Thank you once again for your lovely feedback. Ron and Hermione are great characters to write. Another fairly short back story chapter before we get to the good stuff. I hope you enjoy it.
CHAPTER THREE
SINCERE CAUSE FOR CONCERN
On Monday morning Ron found a Terry's Chocolate Orange sitting in his booth. Meda had stuck a Post It note on the top that read 'Cheers Big Ears', presumably to thank him for staying on Friday night. If only she knew how much he wished he hadn't bothered. He should have let Meda kick Hermione out. Then he would not have spent the weekend having these awful moments of realisation. Hermione Granger was getting married.
Ron knew that realistically it was daft to get worked up about this. Their split had been a very long time ago now, they had practically still been kids. Of course, she had been out there, all that time, getting on with life, changing and growing. Logically, he knew that the chances were that she had met someone, gotten married, maybe had kids. She was smart and fun, thoughtful. Fiercely independent and an occasional pain in the arse.
She had never been beautiful in the obvious sense. Ron knew this because in their first few years of school he had been very aware of the beautiful girls and Hermione had never featured on that particular radar. Not that it seemed to bother her; Hermione had always been more interested in studying, excelling in practically every subject. She twiddled pens into her crazy hair for ease of reach and didn't appear to notice the other girls laughing. She was happiest leaning on the bench in Chemistry with him and Harry, a flask bubbling over the Bunsen burner, adding ingredients that she lifted gently on the tip of a metal lab spatula. It didn't even register with Ron that she was a girl really until suddenly, out of nowhere, it did.
What started as the odd sexy wet dream that pulled him from sleep in the night and left him unable to meet her eye the next morning, galloped into a very serious attraction. Without warning, Ron found himself wanting to get closer to Hermione, without really understanding why. He would orchestrate study breaks that only the two of them could attend, he sat with her in the library, sneaking her toffees to keep her blood sugar up. He started taking more of an interest in his personal appearance; his mum took huge offence when he broke it to her that he wanted to go to actual barber to have his hair cut instead of her usual trim with the kitchen scissors.
The fatal flaw in the plan was probably that he had been a bit too subtle about it. Not everyone was as slow on the uptake as Ron and when their school hosted foreign exchange students for a year, he found that out to his cost. Viktor Krum was already successful in school sports and in that year he became heavily involved in rugby, a sport that was only fledgling in his native Bulgaria. He also became involved with Hermione. Confident, a stand out star at his own school and quickly becoming a heart throb at Ron's, Viktor had none of the awkwardness and reserve that Ron had been battling. Within weeks he was turning up in the library, seemingly having nothing to do apart from ask Hermione questions about herself and complimenting her. Ron thought the whole thing was highly suspicious- Viktor was older and no one had ever really shown any interest in Hermione before- but when he raised his concerns, Harry merely said "Maybe he really likes her".
The thought that Viktor might actually have pure intentions towards his best friend, the girl for whom he was starting to fall himself, gave Ron sincere cause for concern. Yet he couldn't seem to tell her. He tried; it would be just the two of them, heads together at the desk in the common room, working on some project or other. He would glance sideways at her, looking for a break in her concentration, any moment he could use to ease it into conversation. But he couldn't work up the courage, even when the Christmas dance came around and nobody talked of anything else.
Seeing Hermione on the arm of Viktor Krum the night of the dance was easily one of the most distressing moments in his life up to that point. A fitted dress made of gauzy material the colour of cornflowers hugging her petite frame, a happy sweet smile on her face; the storybook ugly duckling transformed into a swan. Except that Ron had never thought of her as an ugly duckling and it annoyed him to hear snippets of conversation in the crowd. "Have you seen Hermione Granger tonight?" "Her dress is fantastic, never worn anything like that before". "No pens in her hair tonight anyway!" "And there we were wondering what Viktor Krum saw in her!"
Suddenly he felt strongly protective over her. Just because she wasn't obsessed with makeup and fashion like the other girls. Heads in magazines, doodling hearts on their folders. She didn't plaster her face in makeup, so her skin always looked fresh and clear, her hair was mental, but it was springy and soft because she didn't bleach it or layer it in sticky, cough inducing spray. She didn't wear clothes to attract attention, yet Ron always thought she looked nice. Better than nice.
