Summary: Hermione had everything she could've possibly wanted: a husband she adored, a beautiful home, a job she'd always wanted, and good health after a long illness. But when she comes home to tell her husband the new of her fresh, clean bill of health, she catches her husband in bed with another woman. Hermione, distraught and hurt, packs up her things and loads it all into her car, and heads off on the road, not knowing where she'll end up.

Along the way, she is joined by Jasmine, a hard-working, big-hearted yet persistent Navajo waitress with a sticky past; Harry, a free-lance investigator living in Albuquerque with a taste for trouble; and Ron, an Auror-in-Training, rooming with Harry who has more to him than he seems.

At first, they are just random occurences to her, just interruptions on this trip she took for herself. But Hermione soon realizes that nothing happens on accident, that everything has reason, that lives are no more or less than overlapping and interconnected stories and people. So what may sometimes look like an end of one story is really just a beginning of another...

Hello, my dedicated readers!

I am very sorry that I went back on my promise to have another story started by the New Year. I wanted to, but after the whole rewriting thing went on with "Happily Ever After," I wanted to make sure that I didn't start a story without knowing where it was going. I was planning on having this story come out later, but I very much like it and I want to make up, even if only a little bit, for not putting out a chapter like I said.

Okay since there are only like... ten of you, i'll make it short. Basically I've seen, like, tons of one shot stories that are songfics. So I'm like, why not make a full story songfic? IT'S INGENIOUS! Well, in all likelihood, someone, somewhere WAY out in the boonies of this site may have already thought to do this, but I DON'T CARE! Why, you may ask. Well, that's because mine is better. And I really like it. So anyway, I hope you enjoy this story, my ten or so dedicated readers! And for all of you who are newcomers, I appreciate any kind of review, even flames, but please, please, PLEASE, DO NOT FLAME ABOUT MY CHOICE OF SONG! I, being the author, get to decide which songs i use, and if you happen to not like the song I chose, be it because you don't like the artist or you think the song sucks, i would appreciate it if you would be so kind to shove it up your... well, i'm pretty sure you got the idea. However, I do not mind reviews saying that you don't think the song fits or somesing of that sort. And if you haven't ever heard of the song, then I think it would be wise to look up the song on iTunes or something. At least look up the lyrics. But if you don't, I'll put my favorite quote from the song up at the beginning of each chapter.

Oh and one last note: Alex has not been emitted from this fic. She is my magnum opus and therefore will never be left out completely. She has simply been renamed "Jasmine" for this one. And also, this story is set on the premise that Harry, Ron, Hermione and Alex had never become friends at Hogwarts.

Anyway, enjoy, read and PLEEZE REVIEW!

Happy New Year

MMB

Chapter One: Don't Bother

"The ring you gave to her will lose it's shine. So don't bother, be unkind."

I shift around uncomfortably on the sanitary paper that covers the table. I've never liked this paper, even if it does keep things a little cleaner. The paper's extremely noisy, making an obnoxious crinkling sound every single time I make even the teensiest movement, and it clings to my thighs, because just for this one occasion I stupidly decided to wear shorts and blind the entire world with my rediculously pale thighs. But it's just one of those days in LA, the days where all the previous temperature records are being broken, and pretty much all you can do is kick back and go with the flow, but it certainly makes your arse stick to paper.

This room isn't really helping either. It's so white and bare; in fact, the only thing that's keeping my vision from being completely seared away is looking out the window, down over my beautiful home of Los Angeles.

Even with its broad billboards advertising new movies and various nefarious bars and innumerable palm trees, lining the long boulevards, teeming with brightly colored, shiny sports cars containing glamorous people with their Fendi sunglasses and stylishly coifed hair and their designer outfits, I have to admit that I hadn't had a difficult time coming to call LA my home. I'd been adopted by my Muggle mother and father in Britain when I was only a couple weeks old, but my house with them or my dorm at Hogwarts was never home to me. They were both just places, places that I'd known forever, but had never felt a connection with, like they held no deeper significance or emotional attachment.

I would often wonder about my real mother, this fantastic, beautiful woman with my eyes and my hair, living some fairytale life in some far off destination. I pictured her built small, like me, and slender with long fine brown hair, like me, and sparkling brown eyes, filled with enigmatic light, living beachside in a cozy little bungalow, painted a faded blue with white trim and shutters, desperately trying to find me and take me back. When I was young, I used to dream about the two of us living together, having picnics of peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwiches and fresh-made lemonade and potato salad on the beach, playing in the glittering turquoise water as the waves crashed around us, and climbing into the attic to watch the winter storms crash around angrily out the window with a big warm blanket wrapped around the two of us as lightning split the skies, reflecting in our wide, amazed eyes.

