Harry stepped out of the cab and walked up to his hotel room. He had never been to Hermione's parent's house and something about having a little bastion away from the action seemed comforting. His hotel room was not large, a modest place with a single bed and a mini fridge. Harry liked its minuscule square footage. Even his own flat had started to feel a bit too large. He put his bag down and laid across the bed so he could stare at the ceiling awhile.
He had packed such a quick bag, things he really needed, only to discover when he opened the damned thing in his room later that he had neglected to pack any socks. From his apartment to the train he was in a flat out run. People watched intensely as he passed them on the sidewalks. Some assumed he was crazy but the few enlightened ones realized they were watching a man in love. It takes a certain kind of desperation to haul down the busy sidewalks of London with a backpack swinging wildly from one shoulder. The sheer brilliance of it all, the rush of the spell he was under had put power in his legs he never knew existed. It didn't take him nearly as long as it should to get all the way across town on foot.
When he had arrived at the station he discovered that the train he needed was departing in minutes. He thought he was still moving through London, he was totally blown away by how fast he got to the train. Some days he was remarkably glad for his new found fitness. The train, as it would have to be, was standing room only, and was filled with the incessant whining of infants. It was apparently the popular hour for new parents to cart their children back to the suburbs. Harry had a pounding headache when he arrived in town, complicated by the fact that his travel plans were, at best, rushed.
He walked up and down the streets trying to find a place with a room to let, all the while cursing his idiot plan to just go. Eventually his desperate gait turned into a limp as his feet blistered and his ankles grew sore. Finally he found a small room in a rundown hotel and his thoughts finally had the time to catch up to him. Oh what thoughts they were.
It seemed odd behavior on Hermione's part to run away in a crisis. She was, after all, the strong one in their trio. He had never known her to back down from a challenge, though it was also true that he had never known her to let him kiss her. He pulled one of his pillows over his face a screamed at his own stupidity. He hadn't even asked how she felt before he made his move. He couldn't even control himself for the remainder of the afternoon like civilized people do. He felt low, like a kind of animal, as though any of his higher brain functions should have mustered the will in him to just not push.
Because he had, he decided. He had pushed and shoved and forced himself and his stupid feelings on a girl he felt something real for. Really real, for the first time in his entire life. The things she did to him both drove him insane and deeply moved him. He wanted more than just her body, though the notion was certainly a pleasant one, he wanted her mind, and her soul and her heart. He wanted her to embrace his victories and his failures and he wanted to do the same for her. He wanted so much and he sat there staring at the ceiling and wondering how he had blown his opportunity so badly. He reached into his bag and pulled the old familiar frame from its depths.
I miss you, Harry. Hope you come home soon.
Love, Hermione
He looked at the letter and felt the weight of his wasted years for the first time. He had spent three years away from her. Three years. It didn't seem like so much at the time. It felt like something that had to be done, wrapped in the odd flow that not having a direction has on time. Now he longed for those three years. He wished he could have them back. The things he would do differently. He would have noticed her sooner. His three wonderful and miserable years alone could have been spent with her. He had traveled the globe trying to find happiness. Trying to learn how to be that guy, the one everyone else seemed so easily able to be. Three years and countless miles only to discover that he never needed to leave at all. She could have taught him.
Three years under her tender tutelage and he wouldn't even have remembered what unhappy was. He would never have been in a rut. How had he been so blind for so long? He had disregarded his pangs of jealousy when she and Ron had started to date. He didn't really understand those feelings, and what sixteen year old boy could? He had dismissed them with the shortsighted notion that he was just envious of the time they spent together. He never let the dark bile dwell in his throat and move him to action. He never let himself realize that it wasn't the time spent away from him, it was Ron he was jealous of. His heart had broken in a way that an entire war and four years of relative isolation still couldn't cure completely.
He thought back to the day he had given her his flat key. She was the only one he could trust with it. It wasn't that she was responsible, it was the private and secret things in his home. He trusted her to see them, he invited her to share a part of his life no one else had. He had let her into his home and even more so into his heart.
"How did I become such an idiot?" Harry asked the ceiling.
