Confession

I drew in a trembling breath and watched as the closet door shut behind me. I heard his footsteps cross the hallway and ascend up the Grand Staircase.

What was he thinking then?

I bit my quivering lower lip and closed my eyes painfully, drawing my knees up to my chest, resisting the overpowering urge to rock slowly back and forth.

Why had I done that?

Why had I risked everything, our friendship, for a few moments of undiluted honesty? I had, in a monotone voice which disguised my heart-wrenching nervousness, extracted all my pent-up perceptions in a well-harnessed speech rehearsed only this morning.

But it was, as I had perceived, been in vain.

"I can't just be your friend, Harry. I've tried. It doesn't work." You're too amazing. You have too much of a hold on me. I would follow you to the ends of the earth, regardless of how hollow that promise sounds, I would. I know I would.

What had driven me to such extremities such as this? Months and months of carefully restrained silence, broken only by the comfort of my own bed by darkness, wasted. All in five bitter moments, three of which were punctuated with a silence so cold, my very bones chattered within me.

My teeth chattered with my nerves. My brain went numb, and I heard myself, faintly, as if my body were in another room, reveal all.

"I care about you so much." I can't even explain it. I wish I could. Maybe then it wouldn't hurt so much. Listen to me! I can't even bring myself to say the word I really feel; for then, it would be too real.

All this has been nothing but a dull meditation in the back of my head for as long as I can remember. Some days it didn't even surface, but it was always there, just below my contemporary thoughts, waiting to remind me with a painful stab to the heart every time he smiled.

"I thought maybe, if I convinced myself I liked him, I could get over you. But I was wrong." Because you mean too much to me.

Perhaps it would be better if I had left nothing unsaid, but then where would I be? The only secret I'd kept from him in my entire life completely exposed. But then, what would that mean? I would have nothing left for myself. No regrets, but nothing to dwell on.

Regardless of the fact that it would sound so unbearably dramatic.

Not that it wasn't already frighteningly so already, with me grabbing his book bag at the last minute, quickly stammering, "I've got to talk to you." There's no going back now.

Pulling him into the broom closet where they'd hid Crabbe and Goyle in our second year.

Funny, how different things had been back then, how simple.

"Hermione, what?" He'd sounded nervous. It was dark; he had a right to be. He'd had to have seen something like this coming at least. There had been so many offhanded remarks of late.

"I have a confession to make." Please understand why I'm doing this!

"That boy I've been talking about to you from Arithmancy? I don't really like him. Not like that." Not like I like you. "I thought maybe, if I convinced myself I liked him, I could get over you. But I was wrong." Because you mean too much to me. "Mostly, because I still have feelings for you."

I never really lost them.

I wonder now, still, if he realizes why I had to do this. Why it was so important to get this off my chest. Why I had to confess, why I needed him to know.

Guilt never did lay peacefully with me.

Lying to my best friend...

I told him everything. Everything but that.

Now, however, he knows. Nothing between us, at least from my side.

He probably keeps things from me. It's the way he is. No one can open his soul by force.

I like to pretend it's the same with me.

Harry, Harry, I just had to get it off my shoulders.

He had remained silent whilst I poured out my heart to him. Carefully, filtering anything too painful to be said out loud.

"You can walk away today and it wouldn't matter, because any kind of pain I'll feel is nothing to what I would experience if I went my whole life without telling you. What I would experience looking back twenty years from now and wondering 'What could have happened?'"

The sad thing is, you will walk away. I know it, I can sense it now, from how you're sitting, on one knee, staring into the darkness, I can see you thinking. But what really troubles me is, why aren't I upset at the prospect?

He had taken in a breath then, his silence frightened me, though I don't know why. It was solemn, regretful.

I was so caught up in the silence, I can't even remember what he had said at first; I can only pick out what reached my ears.

"I'm sorry that I can't return your feelings... You are one of my best friends... I care a lot about you... Considering you were my first, major girlfriend..." A nervous chuckle then, escaped his lips, and as he said all this I felt my heart turn to steel. The air around me turned cold, and everything he said echoed in my head, as if I were underwater.

"Sorry," I mumbled, unable to look at him, willing tears to come, but praying they would hold until he left. He didn't need to see that.

"No!" He sounded mildly put-out. He consoled me with words, but they were lost to me. All I could think was It's done.

Silence again shrouded us again, broken only when Harry asked "want to go upstairs now?"

I felt like I had been removed from my body. I heard myself whisper, "I'll meet you up there."

"Are- are you sure?" He sounded reluctant to leave me, yet desperate to escape. I like to wonder if his hand perhaps hovered above my shoulder, wondering whether to touch me, wondering whether I would cry if it happened, wondering if it would suggest anything.

Maybe that's why it didn't.

"Yeah."

"All right..." He got up then, pushing the door to the tiny closet open. Then he paused. I know he did, although I could pick up my head, which hung with shame.

I felt shameful, though I don't know why.

With a humorous air, he grinned his little grin that was nothing special, nothing adorable or knee-buckling, yet still managed to make my insides churn.

"Don't become isolated and weird."

I managed a laugh, choked by a sob, covered stealthily with a cough.

He is gone now, realistically, from the closet, symbolically, from me.

Only now, do I let the tears go.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why did you do that? Everything's ruined now. How can you ever look into his face again? He'll know from now on. Every time he looks at you he'll think about this. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I feel hollow, scooped out inside. Everything that has consumed my thoughts for the past six months are now exposed, out in the open. No longer mine. His too. He'll think about it now, ponder it to himself. It's humiliating, terrifying. How can I overcome this now?

I can no longer sit in a closet. I launch myself out through the door and through the front doors, onto the grounds. I have never felt so alone, so miserable. I cross to the lake, my heart full of tears and I, unable to stem the flow. I think of what I said, how I feel now.

He will never feel this way. Not to me. Not to me, not for me.

And yet, a thought appears in my head suddenly, like a wand being illuminated in the dark.

What would it be like if everything I had thought I wanted were to come true?

It wouldn't have been like before, and there was no way to guarantee that it would be better.

My head raises wondrously, the clouds clearing away from my head, from my heart.

I realize now that I feel no real heartbreak. My heart felt lighter than it had before.

There will be awkwardness at first, but I know that this will never be spoken of again, at least between the two of us.

There's a healing that must take place before that occurs.

I know that friendship is much more important than this, and no matter what, I still want him in my life.

And so begins the transfiguration of my feelings, from love to love.

Amour to sisterly affection.

I love him, but it is not meant to be.

We will be friends. I still care about him so much, but Harry will understand.

And I, I will move on.

Maybe not right away.

I lift my face to the sun, and feel it shine onto my face. Drying my tears, warming my soul.

"Thank-you, Harry," I murmur, before turning back to the castle as the bell sounds.

I can't avoid Transfiguration.

End