A/N: Again – Wow.  Didn't know you all felt that strongly.  Ah well tough noogies.  :P.  Hopefully I didn't lose many readers… (Note: read the title of the story).  Anyway, just a little warning: this chapter made me a bit sad.  Oh, and in response to one particularly respectable review about Harry being OOC my justification is that when one is as pressured and made nervous by his own family, I believe there is a possibility that one might act OOC.  But thank you for your review.

I must look ridiculous, but here I sit, with the shades drawn and my eyes closed, thinking too hard about not thinking.

So when I hear the door close, I jump about ten feet into the air and my heart hammers in my chest.

"Harry?"

She's home. I'm not ready to see her, but she's home.

"Are you here?"

I can't get out without being seen, so I guess it's time to face the music.

"In here," I say and she sticks her head around the corner.

"Hi honey, I'm home," she grins.

"Hi."

"Is that my greeting?" She's still smiling at me and I miss her so much all of a sudden, even though now she's standing right in front of me.

I take a few steps over to her and she's in my arms.

"Hi," I whisper into her hair. "You're home."

"I'm home." She wraps her arms around me and stands on her toes to reach me better.

"I missed you," she says and kisses me.

I can't breathe. I can't think. I can't, I can't, I can't.

I know she senses it because she pulls back and looks up at me, her eyes filled with concern.

"Do you want to tell me what happened?"

No.

I shake my head. "I missed you."

She laughs, "We weren't apart for that long."

"Too long," I whisper, cradling her face in my hands and touching my lips to hers. It feels so different now.

I want to erase Stephanie. I want to absolve myself of my sins. I want it to feel safe and warm and loving. I want to escape in her.

She doesn't object when I pull the ends of her shirt free of her pants and slide my hands along her ribcage. In fact, I can feel her smiling against my lips.

"Maybe it was too long," she laughs, helping me with my task as she undoes the buttons on her blouse.

"Way too long," I agree.

"What, did you forget about me or something?"

I shake my head vehemently. "Never."

"I thought you might like it if I came home early," she smirks.

"Love it," I nod, not sure of what to say.

"I love you," she smiles and works the button clasp on my jeans.

I want to say it. Instead I lean my forehead against hers and close my eyes.

"Upstairs?" she suggests.

"Here."

She laughs, "And I always thought you didn't like to try new things."

"I don't."

I don't want to try anything else; all I want is you. I love you. Hermione.

"What?" She's looking at me with a question in her eyes.

"What?" I return.

"You said my name."

"I did?"

"Yeah."

"I want you."

"I noticed," she grins, sliding her hand inside the waistband of my jeans and down. She cups my balls through the thin fabric of my shorts and her fingers squeeze gently.

"God," I breathe. "I forgot."

"What?" she smiles and leans in to take tiny bites at the skin of my collarbone.

"You… I forgot how good you feel."

"Why are you talking, then?"

She pulls her shirt off in one fluid motion and moves to do the same with mine. I link my hands with hers and bring both to her breasts. She struggles to break free of my grasp.

I take over there, running my thumb along her nipple and watching it harden beneath my touch.

Suddenly I'm in a hurry, but we're standing in the middle of the foyer and I look around wildly.

"Where?"

She understands what I mean and laughs.

"I don't care, Harry."

The couch is out. I don't want any parallels here.

"I'm not going to make it upstairs" I tell her sheepishly and she laughs again.

"Right here, then."

"Here?"

"Now," she breathes, her breath hot and moist against my neck.

And she sheds the rest of her clothes before I even realize what's happening.

She pushes me up against the stairs so that I land on the bottom step and then she straddles my lap and lowers herself onto me.

"I'm sorry," she says, raising herself slightly and then lowering herself again.

I shake my head. "It's… good."


She chuckles. "Good?"

I grab her hips and she sets the rhythm and even though we're in a very awkward position, I hardly notice.

"Better."

"I love you," she tells me again and when I lower my head to take her nipple into my mouth and my fingers move between us and work to heighten the sensations where we are joined, she cries out and her own hands rake at my skin.

"I love you," I return. "I love you, Hermione. I'm so sorry, baby."

She stills and looks down at me.

"Harry?"

I'm crying, oh Merlin, I'm crying, and I push against her and reach blindly for clothes when I am free to move again.

"Harry?" her voice is far away but so close and I can hear the fear in it.

"I'm sorry, Hermione. I love you."

"What… what is it?"

"I didn't mean it. I love you."

The words that were so hard to say only minutes ago are the only ones I have now.

"I love you. Hermione. I love you."

She's motionless and her voice is barely audible when she speaks.

"Who is she?"


*





My own words sound so far away.

The whole time I was gone, I never seriously considered this option. Never.

But now he's standing in front of me, clumsily pulling his clothes back on, apologizing, professing his love and it's so obvious. It's right there in his eyes.

I grab my shirt off the floor and pull it over my head, then grab my jeans.

"Who is she?" I repeat quietly.

"Nobody."

It was right there in his eyes and I expected this answer, but I didn't expect the wind knocked out of me, I didn't expect it to feel like this. Like a part of my heart was left someplace else, with some other guy, the kind of guy whose answer wouldn't have been 'nobody' but a confused 'what are you talking about?'.

He's gone, and he took that piece of me with him.

I pull my hair up and walk into the living room, sitting down on the couch. My couch.

"Who is she?" I ask again, calmly, quietly.

"Hermione, oh Hermione," he sits on the coffee table across from me, "I love you, I do, I want you to know that."

I look beyond his shoulder, out to the blue sky.

"What's her name, Harry?"

"Stephanie."

"Okay." I rub the bridge of my nose, get up and go to grab my bags.

