Title/Link: Breaking Up Harmony
Team: Appleby Arrows
Position: Keeper
Season 9 Round 10
Task: Your OTP always seems to be going through a rough patch
Bonus Prompts: n/a
Summary: Hermione always thought that her spats with her boyfriend Harry were just rough patches that she had to endure in order to make their relationship thrive. She was wrong. (Harmony break up fic, blame Round 10 of the QLFC! )
Word Count: 2322
Other prompts include: (still prompt hunting, if anything else applies)
Hogwarts: Summer Seasonal Challenges
Days of the Year & Religious Events
30th July - International Day of Friendship: Write about a new friendship
International Body Piercing Day
Dermal conch: (word) Towering
Creative Ice Cream Day
Neapolitan: Hermione Granger and Vanilla: Harry Potter
Gryffindor Characters
Hermione Granger
Let's Put on a Show! Summer Challenge
Venue: (setting) library
Summer Camp - Sports Cabin
Crazy Golf
Stage 1 - Windmill Course: 1,000 words to proceed
I Wanna Be A Yogi Bear
Chair Pose: [Object] Chair
Tug Of War
Hogwarts - (Setting) - Beauxbatons
A/N: This hurt immensely to write, and I maaaaaaay have channeled a lot of my feelings towards my ex's when writing this. Surprisingly enough, it was therapeutic, and now I'm tempted to write a second chapter to turn this into a Vikmione two-shot XD Let me know your thoughts on that!
Thanks to my Captain DaughteroftheOneTrueKing, ScarlettWriter91 and the rest of my team for reading through and beta-ing.
I hope you enjoy! :)
Breaking Up Harmony
Hermione couldn't remember how long she sat in the library, immersing herself in her work in order to distract herself from her most recent spat with Harry. After being stressed about preparing her boyfriend for the First Task, and trying to mediate between him and Ron, to try to salvage their friendship, it seemed like she would have been given a chance to relax and rejoice that Harry flying against the dragon seemed to have been the best strategy of all of the Champions. However, before she could properly rejoice in him coming out of the First Task practically unscathed, Ron appeared, mumbled something about how he reckoned someone was trying to do Harry in, and then the two became best friends again.
That somehow meant that Hermione, once again, got shunted to the side, despite being Harry's girlfriend. It hurt, that Ron was accepted back so easily without even an apology, and nearly as soon as he rejoined the fold, he started treating her poorly again. A small quip here, a complaint there, and Hermione just smiled and endured, even as Harry made no move to stop it, because they were her best friends, and she was supposed to stick it out for her best friends. She could endure it for them. But after a particularly nasty heckling from Malfoy and Parkinson, Ron added in his own backhanded compliment in an attempt to cheer her up.
She snapped.
Words were exchanged, tempers flared, and when she rounded on Harry to back her up, he merely looked between her and Ron, looking lost, before agreeing with the redhead. Hermione fled before they could see her tears fall, and she took refuge in the one place she knew no one would dare judge her: the Library.
Finding her table in the back, she willed back her tears as she set up her work station. Just a rough patch, just a rough patch, she chanted to herself as she remembered her father's words, not the first time she's said that in the attempt to calm down and think through the situation rationally. Instead of running at the first instance of a fight, go and calm down, before talking it through later. But as she sat there, her mind running over all of the instances of 'rough patches' between her and Harry, she realized that there were a lot of them, and there never seemed to be any reconciliation.
Hermione had to admit that the start of her infatuation with Harry must have started towards the end of First Year. They had stood in the Potions Riddle Chamber, she had hugged him tightly, and then she had sent him off through the flames to face who they now knew was Quirrel and the parasitic Voldemort. Seeing him turn from her hurt, and Hermione knew, in that moment, that she would do everything in her power to prevent that from happening again.
She and Harry had exchanged post addresses before getting off the Express a few weeks later, and she made sure to look up his phone number so she could know he had gotten home okay. She worried that his relatives weren't treating him right, and she knew she was right when he had phoned in the middle of the night towards the end of the summer, begging them to come get him.
