Novocaine

'Ministry Officials Under Investigation'

'Hundreds Still Missing; Families Cry Out for Help'

'Asylum Seekers Multiply as Attacks on Muggleborns Increase'

Clenching my eyes shut meant I couldn't see the words anymore, but they were still imprinted in my brain like a shadow I couldn't shake.

The headlines were devastating, so much so that I didn't want to read the stories they summarized. The little snippets I heard around Godric's were enough to turn my stomach, but they were nothing compared to this.

Not even close.

I was in Ginny's room, sitting crossed legged on the bed I had since the first night. Pages of the Prophet were spread about me and nearly covered the entire mattress in a blanket of bad news. I felt tired from skimming alone, and without reading past the first few sentences, it was trivial to deduce that everything that was anything worth looking at was hard to swallow. The items ranged anywhere from bloody skirmishes to artifact thefts, to propaganda about the Ministry. There were no cartoons, or advice columns, or Wizarding fashion exposés. Not even small time local news. Just pages and pages of heartache and grief that left a bad aftertaste.

Most of the papers were old, tattered copies, caked in dust and grim from months of disuse. I found them lying about in upstairs so I took them, figuring they won't be missed. Several Repellos and Scourgifies later and I still ended up with a stuffy nose and a half empty box of tissue paper. It was all worth it though. The papers chronicled events like a novel set in some far away dystopian world. It some messed up sci-fi meets crime/mystery story, with a hint of thriller and suspense mixed in for good measure. I thought of reading the issues in order starting from last year's and moving forward but I figured going backwards from today would be better. At least that way I'd end up finishing with the lighthearted pieces from yesteryear, and I could pretend this life had some sort of happy ending.

Happy ending.

Ha, oxymoron.

I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair before reaching for a mug long gone cold sitting on the nightstand. It held down a lone issue of The Quibbler.

'You're losing it, Hermione,' I thought whilst chuckling at my own musings.

After a few more minutes of skimming I realized I had just passed something that might need a second look. I turned back to page thirty-eight, article three. How I overlooked it in the first place was a mystery. It was practically screaming at me.

'The Boy Who Lived: Friend or Fiend?', was the heading, followed by a picture of Harry holding a hand in front the camera lens with a sneer on his face as he pushed through a crowd in Diagon Alley. Writer of the article? Skeeter, of course. I didn't have to read it to know it would be a crock of nonsense.

I picked up the Quibbler and flicked through its pages, a smile playing at the corners of my lips. It was a paper ran by Xenophilius Lovegood, Luna father. He was sure to know something about the symbol in Beedle and Bard. I was eager to meet him. Or just eager to get out of this house, really. The tent was cramped but at least it was free of tense dinner conversations and uncomfortably cheery ex-girlfriends.

I took another sip and hummed tunelessly, continuing to turn the ragged pages and dog-ear the ones I'd come back to when I had the chance. The sound of crinkling paper filled the room for a bit before I finally pitched my legs over the edge of the bed, having lost interest in distracting myself.

Usually reading calmed my overactive imagination, but it wasn't working. Not this time. Try as I might, I was still thinking about it. About him, and about her.

Ron waltzed in only twenty minutes ago and announced like he was commenting on the weather. After getting over the surprise of him having the nerve to talk to me, I sat down and got back to reading but, clearly, couldn't focus long enough to do anything productive. Don't get me wrong, I didn't believe the git. Not for a bloody second. His story just seemed too odd, too far-fetched. It just didn't make any sense. And even if it did, I wouldn't want it to. It was the sort of thing you tried not to think too hard about.

"It's rubbish," I told myself as I shrugged on my coat. It was found hiding out downstairs in a coat closet. How it got there was anyone's best guess. "You know that it's rubbish."

I could keep telling myself that, and in fact I had been doing just that since I heard, but I couldn't get away from the infamous 'What if?'

What if it was true, that they really were about to shag like the sex-starved animals Ron accused Harry and I of being just the day before?

'Were they doing it right now?', I wondered. 'Was he kissing her like he kisses me?'

The thoughts crept into the back of my head like a virus, which, according to every book I've ever read on the topic, were nonliving entities. I believed it, but Merlin could they replicate until they wrecked havoc on their unsuspecting hosts.

I heard footsteps settle on the other side of the wooden door just when I touched its knob. It jiggled in my palm, but didn't turn all the way. Whoever was on the other side must have just been standing there wondering whether to follow through on their clear intent on coming in.

I couldn't fathom what other nonsense could have possibly occurred in the last few minutes. Perhaps Ron was looking for another gloating session, the git. Or maybe a vortex leading to a parallel universe tore through the living room, having already replaced everyone in the Burrow with impostors and fakes. Both things were equally as likely, so I reluctantly twisted the door open just so I could get on with it.

