Author's Note: Thanks for the wonderful reviews. And a big glomp and thanks to my beta-reader Bingblot who has wonderfully provided the title for this chapter and helped me fix a couple of things.

Chapter Two

~Of Dreams and Showers~

Harry watched her run up the stairs; he then sat on the couch, watching the last of the flames of the fire die down. He sighed; he had needed to say that to someone, to finally get everything out of his chest. It was a tiring thing to live with the guilt inside of him. Now that it was all out in the open, he felt much better. He stood up and stretched, his mind filled with many thoughts racing at light speed. Thoughts about Hermione. What had possessed him lately? He couldn't keep his eyes off her. Somewhere along the years, he had fallen in love with her; he had woken up, seen her and that was all he needed. Now, not a day went by without him thinking the dreaded What ifs.

He never had told her, he had dropped subtle hints, but either she didn't notice, or she didn't want to notice. Most other people hadn't really noticed either; he did stare at her a lot, but sometimes those stares were mistaken as mental lapses. But it had been her own fault; she was the one who had kissed him on the cheek, making him consider his feelings for her.

At first, he hadn't told her because he didn't think that Voldermort needed another person to hurt in order to get to him, Harry.

But even after Voldermort was gone, he didn't tell her. Why hadn't he? He didn't know. Oh well, nothing to do but wait. A thousand years maybe, but still, only wait.

* * *

Wake up

Leave me alone, she thought to herself and muttered this out loud. She was dreaming, the most wonderful dream too. She was sitting under a tree in some kind of forest; she could hear the sound of a waterfall in the otherwise silent surroundings. She was reading peacefully, her mind completely relaxed. She was wearing her long brown hair on a plait and she wore nothing but a long sheet so as not to get hypothermia.

Wake up!

She groaned and looked up from her book, closing it and standing up gracefully. Her long hair fell down towards her bottom and she turned around to see a blurry figure beckoning to her. She squinted, trying to see who it was, but everything was going dark. She couldn't focus on anything anymore. She saw a flash of green and everything came into focus again, but she was not on the forest anymore. She was in her bedroom in the Gryffindor Tower.

"Hermione, wake up!" It was Harry, he was shaking her shoulders. His round glasses were sliding off the bridge of his nose.

"Let me sleep," she muttered drowsily and rolled over, but he grabbed her shoulders and shook her more. "What is it?!" she whined.

"Everyone's gone off to Hogsmeade already. I told Ron we'd catch up to him; he went off with Parvati Patil." He sat down on her bed as she sat up against the headboard.

She stretched her arms and looked at him. But he wasn't looking at her face. She looked down at herself, then rolled her eyes and grasped the sheet, wrapping it around her chest. "Oh, for Merlin's sake, Harry, look up at my face."

"Never seen you wear so little fabric," He shrugged and grinned at her. She hit him playfully on the arm.

"Oh stop. It's just a shirt. If I was naked, I wouldn't want to even know how you would react. Besides, I'm your best friend; you should be ready to see me at my worst," she said rubbing her eyes and letting the sheet fall down. She was wearing a two-piece set of pajamas. The top was blue with yellow moons and stars and it had spaghetti straps and a low neckline; the bottom consisted of long pajama pants with the same colors and designs. "Hand me my robe." She pointed at the blue robe that was perched on the foot of her bed.

Harry reached for it and threw it to her and waited until she wrapped it around herself and got out of her bed, barefoot. She then made her way to the bathroom, leaving the door open as she brushed her teeth. "So why did you 'ave to wake me up?" she asked through a mouthful of toothpaste. She spit it out and washed her mouth with water.

"I told you, everyone's at Hogsmeade," came his voice from the bedroom.

"Oh, right," she replied as she stood now in the doorframe of the bathroom. "Didn't it cross your mind that if I was still asleep it meant that I didn't want to go?"

"Er… why not?" he asked, puzzled. She sighed and stretched again, yawning slightly.

"I was having the best dream I've had in ages," she replied and crossed her arms, still upset that she didn't get to finish her dream.

