Harry and Ron laughed all the way to the burrow. Harry reveled in the fact that he could be so at ease anyplace in the world. It was the most relaxed he had been since before his fourth year at school. Here at the Burrow, he was just Harry, just another teenager.
As they stepped into the kitchen, Harry was immediately besieged by a mass of curly brown hair. Hermione had launched herself at him and embraced him in a tight hug.
“It’s so good to see you guys,” she said excitedly.
“Nice to see you, too, Hermione,” he laughed as he hugged her back.
She turned to hug Ron and Harry noticed it was a little more tentative on both their parts. He also noticed the slight flush on both of their cheeks as they broke apart. “Hmm...That is interesting.” He thought as they tried not to look at each other. He silently wondered if his friends had a little thing for each other. The thought was pushed aside the next moment as Molly told them to get cleaned up for lunch.
While they were eating lunch, they caught up on their respective summers. Hermione had been on holiday with her parents to the coast. She had spent most of her time on the beach reading and, as a result, had almost finished her summer reading list. Harry and Ron both teased her about not being able take a break from studying even on holiday.
“Well someone has to be able to help you with your homework,” she teased back.
She scolded Harry for a few minutes for not writing back for the first couple of weeks, but let it drop when she saw the contrite look on his face.
Just they were finishing, they heard the floo connect. Molly went to answer it and they could hear a muffled conversation. When she came back into the kitchen she spoke to Ron, “Old Mr. Barmes wanted to know if you could help him move some boxes in his shed, I said I would send you over. He told me it would only take about 30 minutes or so.”
“But, Mum, Hermione just got here. Couldn’t I do it tomorrow?”
“No. He said he needed it done today. Besides, you still have to work off the cost of breaking his weather vane last year while riding your broom. How you couldn’t see it is beyond me,” she said sternly. Her tone left no room for argument.
“All right, I’m going. Sorry guys, I’ll see you in a half hour,” He said to Harry and Hermione.
“That’s okay, Ron. I needed to talk to Hermione anyway.” Harry said as he glanced at Hermione. She looked back at him with a slightly puzzled look in her eyes.
“Oh, Merlin. Here he goes again. Careful, Mione, looks like it’s your turn. Don’t worry; it will only hurt for a minute.” Ron chuckled as he said this. Hermione looked completely confused now.
“Oh, get out of here, you prat,” Harry said as he blushed.
After Ron had left, Harry turned to Hermione, “Feel like a walk?”
“I guess,” she replied tentatively.
They went out the back door, and walked down by the pond. When they got to the bench, Harry sat down and motioned for her to do the same. She did so with a little bit of hesitation, after all, it wasn’t like Harry to initiate a conversation.
She looked over at him and could tell he was nervous. They had known each other for a long time, and couldn’t think of a time when he looked quite this antsy. What could it be? She thought to herself.
“Um…Hermione...um…First off, I want to say ‘I’m sorry’ for not writing back earlier this year. I know I should have, but there was so much going on …up here.” He touched the side of his head, “that I wasn’t thinking straight. I was having a hard time with everything that happened at the end of the year, and I was really confused. Can you forgive me?”
“Of course I can, Harry. I was never mad at you…okay, maybe a little…but I was more worried about you.”
He smiled. “Thank you for that. I was a right mess there for a while, but I came around. One of the things that had me going mental was the fact that I never got to tell Sirius how much he meant to me. So after I came around, I decided to let the people in care about know how I felt about them. Do you understand?”
“Not really. Your friends know you care about them, Harry. I mean, you show it in a lot of small ways. You never had to say it for us to know.”
“I just don’t want there to be any doubt. I want to tell the ones I care about, how much I love them.” At this, her eyes started to get a little wider. “I want them to know how much I care.” They got a little wider yet. “Hermione, I love you…”
“HARRY! WAIT!” At this he looked up sharply at her, a little confused.
“Harry, I care about you, and we have been good friends for a long time, but I don’t think I want anything…more…than that. I’m sorry, I don’t want to hurt you or anything, but I just can’t see us as anything more than friends.”
At this, Harry’s eyes flew wide open. “Wait, Hermione, I wasn’t…”
“Its okay, Harry. I don’t want you to be hurt, but I just can’t return those types of feelings for you. I hope you understand. I think of you like a brother, and I just can’t see that being any other way.” She started to get up and head back to the house, tears starting in her eyes.
“HERMIONE! Wait a minute.” She stopped and turned around to find Harry laughing so hard he was about to fall off the bench. She watched him for a minute or so wondering if she had forced him over the edge.
When he stopped laughing enough to speak he said between chuckles, “Hermy, I am not IN love with you. (giggle) I wasn’t trying to tell you that. (snort) Please sit back down.”
