Author's Note: Hello. Well, I might seriously piss some people off by saying that this is like the last chapter. I had originally planned on panning out the story until the end of their school year, but seeing as the focus here is not really on the whole "omfg Sirius Black wants to kill Harry" angle, I don't need to painfully draw out the storyline until they rescue Sirius. So we're closing things up. I felt, as the author of this story, that it was necessary to finally wrap things up because otherwise I'd be beating a dead horse and you guys would get annoyed. You might be annoyed already at my decision, but by the end of the chapter hopefully you'll understand the pace at which all the major questions will be answered.

Also, on a different note that might make you hate me less, be prepared for a new story to come out soon-ish (obviously HHr, and it's AU, too). I'm really excited about it :)

This last chapter is so delayed because I'm participating in NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month. Basically, the challenge is to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. So you can see how that takes away my time. And sanity.

How to Love

Chapter Fifteen: That Someone Was You

"Here's some more chocolate," Harry offered, handing the rest of his chocolate over to the pale-faced Hermione.

She nodded silently in thanks and took the chocolate, then ate it slowly but gratefully, keeping a hollow stare focused on the closed wardrobe where the boggart was residing. Her hands were shaking as she held the bar of chocolate.

Lupin's jaw was clenched tightly and he took a seat a few feet away from them at a small desk. "We could stop," he insisted from the desk. "Both of you are doing very well."

Harry had certainly improved; he didn't hear his parents' deaths as often when the boggart – disguised as a Dementor – appeared from the wardrobe, and although the air was still frozen when it was around, he'd managed to think of the few happiest moments of his life that fought against it. While he wasn't proud of himself just yet, when he looked at how both of them were doing, Harry was admittedly the better one at the Patronus charm.

Hermione had also improved. She managed to produce a decent Patronus Charm when the boggart came her way. Yet she hadn't done as well as Harry…. While she remained strong for the first several rounds, she always struggled near the end of each lesson. The Dementors weakened her, and so Lupin still kept a huge supply of chocolate bars at her side. He had told her that it was unlikely for her to have to fight off Dementors one by one for an hour, so that kept her confidence up enough to keep showing up for lessons. However, she'd always stare at the wardrobe after every lesson with a face paler than usual and wide, haunted eyes that made her chocolate brown eyes turn to ice, as though the Dementors had frozen that part of her, too. She never told Harry what she'd seen or heard, but it was enough to knock her down and make her go faint after too many encounters with the boggart.

"No, I want to try again," Hermione said weakly, not turning to look at him. "Please, Professor, I can do this."

"I think we should stop," Harry told her, handing her another bar of chocolate that she took mutely.

"No," she protested in that same weak voice. "No, I can do it, I really can."

"We know you can," Lupin said quietly, "and we can try again tomorrow." Then he turned to Harry and nudged his head towards the door, motioning that Harry was to escort her out.

"I saw that," Hermione said.

Harry shrugged at a confused Lupin and grabbed Hermione's arm to help her up. She only half-carried herself up, which left the rest of the small amount of weight her body held up to Harry to carry, which didn't take much effort even if it was partially dead weight.

"Let's go back to the common room," Harry said softly.

Hermione didn't look at him as he helped her out of the room. Lupin said, "Watch after her, Harry," after them, to which Harry nodded to show that he had heard him.

They were halfway down the corridor, Hermione weakly at his side, when she collapsed. His grip on her loosened completely as she fell to the floor with a soft, yet somehow deafening, thud.

"Hermione!" Harry screamed after her, kneeling beside her and shaking her shoulder because it was the only thing he could think of to do.

He looked around, as though waiting for a conveniently placed Healer was going to appear out of nowhere. But it turned out that no Healer was needed, because Hermione began to stir seconds later and tried to sit upright, wincing and holding the side of her head tenderly. Harry silently helped her lean against the wall at the edge of the corridor.

"Are you alright?" he asked breathlessly as she winced again, still not looking at him.

"Oh, I'm fine," she said quietly and in a much weaker voice.

"Do you want to go to the Hospital Wing to get checked out?"

Hermione shook her head, which seemed to be a bad idea on her part, since she inhaled deeply and let out a small, "Ouch," that made Harry want to carry her to the Hospital Wing, even if she'd protest the whole way there.

"You don't look so good," he observed.

He lifted one hand and tenderly touched the spot on her head that collided with the floor. She winced but didn't push him away. There wasn't a bump there yet, but Harry wouldn't have been surprised if one appeared later on. He put his hand back on his knee as he sat beside her.

"Are you sure you're okay?" he asked again.

"Yeah, I've fallen from worse heights," she told him weakly.

"I don't mean from that."

He could tell from her widening eyes and parting lips that she understood exactly what he had meant.

