Chapter Three

Harry Is, Isn't He?

Hermione sat up in bed, a frown on her face as she rubbed her fists against her eyes. After spending the better part of last night worrying over how her future in-laws were taking the news—no thanks to Harry—and the rest of it explaining things to her own parents, she didn't care if God, herself, was ringing the bell to her second floor flat!

The new Post-War Reformation laws certainly weren't helping her Muggle mother and father to understand the Wizarding world—which was already teeming with so many concepts they still struggled to grasp—any better than they had when she'd received her Hogwarts letter. The idea that their only child was going to wed two wizards, and that the law supported this, made precious little sense to them.

Wincing, she pulled her quilt around her shoulders and waited, hoping that whoever was at the stoop below would simply think she wasn't home.

Yet, her bell rang, again.

Rolling her eyes, she shoved her feet into her slippers and rose from the bed, dragging her quilt with her. Please don't let that be Mum and Dad!

She adored her parents, but it had been all she could do to convince her father that a Muggle wasn't going to be allowed into the Ministry to give Drusilla and Markham a piece of his mind—which was exactly what he had threatened to do. She didn't think she had the strength to have that particular discussion a second time.

She was also refusing to admit that her mind was just possibly wandering back to that kiss whenever she wasn't keeping complete and total track of her thoughts. The . . . troublesome kiss, and stupid Draco for thinking it would have made a difference, anyway.

But then that thought led her to remembering her very favorite phrase at the moment. Draco Malfoy is an idiot. Then, the world was right again for a few bright and glimmering minutes.

Sighing, she trudged down the steps and across the three-floor building's small foyer. The silhouettes though front door's white-curtained window gave her hope. Neither party was tall enough to be her father.

The bell rang one last time as she finally turned the knob. Who the bloody hell could be so certain she was even home that they'd be this insistent?

Her answer came in the form of two witches—one blonde, the other jet-haired. And both beaming at her, like they knew a secret.

Hermione's shoulders drooped as she stepped aside to allow Cho and Luna inside. "I take it you've heard?"

"Well, we ran into Harry last night," Luna started, rushing past Hermione to dart up the stairs.

Cho continued for her, "And he sort of . . . told us about your Matching."

Sighing again, Hermione shook her head as she closed the door and followed them up to her flat. The pair of Ravenclaw witches had become inseparable after the War, on occasion acting more twin-like than the Patils. The inclusion of Cho into their circle of friends had been a bit awkward at first—for Harry and Cho, both—but that had worn off when it became obvious neither of them had bruised egos left in the wake of their too-short relationship.

"Well," Cho said as she tugged Hermione inside the flat by her wrist and closed the door. "Go on, get dressed. We'll wait."

Hermione's brows drew together as Luna took the quilt from her shoulders and folded it neatly. "Dressed for what, exactly?"

The Ravenclaws exchanged a glance . . . an action that always ended up a cause of concern for Hermione.

"We're going to have a Girls' Day," Luna announced, bouncing on the balls of her feet, and undoing her efforts with the quilt by tossing it carelessly onto the sofa. "And you're going to fill us in on everything!"

Seeming to crumble where she stood, Hermione looked to Cho, her expression twisted into one of helplessness. "Not getting out of this, am I?"

Cho pursed her lips as she shook her head, her pretty, dark eyes widening. "Afraid not. She . . . she found a Muggle magazine and read this article about female bonding rituals, and how they can relieve stress and strengthen friendships, all at once, so she's sort of been looking for an excuse." Cho glanced at Luna again before speaking to Hermione behind her hand, "She's also really excited about it, and you know how she gets."

Uncertain that their friendship needed strengthening, but hoping maybe the girls could give her some much needed perspective on the matter of her pending nuptials, Hermione gave a nod and turned toward her bedroom.

"So, wait." Cho reached across the tiles to pat Hermione's hand blindly. "You kissed Draco Malfoy?"

Groaning, Hermione pulled the gel mask from her eyes and sat up, cringing at the way the gritty cucumber and sea-salt mud bath scraped her bare bum. Girls' Day . . . wonderful notion, that. "You're not listening, he kissed me."

"And you kissed him back," Luna pointed out, wagging a finger in Hermione's direction. "So the distinction you just made is lost."

