How is it that I can never have NORMAL plot bunnies, like other people? Why must I have plot bunnies straight out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail? WHY MUST MY PLOT BUNNIES HAVE FANGS?

You know what?

Don't answer that.

So, my stupid plot bunny (whom I will affectionately nickname 'Anthony') said to himself: "Self, let's bite the authoress and see what infection starts growing in her brain!"

And the infection was this: a newly spick-and-spangled revised edition of 'Denial'. Know that it's actually a multi-chapter fic over on Portkey. Check it out if you so wish.

Denial

Monday, September 1st

Here I am - Hermione Granger, Associate Head of the Department of Mysteries' Research Department, best friend of The-Boy-Who-Lived - and, well . . . I'm writing in a diary

It's ridiculous. I should be too logical for this. Why on Earth should I need a diary? My life is perfect (admittedly busy, but really, with my job, who wouldn't be pulling a hundred and thirty hours a week?) and therefore I shouldn't have anything to write in a diary about.

Yet . . .

Almost a year ago, on my last birthday, Harry gave this to me. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I would never, even if I was threatened and tortured and forced to read an entire year's subscription of Witch Weekly, or, even worse, watch every Quidditch game in the World Cup championships, write in a diary.

But Ron got engaged last week (to Luna, of all people. Luna! Back in school, he used to call her Looney', and yet, for the past three weeks Harry and I have been running around Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade with him, trying to find the perfect ring. Well, Harry was. I was stuck back at home hunched over a table, editing his proposal speech) and because he and Luna bought a house, he's moving out of Grimmauld Place. Soon, it'll just be Harry and I.

Oh, I do seem to sidetrack a bit.

Where was I again? Oh, of course. So, due to Ron and Harry being male and therefore incapable of thinking of anyone other than themselves, when we finally moved into Grimmauld Place, they chose the two best bedrooms in the house - in other words, the two rooms with heating spells that doesn't rattle, shake, and moan in the middle of the night. Thus, I've decided that the most practical thing for me to do would be to move into Ron's old room, what with it's operational heating and attached bathroom that does not come with Gertrude the Ghoul.

Gertrude is terribly kind, what with telling me hair-smoothing potions, but she makes the most hideous noises when the heating begins to act up.

So while I was packing up my things, I noticed this little red book sitting under the mattress. And seeing how I never shove anything under my bed, I picked it up, brushed it off, and realized that it was the blank diary that Harry had gotten me.

That was five minutes ago.

Now, I'm scribbling away like a madwoman with a bit of quill that hasn't been sent off to Ron's room yet.

It's absolutely ridiculous. I am a grown woman. I'm twenty-four, for Merlin's sake! What twenty-four-year-old woman scribbles like a madwoman in a journal? So what if Harry gave it to me - that on-again-off-again business with Ginny has proven that he doesn't exactly know what women want!

At this point, Luna would point to my former sentence and tell me, in that blunt way of hers, "Well, what does Harry giving it to you have to do with anything?" If she was a Weasley (which I guess she will be, by December) she would accompany this with a significant waggle of the eyebrows.

And, seeing as this is a new journal and has no way of knowing this - I am not in love with Harry Potter. Why must everyone assume that men and women cannot be friends without the romantic element intruding?

Admittedly Ron and I did date. But that was once, and for about a month. And then he called me a bint and I called him a lazy git, and he ran into the groping arms of Parvati Patil, and we mutually decided that perhaps it would be better for everyone - including the innocent bystanders - if we just didn't try out the whole dating thing ever again.

I do love Harry, it's just not in the way that everyone wrongly assumes. I love Harry in a sisterly, protective fashion.

Even if I was in love with Harry (the walking-down-the-aisle type of love, not the break-his-heart-and-I'll-break-your-arm type), well, it wouldn't change anything. As I mentioned above, the business with Ginny would certainly destroy any hopes that I had. If I loved Harry.

Ginny Weasley is, quite frankly, Merlin's gift to the heterosexual male. She is also apparently operating under the assumption that Merlin gave her a personal plaything, and his name is Harry. Because, if you think about it, that's the only explanation for this uncertain thing they've been messing about with. Well that, or Ginny is suffering under the Imperius Curse, thus explaining why our friendship spontaneously imploded at age nineteen. But that is besides the point; the point is that Harry is utterly ruined for a romantic relationship because of his interactions with the Gin-inator.

First there was sixth year, when they finally hooked up after all the sexual tension buzzing around, and then broke up scant months later because Harry can't resist being the Boy-Who-Has-An-Incurable-Hero-Complex.

Once we'd put killed Voldemort, they got right back together. But in September of that year, Harry had to go to the Auror Academy, and they took a break' - a break which lasted three years and involved Ginny being engaged to, of all people, Viktor Krum - and when Ginny broke it off with Viktor because he was boshing anything that moved behind her back, the two idiots got back together.

And then Harry met Beth, an absolutely gorgeous Chaser on the Cannons with Ron - who was only on the team because she took beautiful pictures, because, let me tell you, even I could tell she couldn't play to save her life - and he and Ginny broke it off again. But when Beth chucked a crystal champagne flute at his head for always being away on "unexplainable Auror business", Ginny was there to salve his wounds. With her tongue.

