Title:
Faults and Fictions
Disclaimer:
I don't own Harry Potter. The fic is my piece using the creative license we are all gifted with.
Cannon:
This is a Harry Potter fic.
Character:
Harry, Hermione, Ron, McGonagall, etc.
Pairings:
Trio friendship, pre-love maybe.
Genre:
Angst/Fluff.
Timeline:
Post Year Four.
Warnings:
Angst.
Summary:
Hermione walks from her dorm down to the common room and watches the girls react with one another in their girly ways. She wants that sometimes, in the bottom of her heart.
…………….
Three books in her hands are firmly gripped in her hands as she bounces down the stairs in an ongoing ritual to not use strength stopping between steps, just a subtle grace to keep her standing. The books aren't large for her, or even medium. But to others that may have been watching, they look like Webster's dictionaries all stacked in a girl's arms.
One wouldn't think she had a build, but years of lugging heavy books without a weightless spell handy has given her cordy muscles and a firm belly where other girls would shriek in mirrors and wish so hard to be boney skinny.
She is fine with her body, though sometimes she wishes for different hair. Before, she has found herself picturing her brown mop on others' heads and it hadn't fit. When she is honest for herself, which usually she is, she knows it fits her, this brown that is darker than some girl's hair, but much lighter than black. Her eyes are brown as well, with just a hint of blue. She doesn't like them, and Ron and Harry stare at her when she says so.
They make fun of her mop though and she doesn't let it hurt her because she knows they are just joking. Unlike the others she cannot always trust, they do not hurt her on purpose unless Ron is buys in their latest fight. But neither is she watching her mouth so she lets those pains disperse when she calms down and Harry is forced to talk to both of them.
She hits the bottom of the steps and makes her quick way to the common room. On the way The Patil twin in red and Lavender Brown are gossiping on a large ottoman someone must have transfigured. It was purple like the other Patil twin was wearing and Lavender was combing her hair. She started brushing it as well, talking of the thin locks she could have and being in awe over the "perfect skin" and dark silkiness of her long strands that her sister had cut shorter.
Self consciously the should-have-been-a-Ravenclaw touched her brown strands hanging into her face from a red silk band that Harry had bought for her in a moment of impulse with a few Knuts, and a few others just because.
A table away, three younger girls were giggling over drying pink nails as one of them did the second girl's toe nails red. All mushiness of the other girls was starting to get to her, and she thought that maybe she should have been in the house of the Ravens. The books in her hands, though much lighter to her than they looked, beckoned her attentions and her thoughts just got heavier, a rain storm building quickly. The tears were on her inside though, crying for the girly side that she never could reach. The girls in primary school had never liked her, had teased her mercilessly in fact.
Her head began to pound, gentle thumbs that hurt despite the littleness of it. It was the sudden feeling of grieving, she decided a moment later. In the common room, she could see girl wrapped in daily things, colors of clothes, styles, anything and everything that she wasn't.
She made her way down and towards the couch in the corner next to one of the fireplaces that Ron, Harry and herself had long called for themselves, The Golden Trio as Snape had called them barely into their second month. They had been together for a while and she automatically went near them, her thoughts elsewhere. Her books became forgotten on the table, her eyes staring into the red flames.
It was usually Harry that did that, and it had probably been one of the things that had brought the boys' attention to something being wrong. They looked at their bushy haired friend that was the only girl in their trio, and looked towards her books. They were tumbled on the table, out of order and in a messy pile that was quite out-of-the-ordinary for the should-have-been-a-Ravenclaw. Her eyes from her slow walk to their spot began to make sense and rate beyond a 'normal' for them.
Their game of Exploding Snap soon became abandoned. She hadn't even noticed them putting the cards away and re-sort her heavy books. They knew they were heavy but it affected them none. Harry may have been very neglected and practically abused as a child, but years of learned grace and many games on the Quidditch Pitch or the land the Weasleys lived on had given him many muscles under his obese-size clothes. Ron wasn't a push-over either. He was very three inches taller than Harry's 5'5 and Hermione's 5'4, even at his young age. He'd be at six feet at least by the time he took his NEWTS they were sure.
A look around the common room found mostly girls and girls doing girly things at that. The reason for her fire-staring seemed to come to them at the same time. They didn't need to speak or look at one another to communicate.
Harry moved to one end of the long couch while Ron was half way down. Both had pulled Hermione away from her sitting position, and she didn't seem to notice until the red band was slowly pulled from her hair. A spell was cast, and he had a brush.
Long days of doing his little sister's hair had taught him many things.
He gently brought it through her bush before deciding another spell was needed. He cast a straightening spell but it just fuzzed up and he decided that her magical genes had a curse on them as the Potter sons had for generations. He cast a dampening spell instead and his luck was much better.
Gentle strokes made sure that Hermione wasn't asking questions. Instead, she just let them pull her away with them and relax her. Her muscles had corded she found, as Harry's expert hands went to work on her feet and legs. When his hands had to go beneath her cloak to pull her shorts off, she didn't blush, though usually they would have. They had done this before.
