Notes: Hermione in losing Fred
I apologise for the nature of this story, but I had the idea stuck for a while after I did a short piece for my English writing.
Warning: hints of death and loss and sadness and suicide. Major character death.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
The door clicked, slowly opening to reveal the bushy haired, short brunette girl as she walked into the room. It had been a strenuously long day and this showed on her paling features. Deep and dark shadows beneath her eyes and the slightly hollowed cheeks. Small pieces of hair falling out of the up-do she had worn for it.
Hermione Granger slipped the black handbag rope from her right shoulder and it clunked onto the floor, miscellaneous items rattling inside. She shut the door behind her and turned to glancing, unseeing, around her bedroom. It was the average type of room - nothing hugely special about it. About thirty or forty books stacked on shelves, her desk and on the floor. A few CDs, pens, books, notebooks; mementos as well.
She lightly brushed the front cover of the novel she had been reading. But one she hadn't read in days, maybe weeks. Though it felt like years.
The room was organised in a sort of untidy way. All straight lines and solid colours. Pale purple walls, books lined perfectly, one or two sweaters or blankets straying across her bed. To protect from the chill that ached through her these nights.
Today had been tough. Memories had cracked her exterior and interior walls and made her own thoughts more potent. Horrifyingly memorable. Images of the flaming red hair, of laughing until she had cried, and of secret passing moments in the halls of the school they had both attended. How Fred Weasley had become much, much more than her best friend's brother.
A trudge of a step took her towards the bed and she sunk into the sheets, revelling in the feel of cool between her fingers and on her half-bare arms and legs. His space was irrevocably empty. Pyjamas haphazard. She hadn't touched them since... Well, since. Then.
Something small and gold took her attention and yet another memory engulfed her, taking over her senses, as they had been doing all day.
0-0-0-0
I was watching him laugh, as often happened. That Weasley grin planted as he spoke to me, watching me too. Waiting for a reaction from me, even in my slightly dazed state. Soaking in the sunlight, his red hair terribly out of place in the blazing sunlight, absorbing the moment. And he was talking. I was still wondering what on earth he could possibly see in me.
Fred Weasley, jokester extraordinaire, who catches the eyes of all the girls - who had caught their eyes even during the school days - who was talking to me. Bushy haired, annoyingly intelligent Hermione Granger. Not impossibly beautiful or funny or even remotely popular.
And he was looking at me, waiting for the moment to sustain. To make sure. Of what, I was not certain.
0-0-0-0
Hermione turned abruptly away from the damnable thing and shuddered. She would not look at it. And so pressed the base of her hands to her eyes to rid herself of the pulsing and the aching that had begun again.
0-0-0-0
Fred stood from the bench on which we sat and glanced around at the flourishing plants and the greying skies and he took my hand. And sighed, almost inaudibly. I stood up beside him, heart racing and palms sweating. Then hating myself for my sweating palms. He looked briefly at me, then began to walk and pull me along with him, brow slightly furrowed.
I asked him what he was thinking so hard about as the gravel crunched beneath us. Yet, he didn't answer. Only smiled.
But not the blinding one I knew. It was nervous and uncertain.
He let go of my hand and reached deep inside his pocket, shoulder hunched in the slight effort, and pulled something gold and shining in the afternoon light. And then the coin was flying through the air with a flick up of his thumb. A decision to be made.
0-0-0-0
Hermione remembered every second of that instance in detail. The disappointed expression he had worn at the result and her confusion towards it. And his disregard and not holding her hand again. And thinking how horrible a time he must have had to lose interest in her so readily. Perhaps if she were more witty like Angelina Johnson, she would have more of a chance with someone as brilliant as Fred Weasley.
She remembered every expression he had worn in their time. The meanings of each. And that she knew him perhaps too well, which may have been why it hurt so very much. And that hurt too. She couldn't allow herself to forget any of it.
It hurt that she had hurt whilst being with him. Had questioned what was between them. Wondering whether he dreamt of a different beautiful girls, doing things that she would not. At least, not in the nervous way she usually conducted herself. But assured and confident. Whether, one day, everything would simply stop; she would not get calls or summons to the shop or invites to family dinner or that he will decide he wanted someone else.
There were no more calls now.
Hermione was well-aware that he was better and kinder than she. Sometimes more reasonable to parry her logic. That was all she had wanted for him, as well - to be a good person. When they fought, he was never one to punch below the belt. He was never cruel as she could be to him. He had been reasonable and not at all beastly. Perfect.
When the world seemed dreary and pointless to her, he would talk about new jokes and the inventions he shared with his brother. Cheer her up. Because he cheered everyone up. That was Fred Weasley. When the world was crumbling at her feet, he held on to her, not letting her dangle from the earth by a rope.
