Slowly

Slowly

For the 15minuteficlets LJ community

By: Nicole

Ship/Pairing: Harry/Hermione

Some people would say that when she found the one, she'd know whom in an instant. But as she felt deep in her heart that the "one" was around somewhere near her, or rather, in her life, but she didn't know whom it was yet, she would say that people were wrong. It happened a lot more slowly than they thought. Of course, people were different. She was a top-of-the-class bookworm, and her dormmates were femme-fatales who obsessed over Witch Weekly, the latest robe styles, and Harry Potter.

She interrupted her own thoughts suddenly, wondering what had made her finally notice that the girls she happened to think gossipy and shallow were very much obsessed with her best friend? Well, one of them, anyway.

'Perhaps he's the one,' her conscience teased.

Shut up. I seriously doubt it's either Harry or Ron, thanks, as they've neither one shown any interest in me that way since the train ride.

The train ride. Something had happened on the trip to Hogwarts that, in fact, had not happened slowly at all. Lately, with the Dark Lord still around, the Aurors had been making routine checks of things. Therefore, the Hogwarts Express had been stopped twice during the trip. The first time... She blushed thinking about it. None of them had expected the first check, so when the train pulled to a screeching halt, right when she had been getting a book from her trunk, she had toppled into a very surprised Harry Potter's lap. He had turned slightly red, but that had been nothing compared to Ron, Luna, Neville, and Ginny's reactions. The four had burst out laughing at the redness of their friends' faces, and it had served only to make the faces redder. She had scrambled off of his lap, but something made her sit right next to him, as she seemed to feel much safer in his company.

Now, looking back on that, and even though she had told her conscience to shut up, it made her feel all warm and fuzzy just thinking about it. She became so lost in thought about it that she failed to notice the portrait hole open and someone in Gryffindor quidditch robes come in the common room.

"Hermione! You're not working on homework!" Harry obviously couldn't mask his surprise at his finding of her doing something other than studying. However, as Ron's pointing this out normally made her mad, she simply brushed his comment aside.

"Oh, so it's illegal for me to not be studying?" she asked, giving him a teasing grin.

"No, I never said that," he replied, walking over and sitting next to her. "What were you thinking about, anyway?"

She blushed slightly at his question, but she answered it as truthfully as she dared.

"I was just thinking," she said slowly, "about the little incident on the train ride to school."

Now it was his turn to blush. "Oh. Were you regretting it, or were you just thinking about it normally?" He couldn't stop himself from asking her that, as something about that memory jolted his senses slightly.

"Regret it? Oh, no. I don't think I could ever regret that..." She stopped suddenly, turning much more red at what she had just said. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Merlin tell me I just did not say that..

Harry couldn't believe his ears. "Hold on.. Did you just say you could never regret it?" he asked her, with, it seemed, a bit of hesitation.

"Obviously, I did," she said, leaning her head against his shoulder. Though she did this often, it seemed different to both of them this time.

He had been leaning into the back of the couch, but slowly started sitting up, with his arm around her shoulders supporting her. She sat up just slightly, turning her head to look at him.

Something was going on here, and only their hearts truly knew what it was. Slowly but surely, their minds would know as well, and then, they would go from there, knowing not what the future held, but who held the future.