’t remember seeing before (but that he liked, yes, *definitely* liked) in Hermione’s eyes when she informed him and Ron that she was in the mood to be just a bit “rebellious,” and then watching the after-effects of that as Hermione played Rita Skeeter like a piano, knowing just what notes to hit. Yes, there were definitely good memories, and Harry was eagerly anticipating discovering which of them Colin had captured on film.

He made it all the way up to the Gryffindor Tower and past the portrait of the Fat Lady (not even noticing the wink that she gave him when she spotted Lavender trailing behind him) with no thought on his mind other than returning to the couch and re-immersing himself in his present. He was nearly there when he heard a playful giggle at his back, barely giving him enough time to brace himself before his fiancée jumped onto his back.

“Upstairs, Harry,” she whispered in his ear. “I want you, too.”

She what? Wanted him *too*?

“I have to say, Harry,” she added teasingly. “I’m really rather flattered. You couldn’t wait to get through lunch so you could come up here with me?”

Harry was too dumbfounded to speak. That was really what she had thought? It was… well, it was rather logical, he had to admit, even if it wasn’t true. But how could he tell her? *What* would he tell her? What polite way is there to tell your fiancée that you’re not terribly interested in shagging her at the moment because you have some sort of fascination with looking through old photographs that rarely include her?

What choice did he have? He took her upstairs.

~*~*~*~*~

A/N 2: Please don’t hate me! I swear, I didn’t *intend* to have any real mention of Harry and Lavender’s sex life, especially after reading reviews from everyone saying that it made them queasy in chapter 13. But this is where the story led me when I was writing this part today. If it’s any comfort, the break-up scene between Harry and Lavender was written ages ago; this is just the route my muse is taking to get us there. Hopefully it will all make sense in the end!

A/N: I know I’m behind my usual time, so I’m sorry if anyone has been waiting for this! I literally just finished this chapter ten minutes ago, and have spent those ten minutes double checking it for typos (some of which I found and some of which I most likely missed. As always, please let me know if you catch anything I overlooked). I must say, I’m rather surprised at how it turned out. Not displeased, just surprised. I finally feel like the story is wrapping up. This part picks up right where chapter 14 left off. I hope you all like it.

Section 15:

Lavender shimmied down his body as soon as they cleared the door of the room, rubbing herself against him as suggestively as she could before pulling away with a light laugh and flopping down on the bed.

“Isn’t it wonderful, Harry?” she sighed, smiling brightly at him.

“Isn’t what wonderful?” he asked distractedly.

“No one’s around,” she replied, propping herself up partway and smiling at him with a come-hither glance. “No need for silencing charms. No need for watching the clock. No need to worry that we’ll bother anyone or disturb anyone or get caught. Just you… and me… and this lovely, empty bed… and no one around…”

“Yes, you already said that,” Harry replied absently. Mentally, he was working hard to adjust. He had planned to have a couple of hours to go through the rest of the album. He had been looking *forward* to having some time to do exactly that. And now his beautiful fiancée was spreading herself across their bed, offering herself to him, and… he *still* wanted to return to the album. He had never thought that the day would ever come when he’d turn down the chance to make love to Lavender, but there was a part of him that was aching for *something* that he knew he couldn’t find in her arms.

Lavender rose to her knees and crossed over to the foot of the bed so that she was kneeling in front of him. Leaning forward, she captured his lips in a kiss. Harry waited for the familiar heat to course through him, pushing away everything else the way that it always had before. It didn’t happen. He could feel her lips on his, warm and skilled as always, and he could feel his own responding automatically in the way he knew that she liked best, but the passion and lust that she had taught him to experience and enjoy were curiously absent.

“Come to bed, Harry,” she whispered, sliding her hands underneath his shirt to caress his chest. “Come to bed and let me love you.”

How could he say no to that? Why on earth did he *want* to say no to that? It was everything he’d ever wanted, wasn’t it? Of course it was. So when she deepened the kiss, he kissed her back. When she pulled his shirt over his head, he dropped his hands to the fly of his jeans, slipping out of the remains of his clothes, quickly moving to join her. And when the usual feelings of passion didn’t come, he took that as a cue to try harder.

When he finished with her, Lavender fell immediately asleep. It was hardly surprising considering the way that Harry had exhausted her. He tried everything he could think of to draw himself emotionally into the process, but while Lavender had clearly enjoyed the attentiveness, the results from Harry’s end were far less satisfactory.

It was getting worse, not better. He was barely even aware of the pleasure when he touched her, and the little joy he found in it had been entirely physical, as if he’d slept with a stranger instead of the woman he loved. His body had responded mechanically as he went through the motions, but his heart and his mind had remained completely unengaged leaving him, at the end of it, feeling slightly queasy. That hadn’t been making love; at least, not on his part. It had been sex, and nothing more, and it made him feel dirty and jaded and heartily ashamed of himself. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. Not with Lavender. But it *was* like that, and Harry didn’t know what to do. Exhausted and disheartened, it didn’t take him long to fall asleep.

He knew he was dreaming. After years of Occlumency lessons and learning to control his thoughts, Harry was a master of lucid dreaming. No matter what strange situation he came across in his subconscious, he always remained completely aware that it was nothing more than a dream, and that he could control it the moment it seemed to be getting out of hand.

But there was nothing disturbing about his dream at the moment; all he was doing was walking down a deserted corridor in Hogwarts; so he let it play out without interference. Besides, he could tell that he was getting close to his destination, and he was rather curious to see what it was.

Just before he reached a doorway, recognition kicked in and Harry realized where he was headed. This was the room where he had found Hermione during the celebration party: the room with the Mirror of Erised. Only instead of the door being shut and shielded the way it had been on that night, it stood wide open as if it had been waiting for him, and when he stepped inside, he saw that instead of the mirror being angled away from him, it was facing him, forcing his eyes onto it before he was even aware of what he was doing.

And there it was. God in heaven help him, there it was. The image he had seen for only a brief moment but that had remained seared in his brain was in living color in front of him. In the mirror, he saw his reflection, wrapped around Hermione. The heat of their embrace washed over him like a tidal wave, and all the passion he had tried in vain to find in Lavender’s body threatened to drown him under its dizzying rush.

She looked so beautiful. He couldn’t see much of her around his reflection’s body; mirror-Harry was holding on to her so tightly that it was hard to tell where one of them left off and the other began; but the brief glimpses of Hermione’s face when she broke away to gasp in some air or moan his name made him ache with how stunning she looked in the throes of passion. In spite of himself, his body tightened and hardened and he groaned in frustration at being forced to *watch* what he wanted so desperately to *feel*. Mirror-Harry and mirror-Hermione pulled apart and turned to look at him, smiling, maliciously it seemed, at his agony. But then when mirror-Hermione put her hand on mirror-Harry’s shoulder to turn him back to her… it happened.

Harry felt the warmth of a hand on his shoulder, and held his breath in anticipation as he turned his head. There she was. His Hermione. His beautiful, wonderful, irresistible Hermione, with a warm, brilliant smile on her face, showing all of her love for him. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to fall down on his knees and weep for being such a fool and waiting so long, to fall down on his knees and beg her forgiveness, or to fall down on his knees, pull her down with him, and *show* her far better than words ever could that he wanted her more than anything in the world. Remaining upright (for the moment) he opened his mouth, not even sure what he was going to say, but she cut him off with a single finger against his lips.

