Work Text:
Act I: The Forearm Incident
Hermione Granger was beginning to suspect that Harry Potter had suffered a serious, undiagnosed head injury.
Not recently, of course. Possibly years ago.
It was truly the only logical explanation. There was simply no other reason a reasonably intelligent boy - a boy who could cast a corporeal Patronus at thirteen and outfly a dragon at fourteen - could be this utterly, fundamentally oblivious.
The realization crystallized on a rainy Tuesday evening in the library.
Hermione sat across from Harry, pretending to read Advanced Arithmancy for Exceptional Minds. It was a complete farce. She hadn't absorbed a single equation in twenty minutes because Harry had rolled up the sleeves of his Gryffindor jumper.
Again.
Which shouldn't have mattered. They were studying. Except that Harry’s forearms - lean, corded with subtle muscle from years of gripping a broomstick and lightly dusted with dark hair - were entirely unfair. She found herself staring at the ink smudge near his wrist, feeling a sudden, completely uncharacteristic spike of irritation. She hated him a little. Possibly a lot. Definitely not in the dramatic, romantic way Ron kept loudly suggesting, but in a very specific, agonizing way that made it difficult to breathe.
Harry was bent over his Transfiguration essay, his brow furrowed in deep concentration. A rogue strand of messy dark hair had fallen directly into his eyes, obscuring his vision.
Without thinking, driven by a sudden surge of bold, desperate adrenaline, Hermione reached across the table. Her fingers brushed his forehead, gently sweeping the hair out of his face. Her fingertips lingered against his skin for a fraction of a second.
Harry blinked, his green eyes focusing on her. "Oh. Thanks, Hermione."
Hermione froze, her hand hovering in the air. She stared at him, waiting for the shift in his expression. The blush. The realization. Anything.
"That's all?" she prompted, her voice tighter than intended.
Harry tilted his head, looking entirely baffled. "What?"
"I just..." Hermione gestured vaguely between them, her face burning. "Never mind. Return to your essay."
Harry offered her a warm, completely innocent smile and went right back to writing.
Hermione slowly lowered her forehead until it hit the ancient oak table with a dull thud. Across the library, sitting three rows over, Ginny Weasley watched the entire interaction play out. She closed her textbook, looked skyward and muttered, "Merlin help them both."
Act II: The Logic of a Golden Retriever
Three days later, Harry was convinced Hermione had developed a strange, medical anomaly. Or perhaps a sudden nervous tic.
Specifically: she was touching him. Constantly.
Not that he minded. Actually, he minded very much, but for entirely different reasons. Every time Hermione’s hand brushed his or her shoulder leaned into his at the Gryffindor table, Harry’s brain completely vacated the premises. His thoughts would stall, his throat would go dry and he would become acutely aware of how small she was and how remarkably good she smelled - like crisp parchment and some sort of sweet, floral soap.
It was becoming a hazard to his health.
A hand on his shoulder to greet him.
A lingering squeeze of his arm when he made a joke.
Straightening his collar before they went down to Great Hall.
Running her fingers through his hair under the guise of "fixing a stray quill."
He couldn't map the logic of it.
"I think Hermione's become really affectionate lately," Harry blurted out on Friday afternoon. He and Ron were walking back from an exhausting Quidditch practice, their broomsticks slung over their shoulders.
Ron stopped walking. Slowly. He turned his head to look at Harry, his expression a mix of profound pity and absolute disbelief. "Affectionate."
"Yeah," Harry said, shifting his Firebolt. "Like, she’s just really physical all of a sudden. Do you think she's stressed about Ancient Runes?"
Ron looked up at the sky, his lips moving silently as if reciting a prayer for strength. "Hermione."
"Yes."
"The girl who keeps finding excuses to sit close enough to fuse your DNA?"
Harry frowned. "She’s just being friendly, Ron. We're best friends."
"Harry, mate," Ron said, his voice cracking slightly under the weight of his frustration. "The girl looks at you like you’re a dessert."
"She does not! She looks at me like she's worried I'm going to fail History of Magic."
"She spent twenty minutes in the common room yesterday helping you button your dress shirt," Ron pointed out, his voice rising an octave. "Twenty minutes, Harry. For four buttons."
"That shirt was incredibly difficult," Harry defended, his face heating up. "The silver clasps were bent. She was just being practical."
Ron made a low, strangled sound usually associated with severe physical trauma, threw his hands in the air and walked away.
------------------------------
Act III: The Common Room Siege
A week later, Hermione decided that subtlety was a dead language. It was time to be obvious. Painfully, brutally, blindingly obvious. She needed to make her intentions idiot-proof.
