Work Text:
Bad press was something Harry had long grown used to in his life; at least within the realm of word-of-mouth. Getting docked ridiculous amounts of points, being suspected of skulking around the castle and petrifying his fellow classmates, and of course the recent accusations that he had actually signed himself up for a tournament that was effectively a death sentence even for the most accomplished wizards. Never mind that they were indirectly insinuating that he was capable of hoodwinking an ancient magical artefact to believe there were four schools in a Triwizard Tournament; they happily glossed right over that bit.
But that was here nor there.
No, bad press in the abstract sense was an old and contemptible friend of his. However, he had recently discovered that there was something worse in the form of literal bad press.
“This is completely ridiculous!” Harry spat, tossing the paper aside but unable to resist snatching it back up, as though he simply weren’t finished being furious. “She paints me like some...poor child, spurned by the entire school. Look at this. ‘Apparently unable to handle the attention being paid to his friend, Ron Weasley—former close confidant and friend of Potter’s—has chosen to leave even the fringes of the spotlight, abandoning Harry in his time of peril.’ As though I’m going to dissolve into an emotional mess at the drop of a hat.”
The whole article was packed with such prose, turning what had been supposed to be fairly unbiased coverage of the Triwizard Tournament and its participants into a pages-long exposé of just how utterly “tragic” Harry’s personal life was. To his dismay, Harry saw that the other champions had only warranted a single mention in one sentence.
Cedric, naturally, wasn’t mentioned at all; the Hufflepuffs would surely love that.
Most vexing of all, though was that the article had essentially spelled out his own feelings on the matter of his quarrel with Ron, if a bit melodramatically. The betrayal had indeed stung; his not-so-best friend had as much as agreed with everyone else that he was nothing more than an attention-seeking prat looking to soak up every last drop of glory he was able. This was of course in spite of absolutely everything Harry had charitably thought Ron had known about him.
Evidently not.
“Harry, you just need to ignore the whole thing,” Hermione insisted. Glancing over to see her peering up at him from over her essay with a faint smile, Harry rolled his eyes, prompting a confused look from her. “What?”
“Well, it does paint rather a positive picture of you, doesn’t it?” he asked, smirking a bit at her, and Hermione’s cheeks pinked. “Let’s have a read, shall we?”
“Harry, you really don’t - “
“‘Miss Granger, Harry’s stunningly pretty best friend, seems to be the only one to remain loyal throughout the ordeal, standing steadfast next to Harry and ready to support him through all of it. Always with an admiring eye to spare or a comforting smile to give, one could be excused for thinking there’s romance in the air between them. Sparks seem to fly whenever they’re together, and even when Harry’s focused on other matters, there’s one always focused on him. Given her stellar performance in academics and her levelheaded approach to any problem, Harry’s only remaining ally is certainly the better option of the two.’“
Hermione was beet red by the end of this pronouncement, and Harry grinned her way.
“‘Always focused’?” he asked. “Have you been making moony eyes at me while I’m not looking?”
“Absolutely not!” she replied vehemently, her tone a bit prissy. “I don’t make ‘moony eyes’ at anyone. I…worry, is all. You’ve a lot on your plate, the least I can do is look out for you.”
“But you are rather focused on me?” Harry asked her, prompting a quiet huff.
“Aren’t I always?” she asked. Snickering, she nodded toward the paper. “After all, I’m so steadfast and loyal.”
“Well, that bit’s completely right, though, isn’t it?” Harry pointed out. “Seems like I can always count on you. No one else believes me, do they?”
“Which is completely ludicrous,” Hermione grumbled, rolling her eyes. “As though you’re so infamously drawn to any sort of attention. First the whole Heir of Slytherin debacle, now this. It seems like you’re only here to be some spectacle for this lot to focus on every year.”
Harry was only half-listening, his eyes now scanning over another line of the article.
“Hermione,” he said. “What’s this about an ‘admiring eye’?”
Hermione’s fading blush reemerged at that, her shoulders hunching slightly as she ducked her head to hide behind her fringe. “It’s nothing, Harry,” she said in hurried tones. “Just Skeeter reading too much into a look here and there.”
“Well, she’s going on here about sparks and romance and whatnot, it just makes it sound like you fancy me and can’t seem to stop...looking...” he trailed off at the now fearful expression on Hermione’s face. Nibbling on her lower lip, her gaze fell back to her essay, but when she spoke, it was in a voice of forced calm.
“It’s...just a bunch of silliness, Harry,” she said. “She’s making far too much of a healthy amount of concern for my best friend. Can I help it if you find your way into some mortal peril every year?”
“Fair enough,” Harry shrugged, forcing a small grin. “Um...you almost finished with the Herbology paper? Mind helping me with mine when you’re done?”
