A/N: Honestly? I totally forgot all about this story. Woops. My bad.
Based on the 30Breathtakes prompt 'You're good at what you do.'
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Dinner at Grimmauld Place had come to be a quiet affair. The day's rigorous cleaning left the kids too tired to talk much until after the meal was over. This was a relief of sorts to the adults; less questions about Order business was okay by them.
Two months into the summer, the cleaning was becoming commonplace and now dinner was growing as loud and boisterous as meal times at the Burrow. Mr. Weasley was caught up telling Sirius a story about a wizard in Cornwall that had bewitched his silverware to feed him only to have them escape and begin tormenting his muggle neighbors when a noisy thud emanated from upstairs, followed by some muffled exclamations and very loud giggling.
Eyes narrowing in thought, Mrs. Weasley scanned the heads at the table, immediately noting that she was two short. Without a word to the assembly around her table, she raced up the stairs to investigate the source of the noise. Everyone else got up to follow her.
The twins' assigned bedroom, across the hall from the girls' room, was issuing billows of pink smoke from underneath the door. "Fred!" Hermione stormed from behind the door and then began coughing.
Mrs. Weasley banged the door open, standing with her hands on her hips, her most determined on her face, surveying the scene before her.
Fred lay on the floor, covered head to toe in some form of red dust that appeared to have come from a glass jar on the desk, now cracked down the side and oozing crimson liquid that looked very much like blood. Hermione was beside him, her legs all in a tangle with his, on her stomach, and the red powder coated her entire back. Whenever they moved the outline of their shapes could be seen in red on the dark green carpet.
"Oi, you were supposed to be watching that!" George glowered down at his brother's laughing, sputtering form in indignation.
"Sorry. We got a little…" Fred trailed off with a sheepish look at Hermione. "distracted."
Ginny leaned over and whispered in Harry's ear. "I guess that's why Fred's shirt is inside out."
"Oh no," Mrs. Weasley declared. Fred and Hermione attempted to detangle themselves, each pulling and twisting in different directions that only succeeded in getting them even more hopelessly entwined. George stood behind his mother, a hand clapped over his mouth to stifle his laughter. "There's not going to be any hanky panky going on under this roof. I won't stand for it."
"Mum," Fred pleaded. "There's certainly no hanky being…pankied here. I swear."
Hermione was a bright, glowing pink by now as she finally managed to extract herself and stood up, futzing furiously with her disheveled clothes and refusing to meet anyone's eyes. Ginny giggled behind her mother.
"This," Mrs. Weasley announced, "needs to be discussed."
…0...
"So now what?"
Harry and Ginny looked up at Ron as he talked around a mouthful of mashed potatoes. The wake was long over, only a handful of close family friends and relatives still milling around the Burrow to help out, and the three of them sat down to a late snack since eating earlier hadn't really been too appealing.
"That's disgusting, Ron," Ginny admonished and rolled her eyes while she picked at a piece of chicken on her plate.
He swallowed loudly and gulped down some water before speaking again. "Excuse me for being hungry." Ginny glared at him, but he seemed not to notice. "What I meant was; what do we do now?" The question was directed at Harry who, instinctively, knew he wasn't talking about just that night.
Shrugging, Harry pushed his own potatoes around before taking a small bite. "I don't know. McGonagall said we could come back to Hogwarts but…"
"That'd be depressing," Ron interjected. "Going to school a year after our class has graduated? Pathetic."
"Hey!" Ginny exclaimed. "We're all going to have to make up for missing a year and it's not pathetic. It wasn't exactly a choice."
"Yeah," Ron said, "but you were going to be there for another year anyway. It's not as bad for you."
Ginny opened her mouth to retort, but Harry put a hand on her arm to stop her when he noticed Hermione walking slowly towards them. Silence fell over the table immediately.
"That's not suspicious at all," she quipped dryly. She sat down at the table beside Ron, her eyes going from face to face.
