Stupid

Hermione woke up with a start, shaken from imagining that Harry was leaning over her with his eyes on her and his lips sweetly brushing her forehead. But it was only a forlorn, blissful dream, a fantasy broken by the stinging whip of reality. He wasn´t there, kissing her face, and he would never be.

She fell out of bed and needed to get away from his bedroom down the hall, from the curtains he helped her pick out, from the books he bought for her with spare pocket change. Even in her own bedroom, she was not away from him. His essence was all over. She needed to get away, to think, because Hermione could not think with his moving photographs on her wall winking at him and laughing and throwing snowballs and posing like the classical sculpture that he was.

Call her stupid for running. It was three o´clock in the morning and she was running down the stone stairs of their apartment building, fleeing from his eyes but feeling like an idiot, because it was impossible to run from an enticing green gaze. It followed her, haunted her.

Hermione not supposed to fall in love with her best friend, but she did. She could run hard and fast, but she did not think she would ever escape it.

The nights were cold at the time of year. She managed to pull on a pair of jeans and a tank-top and some old sandals before she took her frenzied flight, and that wasn´t much in a London October. But, somehow, in the chill, she was hot, though she had not been running for long. Was it the vague replay of the dream washing through her head, lapping on the shores of a reverie? His lips against her skin - that was all she could think of. Those gentle lips, barely touching her scalding flesh, textured like worn silk, were enough to keep her on fire for the rest of the night. She was very aware and awake.

It burned, this fire deep inside of her chest. She was madly in love, and the force was unstoppable. It was intense and longing and sweet and heated. Yes, she thought as she sweated, it is heated.

Usually, beer could help a person in Hermione´s position to lose themselves. But she was already lost, so what would a drink do to her? Maybe, she thought, it will flip me upside down so that I might find myself again.

Pushing into the nearest pub, she flung herself into the barstool and begged for a nice butterbeer, specifically requesting that it be as strong as he could make it. The ancient bartender shoved one at her, his smile dirty and old, like he had been working at this place for a million years.

Eyes were watching her, this confused young woman, prettily losing her sanity. She felt eyes on her, but they were not the eyes she wanted to be on her - no green eyes.

Hermione drowned herself in the beer uncharacteristically, desperate to see something other than sparkling green eyes and a charming smile and hands caressing her face in her moonlit fantasies. She swallowed hard, and the taste was bitter in contrast to the sweetness she imagined his kiss to hold.

~~

Time blurred. The huge mug was empty, and so was the one next to it, even though it hadn´t been very long. She caught night stars reflecting in the glass. Starry night, tell me, Hermione thought weakly. I don´t believe in divination, but I want to know, is there love waiting for me? The freckled moon-face shakes her head.

The bartender handed her another one, and she started to gulp it with a lack of grace. There was a lot of smoke in the air, and the whole place smelled sickly, and she was dizzy. It was like she was drifting on black smog, dead air. She was a small girl, and she just couldn´t take much alcohol.

Yes, these drinks were intense, but her senses are dulled. Hermione had pressed her limits, and now she was raving drunk. Things started to slip. She could feel only searing emerald eyes and teardrops for the Boy Who Lived, the Boy She Loved. The bartender reached out to touch her hand not sympathetically but greedily, and she slapped him hard and tripped over the stool as she got up, knocking it over.

Drifting a lot - moved too much, too fast. Hermione staggered, her mind reeling. She had lost her control.

Where did I hit him? Was it his jaw, his lip? Smells bad in here, thanks to old air.

A door swung open.

Cold. Blurry. Tears - redness around my eyelids.

Fullness in my stomach - wobbly floor - friendless atmosphere.

I am wretched, heartbroken, ill, drunk.

She thought she heard glass break; she dropped something.

It´s the sound of my shattering heart. Ugly - pale with sickness. I want to be kissed by perfect lips, spoken to by his words, those of the famous Harry Potter. She was crying. She could feel the rain of her eyes running down the rosy pink of her cheeks.

I want him to console me, but I can´t see him. Is he here? He didn´t come here with me; I came alone. I am alone in the friendless atmosphere. Help, help, help-

Madly, she cried out. Have I cut myself? Crimson with no identity - head pains. Am I falling? No, knees are locked.

"I want-" she began to say. It was Harry, Harry; that was how to finish the sentence. But she couldn´t say it. Tongue numb.