There was, of course, no response. He settled to stew in his bitterness for a while longer. Eventually even the energy it took to muster that dissipated. The dull throb from his ankles faded away as he felt himself slip into the darkness of his dreams. His dreams weren't nightmares though they couldn't be described as pleasant. He awoke with an uneasy feeling memories of a tight rope walk lingering in his head. He shook it off and went to the small bathroom to get a glass of water. After he had gulped it down he went to the window to look out at the night sky. It was easier to see the stars here. He remembered times during his travels when he would lay on his backs in a field on a clear night and stare up at them for hours. He would think about her, though then he didn't know why. He smiled at the notion that so much had changed in the last couple of weeks. He understood his reasons more now, but he still stared into the night skies and thought of her.
* * *
Hermione was sitting on her old bed. Her bedroom was like a museum filled with relics of a bygone age. Things she had gathered throughout her younger years littered the place. On her dresser, next to a trinket she had picked up in Hogsmeade, was a wizarding picture of Harry. It had been taken by Colin, years ago. Harry was smiling in the picture. He was talking to a tuft of bushy brown hair that was barely in frame and he was smiling. He looked so young. His familiar deep green eyes didn't have the age they did now, his messy black hair was much shorter leaving his lightning bolt scar visible. How many hours had she spent tracing that scar with her finger? She thought she might have worn through the picture.
There were not many pictures of Harry in existence. Even the newspapers and books only used the handful that were out there when they ran stories about him. After Harry's disappearing act his picture started to go at a premium. News agencies offered ludicrous sums of money for old pictures and more for recent. Rita Skeeter had even owled her once for pictures for a book she was writing on Harry. Hermione refused, that woman had never sat right with her. Hermione walked over and picked up the picture.
It had been a different time then. The darkness was always looming around them, an ever present reminder of how violent their lives would become. She sighed. He had been so gentle. In the precious times he had touched her then, his touch was tender, soft. It was as though he treasured her above all else. He likely did, she thought to herself, he never really had people he cared about. He walked through every relationship like it was made of cracking glass. He was always so afraid to pressure things, afraid his carefully built world would shatter around him if he made the wrong choice or said the wrong thing.
She loved him even then. It all seemed so clear now. When everything and everyone told her she shouldn't. When she knew that loving him would destroy Ron who was ever in Harry's shadow. When finally she and Ron had gotten together it wasn't out of pity, or fear for the fate of Ron, it was because of Harry. Harry closed himself off to everyone in preparation for what they all knew was coming. Harry walked through the last few years of his childhood in a gloom. She had pitied him then, her heart went out to him, but he wouldn't let her give it to him. Perhaps he couldn't. Eventually she went with Ron. She loved him, she really did, but in the end it was just that Ron could give her something that Harry couldn't. Ron could give his heart in return, even though it didn't last.
Now she had been given something that she had wanted for a decade and she had blown it. It had come over her so suddenly. She was in his lap, using their close friendship to live out a little fantasy. She knew as soon as she got there that it had been a bad choice. His closeness loosened something in her she had tried for so long to conceal. He had looked at her then. His deep green eyes pierced her soul. His hand moved, adjusted himself in his seat perhaps. His face had gotten closer. She perceived a a determination in his eyes. She closed her eyes and went for it. Years of pent-up desire plunged her head forward and her lips met his.
She savored the moment in her head. It was the last moment of pure happiness before she lost her mind and ruined everything. She had been too sudden, too presumptuous. How could things not be different after that? Harry had told Ron that he didn't think of her in that way and yet still she went ahead with it. She had disregarded his feelings and there was no going back. They couldn't just be friends any more. Sure he would try, he would explain that he liked her, but not in that way. He would explain that they could still be friends, that he didn't want to damage the relationship they already had. But she couldn't sit through, couldn't listen to him say those words.
So the most elegant solution she could come up with was to leave. To simply not face him. She would find the time to build her defenses to the talk that would eventually come. It wasn't like she could stay away forever, no matter what happened she could be sure that she could never stay away from Harry Potter. The very idea of it sickened her. He was her best friend, her closest confidant. He meant the world to her. She would fix herself, bury the feelings and come back better than ever. She just needed her time alone. Which is why when her mother came in things went from bad to worse in her fragile little world.
