A/N: Welcome to a very unusual story I have just concocted that resembles chick lit and fanfiction all in one! I think I'll rate this M just to be safe in case I get dirty later on. I'm going to dedicate this to all dirty book lovers/HP fanatics. I apologize if this weirds you out, but that's what sprang out of my head tonight. I'm going to cleverly call this brainchild "Inopportunities" because I'm silly like that.
Disclaimer: I don't own any Harry Potter awesomeness, much to my chagrin.
Inopportunities
Chapter 1: Faints
I was having a few people over to my flat for tea. That was when he decided to appear. He couldn't have waited until I was on my own, composed, dressed a little more provocatively or feeling a little more in the mood to talk to him, not falling faint in front of all my friends. Never the considerate one, he simply knocked inopportunely on the door and it started all over again.
We had lost track of Harry after we destroyed the last Horcrux. One night, we went to sleep innocently thinking we would all be off in search of Voldemort the next morning, congratulating each other on our success and nestling companionably into our separate bunks in a small hotel. When Ron and I woke up the next morning, we were alone. We went off in search of him, of course. But he had not confided in us where he was planning to look next; he hadn't told anybody. We asked Lupin and Tonks, but they hadn't heard. We went to Godric's Hollow, we went to Riddle's grave, we went to every place we could think of, but there was no Harry. That was when I lost track of Ron. He deposited me at the Burrow, and promptly disappeared in much the same manner as Harry had. We guessed that he wanted to try it by himself and that he didn't want to endanger me in the process of looking for Harry. It wasn't until we received reports that Death Eaters were disbanding and roaming restlessly about that we knew something had changed for the better. Harry had won.
We all assumed that this would mean Harry and Ron would return to us, if they had not been casualties in the inevitable battle that must have taken place in the end. However, weeks went by full of nail-biting and pacing, but in the end they resulted in nothing but ruts worn in the carpets and stubby bleeding fingertips. That was when I realized I had to move on.
I took a flat in London, near the British Museum. After the war, I had suddenly found myself disenchanted with magic, and felt a strong pull to return to my roots. I took up studying British literature, and found a new set of Muggle friends who knew nothing of Harry, or Ron, and who would never shudder at the mention of the name Voldemort. Mrs. Weasley called what I was doing with my life absolute nonsense. It was a privation and I was only going to end up more hurt by the time I snapped out of this phase of my life. I kept my job in the Ministry for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, but my heart wasn't in it, really.
I rather enjoyed shopping with my new Muggle friends. It brought me back to the days when I was only doing magic by accident and attending primary school with kids who had no special ability.
There were about three girls who comprised my main support system of friends in London. There was Pamela, a twenty-something I met in the library when she was still working there. She was fired for conducting illicit assignations in the Victorian Lit section with most of the male librarians. She had brown cropped hair and tortoise-shell glasses, and she always wore miniskirts, usually in tweeds. Pamela was the epitome of naughty-librarian, and she always made me laugh.
Kat was Pamela's roommate, and she tended more towards farm-girl than a denizen of the city; she was sweetly blonde, and tolerable, in a clueless way. Sasha was my neighbor, and I met her one night when she was having some sort of insane party and I was trying to impersonate a spinster and sleep. I stomped out into the hall and began banging on the door in my frumpiest pajamas and hair all askew. She opened the door, grinned, said, "Hiya neighbor!" and pulled me into the party. That was the night I met Ian, as well. He was a friend of Sasha's and bookish cute. Ian, I'll save for another time. Sasha, however, originated in Japan, moved to London when she was six and never went back, claiming the people there were too smart for her. She had impossibly long blue-black hair, wore the strangest clothes, and knew the life story of every painter in the National Gallery, which she dragged me to at least once a week, to "cleanse her muddied aura" she told me. It was very calming to her, and I couldn't quite figure out why we hit it off as much as we seemed to. In fact, all of these girls could have been considered my exact opposite. I have no creative tendencies, I do not have the talent of "making myself available" to men in general, for understandable reasons, I think, and I would hardly consider myself clueless. Perhaps it was for these reasons I loved them so much. I had to change after losing them; I had to embrace what I was not and reinvent myself.
