Untitled

A/N: Back again rather soon aren't I? Well, this time it isn't a mystery or action/adventure (which I really need to get back to but chapter eight of Knights of Walpurgis is a bit difficult to set up) but a romantic drama. I hope you'll appreciate this one, as much as my last stuff.

Quick important note: Ron is NOT dead, and will be waking up later in story. You will see this as you read on, but I just wanted to be clear.

Two, the reason this is called Untitled is twofold: One, I really didn't have a title, and two, some things in life can't be titled. I'd like to think that this is one of them.

Disclaimer: This is all JK Rowling's stuff, I'm glad she's letting me play with it. If I was nuts I would claim it as my own, but believe me, my imagination is not as grand as hers.

*~***~*

Flat-mates

Harry was not there when Hermione finally got to her flat that evening, heavily laden with grocery bags, her purse and her books. She hadn't expected him to be, he was an Auror and Aurors had things to do. They could be called away at any given moment, were expected to be available when needed, and the more dedicated among them probably rarely left the Ministry at all. Goodness knows how Mrs Weasley had managed to change his mind on that one.

But for some reason, a part of her had hoped that he would have been. Though a few Shrinking and a Lightening Charm had taken care of the worst of her baggage, it would have been nice to have the extra hands. It would have been nice to at least have the company.

Not that there was anything wrong with Crookshanks, of course, but she meant of the human variety.

Sighing softly, she balanced her bags on one hip and fished through her purse and pocket for her keys, trying to push away those thoughts. She would not have them. She was an independent twenty-two year old with a career, the love of her friends and family, and what was surely a great life ahead of her.

But it was to no avail. The moment she opened the door and stepped into the dark and empty flat they came rushing back.

She and Harry may have been sharing this flat for the past two years, with her having rented it for a year before that, but she still felt alone. Blame it on his Auror schedule, on her teaching position at Hogwarts, or the alien existence of life without a familiar gangly red-headed bloke, but she always felt alone. And she hated it.

Shutting and locking the door behind her, she switched on the lights, deposited her purse and keys on a nearby table and then continued on to the kitchen to set down the rest. Crookshanks was nowhere to be found, but the signs of Harry's presence greeted her before she was at the counter.

He was not, as a rule, a messy person, the Dursleys could be thanked (but won't) for that. But tonight he had left a half-drunk butterbeer, the remnants of a take-out dinner and two Chocolate Frogs, one of which had a missing leg and both with the charm gone out of them, on the table. His chair was pushed back against the cupboards behind them, the kitchen window was still open and there was a hastily written note spelled to the refrigerator door.

“Disturbance in Dufftown. Sorry about the mess, Harry.”

As usual he had left in a hurry.

She sighed again, removed and discarded the note, and then cleared up the mess. Butterbeer and take-out meal to the bin, bitten Chocolate Frog to the fridge and the other to her mouth, chair back in place, and then to the groceries. In the absence of the extra pair of hands she had to be grateful for magic, it took no more than a few flicks of her wand and a Banishing Charm for it to be done. And when it was, she took out the extra take-out dinner Harry had left for her, as usual, and went off to her room to change.

She had been visiting with her parents in High Wycombe and shopping in Diagon Alley that day, and predictably it had been a tiring and dirtying affair. She had spent so much time walking—for her mother just had to take her to London for that cocktail dress she would never wear, and then she had to help the both of them with lunch and after that had to get that new book on Transfiguration that might help her Sixth Years—that her feet hurt and she was in need of a relaxing hot bath. In parts of Diagon Alley the streets were horrendously grimy, she had very nearly tripped in the midst of London, and though she had cleaned it, she was sure she still felt the greasiness of the sauce she had spilled onto her pants while testing the gravy for the roast duck. She couldn't get out of her clothes and into the tub fast enough.

Crookshanks was in the bedroom when she entered, lying curled up and fast asleep on her bed. She wondered how he had not caught the scent of Harry's dinner, but decided it was a good thing. At the last appointment the vet had said that he was slightly overweight.

Being lazy was no better, but at least he wasn't stuffing his little round frame further.

Opting for a shower, she had a long, hot one that felt like it was peeling the skin from her flesh, changed to a pair of jeans, a camisole and a t-shirt, and went back out to the kitchen. There, she heated the take-out dinner, poured a tall glass of pumpkin juice from the fridge, and then took her books to the dining table to sort them out.

The Transfiguration text hadn't been her only purchase, on account of an unexpected and yet still long overdue run-in with Ginny—who was in training to become a Healer—in the Alley, and the release of a tell-all on the inner workings of the Ministry of Magic under Cornelius Fudge. The former had dragged her all around the Alley looking for her new books, and along the way she could not resist picking up a few for herself. The latter had simply caught her eye in the window of Flourish and Blotts, and particularly for its title: “How Did We Let This Man In?” over a photograph of the ex-Minister attempting to escape reporters after announcing his resignation years before.

But simply sitting at the table brought her feeling of loneliness rushing back. Harry should have been there with her laughing or making some snippy comment about the book (written by a personal assistant no less). Harry should have been having this dinner with her at the table made for four. Harry should have been out there quelling the disturbance in Dufftown with Ron.

And that thought set her staring blankly around the flat, trying not to think of a room in St Mungo's with the blinds seemingly forever drawn….

The flat she had chosen sat on the fourth floor of a Victorian townhouse in a Wizard district of London. It was within walking distance of Diagon Alley and had a beautiful view of the Muggle capital city off in the distance be it clear dark or cloudiest night. The open area that made up the living and dining room had new large screen windows, which replaced the original smaller Victorian ones, and tonight let in the faint moonlight that somehow penetrated the city glare to spread across the floor. Facing her was the open arched doorway that led to the bed and bathrooms, to her right was the kitchen, and to her left, in a small corner he had claimed and cordoned off by moving about the living room furniture, was the desk and chair that made up Harry's office. He very rarely brought his work home, but when he did he locked it all away in his desk.

Though he was not at all messy around the apartment, his room at times was another story and important material could very easily be lost. Hedwig was more grateful than he knew to have the “freedom” of a stand in the living area near his desk, as Crookshanks was to have the run of the house.

All around her too, were the things she had thought to bring with her when she first moved in. Her seemingly innumerable books, her photographs, various house-warming presents from the Weasleys and her parents, a special drawing from Dean of her, Harry and Ron done during the war—the only image of Ron they had dared to keep—all only things for the purpose of making it look and feel like a home.

It was a wonder how in the midst of it she still could feel completely and utterly alone.

When Harry moved in, adding another life to her world of solitude, she thought that he would change that. But instead he brought and kept his stuff in his room, was always off at work or if not that, was off at the pub or playing Quidditch with his colleagues, none of whom she ever met. Within days of his moving back into her life full time, she once again felt alone. And after all this time not much had changed either, there were still some unpacked boxes of his in the closet by the door.

But there was one thing he had left out. One thing that filled the room and emphasised her loneliness, that kept her up at nights when she most sought sleep, that lingered even to Hogwarts all year while she taught: his scent.

His sweat, salty and slick, intermingled with the willow of his broom, the electric “after-burn” of his magic and the barest traces of a cologne Ginny had given him one year for Christmas that he had liked so much that he kept buying even after they had broken up. Clearly, he didn't seem to understand how much it must have hurt her every time she caught the scent of it. But to Hermione it had come to be a part of him that helped more than it harmed.

Tonight it was barely there, and it was that alone that had told her of his absence when she first arrived, but now she found it again. And as she caught it, it enveloped her like an Arabian perfume so for a moment she was aware of nothing else… until the sound of Crookshanks' mewing loudly brought her out of it.

She took a long, slow exhale, looked out at the muted city passing by beyond the screen window, and then turned back to her dinner and her books.

*~*~*

Standing with his palms against the tiled wall of the shower stall while the hot water cascaded his naked form, Harry tried to wash away the last grime of the Dufftown disturbance. It were times like these that he most resented the Death Eaters who refused to give up, refused to believe that he had finally gotten rid of Voldemort.

The sun was up but he had only just got back in. He smelled as if had been frolicking with wild horses, there were bruises and scratches all over his skin and a new shirt had been irrevocably ruined. This was not the way he had planned to begin his vacation when he had requested it.

Of course, if he really wanted to be left alone he should have left Kingsley a “Do Not Disturb” memo in his request form.

Hermione was still asleep. As soon as he had come in, as he had often done since he first moved into the flat, he had gone to check on her. She lay on her side turned away from the door, dressed in a pair of pyjama shorts and a matching vest, her brown bushy hair in a loose ponytail and still clutching the book she had been reading the night before. For fear of waking her he had left it there, but he could not resist drawing the covers up over her. When his fingers grazed her thigh though, he started away as if burned and quickly left the room.

He hadn't meant to do that. He was sorry he had done that. But he would be lying if he didn't admit to the fact that he wished he didn't have to worry about touching her. That they were and could be more than just “best friends” and “flatmates” who saw each other only when it could be scheduled throughout the year…. That they could go back to how they once were, no matter how brief, before….

He shut his eyes and felt the water wash refreshingly over his face.

He could not think like that. He was twenty-one years old, an Auror on the fast track to promotion though he had only just left training, an honorary Weasley… and he was in love with his best friend.

There was no point denying it. He felt it every moment she walked into a room, every time he heard her voice, every time he allowed his mind to wander to her safely locked away in Hogwarts, blissfully unaware of the dangerous world around them anymore. Or at least he hoped she was.

He had done enough; he had hurt her more than enough.

Deciding that he had also punished his skin enough, he shut off the water and reached up to the nearby shelf for the soap. It took him more than a moment of searching to find it. Hermione had filled the shelf with hair and skin products he could not be sure she often used. Hermione was never really one of those girls.

Of course, the way he remembered it, she didn't need them.

He had to soap himself three times before he felt reasonably clean, and then stood a while in the steam-filled shower watching the dirty soap water drain away. Flowing through his hair and down the contours of his body in rivulets, the water pooled at his feet before circling the drain and disappearing into the plumbing. All this washing and he would never be clean.

He was not guilty for Voldemort, he would never be guilty for Voldemort… but he was for Ron. For losing Ron when there was still a way to save him, for failing Hermione after all she had done for him, for giving her up when there was almost nothing standing in their way anymore…. He would never be clean and he would never be able to repay her.

He was not worthy to love her.

Turning off the shower, he pulled his towel from the stall door, and stepped out to get dressed.

But at least he could get her breakfast.

*~*~*

No matter how much she loved her job, and Hermione was quite sure that she thoroughly enjoyed teaching, she loved waking up on an early summer morning with nothing to do stretching out for weeks ahead of her and the feel of Crookshanks' small round body at her feet, even more. She practically stretched and yawned as she awoke to do Ron proud, and lay back down again filled with laziness foreign to her. Well, at least that was until she heard Harry in the kitchen.

At once she sat up, knocking the book she had been reading in bed to the floor with a low “thud” and startling Crookshanks from his slumber. Annoyed, he angrily hissed at her for a moment, and then resettled into the covers again to go back to sleep.

Hermione barely paid him any mind. Throwing off the covers, she replaced the book on the nightstand, slipped her feet into her slippers and stumbled out of the room. The flat was quiet and cool, save for Harry's voice in the fire and the sound of the flames, and filled with the golden-white sunlight pouring in from the morning without. As she appeared in the doorway Harry looked up at her from his Floo conversation in the fireplace, at first confused, and then his features softened into a smile.

“Good morning, stranger.”

He looked as if he had just stepped out of the shower. His skin was flushed as if he had had the same hot bath she had the night before. His messy black hair was still wet at the ends, and stuck up somewhat comically about his head while water occasionally ran down his neck and face. His usually vivid green eyes were bright and alert, and though she did not want to, she couldn't help but notice the way his shirt stuck to parts of wet skin.

She smiled back, “Good morning, everything quiet?”

He nodded, “I made you breakfast… or rather, Mrs Weasley made us breakfast and sent it through with a friend of ours… you remember Avril?”

She turned to the kitchen just as Bill and Fleur's three year old coppery red-haired, sea blue-eyed daughter peered round a counter, and smiled at her. Hermione stooped at once, and Avril came running into her arms. Always happy to see her, the child took care to secure herself on Hermione's hip before saying in-between a giggle, “Good morning! You want to eat?”

Hermione kissed her little forehead and replied, “Yes, I can't wait.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she spied Harry staring at their exchange with a hint of a smile on his lips. She continued to Avril, “Why don't you go on ahead, and I'll come and eat with you?”

The little girl immediately wriggled out of her arms and ran off to the kitchen, giggling again. Hermione turned to Harry, “Mrs Weasley actually sent her only granddaughter over here with breakfast for us, alone? How did you arrange that?”

“No, I kidna-brought her when I stopped over at the house this morning. Dufftown is quiet again, and so we have the next nine hours to ourselves—well, partially—and then we have to meet Neville and the others in the pub,” he replied.

“We're meeting Neville and 'the others' in the pub?” she asked.

“Yes, they haven't seen you all year, and frankly neither have I, we have to celebrate,” he told her.

At this Hermione sighed, but unlike the night before, this was a sigh of exasperation. “Why do you never tell me about these things beforehand? I could have had plans you know?” she demanded, suddenly unreasonably irritated.

Harry smirked at her, “Since when?” and then realising his mistake back-pedalled and asked sincerely instead, “You don't, do you?”

“No,” Hermione replied, curtly. “But I could have… Harry, I can't be available to go out with you and 'the others' every time you're free. I have things to—”

He cut her off before she could begin her rant, “I'm on vacation. I arranged it with Kingsley weeks ago so that we'd have time off together… so, for the next two months any time you're free, I'm free too.”

That was… unexpected. For the past two years it had felt as if there was this gulf between them, a horrible invisible gulf between them, and now this? Shocked, for a time she could not properly respond and then realising that she had to say something, she replied lamely, “Oh.”

Harry arched an eyebrow, and his expression changed from appeasing to slightly smug. That irritated her even more, and then Avril spared them the inevitable awkward discourse, running back into the room calling, “Don't you want to eat? Uncle, Gramma sent for you too.”

Hermione turned to her at once, and replied quickly, “Of course I do, let's leave Uncle Harry to his conversation.”

At this Harry seemed to remember that he had been speaking through the fireplace and turned back apologising. Hermione tried not to listen. When she was not missing him, enveloped in his scent, she was exasperated and frustrated by him, by his unpredictability, and by his refusal to give up the fight against those who sought to kill him.

Wasn't it enough that they had taken Ron?