More specifically, Harry-proof - which was currently the highest tier of difficulty known to wizarding Britain.
An opportunity arose late on Saturday evening. The common room had emptied out, leaving only the two of them by the dying embers of the fire. Harry sat on the plush red sofa, absorbed in a Quidditch tactical manual.
Hermione walked over and sat down beside him.
Not just beside him. Very beside him.
She deliberately placed herself so close that her thigh was pressed firmly against his from hip to knee. She could feel the heat radiating through his denim jeans.
Harry didn't move. He didn't even look up from his diagram of a Hawkshead Attacking Formation. He merely shifted his weight slightly to accommodate her, completely unbothered.
Hermione grit her teeth. She shifted closer, effectively trapping his leg against the arm of the sofa.
Nothing. He turned a page.
With a mental sigh of sheer exasperation, she leaned her entire upper body against his side, practically draping herself across his left arm. She was one inch away from sitting directly in his lap.
Harry finally blinked, pausing mid-page. He looked down at her, his green eyes wide behind his glasses.
"Hermione?"
"Yes, Harry?" she asked, her voice deliberately soft, tilting her chin up to look at his lips.
"Are you comfortable?"
"No," she said flatly.
"Oh." Harry shifted instantly, trying to create space. "Sorry, you can have more room if you want. I know the cushions are a bit stiff on this side."
Hermione stared at him. For three seconds, she seriously considered the legal and magical ramifications of committing homicide in the Gryffindor common room.
The next morning, she cornered Ginny by the portrait hole. "I give up. I am officially giving up."
"No, you're not," Ginny said, biting back a smirk as she adjusted her bag.
"I do. I am withdrawing my application from the field of romance. I will live alone in a tower with eleven cats." Hermione dropped her head onto Ginny’s shoulder. "Harry is a brick wall. He is a sentient block of granite."
Ginny laughed, patting her back. "You know what the worst part is, Hermione?"
"What? That he hates me?"
"No," Ginny said, her laughter fading into a look of genuine, profound awe. "The worst part is that he honestly, truly doesn't know. He’s not rejecting you. He’s not playing hard to get. His brain literally cannot process the data you are feeding him. It’s like watching someone try to seduce a golden retriever."
Act IV: The Accidental Counter-Attack
Meanwhile, Harry had an entirely separate, agonizing problem.
Hermione Granger was beautiful.
This was a deeply unfortunate development. Harry had been trying very hard not to notice it for the better part of six months and he was failing spectacularly. It was getting harder to ignore the way her curls caught the golden light of the torches or the tiny, concentrated frown she got right between her eyebrows when she was correcting his essays.
One evening, when they were studying together, Hermione looked up and caught him staring. And she smiled. A soft smile. The kind she only gave him. Harry's heart attempted a complicated gymnastics routine.
"So," Hermione said.
"So?"
"You've been staring at me for five minutes."
Harry's face heated. "Oh."
Hermione leaned forward. "See anything you like?"
Harry's brain immediately vacated the premises.
"Your... eyebrows?"
Hermione closed her eyes. Slowly. "Harry."
"Yes?"
"You're an idiot."
He was desperately in love with her, of course. But he was also terrified. She was the cleverest witch of her age and he was... just Harry. A boy with a target on his back and a penchant for getting into life threatening trouble. He had convinced himself that she deserved someone better, someone brilliant. So, he kept his mouth shut, contenting himself with just being the best friend he could possibly be.
But the universe, having grown tired of their mutual incompetence, began to intervene. Harry started flirting back. He just didn't realize he was doing it.
It began at breakfast the following Monday. Hermione looked exhausted, dark circles underlining her brown eyes from a late night study session. As Harry sat down, he reached into the center basket, grabbed a slice of golden-brown toast and meticulously buttered it. It was the perfect piece - the thick-cut, evenly baked slice he had been eyeing the moment he walked into the Great Hall.
Without a word, he dropped it directly onto her empty plate.
Hermione blinked, looking from the toast up to his face. "Thanks, Harry."
Harry offered her a soft, devastatingly warm smile. "Anything for you, Hermione."
Three seats down, Lavender Brown violently choked on her pumpkin juice. Hermione’s entire face flushed a brilliant, deep shade of pink and she suddenly found her pumpkin pasty intensely fascinating. Harry, entirely oblivious to the social earthquake he had just caused, simply reached for a lesser piece of toast and began eating.
Then came the rain incident.
