A/N: Well I have to say that I'm overwhelmed by how everyone has taken to this story. This was an idea that came to me one night that I couldn't get away from. I'm surprise to say the lest at the fact that this story has gotten so many reviews. I love you all and I'm so happy that you guys are sticking with me on this. I'm in the middle of writing the next chapter now. I hope to have it off to my beta this weekend. As always thanks to my beta Ken who deals with my horrible grammar and sad spelling mistakes. Without you I don't think this story would be as well liked as it is. And of course I am just barrowing these characters from JKR who came up with a world that is such fun to make ones own. I answered everyone's review from the last chapter and hope that you all review again on this chapter. I love hearing what you think and I sadly live for it. SO next time you hear from me will be when I'm getting ready to post again.
Chapter 2
The first day of a new life
Hermione was dreaming of being in her grandmother's home sitting in the window seat reading one of her favorite books in her lap, when she felt like she was being watched. She turned her head to look around the room but she could see no one.
"Mrs. Potter."
Hermione turned her head quickly to find the source of the noise.
"Who?"
"Mrs. Potter."
Hermione closed her eyes and when she opened them she all she could see was large green eyes. As her vision came into focus she could see that the large eyes were connected to an equally large set of bat like ears.
Hermione let out a blood curdling scream as she backed her body against the headboard of the bed. She watched as the small creature fell from the bed and landed with a thump on the floor.
"What's going on?"
Hermione stopped screaming to turn and see Harry standing in her now open door.
"What…is…that?" She asked as she pointed over the side of the bed.
She watched Harry enter the room, wand in hand, and make his way to where she was pointing. When he saw what she was pointing to a smirk came across his face as he put his wand away.
"Dobby, were you face to face with her when you tried to wake her?"
The small creature nodded, his ears flopping, and proceeded to turn and hit his head against the bedside table. The sound echoed in the room and Hermione cringed at the sound.
"Dobby stop it." When he didn't Harry came closer and picked it up by the back of its shirt. "Dobby stop it. Hermione knows you didn't mean to scare her. Why don't you go and finish breakfast."
The creature named Dobby nodded before disappearing from Harry's hand.
"Sorry he didn't mean to scare you. He just tends to forget that people don't like to be woken up by someone being face to face with them."
"What is he?" Hermione asked again.
"Oh he's a house elf. Have you never had one before?" Harry asked her as he sat on the edge of the bed.
Hermione looked down at her lap before looking back up at him to answer. "No. My Grandmother was a muggle and had maids. After we moved to London we had a maid there as well. My parents are both muggle born. I've read about house elves though. I don't like the idea of them though."
Harry's brow wrinkled slightly. "What do you mean?"
"Well…they're not paid for what they do. I mean they do all this work for no pay and that's slavery." Hermione looked at Harry to find him smirking at her once again. "It's not funny."
"I wasn't laughing at you I swear. It's just that I do pay Dobby. But I won't be paying Winky when she starts working for us and it's not because I don't want to, it's because she won't let me. Dobby is a very unusual house elf, most don't want to be paid."
"Oh sorry."
"No don't be. So you like to read?"
Hermione smiled slightly. "Yes, very much, I have loads of books I brought with me. They are in one of my trunks."
"Well we have a library. I haven't gotten a chance to clean it yet. We could do that today and get your books set up if you wish."
"I think that would be lovely." Hermione smiled and felt a blush creep up on her cheeks.
"I will leave you to get dressed." Harry stood from the bed and walked to the door. He smiled at her before closing the door behind him.
Hermione sighed as she rested back against the headboard. As she sat there she began to think of what she needed to do today.
Well, unpacking needs to be done. Harry said we could clean out the library and put my books there. I need to find out what he thinks of me. I want to know why he didn't want to stay with me last night.
Hermione stop it! She scolded herself. He told you why and you should be grateful that he did that for you. Do you really wish that he'd stayed here with you last night? Taking your clothes off, touching you without a care, forcing you to do something you did not want to.
I don't think he would have force to do anything I didn't want to. Would it have been all that bad?
You have got to be kidding me! You don't know him and yet now you are so willing to give yourself over to him.
Look I don't understand it myself. But I feel like it wouldn't have been that bad. Plus it would have been nice to feel wanted.
That's what this is about feeling wanted? What's happened to the girl who didn't care what people think about her?
She grew up and is married now. She has a husband and she's starting to like him after only knowing him twelve hours.