“It’s alright, Harry,” she whispered, stepping closer. “I’m here now, and everything’s going to be alright.” Then she replaced her finger with her lips and Harry forgot how to speak. His eyes stole over to the mirror just in time to catch mirror-Harry giving him a wink before wrapping his arms around mirror-Hermione. Taking the hint, Harry snaked his arms around Hermione’s back, drawing her in closer and relishing the feel of her body fitting so perfectly against his.

When he did drop to his knees, it was because she pulled him there, bringing them both down to the floor so they could relish the feel of their bodies pressing together, full-length. It was heaven and bliss and *passion* unlike anything he had ever experienced, and Harry never wanted it to end. Deepening the kiss, he ground his hips against hers, showing her as clearly as he could just how badly he wanted, no, *needed* her. She moaned in response, wrapping her legs around his, making him grin like an idiot in spite of himself, overwhelmed by the knowledge that she craved this as much as he did.

“Hermione,” he moaned softly, pulling away from her lips to plant a series of whisper-soft kisses along her neck, up to her ear. “I love you,” he murmured. “I love you.”

He turned his head to lower his lips to hers again, his eyes heavy-lidded and mostly shut in anticipation of the pleasure he would experience, but they flew wide open when instead of soft, yielding flesh, they pressed up against cold, hard glass. The warm curves under his hands vanished, and Harry’s body went rigid with shock when he saw himself pressed not against Hermione, but against the mirror, through which he could see Hermione on the other side, tears streaming silently down her face the way they had on the night of the party, while she shook her head slowly back and forth.

“You can’t undo what has been done,” she stated sadly in a heartbreaking repeat of their argument in the tower. “The only thing that would take the pain away was if you loved me back, and you *don’t*. Goodbye, Harry.” She turned away from the mirror, walking toward the door.

“Hermione, wait!” Harry shouted, pressing up against the mirror, trying to get to her. She ignored him, opening the door and stepping out into the hallway without a backward glance. He saw her disappearing from view and pounded on the mirror with every ounce of desperation he felt.

“Don’t leave me!” he yelled. “I love you! I love you! I lo—”

With a gasp, Harry sat up, wide-awake.

He didn’t hesitate for so much as a moment, immediately springing out of bed and throwing some clothes on as quickly as possible. As soon as he was dressed, he was pounding down the stairs, flinging the portrait open so hard that it made the Fat Lady gasp, and all but running down the hall.

He had to get to the mirror. He had to see if it was true. He had to know and he had to know *now* if the reason why nothing felt right, and why he couldn’t find any satisfaction with Lavender, and why he just couldn’t imagine being happy with his life the way that it was… he had to know if the reason for all his misery in the past few months that were *supposed* to be the happiest of his life was because his heart had walked away from him and hadn’t come back. He had to know if he was really in love with Hermione.

Though he’d only been there once, he didn’t even have to pause to think of how to get to the deserted hallway that would lead him to the mirror. He found the path by pure instinct, and soon he was nearly there. Instead of slowing down, he moved faster as he approached his destination, his eyes lighting up when he saw the doorway down at the end of the hall. Hermione hadn’t put back up the shielding wards when they left last time, so the door was clearly visible. He was so close. In just moments, he’d walk through the door, walk in front of the mirror, and stand face to face with what he wanted most in the world. And once he saw who the mirror placed in his arms, then he’d admit to himself which girl was truly in his heart.

Harry shouted out an “Alohomora,” as soon as he was in range of the door, and smiled with satisfaction when it flew open, eliminating the last barrier between him and what he had come to seek. His emerald eyes were glowing behind his glasses as he stepped up to the doorway, entered the room, and…

… nearly sank to the ground with disappointment.

The Mirror of Erised was gone. In its place was a table heavily loaded with high tea, complete with scones and little sandwiches, a pair of wing-back chairs, and Albus Dumbledore, calmly preparing a cup of tea with lots of sugar and cream.

“Ah good, there you are, Harry,” Dumbledore stated with a genial smile. “I’ve been expecting you, and you’re right on time. Have a seat, have a seat. Now remind me, dear boy, how do you take your tea?”

“Two teaspoons of sugar and some lemon,” Harry answered dazedly as he seated himself across from Dumbledore at the table.

“Quite right, quite right,” Dumbledore responded agreeably, preparing a cup of tea to Harry’s specifications, and loading up a small plate with scones and biscuits. “You really must try some of the chocolate chip scones,” he insisted, placing three on the plate. “I feel the house-elves have quite outdone themselves.”

“Professor, what is this?” Harry questioned, even as he numbly accepted the cup and plate the headmaster gave him.

Dumbledore’s smile was warm but his eyes were sad and looked oddly… repentant as they focused on Harry. “This is my apology, Harry. I do hope you’ll accept it.”

“Apology?” Harry repeated. “For what?”

“For only teaching you half the lesson.”

“I don’t understand…” Harry stammered uncertainly.

Dumbledore put down his cup of tea and smiled gently at Harry. “Really, I don’t think you know how proud I am of you, Harry. You’ve done so wonderfully well; better than anyone could have anticipated. In spite of Dursleys, Voldemort, Dolores Umbridge and all the rest, you’ve become a fine young man, and a credit to wizarding society.”

“T-thank you, sir.”

“But as proud as I am of all of your achievements,” Dumbledore continued, “there is one lesson that remains only half-learned, and the fault is mine.” Dumbledore sighed and looked very tired for a moment. “Your parents were very dear to me, you realize, and I blamed myself quite strongly for their deaths. If I had taken better care to see to their safety; to ensure that they had, as they assured me, found the best and most reliable secret keeper that could be found; to cast wards that would have given us some warning that they were under attack…” Dumbledore’s voice trailed off.

“Ah, well,” he sighed moments later, taking a large drink of tea and nibbling on one of the chocolate chip scones while gesturing for Harry to do the same. Harry obeyed mechanically. “Examining all the ‘if only’ possibilities won’t do either of us any good. Suffice it to say, I felt the obligation to provide you with the protection I failed to give your parents. I wanted you to be shielded, as best I could ensure it, from all harm. That was why I took you out of the wizarding world where adherents of Voldemort’s might have made you a target. That was why I placed you with the Dursleys, where the sacrifice of your mother would guarantee your protection. And that’s why I made you return to the muggle world year after year, to renew the bonds that tied you to your family.”

“I wanted you to feel safe. I wanted to arrange your life so that you would never know the fear that haunted your parents in those last few years, when they saw Voldemort’s shadow behind every corner. It seemed like what your parents would have wanted. But in ensuring that feeling of safety, I made some very grave errors. One of these errors, we’ve already discussed.”

Harry nodded in understanding. “Not telling me about the prophecy. You kept that from me so I would feel safe?”

“That is correct,” Dumbledore confirmed. “I didn’t want to scare you or burden you by making you aware of the weight that rested on your shoulders. I thought you would feel safer if you did not know the full extent of what you were up against. I was wrong, and my mistake cost you dearly, leading to a result that I will never cease to regret.”

The name ‘Sirius’ did not have to be spoken. The two of them sat silent for a moment of silent mourning for the man who had been lost to both of them.

“But as much as I regret that decision,” Dumbledore continued when the moment had passed, “there is another choice I made that burdens me far more: by making your safety top priority, Harry, I forgot to concern myself with your happiness.”

Harry opened his mouth to protest, but Dumbledore cut him off.

