Could've Been Worse

Pairing: Bill Weasley x Hermione Granger

Universe: post-war, EWE

Rating: M

Summary: Olivie Advent cont'd.

Prompts: a Bill x Hermione with a conceivable way to end up together, a request based (I'm guessing) on their brief and ill-fated pairing in Nightmares and Nocturnes. I've previously been very adamant about why that form of these characters would not/should not result in a happy ending, but have made changes to make it theoretically possible here.

Near miss. That's what they were calling it.

"It might've worked," said Ron. "But it didn't, and that's fine."

Yes, fine. Definitely. That's what Hermione was thinking, too.

"Could be worse," Harry assured her. "You heard Bill and Fleur are splitting up, right?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Not that she was surprised to find Harry's input profoundly unhelpful. He was a lot of things, but never especially comforting. "Just because I'm not married to Ron it's somehow… not as bad?"

"Well, it isn't, is it?" he replied in his most earnest form of optimism, and he was probably right, though she couldn't quite put it in those terms. It had still been three years with Ron, plus the seven in the making.

"Misery's not comparable, Harry," she told him with a sigh. "It's not a competition."

"Well, I know," he said, shrugging. "But hey, Voldemort's dead, right? War's over. So yeah, it could definitely be worse."

She avoided all things Weasley for a considerable amount of time, for obvious reasons. After a while, though, she caught wind of something odd.

"A self-defense class, you said?" she asked, interrupting Harry, who had been sort of vocally meandering while her mind drifted. "Like the D.A. meetings we used to do, you mean?"

"No, not particularly," said Harry. "It's sort of a mix of muggle and magical techniques, though much more physical. I tried it out once last year and it's quite good, actually. Very useful."

"I suppose wizards do rely a bit overmuch on their wands," Hermione remarked, frowning in thought.

"Yes, I think that's Bill's point."

Hermione considered the mention of Bill. "I don't really see him as any sort of martial arts instructor."

Not that she saw him as much of anything, or ever had. Though, once she thought about it, she supposed the Greyback scars probably added to his legitimacy as far as credentials went.

"He had some experience as a curse-breaker, I think. Hand-to-hand combat is part of the training. Plus, you know. After everything with the war, and with Fleur gone…" Harry trailed off. "Maybe you should try it out," he suggested. "See if you like it."

"Self-defense? Harry," Hermione scoffed, "don't be ridiculous."

He shrugged. "Just an idea," he said. "Can't be worse than sitting at home alone."

The nightmares about Bellatrix Lestrange she'd been having for years were unfortunately more problematic without Ron in her bed. She would wake to a weight on her chest nearly every night now, leaving her kicking and flailing for escape. Would things have been different if she'd been able to fight back? Difficult to tell what was psychological trauma and what was her rational mind trying to be sensible, but the opportunity to do something about it was starting to loom. Eventually she opted to give it a try, walking into the Diagon Alley studio to find a much larger group than she anticipated.

"Oh, hello," came a voice behind her, and she turned, startled, to find Bill Weasley at her heels. "Didn't know you were coming. Need help with your wraps?"

"Wraps?" she echoed, uncertain.

He smiled. He'd cut his hair differently since the war, having done away with the ponytail for what she presumed to be practical reasons. It made the jagged scars across his cheekbones more stark, though not unpleasantly so. His temples were starting to grey, peppered with tiny flecks of white. Probably stress, Harry had said, seeing as he's only twenty-eight.

It suited him, aging. It made him look distinctive; manly, un-boyish.

"Here," Bill said, pulling a roll of what looked like bandages from the pocket of his athletic shorts and tossing one outward, floating it like a ribbon across the studio floor. "Start here," he said, looping it around her thumb. "Wrap four or five times around your wrist, then four around your knuckles."

"Like this?" she asked, probably clumsily.

"A bit lower."

"Lower?"

He reached for her hand, brushing a thumb coolly across the midpoint of her fingers.

"Here," he said. "Otherwise it slips down."

