Happy birthday, Harry!
~Chapter 8~
Hermione awoke as a shaft of sunlight fell across her face. She felt a little disoriented, conscious of feeling that something was… not wrong, just… off, different… And realized as she returned to full consciousness that it was because she felt… rested.
She didn’t know the last time she’d felt so rested in the morning. It had been months-a year, maybe? She didn’t remember.
She scrunched her eyes against the sun, turning her face into the pillow in a sudden, childish impulse to delay opening her eyes-and then stopped.
Her pillow.
She opened her eyes. She was in her room, in her bed. How had-the last thing she remembered was sitting on the couch in the front room with Harry. They’d been talking. She remembered the rush of mingled sympathy and protective anger she’d felt as she thought about the way Harry’s relatives had treated him. Her heart had squeezed a little at how lonely he must have been all those years. Even though he’d been telling of the “good” things, of being happier when he was left alone, she’d thought of how lonely that must have been. It wasn’t that she didn’t know and understand that it was possible to be happy while completely alone. She had some fond memories from her own childhood when she’d been alone with her books and her toys-but for Harry, all his positive memories involved being alone because he’d been miserable when his relatives were around. She’d suddenly remembered Harry as she’d first seen him, remembered how young and small he’d looked in his cousin’s oversized clothing-remembered the look of surprise in his eyes sometimes at an occasional friendly word or gesture. She’d known before that Harry had been treated badly by his relatives but last night had been the first time she’d really felt as if she understood the scope and depth of his relatives’ mistreatment of him and just how bleak and lonely Harry’s childhood must have been. It had hurt her with an almost physical pain to think of it and all she could do was silently promise herself that Harry would never be left that alone and friendless again.
And then… She must have fallen asleep. She was, she realized, lying on top of the blanket on her bed, being covered instead by the quilt she recognized as being from Harry’s room.
Harry.
She moved her head and saw him. He was sitting in a chair, sleeping, his head resting against the wall, his lips slightly parted.
Had he-he must have carried her up to her room, she realized. She had a vague, rather dream-like memory of being lifted-it must not have been a dream after all. She felt herself flush with a mixture of embarrassment and surprise and confusion. He could have woken her up but instead he had carried her. And covered her with the blanket from his own room. And then stayed, as if to guard her from nightmares. She felt another rush of warmth, from affection this time. He really could be so… sweet.
She studied him as he slept, noticing that his glasses had slipped to be slightly crooked. His hair was its usual mess, making her want to comb her fingers through it. She studied him and for once, maybe because the knowledge that he’d carried her up to her room was still warming her heart or maybe simply because he was safely asleep and she didn’t need to fear that her expression would reveal her thoughts, she didn’t even try to deny her own reaction to looking at him. Didn’t try not to acknowledge the way her heart fluttered, her breath became a little shallow, her skin heated. She didn’t even try to deny that she wanted to kiss him, that she just wanted him…
He stirred and then blinked his eyes a few times before his gaze focused and met hers.
For just a moment, neither of them spoke, just looked at each other as she suddenly forgot to breathe.
“G’morning,” he finally said.
And she felt a swift curl of heat in her body at the husky, sleep-roughened sound of his voice. God, he sounded… sexy… like that and then blushed at the thought.
“Good morning,” she managed to say and then found herself blurting out, “You carried me up to my room.” If she’d thought about it, she would have phrased it as a question but the words slipped out before she’d thought.
An expression that was something like a shoulder-less shrug crossed his face. “You were tired. I thought you’d sleep better in your bed.”
“You could have woken me up.”
His gaze dropped, one hand rather restlessly pleating a fold in his trousers. “You were sleeping so soundly, I didn’t want to disturb you.” He looked-and sounded-rather… shy? She couldn’t remember when-if ever-Harry had last seemed shy. Not that Harry was overly given to boldness or insouciance but she would have sworn that they’d been friends for too long for him to feel shy around her. But maybe-she almost caught her breath on a surge of poignant hope-maybe this sudden shyness was a sign that their friendship was shifting, changing. That he was beginning to wonder if they were only friends.
“Thanks,” she said softly.
“Anytime.” He looked back up at her and-and something about the look in his eyes made her heart skip a beat, her breath catching in her throat. The air suddenly felt thick, heavy, as if it were being filled with unspoken words, unacknowledged feelings…
“How’d you sleep?”