“I know that you have found some happiness in your years here: in the fondness you’ve experienced from various and assorted Weasleys, in the friendship of your peers, in the loyalty and support of Mr. Ronald Weasley and Miss Granger, and in the affection of Miss Brown.”

Harry blushed violently, causing Dumbledore to smile softly. “But as pleased as I am that you have found your place among your companions, I cannot help but hold myself at fault for what you have *not* found or, rather, what you did not know how to seek.” He chuckled slightly. “When I ascend to the adventures of the world beyond this life, I daresay your parents will be quite angry with me. I tried to give you the home I thought they would have wanted for you; a home where you would be safe and where Voldemort’s minions would not be able to harm you; but I was arrogant, and forgot to include the one, vital thing that you had always had in your parents home, even when it was at its most insecure. Harry, I forgot to include love.”

“I was acquainted with your aunt in a vague sort of way and I knew of your uncle.” Dumbledore chuckled again. “Your mother was a woman of fine, strong convictions, who had a fine, strong determination to *share* those convictions with the rest of the world. She was… not shy or quiet when it came to expressing her opinions, especially as concerned her sister and brother-in-law. But for all their narrow-mindedness, I knew the Dursleys could be counted on to keep you sheltered and secure, and that seemed to be to be the most important consideration. I did not think of the damage that could be caused from growing up in a house like that, for someone like you.”

“I did not realize that growing up so isolated from love and affection would have such lasting consequences. Foolishly, I believed that once you settled in at Hogwarts, you’d be able to leave the past behind, and learn how to love and be loved in return. But I was wrong, wasn’t I, Harry? Leaving you to figure out this most essential lesson on your own has caused you far more harm than good, and that has brought us here, to this place, at this particular moment.”

“You know why I’m here?” Harry asked, tentatively.

“You came to see the mirror, did you not?”

“I… yes,” Harry answered.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Dumbledore replied. “At Miss Granger’s request, I had the mirror removed several weeks back. It seems,” Dumbledore gave Harry a significant look, “she had promised someone not to give in to its temptations, and felt that the best way to keep her promise was to remove the temptation.”

“But I…”

“The mirror is a charmed piece of glass,” Dumbledore stated gently but firmly. “It can read your desires, but it cannot create them for you. Whatever you would have seen in the mirror, you already know in your heart. You just have to look to your heart and trust yourself to recognize what it is that you truly want. Do you understand, Harry?”

Slowly, Harry nodded.

“Well,” Dumbledore stated briskly, rising to his feet and loading several scones into a fresh napkin, “I must take some of these scones to Minerva. She was grading third-year Hufflepuff exams when last I saw her, and could use something to… sweeten her temperament. Feel free to stay and finish your tea.” With a kindly smile, Dumbledore headed for the door.

“Professor Dumbledore!”

“Yes, Harry?” Dumbledore answered, turning at the door.

“I forgive you.”

For a moment, Harry thought he saw tears in the headmaster’s blue eyes. But he couldn’t be sure. Perhaps it was just their twinkle that made it seem that way. “Thank you, Harry,” he said softly before stepping into the hallway and closing the door behind him.

Absently, Harry sipped at his tea and nibbled on a scone while he thought of what Dumbledore had said. Dumbledore was right about one thing: growing up with the Dursleys had made it very difficult to Harry to recognize love. He thought he’d found it with Lavender, but he was slowly coming to accept that that wasn’t true. He cared about Lavender, certainly, and probably always would, she wasn’t the one in his heart. If she was, then it wouldn’t have felt so empty ever since… ever since Hermione walked out of his life.

The torchlight glittered against the gold locket around his neck, and Harry popped it open, turning the pictures so that his parents were facing the front. He couldn’t help but smile at the look of love on their faces as they stared at each other. Flipping the portraits over, he looked at himself and Lavender and came to terms with the fact that as much as he cared for her, he would never feel the love for her that his parents had felt for each other. The thought didn’t upset him as much as he had imagined it would.

He closed his eyes and remembered his dream, and the way it had felt to hold Hermione in his arms. It was more than passion that he had felt from kissing and touching her. It was more than desire, or respect, or trust, or admiration, or friendship, or affection, though all of those things were there. They came together to form something that was much larger than the sum of their parts, something Harry had never felt before and had been too scared to recognize.

He realized why he hadn’t been able to feel happy since she left him behind. He realized why he had obsessed over the album filled with pictures of her. He realized why looking at a celluloid copy of her had given him more contentment than he had found in even the most passionate of Lavender’s touches. And he realized why he had dreamt of finding her with him, completing him in the reflection of the Mirror of Erised. The answer to them all was the same. He knew what his heart wanted. Dumbledore was right; he didn’t need the mirror after all.

All he needed was Hermione, the love of his life.

A/N: And here it is, the long-awaited break-up scene. I hope it lives up to everyone’s expectations!

Section 16:

The scones really were quite good. So was the tea. And so were the little sandwiches and the biscuits and everything else laid out on the lavish tea table. And it was just because they were *good* that Harry stayed down in that room for so long. Avoiding his fiancée? Why no, of course not! He was just enjoying a leisurely tea. A *very* leisurely tea. For hours. Lots of hours. Far beyond tea time. Far beyond dinner time. All the way until bedtime, and a bit beyond.

Fortunately, Dumbledore seemed to have found something to tell his friends and fiancée to explain his absence since no one came after him. Harry was grateful for the respite. It meant that he had plenty of time to sit and think (and drink tea, of course; lots of tea) and come up with a plan for exactly how he would call off his engagement. He didn’t come up with much. He’d never ended a relationship before, and hadn’t the foggiest idea what he should do. He didn’t want her to hate him, but he didn’t want to leave her in any doubt that his mind was made up. It was quite a puzzle.

It didn’t help, of course, that even as he tried to think of what to say to Lavender, his mind kept drifting back to Hermione. All he’d been able to find out about the Bankhead Institute was that it was in Switzerland. Apparently, that was all that most people knew. Bankhead wasn’t just a school for healers, it was also one of the leading medical think-tanks in Europe. They kept their secrets closely guarded. Especially their precise location. But Harry didn’t allow himself to be pessimistic. He’d find her. He’d find his Hermione and he’d tell her that he loved her, and he’d never let her go again. The thought of what it would be like when they were finally together was more than enough to occupy his mind for the rest of the evening, and by the time he finally headed back to Gryffindor tower, he’d given up on planning what he’d say to Lavender. He’d simply tell her that he needed to talk to her and from there he’d… well… wing it. It couldn’t be that much harder than defeating the Dark Lord… could it?

In spite of his brave resolution, Harry couldn’t help but feel a rush of relief when he stepped into the tower and saw that the common room was quiet and still, and that the only figure in the low-burning firelight was Lavender, fast asleep, curled up in a squashy armchair. The conversation could wait until morning. His dreams had been rather enlightening lately; perhaps they’d show him what he should say by then.

Lavender slept like a log. Honestly, it was almost cute the way *nothing* external could wake her up once she fell asleep. Harry, therefore, had no fear of waking her when he lifted her into his arms and carried her up the stairs to the room they were supposed to share. Laying her down on one side of the bed, he pulled off her slippers, turned down the sheets, and tucked her underneath the blankets. He sat on the side of the bed and just watched her for a few, long moments. She was quite beautiful when she slept, and Harry had an odd desire to imprint the memory firmly in his mind, since it would be the last time he would see it. Tomorrow he would end his engagement with Lavender, and he would never watch her sleep again.