And there he was with his fist raised as if trying to decide whether to knock or leave. He smiled weakly and lowered his arm, hugging it to his side.

"I'm guessing you've already heard."

I shrugged off my coat and backed into the room, as if someone had pressed the rewind button again on their universal remote.

"Can I come in, then?" he asked.

"No need to act coy, Harry," I said. "I'm sure you've been in here before."

He blinked twice but otherwise ignored my barb. When the door closed, effectively snuffing out the noise of last-minute packing going on downstairs, he stood next to it. The way he stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets and scuffed his shoes made it obvious that he'd rather be anywhere else but there. I couldn't blame him.

"Listen, I don't know what Ron told you but…"

"You don't know?" My voice was harsh; my tone, bitter. I couldn't help myself. "I don't think that's the right way to start."

"Well, let's go from the beginning?" he asked. I interpreted it as a rhetorical question and simply leaned against a desk, awaiting his sure-to-be well thought out explanation. "I see that you're upset."

"Ten points to Gryffindor."

"And angry –"

"Make that fifteen."

"And probably wondering –"

"At this rate, we'd win the House Cup for sure."

He exhaled, pulling his hands from his pockets and folding them across his chest. His eyes focused on me, hard and unwavering. I almost guessed what he would say before he opened his mouth.

"Don't get your knickers in a bunch over this. Nothing happened."

I scoffed. Nothing was the absence of something, and something had definitely taken place or else Ron wouldn't have been so sickeningly pleased with himself.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

"Absolutely nothing?" I have him one final chance. He didn't take it.

"Do you need me to spell it out for you?"

I coughed into my hand and feigned a look of nonchalance even though it didn't matter how calm I looked on the outside. Internally the question crushed me more than I would've liked to admit.

Pause.

Rewind.

And Play. Take away the big hair and the big teeth and I was still the little seven-year old bookworm that sat in the front row in grade school with her hand always partly raised and with crumpled notepaper being thrown at the back of her head. I couldn't understand why I was too short, or too annoying, or just not normal enough to stop making things explode every other time my parents got into spat. I knew I was different somehow, that something just wasn't quite right, but I couldn't place my finger on it. But then my Hogwarts letter came, and I was ecstatic that there was finally that one thing that I could be good at. And then I learned that I wasn't accepted in this world either.

The relevance? As much as I trusted Harry not to do anything stupid, I just couldn't get past the idea, the sick, twisted thought, that I just wasn't good enough. That I still wasn't good enough, and that I'd never be good enough. No matter how smart I was, or how high my scores were, or how many books I've read or spells I knew, that the great Boy Wonder would someday ask himself what he was doing with a girl like me.

So, yes, I needed it spelt out for me. Letter by letter.

"Ron said you were bound at her feet with an Incarceous," I announced promptly. The words tasted like acid in my mouth but I spat them out all the same.

By the look on his face, I could tell that having it put into such black and white terms was alarming even to him. Regardless, the fact that he didn't immediately deny such a ridiculous claim did not go by unnoticed. I didn't know whether it was because he was uncomfortable, or because he was also on the verge of leaking everything into the open, but he was glowering at me something awful. At some point he had decided to react to my anger with his anger, as if fighting fire with more fire didn't make more of a disaster.

"Like I said, it was nothing."

"I don't believe you."

"And therein lies the problem."

"I'm not the one with a problem here. Is this a mind game?" I asked.

"Not at all," he laughed dryly. The reaction threw me off even more so. I almost felt compelled to push past him and make sure there really wasn't a hole in the fabric of the universe ripping open in the living room and spewing out annoyingly evasive doppelgangers with the unique ability to pluck at my last nerve until my hands were shaking.

"Then is this some kind of a joke to you? All I want is a proper explanation! Is that too much to ask?"

"And all I want is a little trust. Is that too much to ask?"

Just like that, we were at an impasse. The temperature dropped sharply as the seconds ticked by. I could feel the chill seeping through my jumper and into my skin, raising gooseflesh along my arms. I heard the rustle of fabric as he shoved his hands back in his pockets.

It was as if I was the one on trial.

"There's really nothing to explain, Hermione. Ginny's off her rocker and I was stupid," he said, though his lips were still curved with that hint of a smile he couldn't seem to shake. "I should've been more observant before drinking any potion laying about –"

"A potion?" I asked. Ron hadn't mentioned a potion between his insincere 'I'm sorry''s that were practically 'I told you so's without the self-righteous undertones.

"A lust potion," he mumbled sheepishly. He was rubbing at the back of his head and looking anywhere but me, most mostly at his too-scuffed trainers.

