Disclaimer: Just borrowing JKR's world for fun…
Author's Note: In which I over-use the dream as my favorite plot-device… Pure fluff. Enjoy!
Written for the brilliant and wonderful Goldy's birthday.
~~~~
Something Like Love
Part 1
Romance, Harry decided, was decidedly unhealthy for him.
When he didn't dream about Voldemort and what might happen when he faced him again, he dreamed about her. Neither of which was conducive to a good night's sleep.
It all started with a dream, really.
He dreamed he was back with Cho in the Room of Requirement only this time she wasn't crying. She was smiling at him, laughing at something he had said, and he felt his stomach flutter with pride and pleasure that he had made her laugh.
"I really like you, Harry," she said quietly and moved closer to him, so close he could feel the heat of her body and the only thing he could think to do was put his hands on her waist- partly because if she came any closer she'd be pressed against him and he didn't think he could handle that. He swallowed hard. She was so close; her face was so close… Her eyes were closing, her lips suddenly seeming even closer than they had been a second ago…
So he kissed her again.
It was very different now that she wasn't crying, he thought fuzzily. It felt good.
Unconsciously, instinctively, his hands tightened on her waist, bringing her just that tiniest little bit closer to him. Tentatively, his tongue moved to touch her closed lips. Her lips softened and then parted on a slight sigh and the kiss deepened from there… Now this was what it meant to kiss, he thought…
The kiss finally ended and he opened his eyes and saw her.
Hermione. He'd been kissing Hermione.
He jerked awake at the shock of seeing her. His heart was still racing; his body still warm from the effects of the dream.
He'd dreamed of kissing Hermione. Cho had turned into Hermione. But why? Surely he didn't-- he couldn't like Hermione in that way. She was- she was just Hermione, his best friend…
He couldn't fancy her like that.
Could he?
No of course he didn't fancy Hermione, he told himself. It had just been a dream, a silly, ridiculous dream that meant nothing.
Just a dream.
And then breakfast happened.
He was sitting across from Ron eating a muffin when Cho walked in, and his stomach clenched a little.
He nearly sighed in relief, even though Cho still steadfastly refused to look at him, smiling and flirting with Roger Davies.
Of course. He could only react that way if he still fancied Cho in some little part of him, no matter what had happened the last year.
He relaxed. It had only been a stupid dream…
"Morning, Harry, Ron," Hermione said, sitting down next to him with her usual bookbag bulging with books.
His hand jerked so much he nearly spilled his pumpkin juice and then to make it worse, he looked at her. He only meant to glance at her as he half-muttered a greeting but found himself unable to look away and stared instead.
Because this time, he really looked at her as if he'd never seen her before in his life. (Maybe he hadn't, not really.) Saw her smooth skin, the faintest tinge of color in her cheeks, her hair (his hands positively itched to brush a strand of it away from her face and he clenched them into fists under the table to keep from acting on his impulse), her slight smile, and finally, her eyes. But more than all that, he saw the spirit in her, the way she carried herself, the confidence in her along with the kindness, the caring… He remembered all the ways she'd helped him, all the loyalty she'd shown. And he remembered how he'd felt on seeing her lying unconscious on the floor of the Department of Mysteries last year.
And oh God, he did want to kiss her.
He wanted to touch his lips to hers, to find out how it would feel, to taste her, to smell her, to feel her breath against his cheek. He wanted to see her smile at him…
The fluttering in his stomach increased and he wondered, a little wildly, how he'd somehow managed to swallow a million butterflies without realizing it.
Her leg brushed his under the table and the warmth emanating from that spot nearly made him gasp. He edged surreptitiously away from her, trying to concentrate on his muffin.
His no-longer-appetizing muffin.
He grimaced unconsciously.
"Oi, Harry, you feeling okay?" Ron's voice broke through his stunned thoughts and he started, looking up.
"Huh, what?"
"You looked like you felt a little sick for a minute there," Ron said, frowning a little at him.
"I'm fine," he answered quickly. "Just not hungry, I guess."
He felt Hermione's concerned gaze on him and kept his eyes steadily averted. He didn't dare meet her eyes now. She was usually able to read his thoughts and he didn't even want to think about how she'd react if she saw that right now, all he really wished he could do was kiss her.
