Authors Note: Hey everyone, I'm back! I realize that this chapter took me forever to write but it's finally done! I've only written one other story, so I'd never hit any kind of writers block before, but I sure as hell hit one on this chapter. I had a thousand words of this written in like, early November, and then nothing, not one stinking word for months. So, because of that, I need to send out a very special thank you to my wife for her help. She gave me some really good suggestions a week or so ago, and they actually got me writing again. I hope you all like this chapter, and please will let me know what you think when you're done. Also, S-E-A-M-U-S….... it's burned into my subconscious! lol
Chapter 6
Hermione made her way back to her room and sat on her bed for a moment to think. She went over and over in her mind what Harry had said to her in the hallway, after he kissed her, AGAIN! She wanted desperately to believe him, but logic made her skeptical.
"Okay, let's look at this rationally. Either Harry, my best friend of six years, now fancies me as he said, to the point where…" She paused as images filled her head. "Oh my God, I can't believe that we almost shagged in the hallway." She covered her mouth as the shock of what had almost happened between them yesterday really hit her. She shook her head to dispel the memory, but once it was gone she exhaled very deeply to.....settle herself. Okay, now that she was back in the real world, the one where she and Harry weren't about to shag each other senseless, she could think straight.
"Or…. he's under a very powerful love potion. So… how do I prove which it is?" Hermione pondered. "Well….I guess I'm going to have to do a little research to find out for sure. I should have thought of this sooner!" She mentally kicked herself for not thinking more clearly over the last twelve hours.
She grabbed a quill and some parchment off her desk and bounded out of her room, and headed for the library. Hermione felt lighter and more at ease than she had felt at any moment since last night. She had a purpose. There was problem to solve and she was going to find the answer. That's what she was good at, very good at. As Hermione walked to the library she couldn't help but think that for the first time in her life she truly wanted to be wrong. She smiled with hope that she might be, and quickened her pace. Just the prospect that Harry could actually want her for real as badly as he had wanted her yesterday made her body tingle with excitement. "Wait, don't think about that right now," she told herself. "It's way too distracting!" A small shutter shook her anyway.
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As the day progressed the buzz around the school reached a fever pitch. All anyone could talk about were Harry and Hermione. The day began with a retelling of the events that took place in the common room the night before for anyone who hadn't witnessed them. This was quickly overshadowed by Hermione and Ron's blowup at breakfast. But by lunch Harry's attack on Ron had trumped even the breakfast gossip. At the Gryffindor table Seamus had just finished relaying to his fellow classmates, Neville, Dean, Lavender and Parvati, how he had singlehandedly saved Ron's life. They looked at him skeptically about the saving Ron's life part, but seemed to believe the bulk of what he had told them. It was all just too weird.
Dean had been the only one at the table who had witnessed Hermione's battle with Ron as he sat eating his breakfast that morning.
"No really, she said that," Dean relayed to Lavender, almost pleading to be believed. "I swear."
"You're telling me, that Hermione said that Ron should go ask his sister. That Ginny was the one who had caused all this craziness?" Dean just looked at her and nodded his head. Lavenders mind was turning. She looked over at Parvati who had a somewhat guilty look on her face. They were both thinking the exact same thing. Lavender leaned towards Parvati and said to her in a low voice, "Do you think?" Parvati shrugged her shoulders and replied, "I don't know….maybe?"
Seamus and Dean both said "What? Tell us!" Lavender looked back at Parvati once more but she saw that she wasn't going to get any help from her; all she got was another shrug of the shoulders.
Lavender scanned the room to see if anyone could overhear what she was about to say. This caused the other four students at the table to also look around. They peered in all directions, and once they were all satisfied that the coast was clear, they leaned in as Lavender began her tale.
"Okay, so yesterday, in like all our afternoon classes. Right?" she nodded towards Parvati who enthusiastically agreed. "Harry was majorly hitting on Hermione. He was practically drooling on his desk every time she moved. But no one seemed to notice," she said with some indignation. "Just me, Parvati, and uhh, obviously Hermione, but she seemed pretty flustered by the whole thing. It was really weird. It started in Defense class and got worse all afternoon. I actually saw him nibble on her ear in Transfiguration. You should have seen the look on her face…"
"What! No way….Harry bit Hermione's ear….in class?" Dean interrupted. "No, I don't think so!"
