Worlds Collide: 5/7

[rumpelsnorcack]

Title: Worlds Collide 5/7
Characters/Pairing: Harry/Hermione, Harry/Ginny
Word Count: 1,078
Rating: PG
Genre: Fluff, Romance
Summary: A Harry from a Harmony world finds his way through a portal to a canon world.  What happens when he meets his counterpart?
A/N: This was written after I had been talking with a Harmonian shipper and she had been trying to 'convert' me.  I had a dream where her Harry met up with my Harry and was, frankly, appalled that my Harry was dating Ginny.  This was the outcome.  The chapters alternate between Harmony Harry's and Canon Harry's perspectives.

Chapter 5: A Harmonious Ending?

 

Harry threw himself back on the bed after this world’s Harry and Ron left the room.  He was caught up in a maelstrom of feelings and emotions.  For the first time, he was able to really look at the way he’d been with Ginny and could see that the people around him here were right.  He had been - not cruel exactly, but he hadn’t given her much thought.  He knew this world’s Harry was right; there had been a bond created between them in the Chamber.  So for a year or so afterwards they had been in reasonably comfortable accord with each other.  They both understood that the details of what happened down there were intimate and just between the two of them.  And, while she still didn’t speak much around him, they understood each other.  He knew when she was hurting from the memories and could silently offer his support and she knew when he had been having nightmares and her silent acknowledgement buoyed him up through it.  But sometime during fourth year, about when he had really begun to take notice of Cho Chang, the connection between them had shrunk away until he had forgotten they had even shared something.

 

Yes, Ginny had grown up and grown more confident and became an awful lot of fun to play quidditch with, but she had also become just Ron’s sister to Harry.  He did have that irrational desire to keep her safe, to protect her, but he had felt like she was his honorary sister.  During the time he spent with the Weasleys, he had unconsciously taken on Ron’s attitudes towards her, so his protective urges seemed to arise out of brotherly feelings rather than anything else.  And after the Cho disaster he had sworn off girls until he had realised that how he was feeling about Hermione went beyond friendship.  Ginny had become ‘one of the guys’ or, more to the point, ‘one of the Weasleys,’ and they only spent time together during the holidays.  So why would he see her as anything more? 

 

He grunted.  None of that excused his dismissing her, though.  Fred and George had become secondary best friends, and yet Ginny was ignored?  Given the way they had been so comfortable together for years that did seem very … dismissive.  Harry sighed.  Well, just because he felt guilty didn’t mean he was going to go out with her or anything when he got home, but he decided he was going to make the effort to rekindle a friendship that had helped him in the past.  Hermione was his greatest supporter, but Ginny had been a source of support too.  He owed her something, he realised.

 

Relieved that he had that part of this equation sorted out in his head, Harry now turned his attention to Hermione.  When he got right down to it, even though they were together in a supposedly equal relationship, Hermione did talk down to him.  She did try to stop him from doing what he wanted to do.  In some cases she was right … and he knew it, he thought with a small smile.  But in others, his ideas were as worthy as hers and yet she couldn’t see it or refused to acknowledge that his intuition was as valid as her logic.  He frowned.  Was she treating him like a recalcitrant baby brother?  Someone who needed to be brought into line and taught how to do things?  He didn’t think so, but he did acknowledge that her nagging bugged him at times.  He was sixteen after all; plenty old enough to make up his own mind sometimes. 

 

But so what?  That was part of her, and he’d known about it going in to this.  Unbidden, the memory of the other Harry’s words rose up.  Ginny doesn’t do that.  How peaceful, how calming not to have to worry when you were with your girlfriend if she was going to find fault in what you were doing all the time.  He shook his head.  No, he wasn’t going there.  Hermione was a wonderful person and thinking like this, carrying through on what he was thinking here, was unfair to her.  He reiterated to himself that he had known going in what she was like, and all her great qualities far outweighed this one negative.  Didn’t they?  He mused again on how his Hermione was with him, compared to this world’s Hermione with the other Harry, and he knew deep inside, though he struggled against admitting it, that they both acted the same way.  Seeing it through other eyes he could tell that this pair were like siblings, so did that mean that really and truly he and his Hermione were like that too?

 

He tossed uneasily on the bed, so like his own, and made the uncomfortable acknowledgement to himself that maybe they were like brother and sister.  No.  Once again, he told himself that he was not going to take his thoughts there.  It would be time enough to evaluate his relationship when he had it back.  Best now to concentrate on getting back to her.  Restlessly, he finally fell into an exhausted sleep.  The emotional intensity of the day had wrung him out and he slid thankfully into the oblivion that came with sleep.

 

However, his dreams were restless too, filled inexplicably with sadness over the way Ginny had looked at him.  Both Ginnies, his and this world’s, swung through his dream castigating him for the way he had treated them.  In vain he pleaded that he didn’t mean it, that he was trying to do better.  Both just looked at him sadly as if their hearts were breaking and faded away.  He awoke to a hand on his arm shaking him out of the nightmares. 

‘Mate, you were shouting in your sleep.  Are you OK?’

‘Yeah, just a bad dream.’  He looked around himself at the slowly darkening room.  ‘Is it night, then?’

‘Well, sort of’ said Ron.  ‘It’s dinner.  We’ve got some food from the kitchens and we’re all ready to go to the Room of Requirement to try and cast the spell again.  No-one will see you; they’re all in the Great Hall.’

‘OK.  Let’s do this,’ sighed Harry.  ‘I’ve had enough madness to last my whole life.’