A/N: Thank you to wonderful nauticalparamour who requested this song and a Hermione centric story with one of the younger Slytherins hope you like :)
SIDE B - TRACK 4
[Hermione Granger x Marcus Flint]
When she calls, tell me truth
Tell me truth, tell me truth
Is it more than I knew?
I knew
So are you home tonight?
Are you alone tonight?
I've been drinking and I'm thinking, that I don't wanna fight
Are you home tonight?
Are you alone tonight?
You've been drinking and I'm thinking
Are we sinking?
Yeah, I just wanna fight
I just wanna fight
Are you Home? / The Broods [2016]
Hermione was sitting at the dresser in her bedroom when the phone rang, she was more than grateful for the distraction having spent the last half an hour trying in vain to perform a charm Mrs Weasley had given her to manage her hair, she was losing the battle. As she jumped from the chair at the insistent ring, she had to navigate the scattered objects all over the thick carpet. Despite being obsessively organised in most areas of her life, the same meticulousness did not carry into her home. It took a few moments to locate the demanding noise, eventually finding the phone under a jumper she had carelessly discarded the day before.
"You're never going to guess what happened to me last night." Ginny's voice hailed through after she clicked accept. Hermione rolled her eyes at the wicked excitement in her friend's voice. Ginny had been on something of a mission since her break up with Harry, not that Hermione judged her, her friend had poured herself into that relationship for nearly three years, and now it was over Ginny just wanted to have fun. She was happier than ever, they both were, that was all Hermione cared about.
"Well, Lavender and I went out, and you will never believe who we saw!" Ginny continued without waiting for Hermione's prompt. Hermione smiled at her eagerness, happy with herself that there was almost no reaction to the other girls name now. Her friends blossoming friendship with Lavender had concerned Hermione at first, it was no secret that she had never gotten on with the blonde at school. But while Ginny and Harry had been together so were Lavender and Ron and the four were thrown together a lot. Now both single they continued to spend time together. Hermione could concede that Lavender had grown up, at least a little.
"Who?" She asked absentmindedly as she twirled the phone cord around her fingers, plonking herself back in front of the dressing table and balancing her feet on the edge.
"Marcus Flint!" Ginny cried, with the tone of someone who had just put down a full house during a tense poker match. "Bet you would never have guessed that would you?"
Hermione's throat closed up, and she shut her eyes, grateful beyond belief that this conversation was happening over the phone. "Really?" she forced out, "how funny that you should run into him."
Ginny was too excited to acknowledge or even register the way Hermione's words fell out of her mouth like leaden pellets.
"You know what it was like when we were at school, looked at us like we were something under his boot. Well, not anymore!"
"Not anymore" Hermione parroted back apathetically. She clutched the phone in a death grip as a fur like feeling seemed to coat tongue, her fingers twitched as she debated her next step. Arguing with herself was futile, she knew she would have to ask. "What…" she coughed, "what happened?"
"Well, by the time I'd seen him I'd had a few drinks you see, and I marched over there to set him straight. We'd had more than one run in on the Quidditch pitch at school, and we are down to play in the league next year, and I thought it was time to settle an old score. So I went over there, eyes blazing, then he offers to buy me a drink, totally took me by surprise…"
Hermione stopped listening, no, that wasn't entirely accurate, she heard the words, but she had finished processing. It was like being on a rollercoaster when you know you're afraid, and you've been brave the whole way around the ridiculously long queue, and suddenly you're strapped in, and the little cart is chugging all the way to the top of this ridiculous peak and you're sure you are going to die and then… the track seems to fall away, and you brace yourself begging it to stop but knowing you have to see it out until the end of the rotation.
Once Ginny made it to the part where they got back to her flat Hermione's fingers were trembling too hard to hold the phone without rattling it, so she rested it against her collar as she stared up at the ceiling trying to control her breathing.
"That's great Gin" she managed to say mechanically as her friend finished speaking. She bit her lip, "will you... err... do you think you will see him again?"
"Not sure, no firm plans anyway," Ginny answered absentmindedly as if she had not thought of the possibility herself. Hermione nodded, not that she could be seen, she had gone way past the point of being coherent. "Anyway," Ginny called excitedly, "I better go."
Hermione heard the call click off and she laid the phone in the middle of her crossed legs, staring at it like an unidentified bag in a train station. Hermione had got with Marcus a year before, not that anyone knew. They had to keep it secret he had said, a position that he had never moved from. When they talked they agreed that their friends wouldn't understand, he said he had no interest in answering to the Chosen One, said that was all it was, and like a fool she had believed him.
It had started out casual, meeting every few weeks when he was back from tours, going out for dirty martini's in muggle hotels and leaving dirty sheets in the morning. It wasn't long before it changed, he started coming back more often, turning up in the middle of trips, staying at her place, inviting her to come to his. Making places for each other in their lives, so she had thought. Hermione had never felt like that about anyone before. Ron and Harry were her two closest male friends, and they were the classic Gryffindors, what you saw was what you got. Marcus was so different, she could have been cliched and said he had 'layers', but he didn't, not really, it was more cut and dry than that. He had a public persona, a smirking, scowling brute on the Quidditch pitch, a man that had grown into his appearance that excluded an 'I don't give a fuck about you attitude' at all times. Then he had the person he was underneath, not some gooey sentimental but a slightly softer, goofier man that like all of them had been forced to grow up to young and had a secret passion for sugary cereal and muggle cartoons.
