Chapter IX: Of Probing
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"He's a poof," Harry grumbled as he forcefully speared his chips.
"He is not. For Christ's sake, Harry, you know he's married!" Hermione cried with a small laugh despite herself. "Besides, you can't just go off declaring that someone's a poof just because you don't like the fact that he's right. It's rude-especially towards people of the sexual orientation, you insensitive pest!"
"That's a new one," Harry wryly noted with a small smirk.
"And well deserved too," Hermione beamed at him as she popped a chip into her mouth.
"He says I have post-traumatic stress syndrome. What the hell?"
Hermione cocked a disbelieving eyebrow at him as she sent him an utterly dumbfounded look. "Seriously?"
"What?" Harry asked, bringing his butterbeer to his lips for a large swig.
Hermione's eyebrows shot up as she noted how serious he actually was. "Then what would you call the past two and a half years, Harry?"
"An unadulterated adoration for alcohol?"
She couldn't help but snort at that response, shaking her head as she chose to leave the therapy to the psychiatrist, there was no way she was going to get into that messed up muck, if that was what Harry honestly liked to call his prognosis.
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"I thought you said you two were having problems," he suddenly burst out, unable to hold back his curiosity as he unknowingly tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
She shrugged, idly staring out the window as he drove on. "I suppose you could say that we still are," she admitted.
"Then before, why'd you say it's solved?" he pestered resiliently.
"Because it is."
His eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Now I know I'm not nearly as bright as you, love, but where the bloody hell is the logic in that?!"
She shrugged again, something that frustrated Harry far more than he'd like to admit. "We decided to just let whatever be be, I suppose."
"And what's that supposed to mean?" he asked without missing a beat, his impatience getting the best of him as he let his exasperation become more than obvious in his tone and scowl.
She paused, puffing out her cheeks as she let out a deep breath, a sight he couldn't help but smirk at. "It means it might be over."
He guffawed despite himself, well aware of how inconsiderate of a reaction it might come off as, but unable to help himself with the eternal Hermione-Ron saga. "As if that hasn't happened a hundred times already? Hell, it's practically become a requisite in your relationship. Why so hesitant about it this time?"
"Because-because this time it'll be for good if we do decide to… listen, I didn't get much rest last night, mind waking me when we get there?"
He eyed her warily as she propped her head up against a hand that was resting against the glass, sighing as she closed her eyes with a frown marring her face, much like his own. "Yeah, sure," he promised her.
--
"So, you don't agree with my prognosis then?" Andersen asked with an amused smile sent towards the figure lying haphazardly across the new chesterfield he'd bought the week prior.
"No," was the confident retort he received.
"Then what would you call it?"
"Honestly?"
Andersen nodded. "I think that is what therapy is supposed to be all about, anyway."
"Okay, then. Well, I'd actually call it a mere love for the buzz."
"Very aptly put," Andersen said, trying to bite back the heaps of chortles that were just dying to burst out, only managing to control himself by writing, on his note pad: seriously delusional, deciding that, for courtesy's sake, some thoughts were best off left unsaid and penned for the sake of release.
Harry shrugged. "Better to be blunt than leave everything unsaid."
Andersen's neck nearly snapped as his head shot up, immediately sensing an opening. "And I suppose you'd know a lot about that, wouldn't you?"
"What?" Harry suspiciously asked.
"Secrets."
--
"Are you going to talk about it at all?" Harry asked her as she slammed the button for her office's floor in an uncharacteristically rough manner that actually made him flinch slightly as he heard the unprecedented sound of the impact.
"No."
"And why not?"
"Because I just don't want to," was her surprisingly cutting retort.
He furrowed his eyebrows. "Is that really supposed to work on me of all people, your best mate?"
"I don't care," she muttered.
"Hermione, what the hell happened last night?"
"Nothing," she told him, gruffly moving a stray wisp of hair off of her brow before agitatedly running her hands through her locks. "Absolutely nothing," she repeated.
"Would you ever actually accept an answer like that from me?" he challenged.
"No, but what I told you is the truth, nothing happened."
"Then why are you in such a terrible fit this morning?"
She shrugged yet again. "I don't want to talk about it."
"Too bad," he immediately snapped, despite the terrible warning bells going off in his head, telling him that she could very well hex his bullocks off so that they were coming out through his nose or something equally as terrible, imaginative, and problematic. "We don't keep secrets from one another… not us, we just don't-we just don't do that, and I'm not going to let it start now. Whatever it is that's bothering you, just let it out. I can help, you don't always have to be the blasted martyr."
