"Oh for goodness sake Harry, say something!" Hermione exclaimed after he had stared at her in unnerving silence for over a minute. Harry didn't know what to say; his mind had gone oddly blank. What do you say when you find out that you've been insanely jealous of nothing for weeks? It had been his own fault really, if he'd just had the courage to ask Hermione about him - her! God he was so confused.
"Well, whether Joey is a boy or girl, it still doesn't change the fact that you believe her over me." As soon as he said it he could have kicked himself; why was he picking a fight with her? He was being ridiculous. "And you hardly ever wrote to me either, what was that all about? What made us change Mione?" He ignored the little voice in his head screaming at him to shut up.
For a moment he thought that Hermione might slap him. "I hardly ever wrote? I h-"She took a deep breath, "what about you? You were hardly using up the rainforest writing to me. Besides I thought -" She stopped and refused to look at him.
"You thought what?"
"Nothing."
Harry sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. "I'm too tired for this, I'll go check on Teddy," and with that he apparated away.
The next morning, after assurances that Harry would come and visit soon, Andromeda arrived to take Teddy home. This was inconvenient to say the least as it no longer meant that Harry had an excuse to avoid his friends. Harry and Ron hadn't spoken about their arguments with Hermione and Harry had hardly spoken two words to her since.
As he wondered aimlessly around the house he could hear the other two laughing down in the kitchen. He really wanted to kick something. He'd spent months wishing that Hermione would come home, and as soon as she did he picked an argument. How stupid was he?
Marching into one of the rooms at the end of the hall he slammed the door, grabbed a paint brush and started attacking the walls. It felt surreally like the time he dug Dobby's grave in the garden of Shell Cottage. He just had to take his anger and frustration out on something or he thought he'd explode.
Thinking of Dobby led him to contemplate the previous winter - almost a year ago now - when he and Hermione had been alone for weeks in the tent. If only… Snap out of it Harry, he thought, you'd have been an idiot to do something then, for one she'd been in love with Ron, and he'd - well there had been Ginny and he'd broken up with her so that he didn't have any romantic entanglements. They'd been hiding from Voldemort for God's sake, it was hardly the time.
"Harry?"
He swung round to face the door, spraying paint onto the sheets covering the furniture. It was Ron, his head stuck nervously around the doorframe, an anxious look on his face.
"Harry, there's owls downstairs for us mate. From the Ministry, I thought we could open them together."
"Oh right, yeah sure; I'm coming."
Ron's head disappeared again.
Harry mentally kicked himself, with all that had been going on lately he'd completely forgotten that the Auror programme selected candidates in October. All of a sudden he was plunged into a state of nervous anticipation. For the past four years - when he hadn't been thinking about defeating Voldemort - during those times when he had allowed himself to imagine a life beyond the war, he had dreamed of being an Auror. Now that he had reached the moment of truth he wasn't sure he wanted to see what the letter had to say.
Quickly, he deposited the brush in the tin and wiped the paint from his hands onto one of the sheets. He rushed along the corridor and down the three flights of stairs to the kitchen where he paused for a moment outside the door to control his breathing before he slowly walked into the room. Ron was standing at the table holding the letters in his hand as Hermione and Kreacher looked on nervously.
"Master Harry, Master Harry, hurry up; you need to open the letter. See what news is brought."
Harry looked from Kreacher's excited face, to Hermione who smiled encouragingly at him, then turned to Ron who looked slightly sick as he held out the envelope.
"Maybe - maybe we should open them at the same time," he said, "that way if one of us…" Ron couldn't finish his sentence.
Knowing that his friend wanted to get in as much as, if not more, than he did harry just nodded as he took the letter from him. Trying to appear outwardly calm, he pushed away the knot of trepidation that formed in the pit of his stomach as he slit the wax seal open. He had hardly read more than the first three words when he heard a strangled croak emerge from Ron and his eyes darted to his friend.
Ron was gazing in dumbfounded silence at the parchment as Hermione rushed over and took it gently from his hands. Scanning the letter she began to smile. "Well done R-" She stopped and looked expectantly at Harry, "sorry Harry I'll let you read yours first."
Glancing back down at the page he had time to read the first line before some sort of explosion happened inside his brain. It was as though everything inside his head had gone haywire and it was a couple moments before he remembered to breathe properly.
"I -" he stumbled over the words, "I got in." He looked up again just in time to see Ron and Hermione dart towards him before he was drawn into a rib crushing hug. For several seconds all he could hear was Hermione congratulating him in one ear and Ron repeating "me too Harry, me too!" in the other.
When they finally released him he spotted Kreacher standing in the same spot his large, pale eyes swimming with tears. "Would Master Harry like a nice dinner to celebrate? Kreacher will make his favourite treacle pudding."
Harry grinned at the house-elf he had once detested, "yeah thanks Kreacher; that would be great."
Harry had long since discovered that any attempt to help Kreacher in the preparation of his meals would only result in the old elf becoming offended. So the three of them sat down at the table as Ron, grinning from ear to ear, began babbling away about all the brilliant things he - and Harry of course - would do once they became Aurors.
"I've heard that as part of your training you get to go out in the field, how soon do you suppose you'd get to do that? Do you think we'll be trusted to do important stuff or will that just be once we graduate? How long is it till that happens, three years? Just imagine all the stuff we'll get to do between now and then. I want to get taught all the ways to conceal yourself that should be cool. We'll get taught loads of new spells that are way beyond…"
Harry glanced across at Hermione and raised an eyebrow at her, her tentative smile changed to a grin as they both thought the same thing. Surely they'd had enough dealings with the Dark Arts over the past few years to last them a lifetime?
