What Are 'You' Doing Here?
Disclaimer: As I'm not making any money from this, chances are I don't own the characters.
The next morning, Hermione got up and did her usual routine, then looked over the room service menu out of habit before realizing that she didn't have to call them anymore. Mark hadn't wanted to leave the room and didn't want to be left alone, so they had been ordering their food for all three meals. She smiled to herself as she dressed for the day.
'There are a lot of things I can do and see now that Mark's out of the picture,' she thought on her way down to the dining room. She picked up a plate from the buffet and filled it with fruits and cr pes. Turning around to find a seat, she finally noticed how packed the room was. There was only one seat open, across from a man with messy black hair, who had his back to her. It struck her as funny that his hair looked so much like Harry's.
'Girl, you have got to get Harry off your mind. He wouldn't be within a hundred miles of this place, remember? This is a wizard hotel and he wants to be left alone. Everyone here would know who he is.' She threaded her way through the tables, noticing that most of the witches in the room were repeatedly glancing over in his direction and stopping behind the man, cleared her throat.
"Excuse me, do you mind if I sit with you?" He put down his orange juice and turned to look up at her. To her suprise, she found herself staring into the equally startled eyes of the very person she had just been thinking about. "Harry?" He regained his senses first.
"Hello, Hermione," he smiled back warmly and gestured to the seat she had inquired about. She regained her senses and sat down. Harry's eyes followed her the whole way.
"What are you doing here?" Hermione asked.
"Eating breakfast," he replied and bit into a piece of toast as if to prove it. She shook her head.
"No, I mean, what are you doing 'here', in this hotel?" Remembering their last conversation two years previous in which he had practically told her to mind her own business, she added hastily, "Not to be nosy or anything, mind." Harry frowned in confusion.
"What do you mean by that?" he asked. "You don't remember the last time we saw each other? How we fought?" Harry nodded his understanding now and leaned forward in his seat.
"Hermione, I'm sorry for the way I treated you that day. You were concerned about me and I behaved a prat. You didn't deserve it, and I apologize. Forgive me?" He gave her a mock begging puppy look that made her laugh. "Honestly, if I ever hurt you again, please just smack me upside my thick skull, alright?" Hermione nodded.
"O.K. And I do forgive you, if you'll forgive me for being so overly concerned about you. I don't know why I was so desperate for you to talk to me about what you were going through." She took a bite of her cr pe, chewed thoughtfully as she studied him and when she had swallowed, said, "By the way, you look fantastic." Harry nearly choked on his eggs. He began coughing as the bite went down the wrong way.
"Thank-you, you look pretty great, yourself," he said when he'd controlled his mild coughing fit. Hermione blushed prettily at the compliment and ducked her head. "What have you been doing for the last two years? Ron doesn't tell me much, but then, I really haven't let him say much concerning you. I thought that you hated me and I didn't want to hear how well you were doing without me in your life. A bit selfish, I know, but maybe I was still feeling some of the initial hurt that was left from our breakup. After a while, he stopped even trying." She nodded and reached across the table to take his hand.
"Same for me. Harry, do you think that we could be friends again? I've really missed you." Harry smiled at her, tightening his fingers around hers.
"Of course we can be friends again, Hermione. In fact, I've always considered myself your friend, just thought that you didn't want to be mine."
He watched intently as she bit into a strawberry and ran his thumb over her knuckles in mime with the way her tongue slid across her lower lip to catch a drop of juice. He dropped her hand when she looked at him curiously, making up for his abrupt action by looking at his watch.
"It's almost nine. I was going to do some sight-seeing today. Would you like to come with me?" Hermione nodded as she finished the last bite of her breakfast.
"I wanted to do a bit of shopping as well. I just have to get my bag from my room." Harry stood up and moved around the table to pull her chair back.
"I'll walk with you if you don't mind. We have two years of catching up to do." He held out his arm as she stood. She giggled and looped her own through it. Something came to mind as they headed to the foot of the staircase.
"By the way, Harry, you never did tell me what you were doing here."
"Ron talked me into bringing my girlfriend here," he replied, pushing his glasses further up his nose. "What about you?"
"Same thing," she said, hiding her disappointment in the fact that Harry now had a girlfriend rather well. The fact that she 'was' disappointed surprised her, but she brushed it away as a thought that Harry had a life away from her. "Ron and Luna thought it would be nice for me and my boyfriend to come up for a holiday." She didn't see the crestfallen look on Harry's face at her answer as she had pulled her key out of her pocket when they reached her floor. She heard him make a sound of confusion and turned to see him glancing around the corridor.
"What's wrong?"
