Official Fine Print: Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling. Just playing with them.
Fixing Harry
Chapter 17
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Madam Pomfrey dosed Harry thoroughly with another range of potions before she left, but while she was quite firm in admonishing him not to get out of bed for another twelve hours at least and to keep his arm as still as possible for another twelve after that, she admitted privately to Ron and Hermione in the hallway that he was healing remarkably quickly.
"The spells you used would accelerate the process somewhat over the more natural course of potions, Miss Granger, but even taking those into account I'm quite pleased. There'll likely be very little scarring with healing like that. Do remind him to go easily, though. Very often such deep wounds may appear healed before the body really has a chance to adjust. He'll still feel it in his muscles and ligaments a good while even after the skin has seemed completely returned to normal."
They agreed to do so, or at very least to try, and escorted her to the kitchen fireplace asking politely after her travels earlier in the summer to visit her niece in Wales. Hermione informed her they were due to meet with the Headmistress the following day and promised to bring Harry up to the Hospital Wing for a check up.
Hermione was surprised to find Mrs. Weasley bustling about in the kitchen making soup with a clearly bored Ginny's assistance. She brightened perceptibly with Madam Pomfrey's appearance.
"Is Harry awake? Can I go see him now?" she asked, dropping the carrots she'd been washing onto the worktop and grabbing a towel to dry her hands.
"He's sleeping at the moment," Madam Pomfrey said. "I've just given him his potions. I'd leave it for a bit; he'll be much better company towards dinnertime."
Ginny's expression grew set and she turned reluctantly back to her task. Hermione couldn't help but wince at the decidedly expressive whack of the knife and was exceedingly happy not to be a carrot at that particular point.
"He'll be up and around again tomorrow without a doubt," Madam Pomfrey told her. She sniffed over Mrs. Weasley's shoulder and nodded approvingly. "Soup's just the thing for the boy, Molly, and yours is as good as any nourishing potion I've ever used."
"Tastes a whole lot better, too," Ron agreed. "Actually makes you want to live."
Mrs. Weasley flicked her wand to keep the spoon stirring and accompanied Madam Pomfrey to the fire. "You're quite certain they can care for him on their own? I'd stay, only Arthur's been working overtime at the Ministry trying not to find Harry and Fleur's home a bit under the weather and I promised Bill I'd look in on her."
Ginny caught Ron's eye and mouthed, `Preggers' while simulating being sick. Ron paled. Hermione, who would previously have thought very little of the news found herself getting a little gooey-hearted at the prospect. A new little generation of Weasley's! Now that she wasn't meant to produce one it was an endearing thought. She wondered if it might not be a side effect of her brush with Lily's enduring mother-magic as well. She'd never thought of herself as having even the smallest of maternal instincts.
"He'll be quite alright Molly, honestly. He's healing nicely, just needs to keep quiet for a bit and keep at the blood replenishing potions. Hermione did a very creditable job stopping the bleeding, I feel confident leaving him in her care."
Ginny's eyes shifted toward Hermione appraisingly. She seemed to be determining whether to thank her or warn her off, and Hermione let her eyes drift quickly back to Ron.
Madam Pomfrey departed through the floo and Mrs. Weasley turned her attention once more to Hermione, Ron and Ginny. "Ginny dear, I'll drop you off with Luna on the way to Bill and Fleurs' flat. You're to floo to the twin's shop in the morning and I'll meet you there at ten o'clock sharp. Ron, I'm trusting you to make sure Harry has a nice big bowl of soup when he wakes up, and I've left cold chicken and a pie as well for you and Hermione. There's enough for Tonks and Lupin if they stop in. Do make sure Lupin eats, the poor man."
Hermione hid a smile at that; there was nothing particularly poor about Lupin any longer; Tonks appeared to be taking quite good care of him. Gone were the days of patched and seedy robes, and while Tonks wasn't exactly renowned for her cooking skills, with her he at least ate regular meals. He was as healthy as anyone forced to become a werewolf once a month could be, and his research job seemed to have panned out into fairly steady work lately.
"Yes, Mum," said Ron dutifully. "What's the Sprout doing with Luna?"
"I'm not a sprout," said Ginny wrathfully. "And I'm keeping Luna company tonight. She's been stuck at The Leaky Cauldron all this time while her dad's been working the summer away."
"Have fun, then. Tell Luna Harry and Hermione miss her scratching behind their ears. The guinea pigs, that is."
"Oh, that was a necessary clarification," Hermione grumbled. She felt as if Mrs. Weasley were watching the two of them too closely for comfort now as well. "We'll take good care of Harry," she promised. "Thank you so much for cooking for us. I know how busy things are just now."
