Thresholds

One of the most annoying things about Quidditch was that the stands for the audience were so high that they always took exhaustingly long to ascend, and virtually forever to descend while slowly moving with the crowd. Sure, from a more neutral point of view one might have acknowledged how even the fans of Quidditch came to their regular exercise while enjoying their favorite game this way, but being right in the middle of it and not being very fond of being right in the middle of crowds in general, Hermione found herself quite unable to appreciate that aspect.

Instead she mentally busied herself with going through her inner spell book in search for something that might have helped her get through this at least a little faster, like making herself pervious or – even better – making the crowd disappear altogether. Seriously, how hard could it be to get down some stairs? You pretty much just had to let yourself fall from step to step, in a coordinated sort of way. Didn't they have anywhere to be? Or couldn't they at least have some respect for those that did?

When the crowd she was so hopelessly trapped in finally reached the exit, she hastily rushed past the slowly dispersing lot and headed straight for the locker rooms, hoping she hadn't spent as many ages trying to get down the stands as it had felt like. Then again, maybe she should've just headed back to the castle with all the others and congratulated him there. There was no guarantee he'd still be here – that much time she had definitely lost on those bloody stairs. But something made her go her way nonetheless, and finally arriving at the entrance to the Gryffindor locker room, she tentatively knocked on the door and then, when no response came, carefully peeked inside, wondering for a split second what she was even doing there and then quickly putting that thought aside.

The room seemed devoid of people, although the stale air that came her way, thick with the intermingled body odors of too many sweaty individuals, was testament to their recent occupation of the room. Scrunching up her nose in disgust she stepped inside despite her olfactory organ's protests. Boys surely were one smelly affair.

Slowly and quietly she walked past the lockers that were lined up at the wall, with a long wooden bench stretching for the whole length in front of them. Over each of them hung a thick cotton banner all in red, waving gently in a wind that wasn't there, with golden borders and flocking showing a large number and a name below. When she reached the locker that had the number 7 up above, she paused. Potter, it read below in shining letters.

Of all the lockers this one was the only one that stood open, and inside hung the uniform its wearer had neatly put back into its place, while a few pieces of protective gear were still strewn out on the bench below. She wouldn't usually consider a sports uniform especially sexy by any stretch of the imagination, but lately she couldn't help but notice how he really made it work quite naturally. Most noticeably, his whole demeanor somehow changed, along with his posture as soon as he put this uniform on, as if he left all his burdens, his worries and, yes, his doubts and insecurities behind in this very locker whenever he took the uniform out.

"You know, fans aren't usually allowed in here."

She cringed violently and spun around with a sharp intake of breath.

"I was just—" she began hastily, but then abruptly found herself bereft of the ability to speak when she saw who had just spoken to her and how exactly he looked.

A few small steps away from her stood Harry, the very person she had been looking for – and, as it turned out, so very unprepared to find – with his slightly damp hair even more disheveled than usual, smiling lopsidedly at her with his head cocked to one side. And Harry, as was plainly impossible not to notice, was clad in much less than a person could potentially be clad in, with no more than a red, knee-long towel – and nothing but – loosely wrapped around his waistline. Far too loosely.

His skin shimmered wetly, if from water or from sweat she didn't even have the presence of mind to discern. Small pearls of the clear liquid slowly ran down his chest and his arms, along the lines of his shapely muscles, naturally rather than excessively defined and proportioned. The form of his body was lean and athletic, his arms long and deceptively strong, his legs unbowed and his shoulders broad for his size and strikingly straight from end to end. When it had last been applicable to call him scrawny in any sense of the word she could not recall. Thin, yes. But scrawny? There was simply too much Harry in front of her for that word to come to mind.

"What?" he asked amusedly, still smiling even while giving her a quizzical look.

With this most complicated of questions registering somewhere between her ears with considerable latency, she searched for something resembling a legitimate answer – anything, really.

What she ended up ejecting sounded an awful lot like yum.

He raised an eyebrow at her, which she of course hardly noticed since she had an uncharacteristically hard time concentrating on his face, what with following that single, playful drop of whatever it was running down over his stomach towards the finest line of hair between belly button and the region that towel insisted on covering…

"Gum?" he asked, in earnest uncertain.

"What?" she asked in return, shaking herself ever so slightly and finally forcing her eyes to look up to where eyes properly were supposed to be directed. The way he looked at her, however, did not serve to steady her knees.

"I, uh, just meant to ask why you're here, is all," he amiably picked up the thread she had hopelessly lost. "Not to rush you or anything. It's just that I was about to take a shower and I came back here because in one of my more cerebral moments I actually managed to forget my shampoo."

"Oh," she said, and then for a few awkward seconds nothing else followed. "Right. I mean, I really just wanted to congratulate you on the victory and the great game you played and all that. It was quite spectacular."

"Thanks," he replied, grinning from ear to ear at that. "But since when does Quidditch make you borderline euphoric?"

"Well," she answered a little unsurely, "it really all depends on the players who play it, doesn't it?"

He nodded as his right hand went to the conspicuously sloppy knot that kept his towel in place and loosely closed around it.

"So which ones do you like?" he asked her in perfect innocence.

"Hmmm," she made, pretending to think about that very carefully. "Well, there's that one guy I really like, I guess."

"Yeah?" he asked, and she couldn't help but feel that he stood just a tiny step closer to her without having noticed him move. "And why's that?"

"He's just a very special player," she replied in a halting voice.

"Is that so?" he asked with a casual step towards her, his voice inexplicably deeper all of a sudden. "And what makes him so very special, I wonder."

She felt herself gulp involuntarily, her throat going dry within an instant. Then she noticed something out of the corner of her eye.

"His broomstick," she blurted out, then gave off the slightest of whimpers in frustration over her own clumsiness.

"Oh?" he asked, with overacted surprise. Then he took another step towards her that brought him within arm's reach of her. "And what do you like so much about his... broomstick?"

"I guess I'm just really impressed with the way he handles it," she answered, and by now even her own voice sounded strangely unfamiliar to her: a phenomenon she didn't find much time to ponder as Harry made yet another step towards her, closing the distance between them to barely more than a foot. She might have tried to take a small step backwards, but she already felt her calves press against the bench behind her.

"And how does he handle it?" he asked, his eyes not once leaving hers.

"With complete and utter control," she slowly enunciated, emphasizing almost every single word as if they were all tremendously important for some reason. "It always goes exactly where he commands it to go, and it always moves precisely at the speed he requires. Every elegant turn, every decisive rise, every sudden stop and every gentle, every forceful thrust happens at his own will."

"Sounds like a bloke who knows what he's doing," he said, making one last step to close all distance that was left between them, their bodies now a mere inch away from touching.

"Uh-huh," she weakly breathed, abashedly averting her eyes from his only to find that staring at his glistening chest, calmly rising and falling virtually right in her face, did not improve her general clarity of mind, pathetic as it already was.

"So," he said, and she could feel his breath tickling her neck as he leaned in even closer. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Don't you want to try it for yourself?"

"Try what?"

"Handling my broomstick," he answered huskily, his lips nearly touching her ears and moving down along her neckline as he spoke, hovering just above her skin. "Maybe take it for a ride yourself."

"You think I could do that?"

"Why not?" he asked with a breathy voice. "It's quite sturdy."

"I don't doubt my ability to handle your broomstick," she whispered cravingly, "it's your broomstick's ability to handle me I'm worried about."

"Trust me," he said in his deepest voice, leaning his head back to look straight at her with his left hand resting lightly at her jawline, his emerald eyes ablaze with unveiled desire. "It will get the job done."

As his lips slowly descended onto hers, parting ever so slightly, and she closed her eyes in anticipation, she felt his right hand gently cup the other side of her face – and a towel dropped to the floor.

Hermione opened her eyes and found herself breathing rapidly in the dark. Even though she could hardly see anything her eyes went back and forth in confusion and disorientation, until slowly but surely her consciousness took over and made her realize that she had just woken up from a dream, which instantly wiped the stupid grin from her face she was irritated to discover had been plastered all over it the entire time.

