Chained

Chained

It was bitterly cold in the dungeons on winter nights. The cold air seeped in through the stone walls, and the torches flickering around the room gave off little heat. Matters were made infinitely worse when one was on their hands and knees, scrubbing a thousand years worth of spilled potions off the floor, as Harry and Hermione were doing. They'd been working for at least two hours, but were only halfway done.

Harry sat back on his heels and surveyed the progress he had made. If his joints hadn't been screaming in protest, he would have felt rather proud of what he'd accomplished so far. Cleaning the dungeons was hard work even with magic, but without magic, it was brutal labor. He glanced over at Hermione, who was also taking a break. Her hair had started to fall out of its loose ponytail and curl around her face, but Harry pretended not to notice this. He quickly averted his eyes, hoping that she hadn't noticed him looking at her. In the whole time they'd been down here, they hadn't spoken once, and Harry hoped to keep it that way.

Never before had Harry been so regretful that he had mouthed off in Professor Snape's class, since it had resulted in serving a detention with Hermione. He had been shocked when she had jumped to his defense in class that day, but now wished more than ever that she hadn't, since the evening had been filled with awkward silences and accidental eye contact.

What he really wanted was for them to be friends again, for them to be able to talk and laugh over their misfortune while they cleaned the floor, but he knew that was unlikely. It had been almost a year since he had started distancing himself from Ron and Hermione, getting frustrated with their well-meant but unappreciated looks of concern and words of sympathy. He had needed them to just understand what he was going through, because if they couldn't, then no one on earth could. And when they had proved over and over again that they didn't, then he had decided that he was better off with no friends at all.

And so it was. He walked the hallways alone now, avoiding the other students and not looking at anyone. He wandered the school grounds for hours at a time, often not noticing when rain began to pour from the grey skies. He often wondered what would happen to him in the end. Voldemort would probably end up killing him, but what then? What would happen afterwards? Would he be transported to some other place where there were people like him? He doubted it, because he was positive there was no one in any world who was anything like him. He imagined that he would walk alone in this other world just as he did in this one, unnoticed, slowly fading from memory and thought, until eventually people would forget that he had ever lived or died.

It was with these gloomy thoughts in his mind that Harry dipped his rag into the bucket of soapy water and began scrubbing again. Perhaps he wasn't paying full attention to his task as he pondered his lonely afterlife, because a few moments later, he accidentally knocked an elbow into the bucket, and the water spilled all over the floor.

"Shit," Harry muttered angrily, dropping his rag and standing up before the water could seep into the knees of his trousers.

Across the room, Hermione looked up from where she was diligently scrubbing, and jumped up. She carried her rag over to where he was standing, and dropped to her knees, using her rag to mop up the excess water and squeeze it out over the portion of the floor that was uncleaned.

Harry knelt down to help her, and jumped when his hand accidentally brushed hers. He quickly moved hisn hand away, and saw out of the corner of his eye that Hermione was blushing a bit.

"Sorry," he said quietly. He looked at her.

"Forget it," she said without looking up.

Harry decided that, as long as they were talking (if one could really call it that), he might as well thank her well.

"And...thanks for sticking up for me in class," he said.

This did get a response from Hermione- she looked up, startled.

"Oh...you're welcome. Snape was picking on you, quizzing you about a potion we hadn't even covered yet. It wasn't fair, so I had to say something." She paused for a moment, and then added, "I would have done that for anyone."

There was silence for a moment, and then Harry said, "Right. Well, thanks." He returned his concentration to the task at hand.

He soaked up the water for about a minute, trying to ignore the steady gaze Hermione was giving him. He finally looked up when her rag hit his shoulder, and saw Hermione standing up and positively shaking with rage.

"Thanks? That's all you're going to say?" she said, her voice quiet and controlled. Beneath the calm, however, he could hear the underlying anger, making her voice tight. "You don't talk to me for an entire bloody year and then all you can say after I get myself landed in detention while defending you is thanks?"

"Um..." Harry said, at a complete loss for words.

"No," she said, "don't even say anything yet. Do you have any idea how much you've hurt me in the past year? Do you know what it feels like to lose one of your best friends?"

"Actually, I know what it's like to lose both of them," Harry said cooly.

