The Littlest Things

A/N: Remember me? Sorry that this isn’t an update for “Powers of Persuasion,” for all twelve of you that are reading, hehe, but I needed to try a little something new. I will hopefully be working concurrently on both fics, but I’m a little short of inspiration for PoP, so any thoughts you have might help! And without further ado…

Disclaimer: I own nothing, nada, nicht.

The Littlest Things

Chapter 1—How Different Could It Be?

Most stories have a beginning. But mine starts somewhere in the middle, after I’d already defeated an evil wizard named Voldemort (with the help of many others of course) and begun trying to create something of a life for myself free from the taint of violence and darkness.

When the war ended, I floundered a bit as I struggled to find my new identity in the wizarding world. There were some offers by a few commercial companies to be the ‘face’ of their product, but I really couldn’t deal with being the spokesperson for toothpaste for the rest of my life. My accumulation of titles up to that point—The Boy-Who-Lived, The Chosen One, The Vanguisher of V-V-Voldemort (just kidding on that last one)—didn’t exactly make me eager to add Mr. Wiz-Lax—“For when you’ve got to run!”—or the Broomstick Expert—“Ask him anything!” There was even talk of a wizarding condom contract involving some clever spin on the title “The Chosen One.”

That was how I got into my current line of work. It hit me one day when I was walking with Hermione around Muggle London that the opportunity to do some real good was right in front of me. Grimmauld Place was completely cleaned out and recently vacated by the Order, so I pitched the idea of setting up an orphanage there for those who lost their parents in the war to Hermione and she got that whole SPEW look in her eyes, promising to support me entirely when I got the plans in motion.

So now, four years later, I am the silent benefactor of the first wizarding orphanage, and I spend a lot of time with some of the older kids who are preparing to go to Hogwarts just telling them about school life and teaching them some, er, useful spells. You know, petrificus totalis, muffliato, the Curse of the Bogies, standard stuff really. That all backfired once when Hermione and Ron were visiting and the little buggers teamed up and did a tickling charm on me when I wasn’t looking. They were all in hysterics and Ron made some smart-ass comment about my lack of constant vigilance or whatever until someone took pity on me and cancelled the charm.

So back to Ron and Hermione. Ron of course went the conventional route and became a Keeper of international acclaim for the, you guessed it, Chudley Canons, who are actually having a pretty good year and might even make it to the play-offs. Technically he lives in the second bedroom of my London flat, but he’s usually on tour and tends to sleep, er, elsewhere when actually in town.

Hermione, however, pulled a fast one on all of us and announced at dinner one night that she had enrolled at a Muggle university in London to earn a degree in medicine. She explained to a rather shocked group of us that she intended to bring her knowledge of the Muggle practice of medicine to the wizarding world and hopefully integrate the two methodologies at St. Mungo’s “to everyone’s benefit, really.” She lives not too far from me with her boyfriend of two years named Connor, who to Ron’s annoyance is actually a pretty nice guy. The only problem is that he’s a Muggle who goes to school with Hermione, so we have to sort of filter all of our conversations so that we don’t mention anything we shouldn’t. (In short, she hasn’t told him she’s a witch and I have no idea when or if she’s going to).

All caught up? I hope so, because this is where the real story starts.

Sunday is the perfect day to catch a few extra hours of sleep, and in a way it makes up for those sleepless nights right before and during the war. I was in that state of half-sleep, enjoying what was probably some weird amalgam of all of my Quidditch matches at Hogwarts in dream form, when I heard loud pounding. I sat straight up in bed, sweating slightly as one with an active subconscious is apt to do and blinking away the images of the Quidditch pitch and roaring fans. I rubbed blearily at my eyes until I was reminded of what so callously ripped me from my perfectly good dream: the pounding was actually someone’s rather forceful knocking on the front door of my flat.

My Quidditch-induced euphoria having evaporated promptly at waking, I rolled myself out of bed and grabbed a t-shirt from the floor so that I wouldn’t be answering the door in just my boxers. The knocking grew louder and more persistent as I made my way down the hall and I could feel myself becoming proportionally grumpier with each step. What was so important that someone had to come charging down the door of my flat so early in the bloody morning? Everyone knows that Harry James Potter does not see the light of day in hours of only single digits on weekends—unless those hours follow noon of course.

I wrenched open the door with a not so cheery morning greeting for whomever was unfortunate enough to be on the other side, but my best friend, Hermione Granger, breezed past me before I could open my mouth.

“Good morning, Harry, I’m glad you’re up, I brought breakfast,” she said brightly, scarcely drawing breath and holding up a paper bag for my inspection. She immediately whisked off to the kitchen, a room only slightly partitioned from the rest of the flat by a counter top.

I remained in the entryway, my hand still on the doorknob. “Hello, Hermione won’t you come in?” I grumbled moodily as I turned to shut the door. I didn’t care if I was being rude and took no trouble to keep my voice down, not that Hermione showed even the slightest attention to my irritated tone. I reckon that by this point in our friendship, I should be used to Hermione’s bursting into my flat at ungodly hours like 9 AM, but my work takes a lot out of me and I figured that I at least had the right to sleep away the weekend days without someone barging into my strangely realistic dreams. Besides, wasn’t she supposed to be on holiday with her parents?

Shuffling my feet and generally being as indolent as possible, I watched as Hermione made herself at home by unloading the contents of the paper bag onto the wooden cutting board on the counter. She took no notice of my behavior and chatted away cheerfully without even glancing at me. But even through my moodiness, I couldn’t help but see the hint of strain in her smile and how her eyes darted all over but never focused on anything. She was babbling somewhat incoherently but maintaining that jollity that seemed just a little too overdone, a little too forced. Her movements were exact and mechanical and I could tell that all of her energy was put into them. I have only seen her act like this a few times in our nearly eleven years of friendship, and none of them had good causes.

“Er, Hermione? Is there anything the matter?” I asked, testing the waters and hoping that my concerned expression was hiding the wince I felt at the words.

“Of course not, Harry. Cream cheese or jam?” she answered, one hand waving my question away dismissively and the other toasting a sliced bagel with her wand.

“Jam,” I replied automatically, not wholly convinced but not probing further. If I was correct, and given my somewhat inadequate knowledge of women I wasn’t so sure I was, she would bring up whatever was bothering her when she was ready.

My guess was confirmed when Hermione moved the opposite side of the kitchen so that her back was now to where I sat watchfully on a stool. A few moments of silence were punctuated only by the sound of Hermione spreading jam over the surface of the bagels. Then, in the same merrily conversational tone, she said, “So, Connor and I broke up.”

At the mention of Hermione’s boyfriend’s—or apparently, ex-boyfriend’s—name, my stomach muscles tightened uncomfortably. Hermione has never been one to talk about relationships with Ron and me, mostly because Ron’s emotional range doesn’t permit it and I make a daily practice of burying mine so deep even I don’t know what I’m feeling sometimes. Of course, I follow suit and do not discuss my relationships either, but this is mostly since there’ve been so few in the last four years since the war ended that there is not much to talk about.

So I figured that if she was reaching out to me of all people, then whatever happened between her and Connor to make them break up must have been pretty bad. I just hoped it wasn’t bad enough more me to have to kill him.

Good sense would have told me to make some sympathetic noises and excuse myself from the room if I wanted to avoid a potentially awkward emotional scene, but I couldn’t just abandon Hermione if she was coming to me with this. Plus, I’ve never been accused of having good sense, so the decision was really made for me.

I got up and moved around the counter so that I could help her put jam on the bagels—and take the knife away from her if it got to that. “What happened?” I asked sympathetically.

