Hello. This is being written for the Harmony & Co Garage Sale Fest via the FB group where writers were invited to claim prompts. The story has been outlined, but I am posting as I write so I currently can't guarantee weekly updates, or even an update schedule.

My prompt was Harry transfers to Hogwarts in sixth or seventh year and meets a lonely Hermione. Hermione didn't even really know what she was missing until the handsome Harry Potter came in and decided that he was going to marry her. And I have taken liberty with the prompt to make it into a story I enjoy writing.

This story is a Hogwarts AU in which there is not Voldemort, James and Lily survived, and Harry got the childhood (and life) he deserved. All explanations for that will come in time.

Thank you to WordsmithMusings and NuclearNik for some killer work on this!

Hope you enjoy!

At ten o'clock—nearly on the dot—Harry managed to steer the Head Girl away from the Astronomy Tower. She shot him a dirty look, one that said I know what you're doing, but she relented when a sound in the opposite direction popped off, and he could have sighed in relief.

He probably would have if it weren't for the sharp intake of breath from his patrol partner. "What is it?"

She held a finger to her lips and nodded down the corridor. "Hear that?"

It took a moment for him to recognize the sound with how low it was, but the footsteps couldn't be mistaken. Then a faint giggle drifted through the corridor. "I think I know who it is."

"Of course you do."

Before he could ask what that was supposed to mean, Ron and Lavender rounded the corner. His friend stopped mid-step, and Lavender's laughter broke off as she stared at them. "You said you'd keep her away!" Ron blurted.

Even though Hermione didn't glare at him then, Harry knew it was only a matter of time before she laid into him for being irresponsible. Sure, Harry thought they could lay off sometimes—cut a little slack, he'd said, actually—but this was far from the first time Ron had broken curfew. "Thanks, mate." Harry rolled his eyes.

With her arms folded across her chest, Hermione stared at him, and he didn't miss the impatient way her flats snapped against the stone floor. "I'll let you handle the punishment on this one," she said smoothly. "It's only fair that we take turns, and I did dock Hufflepuff points for the first-years we caught earlier."

Relief settled on Ron's face, and Lavender managed to smile even.

Harry cursed under his breath, knowing just what she was doing. If he was going to be a good prefect, he would be fair to anyone, even if that person was his friend. That was a conversation that had already been had between the two of them on their first time patrolling together and with this being the second time, Harry knew it was a test. "Ten points from Gryffindor."

Hermione raised an eyebrow.

He swallowed. "Each."

As far as punishments went, it was rather mild considering Harry knew what they'd been planning to do if they had gotten to the Astronomy Tower. Maybe Lavender had imagined they would look at the stars—somewhat—but everyone in the school knew you didn't go there for a pretty view.

Not of the sky at least.

Red tinged Ron's cheeks. "Harry!"

Hermione didn't say anything, and she didn't come to his aid.

"You got off easy," Harry said. "It's not that bad."

"You put us ten points behind Slytherin!" he spat before turning his ire on Hermione. "And you just want to make him dock points so you can be in control because you hate—"

Allowing her arms to fall to her sides, Hermione tilted her head to the side. "What was that? I couldn't quite tell. If you're so concerned about your points, you shouldn't argue over a point deduction especially when it's due to the fact that you broke curfew. If you put half as much effort into earning points as you do Quidditch or sneaking around, you would have them back in no time, but," she shrugged, "that's not on me."

Lavender gripped Ron's arm tightly and gasped.

"If you'd like to discuss it, I'm sure Professor McGonagall would love to do so in her office."

"You should get back to your dorms," Harry cut in, eying Ron's reddening face warily. He waited for them to get far enough away before he looked at her. "I let them off too easy."

She nodded, and a curtain of dark hair slipped over her shoulder. "It's not a surprise. Let's finish patrols."

"I didn't want to." He hurried to keep up with her, even though his legs were longer than hers. "I didn't want to give my friend detention."

Harry expected for her to point out that he shouldn't be a prefect then, but she surprised him. "I understand."

"It's just—you do?"

They rounded the corner, and unless it was a trick of the light from a flickering torch, he would have sworn she was smirking. "I shouldn't have made you dock points."

It didn't particularly sound like her, he thought. "Why did you?"

"Doesn't matter."

Somehow, he doubted that.

When they finished their rounds an hour later, Harry fell into step beside her. "Hey, I needed to ask you if I could miss a night of patrol this week. On Saturday?"

Her lips pressed together, and Harry was well aware that he lingered on them. Luckily, she didn't notice though. "I'll ask Michael if he can cover your night. If he can't, I'll manage alone."

