A/N: Inspired by Perhaps Love (2005), I used the background story as basis for this plot.

The Biographer

Hermione Jean Granger, aged 29, is an established writer in the publishing world. Shehad not found her newest project as peachy as her bosses at the publishing house advertised it to be. She had been researching and following veteran international actor turned successful director/ producer, Lin Jiandong for months now. She is supposed to write his official autobiography; later on ghost write his inspirational book and even provide wording for some sort of pin-up book for some lonely housewives out there.

The man is a genius, both in his craft as an actor and producer, well-known, handsome and most important, for Hermione at least, is that he is professional when it comes to work. This fortunately extends to their interviews. But the man has a problem. He is severely depressive and at times, it borders on him committing almost suicidal or self-harming acts.

Hermione didn't know why, but she presumes it is because of the friendship she's developed with the 43 year old man, but every time he does something stupid, she'd be the one his staff would call.

Right now he was floating aimlessly in his mansion's indoor pool and he had not eaten his meals since morning and it was already evening. Hermione took a deep breath before she stripped to her underwear and dragged the floating man to the side of the pool so she can shake him and talk to him.

Lin Jiandong was born in Hong Kong to a loving family. But he believes his story began when he went to Shanghai to study film. There he met a beautiful woman named Sun Na. He actually first met her when she finished up his leftover noodles as destitute and hungry as she was.

He offered his room for the night as he pitied the poor woman. He glimpsed her beautiful body as she bathed and he felt his heart beat faster. He averted his gaze for her modesty but he knew at the moment that he was in love.

"Are you out of your mind, Jiandong?" Hermione growled at the man who was staring at her vacantly before he realized who was talking to him. "Oh… Hi Hermione! How long have you been here? I didn't notice you." Jiandong noted as Hermione started toweling him dry. Hermione sighed. The man grinned mischievously as the girl toweled him. Hermione asked him to remove his clothes.

"I didn't know that you're that kind of girl, Mione. I like that." He said naughtily. Hermione glared at him and pointed at the bathroom adjoined to the expanse of space that held his indoor pool. "I meant you remove your clothes, dry up and change your clothes. Your servants have already placed your clothes in there." Hermione said drily. The man gave her a small smiled and nodded.

Hermione walked behind him up to the door of the bathroom and listened for his movements as the man seemed to be showering. He was humming what the tone he said he composed for Hermione. But she didn't find any comfort in that as he often hummed that tune after he'd done something crazy. Assured that he won't do anything stupid, she went to the other room, dried her underwear with magic and wore her clothes.

Jiandong went to a cabaret with friends to celebrate his classmate being hired as an assistant director. There he saw Sun Na again and found out that she was a singer in the cabaret. She told him that she came from a rural village and asked where he was from. She told him that she moved to Shanghai to sing because she has no audience in the village. He found himself staring long after the bus she rode drove off.

Hermione still didn't quite trust him with a knife so she cut up his meat for him with him looking at her with a puzzled look. "I'm not going to stab you with a steak knife you know." Jiandong told her. Hermione just glared at him. "I'm not going to stab myself with a knife either. Don't be preposterous." She didn't say a word as she sat opposite him and proceeded to eat her own meal. "Your cook is an absolute genius." Hermione told him as she took a bite of her tasty steak.

"Now, now, Hermione Jean, don't you go stealing off my cook. You've already stolen my heart, isn't that enough?" Jiandong told her flirtily and Hermione snorted at that. "Shut up and eat your peas." Hermione growled. The man laughed at that and that had Hermione laughing. She was seriously worried about him, she knew he is clinically depressive, and is taking antidepressants, a part of him she wouldn't share with the world. But during these moments when he is normal, she sees him for who he really is. He is happiest when he is at work. Maybe the reason why he is normal around her is because he associates her with work.

The man is an absolute flirt. He has a reputation for womanizing but has yet to marry anyone. His publicist used to say that he's too young for marriage and later on his publicist would claim that his work schedule doesn't allow for such commitments. Hermione knew the real reason why and with her book, the world would know the reason, too.

