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Hermione woke to Lavender and Parvati's loud, annoying, worried chatter.

She groaned and flipped over, hoping for more sleep. Fate didn't agree with her, and the hangings on her four-poster were pushed back quickly as if the person opening them had to tell her that the world was going to explode.

"Hermione," Lavender fussed, "we need your help!"

"What?" Hermione groaned. It was early Saturday, and as the memories of the night before haunted her mind, she wished for the first time that she could just sleep in.

Parvati ran over, holding a pile of designer clothes. "What should we wear?" she shrieked.

"Oh my-" Hermione started, throwing her covers over her head.

Lavender protested, "Don't even think about it, Hermione! You're getting dressed up too!"

She threw her covers of her head and sat up, now completely awake.

"I'm what?" she squealed.

Lavender rolled her eyes. "C'mon, Hermione," she said, pulling her up from the bed. "We'll pick out some cute clothes for you while you go take a shower!" She quickly and perkily pushed Hermione toward their bathroom door, obviously excited for getting to doll up their roommate and tormented for not knowing what to wear herself.

Hermione protested, the shock of what Lavender and Parvati were trying to get her to do finally settling in right when she got to the bathroom door. It was pretty funny watching her girl friends panicking over clothes, but she wasn't laughing or feeling as happy as she would normally be with them. Sadness and pain still enveloped her as remnants of yesterday.

"Sorry, girls," she said sadly, "but I'm not really in the mood for dressing up."

"You never are," Parvati said, trying to lighten the mood when she noticed her friend so downtrodden.

Lavender sighed. Now was the perfect time to be Hermione's even better friend and do what friends do: comfort. She nodded at Parvati, unbeknownst to Hermione, who was looking down at her feet.

Parvati immediately understood, as she had noted the Head Girl's depressed mood, and she dumped the pile of clothes on her bed before walking to her two friends.

"Hermione," she said comfortingly, "is there something wrong?"

The bushy-haired girl shook her head, tears threatening to fall, not wanting to spread her misery to the people trying to help her. Obviously, her roommates didn't buy it, and they led her back to her bed so they could talk.

"Hermione," Parvati started again, "what's going on?"

The Head Girl let out a strangled sob, her hands automatically moving up to cover her mouth so as not to let any more cries out. She curled into a ball, still sitting on the edge of the bed, and her two friends on both sides of her. She rocked herself back and forth slightly, but unfortunately, the tears still came.

Throughout the night, she had cried herself to sleep, and she thought her tears had all run dry. But, no, her tears were still there, and they were about to pour out once more.

"I don't get it!" she cried, her words slurred together and muffled with her sobs. But all the same, Lavender and Parvati understood every mangled word Hermione attempted to say. "I just don't get it! Why would he do something like that?"

Parvati's eyes widened. "Who? Did Draco do something? I swear, if he hurt you-"

"No!" Hermione interrupted. "No, it wasn't him!"

Lavender furrowed her eyebrows, concerned. "Well, if it wasn't Draco, then who was it?"

"It was-" Hermione started, but more cries choked her, disabling her speech temporarily. "It...it was-" She paused every few seconds, having to gasp for air so as to calm herself faster. However, this just made her cry harder, making her sweat from exhaustion and sadness.

"Woah," Lavender fussed, "slow down, Hermione!"

"Just take deep breaths," Lavender instructed. "When you're ready, you can tell us what happened."

Although Hermione was sobbing uncontrollably, she was shocked when her friends treated her so respectfully and taking their time to get her to leak out information. Usually they were practically begging for gossip, and now they were giving her a choice of when she'd tell them what was going on. Damn, they were good at this comforting stuff.

After a few more minutes of strangled cries, hiccupping, and used tissues lying on the plush carpets, Hermione calmed down enough to get out a few words. Unfortunately, she was still having speaking difficulties, and after every few words, she would gasp and hiccup. But the words she spoke were enough for her friends to understand.

"Harry...said that...he...he...he loves me..."

