Completed: 3/15/05 10:36 PM

Posted: 3/15/05 10:52 PM

A/N: Huzzah! It's getting more light-hearted! I actually made the effort for fluff, though the ending twisted on me a bit. I think this one was really cute. Enjoy.

"Mummy?"

The petite girl standing outside the candy floss stand looked no more than eight or nine judging by the serious look on her face as she held a bright blue balloon in one hand and the pristine state of her yellow sundress. Precociously matching headband with its fake, fabric flowers sewn on and sitting in her thick chocolate curls, she tugged gently at her mother's skirts and waited patiently for her attention.

"What is it, princess?" Helen Granger crouched down to bring her eyes level with her daughter's. As she'd always done, Helen talked and treated the mature child as an adult; more importantly, as an equal.

"Do you see that little boy over there?" Little Hermione Granger asked. Her doleful brown eyes were smile-inspiring as she turned to the side and pointed a cherubic finger across the carnival square.

A boy about the same age as her sat on a bale of hay – one of the many scattered around the grounds for ambiance. His gangly limbs were all akimbo in his poor attempt at folding himself into a corner of the hay display. Ebony hair looking as if he'd slept at the carnival the night before and coke-bottle glasses so large they dwarfed his entire face, he looked quite the sight. At least to the prim and proper Hermione Granger.

"Why yes! I do see him." Helen Granger shielded her eyes against the rising sun. "You know, he looks rather lonely, dearheart – why don't you go over and introduce yourself?"

Hermione blinked those baby browns. "Where will you and Father be?"

Quirking her lips to restrain her amused smile, Helen looked around before her eyes settled on a stand down the way and she pointed. "I fancy a cup of lemonade. We'll wait there for you."

"Alright," Hermione nodded. "I won't be gone too long." The cultured words sounded a bit distorted leaving her young mouth, but she kissed her mother on the cheek and skipped over to the mountain of fodder, blue balloon bobbing behind her.

The boy didn't look up until she was standing right in front of him, white paten-leather shoes touching at the heels and forming a perfect "V" as she'd been taught. When he did raise his head she promptly thrust out her hand, and said quite clearly: "I'm Hermione Granger."

The boy sniffed and ran the back of his hand underneath his nose. He looked at her suspiciously as if she were offering him a poisonous snake rather than a hand; squinting behind his wide glasses.

"Harry Potter," he mumbled, taking her hand.

"I'm seven years old," she declared, climbing up on the haystack beside him and straightening out the skirt of her dress. Her balloon ponged! on the string as she resituated, and when she was done her dangling feet didn't even come close to touching the ground. She crossed them at the ankles.

"How old are you?" She prompted, when he didn't reciprocate.

He'd turned back away from her, knees pulled up to his chest as he looked out across the crowd, and so his reply was rather muffled and hard to hear. "I'm, uh, eight..."

"Well, it is very nice to meet you Mr. Potter," Hermione said politely.

Harry looked back over his shoulder, lip pulling up to one side as he gaped at her and trying to do the raised eyebrow thing. "You're weird."

"Am not!" She insisted indignantly.

"Are too!"

"Am NOT!"

"Are too!"

"Infinity-am not!" Hermione declared smugly, crossing her small arms over her chest.

"Are too infinity plus one!"

The small girl's mouth dropped open. "Well, well—" she'd developed a stammer in her outrage. "Well, that isn't even conceive-a-ma-ble," she blustered and stumbled over the difficult word. "So, I win."

Young Harry made a face at her and stuck out his tongue. "Whatever, weirdo."

"My name is Hermione," she enunciated, slamming her tiny fists onto her hips with such gusto that her balloon bobbed excitedly with a series of pongs!

"Well, uh...what kind of name is Hermominneee anyway," the seven year-old shot back in the way of insulting young children had. "Sounds like a weirdo name to me!"

"You're a very rude little boy," she accused.

Harry jutted out his chest like a stuffed bird. "I'm older than you."

"Yes, but...oh!" She squealed truculently. "My mother says 'age doesn't matter unless your cheese', so unless you think yourself a block of cheddar—"

"I don't even know what you're bloody talking about!" Harry exclaimed. He threw his arms up in the air, his uncontrollable lankiness making for an odd show.

"Watch your language!" Hermione scowled.

They glowered at each other in silence for as long as their attention spans held out, then they were both watching the interesting people of the carnival move back and forth across the square. Harry had found a particularly fascinating whack-a-gopher participant to spy on, when the "weird" girl sitting beside him sighed.

"What are you doing sitting here all alone, anyway?" She asked rapaciously.

The boy shrugged, his shoulders brushing the bottoms of his ears in the exaggerated movement of children. "My uncle left me here."

"Really?" Hermione's eyes were as wide as her balloon.

After his nod of confirmation, she looked down at her shoes. She scrunched up her toes beneath the paten-leather confines; the insides were becoming slick as the warm summer heat made her perspire.

"If you'd like, and if my parents agree of course, you're..." She heaved a sigh as if it were the most self-sacrificing thing she were about to do. "You're welcome to spend the day with us. Father promised to take me on the ferris wheel next."