Changing into his pajamas, Harry grabbed a blanket off of one of the extra beds and headed downstairs. He wouldn’t share Lavender’s bed anymore, but he didn’t want to embarrass her by bunking in with the rest of the boys. There would be all sorts of questions in the morning if he stayed there, and he wasn’t about to announce to the rest of the wedding guests that he was ending things with Lavender before he had had a chance to tell the bride, herself. No, he’d just crash on the couch for tonight. If anyone saw him, he could say that he hadn’t been able to sleep and had come downstairs to read before accidentally nodding off on the couch. Besides, the photo album was downstairs, and he still hadn’t had a chance to look through the last three years’ worth of pictures.

Harry stretched out on the couch and pulled the blanket over his body, tugging the photo album in place beside him, and flipping ahead so that he was looking at the seventh year pictures. She wasn’t in the back of the album which held the pictures for the past few months, and Harry let out a sigh of frustration. He never should have let it happen. He never should have let her separate herself from his life. But what was done was done, and there was nothing he could do to change it. All he could do was see to it that he never lost her again. He’d start on that in the morning, once he’d talked to Lavender. But until then, there were still the pictures from the beginning of the year. Flipping back, he found them and there she was: chatting, smiling, studying, sketching, and looking so lovely that Harry could have sworn his heart skipped a beat.

He found a gorgeous one of her curled up next to him on one of the common room sofas, nibbling a sugar quill while reading a positively enormous book that obviously had her enthralled. The subject of the photo was Harry, playing chess with Ron, but Hermione was all that Harry saw, watching her sucking gently on the sugar quill while looking up every minute or so, obviously in response to Colin’s request for all of them to smile, to flash a quick grin at the camera.

Harry let out a soft sigh and tugged the photo album closer. Staring at her sweet face in the pictures, he could almost imagine Hermione was lying next to him, and he couldn’t help but smile at the thought. Subconsciously, he reached out to trace her features with the tip of his finger. He loved wizarding photos; they were so lifelike! Blushing a bit, he leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss against the picture.

“Goodnight, Hermione,” he whispered sleepily, lifting his head slightly to pull off his glasses and place them to the side. His vision went blurry, but his eyes continued to focus on Hermione’s picture while his fingers traced the photograph as his eyes slowly slid shut. He fell asleep quickly with a smile on his lips, and slept quite soundly.

There was no way he could have known that Lavender had woken a few minutes after he tucked her into bed. And since he didn’t know that, there was no way he could have imagined that she came downstairs, looking for him, and saw him curl up with his photo album. It never occurred to him that she might have watched him say goodnight to Hermione’s picture… and seen the look on his face when he said it. So naturally, the thought never crossed his mind that his fiancée went back upstairs after watching him and cried a bit before falling asleep.

The next thing Harry was aware of was the feel of Lavender’s fingers combing through his hair. The gesture was warm and very familiar; it was a long-standing habit of hers and one that Harry had always rather liked; but this morning it gave him nothing so much as a cold sense of dread. He could tell that they were alone in the common room, and knew that this was the perfect moment to have their talk. The only problem was, he still had no idea what he wanted to say. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes and gave her a weak smile.

“Morning, Lav,” he whispered before frowning slightly. His vision was more than a bit blurred without his glasses, but even he could see that it was still quite dark in the common room. The light coming from the windows was the gray-blue of just before dawn: much earlier than Lavender usually got up. “What time is it?” he couldn’t help but ask as he sat up and stretched.

“Early,” she answered vaguely, handing him his glasses. “I thought we could talk before everyone else got up.”

“Al-alright,” he stammered uncertainly. “Um… what did you want to talk about?”

“Did you know that both my parents were Ravenclaws when they were at Hogwarts?” Lavender asked. She was smiling brightly at him and her voice was casual, as if she was merely making chitchat, but there was a brittle tension to the smile and the voice that confused him.

“No, I… ah… I didn’t know that,” Harry replied after a lengthy pause where he tried to figure out where this conversation was going.

“I was so nervous when the Sorting Ceremony started our first year. I knew the professors would expect me to be sorted into Ravenclaw, just like my parents, but I knew that I didn’t stand a chance. I’m worlds away from being smart enough for that.”

“Don’t say that, you’re plenty smart!” Harry interjected. He still didn’t know where she was headed with this, but he wasn’t going to allow Lavender to insult herself in front of him. “You get top marks in Divination.”

“So do you, Harry, and you make up your predictions,” Lavender corrected him with a warmer smile. “I… I know I’m not smart, like Hermione, and I… I’m fine with that, really I am. It was just strange during the Sorting Ceremony because I had no idea where I would end up. Even though I’m a pureblood, I’m not what you’d call ambitious. And I’m loyal, I guess, but I’m not much of a hard worker. Gryffindor, above all, seemed out of my league. So many heroes have come from Gryffindor. Like you, love.”

Harry opened his mouth to interject. He wasn’t sure what he’d say; maybe it would be something about how she had been heroic to even care about him in the first place, when loving him seemed to be a death warrant. Or maybe he’d say something about how involved she’d been in D.A. and how brave she had been. But Lavender cut him off with a gesture, letting him know that she wasn’t finished having her say, and Harry subsided into silence.

“There are times when I’d wonder if I was sorted into the wrong house,” she confessed. “You and Ron and Hermione would perform all these daring adventures every year, and even Neville showed courage standing up to you first year and then going with you to the Department of Mysteries. Luna’s a Ravenclaw and she’s been involved in more dangerous adventures than I have. But I think my time has finally come to be brave, Harry. This is my moment to show that I really am a Gryffindor.”

“Lav, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“I’m calling off our engagement, Harry.”

For a moment, he just sat there in silence, looking absolutely shocked. “You’re… what?” he asked dazedly.

“I’m calling off our engagement. I don’t want to marry you. Well no,” she corrected herself. “That’s not quite true. I do want to marry you, Harry. But I don’t want you to marry me.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he whispered, as if he was afraid that speaking out loud would make the world turn upside-down physically, instead of just in his head.

“Marriage is a promise,” Lavender explained. “At a wedding, you stand up before the people that you love and trust most in the world and promise that you’ll spend the rest of your life loving the person standing there with you, above all others. I don’t want you to make that promise to me, Harry, because I know it would be a lie.”

Harry gasped. “Lav,” he stammered apologetically, “I never meant to—”

“You’re in love with Hermione,” Lavender continued as if Harry hadn’t spoken. “We both know it, so it’s time we both admitted it, to ourselves and to each other. She’s the person that you want to love and cherish. She’s who you want to grow old with and build a life and a family with, so the only person you should be making that promise to is her.”

“I made a promise to *you*,” Harry said, grabbing hold of her hand, “when I gave you this ring. I never wanted to break that promise. And I’m so sorry—”

“I’m not,” Lavender interrupted with a sad smile. “I’m not sorry at all. I’ll never be sorry for what we had or the fact that we had it together. But it wasn’t love. You could never give me your heart because it belongs to Hermione and always will.”

“How…” Harry’s voice was low and cautious, “how did you know?”

“I… I’m not smart,” Lavender answered, looking more serious than Harry had ever seen her, her voice shaking a bit with the force of the conviction behind it. “And I probably never will be, but I know that I love you, Harry, with everything that I have. I knew that you never looked at me quite the same way that I looked at you, but I thought that that was natural. I knew you weren’t used to expressing your emotions, and I thought that you felt as much as I did, even if you didn’t show it. But I saw that look of love on your face, and it wasn’t when you were looking at me. It was when you were looking at a picture of Hermione.”

