I Love(d) You (Once)
Chapter Seventeen: And She Who Roams
(The Aftermath)
"Is she all right?" Harry asked.
"As good as anyone can be after that," Ginny replied.
"But you think she'll be all right? Out there by herself I mean," he said. "What if she decides to live off in the mountains forever or something?"
Ginny snorted and giggled despite the serious risk of Hermione's hypothetical hermit-hood. "Hermione's not stupid. She can take care of herself. Besides, she knows people are anxious about her and expecting her to come back."
(Before: in which it's been three days since Hermione spends time from home)
Ginny Potter slouched in on her couch in the living room, her ankles had swollen and she had a constant, gnawing desire to eat. The house was out of food. Harry was out grocery shopping, complying with her ridiculous requests for strange food. He'd be back soon.
She heard the rumble from the chimney—it meant someone was using the Floo—and rushed towards it, her gaze trained at where Harry's right hand would be: with the plastic bag full of dried Blast-ended Skrewts goodness.
A beacon of red hair poked its head out of the fireplace and the rest of Ron's long body followed, bits of soot and dust falling from his shoulders and onto the small tiles as he righted himself. Ginny tried not to hide her disappointment.
"Hey," he said, looking at her as though someone had lifted and placed a heavy burden on him at the same time. "Where's Harry? I thought it was his day off."
"Gone to the shops. He'll be back soon. I haven't spoken to Mum and Dad for days. How's everyone doing? The joke shop?"
"George's made this new product… things are looking up." He didn't need to mention that the shop hadn't been doing so well since the second wave in the Muggle Revolution.
She squeezed his hand. "That's great." Ginny turned to study her brother. He looked different today. Not his physical features; his red hair –the same Weasley shade as her own—framed his face untidily and his freckles spotted over his strong nose and jaw. It was the way he held himself. Ron had a way of slouching. Ginny admitted it made him look like a slob, but it relaxed and made others feel comfortable in his presence.
"Gin-ny! I'm ba-ack!" Harry sang as he unlocked the front door.
"Welcome ho-ome," Ginny sang back to him from the couch. Ron winced. Even after so many years, it was strange to see his sister act gushy and watch his best friend behave as though he were in a musical. "Guess what? Ron's here!"
Ron and Ginny heard the rustle of paper bags and two loud thuds.
"Put your shoes back on the shoe rack!" Ginny yelled at Harry. "What are you going to do if your precious wife trips over your shoes you chucked on the floor?"
There was another rustle and the sound of Harry grumbling. He poked his head out and his face lit up when he saw Ron. "What's up?"
"Did you buy them?"
"Yes," Harry said with an ill look on his face and grimaced as though Ginny was forcing him to eat the Blasted-End-Skrewts she requested. "Here you go."
Ron wrinkled his nose when Ginny caught the bag with one hand and tapped his best friend on the shoulder. "I need to talk."
Harry sensed something was up and nodded, giving Ginny a secret glance. She nodded and waved him away. "You can help me put away the things while you're at it." He placed the remaining paper bags filled with food non-hormone driven people were capable of eating onto the kitchen counter and began to transfer glass jars into the top shelves.
When Ron saw his sister hanging back, allowing them some privacy—not that she wouldn't be able to hear what they were saying from the living room if they conversed in the kitchen without a muffling charm—he waved her over. "Gin, you better come here too. Take a seat. I-I have something to tell you guys."
She took a seat cross-legged on a wooden chair next to the breakfast table, popped open the bag of skrewts and gnawed at a piece. Something was different wrong. Ron only stared at her chewing the skrewt with a blank expression and made no comment. Ron waited and watched as Harry transferred all the glass-bottled pasta sauces and delicates. When Harry picked up the bag of oranges, he took this opportunity to speak.
"I have something to announce… I… just now… well you know how she hasn't been home for three days… and the longest she's ever taken time off was two, and—well—I couldn't do it anymore and so, I—" he said in a rush.
"You're not making any sense," Harry said, putting a hand on Ron's shoulder. "You better start from the beginning. I saw you after lunch, so what happened after lunch?"
(After lunch on that day)
When Hermione ran away after their almost fights, Ron never looked for her. Not because he didn't love her, but because he held in his heart she would come back and he would be there waiting for her. Of course, if they followed the script, Hermione was the sensible one and he was the goofy airheaded boyfriend. Their roles would be reversed, but life dictated more complexities than a character on stage.
Artie sat on the far corner, with stacks of folders surrounding the joint cubicle like a fort. Draco stood from his chair, prepared for some form of confrontation and drew his wand out.
"What are you doing here?"
