Violet stood on the train platform. Her parents had had to go back to Hogwarts early, so her brother had escorted her to the station. He had not left her side. Her eyes scanned the crowd for the blond hair she longed to see. Violet expected Harry to run off and sit with his friends once they boarded the train, but he did not.
She finally caught sight of the person she had been looking for and started to slip away when Harry reached out and grabbed her arm roughly.
"Violet, come sit with me," he said as he pulled her into an empty compartment. She fell back into the seat and the train started to move. Harry took the seat across from her. He looked out the window while his sister sat there glaring across the compartment at him.
"Did father talk to you?" She asked. Her father had told her that he didn't want her hanging out with the wrong sort of people at school and that the wrong sort most definitely included Draco Malfoy.
"He didn't need to."
"Harry, he's my friend."
"You don't know him, Violet, you don't know what he's done."
"I do know him. I know him better than you do."
"You've known him for a few months. I've known him for seven years. Violet, he's a Slytherin, a Death Eater."
"So was my father," she said to Harry, narrowing her eyes and staring at him sharply as if daring him to say a word against her father.
It was their first fight, their first moment as real siblings. Both being raised as only children, their interaction thus far had been an only child's dream of what it would have been like to have a sibling. But as any of the Weasley's could have told them, this was much closer to reality.
"You have no right to tell me who to date." She said sharply in a tone reminiscent of her father, "I don't comment on who you date."
"That's because I date Ginny and Ginny's great."
Violet let out a short laugh.
"What?" Harry said indignantly. "Everyone likes Ginny."
"Not everyone."
"Who? Who doesn't like Ginny?"
"Me."
Harry was shocked.
"What could you possibly not like about her?"
"I just prefer girls with more substance. I can see why you like her though. She must be great for your ego."
"What do you mean?"
"She's a fan, Harry, not a girlfriend. A girlfriend is an equal partner, not an admirer."
"In case you haven't noticed, Violet, a lot of people see me as a hero. Ginny's not exactly unique in acting that way."
"I'm sorry to burst your ego, Harry, but not all girls worship you. Hermione's never been afraid to tell you when you're full of yourself."
He glared at her angrily, not knowing what to say, so she continued, voicing all her unvoiced observations about her brother. She knew she was crossing a line with him, but he had made her angry enough to not care.
"You know what I think? I think that after your parents 'died', the Dursley's, the only family you'd ever known abused you, they never loved you. Then one by one the people who did love you started dieing: Sirius Black, Albus Dumbledore, Remus Lupin. You were terrified of getting your heart broken. You were so insecure, so worried that you weren't even worthy of being loved. You didn't think you could handle rejection on top of everything else that had happened, so you went for the one girl you knew for sure would never break your heart, the one girl who you knew could never do anything except for love you. You're supposed to be a Gryffindor, but you went for the safest option you could."
"And what's wrong with that?" He didn't try to deny it. After all, he had seen dating someone he was sure about as a good thing.
"You don't even love her."
He made no move to deny it.
"I don't care what you think of her. You can keep your opinions to yourself."
"Your mother doesn't like her either."
"She told you that?"
"No, she didn't have to."
"You don't know what you're talking about, she's always been perfectly nice to Ginny."
"You've known her less than a year, but I've known her my whole life. I can tell when she genuinely likes someone and when she's just being polite."
Harry decided that he had let her steer him too far from the original topic of the conversation, Draco Malfoy.
"Violet, Malfoy is not a good friend. I'm only getting involved because I don't want to see you get hurt. He's not a nice person."
Violet leaned forward in her seat.
"I saw Hermione leaving our house in tears, Harry, so don't lecture me on friendship. I don't know what you did to her, but she's the best friend you've got and you did something to hurt her. You can say a lot of things about Draco, but he's never made me cry."
"Don't talk to me about Hermione," he snapped at her. The guilt still consumed him. "Anyway, we're not talking about me, we're talking about Malfoy."
"Draco is my friend, Harry, and it's going to stay that way. You can't tell me anything about him that I don't already know."
"So he's told you all about it then? All about his past? Has he told you how he used to lead girls on, sleep with them and then be done with them. Has he told you about that?"
She turned towards the window and didn't respond.
"Do you want to be his girlfriend, Violet? Is that what you want? Do you think he's going to marry you?"
They had been flirting for months, she had been hoping the relationship was headed in that direction, but…
"Has he even touched you? Our mother's muggle-born, Violet. He's probably repulsed by the thought of it."
It was true, he had never touched her in that way, had never initiated contact at all. She had thought he was interested in her as more than a friend…but maybe Harry was right.
