Disclaimer: I do not own HP; I only borrow for fun.
Author's Note: Angsty. UST. Starts out with H/G altho' this is very definitely a H/Hr fic. (I am not responsible for any illnesses that may result from reading this first part…)
Honesty
Part 1: The Lie
Every day he hated himself a little more. Every day he felt the spurs of guilt claw a little deeper at him, lacerating his conscience and his heart.
Every day he yearned a little more intensely to be able to tell the truth.
He couldn't believe he had become what he hated, a liar, unfaithful in his thoughts if not his actions.
He felt like a right bastard whenever he saw her smile at him and wished more desperately every time that things hadn't happened the way they had.
If only he hadn't been so blind for so long-if only he hadn't felt quite so alone and desperate for some sense of belonging. If only…
But, no, it hadn't happened that way. He had been blind (and colossally, criminally stupid too, he often thought with half-savage self-recrimination) although to be honest he really had been too preoccupied and worried about Voldemort and staying alive long enough to destroy the horcruxes to think about romance. Everyone had been, really, which was why Ron and Hermione's relationship had remained stalemated at friendship with occasional fleeting moments of tension until after the final battle and things began to settle down.
And afterwards, he had felt at such a loss, drifting, more alone than ever after Ron and Hermione got together, and his ordeal at the final battle hadn't helped. Perhaps it was understandable that he had idealized Ginny, thought longingly of her because he associated her with those last few halcyon weeks of peace and contentment before Dumbledore died. And so he'd been glad to begin again, had relished the sensation of being alive and free.
And at first he had been happy. She was as pretty as ever, a little more serious than she had been but, as he felt as if he'd aged ten years in the last year, that was fine. He had been happy and he did care about her.
But not enough, not the right way.
At first he'd put his growing sense of restlessness, the beginnings of dissatisfaction, down to boredom.
But then, one fateful evening, the blinders were ripped from his eyes, all his delusions exposed for the flimsy charlatans they were.
He had had dinner with Hermione as Ron was away for Chudley Cannons tryouts and over dinner and afterwards, he had slowly realized something: he was happy. He was happy with Hermione, all the restlessness, dissatisfaction, boredom and other feelings, that plagued him when he was with Ginny or anywhere else, simply vanished when he was with her. And he knew peace, contentment.
Looking at her during one of the occasional, comfortable silences, he'd wished that he could stay there forever. He never wanted to leave, never wanted to lose the peace he found with her… he simply didn't want to leave her…
Then when he'd finally (reluctantly) gotten up to leave, she'd stepped close to give him his customary hug. He'd breathed in her familiar fragrance as he closed his arms around her-and he'd reacted. She'd stepped back and simply smiled at him and everything inside him clenched with desire, a tidal wave of lust slamming into him with enough force to leave him dizzy and then terrified.
He wanted Hermione.
Good God, he wanted Hermione-Hermione whom he'd never thought about in that way before, Hermione who was still his best friend in the world.
That night had been the first time he'd dreamed of her. Dreamed of kissing her the way he wanted to, parting her lips with his, tasting her, exploring her mouth with his tongue… Dreamed of seeing her naked, picturing what he'd never seen but he knew she'd be beautiful (she was always beautiful, could never be anything less than beautiful…) Dreamed of touching her, caressing her, learning her body with his lips and tongue and hands…
He had awoken to find that he was rock-hard and aching-wanting her so badly he couldn't think straight and he'd fantasized about what it would be like to touch her the way he wanted to, how she'd taste and what she'd look and feel like around him, under him, imagined the passion of her-and he'd come with explosive force, almost without meaning to, her face in his thoughts, her name on his lips…
It was only afterwards that he realized the ramifications of what he'd done-not only that he had wanked off to thoughts of his best friend of 8 years but that he'd been unfaithful, in his thoughts certainly, to Ginny.
He was a right bastard, he thought-but he couldn't stop.
He'd told himself it was a mistake, a crazy fantasy with no substance behind it, just one of those moments when his brain lost control of his libido. But then it happened again.