Hermione was shocked out of her thoughts when she realize that she was standing in front of the full length mirror making sure her dress was on correctly. She had chosen something that she used to wear to work out in the small garden they had in London. She was slightly disturbed by the fact that she didn't remember getting out of the bed.
After pressing down the front of her dress once more with her hands Hermione left her bedroom and slowly headed downstairs. Once at the bottom of the stairs Hermione came to the realization that she had no idea where she was going.
"I was wondering what was taking you so long."
Hermione spun quickly to see Harry standing in a door smiling at her. She felt a blush creep up her cheeks.
"I'm sorry I took so long I had a lot on my mind. I hope you don't mind I didn't dress up but if we are going to be cleaning I didn't feel like having to go and change after eating."
"No that's fine. I did the same thing. Dobby has breakfast waiting for us." Harry moved back into the room.
Hermione nodded and walked in behind him to see that they were in the kitchen not the dinning room.
"I didn't think we needed to sit at a 50 seat table when it's just the two of us. No need to yell at each other across a room."
Harry held out a chair at the small wooden table set for two. She sat down and waited until Harry was seated before looking down at her plate.
"I didn't know what you would like so I told Dobby to make a bit of everything."
Hermione was shocked to see that there were four different type cooked eggs sitting there waiting to be eaten. As well as bacon, sausage, ham and potato cakes.
"I always have porridge for breakfast." Hermione said as she looked over all the food.
"Oh…Well if that's what you'd like I could have Dobby make you some." Harry looked a bit disappointed that he hadn't put the one thing she did eat on the table.
Hermione quickly backtracked. "No! This is fine. My mother was the one who always made me eat that stuff. I've just never really had anything like this before."
"Really?" Harry looked at her a bit confused.
"Well there was this one time that my grandmother had a big breakfast like this. But I was really young I don't really remember it. So what is all of this?"
"Well that just means you'll have to try a bit of everything then doesn't it?"
"I couldn't possibly eat that much I'd get fat." Hermione complained.
"I don't think one real breakfast will make you fat. Besides I think if anything you might be too thin." Harry added quietly.
"Oh."
"Okay this is scrambled eggs, this fried eggs, they call this sunny side up, and this is a hard boiled egg. I'll split that with you. See what you have to do is crack open the shell. Now you are supposed to use this tiny spoon to do that but I can never seem to get it to work right. SO I just drop the egg on my plate." Harry let the egg drop and Hermione laughed slightly as she watched him peel off the shell.
"Okay now you can eat it. What I do is add salt and pepper I think it gives a bit of a better taste. Here try."
Harry held out a fork with a piece of the egg on it for her. Hermione hesitated a second before opening her mouth. She closed her lips around the fork and Harry slowly pulled it back out.
"Well?"
"Not bad, okay what's next"
Harry laughed loudly before starting to feed Hermione the different types of eggs. She liked all but the sunny side up eggs.
"That's disgusting!" Hermione screeched as she spat the egg out in her napkin. "Harry stop laughing!" She hit him lightly on the arm. "Who would eat that? I mean the yoke is all running."
Harry laughter died slightly as he answered her. "I don't know. I don't like it either but my grandfather eats them every morning so I know that someone likes them."
"Yes well… okay I think I'll just have the rest of that hard boiled egg." Hermione quickly reached over and snatched the second half of the egg from Harry's plate.
"Hey! I was going to eat that, give it back."
Hermione shook her head defiantly before popping the egg into her mouth.
"Why you little…" Harry had a smirk on his face as he stood up out of his chair and started to make his way over to her.
"Now Harry you wouldn't want to do anything rash now would you?" Hermione said as she too got out of her seat.
"You ate my half." No sooner had the statement left his mouth did Harry start to run.
Hermione let out a slight scream before taking off running through the kitchen with Harry hot on her heels. He was finally able to grab her around the waist and pull her to him.
"Did you think you would be able to escape me?" Harry laughed as he turned Hermione in his arms.
"Yes, well I thought I'd give it a try but yo-…" Hermione stopped when she realized how incredibly close she was to Harry.
His eyes were greener then she had originally thought. She watched as his eye's lost the laughter that had been there only moments and move from her eyes down to her lips. Hermione quickly pulled back from his embrace and looked at the bottom of her dress. She felt his arms let go and watched as his feet left her view.
"Did you …um… what anything else to eat or do you want to get a start on cleaning the Library?"
"I'm full now lets start cleaning."
Harry led Hermione out of the kitchen and down the hall to a dark cherry door. He opened the door and Hermione could smell the dust and books the permeated the room. She loved it.
