An oldie and a newbie ;-)
Post 1 of 2 for today-- a double post today because I felt like it (and because I won't have time to post tomorrow and probably not this weekend either.)
First, an old fic (finally) which you may have all forgotten about since it's been months since I posted the last part. Posting the first half of the third and last part (which has been written for weeks now and I've been hoping to finish the rest of the chapter but got distracted by other fics and then by the Disaster known as DH...) Posting just the first half now, in hopes that it'll jog my muses to help me finish the rest of this fic!
Part 3(a) of 'Honesty'.
And you can find Part 2 here along with a link to Part 1.
Rated (soft) R- for UST.
Honesty
Part 3: The Confession (1/2)
Later had become seven months now. And still, he hadn’t said anything.
It had been awkward, at first, with Ron, who, although he hadn’t been angry at Harry, had also been torn between loyalty to his best friend and his loyalty and protectiveness towards his little sister. And there had been the inevitable fall-out with the Weasleys, Mrs. Weasley had taken it hard, not blaming Harry really, but hurt for her daughter’s sake, and disappointed too.
Harry had inwardly writhed when Mr. Weasley had told him, gently enough, that part of the reason Mrs. Weasley was so disappointed was because she’d always hoped to be able to call Harry her son, for real. For so long now, she had considered Harry to be like another son to her-and in Harry’s and Ginny’s relationship, she’d seen the hope for it to become real, to really gain a son in the boy whom she already cared for like a son.
It had been a terribly bittersweet thing for Harry to hear. He’d known, of course, that Mrs. Weasley cared about him, considered him to be almost like a son, but to hear it from Mr. Weasley… He, who had always wanted a family, hadn’t been able to help the painful throb of his heart, and for one insane moment, he’d wished he could agree to get together with Ginny again. Not for Ginny’s sake but for the sake of the family which she would give him, the family he cared so much about…
But it had only been that moment, a space of a heartbeat, when he’d thought it-knowing, even as he did so, that it was impossible. That even if he could, he wouldn’t.
Because no matter how much he cared about the Weasleys, no matter how much he might want a family-he wanted Hermione more. And he knew that even if he had to give up everything else in his life, he would do it, and gladly, if it meant he could have Hermione, be with Hermione. Hermione was the one thing he needed above all else.
It had taken months, months when he had not seen the Weasleys and his times with Ron were fraught with awkward moments and silent constraints, subjects that were taboo and never spoken of between them.
But slowly, gradually, things had begun to return to some semblance of normality.
Ginny had recovered, was dating Seamus Finnegan now, and finally, he had begun to think, to plan, to wonder, and to hope…
Nothing had happened but he was still happier than he could remember being in months now. He was free and she was free and now he’d begun to plan. How to tell her, how to confess, finally, the truth of his heart…
They had fallen into a habit of having dinner together, just the two of them, at least once every two weeks or so, from that time when things had been so strained between him and Ron.
He had begun to plan, to wonder, but hadn’t managed to come up with anything. Because it was her and for her, he wanted-he needed-it to be perfect. It was going to be the culmination of all his dreams and all he’d wanted for more than a year now and he needed it to be perfect…
He should have realized that life never happened the way you plan.
He stared at Hermione in dismay.
They were having one of their usual dinners when Hermione had fallen silent and had finally blurted out, “Josh asked me to have dinner with him.”
Suddenly, Harry found he couldn’t breathe properly, his lungs having forgotten how to function. Josh. Josh Kentner, who was one of Hermione’s colleagues at St. Mungo’s and one of the closest friends she had made there. He had met him, found him to be a very congenial fellow; he’d never thought of hating him until now. “You mean, on a date?” he managed to get out.
“Yes. He said he’d fancied me for weeks now and he’d only now gotten up the nerve to ask me.”
“Are you going to?” Harry asked, not sure he really wanted to know the answer (if she said yes, he definitely didn’t want to know) but he had to ask it anyway.
Hermione hesitated. “I- I don’t know. I told him I’d think about it.”
He breathed again but he couldn’t relax. He could only study Hermione, the features he knew so well, the face that had haunted his dreams and his waking moments for months now, and he realized just why he had been an idiot. In all his plans, in all his dreams, the one thing he had somehow never questioned was that Hermione was his. He had fallen into the trap of thinking that because he loved her, knew he belonged to her, she must belong to him as well. For the first time, he realized that it wasn’t true. She didn’t really belong to him.
