Of Course You're Not

...visit you last summer, Ron and I were quite preoccupied with Dumbled--

"What kept you?" Ron suddenly broke the silence only interrupted by an occasional crackle in the fireplace, and Hermione glanced up to see Harry walking in a bit of a trance over to the chair next to her. She went back to writing her letter, but when Harry didn't say anything, she looked back at him to note his eyes were a forest green color, indicating he was thinking hard about something.

"Are you all right, Harry?" Hermione asked, and Harry looked at her, shrugging one shoulder. Hermione set her quill in the inkpot and ran a hand through her thick bushy brown hair, her heart sinking horribly when it started to occur to her what had happened in the Room of Requirement after everyone left.

"What's up?" Ron said. "What's happened?" Honestly, he can be so daft...

She swallowed the lump in her throat and asked in a voice that didn't sound so much like her own, "Is it Cho? Did she corner you after the meeting?" Harry stared at her, a look of shock on his face. I'm not that dull, Harry.

"So -- er -- what did want?" Ron asked a bit loudly after Hermione gave him The Look.

"She --" Harry cleared his throat, and Hermione closed her eyes briefly to try and stop the burning feeling her eyes were getting -- a sure sign she was close to crying while he said, "She -- er--"

"Did you kiss?" she interrupted almost cheerfully, hating herself for it.

Harry glanced at Hermione and Ron as the latter boy asked, "Well?" and his head dropped, as if he were embarrassed, and he nodded. Hermione sighed, which wasn't heard (thankfully) over Ron's whoop. Hermione shot Ron another Look and picked the quill out of the inkwell and started writing again, a bit more fiercely.

"Well?" Ron inquired. "How was it?"

"Wet," Harry replied. Hermione blocked out the rest of their conversation, a hundred things running through her head at the moment, a few including: Who does she think she is? and What am I talking about? She has every right to kiss him, it's not like she's forbidden to him just because he's my best friend or anything. Why am I acting so overprotective? I should be happy...I just can't be. Not about something like this. But after all he does deserve some relief in his life. God knows he does.

"Are you that bad at kissing?"

"Dunno. Maybe I am." Hermione could detect the note of apprehension in his voice and inwardly rolled her eyes. He shouldn't care what she thinks, she's too hung up on Cedric to think anything competent these days.

"Of course you're not," said Hermione, writing extra-hard on the parchment.

"How do you know?" Ron said instantly. She suddenly had the urge to slap him.

"Because Cho spends half her time crying these days," Hermione said, voicing the truth with a bit of disgust in her voice. Harry and Ron didn't catch it, thankfully. At Harry and Ron's inquiring looks, she continued. "She does it at mealtimes, in the loos, all over the place."

"You'd think a bit of kissing would cheer her up." Hermione was very close to throwing her quill at him.

"Ron, you are the most insensitive wart I have ever had the misfortune to meet." So unlike Harry, who is only as dense about girls as they come.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Ron said, his temper flaring up immediately. "What sort of person cries when someone's kissing them?" Good, just rub it in Cho's kissed Harry, why don't you?

"Don't you understand how Cho's feeling at the moment?" She said, not particularly caring how Cho felt. Ron obviously didn't, and Harry didn't have the slightest clue.

"No," they both replied. Hermione sighed, throwing down her quill in exasperation. She launched into her explanation of her theory on the way Cho was feeling. She nearly said, at the end of the explanation, "And I don't see how in the world you could like such a self-absorbed girl, Harry, who's only interested in you probably so she can find out more about precious, dear Cedric."

"One person can't feel all that at once, they'd explode." said Ron, looking bewildered.

"Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have."

"She was the one who started it," said Harry. Hermione inwardly thought, and you loved every minute of it, I bet. Again, she tuned out the boys' conversation, until there was a split second silence.

"You just had to be nice to her," Hermione said. "You were, weren't you?" Just to give her the satisfaction, she added mentally.

"Well," Harry blushed, looking adorable while doing so, "I sort of -- patted her on the back." Hermione wanted to burst out laughing, while at the same time feeling impatient.

"Well, I suppose it could've been worse," she said. "Are you going to see her again?"

"I'll have to, won't I? We've got D.A. meetings, haven't we?"

"You know what I mean."

Harry stared at his hand, thinking for a long while obviously. Hermione just looked at him with curiosity.

"Oh well," It's useless, like talking to a house-elf about asking for wages, "you'll have plenty of opportunities to ask her...."

"What if he doesn't want to ask her?" Ron asked.

"Don't be silly. Harry's liked her for ages, haven't you, Harry?" She looked at the green-eyed boy. Unfortunately.

"Who're you writing the novel to, anyway?" She caught him trying to peek at the letter and pulled it up.

"Viktor."

"Krum?"

"How many other Viktors do we know?" Hermione finished the letter in twenty minutes' time, rolled it up and sealed it. Hermione glanced at Harry once before she started towards the girls' dorm stairs.

"Well, 'night."

Maybe he'll notice me next year, Hermione thought as she dressed for bed, once he's done worrying about Cho. You'd think he didn't even know about Voldemort, the way he's carrying on about her. If that's all I had to worry about....