A fic to start your week...
For all the emotional upheaval it had caused and however significant his telling Hermione about the Dursleys had been, Harry reflected later, it seemed decidedly anti-climactic how little things changed in the weeks immediately afterwards.
The biggest, most noticeable change came from his break-up with Valeria and not anything to do with the Dursleys. His break-up meant that he had more time to spend with both Ron and Hermione. He slid back into the evenings spent at pubs with Ron or spent in their flat with Hermione visiting with relative ease, until there were times it felt as if he’d never lived any other life.
He did miss Valeria, though. He missed her smile, missed her sometimes sharp sense of humor, missed her worldly knowledge and the flashes of cynicism that occasionally accompanied it (both characteristics that he assumed were inevitable byproducts of her work as a reporter for the Daily Prophet). But more than that, though, he missed having a companion for those evenings when Ron was away for a Quidditch match and when Hermione was busy with work. And he missed having someone to accompany him to public events and help deflect some of the attention he inevitably received-or put more bluntly, he missed the way having a girlfriend shielded him from the worst of the flirtations of those fan-girls who were primarily interested in his fame and his status as the Boy Who Lived and Hero of the Wizarding World.
He was guiltily aware that what he missed most about Valeria had less to do with her personally than it did with missing having a girlfriend in general, felt all the more guilty because it proved just how right Val had been in saying that he didn’t need her. And when he really thought about it-which, admittedly, was not often-he had to wonder what it said about him that his feelings for Val, as real and as sincere as they had been, had actually been so shallow. He was sorry for it, felt vaguely guilty too at this realization of the very shallowness of his affection for his past girlfriends.
He saw nothing more of any of the Dursleys and, admittedly, still tried not to think about those years with the deliberate repression of years that had become habit, even instinct, by now. In the days and weeks immediately following his little run-in with Dudley, he had the odd nightmare about being locked up in the closet or being beaten by Dudley, but as time passed, those too became less frequent. And he found that something about having already told someone about the way the Dursleys had treated him-no, to be accurate, it wasn’t the telling that had made the difference. It was Hermione’s reaction to the telling that helped. Remembering what Hermione had said about what the Dursleys had done to him being part of who he was somehow made it easier for him to shake off the nightmares, accept that the nightmares still happened without recrimination.
After all, that may have been the biggest change, being able to accept that the memories that lurked in his mind could still terrify his subconscious without blaming himself for it. He didn’t fool himself into thinking that he was over it, that he would never react badly to a nightmare again, but it was, at least, a little easier now.
And he was so… grateful… to her for it, although he never said it in so many words to Hermione. He only tucked his awareness of what he owed her for this into a corner of his heart.
Neither he nor Hermione mentioned the Dursleys and his admission of how they had treated him again as their friendship returned-remained?-to where it had been before that evening.
Now that he had more time, they fell into the habit of having dinner together at her flat pretty much every week, depending on his and Hermione’s work schedules, where they talked about everything and nothing, as the mood struck them. Their friendship was the same-and as strong-as ever.
But every once in a while, he would look at her to find her eyes fixed on him with an indescribable expression, one he couldn’t quite remember ever seeing on her face before that night he told her about the Dursleys. It was a reflective look, one that softened her eyes until he could swear they were almost luminous. And it was a look that never failed to make his chest fill with an indefinable warmth. He didn’t quite understand it-either the look or his reaction to it-nor could he really describe his reaction. He settled for mentally identifying that warmth in his chest, a feeling that was both powerful and comforting and somehow almost painful in its poignancy, as the “Hermione feeling,” for lack of a better term.
The Hermione feeling varied in its intensity and in what caused it-sometimes it happened when he wasn’t with Hermione at all but had simply been reminded of her in some way. Thankfully, the Hermione feeling generally passed within a few minutes and he was left with just the usual friendly affection he felt for her. And he was comfortable again.
It was, he sometimes thought, what he appreciated most about those evenings at Hermione’s flat. He could be simply himself, no matter his mood, and know it would be fine. He didn’t need to talk or try to be witty; indeed, there were evenings when neither he nor Hermione said much at all, communicating mostly through occasional shared glances and smiles. And somehow, that was all that was ever needed and he still felt as if those evenings had been spent in as warm a camaraderie as ever.
On this particular evening, he could tell that Hermione was preoccupied with something. She had been rather uncharacteristically silent and he could tell from her frequent glances at him that whatever she was thinking about had to do with him. He might have been a little alarmed at this except that, by now, he had learned to somehow sense the quality of her thoughtful silences and her silence now was simply a considering one, not a worried one.
And he trusted her to tell him what was on her mind when she was ready.