"This hallway looks exactly like the one of the floor that I'm on." He looked at the wall as she turned to head to her room and noticed a small scratch in the wallpaper that most people wouldn't see. But then, Harry had been the youngest Quidditch player in a century and was still an expert Seeker for the England reserve team when he was on a break from his position at work. It was his job to look for the smallest thing in the game, and it came in handy sometimes off the pitch as well. He had noticed that scratch when he and Susan had checked in two weeks earlier. He turned his head to the left and saw the number on the door he was in front of. "This 'is' my floor! How about that? We're on the same floor and didn't even know it. What room are you and your boyfriend in?"
"Actually, it's just me, now. I realized that Mark was the biggest loser in the wizarding world and I could do loads better, so I chucked him out last night," she said from in front of her door. "This is my room."
"You're in 106?" Harry asked uncomfortably. Hermione turned to face him.
"Yes, why?"
"You didn't hear anything out of the ordinary last night, did you?" A shocked expression came to her face.
"As a matter of fact, I did!" She looked down as she tried to slip the key in the lock. "I was listening to my favorite dedication program on the radio around eleven, I never miss it, and all of a sudden I heard this woman start screeching from the next room. She seemed to be really pissed at her boyfriend. She stomped out of here like her hair was on fire. Why, did you hear it too? Well, of course you did, or you wouldn't have...Harry, what's wrong?" She had raised her eyes back to him and saw his whole face crumple into a look of anguish.
"I knew that someone had to hear her," he said as he slumped against the wall.
"Yeah! I heard the whole thing. It was pretty hard not to, although Mark slept right through it all. That fool could sleep through an earthquake," Hermione laughed lightly, but sobered up when she saw his expression hadn't changed. She moved forward and lay a hand on his shoulder. "Harry?"
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the key to his room.
"That was Susan, my girlfriend," he muttered as he showed her the number on the keyring. Hermione's hands flew to her mouth in horror.
"Oh, God, Harry! I'm so sorry! Here you are with your girlfriend leaving you and I'm making cracks about it..." Harry waved it off.
"Don't worry about it. I don't think that I ever really loved her, I don't know if she even really loved 'me', or more the idea of being with Harry Potter."
Hermione took his hand and led him to her room, directing him to the chair when they had entered and closing the door, sat down across from him.
"The funny thing," he continued, "Is that you wouldn't think that she would know who I am, her being a Muggle and all, but some of her friends are witches, they went to Beauxbatons, and of course they 'do' know who I am, and I'm rambling." Hermione chuckled.
"You're fine, Harry, you just tell it exactly as you want. You said she was a Muggle?" He nodded, took a deep breath and continued.
"We met through Fleur and Bill about six months after we left Hogwarts. They thought we'd be a good match and asked a few of Sue's friends if they would get her to go on a blind date with me. Honestly, I think she had more fun than I did on our first date. We went to a fun fair that was around for the weekend, and I spent the whole time wishing that she was someone else. She was polite and all, but she didn't really know how to, I don't know, let go the way 'we' did while we were at school. Then Ron and Luna got married a few days later and I asked her to go with me to the wedding. I'm really sorry that you didn't come."
"I was still mad at you then, Harry. When Luna told me that you were going to be there, I said that I wouldn't, and sent my present later."
"That's what Ron said when I asked him about it. I turned down being his best man when Luna said that she was going to ask you to be her maid-of-honor. But then she changed her mind and chose Ginny after he asked Neville, and I ended up just sitting with the other guests with Susan. Well, to keep this from taking another two years of our lives to explain, I know you want to go shopping and sight-seeing with me, we'd been together a year and a half, as you no doubt heard last night, and as I wasn't ready to give her more than friendship, she up and left me." He gave her a ruefull smile. "I'm really much happier without her, because now I feel like I can breathe. She was always around and I had this constant feeling of being smothered. She was always asking how I did spells and what the purpose of a broomstick was, sort of like Ron's dad in reverse." They laughed as they remembered all the times Arthur Weasley had grilled Harry about different Muggle things, such as their money and toys like rubber ducks. "So it's over between us." He breathed a sigh of relief. "Now what about you and, what was his name?"
"Mark. He was a wizard, but only used his powers to get something from my kitchen when he didn't want to get off the couch. When he stayed with me a few days, my house would look as if a tornado had hit it. Clothes everywhere, empty bowls and glasses covering every surface, urgh! He's worse than me! You know how I can get when I'm busy with a project." Harry nodded, smiling as he remembered watching her with all of her books, doing her homework at Hogwarts. "Well, this was too much. It was like I was living to clean up after him, and when he did something for me, it was never without an ulterior motive. He was forever trying to get me to go to bed with him. He never succeeded, of course." Harry's face seemed to brighten when she said that, but he frowned a little and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees.