“Did you sleep okay?”
They both spoke at once, the questions overlapping, and the tension abruptly eased as they both laughed.
“Did you manage to sleep?” she asked, speaking first.
“Yeah, I did. What about you?”
She smiled. “I slept through the night. I think it’s the first full night’s sleep I’ve had in months.”
“Good, I’m glad.”
“You-you stayed here all night.” It came out sounding like something halfway between a statement and a question.
He lifted one shoulder into a shrug. “I wanted to make sure you didn’t have nightmares.”
“Thanks.”
“You’ve stayed to help me with my nightmares so we’re even now,” he returned with a faint upwards quirk of his mouth.
“Still. Thanks, Harry.”
He glanced at the window, at the bright sunshine outside. “It looks like it’ll be a perfect day to go to the beach,” he said, changing the subject so obviously that she suddenly realized he really was uncomfortable with this, with whatever had changed between them after he’d carried her up to her room and then stayed with her as she slept. Something had changed, not because of what he’d done but rather because of what it meant, what it revealed-and now, he was uncomfortable.
She felt a sudden, almost unaccountable pang of loss. She knew what she felt and what she wanted, what she hoped for-and yet… for a fleeting second, all she could think was that their friendship-the solid, dependable friendship they’d always had-was somehow over.
She forcibly pushed the irrational thought out of her mind and sat up. She was being ridiculous. They were still best friends. “Harry, are you sure you’re ready to spend the day at the beach? It’s a public place and there’ll be lots of other people around and, well, you know…” She trailed off rather awkwardly, not wanting to say that he didn’t deal well with large crowds.
He made a slight face. “I don’t know,” he admitted after a moment. “But I guess we’ll find out,” he finished with an attempt at bravado.
“We don’t have to go, if you really don’t feel ready for it. I can-I’ll think of some excuse and Ron will give in, you know he will.”
“No, it’s okay. I-I want to find out if I can do this. And-and it’s what Ron wants to do. He’s put up with doing what we want to do for days now and…” He shrugged a little. “It’s what Ron wants to do,” he said again, as if that simple fact settled the matter. Which, as far as Harry was concerned, it did.
“It’s okay, Harry, you don’t have to explain. Ron’s my best friend too and I know…” she hesitated for an almost imperceptible second and then finished, “I know Ron comes first for you.” Because she did know it. It wasn’t something that had ever been put into words between them but it was an underlying truth of the Trio and had been since the beginning. She didn’t even mind it. She knew she was Harry’s best friend-and maybe, maybe, something more than that now-but she also knew that Ron was-had been-Harry’s first friend. And Harry’s loyalty to Ron was bone-deep.
“No, he doesn’t,” Harry said slowly, an odd note in his voice making her glance at him. He looked… a little surprised and the tinge of shyness was back in his face. “You do.” He sounded somewhat uncertain, as if he were still trying to convince himself of it, but then he repeated himself. “You come first for me.”
She blinked and found herself blurting out, “But I know that’s not true!”
He gaped at her. “What-why on earth would you say that? I think I would know better than anyone.”
“Because-” she waved a hand a little, a weird, frustrated gesture as if to emphasize her point-“Ron’s your first friend and-and the one you’ll miss the most.”
He frowned. “What are you talking about?”
She let out a breath, her voice quiet. “The Second Task,” she said briefly and then added, hurriedly, “It’s okay, Harry. Ron’s my best friend too and-”
He cut her off by laughing abruptly. “Hermione, don’t be daft.”
“What-”
“That was ages ago.”
“It wasn’t that long ago.”
He sighed, his face changing until he suddenly looked much older than his years. “It feels like centuries ago.”
Her face and her voice softened with understanding. “Yeah, I know.”
He sat back in his chair, running a restless hand through his air. “Things are different now. I’m-we’re all different now.”
It was true, of course, but some things hadn’t changed and she’d thought Harry’s loyalty to Ron was one of them. She hesitated for a moment but then blurted out, “I really come first with you?”
“I don’t care so much if I can’t enjoy myself at the beach today since it’s what Ron wants to do but if you said you didn’t want to go, I’d tell Ron we weren’t going.” He gave her a faint, rather sober smile. “Just don’t tell Ron, okay?”