When Lin Jiandong quit his film school for lack of finances, Sun Na took him in, sharing her makeshift home in an abandoned warehouse which was partly underground which kept the place a bit warmer than expected. He then decided to proceed with part time as an art director. The first clue he has of Sun Na's character had been when she mentioned that she was disappointed that he is quitting film school because she had been banking on him to make her into a big film star. Seeing his disappointed look, she quickly followed that statement by saying she was kidding.

She calls him Lao Dong, even though he'd repeated that his name is Jiandong. But who is he kidding? She can call him anything she wants.

He was quite happy at that point in time. He was with the woman he loves.

Hermione sat beside Jiandong in his home theater watching the most recent of the films he'd directed. They have been happily munching popcorn, laughing at funny parts and commiserating with the actors in others. "Will you be staying over? I'll have them prepare a guest room for you." Jiandong asked her.

Hermione looked at his face, lines of sadness and depression still vivid on it. He might look young and well kept, but she knew that appearances could be very deceiving. She sighed and nodded.

The man gave her a grin and squeezed her hand before returning to the movie they were watching.

It was the happiest months of his life. Jiandong helped Sun Na to sell used goods. They might have lived in an unheated warehouse, but he never felt the cold. All he could feel that his life with her was one happy song.

The winter was cold, times were hard, their entertainment was cheap, the food was simple but Sun Na's company was all he needed.

Hermione stirred in the comfortable bed of the guest room. She just couldn't sleep. She heard a loud shout and heart wrenching sobs. She knew that voice and she also knew she was far away from others in this palatial home, all except for him.

She didn't even bother to knock as the door was opened partially. She found him crumpled on the floor, sobbing. He was wet again; he probably came from the pool and floated while she was asleep.

She didn't say a word as she went inside his bathroom, toweled him dry and with a big warm towel wrapped around him, she led him to the bed where she laid beside him hugging him as his sobs got quieter and became silent tears.

"Hermione…" Jiandong cried. Upon seeing sanity returning to his eyes, Hermione motioned to stand up but he held her back. "Please don't leave me. I'll do anything. I'll give you anything. Just don't leave me." He cried. Hermione hushed him and started humming the lullabye her mother hummed for her when she was a child.

Jiandong's eyes slowly closed and Hermione held him tighter against her, crying silently for the degrading brilliant mind.

It was hard to keep the warehouse where they lived in clean. But they were getting by. One day as Sun Na was mopping Jiandong asked if he could come and visit the shoot where she managed get a part in. Sun Na agreed.

"Is the film going to be shown in America?" Jiandong asked as he tried to make his tape recorder work. "Yes, of course…" Sun Na answered. "The American producer also said… don't know if he's serious though… that he'll marry me." Sun Na continued.

Jiandong abruptly stopped tinkering with his tape recorder and looked somber. "It's just a marriage on paper! Otherwise, who would marry a fifty year old?" Sun Na added. Jiandong only nodded. "He's probably just teasing me. He knows I want to go to America." She continued.

"Is that what you want?" Jiandong asked. "Of course! All film people dream of going to Hollywood! Who's going to watch the films made here?" Sun Na answered. Jiandong gave a sad smiled and nodded.

"He also said that I'm petite, only a head shorter than average. But in America, I'd be three heads shorter… That would make me very special!" Sun Na said further. Jiandong stopped the pretense of nodding or even smiling and was only looking at the empty air in front of him absently. "…And it is much easier to visit you in Hong Kong with an American passport." Sun Na said in efforts to console him.

Jiandong went back to his pretense of smiling and nodding. "It is a big world out there!" Sun Na exclaimed in heavily accented English.

He had to work the next day, a shoot to oversee and it was a good thing that it was just a short drive away from his Los Angeles home. Hermione went with him, following him to make sure that he was okay, although she knew he doesn't fall apart whenever he's working. It's as if work is what's keeping him together.

The man might have been a brilliant actor before and she'd seen many of his works with this research, but he was an absolute genius as a director. He was raking in critical and even commercial acclaim for his works, with several awards to his name, both for his acting and directing. This was not shabby for an Asian director.

