AUTHOR'S NOTE: Finally, an update. I would highly recommend anyone who has been keeping up with
this story from before to go back and reread the first few chapters! I've completely revised the Foreword, the
first chapter, the second chapter, and the third chapter. Enjoy.
4. The Power of Connections
Harry almost ran into his bedroom, his heart racing at an unaccountable rate. He almost let his feelings for Hermione slip out into the open, and he honestly doubted that she didn't notice. She was always more observant than she ought to be, noticing things that others tend not to see. However, as he thought about it further… wasn't that was just one of those small little peculiarities about her that he always seemed to enjoy? Wasn't it something that has always seemed to help him in the past?
Why does everything have to be so difficult now? Now that I have come to terms that the friendship I have been sharing with my friend for all these years has managed to grow into love, why does everything between us have to be so much more intricate and complicated? So awkward? The only thing he could do, he supposed, was to just have to be more careful from now on. Even then, though, he was unsure of his ability to do so. How can I go on much longer, keeping this love I have inside of me for her, without telling her? I want to mark her as my own, as possessive as that may sound, but it's the only way I can truly be happy… knowing that I know she knows of my love for her, and that she loves me in return. Why can't things be as easy as that? Why can't I just come up to her, and proclaim to her and the heavens above me of the love I have for her? Why can't she just tell me she loves and make it all that much easier?
He still couldn't believe just how much things have changed over the past day. He had come to a deep and inevitable realization regarding the young girl standing outside his room. After being friends with her for so long, and gradually forming a bond with her that made them practically in sync with each other, he had come to realize that he loved her… cared for her more than that of a friend. He needed her… needed to be beside her, to feel her appreciation for being in her presence, to have her there to tell her it was alright when things were threatening to fall down around him, and to just be able to have her beside him for the rest of his life. It wasn't a matter of possessiveness. No, much the opposite. It was a matter of survival… of great need. She was his lifeline; no, he needed her more than life itself.
Harry's upbringing was far from normal. He was initially born into a loving family: he had two parents, both wizards and very honorable ones at that, who loved him unendingly. The love he must have felt within such a family, Harry had no recollection whatsoever of. Instead, he was utterly doomed to have his parents ripped away from him, and to be put under the so-called "guardianship" of his uncle and aunt. There, no love was shown to him. The "connection" that existed between his aunt and uncle seemed to barely exist, and the care they gave him fostered hatred and loathing, not appreciation, care, and a blossoming feeling of love which he deserved to have, just like all of the other normal human beings he lived with.
When he had come to be eleven, he was finally shown what love could be. The Weasley family was his first such presentation of love: in their intricately, yet fundamentally simple, networked family he was shocked to see a measure of caring and understanding shared between all of the members of their family that he was never fortunate enough to experience or see in his own childhood. They were concerned with each other with a mind-numbing ferocity that shook him to his very core, and made him see, as if a spotlight was finally put in front of his being for the first time in his life, a speck of light in the darkness he was forced to grow up in. He saw love for the very first time.
Later, he had come to find the care and understanding that could be shared between friends. His friend, Ronald Weasley, was somebody he came to care about, concern himself with, and ultimately share most of his experiences with. He was a brother he always wished he had: he was a person that you could come to for help, or simply someone that you could relax and be comfortable with. The interests they shared, most prominent of them being the game of Quiddich, was also another thing that connected them in ways he could never connect himself with others he knew. At a very essential level, they were instructors to each other, people who taught each other the wonders of life, and some of its nitty-gritty guidelines. Without Ron Weasley in his life once he came to Hogwarts, he didn't know how he would have came out to be.
Then there was Hermione Granger. What could he say about her that he already didn't have to say? They found each other on that train, that first day on the Hogwarts Express, and ever since then there were no words that could describe the correlation and link that they shared. In Hermione, he learned the true meaning of love. In Hermione, he found his other half.