She had to laugh a little. “Okay. Harry?”
“Hmm?”
“You come first with me too.”
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
There was something a little odd in his face and she realized with a little shock just how moved he was-and for a fleeting second, he was once again the little boy with broken glasses who had never known what it was like to have anyone care about him. Her heart clenched.
“And you can’t tell Ron that either,” she added quickly, wanting to banish the shadows from his eyes.
Now he smiled for real, his eyes clearing. “I won’t,” he promised.
She returned his smile and there was a brief silence before he stood up, stretching a little. And she found herself abruptly distracted as his t-shirt rode up, revealing a strip of pale skin at his waist.
“We may as well start getting ready for the day,” he said as he straightened.
She scrambled up off her bed in a flurry of movement so he wouldn’t catch her staring-oh who was she kidding, she’d been ogling him-and busied herself haphazardly folding his quilt up.
“Here, you’d better take this back to your room,” she managed to say, striving to sound matter-of-fact, as she handed him his quilt.
“Thanks. I’ll see you downstairs in a bit.” He gave her a fleeting smile as he left and she sank back onto her bed, annoyed at herself now. She couldn’t keep reacting like this! She’d gotten so good at ignoring her physical attraction to Harry, tamping down and generally refusing to acknowledge her reaction to him, so much that she usually succeeded in pretending she didn’t react at all. He was only her best friend. That was all. And she wasn’t about to risk their friendship by giving any indication that she thought about him as anything other than a friend.
Anyway, he didn’t care about her as anything more than his best friend. Or at least he hadn’t used to. But maybe, maybe that was changing…
Her gaze fell on the chair he’d spent the night in-to keep her nightmares away. And she heard his voice as he’d told her, “You come first for me.”
He’d been talking about their friendship, she knew. He hadn’t meant anything more than that. And she would have sworn that she didn’t mind that Ron’s friendship came first for Harry, would have sworn that it didn’t matter.
And yet, knowing that her friendship came first… It wasn’t all she wanted from Harry but for now, for that moment, it was enough.
~
To be continued in Part 2 of this Chapter...
Hermione awoke as a shaft of sunlight fell across her face. She felt a little disoriented, conscious of feeling that something was… not wrong, just… off, different… And realized as she returned to full consciousness that it was because she felt… rested.
She didn’t know the last time she’d felt so rested in the morning. It had been months-a year, maybe? She didn’t remember.
She scrunched her eyes against the sun, turning her face into the pillow in a sudden, childish impulse to delay opening her eyes-and then stopped.
Her pillow.
She opened her eyes. She was in her room, in her bed. How had-the last thing she remembered was sitting on the couch in the front room with Harry. They’d been talking. She remembered the rush of mingled sympathy and protective anger she’d felt as she thought about the way Harry’s relatives had treated him. Her heart had squeezed a little at how lonely he must have been all those years. Even though he’d been telling of the “good” things, of being happier when he was left alone, she’d thought of how lonely that must have been. It wasn’t that she didn’t know and understand that it was possible to be happy while completely alone. She had some fond memories from her own childhood when she’d been alone with her books and her toys-but for Harry, all his positive memories involved being alone because he’d been miserable when his relatives were around. She’d suddenly remembered Harry as she’d first seen him, remembered how young and small he’d looked in his cousin’s oversized clothing-remembered the look of surprise in his eyes sometimes at an occasional friendly word or gesture. She’d known before that Harry had been treated badly by his relatives but last night had been the first time she’d really felt as if she understood the scope and depth of his relatives’ mistreatment of him and just how bleak and lonely Harry’s childhood must have been. It had hurt her with an almost physical pain to think of it and all she could do was silently promise herself that Harry would never be left that alone and friendless again.
And then… She must have fallen asleep. She was, she realized, lying on top of the blanket on her bed, being covered instead by the quilt she recognized as being from Harry’s room.
Harry.
She moved her head and saw him. He was sitting in a chair, sleeping, his head resting against the wall, his lips slightly parted.
