The Mistletoe Muddle

Bingblot

Rating: G
Genres: Romance
Relationships: Harry & Hermione
Book: Harry & Hermione, Books 1 - 6
Published: 19/12/2011
Last Updated: 19/12/2011
Status: completed

What mistletoe can lead to... AU 7th year one-shot.

Chapters

1. untitled

1. untitled

Disclaimer: All things HP belong to JKR.

Author’s Note: A short little fic written at the request of marenkp and omicronus_1326, who wanted a fic involving H/Hr under the mistletoe and omicronus_1326 who threw in the twist of recent break-ups of the canon relationships.

The Mistletoe Muddle

He was in Hell, Harry decided matter-of-factly. The special level of Hell for people caught in the middle of a fight.

Wasn’t there a children’s game about something like this, he wondered—in an attempt to distract himself from the positively Arctic temperature of the silence around him. A game involving a person caught in the middle—what was it called… Piggy in the Middle, that was it. That’s what he was right now, the piggy in the middle.

“Harry,” Ron broke the silence, “what do you say we go outside for a bit, see if there’s enough snow to make a snowman or something?”

“Harry,” Hermione immediately responded, “we have to finish our assignments for class tomorrow and you know you wanted to do some more research about the you-know-whats.” Her voice lowered at the end for the reference to the horcruxes since they couldn’t talk about them openly in the Gryffindor common room. They might be staying at Hogwarts this year, as the safest place for them and the place with the best resources to do research, and even taking some classes, but they all knew it was a temporary thing. Soon enough—Harry couldn’t decide if it was too soon or not soon enough—they would need to leave the safe refuge of Hogwarts for their quest to find and destroy the rest of the horcruxes and then—Harry tried very hard not to think about what would happen after that, the final confrontation with Voldemort.

“Some people should know better than to invite themselves in where they’re not wanted,” Ron shot back, ostensibly addressing Harry since Ron never spoke to Hermione directly anymore.

“Some people are so immature,” Hermione commented as if to herself.

Harry inwardly winced. Ron and Hermione had broken up—after a series of escalating fights—a little more than a month ago. Oh, who was he kidding—they had broken up exactly 6 weeks and 4 days ago, that is exactly 2 weeks and 5 days after he had told Ginny that she shouldn’t wait for him, that no one, least of all him, knew what was going to happen and he didn’t want her to wait, that she should date and snog other fellows, and not wait for someone who couldn’t promise anything.

For the first month, Hermione had retreated, deliberately burying herself in class work and research about the horcruxes, leaving Harry and Ron to their own devices, although she had always been willing to speak to Harry provided Ron wasn’t there. Harry had taken to making excuses to Ron—horcrux research was generally the best one, as Ron would have been quite happy never to hear the word “research”, let alone actually doing it—when he wanted to spend time with Hermione. And he found he did. Want to spend time with Hermione, that is.

He’d never really thought about it before, but then he’d never really needed to because Hermione had always been there with him and Ron. He knew, from that time in 4th year, that he would miss Ron if Ron stopped speaking to him, but now he realized that he missed Hermione too. He missed the way she smiled at him, missed the careless little touches she gave him, missed the way she usually understood what he was thinking without his having to say anything. He found he even missed the way she had of making sure he’d finished his assignments or if he’d slept well or eaten, missed what Ron called her “nagging” because, he realized, it was because she cared about him. It was the sort of caring he’d never really known before, the sort of caring he knew, after meeting Mrs. Weasley, that a mother showed—and maybe that was why Ron didn’t like it but Harry found he did and missed it.

He just missed Hermione. And so he’d sought her out, usually in the library, when he was tired or when he got annoyed with Ron or when he’d just wanted to be quiet or when he’d wanted to talk about something. He found himself wanting to seek her out more than he really could, since he couldn’t desert Ron that often, and that was what did it. He hated having to essentially choose between Ron and Hermione, hated the guilt he felt at leaving Ron when he went to spend time with Hermione.

So he’d given in and asked—begged, really, although he wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone except maybe Hermione herself—Hermione to come back, to be friends with him and Ron again, so they could be the Trio again. Because he’d realized too that being with Ron alone or Hermione alone was just not the same as the three of them together.

What he hadn’t realized was that he should have asked Ron too—although he sometimes wondered just how much good that would have done. Ron could be amazingly single-minded at times and it never seemed to occur to Ron that just because he wasn’t speaking to Hermione, Harry might feel differently or that it might make a difference to Harry to have both his best friends around, as opposed to just one.

