Harmione One Shots

| Alone Again, Unnaturally pt. 3

Summary: Harry and Hermione deal with a shift in their relationship as he finally allows himself to think of a possibility he hadn't considered before.

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Now Harry knew what had been so different about Hermione when he had looked at her after agreeing to hear her out. Now he knew why he enjoyed it when they ended up in that very intimate position some moments ago. Now he knew why the thought of his place in her life being threatened was enough to fill him with so much pain that it made him burn hot with fury. He knew it all.

And that had to be the reason why he couldn't resist calling her cute. At first, he told himself that it was something friends could say to each other even though it didn't feel like such. Now, though, he understood why he said it. He hadn't been thinking about anything other than how nice Hermione looked when she had gotten so angry over him getting hurt. He didn't have time to think about his feelings or what it could mean when he said it.

Her question, though, opened his mind to the idea that there could be something more between them. It was something he had never considered before but it was something that he was very much open to. Harry didn't know why he was so open to it, he just knew that it felt...right.

In a way, he was reminded of what he felt for Cho at first when he had developed his crush on her when he saw Hermione at the Yule Ball and then again when she met him in the tower. He hadn't been able to fully figure out the feeling was the same at the time of both of those events but now he did. And it explained everything that he'd been struggling to understand.

It explained why he was so jealous of Ron over the summer. It explained why he was so hurt by her not writing to him and then basically avoiding him throughout the school year so far. It explained why even after they reconciled, he wanted her to just stay with him without the Order or Ron interfering. That last part was crucial.

Because Harry was open to having the Order trust him enough to talk to him and was open to Ron finally being a best mate to him again but he wasn't open to that cutting into his time with Hermione. If any of them took time away from him with her, he wouldn't be at all as forgiving to them as he should be.

So did all of this mean that his feelings for Hermione had grown deeper over the summer? Or maybe since last year at the Yule Ball?

The answer to that was a resounding yes. It felt like a snap decision to go from just wanting Hermione back as his best friend to now wanting to be with her like he did with Cho last year but it felt right. He'd already said it but his best friend had something about her that made it easy for him to trust anything that concerned her. She radiated warmth, peace, and security.

Plus, if he was being honest with himself, Harry hadn't been too satisfied with their earlier reconciliation. That was why he was so quick to ask her to let it just be them for a while. It wasn't that her reasoning for abandoning him was something he couldn't forgive, it was that he wanted more than just them returning to who they were before Ron abandoned him last year.

Last year had seen such a marked change in their friendship without Ron being there and he loved that. He really did. He just hadn't been able to see how good it was to just spend time with her until after it was over. When Ron came back into his good graces last year, Harry had taken a step back from spending as much time as he did with Hermione and it was one of the moments he regretted during the summer.

That was why he had wanted to make amends by having her promise to just let it be them together for a while after they made up. It was more than just making amends, though, he was doing it because he enjoyed having alone time with her. She gave him peace and affection in ways no one else could, not even his godfather. He wanted them to return to who they were last year, not who they'd been in every other year before that.