"Fine," Hermione said in a whisper as she hung her head, irritated by the subject matter, but aware they weren't going to let her out of talking about it.

A mischievous grin curved Cho's lips. "So . . . if you kissed him back, that means the kiss was good then, yeah?"

Burying her face in her muddy hands, Hermione spoke loud enough to be heard around her palms. "Yes! Dammit, all."

Sighing, Cho sat up in her own in-ground bath and pulled her mask down around her neck. "I know it's not what you wanted, but you're going to marry him. I would think you should be relieved that kissing him wasn't not good."

"I guess you're right," Hermione muttered as she lifted her head and leaned back in her bath, once more. She hated it, but Cho's words did make perfect sense. "I just . . . I adore Harry, you guys know I do. I just wish he hadn't been there to see it."

"Because you're worried how uneven things will be if you have a spark with Draco, but not one with Harry?" Luna waved her hands in the air, as though she was conducting some silent orchestra as she spoke. "Or are you worried because you think you will have one?"

Hermione frowned thoughtfully as she ran the tips of her fingers over her gritty, greenish-brown kneecaps poking up through the surface of the mud bath. "I don't know. It could quite honestly be either. I don't want to be unfair to him, that's the biggest thing."

"There's only one answer." Cho wriggled about in her tub as she again gave that playful smile. "You have to kiss Harry."

Blinking hard, Hermione tried to process that idea, but her mind went suspiciously blank. "I . . . I don't think I can. I've never looked at him like that, before."

"What's the matter?" Luna asked, pouting—a rather adorable and amusing sight, what the colored mud covering her face. "Don't you think Harry's an attractive man?"

Hermione's shoulders slumped as she nodded. "Well, of course Harry's attractive. He's . . . ." Her face fell and her eyes widened. "Oh, God. Harry is an attractive man, isn't he?"

The Ravenclaw witches both nodded in reply.

"And, if my input counts for anything," Cho said, steepling her fingers, "he's probably a great kisser, too."

Turning her head slow, Hermione met Cho's gaze.

Cho shrugged. "If he was good when he was fifteen, I can only imagine he's improved with age."

Biting her lip, Hermione tried very hard to imagine herself kissing Harry. Her posture drooping a bit as she failed—even in an imagined scenario, the attempt ended with her and Harry laughing too hard to make a serious go of it—she asked, "Why can't I see him that way?"

"You probably conditioned yourself not to," Luna said, her tone reasonable. "After all, when you two were becoming the attractive people you are today, Harry fancied Ginny—well, no, first he fancied Cho—" Cho gave a small nod as the blonde witch continued—"then Ginny, and you fancied He Whose Name Now Infuriates You."

Hermione snickered as she nodded.

Again Cho shrugged. "Just like learning spells and enchantments. You train yourself until the knowledge becomes ingrained, and you know exactly what to cast when the situation calls for it."

"That actually makes sense." Hermione twisted the crystal band around her finger. "I need to sort through this somehow if I can't figure a way out."

Luna sat up now, sighing dramatically as she pulled her mask from her owl-like blue eyes. "I don't think there is a way out, Hermione. I'm sorry."

"You'd have to find a way to reverse the rate of Squib births, and it's not like the Ministry and every other Wizarding government hasn't tried." Cho shook her head, once more patting Hermione's hand reassuringly.

"Pretty sure not even I could pull that off," Hermione said, tipping her head to one side as Cho preoccupied herself with cleaning the mud from beneath the Gryffindor witch's nails. "No, just . . . reverse the decision, maybe. Find a way to change the results of the Match so it would only be Harry."

"And you'd be happy, then?" Luna asked, her brows inching up her forehead.

Smiling, Hermione nodded. "I think we'd both be."

"Except for the whole might-not-have-a-spark issue," Cho said, frowning.

Hermione deflated at that. "Yeah."

"We already told you how you can find out."

Hermione looked from one Ravenclaw to the other, and back. "Refresh my memory?" She knew the answer had been handed to her, she simply couldn't recall it—or she didn't want to.

Luna leaned forward, looking past Hermione to meet Cho's gaze, before the two said in unison, "Kiss Harry!"

