Chapter 10- Can't Heal You

Harry was there in an instant, barely taking the time to wave a stasis charm over his concoction before he was at her side. Hermione felt like she couldn't look up from the shattered plates, rooted to the spot, her heart pounding. A date?

"I'm sorry" that was her voice she was pretty sure, but she didn't remember consciously beginning to talk. "I must be more tired than I thought." She even managed a weak chuckle. This was good, acting nonchalant was good. He hadn't meant a "date" date. There was no way. No need to get all worked up about it.

"You, tired?" Harry joked, wand now out as he carefully repaired the broken china and sent it flying to the sink. Then he was there beside her, gently tipping her chin up until her gaze met his instead of continuing to look at the tiled floor. She gulped, hoping her pupils weren't too tellingly dilated.

"How hard have you been working?" this said with the kind of concern only Harry could give.

"Too hard, I guess."

"Hey, go upstairs, go do whatever you need to do with that paper work, I need 5 more minutes with your breakfast anyhow and then we can come down and we will talk dates, and, well, I still need your help with something so we'll talk about that too. But right now, you go wash your face or whatever it is girls do to feel better, then we'll have breakfast. There will be tea. It'll be good, promise."

Upstairs, she could do that.

She felt like she was on auto-pilot, gathering up her things, crossing the utter disaster that was her living room and wincing almost absently where she noticed her book piles had spilled over in precarious ways. Books were alarmingly close to the fireplace, the windowsills, something would need to be done about it, and soon. But first, she needed to calm down.

Hermione had never really looked at Harry beyond friendship, not really, not while she had been so fascinated with Ron. But, she reflected as she climbed the stairs, even she hadn't been able to ignore Harry's obvious maturity, his determination and his strength. She'd always been attracted to ambition. It had been the lack of it in both Victor and Ron that had ultimately turned her away from them. She knew what she liked and she wanted a partner who did too.

Which was why her attraction to Harry now that he was at his most directionless, as lost as he'd ever been. Well, she'd always been driven to saving people. Maybe it wasn't so surprising after all.

Feeling like she had violently sorted through the contents of her mind, face washed, hair re-secured at the nape of her neck- if no less tangled- Hermione felt ready to go back downstairs and face Harry, find out what he meant by date, find out what help he needed, and hopefully convince him to help her move back to Hogwarts. Maybe she could even get him to consider teaching! It would be a great start for him, give him a chance to re-group before he went to take the Auror test again. She was sure it was just nerves and a rattled mental state that messed him up, not a lack of skill, but he was determined not to go in again nonetheless. Maybe she'd mention both options to him again. And she couldn't imagine living at Hogwarts without him, somehow. Though she was sure she could manage. She'd have her hands full between her own projects and her apprenticing soon enough.

Upon re-entering the kitchen, Hermione was temporarily amazed.

"Where did all of this come from?" she blurted, taking in the two heaping plates situated on her now-pristine kitchen table.

"Your fridge, mostly." Harry said somewhat sheepishly, though his smirk betrayed how proud he was with himself. He put down two fresh mugs of tea before clambouring into her adjacent chair, smiling invitingly as she sat down. She felt unnervingly like a guest in her own home.

"I know I didn't have all of this in my fridge." Hermione replied defensively, "you used up the last of the eggs earlier this week, and I don't think the inside of my crisper has seen fresh veggies for months."

"It may not have all originated in your fridge…" Harry admitted, beginning to shovel omelet into his mouth now that she was seated.

Even though she strongly suspected that he'd spent far too much of both his money and effort on this, Hermione let it slide, preferring to focus her energy on devouring her delectably prepared plate. Harry watched her anxiously for a few more minutes, but when it became clear she'd let it slide he relaxed again and they settled into the comfortable rhythm they shared, content with silence. The familiarity eased Hermione's nerves more than the brief reprieve from the tension had and as she filled up she found herself becoming more hopeful. She had a plan, a new career path, a quest of sorts, and Harry by her side. Well, not Harry exactly she amended, but still, a best friend who finally seemed to be recovering from heartbreak.

"So… we never really did get around to why you showed up this morning." Hermione broached the topic casually, hoping she didn't sound too desperately curious.

"Oh. Umm. Well." Harry paused to chew, suddenly looking anywhere but her eyes. "A lot has happened, actually."

He had begun to push the remainder of his breakfast around on his plate abstractly, hand clenched tight around his fork.

"Good news first, I got a job!"

"Oh Harry that's brilliant!" Hermione exploded, equal parts relieved and excited for him. "What will you be doing? Are you starting right away? When did you get the offer?"

"Well, I was just about to tell you." He said it kindly, with eyes full of laughter, but it still flustered Hermione a little. She was still prone to unnecessary interjections when she got excited and it was still a bit painful to have it thrown back at her.

"I've got a year's contract coaching for The Falmouth Falcons, they're a Quidditch team. I go into negotiations for salaries and players and that kind of thing Friday. I know it's not what I had originally planned and I'm not really helping people but it's something I'm good at, you know?" He finally looked up at Hermione, his eyes pleading with her to understand his position.

"Harry I think it sounds perfect for you! It's only a year so it's not too committed if you do decide to go back to Auror training or whatever else you might do, and it'll give you something completely different to do! The only part I don't like about it is now I can't bully you into going back to Hogwarts with me." She smiled warmly at him, getting up to collect the dishes and take them over to the sink.

