Love is Strong

Well.... (big sigh) here goes....

 

Harry stirred in his sleep. The night’s gloom had been swept away and replaced by a glowing dawn. Mixtures of red, orange and yellow cascaded across the sky.

Harry, having opened his eyes, rolled over to look at his bedside clock. It displayed half-past six, on its luminous, red, flashing digits. Then something in Harry’s brain clicked. It was school today. Oh, back to Hermione and Ron, and Hogwarts. Harry stretched, fell out of bed, washed, combed the hair (which was a waste of time), dressed and went to breakfast.

The Dursleys had also risen, Harry reckoned, to prevent him blowing up the kitchen. Aunt Petunia was frying bacon on the hob and Uncle Vernon was reading ‘The Sun’ newspaper in the corner. On closer inspection, Harry noticed it was page three of ‘The Sun’ (for you non-U.K. people, it’s a page of pictures of revealing young women, you know peep shows, that lot.), which Uncle Vernon closed every time Aunt Petunia came within three feet of his precious newspaper. As Harry was pondering why they bother with these things in newspapers (well, he’s innocent!), Dudley appeared at the doorway. ‘Oh, ikkle Duddikins, have some bacon!’ Aunt Petunia crooned, sweeping past Harry, making him fall into the dustbin. Aunt Petunia, placing the bacon on Dudley’s plate, turned round to return to the stove, when a small brown, fluffy, ball of feathers shot past her ear and hovered over Dudley’s head. In the commotion that followed, Dudley scrambled under the table, Aunt Petunia fainted, Uncle Vernon torn his ‘The Sun’ page three, and Harry got an ear full of bacon while still attempting to remove his head from the bin.

When he had done so, he turned round to find Dudley stuck under the table, the bacon all over the floor and Uncle Vernon standing over the limp form of Aunt Petunia, tearing his moustache out with fury. "WHAT," he yelled. "WHAT IS THAT...THAT THING DOING HERE?!?" He was of course referring to the owl dancing round the kitchen with joy, having found the right place. It was Pig.

Snatching Pig out of the air, and grabbing the letter tied to its leg, Harry unrolled the scrap of parchment.

Dear Harry, he read,

Are you Ok? Muggles treating you all right? My Dad asks shall we pick you up at say nine am? Don’t worry, we’re coming by car. Send Pig back pronto with your answer. Hope you got to Diagon Alley. Herm’s meeting us there.

See you soon,

Ron.

Leaping up the stairs two at a time to his small bedroom, scrambling about for parchment, Harry wrote: -

Ron,

Yes, please. Shall see you at nine, then. Took the train to Diagon Alley, as Muggles refused to take me.

Thanks,

Harry.

 

Three hours later, Harry and Ron pulled up at the station, laughing about something Hermione had sent to Harry. It had been a How-to-do-homework-without-buggering-it-up book. Harry had been delighted. Until Dudley had used it for warfare against Mrs Figg’s cats, missed and it got squashed by the X18 bus.

"What’s so funny?" said a bossy voice by their luggage.

"Oh, hi Herm, it was about...wow, erm... you look nice." Harry stuttered.

Hermione over the holidays, had obviously been on holiday. Her skin was tanned, hair bleached and straightened and she had lost weight. (Hey, she’s not fat anyway, just making her a little thinner.) Harry and Ron felt their jaws drop.

Ron had gone into a frozen state and was unable to speak. "Ron, stop it." Harry hissed and kicked him. Ron did snap out of it.

"Erm...Hermione, are you still going out with Krum?" he blushed as he said it.

"No, why?"

"Erm...well...just wondering." Ron couldn’t take his eyes off Hermione, as he followed her and Harry down the passageway into an empty carriage, where they dumped their stuff, and settled into the seats.

"Erm...guys, can... can I talk to you about something? It’s... it’s something i’m not used to. It’s about love..." she trailed off.

"Yeah, go on Herm, it can’t be that bad. Best get it out, so you can tell the person you’ve got your eyes on. I must say, it’s a surprise for me." (Ron was breathing rather heavily next to Harry.)

"Well...it’s a surprise for me too." Hermione stuttered. "I know about Rita Skeeter last year, and all that and some people think I should between you two, instead of having you both. You were both just friends until this summer when I had a serious think about my life and you two. I want you to still be friends both of you, but... well... i’m in love with...