"Listen you git, I was there, I saw him do it, and so did she," the blond girl replied angrily as she gestured towards Parvati. "I swear to God, Hermione looked like she was gonna have a stroke or something. There was no way she saw that coming."
During Lavenders story Neville sat on the edge of the conversation. He didn't add anything, or seem overly surprised by what he was hearing. None of the other students really noticed. Parvati did look over at him once while Lavender spoke but she assumed the slight frown on his face was due to embarrassment and nothing more.
Lavender put her hands up for emphasis, "Okay, so here's the rest. When we left our last class of the day, Parvati and I happened to run into Ginny." Both Dean and Seamus began to look at her with a weary eye. She noticed the looks on their faces and responded with a quizzical, "What…we did? It wasn't like we were waiting for her or anything."
Parvati, at that moment seemed to find everything in the room more interesting to look at than the group she was sitting with. They all noticed.
"Well….do you want to hear this or not!" Lavender asked the boys who were looking at her through narrow, suspicious eyes.
Both Dean and Seamus squeaked out slightly frustrated, "Yes's"
"Good, well all Parvati and I did was, well we just mentioned to Ginny that Harry, most of the afternoon seemed somewhat interested in Hermione is all."
Both boys pulled their heads out of the tight circle they had been leaning into and once again cast a very skeptical eye at Lavender.
"Fine…if you don't want to hear, I'll stop." She turned away from them and looked up toward the ceiling and then around the room as though she was admiring the rooms' architecture.
Seamus, in a somewhat defeated tone spoke up. "No, go ahead, we want to hear."
A bubbly Lavender quickly turned back to them and leaned in to get even closer than before.
"Okay, so here's where it gets good. Ginny said, that she knew Harry was drooling over Hermione because she had given him a love potion"
"Bullshit!" Dean snapped at Lavender, startling the whole group. "Hermione wouldn't do that to Harry!"
"Will you please pay attention? Hermione didn't give Harry the love potion you idiot, Ginny did!"
Seamus spoke up. "I'm confused….If Ginny gave the potion to Harry, then why was he so into Hermione?"
Lavender rolled her eyes as if she was dealing with complete morons. Because……Hermione was the first person he saw, duhh!"
Dean and Seamus furrowed their brows as they tried to wrap their brains around what they had just been told. Very slowly the light of recognition went on and they nodded their heads as it all started to make sense. Or so it seemed, until Dean's face grew perplexed once again.
"So how does this all figure in to what's going on with them. It only makes sense if they were together. Something did happen between them in the common room after dinner while I was playing chess with Ron. They were talking, it didn't make much sense, the part I heard anyway, but then again, I wasn't really paying attention. Harry did go up stairs and then like, less than a minute later, he came back down and left through the portrait."
"Was Hermione there when he left?" Parvati asked.
"I don't think so, but like I said, I wasn't really paying attention," Dean answered.
"Did anyone see them anywhere it the castle together?" Seamus asked the group.
Dean, Lavender, Parvati, and Seamus all shook their heads, but Neville slid slowly down the bench away from them. They all turned and looked at him, then at the empty space between him and them, and then back at him.
"Neville," Lavender said in a honey sweet voice. "Do you know something?"
"Umm, ahh, no, not really," he stammered.
"Neville," she said more ominously this time. "You do know something don't you?"
"Uhh, no, not much, I mean, no I don't."
"Yes you do! Spill it Neville," Lavender ordered.
"Well….it's nothing really." Neville replied.
"Well if it's nothing, then you can tell us, right?"
Neville looked from face to face as they all stared at him.
He let out an exasperated breath and dropped his head.
"Okay, I did see them together in the hallway last night after dinner," he informed them.
"And," Parvati coaxed. "What were they doing?"
Neville replied, "Nothing, just standing."
Lavender chimed in, "Standing? How? Where? Just standing? No, you're not telling it all, come on, give."
"They were just standing, alright! They weren't doing anything. McGonagall sent me to find Harry and I found them together. I told Harry that McGonagall wanted to see him. Then he and I left, and Hermione said she was going back to the common room. And that's all." Neville blurted out. He then refused to say another word as he folded his arms across his chest.
"McGonagall huh?" Lavender asked. "I…I mean we," she began as she pointed at herself and then Parvati. "We told McGonagall about Ginny and the potion," Lavender admitted as both she and Parvati lowered their eyes in shame.