So, that was what I did. I read widely, finishing Dickens within a year, and then moving swiftly on to the Brontës, and then Austen. I had read some of these authors on breaks from school, but was never as impressed with them as I turned out to be now. When I got to it, I must have read Wuthering Heights at least three times in a row. I got lost in that book, along with many others. I liked getting lost in books; it was what I had to do.
"So ladies, what's the Tea & Scandal today?" demanded Pamela, crossing her legs, showing off her black patent leather shoes and grinning over her teacup. My flat always looked so much smaller when there were people in it, I observed as we all struggled not to knock elbows over the tea tray. I envied Sasha her studio, it left more room to entertain. Nevertheless, we were all quite comfortable on the worn couches in my miniscule living space when Pamela asked her usual question.
"I'm planning on throwing another party this weekend to celebrate the brilliancy of me," Sasha declared, smirking and tossing her hair. I thought enviously that I could never get my hair to do that with any number of Sleakeasy's hair potions.
"Oh, marvelous," I said, less than enthused at the prospect of her usual floor-vibrating music and raucous guest lists.
"Well you have to come, at any rate Hermione, so don't start whining. Ian will be there, so I don't suppose I'll be able to keep you out, actually." Oh yes, Ian. I blushed to the roots of my hair and straightened my gray sweater. I wasn't sure why I had opted for the old maid attire today; I guess I wasn't feeling too chic. My wand was hidden in my closet, and I only took it out to go to work, I wasn't using it at home any more. I regretted that fact, reaching up to contain the poof of my hair with my hands self-consciously. Ian would be there, I thought. And then, of course, to damn myself, I smiled.
"It's like dangling a bone in front of a seriously deprived dog – a cocker spaniel, even. Doesn't Hermione look just like a cocker spaniel?" Pamela teased. Kat giggled and rocked in her chair like an infant.
"I wonder if tomorrow will finally be the night!" Kat enthused, nearly spilling her tea.
"Look at her, she's practically drooling," Pamela cackled. The girls were always happy when it looked like I was finally turning into one of them. I was an oddity when they first met me, and gradually I was acclimating. That meant giggling over exciting things like Ian and Harrods. Now I suppose, I should probably explain why I found Ian so very thrilling, otherwise you'll never know.
Like I said, we met at Sasha's party that night. He impressed me as being plain at first, but then once I got around to looking at him more closely, I discovered an impressive build largely covered by finely-knit sweaters and dress shirts, with endearingly mussed black hair, and a face obscured by glasses bearing a great resemblance to Pamela's. I asked Pamela once why she had never tried anything with him, and she said she couldn't bear it because he was too much like her detestable self. Thus far, I had managed to think of Ian only in the capacity of good friend, but my total lack of romance since fourth year had lately driven me to change my perceptions of him. Viktor Krum hadn't really been a romance anyway. Ron was… well I thought he was something. I set down my teacup and stood up to go to the kitchen. I couldn't be with them if I was thinking about Ron. I opened the pantry with all the healthy food in it (a place these girls would never venture) and stared at the picture I had glued to the door. It was the last one we had taken all together. Harry, scarred but triumphant, myself looking much the same as always, but somehow happier, and Ron beautifully messy like he always was. I began to smile at the Ron in the picture, who had put his arm around my waist when I heard it.
Someone was knocking at the door to my flat. I froze, and the other girls did too. I knew who it was before I opened it, and I blanched. This was impossible, I thought, shaking my head.
Still, the knocking continued and the other girls looked at me puzzled. I stood agape in the kitchen.
"Hermione, are you there?" came a voice I knew too well, muffled through the insubstantial barrier of a wall. "It's me, Ron," the voice said, and I promptly fainted.