Welcome to my second fic. The idea is loosely based off the movie What If, but the ideas that follow will mostly be my own.
"Let's be friends," Hermione Granger said earnestly. Ron Weasley couldn't believe what he was hearing. After seven years of friendship and less than three months of dating Hermione was ending their new found romantic relationship."I'm serious," she said to stunned silence. "Let's be friends."
"What do you mean let's be friends?" Ron finally asked. "We've always been friends."
"Yes, but I want to just be friends. I want us to be how we used to be."
"How we used to be? Hermione, nothing has changed!"
In the middle of a party in a secluded bedroom, Hermione let go of Ron's hand and took a step back. The bed sagged under his weight as he took a seat pulled down by the shock of her decision.
"I think it's for the best," Hermione continued. "With you going on to training and me going back to Hogwarts. We won't even be able to see each other."
"Won't be able to-" He scoffed not even able to finish the thought."You know bloody well we would see each other."
"Not if I'm studying to go into wizard law! I need top marks to get into a law career!"
"You're being ridiculous! You know you will get top marks anyway!" Ron stood from the bed to engage in their yelling match. The crowd outside was almost inaudible over their screams at one another.
"See! You'll never understand how serious this is! I need to be able to focus and I can't do that if you're popping by all the time for a snog!"
"Popping by for-"
"Don't even try to deny it!"
"Fine! You want to be just friends again, let do it then. Bloody nice seeing you friend!"
The door slammed as Ron made his way out leaving Hermione in the nearly silent room alone. She had expected the conversation wouldn't go well so to be left with nothing except a slammed door was a pretty positive response from Ron. Raking her hands through her mass of tangled curls, she decided to give Ron a few minutes to leave before back out to the party herself.
Lavender Brown had been having a huge end of summer bash to celebrate the end of the war and the beginning of everyone's new start. Nearly all of Hogwarts was stuffed into her parent's two bedroom estate. All that was missing was the teaching staff. By the time Hermione and Ron had gotten there the house was already thumping with remixes from The Weird Sisters and cups of butterbeer spiked with firewhisky were abundant.
She hadn't intended to breakup in the middle of the party. In fact, she didn't really have a plan to breakup with him at all. Once they had gotten to the party and met up with Harry, a flood of nostalgia had swept over her. All she could think about were the times growing up with her boys. Hanging out in the common room, eating in the Great Hall, writing letters to one another as if a moment a part would break them. She missed their great friendship she felt like was no longer there.
Ever since she started dating Ron her other friendships began to fall by the wayside. There was no more Golden Trio and the Ronald Weasley she met when she was 11-years-old was not the same person she had been dating for three months. They didn't laugh together or fight each other the way they had when they were friends. The whole dynamic had changed once they became an item. All her fears were being realized. First, she lost her great friendships by being sucked into a romance, and then she had probably lost a friend entirely by breaking off their relationship.
Despite the emotional war raging inside her brain, Hermione gathered herself to return to the celebration. Who knows, maybe she would have a glass of spiked pumpkin juice and let the alcohol calm her.
As she left the stillness of the bedroom Hermione entered back into the world of loud and raucous party goers. A scent of alcohol, smoke, and sweat wafted through the crowd of people dancing in Lavender's living room. She gazed across the gyrating bodies looking for her other oldest and closest friend in hopes that she could tell him the news before a very angry Ron had the chance to give a biased rehashing of their bedroom talk.
At last she spotted a shock of jet black hair swept over a lightening bolt scar among the people in the kitchen. Hermione made her way through her peers catching glimpses of her former classmates slurring, swaying, and having a good time. She passed Seamus Finnigan arm in arm with Dean Thomas singing a quidditch fight song for a team she barely knew, and Parvati Patil and her twin giggling behind cups of unknown content eyeing the boys in question.
By the time she made it to the kitchen she realized that a Hogwarts party would never change. From common rooms to Room of Requirement to house, the young witches and wizards knew how to have a good time. The whole scene looked like something out of a muggle movie, with the exception of the beverage of choice and the added threat of someone attempting magic under the influence. With that thought, Hermione glance back to Seamus to check for any sparks or soot. She hoped that someone had taken his wand before drinking this time considering the small "spontaneous combustion" he had created at the last party.
Harry was standing next to the kitchen sink talking with Luna Lovegood about what she thought a sponge really was when Hermione finally broke free of the crowd to join them.
"Yes, Harry, the snorklags always live near water. If you went to the ocean you would find tons of them! But you have to go during the summer solstice otherwise they will be hibernating."
His lips lifted into a crooked smile as he listened to Luna's explanation. Idly taking a sip of his drink Harry turned to Hermione. "Did you hear that? Luna was telling me all about the snorklags." He lifted up the dry sponge to demonstrate.
"Oh no!" Luna gasped. "Don't shake him like that! Here, let me take him." She took the sponge gently from Harry's hand and turned to the kitchen sink where she began to bath it.
