I greet Melissa, and find her to be quite personable. She's a little perky for my taste, and overuses the word awesome, but apart from that, I like her.
"I don't really follow a lot of the wizarding news, me being a squib and all," she tells me apologetically, "But I know Harry is like, world-famous and you're really accomplished yourself."
What a relief it is to be living next to somebody normal, who doesn't seem particularly interested in our pursuits, and has no perception of what we're like. I'd half expected one of Harry's crazy fans to take up residence on the floor above and set up a charmed video recorder on their balcony.
"So, have you guys been together since Hogwarts?"
"Sorry?" I look around. "You mean Harry and I? We're not together."
"Oh. I just thought, well he always talked about you and then he asked me to come and see the place when he had it painted and he was sleeping in the girly room."
"Yeah, we had a discussion about that, believe me. We're friends, rooming for now."
"That's awesome."
There it is again. Awesome.
Harry comes out through the open sliding doors and leans over the fence. He flashes her a quick grin and then blames the mess in the house on her.
"I should have gone to the gym earlier, so he can clean up." She tells me.
"Like you need to be more toned." He shoots back over the fence. I fight the urge to roll my eyes, but really this is classic Harry. I've gotten used to it and it's not that I mind it exactly, but I guess I didn't expect a friendly blonde with big boobs living next to us.
We're disrupted when the pizza guy brings over lunch. I had stayed in this house for longer than Harry, but was too busy to do much furniture and silverware shopping. Which probably goes a long way to explain why our cupboards are filled with paper plates featuring every cartoon character Disney ever created. Oh and the Muppets too. Plus Snoopy and that damned bird of his. Woodstock, I think his name is. I settle on Linus and throw a couple of pizza slices on his face.
"We need to go shopping. This isn't environmentally friendly." I mutter to myself.
"How about tomorrow? I'll go with you."
He tells me about the America and how he thinks they're all mad, driving around on the wrong side of the road. He's had lunch with Ron everyday, and the big redhead is still panicked about some Quidditch thing. And still a huge and shameless flirt. It's nice to catch up, even though he was owling me twice a day every day when I was home, asking about everything from what colours of towels I got and whether it was true that coloured toilet paper was bad for your ass. My mother read that letter and raised an eyebrow when I told him to get three ply white just in case.
"Why would he ask you that?" She asked me later during my very short visit to her and my dad's house.
"What? He just doesn't want his tushy eaten away by toilet paper dye."
"You sound, I don't know, like an old married couple or something."
"Mom, don't start."
"He writes all the time. His head is forever in the fireplace to chat with you. He asked me if you liked Rice Krispies because he's planning on making you breakfast in the morning when you guys move in together. He wants to please you. I see how he looks at you."
"The way he looks at anything that walks on two legs and has a second X chromosome." I rolled my eyes. After years of hanging out with Ron, Harry had developed a few of his "charming" traits.
"Right."
"Yeah, right. First, it was Cho. Then Parvati and then Lavender, who could forget Lavender? And the water girl from his last game? The woman selling peanuts down the street? Them too. The maid at the Hershaw's Magical Motel once who came in and spelled her adoration out in Spanish. I think that was in Spain, but I can't remember."
"Why are you upset?"
"I'm not upset, mom." I close my eyes and shake my head slightly and then promptly change the topic.
He grabs the crust off my plate. "You don't want it?"
I shake my head. I'm still wonky from that conversation. Since when were mother-daughter conversations that complicated? He eats my slice happily, then crumples up the paper plates and throws them in the garbage. I stay sitting at the table and he's wearing a sign of concern on his face.
"You look tired."
I shake my head.
"I want to take a walk." He grins.
I groan. "Already? Don't you have jet-lag or something?"
"You going to come with me or will I have to drive that overpriced silver toy on chrome rims?"
"You can, if you want."
"Come with me?"
"Okay." I sigh.
"And put on your bathing suit. It's nice out and I want to go to that swimming hole I heard about on the way here."
"No way."
"You don't have to go all the way in, just a bit, that way it's fine if you get wet."
"I know you, Harry. You'll drag me in and then a gigantic tidal wave will swallow me and pull me under and they'll find my body washed up in Cabo or something, half devoured by sharks, the rest of me regurgitated on shore."
"That's revolting." He grins.
"If I go, you won't let me get eaten by a great white?"
"I won't let you get eaten by a great white shark or a bull shark or a tiger shark."
"Well, if you say so..."
I get up to go change and he follows me upstairs. I turn left to go to my room and he turns right to go to his. I'm digging through my suitcase when he's back at the door, already in his trunks.
"Do you have a bikini?" He asks me.
"Yes, why?"
"See, that's why I got dressed so quickly."
"Of course, I don't have to wear it."
"But you will?" He asks hopefully.
I gently shoo him out of the room and put it on anyway.
The truth is, I don't mind the swimming hole. As long as I don't have to get anywhere near the water. I like looking out at oceans and other big bodies of water, though, love the vast openness of the water, the limitless expanse of it. It doesn't feel insurmountable to me; it feels like opportunity. But damn, this was a swimming hole.
I offer to let Harry drive to the beach, but he declines, good-naturedly joking that if he crashed my car, he'd be indebted to me for the rest of his life. I wink at him and tell him that we could come to some sort of alternative repayment agreement. He smiles at me with his eyes as he always does and we carry on our tradition of shameless flirting.
The swimming hole is fairly deserted and I'm grateful for it. I park on the grass and pull off the t-shirt I'm wearing over my bikini top and step out of my flip flops. He ogles me for a moment until I glance at him and I hurriedly look away and admire the scenery.