Those few months when Hermione dated Viktor were bleak. Ron spent a lot of time making excuses for not spending time with her and Harry; he was continually late for something or abruptly remembering he had something else to do. To be fair to Hermione she didn't exactly rub it in his face. In fact, he got the distinct impression she wasn't that keen on Viktor. She wasn't dismissive of him, just vague and neutral. When he left to return to Bulgaria, both deciding to maintain their friendship, she rarely mentioned him again.
Which is why this new development was so vexing. Obviously, the reason Ron had been thinking about his encounter with Hermione so much was that her choice of partner was confusing, given their previous history. That was what was troubling him, it wasn't anything to do with jealousy or unfinished business or anything like that. She should be happy, she should be with someone who adored her. Not some rugger buggar twat who couldn't possibly appreciate how smart and wonderful she was.
Was he being unfair to Viktor?
Nah.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
"And this is the apricot variety of the Warm Wishes rose. An utterly beautiful choice for an autumn wedding".
Hermione examined the single stem. "And we can mix in some red?" Her wedding planner nodded. "Deep red. I want them to be really lush. The rose is national flower of Bulgaria. They need to be spectacular". Helena nodded again and wrote something in her notebook.
As Hermione's phone started bleating, Helena muttered, "I'll just go and get the place settings". She pushed off the table and left Hermione to take her call.
"How is it going?" Viktor asked, traffic fogging his voice on the line.
"Ok. I have picked roses for the flowers. Helena says they're a good choice for an autumn wedding".
"Roses? I didn't know you liked roses", Viktor sounded confused and Hermione felt her heckles rise.
"I do actually. And they are the Bulgarian national flower. Which I thought would be a nice touch. Your mum might like that".
Viktor snorted. "My mother doesn't like flowers. Anything vill do for her."
Viktor seemed to be full of these tidbits of information that always would have been useful if she had've known about them sooner. Much of the wedding admin seemed to go over his head and, consequently, he distanced himself from it. The most animated she had seen him was when the wedding venue refused to serve his uncle Stefan's homemade Rakia.
She knew she was partly to blame on this front. She had always been authoritarian, verging on overbearing. She enjoyed organising and controlling and tightening every detail and she knew it would feel good when everyone was able to admire all her efforts on the day. Every so often though, she found herself making decisions based on 'how it would photograph' and surely that wasn't the point?
"Well I've picked roses so that's that I suppose".
"Are you angry with me because I am not there?"
Hermione considered this and found that no, she didn't mind that Viktor wasn't here. When they had first started planning, it had grated how much he deferred to her, despite how much she loved dominating the situation. Weddings were a joint effort, it should represent both halves of a couple and this wedding seemed less Viktor and more Hermione. Actually, it wasn't very much Hermione either. Since the wife of one of Viktor's rugby friends had gifted her the services of Helena, more choices were made based on the grandness of the venue or the stature of the people attending and less on what either she or Viktor preferred.
"No, it's fine. Helena is here and she's practically running the show anyway. If I don't make it down the aisle in September, at least you would have a good understudy. She's had such a hand in everything, she could take my place in a heartbeat". Where had that come from? "Anyway, I better go. We're going to look at little pieces of card now".
"What does that mean?" Confusion on the line for the second time.
"Nothing", Hermione replied wearily, "I will talk to you later".
Helena set a wide leather-bound album in front of her as she slid her phone into her handbag and cracked open the first page, exposing rows of place cards in various colours and fonts. My God, was there anything more tedious?
As Hermione looked down at the examples, feeling a part of her slowly dying, Helena was examining what she had written in her notebook.
"Well this is real fairy-tale Hermione. You dated Viktor at school?"
"Yes", Hermione replied distractedly, "He was an exchange student from Bulgaria".
"And did he stay here to finish his education?"
Maybe the baroque script on the white card... "No, he went back to Bulgaria. We didn't see each other for years and then I ran into him last year. He asked me out for dinner to catch up and that was it".
