Chapter 13: Twenty Questions
The following afternoon, practice was a bruiser. Wood, sensing a shift in the team’s energy—or perhaps just the encroaching gloom of the playoff season—drove them through relentless seeker-tag drills. Harry spent two hours diving, feinting, and near-missed a Bludger that would have sent him spinning into the loch. By the time he landed, his arms were leaden and a fine, cold mist had woven itself into his hair and every layer of his kit.
The walk back to the cabin was silent, shared with Hermione who trudged alongside him, her healer’s bag slung over one shoulder. She’d been a spectator, clipboard in hand, her eyes tracking every strain, every wince. He’d caught her gaze a few times, a silent acknowledgment of the shared exhaustion.It was different from before. Less friction, more… fatigue.Inside, the routine was becoming familiar. The peat fire smoldered, needling the chill.The new quilt was folded neatly at the foot of the bed. Hermione wordlessly reheated the leftover stew from the night before. They ate at the small table, the scrape of spoons and the howl of wind the only conversation.The quiet wasn’t hostile. It was the quiet of two people who had used all their words on the pitch and in the cold.
Harry fetched the Ogden’s. He poured two fingers into each tin cup and pushed one across the rough wood to her.“Thanks,” she murmured, taking a sip that made her shoulders drop half an inch.
He watched the firelight catch the highlights in her disheveled braid. “We should play a game.”
She raised an eyebrow, the gesture lacking its usual full force. “Exploding Snap? I warn you, my deck is temperamental.”
“Twenty Questions.”
A flicker of genuine surprise. “Muggle?”
“Universal.” He took a swallow of firewhisky, feeling it bloom in his chest. “Keeps the mind off the fact that my thighs feel like they’ve been beaten with hammers.”
A small, tired smile.“Alright. You start.”
He thought for a moment. “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”
She laughed, a soft, breathy sound.“You’re taking it literally. I thought we’d just… ask.You know, back and forth. No categories.”
“Even better.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table.The fire popped, sending a shower of orange sparks up the chimney.“Okay. First question. What’s the most embarrassing thing in your healer’s bag right now?”
She didn’t even hesitate.“A copy of Witch Weekly. There was an article on the therapeutic benefits of celebrity gossip for stress relief.It’s research.”
He grinned. “Liar.”
“Your turn.”
He waved a hand. “Hit me.”
She studied him, her warm brown eyes reflecting the flames.“Your first kiss. Tell me about it.”
The question was a gentle probe, but it landed with unexpected weight. He’d expected something about Quidditch, his diet, his training regimen.Not this. He felt a warmth that had nothing to do with the whisky rise up his neck.He looked down into his cup.
“It was after a practice match in my second year with the Magpies’ junior league,” he said, his voice lower. “A girl from the crowd.She must have been sixteen. She asked for my autograph on her programme, and when I leaned in to sign it, she just… kissed me. It was over before I realized it had started.She smelled like broomstick polish and chewing gum.”
He glanced up. Hermione was watching him, her expression unreadable.
“She just wanted the story,” he continued, the admission feeling strangely naked.“To say she’d kissed Harry Potter. It wasn’t about me.Not really.”
Hermione was quiet for a long moment. The wind rattled the windowpane.“That’s… rather sad.”
He shrugged, a practiced, careless motion. “It’s part of the deal.Your turn.My question.” He took a breath. “When was the last time you let someone take care of you?”
She blinked, as if the question were a physical thing she hadn’t seen coming.Her fingers tightened around her tin cup. She opened her mouth, then closed it. She looked into the fire, her profile etched in gold and shadow.“I don’t,” she said finally, the words precise and clean.“I organize. I procure.I manage.Taking care implies a… a surrender of control. A trust that the other person knows what you need without you having to meticulously outline it. My parents try, but they’re muggles.My world is puzzles they can’t see the edges of. And in our world… my friends are brilliant, but they’re busy. And the men…” She trailed off, took a sip. “The men I’ve encountered seem to need more taking care of than they offer.So, I do it myself.It’s easier. It’s cleaner.”
The honesty of it was a stark, cold splash in the warm room.It wasn’t a complaint. It was a statement of fact, as clinical as one of her diagnostic charts.
The silence that followed was different.Thicker. Charged with the things they’d just laid bare—his emptiness masked by fame, her fullness armored by self-reliance. The fire crackled, a log shifting and sending embers skittering across the hearthstone.
Harry looked at her hands, one still wrapped around the cup, the other resting on the table near the loaf of bread. Competent, capable hands, always in motion, always doing. An impulse, raw and unfamiliar, cut through his usual calculated charm.It wasn’t a move.It was a question.
Slowly, he reached across the table.He didn’t take her hand. He simply let his fingertips brush against the back of hers, a whisper of contact against her skin.She went very still. Her breath caught, a tiny, audible hitch in the quiet.He looked up, meeting her eyes. Her expression was wide open, startled, the clinical detachment utterly gone.In its place was a vulnerable, searching confusion.
“Could I try?” he asked, his voice barely above the sound of the wind.
Her gaze dropped to their almost-touching hands, then flew back to his face. A war raged behind her eyes—pride, fear, habit, all screaming for retreat. But the warmth of the fire, the deep fatigue in her bones, the stark loneliness in both their admissions, and the gentle pressure of his fingers created a new, more compelling truth.
Her breath caught, but a heat bloomed inside of her that she could no longer deny.