She was staring without seeing. The raindrops rolling down the windowpanes were merely there, as if they had always been. She couldn't see, only feel.
"Are you coming to bed?" She heard a quiet voice ask, somewhere in the distance. Ron. "It's after midnight."
"In a bit."
"Okay, love," Ron replied. He sounded as though he were miles away.
Hermione continued gazing out of the kitchen window. The chipped tiled countertop was uncomfortable, but she barely noticed. She drew her knees close to her chest, breathing deeply, imagining the smell of him. It was intoxicating, even if only in her memory. Intoxicating, and wrong. He was older. He was married. He was her brother-in-law. He was married.
Hermione liked his wife. She genuinely did. Fleur was wonderful; she cooked, she cleaned, and she was wickedly gifted with a wand. More than any of that, she was loyal. Devoted. Helplessly, hopelessly in love with her husband, the father of her beautiful children. As she should be; their life was utterly perfect, as anyone who looked at them could tell. Happy, beautiful, devoted, wrong. Her husband loved her, as any man would love the woman who bore him his children, but that love only went so far. Where there once was passion, there was now a gaping void, and even the perfect, gorgeous, supportive wife was powerless to fill it. That was where she had stepped in.
One Year Earlier
It was never supposed to happen. They weren't supposed to meet in Diagon Alley. The quick catch-up lunch wasn't supposed to turn into a catch-up dinner, and multiple catch-up drinks, but it did.
Ron was out of town, and she was doing some shopping. She wasn't supposed to run into him, and then proceed to spend the entirety of her day in his company. She certainly wasn't supposed to invite him back to her home for a nightcap. The home she shared with the husband she loved. He wasn't supposed to corner her against the kitchen counter, or carry her to her bedroom and fall with her onto her mattress. They weren't supposed to be lying naked and sweaty on top of the sheets half an hour later, but they were.
"You should go," she whispered.
"I know," Bill replied.
"This can't happen again. No one can know," she said.
"I know," he repeated.
And it didn't happen again, for a while. They managed to avoid being alone together, for six months. If anyone noticed that Hermione and Bill were behaving strangely towards one another, they didn't mention it. There was a good chance that no one did notice, what with the mayhem that was the Burrow every weekend. She was cordial, but far from friendly, and pointedly ignored him whenever he tried to catch her eye. It couldn't be helped. Neither of them had forgotten, and they couldn't afford to forget.
So it was unfortunate, she told herself later, when they happened upon each other on Christmas Eve night, each walking alone through the snow in the moonlit orchard, after the rest of the house had long since gone to bed.
Hermione was walking slowly, reflecting on nothing in particular, when she saw a tall figure leaned against a tree. She approached cautiously; wasn't everyone in bed? And then she saw the glint of his earring in the moonlight. Before she could turn around, he called out her name.
"Hermione."
She stiffened. She knew she should ignore him, head back into the house, and join her husband in his childhood bedroom. That was the right thing to do, but instead, her feet carried her forward, until she was standing right in front of him.
"Are you going to avoid me forever?"
"I'm not avoiding you, Bill," she lied, avoiding his gaze.
"Look at me," he bit out. She did.
His eyes were so blue. Ron's were blue too, but lighter, softer. Bill's eyes were deeper, fierce. He raised his hand to cup her cheek. Sighing, Hermione closed her eyes and leaned her head into his touch. She felt his other hand on her hip, drawing her into him, and she stumbled forward. He pulled her face towards him, and kissed her closed eyelids. Her eyes snapped open to meet his again, and she saw another emotion there. Hunger. And he pulled her back towards him, and he wrapped his arms around her waist, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, and he kissed her. And she knew she was lost.
April
Bill lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling. Fleur snored gently beside him. He used to find the sound sweet, cute even, but now the sounds brought him nothing but pain. He couldn't bear to turn to look at her. That beautiful, perfect face brought him nothing but pain. Whenever she gazed up at him, pure love in those big, blue eyes, he felt his shame stabbing him. When she threw that sheet of silvery hair over her shoulder, he was consumed by his crippling guilt. But when he was with herΒΈ the pain vanished, the remorse a fading dream. She had a way of doing that to him.
She. With her easy smiles, quick wit, boundless knowledge. Her slim figure, her rich, chocolate eyes, her demure smile. Her hair. Her wild abandon behind closed doors twice a month, when his wife and her husband had other engagements.
