Harry Potter and the Avatars of Atlantis

Harry Potter and the Avatars of Atlantis
Chapter Two: Hermione Granger

Harry did not dream anymore of Hermione at all that morning, but instead slept until noon. When he awoke, he realized with distaste that he must have missed the Daily Prophet owl at five o’clock, and he scowled and rolled over, trying to will himself to sleep away the day.

If, per chance, he slept without dreaming of Sirius being killed, or Voldemort torturing Ron or Hermione...and simply slept for a good twenty-four hours, maybe he would be able to (dare he think it?) get some peace, and be able to sort things out well enough to somewhat enjoy his summer.

Alas, it didn’t work out quite that way for the fifteen-year old lad, and the month of June speedily passed by...but it was not without more torturous dreams of Voldemort and Sirius’ death. But what began to worry the young wizard even more as time went by, his love for Hermione, always a quaint sisterly one, was beginning to move in an entirely new direction.

It was, of course, all because of that blasted dream.

The marriage dream never reoccurred, but had been so real that Harry was able to constantly see, without distortion, both his mother weeping into his father’s shoulder...and the beauteous (Don’t think like that, Harry thought quickly to himself) Hermione Granger.

Thus, Harry was constantly wrestling with his physche, suppressing thoughts of the final fate of Sirius Black, and trying (and spectacularly failing) to hold down increasingly romantic thoughts concerning Hermione.

What made such thoughts even more difficult to suppress was the bloody owl post.

Ron’s letters caused Harry not a problem. The redhead described the daily life of the Arthur Weasleys, with tantalizing hints of a blossoming relationship between Bill Weasley and Fluer Delacour, as well as Fred and George’s Diagon Alley shop making quite the mint (as Ron put it: Mum hugged Fred and George so hard yesterday, I was certain their bones would crack! She was weeping and said that she “always knew you would bring our family honor with your talents”. Which is, quite simply, a load of bloody crock.)

These gave Harry his needed laughs and encouragements, and letters from the members of the Order of the Phoenix definitely increased a presence of goodwill and pleasantry around the young wizard. They gave him no information (after last year, Harry still smarted when they wouldn’t...but at least now he knew it was for a good reason).

Harry especially enjoyed one from Tonks, in which she enclosed twenty-five pictures of herself with different hair colors and style and told him to tell her which one he liked best. He wrote back that it was the curly bushy brown hair that made her look like Hermione (after sending this piece of owl post Harry fell into a brooding silence for several hours that caused the Dursley’s much consternation, they were positively certain Harry was plotting to do away with them all).

Simply put, it was the letters from Hermione that were driving him completely and utterly mad. She constantly enclosed a picture or two, and after reading her letter, Harry would undoubtably find himself gazing into her warm brown eyes as she waved energetically at him. Harry could then vividly recall when he was standing at the altar with Ron waiting for her...and was forced to mentally beat into his head the simple message that it was all just a dream and his love for her was purely platonic.

Besides, if she turned him down or they broke up, it would absolutely shatter Harry and Hermione as friends...and he didn’t want that right?

Then there was her ruddy signatures. Love from, Hermione. Love from, Hermione. Love from, Hermione. It was enough to drive anyone crazy, but a hormonal fifteen-year old battling all sorts of demons? Harry felt that soon his mind would split in two. One version of his thoughts to pursue his half-formed romantic thoughts about Hermione and dwell on Sirius...the other to take the opposite pathway.

At least then, things might get sorted out.

Mercifully, as the second week of July prepared for birth, the only thing that could break through Harry’s well-run trains of thought this side of a Death Eater attack on Privet Drive, caught his attention. A regular looking owl was tapping at his window, carrying a rolled-up piece of parchment tied to his leg. It was not the Daily Prophet owl that Harry had missed nearly three weeks previously, but another one. This disturbed Harry a tad, and he opened his window. The owl stuck out its leg, and Harry undid the tie, and pulled the parchment off, careful not to get the letter caught on the owl’s talons.

The owl gave a friendly sort of hoot, and flew off, without waiting for Harry to invite it in to share Hedwig’s cage and gave a few Owl Treats. Resultantly, a sinking feeling developed in the pit of Harry’s stomach and he unraveled the scroll.

He had been correct.

