A/n- Ahh...just something I wrote in chemistry class, who cares about the structure of an atom, anyway?
Prompt Used- Quote#28 from Huge TV Show Quotes Bucket challenge on HPFC.
Hope You Like it.
Disclaimer- Yeah, right.
Deliberate Mistakes.
I'll just keep on making the same mistakes
hoping that you'll understand
Hermione didn't know how someone could be this uncoordinated, especially someone who could fly a broom well enough to escape a fire breathing dragon.
"It's been three hours, Hermione," Harry said in a frustrated voice, "I've stepped on your toes a million times, dropped you twice and possibly killed the very art form of dance. I don't think I can get any better but I'm certain I can get worse, we should just give up."
A part of her danced up and down with glee, the rational-pain feeling- toe hurting- back killing-part, but something inside of her, the crazy Gryffindor, probably, was not ready to give up.
Not yet.
No matter how much her dying feet wanted her to.
"No," she said with as much conviction she could manage, which, considering she was tired, hungry and enduring possibly broken toes, wasn't much, "We are not giving up, Harry, for Ginny,"
He snorted, "Yes, because Ginny's the one who wanted me to learn ballroom dancing."
"Okay," she replied, "So, it was Mrs Weasley's idea, but it's Ginny and Dean's wedding, you are one of the groomsmen, you need to know how to dance and not look like a monkey trying to scratch itself while doing it,"
Hermione didn't think her verdict was too harsh, and going by the look on Harry's face, he didn't either.
But she still didn't like how frustrated he looked, sitting on the floor against the wall in her living room.
She walked towards him and sat down on his right, and her feet thanked in her the most sarcastic tone she'd ever heard by telling hr how much they appreciated being stepped on and poked while dancing in heels.
Then she wondered if she'd hit her head too hard when Harry had dropped her because she was talking to her body parts.
She was pretty sure that she had.
"So, how are you doing?" she asked him, and he turned his face around to look at her with those green eyes of his.
Eyes that she could easily get lost in, so green and so beautiful she could cry, combined with his messy black hair she just wanted to run her hands through and those thin lips that she wanted to kiss, it made her eyes really happy to look at him.
Just. A. Friend., she repeated in her head again, trying to get her thoughts to combine with what her rational brain very well knew.
Harry Potter was Just. A. Friend.
"Right now I'm wondering if dancing is really the way I want to die," he said, bringing her out of her mental argument, "but otherwise I'm good."
She rolled her eyes at him and controlled the urge to uncontrollably laugh even though his joke wasn't that funny.
"No, I mean about Ginny getting married and all," she said, determined to have him talk to her about this because he Ron, his other best friend wasn't really clued in about "feelings and stuff," as he would call it.
Harry looked surprised at her question, as if Ginny's wedding bothering him wasn't something he'd even considered, which she assumed was an answer in itself.
"It's been a long time since we broke up, Hermione, "he said, "I'm just happy she's happy."
Hermione tried to suppress her glee at the thought that Harry wasn't still mooning over Ginny, and then repeated Just. A. Friend. , in her head.
Just like she did every time butterflies took flight in her stomach whenever he entered the room or touched her or talked to her.
Just. A. Friend.
She reminded herself that they could never be anything more.
Just. A. Friend.
She couldn't risk their friendship because of some stupid feelings.
Just. A. Friend.
This wasn't a movie or a book and they weren't the geeky girl and famous jock.
Just. A. Friend.,
No one will ever know how hard it'd been for her to be in his arms for the last three hours with almost no space between them and for her to not reach up and kiss him like she'd wanted to for the last three months.
Just. A. Friend.
She knew it was unhealthy and un-Hermione-ish to not deal with a problem head on, but the thing is people who say that you can't run away from your problems - well, they just weren't running fast enough, and they weren't her.
Just. A. Friend.
The constant repetition of that phrase had been the only thing stopping her and getting some rational thoughts into her brain instead of hormones and longing.
Well, that and Harry's constant stepping on her toes.
"Come on, let's do this again one more time," she said standing up, and he looked at her like she was crazy.
Which, she probably was.
'No probability about it, you definitely are,' her toes told her.
Woohoo, talking to body parts again, and the award for the craziest lady on earth goes to none other than Hermione Granger.
He stood up, and held out his hand for her, she took it and led him to the centre of the room.
"Okay, if you can listen to Professor Binns go on and one about goblin wars, you can do this, too," she said, and then took a deep breath to calm herself down.
He laughed as he placed on hand on her waist and held the other, "I really don't see the comparison, Hermione, care to explain?"
"Well, it's what I tell myself when I have to do something very hard, makes it easier because listening to him go on and on about those stupid wars is possibly the hardest thing I've ever had to do," she replied, not being able to stop the mentally high five her crushing-on-harry self had given her over making him laugh.
He appeared more relaxed as they started to move again, and she looked down at their feet for two reasons, first, to check his movement; second and more importantly, to avoid looking in his eeys and saying or doing something she might regret later.
Like sigh, or smile like a love-ridden dork.
He was getting better, she realised.
When she looked back up again, masochist that she was, she found him staring at her, his eyes unreadable.
Something, though she couldn't recognise, she knew she mirrored.
Just. A. Friend., she repeated in her mind.
"Just a what?" he asked, now frowning, and that was when she realised she'd spoken out aloud.
"Nothing," she said, but knew immediately that he didn't believe her.
"No," he said, and she realized that they'd stopped moving, even though he still held her, "You said, 'just a friend,' what does that mean, Hermione?"
She said nothing, she didn't know how to when he was staring at her with a hard look on his face.
He stared at her for a moment, and it terrified her that she couldn't tell what he was thinking, but something told her that he knew exactly what she'd meant when she'd spoken those words out loud.
He pulled her towards him, and to her surprise, twirled her and dipped her perfectly, moving flawlessly, and doing what she'd been trying to teach him for the past three and a half hours.
He suddenly stopped and stared in her eyes, whispering "I got it the second time you taught me,"
"Why?" she asked, only managing that one word but trying to convey all her questions in that one word, why had he been pretending? Why had he spent the last three hours learning what he already knew? And why had he dropped her and continued to step on her toes when he clearly knew better?
The last part was asked by her toes, but she told them to shut it.
"For a really smart girl, Hermione," he said, with a small smile on his lips, "you sure can be thick sometimes."
She stared at him, the wheels in her brain running, as she tried to solve this riddle like she did everything else, with logic and evaluation.
Why would a boy spend three hours with a girl, his best friend, pretending to be bad at dancing when he clearly wasn't?
To hold her and be near her of course, the logical part of her brain replied, then shut up, as her whole being realised what it meant.
She really could be thick sometimes.
In that moment, she didn't know what else to do but to reach up and kiss him, so that was exactly what she did.
She kissed him like she needed to breathe and he was air.
"You make the best mistakes, Harry Potter," she told him when they broke apart for actual air.
"And all of them are deliberate," he said with a wink and he leaned in to kiss her again.
A/n- All reviews are appreciated.