Touch the Air Softly

by Jessa L'Rynn

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. J.K. Rowling created them and writes them with a genius that has never been equaled. Warner Bros. owns the right to do dumb things with them and doubtlessly will once Jo's finished with them, unless she kills them all. I try to fight the urge to put words into other people's visions. But every once in awhile, something yummy like this comes along and I find myself committing what I have been told is both crime and honor. With all due respect to Jo Rowling and her marvelous world, here is my attempt to "steal from the best".

Chapter Two: Step Gently

It had started out innocently enough. They had talked about everything they had seen over the summer, the Dark Mark, the Death Eaters at the Quidditch cup. They had talked about the new DADA professor and his weird eye. They had talked about every boy they knew and how the summer holidays didn't seem to have changed him one bit. And still Hermione Granger wasn't sleepy and still Ginny Weasley had wanted to know more. Things the boys wouldn't tell her - Ron because he was Ron, and Harry because - well, because he was Harry.

So they talked about a muggle summer, and Harry's suspicions, and Dumbledore's concurrence, though Hermione refused to say how she knew that. Then, when Hermione's refusal led Ginny to the next topic, they talked about the end of last year. It had seemed weird to Ginny - she was suspicious. She demanded, at last, to know what had happened that night in the forbidden forest.

So Hermione told her everything. Almost everything. She didn't mention the time turner, the only thing that had saved an innocent man from a fate literally worse than death. She didn't tell her about Harry's godfather, Ron's rat, and how a supposedly dead man had managed to hide under Ginny's parents' noses for years. Ginny didn't need that, righteously suspicious creature that she was.

But she did tell her about Lupin and his lycanthropy. She did tell her about Harry saving them all from dementors. They were girlish and silly, fawning over Ron's bravery and Harry's, impressed in spite of themselves, though Hermione had been in the middle of it, just as well. And then, on that topic, the thing that had hung in her mind all summer, worrying her, bothering her, making her doubt herself as things rarely did, eventually came out.

She had a crush on Ron - had always had one, for as long as she could remember. Ron at been the one to rescue her from a full grown mountain troll. Well, but Harry had helped, but it was impossible for Hermione to imagine having a crush on Harry. She tried to explain this to Ginny - that liking Harry struck her as something somewhere between trying to catch a myth and incest. Ginny, of course, couldn't fathom it - Harry's myth was still all too real to her then.

She had always thought Ron impossibly brave and selfless - he wasn't mythic and he tried to keep up. But that awful night, in the black and deadly forest, in the face of something horrifying, someone else had registered that way too, someone who had come out into the night, on a full moon, with a full grown werewolf and a convict on the loose, come out to rescue students he hated. She knew - KNEW - in her mind and in her instinct, that his motives were anything but noble. Yet she could only see the look on his face "Be silent, Miss Granger, for once in your life," and it had haunted her.

That had been four years ago, after the arrival feast, and she had yet to come forward or say anything. She was thinking about it tonight because it was her birthday and, instead of spending her time with her friends at the party they had thrown her in the common room, she was sitting on the library steps, wondering what she needed to do with her life.

She thought she'd do her best and blame the thing on McGonagall. It seemed most sensible, since it was McGonagall who had brought the subject up in the first place. A young and charming witch with the highest marks and her choice of the best possible futures ahead of her, what would Hermione expect after her last year at Hogwarts?

Nothing, Hermione had thought, thanking her head of house politely and smilingly moving on.

The truth was that, although Harry and Ron had seemed to find what they were looking for in their futures, she remained bleak and uncertain. Well, Harry was bleak and uncertain most of the time, too, so she felt she had some right to her worrying. What would become of Hermione Granger, book worm, know-it-all, and brain, if you took school and friends away from her? Over the years, she had come to think of herself this way - Harry and Ron's friend, Hagrid's defender, McGonagall's pet. Head-girl and, lately, grouch, she had no certain idea.

Then, she could also blame Ron for this. Ron, who had suddenly noticed the girl who had been desperate for him since he met her in fifth year. Ron, who had decided that it was easier to love a dreamy girl with an amazing mind, than a dream girl with an amazing mind. Those had been his words over the summer. They'd both cried, they both apologized. They were both sorry. Harry was relieved as he sat there, awkward, involuntary witness to what everyone was sure would be the worst breakup of the century. But the truth was that, although Hermione loved Ron, she desperately wanted him to be happy and she would have bet all the galleons in Harry's vault that she would never quite manage it.

She had another interest.

It was only a small one, but she had it.

Her mind had long since told her that every adolescent girl in the entire world eventually fell in love with someone wildly inappropriate, someone wrong for her, someone who would hurt her or couldn't be bothered or someone who would take advantage. Someone she had no business thinking about. Her mind told her that it was her hormones and an idiot infantile crush. It supplied almost all the answers, including the fact that any girl with a mind like hers was bound to go for someone older, someone wiser and more mature, someone whose mind appealed more than his body. Someone bad for her. But it didn't have one answer. How was she, 18 now and full grown by a year, to escape it, when the adolescent fascination hadn't bothered to go away?

Because it wasn't a crush anymore.

Checking Hermione's birthday in September and not knowing wizard rules about it, and being nervous, I went ahead and assumed that she started Hogwarts when she was almost 12, as opposed to almost 11.

I'm sorry this one's short! What do you think? I'd love to hear! Thanks!