Disclaimer: Harry Potter is owned by J.K. Rowling.

Defying Gravity

By

Embrathiel

Summary: One-shot. Hermione battles against her own reason and comes up against one of her greatest fears. She needs to face it so she can better understand the young man who makes her feel so incredible even without trying to. Absolutely inspired by the song, though in a totally different way than perhaps intended. Hope you enjoy. Absolutely a Harmony fic.

**DG**

Somehow Harry always brought her to great self-revelations, even when he wasn't there. Hermione didn't exactly consider herself the most emotionally developed person around, so when she found herself in situations like this one, she knew it was big. A life changer in fact.

She paced back and forth along the shore of the black lake, eyes dropping to the glittering Firebolt that lay in the grass, with each pass she made. Yes she had knicked it from Harry's trunk, but this was for science and perhaps more, so she wasn't going to feel all that bad about it just yet. Unless she died or became seriously maimed and destroyed the massively expensive broomstick. That could cause some problems of course. Which led to her primary dilemma.

Hermione bloody well hated the thought of flying on a broomstick.

She was terrified. Horrified at the thought of leaving behind the solid ground for the trust of an enchanted piece of wood. It defied physics, it defied sense. It defied everything she had learned up until Hogwarts.

"Yeah and magic in general hasn't made you rethink things at all now has it Granger." She muttered to herself.

One hand tugged on her ponytail; she had gone as far as to put up her hair so that it would stay out of her face while in the air. She hated putting it up because the curls didn't exactly behave with normalcy and so poofed outward making it look like someone had electrocuted her hair in to a fluffy mess of a comet's tail behind her head. But she had done it on her way down to the lake.

Problem was, putting up her hair in preparation for flying wasn't exactly going to help her get in to the air, as she was finding.

"It's about committal though damn it." She said to no one in particular. And that was true. Usually if there was something she didn't want to do, Hermione would get the first step ready, or a piece that was indirectly related, and do that. It was like nudging open the door without charging right through. A beginning, a way to ease in to the undesirable process without feeling like she was being forced in to it.

Her black knee-high boots brushed quietly over the blades of grass as she retraced her steps in an endless process. She had worn trousers and a heavy blouse beneath her robes in anticipation of the cold air. She had planned and considered, determining that flying out over the lake was the best option because if she fell, it was easier to cushion water and land safely than it was to do so with the ground. She could swim if she had to and she had applied preemptive warming charms to her clothes. She had even planned for when Harry would be out of his room but not in the tower, so she could knick his Firebolt without anyone being any the wiser.

Hermione had planned and planned, but it wasn't helping.

"Why did you even have to act as if this is a secret, you know Harry would have let you borrow it. He probably would even offer to teach you if you would just ask him." That was true. She had expressed her fear of flying several times in the last three years since their flight on Buckbeak, and Harry had offered several times to take her for a gentle flight.

When she was honest with herself though, Hermione knew what her problem was. It wasn't even that acknowledging the problem was difficult. Knowing why and what she had to do was what had brought her here. Conquering a fear however was an entirely different challenge.

Flying was, unsafe, it was risky, it was perilous. And Harry loved it. Not only that but he was a natural. He took to the skies like some kind of avian god and even though it terrified her every time he did it, Hermione could not deny the pure joy that was so clearly plastered across his handsome face. It was a mystery to her how he could enjoy something that she found so frightening. She did not like defying physics. Magic as a whole was rather good at that, but this was different. Learning to Aparate had similarly been difficult for her, but Hermione had told herself that since there was less obvious motion involved, she could trust her will power and make it through. It still wasn't her favorite, but she could manage well enough.

Ron loved flying too, but Harry was an entirely different story. When he was in the air it was as if none of the evil things that had plagued him all his life were there to ruin his day. He seemed happy and joyful and childlike in that freedom.

And maybe that was the key word. Freedom.

So much of Harry's life had been filled with either people trying to control him, people trying to hurt him, or him being trapped in the house of his relatives. Maybe flying was the escape from all that.

And Hermione had to know.

