Hermione was, Harry reckoned, the one bit of normalcy at Hogwarts. He almost recoiled at the thought. 'Normal isn't bad, ' Harry reminded himself. 'It's the Dursleys who are abnormal with their obsession with being normal. ' Ron, Fred, and George were certainly normal guys, as far as Harry could tell; normal for the wizarding world that is, but Hermione - she was his kind of normal.
He hadn't realized it until now, but he had found it comforting to know there was someone else there who had been through everything he'd been through, who knew all the stuff he knew, and didn't know all the stuff he didn't know. She was like a portable little island of calm when he's facing something new and dangerous.
'Well,' Harry thought, 'she was more like the stony spit of rock with the storm beating down on us Uncle Vernon had dragged us to last year when it came to exams-, ' but he figured there were limits to what even magic could do for that. She seemed to be willing to try though. She wanted to get to know him - and presumably for him to get to know her, and even seemed to be up for a bit of fun, if her bit about Quidditch and taking time for herself was to be believed.
He smiled. She wanted to get to know him - just him; just Harry - not the Boy-Who-Lived. He was sure Hermione knew more than he did about pretty much everything, and he was sure there had to be loads of differences between them, but with everyone else only seeing him as a scar, how could he not give it a try?
Suddenly Harry got a sinking sense of dread and pulled out her second letter. 'I know what must be going on in your mind,' she wrote. 'I understand… We're friends and I wouldn't want that to change - Please respond. I certainly wouldn't want there to be any awkwardness between us.'
He was going to say no and didn't want to. Or, at least she took his silence as him not wanting to say no and therefore wasn't saying anything at all. 'And really, ' Harry thought, ' how else was she supposed to take getting nothing but silence after sending a letter like that?' It had to take a lot to tell someone what they meant to your life, but to then be left hanging out there for weeks…
Harry also noticed that he had gone from 'Dear Harry' to just 'Harry' and she had gone from 'Always Yours' to simply 'Hermione. ' He couldn't imagine what it took for her to write the first letter, but to write him again saying that it was okay that he didn't like her back…
Harry also noticed that he had gone from 'Dear Harry' to just 'Harry' and she had gone from 'Always Yours' to simply 'Hermione. ' He couldn't imagine what it took for her to write the first letter, but to write him again saying that it was okay that he didn't like her back…
'Certainly makes my summer seem pleasant by comparison, ' Harry thought, picking up the letter she had sent tonight. 'And it definitely explains why she tried to stop me from reading it, ' he reckoned. She had already gone through the agony of him not-saying no, only to learn he had never gotten the chance to not-say no in the first place. 'No wonder she said it was all "basic stuff," she didn't want to have to go through it all again - and for real this time. She didn't want to risk not being "Your Friend, Hermione."
'Like that would ever happen,' he answered himself. If Harry didn't already know how he was going to respond - even if he didn't have a clue what he was going to say - this would have cinched it.
Harry was half way to his trunk for parchment when the door to his bedroom took a mighty lurch forward and came to an abrupt stop. He bolted back to his desk and scrambled to get everything stashed safely out of sight.
"What the devil is wrong with this door?" his Aunt Petunia demanded quietly.
Harry peeked curiously through the tiny crack in his defenses. "Er - Sorry, Aunt Petunia," he lied, not sorry in the slightest. "Must not have been watching where I threw my clothes last night."
"Yes, well - pick them up," she said acidly. "And get downstairs and start on breakfast. And be quiet," she hissed, "Dudley and Vernon are having a bit of a lie-in."
He closed the door to get ready for the day as Aunt Petunia padded away. 'Dudley and Vernon are always having a lie-in, ' Harry thought to himself. 'It's half the reason they got so fat. '
As he reached the kitchen Harry knew what he was making today. For once he didn't care what the Dursleys wanted. Today, he was making waffles.