They'd met up for dinner, one of their regular dinners as the three of them, Ron flushed with the triumph of his tryouts for the Cannons and he'd looked up and seen a drop of pasta sauce lingering on Hermione's lips (her soft, pink, wonderfully-kissable lips) which she'd licked off quite un-self-consciously, laughing at something Ron had said (and Harry never knew what it was, only smiled along with them automatically). And he'd felt it again, that flash of heat settling low in his belly, that jolt of pure lust.
Lust for his best friend. For Hermione.
He didn't know how he managed to get through the evening but had only just begun to think he had succeeded somehow in acting normally when Hermione had turned a quizzical look on him.
"Harry, is something wrong? Are you mad at me?" The mixture of affection and concern in her voice tore at him.
"Of course not!" he'd hastily blurted out. "I just- have a bit of a headache," he lied quickly.
"I have some headache potion with me if you want it," she offered, smiling gently at him-and then she'd reached across the table and put her hand on his arm. It was nothing she hadn't done before, tens and hundreds of times, the friendly touch on his arm. It was simply her way.
Her hand burned. Through the thin wool of his jumper, he felt the heat of her touch. Every muscle in his body tensed, stilled, as he fought back the automatic impulse to jerk backwards-it was either shake off her touch as if it were poison or reach for her hand and bring it to his lips and kiss her palm, taste her, before trailing his lips up her arm to her lips… He couldn't do either. So he tensed, his muscles locked. He could not kiss her but he could not recoil either. To do so would hurt her, he knew, and that he could not do. He would sooner cut off his own right hand than cause her one moment of hurt.
"No, no, I'm all right," he managed to get out, a little stiffly, his gaze not leaving her hand on his arm.
She gave him a parting, friendly squeeze and then the moment was over.
But his torment had really only begun.
He couldn't stop and that had been the beginning of his torture, his deserved torture.
That had been the start of a series of revelations.
He didn't love Ginny, had never loved her. He'd always cared about her as Ron's little sister, fancied her-and yes, he'd wanted her too, for a while. But he didn't love her.
And Hermione… He didn't know how or when it had happened but somehow, he had fallen in love with her. He loved her, completely, irrevocably-hopelessly.
Everything she did turned him on now, it seemed. Watching her eat and drink was an experience in seduction. The simplest, most chaste touch of her hand on his arm or shoulder was more arousing than anything Ginny had ever done.
And though he'd hoped, at first, that it might just be a passing thing, with every day that passed he realized that he was lost. Realized just how deeply these emotions were rooted inside him. It wasn't simply that he wanted Hermione, lusted for her with a passion that amazed him sometimes. It was that she felt like a part of him in some odd, indefinable way. All the threads of their lives had gotten so intertwined over their years of friendship that to separate them would be impossible.
He was well and truly hers, for life and for always.
He both sought and avoided Hermione's company. It was like some sort of exquisite agony; he wanted to be with her; he always hated to leave her, missed her when he wasn't with her, but at the same time, being with her became painful too. He felt twisted into knots of frustrated desire and suppressed emotions until there were times he almost resolved to avoid Hermione if at all possible, only to give in and seek her out. He needed her, needed to see her smile and hear her laugh and feel that peace he felt only with her…
But every time, it got a little harder to leave her, to simply act like her best friend and not reveal through words or actions any of what he was feeling. There were times when he felt like he was in danger of chewing a hole in his tongue, given how he had to bite his tongue to keep from saying what he could not say. It was worst at those times when Ron and Hermione would fight or when Ron would say some careless, thoughtless thing that would hurt her-and he would see the flash of hurt or, worst of all, the sheen of tears in her eyes and his heart would race, his hands clench and every muscle inside him tense with the desperate need to comfort her and to simply cause pain to anyone who dared to hurt Hermione. Violence would well up inside him and he would have to squelch the urge to simply grab Ron by the shoulders and shake him. How can you hurt her like that? How dare you hurt her? How can you not know how lucky you are? Don't you know that I would give anything- everything- simply to be with her, to be able to tell her I love her-and you, you hurt her, take her for granted. How can you do that when I would give anything simply to be able to touch her the way you can?
But he never said it, never let either of them see.
While she and Ron were together, it was slightly better. He wanted her to be happy and if Ron made her so, then he would be content. And not even for her would he break Ron's heart or betray him like that so it was easier to hide what he felt.
But then she and Ron broke up, finally deciding that they were better off as only friends. She was free, uncommitted and heart-whole-and the revolution of emotions he experienced was a new rack of torture.