I knew that my parents loved me and I cared about them a lot, but I always kept them at arm's length. I would always come close to breaking down and giving in, but I couldn't. I wouldn't. I felt like loving them would be a betrayal of my biological mother, and how could turn my back on the beautiful mother I'd visit in my dreams, where she'd read me to sleep in my darkened room by the light of the lamp as the waves crashed gently outside my window and hold me close when the thunder would rattle my windows, telling me that everything would be okay?

When I got older, my parents, being supportive, went to the adoption agency where they got me to try and find the records of my adoption, which might've had my mother's information on it. The agency was very helpful, giving us every and any piece of information that might be helpful.

Unfortunately, there was very little information to be found. It seemed that the only information about her in the records was that she was young, in her mid-twenties, with brown hair and eyes, about 5'8", wearing a pullover, jeans and sneakers. The records said she'd brought me in in the middle of the night, only a couple hours old at the time, asking for forms to wave her rights to me, so I could be adopted. The person there at the time went to get the papers and when she came back, she was gone and I had been set on a chair, sleeping soundly, nestled in my blanket. She left no name, no phone number, no address.

I didn't want to believe it at first. It didn't even register that the woman I dreamed about every night was nothing more than a small child's invention to keep from thinking that she was unloved by her real mother. That the woman in my dreams wasn't the woman who'd given me away. That my mother wasn't looking for me, and she didn't want me to find her.

At first I thought this would bring me closer to my parents, the people who really loved me, not the woman who'd given me up before I'd even opened my eyes. But it didn't. In fact, it made me push them even farther away. If my own mother, the woman who'd carried me for nine months and given birth to me, couldn't even love me, how would they?

So when my husband asked me to come to California with him at my graduation, I didn't think twice about it. But even though I often ponder about if I hadn't left, I've never regretted it. I'd moved for him and would do it again in a heart beat. I love him more than anything. Wherever he is is my home.

Truth be told, it's not really the sanitary paper that's bothering me, or even the room. It's just that the only time I ever come in contact with the sanitary paper is when I'm here (okay, so that's not entirely true. I work as a Healer, so I come in contact with it occasionally at work, but suffice it to say that it only comes in contact with my butt and sticky thighs when I'm in this room) and whenever I'm here, it seems like I always get bad news. And, frankly, the room is so utterly white, it makes the room look like a psych ward.

Suddenly the door knob turns and Healer Kimball walks in, carrying my chart. She's a model looking type--tall, long, curly blonde hair, bronzy skin and pale, crystal blue eyes, very buxom--and the polar opposite of the typical doctor. But hey, she's gotten me this far. I can ignore it.

"Good afternoon, Hermione," she says, smiling as though any second sunshine's going to start shining out her arse. It amazes me how happy she is all the time. "How are you today?"

She asks me that every time I'm here. How the bloody hell do you think I'm doing? I'm sitting on this sorry excuse for paper while it sticks unrelentingly to my arse in this room, which is white enough to drive a person completely mad, and I don't know my test results, which happen to be right in her hands. Yeah, I'm just splendid.

To be quite honest, I can't take anymore bad news. I just can't. I've been through enough. These past couple of years have been hell on me, and I'm tired of always being sick and weak, always wondering whether I'll ever be healthy again.

"So, Mila?" I say, very comfortable with her after all the testing and treatments she's taken me through. "What's my prognosis?"

"Well, let's see," she says, sounding extremely hopeful. "Hermione, I'm happy to tell you that you are completely clean!"

I blank.

"What?" I ask, my voice flat with shock.

"The infection is completely gone," she says, still wearing that humungous smile.

Then suddenly, it just barely begins to sink in. But that's all it takes to send me right into shock.

All of a sudden, it's like the entire world has stopped. As if I looked up at Mila she'd be frozen, her springy curls in mid-bounce, that cheery smile still spread across her face. As if I looked out the window every plane and random bird would be suspended in mid-air, nothing more than stickers pasted onto the LA backdrop; every speeding sports car just a shiny blur on the boulevard; every palm tree being rustled by the breeze in mid-sway.

"Does that mean I'm completely done with treatment?" I ask expectantly. "Forever?"