0-0-0-0
We both leaned against the hard wire of the fence, looking in respective directions. Broken pieces digging into our backs, but not enough to make us care. In unison with the thing streaks of silk webs, criss-crossing. The signs of life growing up around us - the weeds between grass and stone, flowers poking through dappled canopy of leaves.
Moments seemed to last forever, our hands clasped together, and absorbing the company. Then he would talk some more about his work and I would talk about my work and then we might talk about the future a little and the endless possibilities and he would joke some more.
Conversation would slowly come to an inevitable pause. And Fred Weasley turned to me, eyes warm in the dying sun, impossibly close all at once. My heart pounded, and everything seemed frozen until his lips were gently, warmly, pressed to mine.
0-0-0-0
She clung to the memory of that, of what it felt like. The memory of something so seemingly strong and constant.
His scent hung in the sheets a little. And his pillows were arranged as he had left them. Hermione had not touched anything of his. Not a single sock - not the purple pair lying at the bottom of their bed. Nor the wrinkled, maroon t-shirt that was lain over the chair in the corner or the room.
Of course, she sugar-coated. She could only admit such a thing while completely alone. Would only dare to think it. Because George was likely out and would be for a couple days. In the Leaky Cauldron or at Angelina's. A drink in his hand, possibly.
Not everything had been like the dreams many often have of love and romance. There were times when she had hated him in a way - abhorred the times when he might cut her with words or choose one thing over another. When he would spitefully spend evenings with his brother because Hermione had mentioned something about one of the people at work. He was never terribly jealous, but he had a bite that she sometimes couldn't ignore.
But no one wants to hear about that now. Only the good things.
She couldn't tell Ginny about those things and she couldn't talk to Ron about it either. And she could hardly look at George.
0-0-0-0
It was a luxuriously late evening out in the city, yellow lamps flickering along the littered streets we walked along. He told me that he knew a shortcut and grabbed my hand with a Fred Weasley grin. One that softened my qualms in the darkness. And I trusted him, because that's what I do; what we do. I must have told him a dozen times before, and told him again that night as we made way up the paths.
He spoke to me while we walked because he knew I would be anxious. Being out this late and both of us having had something to drink. Neither of us wanted to get a taxi and neither of us could drive home. It was a matter of principle and logic combined.
Fred pulled me along with him, walking backwards as we reached the park we had trundled through many a time. I recalled the first time; the time he told me he would protect me from the leering strangers of the night air. I had blushed and he had taken my hand.
Finally, we reached the edge of the park, two lofty trees marking out exit. I let go of his hand without even thinking about it, only considering my sweaty palms and my want to get away from the darkness of the park and to get home as quickly as possible. To the side of the road in which light was far more substantial and the road ahead was clearer to me than was in he park.
0-0-0-0
But Hermione Granger had not seen it. And nor had Fred Weasley. Reaching into his pocket to brush against the velvet box there. Square, but hardly protruding. Hermione had not questioned him about it. It was his question to ask.
0-0-0-0
He laughed and began walking across the road, grinning like the idiot he was. The wonderfully brilliant idiot. And paused, watching me intently and keeping his hand in his pocket. My eyes drifted there and he winked. I blushed. Knowing that insinuating gaze.
But then I heard it. Heard the music, heard the engine, heard the screech. And turned to see.
Fred did the same.
He opened his mouth, paralysed by the impending moment. And I thought maybe he was trying to say something, but then it was all over too soon.
0-0-0-0
I love you. That's what he had said, time and time again. Maybe what he had been wanting to say as the car had hurtled down the road, juddering drunkenly with heavy dubstep blaring from it's speakers. The drivers inside barely paying attention to their own thoughts, and not even comprehending the chance of the tall ginger-haired man standing across the zebra-striped road.
It's what he had said when the ambulance had so unceremoniously abducted him from her, whirring away. Taking him from her with teasing and taunting of the deafening sirens. And she could not utter a sound to the drivers who were wobbling on unstable feet. Drunk off their arses.
It's what he had said when she told him that she loved him, tears streaming, unconsciously, down her face. Moments before the rest of his family arrived. The family that was almost her family.
0-0-0-0
I had tried writing a eulogy, but I neither had the voice to say it or the words to say. Instead, my memories were contemplated in private - that way no one could look in on my thoughts. And hardly anyone approached me. Only Harry and Ron. And maybe Ginny. George stayed well away and I was thankful for that. I couldn't look at him.
Grieving is a lonely process. And the funeral was awful anyway, as they mostly are.
Throughout the day, I attempted to blend in with the monotonous ongoing of those in attendance. To not think about how much I really meant, if anything. Which, of course, was silly. I had seen the ring when I was handed his belongings. Had cried more than a few times over it.
There were no words for our possibilities.
0-0-0-0
Hermione Granger filled up the bath and lay her robe on the floor, knife clattering to the ground.
In a matter of minutes, the pain was no more.