Despite my inexperience with relationship stuff, I remembered how horrible I felt after Ginny and I broke up the second time (and no, I don’t want to talk about it), so my sympathy in this case was genuine. She was really happy with the guy, and who knew if the break-up was just a momentary slip in sanity on his or Hermione’s part (Ron would probably put his money on the latter)? Maybe I was supposed to talk her into getting back together with—

Hermione began to explain in an oddly mechanical voice. “I was supposed to be gone for the whole weekend with my parents, but my trip ended early, so I decided to go home and surprise Connor with breakfast. But when I got there— ” here her voice broke and she made a valiant effort to compose herself. “But when I got there, I found him—in bed—with another woman.” She broke down into sobs launched herself into my arms, clutching blindly at my shirt as I recovered my balance.

Never mind talking her into taking him back, Connor was a freaking dead man. Not only was he dead, but he was possibly one of the stupidest soon-to-be-dead men ever. Anyone idiot enough to cheat on someone like Hermione—a fierce and loyal friend, not to mention maybe the cleverest person in existence and the most talented witch I have still ever met to this day—has got to be missing a few vital brain cells. Frankly, I was surprised that Hermione didn’t do the job herself.

At first I was too distracted by my anger at the situation and concern on her behalf that I didn’t notice Hermione was speaking muffled words into my shirt.

“It’s not as if I didn’t expect it. The long nights out ‘studying’ with his lab partner—oh, and there just happened to be someone smoking right next to him, that must have been the reason he always came home smelling like a bloody ash tray. And the perfume? Well, that was someone’s idea of a joke, to spray him with floral scent, repeatedly,” she said bitterly.

I patted her back and made the kind of cooing noised I had often heard Fleur use on her kids when they were upset, but I couldn’t help feeling helpless at the sight of my best friend’s tears. She was definitely entitled to them but I had no idea how to comfort, despite the many times she’s had to comfort me.

Finally she pulled away and sagged against my side, deflated. She looked sideways at me and said with some embarrassment, “I’m sorry I woke you up, Harry, I know you like to sleep in on Sundays.”

A wave of guilt washed over me for being such a jerk. I opened my mouth to tell her she was ridiculous to apologize, but she continued on in a voice thick with emotion, “I just didn’t know where else to go…I can’t go back, not the flat we shared. I can’t even look at it, it’s too raw. She was in our bed, Harry! The one he and I had bought together!” She sighed heavily, staring ahead blankly. “I don’t know what to do, and that hardly ever happens,” she joked with a small smile.

I couldn’t help but smile back and the solution seemed to come to me immediately. It wouldn’t make sense for Hermione to go back to her parents’ since she was still in school and even for a wizard a daily commute from Devonshire is a bit much. The next thing I knew, the words were coming out of my mouth before I really thought of the consequences—sound familiar? “Why don’t you move in here?”

For a moment, Hermione looked surprised that she hadn’t thought of that. Then her face brightened with the first true smile I had seen on her since she arrived. “That’s brilliant, Harry! In Ron’s bedroom then?” she asked, already two steps ahead of me of course.

I nodded vigorously, becoming excited at the idea of having a flatmate that was around more than just a few days a month. “Sure, why not? I’m sure he won’t mind. We can just store his stuff at the Burrow or something.” Unconsciously, I was steering Hermione by the hand down the hall and pushing open the door to Ron’s room.

“Good God,” Hermione swore, pinching her nose to ward off the smell of what was probably weeks of Ron’s laundry piled up in the corner. I pulled out my wand to try and neutralize the stench, not looking forward to the packing and moving this job would require. Hermione was scrutinizing the room as though sizing up the task in front of her. With a nod to herself, she turned and threw her arms around me. “This is perfect, Harry, thank you!”

After about fifteen years of friendship with Hermione, I was pretty accustomed to being on the receiving end of her boa constricting hugs, so my lungs only protested mildly as they were denied oxygen for the duration of Hermione’s embrace.

During breakfast, Hermione was deep in thought and didn’t say much but she seemed to be pleased with the new living arrangements. It was when her face fell that I thought I suck up all my feelings of discomfort and be there for my best friend. I reached across the table to where she was sitting and grasped her hand. “Hermione, you all right?”

She looked momentarily surprised by the fact that I had initiated contact, and smiled at me sadly. “Well, I’ve already thought through some of the legal obligations, in terms of removing my name from the lease and everything, but I’m just not looking forward to going back to get all of my things.” She pinched the bridge of her nose as though fighting off a headache, a habit she must have picked up from me at some point. With a sigh, she continued, “It just feels as though the whole flat has been tainted by what he’s done. Do you know what I mean?”

I nodded. Strangely, I did know what she meant, because that was exactly how I felt about Grimmauld Place after Sirius died. I suddenly had an idea of how to help. “I’ll go get your stuff if you want.”

She was torn between apprehension and relief. “No, that’s okay, Harry,” she said hurriedly, “but thanks.”

“Why not?” I asked a little indignantly. Did she not think I could handle just going to her flat and retrieving her clothes and books? I’ve been carrying her books for years—if anyone could do it, it was me.

Having caught on to my annoyance, she squeezed my hand and replied in a calming voice tinged with amusement, “No, Harry, you misunderstand. Honestly, I’m just worried that you might kill him.”

I laughed, voicing my thoughts from earlier. “I’m surprised you didn’t.”

I realized that this was probably the wrong thing to say when her smile faded and she spoke dejectedly. “I really wanted to.”

She looked away from me and seemed so hurt and forlorn that I was tempted to just reach over and hold her—something I’d never thought to do before. This struck as odd, but there were more important things to dwell on at the moment. “Hermione, just me help. I promise I won’t hurt him—I won’t even talk to him if you don’t want me to. Just—I’d like to help,” I said, eager to be of some use.

For a long moment she seemed to stare right through me as she considered my request to do this favor for her. Finally, she relented. “All right, I doubt he’s still there anyway. I definitely owe you one, Harry.” She gave me a small smile and I finally took my hand away to finish breakfast.

An hour later, I was armed with several bin sacks and a list of everything Hermione claimed as her own as well as where to find it. I reached her flat in about twenty minutes and knocked soundly on the door. If Connor was there, he’d definitely be receiving something from me, whatever I promised Hermione. He was just lucky that legally I was prohibited from educating him with my wand on the foolishness of cheating on my best friend. But really, when have I ever been one to follow the rules?

When I heard no footsteps approaching, I cast a furtive look over my shoulder before pulling out my wand and unlocking the door. I didn’t visit Hermione’s former flat very often because our schedules were so hard to coordinate. Hermione had really taken a lot on by going to Muggle university, and the only chance we usually got to see other was at lunch between classes or maybe dinner out at some local pub.

As I walked from room to room, it wasn’t hard to see Hermione’s decorative influences. There were several pictures of the three of us—Ron, Hermione, and I—magically stilled of course, in the living room and several books on the shelf with modified titles that I recognized from our Hogwarts days. I wondered how she and Connor had managed to last this long while Hermione hid away such a substantial part of her life. I mean, her entire flat was Muggle proof!

I decided to start there in the living room since most of her stuff was in plain view and I was not looking forward to rifling through dresser drawers. The list she made me was appropriately Hermione-like, with a room by room breakdown of the flat and key descriptive details to help me identify what was hers. For the next half hour or so I filled the sacks that I had brought with books, picture frames, quills that had been secreted about the room, and other various knick knacks that she desired to keep. I shrunk down her writing desk and the chair and ottoman pair that she had inherited from her grandfather and put them in one of the sacks.

Then came the kitchen, which thank Merlin had almost nothing of Hermione’s in it. She had never really been one for cooking, so I assumed that Connor must be the resident chef.

I tackled the bathroom next, mistaking Hermione for one of those girls who didn’t have a lot of beauty stuff. Clearly Hermione had become one for hair products, which explained the dozens of plastic and metal cans I was putting into the sack as well as why her hair seemed to have calmed down a bit since Hogwarts. I smiled as I grabbed a bottle of Sleakeasy’s, which she hadn’t bothered to disguise, and remembered the time she confessed to having used almost an entire bottle of it for the Yule Ball fourth year.

