Disclaimer: I've been trying for years to trade JKR my most worldly possessions (26 cents, a rubber band, and a broken candlestick) but she still wont give me the rights to Harry Potter!

A/N: I wrote this for a friends for her birthday, along with five other fics which I'll post later on. Hope you enjoy.

Fireflies
Chapter One

It was something so unexpected from him that, even today as she remembers back to that hot and sticky June day, she can't help but wonder if she had imagined it all. The only evidence of that day was the small but still beautiful white gold band which had its permanent residence around her frail ring finger.

It had been unbearably hot that afternoon; Harry, Ginny, and her had been sprawled out in front of the dead fireplace, which had long since been used, doing their best to keep cool. Ginny had been lying on her back across the warring rug and around her Harry had draped himself over the lumpy sofa, his arm falling lazily over the edge. She had been curled up at the end of it, book in hand, doing her best to focus on the words written on the pages, rather than the blistering heat that surrounded all of them.

The three had been in these exact positions for more than a few hours by the time anything of actual interested had begun to take place. For the most part they'd been silent, breaking it only momentarily when Harry would mumbled something sweet to Ginny and she was brush his hand away from her cheek, which he'd been stroking quietly the entire time, laughing softly.

She recalls, now, that it had been their seventh year – Ginny's sixth – and they had all rejoined again at Hogwarts, under Professor McGonagall's rule, this time, for their final year. Of course, it hadn't gone smoothly, it never had. The year, their studying, their N.E.W.T's all interrupted when they'd come across new information on a Horcrux.

But now, as the sun shone brighter than ever, hanging alone in the cloudless sky, they were just like every other student at Hogwarts. Bored, hot, and sticky. But, as always, that would never last long.

A small first year boy with matted golden hair came shyly up to the couch she had been seated at. He gave a small, nervous smile and looked down at the floor beneath him.

'Are you,' he took a deep breath, as if this were one of the hardest things he'd had to do, 'Hermione Granger?'

She looked up quickly, unsure as to what this could have been about. She hadn't been made Head Girl, so it couldn't have been about a problem. She never would have admitted it, but when she didn't get a letter congratulating her on becoming the new Head Girl of Hogwarts she'd been only mildly disappointed. She never truly expected that letter to come, not after their sixth year, not after they'd discovered that it was The Dark Lord or Harry Potter in the end.

'Yes,' she replied, unsure. She glanced down quickly at the small number scrawled at the top of the page, 267, and shut it gently.

'I'm supposed to give this to you,' the boy held out his hand, revealing a small, crumpled note of parchment in his palm.

She took it hesitantly from him. 'Who's it from?'

'I'm not supposed to say anything else. Just give you the note. That's what he said,' the boy nodded.

She was curious but uncertain and only mildly aware that Ginny had come up beside her, crouching down to her level beside the sofa. 'Open it,' Ginny smiled, throwing a quick glance in Harry's direction.

The boy rushed off quickly, though she hadn't been paying him any attention anyway. She shrugged and tugged on the sides of the parchment, smoothing it out on her lap before reading. Barely audible, in a scrawl she'd come so used to seeing, as she'd corrected it many times in the past years for various homework checks, was written:

Hermione,

Meet me behind Hagrid's hut. Midnight.

And that was all.

She looked up at Ginny and Harry, as if they could fill in the blanks. And now, looking back, they probably could have, though at the time they'd acted completely nonchalant to the entire ploy.

'What does he want?' she asked, questioning filling her brown eyes. She hadn't seen him all day; he'd somehow disappeared before any of them had gotten down to breakfast. Of course, when she'd asked Harry about it he'd only shrugged and greeted Ginny with a sweet kiss.

'I guess you'll have to go and find out,' Ginny smiled, pleased.

The rest of the day had passed in somewhat of an off way. Whenever one of the four were missing it seemed to through off the whole balance of their perfect little world. She hated it when he wasn't there. She'd always felt like a third wheel with Harry and Ginny, almost as though she were intruding in a private moment. Of course, that was never the case. They loved having her around, but she felt a bit awkward without him there with her to even out the coupling. Neither she nor he had anyone to share their lives with at the time, unlike their two friends, and somehow, when they were together it didn't seem so awkward to be around the couple.

As the day passed slowly, in the exact same way it had begun, she couldn't help but let her mind wander to whatever he had planned at Hagrid's. She couldn't possibly have imagined what was soon to come, though she'd spent most of the afternoon in quiet contemplation.

It was so unlike him to plan anything in secret; he had always been terrible at keeping anything from his friends. And at this thought she couldn't help but smile softly to herself at the thought of him trying to keep Quidditch tryouts from them. She'd known what he was doing late at night when he was practicing for them.

The night especially seemed to drag on just as slowly as a turtle in peanut butter. It was almost agonizing. Ginny had done her best to bring it up whenever possible, and, during some occasions, even when it wasn't at all a subtle change in topic. Since the moment the small boy had arrived with the note the couple couldn't wipe the secretive smile from their lips.

Finally, by the time the common room had cleared of nearly every other Gryffindor, she escaped to her room, sentencing herself to quiet solitude as she awaited midnight. Whether it might kill her or not. And, in all honesty, she had sat completely still on her four poster, watching the door, her stomach in a twist of knots as her mind ran her through all of the heart wrenching possibilities of tonight.

Of course, there were the terrible ones, the ones which involved him telling her he had found the girl of his dreams, the love of his life, the one he'd been waiting for. Or the ones where he would tell her he was sick or hurt, which, in all honesty, she was even more terrified of.

But she wasn't foolish and she wasn't blind. She was a clever witch and she could tell that something had stirred inside of him. Finally, after so many years of waiting, something had gone off in his head. He was finally seeing her in a whole new light, a light she'd longed for him to see her in.

Deep down, though, she couldn't help but look darkly at it. Whether or not he was finally falling for her just as hard as she'd fallen for him all those years ago, there was no way he would have been so bold about it. And so she continued her wait for midnight in a cloud of mingled bliss and edge. Waiting. Always waiting for a moment she knew might never come.