"Hermione, dear." Her mother peaked around the edge of her door, "Harry is downstairs to see you."
"What?" Hermione went instantly pale.
"Your father is distracting him while I check to see if you're here."
"Thank you." Hermione gave her a pitiful smile. Her mother crossed the room and sat down next to her. She took Hermione's hands in her own and looked her in the eyes with sympathy.
"Why don't you tell me what happened?"
"I wouldn't even know where to begin." Her head fell into her mother's shoulder.
"Why don't you try the beginning?"
"He saved me from a troll." She sighed.
"Maybe not that far back, dear. I know all your Hogwarts stories."
"Not all of them." Hermione blushed.
"Do tell."
"I found him asleep on one of the chairs in the common room one night." She said quietly, "I was just going to take his glasses off, I swear I was."
"But instead?"
"I started to brush the hair from his forehead. That's when I saw it. His scar."
"The one from when he was a baby?" Her mother touched her hand to her own forehead and winced slightly.
"Yeah."
"Poor thing."
"Which is exactly what I thought then. He had been through so much already, and he would have to go through so much more yet." A slow tear fell from Hermione's eye.
"What happened?"
"I kissed his forehead. I kissed his scar. I wanted to take his pain away, or maybe I just had always wanted to kiss him. I don't know, I honestly don't."
Her mother hugged her. "It's natural for a girl to be drawn to a boy like Harry. It's not something to be ashamed of."
"I kissed him."
"It's in the past." Her mother patted her head.
"No, a few days ago, in his kitchen. I kissed him." Hermione pulled away to look in her mother's eyes.
"And?"
"I... I don't know. I kind of freaked out on him and ran away."
"Which is why you're here, not that we don't enjoy having you but we figured it had to be something." Her mother nodded.
"What should I do?" She looked up imploringly.
"I can't tell you that. It has to be you that decides."
"Okay, but just tell him that I'm not home right now."
"I will, sweetie." She hung by the door for a few seconds, "You'll have to talk to him eventually."
"I know."
Hermione fell back against her bed and wished that she could erase the last few days and start over. Now he was here, at her parents home, he had come this far just to talk to her. It meant something, though she didn't know what. She knew their friendship was important to him. She was just afraid to find out his motives, afraid of so much.
* * *
Hermione's mother had come downstairs and taken a seat beside her father on the couch. She looked at Harry with a mixture of amusement and pity.
"Hermione is in a very delicate place right now." She began.
"I know, I just want to talk to her."
"She may need some time, would it be asking you too much to give her that?"
"The thing is, though that she's got the wrong idea." Harry tried to explain.
"She knows, and I understand, Harry." Hermione's mother bit her lip, "But if you're not interested in her in that way, good." She smiled at her husband, "I sound like a little kid when I say things like that. Harry, if you don't have feelings for her, you need to let her work this out. She's had a thing for you for a very long time."
"No it's not that-" He tried.
"She needs to find a place to move on. She needs time and space to do that. If you want to keep her as a friend, you need to go away until she's finished."
"I don't want her to move on!" He stood up, "I don't want her as a friend! I..." He looked at the shocked faces of her parents, "To hell with it, I love her. I really do, and I've been foolish and stupid and everything else that means dumb for taking so long to realize it."
"Oh." Her father said in awe. Harry sat back down.
"I just want to talk to her. I just want to tell her. I swear."
Her parents asked to be excused so they could go into the kitchen and have a conversation out of his earshot. While they were gone Harry basked in the freedom of finally admitting it all out loud. However he couldn't help but be a little nervous as well. It wasn't the best position to be in, sitting alone on the couch as Hermione's parents decided whether or not he could pursue the one thing in his life that actually made sense.
When they came back in to the living room Hermione's mother went upstairs and her father sat down adjacent to Harry. Harry swallowed a ball of nerve as her father shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
"Harry, I'm not good at this sort of thing." He began, "I have to tell you, there isn't really a rule book on how to be a father, which is why the job is so hard."
"Okay."
