Back To You

Back to you
It always comes around
Back to you
I tried to forget you
I tried to stay away
But it's too late

Hermione Granger was a girl with a plan. She always had been, she always would be. She had a plan for everything. Sometimes she even made lists. She had a plan for her life. She'd get a great job in the wizarding world, though at that precise moment she was torn between being an Auror and a Healer. She'd fall in love with a wonderful guy, and they'd get married.

That was one of the things she had a list for. Her perfect man. He'd be kind, caring, funny, handsome, thoughtful, smart and brave. All of those things would be embodied in her true soul mate, and if she waited long enough surely he would come to her.

She sat facing the lake, her back against the willow tree, her eyes staring out over the moonlight water without seeing the beauty it held. Her entire focus was within herself, her thoughts whirling around like a tornado, twisting and dismantling all her notions of perfection. It was dangerous, she decided, to fall in love.

There was Harry. The hero. Definitely everything on her list, even if the 'thoughtful' part could use a little work. He was only sixteen; he'd mature into someone that any girl would be lucky to have. Hermione, having watched him grow from an insecure eleven year old into this almost-man he'd become, was so proud of him she could burst from it.

But she had no feelings for him, at least not romantically. She loved him, surely as the wind was blowing through the willow, but hers was the love of a friend, and only a friend. That was all Harry would ever be to her. The greatest friend a girl could have, maybe, but still simply a friend.

Plus, she had a sneaking suspicion he harbored feelings for one of the other girls in what she'd taken to calling his Posse. Harry's Posse consisted of Hermione herself, Neville, Ginny, Luna, and Ron. They who'd been together in the Department of Mysteries at the end of last term, those who had drawn closer because of it.

She wasn't sure whether it was for Ginny or Luna he felt those confusing feelings, the ones she understood perfectly. She could see them written all over his dramatic face. Somehow everything about Harry was dramatic. His voice, his gestures, his speaking habits, his very appearance. He smiled, frowned, worried, and laughed dramatically. It was in his nature, he was an unwitting attention-getter.

After six years, she could read him like a book. She knew he was having the same crazy feelings she was, although his feelings were directed towards one or the other of the fifth years in his Posse. Her own feelings, however, were directed toward someone most unexpected.

She should have realized it long ago. There were all the signs, now that she looked at it. Why had she let him worm his way into her heart? Now she felt that, if he was to suddenly disappear, she'd wilt away into nothing without him. He didn't worm his way into her heart, she reflected, he stole it away from her completely. He became her heart.

Somehow he'd managed to do it without her even noticing. Not until it was too late.

Hermione glared up at the night sky, the very stars seeming to spell out her secrets. She feared that anyone who looked up would be able to see the truth she'd buried deep in her heart so long ago. It had taken until now to bring it to the surface, this feeling she'd had since she first met him.

It hadn't been catastrophic. It had been yet another skirmish in a battle, in a long war of words that they'd been fighting since the first moment they met.

"Who's the letter from, Hermione?" Ron wanted to know at dinner that night.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Viktor."

"Why do you keep writing to that git?" Ron demanded irritably, stabbing at his food as if it had offended him.

"If you must know," she snapped, "I like to have intelligent conversations. Viktor is very intelligent, and I enjoy exchanging ideas with him."

At the first mention of Viktor Krum, the heads of the rest of Harry's Posse had snapped up. Any word of the Bulgarian was sure to result in a row between the two most emotional members of the group.

"Oh, yeah," Ron said sarcastically. "There's that. Then there's the part where he's madly in love with you. And you're encouraging him."

"He is not madly in love with me," Hermione said, surprised.

"Yes he is," Ron argued.

"No, he's not," Hermione shot back.

It irritated her that they'd sunk to bickering like three year olds, throwing any semblance of logic to the wind and resorting to finger-pointing. Next thing anyone knew they'd be calling each other names.

"Yes he is," Ron said, stabbing at his food again.

"Viktor couldn't possibly be in love with me," Hermione said. "He just likes the conversation."

"Is that all you think you are?" Ron demanded. "Conversation? You are so much more than that! The question, Hermione, is how he could possibly not be in love with you!"

A chuckle came from Luna's direction. The strange girl had taken to eating with the rest of them at the Gryffindor table, and frankly none of her fellow Ravenclaws missed her very much. That fact didn't faze her a bit.

"I mean..." Ron said, his ears starting to turn red. "Er..."

And suddenly it was different, so completely different, than any argument they'd ever had before. If she wasn't very much mistaken, Ron had just admitted something so important it practically made her head spin.

Instead of replying, she'd run out of the Great Hall and down to the lake. She'd been there ever since. It had been at least three hours since the fateful moment, and she was still as confused as she'd ever been.

Damn Ronald Weasley for messing up her plan. Hermione lived by her plan. She based every day, every decision on her plan. It was as if Ron had come along and personally ripped all her little lists to pieces with his bare hands and thrown them into the fire.

