Official Fine Print: Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling. Just playing with them.
Fixing Harry
Chapter 5
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Hermione apparated into the kitchen of Ron and Harry's flat early the morning he was due to leave for the Quidditch trials. She had a box of the Muggle bakery doughnuts that Ron so loved and she'd thought that she would surprise them both with breakfast.
Hermione wasn't much of a cook, herself. Of course she could cook, anyone could if they put their mind to it, couldn't they? It was just the orderly addition of ingredients and the proper attention to instructions, after all. Somehow, however, her best efforts always ended up never better than ordinary, and Hermione was not the sort of girl to waste her time on ordinary. She appreciated good cooking as much as anyone, but if hers wasn't going to surpass the taste of store bought food what was the point of going through the trouble? So she cooked only to the point necessary to sustain herself and was more adamant then ever now that house elves be paid and appreciated for their efforts.
Because boy was she ever going to need one if she ended up with Ron.
A prospect looking slimmer by the day, she reasoned, setting the box on the counter. They just weren't getting on. Not that they hadn't always had their little quarrels, but this was different somehow. Primarily because the thrill (such that it ever was) was… gone.
It had all started out as so much more of a challenge. Ron had seemed at first to truly despise her and then graduated through Harry's persistent intervention to simply mocking her. By third year he was baiting her, and by fourth his jealousy was evident. Fifth year they had grown tentatively closer, drawn by their mutual worry for Harry, but sixth had proved the breaking point. Hermione had suffered the indignity of his utter obliviousness about how exactly to proceed with her while having to watch his pitiful succumbing to Lavender Brown's more obvious charms. Not stopping to think that Lavender's type might actually be all Ron was ready to appreciate Hermione had instead suffered through a severe case of inferiority poisoning and the worst year of her Hogwarts career. It seemed like one overlong bad dream, a dream punctuated by Dumbledore's death and the realization that she had been so obsessed with failing to attract Ron that she had in turn failed to see that the obsession with Draco Malfoy she had mocked Harry for had at least been valid.
It was more than she could say about hers with Ron. They had both been deeply shocked, first by Snape's murder of the Headmaster (while his apparent defection was entirely believable; the fact he would actually kill Dumbledore was somehow much less so even despite their active dislike of him) and then by Harry's retreat from the beginnings of his own relationship with Ginny and his avowal not to return to Hogwarts. The world as they knew it was shaking apart; all they'd ever feared for Harry and themselves seemed to be coming true and they'd clung to each other like lifelines.
Seventh year had tested them in fire. They should have come through it bound forever after the things they'd been through. And she did feel forever bound, with a strength she had never imagined existed and a tenderness that seemed impossible after all she had endured.
Except it was to Harry, not Ron.
She'd tried not to think about it. When she'd found herself literally unable to pry herself from his bedside at St Mungo's and she'd had to admit that hadn't worked, she'd tried to rationalize it.
It was a reaction to all they had gone through to help him defeat Voldemort. She felt sorry for him. She admired him.
She bloody well wanted to jump him, bandages and all. She wanted to hold him and never let go. She'd seen him lying there on the floor when the Dementor had finished with him, and his echoing scream had forever smashed the protective in-case-of-emergency glass around her heart. Truth had flooded her until she gasped for breath, certain it was too late and she had made a terrible, terrible mistake.
It didn't matter if he was supposed to die; she couldn't stop it, couldn't change the way she felt even if he did. And then, he'd lived.
She loved him. She'd probably always loved him, from the moment she'd first fixed his glasses and he'd gifted her with his heartfelt and impressed thanks. He'd never stopped doing that, never stopped remembering her when others forgot, defending her when others slighted or attacked, listening to her when she had an idea, asking for her help and believing he needed her. She'd taken it all for granted, taken him for granted. Love was banter, flirting, fighting and making up. Wasn't it? That was what Ginny thought, and Lavender and Parvati.
She'd been an idiot, closed her eyes and ears to her own intelligence and her own heart in the process. Love for her, plain Hermione Jane Granger, was steadfast, boring and true. It was determined to go on, despite anyone's best efforts to stop it. It was faithfulness, and unfailing loyalty. It was Harry.
And it was too late.
He saw her as Ron's now. She knew he loved her dearly, but as a friend, as his other friend. She was quite certain that in Harry's mind she had chosen and she belonged with Ron. Except that she could feel that whatever she might have had with Ron was failing, and she was afraid that if it fell apart she might well lose them both. They were flat mates now; if there was a break up and it wasn't nice what happened then? She knew Harry would never forsake her entirely for Ron, but what if she weren't welcome in the flat? What if Harry avoided her for weeks on end so he didn't have to hurt her, to filter every thing through the 'don't mention Ron' phase? What if…
What was that noise?
