The list

Chapter 13: In Which There's a New Year's Kiss

"If you love someone you say it, you say it right then, out loud. Otherwise the moment just... passes you by..."
- My Best Friend's Wedding

The rest of Christmas Day passed by rather smoothly. Although Harry and Hermione would blush slightly whenever they caught one another's eye (causing Mrs Howard and Mrs Granger to exchange satisfied smirks), they managed to keep their emotions in check for the rest of the festivities. Not that they had a lot of free time on their hands. By the time they had reached dinner, and the roast turkey, roast potatoes, and Christmas pudding (Mona and Lia rejoiced at the two coins they recovered) had been set on the table, both teen-agers felt utterly exhausted. They had spent most of the day helping out in the kitchen, basting the turkey and making the pudding (Mrs Granger had been so preoccupied with her daughter's love life that she had forgotten to make the pudding in advance, and so Hermione was forced to endure her mother's anxious barks of "Stir!" before she finally snapped and pointed out that the custard had thickened five minutes ago).
After dinner was finished and the dishes had been cleaned, Lia and Mona ran to the sitting room to play with their presents. Not wanting anything to happen to her precious gift from Harry, Hermione gathered the five books into her arms and carried them up to her room. Harry stood awkwardly in the room for a few minutes, before he finally gave in to Mrs Granger's, "Don't worry about keeping us company, Harry, dear. Go upstairs and join Hermione. I insist."
When he arrived in Hermione's room, he found her sitting on her bed, staring across the room at her bookshelf. Harry walked over and saw that Hermione had cleared out space for the five books on the middle shelf in the very centre. As honoured as he was, he was also rather confused.

"Hermione," he said slowly, breaking her out of her daze, "the books aren't alphabetically organized anymore."

"I know," Hermione said, slightly flustered, "but I couldn't stand to separate them or to put them away where no one could see them." She concentrated on her hands, looking terribly nervous, and then she finally looked up at Harry and voiced a question she had been dying to ask for hours. "Harry...why did you give me these books?"

Harry stared at her. "What?"

"It's not that I don't like them," Hermione said in a rush. "On the contrary, I absolutely love them, more than almost anything in the world, but...it's just...I mean...not even my parents have ever given me something so meaningful." Hermione stared at Harry, her heart beating erratically. She knew what she wanted to hear (Would you stop with this nonsense? the voice inside her head demanded), but what was the likelihood that Harry would actually say it?

"Hermione..." Harry began, dragging his fingers through his hair. It would be oh so easy to just lie to her... "You've just been such a great friend all of these years," he could imagine himself saying. "This is just my way of saying thank you." But a small voice in the back of his head, that sounded suspiciously like Ginny's, whispered, "Pathetic," and Harry found himself walking over to Hermione, sitting next to her, and breathing in deeply as he readied himself for a confession. After all, what was the worst that could happen?

"The truth is," he said, not quite looking at her in the eye. You're going to tell her, you're going to finally tell her! Ginny's voice chanted happily in his head. "I —I... " And then he lost his nerve, as the image of a future in which Hermione constantly avoided him played in his head, and he muttered, "I'm just grateful is all. For everything. You know." Yes, I do know, that you're a pathetic git, shot the voice.

Hermione opened her mouth to ask what exactly that meant, but at that very moment Mona raced into her room. "Hermione!" she exclaimed. "Mummy says we're leaving and that I need to say goodbye and that I'm not going to see you again until the summer and if you don't come down now I won't get to say goodbye and Lia will cry and please hurry up because Mummy says we need to leave now, Hermione!" Mona tugged impatiently on Hermione's shirt.