Continental Holiday

CHAPTER-12

A/N: Dumbledore's quote during Hermione's bit is directly from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire page 724. Just trying to keep myself out of trouble. This is the saddest chapter I've written so far. Was a real heart breaker in spots to write. Cheers!

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Harry was doing the same thing he had always done for the past few weeks when he had a problem he couldn't figure out: he was sitting on his bed and looking through the photo album that contained the only pictures he owned of his family.

He counted himself lucky that he had heard their voices speak to him on two different occasions, because it allowed him let the ideas in his mind take on their voices. It was the closest he would get to getting life advice from his parents.

Almost every parental figure he had ever had was dead: His actual parents, Sirius, Dumbledore, and Remus. He still had Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and he was supremely grateful, but he had a hunch that for this particular issue that they had a stake in the outcome.

That was because the issue that was rolling through his mind involved both their only daughter and the ex-girlfriend of their youngest son.

Hermione had been acting very strangely tonight. Well, maybe not acting strangely so much as reacting strangely. There was nothing new to Harry and Hermione walking and talking. There wasn't anything new to them holding hands or sitting together. What was new was the subtle changes in Hermione's reactions. Her blushing, the way she jumped to her feet when he mentioned Ron and Ginny, and her mentioning feeling "safe".

The one strange action was her choice to sit between his legs. It had caught Harry off guard, but he had chosen at first to simply go with it rather than spoil the moment. Only once he had pictured Ginny walking up did he decide it was time to move. After all, it had been quite pleasant to be in such close company. It reminded him very much of the way he and Ginny would sit by the lake on warm afternoons at Hogwarts.

That was just it wasn't it? He was missing Ginny and Hermione probably missed Ron. That was what had brought it about, right? It wasn't as if either of them seriously considered the other as a romantic possibility. At least, he had thought that until Ron had told him that Hermione at least had thought otherwise.

With her relationship with Ron over, was Hermione starting to look at him that way?

It would explain some of the subtle differences in her actions the past couple of days, but so would their heart to heart the previous night. Maybe they were just basking in the glow of a friendship that had reached an all-time high?

Besides, he still had never considered her as a romantic possibility before. Even now something about it didn't seem quite right. His relationship with Hermione had never been any different, even if it was deeper, than the one he had with Ron, it just so happened that Hermione was a girl instead of a boy.

Granted, he knew she was a girl. A beautiful one in fact. The Yule Ball had been enough to show him that his best friend was a very pretty girl indeed. He hadn't been lying to her fifth year when he told her she wasn't ugly.

Still, he had never thought about her like that. He had always known Ron fancied her, probably before Ron knew himself, and he would never think of betraying his friend's trust. So he unconsciously had put up a wall in his mind to keep it from going there.

But she had broken it off with Ron. Where did that leave them? Even if Ginny wasn't in the picture, did this mean he could bring that wall down? Ron surely wouldn't like it and anything that could possibly injure both of his closest friendships was still a no go.

She had said she loved him. She had never said that to him before. She had called him his best friend and that he knew. Maybe she just meant that she loved him as her best friend.