And finally came the room I dreaded the most, for obvious reasons: the bedroom. A quick peek at the list revealed that most of Hermione’s things were in here in the form of clothes, shoes, and her Hogwarts trunk.

I walked in the room and felt a surge of anger that I’m pretty sure was the reason why the glass holding change on Hermione’s dresser shattered—the bed wasn’t even made. The sheets were still rumpled probably from after Hermione had walked in and out of the flat. Connor must have left shortly after because I couldn’t think of any other reason why someone wouldn’t have the decency to clean up after something like that. What if she had come back and seen the room like this?

Part of me hoped that the jerk would come back so that I could deal with him personally, which surprised me, since it’s usually Ron who’s the overprotective one.

Eager to get going, I moved systematically about the room collecting what belonged to Hermione. I had a feeling that the duvet and sheets were also hers, but she had omitted them from the list and I doubted she’d ever want to see that flowery print again anyway.

I was instructed to remove Connor’s crap from the dresser and shrink it down as well, but as I began to toss his socks and things out onto the floor, I heard an unexpected dull thud. I look down to investigate the noise and just stared—there on the floor with his stupid tube socks was a black velvet box. I reached down gingerly, already knowing what was probably inside but unable to keep from opening the box just the same. Inside was a brilliant diamond ring, impressive even to bloke, but it only succeeded in filling me with more anger. Here was evidence that the idiot was going to ask Hermione to marry him when he was going behind her back with another woman for who knew how long. I walked over to the crumpled bed and placed the opened box right in the middle so that he would realize just what he had done with this one selfish act.

Ten minutes later I was finished and only slightly weighed down by the shrunken bags in my coat pocket with the majority of Hermione’s worldly possessions. As I walked back to my flat—to the flat that I shared with Hermione—I stopped in a restaurant to get us some takeaway lunch. On a whim I took a detour to the nearest department store where I bought Hermione a new duvet cover, since I doubted she would want to use Ron’s.

I called out to her when I got home, liking the sound of it, but I grew worried when I didn’t get an answer. Maybe she had changed her mind and left? For some reason the thought hit me like a bucket of ice water. “Hermione?” I called again, setting the food on the table and meandering about the flat.

There was still no answer, but now I could see why. Hermione was asleep on the living room couch, and while I was glad that she was getting some rest I could also see what appeared to be fresh tear tracks running down her cheeks. Without realizing it I had bent down next to her and was smoothing her hair away from her forehead in an oddly familiar gesture. She stirred slightly and I stepped away, not wanting to wake her.

When I opened the door to Ron’s room, I hardly recognized it. In my absence, Hermione had made full use of her wand and probably had covered the entire room in cleaning charms. All of Ron’s stuff was shrunk down and put in a box in the closet and I made a mental note to send Hedwig out to get his official permission.

I put Hermione’s things on the bed but left the unpacking to her since she was pretty particular about that kind of thing. As I closed the door to Hermione’s room behind me, I couldn’t fight this feeling that things were going to change. But I’d lived with four other guys before in Gryffindor tower, and with both Ron and Hermione in what would have been our seventh year, so how different could living with my female best friend be?

I was about to find out.

A/N: What do you think? Like it, hate it? Let me know!

A/N: Hello all! Wow, the response the first chapter was a little overwhelming, but I’m so glad that some of you have been enjoying it! I’m sorry that I haven’t gotten back to all of your reviews and I will definitely get on that. Thanks so much for reading! Oh, and some of you haven’t noticed a problem with the format. I’ve tried to correct it and have re-uploaded this baby about four times but it seems to be an exercise in futility. I suggest copy and pasting into Word. Sorry!

Disclaimer: I own nothing, blah, blah, blah. Oh! And there are two little songy bits in this fic. The first is “Witchy Woman” by the Eagles and the second is “Hole in the Head” by the Sugababes, which I realize was technically released after this story takes place, but I hope you will forgive the oversight.

The Littlest Things

Chapter 2—Pros and Cons

When I woke up the next morning, it took me a good thirty seconds to figure out why my flat smelled like breakfast. Then it came to me that it wasn’t just my flat anymore. At once the contented smile that had spread over my face immediately dropped off upon realizing that what I was smelling was probably Hermione’s cooking. Now I’m no gourmet, but Hermione in control of the kitchen is truly a fearsome sight. For someone who’s so good at Potions—and nearly everything else—I don’t understand how she can produce such foul-tasting food.

Anyway, with the safety of our flat in mind, I jumped out of bed, put on a t-shirt from the floor, and headed purposefully toward the kitchen. I was just in time too, because Hermione’s attention was divided between three simmering pans, one whistling tea kettle and four slices of bread.

“Hermione!” I shouted, darting forward to flip over the burning scrambled eggs.

I must have startled her because she jumped and the bread she had been toasting fell to the floor. The fact that she yelled, “Harry!” in annoyance was probably an indicator too I suppose. Her hands went to her face as she watched me taking over the helm at the stove, and she said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I know I’m rubbish at cooking, I just wanted to do something nice for you—”

“You don’t have to apologize,” I said, interrupting her and smiled to show I wasn’t annoyed that she was on her way to burning down the flat. Eventually she lost her dejected look and she busied herself by setting the table while I finished breakfast.

Conversation was easy as we chatted about what we were going to be doing that day. Hermione was going to be heading off to full day of classes—“Including labs!” she gushed in a way that made me think that labs were probably sheer torture for anyone other than her, perhaps on par with giving Snape a neck massage—while I was going to spending at least the afternoon at Grimmauld.

“And thank you so much for the duvet cover, Harry,” said Hermione, her eyes trained on me earnestly.

I squirmed under such a show of genuine gratitude and mumbled a quiet, “No problem.”

She rolled her eyes at me, quirking her mouth in a smirk and shaking her head amusedly as she started to clear the table. I followed her to sink, intending to do the dishes as I usually did after a meal. Hermione saw my approach and held up her free hand. “No Harry, I got this, just go and do whatever you normally do in the mornings.”

Now how could I argue with that? With a joking, “Thanks for breakfast, Hermione,” I headed into the living room and plopped on the couch. Normally my mornings were spent leisurely, since the kids at Grimmauld were generally in their lessons until at least lunchtime. But with someone else around I felt as though I should be doing something more productive, so I reached over for the folded newspaper with an absent thought that Hermione must have forwarded her subscription here already because I didn’t usually get the Prophet.

I was impressed by how quickly she worked and felt a twinge of something like disappointment that she would probably find a new place to live just as swiftly. So far having a flatmate to talk to in the morning over breakfast was pretty nice and reminded me a little of Hogwarts.

I tried to keep that in mind a few days later after Hermione cheerily left for school and I went to take a shower. I pushed over the door to the bathroom and was immediately assaulted by the violently colored and oddly shaped bottles of all of Hermione’s hair stuff, arranged neatly in a row on the counter. Apparently she had removed the charms that had disguised them from the Jerk, as I was now calling him in my head, because I didn’t remember them looking quite this…magical when I shoved them all in a sack the day before.

Looking around I also spotted extra shampoo bottles in the shower as well as something that looked a lot like my razor except that it was bright pink. There were new—or transfigured, probably—bath mats and a matching red seat cover. She had also added a toothbrush to the cup that normally just held mine and had placed an extra roll of toilet paper near on the back of the toilet in case the one in the dispenser ran out. All in all, my bathroom had become feminine and practical—and it sort of scared the hell out of me. I had already had to deal with the toilet seat always being left down, and really, a bloke can only take so much.

