Harry remembered that life changing day like it was yesterday, the day he met his very first and only friend. His companion and partner in crime, his best friend forever.
It had been a normal (oh how Harry hated that word) day for a six year old Harry Potter, as usual his cousin and his gang had been chasing him in a sick game they called Harry-Hunting (He detested the game as well) when he had ran into his primary school libary. It was when he hid behind a seemingly normal bookshelf that everything had changed for him.
As he had hidden behind the bookshelf he hadn't noticed the curious frizy haired girl staring at him with wide eyes from behind the large book in her hands. It had been a history book, one for children far older then her.
Harry's heart beat had stopped for a moment when his cousin and his posse had entered his safe haven, their loud yells and heavy footfals had been enough for the iritate librarien to force them out of the library telling them to not come back. Harry had let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding collapsing against the bookshelf in relief. It had been at the same moment the brown haired girl had tapped his shoulder having put her bulky book back onto the shelf where it formally had been.
Harry started his eyes going wide in fear and his breath speeding up in panick as he gripped the wood of the bookshelf for dear life. He whipped his head around some of the tension leaving his shoulder when his emerald eyes landed on the startled girl. He froze when his own fearful orbs connected with a pair of equally concerned hazel eyes.
"A-Are you okay...?"
Harry had narrowed his eyes in distrust shrugging her hand of his shoulder as he took a step away from her ready to run if need be. This was a trick, it had to be. Nobody was ever concerned about how the freak felt or if the freak was scared. They never cared, and they never would.
"I'm fine, thanks."
His words were as sharp as daggers as he glared at the offended girl with narrowed eyes, his face cold as ice, even though his heart was thundering behind his ribcage as if it would burst clean out of his chest.
She raised a unimpressed eyebrow her hands on her hips as she motioned to his bloody nose and black eye with her own set of narrowed brown eyes.
"You call that 'fine'?"
Her tone was sarcastic as her glare dared him to lie to her or refute her statment, but Harry had never been one to fallow the rules. He crossed his arms defiently drawing himself up to his full height, which was sadly still shorter then the frizy haired girl.
"I just fell, I'm clumsy like that."
His voice was as cold as his face as he drew his arms tighter around his torse, he wiped the blood away from his nose his gaze never leaving the older girls offeneded face. He was suprised when she took a deep breath clenching and unclenching her hands. What was she doing? she unpersed her lips offering a pale hand too the suprised six year old.
"We got off to a bad start, Im Hermione Granger. I'm new in town."
Harry hesitated for a moment before gingerly taking the offered appendage still wary of the enigma known as Hermione Granger.
"Harry... my names Harry Potter."
Hermione beamed at him a thousand watt smile lighting up her face and the room along with it, she shook Harrys hand vigerously the grin never leaving her young face.
"So why are you here (In the library i mean), Harry?"
Harry looked pointedly at the spot Dudley and his friends had once stood rolling his eyes at the innocent question. Hermione blushed beet red hiding her face behind a large book she had picked up. Harry allowed himself to smile a bit, it was a teeny tiny smile but it still spurred Hermone on. She smiled back at him.
"Chemistry? Where did you get that from?"
She looked over the rim of the paper pages her chubby cheeks still tinted pink, she glanced down at she was reading as if she had just noticed what was in her hands.
"I-I just like to read..."
Her smile was forced as her eyes dimmed with insecurity and fear of abandonment and dissapointment. She was like him, but not like him. He scooted his chair closer to hers leaning over so he could read the pages as well.
"Well I just happen to like chemistry!"
It was that day in the little library of Little Whinging that a freak and a teachers pet became the best of friends, the kind of friends who would destroy the world for one another. And it all started with a simple chemistry book.
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Harry had been beyond suprised when his aunt had sat him down and told him of his mother and her life. She had told him that his mother was a freak who went to a school for freaks. He had been told about his mother hadn't died in a car cash because she had been drunk, no she had died heroically fighting the dark lord. How she had died for him, how she hadn't been a whore and a drunk as he had been told for as long as he could remember.
Harry had been eight at this time, he and Hermione had been friends for almost two years. His relatives didn't know of her, of course. Because even though his aunt had suddenly told him the story of his mother didn't mean she still wouldn't take joy in stealing his only friend away from him. On this birthday she had given him fifty dollers. With this money had bought himself a photo-album along with a camera, so he could capture all the fun moments Harry and Hermione had so when they were all grown-up they could look back at it fondly.