Hermione felt her eyes roll back as a knee-jerk reaction. As much as she valued Luna's friendship, she could not understand the logic that girl came up with sometimes. Honestly, she couldn't even believe a household sponge wasn't some magical creature with an ancient past and human feelings.
"You haven't seen Ron, have you?" She asked jovial Harry. At least he found Luna's nonsense amusing.
"No," he said his smile faltering. "Not since you got here. Something wrong?"
"I sort of broke up with him."
"You what?"
"I told him I thought it would be better if we were just friends. Like we used to be."
"That's awful," chimed Luna's soft, lilting voice before she returned to bathing the sponge.
Harry sat his cup down on the already cluttered counter among the other cups, bottles, and various half-used trash. His face became more somber as he folded his arms.
"And then what happened?"
"He stormed out. I assume he le-" Before she had the chance to tell Harry she believed Ron had left the party they heard the crowd suddenly rise in volume.
"CHUG, CHUG, CHUG, CHUG!" sang out from the living room. A mass of fists was raised cheering blocking the view of the particular spectacle.
"Oh hell," Harry said forcing himself through the people. He turned back for a moment to look at Hermione. "You stay there!" The crowd swallowed him as he pushed through to the living room.
Standing on tip-toe for a moment, Hermione gave up and began to follow Harry's lead. She elbowed her way past a couple of Slytherins and was nearly pummeled by a drunk Hufflepuff girl. Breaking free of the pack, she came out on the edge of the ring of people surrounding the show.
Ron was standing on a coffee table chugging a pitcher of unknown contents while a second pitcher lay empty at his feet. As he finished the pitcher he dragged his sleeve across his foam covered mouth and raised the empty vessel in the air. The crowd of party goers went nuts.
"I didn't think he had it in him," said Seamus handing Dean a galleon. "Bloody awesome, Weasley!"
"All right," said Harry stepping out of the crowd. "Probably time to leave, mate."
"You can leave," Ron argued. "I'm staying." He jumped down from the coffee table and grabbed Harry's shoulders. "If you have heard, I'm a free man! I've got the whole night ahead of me and no to whine about how much I'm drinking or complain about who I'm talking to."
Hermione shrank back into the crowd as Harry tried to cajole Ron into calling it a night. She couldn't help thinking she had caused the scene. Although Ron hadn't done anything too crazy yet, she could tell she had set him down a very dangerous path.
Within an instant the crowd went from rooting Ron on in a his own personal chugging contest to chanting a new word. "FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!" Rose up as the crowd reformed around Ron. Hermione peered over someone's shoulder to see what was going on now.
"Ron, for fucks sake!" Harry yelled as a pale, freckled fist swung as his face again.
"You wanna fight, I'll fight!"
"I don't want to fight you. I just want to help you get home." Ducking out of the way again, Harry pulled out his wand. "Please, don't make me do this."
"I told you I'm not going home! I'm free now!" Ron stumbled after a quick moving Harry still attempting to throw punches, but barely even grazing his unwilling opponent.
With the flick of a wand, Ron was dangling in the air by his feet still attempting to knockout Harry despite being upside down. His shirt fell bunching up under his arms and exposing his pale flesh. He pulled his shirt up as if he could alter gravity and make it stay, but soon gave up to begin grabbing for Harry again. Despite his struggle and flailing limbs, Ron could not pull himself down from the invisible grasp. The crowd around him laughed and cheered at the fights progression.
"I'll show you!" Ron yelled attempting to grab his wand from his back pocket. However, the slender piece of wood had already fallen to the ground and rolled out of his reach. He had no other choice, but to wait for Harry to let him down.
"Are you ready to listen now?" The question was met with Ron's silence as he crossed his arms in fury. "You're right, I don't care if you drink and I don't care who you talk to, but I do care if you get hurt." Harry walked over and picked up Ron's fallen wand. "So you can stay and drink all you like, mate, but I'm taking this with me." The wand waved inches in front of Ron's nose as he attempted to make a grab for it.
"What am I supposed to do without my wand! How will I get home?"
"Beats me, but I'm going back to the flat." Without so much as good-bye to anyone, Harry popped out of the room and Ron came crashing to the floor.
"Well, at least I can keep the party going now. Someone grab me a pitcher!" yelled Ron pulling himself up from the ground.
Hermione slunk off before he could see her. She didn't want to cause him more pain or make him do anything more stupid. She was already fuming from watching him fight with Harry. At least Harry had some sort of sense. However, now that he was gone she wasn't sure who she would talk to as well as who could help her avoid Ron. She really wasn't up to answering questions from anyone else at the party now that Ron had announced to the world the end of their relationship. After circling the room for a few minutes looking for a new companion that hadn't been sucked into Ron's binge drinking audience, Hermione decided to give up and decided to go home.