"So, I'll try to do this right. I don't want to run into cliché, but what are your intentions with my daughter."
"I... I don't really know."
"You don't know? You said you love her."
"I do. I really do, but thing of it is, well..." He rubbed the back of his neck, "I only sort of figured all of this out in the last few days. At this point, honestly, I just want her to know that it was all my fault and not hers and that I love her."
"I can't argue those intentions."
"Thank you."
"We think she'll need some time to digest all of this. She probably has a lot of thinking to do, and frankly I've been told that that she's liked you for a long time and you've done little more than ignore her and run off for years."
"Oh, yeah." Harry cast his eyes to the floor. He couldn't believe he hadn't thought of that before. Everything that he must have put her through.
"It seems to me that she's done a lot to prove her feelings for you, and all you've done is confuse her, make a sudden and move on her, and chased her here."
"Yeah."
"What's your move now?" Her father leaned forward and rested his chin on his hands.
"I..." Harry bit his lip and considered his next few words, "What would you do?"
"Well, when I went after my wife I read her poetry and gave up certain things she didn't approve of, as she did for me."
"I don't really read poems." Harry sighed.
"You'll figure it out."
Just then Hermione's mother came down the stairs. She walked into the living room and sat beside her husband. She took his hand and smiled at him. She then turned to Harry.
"She says you can go up. Down the hall third on the right. Behave yourselves." She said sweetly.
"Right." He nodded before he headed up the stairs. When he got to the right door he saw a sign hanging on it. The handwriting looked like it might have been done by Hermione when she was very young. It just said, "Hermione's room." He raised his hand and noticed a slight tremble through it. He breathed out a deep calming breath and knocked. From behind the door he heard her nervous voice tell him to enter.
"Hi, Hermione." He said lamely.
"What are you doing here?"
Harry's tongue caught in his throat. He had been so sure that if he could just see her everything would just flow out of him. As though just her presence could evoke the long dormant romantic in him. As it was he wished he had put more thought into what he was going to say. He just stood there for several long moments, tension building around him, as he struggled for the words. He thought back on all the romantic advice he had ever been given and began to grasp at those straws.
"Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets," Harry spat out suddenly the first thing he could think of.
"Why are you quoting T. S. Elliot at me?" She had a totally bewildered look on her face.
"I... I really have no idea." He looked at the floor.
She patted the bed beside her."Sit down. Let's just talk."
Harry moved and sat on the bed. He shifted his wait and played with his fingers.
"What, uhm.. What did your mum tell you?"
"That you absolutely had to talk to me, and I had to get this over with sooner than later. Why are you quoting World War Two poetry at me?"
"Your dad said that I should... It was the first poem I could think of and, I was trying to impress you, because honestly I am not as smart as I wish I was and I thought that you would appreciate it better if I could talk to you a little more on a level you were more used to... and your dad said that it was the thing to do, because I don't know what I have to give up, which sounds kind of weird if you really think about it. Because There is so many things that I already gave up and I think that it-"
"Harry, you're babbling." She put her hand on his, "Slow down and tell me what you came up here to tell me. I can take it."
Harry moved on the bed to face her. "Okay, here's the thing. I have this thing ever since, you know what happened, it's like it's empty in my head. Well, empty is the wrong word. Lonely! It's been lonely in my head. You know?"
"Not at all. Is this about Voldemort?"
"No, yes... no. It's not. See, I've been in this place that it felt like I would fall apart if I didn't just get away from it all. The pressure and the fame and the fact that I killed a man. All of it. It was tearing me apart."
"I know, Harry. That's why you left. You explained all of this to me." She swept her fingertips gently over his cheek, "Are you leaving again?"
"No!" Harry turned away and put his head in his hands, "Why am I so bad at this?"
"Bad at what? Just tell me."
Harry reached into the bag he had brought with him and handed her the framed letter he had brought with him. She looked down on it and puzzled at its meaning.
"I saw this in your room." She said, confused.
"That's when it started. When I started to put it all together. It was the little things. You missed me, not we. Love Hermione, not love from. I obsessed over these things and I didn't even know why, but I figured it out."
