Twist and Turn
By QP
I don't own the Harry Potter characters. Enjoy! By the way, the POV's are alternating between Harry and Hermione. That's just my style. . .
Smog.
Since the beginning of the year, I've had to get used to flying. There was a procedure to be followed and I quickly adapted. Try to pack as little as you can, so that you can store it all on the overhead compartment and thereby avoid two things: the airline losing your luggage or having to wait for it at the carousel forever. It seemed that no matter what time you checked in at the counter, whether you came early or late, your luggage was always the last to be unloaded off the plane. Eat nothing on the plane, unless you're on first class, and even so, order the vegetarian meal. The pasta, the beef, the noodles they offered were no more than cheap imitations of Pedigree or Purina, I thought. Sit at the front of the plane, where the oxygen still circulates and always, always ask for an aisle seat.
The best part of the flight was the descent when you'd float down between the ephemeral white, puffy clouds and the city below would reveal itself. I like the ones by the water. A lake or a river, or the ocean provided a nice backdrop and transition between the baby blue of the sky and the stark landscape below. It comes no where near a broomstick experience, but I didn't think a broomstick would've made it across the Atlantic Ocean. I wanted time away from all the madness, and a Portkey would've just brought the madness to me quicker. The airplane was my sanctuary.
I was returning from a short trip to the United States. It was off-season in Quidditch, and everyone told me I needed a break from everything. So I went for two weeks, two weeks of the exact same thing. Americans were just as rabid as the British. They were after me for photo shoots, autographs, and interviews. Because not only was I a top Seeker for the Wasps, but I was the bloody Boy Who Lived. The Damn Boy Who Won't Die, as Lord Voldemort liked to think of it.
In my last year at Hogwarts, Voldemort and his followers were more powerful than they were 17 years before. But the Order of the Phoenix had gotten stronger too, with the addition of my classmates. The age rule was lifted when they saw that practically all Slytherins had been inducted as Death Eaters. The battle that ensued was most likely the greatest battle ever fought in Europe, but the Light side won. At least for now. I defeated Voldemort almost the same way as I did when I was a baby, not without the help and loss of some people I love. Fortunately, my best friends still lived. Ron and Hermione are still by my side. Voldemort was weakened, not dead, and hiding in the shadows just waiting to rise up again. But for now I was everyone's hero.
In London., the plane descends below the clouds, as I've come to expect, but then there's smog. Ugly, brownish, thick.
I had called her earlier, and told her I'd take a muggle taxi.
"You have lots of luggage."
"The cab has a trunk."
"I got a car last week, when you were still home. Well, not home anymore, but you know." Yeah. I do. Smog is home now.
"If you want to drive out here and get stuck in traffic..."
"I do."
The plane touches down and muggles around me clap, happy to be alive, happy to have survived a foray into the land without Magic. I think of her waiting at the gate. I wonder how long it will take her to ask about a dog again, "To keep Crookshanks company." And I wonder if she knows I've already decided to say yes, I just haven't told her so.
Everyone needs a lifeline. I have a roommate.
The airport is busy, but not teeming with people. It's midday Tuesday, and I move past the arrival gates and scan the crowds. She comes up behind me and sneaks her right arm around my waist so that she turns me around and pulls me into a tight hug. It's old and comfortable.
"I missed you." She says, as if I couldn't have gathered from her reaction.
"I missed you too." I smile at her, then take a closer look. "Is the house messy already?"
She laughs at the absolute ridiculousness at the thought. If Hermione lives there, you know that house will be spotless. Before I know what's happening, she makes a wild grab for my backpack and suitcase. I pull them away.
"What am I supposed to do?" she asked. "It's muggle tradition. You come home, I help you with your bags."
"Walk beside me."
"At least give me the backpack, you're overloaded."
"Let me be manly for once."
"It's a pink and purple backpack." She points out and laughs. Lucky for me, she rolls her eyes and walks beside me.
On the way to the parking lot, I'm spotted by a couple of girls. They're close to our age. They're off to a vacation and conveniently have a camera ready. Hermione volunteers to take a picture of the three of us, thinking it's faster than asking a stranger. One of them, with a perky name like Jessica or Lindsay asks me for a kiss on the cheek and I blush slightly, but oblige. She captures it all on film. I sympathize with her. Hermione's life with The Boy Who Lived, Part One.
I load my bags into the back of the shiny silver car. I look questioningly at her.
"It's a Lexus" she shrugged. "My mother bought it for herself, but realized she just looked too old driving it, so she gave it to me."