As she shook her head in despair, the wind picked up a bit, playing with bits of her unmanageable hair and slapping her in the face with them.

This is it, her heart whispered to her. Here and now, it's him, and it's undeniable.

How can you be so sure? her head retorted. He's not what I want.

He is everything you want, her traitorous heart whispered insistently. Everything to you.

He really wasn't, she thought. He wasn't the perfect man. He wasn't kind, caring, funny, handsome, thoughtful, smart, and brave. Not by a long shot. Even as she thought it, she knew it wasn't true.

He was smart, whether he showed it or not. He always came through in a pinch. He was kind, as evidenced by his recent deference towards the oddity that was Luna Lovegood. He was caring. So caring. He lived off emotion, he acted on emotion, and he cared more deeply and truly than anyone she'd ever met. His capacity to love was something that both scared and thrilled her to no end.

His bravery was never in doubt. In all the times Hermione had needed him, he'd never once backed down. He was the epitome of Gryffindor courage, someone Godric Gryffindor himself would have been awed by.

Now that she thought about it, he really was quite handsome. Okay, if she admitted it to herself, she'd thought about his good looks more often than she liked to admit. He was handsome, there was no other word. Cute didn't even begin to describe him, adorable was an insult, and good-looking was too common to do him justice. Although her own opinion was rather biased.

He was funny, too. He always knew how to make her laugh, even in the darkest of times. His sheer optimism about everything was something she found amusing, and he had a sharp wit that surprised her at every turn. He was always open for a joke, even something so silly as, "A man walked into a bar. He said ouch." He'd told that joke to her just yesterday, she recalled. Godric how she loved his sense of humor.

His thoughtfulness was so subtle she sometimes missed it entirely. It was little things, like silently offering a hand to hold when they read something awful in the Daily Prophet. If the news was particularly bad, she knew that he was always there as a shoulder to cry on.

It was into the midst of these terrifying, amazing, wonderful, world-shattering thoughts that Ron himself walked.

"Hermione?" he said, in soft voice.

She thought for a moment that her own musings had conjured an image of him into being. Then he sat down beside her and she found that he was very much real, all six-foot-some-odd-inches of him, every Quidditch-toned muscle in his body. Solid, warm, and comforting in his very presence.

"Ron," she acknowledged, hoping desperately that her voice sounded casual.

It wasn't every day that Hermione realized her true feelings for her best friend of six years. It was a lot to handle all at once.

"You've been out here for a long time," Ron said, searching her face with his sharp blue eyes as he spoke. "What's the matter?"

She shook her head. "Nothing."

Ron snorted. "Something's the matter. I know you too well, and you always get that little crinkle between your eyebrows when something's wrong."

Hermione smiled faintly. "I was thinking about what you said earlier," she admitted.

Ron sighed. "It just slipped out."

Hermione grinned. Good old Ron, trying to play things off so casually. Any minute now he'd start rumpling his hair in that annoying, adorable way he did.

"And I...well, Ginny's been yelling at me for three hours straight," Ron said, putting a hand to his head. "Excuse me if I'm not making any sense."

"Why has she been yelling at you?" Hermione asked curiously.

"Because I offended you," Ron said, his eyes slightly worried. "I'm sorry."

"You didn't offend me," Hermione assured him. "I was just...startled, is all."

"Why?" Ron asked.

Hermione sighed. "How could he not love you," she quoted, then added, "I really never saw myself as loveable."

Ron made an indignant noise. "You are very loveable. Everyone loves you. I love you." He paused, and blushed slightly. "Harry loves you. We all do."

"You do?" Hermione said, startled by this new development.

What she'd told Ron was the truth. Hermione Granger, Bookworm and Girl Wonder, didn't see herself as loveable. People came to her in a crisis, and when they needed homework done, but she never thought anyone actually loved her.

She registered Ron's indignant assurance. I love you. If only he loved her the way she loved him, not the way she loved Harry. It was too frightening to contemplate, someone feeling for her what she'd felt for Ron since the moment he'd first come to her rescue, in that girls' bathroom six years ago. Even if it had taken her six years to realize the truth. It had taken stark terror to bring them together as friends.

Thank goodness for rampaging trolls.

"Of course we do," Ron said.

"Thanks, Ron," Hermione said.

Her heart broke into a thousand tiny pieces. The love just realized had been dashed upon the rocks of reality, never to blossom into something wonderful. We love you. Not him specifically, not any differently, not even worth mentioning.

Somehow Ron managed to put her heart back together with one smile. He looked at her with something akin to resolve in his eyes, and sealed the glue on her fragile heart.

"You know," he said laughingly, "I never realized just how easy you are to love."

Then he kissed her.

Hermione Granger, girl with a plan, suddenly realized that maybe lists and plans weren't so important after all.

Back to me
I know that it comes
Back to me
Doesn't it scare you
Your will is not as strong
As it used to be