It was the results of his Ordinary Wizarding Levels. He was not entirely surprised to see that he had pulled an Acceptable in Potions, but he was certainly pleased. His Exceeds Expectations mark in Astronomy was rather bizarre, considering that Harry had done his astronomy chart while Hagrid was being forcibly sacked by Ministry officials. Or rather the Ministry officials officials were attempting to sack Hagrid by force...it hadn’t exactly worked, and Harry could expect to see Hagrid back as his professor in Care of Magical Creatures as a sixth-year. Not surprisingly, Harry had garnered an Outstanding level in Defense Against the Dark Arts. He smiled with remembrance when his grading professor, Something Tofty, had asked if he could produce a full Patronus for a bit of extra credit.

Despite those decent grades, Harry had completely and utterly failed his Divination test and managed only a Poor in his History of Magic courses, getting a Dreadful in each of those categories. His A in Care of Magical Creatures was only slightly better, and he gained a healthy E in both Charms and Transfiguration. An Acceptable in Herbology rounded out his courses. Harry breathed a sigh of relief that he had managed to get O.W.L.s in all but two classes, one which he planned to drop anyway. He had tired enough of Divination after two solid, sordid years of Professor Trelawney’s gruesome predictions of his demise.

With such adequate grades received and the knot in his belly loosening, Harry mulled on what grades Ron and Hermione had likely received. He would have been extremely shocked had Ron done much better than he had, but Harry was certain that Hermione’s grades would be all O’s. At the thought of Hermione, Harry’s stomach lurched again, and he tossed his paper away, muttering “Stupid, bloody dreams” as he launched himself on his bed.

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Harry was not quite certain where he was when he awoke, and for a minute he believed that he was in his dormitory in Gryffindor Tower. His dreams had been a mottled mixture of Hermione, Sirius, and Voldemort...but he had very few real images or memories of them that he could recall as he slowly crept open his eyes.

A very familiar voice answered sweetly, “Yes?”

Standing over his bed, wearing Muggle jeans and plain white T-shirt was a rather nice looking girl with long brown hair that’s bushiness had not abated through six years of friendship with Ron and Harry. Actually, after knowing Ron and Harry for six years, it was a bit of a surprise that her hair wasn’t completely white or had fallen out. And as Harry looked up at her and blinked, Hermione Granger’s face bore a wide smile. On further analysis, however, Harry could detect a puzzled expression in her eyes.

For a few seconds, Harry simply stared into her comforting features. Seeing Hermione was like a pillow for his eyes, something comfortable to gaze on. He did not know why he did not jolt upward or feel embarrassed Hermione was in his bedroom at number four, Privet Drive. Perhaps he was just in shock, he told himself, but somewhere he knew in the back of his mind that he had been expecting just such an eventuality since his wedding dream.

“Harry?” she said with such uncertainty in her voice that Harry felt pleasant emotions that she cared about him enough to worry at his silence. Not that Hermione had ever not cared about him, she had always been there worrying for his sake and standing with him, no matter what. He allowed such waves of happiness to wash over him for just a fraction of a second before he pulled the drain on them and had them sucked into a sewer somewhere in his brain. “Are you okay? You were saying my name over and over when I came in...” Hermione’s voice trailed off a bit, and her face flushed a tiny, yet noticeable bit.

Harry hardly noticed this because he was mentally taking a sledgehammer to whatever portion of the brain was responsible for creating Hermione-related dreams, as well as whatever caused the mouth to engage itself while Harry was blissfully sleeping his way through said Hermione-dreams. At least, he consoled himself, he hadn’t been saying something such as “I love you, Hermione,” when she had walked in.

As he thought this, Harry idly wondered if she’d be interested in him as more than a friend, but promptly dismissed this idea, since he was never going to ask her out, but he loved her like a sister. Of course, a part of Harry (his Hermione-voice perhaps?) told him that nobody looked at their sister (legally anyway) the way Harry was currently regarding Hermione.

“I-I’m fine,” Harry choked out, barely managing to follow those two words up with a “What are you doing here?”

“Well,” Hermione’s grin got even wider, showing even more of her teeth. Harry had to silently congratulate Madam Pomfrey on how she had lined up and shrunk Hermione’s old buck teeth way back in third year. “I’m coming to take you away from here. You didn’t believe me when I told you I’d see you really soon?”

Harry nodded, “I believed you...but, er,” he gestured at his bed.

Hermione’s eyes widened, “Harry! It’s three in the afternoon!”