And then sometimes, just sometimes, he would do something that would erase his mistakes in a heartbeat, such as then.

He had made arrangements weeks before, before she had even left Hogwarts, before she had even begun to think about the impending end of the school year, to spend his vacation with her. For some reason she could not help but smile as she helped Avril with her pancake syrup. It was just so… Harry, to do something like that, after so long… after all that had happened….

She (or rather they) was on her third syrup and butter-soaked pancake when Harry at last joined them at the table. Sitting across from her, he took a moment to tease Avril before drawing over the pancake platter and the syrup bowl. And straight away Hermione was assaulted by his scent, where soap replaced sweat, and melded seamlessly with his cologne.

None the wiser, Harry asked, “So… how was your year?”

“Dull compared to yours,” she replied.

“I like it that way. So tell me about teaching, and your students. Any you've developed a soft spot for, namely skinny, messy-haired, green-eyed boys with glasses and their red-headed friends?” he asked, reaching over to claim the butter dish from Avril.

Hermione pushed it over to him, “There's nothing really to tell. I love it, I mean, I love being able to show them something and watch them understand and apply it later. I know it sounds terribly cliché but I do. I love to see them, each and every one of them, every day. There's this one girl, Paisley—blonde hair, brown eyes and freckles—who is so smart but so lonely that sometimes I just call her to my office to talk. Maybe she'll have better luck in Second Year. I love setting up the lesson plans, and the tests, and—”

Harry had paused, listening while she spoke, and as she got to “tests”, he exclaimed, “I knew it! I'm sure that that's the highlight of Hermione Granger's entire year, 'tests'! You probably have them written out before you've even begun the year.”

She glared at him, “I do not! You can't set a test without knowing how much you've covered for the year. You can't test someone for something they haven't been taught!”

Just as irrationally as moments before she was irritated again, so what if he thought she was a swot?

“If you say so… but moving on, how are Professor McGonagall and Hagrid?” he asked now that he was satisfied that he had wound her up a bit.

Unfortunately, he had wound her up a bit and she snapped, “Why don't you go visit them and find out?”

“Haven't the time,” he replied, and then immediately changed the topic again. “How are your parents?”

She let him, “They're fine, missing me, wished that I would move home with them again, but they're fine.”

“I kept you away from them, didn't I?” he asked quietly, his mind wandering down that path again….

Hermione rolled her eyes to keep herself from joining him, “Oh don't be silly. The war kept me away from them, and if it hadn't they probably wouldn't be here to miss me. If I didn't help you… well….”

“Didn't do Ron much good did it?” asked Harry, without malice.

A strained silence fell over the table, where Avril became the only other source of life (Hedwig was asleep at Harry's desk, Crookshanks lost to the bedroom) and a noisy one. She began chattering almost as soon as they stopped speaking, recounting a story of the day before where she had apparently been attaching something that sounded suspiciously like “garden gnomes” to kites with Fred and George. She didn't seem to notice or care for the adults' discomfort, and that suited them just fine. She deserved to be innocent.

And then they were interrupted by the sound of a voice in the flames. Hermione had heard it so many times that she didn't need a second thought to identify its owner, it was Kingsley.

Coughing mildly, he called to Harry, “Harry, Harry are you there?”

Harry was up and out of the kitchen in an instant. Hermione could not suppress the feeling of being crushed. Breakfast was over, ruined, for no doubt there was another disturbance somewhere. She said nothing though, as she continued to help Avril and tried to shut out the conversation going on behind her.

It made its way to her though. A fire in Bristol, Death Eaters spied, the Dark Mark hovering over a few Wizard homes, he was on vacation but she knew that he would go anyway.

Before it was over she called to him in the living room, “You can go if you want to, I'll clean up here and return the little hostage.”

There was a pause, and then Harry took a stab at protesting, “Really, `cause I wanted to spend some time catching up with you before—”

“Yes, I'm sure, it's okay, I know Kingsley there wouldn't call if it wasn't important,” she replied.

“It is,” he quickly confirmed, needlessly.

Faced with her “permission” and Kingsley's insistence, Harry could say nothing more than, “Okay… I'll get my robes… um… see you in a few.”

As he disappeared to his bedroom, and the fireplace fell silent, Hermione could not help the intense feeling of solitude that descended upon her.

But this one was her fault, wasn't it?

-->

A/N: Part deux of this little saga, but don't worry, it probably won't reach ten chapters. I have stuff to do. This chapter is more angst, nothing really important happens, but it's linked to all important drinking episode. Heh, enjoy.

Disclaimer: As if she would ever write this, she is much too cool.

*~***~*

An Evening at the Pub

Harry was not back by the time they were appointed to go to the pub that evening. Hermione, who had not been holding her breath, who had been more than expecting something like this, was not surprised. But still, as she searched through her closet for something “pub-worthy”, she could barely resist the inexplicable urge to cry.

Why this time, why this summer more than the others was she bothered by this, she could not tell. But she was.

After his big smile and big announcement and the hints of his big plans, he was off at work and she was home alone. It was like last summer, and the one before that, and if she thought about it, every vacation in-between when they should have been together and were not. Could she really seriously consider him her “best friend” when they only saw each other at special Ministry-hosted events, Christmas and when it could be “scheduled”?

It sounded more like he was an acquaintance; she had a closer relationship with Ron.

She stopped going through the closet and released a loud, exasperated sigh. She was not his girlfriend or his wife; she had to get a grip.

The closet was empty, and Crookshanks was half-buried under a pile of clothes on her bed. The fat little bundle of orange fur was not happy… as if his mistress noticed.

She had nothing, absolutely nothing in her closet that didn't scream “swot”. No wonder Harry knew she would have no plans for that evening, a Friday of all days. No wonder Witch Weekly completely ignored her existence, even when going over stories from the war that she was directly involved in. No wonder she was always alone.

But she didn't date Viktor Krum and was assaulted by Cormac McLaggen because they pitied her.

Drawing her wand, she lazily commanded, “Pack!” and watched her clothes fly off the bed and back to their positions in the closet, sorted by season and colour. Then she summoned the bag from yesterday's shopping trip she had stashed under the bed. She was wrong when she thought she would never wear the cocktail dress. Well, that was, once she had added some changes, like a shirt.

Crookshanks gave her a reproachful glare from the bed. She pointedly looked away, and muttered, “I'm not going on a date. It's just the pub and I need to look like I do this often….”

The cat refused to acknowledge her.

The regulars were just beginning to file in when Hermione finally arrived at The Fire-breather's Lair forty-five minutes later. She was still alone, but now dressed in jeans, a jumper and indigo robes, and doing her best to melt into the crowd. It was a cool night out in London, and the streets of Diagon Alley were crowded. The cocktail dress here would have been far too conspicuous.

It may have been four years since the war's end, but Harry would flip if he found out she had drawn unnecessary attention to herself.

Neville and 'the others'—Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnegan, Parvati Patil, Lavender Brown, Luna Lovegood, Ginny, the Creevey brothers, Dennis and Colin, and Ernie Macmillan—were already there at what looked like a reserved table at the back of the pub. She had to wonder how often they came to this pub to have that. Away at Hogwarts the only options she had were The Three Broomsticks and the Hog's Head Inn. And the former was usually heavily populated by students, while the latter had too many dubious inhabitants to be frequented safely.

Besides, having tea with Hagrid and Fang was always fun.

The first to spy her was Neville, round-faced, slightly plump and cheerful, and he waved her over with a smile. At his movement the others looked up, and she released an internal sigh of relief when instead of frowning they all smiled brightly as well. She smiled back then and quickly weaved her way through the gathering patrons—puffing away on their pipes, or downing glasses of firewhiskey like water—to their booth.

She made a point of ignoring their faces when they realised that she was unaccompanied by a certain wizard.

Under a magical poster of the Irish National Team and a homemade dartboard from a Wanted poster of a Death Eater she recognised as Macnair, the ten had squashed themselves into a lounge chair round an old rectangular table. If it had been magically expanded or had been made that way, she could not tell, but they did all look comfortable.

The Creevey brothers were at the ends facing each other. The closest to her, Colin, sat next to Dean, who was seated next to Parvati, with Lavender beside her, then Seamus, Neville, Luna, Ginny, Ernie and finally Dennis. It didn't look as if they had started ordering their drinks yet, but Ginny and Lavender were both nursing something. With the addition of her, and Harry, when (if) he arrived though, it didn't look likely that they would be able to so comfortably move around as the butterbeers worked on their systems. Yet when she got to the table, the others shifted, and she slid in beside Colin with ease.

At once Ginny started in on her, (after the introductory chorus, “Welcome back Professor Granger!”) “Where's Harry, he arranged this little welcome party and he's not here?”

“Kingsley called him this morning, something in Bristol,” Hermione explained, quietly. She was glad to see them again, she really was, but she didn't quite feel… in the mood to discuss Harry.

Oblivious to her mood though, and undeterred by her tone, Ginny continued, “How was your year? We've all been waiting to hear about it, well, they have, I was doing my best not to tell them.”

“Oh really? Who's Paisley, Hermione?” asked Seamus, and Ginny glared at him.

Hermione forced herself to smile, as Ginny confessed, “Well… not to tell them everything. But you can't expect us not to be excited about this; we kind of always knew you would be a teacher.”

“Actually… I wanted to be a Healer,” said Hermione.

“Oh no, being a teacher is much better. I was just telling them about my books, I finally had a chance to go through some of them last night and you would not believe the stuff I have to learn before the end of this year!” replied Ginny, and then launched into a detailed explanation.

Quite unintentionally, Hermione tuned her out and turned her attentions to the others. It was not long since she had last seen them, Christmas, was it, and still they looked as if they had grown older. Or maybe it was just her, the constancy of young faces and much, much older ones polluting the images of her friends in her memory.

Harry never aged though. Oh no, not him. He had to grow old before her eyes, and not in the gaps in time between their meetings.

Colin, Ginny, Luna and Dennis, at twenty and nineteen respectively, looked a full year older than they were. For Ginny and Luna she would blame exhaustion. The work of a Healer-in-training could surely be blamed for the lank, messy look of Ginny's fiery red hair and the slight bags beneath her cinnamon brown eyes. Her still relatively new position as her father's employee at The Quibbler, and the task of raising a rambunctious, nearly four year old, almost stubbornly on her own clearly had made Luna's straggly dirty blonde hair even stragglier, but somehow made her wide pale blue eyes brighter. But she had more pronounced bags under her eyes, a decidedly wan complexion and an apparently put-on smile.

She made a mental note to visit and take little Gemma off Luna's hands more often.

As her eyes adjusted to the lighting though, she was happy to find that the Creevey brothers, one, a photographer for the Daily Prophet, the other just out of Hogwarts, looked much more eager-eyed and on the cusp of life.

Depressingly, she thought, the war had not gotten to them, but life soon would.

Seamus, Neville, Dean, Lavender, Parvati and Ernie, all had shared a year with her, and then indirectly, a war. Gone off now to their new careers, Seamus and Dean in training to be Aurors (why weren't they in Bristol?), Neville in study to be a Herbologist, Lavender and Parvati (as expected) to Witch Weekly, and Ernie to the Ministry, they had become serious, wearied and bore slightly hardened looks though they were not yet her age. What each would not give for a chance to redo their school years stress free?

What she, and they, would not give to be free of being haunted by Harry?

Ginny was speaking to her again, “—so you're going to be on your own tomorrow.”

“What?” asked Hermione, suddenly alert, and feeling rather confused.

Parvati smiled pityingly, “You need to get out more. You were daydreaming in company.”

Hermione forced another smile, and shook her head, “I'm just… really tired.”

“Of doing what?” asked Ginny, sceptically. “According to Mum you spent the entire day at home, and you brought Avril back early.”

“I was reading, and trying to put together lesson plans for next year. I see you all don't know the merits of finishing work early so you'll have plenty of free time later,” replied Hermione.

The others exchanged glances, Ginny sighed, and said, “As I was saying while you were 'out', you and Harry will be on your own tomorrow with Ron. I'm not going to explain why, but you are.”

Automatically, Hermione responded, “Oh, that's okay; we haven't spent that much time alone with him like we used to. And besides, it's not like if he knows who's there or not anyway.”

She did not voice her thought though: but I do, and if it's just Harry and me, I might as well go alone.

*~*~*

Why was he here?

No, not why was he alive, he knew that one. To save the Wizarding world, had his name down for it since Voldemort decided he wanted to live forever and rule the world while he was at it. After he defeated (read: killed) him, he realised that he would not be completely victorious until he stopped his most hardened supporters too, and so joined the Aurors.

The question he wanted answered was why was he in Bristol?

By the time he had arrived there that morning most of the rebels had been rounded up and a small street fire put out. There was practically nothing for him to do, and if he thought about it, no reason for Kingsley to call him out of the house. It was not like those times when he needed rescue from a bad date or a way out of an awkward Weasley family dinner.

Kingsley though, had had him stick around for interrogations he only witnessed, and processing it was not necessary to involve him in, and even after Harry pointed this out.

But then those interrogations revealed the details of a planned raid in Greater Hangleton, and since he was already there, why not kip over and give some of his colleagues a hand? It was not like he had anything better to do, and surely Hermione would understand if he was a little late. She was not his girlfriend or his wife.

She used to be the former… he wished she would be the latter….

Of course, the “raid” in Greater Hangleton just had to be an ambush, so that when he and the others got there they were pounced on like a lioness on a too-slow wildebeest. They put up a good fight under the circumstances of course. And though only surviving on breakfast Harry managed to hold out until their leader was captured and dragged from the house in a Full Body-Bind.

So the day wasn't a complete bust, was it?

But, it was then that he realised that he was bleeding, and had been doing so for quite some time.

Oh, Hermione was going to kill him. As soon as she had gone over him herself, just to be sure that no serious damage had been done and a trip to St Mungo's was unnecessary, she was going to kill him. He might as well admit it now, send away the Mediwizard currently attending to the seven-inch long slash in his side, dump the last of that Blood-Replenishing potion and go home to his fate.

Though she had been the most supportive of his decision to join the Aurors after the war, he knew she was only half-joking when she said she would “finish what Voldemort started” if he ever got hurt.

With a bit of luck though, he would be home and in bed before Hermione got back from the pub. She was no heavy drinker, nor one to be out late, but she hadn't seen their friends in a long time.

The Mediwizard had just left him sitting on a park bench as the last of the Magical Reversal Squad were finishing up with the Muggles, when Kingsley approached. Harry looked up at him; the tall black Auror with the gold hoop in his ear gave a nod in greeting, and asked, “Flesh wound?”

