DISCLAIMER: I don't own Harry Potter.
Hermione dropped her last bag on the floor with a thunk; the blank walls of her new flat stared back at her uninvitingly.
I can do this.
She stepped over all the bags that she'd dropped in the entryway and went into her tiny, dark kitchen, searching blindly for a light switch. She was ravenously hungry, and she hadn't thought to bring anything home for dinner, but she thought she remembered sticking a half-sandwich in the otherwise empty fridge earlier in the afternoon.
Everything had seemed a little easier that afternoon. It hadn't been so dark, for one thing; and for another her mother had been with her.
"If you put a chair here," she'd said, "it covers up the stain on the wall...And some curtains would brighten this room right up...Such a cozy room this is...Look how darling this kitchen is!...It's quite clean in this flat, dear, it could be so much worse." And so on, and so forth, until Hermione began to feel that it was all right after all.
Now both the sunlight and her mother were gone and the flat felt horribly close and small.
Herimone finally found the light and switched it on; in its dingy, flickering glare, the kitchen looked drab and rather dirty. The refrigerator proved disappointing; it was quite empty. Hermione supposed she would have to go out, or else order something in. Ordering in would be more practical, since she had a lot of unpacking to do; but going out was far more appealing.
"But what's the use?" Hermione asked the silver teapot that her mother had given her. "I'd just have to come back here again."
The teapot was silent. Hermione stood staring at it for a while, and the silence seemed to close in on her. She couldn't even hear a clock ticking, because she hadn't put one up yet.
"Right," she said aloud. "Well, I may as well get started! Where's my mobile? I'll get a pizza. Where on earth did I put it?" And here she began the mad search that ensues when one has lost one's mobile.
"It's in my purse!" she exclaimed suddenly. "I've left it in the car. Damn!"
She grabbed her key and hurried out of the flat, down the four flights of stairs (the elevator had stopped working) and practically dashed out into the cold night. "Where on earth did I park my car? Oh, damn it, I forgot my coat," she muttered to herself. "What's wrong with you, Hermione Granger? You never used to forget things!"
Well, said a little voice in her head, I never used to be a total failure either.
"Don't think about that, just don't," Hermione told herself. "Just focus on finding the car, getting the purse, and getting back inside. You can fall apart in there, if you want."
Well, said that little voice again, I am now talking to myself. I'm officially insane.
Four blocks down, Hermione found her car. She now remembered searching fruitlessly for a closer parking space earlier that evening, along with hiding her purse so that she could return for it later, because she hadn't had a free hand at the moment..
She hated the particular side effect of what had happened, that it could make her lose huge chunks of her memory at a time.
She unlocked the car door, her fingers now blue and trembling with the cold, and found her purse stuffed under the passenger seat - along with a bag of takeout. She'd forgotten that, too. She tugged out her mobile, hoping against hope to find a call - from someone, anyone, even if not from him.
But no one had called.
She dropped the phone back in her bag and clumsily locked the car again. Halfway back to the building, she realized that the takeout was still in the car.
"Bloody hell," Hermione muttered. "May as well just leave it."
But of course, she didn't, because she was starving. She hurried back to the car, unlocked it, pulled the bag out, locked the car again, and hurried back towards the flat. She had now reached that state of cold where you feel that you can barely think, let alone move. She just walked, her eyes squinted against the cold, until, oh joy, the door was only a few feet away.
And then her foot slipped on a patch of ice, and she went down with a thud. For a moment, she lay still, so cold and stunned it seemed impossible to move. After a moment, she began to look around her; to her horror, the contents of both her purse and her take-out bag were scattered all over the sidewalk.
"Shit," she muttered.
"Excuse me," said a voice.
Hermione looked up and there he was, stooping over her, one hand stretched out to help her. For a moment she was frozen in place, unable to say a word.
"You all right?" he asked.
Hermione blinked. The voice was different, the cadence was different...it wasn't him. In fact, it didn't even really look that much like him. It was a different young man entirely.
"Y-yes," she stammed. "I'm all right, thanks." She began to pick up her scattered belongings, her hands shaking so much that she kept dropping them. After a moment, the man stooped down and began to help her gather her things back into her bag.
"Thank you," Hermione said, when they had finished. "Thanks so much." She glanced helplessly at the food.
