+++
Confusion/Clarity
+++
Harry James Potter was easily confused.
It was a bad habit of his, and something he was terrible embarrassed about. He supposed that his confusion was something that he inherited, like his green eyes and black hair. Maybe his father had been unable to follow long streams of words as a child? Or maybe his mother, with her red locks and what he assumed was a nasty Irish temper, had never been fully able to understand why people did the things they did? Harry persistently blamed his confusion on his genes, and therefore never attempted to remedy this character flaw.
With this in mind, it was no surprise that Harry was befuddled when called out of class one spring afternoon, no more than a month before his graduation from Hogwarts. Of course he had no complaints (his normal Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher was ill, and the unwitting understudy was none other than Professor Snape), but curiosity got the best of him as he walked alongside Professor McGonagall to his headmaster’s office. Harry did not say anything to her for fear of sounding incompetent (surely he was told why the Headmaster wanted to see him and Harry had completely forgotten?), instead trailing his feet and shuffling his hands throughout his pockets.
Before long Professor McGonagall stopped at the entrance that Harry had come to know all too well. With a knowing nod, the aged woman murmured the password (“Smelling Salts”), turned on her heel, and walked down the hall back to her awaiting class of First Years.
Harry felt his heart race just a little bit as he stepped cautiously towards the Headmaster, who was currently flipping through what Harry perceived to be a very large, very old Muggle dictionary. Not wanting to disturb the astute man, Harry clasped his weathered hands behind his back, and stood as a solider awaiting order would.
“Harry,” Professor Dumbledore said without turning around. “Please, do take a seat.” His hand motioned to a large chair that rested aside his desk. Harry did so nervously, fingers intertwining and planting themselves in his lap.
“Do you know why you are here?” the white-haired man asked, sitting in a leather-bound seat behind the bulky mahogany desk. His long fingers drummed against the wood, rhythmically, as if the simple beat would give Harry the answer.
“Well… no,” Harry confessed, “though I’m sure that I’m supposed to.”
Dumbledore shook his head. “No Harry. There is no reason why you should know why you are here. Nobody has told you. You have no forewarning as to what I am going to tell you.”
“What are you going to tell me, exactly?”
A chuckle escaped Dumbledore’s weather lips. “I intend to give you some advice.”
“Advice?”
“Precisely. You see Harry, you’ve had very few people in your life that have been able to act fatherly towards you. I daresay the closest thing that you’ve had to a father figure was Sirius Black, who departed to early in your life to make a real difference.”
Dumbledore shifted in his chair, and rung his beard around
his finger. “Graduation is upon us, Mr. Potter. You will soon leave these
grounds that have dealt you some degree of protection in the last seven years.”
He rearranged a stack of papers, peering over the tops of his lenses. “You are
to attend a university, if I am not mistaken?”
“Yes, that’s correct. I’m to attend a Mediwizard school with Hermione in the fall.”
“Miss Hermione Granger. An interesting topic in itself.”
A light dusting of pink appeared across Harry’s cheeks. “Yes. Hermione’s quite amazing.”
Dumbledore held back a chortle. “Amazing does not even begin to cover Hermione Granger. I’ve been teaching for many years at this school, Harry, and I’ve yet to come across another witch with half the talent that Hermione possesses. She may well be the most powerful witch her age ever.”
“Indeed,” a despondently flushed Harry replied.
“She’s also become quite the attractive young woman, has she not?”
The green-eyed boy didn’t answer.
“I take your silence as agreement.”
Harry suddenly found new interest in the back of his hand.
“You friend Ronald Weasley obviously found her very attractive. They dated for the better part of two years, did they not?”
Harry’s head bobbed up and down in affirmation.
“I see. Why on earth did they end their relationship?” Dumbledore inquired, though he knew all too well why the two were no longer together.
Harry shrugged. “Hermione said that they wanted different things. Ron didn’t want her to go to a university after Hogwarts. He thought that they’d get married right out of school and be like…” Harry’s voice trailed off helplessly. “Well, like Ron’s mother and father. And Hermione didn’t want that.”
“Interesting,” Dumbledore replied, knowing full well that this was not the only reason Hermione had broken off her relationship with Ron Weasley. “Tell me Harry, do you ever think about marriage?”
Harry blinked in bewilderment. “Not really. I’m only seventeen, sir. It seems a long way off.”
“You’ve only dated a couple of girls through your seven years here, am I correct?”
“You’re correct. Three in all.”
“Three is quite a small number for a young man as famous as you, Harry.”