“I hope so,” Harry replied, lazily. The pain-relieving charm the Mediwizard had used had an effect like morphine, making him sleepy.

He blinked twice, rubbed his sleepy eyes and stifled a yawn. Kingsley looked him over with a furrowed brow, and said, “You should go home; I forgot you were on vacation.”

Oh really, so what was all that this morning?

Harry shook his head weakly, “No, it's okay; I want to know what this was all about.”

And then, just out of the blue, Kingsley asked the last question Harry thought he would, “Don't you think Miss Granger would have a problem with that?”

Harry looked up at him at once, surprised, and Kingsley continued, “Just go home, Potter. We'll see to them, unless it's something very serious you're on vacation.”

Harry grunted his concession, exhaled heavily, forced himself to stand and staggered away to find a safe point to Disapparate. He was too weak now to figure out what Kingsley meant.

*~*~*

Hermione had just walked into her room to change, lazily kicking away shoes as she went, when she heard the flat's front door open, and the sound of Harry stumbling in. At last, at long last he was home… and just in time to completely miss their pub outing.

Without really knowing why, her anger flared up again and she hurried back into the living room to him.

“Where have you been?” she demanded, angrily.

He looked like a deer in headlights, or more appropriately, a naughty child caught with his hands in the cookie jar. His messy hair was now filled with clumps of dirt, there was something that looked frightfully like dried blood at the hem of his robes, and he looked wearier than she had ever seen him. After his initial surprise at seeing her something settled in his eye that was clearly unabashed gawking… and then it was gone.

“Goodnight, how was your day Hermione?” he asked lightly, doing his best to disguise a limp as he walked to the sofa.

“I had to go to the pub alone! I haven't seen them in months; do you know how many times I must have embarrassed them? It was so awkward, I needed you there, Harry!” she nearly yelled, overreacting.

Why was this bothering her so much, why oh why was this bothering her so?

“Well, Kingsley needed me too!” he snapped, irritated by her behaviour.

“Dean and Seamus are Aurors, and they were at the pub!” she declared. “The disturbance in Bristol couldn't have been so bad if they were there!”

There was no way he was going to admit that she was right, “They're still in training—”

“If the situation was serious enough to call you out of vacation, shouldn't they have called them out too?” she cut him off, heatedly.

Harry was not going to sit there and be yelled at, she was being ridiculous. He made to get off the sofa, but his recently charm-healed flesh was still sore and he could not strangle a groan of pain as he moved. He valiantly tried to cover it up, masking it as a groan of frustration, but Hermione Granger was no fool. In an instant she was beside him and forcing him back into the sofa's cushions.

He could not help but think about a time when something like this was for an entirely different reason.

She did not hesitate to yank his shirt from his pants, and pulled it open, sending buttons popping. His flesh exposed and the thin line where the cut had been revealed, she reached a hand to examine it. And then Harry's lower stomach region twitched nervously, and he immediately held her hands away from him.

For a moment she looked up at him as if she understood the problem, but then she was angry again and demanded, “What happened?”

“Death Eater, and a well-placed Severing Charm—it's only a flesh wound,” he grumbled, disgruntled at being caught out.

Hermione did not agree with him, and, as if on cue, her face crumpled and her eyes filled with tears. His anger melted away instantly.

He hated weepy girls; he truly did, for he did not know how to handle them. But a weepy Hermione, a moody Hermione, an anything but happy Hermione was someone for whom he would make exception. More often than not it was his fault… such as now.

But Hermione hated being weepy too, and pushed him off as he rose to comfort her, slipping his hands round her back.

“No Harry, I'm so sorry, you're hurt and here I am yelling at you for no good reason. Did they give you a Pain-Relieving potion? I might have some in the cupboard, I'll get it…”

He once again took hold of her hands, but this time to keep her where she was.

“It's okay Hermione; the Mediwizard knew what he was doing. I'm just a little sleepy… now… that's all.”

For emphasis he yawned, and lay back unto the sofa. She studied him for a long tense moment, and then he felt her relax and lie back with him. If he looked down at her though, he would find that her eyes were still shining with their unshed bounty.

“I'm sorry, Hermione,” he said, with meaning and began to stroke her hair. “I'm so very, very sorry.”

-->

A/N: Yes, I know this update is very late, but I've been focusing on the other story I've been writing and so had no time to really do this one. Somehow it feels incomplete, like I've left something out, or lost something that was there in the earlier chapters. I promise that this should never happen again, please do tell what you think anyway.

Disclaimer: Getting bored of writing these, will adopt a standard one soon, for lawyers never tire of lawsuits. Until then, nope, nothing is mine except the plot and those two little kids.

*~***~*

Ron

As expected, Harry was late for their morning visit to Ron in St Mungo's the next day.

When Hermione awoke she was still on the couch, but alone and covered with a quilt from his room. The weak early morning sunlight was barely a whisper across the floor, but the clamour of the world outside had long risen. Hedwig's head was drooping as she succumbed to the call of sleep in her corner, age and the night's hunt finally catching up with her. And Crookshanks had surprisingly left the comfort of her room and soft bed to curl uncomfortably near her feet.

But she barely noticed any of this, Harry was gone.

A note lay on the end table beside her.

“Had something to take care of, meet you there. Sorry, Harry.”

She crumpled it in fury and hurled it at the door.

In a strange sort of way this was rather funny. Hadn't she just the night before thought of going to visit Ron alone if she was supposed to be with Harry?

Too bad she didn't want to laugh.

Through breakfast and changing after, she operated on an absent-minded auto-pilot. She barely noticed that she had no milk in her cereal until she was halfway through it and Crookshanks nudged her leg. She was long out of toothpaste before she noticed she was still brushing her teeth. She was reaching for her towel when she realised that she had showered without soap. But what was surely the worst of all, for it rather reminded her of a childhood nightmare, she was nearly out the door before she realised she had forgotten pants.

Then she laughed, but it was mirthless.

As she went back for a pair she tried to reason that her behaviour was because of Ron. Every year when she returned from Hogwarts her guilt would drive her to distraction. What right did she and Harry have to lives of their own when one-third of their whole couldn't?

She ignored Crookshanks accusing eyes, as if he could read her mind, and the fact that the reverse of that argument had been her rationale to move on four years before.

“What would Ron think of us putting our lives on hold just because of him? Luna's already doing it and they were so close, so why can't we?”

This was not because of Harry, it was all about Ron.

Knowing that she was a bit early still, she decided to take the long way to St Mungo's. The long way being the Knight Bus where she would sit among strangers who either pretended or really didn't know who she was, where she would be leered at by the occasional drifter and finally leave feeling and no doubt, smelling, dirty. And even after all of that, when she arrived at the magical hospital Harry would still not be there.

She hoped that that “something” was of the life-threatening, dangerous to the Wizarding world variety.

Not entirely sure why, once she had gotten to St Mungo's (the journey there being just as she expected minus the leering, today she was just ignored) she sought out Ginny. She had told her the night before that she had something to do that day and therefore couldn't visit with them, but that was after her morning rounds.

And besides—Hermione was sure she didn't add—she could visit him any time she wished now that she was training in St Mungo's itself. In fact the only people who actually saw little of Ron in his immediate family were the two people he had considered his closest friends for nearly seven years.

And the youngest Weasley was already on her rounds, accompanying her Healer Instructor and two others around the hospital's wards when Hermione arrived. Hermione just spotted her in the lifts on her way to another floor, and she could only wave and smile before the doors shut in her face. That was probably the last time she would see her all day.

There went that idea.

Now resigned to her fate, Hermione walked to the lifts, waited for another to arrive and took it straight up to the Spell Damage Ward. Ron's room was at the end of the hall on the floor, a private one that had been heavily decorated with objects from his room, pictures of a daughter he never knew and especially chosen for the fact that every morning he would be greeted by the sunrise. It had been Harry's idea, so that when he woke up he would already be oriented to the flat.

Harry always said “when”, it never crossed his mind in the slightest that that “when” might never come… or that Ron would want to go with Luna, but that was beside the point.

Four years ago, in the last moments of the Second War, Ron walked into a trap that was intended for Harry. It had been set earlier by the Death Eaters to capture and bring him to Voldemort, but Harry had broached Voldemort another way.

She tried not to think of it as she got to his door and stepped into the room. But the sight of him lying there still, barely breathing, unmoving, his usually bright red hair now limp and dull, his once handsome features sunken, every visible muscle flaccid and his skin deathly pale… it brought it back as vividly as the day as it had happened.

“C'mon! We have to get to Harry! The Dark Mark's gone! Look, it's gone from their arms, Harry's won!”

“Ron! Ron, wait! Stop! We don't-we shouldn't… he doesn't want us to come… he'll come to us—”

“Hermione, you know full well he told you that nonsense to keep you away in case anything went wrong! The mark's gone, Voldemort's gone! Let's go!”

“Ron, I don't think—”

Without warning, in the midst of her protest he simply fell. And four years later he still hadn't woken up.

A subsequent interrogation of the Death Eaters who had set up the trap revealed why. Poison, delivered by a dart that struck him directly in the neck, and the only reason he hadn't died was because the dosage wasn't strong enough. The intention had been to incapacitate Harry, not kill him… and instead they got Ron.

Surprisingly, Harry hadn't blamed himself for it happening. She had been absolutely convinced he would, had been preparing for it, waiting for it, but it never came. Instead his depression found ground in the number who had died before they managed to reach Voldemort. And it was officially in their name that he signed up with the Aurors.

Of course, if she thought about it, maybe he had blamed himself.

It wasn't long after that that they broke up, his excuse being that he didn't want his career to get in the way of her dreams. That he didn't want her to be worrying about him when she should have been planning her class schedules and tests (the same tests he teased her about). And he gave her no choice in the matter when he began to exclude her name in interviews, said a little too much to her father one night at dinner (which got her nineteen year old self banned from the Wizarding world forever) and did his very best to avoid her.

She was too weak then, too drained from it all to put up much of a fight.

And so it had come to this: Ron comatose and she and Harry once more “very best friends” who just happened to share a flat. It was only in the name of civility that she pretended it never happened and all was well… but she couldn't pretend about Ron.

Walking to his bed now, Hermione stopped, as she always did, just away from him and commanded, softly, “Ron… wake up! Wake up, Ron! It's a beautiful day outside, the Chudley Cannons are still playing Quidditch, Gemma's in preschool and I think Ginny's got a new boyfriend, so you get up! Get up!”

No response.

But she would have been greatly surprised if she had gotten one, all the Healers agreed that he would eventually wake up on his own. As far as she could see though, that was not happening.

Her ritual done, Hermione drew up a chair and sat down. Closer now she could hear his breathing, low, even, hypnotic, hear the rhythmic beat of his heart, and just catch the last traces of his scent: dirt, old socks and broomstick polish. It was an almost completely stereotypically male combination, where, when he was awake, one of the three main would be replaced by his last meal or the old wood of his Wizard's Chess board. Now though, it never changed, no matter how many times he was cleaned and swathed in Mrs Weasley's knitting or covered in something Gemma made. That was good; Hermione knew only too well now that not all change was for the best.

Curiously, she was suddenly assaulted by the memory of Harry's scent, overwhelming her as she lay in his arms on the couch….

She sat silently staring at him like this for a while, and then began, “So here's what I did this year. And unlike Harry I know you're going to sit around and listen to the whole thing.”

She was halfway through her recount of a particularly humorous incident involving her First Years, where a rather Neville-like boy got his hair turned green, when she noticed him.

He had been standing in the doorway, dressed in the Aurors' trademark black work robes (which explained where he had been, “Oh Harry!”) listening intently. She only noticed him when he shifted, apparently so that he could hear her better, but the door got away from him and he stumbled into the room. Or rather, when somewhere in the back of her mind she realised that Ron most certainly did not go “Meep!”

She stopped mid-sentence and turned at once. Still bowed slightly, he immediately straightened and grinned sheepishly at her. She did not return it.

“Ginny told me you were up here,” he explained, grin reduced to a half-smile, “When I heard you telling your story I didn't want to disturb you.”

“If you were a little earlier you could have heard it all from the beginning,” she said.

“Had something to do,” he replied, echoing his note. “Besides, you've been away all year, you needed the extra alone time.”

He walked closer to the bed, took the opposite chair where the sunlight gilded his hair gold and white, and for a time just sat staring at Ron. Then he reached up, took his hand and gently squeezed. It was an action he would not have taken were he awake, but she had her ritual, and he had his.

She waited until he let him go again, to ask quietly, “Are you going to tell me where you were?”

She stood to fix Ron's sheet a little higher up his chest, though he never moved it always did.

“Tonight, at the pub,” he replied.

“You're actually going to make it there this time?” she asked, but nothing in her tone indicated real interest. After all, she didn't know they were going to the pub that evening, and on that alone she definitely wasn't going. And what was his fascination, his insistence that they go to the pub anyway? He knew she didn't really like it.

He inhaled sharply, stung, and replied, “I guess I deserved that… but yes, I'm going to make it this time, and we're not going to leave until we're both completely pissed. Do you know I haven't had a drop of firewhiskey since… the night before I met Voldemort?”

Hermione looked down at her hands in her lap, “Yes… it was the last time I had any too….”

And why should she drink any more, by the next afternoon Ron was on his way to St Mungo's in a stretcher.

Harry was in a teasing mood though, “Don't make it sound so bad, we had fun.”

“No, it wasn't,” she replied, still in that depressingly quiet tone, “My head hurt all day, it was a wonder I hadn't—”

“I wouldn't have let it happen,” Harry cut her off seriously, needlessly. “You knew then that if anything happened to you I would have probably died.”

She offered him a smile, and asked, “And who would have dealt with Voldemort?”

He did not smile when he replied, “You… you were the light in my world of darkness, my reason for breathing, living… if you had gone… I wouldn't have cared….”

For a time she said nothing, just stared at him, and then finally she asked, “When did that change?”

She was about to give him up as unable to find an answer when he replied, “Who says it did?”

*~*~*

When they finally left Ron, it was more than an hour and a half later. Like with a Muggle coma victim, the Healers advocated that it was good for Ron to hear familiar voices, if not speaking to him, at least speaking to each other. But Hermione and Harry had not been speaking at all.

After Harry's declaration of sorts, there was nothing left to say.

Or at least, Hermione could find nothing more to say. In one sentence he had deflated every argument she could have ever dreamed of coming up with, and set her mind spinning.