Lavender and Parvati, with their personality, squealed, jumping up and down on the bed. But their toothy grins and excited actions died down when they saw that Hermione didn't seem all too happy about any of this.

"Hermione?" Parvati said in a motherly-voice. "Is there something wrong?"

The intelligent Gryffindor lost her control, finally bursting and letting out her frustration. "Wrong? Is there something wrong?" she cried, surprising her friends. "Of course there's something wrong! My best friend, or who I thought was my best friend, starts acting all friendly and concerned, and then when I talk about my boyfriend, he explodes and jumps on me! And he tells me he loves me! And now I don't know what to do because I just ended our friendship and now we're probably never ever going to talk to each other ever again! And you ask if there's something wrong?"

She bent her head down, her arms clutching her shoulders, and she started to cry even harder than before.

Lavender and Parvati stared at the ground, both of them wide-eyed and speechless. Not only did the Gryffindor bookworm just break down, but from what they gathered, Harry, "Saint" Harry Potter, jumped on her and confessed his feelings for her, something even they didn't know existed.

And what Hermione just said about Harry didn't seem like him at all. He was a noble and sweet guy, not someone to just lose a friendship just because of how stupid he was!

"Oh, Hermione," Lavender comforted, placing a hand on her back gently. The bookworm leaned in, letting her friend hug her as she cried into the large shirt her roommate wore over her underwear. Parvati patted Hermione's back soothingly, torn apart by how broken her friend was.

Eventually, Hermione's cries again subsided. Although Lavender and Parvati didn't want to press her to tell them the entire, detailed, less vague story, they knew it would be best if she didn't keep it all bundled up inside.

"Hermione," Lavender said a bit hesitantly, as she knew her friend had a temper that could surface any moment, "what happened exactly? When? What did Harry...no, wait, that's a dumb question, asking what he did... Please, Hermione, just tell us what happened."

Hermione looked up at her roommates and her very good friends. She wanted to tell them, not to have their pity, but to have their advice, but she was hesitant to spill her guts out about what happened the night before.

"Hermione?" Parvati asked as comfortingly as she could.

After a few seconds of silence, the Head Girl finally decided to tell her friends about last night. She didn't know if it was the right thing to do, and whether or not she would regret it later, but she felt the urge to let it all out, to share her information with the girls in her dorm, both of whom were still half-naked like they were when they were trying to find out what to wear for that day.

Parvati and Lavender thought that they weren't going to get anything out of their friend, but just as they were about to give up hope, Hermione's words rolled out of her mouth in a quick and sad, but understandable, speech.

She told about the night before, from when Harry asked her about her locket to when they started talking about true love. She told about when Harry seemed to get incredibly jealous and when he brought himself on her, pressing her against that damned tree. She started crying again when she spoke about how she left Harry standing on that hill and how he protested against her departure.

Throughout the entire story, Lavender and Parvati found themselves hanging on every rushed word that came out of Hermione's mouth. They gasped at the right places and glared at an imaginary Harry whenever it seemed appropriate. When Hermione came to the end of the story, they found themselves both despising Harry and pitying him.

"-And," Hermione cried, "now I don't even remember what I did with my locket, and I don't know if it's worse if a stranger picked it up or if Harry did, because if he has it, I have to go to him and get it back!"

As soon as she said those words, she lost control once more, letting her sorrows out and leaving her friends to absorb all that information they just received.

"Oh, Hermione," Parvati said, her voice quivering as if she was going to start crying as well, "I'm so sorry!" She hugged her friend again, letting the tears soak their way through her own nightshirt.

"Harry," Lavender reassured, "is such an ass for doing that stuff to you! Don't worry, Hermione, you did the right thing, leaving him like that."

Hermione was extremely comforted when her friends let her know that they were on her side, and that they agreed with her about the Boy-Who-Lived, but she wasn't feeling much better, knowing that there was a reason she didn't push away from him earlier when he kissed her. There was also the fact that she knew it wasn't as easy to stop crying as she thought, and the tears just kept coming.