I tiptoed around the room as though afraid to mess anything up and gingerly turned on the tap, undressing and waiting for the water to reach a tolerable temperature. Stepping into the tub, I noticed that Hermione had adhered some kind of sticky flowery things to the bottom. I shrugged my shoulders, figuring that it was still okay for a bloke to have floral designs in his bathroom if it prevented him from slipping the shower.

Reaching blindly for a switch just left of the water knob, I was again glad that I let Ron talk me into installing a shower radio. Hermione even charmed it to pick the wizarding stations as well. I flicked the switch, expecting to hear some generic indie band, but what came out was:

Raven hair and ruby lips

Sparks fly from her fingertips

Echoed voices in the night

She’s a restless spirit on an endless flight

Ooh, witchy woman, see how high she flies,

Ooh, witchy woman, she got the moon in her eyes!

In the words of Ron, what the bloody hell? I checked the dial and saw that it was tuned to what was magically labeled ‘Spellbound: Wizard Oldies.” Figuring this was Hermione’s doing, I interpreted this as another example what it must be like to share a place with someone. I mean, I shared a dormitory with four other guys in school and with Ron and Hermione for a while during the Horcrux extravaganza, but we all had clearly defined boundaries and not really any shared space. I supposed that that was what I was experiencing with Hermione.

It would just take some getting used to, I tried to tell myself. Like the hair that I had to clean out the drain sometimes that wasn’t dark enough to belong to me, or the fact that our bathroom smelled really girly after she’d been getting ready in it. Or the fact that my refrigerator was now full of healthy food and there wasn’t a pizza box in sight. And the flat was actually clean and neat, which, for a bachelor pad often is not the case.

When I went to grab my towel from the floor where it usually was all I felt was air. A note scrawled on a ripped off piece of waterproof parchment was stuck to the wall and said in Hermione’s distinctive script, which was big enough for me to read without my glasses, ‘Try the towel rack.’

Slightly confused by her meaning and also a little surprised to be finding notes from my best friend whilst in the shower, I turned off the water and slid back the curtain, noticing that my towel was neatly hung on a metal rod attached to the wall. Suddenly, a fuzzy memory of Aunt Petunia chiding me for leaving my wet towel on the floor and forcing me to pick it up and hang it on a metal rack came to me and I figured that I kept to do it in adulthood in the hopes that it continues to annoy her. Somehow Hermione’s casual suggestion seemed to be more effective, and I replaced the rumpled towel when I was finished drying off.

Over the next few weeks we got into the swing of things and worked out shower schedules—Hermione’s idea—and a television schedule—er, my idea, which was a little pointless anyway because Hermione almost never watches tele. Popstars the Rivals, why are you so addicting?

Living with Hermione was interesting because despite the fact that we had known each other for over decade, she still managed to surprise me on almost a daily basis. If you had asked me before she moved in how much I knew about the girl I considered to be my best friend, I would have answered something along the lines of ‘nearly everything.’ Now, though, I feel the need to emphasize the ‘nearly.’

I’ve already hammered the cooking thing to death—mostly because I’ve been on the receiving end of some pretty dodgy meals prepared by the otherwise brilliant Hermione Granger—but what I didn’t know until about week two of Hermione’s residence that the girl has a damn good set of pipes.

I had just switched off the wireless in the living when I heard the words:

Seven hours since you went away

Eleven coffees, Ricki Lake on play

But late at night when I'm feeling blue

I'd sell my ass before I think of you.

               After verifying that the sound was not in fact coming from the radio but from somewhere down the hall, I followed it to the wooden door of the bathroom.

Seven hours since you closed the door

Started a diet, got a manicure

Erased your number from my telephone

And if you call me I won't be at home

They say

Why'd you cry-ee-eye-ee

For the guy-ee-ey-ee?

Say goodbye-ee-ey-ee

Run away

Why'd you cry-ee-eye-ee

For the  guy-ee-ey-ee?

Say goodbye-ee-ey-ee

I said ok, 'cause...

My jaw dropped.  Hermione was singing, more importantly she was singing a new Muggle song about breaking up.  I felt weird about eavesdropping on my best friend while she was singing in the shower and probably thought that no one could hear her, but I still leaned closer.

Ooh, won’t you miss me like a hole in the head

Because I do boy

And it's cool boy

And ooh, bet you never thought I'd get out of bed

Because of you boy

Such a fool boy

With a smile I shrugged to myself. After all, it’s not every day that you hear Hermione Granger belting out girly pop lyrics in the shower. I hoped that the spite in her voice was a sign that she was moving on from Connor.

Anyway, the shower thing worked out well for the most part. I say for the most part since I suppose it’s inevitable that when two people are shoved into a small area, there are bound to be, er, collisions. In my defense though, the door was unlocked, so there’s a disclaimer.

I was minding my own business and heading to the bathroom to brush my teeth before heading to bed. It had been a long day and I didn’t really think about the implications of a close bathroom door, so without thinking I twisted the knob, opening the door and got an eyeful of my best friend—but thank Merlin it was the female one.

“Harry!” Hermione—who was very clearly not in her room asleep like I had thought—shrieked, turning away from me and wrapping herself in a towel.

Now the decent thing to do would have been to look away, apologize, and excuse myself, or some combination of the above, not to stand there staring like an idiot at the girl I thought I knew as well as I knew myself.

“Just get out!” she cried, less hysterical but a touch embarrassed.

I complied, closing the door and walking mechanically to the living room where I sat and stared blindly into space.

What had I just seen?

The rational part of my brain supplied for me, rather unhelpfully I might add, the proper names of all of the anatomical flashes of Hermione that were now permanently burned into my weak, little mind. Now I’ve always known that Hermione was a girl. The fact that she was so defensive about it fourth year and liked to talk about emotions was sort of a tip-off. And I would be lying if I said that in the decade or so that we’ve known each other I haven’t noticed her other feminine attributes. Hermione isn’t really conventionally beautiful—but she is attractive in a way that is from within and not the result of hours of effort. Not that she couldn’t clean up nice.

I barely had any time to force out the images before soft footsteps announced Hermione’s tentative arrival. She paused at the end of the hallway, now dry and fully clothed, and we regarded each other carefully. She and I had grown up together, a fact that was made even more evident a few minutes before, and I was wondering where we stood.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered, keeping my eyes firmly focused on her face only.

Her face remained expressionless for several long moments and I feared that our friendship had somehow been irrevocably damaged by my one, rare, moment of stupidity. Then she cracked a grin and pointed a finger at me. “I had you there for a second,” she laughed as I sagged against the couch cushion in relief. “It’s fine, Harry, I shouldn’t have left the door open.” She turned to leave, not seeming to notice that I hadn’t spoken a word, and said, “Next time, just try knocking.”

Hermione’s words of advice rang in my head every time I encountered a closed door and I tried to get used to certain parts of what was formerly just my flat now being off limits. For the most part, this practice of knocking on the bathroom door seemed to work well, as neither of us were really used to locking it behind us.

One night, though, I passed Hermione’s room on the way to bed, musing to myself how strange it was that the door was shut since Ron was hardly ever home. It was nice that the room was occupied and even nicer that the occupant was my best friend. My grin was replaced by a frown when I detected faint sniffling coming from the room I had just passed.

“Hermione?” I knocked softly and heard scuffling through the door.

“Come in,” called Hermione in a thick voice when the sound had stopped. I opened the door and found her sprawled on her stomach with a large book open on the bed in front of her. I smiled to myself; some things never changed.

Hermione closed the book and gave me her full attention. The light from her bedside table threw her features into sharp relief and I noticed for the first time in a while that she had dark circles beneath her eyes. The brown color of her eyes stood out sharply against their red and puffy background and I realized with a slowness that alarmed me that Hermione had been crying.

“Are you all right?” I asked in concern.

She smiled radiantly at me and for a second I wondered if I had misinterpreted everything. “Of course,” she answered hastily. “Did you need you something, Harry?”