But the thoughts raging in her head were mostly, and surprisingly, angry.

What right did he have to do this to her? What right did he have to say something like that over Ron's hospital bed? What right did he have to try to sweep back into her life as if nothing had happened?

Okay, they had been living together for the past two years, and she had not made much of a fuss after they broke up the first time, but that didn't give him a right to think that all was well.

It was not okay for him to still care about her after he forced her away. It was not okay for him to shatter the carefully built shield she had tried to put around her heart. It was not okay for him to remind her of a time when his very presence used to fill her with a contentment out of place in their world of sadness. It was not okay, it was just not okay that he reminded her of how very much she loved him with just one sentence.

They took the Floo Network out of the hospital. Once their morning visit with Ron was over they were invited to dinner with the Weasleys at the Burrow.

Ginny had left before they left Ron, and was not there when they arrived. Harry, apparently unperturbed and ignorant of the effect his statement was having on her, whispered after they stepped out of the fireplace into the deserted living room, “It may not be a good idea to mention her absence in present company… she's with Malfoy.”

Hermione stopped and turned to him astonished, “Malfoy? Draco Malfoy?”

All at once every thought of his earlier announcement flew out of her head.

He nodded, “The one and only…. His regular Healer is out of town for the while, so Ginny, being her friend, decided to take her place. She swore she didn't know that her friend worked for Malfoy at the time, but…. I keep telling them to look on the bright side though; at least Malfoy's badly off. I wish it was worse than Ron but this will have to do.”

Hermione did not answer, just sighed, thinking of how much she had become distanced from the family of their best friend, and followed him out of the house.

Lunch was outside today, in the backyard where Bill, Fleur, the twins, their girlfriends, Luna and Mr and Mrs Weasley were already sitting down to eat. As Harry and Hermione came through the door they looked up and immediately greeted them with smiles. The only children present, Avril, and Gemma, who had inherited her father's bright red hair, which Luna had today pulled into reluctant pigtails, and showed her excitement, also like him, entirely in her ice blue eyes, actually hopped off the bench and ran to them. Both girls squealed delightedly, “Good day, good day Harry!”

Harry swept them up in his arms immediately, kissed their heads and said, “Good day to you two, too! Um… good day everyone, what's for lunch?”

Hermione quietly, and somewhat nervously, murmured beside him, “Good day.”

Mrs Weasley smiled, “Good day, Harry, Hermione… come on and eat. Put those children down Harry, they'll ruin your clothes, they've been having quite a day playing in the mud.”

“I don't mind,” replied Harry, then he turned to Hermione and asked, “Do you mind?”

He pushed the two giggling girls in his arms towards her, she smiled and made a face at them, and shook her head, “No, I don't mind.”

“Put them down anyway,” insisted Mrs Weasley, “Your lunch is getting cold.”

All three groaned and Harry set the girls down again, and as they ran off said, “Well then, at least this one is clean.”

Before Hermione had time to think about what he meant, he turned to her, swung her up into his arms and carried her to the table. And he pointedly ignored her protesting squeals and struggles until he set her down at the bench, sat himself, and then turned to Mrs Weasley again, “What's for lunch?”

Hermione looked at him solidly shocked for a full minute, before he placed a ridiculously full plate before her and commanded, “Eat. You've gotten far too thin; I'm going to have a talk with Dobby about what they're serving at Hogwarts nowadays.”

She looked to the others for help, but they were just the same, all cheerful and busily talking to Harry. It was as if she wasn't there… and then she was, as if she had never left.

Fred floated a glass of juice her way, Luna drew her eyes with a smile and tried to get Gemma to say her name, Mrs Weasley broke away from conversation with Harry to address her… it was almost as if Ron was still there sitting with them.

But he wasn't, and might never be again.

-->

A/N: From the chapter title alone you can see where this is going, can't you? I apologise for the nonsense you made read further on, though I will not for some of Hermione's dialogue, it was hilarious to write. Again, I reiterate that I don't know when I will be able to post the next chapter to this or my other story, but I will try.

Disclaimer: Checked with lawyer, still hers, so don't sue.

*~***~*

Ogden's Helping Hand

Surely a first for him, Harry managed to make it to the pub this time. And what was more, he was actually facilitating the reason Hermione was having a good time.

Of all the inventions and innovations provided by magic, Hermione had to say (and she couldn't believe that she was doing it at that) by far the best was Ogden's old brew, that wonderful thing: firewhiskey. Really, the stuff was award worthy. In fact, if she was in charge of it, she would hand good ol' Oggie the Order of Merlin, First Class as soon as she saw him. He thoroughly deserved it.

For the first time in… well, she couldn't really think of when at the moment, but she could say a long time, she felt absolutely stress free. No more silly worries about lesson plans and unruly students and poor lonely Paisley who was now happily on vacation with her family again. No more nonsense about missing Harry when he was right there or wondering about Ron or trying to sort through the mess she called her life. One tall glass of firewhiskey, no chasers to prove a point, and Hermione was more relaxed than she had ever dared to be.

Oh how dangerous was that.

She had arrived at the pub alone again; Harry had something else to 'take care of' and had left the Weasley luncheon early. Again the others had managed to cover their disappointment with bright smiles and warm greetings as she made the way to the table. And again Hermione had pretended that she was not at all bothered by Harry's behaviour, though this time it was made distinctly difficult by his revelation in the hospital.

But just as Seamus and Dean began to coax Neville into a silly drinking game, and Ginny—newly returned from Malfoy Manor, and apparently unharmed—Lavender and Parvati all rolled their eyes with Hermione, a round of impromptu applause broke out at the entrance of the pub. At once she looked up, and couldn't believe her eyes.

He was there, Harry was actually there.

At last out of his work robes in what was surely the first time in days he wore a set of clean dark green ones over a khaki and red-striped polo-neck t-shirt and dark blue jeans. His hair had been recently washed, and occasionally droplets of water dripped onto his shoulders and back. He looked completely ruggedly handsome, and many a witch between him and their table stood in his path as he approached with the hopes that he might notice them and have a seat.

He didn't, just continued straight to his friends who stared at him with more surprise than Hermione thought they would have. And then not entirely sure why, she stood up and called to the bartender, “One bottle of Firewhiskey please, sir!”

Harry, halfway to them and nervously shrugging off the patrons slowly swarming him, and all at the table, looked at her in shock. The mortification came sweeping in, but she couldn't back down, they had all heard her, and so she quickly turned it into a joke, “Well of course, Harry's actually made it this time. This calls for a celebration.”

That did the trick. The others burst out laughing, and Harry, once he finally stood with them, said, “Cheeky today, are we?”

She gave her bravest smile, which quickly vanished as the bottle appeared before them.

Oh, what had she been thinking?

She could not clearly recall now though, how she had managed to get the first drink of the black, gently smoking liquid. It might have involved something with Seamus and Neville… or maybe Dean and the Creevey brothers… or even Ginny and the other women, but somehow she ended up summoning a tall glass, no chasers and poured herself a drink. She could recall though, the looks of awe and alarm she had received when she informed them that she needed nothing else, not even a Cooling Charm with it.

Someone had tried to plead reason, maybe Seamus or Harry. No, not Harry, he just stared at her until he could take it no more and tried to take the glass away. She smacked his hand off, no, she had to do it. She wanted to do it.

Someone else had tried to lift her away from the table. It was probably Dean, he had declared that as a Ministry official he could not sit by and watch while she hurt herself. She smacked him too, or maybe it was Harry and then the two of them ended up in a rather childish mock fight right there in the middle of the aisle with a crowd of patrons cheering.

She rolled her eyes, sighed, and took a first big gulp.

Oh the pain. She remembered that perfectly. It felt as if someone had poured a can of petrol down her throat and set it ablaze. And this liquid fire had been let loose in a throat in which her tonsils had been forcibly removed by a mad surgeon with no anaesthetic and utensils soaked in freshly-squeezed lime only moments before. She choked immediately.

She coughed and gagged and coughed again until her eyes watered and some nutter beside her began thumping her back as if she had been choking. When she made to snap at them no sound came out of her mouth but her breath was so hot it felt like she was breathing flames. Harry forced a glass of ice-cold water in her hands, Ginny suggested that they give her some room… but suddenly it was all over. The pain in her throat vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and save for the slight burning in her chest she felt fine… and thirsty for more.

They had to fight her for the glass then, but she eventually tipped it into her mouth and after another painful episode, where she felt on the brink of a seizure, she grinned.

The bottle mysteriously vanished from the table at once.

It was too late though. Just as she had been, had come to be that night those few years ago, before rushing off to what they had all felt their deaths, she was drunk. And it was truly the most wonderful experience. Why ever had she thought she would never do this again? What a clichéd, Miss Goody-Two Shoes, swotty, by-the-book thing to say. Frankly, she was sure she had just discovered her new favourite pastime.

But for some reason, Harry didn't seem to be enjoying it with her.

As a matter of fact, while the others had all shook their heads and given up on her and gone back to their own conversations and drinks—butterbeers this time—he was just staring her. She interacted in the conversation as much as she could (though it was not all that coherent) she ordered herself a bit of butterbeer to wash out a wave of nausea that had come over, (another bad idea, in retrospect, as this seemed to stir the potency of the firewhiskey) she even apologised profusely for her behaviour at one point, but still Harry just sat there, staring. It was beginning to get annoying really.

She was doing her best to ignore him then, who was he to tell her that she couldn't enjoy a little social drinking now and then? If she could recall correctly he was the one who had smuggled the firewhiskey from the Black house's secret wine cellar and had suggested a “going-away party” of sorts.

Or it could have been Ron; again, her memory was a little haywire at the moment. She couldn't be sure but the firewhiskey may have scorched a few brain cells on its way through her system.

But still, how dare he try to give her that holier-than-thou, I-can't-believe-you-did-that, what-the-hell-is-this-all-about look?

Finally though, she could take it no more, and asked, “What? Why are you staring at?”

His brow furrowed as he took a moment to puzzle over what she had just said, and then he stood abruptly. The others all turned to him too, as did a few other patrons who had been spying nearby, but he ignored them, seized her arm and said, “We're leaving, now.”

“What?” she asked, and yanked her arm away from him.

“I think we need to talk,” he told her.

“What fur?” she slurred, glaring at him and rubbing her arm. His grip had been unnecessarily strong.

“You're drunk,” he replied.

She turned to the others and scoffed, “I know that.”

“Good,” he said, and grabbed her arm again and forced her upright.

Colin, who had the unfortunate position of being between them, could only slump back as Harry proceeded to force his way out of the booth, pushing her before him. She tried to protest again, but Harry ignored all her attempts at it until they were outside. Still dressed in the outfit from this morning, which was not entirely suitable to the chilly night air, she shivered slightly. Harry barely noticed.

Once they were out of the pub he forced her to face him and demanded, “What the hell are you on?”

She did not know why, she just said it, “Firewhiskey, and you?”

A man heading into the pub behind them laughed, Hermione was sure she saw something like a camera's flash, and she swayed and stumbled into Harry. He pulled her to him, gave her a moment to steady herself and immediately Disapparated them to the flat.

*~*~*

He would be lying to himself if he didn't say that he hadn't been expecting her to do it the second they appeared in their living room. With a loud “Thwack!” and a moment of temporary blindness after the blow landed, she had slapped him. His cheek reddened immediately, but he ignored the painful residual stinging as he tightened his grip on her arm and said, “What the hell are you playing at? How could you do that? Why did you do that?”

But Hermione pulled away from him, seemingly mortified at what she had just done.

In another lifetime he would have noted this reaction, filed it somehow and stored it away in the back of his mind for later perusal. Another time when she was less drunk and he less angry and wonder what it meant. Could it be, like in his delusions, she couldn't believe that she had just hit the man she loved? Or as it probably really was that she was just horrified that she had struck her best friend for saving her from public humiliation?

But not today, not now… now he just couldn't believe what had just happened in the pub?

Had that really just happened in the pub? Since when did Hermione take up drinking, and especially firewhiskey?

He came out of his thoughts though, when she started speaking, coming over to him from somewhere with an ointment-laced cloth and whispering softly, “I am so sorry, Harry. So very sorry, I don't know what came over me… I… oh goodness…. Does it hurt…?”

“What do you think?” he snapped, angrily, jerking away from her reach.

Her hands remained outstretched to him for a moment, but then she dropped them and said, surprisingly sullenly, “I said I was sorry.”

It was then that he realised that she was still drunk. She was swaying slightly where she stood, the smell of alcohol was strong on her breath and though when she looked up at him she was glaring the effect was slightly lost as her gaze was unfocused. He drew his wand, tried to think of a suitable spell for the situation and then tried to cast it on her.

Tried, of course, was the operative word, for just as quickly she deflected it (surprisingly good, her reflexes, though she was drunk) and said, “Don't… I'll sleep it off.”

“I need you sober, we have to talk,” he insisted, still wondering slightly at how quickly she had drawn her wand.

“What do we have to talk about? Why do we even need to talk? We went to the pub, I got drunk. It's what people do when they go to the pubs, it's what you said we were going to do.” she replied.

“It's not what you do,” he told her.

“How the hell do you know that? How the hell do you know that I don't drink? I drank with you and Ron! We were—I'm sorry, you were joking about that this morning, weren't you? Don't tell me that what I do or don't do!” she snapped.

She swore now, too?

“It's not what you do!” he nearly roared back.

Hedwig started from her perch and hooted angrily at them. Something dropped heavily to the floor in one of the bedrooms and suddenly Crookshanks appeared in the doorway, glaring at them both. Hermione took advantage of the distraction to throw the cloth she had brought at Harry and storm away. He grabbed her hand and pulled her back.

She stood fast though, but could go no further and refused to look back. He was forced to speak to her bushy mane instead, “What's happened to us, Hermione? What's wrong, what's going on here? I know something's wrong, I can see it on your face, in your eyes. You don't drink, you seem forever angry at me and today with Ron… you sounded so upset before you realised I was there and when you discovered me after that you were just angry. What did I do?”

“Not everything's about you,” she said, coldly.

“I have a feeling that this is,” he told her and pulled her round to face him.

She glared at him, furious, and tried to push him away but he wouldn't let her. Instead he told her, “Something is wrong with us, Hermione. We used to be so close, we used to be able to have a normal conversation, and all of sudden we can't. I know something is up, I just want to know what it is, help me… tell me what it is!”

For a moment longer she fought him, and then she stopped and said, “Oh what the hell, if it's bothering you so much….”

And then she kissed him.