The bartender said something about paying for the glass. Coins are in my pocket. Legs shaky. Brace myself on the bar, sliding him the coins. Never counted them.

She murmured something to him. She could not remember what she said, except that was meant to be witty and biting, but it came out wrong. Laughter, feels like it´s decaying. His face fades away from me.

"I´m not crazy!" she shouted, her words slurred ridiculously. "I´m sick, very sick. You can´t understand me." Not crazy, just sick with love. I am paling, slipping away. What´s happening? Hermione´s lashes trembled, her faint makeup smudged slightly.

There is a lot of movement. Fading - colors blur - can´t tell one thing from the next. Jolt. Who is coming for me?

"It´s not-" she started. Someone is coming for me. But, he is not Harry. Harry´s the only one who I want to come for me.

"Come, Harry, come to me." Hermione called out his name, but he couldn´t hear her, because he was not there.

Love, it bites me. I am bleeding after all.

Faint, needy, helpless - and vulnerable.

Tasteless.

She turned, determined to get out of this place. Hermione stumbled. I have three feet. Don´t I? The floor zooms up, and I stare helplessly at it as it comes towards me. The red tile, dirty with spilled beer - it´s amazing, the multitudes of speckled dirt.

Halt. Fingers tickling the flesh. The hands are male; I can tell by the strength laced through the tops of them. He´s strong, and he caught me. Grateful. Still ill.

She giggled. Her rescuer didn´t notice. He supported Hermione under her arms, dragging her to a chair, saying something to the bartender, who grunted in acknowledgement. Words melt. Can´t understand.

The man was careful. He brought her a glass of cold water. Icy burn in the back of my throat. I look up to see who he is, and my eyes miss his face, and I´ve used up all my bullets. I can´t take another shot at identification, and I slump, dim. Lights are low.

Part of Hermione thrashed against him. I do not want a stranger. I want Mr. Potter, all his skin. I want his hands pushing me with gentle love into the chair.

Glass broke again. "You aren´t who I´m looking for, sir!" she said to him, but he kept her down and pushed the glass against her thin mouth again.

Icy ring, hits my teeth a little. Grace is absent. Harry, Harry- She coughed on the cold water.

But, no, Harry is not coming for me. There is no Harry Potter here, and reality speaks with a cold, hard, truthful tongue, snappy and brutally harsh. I must settle for these foreign hands. Struggling ceases.

Hermione saw a few hues, mostly dark red and brown, the colors of this dingy bar. Vague shadows fell over her face, and she slipped into subordination, into the hands of her caretaker. Harry Potter is not here. He is all I want, but that emotion does not call him to come. I need Harry, but I must settle for less.

The faceless man said something soothing, but it slurred in Hermione´s brain. "Drink" - that was the one word she caught. "Drink," he said again, and she sipped the water he had brought for her. He steadied her wobbly head. She muttered thanks and appreciation at him.

"Nice," she whispered at him. "You´re nice. Thanks."

~~

Time blurred, again. She started to be able to talk and to comprehend, though her vision was still fuzzy. Her rescuer said to Hermione in a quiet, gentle voice, "You shouldn´t drink so much next time."

Hermione nodded, and sipped. She couldn´t recognize him. All she knew was that his shirt was dark, like his pants, like his hair. Her eyelashes fluttered shut briefly; the foggy lights were very bright to her clouded eyes. She felt like a shadow, but at least she could think completely.

Mind alert, body dead. I want a certain emerald-eyed man to bring life back to this limp form.

"Are you drunk, too?" she asked with a shaky voice. Hermione couldn´t tell, but he seemed much more calm and in control than she was.

"No. I came here to think." The man had a hand on her own, guiding the glass of water to her trembling lips. She drank it, and he nodded in approval. His features blurred to Hermione. He was handsome, a distraction from Harry´s green eyes.

But I do not want him.

"So did I. But then I decided to get drunk, too." Hermione hiccupped and he laughed a little, but he didn´t mock her like the bartender or scorn like any other stranger would. He seemed to understand in his own quiet way.

"What were you thinking of?" she asked impishly.

"I can´t tell you that," he said.

"Why not? I´m drunk. I won´t remember when I wake up in the morning." The strange man laughed at this and gently urged her glass towards her mouth. She swallowed, contentedly.

