The Best Medicine

I wake up in the morning with the sunshine all alight in my hair. I feel like a cinnamon sprinkle, happy and warm. I sit up and the blanket falls around my waist. I rub my eyes, aware suddenly that I've been asleep on Harry's couch all night. A knot full of worry forms in my stomach.

I crawl out of my blanket cocoon before deciding that it's too cold for that. So I wrap the warm cloth around my shoulders and, with a shuffle, wander haphazardly into his kitchen. I see on his freezer a note, pinned with tape. I pull it off.

Hermione--

Good morning. I hope you slept well.

Ron made me go with him to help him buy flowers for a date tonight. Sorry to leave you, but I think you'll manage. I made you some toast. It's spelled, so hopefully it should still be warm enough.

Love you.

- Harry

I've got to read it twice, simply because I can hardly believe it.

I grin and look at the toast, which is sitting on the counter with the butter melted and dripping a little onto the plate. And then I laugh. I laugh and am dancing around the kitchen, wrapped in my blanket like it's a toga. I'm laughing so hard with my head thrown back.

He said, "Love you." Just so casual -

I turn on the radio, which I gave him. Harry lived like a Muggle for years and he's more in tune with Muggles than he is with wizards. He likes to listen to it, remembering old songs from when he was a kid, locked under the cupboard. He used to listen through the stairs from Dudley's stereo system upstairs. I thought he needed his own.

I hear a fiddle start up, jumping into a song, like I'm jumping for joy.

I'm in a room full of people, hanging on one person's breath,
We would all vote him most likely to be loved to death.
I hope he still wants it, but it might remind him of when
He aimed for the bull's eye and hit it nine times out of ten.

I take my toast over to his small kitchen table, skipping, and I take the Daily Prophet from where it's laying, and open it up, even though I'm too distracted to read.

Harry made me toast. And he said he loved me.

I can't help but to be ecstatic. I slept through lovely dreams last night, wonderful reveries that made me sigh in my sleep, in the middle of the night.

Despite the fact that I still feel like I'm wobbling with ever step on two weird scales, on a second in time, this is my moment. Let me have it. I can dance around the kitchen and celebrate and know that I've got more than other girls can say they do. I have a best friend who makes me toast and lets me sleep on his couch and writes me notes to say he loves me.

That one time his hand slipped, and I saw the dart sail away.
I don't know where it landed, but I'm guessing between green and gray.
I thought nothing of it, but it still haunts him like a ghost,
With all eyes upon him, except two that matter the most.

I eat my toast quietly, listening, subdued while my heart runs a million kilometers an hour.

After I'm finished, I go to the sink and wash the plate by hand, like life is simple. There are a few other dishes, too, so I do them. I figure it's what I can manage as a favor to Harry. The water runs warm over my hands, warm like blankets and being under Harry's gaze while I fall asleep with tears in my eyes. I remember the previous night but the knot drops from my stomach to the floor, and I just can't help thinking that I'm sick of crying. I'm running dry.

I still don't know anything. I'm as silly as Harry, who can't see that he's got a best friend head-over-heels for him, even when she fights it. But today - today, I don't want to care about anything. Today is fresh, an unopened can.

He says, "Green is the color that everyone sees all around me.
Gray is the color I see around her, and she's just a blur.
The more the crowd cheers, the less I can hear
And they don't really care what I play. It might be for her,
But for now it's between green and gray."

I dry off my hands with a towel. I wander to the sofa, which is right next to the window, and my eyes lift while I fold the blanket and set it down. I look across the city and see the sun shining in all the dark places, like life is beginning today all over again. It's like - it's like I'll start again today and not think about how I've cried, how confused I've been. I'll let the day take me and see what happens, and if Harry falls in love with me, so be it. I won't fight anything today, not when the sun is so bright.

I go into the bathroom and look at my hair. It's all very loose, I can see in the mirror, going down my hair in soft curls that tend to fluff, and I look very sleepy still, with my cheeks a bit puffy, and a line just begins to run across my cheek. I bet it's from the seam of the sofa cushion. I'm wearing the rumpled clothes from last night, but something about me feels strangely alive and happy, strangely -- beautiful.

In the mirror, I smile.

We paid and we cheered; now we're gone and to us that feels right.
But for him every one of those evenings turns into a night.
With another hotel room where he lays awake to pretend

That he's doing fine with his notebook and Discman for friends.

On the back of the door, there is a large white shirt hanging. It must be Harry's. I smile and I take it off the handle, and I lift it to my nose to smell. It smells like Harry, like his aftershave, like the city, like the sheets in his bed.