"Just stay safe and in the house until we can get this business with the Ministry sorted out," Mrs. Weasley requested, handing Ginny a pinch of floo powder.
"Yes, Mum," Ron repeated. "Bye, Sprout."
It was a good thing Mrs. Weasley went first. Hermione didn't think Ginny's parting gesture fell under the category of either friendly or waving.
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What little was left of the day proved uneventful. Hermione even played a game of Wizard's chess with Ron to pass the time, although it wasn't the same without Harry with them. The words were on her lips to speak more than once and she was certain she saw Ron bite them back as well. She was reminded again how grateful she should be that they were still sharing that thought.
It must have shown on her face this time, because Ron rather ruthlessly claimed her Bishop and warned, `Don't go all mushy-brained on me, Hermione. I can handle you shagging Harry a lot easier than losing my best bet for a decent game of chess."
"I think you ought to ask Luna for a game. I bet she's completely unpredictable. In fact she might even beat you."
Ron grinned at the prospect. "Harry needs to cope with Ginny first. Ginny and Luna have been friends for a long time. I don't want her to feel like she's walked into the middle of something and then asked to take sides."
"Luna probably already knows how it all ends up. I don't get the sense she's overly concerned about it either way. She certainly knows Harry and I are together, and either she kept it to herself or she was no more successful in getting Ginny to believe it than Harry's been convincing her they're over."
"Ginny's always been determined to do things her own way. She had to be, it can't have been easy being the youngest of us, and the only girl. In Harry's defense I always thought she'd be terrifying for some bloke and lead anyone she chose around by the ba…nose with a firm hand, but in Ginny's she's been nothing if not faithful. She made up her mind the moment she set her eyes on him."
"I'm not sure dating Neville, Michael Corner and Dean is exactly what I'd call faithful, even though I'm the one who told her she ought to get on with her life," Hermione said. "Still, that's not love, Ron. That's obsession."
"Only when someone else does it. Didn't seem to take you a second look."
"It took a second look at a troll," she pointed out. "And suddenly the two of you seemed brilliant company in comparison."
Hermione had gone back upstairs after dinner and taken a nice long bath, soaking and attempting to think of nothing in particular until her skin pruned. She was only semi-successful; she continually felt as if she was on the verge of some vital discovery but never quite got there.
She wrapped her hair in a towel, tied her robe around her waist and padded down the hall to the room where Harry lay still sleeping. She settled in the same chair by the window Elspeth had chosen and began to comb out her hair. This was a somewhat complicated process only partially speeded on by magic. Hermione had found that drying and styling charms were every bit as time consuming and complicated as their muggle counterparts; too strong a charm and her hair ended up dry but looking like sheep's wool, too light a one and the damp bit underneath caused the straight part to bush out violently. Combing it through by hand and applying several mild drying charms throughout the process instead of one overall stronger one seemed the best method to achieve results she could live with. She was long past the days when she'd bothered envying Parvati her heavy hair that dried so straight and shiny, or Lavender the results of her careful routine of curling and styling spells.
Somehow the whole process now seemed a bit more worth it. It was almost funny, how Harry's perception of her softened her own. Things had been far more complicated with Ron. She had never truly felt like his first choice; she knew he'd had to work his nerve up for her and other girls had been easier, but there it was. Harry had always been kinder - or perhaps just less openly opinionated - than Ron, but nothing in his previous choices (Cho would have been a tough act of follow if she hadn't turned out to be such a cow, and Ginny really was lovely when she wasn't possessed or obsessed) had left Hermione feeling she was in any way his epitome of womanhood. And yet he managed to make her feel that way now; as much as the draw between them was based on the comfort of long familiarity, getting to know him on a more intimate level proved there was still quite a lot to be discovered on both sides.
The feel of his fingers running through her hair, the unthinking gentleness with which he could tuck a lock behind her ear to make way for a kiss, the way he sometimes buried his face in it over her shoulder afterwards, all of them made her feel desirable, womanly, pretty even. Plain old bushy-haired Hermione. Imagine.
She was almost finished, mindlessly eying the evening sky as her fingers methodically worked to comb through the thick tangle of curls in the final bit when she heard the soft sound of the sheets rustling behind her and turned to find Harry had awoken and was watching her from the bed. The rustling might have been him reaching for his glasses, for they were already in place.
She smiled with pleasure to find him awake, though it faded slightly when no answering smile met her in return. His gaze was owlish and intent.
"Hermione, you're… you're just… you're gorgeous, sitting there," he whispered thickly. His struggle to find the words and the ultimate simplicity of his choice lent them a sincerity that eloquence could never match.
