Thought I'd have a crack at a Harry Potter fic. Tell me what you think.
I decided that this takes place 6th year, and I thought "to hell with the real book, I'm gonna do it my way" So nothing bad that happened in HBP ever happened. Dumbledore's okay, and Harry's not in love with Ginny.
"I love you."
She was ecstatic. She was overjoyed.
Hermione Granger never thought those words would ever mean very much to her.
But she could never have been more wrong.
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It was a beautiful, bright, sunshiny day. As could be predicted, Harry, Ron, and Hermione were sitting on a grassy bank of the lake, enjoying a particularly fine picnic lunch. Each was brooding deep in their own thoughts.
Ron was reflecting on his Quidditch playing. Harry's constant stream of compliments was finally getting to his head. In a very short time, he was deep in a daydream about being the Quidditch captain, and a series of fantastic matches eventually led up to the team manager of the Chudley Cannons begging him to join on, and give them a chance at the World Cup.
Hermione glanced at the glassy eyed goofy grin on Ron's face and smirked.
Harry's thoughts, meanwhile, were quite a bit darker. Sirius' death had wounded a deep part of him. He would never be the same. Around his classmates, he kept up the happy-go-lucky façade, and for the most part, they were none the wiser. He had taken to falling deep in thought often, developing dark shadows that danced across his face. That was, of course, when he thought no one was looking.
Hermione had only seen it three times.
All three had been in the common room, when she bade goodnight to Ron and him. Ron had always fallen asleep snoring over an essay due the next day. Harry acknowledged her with a slight wiggling of the fingers, and turned to face the fire again. He thought she hadn't seen, but she had.
To her, it looked as if he were willing Sirius to come back from the dead, and have his head pop into the fire, so they could resume a long-awaited chat.
She felt sorry for him, she truly did.
It was a blow to her when she heard Sirius had passed, but by no means close to what Harry felt.
He would never talk about it, but she knew there was a cold, numb void in his soul where Sirius had previously occupied.
She desperately wished she could do something to help, but she always knew there was nothing she would ever be able to do for him.
Suddenly, Hermione was shaken out of her reverie by a loud, terrified shouting.
All three looked at each other, and then around them quickly.
When she discovered the source of disruption, she could have laughed.
Neville, it seems, had been leaning too close to the water trying to pet the giant squid, when he had fallen in. Other students outside started to laugh. The squid had taken him in its tentacles, and had him doing a sort of flailing marionette impression. Neville's face burned with embarrassment.
Hermione sighed and grabbed a piece of toast from the leftovers.
"I'll get him."
She walked over to the squid and its prey, and offered the toast to a tentacle that had not wrapped itself around one of Neville's limbs.
"Leave him alone, you."
The squid relented, tossed Neville lightly onto the grass, and submerged within the lake's depths.
She helped him up, and performed a drying charm. "Alright Neville?"
He nodded.
She smiled at him and walked back to her friends. "I think it likes you!" She called after her.
Even Neville laughed weakly.
"C'mon guys, we have to get to Charms."
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"Class! Class! Look at this here! Miss Granger has managed to conjure a perfect dove!'
It was the usual as in any class. Hermione was the first to complete the lesson. She noted many jealous gazes glaring at her white dove, cooing on her shoulder.
"Ten points to Gryffindor! Well done!"
Hermione sat in between her two best friends. Harry had managed to somehow conjure a single black feather ("it's a start!"), which was considerably better than Ron's small pile of soot.
After Professor Flitwick's announcement, the other students renewed their efforts to compete with Hermione.
Ron sighed and put his head on his arms.
Hermione glanced sideways at Harry, and winced as he whipped his wand about. Finally, she couldn't stand it anymore.
"No Harry, like this!"
Without thinking, her hand was over his, guiding him through the brisk swishing motion. She thought nothing of it, that is, until she looked up at his face.
It was completely red.
Quickly, she withdrew her hand, and busied herself with looking up the next assignment.
They hardly spoke the rest of the day, and it passed without incident.
All three were in the common room, trying to cram in some homework before dinner.
Ron, at ease and relaxed, had no idea of the tension between his two friends. Harry was facing a window, and Hermione was bowed low over her parchment.
The minutes crawled by like snails. Hermione was trying very hard to focus on her potions essay, and nothing else. She ended up failing miserably. She pretended to scratch her quill inconspicuously, and stole glances at her two friends and listened to every tiny noise that Harry made. He might as well have been molded from stone. His eyes were unfocused and there was a frown scribbled across his face.
"I'm starving!" Ron suddenly groaned.
Finally, the dinner bell rang.
"Excellent!"
Ron leapt up and started towards the portrait, but turned and waited hesitantly for the other two.
Harry rose from his chair and raised his eyebrows in a question towards Hermione.
"Oh, no, you two go ahead, I'm not very hungry..."
Ron didn't wait to be told a second time.
Harry, on the other hand...
"So..I'll see you after dinner.."
"Yeah.."
And he left, along with a herd of other Gryffindors.
Only a half a minute and she was alone.
She took a very deep breath, set aside her potions essay, and put her hand up to her heart.
What had just happened?
She was so confused. Certainly she had never had these feelings before. Always, Harry was a brother-figure first, a best friend second, and nothing else. So why now? Why was he blushing?
She longed to be in the library, to search for answers to her questions, but she knew the library couldn't help this time.
She settled to pacing back and forth in front of the fire, biting her lip. After the enchanted rug started to squeak in protest, she settled into her favorite chair, and Crookshanks came out of a corner to leap up onto her lap and purr.
