[Amortentia Challenge: cherry, parchment, chocolate] [Leonard Cohen challenge: "Ah, the last time we saw you, you looked so much older Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder"] AU. Postwar.

The song that goes with this story and the title is Famous Blue Raincoat by Leonard Cohen, I really recommend it :)

~o~

Blue Raincoat

Bill/Hermione

[Song: Famous Blue Raincoat - Leonard Cohen]

~o~

"Why did you love her?" the psychiatrist asked as she crossed her legs and sat across the tall, brooding young man with dark red hair in a ponytail. He had an earring in one ear, which seemed to be the fang of some unknown creature. It hung there on his ear like a blade, a warning.

Bill took in a deep, rattling breath. The recent full moon made his young, handsome but scarred face ultimately seem more sombre than it actually was.

"Because she said 'please'," he answered finally. "Because she had eyes that told me she needed me."

"But she was your brother's," the psychiatrist is quick to correct him.

Bill nodded. And his large, scarred hands threaded their long, strong fingers together. The hands that have fought werewolves and wove spells through countless cursebreakings and unlocked bank vaults. And yet couldn't solve one woman.

"And you were married too."

He nodded again. It's clear he wishes it wasn't so. Yet, as he explained before, it didn't change anything or the disastrous effects of what started.

"Tell me how it happened."

It was a command, not a question. So Bill Weasley took in another long breath and shook the red locks out of his eyes as he peered across at his inquirer, his investigator. He really no longer had a choice about being here or answering these questions that had so long been in the dark, withheld from everyone, including his family.

"I met her—I mean really met her, not just someone my brother married and whom I scarcely saw—when she came over to drop off a cherry pastry for my wife. Fleur had been sick with Veela fever, for the second time. It was completely the wrong time—to fall in love with another woman. But Hermione appeared at my doorstep, out of the rain, still in her healer robes...I still remember, she had on a blue raincoat that was torn at the shoulder and she lifted up a box.." Bill wiped away a stray tear that hasn't really formed or fallen. "...of these cherry tarts." He paused. "Of course, she brought healing potions too, but it was the cherry that stood out to me. She looked so simultaneously broken and cheerful as she offered them, trying to please everyone, trying always to do the right thing."

"You feel Hermione was a perfectionist, who always did things for others? Thinking of others before herself?"

"Oh completely. I don't think she'd ever done a selfish thing in her life before...before me..." His hand rubbed at his chiselled, stubble covered jawline.

"And why did the cherries stand out to you? You seem to remember them particularly."

"...it matched her lips." He raised a heavy, auburn brow as if studying his own intentions in retrospect. "I'd never noticed how red they are. How beautiful she was. I'd never really seen her as a woman before, though she was only a few years younger than me. She had grown. "

The psychiatrist cleared her throat, crossing her legs again. "So you thought of Hermione from that day?"

"Yes. I guess you could say that."

"Were they violent thoughts in nature?"

"No," he said firmly and his eyes lowered to the floor again.

"You'd never had sexual thoughts of your sister-in-law before?"

He paused before nodding. "Never. It had never crossed my mind. I'd never thought of myself of a cheater or capable of..." He paused again to stem real tears now, tears from causing a divorce and family turmoil within the close-knit Weasley family. Real anguish. Real tears. "Merlin. I didn't."

The psychiatrist has seen everything, yet she's never seen a man so destroyed. And simultaneously liberated from his own family and expectations.

Bill continued. "I didn't plan to break up my family. I didn't plan to destroy what I had. I love my family, I still do. But then everywhere I went after that, it was like the scent of cherries followed me. And I kept on thinking of her."

"Dominating thoughts?"

"Yes. I don't know why. But with Hermione, with her, it was always something violent and almost uncontrollable that I wanted. I wanted to control her for a moment and make her stop being so selfless, to make her see what she was. What Ron couldn't show her."

"What was that? What did you need to show her she was?"

"A desirable woman. Someone worth dying over."

"You could've done something to stop it, confess to your wife, admit your feelings, or just avoid contact with your sister-in-law. Yet you didn't."

"No." His words were a cold, bitter admission of guilt. "I didn't."

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