Snape was there when they got off the train. He watched Harry exit with Violet and sent him a short nod. Confident that she was now under the watchful eye of her father, Harry went off in search of his friends.
o
o
They were back at school for a few days before Draco managed to run into Violet alone in the castle.
"Violet."
She turned towards him with an irritated flash in her eyes.
"I thought you were going to come visit me over the holidays."
"I tried. Your father wouldn't let me see you."
"I thought he liked you. I thought he was a family friend, your godfather. I thought he helped you get out of Azkaban."
"I thought so too.," Draco said quietly.
"He doesn't want me spending time with you."
"I know. But I don't know if I can handle that. Your friendship really means a lot to me."
"Friends? Is that what this is?" She said angrily. Had Harry been right? Was Draco not interested in her like that? She stormed away, leaving a very confused Draco Malfoy in her wake.
o
o
Harry went looking for Hermione. He had been thinking a lot about her since he had gotten back to school. She had stayed away from him, much to everyone's curiosity and Ginny's delight. But he felt an emptiness in the space she used to occupy in his life. If he was honest with himself, he missed her. He had spent almost every day alone with her for the better part of a year. To have gone a few weeks now without speaking to her was more than he could handle.
More than anything, he felt terrible about the things he had said to her. He hadn't meant them. He had been angry at himself and she had had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He knew that what had happened between them that night was as much his fault as it was hers.
The fact that she had basically admitted to being in love with him was something that he hadn't completely dealt with yet. And the fact that she could have felt that way from the beginning was even more unimaginable to him. He kept thinking of the look of hurt in her eyes as she had fled from the room. He had thought that he had felt bad for cheating on Ginny, but that feeling in the pit of his stomach when he realized he had hurt Hermione had been so much worse.
He knew now that he was attracted to her, but the thought of having Hermione as a girlfriend was still hard to imagine. Ginny was easy to deal with. She adored him. It was so simple. Hermione, on the other hand, gave him a hard time about a lot of stuff. She had been nagging him for months to apply for a job at the ministry. She said that he was a public figure and that people looked up to him. She said that he could do a lot of good there. It didn't sound like much fun to him. Ginny was fun to hang out with. She always had some funny story or gossip to make him forget about the serious stuff.
He wasn't sure exactly what he felt towards Hermione, only that he missed talking with her, missed her very presence. All he knew was that no matter what, he needed to fix his friendship with her.
He slipped out of the common room and went looking for her in the place he was sure to find her, the library.
Sure enough, she sat alone at a table, bent over a book. She didn't look up until he sat down next to her. She looked at him with a blank expression on her face.
"Hermione, I'm so sorry about..."
"Don't, Harry," she said standing up quickly and gathering her things. "Just don't."
"I miss you. I need you," he whispered as she started to walk away.
She stopped and for an instant he thought she was going to stay and listen to him.
"That's not my problem, Harry."
He watched as she disappeared behind the book stacks and a few moments later heard the library door close behind her. And for the first time, he realized that he might have lost her forever.
o
o
He looked around him, the room was dark but even in the low light he could see that it was filthy. Where was he? There was an old woman there, gnarled teeth and matted white hair. She was shorter than he but there was something wrong, something very wrong. Hadn't he been here before? The woman was speaking. What was she saying? Her words carried a faint hissing sound with them. Then she was a snake, the horrible moment of realization, of mindless fear, of the glowing eyes of the snake in the darkness coming towards him.
Harry gasped for air, his eyes shot open, and he sat up suddenly. He was sweaty, heart still pounding in fear as he looked around the quiet room. He was not in Godric's Hollow, he was in the boy's dormitory of Hogwarts. It had been a nightmare, only a nightmare.
He had thought that once his connection to Voldemort was gone, that the nightmares would go away, but they hadn't. They had changed. They were no longer visions and memories from Voldemort sent to him through the link. They were his own memories, his worst memories, revisited and relived at night while he slept.
The first morning light was starting to poke through the windows and he knew he wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. He dressed silently and made his way down to the common room.
It remained empty for nearly an hour as he sat by himself. He wanted more than anything to talk to Hermione. She had been through it all with him, had stood by his side through all those terrible moments, she would understand. He suspected that she was even visited by the very same nightmares that plagued him.
He heard footsteps on the stairway from the girl's dormitory and looked up hopefully. He tried not to let his face sink too much when he saw it was only Ginny.
"What are you doing up so early?" she asked, taking a seat next to him on the couch.
He shrugged. "Couldn't sleep."
She studied his face thoughtfully.
"Another nightmare?"
"Yeah."
"It's ok...they'll go away eventually."
She moved closer to him, reaching out to touch him.
"I understand..."