“I’m so sorry. I never meant to—”

“It’s okay, Harry. Really it is. You didn’t do anything wrong. Of course,” she said, and at this point her voice deliberately grew breezy and bright again, “you didn’t do anything particularly right either. Honestly Harry, letting the girl leave the country? I thought you seekers were supposed to be faster on the draw than that! And now you’ll have to chase her half way across the Continent, and trains to Switzerland are positively dreadful this time of year. And packing will be a wretched ordeal. Which color robes adequately say ‘I was a fool to let you go and I’ll do anything to get you back?’ And whatever color you decide on, you might want to have a few spare sets in the same shade, in case she chooses at first to lock the door against you and throw objects at you from an upstairs window, which Merlin knows you deserve. But still, bloodstains are disastrously difficult to get out of good material and you’d do well to be prepared—”

Harry was laughing out loud by this point, and Lavender was smiling, well pleased with herself. “I do love you, Lavender,” Harry said with a grin.

“Of course you do,” she replied. Her tone was flippant but her smile was surprisingly understanding. “I’m very loveable.”

“I’ll miss you, Lav. We had something good.”

“We had something *great*, Harry, truly. We were able to make each other happy in a time when we both really needed some happiness, and I’ll never regret that.” She ran her fingers gently through his hair again, one last time. This time it was slower, more lingering than usual, as if she wanted to savor it while it lasted. “I know I made you happy, love, but Hermione does something more than that. When you’re with her, you don’t *have* to be happy. You can be sad, or scared, or angry, or even irrational, and know that she’ll never judge you or misunderstand you. She’s the one person on earth that you trust enough to allow her to see every side of you, with nothing held back. There’s just no getting around it. She completes you.” Her smile grew somewhat wistful. “I should have seen it earlier,” she admitted. “I should have known what it meant. I’m sorry that I didn’t.”

Lavender slid the engagement ring off of her finger and pressed it into Harry’s hand. “Good luck, Harry.” He squeezed her hand gently and gave her a grateful smile. “Now scurry along and pack!” she said, releasing him and shooing him away. “We’re too busy to be sitting around like this. You have a girl to catch and I have a very complicated and elaborate wedding to cancel.”

Harry, who stood at the beginning of her sentence, froze at these words. “Oh Merlin, the wedding plans. I can’t leave you to deal with that on your own!”

“You can and you will,” Lavender replied firmly. “Now if you don’t start heading up those stairs in the next five seconds, be prepared for me to start practicing the stinging hex you taught me fifth year on your backside!”

“Will you be alright?” Harry asked gently.

Lavender smiled in reply. “Of course I’ll be alright. I’m brave, remember? I’m a Gryffindor.”

“That you are, love,” Harry murmured, pressing a gentle kiss to her forehead before bolting up the stairs.

Lavender watched him go and then, when she was sure she was alone, pressed a gentle kiss onto her newly bare left hand ring finger. “I’ll be fine,” she whispered to herself with a rueful smile. Smoothing down her hair, she stood and walked over to a mirror in the corner to check her eyes for signs of tears.

“Lovely as always, dear,” the motherly voice of the mirror said. Lavender flashed it a winning smile before stepping away and turning to the exit. First stop was the Owlery; she had quite a few posts she needed to send.

“Yes,” she said to herself with a firm nod, “I’ll be fine.”

A/N: Thanks to everyone for being patient with me over the delay on this chapter! I hope it’s worth the wait. This’ll probably be my only post today. My parents are coming into town this afternoon, so I’ll be rather busy. On the bright side, they’ll be heading into Connecticut tomorrow for a wedding (to which I wasn’t invited… but don’t get me started on that) and won’t come back to the city until Monday, so I should be able to get part 18 (hopefully, the final part) written and posted sometime tomorrow. It’s hard to believe this story is almost over! *sniffles a little* Big thanks to all the wonderful people who have sent me reviews throughout. Enjoy the chapter, and bonus points to anyone who recognizes the source of Ron’s dream mumblings!

Section 17:

Harry knew he probably looked impossibly silly, but he couldn’t wipe the grin off his face. Never, not even on a broom, had he ever felt so free. The wedding that he had been dreading (and hating himself for dreading) was no longer on the horizon. The break-up that had preyed on his mind for most of the previous day was over, with no hard feelings left behind. All that was left in his future was Hermione, and the thought made him so happy, he was amazed his feet touched the ground at all.

Running up the last stairs, he threw open the door to the boys’ dormitory and pounced on a sleeping pile of Ronald Weasley. As he expected, Ron only muttered something about roller skates in his sleep and rolled over, reverting to snoring as soon as the words were out of his mouth. (No one else in the room noticed the disturbance. Over the years, Ron had developed a snore that could make the walls vibrate. Harry, Dean, Neville, and Seamus had learned quickly that silencing spells was the only way to get any sleep.)

“Ron, wake up!” Harry whispered loudly, shaking Ron’s shoulder.

“No, I’ll wear the purple shoes,” Ron muttered. “Who painted the kitten?”

“You have to help me pack,” Harry insisted, continuing to shake him. “I’m going to Switzerland.”

“I know – put my earmuffs on the cookie,” Ron murmured.

“I’m in love with Hermione.”

A single blue eye cracked open slightly. “Huh?”

“I said I’m in love with Hermione,” Harry repeated, beaming proudly.

“Funny,” Ron whispered sleepily. “I’ve never had a dream about that before.” Shrugging slightly, the eye started to slip closed once again, but Harry continued to shake him far too persistently.

“Go ‘way, Harry,” Ron mumbled, his voice muffled by the pillow as he tried to turn away from Harry’s pushiness.

“Lavender called off our engagement. She told me to go after Hermione. I’ll be leaving as soon as I pack.” No response. Well, no response except for snoring. “Luna’s standing over there wearing nothing but a feather boa!” Harry finally called out as a last resort.

“Luna?” Ron asked eagerly, opening both eyes and sitting up. “Where are you, love?”

“Okay, I lied about the Luna part,” Harry admitted sheepishly. “But the rest of it is true.”

“The rest of it?” Ron asked, moving to lie down again.

“Oh no, you don’t,” Harry muttered, grabbing hold of Ron’s arm and forcing him to remain upright. “I’m in love with Hermione. Lavender’s called off the engagement. I’m leaving for Switzerland as soon as I pack.”

“You’re in love with Hermione?”

“I’m in love with Hermione,” Harry agreed, the same foolish grin from before covering his face.

Slowly, a similar grin spread across Ron’s face. “It’s about time, mate,” he chuckled.

“What?” Harry stammered. “You mean… you knew? How could you have known? Even *I* didn’t know!”

“Ron the Great knows all,” Ron teased through a massive yawn. “Just look at my divination scores.”

“You make your predictions up.”

“Doesn’t stop them from coming true.”

Harry opened his mouth, then closed it. Then opened it again, then closed it again. “I’m in love with Hermione,” he finally said a moment or two later.

“Yeah, you mentioned that,” Ron grinned. “Mighty fond of saying it, aren’t you?”

Harry only blushed and smiled in response.

“Falling in love with Hermione’s made you downright goofy, mate,” Ron replied. “You even look different.”

“I do?” Harry asked, looking down at himself. Everything looked normal from his perspective. “What looks different?”

