Disclaimer: JK Rowling owns everything Harry Potter related.
[AN]: This chapter involves Harry and Hermione finally getting it on … not in that way at least.
Chapter Two: Getting to Know Each Other Again
Hermione thankfully was holding a pen in her hand when all of this was happening. She was fidgeting with it while she was looking at the man she probably knew when she was 11 years old. She bit her bottom lip and she looked down for a second then back up to look at him. All of a sudden something just built up inside of her chest. It was screaming to come out, but she couldn't find her voice.
She heard the man's voice and she couldn't believe what a sound it was either. It was a deep, but with a lot of love and care along with it. She swallowed hard and moved around her desk slowly, placing the pen down onto her desk. Her heals made a small noise every time she took a step forward. Hermione made her way in front of her desk and just stood there, trying to get a better look.
He's changed so much, she thought and felt her eyes get watery.
"Harry?" she said and moved a little forward, her heals once more clicked against the floor.
She said his name and all the worry seemed to vanish within him.
Quickly she walked over to him and the last few steps she jogged up to him. Harry smiled broadly and dropped his bag as she rushed into his open arms.
"Oh, Hermione," he said happily, lifting her from the ground and spinning in a circle with the momentum.
He felt a twinge of guilt as he realized that he was getting her nice suit wet but disregarded this thought in his happiness. As Hermione looked up into his face, he gazed back at her, his green hues examining every detail of her face. She had certainly grown into her looks. Her once bushy brown hair had finally receded into delicate waves instead, and they circled her face which had lost all traces of baby fat, leaving it angular and smooth. A truly genuine smile danced across her lips and Harry felt his heart race.
"I still can't believe it's you," she said and just threw her arms around him once more being twirled by him.
She laughed, and for the first time probably, her laugh meant something this time around. She was held tightly against him until once more she was placed down, her heals clicking again.
"For a minute there you scared me," he said with a small smile, looking down at her face.
"Well how should I know that someone like you would end up here?"
Harry grinned and sighed happily. "It's just really nice to see you."
"You have no idea … But now you have to explain a whole lot."
"I want to know everything from the start to the end. Why didn't you return my letters? I sent you a letter every single week until I just gave up. I had a feeling the Ministry was probably burning them up so you couldn't read them," she said slightly annoyed by the fact of it.
"Why were you gone for so long, Harry?" she asked softly just looking at him.
"You have no idea what impact you did on me after all these years."
"And as much as I would like to tell you from start to finish, I am afraid I can't."
He raised a hand as Hermione opened her mouth to argue and she fell silent.
"Please, wait. You have to hear me out and then you'll see why."
Hermione nodded and Harry leaning back into the chair and resting one ankle on his knee.
"First off, I'm sorry I lost contact. If I had had my way I would have written you and Ron every day. Unfortunately that was a luxury I was denied.
"After the final battle I couldn't stand all the publicity," Harry continued, sighing.
"Everyone wanted to worship `The Boy Who Lived.' It was ten times worse than it had ever been and it was driving me insane. After only a week I wanted nothing more than to be free of all these people and have a little solitude until the hysteria died away. That was when a man from the Ministry approached me and offered me a position in the Department of Mysteries. The idea of being separated from the rest of the world was too tempting to ignore and so I accepted on the spot, and I became an Unspeakable."
At this Harry gestured to his bag, which he had left by the door, and it zoomed across the floor to him. Opening it, Harry withdrew a stack of letters tied with twine, each one with his name written across its envelope in Hermione's curling script.
"This is every letter you've written me over the years," Harry said, and then set another stack beside it, slightly smaller.
"This is every letter Ron wrote me," he said before placing a third and fourth stack of letters on the desktop, one pile with Hermione's name written on it and the other with `Ron Weasley' scrawled across its surface.
She noticed how her pile was slightly bigger than Ron's pile and she couldn't help but blush a little.
"And these are all of my replies, which I was forbidden to send."