“How about you at least write up a first draft, and I’ll give a look-over for you?” Hermione shot back, looking relieved at the change of subject.
“But you’re supposed to be so steadfast and determined to help me,” Harry protested jokingly, and she let a giggle at that. Resting her chin in her hand, she fixed him with a long-suffering smile, tossing a crumpled piece of parchment his direction.
“You know how I favor the tough love approach,” she told him.
“Much too tough sometimes,” Harry said, though he extricated some parchment and a quill from his bag and made a valiant effort to focus on the healing properties of dittany. They fell silent for a moment, enjoying the quiet of the common room and the crackle of the fire. The article lingered on Harry’s mind, though, and he didn’t get much further than the first sentence before losing focus.
Hermione, admiring him? Romance and sparks in the air? The article had been spot-on in other assessments of their friendship. Was there a possibility...?
No, that was utterly silly. Hermione was well out of his league; she deserved an intellectual, someone able to keep up with her academically. Harry was able to scrape by with passing marks, but Hermione simply left him in the dust. Besides which, asking any girl to be with him was just inviting them to take on all manner of trouble, both life-threatening and publicity-wise. Hermione was already reaping such dubious rewards, and they weren’t even an item.
Even so, as he stared at the pool of ink forming on his parchment from the dripping tip of his quill, Harry couldn’t help but think of Hermione’s apparent embarrassment, her reluctance to so much as look at him when her ‘admiring eye’ had been mentioned. Did she admire him? When he wasn’t looking, did she secretly gaze at him with longing, with fondness in her eyes? The idea seemed silly from Hermione, but then again, there was a whole side to her that he didn’t tend to consider. Despite how rarely he acknowledged it, even to himself, there was no denying the fact that Hermione was in fact a girl, and when Harry considered her in the same way that he might consider a girl like Cho or even Parvati and Lavender, well…
Well, what?
Hermione wasn’t sporty or athletic like Cho, but she was confident (too much so at times) and intelligent. She didn’t have the same flair for makeup or a working knowledge of Witch Weekly’s Top Ten Hottest Wizards Under 30 like Lavender or Parvati, but she knew so much about so many more worthwhile things that thinking about cramming all that she knew into his own mind made Harry’s head hurt.
Maybe Hermione wasn’t like Cho or Lavender or Parvati, but she didn’t really need to be, did she? She was a girl in her own right, the sort anyone would be lucky to have.
“Hey, Hermione?” he spoke up after a moment, and Hermione let a small hum of acknowledgment. “If...if you did fancy me and were making moon eyes at me, well...I think I’d be a pretty lucky bloke, you know?”
Her scribbling paused, and when she spoke, her voice was quivering ever so slightly. “Really?”
“Yeah, I mean...I’m already lucky enough, having you as my best friend,” Harry went on. “If you... You know, if you liked me that way, things would be pretty perfect, I’d think. After all, you are stunningly pretty, aren’t you?”
“Harry,” she said with a small pout, though her cheeks had once again gone pink.
“Well, she’s right,” Harry went on. “Pretty, smart, you’re all of it. If you fancied someone, he’d be lucky for it.”
“...You’re sweet,” she said softly, fixing a warm smile on him. “You know, you’re quite a catch yourself. Someday...you’ll make a girl really happy, too.”
“Yeah,” Harry said with a shrug. “Someday.”
They went back to their essays, though Harry found himself unable to focus, watching instead the way the firelight played off of Hermione’s skin, glinted in her hair. Could she...?
Did he...?
Well. Maybe.
000
Classes that week were murder, and not only because of the article, though plenty were eager to quote it at him as though he hadn’t read the thing himself. Harry had taken to pointing out when someone scathingly repeated a line or a misattributed quote that, yes, that had indeed been what the article had said, leaving them a bit nonplussed as to how to continue. Some were a bit more creative, at least.
“Hey, Potter, d’you need a tissue in case you start blubbering during Charms?”
Harry’s new favorite response to these jeers was to lean into them, often with a “Yes, please.” That tended to bring them up short, leading to a blissfully awkward silence.
Still, that wasn’t even the most maddening part of things. Hermione was. Of course, she handled the teasing with aplomb; evidently used to it from years of being a bookworm in primary school, insults and petty remarks rolled right off of her without ruffling so much as a feather. No, it was those blasted looks she gave him.
Rita Skeeter had been completely right in her estimation of how often Hermione turned to him with her ‘admiring eye’, and now that Harry had been made aware of it, he couldn’t stop noticing it. When he was focused on an essay, when he took a bite of treacle tart, when he was bloody staring empty-headed into the common room fire—she was always sneaking a look! It was subtle, so much so that she didn’t often get caught at it. When she did, her face would flush, and she would snap her gaze away, swiftly turning a page in her book or going back to writing her essay.
And five minutes later, she was bloody back at it again!
