Author's Note: Thank you to those who stuck with the story after my small absence. I appreciate it so much that this chapter features Dumbledore. Unless you hate Dumbledore, then oops. Sorry. He is a crazy manipulator, but very fun to write about. And he gives answers (…somewhat? Well, in the way that he gives answers), and even though they're vague, they're something that you guys have been demanding from the beginning with angry expressions and pitchforks raised in your hands.

Disclaimer: We haven't had one of these in a while. And by a while I mean since chapter five. I don't own Harry Potter and I'm not J.K. Rowling, you know the drill.

How to Love

Chapter Ten: The Nineteenth of September

It was Hermione's birthday. Harry hadn't even realized it until lunch, when Ginny asked Ron for the date.

"Da nine – nineteemth," Ron mumbled through his food. Ginny rolled her eyes and smiled at Harry, whose mind was reeling.

"September nineteenth," he said aloud, as though it was a spell that would reveal its importance to him immediately. And, in a way, it did, because Hermione coughed loudly, five seats away from him. Nobody else seemed to notice, however. The image of Hermione's birthday in writing underneath her picture was clear in his mind. He regretfully remembered the rest of the family tree from her favored DNA book, the proof that she was an orphan…just like him. "Hermione's birthday."

Ginny choked on her food for a moment, recovered, and stared at him. "What?"

"Hermione's birthday," he repeated, "is today."

Ron just looked at him and shrugged. "Let's throw a bloody party for her," he said, looking away from Harry and giving Hermione a scorching look. Ginny giggled.

"Oh, you're nice," Harry said, annoyed for reasons he himself could not comprehend. Hermione had been nasty to him in the past, so it was odd for him to feel bothered when someone was being nasty to her. Maybe it was because while she made her unnecessary comments, she was intriguing. She held mysteries that Harry was determined to figure out.

And there was always the fact that Hermione didn't care about his fame. This was very unlike Ginny, who was now looking at him with her head tilted to the side and whose eyelids were fluttering a little too frequently to be considered normal. Around Hermione, at least, he was just like everybody else.

So if it was her birthday, what was Harry supposed to do? Give her a present? His stomach twisted horribly with guilt. There must have been something he could do. As he filed out of the Great Hall with the other students and walked with Ron and Ginny to the Gryffindor tower, he wondered if saying "Happy birthday" would be good enough. Was he even considered a friend of hers?

His thoughts were interrupted when Ron was waving at him frantically. "Harry!"

"W-What?" he asked, his mind not completely drifting away from Hermione and her fourteenth birthday….

"Take a seat, mate. You look weird."

Harry obeyed and felt the impression Ron and Ginny made in the couch beside him. "I'll be right back," he said moments later. He could hear the springs of the furniture as his friends stood to question him, but he quickened his pace and their voices were unheard.

It wasn't much, he thought to himself as he extracted the galleons from his trunk, but it was something. Harry didn't want to think of Hermione's reaction for fear that it wasn't going to be a good one. Although he couldn't blame her, really. He had to admit this was literally the least he could do. Would she think he saw her as poor and needy? Harry shook the thought away as he walked down the spiral staircase, back to the common room.

Hermione was there, sitting in a corner, hiding behind shadows and a book. Harry wondered for a moment if it really was the nineteenth of September. She was acting as she always did: away from everyone else, reading and reading.

Harry snuck behind the couch that only Ron was sitting on – Ginny had found no reason to be with her brother since Harry had left – and sat on a chair beside Hermione's.

"Hello," she said politely, however he wasn't sure if it was polite of her to not look at him.

"Happy birthday."

This time, Hermione looked at him…for a long time, and like she had never seen him before. "You remembered," she told him. She said it in a strange, airy voice.

"Er, yeah," he said awkwardly.

"I almost forgot it myself, you know," Hermione continued as though he hadn't spoken. "Until I overheard your friend Ginny –" she said Ginny's name as though it were a sin to speak of "—say that it was the nineteenth."

"You heard that from five seats away?" Harry asked, bewildered.

"I've adapted to good hearing after a while."

He wasn't sure how that worked exactly, but he didn't comment. To make up for his awful present – if he could even call it that – he wouldn't bother her with questions. "Er, here," he said, handing her a few galleons. "You gave me this, and I thought I'd return it."

"But I gave you money back for buying me a DNA book," she said, looking at the money as though she were expecting it to jump out of her hands. "I don't need this."

"Consider it a birthday present," he said, shrugging as though the idea had come to him that very moment.

"A what?" Hermione asked. Her eyebrows were raised and the money was still in her hands that were now shaking.

"A birthday present," he repeated. He wished he didn't have to.

"I…okay." She looked confused. It was strange, but what she said next was even stranger. "Should I thank you?"

Harry was more confused than she looked. He had subconsciously expected her to throw the money back at him. Had she never been taught proper manners, or was the idea of receiving a present so new to her that she did not know how to react? Or maybe, he thought, was this not even considered a present to her? Although by the sound of it, she sounded like she didn't even know what a present was….

And then Harry remembered his younger self, trapped in a cupboard and staring at the dusty clock that would read midnight. He always stayed up on the night of July thirtieth to witness July thirty-first begin, and then he would wish himself a happy birthday. Nobody else would.

"No, it was nothing really."

- - - - -

Harry needed to see Dumbledore. Immediately.

He was rushing through the corridors, and it was a relief that the early risers that Monday morning were staring at him because he was rushing at this early hour, not so much because he was Harry Potter – after all, by the time they registered his identity, he was yards away.

There were the gargoyles in front of the headmaster's office, and Harry smacked his scar-bearing forehead. How could he be so stupid? And then he wondered just how far his stupidity could go, because he was walking towards the gargoyles anyways. "Er," he began awkwardly, "I need to see Professor Dumbledore."