A sudden, torrential downpour caught Hermione outside the greenhouses after Herbology. By the time she sprinted across the grounds and crossed the threshold of the castle, she was dripping wet, shivering and looking thoroughly miserable.
Harry, who had been waiting near the entrance hall, didn't hesitate. In one fluid motion, he pulled his thick, woollen Gryffindor jumper over his head, leaving himself in just his thin t-shirt and wrapped it securely around her shoulders.
The jumper was massive on her. It was still radiating his body heat and it smelled intensely of rain, broomstick wax and him.
Hermione froze, clutching the collar of the sweater to her chin. She looked up at him through wet eyelashes, her heart hammering against her ribs. "Harry."
"Hm?"
"I adore you."
Harry grinned, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "Thanks, Hermione. See you in the common room."
He gave her a cheerful pat on the arm and walked away. Hermione stood frozen in the entrance hall for a full minute, seriously contemplating throwing herself directly into the Black Lake.
Act IV.V: Inside the Jumper
From Harry’s perspective, the entire rain incident had gone entirely differently.
He had been standing near the massive oak doors of the entrance hall, shifting his weight from one damp shoe to the other. He was supposed to be heading down to the kitchens to nick some damp proofing paste from Dobby for his broomstick but he hadn't moved a centimetre in ten minutes because Hermione was out there. In that storm.
Through the towering glass windows, the grounds looked less like Hogwarts and more like the bottom of the Black Lake. The rain was coming down in sheets, heavy enough to dent a Seeker’s skull.
Then, the heavy doors groaned open.
Hermione practically tumbled inside, chased by a ferocious gust of wind. She slammed the door shut with her shoulder, gasping for breath. She was a complete disaster. Her heavy winter robes were drenched through, her dark curls were plastered to her skull like wet seaweed and she was shivering so hard her teeth were audibly clicking.
Harry’s chest tightened. It was a strange, heavy ache that had been showing up more and more lately whenever she was near. He hated seeing her miserable.
Before his brain could even formulate a plan, his hands were already at the hem of his Gryffindor jumper. He yanked it up over his head, temporarily blinding himself in a tangle of thick wool and pulled it off. The chilly air of the entrance hall hit his bare arms through his thin t-shirt, but he didn't care.
He stepped into her space and draped the massive sweater over her shoulders.
She froze. Up close, her eyelashes were beaded with tiny drops of rain. She looked tiny, swallowed up by the dark red wool that carried all of his body heat.
"Harry," she whispered. Her voice was trembling.
He looked down at her. Really looked at her. Her cheeks were flushed pink from the cold and despite the mud and the mess, Harry thought she looked entirely, devastatingly brilliant. He noticed a stray drop of rain rolling down her cheek toward her lips. Without a single logical thought in his head, he reached out and brushed it away with his thumb. Her skin was freezing but soft.
"Yeah?" he asked, his voice lower than usual.
"I adore you," she breathed.
Harry’s heart did a violent backflip against his ribs. His face instantly felt hotter than a freshly stoked fireplace. She adores me, his brain repeated, a dizzying wave of affection rushing through him. Of course she does. Because we’re best friends. She’s bloody brilliant and kind, and she says nice things to keep me from losing my mind over Voldemort.
He forced a massive, cheerful grin to hide the fact that his knees had gone slightly weak. "Thanks, Hermione. See you in the common room."
He gave her what he hoped was a perfectly normal, totally casual buddy pat on the arm and turned on his heel. He practically marched up the stairs toward the boys' dorms, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm.
Nailed it, Harry thought proudly, rubbing his cold arms as he walked. Totally normal response. She has no idea I'm completely mad about her.
Act V: The Epiphany
The breaking point arrived on a Friday night. The common room was completely empty, save for the crackling fire and the two of them huddled over the low coffee table. Neither of them had actually done any work in over an hour. The tension in the room was thick enough to cut with a Diffindo charm.
Hermione was staring at a paragraph on the properties of moonstones but the words were swimming. Harry was sitting right next to her, his shoulder brushing hers, idly spinning a quill between his fingers.
Finally, the sheer, unadulterated frustration of the past month boiled over.
Hermione slammed her heavy textbook shut. The loud crack echoed through the silent room.
Harry jumped, nearly dropping his quill. "Blimey, Hermione! What's wrong? Did you find a mistake in the text?"
"What," Hermione demanded, turning her entire body to face him, her eyes flashing with a dangerous intensity, "would it take for you to realize that I am flirting with you?"
A heavy, absolute silence descended upon the room.
Harry blinked. Once. Twice. Three times. The quill slipped from his fingers and rolled off the table.