Hermione was proud of him. She smiled at him from where she is seated, typing away at her laptop. He smiled back and waved happily.

Jiandong may not be a genius but he knew the exact moment when Sun Na cheated on him with the American producer she was always talking about. The meal they ate that night felt bitter on his tongue as her silence was unusually deafening.

She was often hungry and ate her meals fast, but not that night. She rushed off from the table, she switched off the overhead light and started kissing him with more aggression than she ever did before. He tried to stop her from her actions, to make her see reason. But she practically forced his reactions.

Sun Na was gritting her teeth in her sleep that night. Perhaps out of stress or guilt, he doesn't really know. He caressed her cheek trying to make her stop but when that failed, he placed his index finger between her teeth to stop her. She bit him a bit but he endured the pain as he held her close against him.

Before she met Jiandong, she didn't know how to drive. He actually taught her to drive when he realized she didn't know how to. She ended up often driving for him whenever they're together as the man preferred to drive by himself and would not hire a chauffeur although his assistant could double as one.

Jiandong smiled after Hermione was able to park his car properly. "You're getting better at driving Hermione." He complimented her. He got off and Hermione smiled sadly behind him. 'I wish you were getting better.' She thought to herself as she followed him to the door to his house gloomily. "Hey! Mione, let's see what the cook has prepared for us, shall we?" He asked as he led her in.

Sun Na packed her bags the next day. Jiandong did not say a word as she went away. "Don't look." Sun Na bid him but he couldn't avert his sad eyes. After she walked from the doorway, his eyes followed her up, seeing only her boots as their warehouse was partly underground. She kicked snow to the window which surprised Jiandong, who backed away from the window in his shock, before she ran away from the warehouse.

He was left staring out of the window long after she'd gone.

Jiandong was animatedly telling Hermione about his day while Hermione was staring at him warily. She'd known him for about a year, months of research and in his company and she still couldn't get over how quickly he changes moods. But he wasn't this bad before. So what changed for him?

She was still figuring it out when he broke her out of her reverie. "Today's dinner is good isn't it? I've requested the cook to prepare your favorite food. We don't know how long we have you with us after all." He said with what Hermione have now known as a fake smile. She would have reached out to touch him if the table between them is not such a long one. She didn't say a word and just went back to her food as soon as he returned to his conversation about how the actors and staff had fared in today's shoot.

He found Sun Na lying down on a frozen lake just near the warehouse. It doesn't take a genius to know that the producer lied to her and did not bring her along with him to America as he'd promised. He gathered her to his arms and let her cry on his shoulder as the snow fell around them. He tried hard to return how things were in the next few months. But things could never get back to the way they were before. But he tried... Isn't love worth fighting for?

After Jiandong improved, Hermione was able to return to her modest rented apartment in Pasadena. She was done with his autobiography, romanticized his life and love, cleaned it up and made him a hero to look up to. She placed him on a pedestal to be worshipped and loved by millions of his fans, either as an actor or director, whichever it was didn't matter.

She was so stupid to have fallen in love with a man who loves an ideally flawed woman who didn't and could never love him. She sat down on her bed and cried.

One day, he woke up with a recording of how she left him all of her savings and told him to use it to get a ticket back to Hong Kong. He ran out of the warehouse, hoping to catch her but she'd gone. He'd spend months waiting for her, only to find out that she ran away with a friend of his.

Of course, she'd meet her first step into stardom through his film school buddies. He'd been the one to introduce the two of them after all. His so-called friend would be the one to tell him that Sun Na ran off to be with him to go on this shoot she'd wanted. He was forced to go home to Hong Kong where he would later be discovered, not as a director as he originally wanted but as an actor.

Hermione was surprised to see him at the airport. He was grinning, one of those cold smiles he has on his face whenever he tries to play hardball or is being mean to someone. It was at these moments that Hermione wished she didn't study the guy as hard as she did, so it didn't hurt so much.