Ron pulled his hands out of his pocket to show he hadn't planned on making a scene. Relaxing, Draco tucked his wand back onto his table and tapped the nib of his quill on the inkwell, continuing with his work. Ron stood in front of him, looking frightfully incongruous in his jumper with all the fitted-suits in the office. "Do you know where Hermione is?" he asked.
"Hermione's not here," Artie answered him. "She's on leave for the next few days."
"I'm sure you knew that already."
Ron stared down at his shoes. "Do you know where she went?" His grey-but-once-white and shabby sneakers smiled back at him and he looked further across the floor to see Draco's loafers tap on the floor. He lifted his eyes with mammoth effort until they reached Draco's face. Asking something from Malfoy wounded his pride, but Hermione disappearing for three days with only a note (I need time, by myself.) devastated him. "Do you know where she is?"
"I have a pretty good idea," Draco confessed. "But I don't think I'll tell you."
Ron shook his head. "I know we don't get along—"
"We hate each other."
"But I need to find her."
"Yes you do," Draco agreed. "But not with my help. You need to find her on her own. You need to be the one who runs after and find her when she hides. That's your job as The Boyfriend." He made quotes with his hands. "Me? I'm just a regular colleague who doesn't want to get involved in your lover's spat." He took another piece of parchment and pretended to read it over, willing for the red-head to leave. He had enough relationship problems of his own. (Astoria, why are you ignoring me!) He didn't need Ron and Hermione's.
Ron started down at his grubby shoes again. "I can't find her."
Draco snorted, unsympathetic to Ron's plight. "You should have been at least prepared for this sort of thing when you decided to date Hermione Granger. That woman's a shark. You should've known she's high-maintenance—the reason why she ran away isn't because she needed space. She ran and hid from you so you had the chance to catch her. You know her; she's the Queen of Actualised Symbolism. Find her, run and catch up to her: so you can head down your path of life together, hand in hand… into your golden future. Weasel, you're dawdling behind. She moves like Newton's first law of motion: an object in constant motion. If you want to stop where you are, the distance between the two of you will only grow larger."
"I know that," said Ron, balling up his hands and shoving it in his pockets. "I'm the one who knows that best."
"Find her then," said Draco. He wondered if this counted as a heart-to-heart with the Weasley. He hoped not. His forefathers and his line of future descendants would never forgive him for helping out a Weasley.
"But I can't!"
"Give up then," he said, apathetic to Ron's plight.
"If I don't find her, do you think she'll come back to me?" He asked Draco though he knew the answer. Hermione would come back physically. She hadn't withdrawn any money and she hadn't taken away her favourite travel pouch. But if I don't find her… what would happen then? Their relationship had been so simpler when they lived on different continents; the distance mellowed and allowed them to remain ignorant to some obvious differences between them. She had talked to Ginny, something about a Boggart, seeing their future… what she was working towards was not what she actually wanted…
"Weasel, why are you asking me of all people?"
"I have to at least talk to her, find out why she ran away like that," he mumbled more to his own benefit than others. "Thanks."
"Never helped you," Draco shot back at him.
"You did," he said back to him, a smile neither condescending nor malicious gracing his lips. That was a first. Maybe he could change. If he could smile at Draco with sincerity, maybe it meant he could change the way he wanted to live life.
Artie, who had been lost in the their exchange piped up. "I'll see you out then."
"Wait," said Draco, who despite everything wanted the best for Hermione… even if it was to be with a man he didn't approve of. "Take the Floo, it'll be faster."
"Thanks," Ron said. He headed back into the room and he gathered a fistful of green powder into his hand. Where to go next? "Diagon Alley!"
Draco placed the pen to the side and scowled. "Diagon Alley? Once an idiot, always an idiot."
Three days passed.
"Are you kidding me?" Draco said. He slapped the towering stack of boxes Pucey had assigned them to.
Artie sighed and looked dropped the heavy box to his feet. Grunt work, which involved moving boxes out of the file room and into their corner before reading everything and taking the duplicates and outdated documents out. With two people, especially with someone like him who had a rather shabby eye for important detail, they were drowning.
Draco who was rubbed his back. He heard clicking noises when he rotated his shoulders and a tight feeling stretched across his deltoids.
"Did you pull your back?" Artie asked, stretching his own arms. Draco winced and nodded. Being the scion of Malfoy and then under the favoured patronage of House Pucey, Artie didn't think Draco was used to physical labour.
"Whoever broke the lifts today is going to get hexed," his mentor said.