"Well," he said and grinned innocently, "I promise that the next time you dream about me, I won't wake you up."

She scoffed and laughed teasingly, eyeing him. "If I had a dream about you, Harry Potter, it certainly wouldn't be my best dream. One of the very worst, actually." Liar! Her mind shouted at once. Shush, she thought to herself. This, however, didn't wipe the grin off of his face; instead he stood up and walked over to her, still grinning. She gulped and took a step back.

Of course dreaming about him wouldn't be her worst dream, it would be the very best. If only he knew what he did to her in her dreams.

No, don't come closer, she thought frantically, taking several steps back inside the bathroom as he kept walking towards her. She couldn't think straight with him within three feet from her, she got inside the shower and he snickered and stepped in with her.

"Where are you going to go now?" he asked, still snickering.

"W—what are you doing?" she stammered. He got really serious for a moment and looked down at her, a tinge of crimson appeared on his cheeks. He blinked a couple of times and his own thoughts drifted back to his mind momentarily. It seemed that he had forgotten all about his feelings for her because they felt so natural when he was around her. When he was alone, he could torture himself by just the mere thought of her. But when he was with her, he could act so natural, that he sometimes wondered how on earth he could be such a good actor. Or maybe he wasn't and she only pretended to not notice.

And now, he considered the situation he was in. He looked at her again, and it seemed to dawn on him that she was wearing only her robe over her pajamas, and that they were inside of the shower… together. Alone. He could feel the heat rising in his face. However, he decided to throw all this aside and concentrate steadily in another thought, one that didn't include the hundreds of ways that this situation could turn out as.

"Are you afraid?" he asked and grinned charmingly at her. She smiled.

"Yes," she said mockingly and smiled up at him.

"You should be," he said and started tickling her and she squirmed with laughter and tried to tell him to stop in between hysterics. "What?" he asked, as if he was deaf, while she tried to get his hands off her sides. "I'm sorry, I can't hear you!"

"Stop… please… stop…" she managed to blurt out, laughing still. He tickled her harder and she squealed. She fumbled with her hands behind her; her sides already ached from laughing so much. She found the tap for the cold water and turned it on, making him gasp and stop tickling her.

"Turn it off! Cold!" he said as the water soaked him and he put his hands over his head to try to stop it, Hermione grinned and stepped out of the shower, leaving the water on as she too dripped with water. He got out after her and shivered, his teeth shaking. "It's winter!" he protested, shivering.

"Aw," she said, though she was shivering too. "The baby's cold?"

"You'll pay for that one," he said as he ran towards her. She ran out of the bathroom and into her dormitory. The five beds were already made; she guessed a house elf had come and arranged them. She ran to her bed and stood there, panting. Harry caught up to her and grabbed her pillow and started hitting her with it. She gasped and grabbed Parvati's pillow, as they both giggled and laughed, hitting each other.

Half an hour later, they were both on her bed, panting after the pillow fight, lying beside one another. Hermione looked at Harry and smiled. He smiled back at her. "I think we both just regressed to being eleven," she pointed out, sitting up and her breath steadying; he sat next to her and nodded.

"Good times, good times," he said sighing. "I just sounded like an old man, didn't I?" Hermione nodded and sniggered. Harry pinched her cheeks. "Yes," he said teasingly "Nice little girl."

"Oh, stop it," she said standing up and arranging her bed.

"Leave that," said Harry. "The house-elves will do that for you. That's what they're here for."

Hermione turned her gaze upon him, sternly.

"You still with the whole spew thing?" he asked, grinning.

"Yes, and it's not spew, Harry—"

"I know, I know, it's S.P.E.W." he said. She looked up at him, he remembered. Oh, come on! Harry isn't Neville, he doesn't forget things that easily, she thought. She needed to give him a bit more credit.

"Get dressed," he said, "We can catch up to Ron and Parvati in Hogsmeade."

"Yeah, okay," she said "Now get out while I take a shower and dress."

"Didn't you have a shower already?"

"Funny," she said shooing him out the door and closing it behind her, laughing slightly.