Parvati suddenly pushed Hermione away from her by her shoulders. The Head Girl thought there was something wrong or that Parvati changed her mind about what she thought about the whole Harry-Hermione situation. Thankfully, though, that wasn't the case. But the Gryffindor bookworm wasn't sure if what her friend had to say was much better.

"I have an idea, Hermione!" she said excitingly. "Let's show him!"

"What?" Hermione asked, wiping a few of her tears away.

"What are you talking about, Parvati?" Lavender said, looking confused, which, of course, she was.

"I'm talking about Harry," the girl said. "Why don't we show him what he's missing out on, you know, torture him kind of?"

"I'm lost," Lavender shook her head.

"Listen," Parvati stood in front of her two friends, "let's do what we were going to do anyway, you know, dress up Hermione a little bit?"

"What?" Hermione cried, jumping up on her feet.

"Sit down, Hermione," her friend rolled her eyes. "No, just listen. If we dress you up, and Harry sees you, he'll feel so guilty that he gave you up, and he'll be heartbroken! It's perfect, Hermione! We'll get back at that bastard and make him feel so miserable!"

"Are you crazy?" Hermione squealed, still standing, as she had not listened to her friend's command. "I'm trying to avoid him, not draw him to me!"

"Actually," Lavender said, "he won't have the guts to go up to you, after what happened. He'll be admiring you from afar, and when Draco starts fawning over you like usual, he'll feel so tormented that he'll feel sorry for ever even getting jealous."

"No, no, no," Hermione stuttered, "we can't do that!"

"Why not?" her friends said together.

"Because," she answered, "he didn't want me to leave him yesterday when I ran away, so he's probably upset too. I mean, I hate what he did, but I don't hate him, you guys! I actually miss him already! I don't want to hurt him anymore. I'll only be hurting myself. I don't want to make him feel worse."

"But," Parvati said, "how do you know if he's really sorry for what he did? I mean, did he actually apologize yesterday?"

Hermione paused, thinking back to that sunset she and Harry had shared yesterday, along with that kiss. She was sure he had apologized. After all, he had to know what he did was wrong, right? But she knew deep inside her that Harry had, in fact, not told her that he was sorry.

Lavender and Parvati took Hermione's silence as an answer, and they immediately knew that Parvati's assumption was correct.

"Hermione?" Parvati said, snapping her out of her trance.

"Okay, maybe he didn't say he was sorry," she said, "but I still don't want to do this to him-"

"Hermione!" her friends cried.

Lavender rolled her eyes in a frustrated manner. "Parvati's right. We should show him! Let's just show him what he's missing. It won't be that bad."

Although Hermione greatly doubted that, she knew how stubborn her roommates were, and she hastily and regretfully agreed to doll herself up. What was she kidding? These girls were Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil. Of course they would get her to dress up!

"C'mon," Lavender said, as Parvati squealed in delight, "go into the bathroom and take a shower. Or a bath, that's even better. You know, refresh yourself. You don't look like you've gotten much sleep."

Hermione mentally cursed herself and begged Merlin that Harry would forgive her one way or another. She grabbed her wand and some underwear (she still wasn't comfortable enough to walk around in front of her friends when she was naked) and walked slowly and sadly into their bathroom.

As she opened the door, the clean and white tiles, sink, shower, and bathtub greeted her. The walls, in her opinion, clashed slightly with the tile, as they were painted a deep maroon color. But the shower hangings, mats, towels, soaps, and ceiling matched the walls perfectly, which made up for the lack of gold, which there was barely any of in the room.

She sighed, closing the door and locking it, and she dumped her underwear and her wand in a small pile on the side of the sink. Before she walked away from it, however, she glanced in the mirror above it, studying her appearance.

She knew she must've looked terrible when she was crying and moping on her bed, but her reflection proved it.

Her usually sparkling eyes were a dull brown, matching her tangled hair, which was now bushy, since she hadn't spelled it to curl gently yet. She had visible bags under her unhappy eyes, and the frown etched on her face wasn't very attractive. Her lips were as dull as her eyes and hair, but instead of a dead and plain brown, it was a pale pink color. Her skin was just as pale, which, for some reason, showed her exhaustion.