"It's much more complementary if you don't sound surprised when you say it, you know," she managed after a moment, once her heart resumed beating and she'd got her breath back. Her cheeks and chest felt as if they were on fire. She'd lain with him without a stitch between them, done things with him that should have rendered her impervious to embarrassment. He'd probably touched every inch of her now, how could he leave her on the verge of tears with one stupid word?
Because he truly believed it, and she knew he did; she'd just been thinking about it, hadn't she? Because he was surprised. Because he'd known her for ages through good times and bad, he'd seen her with her head buried in a book, seen her turned into Millicent Bulstrode's cat, seen her struggle to admit she loved him, but he'd never actually seen her sit and comb out her wet hair before and for some reason it had truthfully struck something in him. Hogwarts might have had broom closets and empty classrooms for couples inclined to plumb the mysteries of life, but it hadn't exactly provided opportunities for simple intimacies like this. And they'd almost missed their chance.
She rose from the chair, leaving her hairbrush behind, and climbed up on to the bed, laying down beside him.
"I didn't mean it to sound that way," he told her, reaching for her tentatively with his uninjured arm. She shifted closer, settling down against the length of him, slipping her arm over his waist and resting her head on his shoulder. She had the sense again of fitting him, or of him fitting her, as they moved together.
"It's alright," she reassured him, nestling closer to reinforce her words. "I was… you surprised me, too. You actually made me feel sort of gorgeous for a moment there."
He made no response other than stroking her still slightly damp hair, but she felt his lips press gently against her forehead. They lay in silence for some time and Hermione felt herself go comfortably drowsy, warm and clean and utterly content to be beside him. Despite all that awaited them beyond these four walls she had the sense of being quite safe entwined with him, as if nothing could harm them as long as they stayed together. Just as she'd begun drifting off she heard him finally attempt to put in words what had obviously been occupying his own semi- somnolent conscience.
"What use is all of this magic," he asked softly, "if I can't make you see how amazing you are to me? You saved my life, Hermione. You call me back and make me glad I came. You were like the stained glass mermaid in the Prefects' bathroom, combing your hair just then, only a thousand times more beautiful because you were you and I could only imagine what you were thinking. I'm pretty certain that mermaid couldn't have worked out anything in Ancient Runes in her head."
She wondered how firmly the roof on Number Eleven was attached. It appeared they'd have to find out.
"I have a confession," she told him, lifting her eyes to meet his and trying hard not to lose her train of thought as they fixed on her steadily with their almost magnetic pull. "I wasn't doing Runes, or even working out how the Ministry might manage find you and succeed in putting limits on your magic, the way I should have been. If I looked deep in thought, it's because I was thinking of you beside me just like this. How lovely you feel to me, and how glad I am that we've worked out this way. You make me daydream, Harry, in the most distractingly physical way, and if we'd done this in school it's distinctly possible I might have trolled every one of my N.E.W.T.s."
"I find that disturbingly hot," he told her, the wicked little grin that spelled trouble overtaking his earlier seriousness. "It'd take more magic than offing Voldemort for you to troll anything. Maybe I am the next dark lord."
"Shut up," she said firmly, "and kiss me already."
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Hermione awoke some time later to find their door cracked and light from the hallway spilling inside. She blinked until her eyes made out Ron's silhouette at the foot of the bed, as far away from them both as possible, shaking one of her feet gingerly through the blankets.
She bolted straight up, fear rising in her chest, and then realized through the dim light that his expression had become at once both panicked and almost helplessly intrigued. Almost as soon as she did, he did as well, and his eyes bolted for the ceiling. She snatched the sheet up and closer around her and Harry stirred fitfully in his sleep, reaching for her.
"What's wrong?" she asked as softly as she could through her annoyance.
"I think you'd better come downstairs. Both of you, if he can manage it," Ron told her, swallowing. His eyes roved around the room, anywhere but the bed. "Ginny and Luna are here. They stumbled onto a meeting at The Leaky Cauldron that sort of changes everything."
"Why?" she asked, casting her own eyes around for her nightgown and robe.
"That aide of Scrimgeour's, Smeggall, was there, and Umbridge," he said. "But the really bad news is so were Snape and Elspeth."
That didn't sound right. Or good, at the very least.
"My robe is, erm, right behind you. Over there," she indicated. It had quite clearly been flung where it lay; he picked it up and tossed it back to her.
"Ginny thinks Elspeth's been betraying Harry right along," he said anxiously. "And now she knows about this house. We're going to have to move, and fast."