I scratched the back of my head uncertainly. “Er…well, I’ve left the grocery list on the table for you to add anything that you need to it.”

The smile Hermione wore was truer as she looked up at me from her bed. “Thanks, Harry,” she answered, and I had a feeling that she was speaking of more than food.

I returned her grin and shut the door behind me as I continued my journey to brush my teeth.

The next day Hermione had left for school before I got up, so I had breakfast by myself and spent the early afternoon reading the Prophet, which I was glad to say had been revamped in the years since the war and printed more than just tabloid nonsense. Since it was Wednesday, I knew that Hermione would be home late from her chemistry study group and was usually starving after hours in the university’s library.

After getting dressed and having a quick lunch, I grabbed the list off of the kitchen table, noticing that Hermione had made some additions, and with a faint pop Apparated to Sainsbury’s.

I walked through the sliding doors, inserting a pound coin into the slot on a shopping trolley and wheeling it toward the bread section. I had already gone through the aisle of cans before I glanced at the list and did a double take. There, in Hermione’s neat script, was word that I had only ever heard used on commercials and conversations that I endeavored to ignore: tampons.

Hermione wanted me to buy her tampons…I obviously had to do it. I mean, what were my options? To get everything else on the list that she requested and claim to have missed that possibly vital product? Put that way I really didn’t think I had a choice. Half of me was concentrated on directing my steps and the other half was engaged in some kind of pep talk. I found the appropriate aisle—pretty much the only one Ron hadn’t ever dragged me down when we did our rare grocery shopping excursions—and stopped dead.

There were hundreds, nay millions of boxes on either side of the row, looming over me in their colorful packaging. I squinted at the labels and now understood why Hermione had to specify; there were at least a dozen different kinds! Different sizes, different shapes, different brands, scented, unscented, different—gulp—applicators. Honestly, why did there have to be so many different varieties of something that ultimately served the same purpose? And what the hell did ‘regular’ mean then?

Not wanting to spend an hour there choosing, I grabbed the box with the most subdued coloring and after a moment of hesitation, put it inside my jacket pocket. I had to urge to also buy something to assert my manliness as well—like bacon.

“Excuse me, would you like some sanitary napkins to go with the tampons you were just looking at?” came a sweet voice not ten feet away from me. I sharply turned to find a girl a few years younger than me wearing the store’s trademark apron and smirking in that knowing way I have become used to seeing from women.

“Wah-er-I was just—” was my coherent reply. Take that, teenage Sainsbury’s worker!

She laughed and said, “It’s all right to keep it out in the open. Frankly, I think it’s sweet that you’re buying them for your girlfriend.”

And with that she walked away, leaving me choking on my instinctive response that Hermione was not my girlfriend but that we just lived together. What was weird was that the female teachers at Grimmauld also gave me that knowing look when I mentioned that Hermione had moved in. Strange.

So I paid for the thingies—sans bacon—and headed home to find the lights still all out. I walked to the bathroom and deposited the purchase on the counter, silently praying that I had gotten what she asked for because there was no I way I was going back anytime soon. Still feeling slightly grumbly about the whole thing—or maybe just embarrassed that I tried to hide them in my coat and nearly got accused of shop-lifting in the process. Oh, what if the Prophet had gotten wind of that?—I headed to the living room and turned on the wizarding wireless, since the Quidditch match was on that would decide which team next played the Canons.

I flipped the dial to the match, having just missed the pre-game talk, and plopped down on the couch with my hands laced behind my head and a freshly summoned butterbeer on what according to Hermione was called a coaster in front of me. The score was about 140 to 170 Holyhead Harpies when I heard keys jingling in the lock. I angled my head toward the door and greeted Hermione, looking exhausted as she walked in with her school bags and a plastic bag of takeaway. Annoyance flared up that she had time to pick up food but not buy her own…thingies. I wasn’t sure what I was irritated about, other than that she had put me in an embarrassing situation and I was still recovering from it.

“It’s a peace offering,” she explained, holding up the bag. “We had extra food left over from the study session and I just wanted to apologize.”

“What for?” I asked, my annoyance momentarily forgotten.

With a sigh, she answered, “For making you buy tampons for me. I didn’t realize until later…” She plopped down beside me on the couch and I noticed how the harsh living room lighting accentuated the lines on her face. She was working hard at school, even harder than most Muggle studies because she hadn’t had the same academic background and had to catch up, and she had just caught her boyfriend with another woman. Why was I being such a jerk about these little things like hair potions on the counter or the wireless set to a different station?

“You didn’t make me do anything, Hermione. I am able to refuse the great Hermione Granger, you know,” I said playfully, wanting to reassure her that although I may not have enjoyed my little foray into the land of women, she was my friend and she would do the equivalent for me, whatever that was.

She arched an eyebrow at my comment. “Oh really?” she said challengingly.

Something in the room shifted, like the thermostat had suddenly kicked on the heater, and I could tell Hermione felt it too because she fidgeted in her seat and turned a delicate shade of pink. I couldn’t put my finger on what just happened, but I was distracted when Hermione jumped up from the couch, saying something about putting the food on a plate, and the moment had passed.

I sat there frozen while my mind vaguely registered the sound of clinking dishes and closing drawers. I wasn’t sure if what had just happened meant anything more than just two friends’ playful banter, but there was an odd feeling of hope in my chest like maybe I wanted it to.

I immediately disregarded that thought, again reminding myself that Hermione was going through a difficult time and that it was my duty to simply be there for her. The last thing I wanted to do was confuse her by thinking she implied more in her offhand comment than she had.

“Here we are,” she announced, carefully levitating two plates of Indian food and two bottles of butterbeer in front of her. I hopped up to make room on the coffee table, pushing aside various Quidditch magazines and catalogues and old newspapers, and gingerly set down our meals. She gave a small smile of thanks and sank down next to me onto the couch, scooting forward so that she could reach her plate.

I took the opportunity to scrutinize her profile from the corner of my eye. The dark circles, whose presence I’d noted not two weeks before, were still marring her otherwise flawless complexion and she seemed to have lost some weight since moving in. Both could be attributed to stress related to school, but if it was something else, I wasn’t sure if I had the right to question her about it. Hermione hadn’t had too many serious conversations since the war because when you’ve been fighting for your chance to live every second, everything after that just doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal. But I thought that maybe this situation was a little different.

“So how are you holding up?” I asked with a casual tone so that she wouldn’t feel awkward.

She looked over at me and finished chewing before answering with a careless shrug. “All right, I suppose. Final exams are coming up so everything at school is getting rather hectic,” she said, matching my tone. The silence that followed was punctuated by the scraping of cutlery across the plates. I looked up when I realized that I was the only one shoveling food into my mouth. Hermione was facing me with a faraway look in her eyes. When she noticed me gazing back, she blushed and stared down at her plate, pushing her rice around with her fork. “I know what you’re doing, Harry, and I appreciate it, but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

I tried to affect an innocent expression but I don’t think she bought it. Since I’ve always been one to recognize defeat when I see it (well, actually, I haven’t, but that’s neither here nor there), I admitted, “You’re not making me uncomfortable, Hermione, I just thought maybe you needed to talk about it.”

“Talk about it?” she asked doubtfully, quirking an eyebrow. “I am speaking to Harry Repressed Emotions Potter, right?” she joked.

“Hey!” I said indignantly, ignoring the fact that I sometimes refer to myself by the same name. But watching her smile into her plate of food distracted me from arguing with her.

Her laughter naturally died down and she looked up at me uncertainly. “I’m sorry again for the store thing, Harry. Connor didn’t even like picking up tampons for me, so I should have realized that you wouldn’t either,” she said, the words coming out in a rush.

“Yeah, well, Connor was a jerk,” I said without thinking.

