The One Who Had the Clearest View

A/N: This is a stand-alone piece at the moment but it may be developed into a fic. I'm not sure yet. I might build on this or I might leave it as it is. Let me know what you think.

About the story: I've never been to New York and have no idea if it snows in October so don't have a go at me if it doesn't. For the record I doubt it does but, for this piece, it does.

Disclaimer: Own nothing, paid nothing, don't sue.

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"Are you sure you have that much time?" she asked, turning off her cell phone and pager, "There's a lot to tell,"

"I have all day. I want you to tell me everything: what you really thought, how he was out of view, how he acted with you, what he was really like, everything. That is, of course, if you want to," the red-head sat across the table in the New York café enthused, smiling in a hope she could persuade her friend to give in.

"I don't know if I want to," she paused a moment, thinking, "But if I do, I want you to promise not to repeat what I say to anyone though,"

"I swear on my life, scout's honour, hand on the Bible, snap-my-wand-if-I-tell, and promise I won't. I've been dying to ask you since you told me that you knew him a few years ago."

The second woman sighed and brushed a strand of brown hair from her face, considering her reply. Why had she let the conversation take this turn? On the other side of the pane of glass separating them from the rest of Manhattan, the bright sunlight of the late October afternoon reflected off the crisp white snow that had fallen that night and continued to do so. On the street outside men and women in suits, uniforms or jeans and sweaters underneath long winter coats brought out earlier than normal scurried past on their way to the main shopping avenues or on their way back to work at the end of their lunch breaks. Inside the café the few regulars sat at their regular tables in their regular groups, discussing the past day or night's events and the waitresses stood behind the counter talking amongst themselves. The bell above the door jingled, announcing the arrival of a customer. She looked up out of curiosity at the face of the handsome stranger who didn't even notice her. It wasn't anybody she recognised anyway.

After another long pause and a sigh of defeat at her friend's eager face, the younger woman met her companion's eyes and said, "Where do you want me to start Alana?"

"How about this for a starting question:" Alana said with a smile of triumph, "What was, in you view, as you were on of his best friends, Harry Potter like?"

"Well," she took a deep breath, "I'm not sure where to start," the brunette thought a moment, "Harry was, to be honest, scared."

"Scared?"

"Yes. Harry was scared. He'd grown up without love, a family, always an outsider and made to believe there was something terribly wrong or bad about him. The Dursleys, on the several times I'd met them, treated him like shit. I suppose they were scared of his powers; but for eleven years Harry didn't know about them; he was fed a lie that his parents had been killed in a car crash. He spent his childhood without the loving environment that most children grow up in and then when he's eleven he finds he's wanted dead and nearly killed by one of the most powerful dark wizards in centuries, who also murdered his parents. You'd be scared too." Again she paused, as if deciding if to say what she were about to was wise, "He once told me that he had feared for his life every day since he'd found out about You-Know-Who and all that. He told me that when we were seventeen."

"Harry had never had anyone to call a friend until he met Ron and I. He'd never known what it was like to be loved or what is was like to have someone to love. Not in that way, in a platonically friendly way. Although the boys would never admit it to each other, we all loved each other to bits. Harry and Ron were my brothers, best friends and part of me all rolled into one. We each thought the same about the other. At first I think Harry was just grateful that we would acknowledge his presence without flinching, but, as we grew up, I think he felt, no, I think we all felt like second families and even personas to each other. Or in Harry's case, Ron, the Wealseys and I may have been like a real family to him, or as close as he was going to get. The Dursleys treated him as an inconvenience."

"As time went on Harry suffered blows. Not just being put under curses or getting into fist fights with the likes of Draco Malfoy, he dealt with them himself pretty well, but emotional blows, heavy blows. Because of who he was the media, especially that nasty 'Rita' bitch, followed and exaggerated things that happened to him. You've heard about the 'Triwizard Tournament' and Cederic Diggory haven't you?"

"Yes," Alana nodded, paying rapt attention to the speaker's every word, "Harry saw him die didn't he?"