If she ever does ask me, I'll have to tell her the truth. I promise myself that. The friendship they shared was important, but a chance to be with her, to have her in his arms everyday he woke up for the rest of his life, was far more important than a chance to keep their friendship together. The possibility of her being his… of them sharing a life together in the future… was becoming a beacon of sorts for him, driving him on and making him dismiss the former fears he had of dying. He would win. For her.
Once he reached his bed, he practically jumped onto it, and sat down, waiting for his best friend to follow. Having no need to worry, he saw that immediately after he made himself comfortable on the bed, she was making her way towards him where she, without any sort of hesitance, sat down beside him.
"So, now what?" Hermione asked. It was a simple question. It held no tone of sarcasm, nor any underlying questions. It held no awkwardness, nor any sort of fear. It was just like she would have asked him the same question weeks ago. She sure doesn't sound any different. Maybe she chose to simply ignore it, or think nothing of it. I dearly hope so, for both of our sakes. Even if he wished to have a future with her, he didn't wish to completely erase the chance they had for innocently being in each other's presence that first week of summer.
"Well, we could always try out some of that transfiguration you mentioned earlier. Oh, before we do that, however," Harry took his wand out from his pocket and aimed it at the door. Pronouncing each syllable of the incantation with care, he stated, "Colloportus." His bedroom door immediately sealed itself closed with a squelching sound, and immediately after this he said, "Obfirmostium," which resulted in the lock mechanism of the door making a soft click, identifying the door to now be locked. Smiling at his noteworthy display of spell-casting, he looked to Hermione for her response. She eyed him proudly, but asked him, "Doesn't your uncle have the key?"
With a passive look of thought, he replied, "I suppose so. Any ideas?"
She grinned back at him and nodded. She took her own wand out and, aiming it at the door, pronounced,
"Repello." The end of her wand sent out a strange misty fog that made its way to the door and
enveloped it, soon after that disappearing.
Harry eyed her questioningly, "When did you learn to cast a Repelling Charm?"
She grinned widely, "I was reading ahead before I got here. That's the first time I've tried it. It'll
hopefully always make your relatives suddenly want to go do something else when they get near your door."
He chuckled and shook his head at her, "Hermione, you never fail to amaze me. You really are the 'brightest witch of your age.'"
She blushed and continued to grin, but then said, "Harry, you don't realize that you could be just as smart as me. You just have to apply yourself to your studies and be adamant in wanting to learn." Returning to her very studious posture and tone of voice, she eyed him down with an analytical sort of gaze.
Harry stared off for a few minutes, and then nodded, "Then that's what I plan to do this year. No matter what, I'm concentrating on my schoolwork and training. But you should know, Mione, that no matter how hard I try, and this even applies to anyone else in our grade for that matter, you'll still be the smartest one of all of us. I have every bit of confidence that you would."
Hermione smiled at him, and nodded, "You don't have to flatter me to make me feel happy, Harry. You make me happy by just being y-"
"Before you finish, Hermione, I want you to know: I'm being completely honest with you." The sincerity he showed, once again in his eyes, stopped Hermione from finishing her sentence, and to instead try to change the subject, "Well, do you want to practice Transfiguration then?"
He nodded, and pointed towards his wand, "The incantation was 'Restituo,' right?"
Still smiling up at him with a very intense gleam in her eye, she nodded, "Alright, so what do you want to change first?"
He thought for a few seconds and then replied, "The bed. I'd like to have a comfortable night for once here."
She somewhat silently snorted (with practically a grunt of hatred too, Harry noticed, but he didn't want to point that out to her) and said, "I figured as much. Let's watch you do it, then." She got off the bed, somewhat reluctantly he noticed, and stood behind him.
Walking up beside her, they were both now standing side-by-side facing Harry's bed. Aiming his wand at the bed, and releasing a long breath he was carrying, he said, "Restituo."
Hopefully I was concentrating hard enough on what I wanted it to change to. And, soon enough, the bed did change into what Harry wanted. It became instantly fluffier and more engorged, and the beds and sheets on it were replaced with much better alternatives. The bed now looked more like the one he had in his Hogwarts dormitory.
