It was the winter holidays and Harry was spending them at home with his mother, his new stepfather and his sister. He had reached a cautious truce with Snape, but they were by no means friends. His mother had insisted they spend time over the break on family activities. Ginny's parents had taken her and Ron to Romania to visit their brother Charlie, so he hadn't put up much of a fight. Tonight though, he was going out. He put on a fresh shirt and walked outside to apparate. A few minutes later, he was in Fred and George's small apartment. Seamus was having a party at his parents' house and a few of them had agreed to meet at the twin's place and apparate over together since not all of them knew where it was.
He arrived into the apartment amidst a flurry of activity. Lee Jordan and Dean Thomas were there, talking to Hermione in the living room. They were interrupted by Fred and George, coming out of the kitchen holding an armful of alcohol with mischievous grins on their faces.
"We shouldn't let things get too out of hand tonight, remember what happened last time?" Lee laughed.
"Don't worry, Hermione will take care of us and make sure we don't get into any trouble," Harry grinned at her.
"I'm not your mother," she replied, staring into his eyes.
The rest of the guys laughed at the comment, taking it as a joke, as a complaint about having to pick up their messes all the time. They left the room, talking and joking, but there was a seriousness in her eyes that told Harry she was not joking. He continued to stare at her for a few more minutes with an odd expression on his face, as if realizing for the first time that she was not, in fact, his mother.
x
x
They arrived at the party, alcohol in hand. It seemed as though most of Hogwarts was already there. People were already drunk and everyone wanted to talk to the famous Harry Potter, the one who had defeated Voldemort, but he barely listened to the lips moving in front of him. Hermione's words were still ringing in his head. What had she meant by that? He shook his head as if trying to shake the words out. Of course she wasn't his mother, he had never thought she was. He excused himself as Cormac McLaggan droned on with a play-by-play account of the final battle to an interested-looking group of witches.
Harry walked into the next room to see Hermione passing around a bottle of firewhisky with Fred and George, taking liberal sips. Her face was flushed from the alcohol. It occurred to him that he had never seen her drunk before. She saw him enter the room and walked over to him with the bottle, swaying slightly as she walked. When she reached him, she held out the bottle.
"Here, have some."
"Hermione, this isn't like you," he said softly, not wanting others in the room to get involved.
"Isn't like me to have fun? Isn't like me to relax? Isn't like me to think about myself for a change?"
"That's not what I meant."
"That's exactly what you meant."
She thrust the half-empty bottle into his hands.
"I'm not your sister either." She said angrily and stormed out of the room. He sank into a chair and tilted the bottle to his lips.
He watched her from across the room as she talked animatedly with Luna and was struck both by the fact that she was beautiful and that he had known that all along. He tried to tear his eyes away but found it impossible. Her words came back to him. She was not his sister.
Back when she and Ron had first started dating, Ron had been convinced that Harry liked Hermione too. Harry had told him that he was being ridiculous and that he had always seen Hermione as a sister. He had meant it…or at least thought he had. Now that he actually had a sister, he wondered if he had been wrong, if perhaps Ron and Harry had both felt the same way about Hermione but Ron had been the one who actually had a sister and therefore the one who could tell the difference.
She was not his mother. She was not his sister. Who was she?
Hours passed and they both lost count of the drinks they had had. They hadn't spoken since their confrontation, but caught occasional glances of each other through the sea of people. Finally, she stepped out onto the balcony for a breath of fresh air and he followed.
"Hermione," he said cautiously, pushing his way through the curtain that separated the open balcony from the rest of the room. The curtain flapped in the breeze as she turned around to face him.
"I'm sorry about what I said earlier. I was just confused why you're acting like you are."
"Harry," she said softly, "I took care of you for seven years. I took care of you, I watched out for you, because you needed me to. Well, guess what? You don't need me to anymore. Voldemort is dead, your mother is back, you don't need me anymore."
The breeze blew her tangled curls away from her flushed cheeks. Out there in the moonlight, she was so beautiful. He took a step closer to her and offered her back the bottle she had given him earlier which was almost empty by now. She took it and finished it off. He took it back from her and gently set it on the rail.
He reached down and brushed a stray curl out of her face. There had always been a strange closeness between the two of them that he had never questioned.
"Is that why you're upset? Because I don't need you anymore?"
She laughed at his question, a laugh that contained a tinge of madness and desperation and then moved closer to him until they were almost touching. When she spoke, he felt her breath on his skin.
