A/N Wow rayray13, thanks for going to such effort just to review my story, glad you like it that much. Female Nerd I'm afraid I can't even begin to answer any of your questions without ruining the story for you, just stick with me...you may hate me but it'll be worth it I hope.

As for Scrib, you'll see the point of the last chapter in these next two.

Appologies for the wait...I had trouble with this site and this is the first chance I've had to post the new chapters.

Chapter Twenty-Eight - No Surprises

'This is my final fit. My final bellyache. With no alarms and no surprises, no alarms and no surprises, no alarms and no surprises please.' - Radiohead

"Hello this is Hermione I'm here to listen."

She had been doing really well since the Ron fiasco the other week, all of her calls had gone pretty well and she hadn't grown inappropriately close to any of the cases or become overly cold due to her determination to remain professional with them. Susan had been right, these people wanted to talk to a human being who's made their own mistakes not a perfect flawless super-human who they can't relate to. She wasn't there to diagnose anybody, that's what doctors were for; she was there to listen and to answer whenever they called. Like the woman who had just called her for example, she just wanted to know that she wasn't alone.

"Sometimes I wonder about that though." the woman who had given the name Beth sighed.

"About not being alone?" Hermione asked.

"About loneliness in general. About how I'm made to feel whenever I don't have another person in my life. It's like my existence is vindicated according to society if I have a man in my bed. So what if there's a man in my bed? If that man makes me miserable then shouldn't I be without him?"

"Nobody should be defined by his or her relationship." Hermione reassured her.

"But I've been trying to find somebody who doesn't end up dominating me and it always turns out the same way. I just keep attracting the same man over and over again. Is it me? Am I doing something wrong here?"

"No of course you're not. You could have just shut yourself away and decided to stop trying but you didn't, you go out there and have another go."

"But I don't feel I can go through that all over again, I just want to let that false hope go and resign myself to solitude forevermore."

"So, in your quest for absolute solitude, you called me?"

The woman laughed, Hermione felt good about that.

"Well that's the thing about solitude, it's gets a bit lonely."

"So maybe you're not ready to throw in the towel just yet then?"

"Maybe not."

"You know there are good people out there, you know there is a good person out there for you, but you should also know that you don't need to stress yourself out searching for it. Don't worry about what people think if you don't have a date for Valentines Day. Don't worry about not kissing anybody at midnight on New Year. You had people for those things before didn't you?"

"Some years, yes."

"And what happened to those relationships?"

"I see what you're saying."

"You know what Beth? I think that the greatest people in the world are the ones you meet on an uneventful Tuesday morning who give you a smile even though they're cold and windswept and their bus is twenty minutes late. Those people exist all year round but we only go looking for them just before one of these 'you've got to have a partner' seasons and that's when every other woman is on the prowl."

The woman had giggled at that little speech.

"What is it?" Hermione asked.

"It's just that description of my perfect man, I've seen him around, I only ever see him just as I'm vowing to abstain from men for the rest of my life."

"Right well next time you see him smile back at him. The next time you see anybody who looks like they need a smile then just smile, it won't ruin anybody's day and nine times out of ten it won't lead to anything but at least you can be that friendly woman at the bus stop who always has a smile no matter what kind of a day she's having. Then you and that man at the bus stop will have something in common."

She had no idea where all this insightful relationship advice was coming from, as if she had any clue how to get a man, but Beth seemed to find her words comforting and her personality seemed a lot more buoyant when the call was over.

Hermione stretched her arms out as she sat back in her chair. Susan waved at her from across the large cubicle filled room. Hermione waved back and yawned.

"Are we keeping you up?" her ex-buddie commented in a way he seemed to believe was charming.

"I was at night school yesterday evening." she explained coolly before pushing the button on her phone that closed her line down.

She still had another three hours to go but she needed to stretch her legs and have a coffee.

"Over-working yourself doesn't help the callers y'know?" he said in his smarmy know-it-all way.

"Did I say I was over-worked?" she looked back at him as she passed by.

"Well you're always here every day and then you stay up all night learning a language nobody speaks. You've already lost focus once here and now we'll never know what happened to that poor bloke you turned all Freud on will we?"

What a bastard, she thought; how spiteful do you have to be to bring that up?

"I wasn't aware the Samaritans ran a selflessness competition." Hermione hissed.

"Excuse me?" the idiot said, an idiotic look on his face just to illustrate how much of an idiot he was she thought to herself.

"I thought you and I both came here to do some good and be a friendly voice for people who needed one. You seem to think that we're competing to see which of us is better at caring. Is there some kind of scoreboard I've not been made aware of? What exactly do you win when you don't get hung up on for the thousandth time?"

She was really shocking herself at how tough she was being, she'd never been confrontational before, this little rant was giving her something of an adrenaline rush.

"Wait, no I'm sorry you thought I was...I'm not picking on you because you made a mistake Hem...Hemer-nie."

"It's Hermione and I'll thank you to stop bringing my one mistake up as if you enjoy the fact I made it in the first place."

The idiot's cheeks were flushing bright red now and he looked as if an egg could be fried on his face in seconds.

"What's the matter 'buddie', never been put in your place before? Well get used to it because I'm not going to take your smarmy little digs anymore. Oh for goodness sake, splash some water on your face before your head bursts into flames!"

