Lovers and Liars
.o0o.
Pilot
"Are you sure that you want to do this alone?"
She remained silent as she packed her suitcase, blinking away her irritation at his question. It had been weeks since she'd made the decision to leave, and yet, despite making it very clear that this was something she needed to do on her own, Ron had simply not let it go.
In a way, she understood where it was that he was coming from. He wanted her at his side, especially in the wake of the tragedy that his family had endured, but she needed her space. She needed to find her parents, and there was no telling where about in Australia they were, or even if they were still alive. There was no telling how long she'd be abroad, and she couldn't bring herself to pull her friends away from their lives to accompany her on the trip.
Above and beyond this, Hermione Granger needed to find herself, because whilst it was one thing to live through the war – she was finding that it was a very different concept altogether to survive the peace. She needed this time away from her reality in the same way that bread needed butter and the library needed books.
"I'm sure, Ron," she replied finally, once the pile of clothes from the bed had all disappeared into her suitcase. Zipping it shut, she looked over her shoulder and forced a smile to her lips, knowing full well that he was only trying to help.
"How long will you be gone for?"
"As long as it takes," she answered, tapping all but one of her bags with her wand, shrinking them down to the size of her nails before stuffing them into her coat pocket. "Australia is a huge place, and I don't think that I'll be coming back till I find my parents."
"Hermione." Ron's voice was low, and there was no mistaking the obvious tension in it. "I need you."
"You don't need me, Ron," she sighed, reaching out to cup his cheek, letting her thumb massage the bags beneath his eye. "I understand . . . believe me, I understand how you must be feeling right now, but this isn't healthy for either of us. You can't use me as a crutch to escape your grief, and I can't use you as an excuse to pretend that I'm OK. We need time apart, whether you're willing to see it or not, and if all goes well, then I'll be back before you even know I was gone."
"You've got it all figured out, don't you?" he groused, a resigned look crossing his features.
By way of answer, she rose up on her tiptoes and pecked him on the lips, the kiss deepening as his arms slid to the small of her back, his brow coming forward to touch her own. Her eyes fluttered shut, her lips parting to admit in his tongue, but then all at once reality came slamming back into her and she drew away.
"I have to get going if I want to make my flight," she managed, grabbing the handle of her suitcase and dragging it behind her as she turned on her heel, feeling her heart sink as he fell into step beside her.
"I still can't believe you're travelling the Muggle way," he pointed out, each word punctuated by the thud of her trolley bag making its way down the stairs. "I'm sure it's a hell of a lot faster to take a Portkey."
"It'll make it easier to find my parents," she responded, the little white lie flitting from her lips like the most delicate of butterflies, and for once she was glad that his kind new so little about the Muggle world. She had fed Harry a lie of a different sort, one that he had easily believed, but with Ron and the other Weasleys it was just so much simpler to supply them with a minor mistruth.
After all, she truly did not want anyone coming after her, and it was so much easier to slip off the radar using Muggle transport than it was when travelling by magical means.
She reached the bottom of the stairs and took a deep breath, preparing to make her final farewells to the family that had over the years become as good as her own, when his hand grasped her shoulder.
"Shall I wait for you?" he asked, his tone uncertain. "When you do come back, will you be coming back to me, Hermione?"
She swallowed, feeling the knot in her throat tighten all the more, but she let the words tumble from her lips all the same, ignoring how with each syllable, her mouth ran dryer and his grip grew harsher.
"I love you, Ron. I've known you for seven years, and you've been one of my best-friends for all that time. But you've just lost your brother and you're mourning, and I don't want to be a coping mechanism for you. I lost my parents and I don't know if I'll be able to find them, so before I can even think about a romance, I need to search for them. You need to go out there, and you need to figure out what you're going to do without me for a time, because while I honestly do love you, I need time to figure out if I'm in love with you."
"So I take it that that's a no?" He snorted, his grip finally growing slack as her final words sank in, and she felt the balustrade creak as he no doubt leaned against it. There was no denying that her words had invariably hurt him, but she would not make a promise that she was not sure she would keep.
After all, had they not already proven that prophecies were filled with double meanings, and that no man, or woman, could truly discern the future.
"It's an, until we meet again," she said finally, before leaving him alone on the rickety stairs.
.o0o.
"I thought I'd find you here."
Her familiar voice broke him from his reverie, and he looked up with a tentative smile across his face, stifling a yawn as she settled down beside him on the bench. The morning was chilly, the crisp bite of cold in the air signifying the coming of autumn in ways that the falling leaves could not, but it wasn't the scenery that had brought him out this early.
No, it was simply the fact that he could not sleep that had led him to watching the dawn, savouring in the molten slash of red-gold as it burned across the horizon. There was no doubt that Mrs Weasley would soon be up and about, surrounding herself with the sizzling of sausages and eggs as she began her housework.