"I'm not upset about that. Quite the opposite actually. I don't want you to need me. I never did. I want you to want me."
He reached out for her, tracing the curve of her hip with his hand before reaching around to her back and pulling her up against him. Her fingers found their way through his hair and she pulled his head down, pulling his lips into hers. He kissed her back passionately and she ground her body against his. She placed her hand on his chest and started to move it downwards between them. He closed his eyes and waited for her to stop. She was Hermione Granger, after all. He felt reasonably confident that her hand would stop once it reached his waist, but it didn't. He opened his eyes as her hand came to rest on the hard bulge forming in his pants, caressing it through the fabric.
"Harry, I want this. I want everything." She looked up at him, her eyes filled with lust and need and his breathing quickened. He had a girlfriend and in the back of his mind he acknowledged that fact, but the alcohol and the effect of this girl being so close to him convinced him that he could deal with that later. His racing heart told him that this was a moment he had been waiting for for so long without even knowing he was waiting for it.
"I have a portkey to my house," he said softly.
"Take me there," she whispered.
He pulled the key out of his pocket and a second later they were standing in his bedroom. He led her to his bed and lowered himself on top of her.
"Hermione, if you don't want this…"
"Harry, I've wanted this for more years than I can count. But I couldn't. I had to be who you needed me to be."
What followed was a jumble of moans and sensations. He hadn't really thought about the fact that she was a virgin until she cried out when he entered her. By that point, it was too late to stop, far too late.
x
x
Harry drifted off to sleep while she lay on the bed, thoughts racing a million miles an hour and a few stray tears running down her cheeks. She had to get out of there. This had been a mistake, a terrible mistake. She couldn't be here in the morning. She hastily dressed and opened the door silently, slipping out and down the stairs. She just needed to make it outside and then she could apparate home without waking anyone. She glanced at the clock, it was 4 am, everyone was asleep, hopefully she could make it outside unnoticed. What she didn't count on was the fact that she was still quite drunk. As she crossed the living room, she tripped on the carpet, sending her flying into a chair which she toppled over and landed with a crash. She tried to get up, but the room was still spinning. After a few attempts, she finally made it back to standing. Her eyes focused and she became aware there was another figure in the room with her.
"Miss Granger," the voice drawled from across the room, "What are you doing in my house at this time of night?"
"I'm sorry, I didn't know anyone was up."
"I was working in my labs, I was just coming up to bed. You didn't answer my question."
She glanced down at herself. Her skirt was slightly askew and some of the buttons of her shirt had been buttoned incorrectly in her hurry. With her disheveled hair, she was sure he already knew what she had been doing in his house. She just hoped he didn't notice the dried tears on her face.
"I was…I was just…I was just leaving," she managed to stutter, feeling as though he had just caught her sneaking around the halls of Hogwarts after curfew.
She moved towards the door, but he blocked her exit.
"And how are you getting home?"
"I'm going to apparate."
He stared at her a moment.
"You're drunk. You'll splinch yourself." He didn't even sound angry, just tired and sad.
"I'll be fine," she begged him, "Please, just please let me leave. I can't be here."
The 'when he wakes up' part remained unspoken.
After a few moments he sighed, pulled on his cloak and opened the door.
"Come, I'll apparate you home."
She followed after him as they made their way to the apparition point.
"I'm surprised, Miss Granger," he said, breaking the silence of the night.
She said nothing.
"Surprised and disappointed," he continued, "I never took you to be the sort of girl who would be sneaking into boys rooms drunk in the middle of the night. I thought you were the responsible one."
"I was. I took a night off from responsibility. Someone else can be the responsible one for a change."
"Me, apparently," he remarked before apparating them both.
They landed on a quiet suburban street. She fell to her hands and knees and threw up in the street. Side-along apparition while drunk was safer, but sometimes had some unpleasant side effects.
She stood up and he continued walking her home. She opened the gate and they entered the back yard of her small suburban house. An old swingset creaked in the wind, already wet with the morning dew. She shivered. Being here was painful.
"I had heard that your parents…" he said softly, barely audible over the creak of the swingset.
"The memory charm could not be reversed. I couldn't convince them they had a daughter. My aunt is staying here with me," she said quickly, looking away from him. She clearly did not like to talk about this.
"You sacrificed so much for him," he whispered, studying her intensely. Finally he sighed and cast a wandless unlocking spell on her back door and the door swung open into the darkness beyond.
"You'll be ok from here?"
"Yes. And thank you."