DISCLAIMER:
I do not own the Harry Potter franchise, it belongs to the marvellous JK Rowling. I just like to play with its characters.
AN:
This is my second story and my first is still at its beginning. I am writing an aftermath Fremione because I feel like this couple is very interesting, as a writer. Plus I like the idea of an aftermath story centred on Hermione's recovery, as she took a lot upon herself during the years prior.
CHAPTER 1: DISTORTING THE EXPECTED
The silence was deafening.
All eyes were riveted on the lone figure in the middle of the circle, a figure that was leaning on its knees, exhaustion catching up to it.
It was over. Done. Evil had been vanquished.
Yet, everything was raw and fresh, like a bandade being ripped off too soon, leaving the wound to open up again and blood to poor out of it.
Hermione, breaking the circle, ran to the person in the middle, hugging Harry's kneeling body and supporting its weight at the same time. His exhaustion was evident in the way he leaned heavily on her for support. He was crying, but then again, so was she. For as much as they had just won the Battle, the War, bodies littered the ground. Bodies of fallen comrades, classmates, brothers, sisters, parents, lovers… children. The loss was immense, casting a dark shadow on the sense of victory felt all around.
But what Hermione was feeling right now was a distressing numbness.
A wave of cold had settled inside of her, to her very bones. And as adrenaline from the fight left her body, she could only feel the icy wave crash inside of her, feeling her up with nothing else but numbness.
Numb and cold. Cold and numb. She didn't know what feeling felt better. Numbness allowed her to process what had just happened but left her separated from the all too normal human feeling of grief. Coldness was just as worst, because it meant confronting the pain from a distance. It meant rejecting the hug Mrs Weasley was desperate to give her surrogate daughter, rejecting the hero status that would soon befall on herself, Harry and Ron.
Ron… that was another issue Hermione wasn't prepared to deal with.
A new battle that circumstances thrusted upon her weary heart. She wasn't in any position to deal with his disappointment, nor did she want to, really. She wanted to hide away under a rock, or in a far away land and not confront the hurt and angry face of her best friend.
He had tried to kiss her after destroying the cup, in the Chamber, but Hermione had pushed him away telling him that now was not the time. She had seen the hurt and confusion fill his eyes and his mouth set itself in a determined, angry scowl, lips thinned and pursed. He had tried to call her out on her refusal but she had prevented his attempt by telling him then needed to find Harry. Then she had ran as fast as she could out of the Chamber, far away from the desiccated body of the Basilisk, far away from the relationship everyone seemed to want. Everyone but her.
Waking up with a start, Hermione took a minute to gather herself and analyse her surroundings.
She was in a bed, in Ginny's room at the Burrow.
The room was empty of any other occupant as Ginny spent most of her nights in Harry's bed, evading the watchful eye of Molly Weasley.
Lucid dreaming seemed to be the norm from now on. Every night as she went to sleep she relieved moments of the Final Battle, from mundane things such as hearing her name said by McGonagall when her favourite teacher surprised her and hugged her, departing from her stiff image for a moment. To images of the fallen bodies, limbs torn out or positioned in unnatural poses.
Hermione didn't really know how to deal with those dreams, she had expected nightmares and waking up in cold sweats, but those were rare. Most night she experience this state of consciousness in her dreams, and was able to think while relieving events. She didn't understand why her dream had centred on her rejection of Ron. Was it a way to tell her things would get better on that front?
Now that the Battle was won, lives needed to be lived again. People would look for normal again. Normal…
Hermione didn't know what that corresponded to anymore, she had no parents, the memory charm performed being permanent for all intent and purposes. She had wanted to offer them the ultimate protection, the perfect way out of the horrors that Tom Riddle and his followers had planned for them. Torture and rape, again and again, without a doubt, as well as assaults on their minds to discover where Hermione was, then through her Harry. But her protection meant that Hermione was now an orphan.
Just like Harry, like Neville, she would discover what it felt like to fend the world without parental figures to fall back to in times of trouble. She had slowly been separating from her parents since coming to Hogwarts, but this separation was definite, final and it hurt.
If they couldn't grieve for the daughter they thought they never had, she would have to finally allow herself to grieve for the parents she had deliberately lost.
She had cut her most important connection to the Muggle World, her connection to the child that she had been, the overly bright child that was adored and supported by loving parents.
For the first time in all her life Hermione was alone.
Yes she had Harry, but as much as she would have loved to talk to him, she knew that he wasn't in any position to offer her support. As selfless as her best friend was, he was also human, and he would cling to his happiness, or any trace of it. That meant reconciling with Ginny, the only woman he ever loved, contrary to what Rita Skitter liked to print. It also meant following a logical path that was expected of him, because the Weasley family was his connection to the Wizarding World.
But Hermione couldn't count on this same connection, could she?
She had rejected Ron, and even though she knew she could come back on this decision and chop it up to stress, she didn't want to.
His pettiness and selfishness during their time on the run was one more slight against her heart that went on the long list of hurtful things he had said or done to her: their fight in fourth year, his jaleousy over Krum making her night miserable, the way he deliberately flaunted his relationship with Lavender in their sixth year, his expectation that she would just follow him, leaving Harry to fend for himself, his constant whining about her bookish tendencies, only stopped when he actually needed homework help from her.
