Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or his world. I just play with them sometimes, but I always put them back where I found them.
A/N: Again, check out this fic I'm working on with beccalyse, Eyes Turned Skyward, it's sequel For There You Have Been, and their EPOV companion piece, Learning to Live. She is the Alpha to my beta, and she always astounds me with every new chapter of awesome she sends me to read!
Also, to those who've been wondering, this is occurring in their Sixth Year at Hogwarts. No, the Half-Blood Prince is not involved, and yes, I realize they didn't learn about Muffliato until the HBP showed them. It's just a very handy spell for purposes of my story, and I think it's tacky when people make up their own spells. Not to say that I won't ever do it, but I will do so very sparingly and with as much authenticity as I can manage.
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After a rather subdued lunch, during which Ron sat staring in irritated silence at his best friends, neither of whom were paying attention, only serving to upset him further, both Hermione and Harry were lost in their own thoughts, most of which were a repetition from earlier in the day. Ron had been forcing conversation for most of Care of Magical Creatures, and on the way back to the castle for lunch, he had given up in favor of an ill-tempered silence, which also went unnoticed by his distracted friends.
The trio went upstairs for Double Charms with Slytherin, where Harry, Hermione and Ron were all too distracted with their own thoughts of one another to notice Draco eying Hermione and Harry suspiciously. They were set into pairs to work on Shield Charms, and poor Hermione was assigned to work with Draco Malfoy, who'd had trouble with it in the previous lesson. Harry tried to offer to switch with her, but Ron quickly stepped on his toe each time he spoke up, so Professor Flitwick never heard him, but did admonish him twice for foul language. As former members of the D.A., Harry, Ron and Hermione were all far beyond proficient at the spell, and even the usually inept Neville had had Professor Flitwick squeaking it delight at his perfect first attempt. The success of the Gryffindors during the last lesson had put Malfoy in an exceptionally bad mood, and he was blasting hexes at Hermione with a vengeance as she coolly threw up one Shield Charm after another.
When even Harry had to admit that Hermione was perfectly safe with Malfoy, who hadn't yet landed a spell on her, he turned to Ron, crouching into a defensive position, but found him staring suspiciously down at him. Harry noticed a familiar buzzing sound in his ears, and stepped forward, inside the range of Ron's Muffliato Charm.
"What did you do?" he immediately set in upon Harry.
"I don't know what you're on about," Harry replied fiercely, experiencing the same tightening in his stomach as he had when talking to Ernie Macmillan.
Ron looked like he was about to explode. "If you two want to keep it a secret, that's fine for everyone else, but I'd have thought you'd have the decency to tell me, so when my best friends spend all day ignoring me, I can at least know why."
"I—" Harry began, but Ron seemed to have a prepared bit to say.
"If you two are just happy as the giant squid to be together without me around, you could say it, rather than staring off into space and spending all day daydreaming about how long it'll be until silly Ron goes away and you can be alone with her."
"Look, if you'd just stop and pull your head out of your—"
"I'm not finished!" Ron declared hotly. "I'm supposed to be your best friend, and now you're ditching me for a girl! And not just any girl, but Hermione? How could you ditch one best mate because you've got a thing for the other? I thought you were better than that, not that sort of bloke."
"Are you finished now?" Harry asked impatiently.
"Almost," Ron replied, and with the look on his face, Harry knew exactly what was about to happen. "Impedimenta!"
During their argument, they had been throwing Disarming and Shield Charms at one another, keeping up the appearance of practice, though both had long since mastered the spells. Circling to keep their duel authentic, Ron now stood between Harry and Hermione and Malfoy's dreadful practice.
When they began, Hermione had been the one conjuring the Shield Charms, so that Malfoy could see how it was done. Now, Harry could see they had switched, and as Hermione repeatedly Disarmed him, Malfoy was barely producing any shielding effect. Even through the best charm he had managed so far, Hermione's spells stilled moved his wand in his hand.
Apparently fed up with being consistently shown by someone he disliked so openly, Malfoy looked fit to be tied. By the time it had reached this point, Harry had been paying more attention to Malfoy's growing rage than to Ron's ranting. His instincts were still sharp enough that he saw and felt the signs from both that an attack was near.