"Oh." She swallowed. "Right, okay—"

"Bill?" came someone else's voice, and Bill, turning to follow the sound of his name, released her.

"Sorry," he said over his shoulder, distractedly addressing Hermione again after a brief communication across the studio. "Anyway, wrap between your fingers, okay? Like this." He traced the motion into the air around her hands. "Then a few more times around the knuckles, yeah? I'll check on you in a second."

"Sure, of course," Hermione said, watching him go.

After he'd gone, she could still feel his touch as if he'd marked her.

She expected to pick it up quickly, as she had with everything at Hogwarts.

She did not.

"Just keep coming," Bill said at the end of class. She was rubbing the sting from her eyes, unable to tell if she'd somehow been inadvertently crying from exhaustion or if her eyeballs were merely sweating. "It's muscle memory," Bill told her, sounding factual. Detached, even. "Eventually you won't have to think so hard about getting things right."

Thinking was the one thing she did well. The moving part came less naturally.

"Yes, okay," Hermione lied, fully intending to never return, but Bill caught her by the elbow.

"It'll get better," he said. "Trust me."

She was pretty sure it was only meant to resonate one way, but it seemed to flood her temporarily in waves of impact. She felt it in her chest, and then in her head. It slid from her arms and legs, trickling down her spine alongside the hour's worth of sweat.

"You promise?" she said wryly, half-joking.

His mouth twitched.

"I promise," he said.

In the shower she marveled at the pain in new places, growing distinctly sore and stiff throughout the day. Then she glanced down at her knuckles and thought of his touch smoothing over them, healing and soft.

"How was it?" asked Harry in the Floo.

"Well, I didn't die," said Hermione. "So I guess it could've been worse."

She started coming twice a week, finding that Bill was at least right about one thing: it got easier each time. After about a month she was starting to counter naturally, the motions becoming more reflexive than planned. It continued to hurt, but either she was quietly masochistic or the pain was somehow cathartic. Eventually it became a relief of sorts, learning the limits of what she could take, pushing them as far as she could. That she could take a blow and return it became a certain reassurance, proof of life. Her lungs, so long paralyzed in the aftermath of what she'd left behind, gradually re-learned how to fill.

She and Bill spoke politely, though infrequently. People typically required his attention, though in December his class had all but emptied.

"Holidays," he explained when she walked in to find herself alone, shrugging in answer to the question her furrowed brow must have implied. "Mind if I do a work out with you? I wasn't expecting anyone to be here."

"Oh, no. No, of course not." She let her bag slide from her shoulder, beginning to wrap her knuckles. Bill was wearing an old t-shirt, the fabric thinned around the blades of his shoulders, and his hair was slick with sweat.

"Are you going to the Burrow?" she asked him.

"Not yet." A pause. "Or maybe not at all."

She blinked, surprised. "No?"

He looked over at her from where he'd been stretching. "It's a bit odd now. My mum," he began, and hesitated. "She… fusses."

"Right." Hermione cleared her throat, approaching him in the center of the room. "Should I get on one of the bags, or…?"

"Nah. We'll spar." He beckoned her forward, and she blinked. "Don't worry," he said with a laugh. "We'll keep it light."

"But—"

"Just try not to think so much."

Right. This again. "You know that's actually impossible, right?"

He shrugged. "Just focus on slipping. Watch my shoulders," he said, tapping one. "If my right one comes forward, your right shoulder comes forward. Same with the left."

He motioned slowly, and she watched. Movement for him was fluid, natural. She could see the muscle beneath his shirt and followed the lines of it, his planes of mechanization.

She watched him, and swallowed.

"Right," she said, taking her place opposite him. "You sure?"

"Just feel it. It's the same with magic," he said. "Trust it."

"I'm not so good with trust," she said before she could stop herself, and his tongue slid out between his lips, moistening them briefly.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I know."