She saw his head turn, and he looked away from her. His sigh was like that of a lost person, like Hermione.

"I came to think about someone," he said quietly. "I came to think about someone that I know, and that´s all."

Hermione felt a little ounce of shame for being drunk, suddenly. "So did I." The glasses teetered. "But I came to think about someone that I love."

Her eyes started to water and cloud up. Her face was hot, hot with tears. Her flesh was scalding. She put down the glass hurriedly and forcefully, feeling her stomach clench with an indescribable hotness. Hermione was sweating again in the stuffy bar.

"I wanted to drown. I didn´t want to think of him, because this someone - he doesn´t love me back," she gasped out.

Churning head. Rage, self-loathing. I want to get away-

The man steadied Hermione, his hand on her shoulder. He had scars on his hands, drawn like pencil lines across his knuckles. "Are you so sure about that?"

Hermione´s voice got shaky and her control was slipping away like her fingers were made of butter. Hermione laughed, sobbing. Her head was thrown back and her wild, wild hair was splayed across the back of the chair. "How could - how could a beautiful, strong, brave, clever man fall in love with this?" she cried at him, hugging her sorry self.

She looked at her hands. The fingers were thin, shape-shifting before her drunken eyes. A scrape across the top from broken glass, she noted. Blurry eyes, my lips curled down - hair undoubtedly a mess. "He´s perfect," Hermione told her companion.

"Perfect?" the stranger chuckled. Somehow, his voice echoed in her intoxicated mind. "Alcohol is making your senses twisted. No one is perfect."

Well, of course my senses are twisted. I can´t recognize faces yet and all I see are blurs of colors. But my heart is straight, she told herself, clutching to the arm of her wooden chair.

"Oh, you can´t understand unless you know him, and he knows you, and all is right in the world," Hermione told this dumbfounded stranger. "He has these - these lovely green eyes, and every time I look into them, I just want to get lost with him somewhere, get lost inside of his soul, or his kiss, or even just - his presence."

The stranger pushed her glass towards Hermione´s lips, making her take another sip before she went on. "He´s comfortable, like an old shoe," Hermione told her Good Samaritan, looking down into the glass. "He´s understanding, and gentle, and sweet, yet he´s courageous, and prestigious and powerful and-"

She paused to swallow. "And even all his dark corners are comfortable to me."

"Perfect," said the stranger calmly, as if in a trance.

"Perfect. How could he love this?" Hermione whispered gloomily. Her eyes fluttered closed, and the stranger grabbed her arm hurriedly, thinking she might pass out.

No. I just want to see Harry in the dark, like a nocturnal cat. I can´t stop thinking of his face, the way he bites his lip when he´s nervous or confused.

The stranger put his hand on her face, tilting her head up. He whispered, "Don´t say that, Hermione." She had never told him her name. Things started to clear. Hermione´s eyes opened swiftly, but she still saw only Harry, only his concerned face, as though the vision were etched on her eyes.

Suddenly, Hermione realized.

It was him.

Hermione wanted to flee, to run from Harry´s green eyes. She rose to leave, but stumbled. Shaky knees -like broken table legs.

His fingers trailed along her feeble chin, under the rim of her eye, swiping away sadness, cold against her hot.

Hermione almost choked with grief. I feel stupid, careless, for letting this truth slip out to him in my drunken stupor. I didn´t know it was him. I thought it was a stranger. If I had known, I wouldn´t have said-

"How could you fall in love with this?" Hermione choked out.

Suddenly there were lips upon lips, fire meeting ice, melting away desire as it is quenched. And she didn´t know who started it, because it had all happened so damn fast, but all Hermione knew was that she wanted this touch. She did not care anymore. Thirsty, she drank Harry in. She drank in his hands on her face, on her back.

I taste nothing but caramel and a roguish age and Harry, just like I wanted, just like I dreamed, just like the fantasy that took me here.

"This is stupid," he said to her, breaking the kiss to breathe onto Hermione´s face. "You´re out of your mind, and you don´t know what you´re saying-"

"I know that - that I love you," she gasped, her lips dragging over his jaw line. "I always have, and I always will and - please, Harry, kiss me again."

He paused, thinking morally. Hermione was not thinking. Kiss, taste, feed, hunger, insanity-