"To be honest, Ron, right now I trust Elspeth's judgment a lot more than Ginny's. Elspeth helped Harry escape the Ministry by letting him take her hostage at wand point, for goodness sake. Would you actually let him hold a wand to your throat about now? And you know as well as I do that Ginny'd be the one taking Harry hostage now if she thought it might get them back together. There must be more to this than meets the eye."
"She may be a little obsessed but I told you before, she was obsessing about Harry back when you couldn't tear your eyes from Viktor Krum," Ron said defensively. "You're not the only one who's ever cared about him, you know."
"But she's the one I actually want to care about me," Harry interjected, still sleepy but sure of his position on that issue at least. "She's the one I want to care for. There's a difference. And why are we arguing about this in the middle of the night?"
"It's only just past eleven, actually. Luna and Ginny are downstairs. Ron says they stumbled across a secret meeting at The Leaky Cauldron between Smeggall, Umbridge, Snape and Elspeth."
"Elspeth will tell us about it in the morning, then," Harry said confidently.
"You can't tell me that particular combination doesn't give you at least a mild case of the willies, Harry. Nothing good can come of it. Snape, Harry. With Umbridge. Talking about you."
"There's no love lost there," Harry pointed out. "At least you can always count on Snape to hate everyone else almost as much as he hates me." He sighed and began heaving himself up and out of bed. "I don't suppose you'd be a friend and throw me those?" he asked Ron, eyes fixed on a pair of jeans folded over the footboard.
Hermione watched the two eye each other steadily for a moment. Ron picked them up at last and threw them with perhaps a bit more force than necessary Harry's way.
"Thanks," Harry said, and rose with deliberate carelessness from between the sheets to pull them on. She felt Ron watch her watching him and refused to look away. Harry toed his way into unlaced trainers and pulled a clean t shirt from his pack on the floor, turning hopefully toward her. She understood at once he needed her help to put it on and moved to do it, but before she could reach him Ron took it from his hands and bunched it up, holding the sleeve open for his wonky arm. Harry slid it in trustingly if gingerly, and Ron helped stretch the neck over his friends' head, eyes meeting Hermione's quite deliberately before it poked through. The message was quite clear. You're not the only one who's ever cared about him, you know.
"Go easy on her, you two," he said gruffly, stepping back from Harry and clearly including Hermione in his plea. "It's no one's fault, is it, how it's all turning out, and once she had a taste of things year before last she's not been the same about it since. She's not going to like the two of you together a bit and you well know she's got a temper, but she genuinely thinks she loves you, Harry. I think she thought you loved her too."
The nominal topic of discussion downstairs might be the meeting that Ginny and Luna had observed, but it was obvious to all three of them that the time had come to live up to their decisions.
Harry ran his fingers through his hair, succeeding only in making it appear more disheveled. "I'll do anything I can, Ron, but I've tried a hundred ways to be gentle about it and they've all come back to haunt me. She can yell and scream if she wants but it's not going to change anything this time round. It was a mistake. I'll always be sorry it happened because she was the last person I should have let it happen with. I do know that, and I don't know what the hell I was thinking. It's entirely my fault it did, but I love Hermione. I just…" his eyes dropped and then shifted to hers with the same mix of shyness and undisguised discovery that had taken her breath away earlier that evening. "I just do. Wanting not to hurt Ginny's feelings isn't the same thing at all."
Ron sighed. "Trust me, I've figured out over the last few days what you're on to in each other. I wish you'd done us all a favor and figured it out a bit earlier, but I reckon you're not going to change your minds now. Half the time, I couldn't be happier for either of you and the other half I want to wring both your bloody necks."
Ron headed downstairs, Harry went to the loo and Hermione found Crookshanks curled up possessively on her nightgown. She gave up and was about to head to her old room to grub through her bag for clothes when a thought occurred. It was terribly juvenile, but nothing spelled possession like a boy's favorite shirt. She found a clean pair of boxers and his Kenmare Kestrals shirt; she'd had to drag it out of the laundry, but it had been on top and wasn't obviously dirty or stained. Best of all it still smelled faintly of Harry when she'd poked her head through the neck. She felt invincible.
She met Harry coming out of the lav as she started downstairs, and his soft "Holy hell, Hermione," didn't hurt matters either.
"For someone who's not a Quidditch fan, you wear that really, really well," he told her, "I haven't got much in the way of clothes but they're all yours if I get to be around when you try them on."
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Ginny and Luna were waiting in the kitchen comparing stories between the Quibbler and the Daily Prophet. Both looked up with what appeared to be genuine pleasure to see him when Harry made his way to the table. Ron hunted down five bottles of butterbeer while Harry ignored Ginny's indication of the chair beside her and sat down across from her with the table safely between them.