Hermione raised her eyebrows, probably surprised to hear how vehemently the words came out. “Are you referring to something specific or just speaking in general?”

I laughed despite myself as images of a black velvet box flashed in my mind. “Just a jerk in general,” I mumbled.

“I know,” she agreed quietly. She continued to push food around her plate and I got the feeling that she was deep in thought.

Steeling my courage, I asked her something I’d been wondering for a while. “Hermione?”

She looked up at me curiously. “Yeah?”

“Why didn’t you tell Connor you were a witch?”

Pursing her lips, she seemed to be forming her words before answering. “I just…I was waiting for the right time, you know? I tried many times, and even started leaving little clues around the flat to broach the subject. I never told him explicitly, but I think he sensed that I was hiding something.”

“Oh,” I replied eloquently. “So he didn’t know anything about Hogwarts or anything?”

She took a bite and chewed slowly, considering her response. “Well, he knew that you, Ron, and I were schoolmates from Scotland, but I didn’t tell him the name of the school and definitely had to give him slightly censored versions of our little misadventures,” she laughed sardonically. “In a sense, I’ve been feeding him half-truths since we met.”

I smiled sympathetically, not sure what to say after her admission.

“Although I would have taken a wand to him if he psycho-analyzed me one more time,” she added.

I vaguely remembered her once telling me that Connor was studying to become a therapist and how he sometimes took his work home with him.

“You know what he told me once?” she asked suddenly. I reckoned the question was rhetorical so I let her go on. “He said that he sensed I had some ‘issues,’ as he called them, with ‘disconnecting from my past.’ Just because I run around with a pair of blokes for best friends and sometimes have nightmares about the war that he obviously couldn’t know anything about. Honestly, if he had seen the things I have, then he wouldn’t have opened his big gop. Bloody psych majors.”

I was taken aback by the amount of curses that had just issued from Hermione’s mouth. But strangely enough I could understand where she was coming from, because it was exactly how it was with Ginny when the war ended. “I know what you mean,” I said quietly.

She gave me a warm but sad smile. “I knew you would, Harry.”

I held her gaze for a long moment and was the first to look away, casting about for something to fill the silence. I was unnerved by the awkwardness that seemed to have descended over the conversation, since it wasn’t a feeling I often had near Hermione. “But you always seem to recover quickly from break-ups,” I said, speaking the first thing I thought of. I wasn’t sure how valid this was, since I had heard sniffles coming from her room a few times since she had moved in.

A snort escaped her and she aimed a truly amused grin in my direction. “Yeah, all two of them,” she said sarcastically. “Ron and I broke up during the war, Harry. Did you honestly expect me to going around moping when there were bigger things going on?”

I shrugged, returning her grin. “Guess not,” I said. I thought of how funny it was what my mind chose to remember from the war. Sure, all the battles and faceless—or masked—opponents blurred together as one giant memory, but mixed in with that were images of Hermione, Ron and I around a fire somewhere laughing, or poring over the Dark tomes in Grimmauld’s library while Ron wolfed down the contents of one of Mrs. Weasley’s care packages. So much had happened in those two years when we were so young that I couldn’t imagine what my life would be like without the pair of them, even when they were bickering constantly.

Hermione’s fork suddenly hit the plate. “I just feel like such a fool!” she exclaimed suddenly. I jumped at her outburst and dropped my fork on the floor but she didn’t seem to notice. “I’d suspected for months, you know,” she confessed in a quiet voice. I was horrified to see tears in her eyes. “Deep down, anyway. I was just unwilling to see the signs…” A tear rolled down her cheek but I was frozen in my seat by her words. “I thought, when I met him, that along with meeting you and Ron and finding out that I was a witch, he was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Every time he came home from a study session, I thought to myself if I could just be prettier, or smarter, or more ‘emotionally accessible,’ then maybe he would feel the same. I thought that somehow loving him made up for all of Malfoy’s taunts in school, for being Petrified second year or surviving Dolohov’s curse fifth year.” She furiously wiped away the tears coursing down her face and seemed to sag after the weight of words left her. “But you know what the worst thing was?” she said almost to herself. “When I walked in the room and I saw him like that, I wasn’t even mad, I was just disappointed. After all that we had been through together, I wasn’t someone he could commit to, and I was delusional to think that he might love me as much as I loved him.”

I couldn’t hold back any longer. “He did love you, Hermione. Listen, when I went to get your stuff, I found something.” Suddenly I wasn’t sure if I had a right to say anything, but I seemed to have caught Hermione’s attention.

“What?” she said, leaning forward on the edge of her seat.

“I, er,” I began, scratching my neck nervously. She looked at me expectantly. “Found a ring.” I held my breath as Hermione processed the information, a rather familiar look.

“Oh,” was all she said.

That was it? I mean, I didn’t want to invoke any hysteria from my best friend, but I definitely expected something more than ‘oh.’ Maybe this was something she would have to sleep on. “Was I right to tell you?” I asked anxiously.

She lost her dazed expression and sent me a warm smile. “Of course, you know you can always tell me anything.”

I grinned back, not noticing the current running between us. “Good.”

She leaned forward and placed her plate on the table. “How about some tele?” she suggested with a mischievous wag of her eyebrows.

I laughed out loud. Only Hermione could think of television as some form of mischief. “All right. A little light comedy?”

Snuggling deeper into the couch cushions, she said, “Sounds perfect. And Harry?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

I reached the remote and heard Hermione sigh as she snuggled into my side. Flipping the channel to a little “Whose Line is it Anyway?”, I didn’t realize until we were both cracking up over something ridiculous that I had put my arm around her. I looked down at her as she laughed and pointed at the screen, feeling a twinge of something fluttery in my stomach. It had been a long time since I had heard her really laugh and I couldn’t help but think how nice it was.

But I should have known that since my name is Harry bloody Potter, something would come along to screw it all up.

A/N: Some of you by now have realized that I’m not British (especially since I just spelled ‘realized’ with a z) so I hope that you are able to overlook my pitiful attempts at impersonating a British guy.

Author's Note: Hey guys, sorry that this isn't an update, since I know I'm long overdue. It might be a few more weeks until I am able to continue writing, since at the moment I'm on a field study in a desert and don't frequently have the free time to write nor the available internet to post (actually, at the moment I'm in the closest town—45 minutes away from where I'm camping—waiting for my laundry to get done while I check my email. I'm sorry to have to request your patience for just a little bit longer, and I hope that what I end up churning out is up to scratch. So, until then enjoy the movie premiere and the last book!

~mysterium26

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A/N: I forgot to mention that the song Hermione was singing in the shower is called “Hole in the Head” by the Sugababes. I've ignored a slight continuity problem—the song was released in October of 2003, but the story is set a little bit before that. And I'm sorry for the delay in updating but I'm sure you don't want to hear (read) any excuses…

The Littlest Things

Chapter 3: Catching Up To Do

A week later I started to notice some other changes around the flat, but while these changes were just as seemingly unwelcome as the introduction of the pink razor in the shower, they were of quite another nature. Hermione's things started disappearing from the common areas of the flat. Oh, the Prophet was still in its usual place on the coffee table, but the cloaks and shoes she had usually deposited near the door had been relocated to her room. One by one her hair potions vanished from the loo and I saw fewer and fewer of her books lying around the living room. It didn't take long to dawn on me that moving her possessions to her own room could only mean one thing: she was preparing to move out. How else could one explain her behavior?

Even I couldn't deny that there had been some kind of shift in our interaction after our discussion about Connor and the black velvet box. It was becoming harder for me to talk to her, knowing that I had been instrumental in bringing her more pain, and I secretly felt that she was blaming me for it. With such an air of discomfort over the flat, maybe it would be better for her to move out. Unfortunately I wouldn't allow myself to just accept that; Hermione and I had weathered worse than this, maybe it would time to just talk to her about it.