I mean - don't get me wrong. I know what his bed smells like simply because sometimes, when I'm over, we lay in his bed and chat about things, or study, or laugh. It smells like - like heat.

I put on the shirt. I don't know why I want to wear Harry's shirt, but it doesn't help that I'm thinking about being in bed with Harry. Never mind that. I slide my arms into the sleeves and straighten it over the t-shirt I had been wearing before. I stand in front of the mirror and hug my arms around myself slowly, tugging on the shoulders. It's so big that the shoulder seams fall down my arms about halfway. But somehow it feels like it fits right.

He says "Green is the color everyone sees all around me.
Gray is the color I see around her, and she's just a blur.
Night after night what I hear, what I write fills the room
And my head starts to sway. It might be for her,
But for now it's between green and gray."

I leave the shirt on. Slipping like a stealthy cat, I round the corner. There's Harry's bed, tucked into the corner of his room. It looks neat and untouched, barely used. I know he must have made it on Wednesday morning; he said he cleaned the house for the expected Seamus and Dean. But it still looks as though it was only slept in once or twice since then. The clothes from last night are sitting on the bed, right on the pillow.

And then it hits me that Harry didn't sleep here last night. He must have slept next to me on the chair and put his clothes from last night on the bed this morning.

I let out a very deep sigh.

I try not to think about the fact that Harry abandoned his bed to sleep next to me in a recliner. I wonder if he fell asleep before I did, or if he stayed up, watching me for a while to be sure I was asleep. Harry would do something like that.

Something inside of me wants to fall asleep with him again, on his bed this time, with the window shining in starlight and the sheets cool when we slide into them. He'll tuck me under his arm like a doll that keeps his side warm at night.

I rake my fingers across my scalp and shiver to think of smiling and snuggling under the covers with Harry, feeling his warm chest against me, being pulled against him and listening to the heartbeat underneath the cage that his ribs make. I could pull off his glasses, and put them on the bedside stand, and he would squint at me, and get real close to see.

And - he would kiss me, dipping me back like water in a fountain, like we were dancing the tango.

"I want you to love me," he whispers, unable to speak.
And he wonders aloud why feelings so strong make the body so weak.
Then he awoke. Now he's scared to death somebody heard.
If it was you, and you know her, please don't say a word.

The bedroom door opens, and I jump with a start. Harry comes in.

~

Well, I don't know how I got into this. But I did.

It all began when Harry talked to be about how Ron had a date with the girl from the Quidditch Supply Store tonight. Her name is Ellie and she's got blond hair, like a bombshell, but she's a mean Keeper, according to Ron. And it was Harry's genius idea that we keep ourselves out of their hair.

"Fine," I had said. "So we won't go knocking on the door to his flat that night."

He had shaken his head at me. "No, but, Hermione - they might appreciate a little more space than that."

"Harry," I had argued, "we live here! We have as much of a right to be here as anyone else."

"Oh, c'mon, Hermione! We don't want Ron sitting there anxious. He'll be so scared that we'll walk on the middle of him kissing her; he'll nearly pee his pants. For the insurance of it, maybe we should just go out together. Let's take the opportunity for a night on the town."

It certainly sounded innocent enough, but then Harry comes over and tells me that it's a nice sort of café we're going to. So now I'm standing in front of my mirror, preparing for what seems like a date with Harry.

My robes are a pretty medium blue, like the color of my veins, pumping what feels like dead, nervous weight. I spin in front of the long, tall mirror. I fuss with my hair a little bit, trying to not look like I care what Harry thinks of my looks. I put on a bracelet that makes a noise like a chime. I wonder if it will quiver with my nerves.

I tell myself, my friend and I are going out for dinner and some coffee. This is very, very simple, I say. But I know it's a big lie. It's a big, huge, looming lie.

~

After our dinner, we go out to Hyde Park and sit on a bench in the middle of the pretty rose garden there. The flowers are all closed up for nighttime, like they always do. The place is thick with trees, and the city lights shine through the leaves in odd places, making scattered sparkles of light on the stone path. He stretches out both his arms behind him, looking very dashing in a green shirt that tugs just right on the planes of his chest.

"We should do this more often," he says casually, looking up and away, the look in his eyes distant. Sometimes, when Harry gets like this, I like to be with him. I know I can't always be in his head at every second, and I don't want to be. But I do like being there while his thoughts drift, just to see him go.

"Sure thing," I respond, feeling his arm slip behind me. "Ron would have really liked that café we went to, too."