It would've been a simple matter to levitate the heavy boxes if it Pucey hadn't banned using magic for this task. "The point of this exercise is to teach you patience and to do things the proper way. I couldn't find anything better for you to do, but the lesson to learn is that the means do not always justify the end. The process is important."
That was what he said three days ago.
The exercise seemed counter-intuitive to Artie. If anything, it was teaching him the value of doing things his way, as it was the most efficient. His fingers itched and they reached into his pocket.
"Don't do it. You'll get us caught," Draco warned, looking around him.
"We could do this in seconds!"
"And risk Pucey finding us out and assigning us something worse? What next? Scrubbing the toilets?"
"That would be better than this," Artie exclaimed. "I never thought I'd be sweating in February!" He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and he shook out his shirt, it had clung to his back and armpits.
Even Draco, the man who contrived to remain spotless while on reconnaissance missions during the summer, looked untidy.
"Are there any windows here?" Artie asked, looking around the staircase. The only adjective to describe the fire-exit was functional. It offered no other luxury than its precise purpose of allowing five people to descend the staircase at once. Yellow strips at the edge of each step ensured that no one would slip and tumble.
"I'm about to make one." Draco placed his fists eye-level and made a swooshing sound and pretended to punch the wall. "Since we're not allowed magic, I might be forced to make one manually with my fists."
Artie sighed and squatted down; making sure his back was straight as he picked up his box of documents again. "Let's just get this over and done with."
"Or we should get Granger back here. These boxes should be hers to move. It isn't fair we're stuck with this grunt work while she's off hiding somewhere." Draco kicked the box. "I'm going to bring her back."
(At this point: Draco's had enough)
There was a point when words run dry and there was nothing to do but pursue your heart's deepest urge. Such a time occurred for Draco as he walked through the streets of Muggle London and his deepest urge was to scowl at all those looking his way. Suffice to say, his self-consciousness shot through the roof. He felt naked and alien. But he would brave these foreign lands in order to get Hermione back… to do her job.
"If the Weasel hasn't found her yet, it means she's camping in the Muggle part of London," Draco said to Artie beside him. The man was more at ease with this sort of environment. Having grown up in a Muggle neighbourhood, Artie was the one who suggested the shopping centre to him.
"When you're born a wizard, it's easy to forget about the other side of town," said Artie in a soft tone so no one would overhear their conversation.
"Or if you're born as stupid as Ron I-Have-No-Common-Sense Weasley," said Draco, scowling. "I mean, if she isn't in Diagon Alley and we assume she's hiding somewhere close, it must be here."
Draco shook the feeling of eyes watching him and contrived to keep his back to the wall until he saw the directory of the shopping centre in the middle of the conservatory. He waded through a throng of shoppers, stood in front of a back-lit board and ran a finger across the list of shops.
"What are we looking for?" Artie asked.
"G-15. A library, right? A library near the food-court." Draco pointed to the store on the board. "Let's go get the slacker."
"How are you so sure Hermione's going to be there?"
Draco shrugged as he cut his way through the shoppers. "It's Granger. She's the kind of girl who doesn't like boys but fast-food and fiction."
At least that was something Draco was counting on. To Draco, Hermione was a woman couldn't stand sitting and doing nothing, she'd need to do something with her hands. "If you had a decent pair of brains you would figure that out. I guess that's what tripped Weasley up." He flipped the collar of his trench coat up.
"I know you have a thirst for theatrics, but you look suspicious," Artie said as they entered the library. "Ouch!" He'd bumped right into Draco, who had stopped and dashed behind a bookshelf.
"There," he said, pointing to a bunch of red bean bags. Artie saw a red bean bag look as though it had swallowed half of Hermione's torso. In her hands was a book heavy enough to be a lethal weapon dropped from a height. He gave Draco's a thumbs up and the man smirked at Artie, pleased at their success. "Don't know why it took Weasley so long."
(Some time later)
Hermione could feel someone stare at her. Her war-honed senses stirred and she looked up, expecting to see a stiff-faced librarian. She sighed and her gaze drifted back to the book in front of her.
A pair of feet shuffled towards her. Hermione snapped her book shut and stood up to face the stranger. But the person in front of her was no stranger. Clad in his grubby sneakers and hand-knitted jersey, courtesy of his mother, stood Ron.
"You here."
"I had some help." He played with a loose thread on his sleeve.
"You asked Harry?"
"Yeah," Ron lied. "Let's take a walk."
She nodded and they left the bookstore and the shopping centre. Ron trailed close behind, but not at an intimate distance as she led them to a nearby park. The paint on the wooden posts had cracked and by the small teeth marks on the edges. It seemed as though small children (or wild animals) had gnawed on the posts.