At the same moment Ron cast his jinx, he heard Malfoy shout, "Indencio!"
"Protego!"
The spell flew from his mouth automatically, and would have even if it hadn't been the lesson of the day. Rather than moving to protect himself, however, Harry sent his shield from the end of his wand like blue ice, rushing toward Hermione. It wrapped into a full circle around her, stretching to the ceiling, so that Malfoy's enchanted flames fluttered harmlessly around the edges. Though Hermione was fine, Ron's jinx and the anger behind it sent Harry flying into the desks that had been pushed up against the far wall. His head bounced off one of them, and he only heard Professor Flitwick squeaking, "Mr. Malfoy, how dare you!" before he heard no more.
The room fell into chaos.
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When Harry could hear again, it was several loud, girlish screams, and one sneering, furious voice yelling over them all. He was aware of a warmth on his side, and wondered vaguely if he were bleeding, but he was too distracted by all the noise around him.
"I wasn't trying to hurt her!" Malfoy was yelling. "I knew she'd get her shield up in time."
"That's horseshit!" Ron was screaming in response. "It was your turn to be shielding, not hers. Professor," he continued in a more dignified manner, "Hermione wasn't even the one who reacted. If Harry hadn't've tossed up that Shield Charm around her, she'd be, well, toast."
"Yes, I did see that," Professor Flitwick responded impatiently. "I was here as well."
"It was brilliant," Ron continued, seeming to ignore Flitwick, and only five years of friendship let Harry hear the note of suspicion in Ron's voice that no one else caught. "I was jinxing him—it was his turn to do the shielding, you see—and he saw Malfoy behind me trying to curse Hermione when she wasn't ready, and at the last possible second, he changed his shield's direction and sent it to wrap around Hermione. It was brilliant," he said again. "Total self-sacrifice."
Harry felt himself blush to the roots of his hair from where he lay on the ground.
"Oh good, you're awake," Hermione whispered into his ear. "Could you move your head the other way?"
Too confused to argue, Harry did as he was told, and felt her gently touching his head. As her fingers moved through his hair, his first thought was that this was actually quite a lovely sensation; his second, to wonder why she was doing this for him; and his third, to realize that he was in a lot of pain. Her fingers found the cut on the back of his head, pulling a loud gasp from him, which drew the attention of most of the room. The girlish screaming took up again, this time celebratory, as Lavender and Parvati realized he wasn't going to die.
He realized suddenly that the warmth in his side was Hermione, whom he figured had crawled behind him after he'd fallen unconscious. What he couldn't understand was why she would sit so close to him. He tried to shift away from her, giving her more room to be comfortable, but a ripping pain shrieked through his head whenever he tried to move himself.
"Hold still Harry," she whispered, placing a restraining hand on his chest.
Instinctively, not because he thought about it, or meant to, or because he was consciously trying to impress her—he told himself later it was because she'd surprised him—Harry flexed the muscles lying underneath her hands, then felt himself burning in shame again. What was happening to him? He never blushed! Why couldn't he control himself around this girl? She'd touched him before, hadn't she?
Ah, but not when you wanted her to so badly.
But we've been friends for years!
Too bad it took you so long to notice. Maybe now you'll embarrass yourself into getting something done with her. It's all that'd get anything done around you.
Shut up.
"I'm trying to fix the cut on your head," she continued, nothing in her voice telling him that she'd noticed anything about his sophomoric macho movement, nor his internal conversation.
"My head?" he asked, not fully understanding what she was doing, only that it hurt.
"You cut your head on the desk when Ron blasted you across the room," she muttered darkly. "Why didn't you shield yourself, Harry?"
And there it was. The question he really didn't want to answer, mostly because he didn't really know himself. He'd been poised to protect himself, known that Ron was attacking him. But he'd been more aware of Hermione's danger from Malfoy, and he hadn't stopped to think about what he was doing, just moved to protect her, even if it meant putting himself in danger. In retrospect, he thought that he might have been able to shield both himself and Hermione, but he hadn't even had a full second to react, and getting something between Hermione and Malfoy's curse was all he'd had time to process.