This was insane. He couldn't kiss Hermione! He shouldn't even want to kiss her! He certainly shouldn't dream about kissing her!
This was insane. She was his best friend, only his best friend. You don't kiss your best friends, he reminded himself sternly.
He just needed to forget about his dream, ignore the funny feeling he got in his stomach when he looked at her, just ignore it all.
It would go away.
He was just tired today, tired and obviously not thinking straight.
It would go away if he just ignored it. It had to.
It didn't.
If anything, it seemed to get worse.
They had Potions that morning and Potions was hell. Or to be more accurate, more hellish than usual.
He and Hermione were partners since Ron wasn't in Potions and so he didn't even have the distraction of Ron. There was only Hermione-and the potion they were working on. He tried to keep his attention completely on what he was doing for the Sleeping potion they were brewing that day, cutting up the materials for it with near-obsessive precision in an attempt to keep his eyes and his mind from wandering to Hermione, sitting next to him, quietly murmuring beneath her breath as she read aloud the instructions for how to make the potion.
He wouldn't look at her, wouldn't think about the fact that she was sitting so close to him he could feel the warmth of her body against his side or that if he shifted just a little and turned his head, he could probably smell her shampoo… He refused to notice the tiny wrinkle appearing between her eyebrows in her concentration or the way she bit her lip as she worked. (She'd had those little mannerisms for years; since when did he suddenly find them so endearing? Since when did he suddenly think that she looked- cute- when she frowned like that? Hermione-cute?)
He returned his attention to his cauldron, glowering at his textbook since he couldn't exactly glare at his wandering thoughts, determined not to look at her again. He would make the best bloody Sleeping Potion in the history of Hogwarts! Not the best; you know Hermione's potion will probably turn out better than yours, a small voice in his head reminded him and he grimaced as he added in the lacewing and stirred his potion which was now a disgusting color of greenish-brown and very thick.
"I assure you, Mr. Potter, glaring at your potion is not going to make it ready any sooner, your faith in the power of your displeasure notwithstanding," Snape drawled sarcastically as he paused by Harry's cauldron.
And for once he almost welcomed the sound of the Slytherins' sniggering and Malfoy's loud laughter; it served as a distraction from Hermione, who he knew, even though he wasn't looking at her, had glanced at him in concern and sympathy before throwing Snape a look of dislike. (When had he developed this sixth sense that told him what Hermione was doing even though he wasn't looking at her?)
It was the longest hour of his life.
Not looking at Hermione, not thinking about Hermione, had suddenly become an impossible task.
He had never been so glad to leave the Potions dungeon, helped by a sense of triumph at having made a good Sleeping potion. He knew it was good because even Snape hadn't been able to criticize it, only glared at Harry and stayed silent although he took the rest of his wrath out on the hapless Seamus.
He rushed out of the dungeon, for once not waiting for her until he heard her call his name.
"Harry!"
He stopped automatically and turned to face her, trying to keep his eyes on her eyes or her forehead or her nose or her eyebrows-anything rather than her lips where they were irresistibly drawn.
"You did really well in Potions today," she said, smiling approvingly, and the funny feeling in his stomach increased at the sight of her smile. She was smiling because he'd done well; she was pleased for him. He restrained the urge to grin like an idiot at that thought, as sternly as he quashed the impulse to brush his finger across her smiling lips-or, worse, brushed his lips across them.
Then it was Charms but with Ron there, it was easier to focus on Ron rather than Hermione on his other side. Easier but not easy.
His stomach persisted in fluttering in the oddest and most annoying manner every time he looked at her.
Maybe he was getting sick, he thought desperately. He was getting sick and light-headed and that was why he'd suddenly become obsessed with the idea of kissing Hermione. And that would explain the queer feeling in his stomach as he watched her surreptitiously.
They were practicing the Invisibility Charm in class that day, trying to make objects invisible, and he again tried to force all thoughts of Hermione out of his mind and think only of the subject at hand.
He failed-but the increased concentration he gave to the class meant he still managed to master the Charm quicker than anyone else except for Hermione.