Once again, Hermione looked at him as if he had done something wondrous. If this was what would make Hermione look at like this, he definitely wanted to try harder in school now. He would certainly do so to succeed against Lord Voldemort, but he only wanted to be able to succeed so he can come out victorious to be able to please her like this for the rest of his life. The smile on her face was making him dizzy, and made his breathing speed up.
"Good job, Harry! Alright, my turn now."
She aimed her wand at his end table, which was chipped and seemed to be falling apart, and repeated the same incantation, "Restituo." The end table immediately changed to one that seemed to be made for royalty, and the clock atop it transformed into a better-looking digital clock. She smiled up at him, and they continued to repeat this process with much of the other furniture that Harry had in his room. Once they were finished, around fifteen minutes later, they both seemed to be exhausted and were lying down, side-by-side, on Harry's bed that now, Harry realized, felt like he was floating on air.
"You know, Harry, you already seem to be doing better with your Transfiguration. What'd got you so inspired?" The question she gave him, as innocent as it was, had managed to make Harry almost let out his deeply-kept secret once again. He stopped himself before he was going to say "you," and instead said, "Like I said before, I want to try harder from now on. I guess that that fact has sort of pushed me to try and concentrate harder on casting spells like these, and maybe that's why they're working so well now."
"Whatever it is you're doing, you're definitely doing better now. Maybe we should put aside a bit of time
every day to practice spells. Especially ones we'll be learning this year. What do you think?"
"Mione, I trust in anything you say. But yeah, I definitely think that's a good idea."
She nodded, not trusting herself to say anything right now, and laid there on Harry's bed for quite a long time until Harry said, "Well, it looks like it's starting to get late. Is there anything else you'd like to do, or should we go off to bed right now?"
"Well, I would have liked to start our homework today, but that can wait. I'm exhausted, especially after all
that advanced spell casting." He nodded, and said, "Since you need to dress, we should probably clear the
door of any of its spells and I can go get the bathroom ready for you."
He felt Hermione shake her head beside him, "No, we don't need to do that. I can create a temporary washroom inside your room that we can use, and when we're done with it we can cast it away."
"You can do that?" Harry said in wonder and felt Hermione nod her head in response.
"I'm sort of tired right now, but I'll try it. If I can't do it, then we'll try your idea. Alright?" They both stood up off of the bed.
Harry nodded and looked at her with thanks. She smiled, and looked away towards an empty wall in his room. Taking out her wand, she swished it around and said, "Inanimatus Conjurus." A doorway suddenly appeared on the wall, and Harry's jaw fell in response.
"Did you just…use a conjuring spell?"
She nodded sheepishly, and said, "Well, I guess since it worked I'll use it first?"
He could only nod, and went back to the bed to lie down on it as he waited for Hermione to finish. He just couldn't
get her out of his head, and the inflating feeling in his stomach was driving him mad. I need to know. I need to
know. But… I can't tell her without putting our friendship in danger.
* * *
This is simply getting harder and harder. I don't know how I'll be able to sleep by him tonight and not fantasize about him and me… doing… things. I already do it when I'm just looking at him in the middle of the day!
While she was washing herself and was about to put on her pajamas, she heard someone knock on the door. She looked at it in confusion, and wondered what could Harry want. She opened the door, and looked at Harry with somewhat of a glare, but mostly a questioning glance. She then suddenly realized that all she was wearing above her waist was a bra, and she suddenly blushed.
Harry seemed to freeze as her eyes looked up and down her body. Before she could blush even more, he quickly said, "You forgot this. I'm sorry for interrupting, but I thought that maybe it'd be better if I gave it to you before… you came out." He handed her something and quickly closed the door, cheeks red as a beet.
She looked down, confused, to her hand and saw that Harry had given her the pajamas she was just about to put on, and realized that she must have forgotten them before she came into the washroom. She tried to slow her breathing as she finished off with dressing for the night.
* * *
Merlin, she's beautiful! More and more this summer I see different sides of her, sides I never knew about. It's only driving my body to feel more and more foreign feelings. I don't know how I'm going to be able to stop myself from telling her my feelings before the end of the summer.
