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Three weeks after Hermione had broken up with Ron, Hermione had been ranting to Harry about how all her friends bar him were in disgustingly happy relationships. She wasn't jealous per se, but it was the last thing she wanted to be around right now.
Harry's response surprised her.
"How would you like to come to a meeting of the Honorable Order of Weasley Exes?" he asked as he passed her a drink.
"The what now?" she asked as she sniffed at the glass to make sure it was a normal fruit juice and not one of the weird juices that Harry kept in his kitchen.
"Anyone who used to date a Weasley can come."
"That sounds rather mean-spirited," Hermione protested.
Harry shrugged. "I mean it's mostly a bunch of women celebrating how little like Molly they are."
"...I'll think about it."
"And Dean also shows up once in a while. We've got someone for everybody except Charlie."
Hermione winced at that. The only ex-girlfriend of Charlie that she knew of was Tonks, and she was obviously unavailable.
"Lavender predicted that we'd get one in about three years, but she wasn't sure how we'd fit a dragon inside."
"That's horrible," Hermione said, though she was laughing as she said it.
Harry shrugged and took a sip of his drink. "I'm actually not sure if she's serious or not."
Hermione rolled her eyes at that. Lavender had been making a living as "The Seer of the Heart" after school. Hermione rather doubted her former roommate had the Sight, but considering Lavender had said that it only worked for matchmaking and relationships, Hermione was almost positive that she was relying more on psychology and gossip. The best evidence that Lavender couldn't have the Sight, even limited to romance: the fact that Lavender had also dated Ron.
That said, she couldn't deny that people in the magical world would rather go to "The Seer of the Heart" and trust in divination than try couples counseling, even though it seemed that couples counseling was actually half of Lavender's business. From a marketing perspective, it just made good sense and Hermione had unbent enough from school not to make any comments about how silly divination was when Lavender was apparently both making a very good living and injecting a degree of mental health into the magical world.
"How often do you guys meet?"
"Oh, it's been about once every other week for a while now."
Hermione blinked. "Is that why you always seem to be busy Wednesday nights?"
"Yup."
"So you aren't dating Penelope?"
Harry doubled over laughing, almost knocking over his drink in the process. "You thought that?"
"Well you always seem to have seen her Wednesday nights…."
"I'm pretty sure she gave up on men after Percy."
"This isn't going to be a joke about how Percy was so bad in bed he turned her lesbian is it?"
Harry shook his head. "No, I think she's decided on becoming a crazy cat lady."
"Spending time with cats rather than dating does sound appealing."
Harry rolled his eyes. "You can come to the meeting and compare notes. Last I checked she was seriously considering breeding Ragdolls and was looking for spells to handle the fur."
"Hmmm…."
"Oh, Merlin, not you too."
Hermione hit him on the shoulder. "The fur part, you prat. Crookshanks sheds. I'm not considering becoming a crazy cat lady."
Of all the things Hermione might have expected when the door opened to Penelope's flat, seeing Harry in nothing but boxers and an apron, swinging a towel over his head was not one of them.
"What on Earth…?"
Penelope's flat had a large open area with the kitchen and living room bleeding into each other. Hermione suspected that it was originally just a kitchen and small dining area, but Penelope had applied space expansion magic to get additional seating in.
"This is the best part." Lavender, who had answered the door, shuffled Hermione off to the side, where she got a glimpse of Harry snapping the towel down. This caused some kitchen utensil to flip into the air, and Harry caught it with some sort of overblown victory pose, to the cheers of the other women in the room, especially Lavender next to her. Despite the atmosphere Hermione didn't see as many glasses of alcohol as she would have expected from the display.
"Is Harry a member or here as your private stripper?"
"We take turns. We brought in someone for lessons, mmm, five months ago?"
Hermione blinked then pinched the bridge of her nose. "Right, celebrating not being like Molly."
"Harry's actually lost the vote for the most Molly-like," Lavender admitted. Hermione couldn't tell if that meant he was the most like Molly or the least. She could see it going either way.