"Ron said you two came across a meeting between Smeggall and Snape and Umbridge?" Harry asked. "Why is that I never get invited to I Hate Harry night at the Cauldron?"
"We weren't exactly invited," Ginny told him excitedly, "but most of their generation hasn't picked up on Fred and George's stuff yet, and the extendable ears worked out great."
"I would have like to have seen them though," Luna said thoughtfully. "Extendable eyes would be really useful. You can tell so much more about someone's true intentions when you can see the expression that goes along with the words."
A very valid point, if a bit surprising coming from her. Although he reckoned if she really was a seer it might be twice as frustrating as anyone else. He wondered if she had visions or just sort of knew things, and how it came to her. She seemed so vague; who was to say she hadn't foreseen important stuff and just not been paying attention? Harry had found himself wondering lately that if Trelawney had only laid off the sherry there might not have been an extra verse to his own prophecy. Something along the lines of:
And the Ministry will claim his wand and neuter the one's magic by forcing him to turn to the dark lord's traitorous potion master to beg for help… because it wasn't humiliating enough to be unable to control the magic required to defeat the dark lord in the first place. And the one will live on in misery as an example to future dark lord slayers that it might be better to die in infancy than live to save future soulless Ministry wonks' miserable arses just so they can be betrayed, too… the one with the power to vanquish the dark lord will be born as the seventh month dies, and his eighteenth birthday will be the most miserable yet… and that's saying something….
"Harry? Are you even listening to me?" Ginny's voice broke through his reverie and he realized there'd be no faking this one. He hadn't had a clue she'd even been talking.
"Erm, sorry," he said. Hermione came and sat down beside him and he felt a little better. More focused somehow. "What were you saying?"
"Their little get-together was called by this Smeggall person. He's been dealing with Snape all along about finding a way to limit your magic. Snape's been trying to sell him on the idea that the only real way to do it was to keep you on steady doses of a potion and just use an artifact like wrist bands or a collar or something for show - like a visible symbol. He insisted that was the only foolproof way there was. Umbridge cut him off and said he was wrong, that she'd found exactly what the Minister wanted."
"Vicious toad. It would be her," Hermione said angrily.
"You'll be wearing one of her dopey hair bands before you know it, mate," Ron added.
"She was one twisted piece of work," Harry admitted, "but I'm not exactly frightened of anything she'd come up with. She wasn't powerful as a witch in her own right at all; she was just good at manipulating situations to her own sick purposes."
Luna shook her head. "You don't understand, Harry. It seemed serious. She didn't create it or come up with the spell herself. She's found something and worked out a deal for it. We couldn't tell what she'd done, but even Professor Snape was really surprised by whatever it was. He seemed to believe it would work, but that it would leave you a squib. Elspeth Hawktalon said that wasn't what Scrimgeour wanted and he wouldn't stand for it, because the backlash from regular witches and wizards would be too strong. They might buy you being held to average magical abilities, but never having your magic actually taken from you."
"How nice," said Harry faintly.
"Umbridge insisted that your level of magic now was even higher that it had been when you were released from St. Mungo's and that whatever it was wouldn't go far enough to leave you a squib," Ginny said.
"How would she know that? She's nothing to base that on," Hermione protested.
"Unless they measured it somehow while I was out of it before you and Ron and Tonks and Elspeth came for me after I blew out the front of Flourish and Blotts. I wouldn't have had a clue what they were doing to me, and I couldn't have stopped it even if I had," Harry pointed out. "What difference does it make, though? They still haven't proved I'm a threat or I'll turn dark, either. They don't seem to need to prove anything, it's down to me to disprove it all and no one will believe me."
"Here's the part you need to worry about though. Whatever it is, it's visible and permanent. From what they were saying it goes under your skin but can still be easily seen. They want Snape to make up the ingredients for applying it, but they have someone else who'll do the actual deed when it comes to you. Elspeth's job is going to be to put the Ministry's seal on it by doing the verifying spell."
"They all agreed it would work, Harry," Ginny told him, her eyes hard. Your `friend' Elspeth sat there and said that the Department of Spell Damage Reversal could monitor enforcement for the first year or two to make sure there was no way for your magic to compensate for it. Snape pointed out that they actually needed to catch you first if they were going to do it, and Smeggall said they knew where you were and it was just a matter of getting to you. He said, `I'm sure he'll come out for his friend Ms. Hawktalon, won't he? And she agreed, Harry."
"Fuck," Harry said, his blood running cold. He felt suddenly nauseous. `Please let me not have ruined someone else's life, not now.'