He knew it was wrong. He knew he should put an end to it. But every weekend at the Burrow for family dinner, she was there. She looked so beautiful, her smile lighting up the room, and he knew he would never be able to stop. So he didn't. They carried on, their relationship existing solely within the walls of her bedroom on those two afternoons every month. They never spoke of their marriages, preferring to leave emotions out of the equation. The fragility of what they had together would snap if the every expressed anything to each other beyond lust. But he knew that he loved her, and he knew that she loved him. She made him forget about his wife, his perfect, loving wife, and made him believe that Hermione Weasley was the only other person in the world. For five blissful hours, two times a month, Hermione was everything, and the only thing in life worth having.
Ron had to leave. An Auror mission, somewhere in eastern Germany. He would be gone for a month, he said. Maybe more. Fleur was in France with the children, visiting her parents. For the next two weeks, Hermione was the only reality for Bill. Every night, they slept in each other's arms after hours of exhausting love-making. Every morning, he opened his eyes to her face. He never wanted their time to end, but it had to. On their last morning together, before he could stop himself, he said those three little words that changed everything. I love you. And she blinked, and her eyes filled with tears. She repeated the words back to him, kissed him passionately, and got out of bed. He dressed slowly before making his way into the kitchen. She wasn't there, and in her place was a scrap of parchment.
He picked it up, his heart sinking.
I love you, but I love Ron too. And you love Fleur. It's over. I'm sorry.
He left her house, completely numb, and apparated home. He walked into the kitchen, dove headfirst into a bottle of firewhiskey, and didn't crawl out until late that evening, when Fleur returned home and found him face down on the floor.
Present
They were staying at the Burrow in between houses. Their first home was too small, and they were suddenly in need of more space. Hermione heard the creaking of the stairs as Ron retreated into the upper levels of the house. Sighing, she turned back to stare out the window. Everything had changed since that day, two months ago, that she had left Bill in her bed. She could barely eat, was constantly ill, and cringed away from her husband's touch as though burned. She wanted to drink herself into a stupor, but she couldn't. Not anymore.
She felt his presence before she saw him. How fortuitous that he had chosen tonight to fall asleep on his parents' couch after dinner. She turned, and he was there. Those damned eyes, piercing through her, straight to her soul.
"Why did you leave?"
"You know why."
"I love you."
"And I love you."
"Then come back to me. We can leave, just the two of us."
"No, Bill," she sighed, turning away again. "You have a wife and children. Go home to them."
"You are my home, Hermione. I love you. We can make this work!" He was almost pleading with her now.
"Things have changed. I wish we had found each other before we married other people, but what's done is done," she replied. She slid off of the counter, and walked up to him. Her eyes were sad, and when he leaned down to kiss her, he tasted tears on her lips.
"It's not too late. It will take time, but people will understand," he said, mouth now pressed against her temple as she cried into his chest. Her body suddenly tensed, and she looked up at him, her eyes steely.
"I have made my decision. I am going to go upstairs, to my husband. I suggest you return to your wife." And with that, she walked out of the kitchen.
Two nights later, Hermione and Ron announced over the weekly dinner that they were going to be parents, to raucous cheering from the entire family. Ron beamed proudly. Hermione's smile was little more than a grimace. Her eyes locked with another pair across the table, and she saw the shock reflected back at her. He glanced quickly towards his brother, and then back to the woman he loved more than any other. She shook her head imperceptibly and turned away. He knew. He knew that the baby wasn't Ron's. She had vowed to herself that no matter what, this baby would know Ron as its father. And she vowed that this child would be the price she and Bill had to pay for everything they had done to each other, to Ron, to Fleur. Ron deserved to be happy, and he deserved to be the father of the child he had so desperately wished for.
They weren't supposed to be parents together, her and Bill. They weren't supposed to have met that day in Diagon Alley, so many months ago. They weren't supposed to rekindle what never should have been, in the orchard on Christmas Eve. They weren't supposed to be so careless when they had no one but each other for those weeks two months ago. They weren't supposed to fall in love with each other, and they weren't supposed to have broken each other's hearts over what could never be. And after dinner was over, and Bill was leaving with his family, he hugged his beloved. Anyone else would think it a brotherly display of congratulations, but Hermione knew. And her heart screamed out to his to never let her go.
But he did.