"Well - I meant just you and me. He's going to be going off on an awful lot of dates now, I bet. So it'll just be the two of us," Harry says coolly.

I look at him and wonder if he said that with such an intention. But he looks very calm, as though he had meant it very innocently. I make a slight tilt of my head away from him. "That'll be unfortunate to have Ron gone away from us, though," I mutter.

"Is it really so bad?" Harry asks. "Personally, I'd be sick of me, too, and I'm sure he must love the time outside." He chuckles at his own joke.

"But that's what's so bad about it. Haven't you ever worried that he'll maybe get too sick of us? Haven't you ever thought about how terrible this would be - how awful it would be if Ron left us for some girl?" I shoot back, my brows narrowed.

Suddenly serious, Harry leans back, looking very pensive. "It's not like he's actually going anywhere, Hermione." He seems to sense my worry; his look is one of terrible apprehension.

"Well - what if he gets married to her, and they want to have kids? Certainly they can't have a houseful of Weasleys in that little flat, Harry!" I exclaim logically. "He'll move away - and then we'll never see him again. He'll be spending all his time taking his kids to Diagon Alley for their Hogwarts school supplies, and playing Quidditch games with them in the backyard, and everything."

I look down at my hands in my lap. I've been fiddling with my bracelet, and now it clatters with an anxiousness that I can only blame myself for. Now we're talking about what I've always feared, and I close my eyes and try not to think about it too much. I wonder if he knows that I'm thinking about his part in this, too; I wonder if he knows that I fear him leaving just as much as Ron.

"Relax, Hermione. They're going on a first date. They're not getting married anytime soon," Harry tellsme, giving me a friendly rub on the back. I had just remembered his hand was even there.

"I know - but, Harry, it could certainly happen. And then - and then you'll go off, and get married, too, and leave me all alone in my flat with my books."

"Hermione, please, stop. You're just getting anxious now. No one's getting married anytime soon, and I'm certain that if someone did, we would still all stick together for better or for worse. And as for right now - you stick with me until Ron gets back from his date. Everything will be perfectly normal in the morning, I'm sure," Harry tells me, giving me a worried look. "Are you alright, though? You look - pale. Or maybe it's the light."

"I'm fine. I'm sorry. I just - it scares me." I put a hand over my jingling bracelet.

"Is - is this something that's been bothering you for a real long time, Hermione? I mean - is this why you've been crying a lot, and why you didn't want to go on that date with the guy from your university, and all that?" Harry asks me. "Is it because you don't want to have anything to do with anybody but me and Ron?"

I give a small laugh, because he almost has a clue, and he almost totally understands. But what he doesn't know is the cruelest irony of all; he doesn't know that it's very much more complicated that that. And that's why he can't solve this, not this time. "That's pretty much it," I tell him.

"Hermione, listen to me - look at me." He touches a hand to my cheek and makes me look him dead in the eye, straight through his glasses, like looking through a wall. "Ron can go on as many dates as he wants - and you can, too, if you like. Or you don't have to. It doesn't matter, because no matter what, we're best friends, and nothing at all can change that. We'll always be there for each other. Ron might not be here right now, but don't you trust him? He'll come back. And if you go off dating boys in your university, you'll come back, too. I know you will. I trust you will. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

I give a small nod. He obviously hasn't even thought about the fact that none of what he says makes sense when two of those people out of three are dating.

Harry nods, letting me go. "Okay, good. I just - you ought to know that," he says quietly. "I mean - if it worries you again, let me know." He swallows. "I've been thinking about that, too, honestly."

"Really?"I ask.

"Sure. I mean, not often, though."

There is a moment of silence, where we both look around the empty rose garden, very aware of how alone we are, and how noisy the city is, but noting the silence and darkness surrounding us. We are so very alone.

"Hermione," he says, and I turn to him. I can only barely see his face, guarded with shadows. "If Ron has a date again tomorrow night, and you're not busy with anything - I've been told that there's a place down the street with really good soup. We could go."

Smiling, I nod. "Alright, then."

He seems to be relieved by this, and leans back, arching his back to stretch it. "Like I said, ee'll probably be left alone a lot of times, if Ron and this new girl hit it off real well." Harry gives me a sideways glance, which I notice with some curiosity. "We could go together to every restaurant in the whole block, if we wanted to."

Suddenly, it hits me. Hints - Harry's been dropping hints to me all night. It seems as though he's been planning to say this, and that he's got his nerves on edge. Could it be--? My stomach whirls like it's being sucked down a drain and I don't know what to say, how to feel, how to breathe. I've suddenly lost my appetite for this rose garden, these smells, and this darkness. I've never been more terrified in my life of him.