The phrase “taken by complete and utter surprise” would be understating what he felt when all of sudden he felt her lips on his and her free arm slip round his neck to draw him into it. And “it” was, well, to quote another much-used phrase, was nothing like he had ever had before.

Instead of wet and guilty, like Cho's, or confident and playful like Ginny's, or even nervous, questioning and yet hopeful like hers had been when first they became a couple, this was filled with pain. And not because she had almost bitten his lip or that the firewhiskey on her breath was still strong, but because that was what she was feeling. Like people sometimes do, she had put her emotions into it and all that came from her was painful: anger, loneliness, hurt and disappointment. He couldn't believe that she was feeling that way.

But before he could pull away from her she managed to convey one last emotion that was surely the work of the alcohol in her blood. Oh it had been there before, sometimes during the war when they were alone in Grimmauld Place he had felt it, and they had played with it, grazing their fingers along the shimmering surface of its dangerously deep pool but never quite taking the dip. That last night before he had faced Voldemort they had very nearly fallen in, and if it weren't for Tonks stumbling into the room they very surely would have. And here tonight it was back again, forcing him to jerk out of her kiss before she pulled him in with her: it was lust.

He stepped away from her and out of her reach with a hand to his mouth surprised. All thoughts on why she had kissed him in the first place replaced with wonder at her feelings and the extent to which they were. He knew he was in love with her; it was why he had not immediately pulled away when she kissed him. But did she, could she…?

No, she was drunk, it was the firewhiskey in her and as much as he hated to think it, she might have kissed Seamus, Dean, Neville or even one of the Creevey brothers the same if they had made a move at her.

He pointed his wand at her again and said, “I'm sorry but I—”

“Expelliarmus!” she said and his wand flew out of his hand. He couldn't believe how loosely he had been holding it.

“I'll sleep it off,” she repeated, angrily. “You were right, this is about you. This has everything to do with you. I loved you and you just-just…. I think I'm going to bed now, I may have just made a fool of myself twice for the night and I want to enjoy the luxury of the alcohol-induced amnesia tomorrow a little sooner.”

She turned and walked away, brushing past even Crookshanks without a word and then a moment later he heard the door to her room close. He was left standing staring at the spot she had just been standing in, the lingering taste of her alcohol-laced breath on his lips and a million thoughts racing through his head. It was as if she had Confunded him, but when Crookshanks glared at him, he hurried after her.

“Hermione, Hermione wait…” he called, nearly tripping over the cat as he stumbled from the room.

Through her door she called back, though it sounded dangerously like a groan, “What do you want? Go away!”

“I'm not going anywhere, we haven't finished talking,” he replied.

“Yes we have,” she said, and then he heard something strange. Just as her protest ended he heard what he thought was a glass bottle dropping onto the carpet.

“Hermione… Hermione, are you alright in there?” he asked, coming to the door and putting his ear against it to listen.

“Quite fine, thank you. I just realised that I may have sobered a bit with our argument and need to get back to where I was before for the amnesia to fully kick in. The sound you just heard was one of the bottles from my secret stash,” she replied, dryly.

But Harry was alarmed, and with a quick “Alohomora!” forced his way after her… only to find her standing in the middle of the room in her bathrobe clutching a bottle of what looked like shower gel.

Embarrassed he tried to back out, but Hermione was before him in an instant and raging, “Well then, that does it, what are you waiting for, talk! You dragged me out of the pub to do it; you forced your way in here to do it! So do it! Talk! We can do anything you want!”

“Maybe when you're done with your bath…” he said and tried to back away.

“No Harry, you wanted to talk, so let's talk. But you already know what the problem is so I can't see the importance of this conversation… nevertheless, we will have it. What do you want to know? What do you want to say? What do you want from me?” she demanded.

He didn't know how to begin to tell her that he didn't quite know what that really was. He had only started chasing her after Crookshanks glared at him, which, when he thought about it, was a rather dumb thing to do. He was a cat—well, part-Kneazle—but he still had the body of an ugly, fat little cat and he should have known better.

Hermione though, had an idea, “No wait, don't bother, I know.”

And she dropped the bottle and kissed him again.

Now, that was not it. If there was anyone to admit that to, apart from her, he needed to be clear on that one little thing, he did not come here to kiss her. He had come into this room because he had thought she was getting drunk again and that he needed to talk. She had not been, but she was still drunk and oh how much had lust replaced the pain from before. Of their own volition his hands went round her back and drew her into him and his mouth opened to hers and he let her force him back into the door and….

He pulled away again, or rather, pushed her off and grabbed at the door knob behind him.

Hermione dropped onto the bed and sighed; “Now I really need that drink, I'm going to remember this tomorrow… three times…. I'm practically throwing myself at you and… you know what, I'm going for a shower.”

Harry started from the door at once and said, “No, wait….”

“For what…? The problem should be clear to you by now, I loved you… I love you, and you rejected me. You pushed me away to live free of getting hurt, but you know what, you hurt me more that way. After Ron got hurt you say nothing's wrong but you make sure that there's my father and your Auror training between us. You move in here and you live like a tenant. You claim that we're going to have this wonderful summer and then you keep rushing off. What am I waiting for, huh? I'm twenty-two, maybe when I'm forty I'll start pining after you again, pretending that I don't love you so that we could live in this flat and wait for Ron to wake up. I mean, Luna's the mother of Ron's child, she was his fiancée and she's moving on with her life wonderfully. There is nothing tying me to you so what am I waiting for, why should I wait?” she asked.

When he couldn't immediately answer, she turned and walked away, “Fine then… but you should know that it's a good thing that I'm pissed right now, or else I would have never told you a thing. I might have just left. Good for me too then….”

Before she was at the bathroom door he was across the room, and when he got to her he forced her to face him and kissed her again. She was understandably surprised, and tried to force him away, but he began to whisper, “I love you, I love you too, I love you….”

She stopped fighting, and he was only partially sure it was because she did not quite believe what she was hearing… but then she began to return his kisses. And with such urgency, such want, such need that it scared him… but he would not pull away.

He knew it was wrong, he knew that he should be the stronger one because she was intoxicated and not thinking clearly, but he couldn't stop. He tried, he really honestly tried, putting his hands onto her shoulders and forcing her to look at him, to understand that this could not go on, that he was only trying to convey a message like she did…. But when he saw her eyes, they were no longer unfocused, she was staring at him as if he was the only thing she could see, that she wanted, that she needed to see…. And then she smiled a bright, happy relieved smile that she followed up with a deep, passionate kiss like she had never given him before or he thought it possible she would.

And suddenly they were at Grimmauld Place again, two teenagers alone in the house too young to understand or care for the implications of what they were about to do… and this time, when the pool presented itself, dark and warm and deep, nothing stopped them from falling into it.

She loved him, he loved her, and they both knew it.

-->

A/N: I tried my best for this not to be crude, corny and cheesy, I hate crude, corny and cheesy, but alas, alack, it surely came out that way still. And it seriously messes with the rating this way. Oh, and do forgive the hangover scene, I've never been drunk, and I know that one very small glass of rum while grandma baked a cake doesn't count.

But I have to ask, if just to tease, surely you didn't expect to end the story that easily?

Disclaimer: Yeah, JK Rowling would never write this. HBP aside, she does not do crude, corny or cheesy. Aside from that, the characters are hers, the OCs and the plot is mine.

*~***~*

The Morning Afternoon After

It was Ginny who had told her once, in a moment of crudeness, that if you ever woke up naked, alone, nauseous and smelling strongly of alcohol you were in trouble. Lavender had then pointed out that that wasn't so bad, it was if you ever woke up naked, alone, in someone else's house, nauseous, smelling strongly of alcohol and feeling rather sore in a particular place that then, and only then were you in trouble. The naked hangover could happen to anyone. Ginny had agreed and both girls had started laughing, but Parvati and Hermione, to whom nothing like that had even remotely happened just sat staring at them with jaws dropped, stunned.

Now though, Hermione knew exactly what they meant.

She was still in her room, which was immediately and annoyingly clear. The sun had had the audacity to rise hours before all bright and yellow and was now pouring light heavily in unto her. The room was sickeningly warm, people were clearly up and about in the city without and every pinprick of light that penetrated the protective wall of her eyelids stabbed dangerously into her head threatening each vessel with explosion. She groaned and rolled over.

Today she was not a morning person, though the sun shouldn't be on this side of the flat….

This was when she discovered that she was naked and nauseous. Lavender and Ginny had both agreed on this point, and that was frightful enough, but then there was also that last one that Lavender had pointed out on her own. She was sore, and she felt it, but oh it was in more places than one.

What had she done? She could not have, could she…? She wasn't one of those girls, and she certainly wasn't like Lavender and Ginny, not that open. But she must have done something, hence her condition, and really the only other question that mattered now was, who had she done it with?

She dare not open her eyes, the pain from that exercise would be unnecessarily excruciating, but she had an arm free. If she moved it slowly enough, and in one direction—in this case, forward—she might be able to lessen her brain damage. It would still hurt, of course, that was the point of hangovers, but she had to do it. She had to know if she was alone.

Very slowly, she inched her fingers across the smooth mattress. Despite her careful calculations (okay, not that careful, but her head hurt) each creeping step sent a jolt of pain to her nerves and she found the bile slowly rising to her throat. But she was a Gryffindor, or at least had been one, and had fought Voldemort, or rather, had helped that ungrateful bastard she called her best friend fight him, she could take it.

Or at least she thought she could, that was, until her hand met with warm bare skin.

It was smooth, this skin, and coated with a thin film of sweat and a vaguely familiar scent. It was also attached to a slightly muscular arm that though as well vaguely familiar was obviously not hers. And, if truth be told, as she dared to trace her fingers along it, it became rather frightfully familiar.

She couldn't keep her eyes closed, she had to look. Groaning at the effort, she forced them open… and then nearly fell off the bed in shock.

He was lying beside her with his head on his arm fast asleep. His glasses were gone, as were, as far as she could and would dare to see, his clothes. His messy black hair was even messier, sticking up at odd angles all about his head. All about his shoulders and arm she could see the marks of her fingernails, and one of them had been deep enough to draw blood. And his scent, oh his scent, in the vague visions of the night before that refused to fully come to focus she remembered it like musk, and now it coated him, the bed they lay on, the sheets they were tangled in and her.

It was Harry, she had slept with Harry.

Despite the pain, despite the nausea, despite the fact that she was surely fully nude, she forced herself off the bed, snatched up her discarded bathrobe and backed into the wall.

What had she, what had they done?

But oh, if she hadn't believed it had happened before the small dark red stains that had soaked into the sheet and maybe even the mattress beneath was the final nail to the coffin.

She got up and speedily padded off to her bathroom, and not caring or worrying that she would wake him, slammed the door behind her. And once safely locked within she dropped her head over the bowl and retched until her throat and chest hurt and the tears were running freely.

Oh no, what had they done?

Harry, she had… with… oh no, what had they done?

If this had happened in any other way, she might not have been so… well, she didn't want to think mortified, maybe surprised. As a matter of fact, she had often found herself thinking about, dreaming about a day like this. A morning when she would wake up next to him and smile and kiss him awake and it would swiftly go the route of one of those romance novels when the hero and the heroine are finally together in the end. They would have been married first, they would have been deeply in love and they would have been definitely sober….

But not this… she had never thought of anything like this.

What exactly had happened the night before? Everything after she had finally drunk that second butterbeer was a rather strange blur.

Had Harry started drinking too? Had their friends dropped them off at the flat before they publicly humiliated themselves? Had he taken advantage of her, or she of him? Did he even know that… she had never lied to Ginny and Lavender about it, but that had been so long ago, before he moved into the flat, before they had become so estranged, surely he didn't know…?

But when he saw the blood he would, probably already did. Oh, what had they done? She was more responsible than this, how could she…?

And then she remembered why she had drunk the firewhiskey in the first place. Harry, the very sight of Harry coming into that pub, like his absence that morning, seemed to make her silly. Rational Hermione took a hike and this crazy, alcohol-guzzling, whatever she was took control and the next thing she knew she was naked and feeling like a complete fool?

What had happened to them?

“Oh Harry, what happened to us?” she whispered, dropping her head against the cold ceramic bowl, relishing in the chilled touch against her warmed, sore forehead.

But seconds later she was sitting sharply upright again and looking over herself in alarm. If they had, oh who was she kidding, since they had done what they did… had they… did they…?

Temporarily forgetting the throbbing pain in her head (ha-ha) she darted to the sink drawer nearby and began riffling through it. They definitely had to have, if they weren't both drunk, (and if they weren't Harry had better have a proper explanation, one, for taking advantage of the situation, and two, for not thinking) then surely someone had had the sense to….

She found what she was looking for: her little black diary where she kept track of all her personal details. For a few tense seconds she stood anxiously flipping through the pages, trying to ignore the fact that she was standing there naked and had not just stepped out of the shower… and then gave a relieved sigh. Even if they had forgotten a thing or two she should be, they should be safe.

Sometime later in their conversation, Ginny had added: “Actually, we forgot one, let's hope no one forgot to—ahem, for the sensibilities of our 'less mature' friends—mind the gates, because if not, then you should consider yourself well and truly screwed.”

It had not been less crude, just more vividly reinvented.

And then she heard him.

Despite the fact that it hurt too much, her brain had refused to shut off her hearing and so she knew perfectly when he awoke. She heard him move, rolling over on the mattress, the sheets rustling, and then suddenly he sat up and after a moment or two called, “Hermione…?”

She snatched up the bathrobe again, flushed the toilet, closed it and sat herself on the bowl, “H-Harry…? I'm… I'm in the bathroom….”

There was no denying that this was going to be awkward. She could already hear him shifting off of the mattress to come to the door. It was not that she didn't love him, oh she definitely loved him, always had and probably always would… but the thought that they had… and she had been too drunk to remember…. She couldn't face him, he had probably seen more of her and her of him than she knew by now, but she couldn't. Not after what had happened, oh how could they…?

The bathroom door knob rattled, “Hermione… Hermione are you okay…? I didn't… I didn't hurt you did I?”

She tried to be cheeky again, “That's very presumptuous of you, Mr Potter. What are you trying to imply?”

Harry didn't seem in the mood for it, his voice faltering, he replied, “There's… there's blood on your bed….”

She lied at once, “Oh that, well, you know… I'm a girl, time of the month thing….”

Secretly she prayed for that “time” to come on time. How stupid could she have been?

“Oh… okay,” he replied, and then, after a moment of awkward silence, where she was sure he was working some things over in his head, asked again, “Are you sure that you're alright?”