“Your face,” Ron answered. “You look… happy.”

Harry’s smile grew so wide, Ron started to wonder if he was going to sprain something. “I am,” Harry whispered. “So happy, you’ve no idea. I’m…” he shrugged, at a loss to describe just how he felt. “I’m in love with Hermione,” he concluded as if that explained everything. He was right; it did.

“Now get up, you lazy git,” he said, punching Ron on the shoulder as he got off the bed. “I’ve got to go to Switzerland to see about a girl, and you’re going to help me pack.”

Fifteen minutes later, Ron finally managed to haul himself out of bed and into the shower. He threw some clothes on and found Harry, also showered and dressed, in the room he and Lavender were supposed to share, loading his stuff into his trunk and humming something tunelessly but enthusiastically. Harry’s grin from before was undiminished, but Ron’s had faded. He’d thought of a problem.

“Harry,” he asked tentatively, “do you, um, have any idea where you’re going?”

“Switzerland,” Harry answered cheerfully.

“Yes, but once you *get* to Switzerland?” Ron pressed.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Harry admitted breezily. “But that’s alright. I’ll find her.”

“You’ve no idea the kind of protection spells a place like Bankhead puts up,” Ron warned him. “Finding it won’t be easy if you don’t know where to look.”

Putting down the sweater he was folding, Harry crossed the room to Ron and placed both hands on Ron’s shoulder. “I’ll find her, Ron,” he promised quietly, “because there isn’t any other option. I need her, and I love her, and I won’t stop looking until I find her.” Grinning at his best friend, Harry returned to his packing.

“There… is one other possibility,” Ron stated hesitantly.

“Oh?” Harry replied distractedly, trying to remember if he had packed everything that he would need.

“If you knew someone who’s been to Bankhead, they would be able to tell you how to get there,” Ron elaborated, his voice still very cautious.

“Hmm…” Harry answered, only half-listening. “Pity I don’t know any healers.”

“There is someone else…” Ron added slowly. “Someone who I know has been there; I remember seeing the pictures in the paper.”

“Really?” Harry asked, growing slightly suspicious. It obviously wasn’t going to be someone Harry would want to talk to; if it was, then Ron wouldn’t be choosing his words so carefully.

“They donated a whopping pile of money earlier in the year, him and his mum. Dad said it was tacky, the way they were trying to buy back their good name, but it *did* have results. They got some very positive press out of it.”

“No,” Harry whispered, going pale. “You don’t… you *can’t* mean…”

“I know you hate him, Harry, but who else can you ask? And he’s still around, you know. His final project for his Potions N.E.W.T. isn’t complete for another few days, I think.”

“I didn’t see him at lunch yesterday,” Harry replied numbly, seating himself rather abruptly onto the edge of the bed.

“He and Snape worked through lunch,” Ron explained. “They both showed up to dinner.”

“Oh,” Harry replied weakly, absorbing this new information. “You can’t be serious,” he stated a moment later.

“He’s your best bet, mate, really he is,” Ron stated, as encouragingly as he could, cautiously seating himself next to Harry. “As…unpleasant as the idea may be.”

“Unpleasant?” Harry snorted. “Unpleasant is the Care of Magical Creatures kennel on a hot day. Unpleasant is bubotuber puss. Unpleasant is detention with Filch. Having to ask Draco Malfoy for a favor is more than unpleasant.”

“It’s still the best way to find out,” Ron replied. “Isn’t Hermione worth it?”

“Hermione’s worth anything,” Harry answered, automatically and instinctively, “and of course I’ll *try* to get the information from him. But… do you really think it will work?”

Ron shrugged philosophically. “There’s only one way to find out.”

Numbly, Harry nodded his agreement. Packing abandoned, he picked up an old, worn piece of parchment and informed it that he solemnly swore that he was up to no good. Moments later, the map of Hogwarts blossomed across the parchment, and it didn’t take long for Harry to find what he was looking for. Draco Malfoy, so the map informed him, was already up and about and apparently taking breakfast in the Great Hall. With a solemn nod in Ron’s direction, Harry went off to face the dragon.

Draco was in the middle of a very nice omelet when his morning was spoiled by Harry Potter walking into the Great Hall. With a groan of disappointment, Draco huddled behind his Daily Prophet and hoped that the other boy would keep his distance. He had promised Hermione that he wouldn’t pick any fights with him, but the temptation grew almost unbearable whenever the git was in range. Deciding that distance was the best way to keep his promise, Draco started shoveling down the omelet, hoping to finish his breakfast and get out of the Great Hall as quickly as possible. To his shock and dismay, his plan was foiled when Potter, with an expression of fierce determination on his face, approached the Slytherin table.

“Malfoy,” he stated with a slight nod.

“Potter,” Draco replied.

“I need to talk to you.”

Draco raised a single eyebrow. “No, you don’t,” he retorted a moment later.

“Malfoy…” Harry growled.

“There’s nothing pleasant I wish to say to you,” Draco explained in as condescending a tone as he could manage. “And I imagine there’s nothing pleasant you wish to say to me. And since I promised a certain lady that I wouldn’t start a fight with you, there’s really no need for you to talk to me. Ever.” Draco picked back up his paper and his fork, determined to ignore the scar-headed annoyance in front of him until he went away. Sadly, the annoyance didn’t seem to get the message.

“I heard you know how to get to the Bankhead Institute,” Harry stated as bluntly as he could, knowing that would get a reaction. It did.

Down went the newspaper. Down went the fork. “No,” Draco replied, harshly biting out the word.

“You don’t know how to get there?” Harry asked, bewildered.

“I know how to get there,” Draco amended, “but there’s not a chance in hell that I’d ever tell you.” Abruptly, Draco rose to his feet and walked out of the Great Hall without so much as a backward glance.

Harry’s face hardened as he hurried after him, following him as he headed down the hallway, grabbing hold of his arm and forcing him to turn around. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” he growled.

“I didn’t expect to,” Draco answered coolly, shaking off Harry’s touch with a look dripping with disdain. “I just thought it might be best to have this conversation somewhere *other* than in full view of the professors at the head table.”

“Oh,” Harry replied, momentarily taken aback. “Right. So… are you going to tell me or not?” he demanded.

“Not,” Draco stated firmly.

“Malfoy, if you’d just—”

“No.”

“But why can’t you—”

“No.”

“If you’d only let me expl—”

“And still the answer is no.”

“Why do you have to make this so difficult!” Harry yelled, his temper stretching to the breaking point in spite of his best intentions to stay calm.

“Because I can,” Draco answered calmly. “Because you deserve it. Because I know how badly you hurt her. Because I was the shoulder she cried on every time you crushed her heart a little bit more. Because every single tear made me want to put your head through a wall, and only my promises to her stopped me from trying it. Because I have no inclination at all to make this easy for you after what you’ve put her through. But most of all, because I promised her that I wouldn’t, and I’m not about to break my word to her just for *you*.”

“I can make her happy, Malfoy.”

“No, you can’t,” Draco scoffed. “Haven’t you realized that yet? You can’t just go over there; in between preparations for your *wedding*, I might add; and try to make her happy with your friendship when what she wants is your *love*.”

“She *has* my love,” Harry replied softly.

For the first time in as long as Harry had known him, Draco Malfoy looked truly lost for words. “Come again?” he managed a few moments later.

