shut lids of his eyes were bluish with tiredness and his jaw and chin were also bluish, where he had not shaved.
A lancing pain went through Hermione as she looked at him: fear mixed with protectiveness mixed with love. Through the clear pane of his unconscious face, she could see through to the child he had been, the little boy with the too-big clothes and the uncooperative hair, tough and stubborn and trusting and brave. She remembered the first time she had ever put her arms around him. Harry, you're a great wizard, you know.
He had shaken his head. I'm not as good as you.
Me? Books! And cleverness! There are more important things — friendship and bravery — and, oh Harry — be careful — She remembered seeing him after that, in the infirmary. She had been quite sure he was dead, and when she had seen him alive again a sort of terror had possessed her and kept her from embracing him — a terror perhaps that having not lost him in that instance, she was once more vulnerable to losing him again. She carefully moved closer towards where he lay on the bed, so that her hand rested on his side and rose and fell with his breathing as he breathed. He seemed to tense under her touch, and very slowly his eyelids fluttered and rose, and he opened his eyes.
Without the glasses, they were clear windows of green glass, fringed with black lashes.
She held her breath, waiting. Would he be angry — would he remember their fight — would he remember last night, after she had brought him upstairs to her room? Although all he had done was fall asleep immediately, pushing away her hands as she tried to help him off with his boots, his wet jacket.
But his green eyes were still foggy with sleep, and he smiled at her tiredly but without surprise, as if he had expected to see her there when he woke up. He turned so that he could hold his arms out, and she went into them and let him clasp her tightly, feeling the residual dampness of his cloak under her hands, his soft breath stirring the hairs at the nape of her neck.
They lay like that for several minutes without speaking before she felt his grip on her slacken, and he released her, moving his right hand up to touch her face.
Very softly, she said, 'How are you feeling?'
He cleared his throat, and winced. 'I'm in bed with my shoes on and I feel as if someone took a lemon wedge, taped it to a two-ton weight, and dropped it on my head. Other than that, I'm fine.' He smiled at her. 'And you're here, which cancels out the bad stuff.' The smile turned into a puzzled look. 'Did we…. do anything last night?'
Hermione smiled at him sweetly. 'What, you don't remember our first time?'
Harry sat up like a shot, and then clutched his head. 'Owwwww,' he moaned, and looked at her imploringly. 'We didn't! Tell me we didn't.'
Hermione crossed her arms and looked at him with narrowed eyes. 'Why, would that be a bad thing?'
'If I didn't remember it, it would be a very bad thing,' he replied.
Hermione flipped her curls back and shrugged. 'You were far too out of it to do anything other than collapse on the bed after being sick all over some books in the common room — I think you owe Neville an apology.'
'I wasn't sick on you, was I?'
Hermione smiled. 'How romantic. No, you weren't sick on me. You weren't sick on Draco either, which is disappointing. I wonder how he would have handled that.'
'Badly, I suspect.' Harry put his hands up to his temples. 'I barely remember anything from last night after…' He went suddenly very pale.
'After…' She watched as awareness flooded into his expression, followed by shock, followed by horror. 'Oh, God,' he said, sounding numb. 'Oh, God. Last night. What you must think of me. I don't know what got into me-'
'About a quart of vodka, from the look of things.'
'I think it was gin,' he replied distractedly. He looked at her, pale and remorseful. 'Hermione, I — '
'Went to a strip club. I know.'
Harry looked as if he might fall off the bed. 'You know? How do you know?'
'You,' she said, and poked him with a finger, 'talk in your sleep.'
'Oh.' Harry looked very embarrassed, which she had always thought was rather cute — his ears turned red and he bit his lip. 'I, uh — '
'Who's Angelique?'
'Angelique?' Harry floundered. 'She was, um, the bartender.'
'The topless bartender?'
'Y-yes. Well, she had a lot of hair.'
'Really.' Hermione's voice dripped scorn. 'And was Snape really there playing the clarinet?'
'Hermione!' Harry cast aside the pillow he had been holding with a gesture of despair. 'I don't know how I ended up at the Sleazy Weasel, it just happened, and I'll make it up to you, I'll buy you and Ginny copies of the Playwitch swimsuit calendar — '
'I heard Charlie was February,' said Hermione, intrigued.
'— Just forgive me.'
Hermione blew out a breath of exasperation. 'Oh, Harry, for God's sake, I don't care about that. So you went drinking, so you went to the — uh, Sleazy Weasel, what a ridiculous name, I don't care, I know exactly where to lay the blame for all that, and that's on Draco. But I don't even blame him, he was just trying to cheer you up and if it had worked, for Heaven's sake, I'd be the first person thanking him. I've been so worried — '
'I'm not just sorry about that.' He stood up and took her by the wrists, lifting her to her feet. She rose along with him, and stood, tilting her head back to look up at him. She remembered when she had been taller than he was. No longer. 'There's also what happened in the common room. I'm sorry about that. I was a total git, and — forgive me, please.'
Hermione hesitated.
Harry's hands tightened. She could feel his grip braceleting her wrists and looked up to search his face. Behind the sheer green color of his eyes was concern, and even a rising panic. He was afraid she wouldn't forgive him, and why? Because he knows that whatever it is he's hiding from me is something serious, and if I knew what it was, I would be angry. Very angry.
'Of course I forgive you,' she said. She heard her own voice as if at a distance: remote and a little cold. 'There's almost nothing you could do that I wouldn't forgive you for and you know that.'
A little of the fear went out of his expression, but some anxiety remained, like the afterimage of sun against closed eyelids. There was always that darkness there in his eyes. Hermione thought of it sometimes as the darkness of that broom closet under the stairs, the shadow that could never quite leave him. 'Then what…'
'I don't know what's bothering you, Harry,' she said. 'But something is.
You think I can't tell?' She pulled her wrists out of his grasp, took his hands and turned them over. Along the side of his right hand was an ugly bruise and on both palms were the faded half-moon imprints where nails had been dug into the skin. 'You're beating yourself up about something, literally as well as figuratively. And if you don't tell me what it is that's tearing you apart, then you put a gulf between us. And if one day I can't reach you across it, then you have no one to blame but yourself.'
She raised her eyes to his face, and for a moment saw the shutters drop from his expression, exposing for a moment the Harry she knew -
vulnerable, bewildered, fiercely loving. Then his eyes slid away from her face. He said, 'Just give me a little more time.'
She sighed. She felt very tired, but then again, she had hardly slept the night before. 'Do what you need to do, Harry.'
'I love you,' he said. His tone was hopeful, a little defensive. But she reacted to the declaration anyway, as she always had. She raised her face and he kissed her gently, the light stubble along his jaw and chin brushing her skin. She put her arms around him then, and he held her, his face bowed down into her hair, his hands clasped across her back. But even as they stood locked together, seemingly as close as two people could be, Hermione felt the distance between them and knew that it had not been breached.