"And, uh, another thing." Harry stepped in front of her before she could issue the monthly password to the Fat Lady. "Do you know what page we were supposed to use for Arithmancy?"

Torches flickered in the corridor, catching in her hair and illuminating her. "Do you mean the assignment that's due tomorrow? First thing in the morning?"

"Er," he tugged his collar sheepishly. "Yeah. That's the one."

"I do know, but it's going to cost you. I've already given you one favour tonight."

He snorted. "I will get on my knees and beg you right now, Hermione."

The corner of her mouth twitched. "That really won't be necessary. You have a library book I need. The Twelve Uses of Dragon's Blood? I asked Madam Pince and it's been checked out since the start of term."

He knew the book she was talking about, and the last night he'd seen it, Ron had been using it as a coaster. "I can find it." Harry climbed through the portrait after muttering the password of pygmy-puff and called over his shoulder, "Wait here."

Climbing the stairs two at a time, Harry pushed the door open quietly and searched around his bed. Just as he'd thought, he found the book on Ron's nightstand, and he was able to pull it out from under various treat wrappers while Ron slept.

Hermione was just where he'd left her, swaying slightly from side to side in front of the fireplace. She thanked him as he pressed the book into her hands. "Page 117 is the one you're looking for, by the way, and I'll let you borrow my notes if you like."

Apparently, she'd gone to her dorm at the same time he'd gone for the book.

"You're a lifesaver. Thank you."

She shot him a bright smile before climbing the stairs and leaving him to sort through his own assignment which would have taken hours if not for her.

The map crinkled between his fingers. "Just a bit more to the left, yeah?" he muttered, his tone edging more toward desperation at that point. Sirius said it was right in here… Still, Harry didn't see a secret passage anywhere, and he began to wonder if Sirius was playing a ridiculous, ill-timed—not that his God Dog had any bearing on the timing—prank.

"There's nothing here." Ron frantically searched the wall, sliding his palms across it in the vain hope that a passage would miraculously open, but nothing happened. "I think we're in the wrong spot, or he's pulling your leg."

Tail is more like it.

Heaving a sigh, Harry's shoulders dropped. "Looks like you're right. We'll have to wait for the next Hogsmeade weekend." Honestly, it was all so bloody absurd that while Harry had every recollection of ending up in the situation, he berated himself for allowing it to get so far.

Only Ron Weasley and his bottomless stomach—not that Harry could talk much on the topic—could have convinced him that it was a good idea to sneak out of Hogwarts and into Hogsmeade for fucking chocolate.

But not just any chocolate, Harry. It's Honeydukes, and you know that's the best.

And what was it all for?

Docking twenty—twenty—measly points from his own house for his best mate's tendencies to canoodle his girlfriend after curfew.

His mother would kill him if she found out.

"What are we waiting for?" Hermione asked from behind them, one eyebrow arched as she looked between the two of them and then back again. "So, is this why you had to miss patrolling tonight?"

"Fuck me," he muttered under his breath, as he dragged his fingers through his hair. "No, we really did have a last-minute Quidditch practice."

Whereas Ron thought the expression was utterly hilarious as her brows shot up and her lips parted, she didn't seem to agree. "It was important." Ron nodded as he said it, but her face remained stony.

For whatever reason, it made Harry think of how freely she'd smiled and laughed with him just a few nights earlier as she'd handed over her notes. The two memories were a stark comparison. "Oh, it must be terribly important to sneak out of the school," Hermione agreed. "Life-altering, even."

Harry didn't really believe the heavy sarcasm was lost on Ron, but the boy couldn't have chosen a worse moment to carry on with blind humour.

"See, she gets it. I told you that Ho—"

Each of them heard the echoing footsteps at the same time the wall shook behind them, sliding to the side and revealing a passageway. "Holy—"

Hermione bit her lip and took a step before shoving Ron backwards. He stumbled over his own two feet in surprise, and the wall slid back into place before he got a word out. "Not a word," she hissed. "Professor McGonagall."

The professor peered down at them over the rim of her glasses, the lines of her face not giving away any mirth. Although, according to his father, she was certainly capable of such a thing. "Mister Potter, Miss Granger. What are you doing in this part of the castle so late?"

The heel of Hermione's shoe squashed his toe, and he kept his face straight. "Patrolling, Professor McGonagall. We were just finishing up."

She's covering for me.

God, his toes ached from the poor treatment she'd chosen to put him through, but at least his face wouldn't give them away.