I turn to him, and I know that there's shock written like a stop sign all over my face. "Harry, are you - are you asking me out, Harry?"

He arches an eyebrow at me playfully. "I believe I already did ask you out, tomorrow night. Or weren't you paying attention?"

I shake my head at him. "No, no, Harry, I mean - are you making - do you have intentions to date me, Harry?"

Harry looks me straight in the eye in between the shadows that this damned darkness causes. He looks at me hard and sees the fear lodged like an ice pick in my face, bleeding blue. Uncomfortably, he looks down and away from me. "I had intentions to date you, until you - well, now you seem very unwilling to the idea."

"I-- Harry, since when has this happened?"

"Since when has what happened?" he asks me.

I laugh tensely. "Since when have you wanted to date me?"

His eyebrows raise up in a jump, as though the question had shocked him. His eyes are fixed on his knees. "I don't remember. I mean - you've always been there for me, Hermione. Don't you expect that I should start having feelings for you?" He shrugs.

"Harry, I - I don't think you know what you want," I cry out, standing up and meaning to walk away. My hands are shaking violently. This is Harry, giving me a confession of his emotions, and I'm getting up to walk away, because I don't want to have to answer him. I don't want to have to choose between being a friend and being a girlfriend.

"I do, though! Please, Hermione. Come back, just listen to me, please," he pleads, begging. I hear him jump to his feet. His shoes hit the ground, their rhythm familiar like home. I can hear the urgency in his voice.

I pause, looking at the black tips of my shoes, and turn around, scowling, not wanting to seem overly eager.

Harry shoves his hands into his pockets, fiddling with his keys. I can hear them jiggling. "Listen, Hermione - don't you think that I've been thinking about this for a long time now?" he asks me, and the keys jingle a little bit more, a little faster, a little louder. "I asked you about it, even. Do you remember me asking you if I ought to date again? And I told you I was lonely - because I wanted to date you, Hermione."

I swallow, wringing my hands together. I'm sure that my eyes are wide like a deer's in the nighttime. Harry's head falls a bit, embarrassed. The darkness of his hair catches freckles of light from far away, and his eyes look like dark pools of emptiness, like he's poured himself out.

"But you didn't seem very encouraging. You didn't seem to understand how I felt, and I thought that maybe you didn't feel anything like that, like you didn't need anyone. So I dropped it, and told you that you ought to date, to cover up - but, Hermione, I didn't want to say that." With a look of apology, he makes a step towards me, and I don't back away, because I'm too frozen to do so.

Now he's close, standing arm's length away, a dark monster in the middle of the rose garden, a creature that's haunted my dreams for long nights, but a thing I've always feared coming to terms with. He says to me with a voice low and husky, "I know I've blown hot and cold, because I haven't known how I stood with you. Whenever I was about to say something, I would chicken out, thinking that it would ruin everything, absolutely everything."

"It will," I tell him in desperation. "It will ruin absolutely everything."

"But, Hermione, please - I'm - I love you." I feel my breath get sucked in when he says it, and my eyes water with tears of joy, tears of pain, tearsof horror. It's probably not the argument he had in mind, but it's the best damn argument I've ever heard.

When I'm silent for too long, Harry turns away. The shagginess of his bangs hangs down into his eyes, which are downcast to the stones of the pathway. He scuffs one with the end of his shoe. "Never mind, then," he says, his voice gone gruff. "I mean - obviously, this is all one-sided."

I shake my head, unable to let him think that he's unloved. Haven't I been a friend, even when my heart craves to be anywhere but there? Haven't I stood there by him through thick and thin? Of course I love him. He's Harry, for goodness' sake. "Harry - never think that I don't love you. Don't ever think that." I grab his hand, and my bracelet quivers like an arrow that's just been loosed.

Harry looks up at me. Now the light hits him, only in his eyes, so that their green sparks like magic all its own. His look is one of depression, of angst, of embarrassment. "You love me as a friend, Hermione. That doesn't even begin to describe what I feel for you." Tenderly, he runs his finger along the palm of my hand. But his tone is one of the ultimate hurt.

Harry blinks and casts a glance to the stones. "Let's - let's go, Hermione."

He turns away, loosing his hand from my grip. I see him retreat, thinking that I'm following. His form falls into the shadows like he's a ghost, and he's falling away from himself, from me. I've just hurt Harry, I'm hurting myself, I'm breaking apart everything - everything is already ruined.