"You weren't ready for his attack," he muttered without much conviction. "It wasn't a fair attack, was it? He could have really hurt you."
Although she knew he couldn't see it, Hermione smiled down at him, turning faintly pink. It was amazing how much she blushed around him these days. Come to think of it, only today she'd been thinking how infrequently Harry blushed, and here he'd done it twice in as many minutes.
Although his spell had been both heroic and self-sacrificing, Hermione had to tell herself again and again that it was simply in Harry's nature to behave this way. It wasn't, however, his way to flex muscles randomly, and especially not to show off, but Hermione's logical side again kicked in, and she was annoyed to hear Professor McGonagall explaining that Harry had suffered a head injury and was probably experiencing muscle spasms.
She didn't know what else to say to him as she worked on his injury, which looked like it had cracked his skull, so she remained silent.
Harry was in a great deal of pain, though, for much the same unnamable reasons he had shown off his muscles, he remained steadfastly silent as well. If Hermione could stand to be helping him with an obviously bad injury, he could be man enough to not let her know he was in pain, because he knew she'd feel as though she wasn't doing enough. She must have known her work would cause him pain, though, because at moments when the pain was especially all-consuming, she would pause her work to squeeze one of his hands in her own smaller one. Those moments let Harry focus on nothing more than the softness of her hand in his, and more than once, Hermione heard him sigh in relief as he slipped in and out of consciousness.
Through his hand, Hermione could feel his pulse getting weaker and weaker, at moments barely fluttering. She suddenly became aware of how much blood was soaking through her robes, and paled at the thought of how precious little was left inside her best friend. "Professor Flitwick?" she called politely, trying to keep her shaking voice under control. Then, when he couldn't hear her over Ron's yells, she tried to run to him, but Harry's dead weight kept her firmly in place.
Hysteria threatened to take over as she screamed, "Professor! Ron! Help!"
Everyone suddenly fell silent, then saw that Hermione's robes were slick with fresh blood, which was dripping from the wound on Harry's head. The momentary relief they had felt at his consciousness evaporated immediately with one glance at his sickly pallor.
Ron rushed over, calling, "Wingardium leviosa!" as he approached them. Harry's limp form lifted away from Hermione as they rushed toward the hospital wing, the entire class in tow. His hand twitched in hers as he was pulled away from her, and he groaned painfully.
Hermione followed beside him, watching his face and trying not to explode into tears in the corridors. His eyes opened, a frighteningly pale version of their usual vivid green. He tried to speak, and Hermione stopped him, explaining, "We're taking you to the hospital wing, Harry. I'm sorry, Harry. I was trying to fix your skull, but I couldn't do that and stop the blood loss. I didn't realize how bad it was, I'm so sorry I'm not a good enough healer, I shouldn't have tried," she chastised herself for taking such a risk, especially on someone as important to her as Harry. "But Madam Pomfrey will set you right." But what if she couldn't? Mustn't think of that now, it won't do any good. Just keep him conscious. "It'll be alright Harry. Oh, I'm so sorry, I should've made Professor Flitwick look at you straight away instead of arguing with Ron. I'm sorry, Harry."
He responded by wildly throwing his arm out to her, stretching to run his hand reassuringly across her face. He said something she couldn't quite catch, but she knew it was meant to be an assurance that he would be alright. She caught his hand in hers, briefly leaning her face into his palm before placing it carefully on his stomach.
"No," he mumbled. "Hold on…feel real…help…"
Hermione wasn't sure what he'd said, but his hand twitched again toward her, and rather than let him expend the energy to struggle, she took his hand in hers, squeezing it reassuringly, and asking him to squeeze back if he could hear her. She only let go when they had to duck through a short, narrow passageway, but even that lack of contact unsettled her.
They were only two floors down from the infirmary when Hermione took his hand, asked him to squeeze hers in response, and got nothing.
She asked him again, but there was still no response. His pulse was there, but weaker than ever, and if he was not responding, it meant the situation was rapidly getting out of hand. She panicked, yelling at them to move faster, telling Ron to run, screaming at the crowd to get away so he could move. She took off at the fastest pace she could manage while still holding his hand.