"That's right. That hit him hard. He was guilt ridden for months and was nearly swallowed by his own depression. Then the deaths started."

"Deaths?"

"You-Know-Who started getting at Harry by getting at the few people he held close to him. First it was Hagrid, the Hogwarts Groundskeeper who had introduced Harry to the magical world only four years before. You-Know-Who killed him and let Harry find the body on purpose, along with a note that convinced Harry that it was his fault the Hagrid died." Alana gasped in shock. She'd heard that Hagrid had died, but not that. "Then Harry's first girlfriend, Cho. She was kidnapped and Harry was sent her wand and head in a Christmas present. That tore him up for months. He went through a phase of just not speaking. It was horrible. After Cho died he distanced himself from everyone but when Ron's sister, Ginny, who he'd been friends with since our second year, was killed, he just broke down."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, Harry and Ginny had always had a thing for each other, it was common knowledge. She was one of the people who helped him get over Cho and he told me the day before she died he was going to tell her he really, really liked her. It was wonderful; it was like having the old Harry back again." A sad, reminiscent smile played across her face and her eyes looked, not focusing, at something behind Alana, marking the beginning of another long and thoughtful pause, through which Alana sipped her coffee patiently. She hadn't known how delicate a subject this was. The second woman's head snapped up suddenly as she drew herself out of the memories dancing across her inner eye and let her smile fade before continuing her story, "Ron and I set up a picnic by the lake for them so he could tell her. Harry was running late and was about to go to meet Ginny when he got a stabbing pain in his scar. Do you know about the scar?"

"Didn't he get pains in it whenever You-Know-Who was near?"

"Yeah. Well he nearly passed out it was so bad, but he insisted he was fine and left. When he got to the lake there was a crowd around where he and Ginny were to meet. You-Know-Who got to Ginny. The pain was because he'd gotten into the school grounds."

"Oh God. What happened after that?"

"It was like he was sucked into a black cocoon. He barely slept, barely ate, barely spoke and threw himself into his studies so hard he would exhaust himself. He avoided Ron and me constantly. Ron grew angry with him because of this but he was just hurting over Ginny and, although I wish it wasn't the reason, it was that was what brought me and Ron together. Harry's avoidance and Ron's despair drew us all even further apart and, because I couldn't get near Harry to even speak to him most of the time and Ron was so devastated he seemed to cling to me, it drew Ron and me together."

"I remember that during the Christmas of our sixth year Ron went home for the holidays and I stayed with Harry. We were the only pupils at school that Christmas and we actually started to talk properly again. We thought we were getting things back to how they were before until Dumbledore called him into his office on Christmas Eve and told him that Sirius Black, his godfather, had been found dead. Harry came back to the Gryffindor common room and just broke down. He just burst into tears and told me he was terrified of who was going to be next. I can remember feeling so helpless. He just sat there, in my arms, and poured his heart out, but worst of all was what he said to me before he fell asleep. 'Hermione, everyone I hold dear to me dies. I hate this. I'm fucking cursed. Everyone I love dies. It would have been better if I'd Voldemort had done it right the first time around.'"

"He didn't?"

"He did. It was horrible because I knew he meant it. He wished he'd died. He tried to kill himself when Ron died a week later."

Alana gasped and Hermione looked down, willing the tears not to fall. Alana was the only person, other than Dumbledore and Madame Pomfrey that she'd told that to. 'Oh well' she told herself, 'better than bottling it up'.

"Harry stole some poison form the potions lab the same day. I went up to see him before I went to sleep and found him. He was pale, his eyes rolled back in his head and he looked like he'd thrown up blood over himself. He told me in the hospital wing a few days later that he'd done it to protect me. He said that he was scared to get and stay close to people because when he did they died. So you see Alana, that is why I describe Harry Potter as scared. He was scared of love. His parents had loved him and been killed, Ginny, Cho, Hagrid, Sirius and Ron had loved him and he'd loved them and they'd all been snatched away from him. He was scared of going through that pain again."

