Title: Protests
Author: Nemesis
Disclaimer: Not mine. Go away.
Pairing: HP/SS
Rating: G
Feedback: Hermione always knows Harry's secrets and finds it highly amusing when he denies it.
Beta: My absolutely amazing girlfriend. Hats off to her.
Challenge: Coming Out Challenge
Archive: Dawn-to-Dusk Wave IX
It had always been Hermione, Harry mused. She was always the one who figured it out the quickest.
She had started it when they were fifteen. First it had been being gay. She had insisted that Harry was, and ever time Harry vehemently protested, she clucked her tongue and recited, "He doth protest too much."
Harry really hated that expression. He loathed it. It always spelled out trouble for him. Whoever invented had better be happy that he was already dead, otherwise Harry would have killed him slowly and painfully.
It wasn't as much the expression as what it always led to. His utter humiliation.
Because Hermione was always right.
Harry had figured out he was gay around the time Hermione had got it into her head. But he had no idea how she figured out the other parts.
"You're in love with Snape, aren't you?" she asked him one day in their sixth year.
Harry sputtered. "What!" he demanded, trying to figure out how she knew.
"You're in love with him. I can tell. There's this look in your eye when you look at him."
"I am not!" he answered indignantly.
But she had only laughed and said, "He doth protest too much."
That particular issue had only two or three recitals.
Then came the next issue. "You're dating him," she informed him matter-of-factly in their seventh year.
"What!" He was desperately trying to remember if he had given any signs.
"He teases you all through Potions. Running his quill along his lip, stroking the chalk while he pauses to think, always handing you back your paper back last… He leans over you and runs a hand along your back surreptitiously."
"You're seeing things, Hermione. I am not dating him."
She chuckled. "He doth protest too much."
But that wasn't the particular question that drove Harry nuts. He would spend the rest of his life trying to figure out how she knew the fourth issue.
"You're married to him," she announced to him when they were twenty.
"What!" He scanned his memory quickly, trying to remember having ever hinted at it.
"It's obvious in the way you two look at each other over the table when you think no one else is looking. The way you refer to each other. The way you act around each other."
"I am not married to him! You should know that."
She grinned. "He doth protest too much."
Harry stormed down to the dungeons, pulling out his bonding-ring as he went. He slipped it onto his finger as he entered their rooms.
"She knows," he informed Severus.
Severus looked up. "She would," he answered, laughing. "Come here, you little imp."
Harry laughed and sat down on his husband's lap.
-- End.