Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Cracked	By : Mermaid-in-a-Manhole Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female Views: 43531 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 16
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters within that universe, and I am not receiving any money for my fanfiction.

Chapter List
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- 6
As it turned out, the thing Dumbledore needed assistance with was getting Voldemort's old potions professor to take the teaching job again. Whether this meant that Snape had left for greener pastures or was given a different position, he didn't know. Slughorn was even more obese than he'd been the last time a young Tom Riddle had seen him, which he'd thought was impossible. Now, the walrus-sized man with the matching moustache was once again employed at Hogwarts, and Harry watched, bemused, as Dumbledore disappeared after a chat in a spidery broom shed and then delivering him to Mrs Weasley.
Harry turned to face the matron of the house and spotted Lupin sat at the table with a mug between his hands. Mrs Weasley patted him on the cheek and bustled off to the kitchen to make him some food. “What brings you here, Professor?” Harry asked, sitting down across from the man.
Lupin smiled tiredly. “I am no longer your professor, Harry, so please, call me Remus or Moony. As to what I'm doing here… well, it seems Tonks has gone missing. She sent me a letter saying she had found a romantic partner and was leaving for America with him, but I don't know whether to believe it or not. It seems too sudden.”
“You rejected her again, didn't you?” Harry said.
Lupin looked shocked. “I… what? How did—”
“I noticed last year in Grimmauld Place that she was looking at you the way Ron looked at Hermione, and even though Ron is so blind about his own feelings for her, he's clearly in love with her. Then, Sirius mentioned that she'd approached you, but you'd denied her, in one of his letters to me last year,” Harry fibbed.
Lupin flinched when Harry mentioned Sirius’ name, then looked down, ashamed. “He said that? Well, I guess since you know… Look, I'm thirty-six, and she's twenty-three, that's a thirteen-year age gap! When I was in my third year at Hogwarts, she was only just born! And on top of that, I'm a known werewolf and she's an Auror, it would be very bad for her career to get involved with me, she might even end up losing her job all together!”
Harry interrupted him. “Stop, Prof—er… Remus, you're being ridiculous. You can't think of your age gap like that. When you're a hundred, she'll be eighty seven! That's not the sort of age gap that's horrifying. If she were twenty or even thirty years younger than you, I'd understand that reluctance. You being a werewolf has made your looks age prematurely, but that doesn't matter either.”
Lupin looked like he wanted to deny the point Harry had made but couldn't refute his logic. Harry continued, “As for the second point, you may be a werewolf, yes, but you have Wolfsbane to prevent you from hurting her, and while she may be an Auror, you are known to be a good, intelligent man who taught at Hogwarts for a year without infecting anyone, and an Order member who's fighting for the Light.”
He shook his head slowly as he considered Harry's words. He went in for the kill. “You were denied friends and normal human contact for your entire childhood until my dad, Sirius, and Pettigrew showed you that you could have them. Then you lost them and you started believing you didn't deserve anyone's love or friendship. Tonks wanted to prove otherwise again, but you kept trying to prove her wrong and reject her. Apparently, you pushed too far and she found someone to have a whirlwind romance with. She was prepared to love you through all your doubt and self-hatred, and you made her run away.”
Lupin was now visibly upset. “I—I didn't understand it, but now I do. I made her run away when all I had to do to find everything I wanted was to say yes. No wonder she found someone.”
Deep in thought, he said goodbye to Mrs Weasley just as she came back with Harry's food, and left. She turned to Harry. “Thank you, dear. I've been trying to get him to understand that for over an hour now. It's a hard lesson to learn, but now he seems on his way to understanding it.”
He smiled at her as he dug into his food, planning to fuck Nymph extra hard and tell her all about his mind games with Lupin. Of course, that went out the window when he spotted Crookshanks saunter past. Hermione was here. He had come up with the beginnings of a grand plan over the past three weeks, and part of it involved Hermione. She was scary smart, yes, but she had a blind, unwavering loyalty to authority figures. If he played it right, he could get her on his side and under his control. If he could manage it, he'd have her as his willing slave. If not, an unwilling one would do. First, however, he had to talk to her and Ron about a few things he'd come up with to start the ball rolling.
Once he'd finished the food, he handed the empty plate to Mrs Weasley with a smile and headed upstairs. He knocked on Ginny's door, and he opened it when she called out, “Yeah?”
He had a split second to see Ginny at a makeshift vanity, brushing her hair, and see Hermione reading on a camp bed, before the latter rushed at him and near squeezed the life out of him, screeching his name.
He laughed and hugged her back, swinging her around in a circle before setting her down again. Her cheeks were flushed and she had a slightly bemused smile when he saw her again, and he congratulated himself. He wanted to make her believe that he had feelings for her, and the best way to get that started was to make her feel girly when he did things like that, and make her analytical mind start to wonder why she felt like that.