It was early, half seven. She'd thought to surprise them, was sure neither would be up. So what was making that thumping noise?
She crossed the kitchen and started down the little hall to the bedrooms. The bedroom doors were dark, but the door to the bathroom at the end was half open and a wedge of light shone into the dimness of the hallway. The distinct bumping sound she'd heard emanated from within.
She crept closer, wondering even as she did why she didn't just call out. When she came close to the door she realized almost at once that the direction of its swing blocked her from view within, but she had a clear line of sight in the one of the mirrors.
Ron and Harry had been sharing bathrooms for seven years and were far from shy around one another. There wasn't room - nor had either the patience, for it was not as simple a prospect as it sounded, even using magic - to add another loo. So they had simply slightly enlarged the one they had with Fred and George's help, adding a second sink and mirror and a shower stall in addition to the enormous old fashioned bath tub it already contained. It gave them room to move around each other in a rush, and Harry liked to think that someday it would actually be necessary. She had seen in his eyes the suspicion Ron would be using the shower to wash away the nastiness of visiting him in Azkaban.
Now Hermione could see clearly that it was Harry who had just recently finished a shower and stood before the sink behind the door, drying his hair with one towel, another tucked - far from securely in Hermione's mind - low around his waist. Ron was sitting with his back to her in the big old claw foot tub, not having a bath but simply lounging in his pajamas while chatting to Harry. The noise she'd heard was him lifting and dropping the metal soap dish that hung over its curved edge with his foot. Even as she pegged it, Harry turned to him with rolled eyes.
"Ron, d'you have any idea how annoying that is?" he asked, finishing with the towel for his hair and hanging it on the bar beside the tub.
"You'll miss it when I'm gone," Ron told him.
"I think I can manage to live four days without it. If I miss you too much I can just come in here and rattle the soap dish for myself."
With Harry turned toward Ron she could see in the mirror's reflection the angry line of the half-V scar that still ran across his chest even after the healers were done with it.
"Fine. Who's going to spell your ugly mug for you then? You'll have a full beard when I get back," Ron said smugly.
Of course. Harry was hardly casting any spells, no matter how routine, on something quite as vulnerable as his neck at the moment.
"I'd have a hard enough time getting the shadow of a goatee together in four days the way mine grows. Don't get your hopes up there, Ron. I'll just shave like the half muggle I am."
"That's just barbaric, that is," Ron informed him.
"Well, those of us stuck without a houseful of convenient brothers or a Dad to do it for them just had to get in touch with our inner barbarian, thanks much to the equally barbaric underage magic laws."
"You used to look like you'd spent the summer having your face attacked by Grindylows for a few years there," Ron agreed. "Didn't take you long to learn to cast that spell on the train."
Harry smiled ruefully. "I got the oldest, dullest most useless blades in the house then. You didn't think they'd let me have something sharp now, did you? Dudley got me good once. He actually put his nice new ones in for mine. Bled like a stuck pig on Petunia's revolting bathroom carpet the next morning and got the snot kicked out of me by Vernon. Old Dudders laughed so hard I thought he was going to be sick. I actually wished he would. Where was all my spontaneous magic then, I ask you!"
Ron laughed. Hermione's stomach clenched. Harry turned back to the mirror to brush his teeth.
"Angelina told Fred that that Hufflepuff chaser from our year, Megan Jones, was scouted by the Wigtown Wanderers," Ron said idly.
"They're still playing the Parkin's Pincer as if no one's twigged it in the last five hundred years. They need a backup bench of chasers miles deep to replace all the ones they lose to collisions," Harry pointed out while readying his brush. He began to clean his teeth. Hermione realized she'd never seen him do so before, and that her parents would probably approve of his technique in this matter, if nothing else.
"It's their signature move; they'll hardly give it up. Still, she's a bit of alright. Wouldn't mind playing with her. She's got a sense of humor like one of the boys but she sure doesn't look like one when the pads come off."
Harry's back stiffened, and he spit.
"Don't mention that to Hermione on the way out if you know what's good for you," was all he said, but his expression, reflected twice by the time it reached Hermione, said far more.
"Never fear," laughed Ron. "I want to live long enough to try out."
"Why'd'you do it then? Keep looking, and doing it in front of her? Sure seems like you've got a death wish from over here." Harry asked.
Ron frowned for a moment, as if actually considering the question, the great dolt. When he replied, however, it shocked her to her core.
"That's just it, isn't it." Ron said. "Feels like I've got a bloody leash on and we're eighteen. She's at me all the time to grow up, but when it comes to the grown up part of snogging her she's always damn sure we're not ready. And there's no revving her up past it, I've tried. She's a bit lacking on the more, erm, exciting end of things, to be honest. Getting her jealous seems to move it all along somehow."
