Author's Note: Chapter titles are derived from Tori Amos's "A Sorta Fairytale."
As the two weeks remaining of the term passed at frightening speed, Harry found himself again dreading the coming of the dance; he caught glances in the hall from a rather apologetic-looking Cho as she trailed along behind her "flock"—he also caught Ron, Hermione, and Ginny shooting venomous glowers in her general direction, as well as some equally nasty looks at her giggling cohorts. To the sound of Hermione's muttered cursing and Ron's low growls were of large comfort to Harry, and as Cho sought to catch his eye, he acted completely absorbed in his Defense books, and refused to give her another thought. As the six of them would be going together, the need to find a date was no longer exactly necessary, removing a tremendous weight from his shoulders—it seemed that he and Hermione would simply sit at a table with some pumpkin juice, watch Neville and Ginny dance clumsily and laugh at Luna dragging Ron about in pursuit of Sickle-Winged thing-a-ma-whatsits, and that would be the blessed end of it. That was, of course, until the last day of term, before NEWT Charms as he, Ron, Hermione, and Neville were clambering up the steps towards Flitwick's class.
"So, Potter, just when I thought you could go no lower," came the piercing and all-too familiar drawl of Draco Malfoy from the foot of the stairs. Harry and Hermione collectively rolled their eyes, while Ron, his eyes dangerous, froze on the top step; after the aggravation of Luna's invitation, he seemed rather ready for a fight.
"Shove off, Malfoy!" Ron said, half turning.
"Perhaps it's you I should be having the word with, Weasley," Malfoy retorted lazily. "Your family of muggle-lovers has obviously rubbed off on him. I mean, the rumors went around, but actually going to a dance with Granger? Though I suppose it fits—you can be an attraction, can't you?" He turned his cold glance on Harry and Hermione's stiff backs. "The mudblood and the freak. It seems you've got your father's taste, haven't you, Potter?"
Harry whirled, his eyes emerald murder beneath a shock of black hair that moved as though in slow motion around them—in a second he was down five steps, almost within an arm's reach of Malfoy's smirking face—suddenly there were six arms holding him back, shouts in the hall, and the sound of his own ragged, shallow breathing as he glared daggers at his nemesis.
"Don't let him get to you," floated that voice of reason through the hazy red fog of passion that obscured his vision. "He's just a stupid git who doesn't know anything, not about you or me or your parents. He's not even worth your anger. Now come on, before we're late."
"That's right, Granger," said Malfoy, sneering. "Keep your little boyfriend out of trouble, can't be late for class after all, can we? We all know that neither of you belong here—why don't you go back to your filthy muggle Secondary School, and drop him at the nuthouse on the way?"
"Go to Hell, Malfoy!" Ron said obtusely before Hermione held up a hand. Neville's eyes darted between his friends and the Slytherins gathering behind Malfoy—among them Crabbe, Goyle, and Theodore Nott.
"Harry and I aren't dating, nor have we ever. We're all going as a group to the dance—but why that, or any part of our personal lives, is any of your business is beyond me. Good day." And with that, Hermione took Harry's arm and began pulling him towards the Charms corridor, which they reached to a chorus of laughter from the Slytherins below. Ron twitched his bag before looking at his friends, the look on his face one of mingled amusement and anxiousness.
"That stupid git—wonder where he ever—like you two would ever date each other…"
Hermione gave him a slow half-glance with narrowed eyes. "Oh—you think that, do you, Ron? And just what, pray tell us, do you base this startling observation of yours on?" Her voice, to the deeper spectator, was decidedly poisonous; Ron, however, didn't seem to notice. Harry hung back a bit, watching them with a guarded expression.
"Well, I mean… er… you just… aren't each other's type, that's all," Ron said, as though that settled the issue.
"Ah," Hermione said dangerously, her head inclined forward so that her chocolate-colored curls fell around her eyes. She seemed to have momentarily forgotten Charms class, as she stood in the hallway contemplatively for several moments. Suddenly she nodded her head as though to herself, again looking at Ron. "You know, you assume too much."