Pouting, Hermione pulled her mask into place and sank down into the grainy mud. She had known the answer, but it was as intriguing as it was terrifying. To Luna and Cho, it was only a kiss, but to Hermione, it was a simple act that could change one of the most important things in her life, forever—her friendship with Harry.

"They cannot possibly be serious about this," Lucius roared, crumbling the missive—which only confirmed the absurd news Draco had given them when he had returned from work, last night. "What the bloody hell is wrong with these people?"

Draco blinked, his grey eyes widening . . . . But he wasn't quite certain if he was relieved his father was echoing his own words from yesterday, or if he was disturbed at suddenly noticing the startling resemblance between himself and his father. "That's what I said!"

"I really thought this insanity would be sorted before they got to you. This is a travesty! You are simply expected to marry that—that Granger girl?"

Narcissa sighed as she shook her head, her attention on the needlepoint she was directing with a wave of her wand. They'd gone over all this last night . . . . Were her son and husband both suffering some sort of anger-induced amnesia?

"And they want you to share her? With Potter?"

Draco shook his head, sighing. "I said that, too!"

"I will not let this stand," the Malfoy patriarch said, growling the words through his teeth.

As he spent a moment fuming in silence, Narcissa caught her son's gaze from across the sitting room. She shook her head again, an expression of disdain flitting across her face at how the young man had managed to wind up his father twice about the same matter in less than twenty-four hours.

She set down her wand, her work placing itself neatly on the ottoman at her feet. Rising from the chaise, she crossed to her husband's side. "You will stand for it, because this is the law, Lucius." Their last attempts to change laws had hardly won them any favors, or even a moment's peace of mind; in fact, it had nearly cost their family and their lives.

He scowled—again concerning Draco over the question of familial resemblance—and took his wife's hands in his own. "You cannot tell me you are thrilled at the idea of having that Mud . . . ." Lucius swallowed hard and forced himself to use the more politically correct term. "That Muggle-born as our daughter-in-law. Or at the fact that she will have a husband besides our son!"

A surprised laugh bubbled out of her. "Of course I am not happy about the situation, Lucius!" She drew in a deep breath and let it out slow from between pursed lips as she held his steely gaze. "But it is past the time for us to stop railing against what is. These Matches are in the best interest of all of us, whether we like it or not. Would you really be content with a grandchild who did not possess magic?"

Squaring his jaw, Lucius dropped his gaze. "I suppose I would not."

The tension in Narcissa's shoulders eased and she nodded. None of the other families were making a spectacle of themselves by fussing over this—perhaps they were fussing privately, for all she knew—and she would not allow what little Post-War standing they'd gained to be damaged by becoming the first pure-bloods to fuss publicly.

"Besides," Draco said with a shrug as he eyed the red-purple band around his finger; Merlin, he wasn't even certain why he'd put on the damned thing. "Granger said she's going to try to find a way out of this. If anyone can . . . ." He shrugged again as he let his words trail off.

Narcissa's brows crept up her forehead in surprise at what was almost a statement of praise toward the girl falling from her son's lips. Her husband, however . . . .

"She is looking for a way out?" The color that had drained from his face for barely a blink flooded right back in. "A way out of marrying a Malfoy? Any witch should be pleased at such a Match! The insult!"

Draco thought perhaps his father was a bit too temperamental at the moment to rightly recall Granger's less-than-pleasant history with their family.

He jumped a little as he noticed the withering look his mother was giving him. And he couldn't say he blamed her—especially not as Father went one another tear. She'd just gotten him to think reasonably about the situation and Draco had gone and dashed those efforts with a single sentence.

Lucius Malfoy had once had so much power, so much influence. Now he had to go along with absurd new rules and standards of conduct . . . and he could do nothing about them but huff and rage in the privacy of the Manor's walls. It wasn't that Draco didn't understand, it was only that he wished his father had chosen a coping mechanism that involved far less yelling.

As Father sank himself into another pointless tirade, Draco crept from the room on careful, quiet footfalls.

Hermione practically barreled through the door of 12 Grimmauld Place as Harry opened it for her. Swallowing hard at the severe expression on her face, he said belatedly, "Hermione, come in."