And only then, like a flash of lightning jolting through her whole body, did she suddenly realize what dream she had just awoken from. Within an instant she sat straight up with her eyes widened in blank horror, her duvet falling off her shoulders and puddling in her lap. Down by her feet lay Crookshanks, who gave her a look that suggested he would be raising a quizzical eyebrow at her right now if only he'd had one at his disposal. He didn't seem to approve.

"Children of an idle brain, my arse!" she said out loud, putting a hand to her head and grabbing her hair in disbelief. "Who talks like that?"

<3<3<3<3<3

"You look like crap, mate."

"Thanks," said Harry without looking up at his friend, preferring to concentrate on lacing his shin guards instead. "You too."

"Yeah, well, I got kicked out of bed even though I've got three free periods today that I would've very much liked to spend sleeping. By you, no less," Ron complained, having a good yawn to emphasize his point. "What's your excuse?"

"I guess I don't have one," answered Harry rather flatly. "I slept the whole night through, without so much as an interruption."

"Oh, right. That potion, huh? Did it work?"

Harry shrugged his shoulders indifferently. "Guess so."

Mustering his friend with attentive eyes, Ron went on to ask, "No dream at all?"

"Can't remember anything."

"And you didn't do your teleportation thingy either?"

"Nope."

Ron watched him quietly for a moment as Harry morosely proceeded to put on his elbow pads as well, then a knowing smile spread across the young Weasley's lips and nodding he said, "So that's the way the wind's blowing."

"What are you talking about, Ron?" Harry asked, more than a little peeved. Then, further irritated by his own flaring temper, he looked up at him and found Ron raising his eyebrows at him.

"Must've been one relaxing night you had there," he said, grabbing his own set of elbow pads from his locker.

Sighing heavily Harry said, "Could we please just keep to the point, here?"

"Sure," Ron answered easily. "What point?"

"How about the point of you not making the team if you don't get your act together?" replied Harry, a little more aggressive than intended and instantly rueful about it. "I'm sorry," he said, "I'm not trying to be mean here, but it's true. If I were to put you into the starting seven instead of McLaggen right now, people would call it nepotism – and rightfully so, with the shape you're in."

"Well, sorry," said Ron, patting his stomach a little too affectionately. "I still have a little vacation weight on me. You should've seen the buffet they had down there. Man, that was one sight to behold, lemme tell you..."

Harry looked at him with a weird mixture of disapproval and amusement, waiting for him to snap out of his culinary daydream. Eventually he did.

"What's that git even doing here anymore?" he asked, looking at McLaggen's locker in plain annoyance. "Shouldn't he have graduated last year?"

"Apparently he wasn't satisfied with his N.E.W.T. results," Harry concisely explained.

"Oh? So just because McLaggen's ambitious I have to work harder?" Ron asked, not without a healthy dose of self-deprecation.

Harry, although not quite able to suppress a smile at the same time, shook his head at his incorrigible friend. "There's actually a rather promising kid in second year as well, if you must know. He's a little small, but very quick."

"Now you're just trying to intimidate me."

"Yeah, that's what I usually use my twelve-year-old acquaintances for."

When Harry was just about to put his gloves on, Ron pointed towards his wrist and said, "Hey, where's your pretty bracelet?"

Harry raised an eyebrow at him. "You're awfully perceptive for someone who was pretty much sleepwalking less than five minutes ago," he remarked, and only then answered the question. "I already dropped it off at Madam Pomfrey's office before I came here."

Ron merely nodded, then stood up and grabbed his broom. When Harry followed suit, Ron again looked surprised.

"Your Firebolt?" he asked rather incredulously. "It looked more like fire-wood yesterday. That was one hell of a collision. You fixed it up quite nicely."

"No way could I've done that myself," said Harry, looking at the gift he had once unknowingly received from Sirius so seemingly long ago. "Hermione did it. She came right down here after the crash."

"Guess she must've been really worried about your broom," Ron quipped.

"It's just a good thing she was doing her homework sitting in the stands again," said Harry, deliberately ignoring Ron's comment. "She helped with Dean's arm too, and there wasn't all that much left for Madam Pomfrey to do, as she told me earlier."

Harry didn't notice the way his friend was looking at him, for he was far too busy with looking at his Firebolt in admiration and reminiscence, lost in his very own thoughts.

"So," Ron spoke up after a while in a convincingly conversational tone, "you think it really were the dreams that caused your teleportation?"

"Maybe," Harry replied evasively. "I don't know. Might be a coincidence that it didn't happen last night, or maybe the potion just messed with whatever it is my brain does while I'm sleeping. Could be a whole lot of things, I reckon."

"But you did dream about Hermione the nights before?"

"Seriously, Ron," Harry groaned. "I was practically interrogated twice already this week and I think that's quite enough for me, thank you very much."

"Yeah, but I'm your friend," said Ron, giving him the puppy eyes. "And I feel so left out, what with being all alone in my bed and all."

"A pain in the arse is what you are," Harry told him, rolling his eyes with a grin. "But honestly, it's not like I have sultry dreams about Hermione every night. That's not how it happened."

"Wait," said Ron, even while Harry realized his mistake on his own. "Not every night? Last time I checked you told me you'd never had any such dream about her at all. If I remember correctly, that was, what, three days ago?"

Wondering if his cheeks would ever be able to recover from this strangest of weeks, Harry felt the heat radiating from his face once more. "Well, it was true at the time!"

He received another raised eyebrow in response. Desperately searching for a way out of this and failing miserably, he surrendered with slumped shoulders and a weak sigh.

"There might have been one such dream," he reluctantly admitted, and then added in defiance, "Incidentally right after the day you kept going on about it, so we might as well call it your fault."

"Oh, sure," Ron replied in mock agreement. "I always knew I could control other people's dreams! Trelawney would be so proud."

Harry didn't appear to be planning any kind of response, for he silently proceeded to close his locker and then, when he had accomplished that, busied himself with readjusting his gloves.

"So," Ron began anew, pointedly clicking his tongue, "was it any good?"

When Harry instantly turned to scowl at him he found his friend grinning from ear to ear. Just as quickly Harry looked away again and decided to readjust the same glove again he had just finished with five seconds earlier.

"What kind of question is that?" he mumbled under his breath.

"The kind with a question mark at the end?" When Harry merely mumbled something else into his nonexistent beard in response, Ron continued, "Come on, now. If we want to blame me for causing it, we might at least let me know what exactly I brought onto you. I wouldn't want to be responsible for… bad entertainment."

Harry gave off an exasperated sigh, aimed half at Ron and half at himself for realizing that he was now officially wearing the most readjusted pair of gloves in the history of mankind.

"I promise," Ron tried to encourage him further, "I won't ask why it was good, I won't ask for any details and I won't even ask if it was good because of any specific people that appeared in it. Just tell me if it was good in a general sense. It's a totally harmless question. Was it a good dream?"

Harry neatly put down his broom, leaning it against the bench. Then he opened his locker again, looked for nothing in particular and surprisingly didn't find it, then closed the locker again. Then he slowly and most thoroughly flattened the perfectly flat sleeves of his jersey: first the left, then the right. Then he scratched his neck, and then picked his broom up again. With Ron watching him attentively with the most amused expression on his face, he heaved a sigh – if only because by now he had run out of things to do.

"Yes," he then said.

"Did you guys do it in your dream?" Ron immediately queried, and when Harry raised his broom at him in a playfully threatening gesture, he raised his hands in surrender, hastily saying, "I'm kidding, I'm kidding!"

"Well," said Harry with a lopsided grin, shouldering his Firebolt and heading towards the exit that led straight to the pitch, "we probably would have, if I hadn't woken up."

Ron followed him excitedly. "Seriously? Like, for real?"

"No, Ron," Harry replied in a deadpan manner, turning around to face him when they stood just in front of the door. "In a dream."

His friend grimaced at him.

"Could we please concentrate on Quidditch now?" Harry asked. "We have a lot of work to do if we want to get you back on track before the first game of the season."

"Yeah, yeah," Ron casually disregarded his seriousness with a wave of his hand. "Quidditch, Shmidditch."

Harry raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Did you just actually dismiss the importance of Quidditch?"

"Wow," Ron breathed, blinking in disbelief over himself. "I think I just did. This can't be good. I'll lie down in shame tonight."

"Well, if it's any consolation, I'm sure Quidditch will get over it."