"You've known for this long?" She let her head hang, "Why didn't you tell me? I've made such a fool of myself. I shouldn't have kissed you."
"That's not what I'm talking about." He grabbed her shoulders and looked into her eyes, "None of this was your fault."
"It was, Harry." She moved away, "It was wrong. I knew how you felt, but it was like I couldn't control myself."
"Stop being so goddamn frustrating for six seconds." He pulled her back to him, "You didn't kiss me. It was the letter, don't you see?"
"I really don't."
"Why can't I do this? Why is this so hard for me? I've never been great at talking about feelings, but I'm so fucking twisted inside."
"Just calm down, Harry. Tell me."
"I love you."
"What?" Hermione said in awe.
"That's the thing. That's what I came up here for, it's why I followed you all this way. I've been in love with you for a long time, but it wasn't until the letter that the cogs started to turn. I treasured this one letter for so long. But the rest of them, the other letters you sent. They were so vague that I couldn't put it all together right away."
"You didn't know?"
"I do now. I love you, Hermione. Not like a sister, not like a dear friend, not even regular romantic love either. I love you like a religion."
"What?"
"What I feel for you, it's a kind of oneness. You're the other side of my coin, the half that completes me. It's spiritual. I came here, in the middle of everything else to tell you, that it wasn't you. I kissed YOU, not the other way around."
"You kissed me?"
"I did. I kissed you, because you held my hand and you sat in my lap, and there was this family I saw from the street, it's all pretty confusing, but it was me."
"I thought that I had kissed you."
"I know, and maybe you did, but I did too. It wasn't a stolen kiss, it was a shared moment. A moment that got really messed up, but a moment none the less."
"I never knew that you felt..." She wiped tears from her eyes, "Oh Harry, I love you too. I've loved you for so long. I just didn't think you could feel the same way. You're this big hero, women practically throw themselves at you. I never thought that you would go for a bushy haired book worm like me."
"You're beautiful. You just don't see it, and in it's own weird way that makes you even more beautiful. I always thought, even back in school that you were too good for me. That you weren't interested."
"I was Harry." Her eyes rolled to the ceiling, "God, was I ever. I had it bad for you, but you were so uninvolved in everything, so unapproachable. You didn't seem to like me like I liked you."
"I think I just needed a push."
"So many wasted years." She shook her head.
"Well, we're here now." He lifted her chin up with his thumb, "Can I... Would you mind if I kissed you?"
"Just kiss me."
Harry moved forward and pressed his lips to hers. Their lips moved into each other like waves crashing against the shores. A passion flowed through them and into each other. They would stop momentarily, look into each other's eyes, and giggle or smile before they continued kissing, letting each lonely year pour into the moment. Everything felt right. Finally when they pulled away they smiled at each other and held hands. She moved against him and he put his arms around her. The two fell back onto the bed and enjoyed the feeling of being wrapped in each other.
"I've been waiting a very long time for that." She sighed against him.
"I hope it was everything you hoped."
"And so much more."
"Good."
"So where do we go from here?" She looked into his eyes.
"I say we go back to London, do the dating thing and get married."
"Sounds good, and I won't tell the other boys that you proposed before our first date."
"I'd appreciate it." He smiled.
"So Ron's wedding." She began, "Do you still want me as your plus one?"
"I want you as my plus one for everything we ever attend in the future."
"I could get used to that."
"Good." He looked at his watch and saw that somewhere between making out and cuddling two hours had passed, "We had better go explain to your parents that we've been up here behaving."
"Then we'll go home." She nodded, "I hope my parents don't give us the safe sex talk."
"Are we in danger of that?"
"We just might be." She said cautiously.
"Well, it's probably about time I got one from somebody then."
"You never... No one ever gave you the safe sex talk?" She gawked.
"I was in the hospital wing for that during school." He blushed.
"Yeah." She looked down.
"Come one." He smiled at her, "If it's going to happen, we'll do this together."
"I love you." She smiled at him before giving him one last soft kiss.
"I love you too."
He brushed some hair from her face and they stood up and fixed their rumpled clothes. Harry took a steady breath to suppress his nerves and Hermione took his hand. Together they walked down to see her parents.