Still feeling nothing but dead weight in her hand, Hermione looked down to see Harry's eyes opened to just a slit. She hoped for a moment that he was coming back around, but she could see the dusty green of his worn-out eyes for only a few moments before they rolled back into his head. She doubled her speed, urging Ron to do the same as they raced their friend to Madam Pomfrey, hoping there was something, anything that could be done.
~%%~
Harry had a sudden sensation of weightlessness, and the voices around him took on a concerned tone, though he didn't even try to make out the words they were saying. The only thing of which he was acutely aware was Hermione's hand being pulled away from him, and he gripped her hand as tightly as he could manage, but it still did not seem to be tightly enough, for she was slipping away from him. He demanded hotly that she be brought back to him, not concerned about embarrassing himself anymore, because her hand was suddenly the only sensation of which he could be positive. The rest of his body didn't quite feel as though it was there, and he became slightly more interested in the content of the worried voices.
Swimming up through his own body, Harry forced open his eyes to find Hermione's, brimming with tears. He frowned, not only because she was crying, but because she was suddenly at eye level, no longer above him, and that did not make sense. He tried to ask what was going on, but could not seem to work his mouth.
Hermione understood though, and said tearfully, "We're taking you to the hospital wing, Harry. I'm sorry, Harry. I was trying to fix your skull, but I couldn't do that and stop the blood loss. I didn't realize how bad it was, I'm so sorry I'm not a good enough healer, I shouldn't have tried. But Madam Pomfrey will set you right," her voice cracked and doubt seeped into her voice. "It'll be alright Harry. Oh, I'm so sorry, I should've made Professor Flitwick look at you straight away instead of arguing with Ron. I'm sorry, Harry," she whispered again.
He wanted to reassure her, to reach out and cradle her face and let her know he didn't blame her for anything, couldn't blame her. But all he could manage to do was lift his hand to her face and awkwardly brushed the side of her face, muttering, "S'arigh', 'Mione."
Her face leaned into his hand, and he felt the most incredible warmth spreading up his arm. This contact with her was the only thing making him feel real at the moment, and when she placed his hand upon his own stomach and moved to take hers away, he reached out for her, gasping desperately. Harry gathered his strength for one great sentence and said, "No, hold on to my hand. My body doesn't quite feel real, and it helps."
Whether or not she'd understood him, Hermione grasped his hand, continually having him squeeze and release, so she could know he was still conscious. The waiting for her voice and the very realness of her hand in his kept Harry just breaking the surface, so when her hand disappeared, he slipped slowly under. At first, he concentrated on the noise surrounding him, hoping the stability of Hermione would return, but when it didn't, there just didn't seem to be any point in trying to tread water. He let himself sink under, as though into a feather bed, and it felt just like going to sleep.
Desperately, from very far away, Hermione's hand came back to him, gripping tightly, yelling at him to go faster, and he didn't understand, because the Snitch was so close he could see it glinting in her eyes. It was so close, and there was no need to go faster, because if he could just sleep, it would be alright.
Students passing by the crowd on their way to the bathroom screamed, doors opened to see the cause of the commotion, and before they had reached the hospital wing, the entire school knew that Harry Potter's life hung by a thread.
~%%~
A/N: The wait was getting ridiculously long, and you've been waiting patiently for a while now, and I'm in class, so what better to do than work on my latest chapter, right?
I'm not sure if the kiss will be in the next chapter or not, because the kiss itself is already written (and it is hot), but the lead-up is getting really, really long. If it is a separate chapter, I'll post number seven tonight and wait a couple days to post the kiss.
Thanks to all my reviewers from the last chapter, and to everyone who didn't review but still sat patiently waiting for the update email!
The winner of my favorite review line from Chapter 5 again came from TheTimma, who said: "please keep the win level at . I may have to give you my EPIC WIN SEAL OF APPROVAL!*cue angelic choir*"
In case you haven't noticed yet, the "Review of the Week" is people who liked it and told me why, though a well placed flamer could very well earn you a mention. It's all in the way you construct the review. Just a friendly note for some of my more competitive readers!
And one more thought for those teetering on the edge of that little green button down there. Any and all signed reviews will get a sneak-peek at the next chapter when I respond to your signed review.
Rock on, keep reading, and as always, review!
cj596