Harry shook his head before dumping all of the letters back into his sack except for the one with Hermione's name.
"As part of my job I was not allowed communication with any Wizard outside of the department. I was grateful for this because it gave me an excuse to escape the limelight, but my biggest regret was that I was also forbidden even casual contact with you and Ron. I received every one of your letters, and for reasons I will never know, I wrote back. I suppose maybe it was just a sort of counseling for me. I felt like a horrible person if I didn't at least write back. So I would write a reply, seal it in an envelope and address it, and then I dropped it into a drawer on my desk and it never saw daylight again."
Harry sighed again, rubbing the bridge of his nose, before looking back up at Hermione.
"I worked in the Department of Mysteries for all these years until today," Harry said and he couldn't keep the smile from his face.
"Today was my last day working there. The hysteria over me has long died down and I finally grew to weary of being trapped in a cubicle to continue working there. So I put in my resignation and today I left the Department of Mysteries for the last time. I was on my way home to owl you and Ron when I stumble across your store and I had stepped in to buy a book as a present for you. That's when I saw your name on a business label and I had to come and see if it was you. I suppose buying one of these books for you would have been worthless since you own them all already."
Harry laughed, an honest laugh for the first time in years, and marveled at the way it felt.
He leaned forward, placing his elbows on the desktop.
"That's my story, as insignificant of an excuse as it may be for not speaking to my best friends for over seven years. I can't lie though, seeing you are the greatest thing that could have happened to me today," he said, smiling as he gazed up into Hermione's face.
Hermione couldn't help but lean forward towards Harry to just get a better look at him with that charming smile of his. A curl from her hair fell in her face and she shrugged slightly. She placed it behind her ear and looked straight at him once more where she found a grin. She just shook her head with a small smile that was across her face and looked down at her desk then back up.
"All I have to say is that once I see the Ministry again, I will be hexing them not into the next universe, but several others farther from the one we're in."
This made Harry laugh a little and she just smiled, sitting back up in her chair.
"And I'm actually glad I've made your day and that you're finally free to be whoever you want to be. I never judged you as `The Boy Who Lived'," she said softly.
"I know you haven't," he said gently. "And I thank you for that."
"But now I have to tell you something that's true," she said and received a curious look from his face.
She leaned forward once more and their eyes were staring right into each other.
"You completely made the year, not day, year for me," she said and smiled.
"I thought it was going to be another year just like the others."
All of a sudden her phone started beeping and she rolled her eyes. Quickly she pressed the button and listened to the voice at the other end.
"Hermione Granger speaking," she said and Paula was on the other line.
"Paula, what do you want now? I'm in an important … meeting." Hermione looked over at Harry and winked at him to go along with a small smirk on the side.
"Wait, could you hold on one second?" Paula asked.
From there she put her on hold and Hermione turned to Harry.
"Paula loves to call me in when people visit me or something, so what I do is I play around and tell her I'm in a meeting, like always. So if she asks you what the topic is just think of something with books in it at least."
It was a shock how much Hermione had changed throughout the years he had known her. She had never even dreamed of lying when they first met, except for the rare occassion with the troll in the bathrooms their first year. As time ahd progressed she had gradually grown to lie a little more often, although rarely very effectively. Now she was willing to tell a white lie over the simplest things without batting an eye.
"I'm back, Ms. Granger," Paula returned saying.
"Wonderful, now what did you need again?" Hermione asked looking over at Harry.
"Oh yes, I was wondering what your meeting was about because there's a truck parked outside with more boxes of books."
"Tell them to drive them over in the back so warehouse can take care of it," Hermione said and looked over at Harry.
"Oh about the meeting, um, Mr. Potter, what were we actually talking about?" Hermione asked but with such a sweet smile on her face, yet her voice seemed so serious.
"We were talking about the rare book I was wondering if you had found, do you not remember?" Harry asked on sudden inspiration, trying to keep his voice steady although he was practically erupting with laughter inside at the grin on Hermione's face.