When Harry opened the door and was just about to step outside, Ron made him pause when he spoke up again.

"Seriously, though," he said. "I mean… I just want to say that, all jokes put aside for a moment, that… you could talk to me, you know? I realize this has been a pretty crazy week for you and I know the whole situation makes you uncomfortable and that more often than not you prefer to deal with stuff on your own and all, but… it's not always the best way to go about things, right? But even I get there are things you maybe just aren't ready to say, or something. I guess all I want to say is that… I'm here, you know?"

For one speechless moment, Harry didn't react at all. Then a smile began to curl up one corner of his lips. Ron looked positively bashful.

"You want to hug it out with a nice little dosage of bromance," Harry asked him, "or would you prefer a rough, manly clap on the back?"

"Well, now you've just ruined the moment," Ron mumbled in mock disappointment.

They shared a short yet no less heartfelt laugh about it.

"Thanks," Harry then said. "Really. I appreciate it."

Ron nodded his head while looking at his feet. "You think I could maybe ask you one last question?" he then asked with uncommon diffidence. "A serious one. And just the one."

Harry sighed, albeit mostly for show. "Go on then, if you must. But just the one, really."

"Okay," Ron agreed elatedly, looking up at him. "So, here it goes. You woke up in Hermione's bed three nights in a row, right? That's not the actual question, but I need some confirmation here."

Harry, scratching the back of his head while taking a newfound interest in the doorframe, answered with a nod.

"And now you didn't," Ron went on. "Maybe because the potion worked and you really did teleport because of your dreams, maybe not. Doesn't matter. You woke up, well, the way you used to wake up until any of this happened. In your own bed, by yourself. Like the ordinary rest of us. So, my actual question is, are you happy or relieved that you did, or are you something else?"

Harry went up and down the dark lines of the wood grain of the doorframe with his thumb, lost in his thoughts for a few long seconds that passed in silence, until he took in a deep breath which he then exhaled in a long, heavy sigh.

"Maybe… probably… mostly something else."

Ron nodded sympathetically. "See? That wasn't so hard."

"Not for you, I'm sure," Harry gave back. "Anyway. Now that that's thankfully over with, would you finally be ready for some actual Quidditch practice?"

Ron shrugged his shoulders. "I guess," he mumbled listlessly.

"Hey, don't give me that defeatist attitude," Harry told him. "I want to hear your uncompromising determination and willpower."

"I guess!" Ron exclaimed with unbridled enthusiasm, and so the both of them finally went out onto the Quidditch pitch together – brooms ready and spirits high. Mostly.

<3<3<3<3<3

Going straight from the freedom of flight into the confines of the Hogwarts dungeons could be a challenging transition to make, especially considering that going into the dungeons was a challenge in and of itself for all those students who were not used to the cool, damp atmosphere that was most bearable when at least there hadn't yet been a Potions class that day to fill the corridors with oftentimes nauseating smells. It was, after all, Slytherin territory, and accordingly referred to as The Snake Pits by some of the other Houses' students, or The Winding Bowels by some of the more imaginative minds, while those more outspoken and less metaphorically inclined simply tended to call it The Stink.

Harry and Ron, freshly showered after their exhausting practice session, were already waiting in front of Professor Snape's classroom with a group of Gryffindors and Slytherins – or rather two groups, meaning one of each – when Hermione arrived and joined them. When she greeted them, Harry couldn't help but notice how her eyes barely flickered in his general direction while at the same time she didn't appear to have any problem at all with looking at Ron.

"How was your practice?" she asked conversationally, without looking at anyone in particular.

"Ask me that in three weeks again when you'll see McLaggen sitting on the bench without a reason to show off any of his stupidly white teeth," Ron answered coolly.

"Hey!" someone behind him complained. "I heard that."

Ron turned no more than he needed to in order to face the one who had just spoken. "Oh, I'm sorry, Cormac," he said without the slightest attempt to sound sincere, "but I really don't give a toss."

"That's great, Ron," Harry disapprovingly remarked, even while having a hard time fighting the grin that forced its way onto his lips. "You're doing wonders for our team chemistry there."

"Yeah, well," said Ron, "it's not team chemistry that keeps the Quaffle out of your goal hoops. By the way, Hermione, I think you've blown the job on Harry's broomstick."

Hermione winced visibly, as if abruptly and most unpleasantly woken from a daydream. "Excuse me?" she asked with her cheeks appearing to be slightly flushed all of a sudden, utterly bewildered and, in all her confusion and just in case, quite affronted as well.

"It splintered," Ron explained haltingly, startled at her unexpectedly touchy reaction.

"It's just a minor fracture," Harry was quick to explain, and for the first time Hermione's attention switched to him. "I think I'll have to send it in and get a thorough checkup from the folks in Diagon Alley. But you did a great job, Hermione. Honestly. It felt great. I just went too hard at it, I guess. And with the damage it took yesterday it's really not surprising. This is exactly the kind of thing experts are for, so please don't feel bad about it, okay?"

For an awkward moment Hermione merely stared at him – or maybe straight through him – with unmitigated confusion still frozen on her features. Then she blinked.

"Right," she said, shaking herself. "The Firebolt. Your… your broom. A fracture, you say? Wait, nothing happened to you, right?"

"Nah," Harry casually reassured her. "Really, just the smallest of cracks exactly in the spot where it practically broke yesterday. It happened when I took an unnecessarily hard turn. Should've gone easier on it."

Hermione gave a nod in response, saying, "Good, good," and averting her eyes again, fiddling around with the school bag that she had strapped over her shoulder. Harry and Ron watched her for a second or two, then shared a clueless look. Harry shrugged his shoulders.

"You seem awfully flustered today, Herms," Ron remarked, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

Immediately her head jerked up, her eyes sparkling dangerously. "If you call me Herms again I swear you'll be far worse than flustered, Ronald."

"There you go," he merrily announced to Harry. "I fixed her."

Just in that moment – without leaving Hermione much time to glare at Ron, let alone decide which spell to use to hex him into oblivion – the door to the class room swung abruptly open and Professor Snape brusquely bade them enter, vanishing just as quickly as he had appeared. And thus, once more, four whole hours – the curse of being in seventh year – of brewing murky liquids in steaming cauldrons with everybody's favorite teacher began.

Today they were to make the antidote to the poisonous bite of the horned desert basilisk, which being in northern Scotland seemed a bit weird to say the least, but once the initially amused students began to realize just how difficult and tedious the procedure of its creation was, the jovial mood quickly diminished – with Snape's own mood behaving exactly opposed to that of his class, of course.

When, after twenty minutes of intricate instructions, the somewhat dazed students began to gather their utensils and ingredients and got to work in their usual pairs of two, Harry and Hermione did so without many words and with a lot of nervous glances and awkward motions, which distracted Harry immensely since he had been under the impression that the whole awkwardness that had persisted between them for the greater part of the week seemed to have subsided at least a little bit the day before.

She avoided looking at him, she barely spoke a real sentence and once she even flinched back from him when his hand lightly, unintentionally grazed hers. It was all beginning to irk him excessively.

If anything, he thought, it should be him acting like Hermione paradoxically did, after the talk they had about his dream. Was she suddenly embarrassed about her own outspokenness? That didn't make any sense. Or did it? He threw her what he hoped was a casual glance, and she looked up from her book and just as quickly away again.

Oh, no! She's uncomfortable around me because of the things I told her! Because of the dream!

But why then had everything felt so normal in the locker room after Quidditch team practice last night? She had been her usual self: concerned, caring and ridiculously competent. After Dean had left with his arm looking much more regular than before Hermione had administered what she herself simply called first aid – even though Harry was quite sure she could give a few employees at St. Mungo's a run for their money with stuff like that – she had pretty much reached straight for his broomstick and inspected it closely, handling it with great care and no lesser interest. To her, of course, it probably had looked less like a broken broom and more like a challenge.

After she had mended the fracture with the help of her wand, she had tenderly run her fingers up and down the wood with Harry watching her in amazement. It really had seemed as good as new and he couldn't even begin to explain how in Merlin's name she had done it. Brilliant – as so often before – had been the first word to come to his mind and, eventually, over his lips, and Hermione, blushing ever so slightly, had smiled very happily at him in response – even while talking what he could only describe as modest nonsense to downplay her accomplishment.