As his words sank in, she turned dark red. “Oh, Harry! I am so embarrassed. The way you started talking, I thought you were going to ask me to…well…be your…um…well…girlfriend.” He cracked up again. “Harry! Stop laughing at me! This isn’t funny!”
He forced himself to stop, but only barely. “Look, I’m sorry I laughed, all right? What I was really trying to say, although, I guess not very well, was that I think of you like a sister, too.” She buried her face in her hands. “Hey, don’t be embarrassed by that, I can see why you thought I was going to say that, okay?” She looked up and nodded.
“Hermione, I never had a family growing up. My relatives never treated me very good, at least until recently, and I always wanted that. You came into my life and have given me something I always wanted, a sister. You’ve been a great one. You’ve pushed me to be better at school. You have tried, for the most part, to keep me out of trouble. But when the chips were down, you have been right there beside me.”
“I do love you, Hermione, more than you could ever know. I love you as much as I could if we had the same parents, and THAT is what I wanted to tell you.” After that, he was quiet.
He looked at her, and her lower lip started to tremble. As soon as it did she threw herself at him and hugged him tight. “Harry, I think that is the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me. I was scared that it was going to be the other thing and ruin what we do have. You mean too much to me for that to happen, it would have broke my heart.”
“Hermy, you’re rambling.”
“Sorry. Harry? I love you, too, but why are you doing this? What aren’t you telling me?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, suddenly wary.
“Harry James, there is something you’re not saying. I know you too well.”
“Well, you don’t know me that well if you thought I was in love with you,” he smirked trying to change the topic.
“Oh, ha ha. Spill it, what’s up?” He could tell her temper was starting to rise, and he knew she would not give up.
Slowly he replied, “You’re right, there is something else, but that is something I am going to tell everyone at once tonight. I just think it will be easier to do it that way. I’m not trying to duck it, but, please, let it wait until tonight, okay?” His eyes were pleading.
She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. “Okay, I let it go for now.”
This time, he hugged her. “Thanks.”
“What are sisters for? Come on, Ron should be back soon,” she chuckled.
As they walked back to the house, Harry got a mischievous gleam in his eye. “So, how long has my darling sister had a thing for Ron?”
She stopped dead in her tracks, mouth open and blushing furiously. “How did you…”
Remembering Molly’s words from the day before, he said, “A brother always knows.” With that, he continued walking to house.
* * *
After Ron got back from the neighbor’s house, the three friends went out to the garden to relax. They talked about whatever came to mind, and it usually had no significance. It was what friends do when they are relaxed.
Every now and then, Harry would catch Hermione’s eye and she would blush a little. Whenever this happened, he would smile a little and wink. Ron, on the other hand, seemed oblivious to this. Harry did, however, catch him looking at Hermione a time or two. He thought he saw a little bit of longing in Ron’s eyes when he saw this. He just smiled and shook his head when he saw this.
Around three o’clock, Ginny came walking out of the house. When Harry saw her, he felt a wave of nervousness flutter in his stomach. She looked pretty with the sunlight glinting off of her hair. He had never noticed before how the sun brought out streaks of gold mixed in with the red. He thought the color was very nice indeed.
She walked over, greeted Hermione with a hug, and sat down with them. They all sat there talking for a little while. Harry could sense her glancing at him from time to time, and he knew she was remembering that he had wanted to speak with her this afternoon. Finally he screwed up what little Gryffindor courage he had left.
“Hey Gin, you…um…feel like going for a little walk?” He tried to not sound too nervous.
She thought for a few seconds as she chewed the inside of her lip. “I guess I could, although I had wanted to go in and scrub the loo,” she deadpanned.
Harry’s face fell, but then he heard Ron and Hermione start laughing. He glanced back at Ginny and saw a twinkle in her eyes. He couldn’t believe he had fallen for that, if only for a second.
“Of course I’ll go for a walk. I told you this morning I would. Come on,” she said as she got to her feet.
Harry stood up and they started off to the pond. Behind them he heard Ron whisper something to Hermione, and then heard her exclaim, “What? No way!” Then Ron started laughing.
As Harry and Ginny got to the pond, she made a sharp turn and walked into the grove of trees that flanked the pond. She walked up a path that wound through the trees and up over a little hill. Harry had never been up here.
“Ginny? Where are we going?”
She looked at him a smiled. “There is a place that I go to when I want to be alone and think. It’s quiet and peaceful. It’s just up at the top of this hill.”
Harry followed her until they got to the top of the hill. When they got there, they were standing on top of a little bluff. You could see several fields surrounded by trees from there. The view was very nice.
Ginny sat down, letting her feet hang over the side. Harry sat down next to her and looked out over the fields. Ginny surprised him by reaching into a hole in the rocks and pulling out two muggle sodas. She handed one to Harry and opened the other for herself. They were ice cold. He looked at her with a question in his eyes.