The gargoyles didn't move. He didn't expect them to.

"Er, please may I see Professor Dumbledore?"

Nothing.

And so Harry waited. It was rather ridiculous, he thought, just waiting outside the headmaster's office to talk about something that he probably wouldn't get any answers about. But it was the only chance he had, really. It might have been five or ten minutes, Harry wasn't sure, but eventually his waiting was over when the gargoyles jumped out of the way and Dumbledore appeared from the top of the staircase in dark blue robes.

"Hello, Harry," he said casually, as though this meeting had been arranged.

Harry wiped debris off his school robes that he wasn't sure was even there. "Er, Professor, I'd like to speak to you. Please."

"Ah, yes, I did hear a student trying to enter my office," Dumbledore said, staring at the wall behind Harry with piercing blue eyes. "I'm sorry I didn't arrive here sooner. But what is it you'd like to speak to me about?"

Harry suddenly felt very nervous, and he wondered if this was even a good idea. "I want to talk about Hermione Granger, sir."

Dumbledore didn't say anything as he led him to his office, which made Harry uncomfortable when he walked into the room filled with odd instruments and portraits of previous headmasters without a spoken invitation.

"Sit, please," he ordered. Harry obeyed. "I have to say, Harry, that I knew you would ask me about Miss Granger. She is quite the mysterious young lady."

"She knew about the cupboard the Dursleys kept me in," Harry said more forcefully than intended. He added, "Sir," as an unspoken apology.

"Ah," Dumbledore said. He folded his hands together and interlaced his long fingers. A minute or so passed before he spoke again. "She's certainly smarter than the average third year, I must say. Miss Granger asked me about the cupboard, however I assure you I did not tell her anything."

Harry remembered lying to her, telling her that the cupboard was not what she thought it was, although he assumed that Dumbledore had lied to respect Harry's privacy, while Harry lied to keep the attention on her, and to remain as normal as possible in her eyes. "Thank you."

"Although how she picked up a small detail that you told Professor Hagrid, and held onto it to question me about, would mean that she is just as much curious as she is about you as you are about her."

Harry found this hard to believe, although he tried to word this more politely by simply saying, "Sir, I don't think that's the case."

"But Harry, I do. You see, Miss Granger asked me other things about you. Yes, she was quite curious. I might even say she was a bit concerned as well."

"I don't think Hermione was concerned," Harry said as nicely as he could. "She's not like that."

"On the outside," Dumbledore corrected him. Harry didn't understand, but he assumed that this was just because it was too early.

"I gave her a birthday present –" Okay, well, it wasn't enough to be qualified as one, but Harry continued, "—and she acted like she didn't know what one was."

Dumbledore smiled at him. Even his light blue eyes seemed to be smiling. "That was very generous of you, Harry. I'm sure that she appreciated it more than you could understand."

Harry opened his mouth, eager to not only disagree but ask him to respond to the second part of his sentence, however Dumbledore lifted his index finger just an inch into the air, then rested it back amongst the rest of his interlaced fingers.

"Harry," he began, "you must understand that Miss Granger hasn't been through the best of times. The simplest acts of kindness are strange to her."

"What do you mean?"

"I will respect her privacy as I have respected yours," Dumbledore declared. "And so I will not tell you what she does not want you to know."

"But she doesn't seem to want me to know anything," Harry said.

"You must earn her trust. This will prove to be quite difficult though, I'm afraid."

"How did you gain her trust?" he asked. Harry hadn't even realized how he had ended up sitting on the very edge of his chair.

"I gained her trust from helping her through something I hope she never experiences again," Dumbledore said. He was no longer smiling. In fact, his expression made it appear as though he had not smiled in years.

Had the headmaster not looked so grave, Harry would have asked exactly what it was that Hermione experienced. And so he took another route: asked a different question. "Professor, er, Hermione was absent for a week, and she told me that you with her at the place that she lived."

Dumbledore's expression barely changed; if anything, he looked even more grave. "Again, I wish to respect her privacy. I was simply helping her sort things out so that her visit next summer would be a little more…welcome."

"But," Harry said, his mind spinning, "she said she was Muggleborn. How did you –"

"Deal with Muggles?" Dumbledore asked. It was strange to imagine the headmaster, dressed in bizarre robes, "sorting things out" with Muggles. Harry had hoped this mental image entered Dumbledore's mind as well, and would make him a bit happier – perhaps he would even laugh at it – but the headmaster's expression remained the same. "It wasn't easy. The Muggles Hermione had lived near –" Harry's curiosity was growing exponentially, and nearly exploded at the fact that Dumbledore had said "near" and not "with"…why? "—were rather tough, I have to say. It wasn't easy to negotiate with them, but I assure you Miss Granger will be safe for the next summer."

Hermione's safety wasn't something Harry really worried about. She always seemed to be able to defend herself, standing with a scar that had previously been engraved in her neck, cuts on the sides of her face, and a look that would frighten most people out of her way. "Why wouldn't she be safe?"

"I did say that she hasn't been through the best of times," Dumbledore reminded him. Then he leaned forward towards Harry and spoke in a low voice. "I really do hope you will be able to help her, Harry."

"But how?"

"Teaching her," he said plainly, and before Harry could ask what he could possibly teach her, he continued by saying, "how to love."

Author's Note: No, Dumbledore doesn't necessarily mean love in the sexytime way. You know how he is, with love being a weapon and everything. I just thought I'd be clever and relate the story to its title. And sorry if there are major typos and things that don't chronologically or grammatically make sense. It's midnight and I'm tired and I can't be bothered to proofread this chapter, so I'm just praying that although it's short, it has enough content to satisfy my lovely readers.