Granted, after that there might have been one particular moment that probably could be called kind of awkward in a sense, when Harry had helped her back to her feet and they had ended up standing right in front of each other with their chests lightly brushing against one another, and with his hands somehow ending up resting lightly against both sides of her waist. She had initially held her head slightly bowed so that, even with her not being all that much smaller than him, he couldn't see her face, and her forehead had been barely an inch away from his lips.

He vividly remembered the moment she had looked up at him, her eyes flickering over his face and then locking with his for a few, incredibly intense seconds that made his heart beat in a frenzy. He had been unable to keep his eyes from switching back and forth between her eyes and her mouth, and he couldn't remember ever having noticed the perfect shape and color of those lips of hers. They had shimmered faintly in the light, and they had been so slightly, so beguilingly agape…

Goodness, how could anyone be this pretty even while having their hands in some kind of green glibber, with their hair all messy, their face flushed and sweaty and a smear of some blackish powder on their nose? And then those dark and haunting eyes, their endless depth a daring place to tread, where one could either find oneself or else get lost in completely. Or maybe both at the same time.

"Harry?"

Bloody hell! She's actually looking right at you! Hello? React, you fool!

"Yah?" was all he could manage to get from his hopelessly overwhelmed larynx. He blinked himself back into the waking world and clumsily fumbled for the mortar and pestle he had only halfheartedly put to use so far.

"The lapis lazuli powder?" Hermione asked him, and from the manner in which she asked he could tell that she didn't ask for the first time.

"Yah!" he said, nodding violently and hastily getting back to work. "Coming right up."

Harry kept quietly pounding and grinding away on the tiny blue flakes for a while, slowly but surely turning them into the fine powder Hermione had requested for reasons sadly unknown to him, but he was confident that it had something to do with what they were supposed to do.

That's just great. I was actually planning on being the one to ask her what's going on with her today, and now I've already made such a fool out of myself again that the world might as well ask me instead what the bloody hell's wrong with me!

"So what's wrong with you?" he suddenly blurted out, turning to face Hermione expectantly.

She looked at him with a puzzled expression and remained motionless for a moment. Then she broke out into laughter, and when she didn't stop, Harry found himself joining her, if a little unsurely.

"What?" he asked her abashedly in between chuckles.

"I'm sorry," she answered, panting heavily after her little bout of laughter, "but you just looked like a psychopath at a cooking contest, with mortar and pestle in your hands and that weird, angry look on your face. And you also just asked me what's wrong with me, after you were practically staring at me and having Merlin knows what kind of out-of-body experience just about three minutes ago."

Told you so. Wait, who am I talking to?

"And by the way," Hermione added with her eyebrows perked up, "I think you've actually begun to grind away at the mortar itself with your pestle there."

The incessant motion of his hand came to an abrupt halt, and making a sulky face at her he handed her the bowl with the tiny mound of blue powder in it.

"Well," he then said, just a tad surly, "could we, by any chance, ignore that regrettable episode of mine and both admit to the fact that my question was still legitimate in nature, since you are acting a little weird today?"

"Am I?" she asked innocently.

Harry, leaning against the table with his hip, pursed his lips, but Hermione seemed to pointedly keep herself busy with her ingredients and the measurement of their dosages.

"Come on," he insisted, though warmly so rather than harshly. "You can talk to me. Did you have a bad dream or something? Because I'm a proven expert on the subject."

Harry didn't even have enough time to notice the pink color spreading over Hermione's cheeks as his attention was suddenly taken by another voice speaking up from behind him.

"Are we making progress?" Snape asked them sourly, his eyes glancing over the mess on their table coldly and deprecatingly.

"Well, I was," Harry casually replied. "Until I got interrupted."

Snape's eyes narrowed, blazing menacingly. But before he could retort in any way, Hermione intervened.

"We're all good, Professor," she said in her best model pupil manner. "Thank you for asking."

Snape curled his lips and skeptically eyed the contents of their cauldron. Whatever he might have thought about those his unchanged expression didn't reveal.

"It has come to my attention that the Nonsomnium potion has brought about the result we were indubitably all hoping for?" he asked them sardonically.

Harry merely nodded curtly in response, his lips tightly compressed into a straight line.

"Lovely," said Snape, and it was hard to imagine the word could sound any less lovely. "Now we'll just have to find a way to keep you house-trained and docile without putting you under the effects of an addictive, mind-altering drug."

Harry didn't get further than opening his mouth before Hermione preempted him.

"It's rare to see a professor care so much for the wellbeing of his students," she said, her voice downright syrupy. "It's most admirable, and very much appreciated."

Snape considered her with the weakest, wriest smile that barely curled up one crooked corner of his lips.

"I'm sure," he said slowly, then turned his eyes back to Harry with his head following suit. "You will be expected back at the infirmary at eight o'clock tonight," he told him emotionlessly, then looked genuinely amused at the way Harry's expression changed into one of apprehension, and smugly added, "Sadly, I will not be attending today's performance."

Eyeing their bubbling cauldron one last time he gruffly advised, "Mind the temperature," and went his way to gallantly support some other students.

With an irritated growl escaping his lips, Harry turned around to see Hermione already going back to work – and without delay, of course, making sure the temperature of the liquid in their cauldron was exactly according to instructions.

"So, where was I?" Harry asked pleasantly, and at least Hermione couldn't entirely suppress a lopsided smile.

"Seriously, Harry," she admonished him nonetheless, "we should really focus on getting this done right."

"Well," he replied, "when you think about it, this hasn't really been the best of weeks for things that should be done."

She gave him a warning look and, playful as it was, it still served to make him relent and do his part in their teamwork with at least a minimum amount of concentration.

The following hour passed rather uneventfully, for a change. Near the end of class even Harry had caught up and was slowly but surely beginning to understand what they were doing, proudly presenting Hermione exactly the flask of whatever it was inside before she even asked for it at one point. When the time had come to bottle a sample of their results for Snape to review before their next lesson, Ron and Neville, working at the table right next to Harry's and Hermione's, looked at their own cauldron most warily.

"Well," said Ron, poking the unintentionally gooey and abominably stinking substance with the handle of a large wooden spoon, with plain disgust showing on his features, "I'm not quite sure it'll do anything against the venom of a horned desert basilisk, but it might just be able to poison it right back."

"And if not," Neville added, looking equally doubtful, "we'll just throw the damn cauldron right at it."

Snape didn't appear to be all that amused.

When they had all finished cleaning up and were finally allowed to hastily flee from the nearly unbearable stench that Ron and Neville so kindly had impregnated the air in the whole class room with, and Harry and Hermione were approaching the exit, Harry – to his great, subsequent regret – was unable to keep his eyes from flickering briefly to Draco Malfoy, who seemed to be expecting them near the door. As soon as green and grey met, the little prince of Slytherin spoke up.

"So," he drawled with a blasé, lopsided sneer, speaking loud enough to involve everyone that was still left around them, "you are actually shagging the Mudblood now, aren't you? And here I thought you couldn't possibly stoop any lower, Potter. I mean, I get the whole notion of opportunism – really, I do – but this? Come on, this should be beneath even the likes of you."

Boiling over like instant noodles over dragon fire, Harry started towards Malfoy, but Hermione gently put her hand on his arm and held him back before he had even made a single step.

"Don't," she told him calmly. "He's not worth it."

Irritated, he turned to face her. "But—"

She shook her head. "Violence won't change him," she said, giving Malfoy a look of what at least to Harry seemed disturbingly close to something resembling sympathy. "I don't believe it's unreasonable to assume that a fundamental deprivation of affection during his formative years contributed its fair share to his stunted emotional development and his well-documented lack of empathy. You cannot give what you never received, unless you know how to make it yourself. It's an oversimplification of a complex issue, but plainly speaking, I reckon it would be more sensible to give him a hug once in a while."

Behind them Ron and Neville at first merely snickered gleefully, but wound up snorting with laughter by the time Hermione had finished. The perennial smirk was, of course, for once wiped entirely off of Malfoy's visage, and his usually pale skin seemed to have found a little color at last. Next to him, Crabbe, Goyle and Pansy Parkinson, for the lack of comprehension, chose to look at Hermione in something that supposedly was meant to resemble hostility, but still ended up looking like a great deal of incomprehension nevertheless.