"What do you see and hear when the boggart goes near you?" Harry asked quietly, trying to sound as sincere as possible; the last thing he wanted was to scare her away. It bothered him that he didn't know what she was forced to relive when the Dementors were nearby.

There was a still silence for a few moments, where Hermione finally turned to look at him and he looked right back at her. She finally sighed and bit her lip, then said, in a shaky voice, "I hear…I hear a lot of things. One of them sounds is my mum screaming."

Harry opened his mouth to speak, but she added, "I know, the only time I would've heard her was the day I was born, and I wouldn't have remembered that, but…but I know that it must be her. And it's horrible…because I killed her, Harry."

"No you didn't," he said immediately. "Don't blame yourself."

"She died from childbirth," Hermione said, shaking her head. "She died from giving birth to me. How could I not blame myself? She probably came from the sound background that I did. No doctors around to save her…."

"The same background, with no doctors?" Harry asked. "What do you mean? Why – why wouldn't there have been doctors around?"

"Because if she came from the same background," Hermione explained slowly, in a voice weaker and shakier than ever, "then she must've grown up homeless."

Homeless? Harry wasn't sure that he had heard right at first, but then he saw Hermione's weak, half-opened eyes and her trembling bottom lip that she wasn't lying, and that he had heard her clearly.

"Oh," was all he could manage to say, because just imagining a Hermione living on the streets without a home or parents to care for her, was enough to constrict his throat and prevent him from really saying anything.

Hermione looked down at the ground of the corridor and added, "I didn't want you to know at first, but…it's nice to just…to tell someone, you know?" so casually that it nearly broke his heart in two.

"Yeah, I suppose," he said, thankful that his voice was loosening now that Hermione didn't look like she wanted to be pitied now that she'd revealed a major part of her background; she began to compose herself…her bottom lip remained still and her eyes were more alert. Even her voice was less shaky.

"Maybe I shouldn't have told you," she said, looking at him with a raised eyebrow.

"No, no, I'm glad you did," he said urgently.

Hermione nodded slowly, turning back to stare at the floor again. "Since my dad passed before I was born I don't hear both my parents, which is what you hear…I couldn't imagine that. Then again, my parents weren't married, so I'm not sure about how good or bad their relationship was...if they would've raised me together. They had different last names, according to that family tree."

"What – I mean – how did you survive without your mum around?" Harry asked as tentatively as possible.

"Raised by different homeless families," Hermione said indifferently. Then she continued, as though in a fixated trance: "A young couple living around the Underground taught me to read and write when I was about seven, and I stuck around long enough to learn math and all that other school rubbish when I was eight. I had a knack for math and science, so I became a tutor when I was ten. Then I could provide for myself once I cleaned up my appearance and got a well-paying job as a tutor for kids my age. You wouldn't believe how much some families will pay."

"So you were off on your own when you were ten?" Harry asked, shocked and trying to absorb all of this at once.

Hermione nodded, wincing again at the pain her head had endured just a few minutes ago.

"But – how?"

This time, she shrugged. "Just focused on surviving, really. I mean, I had enough money from tutoring to buy food and some clothes, but that alone couldn't keep me alive."

"Why not?" Harry asked, although he felt shamefully naïve when she shot him a look.

"Well, lack of shelter, for one thing. It rains practically every bloody day in England, which isn't good when Underground security kicks you out and you're constantly outside," Hermione said. "And other homeless people can be very dangerous at times. But after living like that, you get used to defending yourself. You get used to everything. You just have to adapt."

Harry wasn't sure what to say, but words weren't really needed as Hermione rested her head on his shoulder, just as she had done just a few weeks ago. Her right arm reached around and her hand grasped his right arm.

"But now I've adapted to this." He knew that by "this", she meant the magical world. "I can't imagine going back. I don't want to go back. I'd probably be killed."

"Wait – what?" Harry blurted out, separating himself from her to look at her directly, yet she was still holding on to him.

"Out there, on the streets, they have their own justice system," she said quietly. "And I did something the others aren't too happy with. That was why Professor Dumbledore and I went back to where I had stayed for a few days, so that maybe we could straighten things out. It didn't really work…."

Harry raised one eyebrow and felt his heart begin to pound faster. "What did you do to make them so angry?"

She bit her lip and closed her eyes for a moment or two. She pursed her lips and parted them, over and over again, as though internally debating whether or not to even speak. In the end, she did finally talk.

"Well, I've been wanting to tell someone…the guilt has been eating me alive…someone who didn't know, someone besides Professor Dumbledore and Professor Lupin," she said slowly. "You know how I told you that Anthony was dead?"

He nodded, remembering the moment she told him this and walked away.

"Well, I…Harry, I killed him."

Harry felt himself moving further away from her with his heart racing even faster and his hands shaking. "You what?" All this time, she had killed him?