The way Harry had looked at her had opened a whole new door in her life, and she wasn't sure she was ready for it.
It wasn't that late, but already Hermione felt very drained. Since her chair didn't allow much stretching room, she opted to carry Crookshanks onto a soft, suede couch. Lying on her stomach, with Crookshanks on her butt, she held her head in her arms and stared at the fire, trying to decode Harry's mysterious behavior.
'Just for a minute,' she thought drowsily, 'I'll close my eyes'
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Harry did not go immediately back to the common room. He told Ron he needed to do a little research on their Charms homework in the library.
Ron shrugged, but sensed that Harry was in one of his moods again. The dark glint in his eye told Ron he needed to be alone.
"See you later" He waved and walked off to go play wizard chess with Seamus Finnigan.
Harry wandered about the library, looking particularly at the tomes containing information on the dead, afterlife, and immortality.
He knew it was an empty struggle, but he felt as if he just couldn't give up on Sirius. He pulled out every book that might have any information on what he was looking for. As expected, he found nothing useful, nothing that could assure Harry that Sirius wasn't really dead.
Somewhere to his left, he heard Madame Pince clear her throat loudly.
He glanced at his watch, and gave a start. There were nearly ten minutes left until the library closed. Under Pince's vulture-like glare, he put all the books back into their rightful places, and left.
It took him quite a slow time to get back to the common room, and when he finally arrived at the fat lady, she raised her eyebrow at him. "A bit late aren't we?"
He glanced at his watch.
Indeed he was, fifteen minutes after curfew.
"Bowtruckle"
He ignored her statement and she swung open to admit him.
He trudged through the door wearily, bogged down by heavy thoughts.
There were no night owls or late-stayers tonight. The room seemed to be totally empty except for...
And he spotted Hermione, exactly where she had fallen asleep, and with Crookshanks still purring contentedly on her behind. She must have been deep asleep, for Crookshanks was kneading her robes, and occasionally pricking her with his front claws.
As he approached, he gave Crookshanks a scratch behind the ear, and kneeled to where Hermione's face was.
She was fast asleep. Harry shook his head at the amount of work she was doing these days. What with all of her usual workload, and then practically doing his and Ron's homework, she would surely work herself to death.
He took a moment to watch her as she slept. He had never realized just how unique her hair was. It was a little bushy, yes, but there were so many different colors that he had never noticed before. There was a caramel color, and slight reddish browns underneath, blondes and honeys that caught the light on top. At one glance, it all seemed like a bushy mousy mane. Now that he had gotten so close, he realized it was a complicated network of beautiful curls and tendrils.
One particular curl had fallen and was obscuring her eyes. He slowly reached his hand up and brushed it away softly.
He knew he had always cared for Hermione, but these feelings of friendship had expanded into something much more since Sirius had died.
A nasty voice in his head told him that he was desperately searching for someone to fill the void that Sirius had left behind, and that he was latching on to the closest person to him.
A small part of this was true, but a bigger part wasn't.
Ron was perhaps the closest person to Harry, but it just wasn't the same as with Hermione. She was someone he could love.
A sudden thought occurred to him.
Maybe the sudden intensity of feelings towards her in such a short period of time wasn't of his doing. Maybe it was a love potion!
Now he remembered her in Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, admiring the love potions isle along with many other girls that day.
But, as quickly as the thought had come, it vanished. It was utterly preposterous! Besides, if he was under the influence of love potion, he wouldn't have had any thoughts about suspecting it.
With a nod of his head, he acknowledged that these feelings were all his own.
So why had he chosen to hide them?
Only the most obvious reason, of course.
Voldemort attacked his enemies by first attacking all that are close to them. In Harry's case, he had taken away his parents, his godfather, and had even tried to take a stab at the Weasleys.
No. Hermione was definitely not safe.
He couldn't even imagine how he would feel if Voldemort had gotten his hands on Hermione. That's why he had to stay away. The only way to protect her would be to distance himself from her. He had to learn self control and indifference. He cursed himself inwardly for blushing in Charms class. That wouldn't happen again.
Harry sighed deeply, and brushed his fingertips lightly across her cheek.
"Goodnight Hermione." He said, barely above a whisper. "I hope you'll never know."
He got up and walked towards the boys' staircase. He stopped with his foot at the first step.
"I love you."
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Long after Harry had gone to bed, Hermione snapped her eyes wide open. She brought her hands up to her mouth, her brain churning furiously.
She had awoken the second he had come in; she heard the creak of the portrait swing open. Wisely she feinted sleep, by keeping her eyes shut and her breathing even.
She could not control her heartbeat though. It had beaten faster and faster with every step he took closer.
When he leaned in and touched her hair, she could smell him. It was a pleasant aroma, which reminded her of a warm, friendly forest.
Her cheek burned where he had touched her. She wanted to do anything she could to let him know she was awake, but she felt absolutely paralyzed.
A curious thought came to her. Why would he hope she never knew? But the answer came immediately. It was Voldemort. She just knew that Harry was trying to keep her safe by keeping her from being too close to him. She sighed. Why does it feel so sad?
"Why does it feel so sad?" She asked Crookshanks. He turned his ugly, squashed face to her and meowed.
It took her a long time of combing through her hair with her fingers and staring into the fire until she finally found the answer to that one.
She loved him too.
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So how was it?
Thanks for reading. Now please review and let me know if this story is worth adding more.