She started laughing. “I charmed the hole to keep them cold. I have a weakness for this cola. This is the only place I can keep it without Ron drinking them all.”
Harry chuckled and took a drink. The burning in the back of his throat felt good. He had rarely got to drink them at the Dursleys as Dudley would hog them all. He drank a couple of them this summer while talking with Petunia.
“Harry, you said you wanted to talk to me. What is it about?”
“Several things, actually. First off, I wanted to thank you for writing to me this summer. I know I was a prat at the beginning with not writing back. It was actually your second letter that got it through my thick head to write.” She grimaced when he said this. “No, don’t feel bad about that. That was exactly what I needed at the time. I am glad that you don’t know how to make a howler, though,” he said as he smiled.
She grinned from ear to ear. “Fat lot you know. Two days after I sent that letter, I got Fred and George to teach me how to make one. If you hadn’t written back, I was sending you one the next day.”
“Remind me to thank them for that,” he said sarcastically. She snorted into her soda.
“Gin, I’ve kind of been working my way through your family with these talks. I want to let everyone know what they mean to me. You are the last one, since I really don’t know Bill and Charlie all that well, and I don’t think I’ll be speaking to Percy anytime soon. You know, your family means the world to me.”
“You mean the world to us, too,” she said solemnly.
He felt a little lump in his throat when she said this.
“There's more, though. I feel like I need to tell each person what they mean to me, and that’s why I wanted to talk to you.”
He paused for a minute to try to think about how to continue. She sat there saying nothing, but waiting for him to collect his thoughts. He hadn’t realized until now that she had put her hand on his in a comforting way.
Finally he was able to go on. “Do you know how much you have changed to me?”
She shook her head.
“I remember the first time I came to stay here with your family. You were so shy and quiet.” She had just taken a drink when he said this, and she practically spit it out.
“Harry, I think you are the only person who has ever described me as shy and quiet,” she laughed.
“You were when I first knew you. Although, I seem to recall a small crush you had at the time.”
She was now blushing scarlet. “You would have to remember that.”
“Hey, even though I didn’t say so, I thought it was sweet. You have to remember how much I hated attention though.””
“I know, I wasn’t really subtle, was I? Especially with that singing Valentine.”
He laughed at the memory. “Right, how did that go again? Let’s see, His eyes are as green…” Whap! She smacked his arm.
“You don’t have to rub it in, Potter!” She glared at him, although her eyes were dancing again.
“I’m sorry. But that is what I am talking about. My perception of you has changed a lot. You went from that, to now you can tell me off without batting an eyelash. I’m glad I have got to know the real Ginny Weasley. She’s a great person. You always seem to know how to get through to me, you know that?”
She smiled warmly at him.
“Ginny, there’s something else I have to tell you. I don’t really know how to say it.”
She got a worried look in her eye. “What is it, Harry? Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“No, not any more than usual, anyway.” She looked relieved at that. “I know the crush you had on me is gone. You have been dating other guys. I know you are seeing Dean now.”
“Harry, I…”
“Wait! Let me finish. Please?”
She nodded.
“Like I said, I know you don’t think of me like that any more. But I feel it is only right to tell you, that now the tables have turned. Do you understand?”
She looked puzzled and shook her head.
“Well…um…it’s like this. Sometime this last spring it started, and it…well…it’s grown since then. Sometime during that time, I…um…I…well…I started having feelings for you. Not like Ron’s little sister, not like a friend. I think I have fallen for you.”
There! He said it. He looked up at her. Her mouth was open in shock.
She started to speak hesitantly, “Harry. I don’t know what to say. I mean…”
“I’m not asking you to say anything, Gin. In fact, I don’t want you to.”
“What? Why?”
“There is something I need to tell everyone at dinner tonight. No matter what you would say, you need to hear that before you say anything. And, I am not telling you this to try to take you from Dean. I couldn’t do that to you or him. I just feel it is a little dishonest if I don’t tell you. Besides, tonight is going to be hard enough without trying to do it after you have told me that you don’t think of me that way. You can break my heart tomorrow, okay?”
He tried to look at her, but he couldn’t. If he would have, he would have seen a tear in the corner of her eye.
They sat there for a little while not looking at each other. Finally Ginny stood up, and reached to give Harry a hand.
As he stood up, she leaned in and gave him a small hug. “I’ll let it go for now, Harry, but we will talk about this again, all right?”
He nodded. She smiled at him sadly, then turned and started to walk back to the house. He waited a few minutes then started back, as well.
His Greatest Power by deej
Chapter Notes: Harry has his talks with the two special girls in his life, Hermione and Ginny. How will they react? Read and find out.
Once again, Mrs. Rowling owns it all; I am just playing in her back yard.
Thanks again to Laura (horsegirl_2) for Beta-ing for me. You’re the best.
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