Affair of the Heart
Disclaimer: Obviously I don't own any intellectual rights to Harry Potter otherwise my bank balance would be in the black rather than heavily in red. I'm just playing and mean no disrespect or infringement on JK Rowling or Warner Bros characters.
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This is a one shot about Hermione making the decision to leave Ron. There no Ron bashing in it really.
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She was crying. It wasn't the pretty type of crying where tears gracefully roll down angled cheeks, it was the heaving, red eyed, blotchy face and runny nose type of crying. It suited her, after all, Hermione Granger wasn't usually described as graceful. Her breathing was made up of huge gulps of air in between heartbroken sobs.
She felt ridiculous, she was a married woman crying over a man who wasn't her husband. But her heart was broken. Actually, broken wasn't the right descriptor; shattered, destroyed… Obliterated.
Obliterated.
She needed to get all the emotion out before she left the office; but knew that there would be an empty void where the passion had burnt for the last few weeks. She drew in several cleansing deep breaths and looked at the tearstained parchment before her.
"I've already been thinking about us and don't want to complicate things. As nice as you are, we just can't be any more than friends and it's best if we continue that way. X"
Nice. The word cut through her like a dagger. Nice. It was so simple, innocuous. So painful. Who wants to be called nice when they'd practically offered themselves up to a man. Nice was bland, like these biscuits are nice, they're not great or wonderful. Nice. The ultimate let down.
Flicking to the next page she read his follow up reply:
"We haven't really talked much about your situation at home, but I don't want to be responsible for any heart ache… for anyone. I hope this makes any decisions you have to make clearer for you…
"Do you think if I said anything other than 'nice' it would make things easier? No! So, I'm sticking with 'nice' just to make it easier to swallow… for everyone.
"I hope we can stay friends… Life IS a mess, but I'm always here to talk, you deserve to be happy. X"
She couldn't interpret this. Yes, there was so much potential for heartache, for herself, her child, her husband… him. Who was he getting at? Sticking with 'nice', urgh, why Yes, it made the decision clearer, it wasn't going to be pretty and was going to cause heartache anyway.
Hermione could be very pragmatic, she simply knew that there was only one thing she could do… Leave her husband.
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"Ron, we need to split up."
Ronald Weasley looked at his wife of 10 years across the kitchen table and sighed. He ran his hand through his red hair, "how do you want to do it then?"
Hermione giggled, that wasn't how she expected him to react, she thought he'd get angry or at least ask why. Maybe the affairs she'd suspected but he'd denied had actually been happening.
That was it, 14 years of being a couple ended.
He'd moved out of the family home just two weeks later. She'd found the personal ads just before he left. He'd wasted no time.
She looked over at her eight year old daughter, Rose, who was reading quietly in the chair and remembered how she'd cried over the sleeping child when her marriage first started to fail. Rose must have been no older than one. Ron hadn't bonded with their daughter easily and most of the child's early needs were being shouldered by Hermione, she was exhausted and depressed, alone and isolated. He told her he loved her and held her, kissing the top of her head but that was it, he rarely touched her as a man should touch his wife. When he did, it was selfish, painful both emotionally and physically. They'd not made love in four and a half years when she called time.
In two short weeks, she'd lost the man she'd fallen in love with, the man who'd shown her she was worthwhile, who she was willing to cast aside her morals and cheat with and her husband, the man whose apathy and emotional neglect had slowly destroyed her. She wondered what the future would hold, how long she would be alone for, what kind of person she would find love with… would she find love?