Lamely, Harry replied, “I, er, slept in.”

The look on Hermione’s countenance strongly reminded Harry of Mrs. Weasley right before she went on a tirade (which had, until of late, been directed at Fred and George). Instead of blowing her top, Hermione walked over a put a comforting hand on Harry’s shoulder. Harry tried to ignore the tingling sensations coursing through his body as she did this, telling himself again and again in his mind, She’s like a sister. She’s like a sister. She’s like a sister.

Hermione’s cool voice, rushing gently like a freshwater creek broke into these thoughts and absolutely shattered them, “Have you been brooding about Sirius?”

Harry was quite prepared to begin yelling or make some sort of sarcastic comment to the tune of, “Why would I be mourning for him? He was the only the closest thing to a parent I ever had?”, but was saved from taking such an action as one by one, three figures on broomsticks flew through his open window and dismounted in his room.

The first figure emerged as none other than Remus Lupin, Harry’s old third-year Defense Against the Dark Arts professor who had been sacked after it was discovered he was a werewolf. Unlike in Harry’s marriage dream, where Remus had looked decently young, Lupin’s black hair was now seeded with gray and worry lines were permanently etched upon his face. When he gazed at Harry and Hermione, he gave a small smile.

The second person was Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody, who’s green bowler hat and tweed jacket reminded Harry quite a bit of Cornelius Fudge, the git-for-a-Minister-of-Magic who had attempted to discredit Harry and downplay Voldemort’s rise at every possible moment last year. Moody’s magical eye was spinning at an angle, and he put his thumb under and his forefinger the bowler’s brim and muttered a gruff greeting.

The last person turned out to be none other than Nymphadora Tonks, a rather young (Harry would put her at her mid-twenties), and klutzy Auror. Preferring to be called Tonks due to what she considered to be a rather horrid first name, she was a Metamorphagus who could easily restructure her DNA at will to look like anything she wanted to be. While she could often change her physical form, Harry had mostly seen Tonks only with a different hair-style/color, and he noticed with a bit of glee that she had chosen the bushy-curled brunette hair that he had recommended to her, making her appear almost as if she was Hermione’s older sister.

As Tonks got off her broom, her left ankle never quite made it off, and she fell onto the bedroom floor with a rather sickening thud. She got up quickly and dusted herself off and gave Harry a wink, “We were wondering if you and Hermione had left out the front door and eloped, Harry.”

Harry blushed at Tonks’ greeting and tried to get a “Ha ha” out of his constricted throat, but the sarcasm wouldn’t quite leave his tongue. Instead his cheeks heated, and he wished that he could just throw the covers over his head and escape everyone’s line of vision.

Hermione simply smiled, but Harry was rather glad to notice that her face was a beautiful shade of magenta herself, and it was all he could do to resist wrapping his arms around her at that moment.

“Well Harry,” growled Mad-Eye, “Good to see you. We’ll be headin’ off to suburban London soon. Sorry it’s just the three of us, but the rest of the Order is kind of scattered across Britain at the moment, so we were elected by default to be your guard.”

Harry nodded, but something about that sentence didn’t sit quite well with him, “Suburban London? We’re not going to numb-” Harry checked himself, “Headquarters are we?”

Remus shook his head and answered in a deep baritone, “No Harry,” the young fifteen-year old wizard (Sixteen in a month! Harry marveled Where had time gone?) noticed that Remus’ voice was more leaden and dead than ever before, Harry guessed that Sirius’ death had affected him just as greatly as it had Harry, who then promptly attempted to stuff those thoughts down one of the incinerators of his subconscious, “We’re taking you to Hermione’s.”

Tonks nodded to affirm this, “You’ll be practically as safe there as you are here,” suddenly a loud wail from downstairs interrupted the conversation, signaling that Dudley’s TV had been turned off and he was being told to go and take out the trash or some sort of chore that normally would have been Harry’s.

“And,” Tonks continued, “it should be much more enjoyable.” It could very well have been a trick of his imagination, but Harry could have sworn that Tonks gave a meaningful look at Hermione and then Harry when she said this.

It’s just your imagination from your dreams about Hermione, Harry told himself sternly, not quite believing himself, but rather sure he had gotten the message across.

Harry nodded at Tonks’ statement, and looked up at Hermione and smiled at her, “Um, er, do you suppose-?”