Hermione watched herself shed her pajamas and undergarments. Even though the mirror wasn't large enough to see farther down than her neck, she knew the rest of her body probably looked just as bad as her face, and her mirror was happy enough to point that out to her.

"My dear," it said, "you look terrible!"

"Thanks," she replied sarcastically.

"Well, if you're going to be that way..."

"What way?"

"With that attitude-"

"Look, I don't need your insults right now."

"Fine," the mirror sniffed. "But you know, you look-"

Hermione lost her temper, but she didn't know if it was because of her distress or because that mirror was just getting on her nerves like always. She grabbed her wand, pointing it at the mirror, and muttered a spell. Fortunately, her skills paid off, and the mirror finally shut up.

Hermione smiled to herself at her success, but it quickly faded, as she was still distraught.

She looked at herself in the mute mirror one last time before making her way to the large bathtub. She filled it with pink bubblebath, adding in a scent of lavenders and lilies by muttering a spell.

A few minutes later, she was soaking in the bath, finally giving her time to relax while she thought about Harry. She sadly sighed as she thought of him, however. She didn't want to hurt him in any way, even though it would be returning the favor.

And what about Draco? He was her boyfriend, after all, and she didn't want to hurt him either. She loved him dearly, and she didn't want him to think that she had wanted Harry to kiss her.

And she didn't, of course. Right?

No, she didn't. It was stupid to even consider wanting to kiss her best friend. After all, he was practically the brother she never had. Why would she want to kiss a brother? That was stupid, preposterous! Right? Right?

Yes, that was right. Of course it was.

Hermione forced herself to think about Draco. He was probably in the Great Hall eating breakfast by now, but she could never tell. He would always wake up at different times or have a certain amount of laziness filling him, so whether or not he was in the Great Hall, she didn't know.

She smiled contently, imagining her boyfriend's cocky smirk as he sat at the Slytherin table as if it were his throne. He would cross his arms across his musuclar chest, still sitting in front of a plate of warm eggs and bacon as if he were going to eat it. But no, he wasn't going to eat. How silly would that look, a prince digging piggishly into his food when he was supposed to be watching his loyal subjects?

Hermione's grin grew wider. He would always be doing that, starving himself during breakfast. And she would be doing the same, although she would slip a few pieces of food into her mouth to avoid suspicion that she was on another hunger strike for S.P.E.W. After all, after breakfast on most days, before classes or activities, she would meet up with her loving boyfriend before the duo would slip unnoticed into the kitchens and feast together with none of the watchful eyes of Hogwarts students lingering on them.

It was times like these when Hermione was perfectly happy with life, with her and Draco, her boyfriend, side by side, holding hands and occasionally sharing an intimate kiss. But his kisses, whatever they were to be rumored, were nothing compared to Harr-

"No!" Hermione's eyes snapped open, and she looked at the door leading to her dorm, making sure that Lavender and Parvati didn't hear her outburst. She was so shocked about what she just thought, she didn't even remember that the bathroom, along with all the other rooms in the Gryffindor tower, had silencing charms placed on them.

No, she thought, I do not like Harry in that way, or his kisses, or anything else about him! I have a perfect boyfriend, perfect grades, and a perfect life. Everything was perfect until Harry came along and had to go and love me!

But she didn't love him back. She didn't even like him back! The most she ever thought about Harry was just that he was one of her best friends. Nothing more, nothing less. Right?

Right!

This is just silly! Hermione thought. She had read a lot of books in her time, including romances, and she knew that the characters were always in denial, but were madly in love with a certain other. But no, this isn't just words in a storybook. This is real life, and in reality, there is no way things end in a picture perfect romance. It just isn't possible!

Besides, she thought, I'm perfectly happy with Draco! He's the one for me, and there's no one I'd rather be in love with than him.

Or at least, that's what she kept telling herself. But as she closed her eyes, soaking and relaxing in the warm, bubbly water, she kept imagining something, something she just couldn't help but melt at: