Part II
There's rain tip-tapping against the window when she wakes. It's still dark, but Ronald, snoring faintly, has stolen the bedsheets again, and she's covered in gooseflesh. She eases out of bed, bundles up in a dressing gown, and steals downstairs to see about a cup of tea. Perhaps she'll make crêpes for their breakfast. It's an effort she hasn't gone to in a while, but Ronald is always appreciative of any motions she makes towards domesticity. His winsome smile and lavish compliments are probably what prevent her doing it more often.
But failure isn't an option. She simply doesn't know how to do it, so instead she hunts out flour and eggs, milk and butter.
She's just cleaning up when he creaks down the stairs, sniffing at the air with what is likely comic charm. "Good morning," he carols.
"It certainly is, although the rain will have made a mess of the streets. But I had an interesting idea for time-delaying potions while I was cooking." Why does she do this, why remind him of the places she goes in her head where he can't follow.
"Is that what you're working on, now?" He never asks. If her brain is a caricatured opera, her conscience is hissing from one of the loges: you should feel guilty. Her conscience has a good view, but is usually [blessedly] hard to hear when she's busy at the conductor's stand.
She sifts confectioner's sugar across his plate and passes it to him, tip-toeing up to buss his unshaven cheek. She'll try including him, perhaps she can mitigate the damage, "Not yet, no. It's just a thought I had. I've just been working on revisions the past week." Revisions of what, he should ask. She's finally learned the art of brevity, learned not to overburden a conversation with entire abstracts.
He doesn't ask, but then his mouth is full. He swallows, follows it with a gulp of tea. "Your crêpes are always fantastic. I think you do them better than Mum."
So still nothing, then. She manages a wan smile, and polite thanks.
He does the remainder of the washing up while she gathers their parcels, checking against her address book that each is appropriately labelled, before shrinking them into her bag. "I did that already," he tells her.
She bites back a sharp retort. Maybe he did. Maybe he even did it well. "Alright, I'll just go over mine, then. My head's been all over the place, who knows what I've written." She finds two incorrect postal codes, and tidies the writing on one of the cards. They're all his, of course. But there's a well-known saying about discretion and valour, so she holds her tongue.
Despite the rain, the morning goes well. They flit in and out of shops, and the rest of the Christmas list looks to be nearly accomplished. She checks each item – each person – off her To-Do list with neat, efficient strokes of her favourite biro. Eventually, he balks at tagging after her into Flourish and Blotts, and they go their separate ways. She'll meet him for lunch later, they agree. She browses idly for a while, but there's nothing here she'd feel comfortable sending to Tibs, and she's still resolved to do something in that direction. A fountain pen after all, then. It's properly impersonal to a Muggle, but she half-worries that it might be one of those odd gifts that will really tickle a wizard. Or worse, be taken as a political statement. If she wasn't quite convinced he used one, she'd never dare. Although surely no one who invites you to call them 'Tibs' can actually be on the fully-blown fascist/racist side of the pureblood spectrum, can they?
Ronald's late to their table at the bistro, and he's got George in tow. She's trying to write a quick note to enclose with the pen, and answers them distractedly. Hopefully she hasn't agreed to anything outrageous.
George plucks the paper out from beneath her fingers as she's folding it. "What's this then, Hermione? Love letters?" He laughs, "Ron, do you know about this?"
"It's a note to one of my editors; pass it back."
"'Tibs'? Has he got a tail, like catnip much? Haha, 'Tibs, with thanks for aaaallll your help and suggestions – ooh, suggestions, Ronnie, how do you like that? – best, Hermione.' Well, that's predictably dull."
She rolls her eyes, and snatches it before he can grub it up. Really, though, she's glad George is there. He fills in all of the deadly empty spaces where she has nothing to say.
They offer wrapping services at the Owl Post, so while Ronald sorts out the rates for all their parcels, she is able to address and send this little token before she thinks better of it. She knows the editorial office's address by heart; all that's left is scratching 'Attn: S. Tiberius Prince' at the top of the column.
She doesn't quite manage to pass it beyond Ronald's line of sight.
"'Tibs', eh?"
She shrugs in answer, and wonders if he'll leave it alone.
He does, at least until they've apparated into the back garden, when he appears to finally piece one and one together. "Say, wasn't Snape a Prince? Or his mother, I mean?"
Yes, she nods.
"Any connection, do you suppose?"
"I don't know. Probably not a close one. It's an old Continental family, there have got to be a few still knocking about." And it's the truth of it. She doesn't know. She's wondered, certainly, but there's never been anything more than very circumstantial evidence to suggest it. But Ronald doesn't know about the first paper she published, and she's at a loss as to how to explain that Tibs has put his editorial oar in most of her work from the very beginning. She thinks maybe, just maybe, it was her coauthor's name that snagged his attention; she's been given to understand that he doesn't usually handle junior articles, and that she has thus been an exception. She's acutely aware it's a paper castle built in a windstorm, and that she ought to know better than to reason in advance of firm evidence. Or without any evidence, for that matter.
She rattles the key into the lock on the door. It's sticking again. "Ronald, I do wish you'd take a minute or two and look into this."
He rolls his eyes, sighs, and casts Alohomora.
"Not quite what I meant. Doing that all the time is what's making it stick." She's scolding him. Again. Distraction's a useful tactic.
And oh, but the universe is going to provide her with a distraction, all right.
Crookshanks usually mewls around her feet when she comes in, butting his head against her calves and ensuring that she's well-decorated in crinkly orange hairs. He'll act like she's been gone a decade, even if she's only walked down to fetch the post. The past few years, he's given her enough time to achieve the kitchen – it's cold by the open door, so she doesn't really look for him until he fails to attend to the tell-tale sound of the can opener. "Ronald? Ronald. Have you seen Crooks?" She's standing there with an open tin of catfood in one hand, and the pit of her stomach somewhere down on the floor.
Ronald is, predictably, no help, and with each room, her dread metastasizes. For a moment, when she finally finds Crooks curled on the antiseptic-white bedlinens in the spare room, she is relieved, and can actually draw breath. In the very next instant, she realizes the truth.
She seats herself, woodenly, on the edge of the bed, and cuddles his limp body in her arms. He's so much smaller, somehow, with his fur lying flat. She isn't aware that she's crying until she notices her tears dampening the spot behind his ears, where her fingers are tracing comforting old paths.
She hasn't cried since before the war.
She doesn't want Ronald's arms around her. He's never even made a pretence of liking her bandy-legged, squashed-faced, perpetually scowling old friend. She pushes him away. He doesn't belong in this room. This room is where she takes sanctuary, where she is tiny and broken and helpless and a miserable, crying child again. She tries to explain this but can't get the words out properly, not past this bruise in her chest, this persistent hematoma surely spreading beneath her ribs. "Leave, just leave me be," she finally manages, in great sobbing gulps.
"Fine," he snaps, rubbing his hands on the thighs of his trousers, as if to brush her away.
He slams the door closed when he leaves the house. The vibration knocks something down; she can hear glass shatter. It shakes her out of crying. She doesn't do well with loud noises. In addition to the snot and tears dripping down her face, there's a cold trickle of sweat dampening her armpits, trailing down between her breasts. She swallows hard. Just something broken.
When she can trust her legs to hold her upright, she sets out to investigate the damage, carefully cradling Crookshanks in her arms. It's their wedding picture that's fallen off the mantle. The glass is everywhere. She crunches through it, and picks up the frame. The little Ronald figure is gesticulating wildly; Hermione is hiding her face in her veil. There's a great gash across it, where the glass poked into the photograph. Brilliant. Fitting. She drops it back onto the floor – she can't very well carry Crooks and the frame.
She nearly runs flat up against Ronald as she stumbles into the kitchen, legs still occasionally quivering.
"What the hell happened in here?" He's looking past her, into the sitting room.
"It fell. When you closed the door." She readjusts Crooks in her arms, holding him closer. Defensively.
"Bloody hell. I'll… I'll clean it up. I, uh, I was out digging. For him. Under that tree he always used to get stuck in."
It's perfect, and of course it's necessary, and of course this sets her off again. She sniffs valiantly, and bites hard at the side of her cheek.
Ronald has routed up a box. He glances at her, gestures.
"Out there," she tells him. It is somehow too gruesome to do this on the kitchen floor.
The rain has slacked off, but she gets drenched anyway, kneeling in the dead wet grass near the raw wound he's gouged into the garden. She settles Crookshanks into the box, tipping his scowling face down so that his head is curled over his paws. A claw snags in her sweater, and she nearly begins sobbing again, thinking of all the scratched furniture in her attic study. She hesitates, as she's closing the box. Indecision. Sentimentality gets the better of her – it always does – and she prises the cardboard back open to unclip his collar for a keepsake.
She scoops the muddy earth back into the hole with her bare hands. There should be some inspired eulogy for this last childhood friend. All the rest have grown on, have changed, have disappeared. Have died. And have disappointed. But the words that come to her are neither elegant nor poetic, they are only honest: You were ugly. You were an unwanted thing. You were even, objectively, a right pain in the arse, sometimes. But I loved you anyway, because I saw something like myself in you.