"You sound like the agent who approached me."

"Smart agent."

Silence, then "… if you really wanted me to come to Hogwarts with you…"

"Harry I was teasing! I'm happy for you, really!"

"Okay…"

"Harry James Potter I mean it if you give up this opportunity in some strange misguided attempt to help me I swear— "

"Okay Hermione, I get it! But, uhh, I have some not so good news too." Harry took a sharp inhalation of breath, and Hermione returned quickly to the table, suddenly very worried.

"Something else happened the day I got my job offer." Another pause, and then it came out all in a rush, Harry's green eyes purposefully not meeting her own as he turned redder and redder, talking faster and faster.

"I set off some dark magic detectors. It was the day after I came here- you know- and I went into town and there was this new café so I went there for lunch or I tried to and the next thing I know I'm being held in the back by Fleur's little sister Gabrielle and her fellow wait staff and they're telling me I have all the signs of ingesting this black market potion, a relatively new one, know one knows what it does or where you can get it and the Ministry's dying for any information at all on it and it's supposedly impossible to glamour the effects and no one know what or even if it will wear off or if it will just kill me or if it's harmless and everyone is panicking and my magic is being drained by it and finally I just passed out from it all and Bryan said right before I did that if I knew someone with incredible magical strength, someone who's magic is already compatible with my own, I might be able to mask it for an hour or two and that might be enough, at least temporarily, to get me through to my job and that's why I'm here, bothering you, asking for another favour." This finished miserably, with Harry's head almost touching the table in an effort not to meet her eyes.

"Hang on Harry, just hang on. Of course I'll help you, that's not a problem. But you need to back your story up just a little. You passed out? Magical exhaustion? Black market potions?"

"Pretty much yeah."

"You can't just leave me with that. Harry, I have to know what I'm dealing with before I just blindly walk in to this."

"There's, not a whole lot I can tell you…"

"Just, start with what you know about the potion please? I can't mask it, even if I wanted to, if I don't know what it is."

He brightened immediately, and Hermione began to worry. Did he purposefully take something? Was she enabling him by helping him now? She knew that there were serious ramifications here. And if he had begun to use, it would explain the sudden rebound, his seeming increase in power, and he had already shown an inclination for substance abuse if his frequent drunken bouts were anything to go by. She didn't know much about addictions counciling, but she worried she was doing something terribly wrong here. Her thoughts were racing so fast she almost missed the next part of what he was saying.

"Brian called the potion 'desidero impios'."

Hermione almost burst out laughing. She supposed she shouldn't have been so surprised. This was the boy who'd sent her on a goose chase that ended with the Philosopher's Stone in her first year, had her petrified in the pursuit of knowledge trying to find the mythical Chamber of Secrets, and whom had finally ended their adventures on a quest for the Deathly Hallows, objects that were supposed to be no more than figments of a fairy tale. Still, it seemed incredible, ridiculous even, that Harry could've ingested a potion so rare it had skeptics and scientists alike claiming the potion couldn't be more than an urban legend. She wouldn't even know where to begin to research it, let alone mask it as Harry seemed to be suggesting she could. He'd been staring at her with a blend of hopefulness and trepidation while she mulled it over, and she was reminded forcibly of a younger Harry and Ron begging for homework help at the last minute. This project even also included a near-impossible deadline. 48 hours to figure out how to mask a mythical potion. Not to mention letters to send off, both for her apprenticeship and for her new independent project. She hoped some of the research she was now facing would overlap or she'd never be able to sleep again.

"Okay, I'll do it. I'll try to help. But I can't promise anything, Harry. When people say there's next to nothing known about this potion they're not joking. There's literally no information about it out there. You'd probably be better off asking some contacts at the Ministry."

"I don't trust them. I trust you." Harry said simply, and she had to physically force herself to breathe.

"Can I ask you something though?" she found herself saying the words before she had fully thought them through.

"Sure, fire away."

"What does this has to do with a date?"

Harry literally flopped back in his chair as he laughed and she steadfastly tried, and failed, to refrain from turning pink.

"Oh that. I have another favour to ask you, actually. I hope I didn't scare you too bad. It's just, I ran into Luna the same day."

"And how is she?" Hermione carefully maintained a neutral tone, squashing down the little seeds of jealousy that bloomed whenever she thought of how genuinely happy Ron and Luna seemed to be.

"She's really good, radiant really. The new work seems to be suiting her. She invited us down to the Burrow. For a Christmas thing. I said I'd go, but I can't go alone. I can't face Gin alone. I was hoping you might be my date, seeing as they're kind of your family too?" He was sheepish now, he knew how much he was asking of her.

"Harry James Potter."

"If you don't want to go that's alright too, 'Mione. I just, I don't think I'm ready yet to walk into that household alone. I might need someone to hold me back if Malfoy is there. I'm trying to be mature. I don't want to be cut off from them anymore." She thought of how the Weasleys had been the family Harry had never had, and how many bridges he'd burned with his recent behavior, and how this might be his only chance. And finally, slowly, she nodded, trying not to feel too terribly crushed about it all. Christmas with the exes. It had a bad sit-com written all over it.

AN: As always, thank you for reading. Title is a reference to a Five Finger Death Punch song of the same name.