TITLE: All You Had To Do
SUMMARY: Percy is back in the family fold. But he'll have to do a bit more persuading to convince his ex, Hermione, that he's changed.
WARNING: Smut, anger-sex, condolence love-making.
PAIRING: Hermione/Percy
A/N: A little Hermione/Percy fic. Full of lemony goodness. Please, R&R
HPOV
FLASHBACK
"Good riddance to him."
"Mione, I know what he meant to you -"
"Meant. Past tense. He meant something to me once, but that time is over."
"Hermione -"
"NO! Percy is dead to me. I don't love him, he means nothing to me. And for what he has done to Molly, I will never, ever forgive him…"
PRESENT DAY
God, how much I regret those words. How much I wish I had never said them. But I said them, with as much venom as I could possibly muster. He'd heard every word. He'd left that night, and I had refused to even acknowledge my previous relationship with him. And the war is over.
Over.
Goddamn it to hell and back. All the people we lost - Fred, Lupin, Tonks, Moody, Dumbledore, everyone who died fighting for the Light. And the people we gained.
Percy Weasley is back in my life.
I don't care if Molly, Arthur, the boys, Ginny, I don't care if they have forgiven him and brought him back into the family fold. I ignore him completely. For what he did, for abandoning his family for the Ministry, I shall never forgive him.
I manage a week, avoiding him, refusing to answer his questions, freezing him out. I go out of my way to avoid him.
Until the day I Apparate on top of him.
PPOV
She's been avoiding me. Icy glares, ignored questions, Apparating around the house to avoid having to pass me in narrow halls, pointed isolation. I can't blame her, not one bit. She does everything she can to avoid me, everything and anything to avoid being alone with me.
Crack. The sharp sound of Apparation is followed up immediately by someone landing on top of me. It's very dark in the narrow hall leading to the kitchen. There's a mutter, a curse and a quiet noise of pain. It's half past six. In the morning. I thought I was the only one who got up that early. It's pitch dark. I know I've got a girl on top of me - I can feel her, utterly female. God, it'd best not be Ginny.
"Christ, I'm so sorry -" My heart accelerates. It's her. It's Hermione.
"Hermione?" Even her breathing seems to stop. She is silent for five seconds. Part of my brain registers that I'm still living, that she didn't take this opportunity to bludgeon me to death.
"Percy?" I count to ten, try not to think about the fact that my hands are on her waist, her breasts on my chest - and her hips cradled in mine. I didn't land well.
"It's me." Silence again. And then a whisper, her voice quiet, sad, defeated. Not angry.
"Damnit. Damn it all."
"Are you alright?"
"I will be, when you get your hands off me." I ignore her. I heard her whimper of pain when she landed. I wrap my arms more securely around her, and Apparate us both upstairs to the library. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" The ice-queen is back. I flick my wand. Lamps light, and the door locks, wards. We're going to have this out, here and now.
She glowers at me, cinnamon eyes narrowed, darkened with anger. Her hair - those golden-brown curls that I still remember the scent of when she'd wake up in the morning wrapped around me, the way it would feel when my hands were in it, tangled up during our kisses, stolen in golden moments. The way it looked when we'd just fucked.
"We need to talk, Mia."
"Do we hell. And I've told you not to call me Mia."
"How long do you intend to carry on being the ice-queen bitch?"
"Forever. You broke your family's heart. God damnit Percy, you broke my heart! They might be able to forgive you, but I can't. I won't."
"You're not mad at me, though, Mia. You were, once. But not any more."
"You could always read me. No, Percy, I'm not mad at you, not any more. I'm disappointed." I'd rather she shouted, screamed, threw things. I'd rather she was mad. Right now, I'm drowning in guilt. And those huge, shining cinnamon eyes looking up at me as she informs me that I broke her heart and that she's past being mad at me, makes me want to cry.
"I'm sorry."