And he felt a stab of fear, of dread. God, he couldn’t lose her now!
“You can’t!” he blurted out thoughtlessly, desperately.
There was a brief silence and then she raised her eyebrows. “I can’t? Why not?”
This was the moment of truth. He was going to have to tell her what he’d never said aloud to anyone. It was, he knew, one of those moments that would change his entire life.
He met her questioning gaze. “Because,” he said quietly, with all the utter simplicity of telling the truth, “I’m in love with you.”
He could see he’d shocked her by the way her eyes widened as she just stared at him for a long moment.
“Harry…” she finally breathed, “you-you love me?”
“Yes, I do. I’ve loved you for months now,” he admitted. Now was not the time, if it ever would be, to tell her that he had loved her for more than a year now, that he’d loved her while he was with Ginny. He couldn’t-and wouldn’t-tell her all that, but he could tell her some of it. Had to tell her some of it because he could see the utter incredulity on her face, as if she simply could not understand why. And it hurt him to see it.
“But- but how-- why? You could have anyone…”
He didn’t know how it was that Hermione seemed to have this idea that she wasn’t pretty, but she did. “I want you. Don’t-do you have any idea how much I want you? I can’t look at you without wanting you. I dream about you…” The words spilled out of him in a flood now that he was finally releasing some of what he’d held inside him for months now. “I love you,” he finished, very softly but intensely.
She was still staring at him, her eyes wide, and he felt a small flicker of anticipated hurt because there was no happiness in her eyes, only surprise. And even though he hadn’t meant to ask so bluntly, he somehow had to, needed to know. “Can you-do you think you can love me?”
His question fell into the silence, seeming to hang in the air awkwardly.
“I- I don’t know,” Hermione finally gasped out. “I never-I never thought…” She looked at him with an odd, incongruous, helpless expression on her face. “Harry, you’re my best friend. I care about you but I hadn’t thought… I didn’t know…” she trailed off uncertainly.
He knew all too well just how much Hermione disliked not knowing something. He hadn’t meant to just blurt out his feelings so abruptly but his sudden fear that he might lose her had spurred him on.
He quashed the small flicker of hurt he couldn’t help but feel at her uncertainty. He hadn’t really thought she loved him-and yet-and yet, some small part of him had hoped, had believed… After all his love and all his longing… he somehow hadn’t been willing to accept or believe that it might all end in nothing. His heart twisted with sudden fear.
He suppressed a sigh. “You don’t have to know now. I just-wanted you to know-and think about it…”
She gave him a small, pained attempt at a smile. “I’m sorry, Harry,” she sighed. “I had no idea…”
“I know. I don’t blame you,” he said gently.
“I will think about it and let you know.”
And with that, he was obliged to be content. He had waited so long, now to wait a little longer…
~*~
True to his word, Harry didn’t mention his feelings again in the days and weeks that followed.
And she did think about it, thought of little else, truth be told.
Harry, her best friend Harry, was in love with her, desired her… And she-how did she feel about him? She knew she loved him as a friend; he was the most important person in her life-but was she in love with him? She wasn’t sure but she found she almost-wanted to be…
She had never really thought of Harry in that way (never allowed herself to think of him that way?) but his confession the other day seemed to open a door which she’d always kept scrupulously shut, giving her a glimpse of possibilities, vague visions of romance and love and happiness and, yes, passion, and all the things she usually tried to tell herself she didn’t really care about.
He didn’t say or do anything that showed his true feelings-but sometimes she would look at him and catch an odd look on his face, a look which she recognized from having seen it before, in occasional times in these past months, moments when Harry had seemed-different. She had put the memory of those moments away, pushed them to the back of her mind as one of the unknown mysteries of Harry. As close as they were and as well as she understood him, she knew there were things Harry would not talk about, places in him which he never shared, both out of ingrained habit from years with his relatives but also from his own personality. So she hadn’t really tried to decipher those moments-but she saw them now and understood.
Now she recognized that expression for what it was-and she could only wonder at how she hadn’t identified the banked desire in his eyes for what it was. She could see it now, though, the flicker of heat in his eyes, the sparks of suppressed passion…
And she would remember the look on his face and hear again the intensity of his voice as he told her, “I can’t look at you without wanting you. I dream of you…”
And she would shiver, a prickle of heat going through her, knowing she was blushing but unable to help it, unable to keep herself from glancing at him, studying him.