It felt nice finding out what he was like behind the wall he created; he laughed a lot when they were on their own. Not full belly laughs, given over to abandon, but little choking ones that sounded like she had wrenched the noise from his throat against his will.
He felt like hers when he was like that, stripped to the waist in some tatty sweats reenacting some Quidditch move as he knew how his casual references to broken bones made her wince. She felt like his, how he picked her up if she had fallen asleep somewhere and tucked her into bed with him, whispering how he wished she would come on tour with him when he thought she couldn't here.
And that's why she had ignored the first call.
And the second.
Even the third time when it was pushed into her face during dinner at the Burrow. She had sat motionless as Ron recounted a fairly explicit story of walking on Marcus and Parvati at one of the end of season parties, all while Molly's back was turned, of course.
She had said nothing.
But this was different; Ginny was her best friend. She wanted so much to ignore it but she just… she couldn't.
She picked up the phone, staring at it for a moment and taking a huge inhale.
It answered on the first ring. "So are you home tonight?"
His fingers trailed along her arm as she moved inside his elegantly decorated flat, it was exactly like him, all too big furniture and clean lines till you moved into the bedroom, there was colour there and soft plush furnishings, that room was for comfort not display. In none of the stories had she heard of someone being taken back to his flat. It didn't mean it hadn't happened of course, but she took some comfort from that, no matter how pathetic it made her feel.
She walked around him, pushing down her feelings as she brushed against his side. Marcus turned to close the door, dressed casually he still looked breathtaking, and she averted her eyes. She hadn't bothered to put any makeup on or do her hair. She had thought about it, thought about doing a turn as one of those old school movie sirens, charging in dressing to the nines and making him regret the day he lost her.
It was a nice thought, something for the future maybe. But considering she had been sweeping up shards of her broken heart under the carpet for weeks Hermione was a bit beyond lipstick and a one liner.
Instead, she had jumped up as soon as their brief call ended picking up a pair of shoes and pausing for just two seconds before scooping up the discarded jumper and putting it on. His jumper, she realised when she got to the apparition point. Hermione wasn't sure if she had done that one purpose, maybe her subconscious had wanted to give him some reminder that there was something between them or maybe it was because it gave her a twisted sort of comfort.
"I need to speak to you," she said, entirely pointlessly as she had said as much on the phone.
Marcus looked at her openly, no hint of worry on his face. "Drink?" he asked moving towards the kitchen, but she didn't give him an answer, couldn't, if she let herself derail even slightly she would give in, try to pretend again.
"Anything you want to tell me?" She asked bravely, making herself stand with her back straight and her shoulders back, even though she fiddled with the collar of the jumper.
He stopped then, and when he turned back he looked neutral, but she could see how his shoulders had stiffened. It was enough to feel like she had got him on the ropes. She stepped forward, further invading his personal space; he completely towered over her, but at this moment she knew she was more intimidating despite her size. He didn't move back, but he crossed his arms over his torso and her eyes narrowed. Guilty her mind screamed.
"What are you talking about?" He tried, and she snorted. "Have you been drinking?"
"Ginny," she whispered, and he stopped dead, the rest of his words evaporating on his tongue.
"Hermione... I…"
"Ginny, Cho and Parvati," she said. "And those are just the ones I know about."
Impressed her voice had managed to stay so calm she pulled off the jumper she was wearing, trying to ignore what the static would have done to her hair and handed it back. His fingers reached forward to grip hers, but she pulled away.
When she had been on the way over she had thought about this moment, thought about all the things she wanted to scream at him. But now she was there she felt sore like her entire being was bruised.
She didn't want to fight.
They stood in silence for a time, and Hermione wanted to leave, flee and never look back but for the same reason she had held her phone to her ear the entire way through the stories of his infidelities she stood in front of him and worked up the courage to ask what she needed to. She knew herself; she may not want to know, but she would need to be able to close the chapter, to be able to forget him.
"Why?" she said eventually, and his huge sigh made her wish they were sitting down.
He didn't look at her when he started speaking; his eyes fixed on the jumper she had pushed at him. "It… I like you Hermione, a lot, probably more than I have ever liked anyone, you fit with me, we just fit. But…"
"But?" she prompted, praying to Merlin over and over in her head, she would do almost anything to get through this dry-eyed.
"But," he said, rubbing one large hand against his stubbly jaw. "I like being wanted too, I thought it would go away, and for a little while it did but when it came back I just… I just... well I caved."
Hermione nodded, "I thought it would be something like that, honestly I have imagined all kinds of ridiculous situations, but I think I knew it was just something like that."
Marcus didn't respond; he looked fixedly at a point somewhere over her head, and Hermione nervously rubbed at her wrist.
When his words settled in she felt some resolve, the banality of his excuse spurring her into a quiet action. Sure there would be days to come when she would want to confine herself to bed, cry that she simply hadn't been enough, but somehow she also knew that she would come out of the other side.
It wasn't meant to be.
"Goodbye Marcus," she said falteringly before charging towards the door and letting herself out.
He didn't follow.