"Why did you ever let her come here?" Ginny asked angrily. "What were you thinking?"
"You've got it wrong, as usual," he snarled, utterly unable to stop himself. "I revealed it to her so she'd have a safe place to run and I'm glad that I did. It looks like she's going to need it. I only hope she'll come before it's too late."
"It's already too late, Harry! She's sold you out." Ginny raged back. "You can never see what's right in front of your face!"
"And just what," said Harry, his voice suddenly dangerously quiet, "is that supposed to mean?"
"Just exactly what it sounds like. You take for granted what's right in front of you and never appreciate what you already have. You keep looking for something else when you already have everything you need. She never helped you a bit, never reversed a single curse and now she's told them where you are!"
Harry shut his eyes then; Hermione saw a muscle in his jaw clench. The magical fire in the hearth, charmed not to give off heat during the summer months, suddenly flared and she felt an abrupt change of pressure in her ears. Crookshanks yowled and shot out from under the table where he'd settled at her feet, his tail treble its usual size; and the guinea pigs shrieked in their cage and bolted for their hutches.
"You're right. I have done. I've been an idiot," Harry admitted. "But I've learned my lesson. It won't happen again."
Luna cocked her head at him quizzically, like an exotic bird. Hermione realized her earrings today were made of long scarlet feathers.
Ginny's face lit up with an enormous smile. "Oh, Harry, I knew it…"
Hermione saw him wince, as if anticipating what was to come. She could not tell if Ginny knew and was deliberately misunderstanding him on the chance he might not have the nerve to follow through, or if she truly had remained oblivious to all that had changed in him since he broke it off with her. She felt her hackles rise in his defense. Their sixth year had been a painful one in so many ways, strange and alien and the beginning of the end. It was time to move on.
"Ginny, no," he said miserably. "I'm sorry if I ever gave you the impression that things between us would change if I lived through the prophecy, but they won't. I never should have let us happen in the first place. It was weak and selfish and there's really no defense except to say I never knowingly meant to hurt you. It was all closing in around me, traveling in the pensieve was making Voldemort more and more real and I was starting to understand just what I was actually up against and how small my chances really were of beating him. Everything was changing. I wanted to love someone, I wanted to be loved, and you'd always… wanted to. I cared about you as Ron's sister and as a friend, but I always knew I didn't love you the way you wanted. I just never knew why until now."
"But that's what I mean, Harry. You don't need to be sorry. You don't need to regret it or be lonely anymore. I forgive you for pushing me away then, I didn't like it but I understand you needed to carry out the prophecy and you were protecting me in case you didn't make it. I love you enough for both of us, and now that things are going to get back to normal, you'll learn to love me too. I bet you could get a job or an apprenticeship at Hogwarts while I finish up. Goodness knows you could be the DADA teacher, you defeated Voldemort after all. And we could go to the Yule Ball together and after I graduate we could…"
Harry's fingers began rubbing at his forehead almost exactly the way they had in the days when the horcrux in his scar called home to Voldemort, only now it looked more like he was trying to erase a brain tumor from the outside. They slid up through his hair and he held his head. "Ginny…" he began, then abruptly dropped them to the table with enough force to rattle the butterbeer bottles.
He remembered too late about his healing arm and pain joined frustration in the pounding dance between his eyes.
"I can't teach at Hogwarts, I'm eighteen, entirely without qualifications and a wanted Ministry escapee. They tend to frown on that. If I never attend another Yule Ball as long as I live it will still be several lifetimes too soon. I'm not noble, I'm not a hero, I'm not even nice, and as you already learned tonight a whole lot of people want to take my magic and essentially shove it up my arse about now. And just to make a final point, I can't learn to love you, because I already love someone else. Hermione, Ginny. I'm in love with Hermione."
Ginny stared at him a second and then side to side at Luna and Ron. Hermione noticed both of them discretely shift further away in their chairs.
And then she shook her head. "We can work that all the Ministry stuff out later, Harry, but since you've still got both your eyebrows and Ron hasn't lunged over the table the whole Hermione thing is just silly. Why would…"
"Hermione and I broke it off a while ago, Gin, in part because she told me she was in love with Harry. They aren't kidding. It's time to just let it go," Ron said, with what Hermione thought was remarkable fortitude. He'd really matured since they'd broken up. Did that mean she'd been a bad influence on him?
Ginny's brown eyes darkened then, and her jaw set. She turned back to Hermione, who suddenly realized that her wand was upstairs. There was a brilliant move for a supposedly smart witch!
"You were supposed to be my friend. I told you how I felt about Harry from the very beginning…" she started.
