Harry and Hermione: A Sweet Romance

Nine and Three-Quarters

July 31, 1991, Diagon Alley.

A brown-haired girl stood on tiptoe in Flourish and Blotts, trying to reach a copy of A Beginner’s Guide to Transfiguration on the top shelf. A bespectacled boy pulled it down and handed it to her.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Harry,” he said.

Her name was Hermione Granger. His name was Harry Potter.

That was the first day they met. Neither of them knew how long that name would take root in the other’s life.

This is a story about the “spaces between.”

The spaces nestled between the lines of the original books, never fully explored: In their third year, he woke up in the hospital wing with her hand still in his. She pulled it away three seconds before he opened his eyes. After the Yule Ball in their fourth year, she climbed the Astronomy Tower alone. He found her among the “Potter Stinks” badges all over the castle, said nothing, and stood beside her all night. In their sixth year, she wrote him a letter every week, in neat handwriting and never more than two pages long. He kept every one at the bottom of his trunk. In the wilderness of their seventh year, she cried, “I still have so many books left to read.” He took her hand and said, “Then we’ll read them together.”

This is not a story that upends the original.

The Goblet of Fire will still spit out his name, Sirius Black will still fall through the veil, and Hogwarts will still face that battle that rages through the night, with countless casualties. Through it all, he simply remembers the strength of the soap scent on the handkerchief she gave him, the warmth of her knuckles when she took off his glasses, and how she always walked half a step behind him when they were side by side.