"Where are you going?" He's bewildered; I'm too calm.

"To unpack."

"That's it?"

"There isn't anything else I want to know."

"What?"

"You heard me, Harry." My voice rises. "I don't care if she's sexy, I don't care why or where or how it was. I don't care if you were on top or bottom, it doesn't interest me."

"Hermione, we didn't! I didn't, we didn't have sex."

I start climbing up the stairs and he follows me. I can't stand it. I was doing well thus far because I felt calm, but now there is a tiny ball forming in my throat. It's only the size of a pea maybe, but I know it'll gain a layer with every word he says and it'll gain 3 layers every time I look at him, so I need to get away.

"I was home, she used to go to school with us. And all these people, these idiots, they thought that you and I will never work and I was so tired.  Pressured. And my mom thought Stephanie was this nice little innocent girl..."

"I. Don't. Care. Which part of that did you fail to understand?"

"And I wasn't thinking, it just happened, and then I was so sick, sick of what I've done, so I ran home and then I ran away from home."

"I want you to go now." I tell him as we reach my room.

"Hermione, please..."

"What?" I turn on my heels.

"I never wanted to hurt you."

"What you're doing now, here, Harry, that's hurting me. You looking at me and you feeding me crap about not wanting to hurt me, that hurts." The ball in my throat grows bigger and my eyes are watery.

"I'm sorry." He whispers.

"And this," I motion down the stairs and swallow a sob, "the fact you'd wait for me and kiss me and, God, that you'd..." I take a second to make sure I don't cry in front of him, "have SEX and come inside me, that really, really hurts. It's bloody hurtful."

He pauses in the shock that I called it what I did.  He knows very well that I consider sex and making love two very different things…and the fact that I called it sex must have hit home.

"It's my fault. When I saw you, I knew that nothing else mattered, I just wanted this, and you were there and then I knew what an idiot I'd been. I knew anyway, but when I saw you..."

"You should have had the decency to tell me before we did it, so that I could have walked away with my dignity intact."

"I love you." He whispers, even more quietly.


"And that? That hurts the most, Harry."

I slam the door in his face. Then I cry. I hear him slump against my door, and I know he's sitting in the hallway, just outside my room. That hurts too.


*





How did I ever think I could avoid this?

For a minute there, I did. I thought, okay, this happened somewhere else. Somewhere she wasn't. Nobody knows about it. Mom, yeah, but she's not going to tell. No matter what I've done, I'm still hers and she'll protect me.

It didn't even cross my mind that Stephanie would tell. She'd said that nothing had happened, that it wasn't a big deal.

Ginny is may bloody well be my sister and no matter what kind of dog I am, she knows that I love Hermione.

So I thought I had all my bases covered. I didn't even consider myself.

And it's true; I saw her there and I missed her so much in that moment and I just needed her. I needed to remember the way things were before I met Stephanie and forgot myself.

She told me she loved me and I knew that it was true. She said it so simply, as though they weren't words, but breath.

I thought I loved her before; I KNOW it now.

I can hear her on the other side of the door, taking shuddering gulps of air. I can hear her heart breaking. Or maybe I can feel it because it's my own.

I bury my face in my hands and cry. I cry until there are no tears left and I'm just taking air in, as though trying to refill myself. There's not enough oxygen left.

I'm still next to her door and I hear her moving in the room. I hear the mattress shift and after awhile, there is no more movement. I lean my head back against the door and close my eyes. It hurts because they are so swollen and I marvel at how it may be possible to cry so much that your eyes feel dry.

The sheer exhaustion of the events of the last few hours is making me feel dizzy and without meaning to, I feel myself slumping further and then glorious sleep lets me escape myself for awhile.

. . . .





The door opening wakes me and I forget where I am and what caused me to be there, at least temporarily.

"Hi," I rasp.

"No," she shakes her head and steps over me and closes the bathroom door firmly behind herself.
And I remember.

I groan and struggle to a sitting position. My back aches from my awkward position sleeping outside her door all night and my head aches from all the tears.

I hear the shower running and I get to my feet and stand outside the bathroom door when it stops.

I trace my fingertips along the grooves in the wood of the door and wait for her.

"Hermione?" I whisper her name.

I hear her sigh.

"Please go."

"I can't."

She opens the door but doesn't look directly at me.

"Then I will."

She starts back to her bedroom and I reach out and grab her hand.

She pulls it away and glares at me.

"Don't touch me."

"Okay," I whisper and raise my hands.  "Please, I need to explain."

She shakes her head.

"There's nothing to explain, Harry. I've got it."

"I didn't have sex with her."

I know I've said it before, but I feel like I should say it again. As if it changes something.

"Am I supposed to care?"

"No. Yes. I stopped, Hermione. Because I love you."

She shakes her head.

"What happened, Harry? Did she say no? So then, you hadn't gotten off yet, so you came home to me because I'm the idiot who fell in ... who ... who said yes?"

Her mother had come home.  We stopped because her mother's hand touched that doorknob.  No.

"No! No, Hermione. No. I love you. I love you!"

Tears form in her eyes again and I wish she'd let me hold her. I want to, so badly.

"I don't ever want you to say that to me again."

"I do."

"Don't!" She backs away from me now. "Don't say it, don't think it, don't think you feel it. You don't love me. You don't know what that word means. If you loved me, you wouldn't have been so easy to persuade. And you wouldn't have come home to me and come inside me and told me you loved me and then told me you were with some slut."

I open my mouth to speak and she shoots daggers at me.

"Don't! Don't defend her."

"I wasn't..."

She shakes her head.

"I don't believe a word you say."

"I love you," I try weakly. It's all I have.

"Especially that."

A/N: Please don't hurt me….next chapter will be up tomorrow.