Disclaimer: I don't own HP or any of these characters. That belongs to JKR, Scholastic Books, Warner Brothers, etc. This is just something to pass the time while waiting for the next book.
Part VII : Dealing with a Loss
There are times in life when you are so shocked that you literally cannot begin to comprehend what has happened.
This was one of those times for Harry. He didn't know what to make of Ron's departure. It was incomprehensible. He didn't want to believe that his best friend had just walked out on them like that. He didn't want to believe that he had lost his first friend ever because he fell in love.
The only problem was he was still waiting to wake up.
From his side, he heard Hermione sobbing and once again he could move. Embracing her tenderly, he held her in his arms while she cried.
It was completely awful. It was bad enough that through no fault of his own he managed to lose his best friend but he chased hers away as well. He wouldn't blame her for being angry at him. In fact, he rather expected it. Harry knew that while Hermione and Ron had their share of fights, Hermione valued her friendship with Ron very much.
He just hoped that she didn't walk away from him. Losing his best friend and the woman he loved in one night would be too much for anyone to stand, much less him. It was hard for him to trust people to be there for him because he did not have anyone like that in his life for so long. Becoming friends with Hermione and Ron had been so good for him. He did not know how he had been able to subsist without them, alone on his island. Ron's refusal to believe him during their fourth year had hurt more than he could say. His fervent hope at that time was for Hermione, at least, to believe and she did that so readily, it warmed his heart.
The parallels to that situation were frightening. Ron had just walked out, refusing to listen to Harry's side of the story. Only in some ways it was worse, because Harry did not know what Hermione would do and she had so many options. She could blame him and leave him completely alone. She could decide that it wasn't worth losing their best friend to be with him and end their relationship, almost as soon as it had started.
Or she could decide to stay with him and try to work everything out. Harry knew that she most likely would—no one had as much faith in him as Hermione did, not even himself. Yet he couldn't stop that nagging, worrisome voice from telling him that of course she wouldn't do that, he wasn't worth the effort.
The sounds of Hermione's tears brought him back to the present. He always hated it when she cried because he felt so completely useless. He suspected there was nothing that could stop Hermione's tears right now, short of Ron coming back to say that he was wrong and didn't mean everything that he had said. That was not likely to happen so Harry was left to his own poor devices.
He said the first thing that came to mind. "I'm sorry, Hermione. Please don't cry."
Her tears continued to run, but she still answered him. "I know. I'm sorry too."
"What have you got to be sorry for? None of this is your fault."
Hermione looked up from his chest. "Don't tell me you're blaming yourself."
"I'm not. It's just that I feel like I should have done more."
"You're not mad at Ron for not believing us?"
Harry sighed. "Yes, a little. But I know that he's hurting so it's easy to forget about that. I would have been more upset if he had come bursting in here, trying to assert some sort of prior claim on you or something like that. But he didn't and so—"
"No, he didn't," Hermione agreed softly. "I had rather expected him to say something like that, but he didn't and I can't help but feel bad. I underestimated him and it was really vain of me to think that he had those sorts of feelings left over after such a long time." She sighed. "So I feel guilty because I know that I should have trusted him more. At the same time, we never got the chance to tell him about us ourselves and so it is not our fault."
"No, it isn't. But somehow, it feels like it is, just like you said." Harry removed his arms from around Hermione to take her hand. He led her over to the couch where they both sat down. She quickly snuggled against him and his arm came around to encircle her waist. They sat there, neither one knowing quite what to say.
Unfortunately, they couldn't just sit still together forever, no matter how appealing that option sounded to Harry. So he asked, "What should we do now?"
Hermione closed her eyes to consider her response. It had been a very long day. "I think we should go out to eat."
"Eat?"
"I know that's not quite what you expected me to say. The thing is that we can't do anything about Ron right now. He's too angry to listen to us. And if it weren't for that blasted article, he wouldn't be angry at us. We would have told him, although not this soon. It's selfish but I want some time with you for myself. If I had my choice, I wouldn't have told anyone about this for some time so we could just be together without worrying about what people might do or say."
"We had those two days together," Harry felt obliged to say.
She smiled at him. "Yes, thank goodness we did. But it's not enough. I don't think there's enough time in the world for me to spend with you. My point is that there's nothing we could do about this. If the news hadn't been spread about, we would be out enjoying ourselves but now that's hard to do. But instead of calling all of our friends' fires, I think we should just spend some time together. We'll let everyone know tomorrow. They've no right to expect a daily update on our lives. And we can ask them for their help about this situation tomorrow. But for tonight—"
"You just want us to enjoy ourselves," Harry finished for her. "That's going to be a little hard to do."
"That's why I only suggested dinner. Besides, I'm hungry and I don't feel like cooking. Now, if you want to go into the kitchen, that's fine with me too."
He snorted. "I doubt that. Trust me, love, there's a very good reason why you didn't find too much food in the kitchen when you looked this weekend. My culinary skills are rather . . . explosive."
Hermione laughed at his words with a genuine smile lighting up her face for the first time in hours. "Thanks for the warning, love. Now unless you have some place in mind, I know the perfect spot for us to eat."
****
Hermione grinned at the expression on Harry's face. It came close but it wasn't quite a look of horror. He did look rather scared at the choices before him, however.