"Are you sure?" Harry asked, just a little confused as he struggled internally to hold on to his waning anger.

Hermione nodded her head once. "You don't have to hug him right away, though."

Harry visibly relaxed at that, although he overplayed it just a little by wiping his perfectly dry forehead with the back of his hand. "Phew, for a moment you had me really worried there," he said jokingly, while Malfoy, utterly disregarded by both Harry and Hermione, still watched their exchange with the weirdest expression distorting his features.

"Will I be seeing you later?" Harry then asked her.

"Of course," she answered. "Although I won't be at dinner in the Great Hall since we have a prefect meeting at seven o'clock, so it could get late. We'll be discussing this year's Halloween festivities."

Harry raised an eyebrow at her. "Gosh, you management folks sure like to plan ahead, huh?"

"You do realize who's in charge, right?"

His lips spread into a grin. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't there also be a Head Boy with just as much to say as you?"

"Oh, sure," Hermione replied with an impish smile. "What's his name again?"

He slowly shook his head at her in disapproval, his beaming smile blatantly negating any graveness one might have expected to be in said disapproval.

"Anyway," he said, "have fun with your dictatorial party planning, then."

"Thanks. And you have fun… in the infirmary."

"Now that's just mean," he remarked in mock consternation, whereupon they simply smiled at each other for one quiet moment.

Then, suddenly yet not abruptly, with an unexpected degree of smoothness in his every motion, he leaned into her and lightly kissed her on her cheek, his lips lingering on her skin just a second too long to call it a peck.

"I'll wait up for you," he softly said. "Tell you about all the fun I'll certainly have had."

Hermione, feeling completely bedlam on the inside and hoping to seem perfectly composed on the outside, gave him one last parting smile that felt annoyingly jittery on her lips, and left.

Harry watched her go with a faraway expression, then shook himself back into the here and now once she had vanished from sight. And then he turned to Draco, who was still frozen in place as if he had just had an encounter with a basilisk – not of the horned desert variant, that is.

"I'm sorry," Harry said quite pleasantly. "You were saying?"

And without waiting for any kind of response, he went his way as well.

<3<3<3<3<3

Later that day, when the advancing afternoon hours were slowly blending into early evening, Hermione, after finishing her last class of the day, was leaving the castle through the great two-winged main gate on her way to Hagrid's hut to help her half-giant friend with a few much needed finishing touches on his lettre d'amour.

While not quite as sunny as the days before, the weather was still far enough from being considered unpleasant by any but the most sensitive kind. In fact Hermione welcomed the fresh breeze that was gently swirling around her skin and playfully blowing through her loose hair, and after leaving the warm halls of the castle found the cool air, both on her skin and in her lungs, to be quite invigorating. For now at least, for she simultaneously anticipated the fleeting nature of the feeling and fully expected to be freezing by the time she would reach the incomparably quirky, modest little hut traditionally inhabited by Hogwarts' groundskeeper, that did, however, as Hermione had read in Hogwarts: A History, change its appearance with every individual that assumed the responsibility, and it was hard to imagine how it could look any different while it was home to Rubeus Hagrid.

Taking in the scenery – the lush meadows, the edge of the thick forest not far behind where Hagrid's hut could be seen, that forbidden as it was still looked like a pretty average forest from the outside, the gentle slopes and hills that rose to mountains in the distance and surrounded the placid lake that the castle towered above – and relishing every deep breath she took, she felt as much at ease as she rarely had over the course of this week that so unexpectedly had turned out to be characterized mostly by interpersonal entanglements, heaps of stress and awkwardness, and perhaps most of all by unfamiliarly turbulent emotions and conflicting thoughts.

New discoveries were usually something Hermione was naturally excited about, but in this case, when she found herself to be the very subject of said discoveries, she couldn't help but feel more than a little anxious. Introspective endeavors are certainly a worthwhile effort, but it's always a dangerous thing to find yourself at both ends of the microscope, for whatever you might find, you will not be able to turn away from it so easily.

It was with such ruminations keeping the cogs of her mind turning that Hermione finally arrived at the rickety fence that surrounded both the hut and the multitude of patches of all kinds of plants and vegetables surrounding it, a thick cluster of rampantly growing pumpkins included. Hermione made a mental check mark behind at least this one point on their extensive Halloween agenda. Hagrid might not have been the best person to entrust with the combination to your personal safe, but you could always rely on him for loyalty, companionship and the annual batch of giant pumpkins.

Shivering only slightly, Hermione stepped up to the strangely slanting door that always seemed less askew once you realized there were no two lines anywhere in or around Hagrid's hut that were perfectly aligned. Not even on a pencil. For Hermione it was now time to push away the thoughts about one particular person that insisted so incessantly on going bonkers in her mind, so that she could concentrate on the task at hand. She took pride in the ability to give her undivided attention to any task or person that required it. Lately, however, she had found that ability to be somewhat impaired.

Now that she thought about it, it actually made her a little miffed. It shouldn't be impossible to make that ridiculously short stroll from the castle to Hagrid's place without thinking about, well, all that blasted stuff that was going on. That was not the kind of person she was. She didn't get caught up in petty personal affairs and narcissistic self-pity. Well, except when she did. But only in moderation, and always and without exception in full awareness of her own irrelevance. Yes, indeed.

Irrelevance could be quite magnificent a thing, though – in a certain sense. Some of the things most insignificant in the grand, cosmic scheme of things, like really the sum of all human affairs on that lonely pale blue dot, could turn out to be the most wondrous, the most inspiring experience of one's life, at least within the fleeting blink of an eye they so magically happen. Something could suddenly and unexpectedly be the one thing that defines the very entirety of the cosmos itself for you, and bring the whole elusively palpable essence of everything and nothing unified as one right into the radiant center of your delirious heart.

Like an innocent kiss on the cheek that seemed to tell you everything you could have ever hoped to know, and yet at the same time nothing at all. One answer, an abundance of questions.

Hypothetically speaking, of course.

What are you doing to me, Harry?

"Hermione!"

She jumped, and confounded she became aware of the opened door and the green-eyed person standing right in front of her with a rather surprised expression of his own, looking down at her as she was apparently still standing on the doorstep, and had been doing so for Merlin knows how long.

"Hi," she threw the first two letters off her lips that got there and that luckily made up an actual word. "I, uh, didn't expect to find you here."

"Meaning that you either deliberately looked for me in a place you didn't expect to find me," he jocularly said, "or didn't look for me at all. Which would make me either befuddled or disappointed."

"Can I say it was neither of those?" she asked somewhat sheepishly.

"Uncharacteristically illogical," he replied with a lopsided smile, "but deemed to be acceptable."

"Well," she said, not any less flustered after that, "I actually came here to help Hagrid finish his letter."

"Sure. He told me about it," Harry revealed. "I just thought I'd pay him a visit myself, you know? Had a little chat, is all."

Then he looked at her expectantly and under his constant gaze Hermione nervously switched her eyes from left to right and back again.

"You wanna step inside, perhaps?" Harry then asked amusedly, holding the door wide open for her.

"Oh," said Hermione. "Right."

And then, moving past Harry negligibly clumsier than she would have hoped, she stepped inside and noticed Hagrid sitting at the kitchen table, looking at her with an annoyingly amused expression somewhere between his enormous beard and his wild mane of coarse hair. A good thing then that at least everyone around her seemed so amused for some reason.

"I'll be off then and let the two of you get to work," said Harry pleasantly, and then, with a last glance and a wink at Hermione, added, "Au revoir!" and with that stepped outside, closing the door behind him.

Hermione sat down across from Hagrid with a sigh, letting her school bag slide to the floor next to her chair and, in one fluent motion, ending up with her head buried in her crossed arms.

"Nice t'see yeh too, 'mione," she heard Hagrid say good-naturedly.

With another sigh and her voice muffled Hermione answered, "Please tell me your letter is coming along better than my life."

"Well," said he with a deep chuckle, "if yer life's bad as me letter, I reckon we shoul' work on that first. C'mon, lemme pour yeh some tea, 's jus' done."

Raising her head and stretching out her arms on the table with strands of hair hanging into her face she feebly said, "Tea would be nice."

