More important things
Prologue: The Quietness of Love
"He loved you," Hermione whispered. "I know he loved you."
Harry dropped his arms.
"I don't know who he loved, Hermione, but it was never me. This isn't love, the mess he's left me in. He shared a damn sight more of what he was really thinking with Gellert Grindelwald than he ever shared with me."
Harry picked up Hermione's wand, which he had dropped in the snow, and sat back down in the entrance of the tent.
"Thanks for the tea. I'll finish the watch. You get back in the warm."
She hesitated a moment before picking up the book and then walking back past him into the tent, but as she did so, she brushed the top of his head lightly with her hand. He closed his eyes at her touch and tilted his head back ever so slightly an agonized groan rising up from his throat.
Hermione stopped and knelt beside him; her hand sliding from its gentle caress of his head to rest at the joining of his neck and shoulder as she did so. Harry felt her lips at ear as she whispered, "It'll be all right Harry, somehow, it'll be all right."
The anguish in Hermione's voice startled him. Turning around he looked again at her pale, drawn and pinched face, the purplish shadows underneath her tired red rimmed eyes, eyes that were brimming with tears. She was exhausted, running around the countryside willy-nilly so that he would not have to face whatever lay ahead of him alone. He thought of her parents, living in Australia as Wendell and Monica Wilkins with no recollection of their former lives or their daughter. He thought of how Ron had left, bowed and broken under this same pressure yet, Hermione had stayed. He remembered her telling Ron that she had promised Harry her help and that she was staying no matter what. And how had he repaid her, by venting his anger and frustrations out on the only friend he had left, the only person he'd ever truly been able to count on. Feeling like the world's worse prat Harry reached out and pulled Hermione to his side. Laying his forehead against hers he whispered, "I'm sorry Hermione."
Hermione looked up a curious expression clouding her face as she asked, "Sorry, what do you have to be sorry about?"
Harry sighed as he gestured toward the snow covered ground and the two of them huddled there together in the doorway of the tent and muttered, "Everything I'm sorry for everything."
Hermione reached up and framed Harry's face in her hands as she spoke, "None of this is your fault Harry, none of it. We'll get through it, I don't know how but we'll get through it, haven't we always." She offered him a tremulous smile.
Although he wasn't really convinced that that was true he nodded and offered her a shaky smile of his own.
They sat there for a few moments staring intently at each other before Harry leaned forward and pressed his lips against Hermione's.
She was taken aback by the suddenness of his action, if the truth were told he was just as stunned by his actions as she was but that didn't stop him from pressing his lips more firmly against hers. After a moment Hermione responded by leaning into the kiss and sliding her hands and arms around Harry's neck drawing herself closer to him. Spurred on by her actions Harry wrapped his arms about Hermione's waist and molded his mouth more tightly to hers, slipping his tongue out to glide across her lips.
Hermione acquiesced to Harry's entreaty, with a sigh she opened her mouth to him and allowed his tongue to sweep inside her mouth smoothly gliding over and around her own. Harry heard an oddly muffled purring sound that he was astonished to find was coming from Hermione. She inched closer to him, clutching tightly to the back of his jumper. Her tongue began to move with and against his in an intricate dance that sets his blood searing and pulsing through his veins. His body answered Hermione's back by pulling her more closely to his chest, matching the intensity of reaction to the kiss with his own.
The gentleness that suffused the initial kiss was gone replaced by a frenzied urgency, a palpable desperation that he was not quite sure how to comprehend. All he knew in that moment was Hermione, the feel of her body pressed against him, the delicious heat that seemed to radiate from her wherever she touched him, the taste of her warm, yielding mouth; these things were the center of his world, she was the center of his world.
The unexpected sound of some scurrying animal in the frozen underbrush broke the moment; the noise caused them to pull away from each other thereby bringing them back to reality. Their breathing came in fast, harshly ragged gasps and pants. Instantly they relinquish their holds on each other. Harry's eyes drifted to Hermione's kiss swollen lips fighting the urge to draw her back into his arms and kiss her again.
She raised an unsteady hand to her lips and uttered a barely intelligible 'Oh'. At the single articulated word their eyes met and Harry saw the tumble of emotions he was feeling reflected back at him in Hermione's eyes; wonder, confusion, excitement, guilt, and desire . He opened his mouth to speak though he had no clue what he intended to say, but before he voiced a single solitary syllable Hermione had scrambled to her feet and disappeared inside the tent.
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Harry sat quietly nursing his glass of firewhiskey as he thought back to the events of that snowy December evening which had taken place a year beforehand. He and Hermione had never spoken of that evening and the kiss they'd shared. He imagined that they'd never mentioned it because they had both been too stunned by the fact that it had happened at all. Also, before either of them had really had time to process what had happened between them Harry had seen the silver doe and Ron had returned and the locket horcrux had been destroyed.
Ron's tormented vision from the locket coupled with Hermione's violent reaction to Ron's return had convinced Harry that his and Hermione's moment in the doorway of the tent had been born of stress, exhaustion and a desire to feel even the tiniest bit of comfort. He hadn't thought there to be anything more to it than that, there hadn't been time. There were horcruxes to find, a war to fight, a dark lord to defeat, there was no time to brood over the meaning of heated kisses with one's best friend. It was a lapse, a moment of exhaustion and a desire to feel safe and cared for, that's what he had told himself, but apparently there had been more to that kiss, much more.
He hadn't expected this, never would have believed it possible of himself and yet there was no denying that it was indeed so. It was surprising how differently this felt to his previous bouts of this sort. There was no swooping and flipping in his stomach, no large scaly beasts roaring and clawing to life in his chest; he had neither seen nor felt any indication that his feelings had changed in the least. And yet his feelings had indeed changed though he was hard pressed to determine when and why they had changed.
When he'd spoken to Luna about the matter - he hadn't exactly brought it up Luna had in that curiously abnormal way of hers seen something in his manner that revealed the truth of his feelings to her even before he had recognized them himself - she'd laughed as she informed him that his feelings had not changed but had finally become clear. When he'd asked her what she meant by that Luna had smiled and said that feelings and emotions weren't always obviously noisy. She said that some emotions don't make a lot of noise; she said it was hard to hear pride and that caring was very faint - like a heartbeat, and love, true love - was so quiet sometimes that you didn't even know it was there.
And though hadn't understood half of what Luna had said he did understand the truth in her statement about the quietness of love. How could he deny that a person could fall in love without ever being consciously aware that it was happening when that was what he himself had done.
He no longer felt shock or surprise at the thought of this feeling. It was a simple statement of fact for him now; he was in love with Hermione Granger. The only question that remained was what was he going to do about it.
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