Hermione stepped into the room first and all she could see in the dim light was the massive bookcases. Suddenly light filled the room and she could see in fact that the floor to ceiling bookcases covered two of the four walls. Most of the shelves already housed books and Hermione was eager to see what was here. She turned to see Harry pulling open more curtains that let more light into the room. It was only when all the curtains were open could Hermione see the horrible condition of the room.
Dust seemed to be at lest an inch thick and the paint on the walls was chipped and faded in places. The books themselves didn't look all the bad but she suspected that there was a charm on them to keep them in good condition. The furniture in the room had been covered in sheets but she had no doubt that they were as dust covered as everything else.
"Well what do you think?" Harry asked as he walked over to her.
"It's going to be a great room once we get it cleaned, but that may take all day even with magic."
"I know the rest of the house is a lot like this as well. We have our work cut out for us. It took me a month to get the few rooms I got done before you got here."
Hermione was almost afraid to ask but she did. "How many rooms did you get done?"
"Only six. The master bedroom, two guest rooms, the kitchen, the dinning room, and the parlor."
"And um… how many rooms are left?"
"Well on this floor we have another parlor, ballroom, and the Library. On the second floor we have nine more bedrooms. Then there's the outside but Dobby said he and Winky would take care of that."
"So if we worked everyday we should have this done in about a month. Wow."
"Well let's open the windows and start trying to get the dust out."
Hermione nodded and soon the room was starting to fill with the smell of dust even more then before. As they continued to work the smell of dust became less and the smell of the fresh outdoors became more. It was one o'clock before the dust seemed to be gone and they took a quick lunch break before returning to the room to paint.
"So what color do you think we should paint?" Harry asked as the looked around the room.
"Well, I think maybe a yellow. It's quite a cheerful color and it will help to lighten the room a bit. Plus I think it will look good with the dark wood of the bookshelves."
"Sounds good, you know you are much better at picking out colors then I am." Harry stated before he conjured the paint. "Is that the color you wanted?"
Hermione looked down at the paint before nodding. "I'll paint the trim and the lower half of the wall and you do the ceiling with you wand and then work on the higher bit of the wall."
Harry moved over to start to paint the ceiling and Hermione took the bucket of paint and moved to the door and paint the wall beside the door frame.
"Do you remember the secret room we used to hide in?" Harry asked at one point.
"No. Where is it?"
"Over there behind that wall. You can't get to it from here though. What you do is go out to the hall and walk towards the kitchen. The sixth panel from this door is the door to the room. You have to push on the lowest part of the panel and it will open to a small room that looks into here. I can't believe you don't remember it. We spent a lot of time in there."
"What did we do in there?" Hermione asked as she continued to paint.
"This and that, played games, ate lunch sometimes and that was the place were you gave me my first kiss." Harry said smiling slightly at the memory.
"I-I kissed you?"
"The day you left. You and your parents came over and you started crying because you didn't want to leave. So while our parents were having tea we went in there for a while. You didn't stop crying for a bit. But then I don't know you just stopped and then you kissed me. It wasn't much but still I think I knew then that you'd come back. At lest I always hoped."
Hermione nodded and went back to painting. This was something that she never really thought about. She had known that they knew each other before but she forgot they were in effect each others best friend. How could she have forgotten the fact that she gave him their first kiss? Hermione's head spun as she continued to paint.
It was some time later before Harry and Hermione met up on a wall.
"How's the painting coming?" Harry asked her.
"I would guess about the same as yours." Hermione laughed back.
"Hey there's no need for that." Harry said as he turned to her but no before letting a little paint hit her.
"Why you…" Hermione didn't even finish before she smacked Harry's leg with her paint brush.
"Oh that's it, now you're going to get!"
Harry shot some more paint at her before he moved away from her. Hermione quickly stood and chased after him. Paint was being thrown everywhere and Harry and Hermione were quickly getting covered. Harry was able to grab a hold of Hermione's arm and pulled her to him. He let his paint covered hand run across her check only causing Hermione to shriek and throwing the paint brush behind her.
"WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?"
Both Hermione and Harry froze. Hermione watched Harry's eye's look behind her and widen slightly. He quickly pulled Hermione up right and turned her to see Mr. Potter Sr. with a large yellow paint streak across his clothes.
"I will ask again what is going on here?"
"We were painting Grandfather, things got a bit out of hand is all." Harry said rather quickly.
"Leave us girl, Harry and I need to have a little talk." Mr. Potter said to Hermione.