"Is that so?"

Harry nodded.

McGonagall pushed her glasses up her nose, and her face soured. "Miss Granger, you left an updated patrol schedule on my desk yesterday afternoon. I'm well aware Mister Potter wasn't meant to patrol tonight since he asked to switch. In case you've forgotten, Mister Potter, you were required to let me know."

Fuck me sideways.

It was a small, minuscule blessing he hadn't said that out loud.

"You'll serve three days of detention for sneaking out, Mister Potter. One night of detention will suffice for lying, Miss Granger. Since it was the first offense, ever."

The beginning of a disagreement formed on the tip of Hermione's tongue, and Harry took the chance to squish her toes—only slightly—and he didn't make a show of hiding it.

"You should both be grateful I'm not going to dock points as well."

"Yes, Professor McGonagall."

Hermione glared at him and shoved past him once the professor had passed. The dramatic exit only made it even worse when he had to call out, "Wait, Hermione."

"Whatever your apology is, I don't care."

Harry held up his hands in surrender. "I have every intention of grovelling, but first we really need to get Ron out of the passage."

The Head Girl looked like she'd really rather not.

By a stroke of what could only be sheer luck—maybe even a miracle—they weren't instructed to scrub cauldrons in the dungeons. It was bad enough that his mother would be sure to have a conversation about his detention with him; she'd already caught his eye at breakfast from across the Great Hall.

Luck hadn't been completely on his side, however, when they were informed that the two of them were to organize the Herbology greenhouse. Harry arrived just minutes before Hermione, and she told him Professor Sprout had decided to leave them in order to grade.

"She's likely to pop in, though, to check on us." She busied herself with organizing a row of decorative ceramic pots while stepping over the creeping vines that lined the floor. "Professor Sprout believed we didn't need to be watched."

"Since you're the Head Girl, you mean."

With a scowl curving her lips, Hermione muttered, "Yes, that's why."

Harry set to cleaning the dirt from the counters, already wishing he could use magic without being caught. And he knew that he ought not to talk to his counterpart any more than he absolutely had to, but Harry couldn't help himself. "I'm sorry."

Hermione nodded but only began to scrub the side of the pot harder. Then she sighed, and Harry held his breath. "Why were you sneaking out?"

He hesitated.

"The least you could do after causing me to get detention is tell me why. I did cover for you, after all."

"You're not going to like it."

"I doubt there's any reason that I would like." She shrugged and set the first pot overhead. The side of it gleamed under the sallow light of the lantern that hung above them.

"I told Ron I'd make it up to him for docking points, and he wanted..." Harry could have withered under the glare she gave him. "Uh, chocolate. From Hogsmeade."

She blinked, her lips parting, and then her brows furrowed. "What were you thinking?"

"Well, I was thinking I hadn't planned on getting caught and that it would get Ron off my back."

A hard, sharp crack of thunder snapped outside, and he asked, "Did you know it was going to rain?" His attempt to change the subject went about as well as he expected it to. Hermione stiffened, her fingers curling around the edge of a pot until her knuckles turned into a stark white. "I had a plan, and if Ron hadn't started arguing with me, we would have been fine."

Hermione rolled her eyes and shrugged out of her jacket. "Oh? You had a plan?"

It was a bad idea to tell her, but clearly he hadn't had any good ideas lately. "The map, yeah." Before she asked for a better explanation, Harry told her. "There's a map that tells you where everyone in the school is, including the professors."

Shock flickered across her face, and her mouth dropped open. "The Marauder's Map."

"How do you..."

"I think a better question is how do you have it?"

Harry began to sweep the floor and listened to heavy, falling rain as the sky opened up overhead. "My dad is one of the ones who created it. How do you know about it?"

She fidgeted with the edge of her shirt and leaned against a workbench. "Fred and George nicked it from Filch's office in their second year. I only saw it a few times when they dragged me around the castle after curfew—"

"And you're scolding me? You did the same thing!"

"When I was fourteen!" Her cheeks were rosy. "As far as I knew, they left it inside the castle when they graduated. How did you come across it?"

That was easy.

"Dad gave it to me before the beginning of term. Maybe the twins left it somewhere my mum would have found it?"

"Maybe," she agreed. "For the record, I don't think you should feel bad for docking points. It's definitely not a reason to get detention." Hermione turned away from him and tied up her hair as she climbed onto the workbench. "I probably should have cleaned the shelf before I cleaned the pots."

"Yeah," he replied. "Probably."