"Well I can't drive this. It's too girly." I joked. "Ron drives a Hummer. Now that's a car."
Ron was still in America, evidently enjoying Las Vegas.
"Well, Ron is compensating." She laughed.
"You calling my best friend womanly, Granger?" I growl at her. She laughs.
"Nice to know your sense of humor wasn't left in America."
Soon we are on the crowded streets of London, heading for the house we bought together a little past Diagon Alley. Together. As strictly platonic room mates, and nothing more. The car was silent for a while.
"I like your hair." I broke the silence.
"It's exactly the same as you left."
"Well it's pretty. You're pretty." I grin.
"Why thank you, Mr. Potter." She laughs off my flirting. She always does that.
"I painted your room, by the way. Remember the color we chose?"
"That disgusting green color, You chose that!"
"Well your choice was neon orange."
"That would've gotten me up in the morning!" I pointed out.
"And would've driven Crookshanks insane." She said.
"Well, if you just painted it today, I can't sleep in there. I'll have to sleep in your room." I grinned.
"Sorry, we're wizards, you dolt. I dried it in 5 seconds. But our couch pulls out anyway."
"Darn."
"Oh! And I met our new neighbor. She's about our age. A with that goes to a Muggle University. She seems to have a thing for you." She winked.
"Wonderful." I moaned.
"Her boyfriend likes you too." She laughed.
It was good to be home, smog and all.
This morning when I woke up, I had every intention of cleaning up my already messy room. My bags and clothes were strewn all over the place. I got up early, took a shower and actually hung the towel on the bar instead of dropping it carelessly on the floor. I got dressed and went downstairs to make myself something to eat. I picked up the newspaper and went out onto the deck. And then our neighbor leaned over the fence.
"Hi there!"
She was wearing a pair of cutoffs and a bright pink bikini top and my plans for the morning were shot to hell. She forced me to talk to her for two hours straight. The word "talk" being used loosely. I mostly just nodded, but she didn't seem to mind.
So now as the girl, Melissa, finally says she has to go, I'm thinking about how Hermione will go nuts when she finds all my things thrown about. She had left really early for work, Head Researcher at St. Mungo's. I had spent five hours awake in this house and alerady the kitchen was in shambles. And the bathroom... oh Gods, the bathroom.
POP!
I hear her apparate on our front steps, carrying a bag of groceries. We've made it so that no one could Apparate inside our house. I rush out and tell her to take things out of the car while I bring everything inside, hoping she doesn't insist on using a Levitating Charm. She raises an eyebrow and does so. Every two minutes I spend in the house dropping the groceries on the table, I try to put something away.
I return to her breathless for another armload of groceries.
"You trashed that house, didn't you." She said knowingly.
I looked down sheepishly. She rolled her eyes.
"Purgio!"
I looked in the house. Spotless.
"Harry, you're going to have to get used to using magic again. It must be having stayed at Muggle hotels for so long." She said.
She set things up in the fridge while I watched her. My platonic friend. Then she went up to her room. Then she came out, looking confused.
"Why is my bed all messed up?"
I thought for a moment, then remembered. "Oh. Um, this morning I started getting uncomfortable because my stuff was all over my bed and I didn't think about moving it so I. . ."
"You didn't sleep in my bed! Harry!"
I wink at her and she punches me lightly in the arm.
"I'm going to get you back for that."
"Do you promise?"
She rolls her eyes at me and proceeds to make up her bed.
"Let me do that," I offer and she smirks at me.
"I've got it. Go fix up the kitchen. I'm starving."
When she comes back downstairs, the kitchen isn't spotless any more, but it is presentable.
"What are you making for lunch?" she asks, coming into the room.
"Pizza? Chinese? What do you want?"
"Honestly. I'm going to have to teach you how to cook, I see."
"I can cook!" I say indignantly.
"What, toast? Doesn't count."
"It does!"
She shakes her head.
She inclines her head toward the deck.
"Is that Melissa?" Hermione's eyes are dancing as she gives the once over to our neighbour. "She's cute, isn't she?"
I shrug, "She's alright."
"Your nose is just out of joint because she has a boyfriend."
"Why would it be? I live with the most beautiful woman in London"
"Flattery will get you nowhere."
"That's what you think." I wink at her again and she makes a gagging face and then grins at me.
"You're telling me you can resist my charms?"
"What charms?"
"You're lucky you're my best friend, Hermione."
"If you say so."
"If I really turned on the charm with you..."
"Pizza."
"What?"
"Order the pizza. I'm going to go say hi to Melissa."