Falling, and the Other 11,001 Things to Be Miserable About
A Fanfiction by Heist

*

One: People Who Argue By Using the Same Phrase Over and Over

Hermione Granger was to be on 'administrative leave' for a period of no less than six months, effective immediately. Minister Shacklebolt had been very understanding, and if after those six months she still felt the same way about the Department of Magical Law Enforcement he wished her luck on her next endeavor. Hermione was less enlightened in her understanding, and she felt very comfortable expressing her feelings verbally, eloquently, and explicitly.

"I'm Hermione Granger! I'm Hermione fucking Granger! You can't make me leave! I run this place, and if not a one of you has the stones to fire me properly I'm not leaving!"

Harry Potter arrived in time to interrupt an angry soliloquy on the sexual inadequacies of her most recent (and decidedly former) bed partner, and there was a smattering of intimidated applause as he escorted Hermione off the premises and directly to the nearest muggle bar. Hermione was displeased, but she accepted the first drink, and the second, and the sixth.

"Bastards," Hermione slurred into her liquor, "can't tell me what to do. I'm Hermione Granger."

Harry, being very much divided on the issue, diplomatically said nothing as he topped off her drink. "Look," he said. "Think of it as... an overdue vacation. Relax, take a few weeks off, perhaps finish revising the twelfth edition of Hogwarts, A History. You could, I don't know, take up a hobby. Like macrame."

Hermione threw him a dark look and blew bubbles in her whiskey. One popped in her nose, and she gagged as the liquor seared its way up her nasal cavities and down her esophagus. "Okay, so maybe not macrame," Harry conceded. "But Kingsley should cool down in a few months, and you can come back and play evil overlord, and it will be like it all never happened. Almost."

Hermione paused in wiping at her streaming eyes to calculate the odds, and decided she had better chances of angels burping out her arse. If she wanted to be fair (she really didn't, but she was something of a crusader for fairness), she wasn't completely innocent of all-wrongdoing. "S'okay. Maybe I overreacted kindof."

"You don't say."

Fine. Tracking Ron down while he was on assignment to prove he was trying to get out of doing anything for her thirtieth birthday was a little extreme. Blowing his cover wide open while he was infiltrating a cabal of dark wizards might have been strategically unwise. But calling him out for cheating on her with That Cow right before the dark wizards unmasked for a trust ritual, thereby scattering all of said wizards, undoing two years of solid undercover work, and getting all the in-place agents wounded in the process… well. Chances were very good the fraternization regulations were being rewritten to make note of why exactly it was a very bad idea to sleep with one's thirty-year-old, desperately unmarried boss.

If she had been anyone else, Hermione might have been very deeply fired, rather than put on creative indefinite vacation. But as she had been wont to point out in the last few hours, she was Hermione Granger. The Hermione Granger. She was the brains of the war-ending, wand-wielding friends-and-companions forever Three Musketeers. She had done groundbreaking work with house elf rights when she went back to school to finish her education, and carried through on it when she came to work at the Ministry. Even though it had been three doors down and wasn't even her job, when the Undergrounders reestablished contact with the wizarding world, Hermione was key in redefining the former treaties and crusading for goblin citizenship. She still had tea with the Goblin Queen every third Thursday, and the baby Prince would be sorting at Hogwarts in a year or two, depending on the time differential. She'd eradicated blood purity laws, for Merlin's sake!

All that being most impressive, Hermione's career might have survived sending The Ronald Weasley to Saint Mungo's, if, in her wrath, she had not traveled back to the Ministry directly to also have him fired.

Irate or not, much as one could not fire The Hermione Granger, one could also not fire The Ronald Weasley. Even if he was a cheating bastard who was getting his balls hexed off again the next time she saw him.

"Really, though, Harry? Pansy Parkinson?" The name sloshed around in her mouth like a cocktail of spoiled milk and old schnapps, with too little slurring for her preference. The alcohol was wearing off; damn her ludicrous tolerance and a few too many nights bar-hopping to Hell.

Harry had the grace to wince. Ron made bad decisions. Frequently. More frequently than could rationally be explained, which was why Hermione had made most of his decisions for him over the last ten years. Clearly, he had missed the memo some years back, wherein she had informed him that cheating was intolerable.

"That's it," Hermione announced. "I am moving out. Teach the asshole how to… something. I'm gonna teach him good, Harry."

Harry pulled off his glasses and dropped his head to the bar. "I'll call Ginny to make up the sofa before she leaves for autumn training, then. We were going to take a mini-break before the international season opened up, but I can meet up with her after I help you move out."

But you weren't s'posed to agree with me! You don't agree with me when I'm drunk! That's the rules!"