"Come on," he says. "Hurry up."
I follow behind him as he races down to the water. He stands at the edge and beckons me.
"Are you just going to stand up there and watch me?"
"The view isn't so bad," I tease him.
"Oh, come on. Don't make me come drag your scrawny white butt down here."
I shake my head vehemently and poison him with my glare
"Look, you don't have to dive in," he promises.
"No thanks. Just go get those gigantic elephant feet of yours wet so we can go home." I say.
"You know..."
"Oh, don't even!" I laugh. "Like I haven't heard it a million times before."
"Because it's true."
She looks me over, "Sure it is."
"Wouldn't you like to know?" I wink at her.
"I'm sure Lavender would fill me in."
"Hey!" he shakes his head. "If you're not down here by the time I count to three..."
"What will you do to me?" I tease.
"Miss Granger! Such thoughts!" Harry clutches his well-formed chest in mock horror.
I cross my arms and pretend to glare at him.
"I'm not afraid of you."
"One."
"No."
"Two..."
"You'll have to come and get me."
"Two and a half."
"Now you just sound like my mother."
"Hermione!"
"Harry!" I mimic. "You know I hate the water."
"Too bad. Two and three quarters."
"If I drown, you'll feel guilty for the rest of your life."
"Not likely. Three." He charges up the sand after me and I take off down the bank with him in pursuit. He catches up to me and grabs my arm, and flips me onto his broad shoulders and carries me to the water.
"You're going to get wet,Hermione. You can't avoid water and swimming forever."
"Harrrrrrryyy! No!"
"Please?"
"Why?"
He grins up at me, "Because I don't want to play by myself."
I raise an eyebrow. "Well, when you put it that way..."
I stand at the very edge of the water while Harry takes a few paces further out.
"It's warm!" he calls, encouraging me to come out further.
I shake my head. "This is as much as you're getting out of me."
"Chicken!"
"I am not!" I say indignantly.
"Then come closer," he says, lowering himself into the water. When he rises, his chest comes up shiny and smooth, like glass. I swallow hard.
"You only said I had to get my feet wet."
"I lied." he moves back toward me.
"No, Harry."
"Yes, Herms." he laughs at that damn nickname Grawp cursed me with and when he reaches my side, he grabs my arm and pulls me forward. I lose my balance and fall forward into the lake, which sends Harry into peals of laughter.
"Harry!" I sputter, getting back to my feet.
"Oh, don't be such a baby," he chides me. "It's just water."
"Which I hate."
"You take baths don't you?" he asks, rolling his eyes for good measure.
"Yeah, but that's different."
"How?"
"The bathtub is just a little smaller and there aren't ... creatures... in it."
He shakes his head.
"You're ridiculous. In a very intelligent and studious way."
"Thank you." I move back towards the car and he reluctantly follows me.
"Can we go?" I ask, almost whining.
He sighs, "Yeah, fine."
"I can't believe you did that" I shake my head.
"I can't believe you're whining about it."
I sulk for a moment and then realize that I'm soaking wet.
Harry walks back over to where we dropped our things in the grass and roots through his bag. He hands me a towel.
"Here, hold this up."
"Why?"
"So I can change."
"Here?!" I ask incredulously.
He shrugs, "Where else?"
"Home, maybe? Somewhere there is some privacy?" I shake my head incredulously at the habits he's acquired traveling with a pack of Quidditch-playing men for so long.
He laughs at me. "It's not a big deal, Hermione. Look, we can't get the interior of your new car wet, can we?"
"I don't mind, really" I tell him.
He grins at me, "Come on, Herms. Be a friend. I'll do the same for you."
I sigh and hold up the towel, making completely sure that I won't see anything. For my sake.
"You can't – " he starts, suddenly nervous.
"I'm not looking." I shake my head.
Obviously, he'd never gotten dressed and undressed within the confines of a beach towel because he is slow getting the trunks off. I guess all his macho bravado about changing on the beach was just talk. I stifled a giggle. His height doesn't help him either and I think the trunks must have gotten tangled up around his ankles, because he reaches down to get them off, but loses balance and falls into me, taking me aback enough that I momentarily let one corner of the towel go.
Now, I'm not trying to look. I don't even want to look. He's yelping and I'm frantically grabbing at the terrycloth with my left hand, but there it is. His jeans come on in no time at all and when he stands up, I know he knows. It's the mortified look on his face that tells me so.
It's not that I'm not embarrassed - I am, but I rationalize he was openly ogling my cleavage earlier, so we're even. Not really and not exactly, but it's as good as it's going to get.
"You said you wouldn't drop it!" He shoots at me, red faced.
"I didn't drop it, you fell on me." I try to explain, but he's decided to pin this one on me.
"And?"
"And what?"
"You know..."
I pick up my beach bag and stuff both our bathing suits in it, then shake the towels out to get rid of as much of the sand as possible.
"You've seen one, you've seen them all." I try to be flippant, then thank God for the tan I picked up back home, it's nicely covering up the blush in my cheeks.
We get to the car and he sits down first. "I'm so embarrassed." He moans.
"Harry, why? You've been with girls before, you mean to tell me none of them ever walked in the bathroom when you were in there?"
"No! They didn't."
"Oh, well it was a matter of time."
"Herms, the water was very cold. I'm just saying."
"Oh my God, I can't believe we're having this discussion. You're fine, you look fine, long and lean, whatever, let's drop it and go have dinner."
I've piqued his interest and I back out into the main road.
"So, the long part is good, but I have to ask-"
"No, you don't." I laugh and he eventually joins in, so I figure once again, amends have been made in the way we've grown to know them.