"You're flirting with me?" he whispered.
Hermione made a high-pitched, strangled noise of pure despair and buried her face in her hands. "Oh my God. He really didn't know. Ginny was right. I'm going to die."
Harry sat entirely paralyzed. His brain was working at hyper speed, suddenly dragging up every single memory from the past month and violently recontextualizing them. The library. The touches. The sofa.
His mouth slowly fell open. His ears turned a vibrant, glowing shade of red. "Wait."
"Yes, Harry," Hermione groaned into her palms.
"All those times?"
"YES."
"The library? When you touched my hair?"
"YES, Harry!" She dropped her hands, looking at him with wide, exasperated eyes. "I wasn't trying to clear your vision, I wanted an excuse to touch your face!"
"The touching? The collar? The buttons?"
"YES!"
"The sitting practically on top of me on the sofa?!"
"HARRY, FOR THE LOVE OF MERLIN, YES!" Hermione shouted, her cheeks burning. "I was trying to get you to kiss me, you absolute block of wood!"
Harry stared at her, his heart hammering so loudly against his ribs he was certain she could hear it. "Oh."
Hermione dropped her head back against the sofa cushions, looking utterly defeated. "I can't believe this. I've been throwing myself at you for weeks and you thought I was just being an attentive friend."
"No, wait," Harry said quickly, his voice cracking. He reached out, his hand hovering over hers before he finally took her wrist, gently pulling her back up. "Hermione, look at me. Please."
She looked up, her brown eyes guarded and annoyed.
"What exactly did you think was happening?" Harry asked, his voice suddenly sounding very small, very vulnerable.
"I thought you were rejecting me gently! Or worse, that you were completely blind."
"I thought you were just being Hermione!" Harry burst out, throwing his hands up in a very Ron-like gesture of panic.
"What does that even mean?!"
"I don't know!" Harry yelled back, his face completely flushed. "You're brilliant and you're nice and you take care of everyone! I just thought... I thought you were being sweet because you knew I was stressed. I didn't think a girl like you could actually look at me and want... that."
For one long, breathless moment, they simply looked at each other. The anger melted out of Hermione’s expression, replaced by a sudden, soft understanding.
Then, a small giggle escaped her lips. She tried to smother it but it turned into a full, breathless laugh. Harry watched her, his defensive posture melting away, a sheepish, embarrassed smile tugging at his own mouth. Soon, he was laughing too, the sheer absurdity of the last few weeks washing over them.
"Hold on," Harry said suddenly, his laughter dying down as a new thought struck him.
"What?" Hermione asked, wiping a tear of mirth from her eye.
"You called me handsome. Last Tuesday, in the courtyard. You said my hair looked 'rakish and handsome' in the wind."
"Several times, Harry. I've complimented you several times."
"You meant it?"
Hermione stared at him, her expression softening into something incredibly tender. "Harry. You're an idiot but you are a very, very handsome idiot. Of course I meant it."
"Right," Harry muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. His chest felt incredibly light as if a heavy weight he'd been carrying for years had suddenly evaporated. A pause settled over them, filled only by the crackle of the fire. Then, Harry cleared his throat. "Well. I've been flirting with you too."
Hermione blinked, her eyebrows shooting up. "You have not."
"I have!"
"Harry, you gave me a piece of toast."
"It was the best piece of toast!" Harry defended loudly, looking deeply offended. "It was perfectly golden! I buttered it right to the edges, Hermione. I gave up my prime carbohydrate for you."
Hermione laughed so hard she nearly slid right off the cushions. Harry watched her, his eyes warm, a proud little smirk on his face.
"It was meaningful toast," he insisted, his voice dropping an octave as he slid closer to her. The space between them vanished, but this time, it wasn't a siege. It was mutual. "And what about the jumper? I walked back to the tower in the freezing rain just so you could be warm."
"Harry Potter," Hermione whispered, her laughter finally fading as she looked at him. Really looked at him. He was close now - close enough that she could see the gold flecks in his green eyes.
"It was a romantic gesture," Harry murmured, his eyes dropping to her lips. "I just... forgot to tell my brain to tell your brain."
"You're an idiot," Hermione said softly.
She leaned forward, very slowly, giving him all the time in the world to pull away. But Harry didn't move. He froze for approximately two seconds as her lips met his, his mind registering the incredible, impossible reality of it. Then, his hands found their way to her waist, pulling her flush against him as he kissed her back.
The kiss was warm, slightly uncoordinated at first from a month of missed signals but it quickly deepened into something sweet and certain.