"He was my friend first. I never deceived you," Hermione said steadily. "I told you from the beginning that he was overwhelmed just discovering the magical world and the truth about his parents, and that you'd do better to just be yourself and let it happen if it would in time. I knew as soon as you got together you weren't going to last or be happy. I suspected it was for the reasons Harry just gave you, but I did my best to hope I was wrong, stay well out of it and let you both find out for yourselves. If you and Harry actually had anything going on I wouldn't be here, but I'm not going to turn away from an even deeper relationship with someone I already care about just because you had a crush on him once upon a time."
"Once upon a time? Try right here; right now. And it's not a crush. You've never understood us; you never understand anything that isn't printed in one of your precious books. You think you know so much about Harry, but you don't." Ginny's eyes had narrowed and one hand slipped beneath the table. Spots of red lighting her cheeks were all the more obvious in the set, pale shade her face had become.
"Actually," Harry told her, trying to draw her attention back to himself, "she really does. And please don't make me need to stun you, because my magic is really unstable right now and I don't want to hurt you."
"You wouldn't," Ginny said confidently. "How long has this been going on, then? Have you even kissed her yet? Do you have any idea what you're letting yourself in for?"
"Ginny," Harry said patiently, "she's wearing my shorts."
Ginny rounded on Hermione in a real fury now, her wand making its appearance. "I thought I recognized that shirt! You bloody little…"
Hermione finally lost her patience and performed a supremely confident wandless Silencio, swiftly followed by an only semi-successful Expelliarmus. Ginny's wand jerked from her hand but dropped to the table and rolled.
Ginny's narrowed eyes went wide and she dived for her wand at the same time as Hermione did. Harry's stronger silent spell snatched it away, but he made a show of handing it off respectfully to Hermione. Something had to get through. He wondered if a healthy snog would be out of place, but really, he didn't want to piss Ginny off utterly or hurt her feelings; he just wanted her to get the bloody point already. Optimism was fine, blind denial was turning out to be a major pain in his arse.
Ron turned and stared at Hermione, stunned. "What the bloody hell…"
Luna clapped her hands together in sudden delight. "Hermione! That's wonderful! Not silencing Ginny; sorry Gin, but the sheer wandlessness of it! Is that from being with Harry? Did he teach you or did it just happen? Did you know that Zenobian Iris bees can actually transfer magic by stinging one another, and they don't die afterward? That's how they make their queens; once they've chosen one all the other bees sting her with a bit of their own magical life force until she's as powerful as they can make her so she can defend them from the other colonies."
"Don't get any ideas," Hermione warned Harry just before the helpless laughter made speech momentarily impossible for both of them.
"All I can say is I'm glad I didn't know you could do that Fourth year," Ron said when he'd stopped laughing as well. He grinned at Harry. "Jealous as I was of you then, if I'd known it was catching I'd probably have kissed you myself."
"If I could get rid of it easily as that, I'd be kissing my way through the Ministry. Trust me, you really don't want to know how that happened," Harry told him, catching his breath. "Can I say something that actually matters now? I really am worried about Elspeth. I honestly don't think she wouldn't tell us if she'd known she was going to be meeting with Smeggall and Umbridge, and I don't like the way he was suggesting she could draw me out. She might be playing a Snape, but they could just as well be on to her and planning to try to use her to get to me."
Ginny snorted and shook her head furiously. A foot stamped beneath the table.
"Elspeth wouldn't want you to do anything rash Harry," Hermione said, pointedly ignoring her. "Remember what she did that day in the Conference room, the way she played with those security spells? She knows what she's doing. She can handle herself. We should wait for her to ask for help before we do anything that might interfere with what she's doing."
"I just have a really bad feeling about it. About Emily, actually. Elspeth doesn't seem too worried about losing her job there, and you're right, I don't think she's afraid of anything for herself. All that leaves for them to work with that she cares about is her daughter," Harry said slowly.
"Look, they've been right wankers to you lately, but it's still the Ministry of Magic," Ron reasoned. "They're not Death Eaters or anything. They're playing fast and loose with the laws, but they still seem to care about at least being seen to uphold them. I don't think you need to worry about them taking employee's children hostage just yet."
Harry forced a smile. "Good point. And we're due to meet her in the morning anyway. I'm just being paranoid."
"Having bad feelings about that sort of thing isn't necessarily paranoid. Actually, I'm not sure it's even possible for you to be paranoid at this point Harry; your paranoias always seem to come true," Hermione told him. "What I think we need to do first, though, is find a way to resolve this situation in a mature, responsible manner so Luna and Ginny can get back to the Leaky Cauldron before midnight."
