Disclaimer

Harry Potter and all associated characters, locations and what not belong to J.K. Rowling and whoever she sells the rights to. I have borrowed these characters, locations and what not in order to mess around with them. In some cases I have lifted a piece of dialogue or scene directly from the books as a touchstone. I do not own anything except the plot and I am not making any money from this endeavor. This applies to the whole story.

Warning

There are some references to (severe) child abuse in this story. The story will involve Harry and Hermione in a romantic relationship. If either of these things are not your cup of tea then the back button is up top.

If you have read my other story, Harry Potter and the Last Chance: this story is nothing like that one. I decided to try out a slightly different narrative style and there are no action scenes in this story. Just character driven plot.

In the highest room of a ramshackle house in Devon, Ronald Weasley was absently looking through the most recent letters his two best friends had sent him. Both Harry Potter and Hermione Granger were scheduled to arrive at the Burrow tomorrow. He was looking forward to seeing his friends again, but at the same time it made him nervous.

Ron had spent a large amount of the summer thinking and planning. At sixteen years old Ron was starting to get fed up with his ignorance of the female form. He had spent years looking at girls like Lavender Brown and Susan Bones and wondering what it would be like to to touch and interact with their various body parts. That had been before his oldest brother had brought home the ultimate bird in Fleur Delacour.

Ron prided himself on his strategic skills and gladly demonstrated them to anyone foolish enough to challenge him to a game of chess. He had, naturally, applied this talent to the thorny problem of how to get under a girl's robes. After a few days of trying to work out a comprehensive set of tactics, Ron had come to an alarming conclusion: he didn't even have an idea of where to start. The idea of walking up to a girl like Lavender or Susan made him break out into a cold sweat, even when he was sitting in his own room just imagining it. The humiliation he would experience if they rejected him became all he could see. Ron was honest enough with himself to admit that girls with Lavender's or Susan's looks would have enough options that he would need to come up with a master strategy to get them to even look at him. This was where he had started going around in circles: he had no experience by which to judge how effective a plan might be and he would never get that experience if one of his dream-girls publicly slapped him down; his image would be permanently ruined. He had considered what Harry would do, but that way only led to frustration. The Boy-Who-Lived could get any girl he wanted if he set his mind to it. Ron had taken a moment to imagine how many broom cupboards he would have visited if he had that kind of tactical advantage in wooing the opposite sex.

Ron would still have been stuck had he not had a marvelous bolt of an idea. It had come to him while he was wondering how other men might tackle this problem. He had been grousing to himself about how someone with his natural insight and enough experience would be able to rule the roost at Hogwarts. The problem was he couldn't think of a single girl that he could gain that experience with. That was when it had whispered through his brain: Hermione's a girl.

Ron had been floored by that epiphany for a while. How on earth had he missed it? Hermione's a girl. It was the same glaringly obvious oversight he had been guilty of in their fourth year. There was exactly one girl that he felt absolutely no nervousness around (his sister didn't count for this exercise. Besides, Ron was plenty nervous around Ginny; had you seen that Bat Bogey Hex lately?). There was exactly one girl that he could practice on. Hermione.

The moment was finally here. Ron had planned extensively for how he would handle his first conquest. He had even made a list for himself. Note to self: make sure to get rid of the list before Harry and Hermione get here.

1) Welcome both Harry and Hermione with hugs. Make sure that Hermione's hug is significantly longer.

This should ensure that Hermione would start thinking in the right direction without being too overt. Ron had heard horror stories from his older brothers when they thought he hadn't been listening about something called "the friend zone". Apparently if a man didn't make his intentions clear right from the off, he ran the risk of getting labeled as a friend and nothing more. Ron guessed that he and Harry were probably already labeled as friends in Hermione's mind, but he was counting on her awareness of her fundamental inability to attract men to crack that perception once he showed some interest.

Dad and Bill were going to collect his friends during lunch tomorrow so both should arrive at the Burrow at the same time. Comparison was going to be key to getting Hermione's mind working like he wanted it to.

2) Ask Hermione for help with schoolwork over the next year.

