TITLE: Angry Son

AUTHOR: Aviatrix

PAIRING: Harry/Hermione

RATING: PG-13 for adult situations and sentences. Thar be wordiness ahead!

SUMMARY: Harry has more in common with Hermione than he thought. Set after OotP. .

DISCLAIMER: Rowling owns her characters. I own my words.

A/N: Insipired by and named after the song "Angry Son", by Indian Summer. This has nothing really to do with that, I just was listening to it while I wrote. Also, I am horrible at dialogue, and I hope it didn't come off to OOC. Bleh. Oh, and I'm really retarded for spelling Hermione's name wrong. Sorry.

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"Why don't you go back, where you *came from*, filthy little mudblood!"



Malfoy stood across the hall, covered in his ubiquitous smirk, framed by his henchmen.

Harry felt his shoulders tensing and his mouth turning up in a snarl. Ron's face turned beet-red. "Bugger off, you...you!"

"Oh, good one, Ron." Hermione rolled her eyes.

"Hey, it's not my fault there's no insult horrible enough for Malfoy. Listen, I kinda forgot to take notes in McGonagall's class today, d'you think I could copy yours?"

Hermione sighed. "Sure, fine."

Ron beamed. "Brilliant! I'll get them tonight, alright? I have to go to my detention with Filch, about five minutes ago, so I gotta run. I'll see you later!" Without waiting for a reply, he dashed off, his cloak flapping after him.

Hermione walked over a bench and sat down, Harry following a short distance behind her.

"Doesn't that ever bother you? You barely even changed expressions."

She shrugged, and squinted up at him. "It does get a little old sometimes."

Harry nodded, and sat down next to her.

"I mean...the whole...this whole thing about being just a part, you know? Because I'm smart, that somehow becomes who I am, and all I am. Or my hair, or my teeth, or my parents. It's like I've got a hook or a punchline and that's all anyone remembers."

He shifted, moved a little closer to Hermione. Not so close they were actually touching, but close enough that if he had wanted to (touch her, that is), he could've.

"Funnily enough, I get that. I'm the Boy-Who-Lived, remember? I've got all these people watching me, half of them waiting for me to save the world, the other half waiting for me to turn into my father. But I'm not him, no matter what Snape says, or what Sirius says...*said*. I'm not my father. I don't want to be, I know what he...what he was like, back then."

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All the time, for a while (across the quidditch field, over the table at dinner, under Snape's glare), he thought about Hermione. How she might look in his mirror, and how her name would look written next to his, and what might be the story that led up to her punchline. The way she walked, the way the space be

And so, armed with his thoughts and his ideas, he approached Hermione one day, in the library. She was huddled over a book, her hair falling in the dust and covering her face. She didn't notice him until he tapped her shoulder, and when she looked up, he smiled: awkwardly, shyly, widely. He motioned for her to get up, and she did, an eyebrow arched and her arms folded across her chest. Still smiling, he took her arms and brought them to her side, then brought her lips to his.

He smelled the book-dust that followed her around, and the moisturizer or perfume or whatever it is that makes girls smell like summer. He felt her hair in his hands, her slightly-too-big front teeth under his tongue, and her heart, beating a little to the right of his. He felt her, and knew that now he had something else to identify himself with: I'm hers, she's mine, we're together.

She is the girl with the books and the curls, and he is the angry son.

It works, kinda. And that's good enough for him.

xxxx the end, etc xxxx