"You weren't there," he stated sharply, pulling away from her.
"Don't say that you understand, that you know what I'm going through. You weren't there. Don't say that you understand because you have NO IDEA what that year was like, what we went through."
o
o
Later that day, Harry went to see his mother in her office. He needed to talk to someone and he had recently angered both his sister and girlfriend...not to mention Hermione who still wasn't speaking to him. There was also the matter of the things that Violet had said about his mother's feelings towards his girlfriend. He made his way through the stone corridors towards her office.
He knocked on the wooden door and was just about to reach for the knob when it open suddenly from the other side and he found himself face-to-face with Hermione. She froze in mid-motion, stepping out the door only inches from him. It was the closest they had been to each other since...
"Hermione," he breathed in surprise.
She stared at him for a moment, still frozen, then finally stammered, "I was...I was just leaving," and edged her body around his and took off quickly down the hallway. He was about to take off after her when he heard his mother's voice from inside the office.
"Harry? Is that you, dear?"
"Yes," he said, with one last glance down the hallway. he stepped into the office and shut the door behind him.
"Hermione was just here talking to me about an extra credit project. She really is such a brilliant girl."
"Yeah. I saw her leaving."
His mother studied him for a moment.
"Did you and Hermione have a fight?"
He nodded.
"Whatever it is, Harry, fix it."
"But..."
"Fix it," his mother told him sternly. At least it seemed that Snape had kept his word and had not told Lily what her son had done. Harry had no doubt that he would be getting yelled at right now if she knew. It seemed as if his mother had taken a liking to Hermione.
"I wanted to talk to you...about Ginny. Violet said that you didn't like her."
"She's a perfectly nice girl, Harry."
"You don't sound very enthusiastic."
"What do you want me to say? That she's brilliant? That she's an incredible woman? That she's perfect for you? She's not any of those things. She's a fine girl for a high school sweetheart, but are you really planning on marrying her?"
Harry shrugged. He actually had been planning on it. Ginny had hinted several times that she wanted to get married and start a family as soon as she graduated. He had just figured he would go along with it. It had seemed at the time like the easy thing to do. Why were things getting so complicated now?
"I thought everything would be easier... once the war ended."
"These things are never easy, Harry. You just had bigger things on your mind before...you just set all this personal stuff aside to deal with later and it has all caught up to you now."
He was thankful for his mother's understanding. He forgot sometimes that she too had grown up into a time of war.
He thanked her and started to leave the office.
"She's in love with you, Harry. You know that, right?"
He was about to retort that of course Ginny was in love with him, that he had practically known that since he first met her...but then he realized that his mother wasn't talking about Ginny, she was talking about Hermione.
"Yes. I know."
o
o
Hermione sat beside Snape as they brewed. She stared into the steam that drifted up from the cauldron, lost in thought. She never would have anticipated this friendship with the man. He listened, he understood, he didn't judge her or ridicule her...he had been in her position before.
"I packed my things once. I never told anyone. It was right after Dumbledore's funeral. I heard Harry whisper to Ginny that he loved her. I went home and packed my things, my muggle things, just a few changes of clothes and some money in a backpack. It would have been so easy to leave then, to break my wand in two and leave it all behind. For Ron, it was different. Most of his family were members of the Order, when he was fighting he was fighting to protect them as well, but for me, my fighting was what was putting my family in danger in the first place. I was risking people I loved, risking my own life, for someone who would never love me back and I wanted to get as far as possible away from all of it. It would have been so easy just to leave."
"But you didn't."
"I couldn't. I would rather die by his side than live anywhere else. And I realized that I would still die for him whether or not he ever returned my feelings. I'm only telling you this because I think you're the one person who might understand."
"Probably a little too well."
"Lily loves you back, though, it is a different situation."
She stared at her.
"And if she didn't, I would have thrown my life away for her anyways."
They resumed brewing silently for a few minutes.
"Have you thought about your future?"
"My future?"
"After graduation."
"Harry and Ron always wanted to be aurors, but…"
"But you didn't want to plan for a future you might never survive to see?"
"It just seemed too optimistic."
"And now that you know you have a future?"
"I'm not sure. I am interested in potions."
"There is a private potions college in Germany. It's very exclusive. It is the program that I attended. I could send a letter there if you like."
"I don't know. Isn't that the program that doesn't let you have any outside correspondence and only lets you leave for one week each year?"
He stopped stirring and looked up at her seriously.
"It might be good for you to get away from everything, to get away from…him."
o
o
A/n: for those of you who are confused, James is still Harry's real father. He was conceived after she had gotten back together with James because Dumbledore had erased Lily's memories of James cheating on her and her relationship with Severus.