“I’m in love with her, Malfoy,” Harry stated solemnly. It felt odd to share something so essential with someone he despised, but if baring his soul was what it took to get the directions to Bankhead, then he’d do it. He’d do whatever it took.

“Prove it.”

“What?”

“Prove it,” Draco repeated. “You say you’re in love with her, but last week, if someone had asked you, you’d have said you were in love with Brown.” Draco paused and gave Harry a cold glare. “I assume the wedding has been called off?” Harry nodded and some of the iciness in Draco’s stare thawed. Some. Not much.

“If you want me to believe that you really are in love with her and that you aren’t going to decide *next* week that you’re in love with a Patil, or she-Weasel, or Weasel himself, then you’re going to have to prove it.”

“How?”

“Tell me what you love about her,” Draco demanded.

Harry blushed hotly. The soul-baring was about to get worse, *much* worse, and the thought made him intensely uncomfortable. Talking about his feelings with anyone, even Ron, was difficult for him. Talking about them with Malfoy would be excruciating. He closed his eyes and pictured Hermione to give him strength. It worked. Harry kept his eyes closed, kept that image of his love in the forefront of his mind, and began to speak.

“I love her smiles,” he stated at last, hesitation fading from his voice as he pictured some of her many smiles in his mind’s eye. “She has so many of them: her I-know-the-right-answer smile, her you’re-being-silly-but-it’s-funny-anyway smile, her chocolate-cake-for-dessert smile, her I’m-so-proud-of-you smile, and so many more… I love her hair; it’s so soft and warm and defiantly energetic, just exactly like her. I love the way she concentrates, getting that wrinkle between her eyebrows as she faces down a homework assignment, or a pair of knitting needles, or a sketchbook, determined to triumph over any obstacle…”

Harry forgot Malfoy was there. He forgot that he had any audience at all. With his eyes closed, all he could see was Hermione, and she was all he could think about as he admitted, out loud and in careful detail, all the tiny things about her that he adored. It was the first time he had thought to list to himself all her lovable characteristics, and he soon became far too caught up in the recitation to remember anything else.

He had no idea how long he talked, but he didn’t much care. He could talk about the things he loved about Hermione forever. He was in the middle of talking about how much he loved the look on her face when she opened a new book when a voice cut him off.

“Take the train to Zauberer and exit the station, heading north. You can take a carriage to the town of Kuhstadt, but the carriages only come once an hour, and it’s not a far walk, if you’d rather do it on foot. On the edge of the town, near the dairy, you’ll find a low, stone wall. Follow it until it leads you to the base of a hill with a tall cluster of bushes. Tell the bushes your name and who you’re there to see. I don’t know if they’ll let you in or not, but that’s the entrance, all the same.”

Harry’s eyes flew open and he listened to Draco’s careful direction with his mouth hanging open slightly. At the end of the directions, Draco turned on his heel and began walking away.

“Thank you,” Harry managed to choke out.

Draco turned around and looked Harry in the eye. The stare he gave Harry wasn’t particularly warm or particularly friendly, but it held a measure of respect that no Malfoy had ever granted a Potter before.

“Make her happy, Potter. You’re the only one who can.”

Harry nodded. Draco bowed slightly in reply, and left.

A/N: Ladies and gentlemen, we’re approaching the station. Please make sure you have all your belongings with you. We thank you for choosing us for this journey, and hope you enjoyed the ride. *waves goodbye* I have had such a lovely time with this story, and want to thank you all for making my first portkey experience such a memorable one! The reviews have (quite literally) overwhelmed me, and I’m very grateful to everyone who has shared their feedback with me on this story *big hug to Jane in particular*. I hope the conclusion lives up to your expectations! Oh, and to anyone who only saw the teaser for the last section, it’s been switched out for the full chapter 17, so be sure to go back and read that first.

Section 18:

“State your name, please.”

“I’ve been stating my name for the last bloody hour!”

“State your name, please.”

“Harry Potter, you blasted little overgrown twig.”

“State the name of the person you are here to see.”

“Hermione Granger. Or the administrator. Or the person in charge of putting together the approved visitor lists. Or the *janitor*, for crying out loud. Anyone who is an actual human being and not a bush!”

“You are not on the list of approved visitors for any of the people you have named.”

“I know that!”

“Entrance is only allowed to those who are on the approved list of visitors.”

“Look, if you’ll just *ask* someone if they’d be willing to let me in, I’m sure that anyone would tell you—”

“Entrance denied. Have a pleasant day.”

“I’m not here to steal state secrets for crying out loud, I just want to talk to the woman that I love! Is that so unreasonable? Well? Is it? Hello?”

“State your name, please.”

“Argh!”

If anyone had asked Harry what bothered him the most about life in the wizarding world, he would have answered without a moment’s hesitation that he hated being famous. For as long as he had known what it meant to be considered ‘The Boy Who Lived,’ he had hated the title and everything that it represented. He hated that people he had never met recognized him on sight. He hated that people always tried, for better or for worse, to give him special treatment and single him out from everyone else. His most fervent and habitual wish in any public situation was to be treated just like anyone else, with no privileges or special consideration given to him just because of who he was.

But really, was it too much to ask that the fates (who were, no doubt, laughing their arses off at him at that moment, just as they had been for most of his life,) cut him some bloody slack and let him make use of his famous name *just this once*? It was torturous to know that if it had been a person reviewing admittance through the entryway instead of a bush (charmed to communicate in dozens of different languages, but without the ability to think or comprehend outside of the limited sphere of admitting anyone on the approved guest list and turning away anyone who was not), he would have been admitted in a flash, and probably given a grand tour and a feast in his honor. He was Harry Potter, for crying out loud. He had defeated Voldemort! Didn’t they *appreciate* what he had done? Didn’t he deserve for them to make just a *tiny* exception in his case?

But no, the wonderful and illustrious people of the Bankhead Institute (represented by that bloody *nuisance* of a bush that guarded the entranceway) had decided that the world would come to an end if anyone was allowed on the sacred, hallowed grounds without being on the pre-approved guest list. Harry was not on the guest list, and here was the result:

He had been arguing with shrubbery for the past hour.

It was a warm day and it had been a long walk from the station (manageable, as Malfoy had said, but long, nonetheless), and Harry was hot, tired, excessively aggravated, and rapidly reaching the end of his less-than-stellar patience. From the moment he left Hogwarts, his excitement had mounted to a practically unbearable pitch. He spent the entire train ride to Switzerland seated on the edge of his seat, practically holding his breath for the hours that it took while he reminded himself over and over again that every second that passed was bringing him that much closer to Hermione. It seemed cruel somehow that after all he had gone through to get to this point, he would be stopped by something so inconsequential as a bush.

“State your name, please.”

With a teeth-clenching smile, Harry acknowledged to himself how much better Hermione would have handled this situation than him. If *she* were trying to get in to talk to herself, she’d know exactly what to do. She’d have read up on the Bankhead Institute and studied the spells used to charm the bush in the first place. She’d know how to convince the bush to allow her entrance, or summon a real *person* to talk to, or even how to get in without using the main, bushy entrance at all. She’d probably pull a spell out of thin air that would make the bush open right away and lay out a red carpet for them. And then, when Harry tried to praise her for it, she’d simply smile at him and roll her eyes a bit while telling him it was nothing, downplaying her contributions and ignoring the fact that she was brilliant and amazing and that Harry would be utterly lost without her uncanny knack for always knowing just what to do.

“State your name, please.”