Persistent little bugger, he was, Voldemort never stood a chance really.

“Yes, I'm fine… but I do have a hangover… and I need a bath,” she replied.

“Oh… then… I'll make us breakfast,” he told her, sounding much more relieved, and immediately she could hear him leaving. She made to get off her perch then, deciding that the bath wasn't too bad an idea… when he suddenly came back.

“Um, Hermione…?” he asked, nervously.

“Yes?” she asked, freezing halfway off her seat.

“I love you,” he replied.

Oh Merlin… what happened last night?

But realising that he was probably waiting for an answer, she said, and with as much meaning as she could muster, “I love you too.”

She could hear him smile, she knew he was smiling, and then he was gone again, off to the kitchen to make breakfast, and hopefully a potion for her hangover too.

*~*~*

“Breakfast” actually turned out to be a late lunch. When Hermione finally emerged from her room, clean and dressed in fresh clothes, she discovered that they had slept to noon, the firewhiskey and her unintentional “deflowering” having worn them both out. But she was too hungry to care, and barely waited for Harry to return from his own bath to start helping herself.

He had made toast and ham and eggs, laid out some of Mrs Weasley's scones, reheated, and cold glasses of orange juice and milk, just the smell alone made her both nauseous and hungry. It was a bit much, but the firewhiskey had dehydrated her, and before the pub the last time she had eaten was lunch at the Burrow.

A recipe for disaster that was, alcohol on an empty stomach… thank goodness for Madam S.P. Keyes' Guaranteed Withdrawal Remedy, which he had also set out for her on the counter.

He caught her in the midst of her third sandwich, leaning against the kitchen sink staring out at the lazy London Sunday afternoon, “Hey, leave something for me, I made it.”

She stopped eating abruptly; nearly dropping the sandwich like she had been caught stealing. But that was the wrong thing to do, for Harry immediately came over to her and taking her into his arms, lifted her face to his and asked again, “Are you sure you're okay?”

“Stop asking me that, I'm fine,” she snapped.

“Oh… I was just…” he said, sounding slightly hurt and drawing away from her a bit.

Realising her error, she quickly flashed him a smile and said, “Oh, you silly boy. You worry far too much for your own good, you can never hurt me.”

But that just made him come back to her again, and this time with a kiss over the sink that made her knees go weak and set her heart racing. The half-eaten sandwich dropped into the sink forgotten. She couldn't help but think, even though he had obviously ravaged her the night before, if he kissed like that while he did it she couldn't complain. But she still pulled away.

This was far too new; too much… they had made a mistake, a terrible mistake….

Thankfully, he seemed to think nothing of her withdrawal this time and turned his attention to the rest of the sandwiches at the table. She quietly followed him over and had a seat, watching him very nearly inhale his breakfast before her eyes, oblivious to her thoughts. He might not be fooled for long, but she hoped it would be long enough for her to figure out what had led to this.

Harry would never hurt her; he would never take advantage of her… of anyone really, so this had been a voluntary thing…. But how did it happen?

And then suddenly Harry's hands were around her waist—she did not recall seeing him leave his seat—and he was behind her and drawing the hair from her neck to plant a very soft, very sweet but oh so disarming kiss. She started slightly, and gasped, and he laughed into her neck, sending shivers down her spine and raising goose pimples on her arms.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh no… oh Harry… no….

She put her hands up and pushed his head away, “I'm hungry… I'm trying to have breakfast.”

“So am I,” said Harry.

She blushed, and knew he was as well, but he carried on nevertheless, “I've just found something new I want.”

She smiled; though she wasn't sure he could see it and then began, rather nervously, “Well… I'm tired, and… and…. Harry, I have to ask you something, did we-did we… did I…? Oh I don't know how to ask this, but did you… use one of those—”

“Charms?” he finished for her, going back to her neck again as if she hadn't just pushed him away. He replied against her skin, so that his voice was slightly muffled, “Yes…. You did it… I think.”

She immediately pulled herself free of him and stood up and out of his grasp. When he made to come at her again, she turned to face him but backed away and demanded, “What do you mean 'you think'?”

But before he could answer there was a crackling from the fireplace and Kingsley's voice came through, “Harry? Harry, are you there?”

When neither responded he began to grumble, “First I can't get rid of him, and now I can't find him. That Finnegan boy said he went home….”

Harry made to reply then, but Hermione stopped him with a look. He whispered at her though, “I thought you did it, you said you would take care of it, and then you took my wand…. I-I'm just not sure if you actually did anything….”

“And I thought I was drunk…” Hermione whispered back, heatedly. “I don't know what happened last—”

She snapped her mouth shut mid-sentence and then covered it with both hands.

But it was too late, he had heard, and with eyes widened in surprise, asked, “Hermione… do you… do you remember anything that happened last night…?”

Kingsley's voice again, echoing from the fireplace, “I can hear whispering, I know you're there Harry….”

Her anger long evaporated, she could not find the nerve to look at him. Her voice was barely audible as she confessed, “No….”

“Oh Merlin…” Harry groaned, and then quickly stepped to her, grabbed her hands in his and bent slightly to find her face. When she finally allowed him her eyes, he asked, “And… and the blood…?”

She instantly looked away and he stepped back, but would not let go of her hands.

“Last call, Harry Potter and then I'm coming over, are you there, Harry? I know you are I can hear voices!” called Kingsley again.

The only response he got was Crookshanks padding out of the bedroom towards the fireplace and fixing him a glare. Shortly after that the fireplace went silent.

In the kitchen though, Harry and Hermione could not bring themselves to speak. Hermione kept her gaze trained on the portrait on the wall of the three of them, three carefree, (as if) happy (in what reality) teenagers enjoying the last of their attempts at normalcy. Harry kept her hands in his but his eyes were on the floor, and it was an eternity before he lifted them again to her and asked, “Do you remember… anything?”

“Drinking that second butterbeer and then flashes of afterwards,” she replied, still staring at the portrait.

“Do you remember an argument?” he asked, next, his grip tightening on her hands.

She tried, for a moment, searching through the haze in her head, and then shook her head.

He squeezed her hands for a moment, without a doubt completely terrified, and then said, “You told me you loved me….”

She turned to him so fast she was sure she heard her neck crick, she had told him… but regretted it at once. Harry was staring at her, though she doubted he was really seeing her, completely crestfallen. His eyes were dull, almost blank, his skin pale and his smile gone, not even a trace of the earlier playfulness was left.

But she had told him.

“You told me you loved me and I…. When you kissed me… I stopped you, I knew you were pissed, I knew it… but then you told me you loved me, and that you were just wasting your time… and I didn't want you to leave… I was sure you were going to leave…” he said, dully.

All the life seemed to have gone from him… but it was swiftly being replaced by horror.

And then his eyes refocused again and he said, “I… I… we'd better go to St Mungo's, find out if I… if you….”

She caught on to the path his thoughts had fallen into at once, and reversed the position of their hands so that she was gripping his, and said firmly, “You did not rape me.”

At the word he flinched and dropped his gaze, so now it was her turn to find his eyes and when she did she said, “You did not. I was 'juiced up', to quote Ron… freer inhibitions and what not….”

“I was sober…” he told her, lamely.

“So what?” she spat, as nonchalantly as she could. “I was pissed, and frankly, according to a running bet by Ginny and Lavender, this (she released one hand to gesture between them) was bound to happen sooner or later….”

He still would not look up, and for some reason she could tell he was also none too pleased about that little bit of information, nor was he convinced. She would have to own up to her confession. She might have no clear recollection of it, she might have been drunk when she said it, but she meant it all the same.

She took a step closer, squeezing his hands in hers, “I-I love you, I know that, I mean that… and-and… out of anyone, I'm glad it was with you… that this (she gestured again, her hand only slightly lower this time) happened with you. I love you.”

Harry at last looked up at her, and for a time just stared until Hermione began to feel self-conscious and dropped her gaze. A mistake, Harry pulled his hands free and stalked off towards his bedroom. A moment later she heard the door slam, and then almost immediately after that the sound of him kicking his trunk.

Oh how the tables had turned.

But she was at least grateful that he hadn't tried to force her through to St Mungo's still, or worst, gone immediately to find Kingsley.

She had brushed it all off just for his benefit. She had pretended, and done a rather good job of it, she had to admit, of making it seem as if what had happened between them happened to just about anyone everyday. But she knew, oh she knew, that if he had left her, if she had woken up alone… there would have been nothing to stop her tightly wound world from falling completely apart.

Nausea gone, but hungry still, Hermione let the dishes to the sink and retreated to her room. “Breakfast” was over.

*~*~*

How could he have done it?

How could he have been so foolish, so blind… so stupid?

How could he have not known that she wasn't herself yet? People didn't just sober up because they got into an argument, she had refused to let him perform the spell on her and then… then he… how could he just let everything get so out of hand?

His leg throbbing slightly, Harry was perched on his bed with the windows all shut and the curtains blind. He didn't want to see or hear the outside world, he didn't want to know that the people out there had no idea how he just continued to suffer.

Regardless of what she had told him, he had taken advantage of the situation. He hadn't been drinking, he had had the power to stop it the whole time, and he just… he just let it happen. He was worse than Malfoy.

But she had said, she had just repeated, claimed that she loved him.

He knew she was lying though, she didn't love him.

She thought she did when she was drunk, and she was only saying it now to make him feel better. It was just like her to do something like that.

When the war had been at its worst she had done her best to keep him from it. In the aftermath she had practically gone to every funeral they had had to, gone to every trial they were to give evidence in, and appeared at every party, parade and celebration they were expected at as she could to give him time to recover, to have peace. And how had he repaid her? He broke up with her then, and now….

Oh Merlin, she could be pregnant.

She could be carrying his child right then. He was sure now, he was absolutely sure that she hadn't performed the charm. He remembered every moment of last night, every nervous, jerky, awkward movement, from the first passionate kiss to the last, tender caress. It had not been the entirely mind-blowing event he had expected, or, he was sure, was expected of him, but it would be more than enough.

He squelched the thought, then, that with no one to compare him to, and with her memory muddled, his “reputation” was still intact. What reputation? He was a jerk and a joke.

What was it she had asked him last night?

“There is nothing tying me to you so what am I waiting for, why should I wait?”

He was just a selfish ungrateful bastard, and now that it was his moment of realisation, his opportunity to let her free, he had forced on her a way to keep her forever.

But there was still hope… there was still a way to redemption. As soon as they knew the truth for sure he would give her the chance to walk away, and he hoped, he very desperately hoped, that she would take it. He did not want, need or could stand her pity, not anymore, not knowing that he had once had her love.

With a sigh he fell back on his bed. “Breakfast” was over.

-->

A/N: This, unfortunately, may be the last chapter I will be able to post in a while. I've tried to make it interesting, and it has a bit of a cliff-hanger, but it is all in the name of keeping you in suspense. Do forgive me for it, for I have no idea what I've created.

Disclaimer: You should know by now that JK Rowling did not write this, however the characters and the world are hers, I just borrowed.

*~***~*

It All Falls Apart

Before Hermione could get to the door of their flat that evening, heavily laden with grocery bags, her purse and a good day's stalking through London's many bookstores—both Muggle and magical—Harry had opened it and was peering out at her. It was amazing what could happen in a week. This time she had actually been dreading his presence, hoping that he had gone off with Kingsley, Seamus and Dean. He had practically been home the entire week, and since that Sunday afternoon she hadn't heard the Floo once, save for Mrs Weasley inviting them to dinner that Saturday. Didn't Aurors have work to do anymore?

He opened the door wider at once, and hurried out to help her. She released the grocery bags, but would not release the books.

That was another thing, as he spent more time at home he was now also extra helpful. He seemed to anticipate her every want, need and very movement before she did and chose to fulfil it. She was not that bad of a cook, but for the past week he hadn't even allowed her near the kitchen. (Not that any of that was really that much of a bad thing.)

He gave a slight smile, though in his eyes she was sure she could see some irritation at her stubbornness, and together they re-entered the flat.

Even though the sun was still up without, and the day warm, Harry had drawn the blinds in the living room. Hedwig was awake and looking miserable, Crookshanks too, lying before the large window and obviously missing his sunbath. But there were a series of Cooling Charms up in the flat, working much better than a Muggle air-conditioner, so it was not too warm, just dim.

How perfectly did it match her and Harry's mood since the week began, she wished he would reopen the windows.

But as she got to the kitchen she found out why he had shut out the world. Lying in a neat stack on the counter were no more than seven Muggle early home pregnancy tests. And from Harry's nonchalant manner as he immediately and wordlessly set about putting away the groceries, he had bought them and wanted her to use them.

She tried to be cavalier as well.

Stopping at the counter while he worked, not at all offering to help, she took her time to examine each box, checking their instructions and expiration dates. They seemed reasonably easy enough to operate, so Harry must have just picked up all he saw not certain of which was the best and wanting to be absolutely sure. At length she set the boxes aside and asked, “I didn't know you were pregnant? Whose is it? Cough it up, I suspect Seamus, you two were pretty cosy at Gemma's party.”

He stopped stocking a cupboard just long enough to give her a look. She dropped her teasing and took up offence.

“You're mad if you think I'm using them,” she said, coldly.

“I know there's a spell you could do, but Ginny's at Malfoy Manor again and won't be back until tomorrow. He's putting on his best show…. They'll only take a minute,” he replied, calmly, once more restocking the cupboard.

“I can do the spell, and they're seven of these, so that's seven minutes… and I don't need to go right now,” she replied, her tone becoming more arctic by the second.

“Just humour me, please?” he asked, stopping to look up at her again. When she sighed and rolled her eyes away from him, he dropped his knees to the floor and fixed her with his best puppy-eyed gaze.

There was a time when Hermione would have simply melted at that look… but that was long past, and now it felt like mockery.

“I'm not doing them Harry, I'm not pregnant. You're good, but you're not that good,” she told him, and promptly turned to head off to her room.

She needed to lie down, to shut him out….

He stood at once, gave chase, stopped her and forced to look at him. And when she did he never looked more furious.

“You think this is about 'male pride', Hermione? Is that what you think this is about? If you're pregnant we need to know, and we need to know as soon as possible. We have to know what we're going to do, make plans—”

She cut him off, angrier than he was, and intentionally latching on to only one part of his sentence, “'We have to know what we're going to do?' If I'm pregnant I'm going to have a baby, you're not going to do anything. And if you were suggesting that we should—”

“I would never suggest that, and you know it,” he cut in, his voice dangerously low, looking for all the world as if she had just suggested that he had been in league with Voldemort the whole time. But then his expression slackened slightly, and his voice faltered as he continued, “Uh-unless you w-wanted to….”