"I've called your publishing house." He said in a cold voice. "I told them that while I was satisfied with your work with my autobiography, I think I need a fresh writer to write my inspirational book and to have those small snippets of me in that photo book they want. Just so we won't have hard feelings. Here's the $1 Million you'd be losing on that deal. Your payment for my autobiography I already on your account..." Jiandong told her in a business-like voice devoid of any emotions.

"Thank you for your services. Good bye Ms. Granger." He said extending his hand in a greeting.

Hermione swallowed the hard lump on her throat, took a deep breath and shook his hand. "Thank you for your cooperation. Good bye Mr. Lin." She replied in her most businesslike tone.

Sun Na and Jiandong would meet again ten years later, they were both already stars and are set to star in a musical by a famous director Nie Wen. Everyone knows that Nie Wen had been the one who really discovered Sun Na and built her up to be the acclaimed actress she is today.

Jiandong was a popular actor in Hong Kong while Sun Na had conquered Shanghai. Sun Na pretended not to know Jiandong who in spite of everything was still in love with her. But he wasn't the only one. Sun Na's relationship with the director is reaching is at its end as she is now pursuing someone who could get her the Hollywood fame she'd always wanted. She didn't want anyone to know of her past and that included Jiandong as she fought nail and tooth to be the famed actress she'd always wanted to be.

Hermione waited until she arrived in her London flat and managed to close the door before she cried. She will not stop crying for days, staring at the check she placed on top of her dresser, seeing it as the last link she has to the man she loved.

He loved her still, wanted her still but after she cast him away thrice and watched her cast her lover of several years away for her aspirations of fame. As soon as the shoot finished, he left, he called her but as soon as he heard her voice he realized he couldn't do it. He knows he has nothing over the fame she wants to achieve. He knows he has to move on but for years, he'd carry a torch for his first real love.

Ginny Weasley had originally called Hermione in for a weekend at the Burrows when she found her crying. She knew that Hermione had been home for two weeks prior to this visit. She opened her friend's refrigerator to get herself a drink when she'd noticed something, her friend's refrigerator barely has anything on it. To confirm her suspicion, she checked her friend's pantry and then looked at her friend's trash and noticed one pattern. All Hermione did the past few days is order take out or have food delivered to her home.

Hermione told her the story of how she fell in love with the man she's writing about and he just threw her away once she finished with his autobiography. He'd even paid her for the work he didn't want her to do just to get her out of his sight. She figured Jiandong probably found out that Hermione was in love with him and didn't want her around in his disgust.

She then asked Ginny to return the check for $1 Million much to her friend's surprise. Hermione said she didn't want his money for something she had not even worked for.

He worked hard, gained acclaim first in Hong Kong and later on internationally. He was an actor at first but he started working as a director and later produced movies which would become hits. He supported his family but they chose to remain in Hong Kong while he moved to California.

He is a self-made man who continues his hard work and saves for the rainy days still even if he is now a success. He believes that nothing is secure in the entertainment industry. He has several investments and had saved up most of his money. His admitted luxury had been his large home. He'd always dreamed of owning one. He also has the staff he'd had back in Hong Kong, some even with their entire families living here. He'd always treated his staff as family.

Hermione saw his face on the tele, he was with another star on another red carpet event. She sobbed and turned off the tele. She wondered if this was how he felt for the woman who left him, only his was worse because he actually had her. She never had him.

But he didn't know that the love of his life would pass away in obscurity, the very thing she hated, impoverished and in pain. Cancer is a painful expensive disease. Sun Na died before she even reached the age of 35. Jiandong mourned her death when he found out years later but he'd moved on. He'd have his moments of insomnia and depression but it wasn't as bad as it was before because somehow he'd been able to walk away.

Ginny was a woman with a mission, she flooed in to the the LA wizarding community. Used her magic to track the person Hermione asked her to find and apparated to the nearest apparating point from there. The man was sitting in what Harry calls a Director's Chair. She used her husband's invisibility cloak to go to where he is, bypassing the number of people she'd known would be around. She appeared right behind him. He almost jumped in surprise.