"I don't think you can eat that," remarked the man, mildy. "Fortunately, I'm just on my way down to Walls & Carson."
"Walls & Carson?"
"Why, haven't you ever been?" he exclaimed. "They've only got the best food in the whole neighborhood. You should just taste their sandwiches."
"I can't say I have," said Hermione.
"Well, that settles it," he announced. "Once you've gone in and got a coat on, we could just pop round."
Hermione hesitated. Anything was better than staring at her apartment all night.
"All right, I'll go."
It turned out that Walls & Carson was surprisingly good. The young man, who introduced himself as Bill, was surprisingly good company. In the light of the restaurant, Hermione saw that he was in fact ginger-haired and lanky, which had explained her mistaking him for Ron.
But she was trying not to think about Ron.
Bill explained that he lived across the hall from Hermione and had observed her moving in that afternoon. "I meant to introduce myself earlier," he said, "but this is so much better."
Hermione was enjoying herself, but his subtle flirting made her uncomfortable. Whatever things had been between herself and Ron, they'd been together for years and the very idea of having even an informal dinner with someone else made her uncomfortable.
"So, Hermione," said Bill, "what made you move to this part of town?"
"I wanted a change of scenery," she told him.
He laughed. "You sound like you're rehearsing a line from a play. What do you mean, a change of scenery?"
Hermione blinked at him; his analysis was surprisingly accurate. "I mean what I say," she told him.
"All right then," said Bill. "I'll play your game. Why do you need a change of scenery?"
Hermione shrugged. Bill was nice enough, but she really didn't want to go into the details of her breakup here and now.
"You don't want to say. Fair enough," said Bill, after a moment of silence. "I didn't mean to pry. I just wondered."
Hermione just nodded.
"Look," said Bill after a moment, "this really isn't fair to you. I may as well admit that I know who you are."
"What?" said Hermione, looking up from her plate. "What are you talking about?"
"My last name's Weasley," said Bill. "Ron's my younger brother."
"You're Bill?!" exclaimed Hermione. Ron had mentioned his oldest brother a few times, but she had never met him.
"That would be me," said Bill shamefacedly. "Sorry I didn't say anything earlier. Trust me, I know nothing about what happened, except that you two broke up and you moved out."
"I'm not angry," Hermione said. "I see why you didn't want to say anything. That would have made things awkward."
"So they aren't awkward now?" asked Bill. "That's a relief."
Hermione laughed. Something in her was relaxing a little.
"So how are you?" asked Bill, after a moment. "You all right?"
"I'll be fine," Hermione said automatically. Bill raised an eyebrow.
"Don't give me that look. I just had a breakup!" Hermione said. "I'm not going to snap back to being fine immediately."
"I know," said Bill. "Believe me, I know. But you don't have to pretend to be fine."
"Yeah, yeah," said Hermione. "I've got to address my fears so I can heal, blah blah blah. I have a mother, you know."
"Whoa," said Bill, holding up his hands. "There's no need to be so defensive. I was just saying."
"Yes, and you sound like my mother."
"Sorry," said Bill unapologetically. "Now why did you say, 'address your fears?' I have to admit, that choice of words rather interests me."
Hermione frowned at him.
"Come on," said Bill. "What are you afraid of?"
"I'm afraid of being alone," Hermione answered, a little reluctantly. "I always have been. That's really the only reason I stayed with Ron so long. We had fallen out of love, but it was...comfortable."
"Ah," said Bill. "It does seem as if you don't miss him much."
Hermione stared at him. "What do you mean?"
"Oh, you certainly miss something," said Bill. "The life you had with him, maybe. But not him."
"I do miss him," Hermione objected. "We've been friends since high school. We were friends long before we started dating."
"He made it sound like you two were really in love," remarked Bill.
"We were!" Hermione said. "But sometimes you fall in love with someone you aren't compatible with, which means that when you fall out of love, you're perfectly miserable."
"You just said it was 'comfortable!'"
"Well, it was!" Hermione said. "I knew what to expect from my life! This - this being alone, moving, having to search for another job because I'm too far from the old one - this is awful."
"Sounds as if you're not a big fan of change," said Bill.