It was, naturally, Remus who picked up on what Harry was thinking before anybody else. “Merlin’s beard...I’m sorry Harry, we’ll leave and let you get dressed.”

Harry nodded thankfully, as getting out of bed in his pajama bottoms and the Prophet shirt wasn’t the bad part, but changing in front of Hermione and Tonks (or, for that matter, Remus and Mad-Eye) wasn’t exactly high on his list of priorities.

Just as Harry was about to shoo everyone out when a thought struck him, “How come you didn’t arrive by Portkey?” realizing the stupidity of the question just as it escaped his lips, as Moody had explained the reasons against Portkeys the previous year.

Mad-Eye didn’t seem to mind and simply replied, “Have to register ‘em, Harry. Heaven knows whether You-Know-Who has people in the Ministry checking such things. Same goes for trying to go through Muggle trains...too many possible spies. If we fly like last year we can lose any watchers with precise maneuvers.”

Harry groaned the idea of having to fly in all sorts of directions and at all sorts of angles before arriving at Hermione’s while Remus lead an exodus out of Harry’s room, but Hermione lingered at the door for a second as Harry rolled out of bed and strolled to his closet.

“What,” he joked nervously, “You want to stay and watch?”

Hermione smiled sheepishly and shook her head, she raised her left eyebrow and grinned, “Not exactly my idea of fun, Potter.”

With a snigger, Harry waved his left hand at her as she left, and he reached for a T-shirt and his “hole-y” pair of jeans (after a month, Aunt Pentunia had neglected to wash the tire-ridden jeans, which Harry still wore nonetheless, but he didn’t feel they were entirely good enough to make a good first impression on Hermione’s parents when he arrived to spend summer at her house).

Harry changed swiftly and headed out the door to the hallway, where Remus, Tonks, and Hermione were patiently waiting for him. Harry opened his mouth, about to ask, “Where’s Mad-Eye?” when a thunderous voice called out from downstairs, “So you admit you’ve ignored Potter and forced him to make his own food?”

Harry closed his eyes with fascinated disbelief. For once, Harry had blend treated decently by the Dursleys during the summer holiday; and now Moody was going to scare them to death. No doubt the Dursleys would remember Mad-Eye’s treatment and Harry would be very lucky if he managed to survive his next summer. Remus noticed Harry’s expression and chuckled a little, “Mad-Eye won’t do anything Harry...he just wants to be sure the Dursleys didn’t force you into writing letters telling the Order that all was well.”
“They didn’t,” Harry answered faintly as he heard Dudley’s girlish screams and Vernon yelling that he had treated Harry as his firstborn son, which although not even true at all, Harry did realize that life had gotten quite a bit better since the days when he was locked in the cupboard under the stairs and was forced into sleep without a bed.

Remus sighed, “I told him it was doubtful, but he wanted to be sure...”

A loud “Obilviate!” shuddered the walls of number four, Privet Drive, and Mad-Eye Moody came bounding up the stairs with a grin, a slight one, but a grin nonetheless, upon his lips. “A’right Potter,” he gruffed, “Your relatives are all fixed up, you packed yet?”

Harry shook his head, as the shock that Hermione was here with three members of the Order of the Phoenix to help him escape the Dursleys and go to Hermione’s finally seeped completely in. “Um, no...”

“I’ll help!” volunteered Tonks, raising her hand and making a motion to head back through Harry’s door, but instead tripped over her own shoelace and knocked her head on the door. Thus concussed, she fell onto the ugly Oriental rug that Aunt Petunia felt “livened up the hallway” with a resounding thud. Remus and Mad-Eye helped her up, and as she was knocked cold, Hermione opened the door to Harry’s room and began to help him pack.

Hermione worked fast and very efficiently, almost (but not quite) as swiftly as Tonks had with her wand in the summer before fifth-year. Hermione strapped all of Harry’s books together, asking where her homework planner was. Harry didn’t have the heart to tell her that he had unceremoniously used it to make paper airplanes the first few days after his return from Hogwarts. The lethargic feeling that had spawned within Harry after Sirius’ death was ebbing with time and Hermione’s arrival with the Order, but it still felt as though a huge part of his heart was gone.

“Harry, are you listening to me?” Hermione asked, a bit exasperated.

