With a whoosh! the flames turned a vibrant kelly green and Hermione reflexively stiffened in her seat, only to relax again as a witch stepped out of the fireplace. At least she was no longer jumping up every time someone appeared like that. She had done it so often the barman had come over to kid her about there being something wrong with his chair.
In the end the gap-toothed Tom had brought over a bowl of some surprisingly tasty oatmeal and a copy of the paper in an effort to keep her from scaring off his customers, though that was an obvious joke. She hadn't expected the owner of a place as dingy as the Leaky Cauldron to be so nice, but on the whole the entire establishment was very clean in spite of the optics. She supposed the dark atmosphere was more a product of dark wood, darker stains, a bad paint palette, and a severe lack of light than anything else.
The ash dust didn't help either, but it was mostly confined to where the new arrivals stood when they dusted themselves off. They always did so in the same spot, curiously enough; always the same spot roughly three feet from where they came out of the flames. Hermione wondered if it was something they were taught in order to avoid collisions or just something which had developed naturally.
In a way she wished she had stayed to see Harry leave, but in another she was glad she hadn't. What do you say to someone after you kiss them? It was much easier just to run away. Now though, she didn't have a clue about why he was late. Did he get lost and come out of the wrong fireplace, or did he just oversleep? She didn't want to think about what the alternative could be; it was much more cheerful to think he'd been kidnapped than to think he didn't want to come, which she found particularly strange.
Did she mess everything up by what she did yesterday? Harry had always seemed more - well, reserved - when it came to any sign of affection, physical or otherwise, but he hadn't seemed to mind that she'd done it at the time. If anything, it was how he had relaxed when she'd hugged him while they were being held for questioning that had given her the confidence to do what she'd done afterwards.
She'd hate to think she had ruined everything by pushing him into something he was uncomfortable with. After she had forgiven her father for pranking her with the quill, and had told him more about Harry and his upbringing, he'd done his "official parental responsibility" by giving her a refresher course on the cycle of abuse and what it did to people. Even though what he'd said about the common behaviors of victims didn't seem to apply to him - despite being a victim of further bullying and running away from home, though his desire to please and his dislike of his fame being a reflection of low self-esteem could fit, she supposed - none of the warning signs he'd continue the cycle were there at all.
Could there be some other sort of psychological issue at play that'd make him stay away? With a twist in the pit of her stomach, she felt more than saw Harry curled up in his room petrified and panicking at the thought of getting close to someone only to lose them like he'd lost his parents. It was enough to make her want to rush off to find him, but could you use the fireplace when you didn't know where you were going? Ron's dad had called his place 'the Burrow,' but was that enough for her to get there to make sure he was alright?
Hermione took a breath and tried to calm herself; she was just worrying, there was no call to rush off just yet. Odds are Harry had simply misremembered the time or overslept; it certainly wouldn't have been the first time. He and Ron had been late to their very first class last year and most weekends she'd had been down in the common room for hours before they'd made their way down for breakfast. It was just a case of boys being boys and failing to plan ahead; she could either harp on it until she drove him mad and he didn't want to see her anymore or she'd just have to get used to it and plan around it.
There was a crack! from behind the Leaky Cauldron's closed front door and again Hermione wondered at why these people did what they did. If they could appear anywhere like that, why not Apparate exactly where you wanted to go rather than at the front door and walk in? Was there something preventing them from doing so besides a residual sense of decorum? Waiting for Harry had certainly turned into an odd anthropological study.
She had a bit of trouble at not questioning the sanity of those in the wizarding world when Lichfield was the one to come through the door wearing a purple bathrobe, plaid "comfy trousers" - as her father called them - a white tee shirt, and pink slippers. He waved nonchalantly to Tom before he saw her and stopped in his tracks. Glancing down at his outfit, he looked back at her and grinned before moving to the fireplace, throwing in a pinch of dust, and disappearing in a gout of flame and a shout of "Norwich!"
Was there some sort of wizarding dementia or sleepwalking which had them wake up in odd places? Hermione wished she knew where to start looking for information but they were still just over two weeks away from being back at Hogwarts. She was definitely pursuing Harry's idea for a summer check-out program for the library as soon as they returned, initial joke or no.
The question remained though, if there wasn't a benign explanation for what just occurred, should she tell Harry about this? With his independence at stake, they were certainly putting a lot of faith in a man they barely knew, but if she told him it might break what confidence he had they'd win. She'd ask her dad but even with their new-found openness about the wizarding world she wouldn't put it past him to ignore everything else and try to cram the car into the fireplace to make the journey home easier.
With yet another worry to occupy her time Hermione returned to the paper. Though she tried hard to concentrate, the combination of other worries, already knowing how shoddy Lockhart's books were, and knowing why the goblins had mysteriously closed their doors made it difficult to keep her mind occupied. Before long though she found she no longer had reason to wait.
With a nervous wave of nausea she saw the blaze belch out her black-haired and bespectacled best friend. Her nerves disappeared as quickly as they'd come as he gave her an embarrassedly lop-sided chagrined grin saying he knew that he was late as he dusted off the ash of his journey. He used the same spot to do it as the rest of them. How could the person at the root of so many of her anxieties make them all disappear in an instant, even the ones he had nothing to do with?
Harry flattened his hair with his hand as he made his way over and Hermione chose to break the ice with the first topic to spring to mind.
"You look… casual," she said, taking in the jeans and maroon shirt he wore, which were very much at odds with the stylish new wizarding shoes he had.
"Oh, yeah," he said embarrassedly as he sat across from her. "They're some of Ron's clothes Mrs. Weasley let me wear. Madam Malkin has been nice enough to charm my robes the last couple times I've been here and I promised to come back and buy some real clothes, so I thought we'd start there," Harry said with a shrug.
She nodded. "In spite of what I said last night," Hermione admitted, "it's kind of strange to see you in normal clothes."
"It feels kind of odd too," he said, picking at his shirt. "I guess you can get used to anything. I'm sorry I was late, by the way," Harry said quickly. "It's been a rather bad day for Dobby."
"He's not dying, is he?" she asked hurriedly.
.....
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