She found she couldn’t help looking at him now, caught herself staring at his mouth and his hands, wondering what they would feel like on her body, wondering what it would feel like to kiss him…
And it changed things between them. It wasn’t that it was awkward; it was more just an added awareness that subtly altered the dynamic, the atmosphere between them now. It was amazing what it did to her just to know that he loved her and wanted her so much. The knowledge made her aware of him as a physical being as she never had been before, aware of his height and his strength and his gentleness, aware of the beautiful shape of his hands. It made her conscious, too, of herself, of her own body as she never had been before. And though she tried not to think it as being disloyal and unfair, she couldn’t deny that not even with Ron at the height of their ill-fated relationship, had she ever felt so conscious of herself as a woman. But somehow, with Harry, even when he wasn’t around, the memory of his expression and the suppressed passion of his voice could send a shiver through her, could make her body flush with sudden heat.
And when he did look at her like that, she felt beautiful, sensual, in a way she never had before. It was a heady feeling.
It was really incredible, she sometimes thought, that after nearly a decade of friendship, she could react to Harry like this.
And he was in love with her…
It was an alluring thought. She was aware of the almost-insidious attraction of it, tugging her towards Harry with a force as inexorable and inevitable as gravity.
Not because of this newfound physical awareness of Harry but because of how it muddled up everything else she’d always known she felt for Harry. If anyone had ever asked her, she would have said that she couldn’t possibly be in love with Harry because her feelings for him were completely platonic; now she was discovering the lie in that belief.
He was in love with her-and maybe, just maybe, she was in love with him too…
She hadn’t realized it; she didn’t know when it had happened but somehow she felt rather as if her whole life had been leading up to this feeling, this knowledge, that Harry was already in her mind and in her heart, so firmly engraved there that she could no more separate herself from him emotionally than she could stop breathing.
Love him? Yes.
All her sometimes confusing feelings and emotions where Harry was concerned over almost 10 years of friendship coalesced into this one certainty now: she did love Harry, was in love with him. And, perhaps, in some strange way, she always had been…
~To be continued...
First, an old fic (finally) which you may have all forgotten about since it's been months since I posted the last part. Posting the first half of the third and last part (which has been written for weeks now and I've been hoping to finish the rest of the chapter but got distracted by other fics and then by the Disaster known as DH...) Posting just the first half now, in hopes that it'll jog my muses to help me finish the rest of this fic!
Part 3(a) of 'Honesty'.
And you can find Part 2 here along with a link to Part 1.
Rated (soft) R- for UST.
Honesty
Part 3: The Confession (1/2)
Later had become seven months now. And still, he hadn’t said anything.
It had been awkward, at first, with Ron, who, although he hadn’t been angry at Harry, had also been torn between loyalty to his best friend and his loyalty and protectiveness towards his little sister. And there had been the inevitable fall-out with the Weasleys, Mrs. Weasley had taken it hard, not blaming Harry really, but hurt for her daughter’s sake, and disappointed too.
Harry had inwardly writhed when Mr. Weasley had told him, gently enough, that part of the reason Mrs. Weasley was so disappointed was because she’d always hoped to be able to call Harry her son, for real. For so long now, she had considered Harry to be like another son to her-and in Harry’s and Ginny’s relationship, she’d seen the hope for it to become real, to really gain a son in the boy whom she already cared for like a son.
It had been a terribly bittersweet thing for Harry to hear. He’d known, of course, that Mrs. Weasley cared about him, considered him to be almost like a son, but to hear it from Mr. Weasley… He, who had always wanted a family, hadn’t been able to help the painful throb of his heart, and for one insane moment, he’d wished he could agree to get together with Ginny again. Not for Ginny’s sake but for the sake of the family which she would give him, the family he cared so much about…
But it had only been that moment, a space of a heartbeat, when he’d thought it-knowing, even as he did so, that it was impossible. That even if he could, he wouldn’t.
Because no matter how much he cared about the Weasleys, no matter how much he might want a family-he wanted Hermione more. And he knew that even if he had to give up everything else in his life, he would do it, and gladly, if it meant he could have Hermione, be with Hermione. Hermione was the one thing he needed above all else.
