He's beautiful. He's absolutely beautiful, but he'll never believe her, because every compliment she gives him, he turns around and repays it tenfold in compliments to her.
You're amazing, she wants to say, but before the words can come, he's already told her how pretty and smart and funny she is. How she'll be a good mother and raise such pretty children.
Everybody knows that long-distance relationships don't work. Everybody seems to have one, but nothing ever comes of it. Nothing can stand the fiery furnace of being apart more often than not. If it does, it's a miracle and meant to be. But that never happens, right?
But theirs, maybe, might. The owls come so fast that it's like he's right there. She trusts him, but she doesn't want to know if he's seeing other girls, and isn't going to ask. He knows about that sixth-year Ravenclaw who fancied her, and he can make what he wants of that. It certainly hasn't changed his flirtatious attitude.
She knows she's the envy of many girls at Hogwarts. Viktor Krum, world famous Quidditch player, took Hermione Granger to the Yule ball, and rumor has it that they're keeping in touch! But one day, he asks her something she doesn't know how to answer, for all her smarts.
I'll need a tough woman to be my wife. She'll have to cope with raising our children while I'm away…Hypothetically, do you think you could handle that? Your husband being gone all the time? Quidditch is a dangerous profession…
She doesn't answer right away, and the first time, she screws it up.
I think it'd be hard…I don't like to be alone. I'm afraid of being alone.
And he takes it all wrong and thinks that he doesn't deserve her.
I'm very sorry for asking. You deserve someone who can be with you all the time.
But she didn't mean it that way.
And so she writes back.
I've thought about it more…It's been interesting. I think it'd be hard, not having him see our kids grow up, but I think it depends on the person. If he was worth it, I'd be able to bear the months away for the days of him at home. And no wife wants her husband in danger, but many learn to trust in a higher power…
Hopefully, her answer is better this time. She runs to the dorm to read the latest letter on her bed, crying and gasping and laughing and hoping.
She's young, but she can dream, right?
That's a good answer. Very good actually.
She laughs and smiles and everyone remarks about how happy "Bookworm" Granger has been lately, and even Umbridge can't get her down with her silly regulations and puffed up pride. She defies her bravely, and detentions are worth it, (because really, the fat toad had no right to try and read her private correspondence or demand to see the letter she had hidden in her book bag).
And that's why Hermione Granger keeps up a long-distance relationship, because they click so well and he makes her sobloodyhappyand she knows that the chance it might work out is worth the uncertainty and small visits, the summer months that they get to spend together and the Patronus messages so she can hear his voice. It's worth it because he's amazing.
This is for PDE. If I ever have the courage to post it where you can see it, it's for you, all the way. You've made me so happy that I can't help but sing it out to the world. I can hope, can't I?