"Oh my God. Let's move the conversation on then. What was he really like? When he was himself, I mean."

Hermione waited until the waitress with their fresh drinks had left before smiling and continuing, "He was lovely. He was, despite everything that happened, kind, considerate and one of the best friends I've ever had the pleasure of having. He had so much determination to do the right thing. He was calm under pressure and very, very brave and I admire him for being able to put up with the snootiness I held when I was younger," Hermione laughed a little, "When we got older, when he would speak to people that is, he was always so understanding and we could sit talking for hours. He was always fun to be with and he never, ever let the fame go to his head." Hermione paused a second, tilting her head and met Alana's eyes, "I suppose I was a bit in love with him."

"Do you think he was with you?" the red haired lady asked her friend gently, aware they were getting onto an even more delicate subject.

"I don't know. To be honest, I think he was."

"What was he like away from the public eye?"

"Exactly the same as how he was in it because a lot of the time he didn't know he was in it." Alana noticed a hint of bitterness in her work colleague's voice.

Hermione paused a moment, sipping her coffee and Alana waited patiently for her to continue. The sky outside was darkening and one of the waitresses lit a fire in the hearth near where they were sitting. The sofa they were sat on toward the back of the room was a little worn but it was their favourite place in the café. Alana and Hermione would often, when they weren't working, sit here into the night with friends, taking good advantage of the bar that opened at 2pm. Although the two weren't often in the café to see the bar open, as they had today, they promised each other to wait until the rest of their group met before they started drinking after a hard week of work.

"Now that I think about it, Harry was like a little boy lost."

"A little boy lost?"

"Yes. There was something in his eyes that made him seem that way; I saw it the night Sirius died. He was really, wasn't he? He'd never had anyone to really show him the way for years. I think it was just me that thought of him like that though."

"I suppose you knew him best,"

"Yes, I suppose I did. We got a lot closer after Ron died. Very close if you're getting my drift," Hermione blushed.

"No way! Did you really, you know?" Alana tried to get Hermione to meet her eyes and her friend nodded, "Whoa!"

"Drunk on Graduation Night."

"Didn't things get awkward after that?"

"No. We just woke up and actually looked at each other, screamed and said exactly the same thing," Hermione smiled.

"Which was…" the elder woman encouraged.

"Oh shit, we did, didn't we?"

Alana laughed with Hermione and said "Really? In unison?"

"More or less. I can't remember. Then we laughed a hell of a lot harder than this and laughed about it ever after."

"What, no awkwardness?"

"No, we just laughed whenever we brought it up. Probably because we couldn't remember anything that happened after about 3am."

"In my school the girls all thought of Harry Potter as some sort of fabulous sex-god they were dying to meet and the boys thought he'd be some sort of shy, geeky kid who never had a girlfriend. Nobody had clear views of him," admitted Alana from behind her coffee cup.

"Except me," Hermione mused with a nostalgic tone to her voice, "I suppose I was the one with the clearest view."

"So it seems," Alana added thoughtfully, "seeing as you had the clearest view, did he have a nice bum?"

This set both of them off it fits of laughter and earned them a few odd looks from fellow customers. When they had calmed down Hermione managed to choke out, "Yes, it was lovely," and thus set them off again.

When they calmed down Alana let out a shriek as she caught a glimpse of her watch.

"Crap, I've got a hair appointment in ten minutes. I'll have to love you and leave you. Meet you here with the others at 7?"

"Yeah, I'm good for that." Hermione replied, hugging her friend goodbye.

"Oh, 'Mione," Alana called from the doorway as Hermione was gathering her things to leave herself, "Where is he now? I'd love to see that bum,"

"I don't know," Hermione answered with a sad smile, "I haven't seen him for six years."

A/N: Ta da! Let me know what you think. Should I build on it or was it awful enough to feed my dog? It's 11:50 at night so pleeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaassssssseeeeeeeeeee read and review. Flames are welcome because they'll keep me warm in winter.