She knew she deserved that. It was true, really, all of it. But it still hurt, oh how it hurt.
"Let me tell you a little something about your girl then, Ron," Harry said evenly, although he sounded most unlike himself. "I'm as far from an authority on human emotions as you're going to get in a long day of looking, but anyone that can get as provoked, as protective, and as dead set and determined as our Hermione isn't lacking in the passion department. They're all related somehow. You're likely just coming at her wrong."
"Trust me, mate. I've got the mechanics down, thank you Lavender Brown. Something's just off there."
"So if, hypothetically speaking of course, Megan Jones proves willing, you'd what? Dump Hermione?"
Ron frowned again. He didn't usually have to think this hard talking to Harry, that was one of the things he liked best about him, Hermione knew. Harry's usual reticence was perfectly suited to Ron's lack of interest outside a closed range of topics.
"Merlin. No, I couldn't do that to her, I mean it's Hermione, after all. But she's never liked Quidditch, has she, and we're only sort of seeing each other, we're not about to get married or anything. I reckon we'd just keep on the way we are."
"Aside from the fact that Megan would have to be a bloody pushover…" Harry began.
"Well, she is a Hufflepuff," Ron interjected.
Harry snapped. "Ron, listen to yourself."
"Lighten up, Harry. I'm sorry I said anything, I was just thinking out loud, alright, and I forget sometimes you're still so…"
"So what?" Harry snarled.
"Touchy! Bloody hell, Harry, take it down a notch or you'll end up exploding the toilet this time."
There was a loud crack, and a gush of water.
"Bugger me," said Harry wearily.
"My fault. Power of suggestion, mate," Ron told him. "Let me get my wand."
He started to haul himself out of the tub but Hermione saw Harry shake his head and gesture in the direction of the toilet, beyond her view. There was the snicking sound of mending porcelain and she heard him murmur drying and scourging charms. They seemed to come off fine; neither commented and there were no untoward sounds of a spell gone wrong. There was nothing wrong with his magic really, she mused, it seemed stronger than ever. It was just the odd moment of control, as though it got away from him when he was distracted or not focusing on it. She'd never seen a spell he was actually intent on go wrong, come to think of it.
Except she shouldn't be thinking of it, because Ron thought she was… well, bugger him! She was just as passionate as anyone when someone wasn't constantly riling her up for effect before hand, certainly more so than Lavender, who'd casually admitted to thinking of clothing combinations for the next day while snogging. She'd show him!
What the hell was she thinking? She didn't want to show Ron. That was the whole point, wasn't it? She wanted to show Harry. Mother of Merlin could that towel slip any lower without coming off? He was lovely, every last scar of him, and all she really wanted was to prove to him with her lips and her fingers and every willing inch of her that nothing he had done was in vain and that he was loved for who, and not what, he was.
And he though his life was a mess…
Hermione reined in her wayward thoughts abruptly with a flush of shame. He was being harassed by the Minister of Magic himself, his very future in doubt, and she was carrying on like a thwarted child. Her attention was drawn back to the bathroom; she realized they were still talking.
"…and she wanted me to bring you guys with me next time. I said you'd got Quidditch."
"What time are you meeting her?" Ron asked him.
"Ten. Outside the Ministry. I think the zoo was enough of a stretch we'll probably just go get coffee somewhere. Keep the Aurors happy. I still can't believe they're letting her take me anywhere out of earshot. Either they think she's telling them everything or she really is. I have no idea who's telling the truth anymore. "
Hermione quickly concluded they were talking about his Spell Damage Reversal specialist.
"I can manage that if I leave straight away after. Gives me the perfect excuse not to trail back to the Burrow first for my lecture from Mum. I'll be there, mate. Have you asked Hermione yet?"
Harry shook his head and ran his fingers through his drying hair. "Best go put some clothes on and get myself somewhere to phone her. We've got to work up a better line of communication while she's at her Mum and Dad's."
"Bet the Ministry's behind not getting the provisional hookup to the Floo." Ron said. "You know, you should ask her to come stay here while I'm gone. Seriously. The wankers downstairs can't be counted on in an emergency, you do know that, and you probably shouldn't be on your own just yet."
"She was pretty clear about wanting to spend time with her parents this summer. I'll be fine, honestly."
Harry hitched up the towel, either not a moment too soon or finally, depending on your point of view. Hermione would have whimpered if wouldn't have got her caught. Funny, she didn't seem to have the least feeling of guilt for having spied on her two best friends. And close as they all were, any way she looked at it they certainly wouldn't have been having this conversation casually in front of her.
He raised his attention from the towel and let his eyes meet Ron's as he began to head for the door. She knew she needed to move away quickly or he would see her, but she could sense he had one last thing to say on his way out and for some reason she needed to know what it was.
