Work Text:
Hermione groaned as her phone blared music from on the opposite side of her bed. She didn't need to look at the clock or out of the window to know how early in the morning it was. She was all too aware of the fact that she'd only just gotten into bed after coming in from a night out with Ginny and Luna. She'd been their reluctant third wheel, but as they'd pointed out several times the previous day, she needed to start getting out more and stop moping around just because she'd had her heartbroken.
"Hello?" She mumbled, not even bothering to check the caller ID. Only Harry had her number anyway - considering the fact that all her other friends seemed to repel technology without meaning to.
"Mione." He sounded even drunker than she felt. In fact, he sounded worse than drunk - he sounded desperate which didn't suit him at all. He'd been working on himself lately, something which she'd admired, but for some reason that had meant that he'd backed off from her quite a bit. She couldn't figure out why but she'd left him to it, figuring that he would talk to her when he felt that he could.
She just didn't expect that time to be at quarter past one in the morning.
"Are you okay?" She asked when he didn't follow her name with anything. She was actually wondering if he had fallen asleep and had been contemplating hanging up to leave him be, but instead, she had found herself reaching out to him, something that she had tried not to do while he had been attempting to heal himself and she had been grieving the end of her relationship with Ron.
"No." Harry's reply sounded broken and it made Hermione's heartache to hear him this way.
"What's going on, Harry?" She asked gently as she turned her light on, for some reason thinking that would help the situation somehow, even though he wasn't even in the same building as she was, let alone in the same room.
"I need you." His voice was hoarse as if he'd been crying but honestly, Hermione didn't think that he was in any fit state to talk about what it was that had made him cry. "I just need you."
Hermione swallowed thickly, it was taking all of her strength to stop herself from apparating over there right now. She'd always helped him whenever he needed it though so it made sense that she would want to help now and that he would come to her in the first place.
"You need me?" She repeated, somewhat surprised at how steady she had managed to keep her voice. She didn't feel at all steady, that was for sure, but she needed to put on that front for his benefit. She needed to look after him.
"Yes. I need you here." She could hear him starting to cry again now and all she wanted to do was wrap her arms around him and tell him everything was going to be okay, but at the same time, she couldn't just apparate to him. She didn't know where he was in the first place, though she guessed he could have been at his own flat.
"What's happened?" She asked instead, wondering if something, in particular, has set him off or if this was just him being overly emotional because of how much alcohol he appeared to have consumed.
"Ron." That wasn't at all what she'd expected him to say and in fact, made her flinch. She and Ron had been over for a while now, ever since he'd announced that he was actually gay, and while that had been emotionally scarring to her she'd had to at least pretend to be happy for him. He got to be the person that he'd always wanted to be.
"What about Ron?" She asked as she pulled a pillow to her chest, hugging it tightly and hoping that it would somehow help to release the tension that she felt there. Harry knew how she felt about Ron, about how he had broken the news of his sexuality to her, but she supposed he wasn't really thinking properly just then. She was certain that it wasn't his intention to hurt her anyway.
"He says I should tell you how I feel."
Hermione couldn't help but frown in her confusion. Ron was now giving Harry advice? Any other time she might have found this hilarious but not tonight - not when emotions were running high on both sides.
"Tell me how you feel?" She asked slowly, an eyebrow raised ever-so-slightly as she did her best to swim through the alcohol in her brain to find her thoughts and see if she could figure out what it was that he meant by that. Her first instinct, of course, was that he had feelings for her, but that had to be ridiculous, right? Harry had only ever viewed her as his overbearing, over-protective sister, or at least that was how she had always assumed that she was to him.
“Yeah. I should… I should tell you how I feel before I… before I fuck up. Again.” The way that he said the word ‘again’ tugged at her heartstrings. There was more to what he was telling her, but she knew that he was in no way a fit state to explain all of that to her right now. “I love you, Hermione.” He continued, his voice somehow managing to sound a lot more confident than she was sure either of them felt.
“You - what?” Hermione was still sure that she hadn’t heard him correctly, or she was sure that she hadn’t understood him. He loved her like he loved Ron, that was surely what he had meant. And yet, she found herself hoping that he didn’t mean it like that. She wanted to believe that he loved her as she loved him like she was sure that he was the other half of her heart - not that she believed that you needed anyone else to be whole in the first place. She just… She felt that she understood his earlier words that he needed her now more than ever.
“I’ve tried to pretend that I don’t for far too long now, but I do. I love you.” She heard him take a deep, almost painful breath as she allowed herself to steady her own thoughts. “And you’re needed here.”
And then the line went dead. She didn’t know whether he had meant to hang up or if his phone had simply died or something, but the silence in her room was deafening. She pulled her pillow to her chest just that little bit tighter and stared at her own phone, wishing that it would start ringing again, wishing that he would call back and explain what he had meant.
But that call didn’t come and eventually, she fell asleep, hugging both her pillow and her phone, her bedroom light still on.