And she smiled delightedly at him again as they were leaving, her eyes shining, and he swallowed hard. Not even Cho's smile had affected him this much. Why was it that just seeing Hermione smile-and smile because of something he had done-made him want to smile too? What was it about her smile that suddenly made him feel as if he could defeat a Hungarian Horntail with his bare hands…
Or defeat Voldemort and survive the battle…
He had lost his mind.
That was all there was to it.
All the Occlumency lessons and his different near-death experiences had addled his brain.
Yes, that was it. That was why he couldn't even look at Hermione anymore without wanting to kiss her, when he'd been friends with her for more than five years without ever having thought of kissing her.
He was hungry, he knew that, after having had only half a muffin and some pumpkin juice for breakfast.
But of course he couldn't eat at lunch either.
He sat down across from her, hoping that would make things easier but instead it turned out to be worse because he had a much better view of her now.
He'd piled food on his plate and begun to eat his shepherd's pie but then he heard her laugh and glanced up at her and again, his stomach felt funny.
She wiped her mouth with a napkin and his gaze narrowed down to her lips. Her pink and wonderfully soft-looking lips. She took a sip of pumpkin juice and he found himself wishing he could kiss her just to taste the pumpkin juice lingering in her mouth.
He dragged his gaze away from her, fixing them on his plate as if he'd never seen food before in his life and made a half-hearted attempt at eating.
"Harry, are you sure you're alright?" Ron asked again. "You're not eating a thing."
"I guess I'm just not hungry again," he said rather lamely.
Ron gave him a skeptical look but then returned his attention to his dessert.
He breathed a silent sigh of relief that was short-lived as Hermione now kept up the concern.
"You really should eat some more, Harry. Starving yourself isn't going to do anything and if you don't, you'll be really hungry by dinner time."
She was so sweet. Why hadn't he appreciated that fact before? She was so sweet, the best friend ever. She'd saved his life so many times, helped him so much, even when she thought he was wrong… She'd rescued him from the Cruciatus… What would he have done without her, he wondered.
He remembered the way he'd panicked, his mind going completely blank, at the sight of her lying unconscious after being hit with Dolohov's curse and suddenly realized he hadn't even reacted that strongly to Ron being attacked by brains.
And for the first time he wondered if this- whatever this was he felt for Hermione that made him want to kiss her- was more than just a fancy.
Was it-could it be-something else? Something deeper?
Something that just combined the way he already cared about her as his best friend, with this insane desire to kiss her, to touch her…
Something that was rather frighteningly like- love…
Oh noooo… No, no, no…
His brain stuttered to a halt on just thinking the word. He couldn't love Hermione, not like that, not really. How could he--
This was ridiculous.
He was making a mountain out of a molehill. He'd exaggerated the significance of one silly dream in his mind until he practically drove himself to feel this way when he was around Hermione. That was all it was.
He just needed to get another good night's sleep, dream-free, and he'd be fine. He was sure of it. He'd never felt anything for Hermione beyond friendship before; the only reason he was doing so now was because of that bloody, stupid dream.
He excused himself as early as he possibly could from the Common Room that night after having spent the rest of the day trying to avoid looking at Hermione, and for once was thankful for his Occlumency lessons from Dumbledore that made it easier, thanks to practice, to empty his mind before he fell asleep.
It didn't work.
He dreamed about her again. Only this time, his mind didn't even bother including Cho; it was only Hermione… Only Hermione and kissing her… Feeling the softness of her hair in his hands, the smoothness of her cheeks, tasting her…
Oh God…
He wrenched himself out of his dream, forcibly awakening himself- somehow- because even in the middle of his dream, some small part of him knew it was a dream because he'd never kissed Hermione in real life before…
He lay awake, staring blindly up at the curtains around his bed, trying to ignore the lingering warmth he still felt, trying to forget the feel of her, the taste of her.
He really did want to kiss Hermione.
Somehow, for some reason, after more than five years of never thinking of Hermione in anything other than a platonic fashion, he wanted to kiss her now.
He did.
This second dream had been too vivid, had felt too good, for him to deny it anymore.
He wanted to kiss Hermione, wanted to touch her, wanted to taste her (would she taste as good in reality as she had in his dreams?)
And the very idea of it made something very like panic well up inside him.