Official Fine Print: Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling. Just playing with them. Honest.
Here With Me
Chapter 17
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Hermione's internal alarm clock still worked; that or Fawkes awoke her. The Phoenix uttered one warbling note and cocked its head, blinking amber eyes. It was a quarter hour until curfew and Dumbledore had been quite clear that he wanted Harry in the sixth year boys' dormitory each night. She wondered how it could change anything that he was there; it obviously couldn't stop Voldemort from dropping by for one of his nightly visitations. How were Neville, Seamus, Dean or Ron any better equipped to fight him off if anything happened? He probably just wanted to keep track of Harry.
That, or he was trying to make what had just come to be less likely, allowing her to stay with him but surrounding them both by a bunch of Gryffindor boys. She stretched, cherishing the faint soreness that bore evidence of the failure of that particular scheme. It had been so much better even than she'd ever managed in her own imagination. He was asleep beside her, one arm flung protectively across her still. As she watched him her heart surged; his lips were curved into the faintest of smiles. His face was every bit as tired as the night before, the bones just as sharp, but some portion of the weight seemed lifted and she was fairly certain she had done that. She'd been uncertain about letting him fall asleep after without invoking the dream keeper charm, but he'd really seemed to need it and she felt some small part of her was almost ready to dare Voldemort to try and take him back after that.
"Harry," she whispered, sitting up and shaking his arm gently. "Harry, wake up."
His eyes struggled open and blinked, attempting to focus. She found his glasses and put them into his hands. "We need to get back to the tower. It's almost curfew."
He sighed and sat up as well, attempting to stretch the stiffness from his shoulders. Hermione felt a familiar interior shiver of pleasure watching him now, knowing how else he could move. How much she wanted to see him move that way again... She wouldn't have changed a thing, but the forest clearing was certainly less forgiving than cushions or a mattress. Next time.
"Okay?" he asked with more than a little trepidation, sorting through their scattered clothing. She'd seemed pleased, he'd thought it was fantastic, but he so often got things wrong…
"Lovely, Harry. Really. Thank you. I've never been so happy," she said softly, and flashed him a gentle smile as she buttoned her shirt.
He certainly liked it better when her fingers worked those buttons the other way round, but he managed to smile back. "Me, too."
She finished her buttons and crawled into his lap for a kiss. The meeting of their lips was far more confident and accomplished now, a clear reflection of their deeper knowledge of each other. Harry knew that with the way the rest of the school seemed to watch him these days, as if waiting for him to transform into the Dark Lord at any moment and rampage through the halls, any difference in their behavior would be immediately noticed and probably speculated upon. He hoped Hermione didn't mind. It might have bothered him once, before, but he found it didn't now.
"We really owe Ron, Harry. That was a bit over the top, timing-wise."
"Sorry. I honestly don't know… no, I do actually. It was you, saying not everything was my fault. So it's your fault, really."
"Nice try. Takes two; and I believe you rather enjoyed your half of things. You started it, snog-wise, so it actually is your fault this time. We could talk to him together, but I think it would seem less overwhelming coming from you first."
"He'll ask about us, if he gets over being mad about Ginny."
"So what else is new? He's been acting as if we have since the moment you told him we wanted to be together. He's got to get over the little-boy fixation on sex. We need to find him a girlfriend."
"I have news for you, Hermione. It's not a little boy fixation, it's an every sort of boy fixation. That's what we want girlfriends for. Er.. that's what most, erm other, not me… Anyway, isn't it a bit presumptive of us to assume that's what would make him happy just because it's what we wanted?"
She stared at him for a moment, dumbfounded. Fawkes warbled again anxiously, clearly wanting them to be on their way. Harry scrambled to his feet and helped her up only to find himself engulfed in a old-fashioned, wild-haired, bone-crushing Hermione hug.
"Harry James Potter that was actually perceptive. And absolutely right. You really should be the one to talk to him."
"Hey!"
Fawkes fluttered on to Harry's shoulder. Harry stroked his feathers gently. "Next time you're ready to go up in flames let me know first, okay? Ron'll be more than happy to help me join you, I'm sure."
Hermione held open the door with a smile.
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In retrospect, perhaps brushing their teeth in the boy's lavatory the next morning wasn't the best time to have chosen to speak to Ron. Harry was so much better at hindsight he sometimes wondered if his brain had somehow been shaken back to front by Vernon Dursley over the years. If it hadn't, Ron was doing his best to try and rectify the situation now.