He had never really apologised for any of it, never feeling a need to. She was always the one who had to graciously recognise her fault in the fight and mend the breach he created, never mind the fact that she was not in any way guilty of anything. In fact, Hermione realised, Harry and Ron had used her, her strength, her logical and calculating mind, but they rarely offered her support in return. And while Harry had had a reason for being oblivious to her pain, at least a partially good reason, being the one who had to kill Riddle in the end, Ron did not.
It was in his character to expect to receive and not to give. Being the last boy of a big household Ron clung to his mother like a lifeline, and had expectations of what a relationship with Hermione would be like. She knew he expected her to listen to him and to be there for him. Like his mother was to Mr Weasley and to all her children. But as much as Hermione respected Mrs Weasley and her choices she also knew that she wanted to be nothing like her. She didn't want children, or at least not anytime soon. She did not want to get married right out of school. She didn't want to be stuck at home raising these children while Ron worked and received praise for his time in the war. She just didn't want Ron…
No, Hermione wanted nothing of the sort. And even though she had known that refusing Ron's advances would set a wedge between herself and him, probably between herself and the Weasley's, and even between herself and Harry, she had not see any other choice.
Hermione let out a long sigh. Deciding that she wasn't going to be ale to fall back asleep. Getting breakfast felt like a good idea.
She slowly rose from her bed, her body feeling heavy because of her fatigued mind. Getting up she felt the waistline of her pyjama pants go down and with a sigh she tied the knot again, as she did every morning. She was still very thin, too thin.
She knew she was too thin, having suffered more then the boys from malnutrition as she had tended to eat less on the run, saving food for later while Harry and Ron pilfered through their plates. The meagre amount she set aside was usually eaten by Ron in the middle of the night, when he woke up to take his nightshift, leaving Hermione to repeat it all the next day. She could have stopped setting food aside but her calculating mind reminded her that they could be taken any day. The only time she had tried to explain it to Ron, when Harry was sleeping, as he woke her up to take the second nightshift, he had laughed and told her she worried too much. She hadn't brought the subject again, fighting over food being one of the last thing she wanted to do.
The kitchen was only illuminated by a feint lumos. A single occupant sat at the long family table, interrupting Hermione's personal musings.
"Fred." She murmured in greeting.
"Morning Hermione, to what do I owe the pleasure of your company? Couldn't keep away from my devilish self, now that you realised that Ronnekins isn't your cup of tea? " he said with a smirk.
Hermione chuckled, Fred was always great at distracting her from her distressing thoughts. A task that the young men seemed to have appointed himself at. George also tried to make her laugh, but it was usually in jokes meant for the whole group, for the family. Fred was more mission oriented: he seemed to think that Hermione needed to laugh more. Not that she objected to the aim, she was just a bit baffled and taken of guard by this turn of events.
While the rest of the family seemed to walk on eggshells around her, avoiding to mention the elephant in the room: her refusal to be with Ron; Fred had no problem expressing his opinion on the subject when they were alone.
Her refusal had driven a wedge between the Weasley's: the older brothers seeming to understand that Hermione was an adult capable of making her own decisions, George trying to take her mind of it all, Fred joking with the subject, being the only one to actually talk about it.
The younger Weasley children showed their hostility towards Hermione in different ways: Ron by being spiteful and hurtful when he addressed her. Ginny by looking at her with disdain, as though by refusing Ron Hermione had upset a balance that she wasn't aware of. Hermione suspected the younger Weasley felt that way because Harry refused to talk about their time in the run, leaving the young woman to imagine events between Harry and Hermione that had never taken place. Ron mutism about this year was also suspect to Ginny, but she couldn't have been more wrong. His silence was due to his own shame about leaving his friends alone. And he didn't want the subject brought up because it reminded him of his faults.
Mrs Weasley was very conflicted: she had always thought of Hermione as a daughter and felt obligated to be there for the girl, as she had just been orphaned. But her status as a mother to Ron meant that she couldn't really show affection towards Hermione. The only way she thought she could do so was by speaking to her as though she was a barely known guest. She showed deference and politeness, but did not demonstrate any affection towards the girl. Something Ron revelled on.
Finally Mr Weasley seemed unaware of the tension, even though it was obvious enough. Hermione suspected that the man just didn't want to take sides and ignored the obvious to keep his family united.
"Freddie, Freddie… Don't you know that I cannot live without you?" Hermione said with laugh, the humour obvious in her tone. Fred was the only one who was able to elicit humour from her these days.
Hermione had expected him to laugh at her statement and move on. But silence followed her joke and Hermione looked at the prankster expectantly. Fred was looking at her as though he was caught of guard. His eyes were wide open in an expression of surprise, and his tongue darted out to slowly lick his bottom lip, as though contemplating her statement.
As Hermione open her own mouth in surprise to his look, a noise from behind them broke the tension in the room.
Harry, still sleepy and disoriented, walked in the room and sat next to Hermione muttering a quick hello to the both of them, oblivious to the moment he had interrupted.
Hermione's stare went to her best friend's figure, and examined his slowly recovering body, calculating the weight he had gained since the Battle, his face slowly regaining colour.
While Hermione stared at her best friend she did not notice Fred's lingering stare on her. His mesmerised look.