A/N: Posting out of guilt and love and mostly guilt so love me and not hate it?

_The Day You Lost Me_

CHAPTER 7

"I thought that maybe, just maybe, you'd look at me one day and see me as just as much more."

Hermione.

How's your summer so far?

I'm sorry, I couldn't help it. Hasn't it always been that way, anyhow? The only time I used to write you was during the summer or winter, when we were far apart.

Though now that I think about it, we never really were that far from each other. I suppose I could have even taken the bus or the train and been at your house in less than an hour. And now I can be there in a second. I can be there and stand outside that door, and see just how big that house is...and then I remember that somewhere inside that big house is my best friend, who I have been waiting for for the past four years.

And this is the same exact thought that has been running through my mind the past week. That in one second I could be on that porch and ringing that bell, and then I'd see you and you'd see me, and then we'd have another row and I'd say something and you'd say something and one of us would have to walk away. Though since it is your house, I guess I'd be doing the walking.

This has a point, I promise.

The point is that I should never have waited. I should never have sat there waiting and hoping that you'd return.

I should have followed you and stopped you. I should have followed you and brought you back home.

But I didn't, and the more I think about it, the more I ask myself: Why?

Why didn't I follow you? Why didn't I drop everything in my life to follow you? I'd done it before. I'd dropped out of school to save a world, and yet I couldn't drop anything to save our friendship. And the funny thing is that the more I compare the two – the world and our friendship...I should have saved our friendship.

Instead, I stayed. I couldn't bring myself to follow you and I didn't know why. All I could do was imagine that one day I'd see you again. All I could do was try to always remember you.

And it worked for a while. I could still easily remember your smile, and the way it could always make me sure that whatever I was doing was right. I remembered that seeing you smile always somehow slowed down time for me, because then I could just let go of whatever problems I had because Hermione Granger was smiling...and the world would always stop for your smile.

I remembered you laugh – and I cannot put into words how much I miss hearing it. Sometimes I feel like I do, like it's there echoing in the back of my head, except that through the years that echoing got lost along the way, and I couldn't help it because I'd forgotten how you'd used to laugh. All I could remember was how lively you'd be, and how bright your eyes were, and natural your laugh was...but I couldn't remember your laugh. I couldn't picture it, I couldn't hear it. And for a while I thought I'd never hear it again.

And your eyes. I don't know what it was, but I used to be able to look into your eyes and just see everything. I don't even know what "everything" is, but it was just that grand - it was everything to me. Everything good and everything possible and...I could look into those eyes and feel so sure about whatever I wanted, because that was just it.

You were so brave and amazing and beyond everything else in the world that ever stood a chance to astound me.

So I'd built this image in my head all this time about how brilliant you are, because you know it too, Hermione - you're just brilliant in all ways. And that brilliance and brightness to you...it feels like something I just imagined.

And I don't want it to be just something I imagined, Hermione. I don't want to just wake up one day and wonder who you were. I don't want to be the reason that you're broken, because I know that you are and I know that I am too.

I saw you that day at St. Mungo's and I couldn't believe it because you are not the same Hermione Granger I grew up with; the same Hermione Granger who stuck with me until the end. I couldn't believe it because that was never suppose to happen to you. You were never supposed to ever be this sad and this lost.

And that's when I realized that I really had just been building up this picture-perfect image in my head about how everything would just be magically all right the moment we met again, and I realize now that it was stupid of me to do so.

Nothing is the same anymore. Not even you and me.

And I can see that there is clearly something between us that is off now. I can see that something is missing, and that just kills me inside. To know that I could have all I've been wishing for for the past four years – which is you to be back – and yet it still feels like my heart is caving in.

It's just that I used to be able to see you, Hermione – and my heart would just start beating. Not that it ever really stopped, thank Merlin, but when I saw you the beating would become so literal and powerful that it reminded me that I was still alive. You have no idea how much that helped me through the years, and through the war.

But the day you left, it all stopped. The beating, the sureness, the happiness. It all stopped. And all I wanted was to see you, and see you smile, and hear you laugh and just look at you and feel that sure again. I just thought that if I saw you again all of it would return, but the truth is that none of it has.

I'm broken inside, and I'll be the first to admit it. The day you left some part of me just shut off, and things became ugly. I became ugly. I'm already broken, and that is because of me and my mistakes; and I don't want to see you broken as well.

The world can't handle the both of us broken at the same time, Hermione.

I can't handle the both of us broken at the same time.

I never thought that I lost you. I never even came to the point of thinking that you were truly gone. Something out of reach. I just used to think to myself, over and over again: I'll get her back. She'll come back. I'll see her again.

And now I'm so afraid that I've truly lost you, and I just want to figure things out. I just want to figure out this whole brokenness thing...and I don't want to do it alone.

So when you told me all those things last week, it felt as though someone had maimed me in the head with a bludger. I guess I shouldn't have filled the bottom floor of your house with a thousand daffodils, and I shouldn't have begun this perilous journey down that list of yours. But I did, because I wanted - at that time - to show you that I was a person that cared. That I was a bloke that loved you, even if it wasn't in the way we had discussed all those years ago. And I plan on continuing this list, because I owe it to you Hermione. I owe it to you to finish what I started and I owe it to you because you deserve it. You really do, and someone should have done all of this for you.

You said that I was the only sure thing after you got that letter to Hogwarts, and I've come to think that you were the only sure thing after that letter too. You were the one person who would never leave me unless I wanted you to. I realized that I've proved this twice now. Once in our third year, and then this.

You said that I was the only person who could make you leave, and now I want to be the person that makes you want to stay.

You said that when we met we were 'just' Harry and 'just' Hermione, and even so after we became friends. And right now that's what I want us to be - 'just' Harry and 'just' Hermione.

But then you told me that you fancied me...and I guess the only thing I'm trying to say right now is that...

Well.

What if I don't fancy you, Hermione?

What if all these years of waiting and longing and agonizing every day over my faults...what if it just means that I love you?

What if I love you, Hermione Granger?


Harry stared at the letter he'd spent an hour writing.

What if I love you, Hermione Granger?

His hand dropped unceremoniously on the parchment, and it would take only the slightest movement of his fingers to scrunch the letter up into nothing. All he had to do was move his fingers.

He waited for it to happen. He waited to feel the crunching of the parchment. He could just throw it into the fireplace, and no one would be the wiser. No one would know.

No.

He would know.

And now he would always know.

A/N: Short and sweet guys. I have work to do :(
And unfortunately this work takes up my time. And thusforth I am at a disadvantage. Plus the laptop I use to type out those longer chapters is at home, and I am stuck with this runt of a creature that is called a Netbook, or a Notebook, or for all I care it's called a brochure, because that surely is how small it is! (Rant on tiny laptop ends here.)

Pau-0803: Yes, I know. (Smile). I love Gilmore Girls, and that was indeed my inspiration for that thing. I keep re-watching the first season.

And thanks guys for the positive reviews about the whole Marriage Bond thing. Love ya!

Read. Review. Favorite. Alert.

P.S. just sharing with you guys, when I write these chaps I usually have a song playing.
Either: What Sarah Said - Death Cab for Cutie ; House of Hallways - Go Radio ; Kings and Queens - 30 Seconds to Mars ; Body Parts - Plain White T's and a bunch of others I have yet to re-look up. For this chap it was House of Hallways.