Disclaimer: Like I said, I (although unfortunately) do NOT own Harry Potter, or any other related works, titles etc. etc. They all belong to JKR (the lucky woman...)
I would like to thank everyone that has reviewed! So far, it's been really positive, and so after I finish this one, I might just write another fic! Let me know if you would like me to! Cheers!
Chapter III: arising complications
The next week went by rather quickly for Harry, with going to Grimmauld Place to look forward to. Although at the same time, Harry was apprehensive about spending the rest of the summer in his late Godfather’s house (the memories, he was afraid, would just be too strong sometimes), he couldn’t wait to see his friends again. Yes, Harry knew that it would be difficult at first to be with Hermione, but for some reason his heart told him not to worry about it too much. Besides, he had another woman to look forward to focusing his attention on.
Lupin and Moody arrived on schedule that Monday morning, and having been informed beforehand of their coming, Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia and Dudley had decided to conveniently be out of the house visiting Aunt Marge.
Harry had packed all his things the night before, and was waiting when the two wizards apparated into the kitchen. Upon seeing Harry completely ready to leave, coat already in hand, Lupin let out a hearty laugh. “A little anxious, are we, Harry?” he asked.
“You have no idea,” Harry replied, unable to hide his feelings.
“How are we getting there today? Not the Knight Bus I hope?” Harry remembered all too well his last trips on the infamous bus, and also the nausea that went along with it.
“No,” said Moody, gruffly. “We thought about using the floo network, but as we’re not entirely sure it’s not still being watched, we decided on a portkey. That, and the soot always makes my eye work funny for about a week after going through all those fireplaces.”
Harry laughed, and grabbed hold of Aunt Petunia’s toaster that Lupin had smartly turned into a portkey. Normally he would have been slightly concerned at his Aunt’s reaction about her missing toaster, but now he didn’t care. Yesterday Aunt Petunia had made Harry wait on Dudley hand and foot and pack his suitcase for him for their visit to Aunt Marge’s. Dudley was still mending physically (and emotionally, Harry couldn’t help but think privately) from his first loss at boxing, and so he was completely miserable to Harry and kept hitting him with his Smeltings stick when Harry didn’t fold the shirts ‘exactly right’.
“Ready?” asked Lupin, jolting Harry out of his miserable thoughts from the previous day.
“Born ready," Harry replied. "Get me out of this hell hole.” And in the next instant, felt the all too familiar jerk behind his navel.
In a swirling wind of color, Harry felt himself rushing through space, and finally came to a stop in the living room of Number 12, Grimmauld Place. For the first time, Harry couldn’t help but notice that he had remained on his feet when he landed- but not for long. A girl came running at him shrieking his name, and smacked him flat to the floor with a huge hug.
“UGH!!! Calm down! I’m fine, I’m here! Geez!” Finally Harry straightened his glasses, and saw exactly who it was that had flattened him. “’Mione?!” he gasped, shocked.
How could this be? She seemed to be taking this a lot better than he expected. If he didn’t know better, he would have thought she put a memory charm on herself to make her forget the letters that had been exchanged between them the past few weeks.
“Come on Er-my-nee!” called Ron, with half a sandwich in his mouth. “Give the man some room! How’s it going Harry?” he asked, and pulled Harry into a brotherly hug. “Glad you could get here so soon! Dudley still smarting about his leg, huh? Stupid git. Come on, let’s go unpack your trunk!”
So Harry, Ron and Hermione headed up the staircase into the same bedroom he and Ron had shared the previous summer, and the three began to unpack his trunk. The room was sparkling clean, and Harry couldn’t have helped but notice that the rest of the house on the way to the room had been spotless as well.
“Wow!” he said, awestruck. “Ron, you didn’t tell me that you mum made you clean 24/7 without sleeping! This place looks amazing! And what happened to the portrait of Mrs. Black downstairs?”
Hermione smiled. “Oh, that wasn’t us. That was-“
But Harry being knocked flat to the ground again in a hug cut her off short. “Harry Potter, sir! Harry Potter has come home! To see Dobby! Oh, Dobby missed him so much, sir!”
“DOBBY?!” Harry cried. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, Dobby couldn’t let Harry be all alone in his house with no one to take care of it for him! And while Harry is away at school! So Dobby asked Professor Dumbledore if he could come here to work for Harry Potter, too! Of course, Dobby will still work at Hogwarts, but he will come here on his days off to clean for Harry Potter, sir!”
