ethrosdemon ||| Harry Potter

War: Antebellum I
by ethrosdemon
naturallycalm@yahoo.com

The second weekend in August before their sixth year at Hogwarts, Hermione visited Dean Thomas and his family at the shore. Actually, it was Dean, Seamus, Neville, Hermione, Lavender, the Patils and a rambunctious contingent of similarly aged Thomas relatives. Ron and Harry begged off preferring to practice Quidditch on the ramshackle pitch behind the house until they fell off their brooms in exhaustion every night.

When she arrived at the Burrow to finish up the holiday with the Weasleys and Harry, Ron soon grew tired of hearing "And Dean…" from Hermione's lips. He made the mistake of telling her so. Harry got to practice his healing charms that afternoon.

School recommenced, and the new year found its own pattern, just like all the ones before it. Hermione and Dean were together quite a bit.

She never called Dean her boyfriend, but between the lines is often a gaping distance. In early October, Hermione received a package not by owl, but by house elf. She tried to tip him for his services, but the offended servant yelped and ran away before Hermione could strike up a conversation.

The package contained sweets, a Muggle letter, and a scrap of bright green material containing a small cache of seashells.

Harry leaned over Hermione's shoulder to read the letter, even though she attempted to stave him off with a glare.

"Hermione,
You spent so much time collecting these, I hardly thought you should be without them! Sorry they've been so long in coming. Dean'll want some of those candies, but don't you go giving him any. His will be there shortly, won't they? Keep warm now, and don't let that boy of ours give you too much trouble, girl.
With love,
Miss Nancy"

When everyone else started grumbling, Hermione let Dean read the letter out mimicking his mother's Antiguan accent. Hermione gave Dean some of her candies anyway. Ron and Harry got a few of them too. And she arranged the shells on her dressing table in her dormitory.

That day was an abnormal one; the autumn was full of far more boring ones spent in class, in study, at the Quidditch pitch for Ron and Harry and the library for Hermione, or more precisely Hermione and Dean, who was also somewhat bookish and compelled towards academic achievement. Even if they hadn't been*together *, they would have been together, so the situation suited them.

Hermione was therefore rather startled when one afternoon after Herbology, she was yanked off the path and into a hedge.

Ron's fingers dug into her elbow when she tried to yank free. He pulled her the rest of the way through the leafless husks of the bushes and a little way over towards the greenhouses. The whole way, he never let go, and he never looked her in the face. She was too scared to speak. Her day was being disrupted like this for what she assumed to be Harry. Scared really wasn't the word. She'd been waiting for this, silently, for years.

"We've had it with this Dean malarkey!" Abruptly, he turned on her. They were no place in particular, maybe not even out of earshot of everyone who would be interested in this conversation. That would have been everyone, breathing or not, at Hogwarts.

Relief was there after he spoke, but it didn't last long. Anger came second, and frustration, and embarrassment which only made her angrier, since she didn't have anything to be embarrassed about.

"He's my boyfriend!" She shouted it, and then clapped her lips together, shocked at the force with which she spoke, shocked even more by Ron's face suddenly drained of the almost constant high color.

"Is not!" His voice was strained, gravely, and very low. "Don't call him that." Although she knew all these clues, knew it didn't mean a lessening of his passion but rather a reining in before he did or said something extremely vicious or irrevocable.

But she'd really had enough of this. Of Ron giving her cutting looks and swooping in to place himself between Dean and her. Of Harry *needing * to ask her something ever-so-important just as Dean came strolling towards them in the corridor. Of dealing with her two best friends being so annoying! And with living with images of a magenta stained Quidditch pitch at dusk, two figures blotting out the last of the light, faces obscured but forms utterly recognizable, arms on shoulders, step matched by step, the slighter body bumping the larger at hip, at thigh, and that really had been enough.

It all really was enough for her that day.

"You have one of your own! Why do you have to spoil this for me?!" And sometimes her tongue really did get away from her. From her mind, but rarely her heart. Which squeezed and sank, as she watched Ron turn on his heel and try to stomp but really slink away.

She thought that day was as ruined as any day ever could be. She skipped lunch.

Before Arithmancy, she discovered that when you think things can't get any worse, you are often more wrong than you ever wanted to be.

Hustling down the corridor, two more flights of stairs and three more corners to go, she ran into Harry. Which is to say, Harry stepped out in to the middle of the hall from the place he'd been waiting for her.

"'Mione?" She sighed, because he wouldn't stop calling her that, and with Harry it was better to just let him do as he pleased.

"Did Ron send you? I think he's not speaking to me." She was assuming that, because she'd avoided him herself. Her bag bit into her shoulder, and she shifted it as best she could. The clock in her head ticked on, and being late just wasn't like her.

Harry looked peeved. "Did you have to send him into a fit? You could have just told him to sod off." And Hermione knew immediately she'd have to make a side trip to the Infirmary, because she wasn't going to just be late but miss class altogether.

"I…He…Did you know he was going to speak to me?" When she moved to shift her bag to the other shoulder, Harry reached for it, but she pulled back. They struggled with the over-stuffed knapsack until he started laughing.

"Why don't you charm this lighter? You're going to grow a humpback." He released the strap, and the bag rested on the ground between them. "I've kept him from doing it up 'til now, you know? You're lucky he didn't knock any of Dean's teeth out at Hallowe'en."

His jocular tone reminded her how vexed she truly was over this. "Ron needs to keep his temper better, and it's not like it's any of his business! What's the matter with you two? If you didn't like Dean you could have just said so, instead of, well, whatever it is you're doing! You should have said something!" She stepped back from Harry and yanked her knapsack up.

"We like Dean well enough. If you believed in saying something, maybe you should have done so before yourself, instead of causing Ron to throw up all over my trainers this morning." She really wanted to scream and rant and let out years of bit back remarks, but she felt slightly shamed, so she just turned to walk off. She'd never intended to have the original conversation with Ron, let alone a screaming match with Harry.

"That's none of my business. And Dean is none of yours." Two steps into her huffing away, Harry caught up to her.

"There really isn't any such thing as your business and ours, and the sooner you and Ron figure that out, the easier it will be on everybody." Not for the first time, Harry's reasonable tone made her want to draw blood.

After the scene with Harry, she fumed for days. Harry had to restrain Ron from shooting her rude hand gestures at meals. More than anything, she was confused. There had been just enough said between them to tilt their dynamic, but only underneath. On the surface, they made up as they ever did, and there were exams to study for, Quidditch games to play and cheer at, and most of all there was friendship that seemed to be able to survive even the greatest amounts of stupidity.

Two weeks before Christmas holidays, Dean broke it off with her. He asked if Harry had it out for him, and she didn't know what to say to that. She'd thought the inkwell in his Potions' cauldron really *was * an accident. Later, she thought maybe his comments were over the time Harry transfigured his belt into a snake. Or it could have been the bludger he dodged that hit Dean in the chin.

After there was Hermione and Dean, there was Ron and Parvati, Harry and Gemma, and then all that stopped.



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