And it was that very second that the sprinkler system activated and the fire alarm went off. The telephone operatives leapt up from their seats, some people yelled out their displeasure at being soaked to the skin, other people ran for the emergency exits. A surprising number of the volunteers who were taking calls at the time the sprinklers went off remained at their phones, talking to their callers, Susan being one of them. The idiot stared at her in absolute shock.

"Did you do that?" he exclaimed.

"Don't be ridiculous." she scowled as she held a folder above her head to get some shelter from the water as it fell on the both of them.

"That is the weirdest coincidence of my life." the idiot gasped as he looked around the sodden office.

Hermione looked around too, she couldn't hold in the smile that pushed its way onto her lips at the sight of so many people sitting in wet chairs, in wet clothes, and talking without indicating the chaos around them to their respective callers for one second. She was proud to be associated with these people. Hell even the idiot, he did just as many hours for the Samaritans as she did and for no payment, and he was pretty good at his job when he concentrated on building people up rather than knocking them down.

"Well maybe you can talk to me about this rather than that other thing now, we have an amusing story to tell people rather than one that hurts my feelings."

He nodded and a big drop of water fell from the tip of his nose,

"Sorry I've been an arse."

"That's ok." she smiled and the sprinklers and the piercing alarm bells finally stopped.

ooo

"You're in a remarkably good mood Ron." Dr Rayner said as he sat down in the chair opposite her.

He nodded,

"I've been having a good week."

She smiled at him,

"How so?"

He suppressed the grimace he felt twitching his face at the whistle that had pushed its way through Dr Rayners front teeth and began to swivel from side to side on his chair.

"I don't even know, we've not even been doing anything and yet it's been the most fun ever."

"We, I assume is you, Dee and Jo?"

"Who else?" Ron grinned.

"Do you find that their company really helps you day to day then?"

Ron stopped swinging back and forth in his chair and sat forward,

"I know you don't like that I don't get very deep when answering your questions and I know you know that I go straight outside and discuss the very same questions in depth with the two of them but I'm not deliberately trying to be disruptive to my own treatment...well not anymore." he shrugged and gave a guilty smile.

"I know that Ron, things have been better between all of us since you came to me that morning with your revelation hasn't it?"

"Yeah," Ron said honestly, "I don't know why we still shrug off all your questions and then go away and discuss them privately for an hour before giggling like imbeciles about our answers for another hour, it's just the way we work and I don't think we can help that."

Dr Rayner smiled and sat back in her chair, this was the most relaxed Ron had ever seen her,

"Well it's perfectly obvious to me now why it was so hard to break through with the three of you, now that I know you and Dee were already familiar with each other before the amnesia, of course you were going to be able to confide in each other before confiding in me. Instinct can be stronger than memory you know?"

Ron nodded, so many things had been going on with him that his memory had nothing to do with, he could speak French and play chess without remembering how. He could swim too, he really should've thought about that before diving into the sea that time they went skinny-dipping but his instinct took over and he just knew there was nothing to worry about.

"As for Jo," Dr Rayner continued, "well for all the trouble she gives me she's always been the most charismatic person I've ever had a conversation with, it isn't any wonder you feel that you can talk to her. She has something of an addictive personality."

Ron laughed and remembered Dee saying a similar thing to him once before.

"But for all the positives that have come out of this connection the three of you have you still need to be treated as individuals. You and Dee are very different people and I'd hate for you to let this bond become a wall to anybody else trying to communicate with either of you. The connection you now know you have with each other and to your forgotten lives is wonderful but you are also Ron Weasley. Just Ron Weasley. And he's very unique you know?"

Ron smiled and wondered if Dr Rayner had stopped whistling through her teeth or if he had simply stopped noticing it anymore.

"The same applies to Dee."

Ron understood what she was getting at, she didn't want them to shut her out again and become the impenetrable trio again.

After his session was over he couldn't stop thinking about Dr Rayners words. He and Dee had begun to cling to each other as if they were all they had of their past. They were still friends but something was deeper now. He thought about how much easier it was to talk to Dr Rayner these days and smiled. All this had come out of Jo demanding they all go skinny-dipping. He must remember to thank her for that particular bout of spontaneous craziness he thought. Speaking of which she hadn't been waiting outside Dr Rayner's office for her session immediately after his.

Rayner had asked him to pop his head in at her door and send her along, then she'd mentioned maybe he should look in Dee's room beforehand but only under her breath, and he was going to do just that before heading to the refectory for some breakfast. He wondered what he would have today. He stopped and knocked on Jo's door. No answer, what a surprise he thought with a roll of the eyes, he opened the door and looked in just in case she'd overslept.

His stomach seemed to force every one of his internal organs into his throat and he found that he couldn't breathe, he couldn't move, he couldn't speak. Of all the things he couldn't do the fact that he couldn't look away crippled him the most. His knees almost buckled underneath him but he had to stay upright, he had to move, he had to breathe again and call out for someone to help but his body had gone into shock. Shock at what his unblinking eyes wouldn't tear away from the sight of.

Skin as pale as porcelain, vivid dark purple hair covering her face like a veil in the morning sunlight, limbs limp and unmoving, hanging by the neck from the light fixture...was Jo.