With Added Flourish - - x
After four weeks of clipped greetings and small talk had built up like dust, light indifference finally gave way to sincere conversation and Theodore discovered that he and Hermione had ended up in their current positions for roughly the same reasons.
Of course, certain peculiarities did not align. Theodore's father was in Azkaban, Hermione's parents were in Abingdon. Still, they were both attempting to avoid inhabiting spaces laced with the memories of their parents, albeit for entirely different reasons. Their entirely different reasons, too, had been spurred by the same events. War has an oilly, scentless way of seeping into everything, after all.
There was a tell-tale door creak as Hermione made her way into the staff-only room on the third floor of Flourish and Blotts. It was half five, fifteen minutes to opening on a Thursday morning, so naturally Theodore had been up answering mail since four. He realized with a taste of dislike that 5:30 was also when the owl usually arrived with the Prophet. Hermione's scowl was confirmation.
"Theodore, you won't believe what they've printed today. I swore I'd stop reading these, I know, but isn't this vile? I've tried to cancel our subscription about 9 times now, I think they're just sending owls to spite me." Hermione clenched the paper in her hand and let out a sigh. "No, you know what, this is really silly. I'm sorry, Theodore, I shouldn't have bothered you. You're clearly actually getting work done."
"It's fine, Hermione, I'm about done anyway," he assured her.
"Oh," her face contorted with apology. "You're much too nice to me. There's a stack 12 papers high next to you, otherwise I'd believe you. I really will let you alone now." She turned around and waved at him in the same instant, the sound of the closing door the bookend to the conversation she'd begun.
It was another hour before Theodore had responded to every letter. He wished he could send them immediately instead of waiting for their manager, Almana, to read each one over. Everything would be approved of, it was just the ineffiency of the process that bothered him. Theodore was compulsively efficient.
The same way that voices in a crowded room seem to rise and subside all at once, the store seemed to trickle between nearly full and near-empty. The clusters of customers, made up mostly of parents and school-aged children by this late in the summer, extended their presence beyond after they'd left, living on in up-turned stools and misplaced biographies. Theodore's job that Thursday, like Thursdays before it, was to put everything right and watch disorder overtake it once again. Hermione, meanwhile, would help the customers. She had the patience for it, the people skills, and, after all, they all wanted their story of how the Hermione Granger helped them find their kids' books.
It was almost nine when they were finally closing shop. It wasn't a case of now or never, their shifts ran alongisde each other the full day next Thursday as well, but Theodore tried to talk himself into imagining some immediacy. For emotions that had accumulated gradually, they suddenly felt urgent.
"Do you want to catch dinner?" he asked.
She smiled. "It's almost nine, Theodore. I think dinner's probably run far away now to escape us."
"Drinks, then?" he asked. He realized it sounded pathetic. He was pathetic, and she was Hermione Granger.
She just laughed. The gentle "no" she meant to imply slipped gingerly past him like an arrow.
"Not even a spot of ice cream?"
"Ice cream sounds nice, actually," she admitted. "Maybe ice cream is just what I need."
He said something stupid and forgettable in reply, but she was kind enough to laugh.
The ice cream parlour was a short, silent walk away. It became clear to both of them that it was the sort of summer day that lost its heat as it lost its sun, and there was no need to try to cool it down with ice cream. Still, neither was willing to abandon their expedition.
Hermione ordered a "cinnamon pumpkin, two scoops, regular cone." Theodore knew better than to try to pay for it. He looked for the flavour that said "chocolate" the most times and got it in a chocolate cone. This caused Hermione to laugh, to which he replied, "Chocolate goes really well with chocolate," only half-jokingly.
When they'd slid into parallel white-plastic chairs, her ice cream was already missing a significant portion of its upper-half. Theodore was going to tease her about this, but recognized that he'd already ordered less ice cream than her, and decided not to hightlight this difference in case she was self-conscious about her ice cream habits. Of course, if she were, she shouldn't have ordered more, but then, she did order first, and honestly Theodore had never really been able to understand any of the rationale behind the startlingly common phenomena of people being afraid of eating regular portions in front of other people.