She had been a prat to him this past year. Honestly she distrusted the potions book he had found at the beginning, but it was more than that. She was confused and afraid. She was interested in both Harry and Ron, but for entirely different reasons, and one of them seemed a little off to her. This, had all been an attempt to try and get in the head of her raven haired friend. If she could understand him, perhaps she could understand how she felt about him.

Stopping abruptly she dropped to the grass, wrapping her arms about her legs and resting her chin upon her knees as she looked towards the setting sun across the water. Absently she slid her fingers across the suede leather of her boots while she considered her current predicament. The way she felt about Ron was, odd. They always bickered and part of her latched on to that as a constant. As awful as he could make her feel, Hermione had just assumed it would always be there and attributed it to them being meant for each other like some cutely bickering old couple from a story. So when he had gone to the arms of Lavender it had shown Hermione that it might not always be there to torment her and her teenage worries about love had said she wasn't worthy of even that.

Harry though. That was different. She'd been awful to him in a way because he confused her. The poor thing was clueless about girls and that was partially how she knew that this thing with Ginny wasn't something he was at all sure about. Oh yes they kissed and all, but Harry and Ginny had barely been friends before that and they shared so little. Her talks with Ginny about him had shown her that the girl while not knowing many things about Harry as a person was still adoring the hero she had read about and who had saved her back in her first year of school. It was based on physical attraction on Harry's part and hero worship from Ginny. It wouldn't last.

But there was something about herself and Harry, how they interacted, how they fought, how they somehow understood each other in the oddest of situations. They argued just like anyone else, but it was usually because she was pushing him or because he was being thick. Even if he did not realize it, Harry always trusted her opinions and ideas. He was cute and probably the kindest boy in school aside from maybe Neville. Harry clearly hadn't been treated all that well as a child and yet he cared about helping people. He stood up for her when it mattered and even when it didn't. They relied upon one another in the most dire of situations.

"He trusts you after all. Maybe it is time you trust him."

And there it was.

Could she put aside her terror and allow herself to do this simply because he did? It was a slippery slope, but not necessarily an evil one. If not Harry, who could she trust.

The answer was obvious. And if she was going to understand and trust him, she had to do it properly, without reservation.

Hermione stood, brushing herself off and drew her wand. With a few deft flicks she canceled her warming and protective charms. She raised her hands and removed the tie from her hair, allowing it to spring back to place. With firm steps she moved up beside the broom coloured so well for a Gryffindor.

"Up."

Her voice was far more firm than she would have expected, and the broom snapped up in to her hand.

She hated defying physics.

Hermione slung a leg over the shaft of the broom and straightened her robes.

She hated defying the friendship they had built so well over the last years with her unnecessary rudeness.

Before her, the sun cast rippling waves of light across the lake, showing her the path forward across the waters.

Hermione hated defying the rules, she hated breaking convention.

Her hands tightened about the broom before her and Hermione took a breath.

But it was time to trust Harry in the one thing he loved most.

It was time to defy gravity.

She didn't close her eyes. She didn't scream.

Hermione kicked off from the ground she held so sacred and shot forward in to the setting sun like a bullet borne on the winds of determination.

The wind whipped back her hair and robes, stinging her eyes and threatening to yank her off the broom.

Beneath her the waters of the black lake looked dark and foreboding, but for once she didn't care. Her stomach screamed in protest and threatened to remind her what her dinner would taste like mixed with bile.

But Hermione didn't care.

What wouldn't she do for Harry? That was the real question. Was there anything that wouldn't be worth the risk, worth the trial, worth the self-discovery?

No, there probably wasn't.

She had a new trial before her that didn't seem all that terrifying even though it probably should. She had to make her case to Harry, show him what he meant to her.

She had been afraid to fly, afraid to fall, afraid to love.

She had to defy gravity, she had to defy her fears, she had to defy everything that held her back from being her whole self.

And as Hermione managed to perform a basic turn, she thought she might be feeling even a sliver of how amazing Harry felt while he was in the air.

No, nothing would come at too high a cost to keep her from the person she had been falling in love with since they arrived at the school of magic.

"Defy your limits girl, he's worth it. You are worth it."