Several minutes passed, and during that time Harry managed to sweep the entirety of the section while telling himself he wasn't staring. A fact that was a lie, of course. Hermione Granger had always been interesting to him. When he'd transferred to Hogwarts unexpectedly in the middle of the last term, she'd been one of the few that hadn't been overly interested in his arrival. Though most of his classmates had been more interested in the jagged scar on his forehead than anything that actually involved him.

"You're staring again."

The again knocked him slightly off-kilter, and Harry bit the inside of his cheek.

She climbed off the workbench, dust covering the fabric over her arse as she slid across the surface. "I have a question, if you don't mind."

"No, go ahead."

"The names that are at the top of the map, who are they? Which one is your father?"

"Prongs is my father. His Animagus form is a stag."

Just like Harry expected, she commented on how difficult it was to achieve being an Animagus, and he smiled—not that she saw it—when he considered telling her that they'd done it while still in school. "My Godfather is Padfoot, and Remus is Moony."

"Professor Lupin?"

"Well," he noticed her teeth dig into her bottom lip, "I call him Moony, but yeah. That's him."

From across the greenhouse in sallow light, she tilted her head to the side. "Who is Wormtail?"

The slim, weathered vase in his hands took a sudden tumble to the floor and shattered on impact. "He—" Harry choked on the words. "Wormtail betrayed my parents and led Voldemort to them. He's in Azkaban."

He'd have thought it would be impossible for her not to know, but here they were.

"I'm so sorry. I had no idea. God, I'm so—"

"It's alright," Harry managed, and tugged at his collar. "You didn't know."

Hermione looked like she might apologize again.

"But since you asked me a personal question—the map, I mean—I think it's only fair that I get to ask you one as well."

As she started to untangle vines that had crept up the wall and into the building, Hermione nodded.

"Is there a reason why you and Ron don't get on?"

She froze. "What makes you think there's a reason? Have you ever met him?"

That earned a loud laugh, and he knew he saw her smile, or at least start to. "Call it a gut feeling, but I've seen that the two of you seem to avoid each other."

"No, he avoids me." Her shoulders tensed. "I don't mind him, not really, but we haven't gotten along since our third year."

"What happened?"

"There's nothing to tell." But that was a lie, Harry could guess. "Fine, I'll tell you one thing but it's only because I know you won't leave me alone until I do."

That sounded harsh, but he supposed it was true.

She didn't look at him while picking dirt out from under her nails. "We were friends."

"What?"

"Yes," she snapped. "I know that's incredibly hard to believe, but—"

Harry put his hands up. "Wait, no, that wasn't meant to sound like an insult, Hermione. I just mean I didn't know. He's never mentioned it." And it sounded like the kind of thing his friend would have mentioned. Harry could remember asking about Hermione last term—out of curiosity, of course—and Ron never bothering to explain this particular fact.

Grabbing her jacket without bothering to put it on, Hermione nodded. "Well, we were up until it blew up spectacularly in my face, and that's all I'm going to tell you. It's been literally years now, and it's only going to cause a headache telling you about it now, as is since you'll no doubt ask him about it."

He was about to tell her to hang on, just for a bloody second, when she reached the door. "Come on, wait—"

"Detention is over," Hermione told him. "And if I were you, I'd do my best to stay out of it. Good night, Harry".

The opportunity to talk to Hermione came three days after detention, and that wasn't for lack of trying on his end. He'd switched patrols with Michael Corner in hopes of getting the chance, but he had tragically been stuck with Draco Malfoy—the Slytherin prefect—and they'd spent the hours bickering while doling out creative insults.

It had worked to distract him from how Hermione had slipped out of seeing him, which meant she was actively avoiding him.

However, in Potions with the Slytherins on Friday, she couldn't avoid him any longer. With Ron out sick, and Edgecombe conveniently absent as well, Harry was without a partner as was Hermione. He could have thanked his mother for matching them together just for the day, as it gave him the chance to talk to her. Not that Hermione made it easy.

She was suspiciously quiet, and when she did respond to him, it was through snippy replies. Not at all like the last time they had partnered together.

"I just wanted to ask about Ron," he admitted.

Half-way through a counter-clockwise turn, Hermione's wrist jerked and the cauldron spilt over them. "This is your fault!" Hermione muttered and set to cleaning herself off. "We're just lucky to be working with cold ingredients today."

Covered in things he'd rather not name, Harry didn't feel very lucky at all.

And he still didn't have any answers. Plus, his mum was staring at them, her brows furrowed in concern.

I'd love to hear what you think! I may not be able to promise an update schedule, but your opinions do make me write faster normally!