Harry began contemplating whether blasting the bush to kingdom come would leave the entrance open and exposed. Rationally, he knew that the entrance to something as illustrious as the Bankhead Institute would probably be better protected than that, and that blowing up the entrance bush would most likely result in all entrances locking down and the Swiss version of Aurors coming to arrest him… but the thought was still tempting. Productive or not, eviscerating the bush would certainly be *satisfying*. He almost felt it would be worth getting arrested if he didn’t have to listen to that nasal, annoying, utterly unmovable voice asking,

“State your name, please.”

“Harry?”

Eyes wide with shock, Harry spun around in the direction of the voice, wondering dazedly if arguing with a plant for the past hour in the hot sun had somehow managed to addle his brains. Didn’t people start seeing mirages when they got overheated? And mirages were supposed to look like things that you wanted to see, right? He couldn’t think of anything he wanted to see more than Hermione at that moment, which made it hard to believe that that was really her, approaching him on the path from the town.

His Hermione. It was the first time he’d laid eyes on her in person since realizing that he loved her. Gods above, she was beautiful. All he had done on the train ride to Switzerland was look through the album at photographs of her, but she still managed to absolutely floor him just by standing there.

“Harry?” she asked again, hurrying down the path while her stomach twisted into knots. Was someone hurt? Had something happened? Was that why Harry was there when he was *supposed* to be in Scotland, knee-deep in wedding preparations? “Harry, what are you doing here? What’s wrong?”

“I love you,” Harry stated on auto-pilot, barely even aware of the words coming out of his mouth.

Every last bit of color went out of Hermione’s face, and a hurt look rose in her eyes that hit Harry like a punch to the stomach. “Don’t say things like that,” she reproached quietly before walking up to the bush.

“State your name, please.”

“Hermione Granger.”

“Present your wand hand for identification, please.” Hermione started to reach her hand out, but Harry grabbed it before she could.

“Hermione, don’t go,” he pleaded.

“Present your wand hand for identification, please.”

“Please don’t do this,” Hermione begged. “Don’t hurt me like this. We’ve had this argument and there’s nothing left to say.”

“No, you don’t understand! Things have changed; just let me explain—”

“Present your wand hand for identification, please.”

“Will you shut the bloody hell up!” Harry screamed at the bush. There was silence for a moment, then:

“Identification failed. Entrance denied. Have a pleasant day.”

“Quiet at last,” Harry muttered. “Thank Merlin.”

“Let go of me, Harry,” Hermione ordered in a low, pained voice.

“No,” Harry replied stubbornly. “Not until you hear me out.”

“Everything’s already been said—” she argued.

“*You* have said everything you need to,” Harry protested. “*I* have not. And just because I love you, don’t think I won’t petrify you in place if that’s what it takes to make you listen to me.”

“Stop saying that!”

“Stop saying what?” Harry asked, bewildered.

“Stop saying that you love me!” Hermione answered, nearly in tears. “It hurts to hear you say that and know that you only mean it as a friend.”

“But I *don’t* only mean it as a friend!” Harry growled, cursing Hermione’s stubbornness.

“Don’t lie to me!” Hermione yelled. “I’m sorry, alright? I’m sorry I walked away, and I’m sorry I didn’t give you a chance to say goodbye, and I’m sorry that it’s hard on you not to have me around. But that doesn’t give you the right to show up here and tell me that you love me just because you miss having me as a friend. It doesn’t work like that, Harry! It’s not fair to either of us for you to say—”

Whatever words Hermione planned to use after that were lost when Harry yanked her into his arms and covered her lips with his. His main goal was to stop her tirade, but that became a secondary concern when he realized just how good it felt to kiss her. Shifting his arms around her body to hold her closely against him, he angled his head to deepen the kiss. She was too stunned to react at first and Harry pressed his advantage to wrap her firmly in his arms and in his kiss, but soon she came to her senses and began struggling against him.

“Don’t you dare,” she hissed, attempting (unsuccessfully) to twist her way out of his arms when she managed to pull her lips away from his. “Don’t you dare kiss me when you’re less than two weeks away from your wedding day.”

“The wedding’s been cancelled,” Harry replied, biting back a groan at the feel of her body squirming against his. When she froze at this piece of news and her mouth dropped openly slightly in shock, the temptation was just too great too resist. He kissed her again.

As before, she pulled her mouth away from his when reality sunk in a few moments later, though this time, (as Harry noticed with mingled relief and regret,) she didn’t try to twist her way out of his arms.

“Did you just say the wedding was cancelled?” she asked dazedly.

Harry nodded. “Lavender ended our engagement this morning. She told me that she knew that I was in love with you, and that it was time that we both admitted it. Then she gave me back the ring.”

“She…” Hermione replied numbly. “But… why would she think…”

“Why would she think that I love you?” Harry completed for her. Hermione nodded. “Perhaps because it’s true?”

Hermione opened her mouth to protest, but Harry cut her off with another kiss. This one lasted a bit longer, and Harry could feel Hermione’s resolve weakening… though she still managed to pull her lips away.

“Harry, no,” she protested. “You’re… you’re confused, and upset, and it’s my fault for leaving, but that doesn’t mean that you’re in love with me. After all these years of… all this time that I’ve wanted… told myself that you never could, never *would*… but no. You haven’t. You aren’t. You *aren’t* in love with me; it just isn’t possible!”

“There’s nothing impossible as long as I have you, remember?” Harry murmured against her lips before capturing them in another sweet kiss.

“Harry, you can’t keep doing that!” Hermione protested when she pulled away, although Harry noted with a pleased smile that her voice sounded a bit breathless.

“Yes,” he replied confidently. “I can.” And just to prove it, he kissed her again. She was getting less steady on her feet now, which suited Harry just perfectly. He liked the way it felt for her to hold on to him to keep her balance. “I can keep kissing you for as long as it takes to convince you that I love you. I’m really that stubborn.”

Another kiss.

“And annoying.”

Yet another.

“And pushy.”

One more kiss.

“And I can’t for the life of me imagine why you love me, but I’m so glad you do.”

Another kiss, and this one lingered a bit longer.

“Because I love you, Hermione. I love you so much.”

“Harry, no,” Hermione protested, very weakly.

“Yes, Hermione. Yes,” Harry rebutted, kissing her yet again. This time, he didn’t let her pull away, and he didn’t release her lips until he was certain that he’d kissed her utterly, pliantly breathless.

“Please say you believe me,” he whispered in her ear, peppering the soft skin below it with kisses. “I’m so sorry I hurt you, love; so sorry I made you think I couldn’t love you, but I’ll never do anything to make you doubt my love ever again; I swear it.” He kissed her again.

“Tell me I’m not too late,” he begged, his arms tightening around her. “Tell me that I haven’t bollixed things up so badly that I’ve lost any chance of making you believe me. Please Hermione, please tell me you still love me.”

He felt the warm wetness of tears spill from her eyes onto both of their cheeks and covered her face with kisses, kissing each tear drop away.

“I love you, Harry,” she whispered brokenly.

“I love you,” he gasped in relief, lowering his mouth to hers and feeling a rush of pure bliss when he saw her lift her lips to his.

They stayed like that for quite some time.

If the Mirror of Erised had happened to pop in front of the bush with them at that moment, it probably would have shown them exactly as they were: perfectly happy in each other’s arms. But it’s just as well that the mirror didn’t appear. No mirror could have caught their eye at that moment. They were too busy being in love.

THE END