Well, he’d gotten what he wanted, Hermione coming back to spend time with him and Ron again. Only he’d faced a new set of problems in that Ron never spoke to Hermione directly and had a tendency to make pointed remarks to Harry and at Hermione. Hermione was better, generally preserving the peace by not responding to Ron’s barbs and addressing her remarks almost exclusively to Harry (after her initial, tentative attempts at placating Ron had been rebuffed), but sometimes—like just now—Ron’s words would prick at her temper.

And Harry really was reduced to the position of being the piggy in the middle.

And at that moment, it just became too much.

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake!” he burst out, surging to his feet so he could glare at both Ron and Hermione—and at that moment, he was angry at them both. He was peripherally aware that everyone in the Common Room—thankfully, not everyone in Gryffindor since it was late enough that most had gone up to bed but there were a few stragglers—was staring at him but at the moment, he was annoyed enough that he didn’t care. “You’re both being right idiots! So you broke up but you know what, you were friends, best friends, for a lot longer than you were snogging. Get over it already—and if you can’t, don’t drag me into the middle of it! You’re both my best friends and I’m tired of being in the middle!” He stopped, the sight of Hermione’s stricken face making his surge of temper abruptly die, leaving something like guilt in its place, since he was aware that Ron was more to blame than Hermione was. “You’re both my best friends,” he repeated quietly now, “and we have more important things to be worrying about.”

With that last shot, he turned to leave the Common Room, suddenly feeling as if he might suffocate if he didn’t get out of there, get away from all of them.

“Harry, wait!”

He hadn’t taken more than a couple steps before he was stopped by Hermione’s hand on his arm as well as her words and he turned back. There were tears shining in her eyes and the last, lingering fragments of his anger vanished at the sight of them.

“Oh, Harry, I’m sorry. I should have thought about how you’d feel, should have—”

“It’s okay,” he interrupted her self-recriminations gently. “I’m sorry I yelled.” At you, he added but only in thought. He wasn’t particularly sorry he’d yelled at Ron since he’d been more annoyed at Ron anyway, but there was no point in antagonizing Ron by saying so.

“No, Harry, you were right. There are more important things.”

“Like friendship and bravery,” he finished, remembering her long-ago words, and her eyes flashed up to meet his, the ghost of a smile just touching her lips. And he knew she understood that what he’d meant was that she was forgiven. “Come on. I want to take a walk,” he invited, surprising himself since he’d been thinking he wanted to get away from everyone and just be alone. But he found that, for whatever reason, Hermione wasn’t included in that sentiment.

“Okay,” she agreed.

They never made it to the door.

They’d taken three steps when they both stopped, caught and held so they couldn’t move. And Harry decided in the split second before they both looked up at the sound of gleeful cackling, that clearly, the Fates hated him. Because really, the day only needed this to become even worse.

Mistletoe. The enchanted, mischievous mistletoe that meant that two people caught beneath it couldn’t move until they’d kissed—and worse, the mistletoe was never in the same place twice, wandering the halls of Hogwarts with sly abandon, just waiting to catch people unawares.

“Ooh, I’ve got you now!” the mistletoe was sniggering. “You’ve got to kiss her, you’ve got to kiss her…” the mistletoe informed him in a puckish sing-song that Harry abruptly decided was the most irritating sound ever.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ron staring between them and the mistletoe with a look that should have sent the mistletoe up in flames and realized, with an odd shock, that Ginny was there too, staring at them from the bottom of the stairs that led to the girls’ dormitory. She must have heard his raised voice and come down, he thought vaguely. She’d gone up to bed early since she generally avoided lingering anywhere that he was—and it occurred to him suddenly that Ginny ignoring him hardly impinged on his consciousness at all. Ginny ignoring him made little difference to him—and that was something he really should think about more later.

Later— when the most irritating, devilish piece of mistletoe ever enchanted wasn’t chanting, “You’ve got to kiss her…” above his and Hermione’s heads.

“Harry?”

He met her eyes, seeing the self-consciousness and the uncertainty mingled in with the beginnings of amusement.

“It’s okay, Harry. Just kiss me.”

Just kiss me. Just kiss me… How—and why—those softly-spoken words echoed in his mind, drowning out the sound of the mistletoe, he didn’t know, but they did.