"Yes," she says smiling. "Forever."

Suddenly I feel like I could kiss her. I hitch up my purse up on my shoulder, grinning as hugely as she, jump off the table, and wrap her in a big, crushing hug as I jump up and down like a moron.

Next thing I know I'm in my car, sitting in the driver's seat of my little coupe. I still can't believe it. After all this time, I'm healthy. Now that I am, quite honestly, I don't know what to do with myself.

Suddenly I know.

See, I have (oops, had. It's gonna take a while to get used to that.) a very rare viral infection of the immune system called malocytosis. Even the expert researchers in the field aren't quite sure how it works, but basically what happens is after being infected, instead of your body sending white blood cells or antibodies to the site of intrusions, they send the infected cells from the virus instead, further infecting an already infected area. Another thing the experts don't agree on is how it's passed along. Some believe that it's transmitted sexually, others by contact (like the flu or a cold), and still others believe it's a genetic disorder that's created by many generations of marrying people with the same gene mutation. But the point is, while you have malocytosis you are completely unable to carry a baby to term, because the virus passes through the placenta and since the baby is only a small cluster of cells at the time and far too under-developed to fight off the virus, it dies.

That's pretty much been my main problem. About a year after I got married, my husband and I started thinking about having a baby. We kept talking about it and after one more year we decided that we should. So we tried for a couple months, and at first, there was nothing. I was a little put out, but simply told myself that things of this nature take time and didn't bother to worry myself over it too much.

Then after a few more months, we decided to get really serious about it. I carefully scrutinized every television program about fertility and conception, scanned every issue of Parent magazine I could get my hands on for information, and then quickly employed any and every technique for fertility: I talked to the chief resident at my hospital and got my hours pushed back--less work meant less stress, something crucial for fertility--we both ate better so we'd be perfectly healthy, I switched my husband out of briefs and into boxers, no hot tubbing, and we limited our activity--quite possibly the hardest part of the whole thing, even harder than giving up chocolate.

So we tried that for a couple months. And I was still not pregnant.

So we went to a fertility clinic to see if maybe there was something we weren't doing right. The healers there quickly advised us to take a new fertility treatment I'd never heard of. That should've been the first red flag. They also, much to my surprise, didn't bother to take a blood test. That should've been the second. But I was far too concerned with getting pregnant to realize how careless I was being.

Then, a few months into the treatment, I noticed that I was getting sick often, but it was just colds and ear infections and things of that sort. I ignored it, figuring that I was just tired out from the treatment and work. But then things slowly got worse; soon it was stomach viruses that lasted weeks, fevers that lasted days on end without breaking, and flus that had me sleeping eighteen hours of the day.

Looking back on it, I don't really understand why I didn't go to the doctor earlier. All I knew was as long as I didn't treat it like it was a serious problem, it didn't feel like there was one. Like if I didn't know there was a real medical situation, then there wasn't. And I felt like if I didn't go to the doctor, then I didn't have to hear him tell me I was sick. So by the time my husband forced me to go to the doctors, the disease had progessively gotten worse. I'll spare you the gorey details, but suffice it to say it was horrible and the fight to destroy the disease lasted three long years.

But that's all over. I'm healthy and happy and ready to live again. And I'm going home to my husband to tell him the good news.

I start up my car and pull out the parking lot, unable to stop smiling. And it really is a strange phenomenon, but everything looks different. The sky's bluer, the flowers are brighter and the sun is warmer. Even the iced americana I bought on the way to the appointment smells better. I breathe in deep, rich scent of the authentic Italian leather upholstery in my car mingling with the sweet, coffee scent of my drink. I suppose things are supposed to be like this when you get to live again.

I pull out my cell phone (no witch's glasses in public, since Los Angeles is almost entirely Muggle) and dial my husband's department in the American Ministry.

"Hello, welcome the American Ministry of Magic, Quidditch Department," the receptionist says cheerily.

"Hi Bianca," I say, turning down another boulevard. "Is he in right now?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, Bianca's out today," she says sweetly. "This is Louise."

"Oh, terribly sorry Louise," I say, laughing nervously. "This is Hermione."

"Ah, I see," she says. "Well, your husband is out for lunch, but I can have him call you back if you like."

"That won't be necessary, he's probably at home," I explain. "I'll just talk to him there. Thank you, Louise."

"Any time, ma'am," she says. "Good bye."

"Bye."