Harry stood, bewildered at this news. “Dobby?” he asked, “What do you mean you wanted to come here to work for me? This is… this was Sirius’ house, not mine.” At the last words about Sirius, Harry choked. It was beginning to hit him even harder now that he was at Grimmauld Place that he wouldn’t be hearing Sirius singing Christmas carols in the halls during the Holidays again this year.
“Oh Harry Potter, sir! But Master Black left you everything! So it IS Harry Potter’s house now, and Dobby could not be happier sir, than to keep it tidy for him! That is,” and Dobby broke off, looking scared at the ground, “that is, if Harry Potter would like to keep Dobby. I is a good house elf, Harry Potter, sir. I is been cleaning for weeks and weeks Harry Potter sir, in hopes that you in your greatness, would let me be your servant. I is wanting nothing more than to help Harry Pott-“
“Dobby,” interjected Harry, kindly, “Of COURSE I would love you to help at Grimmauld Place! It will be really nice to have some company here over the Holidays!”
“Oh Harry Potter, sir! You is so very kind to keep Dobby, even though he has been dismissed by his old masters! Oh, Dobby is the happiest elf in the whole wide world sir!!!” and Dobby ran from the room to finish dinner with tears overflowing from his tennis ball green eyes.
Harry shook his head and laughed. “That is one crazy elf,” he told Hermione and Ron. “But still, it will be nice to have him around”.
“Oh, come now Harry!” said Hermione. “You don’t think we’d let you spend Christmas alone now, do you? You better invite us to stay, too!”
Harry was shocked- why in the world would Hermione want to spend the Holidays with him and Ron and the rest of the Order when she knew now that Harry didn’t return her feelings? Apparently, Hermione was not only practical and levelheaded; she wasn’t even HUMAN when it came to disappointments with the opposite sex. But, of course, Harry agreed. He couldn’t be happier than to think of spending the holidays with his two best mates, and the rest of the Weasleys, if he could convince them to come. Even now, with the war happening and everything that had happened in the past month, he was so happy; he couldn’t even worry about Voldemort.
He was away from Privet Drive, he had all the food he wanted to eat and no Dudley to steal it from him, and best of all… he had Ginny Weasley to look forward to seeing every day for the rest of the summer. Even if he never could quite pluck up the courage to talk to her, it would still be nice just to wake up in the morning, and see her beautiful red head sitting at the breakfast table with you. Hearing her laugh, sounding like bells tinkling through the nig-
“Come on,” laughed Ron, interrupting Harry’s private thoughts, “I’m starving, and I bet Dobby pulled out all the stops now that his ‘master’ has come home!!”
“Oh shut up Ron!” said Harry, but he couldn’t help at laughing along with him at his new house elf’s very devoted mannerisms.
As they left the bedroom, talking and joking, Harry couldn’t help but look around, wondering where Ginny was. She hadn’t even come to greet him when he arrived. That was really strange, usually she was quite happy to see Harry.
Harry never told her about how her smile could brighten even his darkest of days, and he thought glumly that he might never be able to. But, now Hermione knew that he liked Ginny (at least, he thought she should be able to figure it out from his letter, since she was so clever) and he was confused. Wouldn’t she have told Ginny by now? After all, they were really like best friends.
Or, even worse- maybe Hermione HAD told Ginny, and Ginny didn’t like Harry at all, so she was avoiding him to spare him the embarrassment. Harry shuddered at the thought. One thing was for sure, Harry would have to talk to Hermione tonight, and figure out where she had went. Hermione seemed to have no problem with what was in his letter, so he didn’t see why it would be hard for him to talk to her alone.
As they headed down to dinner, he didn’t have to wait long to get his chance. While Ron was complaining about helping his mother set the table, Hermione grabbed Harry by the arm and pulled him aside.
“Harry, look, I really need to talk to you about something. I really need advice, and I can’t think of who to ask.”
Harry was shocked. Hermione? The girl that had been first in line to be Head Girl since the day she arrived at Hogwarts couldn’t figure out a problem? That was something new.
“’Mione, why don’t you ask Ginny? I mean, she’s a girl, she would probably be better at this stuff than me.”
“Ginny? I haven’t seen Ginny in almost a week. She won’t even talk to me. In fact, I think she’s mad at me. The only thing I know is that she started acting really strangely after she got a letter from someone. I mean, at first I thought it was maybe she had gotten a letter from Hogwarts saying she hadn’t been made Prefect, and that’s why she was so upset, but, I mean, we haven’t even gotten our OWL results back yet, so I don’t think that could be it. After that, though, she stopped talking to me. I have no idea why! But Harry, I could never talk to Ginny about this!”