And so he kissed her, lowering his head to touch his lips to hers. A quick kiss, a kiss between friends, even a brotherly kiss—but the moment his lips touched hers, he forgot all about his intentions. He forgot about the mistletoe, forgot about their audience, forgot that he’d always insisted to himself and everyone else that Hermione was like a sister to him because she wasn’t his sister…

Her lips were soft and warm and—and this was Hermione and—and then her lips parted ever so slightly and he just felt the tip of her tongue lightly skimming the seam of his lips and his lips parted automatically, his own tongue venturing out to touch hers… Then he felt her hand come up to touch his cheek lightly, almost wonderingly, as if to make sure he was real, and something about the touch yanked him back to reality.

Oh my God, he was kissing Hermione!

He broke off the kiss, jerking his head up with all the more abruptness because he was horribly conscious that he didn’t want to end the kiss. No, he wanted to keep on kissing Hermione, more, longer, deeper…

Her eyes fluttered open as she blinked, once, twice, looking adorably—he cut off the thought ruthlessly; he wasn’t going to think about her like that—and then she, too, returned to reality and he saw her eyes widen with—with horror? “Oh,” she gasped. And then, “oh,” she said again.

And then she ran, fleeing from them—from him—as if they’d all just turned into Blast-Ended Skrewts.

Right. It was official. The Fates hated him and this was the worst day ever, he decided forgetting that just a few minutes before—when he’d been kissing Hermione, when he’d thought she might actually like kissing him too—he’d decided he loved mistletoe and was having the best day ever.

He glanced up. Of course. The mistletoe, having wreaked its havoc, had flitted off and was gone now. Bloody stupid enchanted plant.

“Er—Harry?”

“What?” Harry almost snarled the word as he turned to Ron.

Ron hesitated, looking rather as if he, too, thought Harry about as welcoming as a Blast-Ended Skrewt, and then began, with more force, his face clouding, “If you fancied Hermione too, you could have just told me.”

“I don’t,” Harry said automatically—but for once, the words came out sounding false to his own ears. Oh, don’t you? a voice in his head asked sardonically. You just wanted to snog her silly but no, you don’t fancy her at all… “I didn’t,” he gave in and corrected himself.

Ron’s face and ears reddened a little. “You didn’t fancy her but now you do?”

“I don’t know!” Harry snapped, the bite in his voice more due to his annoyance at himself than at Ron. He stopped at Ron’s answering glower and tried for a more conciliatory tone. He really didn’t want to fight with Ron now. “Look, Ron, not now, okay? I really don’t know what I feel about Hermione, and when I figure it out, I’ll talk to her about it before I talk to you.”

Ron’s face went white and then red again. “You do fancy her!” he accused. “We all saw the way you kissed her just now and that wasn’t just a friends-caught-by-the-mistletoe peck! I saw the way you looked at her!”

“Maybe I do!” Harry shot back, irritated anew. “What do you care anyway? You and Hermione are barely even friends anymore!”

“That doesn’t mean I want my best friend snogging her!”

“Oh, bugger off! My fancying Hermione has nothing to do with you!” He broke off, belatedly realizing he’d all but admitted he did fancy Hermione. “Anyway, it didn’t look like she wanted to snog me so what does it matter?” he finished glumly.

Ron looked strangely as if he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or rage and then abruptly the anger left, leaving him looking more weary than not. “You’re Harry bloody Potter,” he said sourly. “D’you really think she wouldn’t want to snog you?”

“Don’t be an arse,” Harry said although there was no bite in his tone. “Hermione’s never cared about that.”

“But she—”

“Not now, Ron,” Harry turned away from Ron, suddenly tired of this fruitless argument. “I don’t want to fight about this anymore.”

With that, he—finally—left the Common Room, wandering restlessly through the hallways. He wished he could go outside but it was too late and he never went outside the castle at night alone, not anymore. It just wasn’t safe enough. McGonagall—and Hagrid and Remus and Hermione—had been very clear about that.

But he didn’t want to see anyone else and so he wasn’t entirely surprised to find that his steps had directed him towards the corridor where the Room of Requirement was, which was the best chance he had of a room that would be entirely deserted, aside from the classrooms.

Except he’d been wrong, he realized the moment he opened the door to the Room of Requirement to see a room that looked rather like the Gryffindor Common Room. It wasn’t deserted. Someone else had, apparently, had the same thought.

He should have known.

“Hi,” he said lamely, hovering just inside the door but not moving any further.