"Hermione asked me to give you this." She told the man who took the envelope from her hand. The man motioned for the bouncers and guards who were about to get her out to stay away.

He opened the envelope and found the check for $1 Million that he had prepared for Hermione. He looked at the red haired woman expectantly. "She said she's not getting paid for something she didn't do. She's really depressed and hadn't left the house in weeks. She's been crying over you. I know you're some big shot director or something but you could have at least let her down easy. You knew she's in love with you and…"

He'd been quite content with his life really. He had money, fame, a great house, great employees and a good job. What more can a man want? That was until he met her. She is a good 14 years younger than him, determined and optimistic. She was strong willed and as invincible as Sun Na except she didn't seem to be the type to step on others to gain what she wants.

Hermione laughed at his jokes, took care of him when he is feeling depressed and even went out of her way to listen to his corny jokes and laugh. He wanted to see her as a caring and genuine person until he remembered that Sun Na also took care of him, sharing what little she had before she threw him away.

He had to remind himself that this was just a job for Hermione, just research. He was just her client and she is just very good at her job. He was falling in love with her and he knew it would be a cold day in hell before she could love someone as cold and as jaded as he is.

Still he cherished every moment he had with her…

"Wait… What do you mean she's in love with me?" Jiandong asked in puzzlement. "You're all she ever talked about, even when she visits us home in London back when she was working here. She was around you way more than what her job required." Ginny said, congratulating herself that she had not turned out to be a harpy they all expected her to be, given her mother's temper. She barely noticed Jiandong's distress but was too angry at him to care.

"I didn't let her down easy. I…" Jiandong interjected but Ginny cut her off. "Yea you didn't! You dumped her cold heartedly and she hasn't stopped crying since she went home that I'm seriously worried she'll be dehydrated or something." Jiandong was getting worried at what the red haired woman was describing.

"She hasn't been out of her house, hasn't talked to anyone except to tell me to return this check to you." Ginny said before she left, leaving a stunned Jiandong to unable to stop her and seemingly disappeared into thin air a while later.

Hermione lulled him to sleep but had been the one who fell asleep first. He only feigned sleep when he closed his eyes earlier. He looked at her sleeping figure. He knew that she'd already finished the draft for his autobiography and is just editing it. Her time with him is limited. Of course, there's still his inspirational book and his photo book and she would still be interviewing him but she wouldn't be here as often or as long as she did for this book. Could he bear just seeing her occasionally, knowing she couldn't love him while he loves her so much?

He just can't do it, he has to let her go. He can't afford to fall apart as he did with Sun Na before. He can't do it just yet, maybe when she's about to go home. But for now he will cherish what time they have now. He would have to gather enough memories so he can later steel his heart to bid her farewell before she'd be the one who'll slowly get out of his life and destroy him.

Despite the fact that he was one of its biggest clients, the publishing house was surprisingly unhelpful in his bid to find Hermione. He'd had to hire a private investigator to track her down. It took around two weeks, but he was finally able to find her given what Jiandong knew about her.

He had the investigator tag her along, but somehow she manages to shake the investigator off. However, they've established that she frequents the coffee shop near her. So he had the investigator wait and contact him.

Hermione was forced out of her house by well-meaning friends. She was slowly getting back on her feet, as long as she doesn't see his face which seemed to be found just about anywhere, especially after her book was published. The PR machinations of both her publishing house and his people were working hard.

She was slowly getting back to her feet. Her next project is a book on urban gardening. It was a job where the material was provided for her and all she had to do was write things down. It wasn't much but it was helping her get on with her life. Now, she truly understood what Jiandong went through and felt sorry for him all the more.

Hermione heard some noise from the patrons of the coffee shop as if some actor or some other famous person entered. She ignored it and just continued reading her material up until a shadow blocked her reading and she looked up. "I've missed you." Jiandong said the first word that came to his mind.

Before Hermione could react he reached down and kissed her to the gasp and surprise of the patrons of the coffee shop. They could hear cameras from phones clicking away but both didn't care as they were lost in their own world.