Harry groaned as he tipped his head up to face her. "Hermione, when you decided to live together again, you sold your flat to move into Ron's. He pays all the rent. He's not going to let you keep the place."

Hermione wondered if perhaps Ron's poor decision-making skills weren't sometimes contagious. "I'm Hermione Granger," she grumbled, for lack of anything useful to say.

The bartender poured her another drink.

*

Hermione opened her eyes to blue chintz curtains that did nothing to block the daylight and an overpowering urge to brush her teeth. She considered the remains of beer nuts caked in her molars and a burgeoning migraine and rolled over to bury her face in the sofa cushion. She only ever woke up on Harry's couch when she'd had a falling out with Ron, and she knew from prior experience that Ron usually crawled back around the time her alcoholic amnesia wore off.

In any event, she had a few hours yet to sleep off some of the hangover and figure out how to magnanimously forgive whatever he'd done, as well as create the appearance of not having gone on an epic memory-potion-rivaling bender. Harry had never let on to Ron that she liked to… chemically unwind on occasion, and he didn't need to know. She reached back to itch the back of her head and sighed in cozy contentment.

Except… there was something in her hair. Hermione frowned and cracked her eyes open as she prodded through a snarling tangle to investigate. It was damp. And somehow porous and flaky at the same time.

She broke off a bit and extricated it from its comfortable nest. In the bright morning sunlight, it wasn't quite white; it seemed to be more of an eggshell in color, and it reeked of citrus floor polish and something else. Hermione furrowed her brow and sniffed it inelegantly. It looked familiar and the odor emanating from it was reminiscent of something, but blessed unconsciousness beckoned and Hermione thought it wise to answer.

Besides, it was Saturday, and what with the weekend and her birthday it wasn't like she had to go in to w—

OHGOD.

Hermione threw herself to the floor and fumbled for her wand as the events of the previous day pounded back into her head with the rhythm of her hangover. Ron, the Ministry, Harry, Harry saving her from drowning after she followed that poor red-headed muggle into the men's toilet and passed out in the urinal…

She seized her wand from between the sofa cushions and fumbled toward the bathroom, rasping spells furiously. "Accio scissors! Accio toothpaste! Accio bleach!"

The necessary items floated in obligingly, and Hermione dropped the bleach and scissors onto the toilet lid (Harry, unlike Ron, seemed to grasp the import of putting the lid down). The tube of toothpaste she seized with religious fervency, squeezed half the contents into her mouth directly, and chewed. She spat into the sink as the urge to vomit subsided and set to hacking the trough cookie out of her hair.

That task proved more difficult than reclaiming oral hygiene. The piss wafer had lodged perilously close to her scalp, and she mowed down half the hair on her head in swaths and messy chops before she was satisfied it was gone. She shook her head in distaste and popped the cap off the bleach bottle. Hermione hated the smell, but she preferred clean germless bacteria-annihilating bleach over the alternative, and she leaned over the side of the bathtub to dump the bottle over the unfortunate remnants of her hair.

Only after the last of the bleach was down the drain and Hermione's scalp burned like fire did she remember that she was, in fact, a witch, and there just might be better ways of handling this. "Ah fuck."

*

Hermione clutched at her mangled hair and wailed. "Eleven years!"

Harry pinched the bridge of his nose and handed the tub of ice cream over, rather than attempt to fight a scoop into the bowl. Hermione accepted it with a hiccup, and reached up to the vanity for her spoon. "He forgot to marry me," Hermione added. "How do you forget to get married?"

It was a perfectly valid question. She had certainly hinted enough over the years. "And now I'm thirty. And hideous. And no one will ever shag me again! How will I have babies if no one will shag me, Harry?" She dropped her head to the toilet lid and punched the linoleum for emphasis.

A solid minute passed, and Harry offered no supportive words, nor even a hand on her shoulder for solidarity. She lifted her head and sniffled conspicuously, but he didn't move from his perch on the edge of the tub. "What do you want me to say?" Harry asked. "I was supportive yesterday, and you got so rat-arsed I had to drag you out of the loo before some muggle pissed on your head. I let you sleep on my sofa, and when I got back from visiting Ron, who is only in Saint Mungo's because you put him there, you were throwing this ridiculous tantrum on my bathroom floor. And now you're eating my ice cream."

He reached over her head and took the carton back. "Which, by the way, Ginny won't let me buy more than once a month. Last month, the kids ate it, and I will visit Voldemort in Hell if you let it all melt before I can have any." He dug his spoon in and took a defiant bite.

"You'd shag me, wouldn't you?"