Harry waved the utensil, which appeared to be a spatula of some sort at them. "Hey, Hermione!"
"Back into the kitchen, man!" barked Angelina.
"Yes, ma'am!"
Hermione blinked again. "Is Harry barefoot?"
"Yeah, but I can never convince him to paint his toenails," pouted Lavender.
"I'll only go so far for a joke," Harry called back.
And that was Hermione's introduction to the club. She would later deny that the chance to see Harry doing his stripper routine had anything to do with the fact that she came back to their next meeting.
Over the next year Hermione came to a few conclusions. One, Harry could probably make a decent living as a male stripper if he really wanted to. Two, it was much easier to get along with Lavender now that the both of them had grown up a bit. Not living in the same room for most of the year probably helped as well. Three, it was amazing what you could talk Hermione into doing if you explained that it would make Molly regard her as unsuitable dating material. Finally, four, Hermione had terrible taste in men.
Thankfully, she was in a club for people with that exact problem.
"Stupid atavistic instincts," Hermione grumbled.
"Ata- what?" asked Lavender.
"Instincts that our ancestors developed that aren't applicable now." Surprisingly, it's Harry that answered. "What? I have a godson going through a dinosaur phase. Did you know that chickens are the modern animal closest to the T. Rex?"
"Makes sense," Penelope said.
"How does that make sense?" asked Angelina.
Penelope rolled her eyes. "You obviously have never dealt with a real, live chicken. They still think they're dinosaurs, complete with the desire to eat anything that moves."
"Then why does chicken mean afraid?" asked Lavender.
"I have no idea. They're too stupid to feel fear. I've seen a chicken try to eat itself."
"I thought that only happened if they were living in stressful conditions," Hermione commented.
Penelope threw her hands in the air. "These were yard chickens, practically pets. They don't come more stress free than that! They weren't industrial egg chickens." Penelope set down heavily, which coincidentally caused her to lean up against Harry, who didn't seem to mind. At this point Hermione was positive that Harry's assessment that Penny wasn't interested in dating was accurate, but she was also positive that Harry would be happy to reciprocate if the former Head Girl ever made a move.
"So what atavistic instincts were you talking about?" asked Angelina.
Hermione mentally shook herself. "The one where I'm attracted to athletes who I don't actually get along with very well."
Angelina nodded. "That would explain Oliver."
Hermione covered her face. "Nothing would explain Oliver." What had she been thinking? Well, apparently Mmm, muscles.
"Is the not getting along part actually what makes you find them attractive?" asked Hestia. One of Bill's exes, Hestia didn't come to as many meetings as the others because her job frequently took her out of the country.
"Judge by the results," Hermione huffed.
Harry frowned. "I always thought you just wanted someone who wouldn't just give into you all the time."
"Obviously I've overcorrected."
"I think you're in the wrong place for advice," Alicia said. Hermione still wasn't sure which of the twins Alicia had dated, which was rather sad since Hermione had been there at the time. She got the unsettling feeling that it was both of them at the same time… and that one or more of the three may not have realized it.
"Uh, hello!" protested Lavender. "Who's the professional here?"
"You're not on the clock," Harry pointed out reasonably.
"Besides, I'd feel cheated if you just pointed out who I should date. I just - maybe! - need a couple of hints of what to look for in a partner that would satisfy my desire for a long term relationship and my stupid self-destructive atavistic impulses."
"Uh huh." Lavender grabbed something out of her purse, which began to grow as it was removed. It was a gigantic binder with a red cover that had white reindeer outlines dancing on it - literally, thanks to magic. Lavender dropped it on the coffee table with a resounding thud. Sadly, it looked like Lavender had wanted to slam it on the table but it was large and awkward enough that it slipped out of her hands before she could make a production out of it.
"What the actual fuck?" said Angelina.
Lavender rolled her eyes. "Trust me, just a couple of hints won't be enough to get through to her. Take it and read it at home."
"How? When?" Harry sputtered.
"Seer!" Lavender chirped brightly, complete with jazz hands on either side of her face.