When Harry had discovered that Hermione was a freak like him he had been overjoyed (Oh so happy), she was the same as him. That meant she wouldn't run away when she discovered he was the freak, she wouldn't fear or despise him for what he was. She would stay with him, because freaks stick together. They would play together, testing the boundries. Hermione had been a bit miffed that hey were defying everything she had ever known about psyics but she got over it, or at least thats what she said. Harry still saw her looking puzzled when she or he did something weirder then normal.
Something mind blowing happened on his ninth year, Petunia had come to him and given him a stack of books her face empty of all emotions. Harry had stared at her back as she walked away the books held in his almost limp hands. Once he discovered they were his mother first year books he had felt so very conflicted, confused beyond belief, and a little touched. A small part of is heart had stiched itself back together, and Petunia became one of the few people he cared about, right next to Hermione. Hermione would always be the first.
"She left them here, so you better take them before i burn them."
Hermione didn't find out it was his birthday until A week later, she had been both panicked and irritated. After A couple of days she cornered him in the library and shoved a pricy looking ring that was on a chain into his pale hands. He had tried to deny, he had said it was too much. But Hermione had waved him off.
"My Grandfather doesn't need it anymore."
He had slid it around his neck hiding it underneath his shirt so the Dursleys woldn't steal it from him. He had never taken it off.
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The day for them to finally attend Hogwarts and Harry could barley contain himself, when his eyes had landed on the old parchment in the stack of letters he had slid it into his cupboard his face as blank as it usually was when he was at his relatives. He was sneaky like that, but how else would you survive living with people who hated you if you weren't sneaky?
So when the person to pick him up had been a fuming man with greasy hair and a permenant scowl etched into his face who glared at Harry in utter loathing had been at the door his spirits had been dampened considerably. This wasn't how he wanted his first trip into a better world to be! But you couldn't have everything, or that is what he had told himself at least.
When he had left in the alley to fend for himself he had been scared (He would never admit it). When he had gotten himself under control and had halted the approaching panick attack he had decided to go to the wizarding bank Petunia had told him about in one of their talks (Gringotts, he had mentally reminded himself). He had been beyond suprised to find piles of gold in a vault he hadn't been aware of.
Adventuring the alley had been one of the funnest things he had ever done, he loved how everything was magical and there were other just like him. They wouldn't judge him. That was until he discovered he was famous when someone had caught a a glimpse of his famous scar (or thats what he was told, at least), everything had become so much more complicated. And what the old wandmaker had said to him had scared him more then he showed.
"Terrible, but great."
When he ahd finally gotten back to Little Whinging he had been exhausted, he had left all his school things with Hermione as they had agreed. His family still believed him to be inside his cupboard, sleeping.
Harry had been sure to bring a hat with them when they had boarded the train, he sure as hell didn't want to be mobbed again. Hermione had laughed her arse off at that story. The only disturbance had been a haughty blonde boy who had been asking about Harry Potter, but the sight of what they were wearing had made him sniff in distane and look at them as if they were insects before storming away with his goons. They had both been offeneded but after a little bit he had faded from there minds.
Hermione ending up in gryffindor had been unexpected and to say Harry had been suprised would be a understatment, he had expected her to be sorted into Ravenclaw, he had hoped they would both be in Ravenclaw. He changed his plans and was determind to go to Griffindor as well. But anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
'Gryffindor, put me in gryffindor!'
The hat hadn't agreed with him on that, it had said he didn't belond in gryffindor. He wouldn't fit in in the house of the brave, he wasn't fit for the den of lions. He belonged in the house of the sneaky, of the planners and schemers. He belonged in the house of green and silver, the pit of vipers. Harry couldn't stop the hat before it had shouted slytherin for all to hear.
It had all gone in hell in a handbasket from there.
Harry was insulted and cursed by his classmates, he was glared at by the other children, they would whisper when they thoght he wasn't listen. His head of house loathed him and the other teachers didn't seem to care about how he was treated, they didn't bat a eye to his treatment. The gryffindors bullied him, and his house mates hated him, and he was ignored by everyone else. Hermione was the only light in his rapidly dimming world.
