"Yes"
It's a bit funny, how it all came down between us. More than funny, really—strange and miraculous might have been a better choice of words. Sometimes I still wake in the morning convinced that the past few years have been some sort of very terrific dream.
I don't just mean—well, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, although frankly that has been an adventure and a half, and I'm quite sure no one in the Muggle world would believe it.
Nor is it really the Wizarding world that surprises me- fantastic as it is to dwell amongst warlocks and witches, centaurs and giants and unicorns and all the stuff of fairy tales that Muggles eventually learn to disbelieve.
No, I'm talking about something else entirely, and the really funny part is that it is the one aspect of my life that could just as easily have popped up at some normal, Muggle high school somewhere.
I have friends. Good ones. Very, very good ones, about as good as it gets.
This is somewhat of a new experience for me.
Well, yes, of course I had some friends when I was younger—I wasn't completely hopeless, after all- but things were very different. As nearly any one could tell you, yes, I am a bit of a bookworm, yes, I do take pride in my schoolwork and my intellect, and yes, sometimes I get ahead of myself that way. You didn't really think Ron and Professor Snape were the first to call me annoying or a know-it-all, did you? Certainly not.
And seriously speaking, I may have transferred to Hogwarts at only 10, but 9-year-olds can be very vicious little creatures. My primary school days were...interesting at best. Was I to blame? Most likely, at least in part, but it's very hard to look back objectively – it was so long ago, and I was so young at the time...It's an issue I do struggle with a lot, although I've taken care not to share that part of my life with Harry or Ron. Those times are best forgotten – and to be completely honest, I'd rather they not know old-Hermione. Well of course they did, at least for that short while in First Year, but that wasn't really old-Hermione, not the full her at any rate.
To be honest, as wonderful as Ron and Harry are, I'm not entirely certain that old-Hermione wouldn't run them off.
Everything changed once Ron and Harry came into my life. It was an unusual way of making friends, to be sure – somehow I don't think anyone in the Muggle world would know what to do with a friendship that began after some traded insults followed by an incident in a girl's bathroom involving a large mountain troll – and that at a magical school in a hidden magical world. Nevertheless, if Halloween night was the start of our friendship, November 1st of that year was the first day of the rest of my life.
I can't explain why it all works out between the three of us, and I'm not sure I would want to try. Knowing me, I would break it all down analytically and make it all out to be something cold and calculated – a thing of science, when truly it is a thing of warmth and beauty. Of course we bicker – I drive the boys mad reciting books off the top of my head and always playing know-it-all, and Harry drives me mad by breaking every rule in the book (and dragging me along, and getting away with it all), and Ron drives me mad by assuming that I will help him with every homework assignment (and then taking me completely for granted). But since that Halloween night, it has never been a question that we would be friends – not seriously, at any rate...not in our hearts, even when we are fighting and perhaps not even spekaing on the surface! They say there are no guarantees in life except for death and taxes, but I would beg to differ.
Except that also, I wouldn't, which makes this all rather strange. Accept and embrace the Golden Trio as I do, I can't bring myself to completely surrender to the safety of that friendship. I have never felt completely secure and seriously doubt that I ever will – it's impossible. Despite my behavior, I really do know that I am quite annoying at times. I really do know how a great deal of the world sees me. I just don't quite know how to change my personality enough for people to give me a chance. I certainly don't know how Ron and Harry did, and I try not to think too much about it so that I don't second-guess them so often.
I really and truly am afraid that, should Ron and Harry ever chance to know old-Hermione...if I should ever tell them how much worse I can be than they saw in First Year, should I ever tell them how my former classmates rejected me... I am afraid that they might reject me too. And I cannot accept that possibility, because I feel that they are my second and last chance. If I cannot make it with them, I cannot make it with anybody; this is the conclusion my analysis draws me to. If this cannot work, I don't want anything else to work, nor do I believe it ever will.
So here I am, Hermione Granger, and I have friends. Good ones. The best possible, really. And today I was terrified as I stood in the courtyard outside Hogwarts bidding farewell to the Triwizard champions.
He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has returned from the dead, and along with him, a great deal of insecurity. The little world I have built for myself may very well crumble at my feet at any moment. Harry's life is in danger, as well as the lives of all of his friends. Hogwarts is in danger, and all of our abilities to learn there. The times ahead will test all friendships and loyalties to their very limits, I know.
"Everything's going to change now, isn't it?" I whispered to my two best friends. And this is why they are my best friends – because I swear, for two moments, they looked into my eyes and saw what was written there. I swear that I saw it in their expressions. I don't think I ever felt as strongly about my friendship with Harry as that moment when he walked over, placed a hand on my shoulder, and looked me directly in the eyes.
"Yes." Yes, everything is going to change. Except, by the very gesture of that honest word, by the very gesture of what he did, he demonstrated the one thing that will not change:
Us.