"Oi, Weasley, get off him you idiot!" Seamus came through the door and thankfully interceded. The gaggle of younger boys who had backed themselves against any available solid surface to avoid the two of them lurching around the room began to slink gratefully towards the door.
Ron threw Seamus off and resumed pounding Harry. "Get Thomas!" Seamus growled at one of the young ones, and resumed his efforts.
"You could help, you know, Potter," he grunted as Ron swatted him off like a bug again. "You're not bloody enjoying this or anything like that are you? 'Cause just so you know, you look a right mess."
Harry had about reached his limit as punching bag by that point, but found that he wasn't quite ready to hit Ron back. It was a near thing, but the level of anger and frustration in his friend's eyes literally hurt more than his fists did. He was definitely feeling like he deserved most of what was coming his way, or someone did, and it was the least he could do at this point to help Ron get it out of his system.
Unfortunately, Ron sensed this too.
"Awfully bloody cooperative when you've finally gotten your stones off, aren't you, you sodding great heap of … of…." Ron's imagination failed him and he slumped, exhausted, to his knees just as Dean crashed through the door.
"What in Merlin's name is wrong with the two of you? You've already got detention every bleeding night of the week; you've lost your Hogsmeade privileges. What's next? Get thrown off of Quiditch and I'll kill you both myself, it's the only way you'll get us back any of the house points you've lost us," he told them indignantly. He threw a towel at Harry. "Your nose is bleeding. Incidentally, it is still a nose is it? No wands involved, right?"
Harry shook his head and shoved the towel under his nose. "I'b bine," he said. Except for the fact I sound just like Hermione after the bludger hit her…
"Oh shut up. Just quit trying to be noble or whatever and shut up for once, will you?' Ron snarled.
"I thoughbt you bere bissed off at be for nobt tellbing you stubff," Harry snarled back. "Bake up your sobding bind alreaby."
"Out!" Seamus howled. "You're worse than the girls. I was going to clear out the room for you, but you can just take yourselves down to the effing lake to sort it because I swear if either one of you manages to get more points docked for this, Dean and Neville and I'll be down to drown you ourselves!"
Harry and Ron stared at one another steadily for a moment. Neither blinked.
"We'll need the cloak," Ron said at last.
"I'll gebt it," Harry told him. Seamus and Dean each gingerly took an arm and hauled him to his feet, jumping back as his nose gushed again. "Doebn't anybody hab their wabd?" he asked pitifully. "Bad Eye Boody woulb habe your arses." He lurched toward their dorm room for the invisibility cloak.
"Don't generally need it to brush your teeth, unless you're Harry bloody Potter." Dean said, following him. "Did Ron mistake you for Voldemort again or did you actually get him that mad yourself? You are Harry, aren't you? That was a pretty wussy defense for the Boy Who Lives In Remedial DADA."
"Biss off alreaby. You thinbk you ban do better… Arghhh!" Harry had found his wand and attempted to fix his nose. Merlin's stones but that stung! Hermione'd made it look way easier than that. At least it had stopped bleeding. "You think you can do so much better, you take Voldemort on. Job's always up for grabs, help yourselves." He located the cloak in his trunk and slunk back to the loo.
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It's not easy managing to stay quite so angry with someone when you're both huddled under a cloak made for one. Harry and Ron had both grown since their early wanderings, in Ron's case quite a lot. There wasn't much left over for Harry anymore and Ron was forced to sort of hunch over his shoulder as they made their way through the entry hall, now brilliantly lit by a rainbow of color from the newly uncovered rose window, and out the door. The minute they cleared the sightline of the castle they threw it off and mutually withdrew a good bit, bristling like dogs. Both of their shirts were liberally spattered with blood from Harry's nose and they drew their robes tightly around them to hide evidence of the fight. Thankfully the rest of the school was still caught up in the process of beginning to think of breakfast. There was no sign of life save for the smoke from Hagrids' chimney.
They set off wordlessly down the path to the edge of the lake, breath streaming in the chill early morning air.
"Ron, I'm sorry, but I've got to sit for a bit," Harry finally gasped and dropped on to a rock near the water's edge. He'd taken a few good solid hits in the solar plexus after his nose got slippery and the soreness was catching him up.
Ron frowned but stopped as well and began kicking at stones along the waters' edge.
"No one ever meant to hurt you, you know," Harry started reluctantly. "We knew what was going on with Ginny would get to you, but we just didn't know how to say it, or whether to say it at all. I kind of hoped it would just go away. And telling you that way… Ron, we never meant for it to happen like that, honestly."
"We, we, we. I'm so sorry to interrupt your little snog party with Hermione over a tiny insignificant issue like GINNY HAVING A THING WITH MALFOY!"