With frightening purposefulness and speed, she turned on her heel, took a step towards Harry, placed both hands behind his head, and kissed him full on the mouth. Harry's eyes flew open for a second, before he allowed them to flutter closed, pondering the feeling of his best friend's lips upon his own. He had only been kissed by one other girl and on one occasion—it had been a kiss of confusion, and tears, bumbling and sorrowful, the lips of one who had wished he had been somebody else, and not himself; these however, were the lips of one who knew exactly what they wanted, what they were looking for in their search to assimilate him, to tame him, to know him, lips who seemed to have already memorized every contour of his mouth, lips that understood his hesitation and every breath he haltingly inhaled. The reality of what was happening fought through the layers of his mind, Hermione is kissing you, you idiot, battled with him—but, oh, what he would give, how he would sell his soul to keep the dream, to hold onto it with all his life like a treasure, to let those lips soothe away his nightmares of death and war and tragedy, to fight away all the ghosts in the corners of his mind.
But, like all dreams, this one ended in the twilight of parted lips, craving more attention and longing for the warmth so recently present; Harry opened his eyes to find Hermione looking up at him, a flash of confusion that mirrored his own shooting through her countenance before being quickly stuffed away. Hazily, as though forgetting where she was and gradually beginning to remember, Hermione slowly walked away from him and towards Flitwick's open door, at length speeding up and putting the customary strength back into her stride—enough, even, to shoot a nasty glance at Ron before she disappeared into the class. Neville hurriedly followed her, leaving Harry and Ron, standing like two statues, alone in the hall.
Ron's mouth had dropped open wide, half shutting and dropping again in the manner of a fish, watching Harry in a kind of horror that did not really reflect jealousy—just outright surprise. Harry, however, avoided his gaze except in small spats, where he darted large, painfully guilty eyes in his friend's direction before looking away again. His breathing was again shallow—his feet and body moved a bit as though he wasn't sure what to do with them anymore. He felt like a traitor to friendship—if friendship, as an abstract, were more than simply that, a force to reckoned with—guilty for liking the kiss, guilty for wanting to keep it and jump off the cliff into uncertainty, to disregard the feelings of all others and how it may affect them, all for the sake of that beautiful mistral of hope. Unable to handle it any longer, Harry grabbed his bag and swept towards Charms, before he was stopped by Ron's hand on his forearm, gripping him firmly.
"Hey…" he said, trying to force Harry to look at him. "Hey, mate, don't worry about it… I get it. It's okay—it's really not worth fighting with you over."
Harry shook his head. "No… I'm not so sure you get it, Ron."
"What? She kissed you—it's not your fault you liked it. Let them all talk, it's actually kind of funny anyway." There was a kind of false cheerfulness in his voice, a kind of resignation that made Harry want to scream. He pushed the doubt and the dream to the back of his brain and smiled.
"Yeah, I guess it is."
The kiss, in time, began to be rather more a joke than anything else among the six of them, and the discomfiture, like an unpleasant cloud, gradually had begun to pass away. They spent a drowsy afternoon that Sunday in the kitchens, sitting in odd positions over one of the long tables and eating the various things the house-elves brought around to them with gleeful looks.
"So, you two, when's the big day?" Ginny said in a artistically breathy voice, stuffing an éclair into her mouth and awkwardly so, as she was lying on her back on the tabletop, her head falling upside down over the edge, allowing her flaming red hair to swing about over the bench below.
Hermione tipped a bottle of butterbeer into her mouth languidly, leaning the base of her head against a bench from her position on the floor. "Oh, just as soon as possible," she sighed dramatically. "I think I'll drop out of Hogwarts—I can't possibly have children and be in school. To Hell with being Headgirl!" She looked up at Harry, who was lying on his side on the bench above her, working on a rather sticky sugar pastry. "What do you think, Harry dear? Seven children? Eight?" She bated her eyelashes.