She sighed, pouting a bit as she threw her head back against the wall, closing her eyes. "I know that," she admitted quietly. "I just… I really don't like talking about it, I suppose."
"So sad and, again, too bad," he grumpily retorted, not at all enjoying her obvious reluctance when they were supposedly confidants.
She smiled wryly at the response, opening her eyes and lowering her head to look at him clearly. "Fine, if you're going to be a nosy jerk, I'll tell you what's wrong then! The reason is that I just realized how, despite everything that we'd been talking about, it was finally real. We might actually break up."
"You were looking at flats though."
She shrugged as the lift let out a loud Bing signaling that they'd arrived at their floor and Hermione led him out of it and towards her office. "Yeah," she continued in spite of the interruption. "Because just in case something does happen we still want to live together."
Harry stepped back slightly despite himself, absolutely baffled by the lack of logic in that baffling decision. "But you might break up…?"
Her lips quirked upward as he scratched the back of his head lightly in a classic confused pose that she'd never actually seen come to life before that moment, having only been reserved to films prior to that, it was oddly funny in a cliché sort of way, she decided. "Ron… after the war Ron and I… well we became each other's support system with everything that was going on. Maybe that's the only reason we even lasted as long as we did. There's something oddly safe and secure about having a constant like that in your life."
"Constants can still come in the form of mates," Harry grumbled moodily as he moved ahead of her to open the doors to the labs for her.
She let out a small breath of a laugh at the blunt snap. "Yeah, I suppose so, but… I don't know, that's just how it was, I guess. And it did work for us; I think we're just realizing that even if we could be happy together, it's just not meant to be."
"And why are you sad about that, sounds rather amicable to me," Harry muttered as Hermione opened her purse, lifting a leg and propping the bag on it as she shifted through a rather obscene, in Harry's opinion, amount of useless shite in her seemingly daunting quest of finding the keys to her office.
She shrugged. "Still, like I said, there was security in what we had, even with all of the problems we stood by one another through everything. He helped me get through a lot of things and was always there to protect me. It's difficult to accept the fact that I might have to let that go."
"But you're not… and you still have me."
She smiled, biting her lip slightly as she twisted her neck to the side to look at him. "That is true; I do have you too now, don't I?"
"And I am rather amazing," he quipped with a small smile.
She laughed, moving back to her purse. "'Tis true… hah, my keys, knew I didn't forget them!"
He chuckled as he followed her into her office. "You're going to be okay, though, right?"
"Yeah," she nodded, throwing her bag onto the chesterfield before moving towards a daunting pile of files on her desk. "Change is just hard to accept, I suppose."
Harry nodded with a smile as he moved to help her tackle the obscenely large pile in search of the autopsy report.
--
"I don't know what you're talking about," Harry stonily replied, clenching his hands discreetly, but not as much as he'd hoped as he noted how the therapist's eyes immediately took in that action.
"Really?"
"Mhm."
"Bull shit."
Harry stiffened, his eyes widening as he heard the unorthodox reply. "Par-pardon?" he coughed, choking on air in his fit of shock.
"Bull shit," Andersen repeated, and unabashedly so. "I don't buy it," he elaborated. "You tell me that you're here to work past your issues, but you won't even accept the prognosis I gave you, even though it's clearly one that even a five year old could give you-albeit probably not with the same terminology, but it's an obvious one nonetheless. Then, you also tell me you're here purely because your attractive little friend in there-"
"Hermione," Harry interrupted coldly. "And I'd prefer it if you left her out of this… please."
Andersen smirked. "You tell me you're here because she forced you… but I have to wonder if it's that."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"I can't answer everything here, Mr. Potter. I can lead you to the path, but you're the one that has to go down it-I'm the little munchkin, but Dorothy has to follow that yellow road without him, you know that story."
"I hated it," Harry grumbled with a small sneer.
"Well, nevertheless, it's your job to answer that question for yourself… but feel free to share and discuss my unparallelled brilliance when you finally do come to the conclusion," he quipped.
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author's note: I was going to add in more about the case in this chapter but in the end it didn't work out as well as I'd hoped when I did, just didn't match the chapter that had been so personal before that so I decided to leave it like this and save the next scene for chapter 10. Anyway, hopefully Ron and Hermione haters of which I, admittedly, am included will be sated.
Muchos Gacias to my wonderful beta Searcy!
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