"So, is this a date?" she asked as she finished another lick of cinnamon pumpkin.
Her bluntness did little to startle him. "I certainly wouldn't mind if it were, but I'll leave that up to you," he replied evenly.
"I'm not really sure if I want it to be, to be honest. I like you, Theodore, but I hardly know you."
Theodore smiled. "We went to school together!" he teased. "Six-seven?-years!"
Hermione laughed. "Which is why it's so amazing that I hardly know you. Were you avoiding me? Be honest."
"I was avoiding everyone," he answered honestly. "I think I'm the only wizard in history who wished they'd been sorted into Hufflepuff. Life seemed so simple there."
This elicited a laugh from Hermione, though she guiltily tried to muffle it. "I'm sure lots of people want to be in Hufflepuff," she said unconvincingly with a smile. Theodore's mouth was mostly full of very chocolate ice cream, and in the moment it took him to finish before he could reply, Hermione began to speak again, abandoning her earlier smile.
"I wonder if they'll really repair the rest of Hogwarts in time to open normally," she mused.
"I don't think normal is on the table," Theodore replied. "But, I hope so, too, I mean," he added.
Hermione rested her elbow on the small table, seemingly distancing herself from her ice cream as she grew more serious. "Theodore, before I decide if this is a date, I need to know. Why didn't you fight, in the war? Why didn't you ever contact us?"
Theodore tried to phrase what was honest in a way that made it sound adequate, as well.
"It wasn't a matter of picking sides for me. I was already drafted, you could say. I would have fought with Dumbledore if I knew how, but there was no way to contact you when all my contacts were death eaters. I hardly had any friends in Slytherin, much less outside. There are only so many times you can blow off a death eater meeting before they blow off your head, so I did what I thought, at the time, was my only real option," he sighed, trying to cut past the self-criticisms that had long layered his memories of the war. "I wrecked anything in our house that seemed to be of any value, then set everything I could on fire. I emigrated to Senegal after."
"Why Senegal?" was Hermione's first question.
"As I walked away from the house, I heard my father apparate behind me, and I thought of the last place he'd look for me. I want to say it's because I speak fluent French and am an avid Youssou N'Dour fan, but that was something of a happy coincidence."
"What did you do in Senegal?" her voice was critical.
"I worked. I was a guide for European tourists, then I ended up falling in with this organization that works with former child soldiers from farther south in West Africa."
"That sounds fulfilling," she said, still unabashedly critical. "Why did you come back?"
"I thought I'd star in my father's trial. They didn't really need any more witnesses to convict him, but it was too poetic to resist. It seemed like a positive note to end the relationship on. The shift in power, the finality of it all, who wouldn't be tempted?" Then he answered Hermione's next, yet unasked question. "I stayed because even productive hiding is still hiding. I want to go back south eventually, but not returning to England, or putting it off, would be surrendering England to my father. I didn't want my whole existance in England to be defined by him, but if I just left, it would be."
"Did you ask me out just because you know he'd disapprove?" Hermione asked in the same tone as before.
Theodore laughed dryly. He supposed he'd dug this hole for himself.
"I'm sorry, I really must sound obsessed with my father," he said, ignoring the streak of chocolate ice cream trailing down his wrist. "It's just that you asked about the war, which is really filtered through my relation to him. But no, Merlin no, he has nothing to do with me asking you out. Neither does the war, by the way. No, me asking you out has everything to do with the fact that you've actually read more of the books we stock than I have, you hate coffee and always smell like rich Irish breakfast tea in the mornings, you can't stand the news but still check it every day, you always put your hair up like that, and I actually enjoy talking to you even though I make a fool out of myself every time."
"Ok," she said, "It's a date."
x - -