She got him in the chin with an uppercut and he praised her for it, making her want to die a little from the mix of confusion and pride; elation alongside dismay. Then, once people returned to class in January, Bill started summoning her to the front of the room, using her to demonstrate their drills. She learned him, adding his motions to her database of reflexes along with her own. If his shoulder came forward, so did hers.

A demonstration of possible attacks to the body had him slowly modeling a shot to her stomach. His hand lingered, instruction droning in and out.

"—aim it up, not swiping to the side—"

Each motion brushed her ribs, his proximity to her suddenly unavoidable.

"—like that," he finished, pausing with his hand in place. "Got it?"

There was a mutter of agreement as Hermione glanced down, noticing the pebbled flesh across her arms with a mix of embarrassment and longing.

"Got it?" he asked again, murmuring it to her privately this time.

Her body sang it back to him, rising up from her chest with certainty: Yes. Yes. Yes.

"Sure," she said. Too softly, but at least she managed to find her voice.

"You seem much better," Harry commented later during one of their usual chats. "Come to think of it, Bill seems better, too."

"Probably the endorphins," Hermione said. "Or something."

Harry's reply was a grin over his salad. "Well, I suppose there's worse ways to get those," he said.

"What happened with Fleur?"

She surprised herself with the question, finding it immediately too personal the moment it left her lips and regretting that she'd asked it. They were alone in the studio once again, with her lingering in the doorway to face his back. Valentine's Day made for another unpopular evening where it came to exercise.

Bill, however, didn't seem to mind. His shoulders, which she knew how to read by now, didn't visibly tense. He turned to glance over his shoulder with expectancy, as if he'd been waiting for her to be standing right where she was.

"Nothing. Everything." He kept his chin angled over one shoulder. "Woke up one day different people than we were."

"Near miss?" she asked with a grimace, letting her bag fall from her shoulder.

"No." He was wearing the same old t-shirt, the fabric thinnest in all the spots his frame was most broad. "We didn't miss. But just because something lands doesn't make it last forever."

"Think you might have lasted forever without the war?"

He shrugged. "No point wondering. It happened, and it made me. It made her." He paused before adding, "And it made you, too."

This, she thought, was what she had been trying to get Ron to come to terms with. That she couldn't remove what she'd been through from who she was; not one piece of it. Not the nightmares, not the need to fight the things she couldn't see. Not the fear that she should have been stronger, quicker. The version of her that had not seen war was somewhere else, with someone else, doing something else.

That version didn't exist, and she didn't want to pretend it did.

"Right." She stepped towards him. "Spar?"

He met her in the center of the room, and she waited for him to start the timer. Two minutes, light, playful, same as always. Keep it light, he always said, so frequently she'd memorized the cadence of it in his voice. Sometimes she paused to find herself contemplating the shape of his words in her head, wondering how they'd sound if he ever changed his mind.

He stepped forward and reflexively, she stepped back.

Another step, another dance backwards.

Another step, another, until her back hit the wall behind her.

His right shoulder came forward.

Hers did, too.

"Stop me," bled from his lips.

From across the room, she could see the reflection of his shoulders in the studio's mirrors, the blades of them coiled and careful.

"Don't think," she whispered.

He kissed the side of her neck, her clavicle. His lips traveled lower, fingers following the shape of her tank top, folding back the material of her sports bra. He ran his tongue over her skin slowly, letting her shiver in his hands.

The kiss, when it happened, took her like a blow.

A quick motion had her up against the wall. Another motion had her legs over his shoulders, another quick toss propping her hips on his arm. His mouth slid against her, tongue pressed to the material of her workout crops, working her through the fabric.

"Shouldn't," he breathed to the curve of her thigh, breath hot against her skin, and it occurred to her that he might be right.

Oh well, she thought, mindless with rapture by the time he peeled the lycra from her skin, her gasp in reflex slowly learned for months.

Could've been worse.

a/n: I had two similar requests: one for Bill x Hermione, one for Bill x Narcissa, and in the end this won out only because there are more epilogical diaries being added to Modern Romance that deal with the latter.