"No you don't," Hermione said. "You chose to walk away from Ron and me. That's completely different from being walked away from. Do you have any idea what that felt like? It was horrible. Ron and I can't spend all our time together- you know that. We drive each other mad. We're supposed to be a trio, not a duo. It doesn't work with just two of us. But of course you wouldn't think of that," she went on, in a towering rage, "You never think of anything other than the bloody prophecy and Voldemort and the Death Eaters and your impending tragic death. You're just the most self-centered and pig-headed prat I've ever met!"

There was a ringing silence in the dungeon. Hermione was breathing rather quickly and her cheeks were flushed. Harry dropped his rag and just looked at her.

He looked at her, from her black polished shoes to her pleated skirt that fell around her small hips, to the vest that hugged her petite figure to her pale neck to her curling brown hair to her pink cheeks to her dark eyes to the very straight part in her hair. And he sensed that he was looking at her and actually seeing her for the very best time. Under different circumstances, he might have been amused that he finally saw her not when she was dressed up for the Yule Ball or when she was almost killed by Death Eaters, but when she was standing before him, angry enough to spit nails, looking slightly rumpled and disheveled.

But he thought none of that, because at the moment his entire concentration was focused on her and only her, which was something entirely new for both of them. There were a million things he probably should have said to her at a time like this, apologies and explanations and whatnot. But he never had been good at saying the right thing at the right time, so he stood up and did something that was probably the precisely wrong thing at a time like this, but it felt right to him so he did it anyway.

He kissed her. Her mouth was warm and soft, and it was an entirely different experience from kissing Cho. Where that had been awkward, this was comfortable; where that had been frightening, this was oddly familiar and foreign at the same time. When she opened her mouth under his, he responded eagerly. When her tongue slid into his mouth, he moaned. And when he slid his hand under her shirt and she didn't push him away, instead curling her hands around his neck, he knew that this had been the right thing to do.

It ended, in his opinion, far too soon. She shoved him away as he leaned down to kiss her neck, and he looked up at her, out of breath.

"Wh-what?" he asked.

She stared at him, a peculiar look on her face. "You can't do that," she said. "You can't put me through all of this, and then kiss me and expect it to be okay."

"I'm not trying to," Harry responded evenly. "I don't expect you to ever forgive me, and I don't even want you to, because it wouldn't be fair to you. I'm not a girl, Hermione," he said, grinning a bit.

"Everything I do doesn't have a great meaning. I don't analyze everything I or anyone else does. Sometimes, I just do things because I feel like it. And right then, I felt like kissing you. So I did."

"So it had no meaning whatsoever? It was just a random snog?" Hermione asked, looking hurt.

"It is if you want it to be," Harry said, his eyes boring into hers, trying to explain what he wanted to say. "Or it can be something else."

He had been slowly moving closer to her, until he was standing close enough to her to place his hand on her shoulder. "What do you want it to be?"

Hermione swallowed. "I...I want it to be more," she said. "I want to think that you really want me, and still care about me." She leaned closer to him.

"I never stopped caring about you," Harry whispered before her mouth descended upon his.

Her hands were everywhere- tangling in his hair, clutching his back, untucking his shirt from his trousers. His were similarly active, having disappeared up her shirt.

"Wait," she said, pulling away for a moment. "You're not going to regret this, are you? You're not going to walk away again?"

"It would be rather impossible to walk away from you at the moment," Harry said dryly, looking down at the evidence of his reaction to her proximity.

Hermione laughed softly, and pulled him to her again, picking up where they left off, stopping only to lock the door to the dungeon.

Hermione knew he hadn't given her a real answer at all, but didn't press it, because she knew she'd never get one. There was never any guarantee that Harry wouldn't walk away again- if anything, he was even more likely to do it now. She knew this, and accepted it.

Sometimes, in the months that followed, Hermione would occasionally think that she deserved better than a boyfriend who could possibly leave her at any moment. That she deserved better than someone who claimed to love her, but never gave any guarantee that he would be there the next morning. But she also knew that loving Harry Potter was never going to be easy, or fair. She knew that she would always be attached to a green-eyed boy with messy black hair, and that maybe 'fair' didn't factor into the equation at all. She'd been tied to him since the moment he saved her from a troll when she was eleven years old, and understood that, fair or not, she could never leave him. And, in her heart of hearts, she also knew that she'd never want to.