Summary: What will happen when Harry realizes his feelings for Hermione, and how is he going to get rid of that bothersome Ginny? How will Hermione react when she discovers Harry's true feelings, and will their friendship with Ron survive?
Author's Note: H/Hr cliche, fluff, might get risque later on...in which case the rating will be bumped up to M.
Forbidden Love
Chapter 1
A certain raven haired young man awoke with a start in his comfortable four poster bed, as he had so many nights before. His emerald tinted eyes darted about the room with viridian intensity as he attempted to recall the details of the dream that had just woken him so forcefully from what had heretofore been a peaceful night. There had been dark figures clouded in a murky fog of some sort…and someone had been calling his name. Was that right? The Boy Who Lived shook his dark locks of hair away from his sweaty brow and leaned back against the wall before deciding that sleep would be too elusive to continue his nightly rest.
Grunting softly as he carefully lifted his sore appendages from the plump mattress, he trudged down to the common room as quietly as he could while trying to stifle a determined yawn from escaping his maw. Feeling the remnants of sleep still clouding his vision, he reached his hands up to brush the crust out of his corneas. He was still recovering from his abrupt awakening and so lost in thought that he didn't notice the form huddled on the common room couch before he almost placed his derriere upon whoever it was.
Harry almost instantly recognized the shape snuggled cozily against the couch, even though she lay face down, by the large volume placed upon the reading table adjacent to the couch. Tentatively lifting the massive book, he realized it was Hogwarts: A History; it had been left open, face down upon the table. Harry was surprised Hermione would kill the spine of her favorite book by such careless abandon. He smiled, figuring that she must have come back down to the common room to read once everyone had fallen asleep and had dozed off In the middle of her own reading. Well, assuming the fact that she was draped in a chaste, shapeless aquamarine nightgown was an indication of the validity of her theory.
He began leafing through Hogwarts' biography with mild interest; he had never read the book, despite Hermione's constant nagging. Near the end of the tome, Harry felt a bulge against his clammy palm. After flipping a few dozen more pages or so, Harry discovered a small, cheesy muggle romance novel tucked away between two pages. Harry had to stifle a laugh at this, so as not to wake the quietly snoring figure pressed against the couch.
A cross breeze from the separate dormitories chilled the room, and he noticed Hermione shiver perceptively and draw her limbs closer to her torso, hugging herself to keep warm. Smiling softly again, Harry tiptoed silently over to a cupboard pressed against the east wall of the room and retrieved a woolen blanket from its depths and returned to the sitting area. Very carefully, he slid the blanket over her body and tucked it under her. To his pleasure, Hermione smiled and murmured sweet nothings into the quilt wrapped tenderly around her body. Harry stopped himself when he realized he had been rubbing Hermione's back, which was currently facing him. A slight pang of guilt mingled with confusion, fighting for control of his thoughts. He had been going out with Ginny since the end of last year, and here he was nearly feeling up his best friend in the middle of the night!
However, he wasn't so sure about things with Ginny. Last year, he had been certain that he wanted to pursue a relationship with the youngest of the Weasly offspring, but…over the summer, spent mostly at the Burrow with Ron and his family, he had begin to suspect that Ginny didn't like him so much as she idolized the idea of dating The Boy Who Lived. He had felt that this was the case since her first met her in second year. He wasn't sure how he felt about Hermione…yes, he found her physically appealing in a cute, bookish way, and she was always there for him…but…he wasn't sure exactly how attracted he was. Third year was the first time he had looked at Hermione as a woman…but if she had any feelings for him, she hid them well.
Deciding that there would be ample time for introspection the following morning, Harry dragged an armchair as quietly as he could to rest at the end of the couch where Hermione lay. She had rolled over sometime during his pensive musings, and the firelight from the dying inferno played shadows across the features of her face, rolling over contours of the flesh, telling of loneliness…Harry reached down and tenderly brushed a strand of her amber hair out of her face and let him hand rest on her rosy cheek for a moment, gently stroking her face with his thumb, before realizing that such contact had a possibility of waking her up. The combination of the firelight's shadows, the light smile that splayed across her fine features, and the way she had snuggled up against the blanket gave her the appearance of an angel lost deep in slumber.
Hermione's dozing figure had inspired in him another bout of sleep, and he could feel his lids drooping heavily against his eyes. I'll have to ask her about the silly little romance book in the morning he thought. Sleep came, and he gladly gave himself to the darkness.