When they finally pulled apart, Hermione rested her forehead against his, her fingers tangling in the messy dark hair she had been wanting to touch for months.
"So," she breathed.
"So," Harry echoed, a massive, brilliant smile breaking across his face.
"We're both completely hopeless."
Harry considered that, his arms tightening securely around her waist, pulling her into his lap properly this time. "Yeah. But at least we're hopeless together."
Somewhere across the vast, ancient expanse of Hogwarts castle, in the quiet of the boys' dormitory, Ron Weasley suddenly sat upright in his four poster bed. He blinked into the darkness, rubbing his chest, feeling a sudden, inexplicable sense of profound relief - as if a heavy, years-long curse of secondary embarrassment had finally been lifted from the castle.
Epilogue: The Art of the Potato
Two days after the Great Common Room Epiphany, Harry decided it was time to be a proper boyfriend.
He had spent Sunday afternoon dissecting his past romantic failures with Ron - who had mostly just stared at the ceiling and muttered about the tragedy of the wizarding gene pool - and Harry had come to a firm conclusion. If Hermione liked his accidental flirting, she was going to love his deliberate flirting.
He was going to woo her. Muggle style. Or at least, his version of it.
The opportunity came during Monday evening study hours. The library was packed and Hermione was buried behind a literal fortress of Ancient Runes texts. She looked stressed, her hair expanding in direct proportion to her anxiety levels.
Harry walked up to her table, completely ignoring the sharp glare from Madam Pince.
With an incredibly serious, concentrated expression, Harry reached into his robes. He didn't pull out a rare book or a charmed flower or a sugar quill.
He pulled out a large, raw, slightly muddy baking potato.
He placed it squarely on top of her parchment, right over her half translated translation of an ancient Norse saga.
Hermione stopped writing. Her quill hovered in the air. She stared at the potato. It was a very standard potato. It still had a bit of garden soil clinging to the skin.
Slowly, she looked up at Harry.
Harry was leaning against the edge of the table, his arms crossed over his chest. He threw her a look that he had seen Dudley use on girls in Little Whinging - a sort of heavy-lidded, suave smoulder that looked entirely ridiculous on his face.
"What," Hermione whispered, looking around to see if they were being punked by Fred and George, "is this?"
"It's a potato," Harry said, his voice a low, confidential murmur.
"I can see that, Harry. Why is it on my essay?"
Harry leaned in a bit closer, a proud smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. "It’s a jacket potato. From the kitchens. I asked the house elves for the biggest, sturdiest one they had."
Hermione blinked, her brain temporarily stalling. "You... brought me a raw vegetable. In the library."
"Exactly," Harry said, nodding smoothly. "Because I know you like to stay up late studying and you always miss evening tea. So, I used a localized, sustained Incendio charm on it for twenty minutes in the courtyard."
He tapped the potato with his finger. It gave off a faint, distinct puff of steam.
"It is perfectly baked through, Hermione," Harry whispered, his green eyes shining with absolute, triumphant romance. "I even snuck a pat of garlic butter inside the foil wrapper under the skin. It’s practical. It’s warm. It’s sustenance."
Hermione stared at the steaming potato. Then she looked at Harry, who was looking at her like he had just successfully captured the Golden Snitch in under three seconds. He looked so incredibly pleased with himself, so entirely proud of his practical, carbohydrate based courting ritual.
A tiny, helpless sob of laughter bubbled up in her throat. She slammed her hands over her mouth to keep from drawing Madam Pince's wrath, her shoulders shaking violently.
"Harry," she choked out through her fingers, her eyes watering.
"Do you like it?" he asked, his suave demeanor instantly dropping into a look of eager, hopeful vulnerability. "I can get salt if you want salt."
"Harry Potter," Hermione said, lowering her hands, her face bright red from suppressed laughter and pure, unadulterated affection. She reached out, took the warm potato and pulled it close. "You are, without a doubt, the most ridiculous boy in the history of magic."
Harry beamed, leaning down to press a quick, clumsy kiss to her cheek. "I knew you’d love it. Eat up, Hermione."
As Harry strolled away, looking like the king of the castle, Ron slid into the seat across from Hermione. He looked at the steaming potato, then looked up at her with a face full of profound exhaustion.
"Please tell me you're going to teach him how to buy flowers," Ron pleaded, dropping his head onto his arms. "Please. I can't live in a dorm that smells like baked earth anymore."
Hermione just smiled, breaking open the potato as the scent of melting garlic butter filled the air. "I don't know, Ron," she murmured happily. "I think it’s a very meaningful potato."