“I can't believe you're here already!” she exclaimed. “We didn't think you'd be here until the morning!”
Harry smiled crookedly at her and noticed her blush reappearing again. “Well, Dumbledore needed my help to get the new potions professor to agree to the job, and it didn't take as much time as we thought it would, so now I'm here. It's a good thing, actually, because I've been wanting to talk to you and Ron about something important. Can you come with me?”
“Of course, Harry! I always have time for you,” she said, then blushed when she realised what she'd said. This might be easier than he thought. They walked out of the room, and Harry noticed happily that Ginny looked annoyed that he hadn't even acknowledged her.
They entered Ron's room, and the occupant saw Harry and grinned. “It's about time you got here, mate.”
Harry grinned back, but knew that Ron had pushed all his jealousy under the surface for the time being. He had to be careful about what he told Ron. “Yeah, well I'm here now. No more Dursleys for a year.”
Ron motioned for him to sit down, and only then did he notice Hermione's presence beside him. “Hi,” he said, his ears going red when he noticed that she was in her nightgown with a thin robe over the top. Hermione just rolled her eyes at his reaction. “Hello, Ronald.”
Harry broke into their awkwardness. “I wanted to tell you both something that Dumbledore told me at the end of last year. He told me then that I wasn't allowed to tell anyone, but tonight he said that I was allowed to tell you two.”
His two friends instantly became more serious, and Harry continued, “It turns out that the prophecy we were trying to protect in the Department of Mysteries was originally witnessed by Dumbledore. When I got back to Hogwarts after… after Sirius,” he stopped here as though still broken up about it, then continued with a perfect tremor in his voice, “Dumbledore showed me a memory of Trelawney speaking the prophecy. It says, ‘The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies… and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not… and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives… the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…’”
Harry stopped suddenly as he pretended to only just notice how jealous Ron looked. Hermione looked between the two before also seeing what Harry had. Harry cleared his throat in an awkward fashion before changing the subject slightly. “Anyway, that's what I've been stressing over all summer. The other thing Dumbledore said tonight was that OWLs would be arriving sometime in the morning.”
Hermione started before suspiciously narrowing her eyes at Harry, then allowed him to change the subject. A good fifteen minutes later, Hermione left with another odd look at Harry, and then ten minutes after that, Harry let his magic put everyone but himself and Hermione into a gradual but very deep sleep. He exited Ron's room and deliberately stepped on the squeaky step outside Ginny's room. He waited until he heard movement from inside the room before continuing down to the kitchen, and sat himself down on the top step outside with the door ajar so anyone would be able to see him.
It was five minutes later when Hermione joined him, silently laying her head down on his shoulder. It was quiet for a time until Hermione spoke up. “Something else happened, didn't it? Something that's worried you more than the prophecy Dumbledore told you.”
He gave a broken laugh. “You always seem to know when something's wrong, don't you?”
A look from Hermione made him smile half-heartedly. “No changing the subject, I know.” He gave a sigh. “When Dumbledore showed me the prophecy, it was the second time I'd seen it. There was about a minute between one part of the battle and the next where I was separated from everyone, and I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. What Dumbledore showed me was only about two thirds of the true prophecy. The rest goes, “The Light has lost its way, and the Dark even more so… the One is the best of both worlds and will bring balance back to the Wizarding World… the Golden Age of Wizarding Britain approaches, with the One at the helm…”
Hermione looked horrified. “Dumbledore… lied? But—but why? And what does the last third mean?”
“This is what I spent the summer thinking about. The first part makes the Voldemort situation seem like an almost impossible battle and like this Chosen One character needs to sacrifice themselves to even get a chance at winning. ‘Neither can live while the other survives’ is the phrase that you focussed on, isn't it?”
Hermione nodded. Harry continued, “Me too, at first, but then when I wrote the entire thing down to try going phrase by phrase, I figured out that it's the phrase before that, ‘Either must die at the hand of the other’, plus the last third of the prophecy, that made it all start to make sense.” He was loving how interested Hermione was getting by the total bullshite he was weaving into an intricate web. “The word ‘either’ implies two people or parties, and ‘other’ could imply that the two people or parties might destroy each other or, the meaning I ended up with, that there's a third person or party who must kill either of the other two parties.
“Then, the ‘neither can live while the other survives’ phrase starts to make sense, because if the third party only destroys one of the other two, the third party cannot survive, so even though the phrase before suggests that only one of three parties must die, the latter phrase suggests that if only one dies, the other will betray the third party, and said party will then die. Dumbledore didn't show me the last third of the prophecy because it's the key that unlocks the rest of the prophecy. The Light and the Dark are the two parties which are trying to destroy each other, and both are horribly wrong in their skewed ideals, both need the help of the Chosen One if they want to completely succeed, it's why Voldemort wanted to get the prophecy and why Dumbledore became my magical guardian yet placed me with the Dursleys. Both Lords of the sides are trying to find ways to control me and win their war.”