It was odd, he thought suddenly, how… calming… that was. After all these years, he would be the first one to admit that he didn’t like uncertainty, anything unexpected, as in his experience, things that surprised him were almost invariably bad. But with her, uncertainty about what she was thinking about didn’t concern him. Funny, how… reassuring… his confidence in her was. It was an odd word to describe someone but it occurred to him that if he had to summarize what she meant to him, it might be that. She was reassuring; his trust in her gave him courage, a steadiness, he might not otherwise have had. And for someone who hated fear and disliked uncertainty, that reassurance was incredibly precious.
And so, he waited and finally, Hermione said, rather abruptly, cutting off their desultory conversation, “I’ve been thinking.”
She broke off, hesitating, for a long minute.
“Thinking about what?” he eventually prodded gently, with a slight quirk of a smile aimed at relaxing her. “My telepathic powers aren’t working today.”
She gave him a faint, rather perfunctory smile in response to this silliness before finishing, entirely seriously, “I think you should go see Dudley.”
He gaped at her, feeling as if the world had just turned upside down. What… she couldn’t possibly… how could she…
All his chaotic thoughts boiled down to one word. “No,” he said flatly. And then again, “No.”
“Harry,” she began, her tone cautious, “let me-”
He cut her off. “No, no, no,” he said again, for good measure-in case his response might have been too equivocal before. “Absolutely not.” He didn’t want to listen; there was nothing that would make him want to see Dudley again! In his agitation, he leaped to his feet, conscious mostly of anger in all the turmoil of his emotions. “Have you gone barking mad? I don’t want to see Dudley. I hated the sight of Dudley even when we were living in the same house. And now, if I never see him again, it’ll be too soon! How you could-how could you-you know-” he almost choked on the sudden knot in his throat, the acrid taste of betrayal-and he did feel betrayed somehow-“you know what he did to me. You know why I hate the sight of him so how-why-”
“If you’ll sit down and just listen to me, I could explain!” Hermione interrupted him, standing up to face him head-on.
He stared at her. And for one fraught second, he seriously considered leaving, just walking out of her flat. His unwillingness to see Dudley was too strong, too visceral.
And yet-he couldn’t do it. Even in his anger, even with the strength of his resistance to the idea of seeing Dudley, he couldn’t ignore her. He might be angry at her, he might be convinced that nothing she could say would change his mind-but he couldn’t ignore her. He couldn’t ignore the expression on her face, the set of her chin, the look that said she would do or say what she thought was right, and she would do it for him, even in spite of him.
A memory flashed through his mind-of them at Hogwarts just before they left to go to the Ministry to “rescue” Sirius. It was a memory of anger, of a sense of betrayal, much like now, except he’d been angrier then, his sense of betrayal much stronger-but somehow, the memory abruptly took the edge of his anger.
And he sat down, almost before he realized he was going to.
“So, explain,” he said curtly, as she too sat down.
He felt her gaze on him even though he stubbornly kept his gaze focused on the floor or on his hands, anywhere but at her.
“You’ve been having nightmares about the Dursleys again, haven’t you,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“How did you-” he responded automatically before he stopped, realizing the potential stupidity of the question.
“Do you think I can’t tell when you’re having nightmares, Harry?” There was an odd note in her voice and he finally glanced up at her to see that a corner of her lips had quirked upwards into what might have been a smile except that the overall impression was one of something like regret, not amusement. Regret. It was an unexpected thing to see at that moment but, in a sudden flash of insight that surprised him, he knew what it was for. It was regret that him having nightmares was a frequent enough occurrence and had been for almost the entire decade of their friendship that she could so easily recognize the signs for them now, even when he never mentioned them.
The remnants of his anger and his sense of betrayal were abruptly blunted, almost entirely vanishing. Not so much because of what the insight had told him but because of what the mere fact of his knowledge meant. He was accustomed to thinking of how well she knew him; what still sometimes surprised him was evidence of how well he knew her.
Because he did know her. And it was this knowledge, this trust, that made him listen to her now.
“Seeing Dudley again and all the memories it brought back still bothers you,” she went on, her tone gentle. “It bothers you because seeing him again brought back the times you were afraid of him, all the times you were powerless. And you hate that. You hate feeling afraid.”
He inwardly squirmed a little. It was almost… embarrassing how easily Hermione could identify his emotions, put into four simple words the truth underlying his mostly-unarticulated emotions. Being stripped bare like this-all his pretensions, all his vaunted courage reduced to this-was decidedly uncomfortable. So much so that his initial response was irritation-why couldn’t she even pretend to leave his dignity intact?
But something-he didn’t know if it was his sense of fairness or his honesty or his innate trust in her or whatever-got the better of him.
“You’re right. I do,” he conceded briefly. It wasn’t much but in the words was an apology for the way he’d reacted earlier, for even considering just walking out on her before, for being irritated at her, even momentarily, for being right. He looked up at her, meeting her eyes, and saw in the softening of her lips, of her expression, that she understood his apology and accepted it too.
“When you saw Dudley this time, you were at a disadvantage from being surprised. I think you need to see him again, this time with forewarning, to prove to yourself that you’re not helpless against him anymore.”
“Closure,” he summarized, realizing what she meant, even though most of him still didn’t want to do it.
“Yes, closure. And also a sort of revenge.”
“Revenge?” He stared at her. That was almost definitely the last thing he’d ever expect to hear her advocate. “What, you mean to beat him up the way he used to beat me?” It was a tempting idea, but… He grimaced a little. “I don’t think I could. He’s… a Muggle. I’m a wizard. It wouldn’t exactly be fair.”
Now she smiled, a small smile but a smile nonetheless. “I didn’t mean revenge in that way; I meant more a way of turning the tables on him, so to speak.”
“By doing what?”
“Dudley’s a bully. He likes to pick on people who he perceives as being weaker. But like all bullies, he’s a coward. So you can just make him afraid of you, give him a taste of his own medicine.”
“How would I do that?”
Her smile widened a little, now showing a glint of mischief in her eyes. He had the fleeting thought that she really had spent too much time with Ron; mischief and Hermione were not generally things he thought of together. “Magic.” Now the mischief was even more apparent; it was in her eyes and in the curve of her lips and looking at her, he felt a swift curl of something he didn’t bother to identify-didn’t dare identify-through his gut.
“He would be afraid of my magic,” he agreed quickly, to keep from thinking about the something he’d just felt. “The Dursleys all were.” His lips twisted a little. “They said they hated the freak part of me.”
“They’re idiots,” she said flatly. “And they were wrong. You’re not a freak.”
“They were wrong,” he repeated, a little tentatively.
“They don’t understand magic so they’re afraid of it. People tend to fear what they don’t understand but it doesn’t make them right.”
“I still don’t want to see him,” he told her. “Anyway,” he added in a tone of finality, “even if I wanted to, I have no idea where to find him. Running into him in Piccadilly was pure chance.”
She gave him a look. “Nice try, Harry, but I know where he is.”
“You do? How did you-”
“I guessed and then I did some research.” She paused. “Do you really think I wouldn’t be able to find someone if I really wanted to?”
“No, I guess not. Remind me never to hide from you.”
Her lips curved slightly in response before she sobered. “I think you need closure from what the Dursleys did to you. I don’t know if it’ll make the nightmares stop completely but I think it’ll help.”
He sighed. To see Dudley again… he still inwardly recoiled at the thought. He didn’t want to do it. And he wasn’t sure exactly how or why seeing Dudley again would help anything. And yet… Hermione thought it would.
And he knew Hermione. Knew that she wouldn’t have suggested this without having thought about it long and hard, analyzed it from every angle. And she was trying to help him. She was always trying to help him.
The Hermione feeling returned at that thought.
He looked up at her, willing the Hermione feeling to fade away. “I-I’m not saying that I’ll do it, but how exactly did you plan on me scaring Dudley?”
She told him. As he’d known she would have, she had planned it out with her usual meticulousness.
And as he listened to her, he began to think that she might be right.
He still didn’t want to see Dudley-he doubted that would ever change-but he trusted Hermione’s opinion and when he thought about it, he could believe that this might be a case of what was right not being what was easy.
He opened his mouth to agree but at the last second, asked instead, “You really think I should do this?”
She met his eyes candidly. “Yes, I do.”
“Okay, I’ll go see him.” He let out his breath. “Will you come with me?”
“Do you want me to?”
“Yes,” he answered automatically and truthfully. He didn’t imagine going to see Dudley would be easy or particularly pleasant but somehow, he was sure that it would be easier if Hermione was with him. He lifted one shoulder into a half-shrug. “You calm me down,” he said simply.
She smiled, a smile that seemed to come from within her to illuminate her eyes. “Then I’ll come.”
He returned her smile, even as he was terribly aware that at the sight of her smile, the Hermione feeling had returned. And he could swear it was stronger than before, his heart feeling tight somehow, if that made any sense.
He cut his gaze away, making a show of brushing some imaginary lint off his trousers. He was, for the first time in his memory, a little… afraid… of Hermione’s ability to seemingly read his mind. Had she seen-was the Hermione feeling somehow visible on his face?
He glanced back up at her and then relaxed a little. There was nothing in her expression to indicate she’d noticed anything out of the ordinary.
“So where is Dudley anyway?”
“He works at Grunnings now, I’m guessing thanks to your Uncle Vernon.”
“Right. I should have expected that. It’s not like Dudley showed much of a talent or inclination for anything else.”
“When do you want to do this, then?”
His lips twisted a little, rather ruefully. “The sooner, the better, I guess. May as well get it over with.”
“What about Friday afternoon, then?”
“Friday it is.”
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