"Here yeh go," Hagrid heartily said, handing her a white porcelain cup that looked ridiculously fragile in his huge hands and was, as usual, filled to the brim. "That'll work some magic on yeh."

"Wait," Hermione hesitantly said when she held the cup halfway to her lips, "you haven't put any whiskey or anything like that in here, have you?"

"Wha'? Who d'yeh take m'for, Hermione?" Hagrid asked, downright appalled at the insinuation. "It's not even… oh," he said, surprised when he threw a quick glance at the completely lopsided clock above the dented kitchen sink. "It's past four a'ready? Well, then I might as well get the day started an' help me t'summin' good."

"Rubeus Hagrid," Hermione warned him sternly, "if you start downing the booze on me now, I will not be working with you. You are insufferable when you're drunk, and you get drunk disturbingly fast."

"I am?" he asked, a little taken aback. "Insufferable, yeh say? That's a mighty strong word."

"No reason to take it personally," she assured him with a pat on his enormous arm. "Everyone is insufferable when drunk, at least to those who are not."

"I sure have a bottle for yeh too, if that's the problem," Hagrid said maybe half in jest, but he was quick to laugh when Hermione glared at him.

"Just show me the damn letter already," she told him with a smile playing around the corners of her mouth.

With some reluctance Hagrid handed over the piece of parchment and waited anxiously for Hermione to read it, fidgeting around with his fingers and chewing his lower lip. When she was finished a whole four seconds later, she looked up at him in disbelief.

"Seriously?" she asked. "That's it?"

"Well, uh," Hagrid hemmed and hawed abashedly, "It's an awfully difficult language, 's what it is. Wouldn' it be easier if yeh were ter just write the whole thing yerself instead?"

Hermione pursed her lips in a look of disapproval. "Yes, it would be easier. Especially for you. And it would also be completely wrong."

"But if's jus' this once maybe—"

"No," Hermione decisively cut him off. "If you can't even write the woman you profess to love a bloody letter, you are no better than one of those pop stars who can't even write their own songs, let alone sing them properly. If you can't do something, that's fine. Just don't do it then. Find something else to do. But don't let somebody else do the work for you while you take the credit. Especially in these matters it's just plain dishonest and manipulative."

"When yeh say't like that, I guess…"

"Honestly, Hagrid," she said, her voice a little softer again. "It's not that hard, and I'm here to help you. Why don't you just write down what you want to tell her in English and then we'll translate it."

"Huh," said Hagrid. "Don't sound like such a bad idea, but then again… I guess words jus' aren't one of me strengths no matter the language, yeh know?"

"Well, it's not like you have to pull off a Byron here."

"A what now?"

"Lord Byron? The poet?"

"Was he a wizard?"

"Of sorts, but not in the literal sense," Hermione answered, unintentionally increasing Hagrid's manifest incomprehension even further. "What I mean to say is… just be yourself. Write the words you wish to tell her. Words might not be your strength, but your heart is. You just have to listen to it, as mawkish as that may sound."

Hagrid thought about that for a moment and skeptically looked at the parchment and the quill he had put onto the table in preparation.

"An' what if all I can hear 's the beatin'?" he asked full of doubt. "Of me heart, I mean."

Hermione smiled the warmest of smiles at him. "Then it will at the very least tell you I am, I am, I am – and then you just write her about that."

Clearly unsure of what to make of that, Hagrid got to work nevertheless, and Hermione pulled a few things out of her school bag and neatly spread them on the table around her.

"You take your time," she told him. "I'll just get some homework done in the meantime."

"Yeh sure?" he asked. "'cause yeh really don't need t'stay here and wait fo' me t'get summin' done."

"It's perfectly fine," she told him sincerely. "With the way things are going, this is actually one of the last spots of peace left to me around here. Besides, your company is not something I shun. At least as long as you're sober."

"Are them kids still givin' yeh a hard time with all 'em rumors?" Hagrid asked caringly. "Yeh jus' have t'gimme their names, yeh know?"

She gave him an appreciating smile, then sighed weakly. "I seriously doubt you would want to see that list."

"That bad?" he asked grimly. "Kids these days, I'm tellin' yeh."

"Were they any nicer back in your day?" she asked him, thinking of his very particular situation.

"Well, not really," he conceded. "But nowadays they know so many foul words at such a young age a'ready that yeh kinda wanna cover yer own ears as an adult."

"The words might have changed," said Hermione, "but I'm afraid the conventions have not. Nor has the societal perception of the sexes, for that matter."

"How d'yeh mean?"

"Well, as it turns out," Hermione began to explain, "the way I see it, all the rumors, as diverse as they are in flavor, really come down to one basic consensus: Harry, they astutely infer from what little they know, can apparate into the beds of all the fair maidens in the castle, in some versions of the tall tale even all the women in the world, and I happen to be one of those especially indecent deviants who have willingly granted him entrance, double entendre intended. So, naturally, Harry is a hero and I'm a slut."

Hagrid stared at her with his eyes wide and his mouth agape in an expression that could not have been more shocked. Then, after a second or two, the quill between his thumb and index finger broke with a crack! and then hung loosely from his hand, to which he reacted in no perceivable fashion.

"That's bloody outrageous!" he suddenly bellowed in a furious outbreak, banging his white-knuckled fist on the table and sending the feathered end of the quill wildly swirling through the air. "Rubbish! Utter rubbish!"

"Relax, Hagrid," Hermione immediately tried to soothe him, holding on to her books and parchments that had all made a jump at the impact of his fist on the wobbly table. "Of course it's rubbish. That's why it's comparatively easy to laugh off."

"Compared ter wha'?" asked Hagrid, angrily eyeing the fluttering piece of his quill until it fell softly onto the scuffed floor.

"Well, no matter how ludicrous and moronic the things people say may be," she answered, "they are always easier shrugged off from a safe distance and much harder to take when you hear them with your own ears, and even more so when they are spat directly and most contemptuously in your face."

When she noticed the signs of another fit of rage on Hagrid, she quickly added, "But when you end up getting kissed it's not all that bad."

Hagrid looked positively flummoxed at that. "Wha' kind o' nutter would first insult somebody an' then kiss 'em?"

For the fracture of a second Hermione, who had drifted off a little in her unwitting reverie, was almost as confused as the half-giant. "What? No! No, it was Harry."

"Harry insulted yeh?" Hagrid practically shouted, all but deranged by now.

"No, of course not! He's the one who gave me a kiss after somebody else insulted… well, actually the both of us."

"Oh," Hagrid meekly mumbled into his beard, instantly calmed and additionally embarrassed. "That, uh, that makes more sense, I s'pose."

"You think?" Hermione asked in mock seriousness, smiling and shaking her head at the whole silliness of their dialogue.

For a moment they were quiet, and both of them took a sip or two of their tea to calm their agitated nerves.

"So Harry kissed yeh, eh?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Just on the cheek, Hagrid. Nothing to get all nosy about."

"But 'twas a special kind o' situation, if I take yer meanin' right."

She sighed and took another sip, relishing the warmth spreading through her body. "Malfoy insulted the both of us with one of his typical, asinine remarks and yes, he once more referred to me as a Mudblood – bring on the Dementors, yada yada, calm down, Hagrid – and then Harry was just about to attack him—"

"Did he get that slimy git good an' proper?

"No, because I held him back, and something much better happened."

"A dragon came an' ate Malfoy whole?"

"Almost," she said, giving him a smile. "No, we just talked."

Hagrid looked at her in confusion, and also in anticipation of much needed clarification.

"We pretty much ignored Malfoy, and to be perfectly honest I don't even recall what he looked like or if he was even there anymore when I left. But I guess that's the beauty of it. I didn't even care."

"Because o' the kiss?" asked Hagrid, wiggling his bushy eyebrows suggestively at her.

She rolled her eyes again and involuntarily tried to hide herself behind her cup a little more. "Partly," she said. Then, with a sigh, she added, "But I really don't want to overrate it, you know? Where its meaning is concerned. It was a nice gesture, that's all."

"An' yeh really believe that?"

When Hermione merely threw him a quick glance and didn't give any indication she would actually answer his question, he sunk back into his chair and exhaled a heavy sigh that might just have sufficed to push a little sailing boat across the whole length of the lake.