"Hermione," Harry began, "could you tell me what sort of food this is again?"
"It's Thai food, love. It's very good and so I wanted to take you here to introduce you to it."
"There's curry on this menu. That's not a good sign."
Hermione could no longer restrain the laughter she had been holding in. The last time she had taken Harry out to a new restaurant, it had been an Indian one. He had inadvertently ordered one of the spicier curries on that menu and had never been the same since when it came to trying out new cuisines.
"I am so glad that incident is amusing to one of us. I know that I'm still traumatized from that experience." Sarcasm infused Harry's choice of words.
"You liked the nan at least," she replied, trying to calm herself down.
"Yes, the nan was very good. If it weren't for that, I would have starved that evening. There was no way I could have eaten that . . . spicy thing that I'd ordered."
"Well, there's plenty of things on the menu that are not curry."
"It's not as if I know anything about the stuff that's on the menu though. What's to stop me from having another disastrous order like last time?"
Hermione sighed in exasperation and leaned over Harry to point at his menu. "Honestly, you can be so helpless at times. See here, Harry? The little red peppers? They tell you how hot a particular dish is. One little pepper isn't very hot at all, while ten is off the scale."
Harry glared at her. "You're enjoying my predicament, aren't you?"
"No, I'm not. I was just pointing out the little peppers that tell scared little boys how spicy everything is. That way you won't wind up with a dish that's too spicy to eat."
"Scared little boy? Me? That sounds like a challenge."
She rolled her eyes. "It wasn't and you know that. It was merely an attempt to stop your complaints."
"I have trouble believing that."
"That's not my fault."
"No, I never said that." Harry glanced at his menu, shuffling through the various pages. He stopped at one and said, "All right then. I've decided what to get. I'll order this."
Hermione looked over to see what he was planning to order. "Harry, have you lost your ability to count? That has twelve red peppers!"
"I know. Just wanted to show you that I'm not a scared little boy."
"I can think of better ways for you to prove that." Hermione smiled wickedly at the thoughts that began to pervade her mind. "Why don't you try one of those later?"
He grinned right back at her. "I might, at that. That would be later though. For now, I've made up my mind."
He was really impossible to deal with, Hermione thought to herself. It was no wonder that he had so many bad eating experiences. "I thought you didn't like food that's too spicy, love. Trust me on this one—tiger's tears is not what you want to order."
"Sorry but I've made up my mind. This little boy is not scared to try anything."
"You're going to regret that later."
"I'm sure that even if I do manage to burn my tongue off, you'll be able to think of something to make me feel better."
Harry and Hermione grinned at each other, able to put their worries
behind them for the moment and simply enjoy their time alone together.
Author's note—That's another chapter that's finished and as a side note, my sympathies go out to anyone whose tried an authentic version of what Harry's just ordered. In any case, I hoped that you liked the chapter. Please leave a review letting me know what you think, good or bad. Thank you.
Nappa—*shakes head* You did take that threat rather seriously.
*sighs* You really hate the idea of D/Hr, don't you. Ah well.
HarryNZ—I don't know if you're reading this but I hope Nappa
wasn't too hard on you.
Animagus-Steph—I know that feeling. I felt the same way
about my organic chem. lab in college, although the only thing that saved
my grade in that class was the tests as I was awful at lab practicals.
On any normal day, things would work out fine but NOT when I was getting
graded. About the more human remark—I think of as the faults we all
have as being the defining trait of being human. So when I remarked
that Ron does seem more human to me, that reflects that it is easier for
people to find fault with him. I think people, especially H/Hr-ers,
are hard on Ron without remembering that we all make mistakes and we all
have our own insecurities. And about Hermione being an only child—I
know nothing is really said about her family, aside from the time we see
her parents in CoS, but she just seems like the classic oldest child to
me. Overachieving worrywart and all that.
Brian—Yes this is sort of a developmental chapter. I do
have to deal with Ron somehow and I don't think he would be happy about
the way he found out about all this. At the same time, I don't think
that Harry and Hermione should have given him a call to get his approval
during the weekend. They don't need his approval to have a relationship
but they do want to stay friends. And yes—we should make an H/Hr
drinking game. If anyone should stumble upon a bad H/Hr fic, the
alcohol (or caffeine and sugar if you're underaged) should make it better.
Heaven—Thanks for agreeing about the R/Hr scenario's end.
Although I do hope never to see it because I think that's a best case scenario—that
both get too tired at the same time. Of course, right now, I would
be happy with book five. *sigh*
ChrisMiss—I hope your exams went fine—and I do hope they're
over considering how long it's been since I last updated. And yes,
it does suck that they are getting hounded so but considering the media
presence that was in book four—I think that they'll just have to learn
to deal with it all. That or ship off Skeeter to a very far away
place.
Also a big thanks goes out to archforge
(it's going to take a couple chapters at least to find out about Ron),
Lee, AgiVega, Hazelmist (that's what everyone thought
^_^ ), LizD (yes they will make up but Ron needs time to cool down
before he'll listen to reason), Eric, aaliyah-potter, sugar-n-spice,
smegul, toni, Janna Rain, Noodlejelly, Padfoot's
Biggest Fan and TiffanylovesHerself for their reviews.
I wish I could express how much I do appreciate you leaving them but please
believe that I do enjoy reading each and every review I get