Neville was still sitting at the table with them, but he was lost in his own little world. There was no way he would, or even could have described the heated way that Harry and Hermione were looking at each other when he had found them. Yeah, they were just standing, but that was by no means all they were doing. He had also neglected to mention what he had seen them do to each other when he had left them alone for a moment so they could 'talk'.
At present, he was more than a bit annoyed about being interrogated by Lavender, and he grumbled under his breath. "No way….. I admitted to having seen them, but I definitely wasn't gonna say anything about all the buttons!"
Then Neville froze as if he were petrified, which he was, but with fear. He had mumbled that last part a great deal louder than he had intended. He looked up and saw Dean, Seamus, Parvati, and Lavender, and all four of them were now staring at him.
"What buttons?" Lavender growled at Neville as she slowly rose to her feet.
Neville rose also. "I didn't say anything!"
Parvati spoke up. "Yes you did! I heard you, we all heard you say something about buttons."
"No I didn't," a very worried looking Neville spat back.
Lavender pointed an accusing finger at him. "I knew you knew more than you were saying Neville, now spill it! What about buttons? All the buttons on what Neville, someone's shirt?"
Now, both Dean and Seamus were paying attention! The prospect that shirts may have been unbuttoned made this thing a whole lot more interesting, especially if one of the shirts was Hermione's. They smiled at each other because they knew they where both thinking the same thing.
Neville on the other hand, slowly started backing away from the table as he watched Lavender closely, and then, he bolted for the door.
A surprised Lavender glanced at Parvati; they smiled at each other, and then they both took off after him.
Dean and Seamus watched as the girls ran off after Neville. Both were disappointed that they wouldn't be getting to the bottom of this button thing. It was too bad, but they shrugged it off, and then they began to look over what was left on the lunch platters for something else to eat.
Hermione was proud of herself. She had found a good strong love potion very quickly as she searched through the rows of books on such spells in the library. The ingredients for the spell she liked had been easier to obtain than she had expected. A few of them were in the advanced potions kit she owned, and she had managed to scrounge up the rest, mostly with Dobby's help. Hermione then took all of the ingredients, the book, and her cauldron to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom to brew it up. It had taken Hermione over two hours to get the potion right, but it was done! She poured the proper amount of the love potion into a half a glass of pumpkin juice that she had also brought with her. She held up the clear glass and stared at its contents as she thought to herself.
"I hope this stuff works. I better go find Harry and tell him what I'm doing so he can keep an eye on me after I drink this mess." She rolled her eyes. "That's kind of like letting the fox guard the henhouse, but…. He is the one person I trust more than anyone else."
She knew that drinking the love potion herself was not the proper way to run an experiment, but she couldn't just give it to someone. Hermione was certain that she would get in huge trouble if she used it on anybody else. "Hopefully by the end of the day I'll have my answers."
Hermione stepped out of Myrtle's bathroom with the glass in hand, being very careful not to spill in. She peered down into the glass as she walked, checking to see if the potion and the juice were separating at all.
An exhausted and sweaty Neville rounded the corner at the far end of the hallway and began running in her direction. A confused Hermione stopped walking and just stood watching as Neville approached her, panting. Then she had an idea.
"Wait…. Neville! He knows about Harry and me. He can keep an eye on me!" The thought of letting Harry watch over her, while exciting as hell, scared her to death. If she couldn't control herself around Harry when she was not being influenced by a love potion, what would happen when she was?
Neville pulled up to a stop in front of her.
"Hey Neville," she said as she furrowed her brow in confusion as to what he was up to.
Before Hermione realized what was happening, Neville had reached out and taken the glass from her hand. After quickly muttering "Thanks, Hermione," he turned to see if Lavender and Parvati were gaining on him and he raised the glass to his lips.
A panicked stricken Hermione screamed for him to stop, and reached for the glass, but she was too late.
Neville swallowed a mouthful of the very sweet tasting pumpkin juice, and just as he did, Parvati Patil came into view.
Neville's face instantly morphed into that of a lovesick puppy, and he was staring intently at Parvati. Without taking his eyes off her, Neville held out the glass which Hermione quickly took from him.
"No!" Hermione moaned in a whimpered tone. "This can't be happening."
But it was.
On seeing the look on Neville's face Parvati had stopped dead a good fifteen feet from him. She was immediately run into from behind by Lavender.
"Sorry," her friend muttered, and then she too noticed the moony look on Neville's face.
"What the…..? What's the hells wrong with him?" Lavender asked the dumbstruck Hermione as she gestured towards Neville. Hermione could do nothing but stand there staring at the half empty glass in her hand.