All eyes swiveled to the artificially silent Ginny.
Harry harkened wishfully back to his previous notion of snogging Hermione to convince Ginny of both the honesty of his words and the futility of her cause, quite frankly because it would be a lot more fun than anything else he could come up with.
Kissing Ginny had been a matter of holding on for dear life while she made the most of him. It had been exciting, enlightening, and a whole hell of a lot better than his experience with Cho. To be honest he'd learned a lot from her; a good bit of which he'd ended up jettisoning the first time he'd kissed Hermione and discovered it could be something of an art form instead of an athletic event in which the competition rivaled opposing Quidditch teams. It seemed much nicer somehow when both snogging participants were actually aiming for the same goal.
Ginny's first energetic and decidedly eager grab for Harry below the belt had been something of an eyewateringly painful experience for him (she was far too used to handling a broomstick and the Felix had clearly warn off by then.) The rest of their first encounter had thusly been more focused on her than a definitely head shy Harry. Their brief relationship had carried on being somewhat one-sided in the gratification department, as being able please her had utterly fulfilled Harry's damaged expectations of himself that year and suited perfectly Ginny's desire to be treated as older and deeply desirable by the Chosen One.
It had struck Harry already that Hermione genuinely seemed to enjoy bringing about his physical gratification in much the same way he did hers, while Ginny had been far more interested in the power she'd exerted over Harry's need to please. He did not exactly regret Ginny, but felt infinitely healthier and more himself somehow now with Hermione. He'd reckoned that was because his own motives were purer this time; he'd been a willing participant in Ginny's games even when he sensed they might have been feeding the worst in each other instead of the best.
He wanted that for her, he realized, whether for his own absolution or her own good. He suspected if anyone ever made her feel the way he did about Hermione now she'd forget him forever.
"Gin," he said slowly. "We just weren't meant to be together, you and I. I've kept on trying to tell you, and I understand you thought you could convince me I was wrong. But there's someone else involved now, and that changes everything. If I manage to stay out of Azkaban everyone's going to end up knowing Hermione and I are together, because I want them too. I'm proud of her and I don't want to have to hide anything else about my life.
So listen up. It would mean a lot to me if we could all stay friends wherever life takes us, but I need you to know my bat bogey hex beats your bogey hex any day of the week. So no more pretending we're anything but friends; and let's be perfectly clear that nothing will make me feel more like hexing you than blaming or being unkind to Hermione in any way. Try it once and you will know what if felt like to fly against that Horntail, and what it feels like to birth a whole family of them out of your nose. Is that enough like one of the twins to totally turn you off yet? Green hair, blue teeth, uncontrollable gas-passing, all this can be yours. Don't get me started. Because if you don't start treating me like plain old boring Harry, I'm going to become the seventh brother of your worst nightmares."
From the look of things Ginny might have been shocked silent had she not already been under Hermione's silencing spell. Several thoughts apparently flitted across her mind but they were as opaque to Harry as Hermione's seemed clear.
And then she… smiled. And gave a soundless snort, and burst into soundless laughter.
Infectious soundless laughter. Luna and Ron broke into enormous grins of evident relief. Hermione ended the spell and somewhat cautiously handed her wand back with a hesitant smile. Only Harry seemed to be waiting anxiously for her actual words.
"Plain old boring Harry it is, then," Ginny chortled. "Remind me again, what is he like? I don't think I've ever met him."
She had a point, really. Boring as he was inside, stuff had a way of happening to him.
Ginny sobered herself long enough to meet his gaze.
"I don't need another brother, Harry, and the thought of the twins becoming triplets would be enough to put anyone off. Ron still thinks you're worth fighting the ministry over, Dad would put his job on the line for you and Mum makes you soup like one of us. I guess we should be friends, if only because of that."
"Thanks, I think," Harry told her. "Let's."
"Oh, good!" Luna approved. "I was so hoping you would. Now Ronald won't feel like he was asking me to take sides if he invites me to come and play chess with him sometimes. And I'd love to."
It was a complete non sequitor to Harry, but it seemed to mean something to both Hermione and Ron, who exchanged slightly shaken looks.
"To staying friends, then," Ron said, raising his butterbeer.
They drank to friendship and Harry felt a wave of relief, like a capsizing ship righting itself once again. Dumbledore had told him his ability to care for people and make friends had set him apart from Voldemort; his parents' fast friendship with the Marauders was protecting him still to this day in Remus Lupin. His best friend was sharing herself with him in a way that made him want to stay alive.
He might be down again, but he wasn't out of it just yet.
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