Harry sighed. "Ron, help me out here. Are you angrier with me for not telling you Ginny was seeing Malfoy, or for having a relationship with the girl I ASKED YOU FIRST IF IT WAS OKAY TO BE WITH? Do you remember ever saying anything like, oh, I don't know 'You mean love like snogging-in-love, don't you? Hermione? I mean, she's like my sister or something. I think I thought I was in love with her in third year until I started to realize that actually being afraid of her as well would seriously affect my follow through. I couldn't even, umm, think about her that way, if you get me...' Well, I THOUGHT I got you, okay? So tell me, exactly what the hell is so wrong then if I do think about her that way? No follow through complaints at all. I told you I loved her, what did you expect would happen? Which is it, really?"
"Both! It's both, okay! Do you happen to remember saying, 'I've never had a family or a sister. But if I did, I do know I wouldn't want her messing around with Malfoy.' You've no idea what it's like to be responsible for anyone but yourself. You have no idea what it's like to be part of a family, you walk around whinging how it's all been taken from you but it's not so damn easy on the other side of it, either. You've no idea what it's like not to be the first or the best at anything, ever, and to still screw up the one thing you think you can do, even when it's as simple as keeping your own little sister safe. She's MY sister, how the hell is it that she told you and Hermione everything and not a word of it to ME?"
"Perhaps it was because she thought we might not GO COMPLETELY SPARE AND YELL THE WAY YOU ARE! Just a thought."
Ron glared at him, but lacked a ready comeback.
"You want to know what she said to me?" Harry told him furiously. "Okay, then. I was the one she loved, Ron. The one who broke her heart. Go ahead and hit me again, because apparently I'm the reason she's with Malfoy now. How was I supposed to know? You and Fred and George joked about her having a crush on me when we were eleven and then after the whole Chamber ordeal was over she started talking to me instead of goggling at me and it seemed like everything was alright again. I had no idea anything was going on until that night in the Forbidden Forest when Malfoy started saying things. I thought he was having me on. According to her Malfoy and I have 'more in common than I know.' Try that on for size without gagging. I blew a hole in the entry hall, if you hadn't noticed."
Ron turned on him and Harry abruptly regretted the invitation to take another swing, because it looked for all the world like Ron was about to take him up on it and he really wasn't sure he could absorb one more.
"How were you supposed to know? Try how could you be so bleeding thick? Do you really not get the way people see you, Harry?"
"Which ones, the ones that want to kill me themselves, or the ones that just want me dead?"
"The ones like Ginny, who see someone special. All I see at the moment is a wizard too dumb to know how powerful he really is, an idiot brave enough to choose Gryffindor, not just be sorted there. A muggle-raised starved little runt who gets chosen seeker the first time he sits on a bloody broom. Plonker who has a Gringott's vault full of gold and no clue what to do with it. The one who even after all that, every witch in school would jump if he so much as lifted a finger in their direction."
"Jump with their wands set to stun, maybe. Walking around with a great ugly scar connecting you to Voldemort night and day doesn't seem to be so much of a turn-on as you'd think. The one girl who ever jumped my way half drowned me crying over the last bloke I'd managed to bring home dead."
Harry stopped short, suddenly realizing this was no longer true. Well, the bit about Voldemort and his scar still was, but now Hermione… even though it probably qualified as a mutual jumping at, or on, or whatever. The point was, he was more confident then he'd ever been before that none of the things Ron was talking about had had the least effect at all on the one girl he wanted.
"Even if it was true, Ron, it's still not what we're really arguing about. I'm sorry Ginny felt that way, truly I am. I just didn't, I couldn't, and now I know why. And it's not like it would have made you much happier, would it? What should I have done?"
Ron's face worked and he turned away from Harry toward the lake. It took Harry a moment to grasp that his best friend was either crying or trying rather desperately not to. Perhaps girls got something of a bad rap; it wasn't any easier watching Ron break down and he had even less idea of what to do. Suddenly the simplicity of being able to hold Hermione seemed infinitely easier than finding the right words for Ron. Life just refused to let up on him.
"I can't bear it. I can't bear that she even thinks she wants to be with that... Merlin, Harry, what if she really means it? Think of what he could get her into. Percy was bad enough turning into a mindless ministry prat, this would just kill Mum. Her only daughter involved with a Malfoy."
Harry struggled stiffly to his feet and moved beside Ron, tentatively lifting a hand to his twitching shoulder.