"A what potion?" I asked. I wasn't quite sure I heard him right the first time.

"You know, a lust potion. Lowers you inhibitions, gets you riled up. Something she nicked from Fred and George."

"Oh," I said, a frown creasing my brow. "How convenient."

His eyes hardened again.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"What do you think it means?" I replied. "Lust potion? Way to pick the one thing that would make you unaccountable."

It was a reasonable explanation, and one I'd take if it didn't sound so far-fetched it might was well be a lie.

"You know what's getting to me the most?" he asked. I thought it was another rhetorical question and he continued like it was, "That you're basing it on what he says. As if his word is better than mine."

I'd rather drown in my mug of cold stale coffee or be outside with the frosty wind biting at my nose and burning my lungs than be around him when he was like this. When we were like this.

I didn't know why we were like this.

"I never said that."

"You didn't have to."

It was stupid, and we were stupid, because by this point it was obvious that the spat wasn't about whatever happened between him and Ginny. It was deeper than that, so deep that I couldn't put my finger on it even if I went to the bottom of the Mariana Trench with a light and a death wish.

"There's nothing going on between Ron and I," I said, answering the question he didn't need to ask.

"Nothing?" Harry didn't miss a beat. "A minute ago you didn't even know what that meant."

"I should've seen that one coming."

He smiled a grim smile, one where I couldn't quite decide was sarcastic or not.

"You should've."

I got back to my bed of newspapers and sat on the corner of it, idly picking up a copy and flipping it opened on my crossed legs so that at least part of me could hide from whatever it was that was going on. ""All right, let me have it."

He signed heavily whilst making his way over to me.

"Woke up, drank dubious potions, got cornered, was inadvertently saved and defamed at the same time, and then came here for damage control. And you?"

"Ron barged in, told me, and I laughed in his face."

"And all this before eleven?"

"It's maddening, isn't it?"

He chuckled and the mattress dipped where he planted his knee behind me.

"I can be wanker when I'm nervous," Harry said. His hands were on my shoulders, kneading the knots he found there. I couldn't help but smile at his admission, and his thinly veiled apology massage.

"I know," I said, closing my eyes and allowing the feeling of warmth to flow over me. It wasn't an all-encompassing heat but it was good enough to make my teeth stop clattering and my spine stop wracking itself with shivers.

The air was still heavy and steeped with suspicion. The problem wasn't resolved, I reckoned. It just receded back into the darkness where it'll wait 'till one of us slips up again so it could devour us both whole.

"What are you reading?" he asked, although he knew from the moment he walked in.

"Daily Prophets," I obliged anyhow.

"Nothing interesting, I bet."

"That has to be the understatement of the year," I said. The hands on my shoulders paused in their movements.

I glanced up at him to find that he wasn't smiling like I figured he would be. Honestly, he hardly did what I expected him too, but this was different. My brow furrowed as I noted this strange, but all too common lately, behavior. His face blank face was on autopilot and by the looks of it, you'd think his favorite pastime was waiting for dry paint to flake and fall off.

"There's one in here about you, Harry."

"Really?" He asked. He looked at me at the mention of his name but his voice sounded distant, like he was far away from me and this room and all the things that had transpired before eleven. I passed the page to him and followed the movement of his eyes as they skimmed the lines of the article. The rest of him stood stiff, unmoving. I looked back down at the papers and pretended that I wasn't waiting for him to say something. Anything. A second passed. A minute. Three.

"What a joke," he muttered. He folded the article, stuffed it into his back pocket, and looked at his watch. "Let's go get some lunch and finish packing."

He didn't wait for my answer before turning around and walking towards the door.

"Er…Harry?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you think I should stock up on some food before we go?"

The question hung in the air for so long that I thought he wasn't going to answer it. It would've been all right because I was just trying to buy time and delay the inevitable rift from forming any higher than it already was. His back was still to me when he spoke.

"Definitely. I don't think Molly would mind. Be sure to grab some potion ingredients while you're at it."

"Of course."

All those things and more were already sitting in a pack downstairs. I ambled over to him and took his freezing hand.

Whilst we went down the hall, I couldn't help but feel like some vital piece of our bond was lost, like a missing puzzle piece hiding wherever lonely socks go when not being horded by house elves. I didn't know what it was, or how to get it back, or even if I could.

We didn't talk. We barely even looked at each other.

Our footsteps fell into a mismatched rhythm of their own.

I squeezed his fingers.

"Don't let this ruin us." My voice was barely over a whisper, as if thwarting scheming redheads with Extendable Ears tucked beneath the floorboards.

Perhaps Harry needed one too, because I got no answer.