Her dad had driven the 45 minutes at one in the morning, to find Harry was anxiously waiting by the door with Hedwig's empty cage in his arms. After her dad picked the lock on the cupboard under the stairs to retrieve Harry's school trunk, (that was a story she would get out of her dad later), they left, making sure to lock the door behind them. The car ride was silent, except for the smooth jazz that played on the radio, and Hermione barely managed to contain her curiosity. They made it home, set him up in the guest bedroom, and then they all headed to sleep.
The next morning, Harry had explained his encounter with Dobby, his warning, and the Dursleys' reactions, which included the bars on his window, the locks on his door, and the catflap for food.
Hermione was livid.
For Harry's sake, however, they spent the next three weeks just being kids, and Hermione knew she was falling head over heels for her best friend.
Second Year seemed to be fraught with danger, with the Chamber of Secrets and the petrifications. The student body was frightened, and people were pointing fingers again. But for Harry's sake, Hermione diligently researched what could be in the Chamber causing all of the petrifications, and who might possibly be siccing it on the student body.
When she came to from her petrification, Harry sat next to her, her softening hand in his, and it looked like he had been crying. It looked like he had been run over by a lorry, and when they hugged, he clung to her like she was going to disappear.
The next day, they officially started going steady, and Hermione was on Cloud Nine.
Neither of them had much experience with dating, and so they took their relationship one step at a time. Hermione knew they each had their own faults that they needed to work on, but they were teens! From what she overheard from Parvati and Lavender as they chatted in the dorm, this age was for figuring things out, and so Hermione didn't press issues. She nagged too much. He acted like a kid. And while she liked him a lot, Hermione felt stressed whenever she thought about hanging out with her boyfriend. She and her parents had managed to rescue him from the Dursleys the first week of vacation, because they all knew he was not in a good home situation, and he needed to be safe.
They took him with them when they visited her grandparents in France, and as her parents paid a lot of attention to Harry, Hermione couldn't help but feel short with him for soaking up the attention.
It was irrational and unkind to be annoyed, because Harry hadn't grown up with the love that she had, but Hermione had been a single child for so long, she couldn't help the jealousy that reared its head.
Harry had definitely noticed, and it had caused their first official fight when she refused to talk about what was bothering her. This was where she had had her conversation with her dad, about relationships perhaps having rough patches, but they would always have the chance to come back together stronger than ever..
She latched onto the idea, unwilling to let go of one of her first friendships. They could work anything out, couldn't they?
She continued to chant 'rough patch, just a rough patch', to herself many times that year. Between the stress of her classes and time traveling, and blocking out time to spend with her boyfriend, Hermione felt herself tearing at the seams.
She lost count of how many times she and Ron fought, and Harry taking his side every time. Crookshanks and Scabbers...the Firebolt...oh, Ron had been livid with her, and Harry had merely been disappointed, until Ron had fanned his anger. Hermione withstood it stoically in public, and only let herself cry in the safety of the library. She threw herself into her work, into acquitting Buckbeak, into making sure she could keep Harry safe despite him not talking to her.
She didn't think they were broken up, but…
Merely a rough patch, merely a rough patch.
Fourth year was the worst. To be honest, however, the rest of the school treated them like they always did: with suspicion when something went wrong, and adoration when something went right. It nearly gave Hermione whiplash at how fickle the masses were. She doubled down on her efforts to keep Harry alive, and after Ron had split from them after the Goblet fiasco, Hermione noticed that her and Harry actually got along better than when their redheaded friend was with them.
It seriously made her think, and reevaluate their entire relationship.
After the First Task, however, Ron ambushed them as soon as they walked out of the Champion's Tent, as if he had been waiting for them. Her heart sank as the interaction between him and Harry played out, and Ron was accepted back into their friend group without so much as an apology for his jealousy, his acidic comments, or his hurtful behavior the past month.