"Um, I'm sorry to inturrupt you, Hermione, but if you didn't like him, then why did you stay with him?"
"Well, after the last fight that we had at Hogwarts, I was sitting on the train with a couple of first years, and all I could think of was what you had said to me. How you were tired of me telling you what to do and I watched these two girls in the compartment with me, they were finishing each other's sentences. It made me remember how I'd sometimes know what you were thinking before you even did, and when you told me not to tell you what to do, it made it stick in my head. I think I lost some of who I was when I started following that, and wound up staying with the first guy that showed any interest in me at all. I thought that I couldn't do any better than him, but last night, I was sitting in here, and I realized, I didn't have to put up with this. You wouldn't have wanted me to take the crap that Mark was throwing at me. I went into the bedroom, woke him up and told him to get out, or I would call security. They wouldn't have had a problem chucking him out after the way he acted when we arrived."
"What did he do?" Harry asked.
"Harry, he was horrible! He insisted that we not be bothered and hung all over me while he was ogling the cleaning lady's backside. Then when he found out that there wasn't much of a nightlife on the island, he went into a tantrum and started yelling at the manager about it as if it was this man's fault that he was going to be bored. Then he had the nerve to pinch this woman that went past us while we were being shown to our room. Oh, Harry he made everyone miserable, and made 'himself' the most hated man staying here. What's so funny?" Harry had started laughing when he had heard about the woman being pinched.
"Did you happen to see the woman that he pinched?" he asked, his laugh dying down to a chuckle.
"Yes, she was tall, blonde, about my weight, and not at all happy about him doing that. Harry! Why is this so funny?" He had almost fallen out of his chair as his laugh returned full force and harder. He was now bent over, his chest flat on his thighs as he attempted to control himself. Being unsuccessful, he rose upright and fell against the back of the chair. She waited, slightly impatient for him to tell her what it was he was laughing at, but at the same time, happy to see that he was now able to laugh so freely, as he had never been during their years at Hogwarts.
"Did she have on a yellow swimsuit and black shorts, looking a bit like a bumblebee?" Hermione nodded. "And does Mark have brown hair?"
Another nod, and this time Harry 'did' fall from the chair in his amusement. Hermione stood and looked over the coffee table that was between the chairs to see that he was all right. He looked up at her from the floor, tears begining to run down his cheeks.
"I'm sorry, Hermione, it's just that the woman that Mark pinched was 'Susan'!" Hermione's eyes widened as she realized that Mark's roaming hands had found the backside of Harry Potter's girlfriend!
"She told me about it when she came back up to the room and wanted me to go down there and, as she put it, 'turn him into a toad with that wavy thing of yours.' I talked her into blowing it off, but now that I know who did it, I sort of wish that I had." He stood up and looked her in the eye. "It might have saved you the work of getting rid of him later on. And then I would have known you were here a lot sooner." Hermione flushed.
"Do you think that you would have had the same reaction as you did when we saw each other this morning?" Harry nodded and smiled.
"I missed you, Hermione. I really did. The person that I most wanted to see that summer was you. Ron and Luna helped me move into my new house in Godric's Hollow, but when it came to decorating it, I wanted your opinion more than theirs. I mean, you saw Ron's room at the Burrow. Orange everywhere. I wanted someone who had more of a range of the rest of the color spectrum to give me advice." He held out his hand.
"Well, are you sick of me yet, or do you still want to explore the island with me?" Hermione smiled and took his hand.
"Of course I still want to go exploring with you. I just need to get my bag. After all, that 'is' the reason that we came up here in the first place, isn't it?"
She turned and walked to the bedroom, then raised her hand to her chest in attempt to slow her racing heart.
'Oh, my God!' she thought, "Harry Potter still wants to be my friend, and the last two years have made him even 'hotter' than he already was! I'm going to be the envy of every witch on the island.' She grabbed her little bag and hurried back to the sitting room where she found Harry looking out the window. "Ready," she said and he turned with a smile.
"I just had an idea. There's a restaurant across the street. When we come back from our shopping and sight-seeing, I'm taking you to dinner and dancing."
"But, Harry, I thought you didn't like dancing."
"I didn't like it when I knew that everyone was going to be looking at me during the Yule Ball, and that was five years ago. A lot can change in a few years. I promise to have you back for your radio program." He held out his hand again.
She made her way across the room and took it, smiling as she thought, 'You're right, Harry. A lot 'can' change in a few years.' He led the way to the door and after a few seconds wait while she locked it on the other side, they headed downstairs and out into the brilliant sunlight together, friends once more.