Author's Note: Sorry for the long absence. I had my finals and they kept me quite busy.
So a quick reminder what happened: Hermione and Bill have just spend a drunken night together, and Bill realised he made a mistake.
Old Wounds
"Good morning," Hermione smiled at him.
He felt her soft naked body pressed to his and knew he had to get out of there.
"Morning", he rasped turning to get up, "bathroom", he said upon her confused face.
Hermione only nodded wrapping the sheets around her.
Oh no, no, no, he thought to himself, what am I gonna say to her?
He splashed water into his face to win some time. Slowly he returned to his room.
Hermione was still laying in his bed with the sheets wrapped around her, she half got up when he came back and stretched her hands out towards him.
"Hermione", he cleared his throat, "we need to talk."
Her face fell his cold demeanor and the tone of his voice let her know that she wouldn't like what he had to say.
"You see, I'm sorry for last night, that…that shouldn't have happened", Bill couldn't look her in the eye. "You see I care greatly for you as a friend but I am not…I don't want", he stopped, he didn't know what to say, then he tried again. "Look, you're an amazing woman…"
Hermione held her hand up to stop him from saying anything else. She looked away but he saw the tears in her eyes that she refused to spill just yet.
"Stop explaining, I understand", her voice sounded raw and was almost breaking.
He wasn't sure that she really understood but stopped talking.
She got out of bed and quickly put her clothes back on then without looking at him or saying anything else she apparated away.
Bill sighed deeply he felt like, no he knew he was a complete jerk and now he had ruined a wonderful friendship and hurt an amazing woman he deeply cared about.
-O-O-O-
Hermione apparated to her flat. She felt numb. She took a shower and put on some fresh clothes as if she were on autopilot, then she sat down and the reality of what had happened hit her.
She wanted to cry, she wanted to run, she decided she needed to get out of there. She grabbed a few things and apparated straight into her cousins flat.
Her cousin who was just about to have breakfast almost fell out of her chair when Hermione materialized in her living room with a loud pop.
"Oh my, Hermione don't do that you'll give me a heart attack…what's wrong?" She asked concerned after seeing Hermione's expression.
"Oh Catherine," Hermione cried and flung herself in the arms of her surprised cousin. Her cousin let her to the couch, where Hermione began telling her the whole story in between sobs.
Hermione and Catherine had practically grown up together. Catherine was only a year older than Hermione was. However, after Hermione had received her letter from Hogwarts they barely saw each other. It was only after the final battle that Hermione realised how completely estranged she was from her family and how much she actually missed them.
It took a while for her parents to forgive her for changing their memories and sending them to Australia. But many open talks had helped them all mending their relationship. Hermione had made sure to include her family more in her life and visited them regularly.
At her grandmother's birthday she had met Catherine again, at first it felt as if they were strangers but soon they're relationship was almost as close as it had been before Hermione went to Hogwarts.
Hermione trusted her cousin and even told her that she was a witch. At first Catherine thought Hermione was joking and then something between confused, impressed and amazed, even now she still couldn't quite wrap her mind around the concept of magic.
So now Catherine held her sobbing cousin in her arms and listened to her story of how she fell for this guy, spent a wonderful night with him, thought he liked her back only to have him tell her that it was all a mistake.
Hermione felt hurt and foolish.
"O.K.", Catherine said, "I'll give you this day to wallow, we gonna eat sugary and greasy food and watch some really bad movies. Tomorrow we'll drive to my parent's cottage at the sea and have a few days all to ourselves were we relax and have some fun."
"But I have to go to work", Hermione sniffled.
"Just take a few days off," was Catherine's pragmatic answer.
So the next day Hermione and her cousin squeezed themselves and their luggage into Catherine's tiny car and went south.
The area were the cottage was was beautiful. After arriving they immediately went for a walk at the beach. It made Hermione think that she should go on vacation or at least short trips like that more often.
When Hermione got back to London she felt a lot better already and dived into her work with new enthusiasm. She decided, however that it might be a good idea to avoid Bill and the Bureau for some time.
-O-O-O-
Bill was relieved on one hand that Hermione seemed to avoid him, he didn't know how he should act around her, but at the other hand he missed their friendship terribly, he hadn't realized until then actually how important she had become to him.
Well should have thought of that before you slept with her, he berated himself.
Only Charlie knew what had happened and had smacked him quite soundly over the head, it hadn't helped though the harm was already done.
His work started to annoy him greatly, the curse breakers in training seemed to reach new hights in incompetence and his patience was very low. So he was very glad when he received the task to go to Paris and examine some supposedly dark artefacts from a private client.
After Bill arrived in Paris he was greeted by a very enthusiastic and very small man with a huge moustache.
"Ah, bonjour Monsieur Weezy. I am Monsier Moineau." The little man said with a surprisingly deep voice.
"Bonjour", Bill mumbled a little embarrassed, his french was not the best.
"I'll bring you to your 'otel and after you got settled in, I'll show you my 'ome that iz were the artefacts are." Monsieur Moineau explained to Bill.
On the way to the hotel Moineau told Bill that he had inherited a mansion from a distant relative of his and that it seems that said relative liked to experiment and didn't shy back from the dark arts. Which also were his doom, since he died when a rather nasty curse backfired.
Later Bill examined the artefacts, most of them only had minor easily breakable curses and hexes on them, only two or three turned out to take a little more time and skill. He would take care of them the following day and if necessary also the day after that.
That evening when he returned to the hotel, he heard a very familiar voice talking rapidly in french, that voice belonged to a woman with very familiar beautiful long blonde hair.
"Fleur", He said, louder than he had intended because she turned around and looked at him.
"Bill iz zat you?" She asked looking at him in surprise.
Before knowing what he was doing, he invited her to dinner and she readily agreed.
She told him over supper that she was in an on off relationship with Claude Delon a french singer and currently they were off. But she expected him to come crawling back to her asking for forgiveness for whatever offense it was he had comitted towards her in her eyes.
She worked for a french women's magazine and enjoyed that immensely.
He didn't talk a lot about himself and she didn't ask.
She was still as beautiful and charming as she had been all those years ago.
They spent the night together in his hotel room and when he woke up the next morning she was already gone. Bill didn't have much time to think about what had happened, since he had to get ready to meet Monsieur Moineau.
He spent the next four evenings and nights with Fleur. After that he came to the realisation that there existed two Fleurs the one in his mind that was larger than life and the real one. While both were incredibly beautiful, charming (the real one at least when she chose to be) and witty, the Fleur in his mind was also a lot more down to earth, caring and less vain and arrogant than the real one. He still enjoyed the passionate physical part of their relationship though. But after those 4 nights, he had to get back to England for a final medical check up to see if he could go back to working in the field.
They decided to leave their fling at that and Bill went back home feeling like a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He finally started to move on. However, the image of another woman kept creeping up from time to time – Hermione- he squashed them as soon as they would come up. He had royally screwed that one up.
The healer declared him fully healed and his next assignment was Greece. So once more he went back to his old adventurous and slightly lonley lifestyle of work and beautiful women. But now he was looking for a woman to settle down with which is why now he went on second and third dates with some of the women and with one he even had an affair that lasted a few months.
It was on his 38 birthday, that he spent alone only with letters from his family and a bottle of Odgen's finest that it hit him…