For now though, even if it was just to be a brief moment, he was content to be alone with Ginny.
"Really?" he asked, slipping his fingers over hers and linking them, a frown crossing his features as he felt her tense. She would be leaving for Hogwarts tomorrow, he knew, and he would be beginning his Auror training in two weeks – and whilst this told him that their relationship wouldn't be the easiest one, something about her expression was causing warning bells to resound in his ears.
"We need to talk, Harry," she said, ignoring his question, and deliberately slipping his fingers from her own before stuffing her hands into her pockets.
"That's never a good sign," he forced himself to chuckle, even as his gut seemed to twist in upon itself. Even someone as clueless as he was, and there were times when he could be more clueless than Ron, knew what came whenever someone mentioned those five words.
With a start, he realised that the tightening in his chest was born of guilt, rather than fear of having his relationship dissolve, because deep down, he actually felt a sense of burgeoning relief well up within him.
"That depends on how we choose to look at things," she replied, and echoed his toneless laugh, shivering slightly at the lingering chill that haunted the morning breeze.
"I think we should take some time apart, Harry. I've been reading what Rita Skeeter has been writing in the Daily Prophet, about me being with you because you're famous . . . and." She held up a hand to silence him when he made to interrupt, shaking her head as if to steel herself for what she was about to say, and Harry felt his frown deepen as her words began to sink in.
"And I can't help but feel that there may be some truth in it, because I've been in love with The Boy Who Lived since I was five years old, and I don't know if you're one I want, or if it's the Chosen One that was my first crush."
Her words were like a slap in the face to him, but the longer he sat there beside her in silence, the more he came to see from where it was that she was coming from.
"Rita's always been a vindictive sow," he said finally, "I don't believe what she's writing, and it isn't as though I'm the saviour that the media is making me out to be. I'm the same guy I was who asked your mother how to get onto the platform eight years ago."
"That's just it. You aren't the same, and neither am I. We grew up, Harry, we fought a war, and I think you know that we need some time apart as well. And maybe when I'm done with Hogwarts, and you're done with Auror training, we can try again."
"So this is the part where it gets all awkward between us, and we can't look at each other in the eye anymore, or even be as candid as we used to?" he asked, feeling the weight within his chest decrease exponentially.
"It doesn't have to be, not if we look at it as two friends getting back together rather than as a breakup."
"I could live with that," he said, leaning towards her and pressing his lips to her cheek, not missing the faint pink blush that began to colour her cheeks as he pulled away.
"You're going to have to," giggled Ginny, "Imagine what the Prophet would say if breaking up with me did what Voldemort couldn't, and killed you?"
He laughed, but his retort was cut off by Mrs Weasley's voice calling them in for breakfast, and with a final squeeze he got to his feet.
"I'll tell them you'll be there in a second," he said, nodding at her grateful smile before heading towards the kitchen. He had barely slipped in through the door when he heard Ginny's footsteps coming up the front stairs, but he didn't wait for her. Instead, he hurried across the room, accepting a glass of pumpkin juice from Mrs Weasley before sinking into his seat, his mouth watering at the spread before him.
The divine aroma of fried mushrooms and tomatoes, rashers of crispy bacon, and scrambled eggs invaded his nostrils as he helped himself, ignoring the strange looks being shot his way by both Ron and George. The latter seemed somewhat better that usual today, especially since he was drinking coffee instead of his usual Firewhiskey at breakfast, and the former seemed on the verge of saying something every time he looked up from his plate.
"For the love of Merlin and Morgana," snapped Ginny, just as Harry was about to look up and confront Ron about the constant stares. "We broke up, and it was mutual. Stop staring at us like we're House Elves, and you're representatives of SPEW."
"Yes, Ron, you can celebrate," added Harry, knowing full well by the expression on his best mate's face that Ron was very taken with this latest development. It had been a longstanding fact that the closest Harry had ever come to getting his friend's blessing had been: Better Harry than some other bloke I don't know.
He wondered if Ron had any notion that now that he had broken up with Ginny, it meant that she'd be single whilst at Hogwarts this year. A low chuckle escaped his throat as he decided that maybe, just this once, he'd let Ron figure that one out on his own.
.o0o.
The train pulled out of the station with a shriek of its siren, and he tumbled into the first empty compartment he could find, dragging his trunk behind him and trying his hardest to ignore the whispers that crept along the train.
He had heard the words that they spat in his wake though, and he schooled his face to be a mask of indifference. The tables seemed to have turned, and he found that there was a whole other perspective when you were the victim of persecution rather than the perpetrator.
Despite all this, he held his head high, and maintained a purposeful gaze out across the sprawling moors as the train snaked through the countryside, letting the jeers of people passing by the compartment slide off his shoulder like rainwater.