Hermione swiped the bottom of the park bench dry with a tissue from her pocket and motioned for Ron to sit next to her. Children, impervious to the cold, laughed and cheered as they played Tag. Their joy was incongruous to their mood and topic of conversation.
"Want to sit somewhere else?"
Ron shook his head and he laced his fingers together, resting them on his knees. He had thought about and practiced what he wanted to say from the moment Draco told him where Hermione was.
"You know, I understand. I'm not even angry about what you saw with the Boggart. It stings my pride a bit, I suppose... but there's nothing we can do about what you saw and how you reacted. There are things you work hard for in life which doesn't give you the kind of satisfaction you've imagined when you obtain it." Ron took a deep breath and looked at Hermione. "What I'm upset about is the fact that you ran away without talking to me. It's like you decided for yourself we can't work through this."
"You did nothing wrong," said Hermione. "I'm the one in the wrong… headspace. It was something I had to reconfigure out on my own."
"I understand that we are different," Ron began. "And I'm beginning to feel like we don't want the same things anymore. To be honest, a couple of years back I would have imagined being married already. I grew up in a large family and really look forward to loving and taking care of a family of my own."
They had broached this topic before. "And I want that, eventually. I want to be with you," she said. "And I'm sure in whatever I'm working towards, you'll be included in the end point." She took a deep breath and she prepared herself to say what she wanted –no, had to—say next. "But I don't want to be where we are now, I don't want to be in the same state in a year's time. Heck, I don't even want to be like in the same spot next week. It's not that I don't love you," she assured quickly, "It's just that… I'm not satisfied with where I am in life right now and until I'm ready to settle yet."
"I'm content with what I have," he said to quietly to her. "And I've been waiting to start a family since you came back from America." She didn't speak and he closed his eyes unable to bear where he could see this going. "Unlike you, I've know exactly where I am, and I'm ready, ready for the next stage of life. I thought since it was you, it was worth the wait, but…"
"And we're moving at a really a different pace."
He looked up at her and blinked slowly. "You're suggesting?" He didn't want to be the one to say it.
Hermione opened her mouth and tried to say it, but she couldn't. After all they'd been through, she just couldn't put what he—what they both wanted into words. "I'm too scared to say the words."
Ron gave him a bitter smile. "Me too. Age has made a coward of me."
She sniffed and kept her eyes trained on the dandelion plant growing by her foot. "You know even when we've… I'll still love you. You're my best friend. You and Harry are. That's not going to change."
Ron gave a dry cough. "I know it won't."
She hated the fact they were resorting the clichés. But they had been overused for a reason. Words in the end were not just merely words. Stringed together, they conveyed feelings from person to person. In new situations, words in sentences had to be fresh but when two spent lovers spoke their final words in their overextended and dry relationship, they reserved the right to overspent phrases as its significance conveyed exactly how they felt.
Hermione stood up. "I'll have to move out of course."
"No you don't," Ron said, "where are you going to live? I can stay over at Harry's until everything's sorted."
"Ron, don't be silly. Think about it, The Nest is sitting on your parent's land and they built it with their savings. How awkward would it be if their son's ex-girlfriend kicked their son out and claimed it for her own?"
"It wouldn't be like that," he cried. "And y-you, I don't want you to call yourself my ex-girlfriend. You're my best friend and it's going to stay that way. Ex-girlfriend makes it sound like we're never going to speak to each other again!"
"All right," she said, "but The Nest is registered under your name. You keep the place. That's the most logical thing to do, so unless you can come up with a better reason, I won't hear of it. I'll come by at around seven to collect my things. Is that all right?" She looked at her watch. Ron only nodded. "See you then." She even tried to offer Ron a handshake.
"Give me time, we—I—not right now." He blinked back his tears and didn't accept her hand when he stood up and Disapparated.
"So that's what happened after lunch," Ron said. "Hermione and I broke up." His mother always said a person would become like the people they spent time with. The Potters' reaction proved this theory.
This was what he expected:
Thunk.
Ginny dropped her strip of dried skrewt, half-demolished onto the ground. "Ron!" she gasped with her mouth still full.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Harry's bag of oranges slipped from his grasp and they rolled a merry little parade across the kitchen floor. "What happened?" he cried.
But in reality, this was what Ron saw:
Ginny gave a knowing look to Harry. One eyebrow rose and her lips parted in a sad pout. She retained her vice-like grip on her skrewt.
Harry with scratched his untamed hair and gave a long exhale. "Oh," he said, before resuming his task of placing the oranges into the bowl. Not one was given the privilege to parade the kitchen floor.