He knew the other gryffindors bullied Hermione becaause she was friends with him, just like his housemates picked on him because his only friend was a 'mudblood'. The slytherins called him the reckless gryffindor in green and the rest called him the dark lord in training. A dark wizard in the making. It was Ron Weasley who was at the center of this all, having his own fallowing.
In second year when the chamber opened Hermione was the only one who stuck with him, as she always did. It was in this year that Harry would find things missing and small pranks happened. They were harmless really, but that didn't mean they didn't hurt. These harmless pranks grew worse when he had spoken Parseltongue before the whole school. He discovered a little later that it was Ron Weasley and his group of friends.
Hermione was the only one who stood up for him, who defied them, she had been furious to discover them to be the cause of her suddenly more closed-off and quite friend.
But as time passed Harry noticed how she would spend less time with them and more time with Ron Weasley and his two friends (Dean and Seamus), she would sometimes help them with a prank or two but she never helped with the ones on Harry, stopping them if she knew about them.
In retaliation he spent as much time as he could with her, his excuse being that it was for school work or that he wanted to study with her in the library. She never suspected a thing, even though it made Ron Weasley fume in silent anger. It was a well known fact that he hated both slytherins and Harry Potter. And Harry Potter being in slytherin had only made it that much worse.
But what Hermione didn't know was that when she looked away or wasn't paying attention Harry would take pictures of her, sometimes making funny faces at the camera or giving her little bunny ears. Harry was really proud of his collection, and he planned on gifting it to Hermione when they graduated Hogwarts. But what the young teen didn't know was that he would never make it that far.
In fourth year he began to feel he wanted to be something more then Hermiones best friend. He didn't want to be the guy cheering from the stands while she found happiness in someone else. But what he didn't know that Hermione was being spirited away by another man, and when he found out it would already be too late.
As their fourth year turned into their fifth his feelings began to grow, but he could never bring himself to tell Hermione. Whenever he tried the words would die before they ever left his mouth when she turned her full attention to him, her eye glittering curiously and her tilted the slightest bit. He always would become flusted and go back to his book leaving a puzzled Hermone.
When Hermione began to date Weasley at the end of their fifth year he had been so heartbroken, jealous, and sad at the same time. Hope for a happy ending slipped through his fingers, and the future that he was supposed to have was snatched away from him. But Hermione never noticed how her friend slowly wilt away, becoming a insecure shell of the bright and snarky boy he used to be. How he would stare at her brokenly before looking back to his book, or how he slowly began to die inside and his heart began to fall apart the stitch work not being enough.
He hadn't exploded like Dumbldore had expected when he had heard the prophecy, he hadn't screamed and yelled and cried as Dumbldore had prepared for. He hadn't destroyed his office and he hadn't broken down. He had just smiled a smile that should have set alarm bells of in his mind but didn't. The seeminly calm boy had exited the headmaster office, but what the old wizard didn't know was that when he had reached the end of the stairwell he had had a panick attack. That night he had cried himself to sleep in quite sorrow the deaths he cased weighing heavely upon him.
When Hermione had dragged him on a wild goosechase for things they weren't even sure existed he had complied, allowing her to drag him along like a rag doll. A overconfident (In his opinion) Weasley had come along for the ride as well. It hadn't been a very fun ride.
LIttle did Hermione know of the small box Harry carried around in his pocket, waiting to be opened. Everytime the boy had mustered the small amont of confidence he had left Hermione would dismiss him, telling him what he had to say wasn't important. What was important was killing Voldemort.
"I don't care Harry, can't you see i'm busy?"
Learning that he was the last horcrux had been the final nail in his coffin. He had finally understood the prophecy, he had to die for everyone else to live. It was a small price, he supposed. So he wrote a note, and he left never looking back. They never found the bodies.
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"Harry? Im sorry for what i said earlier,"
The tent was quite as Hermione peeked her head inside, there was no sign of her friend. She stepped inside the flaps falling shut behind her.
"Harry, are you in here?"
Their was no reply as she searched for her friend, that was when she noticed a folded piece of paper laid on the table. She tilted her head sitting down, she unfolded the slightly damp note nuggets of dread falling in her stomach. But for the life of her she couldn't figure out why.
-Dear Everyone,
First of all i would like to thank Hermione Granger, for just being there for me when no one else was. You were always there when i was down, you were my shouder to cry on, the person who would keep my deepest and darkest secrets and never tell a soul, the person who would never judge me. You were my first and only friend, my best friend forever, but nothing ever lasts forever, huh? Because of this i'd like to apolagize for all the pain and greif i caused you. But alas, i couldn't have you because your heart belonged to another man. So thank you, for everything.
