There's the way it does go.
In that world, they meet at the beginning-of-year feast and don't think much of each other. To Fred, she's just a wide-eyed first year, if a sight more irritating than the rest. Hermione Granger, the swotty Muggleborn who can't help chattering away throughout the feast, in a rapid-fire pitch that makes him wonder at her lung capacity, about what she read in Hogwarts, A History. He makes note of the fact that she'd probably make a great target for a joke or two and moves on.
He's not much special to Hermione either – she can't even tell the twins apart, at this point in time. He's just Fred Weasley, the mischievous third year that she's pretty sure is, at this very moment, spiking Ron's pumpkin juice with Pepper-Up Potion while the younger boy stuffs his face with kidney pudding. She decides she should probably avoid the likes of the Weasley twins if she's going to succeed in this magical place, and goes back to her discussion with Percy about Arithmancy.
Those opinions do change, of course. Hermione becomes a semi-permanent fixture at the Burrow over the course of the summers. Fred becomes a part of the magical family she has cobbled for herself. They become comrades and classmates, brothers-in-arms, even faux-siblings of a kind. Even their clash in Hermione's fifth-year over what becomes Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes is a mere blip in what is a fairly genial, casually affectionate friendship. They think nothing of each other beyond what's there: empty bickering in the Gryffindor common room, lazy summer evenings in the living room of the Burrow, some surprisingly intellectual conversations about the spellwork involved in their joke shop.
When Fred dies, Hermione feels the appropriate amount of devastation – grief for the smiling boy who lit up lives in the darkest of times, and sorrow for the death of all their innocence, and anger at the cost of war.
But it's wartime, and there's work to do. Hermione mourns him with a sense of weariness that is unique to times like these. Because she's the brightest witch of the age, she sets out to do the extraordinary: to rebuild a better magical society, the one she saw at age eleven and refuses to let go of now, at seventeen.
She grows up and marries Ron and Harry marries Ginny, and it's everything she could have imagined. They lead a full life, and everyone is so happy, so deliriously happy and content and right, that she never once considers there was another way she could've done things.
But there's two paths in life: the way it goes, and the way it doesn't.
In one world, Fred dies suddenly, leaving the world asunder. He dies a martyr, a war hero, the brother-in-law-that-could-have-been for the Chosen One. His tombstone is never visible, beneath the constant shroud of flowers from well wishers and mourners and admirers. He goes down in history as a lover of life and champion of creativity and passion and skiving off lessons.
But there's a world where Fred doesn't die – and in that other world, things go a little differently.
AN: It took me three tries to get this story out, because I'm incompetent with technology, as you'll soon learn.
There's a thing drifting around on the Internet that claims JK Rowling once intended for Fred and Hermione to get together. I'm quite sure it's unsubstantiated, because I can't find any confirmation of that, but it strikes me as something that could work quite well. I've always loved Fred, and while I thought killing him off made sense in the narrative, I always wanted better for him.
I haven't planned this story out super well, and there will be long gaps between updates, because I foolishly decided to start a story as finals are coming up, but I do intend to finish it. That saying, it's much easier when I have help, so if you're interested in betaing for this story, I'd love it if you could drop me a line!