She knew she had made a mistake, but she didn't care. She was too angry. How dare he? How dare he… well, she didn't know exactly what offended her about the whole thing, but how dare he all the same.

Wasn't it enough that they had already made one mistake of the week? Wasn't it enough that she had endured the embarrassment of showing him her little black diary and explaining what the circled dates meant? Wasn't it enough that she had reassured him that she had forgiven him, that she still trusted him, that she still loved him?

No, apparently not.

He began to plead again, “Hermione please, you know this is important. I mean, we weren't even dating; we're not engaged or married. We're just living together… and if… if you're pregnant… then a lot of things are going to have to change. This flat, I know you like it, but we're going to need a house…. I don't know how long it takes for one of those licences… but the tabloids and Rita Skeeter would be all over it and especially if we wait too long—”

Hermione put her hands up, “Wait, w-wait, wait a tick… what are you talking about? I'm not going to marry you or move out of this flat just because I'm pregnant. If that's the only reason you're going to do it, then forget it. I told you I loved you, I told you I didn't care and you just pretend that you didn't hear me! I don't care what Rita Skeeter, Mrs Weasley, my parents or the bloody Minister has to say about it, I'm not going marry you because you feel obligated to do it!”

“Hermione…” he pleaded again.

She stepped back away from him, “I'm not doing it. I'm not pregnant. And after what happened I would have thought you would want to forget about this whole thing—”

“Merlin, Hermione, how can you be so bloody flippant about this? I can't forget it, I won't forget it!” he nearly yelled at her.

“Lucky you,” she said, and finally turned and left him.

*~*~*

When Hermione at long last emerged from the bedroom some hours later, the flat was silent and empty. Harry had gone, she hadn't even heard the Floo, but there was a note on the dining table where he knew she would go.

“Kingsley owled, sighting in Hogsmeade, I'll be back later. Harry.”

She banished it without a word and sat down with her books.

Fine then, go… see if she cared….

But when she was seated, drawing her books from the bags to go through her little sorting ritual, her eyes involuntarily flicked to the countertop… and she quickly stood up again.

Harry had not moved the tests, but he had added some things: a Pensieve—left to him by Dumbledore during the war—and a small vial that no doubt contained a memory. And she had a feeling that she knew exactly what memory.

Earlier that week she had asked him—in one of the rare moments that they actually said more than two uncomfortable words to each other—to show it to her. He had refused at once, too embarrassed and too ashamed to share. They had argued then, for the first time since that night according to him, but this time when the argument ended and she went off to her room, he did not follow.

He had taken to doing that too—apart from constantly sticking around—giving her space, time. But she didn't exactly know what she was supposed to do with it. What did he expect her to do? Think it over and then decide that he had raped her and deserved to be sent to Azkaban?

The only thing that would achieve would be her parents' home and dental surgery burnt to the ground by his rabid fan girls, she would probably lose her job and every single one of their friends and worst of all, him. She could just see the Rita Skeeter-inspired headline now, “Hermione Granger gets her Man: Man-Who-Triumphed Accused of Rape by Fame-Loving 'Best Friend'!”

But now, here was the memory.

For a time she just stood over the counter looking down at the swirling solution in the Pensieve that allowed one to view the memories within, and the vial. After days of pleading, arguing, waiting, she had it… and for some reason she didn't want it anymore. She didn't care what she would see in there. Bits and pieces were beginning to come back—maybe she hadn't been as drunk as she thought—and so she had the general gist of it.

But he had finally relented, and so, drawing her wand, she opened the vial and poured the memory into the Pensieve, stirred it about for a moment, and then fell in.

It was hours before she came out again. Harry had given her the entire night, from the minute he stepped into the pub and saw her order the Firewhiskey to when he finally collapsed over her shortly before dawn, exhausted, but with strength enough to profess repeatedly, how much he loved her. She came out of the Pensieve shaking like a leaf and barely able to stand, immediately ashamed of herself and fully comprehending Harry's concern.

There was no spell, it hadn't even occurred to them to do it.

As soon as she gathered her bearings then, she snatched up three of the tests and headed off to the bathroom. The earliest each of the tests had claimed was four days—she checked the clock above Harry's desk—it had been six. Yes, she could do the spell, but she couldn't summon the nerve. The spell was immediate, this way she could wait; she could prepare herself for it.

Before she got to the hall she saw him.

He was lying across the couch in the living room, his shoes off, a throw cushion as a pillow, his glasses and wand on the floor and Crookshanks curled up on the arm rest at his feet. He had reopened the blinds slightly, allowing in a sliver of faint, distant city lights and under them he looked so peaceful, so vulnerable… she changed direction at once and went to him.

He shifted as she stood above him, turning onto his arm with his face to the soft back of the couch while the other rested across his side. In the Pensieve those hands had roamed freely over her, along every curve and stretch of flesh, tangling into her hair and drawing her into him as if he wanted to mould their bodies anew as one.

She was suddenly, almost violently, filled with a desire to have him do that again, to just reach down and touch him, to kiss him and let him claim her…. But she just as quickly caught herself, and fled.

*~*~*

When Harry awoke it was to find that someone had withdrawn the blinds completely and then opened the windows behind slightly so that the sounds of the city filled the room. Unsurprisingly, it was noisy and warm and the sunlight pouring into the flat was dazzling, and so much so that he blinked furiously and painfully until he sat up away from it. But that was when he noticed her, seated on her haunches in the middle of the rug with Crookshanks in her lap and Hedwig on a shoulder.

He stifled a yawn, and then, with his voice coarsened by sleep, asked, “What are you doing on the floor?”

She stroked Crookshanks' back and replied, “Ginny called on the Floo, Ron's awake.”

Harry flew out of his seat with a start, “What?”

She continued in monotone, not leaving her seat, “He woke up this morning. They're expecting us, he's been asking for us.”

Harry dropped back onto the sofa and retrieved his glasses, pocketed his wand and began to put on his shoes. But then he noticed that Hermione had still not moved, though she was fully dressed and also holding his cloak. Involuntarily, his eyes went to the counter and the four boxes that remained.

He dropped his feet and sat back with his hands on his knees. Her name escaped his lips in a breath, “Hermione….”

The sunlight streaming down unto her had burnished her cinnamon-coloured hair a soft gold and added an angelic glow to her skin and features. She did not look up as he spoke, but instead drew her wand, pointed it at her stomach and whispered an incantation. The glow was unmistakeable.

He rose off the couch again to go to her but she backed up and he froze, stung. And it was made worse by what she said after, “Couldn't you wait? Ron and Luna at least had some fun first.”

He couldn't fight the tears, they immediately came running, and he choked on his words as he tried to speak, “Hermione… don't think for one moment that I would leave you to do this alone…. I won't….”

“I know,” she replied, her voice barely a whisper, her expression blank. “You're a good person, Harry… a great, powerful wizard… and I know you'll be a wonderful father… but I would be lying to you if I didn't tell you that I am not ready for this…. I am twenty-two, I have a good job that I enjoy, I love you, but I am not ready for this.”

“Hermione…” he said again, not sure of what else to say.

“We have to go now, Ron's waiting on us,” she said, and began to rise. He went forward and helped her, but she quickly released him once she was on her feet and separately, they took the Floo to St Mungo's.

Harry let her go first. He couldn't step out the Floo looking the way he did, face sleepy and tear-stained, hair a mess and clothes dishevelled. He cast a quick succession of Charms to refresh himself and then stood before the fireplace a moment to gather some measure of composure.

She was pregnant. That meant that he was going to be a father… that meant that they were going to be parents…. He had only touched her once… just once…. She would never leave him now; he'd forced her to stay with him…. And now Ron was awake….

Crookshanks mewing from the kitchen brought him from his thoughts; he took a deep breath and then stepped on into the swirling emerald flames.

*~*~*

If anyone noticed the changed moods of Harry and Hermione when they arrived at the hospital, they did not comment. Hermione moved carefully, almost painfully so, hyper-aware of her surroundings. Harry, by contrast, just stalked behind her in a dark mood, looking at and speaking to no one. When they were standing before Ron's room with his family though, his parents and Luna already inside, they put on their brightest smiles.

Gemma and Avril ran to Harry as soon as they stood with the others, squealing delightedly, “He's awake! He's awake!”

Grinning brightly, Harry swept them up in his arms like he had done at the Burrow just a week before, and asked, “Who's awake? Can you tell me who's awake?”

“My Daddy!” shrieked Gemma, wrapping her little arms round his neck.

“Uncle Won!” cried Avril, who was still having trouble pronouncing words and letters. Ironically, her latest difficult was the letter “r”, so that, even though the twins knew he probably couldn't hear them, Fred and George had been mercilessly teasing Ron about it.

“Then why are you all out here in the hall?” asked Harry, over their heads to the others. “Good morning, by the way.”

Ginny and Fleur came over to them and took Gemma and Avril from him, Ginny saying as she retrieved her niece, “They won't let us all in at once; we were kind of hoping you'd get them to. Good morning, Harry, by the way. Good morning, Hermione.”

Hermione gave them all a weak smile, marvelling, as they all greeted each other in turn, at how calm they all appeared. After four years Ron was awake and while her heart was fluttering wildly, barely able to keep a proper rhythm, they looked as they were awaiting their table at a restaurant. Was it really just her and Harry who couldn't move on?

“Not to mention,” said Bill, taking his daughter from his wife. “Our little brother doesn't happen to know about his little P-R-O-G-E-N-Y. They're trying to break it to him gently, but with Luna in there, I don't expect it to take too long.”

Just then, as if on cue, they heard Mrs Weasley loudly exclaim, “NO! No—Ron—no, you can't—lie down—Ron, one of your brothers—Arthur, do something!”

And then suddenly the door swung open and Luna stood in the doorway. Ginny immediately walked to her with Gemma and handed her over. Luna gave them all a smile, which brightened slightly when she saw Harry and Hermione, and then walked back into the room. Just before the door closed behind her, they saw Ron half-sitting up in the bed staring at his daughter in Luna's arms in shock.

The others turned back to look at each other and Harry did not miss that Hermione had a hand protectively to her nascent stomach. The sight sent a burst of pain through his chest so powerful it felt a knife in his heart.

“I would be lying to you if I didn't tell you that I am not ready for this….”

“Maybe we should just make a run for it. They haven't got any charms up, we could just walk in,” said Fred, looking over the door while George checked with his wand.

“They probably have some kind of sensor that would send the Healer running in, we wouldn't get near the bed,” said Charlie, looking a bit glum. He looked slightly windswept, as if he had just flown in on the back of a dragon, and then still slightly burnt, as if he had just escaped it too.

“He's meeting his daughter for the first time, he needs some time…” Ginny told them, looking down to the end of the hall, “Maybe ten minutes, then we go in.” And then after a moment she looked back at Harry and Hermione and asked, “What took you two so long?”

“Harry was sleeping, I didn't want to disturb him,” replied Hermione, blandly. “He came in pretty late last night.”

Ginny arched an eyebrow, “Is that why we couldn't reach you two on Sunday either? You're still working, Harry? Mum went spare; she thought something happened to you. And then Kingsley called and said Crookshanks put him out, but he thought he heard voices… why didn't you answer?”

Leave it to Ginny to bring that up, the slightly “knowing” smirk that quickly formed on her face couldn't be more obvious.

“We were having a discussion,” said Harry, with an air of finality, that warded off any further questions. She looked only mildly disappointed. And then he changed the topic, “How'd you find out he woke up?”

Ginny and the others all shifted uncomfortably, the more serious matter at hand sucking all the mirth from the room like a vacuum. She sighed sadly for a moment, and then replied, “I came in this morning to clean him up, but when I walked into the room he just looked away from the window…. Just like that… as if he hadn't been asleep for four years. And the first thing he asks me is 'Did Harry win?' I didn't know what to say….”

“How is he taking it? H-how do you think?” asked Hermione, nervously, her eyes trained on the door since Ginny began to speak.

“I don't know… it's been four years… and he's a father…. Won't that be a shock…?” she replied.

“I'm sure it will be,” said Harry, staring at Hermione again, willing her to look at him, to see his apology. She didn't.

And then door opened again, and Mr and Mrs Weasley emerged smiling. Mrs Weasley went at once to Hermione, drew her into her arms and smiled at Harry, “He's awake, and he's fine… oh but he's just flesh and bone….”

At once they all laughed, they suspected that she was going to say something like that. She ignored them though, to say, “He wants to see you two now… so go in, the rest of them can wait.”

“We should go in together,” said Harry, diplomatically.

“No, I think he should see you two now,” insisted Mr Weasley, and something in his tone brooked no arguments.

Without waiting for him, Hermione detached herself from Mrs Weasley and walked into the room. As the door opened before her, they saw Gemma seated on Ron's bed in his arms, Luna standing beside the bed smiling at them. Ron looked up and plainly grinned when Hermione came in and she could be heard greeting him, “Oh Ron, never, ever do that again!”
His voice came hoarse in reply, “Well hello to you too, Hermione. It was you I was sav—”

The others again turned to look to Harry for explanation, noticing only now that something was amiss. He laughed nervously, “We had a fight….”

“Don't let Ron see,” warned Mrs Weasley.

Harry nodded, and walked on into the room.

Awake, with the light on him as Harry had planned, Ron unfortunately looked very much as if he had been asleep and unmoving for four years. His hair was lank and dull, his eyes sunken, his skin unhealthily pale (emphasised by the neutral colour of his hospital robes) and he just generally looked… different. In a few months he would probably be back to the way he was before, or at least to what he should be now… a twenty-two year old man, and staring at him now, Harry couldn't wait for him to be there. They had four years of catching up to do.

As soon as he closed the door behind him, Ron stopped mid-conversation with Hermione and Luna and said, “Where have you been?”

“Let me step outside and we'll try this again,” said Harry, and he turned to open the door.

“Come on, Uncle Harry!” called Gemma from the bed. Her hair was very nearly out of its trademark pigtails, the denim jacket she had been wearing was long gone and she wore her shoes on her hands, clapping after him. She was not yet truly able to appreciate the importance of the moment, of the day, but she was excited enough.

Ron laughed, roughly, “Harry, don't disobey my nipper… I will have to beat you up….”

“How, with your bedpan?” asked Harry, stepping in to come to him.

“Nah, I'll just let Hermione do it… I hear you two are living together. Mum's not happy, you should have heard her before Gemma came in, she was really mad at me,” he replied.