Hermione smiled at Harry and eventually bit her bottom lip just trying to keep in the laughter that wanted to just come out.
"I'm sorry then to be disrupting your conversation as always," Paula admitted and then said her goodbye.
Harry and Hermione were looking at each other with goofy smiles on their faces until Hermione was the first to get the laughter out of her. She then heard Harry start laughing and looked over at him. Both of them just laughed out what was in them until they both settled down with smiles on their faces.
"The only joy I get out of work," Hermione said with another slight giggle of hers.
"She's been my secretary ever since I started running this business. I know her weaknesses."
Hermione looked over at the clock and was surprised how an hour already had passed. She frowned a little remembering that work wasn't going to end in another three hours.
Unless…
Hermione wanted to at least spend the day with Harry and today really wasn't her day to come into work.
"Hold on for one second," she said and quickly got up from her chair.
When Hermione suddenly stood and walked towards the door Harry was confused for a moment. He watched her poke her head out of the door and couldn't help but give her the once-over again. She really had grown into her looks and Harry couldn't get over that notion. He had never really thought of Hermione as an extremely pretty girl, with the exception of the Yule Ball in their fourth year, but now she looked pleasantly attractive. When he glanced up at her face he saw her blushing and realized that she must have noticed his searching gaze. Turning his head away, Harry felt his ears redden, embarrassed that he had been caught checking out his best friend.
Hermione slid out the door with a small blush on her face, yet a small little smile wanting to escape. She was getting looks these days everywhere she went. Of course she didn't mind, but even her best friend gave her a head-to-toe look.
He heard her steps vanish down the hall and pass beyond his range of hearing. Harry let out a breath he didn't realize he had been holding. What in the world had come over him, looking at Hermione like that? Of all people, Hermione! His best friend, the rule-abidding, bushy haired, bookworm of a best friend. She's not so much like that anymore though, something inside of his head reminded him and Harry shook his head.
Hermione quickly went down the hallway and punched herself out and wrote on the board next to it that she felt sick. She quickly wrote Paula a note and walked over to the small boxes where the mail usually went and slipped it in there.
From there she started walking back to her office and she was hoping Harry had nothing else planned to do at all today. Hermione reached her office and opened up the door, sticking her head in.
"Sorry that took awhile," she said and walked back over to her desk, heels clicking against the floor. Hermione didn't sit down this time but stood there looking around on her desk.
"I was wondering if you wanted to hang out the rest of the day if that was fine with you," Hermione asked she as she looked over at him. "I just punched out and today really isn't my day to come into work and it would mean the world to me if we finally hung out after so long."
She noticed how she kind of rambled and bit her lip. She was both nervous and scared. Scared that he would say no to her offer and nervous if he would be unsure about this whole entire thing. Knowing Harry he would, hopefully, go on their little day out together. It would just be a simple walk, coffee probably, getting a bite to eat. As long as it dealt with Harry she would be fine.
His smile broadened as she told him that she had cleared her day to spend time with him. When she bit her lip, Harry couldn't help but notice how innocent it made her look. Smiling at this thought, Harry stood.
"You know, that sounds like a grand idea," he said. "I could really use the pick-me-up. Merlin knows after all these years of being trapped in the depths of the Ministry that I could use a little fresh air and a friendly face."
"Wonderful then," Hermione said with a smile and Harry couldn't help but feel just grand.
[AN]: Hope you enjoyed reading! Thanks for the reviews for the first chapter. I'm glad you guys like my writing style. I was afraid of using too much words, but I guess it turned out alright.
What to know what's going on in Chapter 3?
"I have to admit myself flattered that you found my bum worthy of a smack," he said, chuckling as he watched her get her water.
She sent him over a look and stuck out her tongue. After that she couldn't help but smile. Hermione sat herself down at the table once she got her glass filled up with water.
A sudden pound of thunder outside drew Harry's attention to the window and he felt a faint smile curl his lips.
Review please!
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