"…and Dad, we'll have to tell them as well. Ginny will be so jealous I can't wait to see the look on her face when she finds out. It's quite good that we're living in London now anyway, we won't have to go far to get to the Auror office. I've never been in the part where they train us before, Dad always said he'd take me but he usually forgot or something had exploded and it was closed off…"
Hermione nodded and made interested noises at appropriate points in Ron's monologue but when she next looked across at Harry she rolled her eyes and had to suppress a giggle.
For a while it was as though Hermione had never gone to Australia and everything was back to the way it had been when they were at school - well he still loved her of course, but apart from that.
During Ron's excited ramblings Harry and Hermione seemed to come to an unspoken agreement that they would forget - if not forgive - their earlier argument. He still wanted to know why she hadn't written to him, but for now he was happy just to be back on speaking terms with her for what was probably the first time in months.
As Hermione finally managed to stem the flow of Ron's enthusiasm and divert his attention onto a more sedate line of conversation, Harry took the opportunity to read through the rest of his letter. After the initial section which informed him that he had been successful in his application, it went on to say that the programme would begin on the twentieth of October and that all he needed to do was to turn up at the Auror Office with nothing other than his wand.
Suddenly his musings were interrupted by Kreacher arriving in a haze of delicious food smells and laying out three plates of chicken and roast potatoes before them. Harry mumbled his thanks and began to eat when suddenly a thought occurred to him.
"Kreacher why don't you join us?" He was rewarded by seeing the elf tear up again as he rushed to fetch a plate. Looking up at the others he felt his stomach flip over as Hermione beamed at him, a sight which he would probably do anything for.
Life at Grimmauld Place adjusted to Teddy's absence and Hermione's return with surprising alacrity. Harry attempted to do some study for his Auror-ship, but he had never been very good at revising and to be honest if he wasn't prepared to fight the Dark Arts now then he never would be. At least, that's what he kept telling himself every time he closed the door to the library.
Despite the restoration of peace with Hermione, the two of them were still being frightfully polite to one another and tried to be alone together as little as possible, a fact which Ron seemed to have picked up on. Whenever the three of them were sitting by the fire in the evening he would always be the first one to go to bed, with much exaggerated yawning and several meaningful looks at Harry. The result of this was that either he or Hermione would follow quite soon after and Ron would feel he needed to repeat the performance the following night.
After one such pantomime Hermione finally got fed up. "Ron this is ridiculous how can you possibly be tired? All you ever do is sleep and this morning you didn't get up until 11 o'clock." She glared at him, then glanced towards his newly vacated seat while Harry wasn't looking.
Taking the hint he mumbled something about keeping his strength up for Auror training and sat back down again. After a moment or two of awkward silence he said, "So does anyone want to play a game of chess? We could have a tournament, you two have a game, then I'll play the winner." He looked expectantly from one to the other and when neither answered he leapt up with a grin and dragged across the chess set he'd left on the table.
"Come on then Harry," Hermione laughed, "what's wrong are you scared I'll beat you?"
With a resigned sigh Harry swung his legs off of he arm of the chair and faced the board. If there was one thing he was thinking right now it sure as anything wasn't that Hermione might beat him. She was notoriously rubbish at Wizard's Chess.
Ten minutes later he was reminding himself that pride comes before a fall. Her hairstyle wasn't the only thing that Hermione had improved whilst she was in Australia; it was as though she'd been getting lessons from Ron whilst his back was turned. Not that she was beating him hands down or anything, but he was having to really concentrate to keep his advantage. Hermione on the other hand seemed to be thoroughly enjoying herself; in fact she was maddeningly smug about it.
Two moves later and she had beaten him.
"How - how…?" He gaped at the board in utter disbelief. Sitting back he tried to work out how she had managed it as she beamed at him. "Ron, how did she…Ron?" But Ron seemed to have mysteriously vanished at some point during the game. "Did you see him leave?" He looked across at Hermione who was staring hopefully round the room as though expecting Ron to suddenly emerge from one of the cupboards.
"Did you see him leave?"
Hermione shook her head. "No, he must have slipped out whilst we weren't paying attention."
"I can't understand why he's always so keen to sleep now, I mean I know he's Ron and he's genetically programmed to be lazy but even still I can't see…"
Hermione was giving him a look that stopped him mid sentence.
"Can't you? I can think of plenty of reasons - look Harry there's something that I didn't tell you before." She took a deep breath and turned bright red as he sat up straight and gave her his full attention. "When you said that I wasn't writing to you before, well you were right. It's just that I was scared."
"Scared?"
"I wrote you a letter every week; I just didn't post half of them because I didn't want you to see what I'd written."
"Erm, Hermione isn't that kind of the point of writing letters?"
"Well it was what was in the letters that was the problem. You see I kind of… was trying to tell you that… Harry will you promise me something? Promise that no matter what I say next you won't freak out or I don't know… Promise that you won't be weird?"
"Hermione you're starting to scare me now. What's wrong?" He reached across and placed his hand on top of hers in concern.
"Don't Harry, don't make this harder than it already is." She pulled her hands away and went to stand by the window. Harry wondered if she realised just how beautiful she looked with the moonlight falling on her face and hair.
"Harry, the thing is I'm… I'm - dammit!" She whirled round to face him. "Harry I'm in love with you."
-->