Harry’s ears perked up and he looked over at his best friend. The way the sunlight filtering through his windows caught her hair, turning it almost golden, caused him to give a little sigh. He stared at her with utter fixation and then caught himself. Feeling absolutely horrid, he attempted to tap dance his way around her question with a clever lie, “Um, sorry, excited for the new term and all.”

“In two months?”

Okay, so not such a clever lie. But it had been worth the shot.

Hermione raised an eyebrow in concern, and she lowered her voice. By the sounds outside, Moody and Lupin had successfully woken Tonks up, but were allowing Harry and Hermione a little bit of catch-up time; which Harry greatly appreciated as he stuffed his four pairs of socks into the trunk.

Hermione picked up Harry’s Invisibility Cloak and some of it draped around her hand, giving Harry the impression that Hermione’s right arm was cut off at the wrist. “It is Sirius, isn’t it?”

Harry sighed again, nodding, after a month of trying to keep Sirius’ death...and not to mention Trelawney’s lovely little prophecy out of his mind, he felt a sudden desire to tell Hermione everything.

“Yes,” he answered, “I’ve been trying to ignore it...but all other thoughts seem just as bad. It’s getting harder to avoid.” That wasn’t quite true, thinking about Hermione Granger in white wedding robes was a very pleasant experience, but not exactly one that Harry wanted to tell her, as he did after all, only appreciate her as...a friend. A very good friend.

Hermione tossed a few rolls of parchment and Harry’s quills into his trunk and looked meaningfully at him. “What’s just as bad? Cho?”

Harry shook his head vehemently, “No, like I said, there’s nothing there. I used to get a feeling in my stomach when I saw her but-” Harry paused, part of his brain wanted to continue by saying Now I get that when I think of the images of you from my dreams.

“But?” Hermione prodded a bit, as she handed Harry his wand. Nodding his thanks, he put the eleven-inch stick into his front pocket.

“But Dumbledore told me what the prophecy Voldemort was trying to steal was.” Harry’s shoulders sagged. He had been keeping this to himself for far too long. He needed to tell. She deserved to know. What was there to lose? “Either I have to kill Voldemort or he’ll kill me.” Harry turned to his bed and leaned over to grab a rogue multicolored sock (one of the odd ones Dobby knitted for him, no doubt). He attempt at nonchalance did not carry very far as Hermione let out a sharp intake of breath and put both of her hands over her mouth, dropping Hedwig’s cage (fortunately, his owl was not in the cage, as she was probably headed off to the Burrow, Harry having just sent a letter there yesterday) with a shocked whisper of, “Oh Harry!”

Before he could do anything else, Hermione gave him something that was a cross between a tackle and a hug. She threw her arms around him with such ferocity that her head smacked into his chin, but she hardly felt it, or at least, pretended not too. Part of the reason Harry had not told Ron or Hermione this fact was because it was entirely likely that they would react like this. As Harry put his arms around her waist and he felt her lay her head on his chest Harry felt...perhaps more at home than at Hogwarts.

He rubbed her back and tried to come up with something reassuring to say, although he knew very well that Hermione’s hug was her attempt at giving him some moral support. For about a minute they just stood there, hugging and holding each other. Harry was reminded of waltz dancing he had seen on television, but wasn’t quite interested in dancing at the moment, but his mind was reeling trying to tell him that his current affection for Hermione was simply platonic. He was trying to comfort her (or vice versa), wasn’t he?

His body and another portion of his mind were telling him a different story altogether, but he was working very hard at ignoring that, and not doing a very good job at it.

Eventually, the silence had likely unnerved the Aurors outside, because they silently opened Harry’s door and walked in. They were obviously embarrassed at the scene they were witnessing, as Tonks cleared her throat rather loudly. Harry and Hermione separated very quickly, both stammering a little bit. Harry suddenly knew that he would have to try and control himself a bit more around his best friend for the rest of the term or else he would start snogging her unrelentlessly.

Not that he wanted to snog her, of course, just...as a precaution.

“Well,” said Lupin in a falsely cheery, completely innocent voice, “Looks like you’re all ready. Right Harry?”

Harry nodded, feeling as though his temperature had just shot up twenty degrees from the combined Hermione-hug, and getting caught doing a Hermione-hug. “All except Hedwig...I sent Ron a letter yesterday.”