Hermione looked over at Harry, who besides looking rather unhappy, nodded. Hermione started to quickly leave the room when Mr. Potter grabbed her arm.
"I'll take this thank you." He said as he pulled her wand from her pocket before pushing her towards the door.
Once outside Hermione looked down the hall.
`Sixth panel.'
Hermione walked quickly to the sixth panel and pushed on the lowest part until it moved aside. After she crawled in she could see why two children would like it so much. She was brought out of her musings by the voices and the movement through the wall. Harry was standing where he had been when she left but Mr. Potter had moved closer to him.
"Grandfather it's her wand she should be able to have it and use it." Harry said harshly.
"So she can kill you while you sleep and run off. I think not."
"She wouldn't do that."
"Just because you knew her as a child doesn't mean you know her know Harry. I'm trying to protect you. I'm surprise she was still untouched when she came here yesterday."
"Grandfather do not talk about her like that. She's a good person." Harry said defensively, making Hermione smile.
"She was raised by muggles mostly. We're lucky she doesn't already have a child."
"GRANDFATHER!"
"Don't you dare take that tone with me young man! Speaking of children should I be expecting a grandchild in nine months?"
"I don't know."
"You did take her to bed last night didn't you?" Harry's grandfather asked making Hermione blush even though she was not in the room.
"Grandfather that's none of your concern." Harry said tightly he didn't look happy to Hermione.
"It is to my concern. It has to do with my family and I would like to know that the family will go on after my death. You are my only heir Harry."
Harry slammed his fist down on the desk beside him. "Do you think I don't know this? Do you think I don't know why? BECAUSE I DO KNOW BECAUSE YOU NEVER LET ME FORGET IT!"
"Harry"
"I think it's time for you to leave Grandfather and I need to talk to me wife. I will walk you out."
With that Hermione watched Harry walk out followed by Mr. Potter. Hermione didn't think of leaving the small room she was hidden in.
She started looking around the dim lit room. That's when she saw it. It was her name written lightly in the wall. But her name wasn't alone Harry's was before hers and there was more writing but it was covered in dust. Kneeling so she was more at eye level she wiped the dust off the writing.
"This is the secret room of Harry and Hermione. Here we spent many days playing and telling stories of things and places we have never seen. This will be our spot for as long as this house stands."
After reading the small note in her own young handwriting, it was only then that she truly started to remember her time here as a child. It wasn't much but she could remember writing this. It was after she had kissed Harry and he promised he'd never bring anyone else in here. The memory brought a slight smile to her face.
"I thought I would find you here."
Hermione turned to see Harry ducking in the small door before coming to sit beside her.
"You wrote that they day you left."
"I know I remembered. How's your hand?"
"Saw that did you?" Hermione nodded. "It's fine."
"Then let me see to make sure." Hermione took his hand carefully to into hers.
Se could see the bruise starting to form from where he hit the desk. She would need her wand to heal it and as if Harry was reading her mind he handed her, her wand.
"Thanks."
"I told my grandfather it was my choice to give you back your wand because I trusted you." Harry winced as Hermione started to heal his hand. "But you may not want to flaunt the fact that you do have your wand in front of him for a while."
"So I guess turning him into a newt would be out of the question."
Harry laughed. "Yes I believe it would be."
"There all better. Why did you get so upset when he brought up you being his only heir?"
"It's nothing." Harry said shortly.
"Oh it's just you seemed really upset I wanted to see if I could help that's all."
"You can't so leave it." Harry's voice was much harsher this time.
"I'm sorry."
Harry stood quickly and moved toward the door. "It's late I'm sure Dobby has dinner ready for us."
"I'm not that hungry. I think I'll just go to bed."
"Fine."
It was only after Harry left the small room did Hermione stand and leave herself. She knew she had hit on something that was to close to Harry. What ever it was it seem to make him very short and rude with her. That was not the Harry that she knew from earlier. Most men would be happy to be the only heir to a family it meant that they would get everything. They would not have to fight siblings for the families land and homes.
As Hermione climbed into bed the thought of siblings still ran through her head. She did not have any and as far as she new neither did Harry. Because if he did have a sibling she would have met them, but that made no since because he had just said he was the only heir.
Soon Hermione thoughts subsided and she fell asleep dreaming of a small redheaded girl in a pink dress dancing in the grass.
A/N2: Just to let you guys know I plan on starting to give cookies to the next chapters of my stories on my live journal. So if you want to check that out here is the link:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/k_t18
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