Hermione had her hands covering her mouth, and her eyes were wide in horrified understanding. “That explains everything that's happened in our Hogwarts years! Dumbledore must have set up that Philosopher's Stone fiasco, not to trap Voldemort, but to test your capability to defeat Voldemort and further your hatred of him. And you told me that Voldemort tried to get you to join him when you were down there. Second year, there are supposed to be Dark artifact wards covering Hogwarts—Hogwarts, A History says so three separate times—Dumbledore must have known about Ginny and the diary all year, and he was there the last time the Chamber was opened, and he had more than enough time to question Myrtle, figure out where the Chamber was, and what was in it, and he let us figure it out for ourselves! He sent you nothing but the Sorting Hat and Fawkes, just enough to let you ‘defeat’ the ‘evil’ hidden there.”
Harry nodded, furrowing his brows in fake thought. “He also was the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot during the last Voldemort war, and he was the only one alive during that time powerful and knowledgeable enough to cast the Fidelius. The caster must choose the Secret Keeper, and only the caster can change who that is. I researched it a couple of weeks ago by wearing a blond wig, sneaking out under my invisibility cloak, and taking the Knight Bus to Diagon.”
She gave him a look that said he shouldn't have risked his safety like that but then said, “So he had to have known Sirius was innocent, but still pronounced him guilty and sentencing him to life in Azkaban, and also that Pettigrew was the Secret Keeper and thus must have known he was the true betrayer of the Potters. After all, when we told him in the Hospital Wing, he didn't at all seem surprised and deliberately hinted that I should use the time turner in a way that might get both of us killed just so that he could test you again.”
Harry nodded. “Fourth year, I didn't actually have to participate in the Triwizard Tournament. I bought a book on the complete history of the event this summer, after I started figuring all this out, and it included the full contract. The book was self-updating so it had the modern contract that last year's participants were entered in. If it had actually been me who entered myself, then I could have forfeited immediately, so long as my magical guardian agreed, but as it was Crouch Junior, his magic was actually the one attached to the contract, not mine, no matter what the parchment actually said, and when I participated in the first task, with my magical guardian's permission, I took his place as his substitute, tying my magic over his to the contract.”
“You told me Dumbledore was your magical guardian,” Hermione said. “How did you know, and how is he not anymore?”
“Remember the will reading?” Harry said. “Dumbledore told the goblin he was, and the goblin said I'd been emancipated the minute he allowed me to participate in the Tournament.”
Hermione looked confused, then her eyes slowly widened. “I didn't remember that until you told me. How could that be?”
“Dumbledore must have tampered with the minds of everyone who attended the reading, except me because he thought I was still under his thumb,” Harry said. “He was probably waiting until it could benefit him to mention it, or just couldn't be bothered to properly Obliviate you all.”
Over the course of the conversation, he had slowly made his expression more and more stressed and worried. “I just don't get it! All my life, all I ever wanted was to have someone to love me, to care for me, and instead all I get is tests, battles, and near-death experiences.”
Hermione took his face in her hands. “You are loved, Harry! I know the Weasleys love you like you were their own, and I'm pretty sure Hagrid sees you as a son-type figure.”
He shook his head as much as he could. “I don't mean like that. The Dursleys already failed horribly at providing parent figures, I don't really want others who try to replace my actual parents.”
Hermione's expression became one of devastated understanding. “I tried with Cho, all I ever heard about her was how pretty she was, how… how great she'd be in bed and elsewhere, but when I tried getting to know her to see if she wanted to maybe get into a serious relationship, all she wanted to talk about was Cedric. She just couldn't get past the fact I'd seen him die and wanted to know if he'd said anything about her in the total of ten minutes I ever interacted with him. It was only these past few weeks that I figured out where I'd gone wrong. I needed someone who knew me already, someone who always went out of their way to help me, no matter what.”
Hermione was looking at him with dawning comprehension, so as her grip on his face slackened slightly, he leaned towards her and kissed her. In the next moment, before she could react, he pulled back and looked as scared as he could. “I-I'm sorry,” he stuttered, then ran off upstairs, leaving Hermione frozen on the doorstep.
He ran up to Ron's room and hid himself under the covers, ready for when Hermione would come after him, as he knew she would. This had been so much easier than he'd thought it would be; she'd sucked up his poor-little-abused-boy-who-just-wants-love act as though it was the most decadent milkshake, after all, and he'd just put the last chocolate shavings on top of it by kissing her, making her feel desirable and girly.
