Brand New Day

Brand New Day

I do not own Harry Potter and all associated items, people, and words thereof.

This story operates on the very pleasant assumption that HBP never happened. Books 1-5 canon is followed.

Published on Portkey February 19^th, 2006.

-----------------------------------------------------------

And I…

I think I'll change my ways…

So all your words get noticed

Tomorrow's a brand new day…

~Brand New Day by Forty Foot Echo

-----------------------------------------------------------

It was a rainy night in London. The water ran down the windowpanes slowly and steadily, with the soft pitter-patter of rain in the background. It was a comfortable night, a warm, peaceful night, with no thunder or lightning. Harry Potter, twenty years of age, liked it immensely.

He was watching the television in the living room of his three-roomed flat that he lived in when he went to London for long periods of time. Grimmauld Place held too many memories that he wanted locked away, but he couldn't quite leave it. It was like abandoning Sirius all over again. He couldn't go through with that. The nightmares still tormented him, even after all these years. Grimmauld Place became his summer home, and his London flat was where he worked during the year.

His wife was working in the kitchen, making beautifully messy BLTs for the two of them. He could hear her bustling about in the background, slicing tomatoes and toasting the bread. Harry smiled to himself as he casually flipped a channel. His wife made the best sandwiches, even better than the food he had learned to make in his eighteen years of slavery at the Dursleys'. Of course, his wife was a formidable witch, and he stuck to his Muggle ways of cooking. There were some habits he couldn't let go of.

She finished and flipped the lights off in the kitchen, coming around the couch to settle down beside him, leaning against his shoulder. The BLTs were on the coffee table, but neither was hungry yet, and besides, they tasted best when the tomato juice had seeped into the bacon.

She spoke first. “Love you, Harry.”

He nuzzled her shoulder. “Love you too.” A pause. “What's the occasion?”

She laughed. He could always make her laugh. “What, am I not allowed to tell my husband that I love him?”

Harry laughed with her. There was no need for words. Their connection ran as deep as the water in the Atlantic.

They were silent for a little while longer, not watching the television, but the water down the windowpanes. An undercurrent of warmth ran rampant in the room. She snuggled deeper into his warm embrace, content and happy, but tense somehow, as if there was something bothering her that she had to get out, like a caged animal inside of her. Harry noticed it immediately.

“What's wrong?”

She sighed. There was no hiding anything from him. “It's just…”

“What? Go on, now.”

She lifted off of his shoulder and turned to face him. A distant rumble of thunder reverberated in Harry's heart, like a warning. Something was wrong.

She looked into his emerald green eyes, biting her lip. “Don't get mad at me, please. I have to know.”

Harry tensed up. The thunder grew louder.

“Who…who was your first love? Was it me? Was it Cho, was it someone else, was it some distant person in your past?” Her words came tumbling out. Her fists clenched. “I just have to know, because it's been eating at me for all these years and I-“

“Shhhh.” Harry pressed a gentle finger to her lips, quieting her. “It's all right, love. I'll tell you.” She relaxed, fists unclenching. “Let me tell you about my first true love…”

-----------------------------------------------------------

I met her long before I realized I loved her. She was my best friend first. There were others before her, but I didn't love them. I liked them. I loved her, though it took me a while to realize it. Looking back now, I think I always loved her.

The realization was slow, painfully so, and I think it began in our fourth year. We had another friend with us. He was good-hearted and kind, but never could agree with her. They argued all the time. We'd been a trio for four years already. He never told me about how he liked her. He didn't have to. It was there in every word he spoke to her, angry or not.

I could see it, too. I was a little jealous at first. Time passed for the first half of the fourth year with him loving her and her not showing any signs of loving him back. But then again, I was the Hogwarts champion, and I had other things on my mind. I was too busy to notice the way she worried about me, the way she helped me through everything. I was selfish. Gradually, her attentions wandered back to him. I didn't notice. I had dragons and mer-people on my mind. Not even when she worried her heart out over me on the shore of the blasted lake did I see. I thought she was happy with another champion, a champion that openly loved her.

Then the Yule Ball came along.

I could ignore it no longer. She went to the ball with the other champion, Viktor Krum. Ron and I went with plain Hogwarts girls. I'll never forget the pure, unbridled jealousy I felt when she walked out to the dance floor with Krum. She had done her hair up and put on makeup and was wearing the most beautiful dress…I regretted more than ever leaving her to Ron and Krum, but what could I do? She was happy. I should've been happy for her, I thought.

That night, after the Ball, she and Ron had a disastrous argument. He was angry that she had gone with Krum. I knew he had been too afraid to ask her. Or maybe he had been too thickheaded and hadn't thought of it. I hadn't either. Dean Thomas didn't call me The-Prat-Who-Couldn't-See all sixth and seventh year for no reason.

The argument was the first real indication that came to me that she loved him back. Her words. “The next time there's a ball, ask me before someone else does, and not as a last resort!” That to him, and nothing to me. The jealousy was stronger than ever.

Then the third task rolled around.

I don't want to talk about that. It's another painful thing I can't stand. I remember the look on her face when I woke up to see her standing over me in the hospital wing after my confrontation with Crouch, Jr. Her eyes were teary, bloodshot. I would see her eyes like that more than ever over the course of our long history.

One more thing happened during our fourth year. On the Hogwarts Express heading back to the Dursley's, she kissed me. It was just a simple kiss, on the cheek. But it meant the world to me that day. I thought about it on the Dursley's car all the way back to Privet Drive.

Fifth year was disastrous.

All summer I stewed over the fact that she maybe loved me. I knew she loved Ron. I knew Ron loved her too. I was afraid something would happen during the summer to the two of them that would make them…

It was too painful to think about. I knew they were together. All that mattered to me was that they were together and I wasn't with them, and Dumbledore still wasn't telling me anything.

And then the Dementor attack happened, and I came back to Grimmauld Place, a raging mass of worry, fear and hormones. All my troubles were gone, however, when I saw them again. She hugged me, nearly knocked me flat. I knew it was okay, and the relief gave way to a mass welling of anger for some reason, only to be calmed when she apologized, clearly shocked by my outburst.

Then I saw Sirius again, and he became the top priority in my life that summer. At Hogwarts, there was Umbridge and the DA and Cho and all, and I never stopped to realize that I was touching her more, holding her more, especially when Hagrid brought us to see that monster he called Grawp. I didn't realize that she worried about me more, hated Cho more for kissing me, didn't seem to like Ron anymore and seemed to go out of her way to make me happy through Umbridge's reign of power. It wasn't until the terrible night at the Department of Mysteries that I realized it all.

I remember the panic, the sheer, utter panic that I felt when she fell from that Death Eater's purple curse. I remember my heart beating furiously fast, a vise crushing it, only slowing when Neville told me that I wasn't in fact going to lose her. That night was…terrible. Horrible. I lost Sirius, almost lost her, emaciated Ron, and almost killed Luna, Ginny, and Neville. I would dream about that night for the rest of my life, my dreams always ending with a slight purple spell…

Upon our return to Hogwarts, when she was lying in the hospital bed, barely alive, a wallowed in despair greater than any I had ever felt before. Madam Pomfrey hadn't failed me yet. I was sure that she could cure her, but I also wasn't…what was to say that she wouldn't die?

It was then, I think, that I realized I loved her. She meant everything to me. I couldn't bear to see her hurt like that again. She was always in danger, especially if she hung around me. I didn't want to ever be the cause of her pain, ever again.

The next major thing to happen in our relationship happened in the middle of seventh year. After two excruciating years of longing for her, wondering desperately if she loved me too, it all came to a point that night in, cliché enough, the Astronomy Tower. I had been doing my homework for Professor Sinistra when she ran tearfully up to me, hugged me tight enough to cut off my circulation, and babbled about Ron hating her and yelling at her, and one phrase got through to me in I think the second minute of her talking.

“I love you so much and you never notice!”

Hermione Granger clapped her hand over her mouth, scared to death. I was too. I felt vulnerable, powerless, stripped of a wand and left to die. I felt like that eleven-year old Muggle-bred boy stepping into the Great Hall for the first time.

Apparently, that boy was brave and daring indeed, because after thirty heart-stopping seconds of staring at each other, I - that boy, who was me - ran at her, grabbed her, and kissed her fiercely, clinging to her like a rock in the middle of the sea.

How cliché. The first kiss in the Astronomy Tower. But I guess all that Hogwarts folklore was worth a Knut, because she kissed me back, with fire and passion that had been seven years in the brewing. I kissed away her tears over Ron and she replaced them with tears of happiness, much to my indignation, but Hermione kissed me after that and I forgot it all.

Hermione was a greater part of my life for all that year. She and I were a couple. We never announced it to the world, never said outright that we were together, but everyone noticed. Ron eventually gave up on her. We never saw Krum again. And when I stepped into the Forbidden Forest at the end of the year to face Voldemort for the last time, she was there with me. She went through it all with me. She watched him die, screaming, in a ball of fire, with my wand on the other end, screaming in pain with him and laughing as my dark side came out full force and I found satisfaction in killing him, and she screamed for me too, two syllables that broke the spell that power had on me - my name, the same word that my mother had screamed seventeen years ago. She ran at me from behind and hugged me, just like that night on the Astronomy Tower, and held me tight, screaming at me to “Stay Harry!”, and it worked.

She saved me. She saved me from myself. After all my heroics and promises to always protect her, in the end, she was the one to save me.

The next year, after we graduated from Hogwarts and found work as Aurors for the Ministry, I asked her to marry me.

I think, Hermione, that you do know the story after that.

-----------------------------------------------------------

When Harry finished his story, he looked back down at his wife, smiling gently. Hermione Potter looked back at him with tears in her eyes, her lip wavering.

“In answer to your question, Hermione…”

He took her hand.

“I always loved you.”

She burst into tears, knocking him over with a desperate hug, crying and sobbing into his shoulder.

“Harry…” She burrowed deeper into his chest as he put his arms around her. “I love you!” She whispered, and she meant it.

Harry felt tears leaking down his face too. He closed his eyes, drowning in the tidal wave of emotions that threatened to overcome him, feeling like it was seventh year all over again and their modest little London flat was the Astronomy Tower.

She gently brushed the tear from his cheek, whispering a gentle Muggle lullaby. Harry felt a spark of inspiration jump alight in his head, a testament to his Marauder blood. He smiled devilishly and took her hands in his.

“Now, Hermione.” He said mischievously. “I won't have my girl take this passive approach to loving me. I suppose there's only one thing to do-“

Whatever he had had in mind, Hermione beat him to it. She pressed into him with fire that he hadn't seen before, kissing him with passion and ardor that had never come from her in all their years together. He returned it in ample supply, holding her tight and never wanting to let go.

When they separated for air, Harry tightened his hold on her and pulled her close. Hermione looked up at him, at his sweat-soaked brow, at his black bangs plastered cutely onto his forehead, hiding his trademark scar. At his eyes, fiery emerald, with love and lust and happiness blurred all into one. He was hers and she was his, forever, they knew.

Somehow they both knew what was coming next. They were Marauders after all. As Hermione sweetly unbuttoned his sweaty shirt, her words blasted through to Harry like a beaker of Skele-Gro, but they were the best he had ever heard.

“Who says I take a passive approach to loving you, my dear Harry? I should think not.”

He grinned back. “You want to prove that to me?”

Hermione fixed her eyes on his and nodded with a mischievous smile. “I think I will.”

-----------------------------------------------------------

And I…

I think I'll change my ways…

So all your words get noticed

Tomorrow's a brand new day…

Tomorrow's our new day

- Forty Foot Echo's Brand New Day

-----------------------------------------------------------

A/N: Wow! Came out in a three-day frenzy of writing. You like?

Thanks to my lovely beta, who wishes to remain anonymous, and Portkey for hosting.

Please be kind enough to review, now that I know for sure you've read it.

Thank you again,

~Misao7

-->