That, however, lasted only so long. Once all the crystal was removed and stitching spells healed, Ginny went to Fashion Week in New York to launch her new line and met a German model named Günter, immediately dropping Harry as if he were last year's Kneazle-print slingbacks.

So, really, it would be completely illogical for me to be in love with Harry Potter. Even if Ginny has currently left him for Günter With-No-Last-Name, she's eventually going to get tired of her boy-toy and come crawling back across the ocean like some Mesozoic slime mold. So there is no way that I could love Harry, logically. There just isn't. Not at all.

Oh dear. I just counted, and I denied being in love with Harry three times. According to my father, who watches far too many reruns of that American show, Law & Order, for his own good, the witnesses who deny it three times are the ones who are lying.

But that doesn't make any sense.

I would never be in love with Harry; it'd be like falling in love with my left arm. And I would know, wouldn't I? It'd most definitely be one of those things I'd be able to tell. I know my own heart, for Merlin's sake. And what does my father know? He went to school, met my mother, married her, had me, and retired! About as risky as he gets is going sock-less to the market in February! Does this seem to be the sort of man who would know about the trials of love?

Well, I'm not going to trust my father - or his addictive American crime show - with my love life. Not that what I have with Harry in any way constitutes a love life', with the possible exception of a sisterly love life'. However, seeing as how I'm not sure if sisterly-love-life is a term, we'll just stick with my original assertion.

Merlin, what was that? It sounded like a cross between the noise Ron makes when he stumbles down to the kitchen for breakfast, steps on Crookshanks' tail, and Crookshanks in turn sinks his teeth into his foot, and an elephant suffering from a digestive disorder walking through a wall.

I should probably go and investigate, because if it involves Crookshanks no doubt someone is going to spray blood all over my carpeting.

Five Minutes Later

I cannot believe it.

A second - well, more a split-second, if I ran as fast as I think I did - I walked into Ron's room, a Scourgify on my lips, ready to clean up any mess caused by Ron inadvertently stepping on the tail of my cat.

And what, you ask, do I see?

Well, I see Ginny and Harry snogging the life out of each other, that's what.

I did, in all seriousness, think about knocking on the doorway and making one of the snarky replies that Draco Malfoy is known for, like, "If I'd known we needed loud, scary noises I would've just called down Gertrude", or something, but I froze in place, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. For a moment, I couldn't do anything but watch in horrid fascination like the people who witness broom crashes do. They know that it's going to scar them for life, but they just can't tear their eyes away.

But then common sense walloped me on the side of the head, and I tensed, prepared to dash off, completely forgetting about the creaky floor plank. I took a step back, and managed to put my toe directly on it. By now, I've gotten used to stepping around it, but in my revulsion I had forgotten.

Bloody plank.

"INRUDERS! HOW DARE AN INTRUDER PUT A FOOT INSIDE THIS NOBLE HOUSE, HOME OF HARRY POTTER? WHO ARE YOU? WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING, COMING INTO THIS HOUSE? SOMEONE, QUICK! CATCH THEM BEFORE THEY GE—"

Harry and Ginny pulled apart with a noise that, if bottled and sold, would have made a fortune in the toilet-cleaning industry.

"Hermione?" Harry's glasses were hanging, somewhat askew, off of the lampshade on the floor, the only thing Ron refuses to take with him to his and Luna's new flat. He's blind as a bat without them, but seeing as how I was the only one in the house other than he - and apparently Ginny - it wasn't that hard a deduction to make for someone who flew through the Auror Academy at the top of his class.

As Harry fumbled for his glasses and Ginny, lips all swollen and hair all mussed, glared at me nastily, I muttered something unintelligible, turning an unattractive shade of pink, and dashed off to my room at a speed that no doubt broke the sound barrier. There, waiting on my bed, was this little red book.

Without even thinking, really, I grabbed it and the spare quill and ink perched on top, and took the stairs at the end of the hall to the roof. I have a pretty good feeling that Harry will have a hard time finding me up here. That is, if he's looking; I doubt that, because he and Ginny are probably still licking each other's tonsils.

Not that I care. Really. The only reason I'm disgusted is because I had to watch the two of them go at it in Ron's old - wait a second! My room! They were snogging in MY ROOM on MY BED. Granted, my room' is empty except for Ron's left-over lamp and my mattress, but still . . . Merlin's socks, I'm never going to use that mattress again. The second that the coast is clear I am going down to Diagon Alley and buying a new mattress. And - ew! - who knows what they might be doing on my bed right now?

That's just disgu- oh, look who decided to emerge from the depths of the tentacles of the Gin-inator. What does he want? I'm going to ignore him. The whistling wind (which doesn't actually exist yet, but if I can hook my toe around my wand, I can probably conjure it up) makes it impossible to hear him.

Harry: Hermione? Hey, are you okay?

Me: Yes. Just peachy.