"Don't do it, Ron. If you think things aren't right, then fix them. Because if you hurt her breaking up with her, I'd be there for you both no matter how ugly it got, but if you did it playing about with someone like Megan Jones I'd have to hex your bollocks off, and we both know how reliable my magic is these days. I'll do it from Azkaban if I have to, and I'll haunt you like the Bloody Baron if I die. We've been through too much together to hurt each other any more, the three of us. I love her, too."
He reached the bathroom door and Hermione knew there was nothing for it but to disapparate as quietly as she could, and reappear in the kitchen before they spotted the pastry box.
If only she could stop crying they'd never know she'd been just a little too early this morning.
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Hermione ended up in Diagon Alley, where she bought a pot of Mrs. Melancholy's Tears-Be-Gone, a combination under eye concealer and red-eye whitener much favored by Witch brides and charmed to guarantee the wearer tear-free for eight hours no matter what happened. Hermione had first learned of it when Ginny used it before Fleur and Bill's wedding. ('Why Bill?' Ginny had moaned as she carefully applied it. 'What did he ever do to deserve Phlegm? Bloody Veela.')
She remembered joking with Ginny how awful it would be to be left at the altar after using it and being unable to cry. 'My head would explode!' Ginny had declared in between fits of laughter. 'Right after I hexed Harry's bits off!' She'd still thought he'd come back to her then, but oddly enough she'd known just what she'd do if he proved uncertain. Clearly Harry knew what he was doing.
She'd gone to Flourish and Blots, which opened quite early and would never turn Hermione Granger away, teary-eyed or not. Only after the mirror in the ladies' lavatory there had assured her she looked as if she hadn't cried a single day in her whole life was she ready to apparate back to Ron and Harry's.
As fate would have it she managed to pop in just as Harry was rounding the corner into the kitchen. His nerves were still a touch overwrought and she'd managed to spook him badly enough that he dropped the glass he'd been carrying. In the resulting confusion of cleaning it up (she'd cast a hasty reparo just as Harry had crouched down to pick it up; her spell had hit his bandaged hand and reacted with the numbing charm on his wound, he'd yelped and pulled back just as Ron arrived to explore the crash, and the two of them had fallen over each other and landed on the floor at her feet) no one noticed the pastry box had arrived before she did.
"Look, Harry!" Ron had said happily, crawling to his feet. "She's brought us doughnuts for breakfast! You're the best, Hermione!"
Yup. That Mrs. Melancholy's was worth every knut.
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Ron seemed genuinely pleased with the doughnuts and ate half the dozen on his own, chattering away excitedly about the trials and which scouts might be there. Harry had apparently heard it all before and was lost in thought in the depths of his coffee. Hermione let it wash over her until she couldn't stand another word.
"I meant to ask you, Harry," she said suddenly, "My parent's are going to a dentist's convention tomorrow for a week. I'd meant to just stay at the house, but now they're having their water pipes flushed and the water heater replaced while they're gone. Would it be alright if I were to stay here with you for a few days and use Ron's room? You wouldn't mind, would you Ron?"
It was a blatant lie, and she surprised herself utterly with the fluidity with which it passed her lips.
"Have at it," Ron said. "I was just telling Harry this morning that he should ask you, actually. Safer for him, too, having someone that can do magic around the place. Legally, anyway. I would have cleaned up a bit if I'd known, though."
"Harry?" she'd prodded, and his eyes had risen suddenly and guiltily from whatever thought they'd been lost in.
"Er, sure?" he'd said, without the slightest idea of what he'd been agreeing to.
Just as well, really.
That settled, she'd agreed to go with them to Harry's appointment but told them she'd meet them there, unwilling to try and keep up her act while helping Ron pack his Quidditch gear. She wasn't crying but her head ached and her eyes burned, for all they appeared clear on the outside.
"Alright, then?" Harry had asked as she prepared to apparate home to collect her things for the next few days. "You seem a bit…" he'd struggled for a word, then gave up and shrugged helplessly, "a bit off, I guess."
He was setting the dishes to scrubbing themselves in the sink, watching her over one shoulder.
What am I doing? she thought. "Just fine, Harry," she said. "I'll see you at ten, then."
She heard Ron calling him, asking to borrow his broom servicing kit as she stepped into her turn and time and space squeezed her away.
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A/N: Thank you to both the anonymous reviewer who spotlighted my error on the dates of Elspeth's interviews with Harry (the second one was a week later, not two days as I had first planned) and to several reviewers who pointed out that Elspeth's daughter is not a pure blood as I had mistyped - Elspeth is half muggle, Almerick was pureblooded. Thanks you guys, for reading and reviewing. I really appreciate your comments.