With a small measure of reservation—I did not often broach serious topics, let alone ones that were practically unidentifiable—I sought her out first in her room. When my knock went unanswered, I headed toward the living room, where I found her resting her head on the arm of the couch, asleep.

She had certainly changed from the girl that plopped down in front of me on our first trip to Hogwarts or the young woman that dueled Death Eaters by my side for years. I saw that despite her being far away in the land of slumber her face had that crease between her eyebrows that I had so often seen while she was awake. It struck me that perhaps that subject of her dream was created with my own words, perhaps she was dreaming about that which has no end—a band of gold.

I felt a leaden weight in the pit of my stomach at the thought that perhaps Hermione was still not free from the memory of Connor, despite all that he had done to her. I tried to convince myself that the force of this painful blow was for the sake of a hurt friend and nothing more, but the longer I tried to tell myself this the more of a lie it became. Hermione was more than just a friend to me—she had been with me for more years than she hadn't, she was the voice of reason, one of the few people to really stand up to me, she had been with me during the loss of Sirius, Dumbledore, and countless others, she was the one I wanted to see first in the morning and last at night. Like the final bolt of lightning in a storm, it hit me: I loved Hermione.

As I stared in shock at her sleeping face, I knew it was true at once. Hermione had been in my heart for longer than I could have known.

She stirred a little in her sleep and I could see her eyes fluttering beneath her eyelids. She made that funny contented smacking sound with her lips before they settled into a small smile. I gazed at her, hardly able to keep from mirroring her happily sleepy expression, and knew that there was no way I could ever tell her of my recent discovery. Clearly, she was still recovering from a relationship in which she had obviously already had a lot emotionally invested. This would not be the time to mix her up by adding in my feelings, she might feel obligated to return them and I didn't think that I could handle the humiliation of a rejection. No, it would be much better to keep silent and let her work everything out in peace.

Plus, I was terrified out of my mind and it would have probably taken a message from beyond to make me spill the beans to my best friend.

I tore my eyes from her sleeping face and forced myself to head to bed myself. For the next few days, Hermione's possessions continued to disappear from around the flat while an internal struggle between calling her on it and staying quiet raged within me. Finally, on the day marking one month since she had moved in, I decided enough was enough. I would innocently bring up the topic of Hermione's great escape during an evening out, with the hope that the high spirits brought on by good food and maybe a film would overcome any potential arising awkwardness.

Nonetheless it was with great trepidation that I dressed and met Hermione in the hall of the flat. She was already waiting for me, wearing a nice pair of jeans and a lilac colored blouse with the sleeves halfway rolled up. The small wistful smile that she was wearing slipped from her face when she noticed my approach. I couldn't help feeling a pang of dejection.

“Ready to go?” I asked with a forced interjection of casualness in my tone.

Without looking at me, she rummaged in her bag and replied, “Sure. Where to first?”

Showing her through the front door and locking it behind me, I said, “Do you want to eat and then see a movie or the other way `round?” I stuck my keys into my jacket pocket and made sure that my wand was there also.

“Let's do dinner then a movie, that way we're not starving all throughout the film,” said Hermione with a shrug.

“Sounds good to me,” I agreed. We walked in silence, I at least was searching for some neutral topic of conversation, wondering when it had become so hard to talk to Hermione.

For her part, Hermione seemed to be feeling just as uncomfortable, but this did nothing to alleviate my unease. “So, er, when is Ron going to be in town next?” she asked with feigned indifference.

I winced inwardly, interpreting her question to be an act of grasping for an excuse to vacate Ron's bedroom before his arrival. “I think he has some time off after his next game. But you know there's no rush to move out of the flat, right?” There, I said it. Well, sort of.

“Yeah, I know,” she replied, still not meeting my eyes.

We reached the usual pub where Ron, Hermione, and I usually have dinner when Ron is around and sat at our regular booth. The waitress came by and took our orders, smiling at the pair of us in recognition. On a whim, I ordered a bottle of wine in partial celebration of our one-month anniversary as flatmates, but more because I thought it would calm my nerves a little bit. Hermione raised an eye brow when I made the request but did not question it.

After I had poured our glasses and made a toast to the improvement of the flat since she had moved in, earning the first laugh from Hermione all evening. A half hour later, the wine had taken hold and Hermione broached the topic of our flat sharing.

“Harry,” she said, leaning forward with an uncertain expression on her face, “Is it really all right that I'm staying in the flat so long?”

The answer to her question was so obvious that I almost laughed out loud. But since I didn't think she would appreciate it, I said, “Of course, Hermione, you know you're welcome for as long as you'd like. Is that why all your stuff is disappearing, because you think I want you out of the flat?”

Although she didn't say anything, her intense stare at the wood grain in the table was answer enough. Before I had had a chance to consider my actions, I reached across the table for her hand and said, “I lo—like having you in the flat, Hermione. You're a much better flatmate than Ron, you know, and it's nice to have you around.” I winced a little. That had come out lamer than I had intended but I wasn't exactly coherent.

“Even with all of my…girly stuff lying around?” she asked doubtfully.

I squeezed her hand, feeling heat rush to my cheeks from the wine. “Yes, even with all the girly stuff as you call it,” I said seriously.

A small grew on her face and I was hopeful that I had erased her worry. “Yeah, I had sort of fell like we were, for lack of a better phrase, drifting apart before I moved in, what with school and everything else,” she said with a barely detectable slur.

I took “everything else” to mean “Connor,” and I could barely keep the frown from my face, but luckily Hermione was glancing at her watch and didn't seem to notice.

“Oh, I think we'd better go, or we'll miss the previews!” she announced. That was another thing about Hermione: every time she, Ron, and I went to the cinema, she was ridiculously adamant about getting a seat before the lights dimmed for the previews.

We made it to the theater with minutes to spare and left a few hours later in improved spirits, our little discussion seemed to have dispelled whatever unspoken obstacle had laid between us. We walked leisurely back to the flat, pausing to laugh over the more humorous portions of the film that we had just seen, and my stomach flipped like it had when I was a teenager when Hermione accepted the offer of my jacket.

“I just think that Yoda should have at least inflicted some injury on Count Dooku,” Hermione was saying as we approached the door to the building.

I laughed. “Is Hermione Granger advocating violence—what's the matter?”

She had stopped in her tracks, staring straight ahead with her mouth open in unconcealed shock. I followed her gaze toward the entrance to our building and saw Connor there leaning nonchalantly against the pole for a streetlamp. He caught sight of us, his eyes narrowing slightly as he took in the sight of Hermione's arm hooked through mine.

“Connor,” she breathed, her voice betraying her shock. Without seeming to know what she was doing, she pulled her arm from mine and began to approach the Jerk. “What do you want?” She said this without the anger I had been expecting.

“We need to talk,” said Connor, coming closer to Hermione and ignoring me altogether. I nearly groaned at the use of The Four Words, and what was worse was that Hermione seemed to be getting sucked in. I opened my mouth to suggest to Connor where he could go when Hermione turned to me and said a little breathlessly, “Harry, do you think you could excuse us?” She gave me the `I'll be all right' smile and handed me back my jacket, leaving me no choice but to leave them to their talk.

With much grumbling I stomped my way up the stairs and into the living room of my flat. This is it, I thought, this is where Hermione goes back with The Jerk and I'm left all alone in the flat again. It felt as though I had swallowed a large fishing weight and that I would be rooted to that spot on the couch for all eternity. I had only just figured out how I felt about Hermione and because I had hesitated, thinking she still needed time to get over her break-up with Connor, I didn't say anything.

But what if I had said something? That wouldn't have guaranteed that Hermione felt the same way about me. In fact there was nothing in her behavior towards me in all of our friendship that would have indicated that she felt anything more than a sisterly affection towards me. Hadn't I walked past her room several times as she cried over Connor into her pillow? How could I have even thought for a second that I had a chance with the most brilliant witch I had ever met?