I drop my phone back onto the seat, thinking intently. I wonder what's wrong with Bianca. She's always in the office, I've never seen her take a sick day. Ever. She must really be sick. I make a mental note to send her a get-well bouquet.

A couple more minutes and I'm turning onto our road. I pull up to our gates, the swirly cast-iron letters "KM" welcoming me home as the gates swing open. I pull up the long twisty driveway, excitement mounting as I get closer to telling him that I'm finally healthy. I pull into the loop driveway and put the car in park. As soon as the car is stopped I jump out and run up the front steps.

"Honey!" I shout excitedly, taking the steps two and three at a time and bursting through the front door. "Honey!"

As the door swings closed behind me, I immediately know something's wrong. I look around and he's not in the kitchen, eating lunch and looking over some business reports like he always does. There's this smell too. One that's vaguely familiar, but definitely does not belong here.

I say nothing. I walk farther into the entryway and look around. Nothing's out of place here. I hear something very faint coming from upstairs. In an almost trance-like focus, I hurry up the stairs at a speed that would normally tired me out in a matter of seconds except for the fact that it's the farthest thing from my mind at the moment.

The sound's getting louder. I can tell it's voices.

I move faster.

I burst through the door to our bedroom. I see my husband in bed with another woman.

The next thing I know I'm throwing Bianca out on the front steps by her hair, half-naked and all.

"You crazy bitch!" she yells at me, masaging her scalp. "I can get you arrested for this!

"I'd like to see you try, you anorexic little skank!" I scream at her. "Why don't you try it and see what happens? I don't know a Magical Reinforcement Personel alive that wouldn't side with me!"

"It's not my fault you can't keep your own man satisfied!" she shouts back. That sent me over. I don't really remember much after that, but the gardeners who were looking on ensure me that I had her running off the property in her skivvies as her bony little legs could carry her. Next thing I remember is walking back up the steps to my husband, who's covering his manhood with a pillow he grabbed off his bed.

"Oh, now you're eager to be modest?" I ask him sardonically, coming up the steps. "A second ago you'd thrown all your inhibitions to the wind."

"Hermione," he says slowly, his accent unusually heavy, probably just because he's not bothering to cover it at all. "Hermione, please..."

"You know, Viktor darling," I say, in a sickeningly saccharine voice, "don't bother explaining." I add a hateful smile for good measure. "I hope you and Bianca are very happy in her cramped, inner city apartment."

"Hermione," he says desperately. "We can work this out..."

"You know," I say, "I really don't think so. And if you don't mind, I'd appreciate it if you'd get the hell off my property."

"You're property?" he asks. "This is--"

"Mine, after my lawyer gets done with you," I say odiously, stepping inside the doorway. "Now, get the hell off my property." I slam the door in his face.

And moments later I'm on the floor, crying and screaming and bawling in despondent dispair, yet relieved that I don't have to act anymore.

Yay! First chapter! Didja like it? Didja?

Okay, I know for some of the chapters I'll get tons of reviews saying "Why the hell did you choose that song?!" So, I figured that at the end of each chapter, I'd say a little piece about exactly why I chose the song, what it means (for anyone who needs it), how it corallates to the chapter, ect. Some songs will have been chosen for similar plot lines or situations, or because the mood is just right for the chapter, or stuff like that. So here goes:

"Don't Bother" is a song about a woman who basically discovers her boyfriend only really sees her as a booty call, because he has another woman who is perfect: smart, cultured, worldly and beautiful. In a nutshell, she tells him that the other woman, though she's flawless and looks perfect on his arm, as a trophy wife, she loves him more than she ever will and that'd she'd give anything and do anything for him.

I think that this corresponds with this chapter because the other woman in the song is basically everything that the girl in the song aspires to be (for examples, see above). Hermione, though brilliant and beautiful, isn't the kind of girl who gets a lot of male attention and isn't very confident of herself in that department. Bianca gets plenty of attention (cough, cough HOOCHIE) and is extremely sure of herself. It's always hard to lose (especially your man) to a person who embodies your very insecurities. Plus, even though she'd never admit it to him or anyone else, she would do anything for Krum and she would do anything for him to take everything back and redo everything differently.

Okey dokey then, I hope you enjoyed the first chapter and stay tuned for the next one!

Peace, Love and Granola Bars,

♥ Mystrymoviebrunette ♥

PS: Oh, and sorry for getting a little Jerry Springer at the end there. I thought the chapter could use a little comic relief. Hope you liked it.