Harry's hand froze, spoon inches from his mouth, and dropped the carton of ice cream into the wastebasket. The very same wastebasket that contained most of Hermione's hair and the trough cookie. To add a Greek dimension to the tragedy, it landed upside down, and that was the end of Harry's double caramel pecan swirl for the month.

"I will pretend for the sake of our friendship that you didn't just ask that question," Harry said, and mournfully savored the last bite of ice cream.

"I'm serious, Harry!"

"No."

"But what if—"

"Not to save my own life."

"If there were no Ginny! Or Ron!"

"Never. Under any circumstances."

"You think I'm hideous, don't you? You think I look like the wrong end of a bald horse, and you secretly make fun of my saggy upper arms. Don't deny it!"

"Hermione." Harry fixed her with a serious look. "I don't think you look like the wrong end of a bald horse. As your friend, I can tell you that you're good-looking. And you have fantastic tits. I still don't want to shag you."

"Why not?" she demanded. "I'm very good at sex. I've read books, I went to a seminar. I have skills!"

"I love you like family, but even if you were the best lay in the world I would rather hex off my own balls. I mean this in the nicest way possible, but really, there was a reason Ron didn't want to marry you."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Hermione asked, righteous indignance bristling off her. "We decided years ago there would be complete honesty between us." Although, given the developments of the last few days, perhaps Harry was on to something...

"Hermione," Harry sighed in exasperation. "Think back, very hard. Who declared that policy of full disclosure?"

"I did, of course," she said. "Ron agreed with me. It was a joint decision."

"Like the decision to completely change his wardrobe? Or the decision to switch to decaf? The entire department felt the fallout from that one for months. Months, Hermione."

"I couldn't very well let him keel over from a heart attack at the age of twenty-five, now could I? He was drinking two pots of coffee a day, he was an addict, I was concerned for his health." She drummed her fingers on the toilet lid while Harry gave her an unconvinced look. "He cheated on me with Pansy Parkinson," she continued. "Ronald Weasley makes bad decisions! It's a natural law, like gravity, or sudden flash floods in dry lands."

"You haven't let him do his own laundry for the last eight years because you don't like the way he folds his underwear."

"It was for his own good! He just throws them in the drawer to get all wrinkly!"

"How would you feel if someone else made all your choices for you for ten years? Packed your lunches everyday. Decided for you whether you would have eggs or scones and jam for breakfast. Banned your recreational bar-hopping."

"I would—"

Oh. OH.

"This is a subtle attempt to discourage the use of reason, and I don't like it at all," Hermione said. "I state for the record that I'm still right. I mean, I'm Hermione Granger."

Harry stood up from his perch and stretched his arms over his head. "Keep telling yourself that. But in the meantime, you need to peel yourself off my bathroom floor so we can get you moved out of the apartment. I would've gone while you were throwing your hissy fit, but," he paused and scratched the back of his head, "your cat. I'm not handling that one."

"Fine," she said darkly as he walked out the door.

"Oh!" Harry ducked his head back around the doorframe. "Hermione, you might want to find a hat. I think I might have one or two left from your SPEW days. I don't know if you've really looked yet, but... the hair..." He made a face and disappeared around the corner again.

She was no stranger to bad hair days. Hermione had experienced more than her fair share of them, and she'd thought being a witch meant she could somehow alter her hair with a convenient spell. Not so. For whatever sick, twisted reason, her hair was impervious to magic. Not just styling charms, oh no; once, in pursuit of a dangerous criminal, a stunner had bounced off her hair and incapacitated the wizard they were chasing. It couldn't possibly be that bad, and she stood up, wincing at her popping knees, to look in the mirror.

It was worse. None of her hair made it unscathed. The spot on her head that had served as home to the unsavory wafer had been shorn within four inches of her scalp, and her hair stood straight up in angry frizzy protest. Elsewhere, she had chopped at her hair with no sense or reason, and all of it was burnt and unevenly lightened by the bleach.

"I'm Hermione Granger," she said to her reflection. "Oh bugger."

"That you may be," the mirror replied, "but this is a bit extreme, even for you. Are you planning to go out like that?"

"Fuck."

"A little more emphatically, dear. You've not quite grasped the severity and scope of the tragedy yet."

"Oh bugger and fuck."

"Yes. Quite."

*

Notes: Posted just in time for Hermione's 30th birthday! I only bemoan FF's six-spaces-too-short titling restrictions... Oh well.

This is the first installment of what looks to be a multi-chaptered fic, and I've sat tight on it long enough. This is also a wee bit of a multi-crossover, with HP as the home universe, so I see no point in spoiling the surprise and revealing all thus yet. I intend to post updates every..... let's say two weeks. I won't be able to stick to this schedule, but I shall try valiantly, and we shall see how I do. I have a plan, and it is glorious.