Author Note: Originally written for an 'everybody switch' prompton comment_fic at livejournal where Hermione Granger is the Girl Who Lived and Harry Potter is the brainiac.
The Special Ones
Hermione glares at the large book open on the table in front of her and then leans back, crossing her arms and shaking her hair out. Apparently it's not enough that a girl who hadn't even known that witches were real until Professor McGonagall showed up at her Aunt's house and turned into a cat is supposed to be the Girl Who Lived. Now she also has to compete in some stupid school tournament and it's adding insult to injury that any books that mighthelp are all bloody huge.
She slumps down in her chair, thoroughly frustrated.
"No good?" says Harry leaning forward across the table and glancing at the text upside down. "Oh. Well, if carnivorous plants were an issue…"
"Dragon," says Hermione.
"Right. Okay, so no good then."
He closes the book and adds it to their pile of discards on the left before lifting yet another Huge Book Of Doom off the larger pile on the right and placing it in front of her with a helpful smile.
"Dragon," repeats Hermione. "I have to face a dragon! How the hell am I supposed to do that?"
The smile dribbles off Harry's face and he pushes the bridge of his glasses up his nose, a familiar gesture of awkwardness.
"You could make it fall asleep, or transfigure it, or… Well, no, spelling something innately magical and that large is a bit beyond fourth year," he mumbles, meaning it's not beyond him but almost certainly beyond her. "Um, you could transfigure something else to distract it, or fly around it, or, um…"
"Throw rocks at it?" says Hermione sarcastically. "Which would be more successful than me attempting to fly at least. Me and brooms do notget along, remember, Mr Quidditch Player."
"Sorry," he says, ducking his head and fixing his gaze on his own library book. "I'm just trying to help."
"I know," says Hermione. "It's just stupid. All of this and expecting me to do anything about it; it's all just stupid. I'm not a school champion. I'm not anything special!"
"Really?" Harry peers across at her over the top of his glasses, which reminds her a bit of Dumbledore. "The Philosopher's Stone and Quirrell. The Chamber of Secrets with Tom Riddle and the basilisk. Facing down Dementors. All the things that you've done, you –"
"Had help! Or got lucky!" She tosses her hair again and says cruelly, "Ron gets it. He thinks that I put my name in the goblet for fame and fortune, to make it about mewinning for once."
That's why Ron isn't friends with her anymore and Harry just trying to helpher is why he isn't friends with Harry either.
"I think for Ron it's more about it being about you again," says Harry quietly. "He thinks you're brilliant as well you know, not just me, and you are. Bloody brilliant he said."
"No, you're the brilliant one," she says. "Youcould deal with a dragon, no problem."
"Nah." Harry smiles. "I wouldn't deal with it. I'd summon a broom and work around it."
"Exactly," says Hermione. "You can fly and you're really clever. You're the one who's brilliant at Defence Against the Dark Arts. You even come from a long line of brilliant witches and wizards. I'm nobody. I'm just another Muggleborn whose parents got killed by Voldemort."
"Blood doesn't matter," says Harry, his face serious, pushing his book forward out of the way so that he can lean his arms on the table. "You-Know-Who killed my parents too, remember? Do you never think that sometimes I'd like to be The BoyWho Lived? Then maybe my parents dying would mean something because at least I would have stopped You-Know-Who."
Hermione lowers her eyes and bites at her bottom lip.
"But I'm not," says Harry. "You are. You're the GirlWho Lived. You are special and you know why?"
She shakes her head and shifts her arms so that she's not really crossing her arms any more so much as hugging herself.
Harry leans across the table and bends his head so that he can meet her eyes.
"Because every time you've gone up against him, against anything, it's been to protect somebody else. Your parents were right to protect you, because you're just like them. You're always standing up for other people, even House Elves."
That last bit forces a smile out of her.
"Your parents protected you as well."
"I know," he says, "and I keep trying to do my best at everything, to make them proud, you know? I want them protecting me to be worth it. Ron thinks that someone would put their name in the Goblet for fame and fortune because that's what he wants," Harry continues. "I thought that being the Boy Who Lived would be about making me surviving being worth something. You, though, you never make anything about yourself, whatever Ron says."
"That's because I'm nothing special," says Hermione.
"No, that's whyyou're special." Harry pushes his glasses up his nose again. "It's why you're frustrated about this tournament too, by the way, because it's just a game. You've never complained about having to do anything dangerous when it meant helping someone, but facing a dragon just for some competition?"
"Right, it's stupid," says Hermione and she sighs.
"Right. For you standing up for people and looking after them is serious business and pretty much everything else isn't." Harry beams at her. "You're brilliant, you are."
"Oh, leave me alone," she says, her cheeks burning with embarrassment.
"Nope," says Harry cheerfully. "Not until we've solved this dragon problem. If you're going to go around helping everyone else, someone has to help you."
Hermione can't think of a proper reply for that, so she just shakes her head at him, sits up properly in her chair, and turns to the first page of A History Of Dragons Volume XII: Death By Dragon.
"I should probably point out," says Harry as he pulls his own book back towards himself, "that you should consider studying to be serious business as well. I'm just saying."
"Dragon," says Hermione and, for now, that's the end of that.