Prologue
Disclaimer: As I'm not making any money from this, chances are that I don't own the characters.
Throwing his hands up in the air and turning around, Harry Potter finished tossing the last of his books into his trunk and slammed the lid shut.
"You just don't get it, Hermione," he ground out as he spun back around to face her and continue their latest argument, which there had been quite a few of during the last few months. Now it was their last day ever at Hogwarts, and they were packing to leave. Hermione had confronted Harry, and had once more tried to get him to discuss what had happened during the final battle between him and Voldemort during the Christmas holidays. The fight had been physically and mentally exhausting for Harry, and when it was over, he just wanted to get on with his life and finish his last year of school in peace, but Hermione wouldn't let him. She repeatedly attempted to force him out of the shell that he had erected around himself, more often than not, infuriating Harry in the process. As a result, they had been at each other's throats for six months now, and no intervention from their other friend, Ron Weasley, would put out the blazing fires that seemed to flare between the two.
"What don't I get, Harry?" she replied. "You won't tell me, so how am I supposed to know? The only thing that I asked is if you and Ginny were getting back together or not. It's not a federal crime to ask about 'that', is it?"
"It is when it's none of your business," Harry spat. "That's 'my' private life. Something that you have no reason to be butting into."
"What do you mean, 'your private life'? I have lived with you in this tower for the better part of the last seven years and I'm your friend, or at least I thought I was. Doesn't that make 'me' part of your so-called 'private life'? I mean, Ron knows more about your life than I do at the moment."
"That's rich," Harry snorted, turning back around to take hold of the handles of his trunk. "Considering that you knew everything about me before I even knew you."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Oh, let's see. You read everything you can get your hands on and then proceed to inform me and Ron about each little detail every chance you get. I'm sick of it!" He hauled the trunk to the portrait hole and dropped it on the floor with a resounding thud.
"Don't you ever get sick of being, as Snape put it, 'an insufferable know-it-all'?" He saw the stricken look on her face as he turned, and felt a surge of guilt go through him. He was about to apologize, but she retorted before he had the chance.
"If you want to talk insufferable, how about you? You make Head Boy, and all of a sudden, you're giving out detentions to groups of Slytherins for the least little offense."
Harry's green eyes glittered with anger. "You don't know what you're talking about, so I'll thank you to keep your mouth shut. They were asking for what they got and worse." He hadn't told Hermione that the Slytherins in question had been making plans to humiliate her in front of the entire school, and he had come upon them as they were getting ready to spring their little trap. He hadn't wanted her to be hurt, no matter how angry he was with her and had given Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle each a weekend working with Filch cleaning the corridor floors after a big rain. It had given him an almost obscene pleasure to see Draco Malfoy on his hands and knees, scrubbing mud from the stone floor in the entrance hall. But Hermione had been mad at Harry for what he had done, and when she asked him why he had set the three Slytherins to this horrible task, he had only responded that they had looked as if they were up to something.
"But they weren't doing anything!" Hermione spat back. "They were just standing out in the entrance hall, minding their own business, then you come along, think they're making trouble, and stick them with Filch for a whole weekend, cleaning mud off the floors!"
"You want to know why I really gave them detentions?" Harry asked, crossing his arms. Hermione nodded and rose from her seat on their favorite couch in front of the fireplace. "They were going to humiliate someone. I heard them discussing it and inturrupted them before they got the chance. They sounded as if they had been planning it all year. 'That's' why I gave them detentions. The fact that it had rained all week long and Filch was having to clean up mud was a bonus when I was deciding what to give them. Even McGonagall agreed that they deserved what they got, so, Let. It. Go."
"But, Harry.."
"Hermione! I said let it go, will you please drop it!" They were inturrupted by Colin Creevey and his brother scrambling through the portrait hole at that moment, both excited about something that Colin had in his hand. They ran up the stairs to the boys' dorms. Harry and Hermione heard a door slam shut a few seconds later.
"Why won't you tell me what's going on anymore?" Hermione said, sounding more than a little like a child that had been told it couldn't have a new toy. "I feel left out half of the time as you only talk to Ron, and it's very frustrating!"
"You want to know why I don't tell you anything anymore?" Hermione nodded. "Because I just want to be left alone. I don't want everyone coddling me and asking me about the final battle with Voldemort. It's over. It's done, and I just want to get on with my life. I've had enough of everyone congratulating me for ridding the world of Voldemort, but no one knows how much I 'don't' want to hear it! I thought that my best friends would help them all to see that, but no. You are just as bad as they are, Hermione. Why won't you leave me alone about it? And you know that Ginny is with Neville, now. Why are you asking if I'm going to get back with her? Don't you have anything better to do than worry about me? Get a life, Hermione!" Colin and Dennis returned at that second and bounded over to the aruging duo. "What do 'you' want?"
"I finished this for you, Harry." Colin held out a picture that still had the wet sheen of being recently developed. "I just had to get the ingredient to make it move. It's still..." Harry snatched it out of his hand.
"Harry! Don't act like that, he was doing something nice for you!" She grabbed hold of the other side of the photograph. Harry turned angry eyes to her.
"Don't tell me what to do," he hissed, fury evident in every syllable. "You keep it up, and you won't have me as a friend anymore." He attempted to pull his hand away, but it seemed to be glued to the picture. "What the? What is with this thing?"
"That's what I was trying to tell you," Colin said nervously. "It's still wet, and the stuff that makes the pictures move, Briarhorn sap, is really sticky until it dries."
"Did you really mean that, Harry?" Hermione said as he continued to attempt to detatch his hand from the picture. "What you just said?" He nodded.
"Yes. I've had enough of you and everyone else telling me what to do."
"Then let me make it one less person. After the things you said to me today, we are no longer friends." With that she wrenched her hand away from his, tearing the picture clean in half, and stormed out of the common room.
"Fine with me," Harry said and left as well, leaving the Creevey brothers staring at each other with total shock.