Because now there was only one barrier between him and being free to confess what he really felt for Hermione, only one obstacle. But that one obstacle was huge.
He hated himself but he was trapped in a web of his own making. He was with Ginny and he didn't want to hurt her, couldn't bring himself to hurt her. He would see the way she smiled at him, would hear the affection in her voice when she spoke to him-and he knew he couldn't do it.
Ginny deserved better than him, he knew, but he couldn't hurt her by telling her that he didn't love her, couldn't love her.
The other side of his deception began there.
A week after that fateful dinner where Hermione had simply been her usual, affectionate, and always-prepared self and he-he had burned for her but only in silence.
He'd come home to his flat to find Ginny waiting for him. Ginny, whom he'd hardly thought of in the past week. Ginny, whom he usually saw at least once a week but whom he'd both intentionally and unintentionally not spoken to in the past week. Ginny, who had once been so much to him and now…
Ginny, who'd twined her arms around his neck, dropping a kiss on his cheek before whispering in his ear, her warm breath tickling his cheek, "I've missed you, Harry. Haven't you missed me?"
And he'd closed his lips on the "no", the truth he could not say, and only kissed her with more passion than he'd given her in weeks, apologetically, hoping that her touch would kindle in him some of the same fire it had before, make him feel even a little of what he now felt every time he was with Hermione or thought about Hermione.
He'd kissed her and he'd kissed her and he'd kissed her-and he'd kept his eyes closed. Even as the kisses led to his bedroom, even as he was stripping off her clothing and hastily shedding his, even as he was touching her, caressing her, he kept his eyes closed.
And it was only later, when she was curled up next to him, sleeping peacefully, that he opened his eyes to the enormity of what had just happened.
He'd kissed Ginny, his body responding to the familiar feel of her, the passion of her, had touched and caressed Ginny-but it had been Hermione he thought of, Hermione he saw in his mind's eye. And at the last moment before he hit his peak, it had been Hermione's face he saw, Hermione's name which had risen to his lips only to be choked back, transformed into a guttural cry.
Ginny's had been the body-but Hermione had been the one he'd truly been making love to.
It was despicable. He was despicable. But, God help him, he could not stop, was trapped in a cage of his own making.
He closed his eyes whenever he kissed her now (when he couldn't avoid kissing her and touching her) and pictured Hermione. It was Hermione's face he saw, Hermione's hair he touched, Hermione's body he caressed in his mind-not Ginny's. It was Hermione who haunted him, who was always on his mind…
He was living a lie. Living the lie that he cared about Ginny that way, was happy with her; living the lie that he felt only friendship for Hermione; living the lie that he was content with his life…
He sometimes wondered how Ginny could not know or sense the lie, how she couldn't somehow intuit that he dreamed about another woman, that he was holding himself back. Hermione would have known it, he thought; Hermione had always had that instinctive understanding of his thoughts and feelings… Ginny did not.
How could she not notice that he never liked to linger with her, that he had become rather expert at creating reasons for him never to stay over at her flat or for her not to stay over at his? How could she not notice that he always closed his eyes when he kissed her or when he was touching her, inside her? How could she not notice that he avoided any talk of their future or of his feelings? How could she not notice that he never completely let himself go, was always cautious around her?
And yet she didn't notice.
He could never decide if he was more relieved or slightly irritated at her seeming obliviousness, along with being a little saddened at this further proof that, even had Hermione not been in the picture, he and Ginny were simply not right together.
He was stuck in a rut named Ginny-and yet, how could he tell her the truth? How could he hurt her like that? It wasn't fair to her; she deserved more, she deserved better, deserved to be really loved-but he was the one she cared for, he was the one she'd dreamed of, wanted to be with, for years now. How could he tell her the truth? How could he tell her that he didn't love her, that he'd never really loved her, that he never would love her?
He should tell her, he knew that. He was being dishonest and unfair to both of them-and a coward. But how could he tell her and break her heart…
He didn't know.
So every day, he hoped for strength and for courage and every day, he would see her smile at him or show him in some other little way how much she cared about him, and every day, the truth got caught in his throat and he would realize he could not tell her…
And every day, he hated himself a little more…
~To be continued…