"It's nothing, Hermione," Harry assured her. "We were just talking about school." He figured that the topic might interest her. Anything book related could almost always distract Hermione from everything else going on around her.
The light in her eyes, which had been sorely lacking the past few days, seemed to dim any more. "Oh." Her voice was small, quiet, and very un-Hermione.
Setting his fork down for the first time since they'd sat down at the table, Ron gazed at Hermione in confusion, his head tilting. "Hermione, you alright?"
She nodded, eyes fixed on the table her fingers were idly running over. "Yeah. It's just…I don't think I can go back there."
Silence fell over them again, only this time it was even more uncomfortable-if that was even possible. Ron shifted uncomfortably in his seat and Ginny cleared her throat to try and break the silence. Harry couldn't blame them. It was obvious that neither of them had thought about it before; going back into the building, the very hallway, where their brother was killed. Now it was out there and he could see it running around in both of their minds.
"So you're not going to finish school?" Harry asked. Maybe if he deflected the guilty thoughts of being back in the castle they could make it through the night without one of them breaking down again.
Hermione shrugged. Something inside of Harry screamed its head off. The idea that Hermione Granger, bookworm extraordinaire and the brightest witch in a generation, would be so flippant about her education sent a cold chill through his body.
Perhaps he didn't get it. He'd never had the person he was in love with ripped away from him. He'd lost his parents, but he never really knew them. He lost Sirius, but was able to go on. Both had hurt, just like the loses of Hedwig and Dobby and Remus hurt, but he had been able to go on. Hermione…her heart was broken and he had no idea how much she must be hurting right then.
"That doesn't sound like the Hermione Granger I know," Ron said in a somewhat petulant voice. Crossing his arms over his chest, he glared at Hermione like he was outraged that she had the audacity to be something other than what he'd always seen her as.
Hermione stood abruptly, her chair flying backwards, drawing the eyes of everyone else in the house.
"Nice going, Ron," Ginny snapped and chased after her.
Ron scratched his head, a confused expression on his face. Even after 7 years of dealing with Hermione, he still managed to say the exact wrong thing to say to her in every situation. "What'd I say?"
Shaking his head, Harry rose from the table and went off in search of Hermione and Ginny, patting Ron on the shoulder as he went.
…0…
Harry knocked softly on the door of Ginny's bedroom. It was where Hermione always stayed when she was at the Burrow, so he was fairly certain she'd be in there.
Ginny opened it softly, pulling the door shut behind her as she stepped out into the hallway.
"How's Hermione?" he asked. "And what are we doing out here?"
He noticed that Ginny began shifting her weight from foot to foot, something she only did whenever she got really nervous or uncomfortable. "What?"
"Harry," she licked her lips, yet another sign of her nerves. He started to worry-even more than he had been before. "Hermione's not going back to Hogwarts."
It seemed like time stalled for a moment. Harry pictured, with some difficulty, what a year at Hogwarts without Hermione would be like. He couldn't remember a time past Halloween of their first year that he'd been without her. Even during the worst times, even when Ron wasn't speaking to him, she had always been there when he really needed her. The prospect of walking down the familiar corridors without her, of going into the Gryffindor common room and not finding her there, of never seeing her in the library again…he wasn't sure he could do it. Or even, if he wanted to do it.
"So Ron's was right; she's just not going to finish school? Just quit?"
A frown marred Ginny's face. "Hermione has a good reason to never want to set foot back in that castle again."
"You're going," he said, but it sounded like a weak argument even to himself.
"I have to." Crossing her arms over her chest, making her look eerily reminiscent of her mother. "But Professor McGonagall offered to let Hermione make up her classes by mail. Some people realize it might be hard to go back into the scene of a battle."
Harry bristled. Did she honestly think that he had no problem going back to the place where so many people-his friends-had died?
"Just…" he searched for the right words to prevent another angry retort from his girlfriend. "When Hermione feels up to it, tell her I'd like to talk to her." He left before waiting for a response, heading downstairs to talk to Professor McGonagall.
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