If there was one thing everyone knew about Hermione Granger, it was that she was mad about her schoolwork. Ron fully expected his brainy best friend to have scored straight O's on her O.W.L.s and to want to talk everyone's ear off about how they had done. He had received his results this morning and he was sure that Harry and Hermione had too. He fully anticipated that Hermione would try her hardest to bring the conversation around to their results and he would use that chance to both complement her and ask her for some help in the upcoming year. This would give them some valuable time together if his plans for the summer didn't meet with the immediate success he expected. The trick here would be to make sure he asked before Harry did. That way Harry would look like the hanger-on; the one who couldn't even take the initiative.

3) Get everyone to go swimming and make sure to use muggle swimming gear.

Ron's family had a swimming pond in the woods behind the house. Ron had come to the conclusion that it had been shockingly underused during Harry and Hermione's previous visits. Still, turned into a lucky break, didn't it? This would give Hermione a chance to get used to the idea of the two of them, half-naked and together. It also took care of what Ron saw as his main competition: Harry Potter. In all the years that Ron had known Harry he had never shown any more skin than necessary; the boy was an absolute prude. If Ron suggested muggle swimming, chances were good that Harry would either just sit on the banks or not come along at all while he played in the water with Hermione. If his hands happened to land on certain body parts during this play, well, that would just be a natural result of horseplay and getting carried away; no one could possibly blame him for that.

Ron had already made the necessary preparations. He and Ginny had gone shopping in Ottery St. Catchpole for swimwear, even if it hadn't been easy to sneak some of his dad's muggle money. They had made sure to leave what they thought were the right amount of galleons so as not to be accused of theft. He would have gone alone except that he had needed Ginny to distract their mum and her price had been to come along on the shopping trip. Ron had also made sure to write to Hermione that she needed to remember to bring her swimwear. He had 'forgotten' to give Harry a similar warning, just in case.

4) Teach Hermione how to fly a broom properly.

This served multiple purposes. First of all: Hermione loved teachers. Ron remembered her fascination with Lockheart and he was pretty sure that the only reason she hadn't had a similar infatuation with any other member of staff was that the other males in that category had been invariably repugnant: a part-goblin, a part-giant, a ghost, someone so ancient he could probably hide his wedding tackle in his wrinkles, a slimy, greasy, nauseating Slytherin, a werewolf, a walking corpse that stank of garlic and a man so riddled with scars that he could start his own irrigation system. No, Hermione's one-time crush was probably due to a lack of suitable candidates. Although...Professor Sinistra is an absolute looker. Ron shook himself to get back to the plan. If he set himself up as her flying tutor, Hermione would soon start looking at him with respect and desire.

There was also the not inconsiderable benefit of finally getting Hermione to understand the joy of flying and Quidditch. Merlin knew the girl needed to find something to talk about besides books.

5) Take Hermione on a flight by moonlight. At the end, ask her out. Failing that at least ask her to go flying again.

Ron was well aware that girls went in for the mushy stuff. A flight by moonlight was just the ticket to get Hermione in the right mood to accept a date with him. If the moment to ask her out didn't present itself, he had a foolproof backup plan: take her out on his broom until the proper moment did present itself.

6) After ticking off all the points on this list, get alone with Hermione somewhere there won't be any distractions and kiss her. See where it goes.

Ron fully expected this point to be reached before they all got on the Hogwarts express again. With any luck he would have all the experience he needed to get in Lavender's knickers on the train.

Ron heaved a sigh as he looked over his plan one final time. Tomorrow...

:-:-:-:-:

In a well to do house in Crawley, Hermione Granger was packing her things into her trunk for the coming school year. She would be spending the next three weeks with her friends and she wouldn't be able to come back if she changed her mind about what she wanted to bring, not with a magical civil war raging through the country. A few months ago she had felt how dangerous that war could be and she would not be exposing her parents to that. Madam Pomfrey's potions had done their job and she didn't even feel any discomfort from her wound anymore; she would carry the scar for the rest of her life. None of the Hogwarts Healer's efforts could completely get rid of the thin white line that now ran from her right shoulder, between her breasts and down to the bottom of her ribcage on the left-hand side. Hermione was grateful that Ron had reminded her to bring her swimsuit. It had given her a chance to go shopping for a model that covered the scar completely.