It had taken months, months when he had not seen the Weasleys and his times with Ron were fraught with awkward moments and silent constraints, subjects that were taboo and never spoken of between them.
But slowly, gradually, things had begun to return to some semblance of normality.
Ginny had recovered, was dating Seamus Finnegan now, and finally, he had begun to think, to plan, to wonder, and to hope…
Nothing had happened but he was still happier than he could remember being in months now. He was free and she was free and now he’d begun to plan. How to tell her, how to confess, finally, the truth of his heart…
They had fallen into a habit of having dinner together, just the two of them, at least once every two weeks or so, from that time when things had been so strained between him and Ron.
He had begun to plan, to wonder, but hadn’t managed to come up with anything. Because it was her and for her, he wanted-he needed-it to be perfect. It was going to be the culmination of all his dreams and all he’d wanted for more than a year now and he needed it to be perfect…
He should have realized that life never happened the way you plan.
He stared at Hermione in dismay.
They were having one of their usual dinners when Hermione had fallen silent and had finally blurted out, “Josh asked me to have dinner with him.”
Suddenly, Harry found he couldn’t breathe properly, his lungs having forgotten how to function. Josh. Josh Kentner, who was one of Hermione’s colleagues at St. Mungo’s and one of the closest friends she had made there. He had met him, found him to be a very congenial fellow; he’d never thought of hating him until now. “You mean, on a date?” he managed to get out.
“Yes. He said he’d fancied me for weeks now and he’d only now gotten up the nerve to ask me.”
“Are you going to?” Harry asked, not sure he really wanted to know the answer (if she said yes, he definitely didn’t want to know) but he had to ask it anyway.
Hermione hesitated. “I- I don’t know. I told him I’d think about it.”
He breathed again but he couldn’t relax. He could only study Hermione, the features he knew so well, the face that had haunted his dreams and his waking moments for months now, and he realized just why he had been an idiot. In all his plans, in all his dreams, the one thing he had somehow never questioned was that Hermione was his. He had fallen into the trap of thinking that because he loved her, knew he belonged to her, she must belong to him as well. For the first time, he realized that it wasn’t true. She didn’t really belong to him.
And he felt a stab of fear, of dread. God, he couldn’t lose her now!
“You can’t!” he blurted out thoughtlessly, desperately.
There was a brief silence and then she raised her eyebrows. “I can’t? Why not?”
This was the moment of truth. He was going to have to tell her what he’d never said aloud to anyone. It was, he knew, one of those moments that would change his entire life.
He met her questioning gaze. “Because,” he said quietly, with all the utter simplicity of telling the truth, “I’m in love with you.”
He could see he’d shocked her by the way her eyes widened as she just stared at him for a long moment.
“Harry…” she finally breathed, “you-you love me?”
“Yes, I do. I’ve loved you for months now,” he admitted. Now was not the time, if it ever would be, to tell her that he had loved her for more than a year now, that he’d loved her while he was with Ginny. He couldn’t-and wouldn’t-tell her all that, but he could tell her some of it. Had to tell her some of it because he could see the utter incredulity on her face, as if she simply could not understand why. And it hurt him to see it.
“But- but how-- why? You could have anyone…”
He didn’t know how it was that Hermione seemed to have this idea that she wasn’t pretty, but she did. “I want you. Don’t-do you have any idea how much I want you? I can’t look at you without wanting you. I dream about you…” The words spilled out of him in a flood now that he was finally releasing some of what he’d held inside him for months now. “I love you,” he finished, very softly but intensely.
She was still staring at him, her eyes wide, and he felt a small flicker of anticipated hurt because there was no happiness in her eyes, only surprise. And even though he hadn’t meant to ask so bluntly, he somehow had to, needed to know. “Can you-do you think you can love me?”
His question fell into the silence, seeming to hang in the air awkwardly.
“I- I don’t know,” Hermione finally gasped out. “I never-I never thought…” She looked at him with an odd, incongruous, helpless expression on her face. “Harry, you’re my best friend. I care about you but I hadn’t thought… I didn’t know…” she trailed off uncertainly.
He knew all too well just how much Hermione disliked not knowing something. He hadn’t meant to just blurt out his feelings so abruptly but his sudden fear that he might lose her had spurred him on.