He messages her limbs. His fingers were miracle workers where Neville's were green, she decided. They were leather and silk mixed together with his long broom riding calluses that had just faded into hard skin with his work.
She was nearly asleep when her depressing thoughts turned lighter, almost like the way Harry's own smile seemed to brighten the world that had rarely witnessed such a craft. It occurred to her that the pounding in her head had turned into a blissful cocoon in their little corner with a table and a large couch that was closing off the section to the fireplace.
She remembered that, although they made fun of her hair, they liked to run their hands through the tangles just to watch them tangle up again.
She remembered that her eyes turned some kind of purple in their own, but she had never witnessed it in front of a mirror, only in their eyes.
She remembered that they would have never gotten through half of their classes without her. Harry was just too self conscious, years of doing no school work with his name on it, but doing his cousin's, had affected him. Now he could teach, but not do. Ron was in no way stupid but he had no real motivation but her and Harry to do his work, as his own self conscious ways at his brothers that had already done everything came out to say. But it was only her brains that brought her to them in the beginning and put them in obstacle of the troll. They loved her for being her and just used her brains when she was overflowing or they needed help.
She remembered that she had never really liked to paint her nails, as they just chipped or broke when she flipped a page or picked up a new book.
She remembers that she didn't like actual gossip as it implied her own self in them way too often, and hurt many people whether meaning to or not.
She remembers that she is the only girl in the trio. But maybe she's okay with this. And as Ron carefully braids her hair from her forehead to the bottom of the length it'll go, she knows this is where she belongs.
Harry is between her legs now, and somewhere in her mind she knows any other boys would take this time to make some lewd comments, like Ron's twin brothers. Harry likes them, but he would be hurt and move. If someone said something and made him move she would be very sad and angry at them. Maybe she'd even hold a grudge. She doesn't understand why but knows there is such a feeling, as Harry should do what he wants for once.
Ron's hands glide around her neck, lessening those muscles and just stimulating her nerves with soft caresses. His fingers enter the parts of her hair that are barely grown and curling already. He straightens them physically and sticks the bits into her braid.
Her robe is only over a small shirt, braw and panties. Her socks and shoes were long discarded on the floor under the table along with Harry's and Ron's. Their feet are long spelled not to spell, and the extra made for noiseless movement on Ron's own helps for pranking. She had found it herself. They're on her shoes. Harry doesn't need them though and she has been concerned for her friend who is too quiet and short and adult for someone his age. He was so small when she met them on the train and scoffed at the Boy-Who-Lived knowing nothing about the world that swore to know everything about him and failed.
She should feel embarrassed, or scared even that the way they're handling her is wrong or something. Guy friends and female friends shouldn't be like this, understanding something none of them will ever mention again, but she can't let go of them.
She's part of the trio that has given Ron something his brother's don't have. She's part of the trio that has saved Harry from his life at Number 4 (the boy has a godfather now and he should live with the man and the other friend of his father's) and given him the family they had all wished for. She's part of the trio where she is the only girl and they understand her more than any of the other children at primary school even ever tried to. They have let her flourish and she has grown with them as well.
As she is in their arms she wonders if she shouldn't be as comfortable as she is but won't give them up. They are comforting her. She is a girl, yes they know that. But she is theirs as they are her's and one another's. They are comforting her the way that only they can. She doesn't need polish of fashion or money. All she needs are those arms to keep kneading and those fingers to keep messaging. All she needs is them.
……………..
They watched her come down to the common room, bushy hair and curves that fit her and would make any boy that thought more with what was in his pants than in his head drool. Magical children matured a little faster than normal after all. She moved with a grace that spoke of quiet strength. They turned their heads when she looked at them though, pretending to go back to normal.
She had been on the couch when her boys had gone to her and the common room had gone quiet, all turning to watch what they couldn't look away from. It was as if they could read each other's minds, some would later decide. They were spectators watching the greatest play in the kingdom. It was a great dramody where they lived and died in a second.
They couldn't look away. They were some kind of audience peaking into the desserts they'd never have or understand. Somewhere the many watching, young and not-so-young alike, looking in on the three that seemed to be a world of their own. They had ties to everything and none of them had realized what the school had long witnessed bloom. Possible suitors disbanded though, knowing that they were each other's. Nothing else would break through. If the Quidditch star from the German school had ended up married to her, he would have to deal with the boys for touching her wrong or saying the thing that would break her heart.
If.
And it was a big if.
An if that would never happen where they were watching.
Harry had slipped her shorts off and eyebrows had ticked. They wouldn't do something like that would they. But no, it was Harry and Ron. And they didn't do anything really inappropriate, just not understood but anyone but themselves.
A cat watched this too from her hidden niche in the common room. Her grey-on-grey hair made her the known tabby in the school. But she too was a spectator. But she couldn't help but raise her kitty brows when the shorts slipped off and the band came out to wave the falling hair and let it work with much room.
….If they were older, this would have been oh so romantic, the type that girls dreamed of.
Ron and Harry painted her finger and toe nails clear, to enhance what she already had. And the three slept on the couch that night, a snowy white owl, and two cats watching them in their protected alcove.
…………….
END.