Hermione couldn't help but wonder if Harry and Ron had received their O.W.L. scores yet. Those scores would determine how much they would see each other this year as they would be the deciding factor in which classes they would be allowed to take. Hermione hoped that the boys had managed as well as they possibly could. She had no doubt that the two of them would be able to get into the same classes. She was altogether more worried that her friends were going to drift away from her.

Some days Hermione still found herself surprised by the fact that she had friends. She had hoped that she would find some when she had first entered the magical world; she had never dared to dream that the bond between them would be this strong. Of course, she hadn't expected to face this amount of danger with her friends either. It's still more than worth it. Hermione found it all too easy to remember that crippling loneliness that she had endured in primary school, the bullying, the insults and that almost palpable sense of rejection were always waiting to ambush her from memory. Compared to that, what was a little danger? Especially if you were Harry Potter's best friend.

There were days when she was desperately grateful for her best friend's shyness. She was sure that if he had been as outgoing and confident, even arrogant, as she had expected him to be when she first read about him, that her existence in Hogwarts would have been just as hellish as primary school had been. Or it might have been incredibly short. The thought occurred to Hermione before she could tamp it down. It was true though: if Harry hadn't been who he was, Hermione Granger would be dead at the hands of a troll.

Hermione shuddered and focused on her packing. She weighed the book she was holding in her hands as she tried to gauge whether it would be able to fit in her trunk after she had gone shopping for this year's school supplies. Regretfully she decided that it wouldn't and carefully placed it back in her bookcase. Turning back to her trunk, Hermione closed and double-checked that the latches were securely fastened. When she stood back up she was finally ready; ready to dive headfirst back into a world of wonder and danger and magic, along with her friends. Tomorrow...

:-:-:-:-:

In a stifling house in Little Whinging, Harry Potter groaned and forced himself to move. His back hurt. He cursed the damn Ministry for sending his O.W.L. scores at a time when his relatives couldn't help but notice the owl winging its way into their immaculate kitchen. Quit your whining, Potter. You knew that this was a possibility. All that's left now is to hope that the risk was worth it.

Harry reached into his trunk and pulled out a roll of cloth roughly three inches wide. There was stitching visible every thirty inches or so. He started wrapping his home-made bandages around his torso as best he could. Good thing I remembered to clean them before I left for the summer.

Harry was just grateful that his sentence at his relatives' was almost up. He finally understood why he was here thanks to the headmaster revealing some of his long-held secrets. Harry growled wordlessly to himself. It still stung that after all he and his friends had done, Dumbledore had taken so long to trust him. If Dumbledore had known all of this beforehand, Harry would have appreciated some help preparing to face his destiny. No. Don't go there. You know that nothing except disappointment lies that way.

Harry took a deep breath and regretted it instantly as he felt the pain he had been somewhat ignoring erupt across his back. Just think of something else. Think of...Ron and Hermione. Harry felt himself relax at the thought of his friends. They were the only reason he still had to go on. Harry had long ago given up on the idea that the world was fair. He would simply take what positives he could from life and be grateful. His best friends were two very great positives and Harry was going to make damn sure that they wouldn't be dragged into his war.

They deserved to be playing chess and reading books, not fighting for their lives. They deserved to be worrying about Quidditch and exams, not dark wizards. Harry knew that he had no choice in the matter, but they did. I have to tell them about the prophecy. They have to know that they could get killed being associated with me. Harry knew it was the right thing to do, had known it for a while now. It didn't make it hurt any less. Life isn't fair he repeated to himself. Tomorrow he would go to the Burrow and possibly spend his last weeks ever with the two best friends he could have ever imagined, best make the most of it. Harry tied off the makeshift bandages and closed his trunk after pulling on one of the larger of Dudley's cast-offs. He settled down to look at the window; he probably wouldn't get a lot of sleep tonight anyway. Tomorrow...

AN: Alright, here we go again. This story hasn't been beta'd because my usual beta is busy with other things. I hope you'll forgive me any errors that I didn't manage to weed out.

As always: thank you for reading.