The black-haired boy shrugged, his slight confusion growing. “I guess…”
“You never dated Hermione Granger though?”
Harry shifted uncomfortably, suddenly finding his palm irresistibly exciting. “Well… no. It just never seemed right.”
“Yet you do admit that you like her?”
“Well… yes. Wait! When did I admit that I liked her?”
Dumbledore smirked knowingly.
“All right, all right. I do like Hermione.”
“Very interesting. Tell me something, Mr. Potter; why would you choose to be a Healer? With your natural magical powers, why would you not pursue a career as an Auror?”
Harry shrugged. “I like helping people, I guess. And Healers help people.”
Dumbledore feigned a surprised expression. “You could do a great deal of help as and Auror, Harry. Voldemort was not the first Dark Wizard to roam the land, and neither will he be the last. Everybody expects you to become an Auror, Harry, and after our meeting back in your fifth year, I was under the impression that you had the expectation to be one as well.”
“I did,” the young man answered back quickly.
“Why the change of heart?”
“I… I…I…I don’t really know.”
Dumbledore rose to his feet, a determined look plastered on his wizened face. “Harry, I’ve known you since you were born. I’ve watched you struggle through your youth with mentally abusive relatives, and I’ve watched your ascent into adolescence. You don’t know it, but I watch you more than any other student in school. I know what you feel and what you want Harry, and I think its time that you understand those things yourself.”
“Harry, you are gifted in the way of magic, but because of your upbringing, you are terrible in the realm of human interaction. The fact that your longest relationship lasted a period of four months speaks for itself. In addition to misfortune in the area of romance, you are appallingly bad at expressing yourself. I note your fifth year’s reaction to my decision to leave you at your home for a great deal of the summer holidays. You also refuse to let yourself feel a great deal of emotions. I suppose this is to be expected after the passing of your godfather two years ago, but it is no excuse to deny yourself something you should crave; love.”
“In case you really don’t know, you are going to
“Professor…” Harry managed to interject.
The wrinkled man held up a hand to shush the seventeen year old. “Please Harry. This may well be the last time we speak before you leave for school, and I would be remiss as both your Headmaster and as your friend if I did not tell you this. There exists an easy way to remedy your problems. If you simply do what you’ve wanted to do for two years and tell Hermione how you feel, you can go off and be an Auror like you’ve wanted to for the last five years. I would be slipshod if I did not tell you that Hermione has also wondered why you chose to go into medicine, as you never expressed an interest in medicine before you found out her profession of choice. She even took it upon herself to ask me why you decided to take on the task of being a Healer instead of an Auror.”
“She… did?”
“Of course she did. Hermione is worried about you. She, like everybody else I know, believed that you would be an Auror. She wants your happiness, Harry. She craves it like meat craves salt.”
“She…does?”
The Headmaster smiled humbly. “Of course she does. She loves you, Harry. She always has. She lied to you when she said that she broke things off with Ron simply because she feared turning into Molly Weasley. She did fear that, yes, but what she most feared was never being with you.”
“Mr. Potter, I daresay I am a poor excuse for a father figure, but I tell you this now; tell Hermione that you love her before you make the biggest mistake of you life. That, my boy, is my advice. Take it. She’ll thank you for it.”
Silence hung like a thick mist in the air for a few tense moments. But then, suddenly, Harry stood up, murmured a disjointed Thank you, Sir, and ran for the Headmaster’s door.
---
Harry could scarcely register the passing students whispering as he rushed pass them, never stopping once to answer to a stray call of “Harry!” or “Where’s he going so fast?” His eyes, though encased in his heavy frames, were unfocused, and he found his feet trailing heavily on the stone ground.
A familiar voice called out to him, and his feet stopped moving. “Harry? Harry? Where are you off to?” The boy turned around, and looked back to where the voice had come from. There stood a girl with bushy brown hair who, right before Harry’s eyes, turned into a lovely young woman with the same bushy brown hair and chocolate eyes. She looked at him curiously, and smiled. “You’re running as if your life depends on it.”
“Hermione” Harry panted, heart racing, “it does. I don’t want to go to Mediwizard school, Hermione, I want to be an Auror. I want to have a family someday, and I want to have children. But most of all, I want you.” And with that he walked up to the young woman and threw his long arms, making the woman drop the books she was carrying and cry out a very muffled “Harry!”, before his mouth claimed hers.
+++
That evening Hermione sat in Harry’s arms in front of the fire. He looked at her face, the face he has known for so many years, and smiled gently. Even though he didn’t have his glasses on, nothing had ever seemed so clear to Harry James Potter in his entire life.