Did she fancy him? Well, the most obvious answer was that she did, though it just felt too easy to Harry. Not to mention, what was he to do about it? The right thing to do would be to figure out how he felt about her in turn and inform her of that. But how did he feel about her? Rubbish as he was with feelings and the like, he had no way of being sure.
Ironically, he found himself wishing he could ask Hermione for help, though she would most certainly piece it together.
He was on his own here. Even if he and Ron had been on speaking terms, he’d have about as little to bring to the table as Harry did. He’d probably just tell Harry to imagine snogging Hermione and –
And, well, now he was imagining it.
His face heated up a bit, and he found himself looking around the common room from his spot near a window, as though someone would be able to tell what he was thinking and ask why he was imagining snogging his best friend.
Which was an extremely apt question. Why was he? Why couldn’t he stop?
He needed a walk.
Scrambling to his feet, he made his way toward the portrait hole, willing himself to stop bloody thinking about it, about how it would feel to hold her in his arms, maybe nuzzle at the hollow of her neck and –
“Harry?”
“Oh—bloody hell, Hermione,” Harry blurted, nearly walking into her as he exited the common room. “Um…sorry. Lost in thought.”
“Harry…why are you wearing a ‘Support Cedric Diggory’ badge?” Hermione asked with an arched eyebrow. Harry blinked, suddenly remembering the badge on the front of his shirt, and grinned at her.
“I thought it would be funny,” he said. “Take the wind from their sails, you know?”
“Well, that’s…quite clever, actually,” she said with a beaming smile at him.
“I got one for you as well,” he said, reaching into his pocket and holding out the gleaming gold badge to her. “Happy…belated birthday?”
“Only about two months, but close enough,” Hermione giggled, smiling as she pinned the badge to her front. “Does it suit me?”
“It’s lovely,” Harry said, unable to take his eyes off her smile. She had a dimple in the right side of her mouth, he noticed. Only when her smile fell slightly did he realize he’d been staring.
“Is something wrong?” she asked. “Do I have food on my face?”
“No, just…” Harry glanced around, noticing a few mingling students around the portrait hole as they trickled up from dinner. “Walk with me?”
He reached out and unthinkingly took her hand, leading her away from the common room and down toward a disused corridor. As they walked, Hermione seemed content to quietly follow, a faint smile on her face.
“So…” Harry slowed to a stop near a large bank of windows that let in gleaming moonlight. A howling wind was battering at them, shaking the glass ever so slightly. “Hermione, I…”
“You…” Hermione prompted him, peering up at him with an amused look. “You still haven’t let go of my hand, you know.”
“I think I’d like to hold onto it for now,” Harry said, and she let a quiet laugh. “Um…”
“You’re having a bit of trouble finding words ton-hmph!”
She didn’t quite get to finish her sentence because Harry was kissing her, something he only realized around the time she worked her way through her shock and started kissing him back.
Wait.
He was kissing her!
She was kissing back!
That…wasn’t really so bad at all, was it? Hermione’s lips pressed gently against his, her hand coming up to slowly brush over his jaw before trailing down his neck and leaving shivers in its wake. Wondering what to do with his own hands, he reached up after a moment and cupped her jaw, thumbs grazing down her chin as they parted. Hermione’s eyes were half-lidded, and she wore a faint smile as she stared up at him.
“Well,” she whispered softly. “When words fail you, I suppose…”
“I think I might fancy you, Hermione,” Harry said, and her eyebrows rose at that.
“Oh, do you?” she asked with an amused sound. “You were being so subtle, I almost couldn’t tell.”
“Oi, I’m not the one making moony eyes – “
“I told you, I’m not, Harry James Potter, there were no ‘moony eyes’ from me,” she said with a stern finger pointed at him.
“Hermione, you’re only lucky Lupin isn’t here this year, or your moony eyes would have made him go wolf,” Harry shot back, and Hermione stuck her tongue out at him.
“You’re the one who couldn’t seem to resist kissing me,” she huffed. Harry chuckled at that.
“That’s your fault for looking so kissable, though,” he said. “I’m the victim here.”
“Oh, as if,” Hermione snickered. “You’re only lucky I happen to fancy you as well, or you would have gotten quite a slap for that.”
“Well, I took a gamble, I suppose,” Harry shrugged. Hermione sighed, leaning in and dropping her head against his chest.
“So, what happens now?” she asked.
“I suppose, and I don’t really know how this whole thing works, but I suppose we start dating now?” Harry suggested.
“Just like that?” Hermione asked. “No heartfelt confessions, no anguish or anything?”
“I’ve rather had my fill of anguish, thank you,” Harry said, and she smiled up at him, moving in to brush their noses together.
“Well, how about a bit more of the opposite?” she asked sweetly.
And then they were kissing again, and everything was quite good.