Before he could continue thinking, he heard the washroom door open silently. Wordlessly, he felt somebody else's weight rest on the bed beside his head. Harry, in response, sat up on his bed and looked over to Hermione. For the umpteenth time today he found himself staring at her. Hermione was wearing a pink silk pajama that left little for whoever saw her to imagine.
Clearing his throat before he got himself deeper into trouble, he said, "I guess it's my turn now." She nodded, and Harry realized that she too was staring at him. He looked away and, grabbing some things from his drawers before he left, went into the washroom.
After washing himself, and putting on a white shirt and blue pajama pants (which he also earlier had cast a switching spell on so they were better to look at and wear than the hand-me-downs he had from Dudley in addition to most of the other clothes in his wardrobe), he made his way out of the washroom to sit beside a waiting Hermione, who seemed to have been in deep thought.
Waiting for her to finish what she was thinking about, Harry took up his wand and silently muttered the incantation "Finite Incantatem," while aiming the wand at the conjured washroom, thus casting the conjuration away. He then folded his hands together in his lap and hummed an unknown tune.
Before long, he felt Hermione move beside him and look at him with a questioning gaze. Giggling, she said, "I never heard you hum before. What are you so happy about?"
He looked at her, no longer humming, and said, "I'm just happy that you're here with me this summer, and I can share all these experiences with my best friend."
She smiled, and said, "I feel the same way, Harry."
He nodded, and looked down at his bed, "Well, ready to go to sleep?"
Nodding, she pushed herself to the far side of the bed as Harry lay down on his side. Wordlessly, they put the
comforter around themselves as Hermione said, "Nox" into the air, with her wand that she had at her
side, and saw the room envelop itself into darkness.
Closing his eyes, Harry felt the warm heat of the girl he loved lying behind him. How he was going to sleep tonight, he had no idea.
Eventually, things got worse. He felt Hermione edge closer to him slightly later on in the night, and wrap herself around him. He literally froze and didn't know what to do. Should I wake her? Feeling Hermione breath so peacefully behind him, he instantly knew the answer and instead decided to stay still and to revel in this amazing feeling.
Then, suddenly, she heard her moan breathlessly in her sleep, "Harry."
He found himself freeze again, and trying to slow his breathing he closed his eyes. Whatever that meant, I can think about later. All I have to do is try and make it until tomorrow morning. That didn't seem to be any sort of problem for Harry, since soon after he was drifting off to sleep, the dreams he had been having ever since the battle at the Ministry of Magic beginning to awaken themselves once more in his subconscious mind.
The girl came up to him, once again initiating a dance to an imaginable tune. He felt himself, once again, rise into the heavens as the world around him shrunk only to concentrate on the two figures there on the floor. With his head in the crook of her neck, he surrendered himself to the peace and calm he felt in this girl's presence.
The stars around him were whizzing past, flying into the distance. It was unearthly, the world they were in, and ultimately in an eternal state of peace. There was no Voldemort, no war, no fighting. There was just him, and the girl in front of him. The girl he was dancing with. A girl who was pushing themselves closer, bringing them deeper into the mechanics and under-workings of the song.
But he knew now, like he always had deep within him, who that girl was. There was no doubt, no uncertainty about it. He knew it now, a knowledge that has become as embedded as the language he spoke. Her presence overwhelmed her, and made him forget all of his worries, just like it could in the real world.
And with one glance upwards to look at Hermione Granger's face, he knew that what he felt for her could not be denied nor ever questioned any longer. Her eyes, as soft and luscious as chocolate, looked into his and he felt as if she was piercing into his very soul.
And he knew. He knew without a doubt that he didn't care what she saw there. He mentally surrendered, putting his hands up in mock defeat. See what I see, Hermione! See how you mean to me! Just being close to you, in your presence, makes me feel safe. Don't you see, Hermione? I love you.
Just being in her arms made Harry feel utterly and undeniably complete. Just being close to the one girl he truly and unconditionally loved, without a single shred of doubt, made him feel as if all of his worries no longer existed. In Hermione's arms, he was in a state of perfect harmony.