Harry just barely stopped himself from snorting. "Oh no, poppet, we simply must have ten. I couldn't imagine knocking you up on the kitchen counter any less times than that." He was beginning to think that all of them had had just a few too many butterbeers, as the comfortable haze that had obscured his mind suddenly made some of the jokes they had been exchanging look pretty good. Ron, beside Ginny on his stomach, gave a shout of laugher and nearly fell to ground. Hermione reached up and half-heartedly smacked Harry's arm, before popping the cap off yet another butterbeer.
"Oh, no, you won't be knocking me up anywhere, Mr. Potter," she said, taking a long gulp of butterbeer. "You will be wooing me with roses and wine every night for bearing all those blasted children, and then I might consider allowing you to take me to bed."
"So you want roses, huh? Not red—doesn't seem your color," Harry said idly, removing the butterbeer from her hand, taking a sip, and replacing it.
"No," Hermione said, somewhat leeringly. "Blue. Like the ones Professor Sprout has, with the purple tips. They always look like they haven't opened up yet. You'll get those kinds of roses for me, seven every night, and a bottle of sweet wine mixed with butterbeer and strawberry cordial. And you'll make a rainbow above the stroganoff, and there'll be five hippogriffs in the backyard, and lots of sunflowers."
Harry felt a gentle smile touch his lips, ignoring Neville's chuckling, Ginny's giggling, and Ron's blatant snorting. "And what for dessert, love?"
Hermione handed him the butterbeer so he could take another sip. "Peach pie, with levitating blueberry ice cream that makes you feel like you're floating."
"Oh God," Ron half-groaned in amusement, "if only the rest of the school could hear you two now, we'd never get the end of it."
Luna reclined back on her arms on the other bench, looking up at the ceiling. "You know, I've a strange feeling that we're all a little bit smashed," she said, unnecessarily.
"Just a little," Neville concurred from his place atop the table, lying perpendicular to Ginny and searching about for another éclair.
"Who cares?" Harry drawled warmly. "Ron doesn't care about the pomp, and since Hermione's dropping out of school to bear my children, it doesn't matter that she's a Gryffindor prefect. And they expect the rest of us to get up to something—this is pretty tame for a Sunday afternoon on holiday."
Hermione leaned back and laughed, meeting Harry's eyes for a moment before returning to her butterbeer. Harry, hearing his words replayed in a strange slow motion within his mind, privately shared Luna's assertion that they were all completely smashed.
The Room of Requirement again provided what was required—in this case, a few couches, a good-sized pile of pillows, and a veritable stack of Floobsie's and Stein's Hiccups n' Headaches Potion, which was the #1 recommended by bar wizards for hang-overs. The six of them had stumbled in from the kitchens the previous night (how they had found it they had no idea) and fell upon the soft couches in heedless heaps, asleep almost before they hit the pillows.
It was in this way that Harry awoke, sharing a couch with a half a snoring Ron (the other half being located somewhere on the floor), his head pounding as though a thousand African town criers were sounding the war cry within his brain. He groaned lowly. Something of the previous day hit him—small flashes, and the seed, just flowering and hopping to become fruit, of an idea, formulated in a drunken stupor. Yet somehow, even in the sober world, he did not want to immediately dismiss it. It flitted before his vision, and he felt himself smiling gently into the accommodating darkness of the Room of Requirement, listening to Ron's snores. After a moment further, he pulled himself upright, rubbing his forehead gingerly, and peered about in search of glasses; as he searched the darkness, his eyes, blurred and fuzzy, groggy from his exploits, fell upon Hermione's sleeping form, flopped over on a chair, an arm casually flung over the edge and fingers dangling above the floor, where Ginny had fallen on a pile of pillows, mouth slightly open.
Smiling again, and finally finding his glasses, Harry placed his feet lightly upon the ground and, with a last look back at them, slipped out the door.