"No one is," said Hermione. "People say they are, but they only mean the sort of change they can control. No one likes to have things changing when they can't do anything about it. But I could deal with all that if I wasn't...I mean, I don't have anyone to...to fall back on, I suppose. My parents are miles away, I haven't got any friends that don't know Ron…"
Her relaxed feeling was fading again.
"I know everyone's got to be alone at some point," she said, speaking more to herself than to Bill. "But...I function better when I've got a support system."
"How about me?" asked Bill.
"What?"
"Your support system could be right across the hall," said Bill. "Just a phone call, or a knock away. Well, a phone call, because I'll be in America for a couple of months."
"Just like that?" said Hermione.
"Well, it's work. I've got to travel a lot for -"
"I mean, just like that, you're going to let me call you whenever I'm having a pity party so that I can unburden on you?" said Hermione skeptically.
"Yes," said Bill, grinning suddenly. "I'm great at pity parties."
The next few weeks were admittedly hard for Hermione. She got a job, and then a second one; she furnished her apartment; she bought a cat, since Ron had insisted on keeping Crookshanks (which was ridiculous, really, considering that when she'd first gotten the cat he'd hated it; she would have refused if Crookshanks had not loudly resisted leaving the apartment). She settled into a daily routine that was work, cleaning, eating, and sleeping - and very little else. She got a third job, eventually - not because she needed the income, but because it helped her pass the time.
Once in a while, Hermione's mother came to visit her. Hermione liked these visits, but they did nothing to make her less lonely; in fact, they made her more so. Hermione got into the habit of messaging Bill rather often, and surprisingly he always answered her. They kept up a running conversation in the months after they'd met. This communication was probably what kept Hermione from becoming depressed as the time passed.
Eventually, things started to become easier; not because anything had changed, but because Hermione found herself becoming more used to her new life. She stopped thinking about Ron so often; she began to paint, something she'd been quite fond of when she was little. She found she actually had a knack for the art, and so on Bill's suggestion she began taking lessons.
She quit her third job, and found that she hardly missed it. Life began to feel less mundane, and Hermione found herself enjoying things like a quiet afternoon alone at home with a book, or an afternoon spent alone at her easel.
While all these things sounded like marked progress, the change had actually been so gradual Hermione had barely noticed it as it happened; it was when Bill pointed out to her on the phone, after she'd told him that she had just spent an entire weekend without leaving her apartment, "Just a month ago you would have been crying because you were so lonely, you know."
One afternoon, after she'd gotten home from work and was feeding her cat, someone knocked on her door. To Hermione's surprise, it was Bill.
"I didn't know you were coming home!" she told him.
"Neither did I," said Bill, grinning. "But hey, I brought you something from down the street. Please accept this sandwich," and he handed her a Walls bag.
"A sandwich?" said Hermione, laughing.
"As a gesture of solidarity," said Bill. "You know how you were telling me on the phone earlier this week about not minding the fact you didn't go out for two days?"
"Yes," said Hermione.
"Well, it made me realize: for the longest time, I haven't been feeling lonely either."
"I didn't know you ever were!" said Hermione. "You never said anything."
"Well, I like to keep my secrets close," said Bill. "But do you know what I think the secret is?"
"We're both afraid of being alone," said Bill. "So what do we do? We go and live alone, for months."
"You're afraid of being alone?"
"Of course I am," said Bill, smiling slightly. "Why do you think I jumped all over the opportunity to have you cry on my shoulder?"
"I thought at the time that you fancied me or something," said Hermione. "And as time went on, I suppose I thought it was all out of the goodness of your heart."
"Hmph," said Bill, flushing slightly. "Well, maybe it was both. But you're missing the point here."
"Which point?" said Hermione, who was now thinking only of one thing.
"This little fear of ours - or big fear, if you like - we got over it because we just lived through it, you see? We faced it head on."
"Yes," said Hermione, after a moment. "I see. You're right. Now what exactly was that about you fancying me?
Assignment: For today's lesson, I'd like you to write about someone overcoming a challenge, or facing a challenge head-on.
Prompts used:
Pairing: Hermione/Bill
AU: Girl/Guy Next Door!AU
Element: Ice
Quote: "Please accept this sandwich as a gesture of solidarity."
Words before A/N's, etc: 2490