“Really? I didn't notice, she tried to kill us for letting it happen,” said Harry.

“She did?” asked Ron, his eyes filled with mirth.

“Yes,” said Hermione, scandalised. “Don't look so happy about it, we didn't even know that you and Luna were-were 'having it off'.”

Now it was Ron's turn to be scandalised, he looked over her shoulder to Harry, “Did-did she just say what I think she just said?”

“Yes, in your absence, the role of fun-loving, amusing best friend was taken over by Hermione Granger. Unfortunately we're still working on brilliant strategist, books are more her thing,” he replied.

Hermione turned and playfully hit him, causing both Ron and Luna to laugh. Harry, temporarily forgetting they were fighting, and that she was newly discovered pregnant, at once swooped her up in his arms and swung her around. Gemma, delighted, stood up on the bed at her father's side and cheered them on.

At first Hermione squealed childishly and playfully tried to throw him off, but then she felt a sudden wave of nausea and a stab of pain in her head. She bent forward and put her hand to her mouth to stop the rush of bile, and Harry, sensing her distress, set her back on her feet just before she dry-heaved into her hands and broke off into a coughing fit.

Ron and Luna stopped laughing, and while Harry stood helplessly by, rubbing her back, Ron asked, “Are you okay?”

Hermione, irritably pushed Harry away now and snapped, between coughs, “Yes I'm fine, he just forgot I'm pregnant!”

Ron nearly shot up off his mattress and demanded, “What?”

Hermione, realising her slip put her hand to her mouth, horrified, and Harry took a full step back from her and the bed. But just then the door burst open and Mrs Weasley came charging in, the others hurriedly behind her, “What did you say?”

Hermione began to stutter, “Well… I… I could be wrong… these things are not foolproof… I'm not a Healer….”

Harry thought he could hear her screaming into his head now: “I would be lying to you if I didn't tell you that I am not ready for this….”

Mrs Weasley ignored her to look at Harry, the question on her face but she seemed incapable of giving it voice. He looked to Hermione who in turn looked to her feet, once again refusing to give him her eyes. It just made him feel worse.

He looked back at Mrs Weasley and nodded. She immediately groaned, “Oh dear….”

Harry's eyes were back on Hermione now though, and as she began to groan herself with her forehead in her palm, he said softly, just for her to hear, “I'm so sorry, I'm sorry….”

“I am not ready for this….”

But oh, he wasn't either, what a fool he had been.

-->

A/N: The following chapter is very short, I know, but I just had to get it out of the way to get on with bigger and better things. Erm, I hope you like it though. Please note, having never been to London, I have no idea of what it is really like beside the Eye, however, I did try to research it as best I could. Just a warning.

Also, after this and A Tale of Winter, okay, and two more stories I have, I swear, it's just going to be Harry/Hermione, Ron/Luna and Draco/Ginny fics.

One more, because I keep forgetting and I really shouldn't, thank you to all of you who read this story and are still with me. Thanks a whole lot. :D

Disclaimer: At this point if you believe that I am JKR or in anyway affiliated with her, then you should also believe in St Mungo's, where you need to be, on the Irreversible Spell Damage ward.

*~***~*

A Changed World

“What have I done wrong? What? Why can't any of my children wait until they're married?” cried Mrs Weasley, clasping her hands together and dropping her head towards her chest.

Behind her Bill protested, “Hey, we did!”

“That's because you're very repressed, dear brother,” said Fred, beside him.

“Not—the—time…” whispered Charlie, as Mrs Weasley turned back to glare at him.

That earned him a glare too, but Hermione cut in, pleading, “Mrs Weasley, please… I mean, I could be wrong, I haven't been to a Healer yet….”

“You did the spell, didn't you?” she demanded.

Hermione looked down, away from her and nodded.

“Then I guess you are…” said Mrs Weasley, staring at her bowed head clearly unhappy. “But what are you waiting for; we're at a hospital aren't we?”

“Please, please Mrs Weasley, we just came here to see Ron,” said Hermione, pleading with her to drop it, looking up again. “It's far too soon anyway, I could be wrong….”

Mrs Weasley shrugged off her husband to demand, “When did this happen? (She turned to Harry as well.) When did this happen?”

“I am not going to answer that,” said Harry, firmly. He swallowed slightly though, dampening the effect.

“And you don't have to,” said Mr Weasley, pulling on his wife's arm again, but Ginny answered for him.

“I'm guessing this little miracle came into existence some time Saturday night… Sunday morning?” she asked, staring at Harry with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

Hermione went beet red, while everyone else turned to Ginny scandalised and upset. Mrs Weasley looked even more shocked, and from the look on her face they could see that she was beginning to calculate something in her mind. Harry, guessing that it would not do for her to come to her conclusion, at once turned to Ron and said, “Listen mate, I'm sorry, but we… we got to go….”

Ron, staring at his mother's face warily, only nodded. Harry stopped a moment to ruffle Gemma's hair a little, and then snatched Hermione's hand and made a hasty exit, the others closing in behind them to prevent Mrs Weasley giving chase. As soon as they were out in the hall though, Hermione broke down and he pulled her into his arms whispering profuse apologies.

In all likelihood those within could hear her cry, but Harry didn't care. She had been humiliated, even though Mrs Weasley would probably argue that she had every right to be mad at them, or even that she had not known, and for that his only concern was her. This was his fault, and he had to make it up to her.

Eventually though, she stopped crying, but remained staring up at him, the sleeves of his cloak gathered in her arms. He looked down at her, still whispering what he had been all the while, “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I never meant—I was stupid, I'm sorry….”

She looked away from him, shaking her head and said, “Stop it, stop it! You say you're sorry but what good is that now? And besides, I told you that you didn't do anything wrong. (She looked down at her stomach.) W-well… except that….”

He looked with her too, and then said, “Hey, you know what… m-maybe we should go see a Healer… Mrs Weasley's not going to leave now… and Ron's not going anywhere for the next few days… we can check him back later….”

“Harry…” Hermione began to protest, squeezing the bunch of fabric in her fists.

“I know… I-I know… you're not ready for this, but you think I am…? When I planned… when I thought that we should spend more time together, I-I didn't exactly mean this much—okay, maybe something like this—” he replied. “But you just said in there—even after all that this morning—that you're not sure, that you could be wrong, let's just make sure now….”

“No, no, I don't want to know, not right now. I just want to go home now, I want… I need to go home…” she replied.

He refused to back down, “Hermione, please… you wouldn't let me… you wouldn't before… but we have to do this now. I mean we have to know things, like when it will be born, and if you have to take any special potions, change your diet, how many times do we have to come back… what kind of clothes and stuff we would have to get—”

“The Healer can hardly tell us that… it's only been a week Harry, we've got thirty-five to thirty-nine more to go,” she said, fighting a smile.

But having succeeding in getting her to smile Harry continued, pretending not to have heard her, “We're going to have to start looking at names, and then there's play-dates and schools and… oh boy, Hogwarts…. I wonder if he'll be in Gryffindor or Ravenclaw. He'll definitely play Quidditch of course—Seeker—and then there'll be a dozen OWLS and seven NEWTS, Auror, Minister of Magic… wow….”

She released his robes, stood back, folded her arms and glared at him, though a smirk was tugging at the corner of her lips. He trailed off, flashed a grin and then reached over, tugged a hand free and began to march her down the corridor.

“We can call him Stephen James Potter, after my Dad and yours, or maybe Lily Alice Potter, after our Mums, or…” he continued, before she finally stopped him.

“Harry…” she said, and she didn't sound happy.

He should have quit while he was ahead.

But she must have noticed his changed mood, for she turned him to face her and said, “Harry, it's not that… it's not that I'm not… I just….”

“I know, I know, you're not ready for this… but that's okay, we've got thirty-five to thirty-nine weeks to,” he replied.

Suddenly, the door to Ron's room swung open behind them and they turned to find that Mrs Weasley had finally escaped her family, and she didn't look happy. Harry at once dragged Hermione off to the fireplace that would take them home. He couldn't let her go through this again; he wouldn't let her go through this again…. And just as Mrs Weasley got to them, calling to Harry, “Harry, I need to talk to you!” he stepped into the fireplace with his arm tightly around Hermione, and swept them home.

*

When Harry and Hermione returned to their flat that morning, much sooner than either had expected to, they quickly separated to an uncomfortable silence. They were alone again now, and they had two choices, either speak to each other, have a proper conversation about what they were going to do, where they stood in the first place, or retreat to their rooms and hope that it was all a dream. But neither attempted to make the first move either way, they couldn't bring themselves to.

So, for a time they just stood staring at each other… that was, until Hermione could take it no more and went around to the kitchen and had a seat at the table. Harry took only a moment to join her after.

But still nothing happened. They sat in silence, listening to the subtle sounds of each other's breathing, of the clock in the living room, of Crookshanks stalking around the bedroom and the noise of the city without, once more through an open window.

In the span of a few short hours their lives had been altered, possibly forever, and they barely had taken any of the time since to process it. But others would for them. Already Mrs Weasley was probably interrogating her offspring about how this all came to be, and once she was finished with them it would be their turn. The minor humiliation in the hospital would pale in comparison to the one to come, with Hermione's parents, the press and very much the entire Wizarding world waiting for answers.

When had it all gone wrong, why had it all gone wrong?

And then, finally, Harry asked, “Do you want something to eat? Or are you thirsty? I'm… I'm not sure I could cook right now, so maybe we could go out and get something to eat…?”

Hermione looked away from her hands, which she had been nervously wringing on the tabletop, to reply, “I'm fine… actually, but I think… I think I'd like… that I need to get some fresh air….”

“Oh,” Harry replied, “Well then, how about we go out for a walk, I don't know how fresh you would call London air, but maybe we could go down to the Thames, there's always something happening near the Eye.”

She thought about it for a moment, and then replied with a smile, “That would be nice.”

*~*~*

Harry was not surprised when, on finally getting to the river, Hermione made a beeline for a stall selling books. All along this part of the Thames there was a series of small vendor stalls for tourists and locals alike. In this particular one, there was everything from Muggle romance novels to biographies, and at slightly cheaper prices than the conventional bookstore. From the look in her eye as she spotted it he knew he had probably lost her for the rest of the day, but he went along anyway. It was better than starting their now inevitable awkward conversation.

But Hermione didn't go for her usual in the stall. Instead she wound up at a small makeshift shelf looking over children's books, and asked, “Do you think Stephen or Lily will like these?”

Not expecting the question Harry looked at her confused, and asked, “What?”

“Well I don't know what children like, I haven't been one in a long time, but I think they like these things. Um, Goodnight Moon, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and The Cat in the Hat…. Gemma and Avril read these things don't they?” she asked.

Realising what she meant now, he nodded, and then said, “But it'll still be year and more before our baby can read, maybe a picture book…?”

“Oh, right…” she said, and replaced the books she had picked up and went over to another makeshift shelf lined with brightly coloured, four to seven “page” books. Harry followed silently after her, wondering only mildly what she was up to.

She made no further comments though, selected three of the little books and then went to pay for them. He watched her from the shelf, and then joined her as she went off with her purchases to a new stall filled with various stuffed animals from the obscenely large to the absolutely miniscule. This time she didn't even bother to ask before purchasing a spotted foal, a black and white puppy and a little golden lion. So he did, asking as she paid for them, “What are you doing?”

“Shopping for the baby,” she replied, and then continued, “You know, I'm not so sure about naming this child after our parents, I want he or she to have their own name.”

Harry wasn't sure how to respond and Hermione didn't seem to notice as they came upon a stall selling little souvenirs for tourists. And it didn't take her long to purchase a tiny white t-shirt with “I heart London” on the chest and a black one with a very strange rocker design that reminded Harry of something Tonks would have worn.

With all her purchases on hand then, she finally stopped and looked up to the giant steel and glass Ferris wheel and said, “Let's go for a ride.”

Harry stopped her then, gripping her arm and forcing her to face him, “Hermione… are you… are-are you sure you want to do this?”

“I've never really gone for a ride on it, always too busy and it seemed kind of silly going alone,” she replied, intentionally misinterpreting his meaning.

He refused to let her, “Hermione, we have to talk about this sooner or—”

She cut him off, “Then let it be later, right now I want to go for a ride on a giant Ferris wheel.”

The look in her eyes clearly meant that further protest would be futile, so Harry took her hand and led her to it.

Up in the London Eye overlooking the murky steely grey waters of the Thames river and a tour boat sailing past them, sharing a small glass room with five others, Harry leaned over and whispered, “We have to talk.”

She did not look at him to reply, “There's nothing to talk about. We're going to have a baby, as I understand it we love each other, and we both feel ashamed of something and afraid of everything else. What else is there? Now how does Ingrid sound to you? It means 'daughter of the hero'.”

“Hermione…” he began, in a warning tone.

“Do you know what you looked like when you woke up that Sunday morning?” she asked.

He did not answer, just shook his head.

She told him, “You looked… like you had just, I don't know, won the lottery. Like if you had just been told that you were now one of the richest men in Britain. Like if you had just… I can't explain it properly, but you looked so happy. And then you realised what had happened and it all went away, as if you had done something very, very bad and the guilt was eating you whole. You ran away to your room and I let you.”

She turned to look at him then, “And then this morning, for just a second, it was there again. You found out that we were going to be parents and you looked as if you were about to walk on air… and then it vanished. It made me feel like even though I was probably giving you what you wanted, you didn't want it from me.”

He was quick to protest, “No, no Hermione, I'm not ashamed of you, of wanting you, I was… I felt bad about how this all happened. You deserve so much better than this, so much better than me….”

She scoffed, “'Better than you', all I've ever wanted was you.”

“Then why are we having problems, why are we… like this?” he asked.

She sighed, long and sad, “I don't know, Harry. I wish I did but I don't.”

“I want it to stop,” he told her.

She was about to ask “How” but then realised that they would never find a proper answer. Instead she surprised herself by replying, “Okay….”

Harry was surprised too, and asked, “W-what? I mean, really?”

She did not answer at first, taking a moment to think over what she was really saying, and then she replied firmly, “Yes, really. If there's no reason for us not to be together… why shouldn't we be?”

Harry couldn't disagree with that. He smiled at her, his brightest, happiest smile, and then, after a moment of debating whether or not he should, enveloped her in a hug. She snuggled into his chest, smiled into his shirt and said, “Yes, we can do this…. We stopped Voldemort, we can do this.”

If only it was really so easy.

-->