He quashed the small flicker of hurt he couldn’t help but feel at her uncertainty. He hadn’t really thought she loved him-and yet-and yet, some small part of him had hoped, had believed… After all his love and all his longing… he somehow hadn’t been willing to accept or believe that it might all end in nothing. His heart twisted with sudden fear.
He suppressed a sigh. “You don’t have to know now. I just-wanted you to know-and think about it…”
She gave him a small, pained attempt at a smile. “I’m sorry, Harry,” she sighed. “I had no idea…”
“I know. I don’t blame you,” he said gently.
“I will think about it and let you know.”
And with that, he was obliged to be content. He had waited so long, now to wait a little longer…
~*~
True to his word, Harry didn’t mention his feelings again in the days and weeks that followed.
And she did think about it, thought of little else, truth be told.
Harry, her best friend Harry, was in love with her, desired her… And she-how did she feel about him? She knew she loved him as a friend; he was the most important person in her life-but was she in love with him? She wasn’t sure but she found she almost-wanted to be…
She had never really thought of Harry in that way (never allowed herself to think of him that way?) but his confession the other day seemed to open a door which she’d always kept scrupulously shut, giving her a glimpse of possibilities, vague visions of romance and love and happiness and, yes, passion, and all the things she usually tried to tell herself she didn’t really care about.
He didn’t say or do anything that showed his true feelings-but sometimes she would look at him and catch an odd look on his face, a look which she recognized from having seen it before, in occasional times in these past months, moments when Harry had seemed-different. She had put the memory of those moments away, pushed them to the back of her mind as one of the unknown mysteries of Harry. As close as they were and as well as she understood him, she knew there were things Harry would not talk about, places in him which he never shared, both out of ingrained habit from years with his relatives but also from his own personality. So she hadn’t really tried to decipher those moments-but she saw them now and understood.
Now she recognized that expression for what it was-and she could only wonder at how she hadn’t identified the banked desire in his eyes for what it was. She could see it now, though, the flicker of heat in his eyes, the sparks of suppressed passion…
And she would remember the look on his face and hear again the intensity of his voice as he told her, “I can’t look at you without wanting you. I dream of you…”
And she would shiver, a prickle of heat going through her, knowing she was blushing but unable to help it, unable to keep herself from glancing at him, studying him.
She found she couldn’t help looking at him now, caught herself staring at his mouth and his hands, wondering what they would feel like on her body, wondering what it would feel like to kiss him…
And it changed things between them. It wasn’t that it was awkward; it was more just an added awareness that subtly altered the dynamic, the atmosphere between them now. It was amazing what it did to her just to know that he loved her and wanted her so much. The knowledge made her aware of him as a physical being as she never had been before, aware of his height and his strength and his gentleness, aware of the beautiful shape of his hands. It made her conscious, too, of herself, of her own body as she never had been before. And though she tried not to think it as being disloyal and unfair, she couldn’t deny that not even with Ron at the height of their ill-fated relationship, had she ever felt so conscious of herself as a woman. But somehow, with Harry, even when he wasn’t around, the memory of his expression and the suppressed passion of his voice could send a shiver through her, could make her body flush with sudden heat.
And when he did look at her like that, she felt beautiful, sensual, in a way she never had before. It was a heady feeling.
It was really incredible, she sometimes thought, that after nearly a decade of friendship, she could react to Harry like this.
And he was in love with her…
It was an alluring thought. She was aware of the almost-insidious attraction of it, tugging her towards Harry with a force as inexorable and inevitable as gravity.
Not because of this newfound physical awareness of Harry but because of how it muddled up everything else she’d always known she felt for Harry. If anyone had ever asked her, she would have said that she couldn’t possibly be in love with Harry because her feelings for him were completely platonic; now she was discovering the lie in that belief.
He was in love with her-and maybe, just maybe, she was in love with him too…
She hadn’t realized it; she didn’t know when it had happened but somehow she felt rather as if her whole life had been leading up to this feeling, this knowledge, that Harry was already in her mind and in her heart, so firmly engraved there that she could no more separate herself from him emotionally than she could stop breathing.
Love him? Yes.
All her sometimes confusing feelings and emotions where Harry was concerned over almost 10 years of friendship coalesced into this one certainty now: she did love Harry, was in love with him. And, perhaps, in some strange way, she always had been…
~To be continued...