The ferris wheel itself was easy for Harry to spot. It rose high above the main hub of the carnival, shiny and red as one of the local fire trucks he'd seen driving through the streets outside Privet Drive. It gleamed in the afternoon sunlight, lazily turning with its swaying basket cage; the people occupying them invisible from such a distance.

Little Hermione saw such a longing on his face as he gazed up at the big, red ride stretching to the sky. Reaching down she untied the bow that anchored the balloon to her wrist and gripped the now free-hanging string tightly in her hand. Contemplating the bobble floating above her head, she gave a tug for one last pong! and then, with a small, nearly unnoticeable, hesitation of loss, offered it out to Harry Potter.

A look of shock on his spectacled face, Harry gingerly accepted the gift and was then presented once more with the tiny, feminine hand of Hermione. "I'll introduce you to my parents."

No sooner had he laid his palm upon hers then like a dark thought summoned by the promise of joy, a gruff voice boomed over both of the two small children, dwarfing them physically by its sheer magnitude. "Just where do you think you're going, boy?"

A large man, the size of a small house, blocked the sunshine from warming their backs and covered the entire display of hay in his monstrous shadow. A horse-faced woman was peering over his bulky shoulder and a boy more wide than he was tall wandered around behind them, a corndog in one hand and candy floss in the other.

Remembering her manners, Hermione hopped off the bale and patted down her skirt before offering the tall man her hand. "Good afternoon, sir."

Surprised, the man had little choice but to take her small hand and shake it. "And who are you?"

"Excuse me," she pardoned, and gave a short curtsy. "My name is Hermione Jane Granger. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"What a cordial young lady you are," the sallow woman praised, beaming rather atrociously at her. "Every youth should be like you and our Duddykins."

Hermione didn't know what a 'Duddykins' was, but she smiled all the same and waved to the woman that had complimented her. "If you wouldn't mind sir, ma'am – I was wondering if I might invite Harry along with my family around the carnival?"

The man grimaced in Harry's direction and Hermione looked curiously between them. "No, of course not." He rasped. "Have...fun."

For some reason, Hermione felt protective of the older boy – as if he were one of her precious porcelain dolls. Grasping his hand firmly she waited for him to slide off the hay before she pulled him slightly behind her. "Where and when shall we rendezvous?" She inquired, pronouncing the silent 'z' with a preadolescent slip of the tongue.

The woman pursed her lips in what must have been a smile, and looked between Harry and her husband. "How,er, thoughtful of you..." She stretched out, as if she'd been hoping Hermione's request had been one of total adoption. "The entrance?" She looked to the man for confirmation and he scowlingly nodded his head. "At six."

"Thank you," Hermione curtsied again, and then was tugged impatiently away by Harry, who couldn't seem to get away from the strangely-acting family fast enough. Her shorter legs caught up with his when he realized that she was having difficulty keeping pace with him and slowed down.

They walked side by side and hand in hand, the blue balloon drifting behind them. Hermione found her mother and father in the crowd in front of the lemonade stand as they'd promised, and her cheeks reddened at the proud looks they gave her. Averting her gaze to Harry, she gave a small gasp. Above the hand that intertwined with hers, a small bow of string was tied about the wrist as she had done.

"Um...," Hermione scrunched up her nose. "Would you like to ride the ferris wheel?"

A expression of utter joy lined his face, and though his glasses were hanging askew off his face he gave a 'whoop' and tackled her with a hug.

Twenty-four year old Hermione sat up straight in bed, head pounding as if she had indeed been bodily thrown to the floor and toes curling beneath the silk sheets still feeling the confines of sweaty paten-leather. The lamp beside her flared to life. Panting heavily, thinking that would restore her consciousness to full wakefulness, her still-occupied mind directed her gaze to the picture sitting on the mantel of her bedroom fireplace.

It had been taken at her "wedding". Harry had flung her over his shoulder, the customary insanely-poofy white dress forced upon her by Ginny taking up nearly the entire background of the picture as she kicked her legs in protest within the wizarding photo. They were both laughing and kept smiling at one another, sunlight highlighting their hair.

"Hmmnn...what's the matter, love?"

Hermione's breath hitched in surprise and she processed it enough to realize she'd been continuing to pant. Breathing normally, she tucked frizzed curls behind her ear and looked down at her husband as he rolled off his stomach and onto his side.

"You alright?" He asked in concern, placing a hand gently along her cheek.

Hermione smiled winningly, and laid her hand over his, moving it to her lips to kiss the soft flesh of his palm. "It was nothing, Draco. Just a dream..."

"About?" He inquired, lifting up the sheets so she could slide back down into her bed.

"Just imagining what might have happened if Harry hadn't gone missing before the final battle," she murmured, taking comfort in the constant warmth of Draco's body that contrasted deeply with the pale blond of his hair the icy blue of his eyes.

"Eh?" He grunted, still half-asleep.

"Nevermind," she murmured, kissing his parted lips. "Let's just go back to sleep."

She reached out to extinguish the bedside lamp, and the last thing she saw before the darkness was the laughing face of the husband in the pretend wedding photo – the one Ron had taken of their Seventh-Year Halloween costumes – as he lifted her over his shoulder and dropped a kiss into her hair. They'd both been eighteen then.

Goodnight, Harry...wherever you are.