"I know what you mean, Ron, honestly. I wish that I knew what to tell you. And if we both think it's so bad and we both can't think of what to do, maybe it's time to go to Dumbledore. I don't know what he'll do, but it can't be any worse."
"Thought you said Dumbledore was gone."
"For a day or two, he said. He's left Fawkes if things get really bad. On the bright side, I've never actually seen the two of them together anywhere; whatever they get up to can't be too bad. A day or two shouldn't make it any worse."
Ron turned toward him again and Harry's hand fell off his shoulder as he moved. "Yeah? Tell that to Hermione. From the grin on her face this morning I'd guess it took you less than thirty minutes to do a fair bit of damage there last night."
Harry felt impatience and anger both scissor through him. "What is it you want me to say to that? I'm sorry? Well I'm not, not a bit of it. And you can bloody well apologize any time in the next sixty seconds before I start taking the snot right out of you for a change." Harry's voice shook and every muscle in his body tensed painfully.
"So you're not going to deny it?"
"Merlin! No, okay, Ron - Hermione and I made love last night. Did you need it spelled out for you? It was…" it was brilliant… amazing… better than anything in my miserable life so far… and too new to share yet, even with you… "between the two of us. It wasn't about you; we didn't do it to hurt you. You didn't actually come in to it at all. That's just how it works. Not because you're not our best friend, or because we don't care about you or anything, it was just… between us."
"So what happens now?"
Harry stared at him, puzzled. "Nothing, I hope. Bill reminded me about not forgetting the charm…"
"So it'll be… all the time, then."
Harry was about to say he rather hoped so when he suddenly caught the drift of Ron's anxiety.
"I've tried to say sorry. Not about all of it, mind you, but the timing. I never planned that, honestly. It can't be all the time, can it, and it certainly won't be in the middle of anything with you again. I promise." Harry gingerly scratched at the back of his neck. "Tell me though, will you, why does the idea of us bother you now? You seemed okay with it when we started. What have we done so wrong?"
It was Ron's turn to veer back away toward the water. He picked up a stone and hurled, too angry still to try and skip it.
Harry shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked on the balls of his feet, waiting.
"Nothing." Ron said at last. "You've done nothing I shouldn't have expected you to do. It just… hurts somehow, seeing you and her like that. I guess I'm jealous after all. Not of you being with her, but what you have with her, if that makes any sense."
Harry almost told him about what Hermione had said about finding him a girlfriend, but thought better of it and didn't. He'd see it as pity or as patronizing, Harry was sure, and he couldn't exactly blame him. "Give it time, Ron. It's everything going on at once as well. I feel kind of the same; it's all changing and it's hard to know who or what to trust. Only I trust you, no matter what, you were the first person I really ever could. The first kid I'd ever met who either didn't pity me for being related to Dudley or want to steal my lunch money, anyway. I'd never willingly do anything to end our being friends."
Ron hurled another stone, silent. He stole a sideways look at Harry, who saw him do it. "I guess not everyone would say that after having their nose rearranged for them," Ron admitted with the beginning of a smile. "You don't look quite so ready to take on Lockhart for the Witch Weekly polls at the moment."
"Lockhart's smile is so much more genuine now that his mind is completely blank," came a voice from behind them, and they both turned to find Hermione standing on the path, eyeing them. "Everything all right, then?"
Ron noticed that she was studiously not looking at Harry, and knew then that she loved him still as well. Not having an enormous mothering fit over a bloody Harry was an act of will she would not have mastered for just anyone. Especially a freshly post-shagged bloody Harry. He was a total idiot. He held open his arms shyly, feeling as if he was standing on a precipice.
She flung herself at him fiercely, catching him up, all flying hair and determined eyes. Revenge was hers; she probably hugged harder than he'd hit Harry anyway. "We love you, you useless git. We'll help sort things out with Ginny, we've always managed to work things out as long as we do it together." She drew back slightly and gestured impatiently for Harry, who Ron noticed was looking distinctly reluctant with the whole group hug thing. He re-maneuvered slightly so that it was Harry in the middle, rather than Hermione. He saw this seemed to rather please Hermione and felt right to him somehow now. A change in the triangle, but just the points. Plus, there was no getting away for the Boy-Not-So-Used-To-Affection.
"You guys are the best. More than I deserve," Ron said happily.
"We know," Harry and Hermione said at once.
"But we need you to make the magic work, Ron. Don't give up on us. Not because of me," Harry said, suddenly serious.
They both looked at him, surprised.
His gaze had turned to the depths of the lake.
Ron reckoned he wasn't worrying about the squid.
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