Must be nice to be universally accepted, flaws and all…
Hermione held her bitterness to herself, but couldn't hold back when Ron started up his backhanded compliments again, Harry never rising to her defense. She went to bed angry more often than not, and she was just getting so emotionally tired of everything.
She burst into tears as she hid her face in her hands, grateful that her usual towering stack of books would be enough to hide her and deter those around her from approaching. The students of Hogwarts knew to leave her alone when she was in the stacks, however, the students of Durmstrang and Beauxbatons didn't have the foresight.
A slight knock on her table startled her out of her thoughts, and Hermione looked up in surprise to find Viktor Krum shyly standing before her. He had become her unwilling study partner when she had been researching the First Task. Her reputation for being more stern than Madam Pince when it came to the books around them led him to seek her company to keep his fan club at bay. She discovered him to be a very intelligent person, once they got past the language barrier, and her respect for him increased when she found out that he spoke four languages total.
So while his presence here wasn't unexpected, his timing was the absolute worst. His expression, however, morphed into one of concern upon seeing her tear stricken face, and she hastily tried to wipe her tears away when he drew closer.
"What happened? Who hurt you?" he asked, and just those words made her heart twinge as she realized that her boyfriend and his best friend, whom she was crying about, had never asked her that question.
"Just boy troubles," she replied, her throat thick. He reached for her and helped wipe tears away, and his gentleness almost brought a fresh round of tears to the surface.
"Tell me," Viktor said before settling down next to her, and she did. She unloaded all of her grievances, her troubles and fights with the boys, and all of the rough patches she and Harry had gone through.
When she finished, she felt parched, and was grateful when Viktor transfigured a cup from one of her spare quills before filling it with a quick Aguamenti spell. She drained the cup before handing it back to him in thanks.
"These are just rough patches, though. I'm sure we'll come back together stronger than ever. We always do." She did not seem confident in her words, however.
"Those do not sound like rough patches. They sound like you two are not fit for each other," he explained. Hermione furrowed her brow and opened her mouth to retort, but he raised a hand to stop her. "You say that you and your boyfriend really like each other. But every time he gets the chance to prove it, he picks someone else. Normal relationships don't have fights, they have encounters that they problem solve together. He is bad boyfriend, and they are both bad friends."
They continued to sit, and talk, and when they separated to head to bed for the night, Hermione was convinced that Viktor was right. It seemed like Hermione had always given 110%, and Harry only gave when it was convenient for him. She deserved to be treated like a person, and not a commodity.
The next morning, Hermione pulled Harry aside before they headed down to breakfast. It hurt her heart to do this next step, but she knew she had to, for the sake of their friendship.
"Harry, this year has made me realize that I love you, but as a brother." It shattered her heart to say this, and she knew that she would always love him as her first friend and boyfriend. But this needed to be done. "I think we should break up. You have too much on your plate to worry about a girlfriend anyway…"
His response had been fairly lackluster, and it left Hermione feeling worse than last night. She managed to deal with her classes, staying mostly silent aside from when directly called upon by the teachers, and she heard more than one classmate confess relief that she didn't try to show off that day.
Ron noticed as well, but instead of asking her what was wrong, he asked Harry.
"We broke up today," Harry replied, to Ron's surprise.
"Oh, I didn't even realize you two were dating! Who would even want to date a bookworm like her anyway?" he added, laughing, and as Hermione froze in her tracks in the middle of the hallway at the exchange, Harry just nodded, laughed, and agreed with him.
She fled to the library.
Hours later, Viktor found her surrounded by the comforting books once more, a kind word and dry shoulder at the ready. She didn't think anything of it, only wanting a friend to be with her, but when Viktor said all the comforting words as a friend that Harry should have said as a boyfriend, she knew in her heart that they were never going to last. Harry valued Ron too much, and what Hermione thought were rough patches, were just spats. Harry had always chosen Ron, and Hermione deserved someone who would put her first. Harry couldn't give her that.
She only hoped that, one day, someone else could.