"He drank it!" she finally said in disbelief, and then she looked up at Lavender. "He wasn't supposed to. It was for me, not him."
A somewhat annoyed Lavender walked towards Hermione and chastised her, "Come on Hermione, get over it, what's the big deal, it's just pumpkin juice."
"No it wasn't! It had a love potion in it!" she confessed.
"WHAT!"
Parvati's eyes snapped from the love struck Neville, who was now smoothing out his hair and grinning at her like a lecherous used car salesmen, and bore down on Hermione.
"What do you mean there was a love potion in it?" Parvati shrieked in disbelief.
"Just what I said. I was going to do an experiment to see if the potion Harry…"
Hermione stopped, and quickly shifted her eyes back and forth between the two girls to see if they had caught what she had started to say.
Of course, Lavender pounced immediately, "What, what was that about Harry?" Before Hermione could answer, they were interrupted by Neville, who finally spoke.
"I love you!" he crooned towards Parvati.
"What?" she said, totally aghast.
"Oh great," Hermione muttered.
"I need you. We belong together my raven haired beauty."
Neville continued spouting declarations of love as he advanced slowly towards her.
Parvati pointed at him, "Neville!" she harshly said as a warning, hoping that the tone of her voice would get him to stop. It didn't, so she slowly began to back away.
"Somebody help me," Parvati pleaded, as she looked over at the girls. "Guys, please! Fix him. You can't do this to me," she begged.
"We don't need them my love. All we need is…. each other," Neville spoke in a breathy voice as he stared into Parvati's eyes, which resembled those of a deer caught in the headlights.
Lavender began to giggle, but Parvati was horrified. She looked to the girls once more hoping desperately that they were going to help her, but both Lavender and Hermione just stood there staring. Unsure of what else to do, a panicked Parvati decided to run; she turned, and took off down the hallway. As she did, a very amorous Neville sprinted after her, spewing poetry as he ran.
"Darling, my love for you is like a red rose……Wait, come back my sweet ….Come back!"
Lavender turned to Hermione. "Can I have that a second?"
"What this?" Hermione replied as she held up the half empty glass, which Lavender quickly took from her hand.
"What do you want it for?" Hermione asked suspiciously.
Lavender smiled, "I want to give the rest of it to Parvati. It'd be too damn funny, don't you think?" And the silly blond burst out laughing.
"Give me that!"
Hermione angrily snatched the glass back. "I don't have time for this now, I've got to go and rescue Parvati. You know, you could try being helpful, after all she is your best friend!"
"Yeah, well whatever, but because of you and your potion, I think I'm gonna have an entertaining afternoon. So, thanks!" Lavender turned and headed down the hallway in the direction that Parvati and Romeo had gone, laughing as she went.
An annoyed Hermione was watching Lavender go when she felt a hand gently touch her arm.
She turned to see Harry standing beside her, and her breath hitched in surprise. "He needs to stop doing that!" she thought, "Well….At least he didn't kiss me this time."
Deep down, she actually felt a twinge of disappointment; she had enjoyed kissing him very much. But…..That aside, she was very grateful to see him.
"Oh my God, Harry, I'm gonna be in so much trouble," she cried as she engulfed him in one of her patented killer hugs.
Harry accepted the hug gratefully; he enjoyed the feel of her body pressed tightly against his. But, she was upset, so he decided he wouldn't act on any of the ideas that were flooding his head at the moment; he would stay focused on what she needed.
"It'll be okay Hermione, whatever you need, I'm here for you." At hearing his pledge to help her, Hermione tightened her grip.
After releasing him from the hug Hermione stood up on her toes and kissed him quickly.
"Thank you Harry," she whispered as she stared into his eyes. He was startled, before he had time to react to her kiss it was over.
"We have to find Neville, but first I need to get rid of this!" she said as she held up the glass. Hermione darted quickly into Myrtle's bathroom, and was back out in a flash.
"What was that?" Harry inquired.
"Don't worry, I'll explain, but we have to go," she told him.
She reached out and took Harry's hand, and pulled him down the hallway after her. As they ran, Hermione began talking very quickly; something about catching Neville to save Parvati. She really wasn't making a whole lot of sense so far, but he wasn't worried about it. He'd sort it all out eventually. He was actually just glad she wasn't crying. So, he willingly went with her, as he always did.
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