Once again, Harry’s mind was blank. Honestly, he was glad that everything seemed so normal between him and his best girl mate, but then again, it seemed a little TOO normal.
“Okay. Lets talk after dinner. We’ll take our puddings into the library, and hopefully no one will bother us there.”
Although Harry had no idea what Hermione wanted to talk about, he couldn’t help but notice that Ginny wasn’t at dinner. She stopped in, made a plate, and went directly back up to her room without stopping to talk to anyone but Ron. In fact, Harry couldn’t be sure, but he almost thought that when she left, Ron had opened his mouth to say something to him about it. But, Ron had also promptly shoved a forkful of food in it, so maybe, Harry thought, he was just hungry.
As Ginny walked out of the kitchen without even so much of a smile or wave at Harry, his heart plummeted. Normally she would smile and say hi, at least, but she seemed so sad today. Harry smiled, and waved, being too nervous to say anything, for fear of sounding stupid, and she just glared. Harry sighed, and looked back to his food. It looked like talking to Ginny was going to be harder than he thought.
Why did she look so sad? Come to think of it, did she even look sad? Harry couldn’t help but worry that she seemed a little more MAD than sad. Even still, he couldn’t help but notice that even when she was glaring stonily at him from across the room, the light seemed to reflect off her deep brown eyes and turn them into basins having more depth and thought behind them than Professor Dumbledore’s pensieve. Harry could almost swear that she could see right into his soul with those beautiful brown eyes.
Even with a somewhat distressed Ginny on his mind, Harry couldn’t help but enjoy dinner. Dobby’s cooking was excellent, and he absolutely ran from the kitchen weeping tears of joy when Harry complimented him on it.
He had even forgotten about how he almost missed the way Mrs. Weasley kept mothering him; telling him he looked ‘horribly thin,' and ‘were those Muggles feeding you at ALL, Harry, dear?.' Lupin, Hermione and Moody were chatting animatedly about Werewolf restriction codes across the table, and Harry swore he heard his friend bring up S.P.E.W. again. Harry smiled to himself, and wondered if Hermione would ever give up on her obsession with House Elves.
Harry also couldn’t help but notice that Ron missed his mouth with his fork about 9 times out of 10 because he was staring at Hermione. Harry privately wondered if his best mate would ever get the guts to admit to Hermione how he really felt about her. ‘Heck,’ Harry thought ‘I wonder if he’ll get the guts to ever admit it to HIMSELF.'
Dinner wasn’t the only time that Ron stared at Hermione. In fact, Harry had noticed that over the past years, Ron really looked at no one else. Even when Padma Patil had started giving him a lot more attention after the second task of the TriWizard Tournament in fourth year, Harry noticed that when Ron told his stories, he always made sure that Hermione was in hearing distance. Harry had also thought that Hermione had been giving Ron nearly as many private glances as he had been her, but, the letters she had sent him this summer… (‘Ha! Love From, “A FRIEND”? Come on Hermione! I thought you were smarter than that!’ Harry tutted to himself).
But, as the meal died down, Harry couldn’t help but feel sorrowful that Sirius couldn’t be here with him to enjoy everything. Sirius would have loved to be here when Dobby had gotten rid of that horrid portrait of his mother. Sirius should be-
“Stop,” Harry told himself firmly. “He is gone, and he’s not coming back. Be happy for the time you had together, and stop worrying. He would want you to be happy here, not just think about what it would be like with him still here. That’s why he left you the manor in the first place. To give you something wonderful to remember him by.”
Harry sighed as he grabbed his pudding (tonight, Chocolate Cream Pie) and headed to the library with Hermione. He seemed to always lose people he cared about. First his parents, and then the closest thing to a parent he had ever known. As he followed Hermione to the library, he saw Ginny come down the stairs to return her plate to the kitchen.
“Hey Gin!” he called. He mumbled to Hermione that he would meet her in the library in a minute, and headed towards Ginny to have a private word. “Ginny, look, I was… um, just, you weren’t at dinner, and you looked sort of, um, upset and I was wondering if, um… if you were all right?”
Ginny scoffed. “Oh, SURE, Harry Potter. I highly doubt that you care at ALL how I feel.” And she stalked off toward the kitchen with a flip of her hair over her shoulders.
Harry gaped at her, confounded, sighed, and headed to the library. “Girls,” he muttered aloud, “Why do they have to be so difficult?”