"I jus' don't know wha' it is about the two o' yeh," he said, and to Hermione's puzzlement he somehow sounded sad. "Have yeh at least talked t'somebody about any o' this? It's clearly eatin' away at yeh."

"Well, you know me," she answered. "I don't open up to just anyone, even if that might damage my newfound reputation as a slut."

"Hermione!" Hagrid breathed, scandalized by all the ambiguity.

"I'm kidding," she was quick to assure him. "I did actually try to talk to Luna, who's really the only girl in school and in my age that I would consider a friend, but… well, Luna is Luna. When I told her yesterday that Harry had woken up in my bed, all she said was, 'Finally,' and then she went chasing after a butterfly that, as I might add, was at least real for a change."

With a chuckle Hagrid commented, "Still, the girl might be on ter summin' there."

"Care to elaborate?" Hermione asked in between sips.

"Well, yeh have ter admit," Hagrid reluctantly went on, fidgeting around with the pitiful stub that was left of his quill, "yeh and Harry, the both of yeh… well, yer really are quite summin', don't yeh think?"

Hermione took an especially deliberate sip of tea before asking, "Meaning what, exactly?"

Hagrid shifted nervously in his chair, which appeared to put said creaking chair's stability to a real test.

"Meet me halfway here, will yeh?" he well-nigh pleaded. "Now I'm the first t'say yer the brightest witch o' yer age, and I guess that's why I really don't get why yeh have such a hard time gettin' yer head 'round this one."

"Around what?" Hermione innocently asked, refilling her cup with some more tea.

"Yer awfully good at evadin' the whole topic, I'll give yeh that."

"Well, I'm listening," she replied. "I'm just not sure I want to add my commentary."

"I guess that's fine by me," said Hagrid. "So maybe I'll jus' say this one more thing, an' then we'll let it rest an' get back t'work, wha' d'yeh say?"

"Sounds good to me," she said. "Go ahead then. It is without a trace of mockery when I say that I am in desperate need of some enlightenment this week."

Hagrid emptied his cup of tea with one last, big gulp and then put the cup back down onto the table with what for him qualified as great care, which made Hermione wonder if the porcelain was actually enchanted to prevent it from breaking. Surely it had to be, for how many cups would he otherwise be wasting every week? When Hagrid finally began to speak, Hermione shook herself from this rather weird trail of thought and focused all her attention back on him.

"I'm not sure I can be much o' help with that, but I'll say wha' I wanna get said anyway. Now, this might be jus' me own opinion, nothin' more. Don't has ter be right or anythin'. But I'm not sure if yer aware or not how most people have been 'xpectin' summin' ter happen between the two o' yeh for I don't even know how long, yeh know? Jus' a general feelin', I s'pose, since yeh two have been t'gether all this time. I guess most people a'ways suspect summin' when there's a boy an' a girl close as yeh two. Now I don't claim ter be an expert on any o' this, but I do think there's not many boys 'an girls who are t'gether the way the two o' yeh are without, yeh know, bein' t'gether, if yeh take me meanin'.

"I'm sure yeh know 'bout the Daily Prophet an' its silly column 'bout Harry's personal affairs, an' I'm the first t'curse them nosey reporters an' their meddlin' an' their gossipin', as if Harry didn't a'ready have enough trouble as 'tis. But whenever they stop writin' nonsense 'bout some girls I've ne'er even heard of who are s'posedly involved with Harry, an' they come back ter wha' they a'ways come back ter eventually, which is Harry and his best female friend – an' by that I mean me 'mione – well, then I jus' can't help but think to meself that summin' 'bout it jus' sounds right, yeh know? An' that's rare fer the Prophet.

"Maybe it's jus' me. I can't even really 'xplain it an' I don't know if that's 'cause I'm not much good with words or maybe 'cause I'm jus' plain wrong. I don't know. But wha' I really wanna say is this, and this is wha' I jus' wanna ter tell yeh. I don't claim ter un'erstand wha' it is with the two o' yeh and wha's goin' on between yeh, but what I do know is that… ter tell yeh the truth, and I've been thinkin' this fer quite a while now, Hermione, I jus' wouldn't wanna be the poor bloke in yer life who's gotta compete with Harry."

<3<3<3<3<3

Sometimes, on days like these, Hermione wondered why she had ever willingly taken on the responsibility as Head Girl. Normally she only wondered how she could ever have received enough votes to be even considered for the position, since she didn't exactly perceive herself as either popular or very socially competent, but today? Today she could only shake her head about her marginally younger self that, a few weeks ago, had been so excited when she had received the letter that officially offered her the position and informed her that she had won both the prefects' and the staff's votes.

When they had finally gone through all fifty-eight points they had set out to discuss during their meeting, the clock had read five past ten. The prefects had been free to leave at that point, with Ron already halfway through the door while Hermione had still been in the process of dismissing them, but she and Declan MacManus, the Head Boy from Ravenclaw, had stayed behind to get everything that had just been discussed in order and work on a timetable for the Halloween event itself. Oddly enough, Declan's girlfriend Siobhan, a prefect herself, had also stayed with them, and Hermione would've actually welcomed the additional help if only the pretty blonde would have refrained from constantly eyeing her with the most irritating suspicion.

Well, at least the rumors hadn't come up tonight, or at least not within her earshot, which was definitely worth something. It didn't change anything about how utterly exhausted she felt, though, and as she weakly dragged herself up the stairs of Gryffindor Tower with most of the portraits on the walls either empty or inhabited by softly snoring witches and wizards – and some house-elves –, she couldn't help but think what a lousy and, quite frankly, crazy day it had been. "For the most part, that is," she thought to herself while her fingers involuntarily brushed lightly against the skin of one particular spot on her cheek. Then she suddenly got aware of the Fat Lady, who was looking at her with one quizzical eyebrow perked straight up.

Hermione awkwardly cleared her throat as she hastily dropped her hand back to her side. "Sapere aude," she mumbled, and evidently that was good enough for the Lady, as she granted her entrance with her portrait softly swinging backwards and making a noise that sounded an awful lot like uh-huh.

Stifling a yawn Hermione stepped through the portrait hole and into the common room, where only a handful of students from sixth and seventh year were left, chatting animatedly on the far side of the room under the open windows. One or two of them raised their hands or gave a nod in greeting when they saw her, but went back to their conversations just as quickly as Hermione's eyes wandered on to scan the room for others that might still be here. And sure enough, one more she found.

She approached him slowly, watching his profile intently as he sat there in his favorite spot in the room: the fireside armchair. His legs were outstretched before him, resting on a footstool made of the same leather as the chair itself. His hands were lying in his lap, loosely holding on to an open book, while his head was marginally sunken forward and slightly tilted towards his shoulder. As she stepped ever nearer, she saw that his eyes were closed and his features relaxed in a face aglow with fiery shades of red and orange.

With a few last steps, muffled on the carpet, she came to a halt with her back to the fire, and tilting her head to align it with Harry's she silently watched him for a moment. There was no sight in the world that could ever have the same comforting and soothing effect on her as seeing Harry so peaceful, so perfectly at ease, for in a world that allowed even a young boy as burdened and stricken as him to find some peace, not all could yet be lost.

"Call me paranoid, but I feel like I'm being watched right now."

The only consolation Hermione found in that moment was that, with the fire as the brightest source of light behind her, no one should really be able to see the tinge of red that was sure to creep onto her cheeks within an instant. And then, suddenly, his eyes were looking right at her.

"Not so paranoid after all," he said with a smile.

"Well, I really just arrived," Hermione stammered an excuse that even to herself seemed pathetically flimsy. Crossing her arms in front of her chest she eyed him suspiciously. "Were you peeking?"

"I didn't need to," he replied, shrugging his shoulders and putting a bookmark between the pages before gently closing the book. "I heard you."

"But I didn't make any noise," she insisted.

"Your walk."

"My walk?"

"I heard you walk."

"But that could have been anyone."

"No. Only you walk like that."

"What?" she asked with a hint of indignation in her voice. "Are you saying I have a funny walk?"

"Not funny," he answered, entirely unruffled. "Just yours. Besides, who else would approach me like that? And we practically had a date, remember?"