To Ron Weasley, first of all i want you too know how much I hate you. I hate you so damn much, i hate everything you stand for, I hate your little group. I hate how you ruined my life, I hate how you stoll Hermione away from me. But listen here you bastard, you better take good care of her. Make sure she eats all her meals, that she doesn't stay up all night reading, that she doesn't waste any tears over me. And most of all, make her fucking happy. Because she doesn't have me to do that anymore.
And finally the million pound question, why did I write this? Well to understand that you will need to know a little story. Once upon a time there was a abused little boy who didn't want to grow up, so he practiced grown-up magic and tore himself apart. This little boy who didn't want to grow old eventaully became the one you know as Voldemort. So this stupid little boy killed and killed until he killed my parents and made a big 'oops'. He created the first living horcrux, aka me.
His so called defeater was sent to live in a world were he didn't belong, a world were everyone hated him. Its a wonder I didn't become the next dark lord like you all thought i would. And thats all thanks to one person.
So here i am, sacrificing myself for a world that only ever hated and feared me for everything I did. This is my final message to all you, and all i can say is fuck you. But even though i say that i am writing my suicide note for you all to see and critisize. But even though I write this i know you will all forget what happened within the year even though i kill the thing that haunts you nightmares. Hope your all happy now, because I never got the chance to be.
-Love, A Dead Man.
A small box and a thin book appeared on the table, Hermione stared at them blankly for a moment the note falling out of her hand fluttering to the ground. She took the small box into her hands. She was in shock, she absently noted.
Inside the box was a familiar ring, freshly polished with almost unoticable fingerprints littering it. It was the ring she had given Harry all those years ago, she had thought he had lost it long ago. Just like that all the moments of him coming to her with the box clutched in his hand came back to her, how he would stared down at the opened box before glancing at her with a emotion she now knew to be longing sparkling in his emerald eyes. She was reminded of how she always said that what he had to sat wasn't important, how she brushed him off saying she was too busy. Unbidden she felt her throat start to close.
She gently set the box onto the table taking the book into her hands. On the front the letters 1988 were printed in gold, golden vines creeping across the cover. She took a deep breath as her shock faded into denial, and she opened it.
As she flipped through the pages of pictures she never knew of she watched as they got older, the many photos taken without her knowing. Her hands quivered as she ran her fingers over the young face of the boy she used to know, and just like that a dam broke. Tears streamed down her face landing on the plastic pages and sliding down the pages. She held her hand over her mouth as she choked on her own tears, the note that had slipped from the book renewing her heart-broken sobs.
I was going to give it to you for our Hogwats graduation, but i guess i'll never be able too. So think of it... as a early birthday present.
At the very back of the book, on the last page of the book containing their childhood there was a recently taken photo. Harry was grinning cheekily at the camera an unknowing Hermione sitting next to him on the green grass, absorbed in her book, unknowing of the camera in her friends hands as well as the photo that had been taken.
That was how Ron Weasley found Hermione, a old book clutched to her chest fat tears streaming down her face as soft sobs escaped her throat. When he had read the damp letter that had been sitting in the dirt he had embraced the distraught teenager who had just lost her first friend. Harry Potter was dead and he had died a hero. And Ron would do his best to follow the boys last wishes.
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As the years passed the heroic slytherin slipped from their minds and his sacrifice faded from their thoughts, as he had sworn Ron had married Hermione. He had made her happy and comforted her and helped her through the dark times. He made sure she ate all her meals and went to bed on time. But Ron had moved on and forgotten as well.
But Hermione Granger would never forget him despite what everyone else did or said, she would never forget Harry Potter, a slytherin, a brave kid who died too young, and most of all her first and best friend who she met in the small library of little Whinging on that fateful day all those years ago. Hermione would never forget the small boy who would follow her around and show her magic tricks, who would smile and grin despite all the things he went through, the one who was there from the very begining, cheering her on from the sidelines. And Hermione knew only now that she had taken it all for granted, A gift she had disregarded. And she hadn't been the only one to pay the price. She looked down at the book in her hands fondly running her fingers over the cover. It was a chemistry text, the one that had set fate into motion, with this book a friendship had begun. A friendship that had been broken by the sharp knife of a short life.