"Harry, we need to talk." She spun on her heel, knowing talk was the wrong word, but having no idea how to broach the subject.

Closing the door, Harry darted his gaze about. "This sounds serious."

She tried not to fidget in place, twisting her ring around her finger for the . . . . Oh, she'd lost track of how many times she'd done that in the last hour, alone. "It is. But it's not. Well . . . sort of."

"Um, okay," he said, unsure what to make of her nervous demeanor. "Why don't we go sit in the parlor?"

Nodding, she turned and headed there. She was already settled on one of the cushions by the time he stepped into the room.

"So what's going on?" he asked as he sat beside her.

"I . . . ." She met his gaze and pouted. The way he was staring at her—but wasn't this how he always stared at her?—twisted her stomach into giddy knots. "Oh, God! I'm making this too hard. I'm thinking too much!"

Harry's eyes widened as he watched her clasp her hands together and rock a little in place. "Hermione, what is going on?"

Sighing, her shoulders slumped and she shook her head. "There's something that we need to get out of the way."

His brows rising up over the wire rims of his glasses, he nodded as he waited for her to elaborate. Yet as she stared back at him, her mouth opening and closing soundlessly a few times, he realized she couldn't manage to get out whatever it was.

With another nod, he slipped his arm around her shoulders and sank back into the sofa, pulling her with him. He hoped the more relaxed position would help set her at ease, at least a little. "Just take your time, Hermione. Whatever it is, it's okay."

"That's the thing, Harry," she said in a whisper, curling herself into his side and resting her cheek against his chest. "I'm not sure it is."

After a few deep, calming breaths, she told him about her day with Luna and Cho. He chuckled and nodded throughout most of it . . . . And then she reached their conclusion. She felt the unmistakable shift in his posture as his spine stiffened.

"They said we should—?"

"Yes."

"And what do you think?"

Hermione frowned, the quickened beat of his heart beneath her ear not helping to soothe her nerves. "I think . . . I think if we're to be married, then maybe it is better to know sooner, rather than later, whether or not there's something. If that makes sense."

Harry nodded, letting out a sigh. "It does."

She lifted her head to meet his gaze. "So . . . do you want to try?"

He was already looking at her. She froze in his loose embrace, aware rather suddenly of how close they were. So close, she could feel the warmth of his breath against her skin.

There was simply . . . something in the way he was looking at her. Had he ever looked at her like that before? She couldn't recall, but it made the air catch in her throat.

Bracing her palms on the cushion beneath her, she raised up a bit. Her heart hammered against her rib cage and her lips tingled as he lowered his head toward hers.

The first brush of his mouth over hers was soft, feathery. She felt warmth rush into her face, and butterflies zip through her stomach as she leaned up just a bit more, pressing her lips more firmly against his.

He felt the gentle scrape of her teeth, and the tip of her tongue flicking teasingly. Just as he opened to her, she pulled back, covering her mouth with her hand.

"Oh, I'm—I'm sorry, Harry! Was . . . ?" She chewed on her lower lip nervously before she could finish the question. "Was that too much?"

Puffing out his cheeks, he shook his head. "Not, um, no. Not at all."

She shifted up to sit beside him, again. They stared at the far wall of the parlor in silence for a few heartbeats.

"I don't know if I feel better, or worse that that was nice," she whispered, uncertainty causing her tone to waver.

Harry nodded, though he tried not to grin. That had been nice. If only they'd known that years ago.

"So," he finally said, turning toward her, "the nibbling and licking at my bottom lip?"

A blush darkened her cheeks instantly. "It's just . . . how I start a kiss."

His eyebrows shot up and uttered an appreciative laugh. "Wow."

"Thanks."

Another strained moment passed before he said, "No wonder Malfoy looked dazed afterward."

She scowled at him, but curled into his side, once more.

He sat back again, dropping his arm around her. "I don't know if I feel better or worse, either."

Hermione nodded, smirking as she reiterated his words from the Ministry corridor yesterday. "At least the wedding night's going to be interesting."

"Any chance we can get away with locking Malfoy in the wardrobe?"

Giggling she murmured, "You read my mind." Though, even as she said that, there was a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach that things wouldn't play out quite that way.