"Oh? A date?" While genuinely surprised, she nevertheless overplayed it just a little. "Is that what we are calling it?"

"Well," he said, putting his feet back on the ground and straightening himself up, "just a little one. A time, a place and no occasion but you and me."

Without consciously meaning to she averted her eyes, and while wanting to, she found herself unable to say anything.

"What time is it, anyway?" she heard Harry ask, his nonchalance sounding just a little put on.

With a glance at her watch she told him, "Just after eleven," and then, when she raised her head and saw how tired he looked, asked, "How long have you been waiting here?"

"Forget about it," he dismissed it. "I had a quiet, comfortable evening with a good book my favorite girl gave to me. Said girl on the other hand looks completely exhausted."

"Well," she said, nodding in dramatic dismay, "party planning is one tough business. We lost a lot of good men and women out there."

"Damn," said Harry gloomily, shaking his head. "I was wondering where Ron was."

Hermione snorted, thereby effectively ruining their little play. "The ruddy bloke was the first one out of there as soon as I spoke the words well then."

He chuckled quietly, and when he involuntarily turned around and noticed that the small group of students was collectively staring at them from across the room, he cleared his throat and turned back to Hermione.

"Maybe we should cut this short and get some sleep, huh?"

Hermione nodded slowly, visibly tired. Then her eyes suddenly flew wide open. "Wait," she said with newfound energy, "what about your visit to the infirmary? What happened?"

"Oh, that," he said, yawning behind his hand. "Right, I completely forgot about that."

She raised a skeptical eyebrow at him.

"Honestly, it was nothing groundbreaking," he assured her, his sincerity only surpassed by his sleepiness that made him slur just a bit. "It was just Pomfrey and Flitwick this time around. They talked about the bracelet and brain activity… and magical currents and energy levels… and a whole lot of stuff. Said they don't yet fully understand it, which is really what it all came down to. Again. Maybe you should have been there. It was pretty technical, really. Flitwick kept saying that something's missing, and he also said he improved something about the barriers around the dormitories with the help of Dobby. You know, because my teleportation stunts are magically more akin to what our little green friends do all the time, and all that. So in the end we decided I would not be taking the Nonsomnium potion again, and instead see if these modified barriers do their job. Maybe Hogwarts' female populace can sleep more easily again, knowing that they are once again safe from the school's most lecherous inhabitant."

Hermione listened to every word he slurred with all the concentration she could still muster in her current state, yet she nonetheless had a harder time than usual to at least pick out what seemed to be the most important pieces of information, let alone make sense of everything he had just told her as a whole. That would evidently have to wait until tomorrow.

"Okay," she slowly said. "I guess we really should go to bed and maybe talk about this when we are both in a clearer state of mind."

"Agreed," he agreed. "I don't think I'd be able to even begin to comprehend the innumerable intricacies of party planning right now."

Hermione stuck out her tongue at him. "As long as you can still say innumerable intricacies, it can't be that bad."

"Oh!" he suddenly exclaimed. "Now I nearly forgot this." And out of his pocket he pulled a bracelet that looked identical to the one he had been wearing the last couple of nights. Hermione eyed it warily, eliciting a chuckle from Harry when he saw her expression.

"Yeah, you get one too now," he said, gloating just a little. "Relax. We'll just be bracelet buddies. It's not like we're married with these."

Hesitantly she reached out and took the thing from Harry, regarding it with no small amount of suspicion. "Well," she said, "I should hope you'd get us something a little more tasteful than what pretty much comes down to a rubber band as a symbolic representation for our marriage." Then she paused a second and, without looking up, quickly added, "Hypothetically speaking, of course."

Smiling he said, "Come on now," and made a step towards her and took her by the hand. Then he gently pulled her after him and she followed, puzzled as she was.

"What are you doing, Harry?" she asked him when he began ascending the stairs to the girls' dormitories.

"Oh, right," he said as he turned around with one of his disarming, lopsided smiles, obviously fooling around. "I forgot that we don't go to bed together, but only end up there next to teach other."

She rolled her eyes at him, even while her lips turned into a smile of their own.

"Not anymore," she then said, looking up at him and unable to make out the finer details of his features, with only the faint light of the fireplace illuminating them weakly.

"Right," Harry quietly conceded. "Not anymore."

Hermione felt herself gulp, and trying hard not to choke on her words she said as casually as possible, "Well, at least I can wish you sweet dreams tonight."

"Right," he said again, though this one sounded much happier than the first. Then, with a roguish smile, he added, "I guess I could think of a sweet thing to dream of."

Ignoring the heat that rose to her head following that ambiguous and yet oddly unmistakable remark, she replied, "I'm sure Malfoy would appreciate it."

"Uhm, ew?" Harry complained, his face contorted with disgust. "Seriously, if my next dream sucks I'll blame you."

She uttered a weak sigh, still smiling while shaking her head for some secret reason. Finally, reluctantly she let go of his hand and moved past him until she stood a few steps above. Then she turned around again.

"Good night, Harry."

"Yeah, well," he replied with his hands in the pockets of his pants, "maybe I'll see you later tonight."

"Maybe," she said, and with that walked up the stairs, wondering if Harry was still standing below and watching her, but never turning around to find out.

<3<3<3<3<3

The first thing he was aware of was a strange sensation, and a feeling hard to make sense of. Maybe this was one of those dreams in which you just die in the strangest of ways? In this case it could be that he was buried alive, or just hopelessly lost under something heavy. If he was buried, he didn't seem to be in a coffin, for there didn't seem to be much air around him. Instead, he had no doubt, he felt the weight directly pushing down on him, especially on his chest.

On second thought, however, it didn't appear to be all that heavy. There was something going around him as well, both on his upper body as well as his legs. Maybe he was tied up? Was he reliving the nightmarish experience of being swallowed and suffocated by the Devil's Snare? Somehow that didn't seem right, for he remembered quite clearly how that had felt, and it had been far worse than whatever this was.

Now that he thought about it, it didn't even feel particularly bad. A little unfamiliar, for sure, but not uncomfortable. There was weight on him, yes, but it wasn't all that heavy and it didn't seem to move much of its own. It rather moved with him, with the slow and steady rise and fall of his ches. Up and down and up again. It was always there, it didn't change. And it felt warm, but not like a blanket, but like something that has warmth of its own.

And now that he thought about how he was thinking about all of this, he couldn't help but think that it was strange that his dream seemed to primarily consist of thinking a great deal about stuff he didn't know exactly what to think of. Was it just dark in here, or were his eyes closed? Maybe he could try opening them. Their lids felt heavy, and a first attempt went nowhere. With the second they flickered open for the fracture of a second, but then fell shut again just as quickly. Only with a third, forceful push did he finally get them open, and then he immediately went on to blink rapidly.

Then he suddenly knew that he was awake, and without consciously meaning to his body shifted with the recognition of the unfamiliar feeling of being beneath something heavier than his blanket, which in turn made that something shift as well – and that was confusing the hell out of him for a moment. He tried to raise his head a little so that he could look down at himself, but all he could make out in the faint light and with sleep still blurring his vision was… well, something that made it impossible to see anything at all, really. Then it shifted again and what had previously been very dark and shapeless became something brighter, warmer and much sharper defined.

Finally his brain accomplished something useful, and at once his lips turned into a contented smile.

"Told you so," he said with unconcealed delight.

"Hmmm?" she blearily moaned, looking around through her curls in utter disorientation with her head hovering just an inch above his chest. And then her sleepy eyes widened. "Oh!"

His smile spread. "Happy birthday, by the way."

"What?" she asked, still more than just a little muddled. "Oh, right! It's Friday, isn't it?"

He nodded.

"Huh," she said, and he couldn't quite stifle a chuckle that forced its way over his lips. "And what's so funny to you, mister?"

He shrugged his shoulders innocently. "I suppose it's just a little funny that it happened again, and that whatever they did to prevent it evidently didn't work."

She looked at him for a moment, then she slowly turned her head to the left and said, "Well," and her head turned to the right, "technically it did."

And then she turned her head back to him, and he looked at her with his eyebrows raised in an expression of amusement joined by puzzlement. When she looked right back expectantly, he merely switched his eyes from side to side, utterly clueless.

With a little sigh she said, "This is your bed, Harry."