“Well then,” Tonks grinned brightly as she Wingardium Leviosaed Harry’s trunk to strap it on his broom and accidentally dropped it on her toes. Harry and Hermione both flinched as they heard the unmistakable sound of bones breaking. Mad-Eye quickly Banished the trunk off Tonks’ toes and she skrunched up her face in a mixture of intense concentration and pain. Suddenly there was a little pop! and Tonks picked up her feet and shook them a bit. She muttered sheepishly, “Fixed ‘em. Let’s get going.”

Hermione nodded and picked up her broom (Harry hadn’t the slightest idea where she had gotten one, but he supposed it must have come from the Order). He was far too busy watching Hermione that Tonks had to tap him with his broom after offering it to him four times, and he only heard bits and pieces of the guard’s orders, just that he and Hermione would fly next to each other and the Order members would fly around them.

He also noticed that Mad-Eye had apparently Disillusioned him, as he saw him performing the charm on Hermione as well. But, not surprisingly, he hadn’t even noticed.

Within a few minutes, they had kicked off, flown out of the window of number four, Privet Drive and quickly raced up towards the clouds. Harry’s ears were thrumming loudly as they flew, when a nagging feeling began tugging at his subconscious.

Since Hermione was closest to him, and having more than a bit of trouble with her broom, Harry used this feeling as an excuse to talk to her about said nagging feeling.

“How come you didn’t pick me up at night?”

Mad-Eye suddenly yelled for them to fly through a cloud (“so the Muggles can’t see us!”), and they veered off to the left, Tonks moaning that the suspended water was going to soak them beyond belief, while Remus pragmatically assured her that they would dry quickly in the warm summer weather.

Just before they entered the white puffiness, Hermione yelled back with a “Remus figured more Death Eaters would be watching at night!”

It was lovely, Harry figured, to be reminded that every one of his actions was likely being watched by people who wanted to kill him.
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When the fivesome ditched their brooms after landing a nice park six blocks away from Hermione’s house (so as not be detected by Muggles, had they landed in Hermione’s backyard, they would have had some answering to do), and they had successfully pulled Tonks out of the tree she had crash-landed in, they had simply carried their brooms and walked the remaining blocks to Hermione’s house by creeping along buckles, hiding in bushes, and doing other uncomfortable methods of keeping their presence from both Dark Forces and Muggles that made Harry begin to doubt he wanted to become an Auror.

To make matters worse, Harry and Hermione had been Reillusioned, so the Muggles wouldn’t think they were ghosts.

Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity (Tonks had tripped over a few trash cans and Moody and Lupin had resorted to Stunners and Memory Charms to quell an inquiring Muggle populace that undoubtably thought that a group of odd-looking well-dressed gentlemen like Mad-Eye and Lupin combined with a young Tonks who was full of bruises and had stems and leaves caught her Hermionish hair; as well as Harry, wearing the ruttiest clothes possible and a very well-dressed Hermione Granger added up to some kind of no-good.)

“At least, you don’t live in a gated community,” Harry murmured to Hermione as they tiptoed behind a fence, “We’d have to have a car to get in.”

Hermione sighed, “I suggested a car, but Mad-Eye said we shouldn’t even rent cars from Muggles, and the Ministry is still sort-of untrustworthy.”

Harry shrugged and sprinted silently so as to get behind someone’s parked car. Who parks a car in an alley? he wondered, but instead said aloud, “How much longer?”

Before Hermione could quite answer a loud pink-faced brown-haired Muggle, slightly overweight with a beer belly came out of his open garage with a hose.

That’s why you park your car in an alley, Harry realized, as the Muggle began rinsing his car. As he came around the bumper, Harry decided there was simply one course of action to take (he would later realize he should have waited for Mad-Eye, Remus, and Tonks to arrive but he wasn’t thinking quite logically at the moment).

He grabbed Hermione by the shoulders and pressed his lips on to hers, pretending, and it didn’t require a lot of imagination, that he and Hermione where just a group of snogging teenagers hiding behind the car. Hermione hesitated for a second, and then pressed her lips against Harry’s.

Harry had kissed Cho once before Christmas holidays last year, but that kiss was absolutely nothing like was experiencing with Hermione as he felt her full lips meet his...

The moment was entirely ruined when the hose went off and the Muggle said incredulously, “Hermione darling?”

Hermione broke away from Harry, much to his consternation, but his heart stopped as she spoke to the Muggle, “Oh, hi Dad.”