"Oh, well, that makes it all alright. You're sorry. Great." Her voice drips with sarcasm.
"I know it doesn't make it OK. But it's all I have for you, Mia. Sorry is all I have." Fuck it. I have to seize this chance. "I'd give you my heart, my soul in exchange for your forgiveness, but you already have them both. Sorry's all I've got left, Hermione."
She reacts exactly how I expect her to. And in a way I don't expect.
GinnyPOV
"Fuck you!" The scream wakes Harry and I, Mum and Dad, the whole house. Within seconds, everyone is gathered outside the library, listening to Hermione screaming at Percy. "God damnit, Percy, why the hell do you have to make everything so complicated?!"
"I'm not making it complicated!"
"Oh, like hell you're not!" There's a crash. Jeez, she's throwing stuff?
"Should we go in there?" Mum whispers, looking round.
"No. Let them thrash it out. Besides, none of us would ever be able to get past the wards." Dad whispers back. "Come on, leave them." There's another crash as we retreat. The row echoes all over the house.
PPOV
"God, Mia, will you just listen! I've said I'm sorry! There's nothing else. I've got nothing else!"
"Fuck!" She throws a book at the wall. I thank Merlin she's not throwing them at me any more. "I didn't need you to have anything else! If you'd just said sorry, walked out, given me time. Why did every row we had have to come back to you making it complicated, telling me you loved me? All I ever wanted from you was for you to say you were sorry!"
"Then let me apologize!"
"It's too late, Percy. It's too late for you to tell me you're sorry." She walks through wards as if they weren't there. But I know, somewhere deep down, if I let her walk out now, I'll never get her back. I stand in front of the door, push her backwards.
"No more walking away, Hermione. We've done too much walking away. I can't watch you walk away again."
"You were the one who walked, Percy. You were the one who walked out on your family. You walked out on me. You… Christ, Percy, you broke my heart."
GinnyPOV
"Take the charm off that room, George," Dad says quietly. "This isn't something for us to hear."
PPOV
"I'm sorry." I reach out for her, taking her hands in mine, kissing her fingertips gently. "Nothing I can say will make it better. Nothing I can say can undo what I've done. But I'm sorry, and if I could go back, if I could change it, I would. I swear to you, I would." Her eyes are shining with tears, ad I kiss away the one that falls. "I love you. I never stopped." I risk it, hold her close, wrapping my arms around her.
"What do you want from me?"
"I want you to say you forgive me."
HPOV
"I want you to say you forgive me." It'd be so simple.
"I think," I say slowly, "I think we both need to be forgiven."
He carried me to his room, putting me on his bed like I'd shatter if he was anything other than totally gentle. He'd kissed me gently, hands waking me back up. I hadn't even realised I'd been numb. But I had been, and now his hands are running over every inch of me, waking me up, setting my skin on fire, his kisses rousing up feelings inside me I thought I'd never feel again. I was dead before him, and I died again when he left. But now his hands are sliding my T-shirt from my body, rough, warm, gentle hands caressing my breasts, slightly rough lips kissing me, peppering heat down my neck, kissing my stomach, fingertips trailing over skin that rises into goose-bumps in their wake, skin that smoothes and blazes as his hands slide over me with firm and gentle pressure. When he hooks fingers in the waistband of my jeans, sliding them down my legs, dragging his lips back over me as he comes back to my waist. I arch against him when he finally touches that spot, I can't stop the moan that tumbles from my lips. He plays me until I'm writhing under his touch, begging him to take me just that little further. When he slides inside me, makes sweet, gentle, tender love to me, I come alive. His kisses make me weak, his touches make me beg and his words make me cry - just as they always did, before the whole mess. I ride the waves with him, and when he hits that spot inside me, when I scream his name, when my toes curl from the sheer force of it, his kisses swallow my helpless murmurings, his touches silence me and his whispers comfort me.
I was always going to forgive him, I realise. Because only he can make me weak.