Hermione went to open it, but Lavender slammed her hand on the cover of the binder. "At home," she hissed in an abrupt change of attitude.
Hermione opened the binder. On the first page was a note saying "Read the whole thing before you call me." Underneath that, triple underlined, was the word "Seer."
Hermione rolled her eyes at that and flipped to the next page. Then she immediately slammed the binder shut.
"The whole thing," came Lavender's voice.
Sometimes magic was a pain.
"How am I supposed to read a picture?" Hermione complained as she turned back to the offending page. To be fair there was a word on it - one word. It was a picture of Harry, looking like he was wearing nothing but an apron from the camera angle and playfully pulling on one of the straps of the apron. On that picture in what looked like red lipstick was written the word "Yum."
"Lavender," Hermione growled, though half of that was in memory of the fact that there was a picture of Hermione from that night where she was dressed even more stripperifically. The sad part was that the impromptu risqué photo session was a result of Harry bringing one of his special non-alcoholic juice mixes and everyone had gotten "drunk" purely from the placebo effect.
She turned the page, hoping that this was just a prank. It both was and it wasn't. There weren't any more pictures, at least not right away, but the rest of the binder - the massive, heavy binder - was full of interactions between Harry and Hermione, dating all the way back to first year. Judging by the handwriting, the binder had been started back in first year, too. Well, technically, the entries looked like they were cut out of copies of Lavender's diary and pasted into the binder.
Well at least Lavender's "Sight" didn't cause her to start assembling this thing all the way back when they were all eleven, but it definitely wasn't what Hermione had in mind when she asked for advice on what to look for in a guy. Still she rapidly forgot about that as she saw a relative outsider's perspective on their adventures back in school.
Actually, there was also a lot on their day to day interactions. Did she and Harry really hold hands when walking in the halls back then? Well, it was a reasonable enough precaution when you were in a building with a giant three headed dog… if you didn't know the dog was really just aggressively friendly and was only interested in cuddles and slobbering all over you. Well, she supposed that still meant a danger of drowning.
She also didn't realize how lost Harry was when she had been petrified, or at least how lost he seemed to Lavender. When they boys had told her about that time she had been more focused on the fact that they had almost gotten themselves killed without her.
Had they really been that clingy after they made up their third year? Hermione did not remember that, but at the same time she didn't remember any contradictions to Lavender's observations.
Also, Hermione would have recognized a lovestruck look on Harry's face when he first saw her in her Yule Ball dress, right? Unless she was too distracted berating Ron for his "you're a girl" remark. Or was that some other time? It was so long ago that she couldn't remember. Now she wasn't sure if she didn't notice any lovestruck looks because there was nothing to see or because she was distracted.
Still, Lavender definitely lacked some context for some actions like why Harry ditched his date for Valentine's day for Hermione. Admittedly, when you put it like that, it was frankly a miracle that Cho didn't murder Harry.
She slammed the binder shut again when she read Lavender recounting the time when Hermione called Harry more fanciable than ever. Hermione sat back with a groan. That's what she got for saying something like that in public, and you didn't get much more public than the Great Hall at Hogwarts.
Yes, it was true that she fancied Harry, both back then and now, though she had never acted on it. When her mother asked her about it, Hermione had said that she was afraid of ruining their friendship. Seeing as this was right after the big blow up with Ron, her mother had readily accepted that explanation.
The actual truth was that she was afraid of rejection, at least from him. Her checkered dating history made a lot more sense when you realized that she only asked out guys who she didn't care if they said no.
Looking at the binder, she felt that maybe, just maybe, her chances of being rejected had been exaggerated in her head, but she had a reason for thinking that: Harry tended to go for sporty girls like Cho or Ginny. Though, now that she thought about it consciously for once, Penny wasn't the sporty type at all, and Harry was attracted to her. Hermione supposed that after the utter messes that were his relationships with Cho and Ginny, it wasn't a surprise that his tastes would change. Harry was capable of learning after all…, which was more than she could say for herself after her last few dating disasters.