"By accident!" she pleaded. "By accident – by magic, when I didn't know how to use it! This is why I don't trust people, because then I end up telling them everything and – Harry, I didn't mean to!"

"By magic?" Harry repeated, no longer moving away from her but not daring to shorten the distance between Hermione and himself. "What do you mean?"

Hermione was breathing heavily when she said, "Anthony was about our age, a couple years older, but he'd already gotten into the habit of drinking alcohol – from his father, you see…and he'd get really mad…and I mean really mad…and once time, he came at me and – and he tried to strangle me using rope."

She then gestured to her neck, where Harry had remembered the mysterious – or, no longer mysterious anymore – line circling her throat. So that was how it happened….

"And then," she continued in a breathless and shaky voice, as though she was being attacked all over again, "I wasn't even sure what happened. The rope released me and went back on him and…and I had no idea what had happened. Moments later, though, Professor Dumbledore showed up and told me everything. And that's why I'm so determined to learn everything I can about magic…so that I can control my powers. So that I don't hurt anyone anymore."

Then she looked at him and in that moment, her normally hardened features softened and her eyes were warm and her cheeks were flushed and she looked like a different person. "So now you know."

As she looked back down at the floor, Harry found himself moving back to her side and she automatically returned her head back to his shoulder, which was where it seemed to belong. She kept looking at the floor for a long time…Harry wasn't even sure how long they were waiting there in the corridor, remaining very still beside each other.

So she'd told him everything. Out of all the possibilities he had thought of, he'd never really thought of her being homeless. He felt more protective of her than ever now, and every little noise in corridors beyond theirs made him pull her closer to him, which she surprisingly didn't seem to mind. He didn't ever want her to go back to living without a roof above her head. He didn't want her going anywhere, really.

While Harry hadn't grown up with the greatest childhood either, he couldn't possibly imagine a life like hers. He'd hated living in a cupboard, but it was better than no cupboard at all. He hadn't enjoyed living with the Dursleys, but at least they kept him alive, whereas all Hermione had ever thought about was survival.

"Harry," Hermione said softly after what seemed like forever.

"Hermione," he said back expectantly.

"I've never met anyone like you, you know that?"

Harry turned to face her but didn't pull away. He could see every freckle under her warm brown eyes and across her small nose.

"What do you mean?" he asked with raised eyebrows.

"Well, you're still Captain Curious," she said with a genuine laugh, "but you actually listen." Then her soft features become very serious, as she continued: "And no matter what I've said or done, you never left. You were never pushed away. After what I've been through, you don't know how much that means to me, Harry."

As she spoke, her warm breath was hitting his face. His heart was beating faster again, but not for the same reason it had been racing a few minutes ago. His neck and cheeks were warm…had someone somehow increased the temperature in the corridor?

"And I've never met anyone like you," he said in a near whisper, as though he were afraid someone was going to overhear him, and his words were only for Hermione's ears.

And then before he knew it, her face was leaning towards his. Harry had never kissed a girl before, but somehow, as he softly pressed his lips against hers, he felt as though this was exactly what it was supposed to feel like…no, it was even impossibly better.

It wasn't those passionate kisses he'd seen in movies, nor was it a soft little peck or brush. It was simple and perfect. And once it ended, they couldn't seem to separate too much, so their foreheads remained touching as Harry smiled at her and she smiled back with lips that, he had discovered, were as soft as her expression had become.

He leaned down towards her and kissed her again because the smile on her face brightened up the entire corridor and made her warm chocolate eyes and rosy cheeks look ten times prettier. When they parted from yet another simple and perfect kiss, Hermione said, "I really like you, Harry."

The temperature in the corridor had somehow gotten even warmer as she said this, and Harry found himself replying with, "I really like you, too," with a stupid smile on his face.

"You know, I feel like a different person now that I've met you."

"Is that a good thing?" he asked as he bent down to gently kiss her on the cheek. When he leaned back, he saw that she was beaming at him.

"Yes, it is" she said brightly. "I…I didn't like who I was before."

"Why not?" His brows knitted together in confusion, yet he remained just as close to her as he had been.

"I wasn't willing to let anyone really know me," she admitted. "But now I've finally opened up to someone... And Harry?"

"Hmm?" he asked, looking at her expectantly.

"I'm really glad that someone was you."

Author's Note: The End. I hope you guys enjoyed this story; I know I certainly enjoyed writing it :) Sorry if the ending was slightly fluffy-ish…I just couldn't help it xD And I know this story is called "How to Love", yet Hermione says that she only "really likes" Harry; and also, they're not like totally making out but rather having little kisses. This is all because they're only in their third year. Trying to keep this PG, you know how it is. But anyways, again, I hope you enjoyed reading the story. It's been a fun and interesting journey. Thank you to everyone who has read, reviewed, etc. the story :)