Her relationship with Harry is like glass: exquisite and delicate, but ultimately without weight or strength. It hardly seems fair that Ron, who never gave a romance a thought in his entire life, has a love as deep and pure and indestructible as diamonds, while hers is just some cheap imitation. He is her brother, and Hermione her best friend, but she cannot help envying them.
Harry tells her that he loves her, and it always makes her cry. He sounds so serious and so lonely, so she kisses him, and he tastes like cinnamon. She doesn't feel anything but that doesn't matter, because there's not a girl at Hogwarts who wouldn't love to be in her shoes. She's so lucky, she thinks, that she has no right to be unhappy.
She tells herself that she loves him too, and most days she almost believes it. In the end, though, it's all about need. Harry needs her-- needs someone, anyone, to fill that aching loneliness he's carried with him since that terrible night in October. He's drawn to her because she's comfortable and safe and maybe, somewhere in the back of his mind, she reminds him just a little of his mother. He thinks he loves her, because he's too starved for affection to tell the difference. She knows this, knows that it isn't real. But when he looks at her with those desperate eyes, it's hard to remember that it's not really about her.
She hears it in the hallways as they pass between classes, sees it in Professor McGonagall's sympathetic looks. She's sixteen years old, and they've already got her pegged as the trophy wife. When she was younger, she told herself that it would be enough. A passing fondness was better than nothing, and Harry was such a good person. Perhaps they wouldn't have passion, but they could have warmth and affection, and be content. Now it feels like so much routine, and she is so empty, she wonders if maybe she's lost her soul. Her eyes burn, and for a moment the tears threaten to spill out, but she will not cry. She has a role to play, and she will not disappoint them.
Harry is Head Boy, like she always knew he would be. The story demands it. So they all play their parts, and Harry dances with Hermione at the Yule Ball. They are beautiful together, the Head Boy and Girl, though Hermione's eyes keep twitching back to Ron, who grins at her from across the room. Harry doesn't look anywhere; so intent on finding the steps that he forgets to smile. At first she just watches them twirl around the dance floor, clutching at her punch glass like a life-line, the only steady thing in a world that threatens to spin out of control. But then Dean is standing in front of her, asking her to dance, so she does, and for a moment he stirs something in her that she's never felt with Harry. Dean raises his hand as if in supplication, but she shakes her head and then the music stops, the moment over. She can read the apology in his eyes as he leads her back to Harry, but she won't let herself dwell on might-have-beens, so she just smiles and turns away as a little part of her she hardly knew she had dies.
This was her dream, she tells herself. A fairy tale, in which she was the princess and Harry her bold knight on a white horse. But fairy tales end with "happily ever after"; they are not meant to be lived. And no matter how beautiful the dream, it will always be an empty thing, as meaningless and insubstantial as the wind.