Had he-he must have carried her up to her room, she realized. She had a vague, rather dream-like memory of being lifted-it must not have been a dream after all. She felt herself flush with a mixture of embarrassment and surprise and confusion. He could have woken her up but instead he had carried her. And covered her with the blanket from his own room. And then stayed, as if to guard her from nightmares. She felt another rush of warmth, from affection this time. He really could be so… sweet.
She studied him as he slept, noticing that his glasses had slipped to be slightly crooked. His hair was its usual mess, making her want to comb her fingers through it. She studied him and for once, maybe because the knowledge that he’d carried her up to her room was still warming her heart or maybe simply because he was safely asleep and she didn’t need to fear that her expression would reveal her thoughts, she didn’t even try to deny her own reaction to looking at him. Didn’t try not to acknowledge the way her heart fluttered, her breath became a little shallow, her skin heated. She didn’t even try to deny that she wanted to kiss him, that she just wanted him…
He stirred and then blinked his eyes a few times before his gaze focused and met hers.
For just a moment, neither of them spoke, just looked at each other as she suddenly forgot to breathe.
“G’morning,” he finally said.
And she felt a swift curl of heat in her body at the husky, sleep-roughened sound of his voice. God, he sounded… sexy… like that and then blushed at the thought.
“Good morning,” she managed to say and then found herself blurting out, “You carried me up to my room.” If she’d thought about it, she would have phrased it as a question but the words slipped out before she’d thought.
An expression that was something like a shoulder-less shrug crossed his face. “You were tired. I thought you’d sleep better in your bed.”
“You could have woken me up.”
His gaze dropped, one hand rather restlessly pleating a fold in his trousers. “You were sleeping so soundly, I didn’t want to disturb you.” He looked-and sounded-rather… shy? She couldn’t remember when-if ever-Harry had last seemed shy. Not that Harry was overly given to boldness or insouciance but she would have sworn that they’d been friends for too long for him to feel shy around her. But maybe-she almost caught her breath on a surge of poignant hope-maybe this sudden shyness was a sign that their friendship was shifting, changing. That he was beginning to wonder if they were only friends.
“Thanks,” she said softly.
“Anytime.” He looked back up at her and-and something about the look in his eyes made her heart skip a beat, her breath catching in her throat. The air suddenly felt thick, heavy, as if it were being filled with unspoken words, unacknowledged feelings…
“How’d you sleep?”
“Did you sleep okay?”
They both spoke at once, the questions overlapping, and the tension abruptly eased as they both laughed.
“Did you manage to sleep?” she asked, speaking first.
“Yeah, I did. What about you?”
She smiled. “I slept through the night. I think it’s the first full night’s sleep I’ve had in months.”
“Good, I’m glad.”
“You-you stayed here all night.” It came out sounding like something halfway between a statement and a question.
He lifted one shoulder into a shrug. “I wanted to make sure you didn’t have nightmares.”
“Thanks.”
“You’ve stayed to help me with my nightmares so we’re even now,” he returned with a faint upwards quirk of his mouth.
“Still. Thanks, Harry.”
He glanced at the window, at the bright sunshine outside. “It looks like it’ll be a perfect day to go to the beach,” he said, changing the subject so obviously that she suddenly realized he really was uncomfortable with this, with whatever had changed between them after he’d carried her up to her room and then stayed with her as she slept. Something had changed, not because of what he’d done but rather because of what it meant, what it revealed-and now, he was uncomfortable.
She felt a sudden, almost unaccountable pang of loss. She knew what she felt and what she wanted, what she hoped for-and yet… for a fleeting second, all she could think was that their friendship-the solid, dependable friendship they’d always had-was somehow over.
She forcibly pushed the irrational thought out of her mind and sat up. She was being ridiculous. They were still best friends. “Harry, are you sure you’re ready to spend the day at the beach? It’s a public place and there’ll be lots of other people around and, well, you know…” She trailed off rather awkwardly, not wanting to say that he didn’t deal well with large crowds.
He made a slight face. “I don’t know,” he admitted after a moment. “But I guess we’ll find out,” he finished with an attempt at bravado.
“We don’t have to go, if you really don’t feel ready for it. I can-I’ll think of some excuse and Ron will give in, you know he will.”
“No, it’s okay. I-I want to find out if I can do this. And-and it’s what Ron wants to do. He’s put up with doing what we want to do for days now and…” He shrugged a little. “It’s what Ron wants to do,” he said again, as if that simple fact settled the matter. Which, as far as Harry was concerned, it did.
