Summary: Unhappy with her engagement to Ron, Hermione fights to regain her independence and sanity.
Disclaimer: All characters belong to J.K. Rowling, not me.
He was out again, running around town with Harry. Drinking, fucking God knows whom. It was the third time this week; the third night she was expected to wait up for him, to hear his drunken slurs on the other end of the phone as he stammered over words that no longer held any meaning to her.
There was a time when his voice sent her heart aflutter, when his touch had given her goose flesh and she would say in confidence that she was completely, head-over-heels in love with Ronald Weasley.
But that was before the Final Battle had been fought and they suffered the losses that could never be recovered, never be repaid. He had come to her afterwards, after their loved ones had been buried along with any innocence they had managed to cling to, and cried in her arms. That night he asked her to take the diamond ring, the nicest he could afford, off of her finger and wait for him.
And so she had dutifully pulled the precious diamond from her finger and worn it around her neck, waiting for the man she loved to come back to her. But he had still been a boy and now there had been too many women, too much alcohol, too much time and distance. She wasn't aware of it happening, but she had fallen out of love with him. She dreaded the sound of his voice over her phone and seeing the sad little boy he had become.
As she had expected, the phone rang out at a few minutes past two. She had jumped, rudely interrupted from the thoughts she was wont to become lost in. "Hello," her voice was monotone; she was merely going through the motions so that she could go to bed.
"HER-MY-NEE!" His voice was loud and boisterous. Whether it was from his unfamiliarity with telephones or the amount of liquor he had consumed, she did not know.
She heard voices in the background, loud music. Females, giggling in their shrill tones brought on by alcohol and music and the glow of the two famous men whose company they kept. He used to hide these truths from her, call her from a quiet place where he could pretend that it had just been him and Harry that night. She wondered when he had stopped bothering, stopped caring if she knew about the other women.
"JUST CHECKING IN." She held the phone away from her ear, lest she become deafened from his screams.
"Of course, darling," she replied, the word feeling bitter and foreign on her tongue.
They said I love you and hung up. She wondered if he meant the words anymore, either. She had long ago taught herself to let the lie flow easily from her lips.
When she had first learned of Ron's behavior, she had been hurt. She had called and screamed like only a woman scorned could. Her words, her pleads, her cries had fallen on deaf ears, though, as he fed her the empty promises that she had clung to for months. Then, one morning, she had awoken and realized she was numb to him.
In the time since that morning, she had gone on exactly one date. It had been with a fairly attractive man from the ministry, a few years her senior. Sampson Crowley had been a pleasant date. They had shared good conversation and a very good bottle of wine. She harbored no illusions that she would one day fall for Sampson, but he had been a good way to pass the time and in the hours they spent together, she had felt alive again.
But then she was awoken the next morning to a large ruckus from her front door. Groggily pulling herself from the bed, she opened the door to find Ron in a jealous rage, beating on her door with all of his strength. His eyes were rimmed with red, his shirt untucked and the buttons not matched up properly. He still stank of firewhiskey and stale cigarettes.
Their argument should have woken the entire neighborhood by the time he stormed out her front door nearly twenty minutes later.
Against all reason, despite every indiscretion Ron continued to engage in, it was her virtue that was called into question. Harry had shown up on her doorstep later that day, wanting to know how she could possibly do that to Ron, when he loved her so ever-loving much. Ginny had been worst, shrieking like a banshee that they just had to wait for Harry and Ron to recover from the war. That didn't they deserve this period of fun after all the work leading up to the war.
How quickly they all forgot that it had been her by their side, every single step. That during the final battle, she had saved both of their skins. Each subsequent visitor offered the same words. They spoke of "sewing oats" and "boys will be boys." And so Hermione resigned herself to wait for Ron to come to his senses, to see if there could ever again be something between them. She understood now that too much had happened, and she could never be known separately from Ron.
Of course, that was until the day Draco Malfoy stepped into her office.
He had not made an appointment, had not announced his arrival with her assistant. Instead, in typical Malfoy fashion, he had barged through her office door, sat down nonchalantly in the seat adjacent to hers, and put his feet up on her desk.
Since the war, the relationship between Draco Malfoy and the Golden Trio had been cordial at best. They acknowledged his change of allegiance during the final battle, but some schoolyard grudges would never die out.
In the years since, Draco had risen the ranks at the Ministry, working hard and often to rebuild his family's stature in the wizarding community. He had changed a lot, though not in the grandiose ways she had or Ron had. Draco Malfoy's evolution had been more subtle and it was hard to pinpoint the difference between the seventeen year old boy they'd known and the twenty-two year old man who sat before her.
He had the same platinum blonde hair, icey gray eyes, and calculated smirk that she remembered from her school days. There was still a certain hardness about him and the air of slight arrogance, superiority. But there was a change in him, that was for certain. Maybe she would never be able to identify it, no one could, but it was there and it was noticed by almost everyone he came into contact with.
For the time, she decided to approach him formally and professionally. "What can I help you with?" she asked smoothly, though she gestured for him to remove his feet from her desk.
However, he was in no mood to make this easy for her, instead deciding to make some very pointed small talk. "How's Weasley doing, Granger? No ring on your finger, I see – or is it just so small I'd need a microscope to find it?"
Hermione scowled. Yep, same old Malfoy, maturity and growth be damned. "Just tell me what you're doing here." She urged him to get to the point.
However, Draco Malfoy was clearly enjoying himself, enjoying the discomfort he was causing in the witch sitting across from him. "How does it feel to be a glorified hag, Granger? Wish I could find a girl like you – Just sitting at home twiddling her thumbs while I go out and fuck everything that moves."
Her eyes flashed for just a moment before she regained her composure. This is what Ron had reduced her to – a running joke. Her situation again demoralized her, the realization that there was no way out having sunk in a while ago.