Chapter Nine: Harry's Dream
When Hermione awoke the next morning, she blinked in surprise as she started to move and found herself restrained. She realized she was still in her clothes from the day before, and the night began to come back. As she attempted to move again, a voice whispered next to her ear, "Good morning, sleepyhead."
She turned her head, finally coming to terms with where she was. On the couch, leaning against Harry's chest, his arms around her. They had apparently spent the entire night on the couch. "Good morning, Harry," she whispered.
The sound of her voice brought a smile to Harry's face, which made Hermione realize how close his lips were to hers. Very, very close. Irresistible. She leaned closer, moving to kiss him…
When Hermione jerked awake, her mind and heart were racing. The situation was indeed the same, with Harry's arms around her, with her leaning back against him. But not the same. He was not awake yet, as she could tell from his easy and rhythmic breathing, and she leaned back into his chest, letting herself float on the gentle rise and fall.
It was not long before she felt Harry stir beneath her, his arms tightening around her waist. "Hermione…" he whispered, and she crooked her head around to look at him. His eyes were still closed, and she lifted her hand to stroke his cheek. He did not respond. Dreaming…
Dreaming about her…
The young witch blushed, suddenly glad Harry could not see her, but a sudden crackling in the fire drew her attention. Harry's sleeping mind was still shaping the fire, and her breath caught in her throat as she saw her own face appear, saw her lips open slightly, saw her head tilt to the side oddly…
That could not be what it looked like, could it? Harry could not be dreaming… that. She was his friend, his best friend…
He had never thought of her like that, had he?
The thought swirled in her mind. Ron had thought of her like that, it was true, but Harry? She had never considered herself to be beautiful, not like Lavender or Cho. But Harry had not gone with anyone since Cho that she knew of. He might have kept it from them, he was good at keeping secrets, for a while, but he usually lost control of them eventually.
She sighed softly. Of course Harry thought about her like that. He was a guy, after all, and girl talk at school had confirmed something Hermione had rather suspected. At their age, there was not a guy in the world that was friends with a girl that did not think about her that way occasionally. And no doubt the fact they were curled up on the couch in a not exactly platonic fashion while they slept had contributed to his dream.
Not that their position was exactly what anyone would call intimate, but when you got right down to it, Hermione had never spent the night in a guy's arms before. Not even Ron, whom she had gone out with for a year.
They had stopped dating when Hermione had figured it out. One day, she had asked Ron what had finally given him the courage to ask her out, since she had been suspecting it would happen for quite a while, and had thought, up until the moment, the summer before sixth year, that he never would. Eventually, he had sheepishly admitted that it was Harry, and she had forced him to relate, well, had painfully and slowly extracted, the entire conversation. As sharp as her mind was, she had made the connection immediately when she put it with the prophecy Harry had eventually come clean about, and what she knew about Harry's character.
She had felt an immediate need to tell Ron, while secretly impressed with the deviousness of Harry's plan. At first, Ron had been hurt, thinking she was breaking up with him over it, and it had taken a while to drive it into his stubborn Weasley brain. But once he had understood, finally, he had surprisingly agreed with her immediately and wondered why he had not realized it earlier. He had been further hurt with the idea of his best friend manipulating him like he had, but he had understood Harry well enough to follow Harry's logic and need to distance himself to protect them.
To keep Harry from suspecting they had figured him out, Ron and Hermione had continued 'dating', but their time alone became strategizing sessions on how to help Harry with his crushing responsibility. He was their best friend, after all, and as they looked back, they were horrified at how close Harry's plan had come succeeding. They had agreed to renew their relationship when Voldemort had been defeated, if they had still felt the same way about each other. Implicit was the understanding, on both their parts, that that was not guaranteed.
Now Voldemort was gone, but so was Ron. She would never have the chance to find out how he had felt, how she had felt, where they were afterwards, as they had agreed to. Though Hermione was sure if they had tried now, it would not have worked, for neither of them had been the same person when they had gone into the final battle. Watching Harry grow the final year at school as he took on the final burden, preparing himself for what was to come, had changed them all. He had not realized it, how much he had become a rock and a leader on which they had all, not just Ron and Hermione, depended. And they, his two best friends, had become the people Harry had needed them to be, the people on which he had depended without realizing it. Hermione could see quite clearly that none of them had realized how close they had become that last year, as close as a single person. She had been their brain, and Ron had been their balls…
Hermione giggled softly at the thought.
But Harry… Harry Potter had been their heart. They had become so close that they had nearly required each other for everything without realizing it, even working as close as before on their classes, which were diverging with their future goals. Each had known as much as the other two, even Ron, who had always struggled with classes, had, without trying, done much better.
Hermione slowly raise her hands to brush tears from her eyes, but then, realized the tears were not there. She blinked in surprise, and thought about Ron more deliberately, about their dates and all the fun times. She forced herself to recall their arguments and fights, and still, she felt no tears. She missed him terribly now, and there was pain at his loss, but it was a dull pain, the pain that she still occasionally had from the curse from two years before, from her parents death a year and a half earlier.
Ron had been special to them both, but, Hermione realized, she had moved on. Her pain was not a severe as Harry's, either. She felt no failure, only loss. She had read about survivor's guilt, and knew that is what Harry had, what she had felt after her parents had died, like it had been her fault…
But she had not fallen into that trap again. And just like Harry had helped her out of the pit when she had fallen into it, she would help him out of his pit if it was the last thing she did. Because he was her friend, and she loved him.
Loved him? Really? Surely just as a friend… No. She could not go on unless she had Harry with her, and she would willingly die before she let him die, especially from this black grief.
Because she was in love with Harry Potter.
Absolutely not. No way in… anything was she in love with him. Was she?
When she had been going out with Ron, she had read everything in the library she could find that had to do with love. For once, even the massive Hogwarts library had been… unhelpful. She had, in fact, learned nothing but some fairly useless poetry and even more useless methods of divination for learning if you were love with someone.
So, in reality, Hermione Granger had no idea what love was, and as smart as she was, that bothered her. She knew she felt differently towards Harry than she had towards her parents, or towards Ron, or anyone else. But that was just because he was Harry. A unique individual demanded a unique kind of feeling.
That was logical; she had no problem with it. But what kind of nonsense was this 'love'? She had heard about a desperate longing for another, but she did not long for Harry. He was, after all, here with her.
But what if he was gone? Would she long for him then? She would, she realized. She would hate every minute he was gone from her. That was just friendship, though, was it not?
Right. Just friends. Just a friend she would miss like her heart was gone if he was. She would miss his smile, the light in his eyes, the way his hair was wild, looking like he had always just gotten off a broom, his consideration and his sense of humor. She would miss his comforting presence, the way he held her when she cried, the little thrill she got when he hugged her…
Shit.
She had fallen for him. But even if he thought about her like her glimpse into his dreams said he did, that certainly did not mean he loved her back. He would probably be mortally embarrassed to find out she had seen what she had seen, assuming… Silly girl… that she had actually not imagined what she had seen.
Maybe, if she said nothing, did nothing, she would forget about how she felt. That would be the best solution. Too bad this was Hermione Granger, the smartest witch of her age, who never forgot anything…