As I sat pondering these things, driving myself into a deeper and deeper state of depression, I heard the sound of Hermione and Connor's voices becoming louder and louder as they came up the stairs and down the hall to flat. My heart leapt a little at the familiar sound of Hermione's annoyed huff—the two seemed to be arguing. A moment later and Hermione had come in, throwing open the front door and storming past me and down the hall without a word.

I stood up at once, addressing Connor in the most intimidating tone I could. “What did you say to her? Why is she upset?”

Connor rolled eyes, obviously not knowing whom he was dealing with. “Relax, Fido, I just asked for some of my stuff back.”

“They were gifts, Connor!” Hermione shouted, returning with a small box filled with bottles of expensive perfume that I hadn't realized were presents. She thrust the box at Connor angrily and said in an undertone as though I couldn't hear, “I can't believe you're being so petty about all of this.”

Connor's mouth thinned into a line and he said, “Well I tried to be understanding about the things you might be going through, just as I've tried to ignore how you never confided in me about it but instead went straight to him.” He jerked his finger at me in irritation.

Again the words escaped me before I had the chance to really consider my actions. “Well why don't you try not being such a bloody git and see how that works for you? You had the most talented and wonderful woman as yours for years and you completely botched it! If I had someone even half as beautiful and intelligent and loyal as Hermione I'd never let her go.” The tirade was finished, my body seemed to deflate and I was breathing hard.

Connor, whose face had become stormier with each impassioned word from my mouth, ground out through his teeth, “Then I guess you're lucky I did. It appears you've benefited from this most of all.”

He might have gone on but Hermione gripped his shoulder and escorted him out the door where their dialogue was slightly muffled by the door. The Jerk was probably fortunate that he was taken from the room when he was because I'm not sure how much longer the International Statute of Secrecy would have held as an excuse as to why I hadn't removed a few of the Jerk's body parts so that it would be difficult for him to procreate and spread his Jerkiness further into the world.

From Hermione's patient and calming tone I gathered that she and Conner were trying to resolve something. Unbidden snippets of my little speech flashed through my mind. What had I done? I'd basically just confessed my feelings for my best friend in front of none other that her boyfriend. Great, just great Harry, I said to myself, moving to the couch and burying my face in my hands as though blocking out the images of the coffee table and entertainment center could also erase my embarrassment. My ears perked toward the door, but I couldn't make anything out through the door. What could they be doing if they weren't talking? “They're probably kissing, you dolt,' said a voice in my head that, oddly enough, sounded a little like Ginny. I let out an audible groan.

“Harry?”

I jumped up and faced Hermione who had just come inside. She looked nervously around and shifted her weight from foot to foot. My heart fell, she had bad news, I knew it. “I'm sorry about all that, I didn't mean to spoil your evening,” she said quietly.

“You're going home with him, aren't you?” I said dismally, ignoring her apology.

She was silent for a few moments and I could practically feel her gaze burning into me. With a sigh she moved to one of the arm chairs and plopped down as though exhausted. “No, Harry, I'm not. I've just asked him to leave. I'd thought of the flat that I shared with him as home, but somehow it always seemed temporary.”

I looked up at her, hardly daring to believe she was implying anything. “But I thought…I mean, you seemed like you weren't over him,” I stammered confusedly.

Again she was silent as she appeared to be choosing a reply. “Connor was my first foray into the land of adult relationships, and there were times when I thought we loved each other,” she began as though she were talking to herself. “But…it was an illusion—as much as the film we saw tonight.”

I had nothing to say that I thought hadn't already been harped on enough. But I couldn't help torturing myself. “Why did you stay with him then?”

At this Hermione issued a self-deprecating laugh. “You of all people should understand the extreme that people will go to to feel normal, Harry. I kept telling myself that it was what I wanted, that he was what I needed. But I was wrong. I was wrong about one of the most important things of my life…” Her voice trailed off but our eyes stayed locked on one another.

“You and me both,” I agreed, hoping that would ask my meaning and yet dreading it all the same.

She was gazing at me in that way that made me feel like she was trying to read me like a book. “Did you mean what you said?” she asked, and I thought I imagined the trace of hope in her voice.

I looked away, still embarrassed that I had let so much out in my defensive speech about her. “When?” I said, deliberately misunderstanding.

“What you told Connor. About me. Did you mean it?” she said impatiently.

I knew there was no choice but to answer. “Of course I meant it, Hermione, you're the most important woman in my life—you shouldn't have to put up with jerks like him.”

“Oh Harry.” Hermione put her hands to her mouth but restrained herself from hugging me.

I shrugged. “Well it's the truth.”

She sprang forward off the chair and hugged me tightly. “You're the most important man in my life. And apparently I'm not the only one to think so,” she said into my shirt. At my quizzical expression she continued. “Connor came to try and patch things up, which I'm sure you guessed, but I told him I wasn't interested. He wasn't all that surprised since he could clearly see—now, how did he say it?—oh, how well you and I are `getting on.'”

“Er, what does that mean?” I was somewhat distracted by the feel of her in my arms.

She pulled back and stared up into my face. “Oh Harry. Sweet, daft, dense Harry. When things between Connor and I turned sour, I thought it was only natural that my friend should be so effective at taking my mind off of it, only natural that I should start to compare him to Connor, only natural that I should think of him first thing in the morning and dream of him at night. On second thought,” she said after a pause of reflection, “maybe I'm the dense one in all of this.”

My mouth went dry. Was she saying what I thought she was saying? “What are you trying to tell me here, Hermione? Wait, why were you crying that one time I came to talk to you if not because you were still hung up on Connor?” I needed her to tell it to me straight before I could even allow myself to hope.

She looked down and addressed the buttons on my shirt. “Oh Harry, I was confused, I didn't think that I was supposed to be feeling that way about you. I thought if I said anything, it would just complicate everything and I was just feeling indebted towards you for letting me stay here. Then she looked up and brought her face closer to mine. My heart started to beat so fast that I thought she might be able to feel it through my shirt. “I'm telling you that these past few weeks have been some of the happiest in my life. I'm telling you that I've never felt so at home with anyone else. I'm telling you, Harry, that the only thing that could make me happier at this moment would be if my feelings were returned.”

My mind went blank, there were so many emotions seizing me that couldn't settle on one. “I'm so sorry, Hermione,” I blurted.

Her face fell and she seemed to sag a little.

I realized that she had taken my words to mean almost the opposite of the way that I had meant them. Instantly I attempted to put it right. I stepped closer and returned her embrace. “I'm sorry that I didn't do this sooner,” I clarified. In slow motion I brought my lips down to hers. Her eyelids fluttered shut right before our lips met and suddenly I was kissing my best friend gently but insistently. Mingled in with promises of the future were sighs of relief and complete shock that this had been what we were missing….

Moments later, Hermione pulled away and said in a rush, “Oh, Harry, for a moment there I thought you didn't—we've been so stupid, wasted so much time—”

I stopped her with a well-timed kiss. “What matters is that we're here now,” I replied, possibly the wisest thing I'd ever said.

Hermione smiled warmly at me and I couldn't help but respond in kind. “Yes, and we've got plenty of catching up to do,” she whispered, waggling her eyebrows suggestively.

A/N: Thanks for coming along for the ride, everybody! And thanks to all of the really great reviews some of you left. I'm sorry I didn't get back to all of them, but just know that they were appreciated. For those complaining of the format of chapter 2, let me just say that I don't have anything to do with that. I uploaded normally and it just happened. I even tried re-uploading it several times to fix it, but all to no avail. I'm not very techo-savvy but I did my best and I am sorry that you had to press the scroll button more than you wanted. But anyway, it's been a good ride and I hope to see you all around again!

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