“It’s okay, Harry, you don’t have to explain. Ron’s my best friend too and I know…” she hesitated for an almost imperceptible second and then finished, “I know Ron comes first for you.” Because she did know it. It wasn’t something that had ever been put into words between them but it was an underlying truth of the Trio and had been since the beginning. She didn’t even mind it. She knew she was Harry’s best friend-and maybe, maybe, something more than that now-but she also knew that Ron was-had been-Harry’s first friend. And Harry’s loyalty to Ron was bone-deep.
“No, he doesn’t,” Harry said slowly, an odd note in his voice making her glance at him. He looked… a little surprised and the tinge of shyness was back in his face. “You do.” He sounded somewhat uncertain, as if he were still trying to convince himself of it, but then he repeated himself. “You come first for me.”
She blinked and found herself blurting out, “But I know that’s not true!”
He gaped at her. “What-why on earth would you say that? I think I would know better than anyone.”
“Because-” she waved a hand a little, a weird, frustrated gesture as if to emphasize her point-“Ron’s your first friend and-and the one you’ll miss the most.”
He frowned. “What are you talking about?”
She let out a breath, her voice quiet. “The Second Task,” she said briefly and then added, hurriedly, “It’s okay, Harry. Ron’s my best friend too and-”
He cut her off by laughing abruptly. “Hermione, don’t be daft.”
“What-”
“That was ages ago.”
“It wasn’t that long ago.”
He sighed, his face changing until he suddenly looked much older than his years. “It feels like centuries ago.”
Her face and her voice softened with understanding. “Yeah, I know.”
He sat back in his chair, running a restless hand through his air. “Things are different now. I’m-we’re all different now.”
It was true, of course, but some things hadn’t changed and she’d thought Harry’s loyalty to Ron was one of them. She hesitated for a moment but then blurted out, “I really come first with you?”
“I don’t care so much if I can’t enjoy myself at the beach today since it’s what Ron wants to do but if you said you didn’t want to go, I’d tell Ron we weren’t going.” He gave her a faint, rather sober smile. “Just don’t tell Ron, okay?”
She had to laugh a little. “Okay. Harry?”
“Hmm?”
“You come first with me too.”
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
There was something a little odd in his face and she realized with a little shock just how moved he was-and for a fleeting second, he was once again the little boy with broken glasses who had never known what it was like to have anyone care about him. Her heart clenched.
“And you can’t tell Ron that either,” she added quickly, wanting to banish the shadows from his eyes.
Now he smiled for real, his eyes clearing. “I won’t,” he promised.
She returned his smile and there was a brief silence before he stood up, stretching a little. And she found herself abruptly distracted as his t-shirt rode up, revealing a strip of pale skin at his waist.
“We may as well start getting ready for the day,” he said as he straightened.
She scrambled up off her bed in a flurry of movement so he wouldn’t catch her staring-oh who was she kidding, she’d been ogling him-and busied herself haphazardly folding his quilt up.
“Here, you’d better take this back to your room,” she managed to say, striving to sound matter-of-fact, as she handed him his quilt.
“Thanks. I’ll see you downstairs in a bit.” He gave her a fleeting smile as he left and she sank back onto her bed, annoyed at herself now. She couldn’t keep reacting like this! She’d gotten so good at ignoring her physical attraction to Harry, tamping down and generally refusing to acknowledge her reaction to him, so much that she usually succeeded in pretending she didn’t react at all. He was only her best friend. That was all. And she wasn’t about to risk their friendship by giving any indication that she thought about him as anything other than a friend.
Anyway, he didn’t care about her as anything more than his best friend. Or at least he hadn’t used to. But maybe, maybe that was changing…
Her gaze fell on the chair he’d spent the night in-to keep her nightmares away. And she heard his voice as he’d told her, “You come first for me.”
He’d been talking about their friendship, she knew. He hadn’t meant anything more than that. And she would have sworn that she didn’t mind that Ron’s friendship came first for Harry, would have sworn that it didn’t matter.
And yet, knowing that her friendship came first… It wasn’t all she wanted from Harry but for now, for that moment, it was enough.
~
To be continued in Part 2 of this Chapter...