It was probably a good sign that Harry was interested in Penny now, because after having seen Penny do her stripper routine, Hermione could say that they had fairly similar body types. Still, there was a difference between being similar to someone Harry was interested in and Harry being interested in her and there was a difference between Harry maybe being open to dating back in school and Harry being open now. Was there anything more recent in the binder?
It was a bit of trepidation that Hermione reopened the binder and flipped to where she had left off. She didn't at all reread and linger over the part about Harry's awestruck look at the Yule Ball. That would have been overly indulgent.
The next new page had a picture that was remarkably similar to the description of Harry's face when seeing her at the Yule Ball except that it was much more recent. Above the photo was written "See, he likes you!" and below it was written "He's looking at you!" with the date of their photo session next to it. Considering that she had been wearing what looked like a giant ribbon that would have come undone with just a tug, there was a surprisingly high love to lust ratio in that look.
Well, now that she was convinced that it was worth the risk, how should she get his attention? Well, she still had that ribbon outfit….
Hermione frowned slightly and reopened the binder. Despite there being more pages, the rest of them were blank, right up to the last one. That one just had "SEER" written in big red letters and a lipstick kiss next to it.
"That girl…."
Actually, no, there was one more page that was stuck to the one that she had thought was the last one. On it Lavender had written "And while it might be tempting to put yourself under his tree wearing nothing but a ribbon, he'll be spending Christmas with Teddy, so that would be a little awkward."
Well, maybe Lavender really was a Seer.
By New Year's Eve Hermione still hadn't made a move. She would have liked to have said that this was because of how busy they were, and they both really were, but it was honestly mostly anxiety on her part. It was almost to the point she wished she had tried the ribbon thing, but considering Teddy had woken up at four thirty in the morning that day, it would have been awkward to say the least.
They were at the Ministry New Year's party at that awkward time of night where it was late, but not close enough to midnight that the excitement of the new year would supply a second wind, when Harry settled down next to her.
"Are you going to tell me why you've been staring at me all night?"
"I have not been staring at you," Hermione reflexively responded.
"Uh huh. Teddy's hair literally changes colors when he lies and he's still a better liar than you."
"I can lie perfectly well."
"Uh huh."
"I can."
"Hermione, I've known you since we were eleven, and I can say quite honestly that you're the worst liar that I've ever known."
"Then obviously you've never seen me in a budget meeting." Hermione didn't even know why this bothered her. Surely being a bad liar was a good character trait.
Harry lifted an eyebrow. "Explain why you've been banned from budget meetings."
"I made an auditor cry the last time I went to one," she admitted.
Harry golf clapped. "That's absolutely brilliant." The sad part was that he didn't even sound sarcastic about that.
Hermione rolled her eyes. "It's not like you're any better at lying."
"I'll have you know that I'm an excellent liar."
"Prove it."
"I hate flying." Of course he ruined the delivery by laughing halfway through.
Hermione smirked. "Truly you are a paragon of deceit."
"Well, obviously, it's going to be weird if we both know I'm going to tell a lie."
"An excellent excuse."
"I'd like to see you do better."
Maybe this was her chance. "I don't like you."
Harry burst out laughing. "You've told me that you've hated me before more believably."
Hermione crossed her arms and glared at him. "Yes, well, usually you've done something to deserve it."
"Is that a lie, because if so-"
"It's the truth, you prat." Why did she fancy people who drove her absolutely crazy?
"Er…"
Hermione realized she must have said part of that out loud and decided that was as good of an opening as she was going to get. "I don't fancy you. I haven't fancied you since I was fourteen. I wasn't staring at you all night trying to think of a way to be your New Year's kiss-"
She was interrupted by Harry's lips crashing into hers.
Their kiss, however, was interrupted by wolf whistles and a variety of hoots and cheers. A couple of people chimed in about saving the kiss for midnight.
"I'm not sure I can wait till midnight," Harry muttered.
"I can," Hermione said with a smirk.
"You what?!" Harry's expression matched his tone of shock and disbelief.
"I told you I can lie."
"Low blow. Really low blow."
Hermione grabbed Harry by his tie. "Let's get out of here."