Author's Note: Well, that's it. It's over. The H.M.S. Harmony has been sunk by the cannon of canon. JK Rowling herself said it. It's not changing, folks. Well you know what? I don't give a damn. I guess this just means we're all writing Alternate Universe stories now, and I can certainly live with that. So I'm coming out of my self-imposed hiatus to write this, and for once, I'm not waiting until I finish it to start posting, and then post chapter by chapter. No, I'm doing this the traditional way, the way you all probably do it. As I write a chapter, it goes up. Now, be forewarned, this may well mean that the story never gets finished. I'll try, but I give no guarantees.
Morning. Why, why, why did it have to be morning? Why in Merlin's name couldn't he just sleep until noon, just this once? He was, after all, allegedly the savior of the Wizarding World. Couldn't the savior sleep in a little? Harry sighed. Probably not. He could almost hear Hermione insisting he get out of bed and get started on the day. I'll bet they let Dumbledore in after he defeated Grindelwald. He sat up and pulled the curtains aside, probably the biggest mistake he could have possibly made. The bright sunlight spiked into his eyes, blinding him instantly.
"Ack!" Harry fell back onto his bed, his hands over his eyes.
Brilliant, Potter, now you're the blind savior of the Wizarding World. He rubbed his eyes and opened them slowly, letting himself get accustomed to the morning sunlight. He fumbled around for his glasses on the nightstand, but they weren't there.
"Oh, right," he muttered. Once again, he reached up to his smooth forehead, rubbing where his scar used to be.
When he had defeated Voldemort, there had been a surge of magical energy, and just before the connection between their wands severed for the final time, all of the magic Voldemort had stored within himself moved through the connection into Harry. When Harry awoke in St. Mungo's two days later, he found that the energy had fixed his vision and healed his scar, not to mention every other lasting injury he had acquired over the course of his life. The leg that had shattered in the final battle felt better than it had done before.
Harry stretched. The curtains around Ron's bed were as yet undisturbed.
He's probably relying on me to wake him up. Harry shrugged. I might as well, Merlin knows I'd rather be woken up by a friend than by my alarm clock. Especially if I get in late. Ron hadn't been in bed when Harry turned in the night before, and he supposed he was celebrating somewhere. Parties were still going on all over Hogwarts, and since classes were still suspended, nobody really felt they had enough reason, or, really, authority, to tell the students to stop celebrating the downfall of the worst threat to the Wizarding World in recent memory, possibly in all of history.
Harry drew Ron's curtains aside, and froze. Ron was in bed, but he wasn't alone. Lying next to him, and indeed, partially on top of him, her bushy brown hair spread across his chest, was Hermione. The lack of anything covering her shoulders or upper back gave Harry a rather large clue as to the nature of the rest of her body, and, indeed, her activities with Ron the previous night.
Harry felt as if somebody had punched him in the gut. He knew, of course, that they were together. He'd be a horrible friend if he didn't. And he was happy for them, he really was. But that didn't change the fact that he was in love with her. Faced with the impossible conflict of being happy for them, while at the same time, being insanely jealous of Ron, and horribly lovesick for Hermione, Harry had put up a shield around his feelings, and while he didn't withdraw from them, per se, he wasn't quite as open with them as he had been previously. He knew Hermione had noticed, she had talked with him about it, but he had written it off to her as anticipation of the ever-nearing final battle. After the battle, Harry figured he would have to come up with something new, but apparently Hermione had written it off to the psychological aftermath of a horrible trauma, which nobody could argue that the final battle was not. She had not, however, allowed him to withdraw as he had tried to do. She let Ron go off to some of the parties alone, and she spent time with Harry, helping him work through some of the intense depression he was feeling.
At that point, however, she was soundly asleep, blissfully unaware of the gut-wrenching effects her bare back was having on her best friend. Harry closed the curtains, and sat down heavily on his bed, hanging his head.
That was a nice little bludger to the stomach, he thought miserably. It certainly drove that point home nicely. Deciding to leave his two best friends to get up on their own, considering he couldn't even face the idea of them being that kind of together, Harry quickly dressed and headed downstairs.