I can't see him right now, but I have a nasty, niggling little feeling that's telling me why he tried to find me. So I'll change the subject.

Me: Isn't it beautiful up here? The sunset is gorgeous.

Harry: Yeah.

He's just walked up next to me, both of our backs to the door, and we're leaning on the black iron balcony that circles the roof. The formerly non-existent wind has kicked up without any magical help from me; just in time to pull his hair in alternate directions (he really should get it cut - he looks like a delinquent now, not the high-level, workaholic Auror Beth accused him of being) and is probably making mine into a rat's nest.

I bet if Ginny were here, her hair would be doing exactly what it should be, blowing back in a sophisticated, model-esque way. No doubt she and Günter make - or is it made? - an absolutely stunning pair. This I don't mean in an envious way; quite simply, the two of them are drop-dead gorgeous. Not that Harry isn't as attractive as Günter. He's just ruggedly handsome, as opposed to gorgeous.

Now there's just silence. The sun is blood-red, and we're both watching it disappear over the rooftops of the rest of Grimmauld Place. Even those annoying children next door have stopped shrieking for a few moments. It's almost too peaceful to last . . .

Uh-oh. He's clearing his throat. He's about the breech the subject of him and Ginny.

Harry: Hermione . . . I know that you saw . . . what I mean is, I'm sorry that you had . . . it's just that Ginny and I, we never . . . you weren't meant to see . . . well, what I'm trying to say is that, Ginny and I, we . . . kind of . . .

He's pushing his hands angrily through his hair, and mussing it up even worse. I'm fairly certain that the only reason that I'm still writing in this is to keep myself from reaching up to smooth back his hair for him. In a sisterly, protective fashion, of course.

Maybe if I say something he'll go away.

Me: Harry, just, next time, put a locking charm on the door.

I've decided that perhaps it is prudent not to mention the whole mattress thing. Now, I'm expecting him to shoot off a grin, like he usually does. Instead, his eyes darken.

Harry: To tell you the truth, I have a feeling that I won't need a locking charm. Not with Ginny, anyway.

Even though he's gripping the metal bar like it's going to keep him from tossing himself off the roof, I'm feeling a very un-Hermione-like jubilation (because I have my faults, I admit, and being nasty is not one of them). Perhaps Ginny and I do not have the most loving and caring of relationships, despite the fact that her brother and I are best friends.

He's probably expecting me to say something, and frankly, I want to fish for more information.

Me: What do you mean?"

Harry: Well . . .

He's trailing off again, but I know, instinctively, that this is a sentence that he's going to finish. I bet I don't look sympathetic, writing down this conversation, but I can't stop. It's like I have Rita Skeeter's quill Spell-o-Taped to my hand. From the way he's mussing with his hair again, I doubt that Harry's even noticed this journal.

Harry: Ginny and I - we've been trying to make it work. Too hard, really. All this time, we thought that our relationship was going to fit into the mold that everyone else wants it to fit in. But . . . today, when you were in the doorway. I dunno; something just . . . didn't make sense about all of it. Nothing was clicking. What was I doing with her? So . . . Ginny and I . . . we're . . . over.

Oh, of course. I've heard that before.

Me: Well, Harry. I'm sorry that it didn't work out, but I'm glad that you realized it.

Harry: Are you really? I always got the impression that you didn't approve. Of me and Ginny, I mean.

Goodness! Harry's never really been that observant about people and relationships. Well, alright, he's fantastic at catching Death Eaters, but no one with two functioning brain cells would let Harry into an interrogation room. How, then, can he have noticed that I've developed a slight, well, dislike of little Ginny Weasley, with her designer job and her constant model boyfriend and her perfect petite body and the way her eyes glint maliciously when she notices something she can manipulate into submission . . .

Ahem.

I've been silent for longer than probably seemly.

Me: Approve of you two? Well, I have to admit that I flashed on Henry VIII . . . with Ginny as Henry.

He's trying to figure out my metaphor, his eyebrows forming a little right angle in the center of his forehead, and all the darkness has left those beautiful green eyes of his.

And now he gets it, because he's smiling like crazy.

Harry: You're the only person who would ever say that.

Before I'm done writing this down, he's darted forward and given me a quick kiss on the check, brushing across my skin before vanishing. Now he's returning inside, hands stuffed into his pockets against the bitter wind. That delinquent hair is whipping around happily.

He's stopped now. I'm not watching, but his footsteps have paused.

Harry: Thanks. For staying.

He doesn't have to finish his sentence - now that Ron is going to marry Luna and have a house full of kneazles, nargles, and children, it's going to be just be us in large, lonely Grimmauld Place. Well, and Crookshanks of course.

Me: You're welcome.

I still refuse to turn around. I can hear the door slam behind him. The wind's died down, and the moon is hanging in the sky before me, and Ron's probably all ready to Floo his stuff to storage. And however ridiculous it is, I can still feel the tingle of his lips against my cheek.

Which is absolutely ridiculous.

Because in no way am I in love with Harry Potter.

The End

OR IS IT?????

Muhahahaha . . .