It had taken only about half an hour in total to get her prepared for this advance after three weeks of little to no contact with her. That meant she'd been seriously crushing on him for a while, likely for over a year, and likely on both him and Ron. She had probably convinced herself she was in love with one or both of them, but had mostly given up on either of them ever loving her back, so had tried to content herself with just being their friends. She'd likely had many fantasies where one of them revealed that they'd been in love with her all along and that something had kept them from telling her. Voldemort had made it a point to study many female's minds, so he actually knew how some of them worked, and Harry had just played on every single one of her soft spots and weaknesses to make her believe he was in love with her but afraid to show it for some reason.
Soft footsteps outside the door signalled her presence a few seconds before the handle was turned and the door opened without a creak. He huddled himself up into more of a ball when he felt her eyes on him. Some more, silent, seconds later, she took a deep breath and approached the camp bed he was lying on. “Harry?” she whispered, sitting on the edge of the bed. He shuddered and curled up into an even smaller ball. “Harry, I'm not angry. I was just… surprised that you thought of me that way. I'm not used to being liked like that. My whole childhood I was the bushy, buck-toothed know-it-all who would never have friends, or be pretty and popular, and for the first few years of Hogwarts, I felt the same, even with you and Ron as friends.”
Well that definitely sounded rehearsed. He absent-mindedly wondered how many times she'd fantasised about this exact or a similar conversation late at night before she went to sleep. “I shouldn't have… have kissed you,” he whispered hoarsely, as though barely holding back tears. “Ron likes you, and I don't deserve someone as amazing as you.”
“What?” she said. “He—then why hasn't he said anything?”
“He thinks it's not the right time. He wants you to come to him, begging to be his girlfriend, and even then he said he wanted to wind you up by dating someone else more ‘fun’ before settling for you.”
Silence for a long moment. “How—how dare he!” she said, her voice quivering with anger and only just managing to remain this side of quiet. “I would never stoop so low as to date him if that's the way he thinks I should act! I'll have you know that you're the one that I like, Ronald Weasley never stood a chance!”
Yes, he did, but he hadn't done anything about it and so Harry would take Hermione for himself. He shifted so he was sitting, facing her. “You really like me?” he asked, his voice full of hope.
Hermione blushed madly, but managed to nod. “I do.”
“Why? I mean, I'm nothing special, Hermione. You, you're amazing, beautiful, kind, funny, and absolutely whip-smart; why would you want to settle for a guy like me?”
Perfectly in line with her fantasies, which he was now carefully accessing since he had unlimited eye contact with her. She blushed deeper. “I'm not ‘settling’ for anything. You're incredibly brave and powerful, and so honourable and chivalrous that you're obviously willing to let me be with someone else while you stay my friend. You're also smarter than you make yourself out to be, which I suspect is due to those rotten Dursleys, and your sarcastic sense of humour always makes me want to laugh until my cheeks hurt. I like you, not Ron, who's just going to have to get over this and his immense, self-centred jealous streak before I curse him into oblivion for seeing me as someone to settle for.”
Harry swallowed almost audibly and hesitantly reached out for her hand, which was clutching the blanket to prevent herself from flinging them around in anger. She sucked in a small breath when their skin touched, and she looked down at their joined hands, then into his eyes again. “M-may I kiss you?” he asked like he was fearing rejection. She blushed yet again and nodded, so he carefully leant towards her and kissed her properly, his other hand rising to cup her face. She made a noise and opened her mouth, so he softly stroked her tongue with his and moaned quietly when hers joined his in a gentle dance. They broke it at the same time, looking away and blushing beet-red. It wasn't actually that difficult to get his face to blush, really. All it took was practice in controlling what his metamorphmagus skills could do to his face, and he'd had plenty of practice, plus Nymph's hesitant instructions.
“You… um, you should probably get some sleep,” he said.
She nodded quickly. “Y-yeah, you too.” She got up and went to the door before stopping and turning to him again. “Should we… keep this a secret?”
Harry shook his head. “Why bother? Ron's going to get jealous and angry no matter when we reveal it, and so is Ginny. Mr and Mrs Weasley will be happy for us, I think, and I'll leave it up to you to tell your parents about us. Nothing else except us matters. The people who turn on us were likely to turn anyway at some point.”
She nodded and relaxed. Ah, it had been a test. Women really were such odd creatures. “Well, good night, Harry,” she said.
“Good night,” he replied. “Sweet dreams.”
She smiled brightly. “You too.”
She left the room and closed the door behind her. He waited for a few moments, then relaxed his magic on the other members of the household, allowing all but Ron to slip into a more natural sleep, then opened his trunk to the storage section and climbed in. All that pretending and kissing had made him antsy and horny. Luckily, he had two slaves to take it out on.
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