Hermione’s eyes had widened at the sight of him. “Oh. Er—Harry, I… I’m sorry I ran off like that,” she faltered, sounding—and looking—unlike her usual, calm self.

And he forgot that he’d been half-planning to flee the Room himself in his surprise and concern at her obvious uncertainty, moving to sit next to her. Because this was Hermione and she should never have to look so lost or unsure of herself. “No, I- I wanted to run too.”

The barest hint of a smile grazed her lips. “I guess it was embarrassing for both of us.”

He stilled, inwardly wincing. Embarrassing? That was what she termed their kiss? Well, that certainly indicated that it hadn’t meant anything beyond a simple kiss under the mistletoe to her.

But then—he suddenly remembered the look on her face afterwards—that hadn’t been embarrassment, he was sure of that.

He looked at her, seeing her familiar features, trying not to get distracted by her lips. But for almost the first time in his memory, he couldn’t tell what she might be thinking, didn’t know if she… had felt what he had in their kiss.

“I- I think I fancy you,” he blurted out—and then promptly wanted to hex himself. Bad day. Very bad day. And very stupid mouth, just blurting things out without the permission of his brain.

Hermione was just staring at him, her eyes wide. “You—I—because of the mistletoe?”

“No! I mean, yes—that is, no,” he corrected himself again. “I don’t know!” he finally burst out. “I just… I liked kissing you and I—I didn’t want to stop and I… care about you because you’re… Hermione and… and I know I’m only your best friend and you don’t fancy me that way but I—I just wanted to tell you.” He finally managed to stop the rush of words, deciding then and there that once this was over, he was cutting out his tongue. Really. That was all he could do because his mouth had developed a mind of its own and was focused on ruining his life.

“Oh, Harry… I fancy you too!”

He was never going to be able to look at Hermione again. He was going to kill every last bloody piece of mistletoe he could find. He was—what? He belatedly realized what she’d just said and gaped at her. “You—you do? But—but then why did you run away?”

She flushed. “Because I’d just realized how much I fancied you and I thought you couldn’t think about me like that and I thought you must have guessed it yourself from the way I kissed you back and that was why you were looking at me the way you were.”

The sudden switch from misery to giddiness was abrupt enough that he was almost dizzy with it and he found himself laughing. “I was looking at you like that because I’d just realized that I really wanted to snog you and it’s not every day you realize you fancy your best friend.”

“Oh, Harry!”

And before he could blink, he found his mouth buried in Hermione’s hair and Hermione’s warm body pressed against his as she’d thrown herself against him. He wrapped his arms around her automatically, loving the feel of her against him.

After a moment, she turned her flushed face up to look at him, although she didn’t try to move out of his arms, which suited him just fine. “Did Ron ever tell you why we broke up?”

He blinked, confused. “No, why?”

“It was because I’d realized that, no matter what I felt for Ron, I cared about you more.” Her smile faded, replaced with regret. “And I think Ron realized it at the end too.”

“Really?”

“Harry, what about Ginny?”

“Ginny who?” he said facetiously but with a thread of truth too.

She gave a choked laugh. “Honestly, Harry.”

“That’s all over,” he told her seriously this time. “You know how she’s been avoiding me and I realized today that I haven’t really missed her. I don’t miss her or wish I could be with her. Not the way I missed you when you were off by yourself.”

“Oh, Harry…” She gave him a smile of so much tenderness—no, so much love—that his breath caught in his chest and he could only stare at her before he was distracted from the sentiment by the curve of her lips.

Had her lips always looked so… kissable, he wondered vaguely, and if they had, how had he been so blind not to have noticed before?

She met his eyes and he knew she’d realized—of course—what he was thinking about when her expression changed.

“Kiss me again, Harry,” she said softly. “Without the mistletoe this time.”

And so he did, his lips finding hers almost before the words had left her mouth. And this time—oh, this time he knew this was going to be anything but a brotherly kiss, his tongue not hesitating as he sought her tongue, learning and savoring the taste of her. She made a soft sound in the back of her throat that he swallowed with his lips, a sound that he swore sent a tingle of heat through his entire body, and he deepened the kiss, his tongue playing with hers.

And this was Hermione…

“Hermione,” he murmured against her lips—and it was amazing how good her name tasted on his lips. He’d said her name so many times before, but never like this, never with this desire…

“Harry,” she breathed.

And his last thought before he deepened the kiss was that it really was amazing what mistletoe could lead to…

~The End~

Happy Holidays, all!