Chapter Text
Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, was going crazy.
I would be better off called the Boy-Who-Was-Going-Insane, he morosely thought to himself as he lay flat on his back in the dirt underneath the living room windowsill, hidden from the world by an overly-perfectly trimmed row of shrubbery.
Harry hadn't realized just how much he had been relying on Hermione to keep him grounded and sane until he no longer had her around. So far this summer he'd swung from being too depressed about Cedric's death to do anything, to feeling overwhelmingly guilty, as if it had entirely been his own fault that Cedric had died, to recklessly wanting to hunt Voldemort down himself, and back through the list again several times over — and it had been less than forty-eight hours since he left Kings Cross station with the Dursleys.
But the lazy afternoon silence was slowly replaced by the sound of someone whistling cheerfully as they walked down Privet Drive. While this mildly peaked Harry's curiosity, as no one ever walked down Privet Drive whistling (he thought there might be some kind of law against it), let alone cheerfully (that, he was positive was illegal), he was too determined to maintain his current mood of being too depressed to do anything to move to see who it might be. His resolve was sorely tested when the whistling seemed to turn up the Dursleys' walk, but he remained strong. That is, until his unobstructed view of the lovely blue sky was suddenly obstructed by waves of bushy brown hair framing an attractive, and quite familiar face.
For some inexplicable reason, Hermione Granger's face (and hair) was staring down at him from out of the sky. Then after blinking a few times, trying to make the mirage go away, Harry finally realized that his girlfriend's face was not, in fact, floating in the sky above him, but that her entire body was standing on the other side of the shrub, here at Number 4 Privet Drive.
"Uh...hi," he greeted her ever so eloquently.
"Hi, Harry!" she replied as cheerfully as always, as if finding her boyfriend lying in the dirt behind some bushes was nothing out of the ordinary. "Planning on inviting me in anytime soon?"
Just as eloquently as before, he said, "Uh...", but this time he at least began to stand up.
Hermione reached down and grabbed his arm and helped pull him up, pulling his face to hers as soon as he was on his feet, kissing him passionately. Releasing him several seconds later, she asked, "So why were you lying in the dirt behind the bushes?"
"Avoiding my aunt and uncle," replied Harry, thankful that said relations were in the kitchen and not sitting in the living room at the moment. "So what are you doing here?"
Taking his hand and twining her fingers in his, Hermione replied, "Thought you might like some company, so I took the train over to visit you."
Squeezing Hermione's hand to show her his appreciation, Harry opened the door with his other hand, and let her in. Taking the risk that his aunt and uncle would be polite to a girl, even if Vernon did remember her from the train station two days earlier (or if they weren't polite, that Hermione would set them in their places), Harry led her down the hall and into the kitchen, hoping to pilfer for them some of the lemonade that he knew his aunt made every afternoon, but never let him have any of.
~HP~
Vernon and Petunia Dursley were sitting in their kitchen enjoying a cold glass of lemonade, when they heard the front door open.
Knowing that their dearest Dudleykins was at the Polkisses' for tea, and wouldn't be home until much later, they reasoned that it must be the other boy who lived in their house, who was under no circumstance supposed to be in said house during the day. Hearing footsteps approaching the kitchen, Vernon was about to launch into his best tirade when he caught site of the attractive girl following not-Dudley into the kitchen, and the words died on his lips.
She was dressed in a tight pair of jeans, and an equally fitting t-shirt that hugged her medium figure — in short, a completely normal, good-looking teenage girl that would do well for their Duddykins.
Something nudged at the back of Vernon's mind saying that she looked too familiar, and there was also the thin stick poking out the top of her back jeans pocket that didn't seem quite right, but she was too normal looking for either Vernon or Petunia to really notice either of these things. After all, if she had been one of his kind, it would have been much more obvious — his kind stood out like sore thumbs, or people who cheated on the water ban.
Meanwhile, as the Dursleys were staring at their unexpected guest, Harry walked over to the refrigerator and poured two glasses of lemonade, handing one to Hermione.
"Want to go up to your room?" asked Hermione as she took the glass from him, before turning around and walking sultrily out of the room with her hips swaying, towards the stairs that she knew must lead up to Harry's bedroom based on the small amount he'd told her over the four years she'd known him about his home life.
Taking advantage of the Dursleys' continued temporary stunned silence at everything, Harry quickly hurried after her, his own lemonade in hand.
As soon as Harry entered his room room after her — and she'd taken both of their drinks and set them down on his desk — Hermione lost no time in pouncing on her boyfriend, knocking him over backwards onto his bed. Several minutes later, having thoroughly greeted him properly (and needing to come up for air), she sat back on her knees, looking down at Harry.
"So how have you been?"
~HP~
Several hours later, Harry and Hermione were lounging on Harry's bed, reading.
Their new booklists were still at least a month away from being sent out based on the previous four years, but as Hermione didn't want to spend the entire afternoon snogging (not that they hadn't done their fair share), and Harry wasn't in the mood that day for talking about the night in the graveyard, they had settled on reading Harry's fourth year books over again. Besides simply being good review during the time in which neither of them could actually practice any magic since they were both in all practicality muggleborns and didn't have at least one magical adult in either of their houses to prevent the Trace from being usable, Hermione also thought that if Harry could have a better understanding of the theory behind Potions before going into the new school year, and therefore be more proficient at the subject once classes started, then Snape would have less ammunition to abuse Harry with — not that Snape would ever actually leave Harry alone, but it would be harder for the greasy-haired bat.
Harry's concentration on a particularly tricky little concoction was interrupted by the bushy-haired bookworms' voice asking him curiously, "I've been meaning to ask you something, Harry. I know you've said you have more money in your vault than you could ever need, and you had no hesitation giving the TriWizard money away, but just how much do you have in your vault? — If you don't mind me asking," she finished hurriedly.
"I've never had a chance to count it," replied Harry honestly, as he thought hard, trying to picture the inside of his vault in his mind. "But I do know there are several mounds of gold roughly the size of Hedwig's cage over there, tall columns of silver going up to the stony roof, and heaps of knuts haphazardly strewn in between. And that's just what I've seen from the doorway and stepping in to fill my money bag. The back of the vault's always been in the shadows, and I've never really looked past the obvious piles I could see."
Hermione nodded slowly, clearing thinking to herself, but she didn't ask any more questions, and after a while went back to reading, so Harry did the same. Whatever his girlfriend was thinking, she would tell him when she was ready.
Late that afternoon, Hermione departed Privet Drive with a final kiss and the promise to return within a few days, as soon as she could. Spirits buoyed by her visit, and the promise of not being stuck alone all summer, Harry contentedly ignored the dirty looks his aunt and uncle started giving him, suspicious of who this female was that was willing to hang out with him.