Before I know it, my eyes have spilled over. I stifle a sob and bury my hands in my face. Everything is already ruined, and nothing can be done now. I've forced Harry into a stalemate and myself into a dark cage where he cannot even touch me. I feel the water running between my fingers, wet and salty like the sea that I'm crying from my eyes.

"Hermione?" Harry says. He sounds far away, and I can hardly see him. I can only hear his voice through my tears.

Suddenly his hands are on my shoulders, pulling my hands from my face. "Hermione - don't worry about it, alright? It's not your fault. There's nothing you can do." His palm smoothes across the wetness of my cheek, pulling away loose strands of hair, and through my glassy eyes I can see the traces of light on his face, catching the worry etched there.

His hands linger a moment longer on me, hesitating, but I feel them pull away with a regret, as though it was so hard for him to do.

"Harry," I say, choking, not sure how to say this, "Harry, how could I not return your feelings? How could - how could I not be in love with you? You're - you're Harry, for goodness' sake."

I know he's gone tense, because he looks at me with an expression of blankness, of disbelief. Suddenly, he's gathered me in his arms - I feel, between my moments of shock, his hands all over my back, my hips, my stomach, myhair. I feel his face buried in my shoulder, in my wild hair, and my body pressed against his chest, hard, like he's never letting me go.

My blood pumps faster than it's ever gone, like the Snitch has gone loose inside of me, and I just want him to hold me, touch me all over, find it--

"Hermione - oh, Hermione," he whispers into my ear, kissing my neck. My breath quickens. "Why didn't you say something?"

"Because I thought it would ruin everything, and now it has - now it has, Harry. Nothing can ever be the same again," I cry, smothering a sob into his shirt, its green fabric cloaking the sadness in my eyes.

"Is that so bad, Hermione? Is that so terrible? Now, look - is this so terrible?" His arms tighten around me and I'm pulled even harder against him, so hard it almost hurts, but it feels so good. I'm left looking up into his face.

"No - and yes. I'm your best friend, Harry - what if we don't work out, and our friendship is ruined? I can never see you in the same light again, not after this."

"But - I thought about this. I really did - and if we don't work out, won't you still be my best friend? You'll always be my best friend, whether I'm dating you or not. And Ron will always be our best friend, too. We're all three inseparable, and that's how it's always going to be."

My head drops. "You sound so sure, Harry." I sigh, leaning my forehead against his chest. "But - it's so different. Everything is changed."

"Is it? I don't think so. It doesn't matter what you call this - this relationship between us. All I know is that I'm in love with you, and I have been for a long time. I'll be your best friend who loves you. I'll be your best friend and - boyfriend at once."

"But, Harry - how can you be both at the same time? How can you be - everything at the same time?" Frustrated, I bite my lip. "There's me, and then there's you, and then there's Ron. Why is it - different with Ron than with you? I can't understand it. I like to be in control of what I feel - but I can't, not now."

I let out a shaky sigh. "I don't know why I'm in love with you. I fought it - tried to set up dates for myself, even, but it always came out that I couldn't have it any other way but with you, somehow. I thought - I'll always be here for you, but I never knew how I wanted that to be, how we should be. What are we now?"

"That depends on how you want me, Hermione." I look at him, and I see a passion in his eyes that I've never seen him have. His eyes are deep and penetrating, like his glasses aren't even there, like I can see straight into him. "I can be - however you want me to be."

I swallow and feel my chest rumbling. I know - if I kiss him, it seals the deal.

I pull him down to me, gripping him by his shirt collar, and I kiss him.

His arms are like a steel cage I don't want to get out of, pinning me against his chest, right over his heart. His hands touch me everywhere, like they have a hunger all their own. His lips are soft like I always thought they would be, supple. His mouth is an invasion of privacy on mine, wet, inviting me in, his taste like nothing I've ever tasted, like heat - like his bed sheets. His kiss is - amazing, breathtaking, and I can't even breathe.

I've never been kissed like this, with such power, with such passion - with such a need. I wonder how long he's wanted to kiss me. Harry lets me go, his mouth breaking from mine, but I need him, too, and I don't let him go and kiss him again. And kiss him and kiss him and kiss him.

When we finally do let go of each other, I know I'm a total wreck. My robe has slipped partway off one shoulder, and Harry's glasses are on crooked. Both of us are too breathless for speech.

I smile, though, bigger than I've smiled all night, bigger than I've smiled in all my life. I touch his glasses and mean to fix them, and he blushes - blushes! - andlaughs, too. His arms loosen on my waist and I wobble,weak in my knees. Harry raises his eyebrows at me. "That good?" he asks.

My cheeks hurt from smiling so much.

(Not the end!)