Helena sighed wistfully. She did that a lot and it was beginning to irk. The woman clearly loved weddings, so had chosen her ideal job, but this didn't allow for people who weren't so keen.
"Imagine running into your old school boyfriend and him being an international rugby star. And he whisks you off on a romantic dinner and now you're getting married".
Hermione's finger paused as she ran it down the page. That did sound like a fairy-tale didn't it?
"He must have asked you to marry him straight away if you only met up again last year." God, but she was nosy.
"Yes. We had dinner in January, got engaged on holiday in August".
Helena made a contented squeak. "Now there's a man who knew what he wanted! Let me grab the other book".
Hermione sat back from the table and stared out of the first-floor window. Helena was right about that: Viktor knew what he wanted. Out celebrating a friend's birthday in a decadent city restaurant, she had been delighted to come across Viktor having dinner with his old team mates. He was broad and capable looking, still and had retained his dark Bulgarian good looks. Of course, her girlfriends wanted to sit with the handsome, striking sportsmen so they had pushed the tables together and it had become one huge party.
All night Viktor had engaged her in conversation; they talked about her job in America and how she had returned home following the end of her tenure to find that work was scarce so she had been temping for the last few years. He told her about his career in rugby, his subsequent retirement the year before and his quest to find a place in the sport off the pitch. They talked late into the evening, long after everyone else had called it a night.
The next day he phoned her and asked her to have dinner with him and the following week they had shared a relaxed supper in a restaurant overlooking the river. At times Hermione felt she was doing too much of the talking, Viktor appeared content to sit back and let her lead the dialogue. But, thinking back to their childhood, he had been reserved as a teenager. On the sports pitch was where he expressed himself. In person, he was prone to letting the conversation wash over him.
And Hermione found that after the noise and bustle of America, this was welcome. Besides, Viktor certainly wasn't shy about letting his feelings be known. After the first date came another phone call, followed by another date, followed by another phone call. Soon they were seeing each other every week, often twice a week if Viktor could persuade her. He had many appointments and engagements, but it didn't ever seem to be a problem to fit in time spent with her.
After four months of weekly dates she accompanied him to their first engagement as a couple, a charity gala. The local press had printed their picture in a magazine and Hermione' grandmother had cut it out and put it on the fridge. Hadn't it felt special, her friends and family clucking over her handsome new boyfriend? Didn't she deserve to be happy after the way Ron had treated her?
Every so often, Hermione would think about Ron and wonder what he was doing. After they had finished school, Ron had seemed a bit uncertain about what direction he had wanted his life to take so he had followed Harry into the Police Service. While he was efficient in the role, training hard and building the physical and emotional resilience needed to perform well, he would occasionally suggest that perhaps it wasn't a good fit. He didn't like the long shifts, working late into the night and falling into bed minutes after Hermione had exited it in the mornings. He felt stuck behind a desk, paperwork mounting, phone ringing, when what he really wanted was to be around people. The human aspect of the job seemed lost in administration.
He was considering leaving the Service when they had the accident, so Hermione hadn't known where he was up until this point. Her relationship with Viktor left very little time to ponder such things, rushing ahead as it was. In August, he surprised her with a trip to Venice and, with a picture-perfect sunset in the background, he proposed to her on the Zattere. She was proud of herself for not allowing him to see how completely overpowered she was by his gesture. At first, she thought he was joking. But Viktor rarely joked, and he was deadly serious about this. His long, impassioned speech about the good life they would have together, the places they would see and the people they would meet was very convincing. Hadn't she known she was his first love, the girl he had felt things for that he had never felt for anyone else prior to that moment? Didn't she think it was meant to be, them running into each other, hitting it off after years apart? Didn't she love him? Because he loved her, and he had known for a while that he wanted to her be his wife.
In the long, aching moments that followed, Hermione considered what he had just said and how she felt about it. Viktor had a succinct flair for speaking; everything was neatly summed up in a desirable package. He was handing it to her gift wrapped. All she had to do was take his hand and say yes.
So, she did.