Because if he could survive the Dark Lord, there was no denying that he would survive a bit of taunting from those beneath him. Whilst the war had opened his eyes in more ways that he could have ever imagined, there was still no denying that some things, blood purity included, still held sway amongst the noble houses of Wizarding Britain.
Still, it was going to be a long, long year – and he was not foolish enough to assume that he would make it through unscathed. People would remember that he had fought under the Dark Mark, and even though several people knew that he and his mother had both helped Potter and his friends during the war . . . it was a honest fact that the world never really remembered your good deeds, especially when they were held against your sins.
"Draco, I didn't think to find you on the train," came a voice, and he looked up, a smirk curling across his lips as Blaise Zabini swaggered into the compartment. The tanned youth grinned down at him before sinking down onto the opposite seat, flicking his wand to levitate his trunk onto the shelf above.
"I thought you'd still be hiding under a rock in Italy," drawled Draco, leaning back into his seat, his eye twitching as a slew of venomous filth trickled in through the door, torn from the mouths of a pair of passing Ravenclaws. He wondered what they would have done had they been in his shoes, with a wand pressed to their mother's throat. If they were given the choice to watch their mother die, or to take the Dark Mark, he wondered how quickly they would kill each other to be first in line.
"Spare me, Draco," chuckled Blaise, "You know how Mother feels about tattoos. And a Zabini would never bow down to a halfblood, even one as powerful as the Dark Lord."
Draco bit back a retort, knowing that this was not the time to point out the flaws in Blaise's logic. As chance would have it, he was likely to be the only friend he would have this year, and it would be safer for him to have an ally at this point in time. The list of people who called his family their enemies grew with every passing day, and he doubted that any of the Hogwarts professors in particular would be quick to help him if he were in need.
He was sure, very sure, that him letting the Death Eaters into Hogwarts would not be forgotten by them anytime soon.
Abruptly, he realised that Blaise was still talking and without letting his lapse of attention show, he diverted his gaze out the window, keeping his ears trained on the conversation at hand.
"I hear Crabbe went and got himself killed, the gormless gargoyle," continued Blaise, "And Mother tells me that Goyle's serving life in Azkaban, something about killing that Creevey brat? I suppose that means it's just going to be you, me and Theo in the dormitory this year?"
"Theo isn't coming back to Hogwarts," sneered Draco, stung at the offhanded manner in which Blaise dismissed Crabbe and Goyle's demise. Despite their denseness, he had been fond of them – and they had been his friends.
There was also the fact that only luck and chance had kept him from escaping their fates.
"So I guess it's going to be just you and me this year?" queried Blaise, raising an eyebrow, a smirk curling across his lips.
Draco opened his mouth to respond, when suddenly the compartment door slammed open and she strode in, wheeling a designer trolley bag behind her. A stream of acrid smoke trailed from her scarlet-painted lips, and without warning she flicked the cigarette at their feet, the ash scattering across their shoes as she sank into the seat next to Draco. Running a finger through the sable curtain of her hair, she smirked, whilst tapping the floor with her pencil thin heels.
Despite all of this, there was simply no denying that her face was eerily similar to that of a pug.
"Don't forget about me," she said, a simpering giggle escaping her lips. "Daddy insists that I return to this pit, and how lucky that I'll have you two to entertain me since none of the other girls are coming."
"Oh Merlin, no," breathed Blaise under his breath, and Draco stifled a cough before finally having the sense to snuff out the still smoking fag with his shoe.
"Pansy," he muttered, sighing as she extended a perfectly manicured middle finger at Blaise.
It was definitely going to be a long year.
.o0o.
Sneak Peak into the Next Chapter:
"Merlin, am I supposed to be partnered with you till Christmas?" exclaimed Draco, not even bothering to conceal the horror in his voice.
She smiled at him, the absurd radishes hanging from her ears seeming more and more normal when held against the necklace of Butterbeer corks slung around her neck. Not at all perturbed by the obvious rudeness in his tone, she stuck out a somewhat grubby hand. There was a slimy, greenish onion between her fingers, and he winced bodily when he realised that she expected him to take it.
"You should keep this with you," she said by way of answer, her voice dripping with whimsy. "It keeps away the Wrackspurts, and frankly, you're covered in them."
A/N: Reviews Are Love I am planning on biweekly updates, on perhaps Wednesday and Saturdays for this story.
I'll be doing away with the Epilogue from Deathly Hallows for this story, and there will be multiple pairings involved. I have several arcs planned for this, but for now all I can say is it's going to encompass the lives of Harry Potter characters from the time after the war and will go on to Next-Gen (and who knows, it could go even further), eventually. Thank you all for reading ;)