Ginny stared down at her block of skrewt and resumed nibbling it like a small beaver.
"That's it?" Ron asked, feeling surprise by the lack of their surprise. "Oh?" He grabbed the bag of apples and tipped it upside down.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
"Where's the gasps of shock?" he cried. He saw a bunch of bananas and he threw it to the floor.
"Ron!" Ginny said, putting her skrewt down onto the table and giving him a glare. "What are you doing?"
"What am I doing?" he yelled. "I just told you Hermione and I broke up and the only reaction I get from you—" He pointed to Ginny. "My sister, is to keep chewing on centipede—"
"Hey, skrewts aren't centipedes!" Ginny said, turning red, but that was an argument for another time.
"And you!" Ron said, jabbing his index finger into Harry's shoulder. "Oh? That's like saying "oh" if the Chudley Cannons won the League Cup this year."
Harry scratched his head again. "It's not really the same. I wouldn't have expected that to happen—" His sentence cut short when Ginny pinched him hard on his arm.
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing."
"Harry?"
"Nothing!"
Ron stood still for a moment before he bent down, picked the bunch of bananas off the ground and placed it into the fruit bowl. Grabbing the now-empty paper bag, he crouched down on his knees and picked up all the apples he'd dropped. When he stood up again, he saw Ginny and Harry looking at each other with a bewildered expression on their faces. "You weren't surprised," he said. "You knew Hermione and I were going to break up."
Ginny took a step forward. "We didn't know you were going to break up."
Ron turned away from her and placed the apples not-so-gently into the fruit bowl. "And." Thunk. "You." Thunk. "Didn't." Thunk. "Think." Thunk. "Of." Thunk. "Telling." Thunk. "Me."
"We were hoping that you didn't," Harry said helplessly.
Ginny gave him a hug. " I really hoped that you two could make a compromise."
Ron sat down on a kitchen stool and pressed his hand against his forehead. "When did you know?"
"Um," Harry said, looking up at the ceiling. He turned to Ginny, who shook her head.
"We weren't ever sure, of course. But we thought it was best to let you two sort out your own business."
"When did you know?" Ron asked again.
"WhensheleftforAmerica," Harry said, unable to hold it in. Ginny pinched him again and he winced. "You said you wanted a family quick, and she… well, she wasn't too keen on the idea. But you two looked so happy together so I hoped I was I wrong."
Ron shook his head in disbelief. "What did you see that I didn't?"
"The war changed everyone a little bit." Harry said.
"War made Hermione count her days short. In the face of Voldemort and encountering life-threatening situations, Hermione put her life-goals on hold and put her energy in fighting the dark side. You and Hermione worked," Ginny said, "because your goals were the same, you wanted to protect Harry and defeat Voldemort. But with that goal completed, your paths diverged and you became very different people."
"Opposites were meant to attract," Ron said to them. "They're supposed to complete each other."
"They do," Ginny conceded. "Until they don't."
"What am I going to do?" Ron asked.
"Win her back?" Harry said, his voice full of hope. "What about getting her back?"
Ron shook his head. "No, let's be logical here. We both want different things. I am unwilling to wait, and she is not willing to rush into things. No hard feelings." He placed his head on the countertop, his arms slack beside him, the picture of defeat. "How am I going to talk to her from now on? Where is she going to live?"
"You don't mean to kick her out?" Ginny gasped then said, "No, of course. It wouldn't be right to continue living together if you've broken up. Don't worry; she'll live with us."
"Take care of her, will you?" Ron said, sniffing. "Even though we're… not together anymore,"—at this point his voice clogged up—"I still care for her."
Harry nodded. "She can keep Ginny company when I'm on missions." He gave Ron a pat on the back.
"I feel a bit better talking to you two. I mean, I knew things weren't going the way I wanted them to a while ago, but I just didn't realised it would break us up." He gave a soft chuckle. "You two must think I'm stupid. I thought the only way people would break up was because they couldn't forgive something the other person had done… cheating or something like that. Who knew you could break up just because of this?"
"Life," Harry responded weakly.
"If someone told me this four years ago, I would have punched them to the ground," Ron said. He hugged Ginny and Harry before pulling away. "Take care of Hermione."
"We will." Ginny said. "And we'll take care of you too."
"Okay, but I need to be alone right now," Ron said, his voice cracking. He rushed through the front door and the Potters heard a loud slam. Harry exhaled and took a seat on the kitchen table.
"Don't sit on the kitchen counter," Ginny said automatically.
Harry slid off the counter and pulled a chair beneath him. "Well. They realised."
xxx
Hermione loitered in the park until it was getting dark and she wondered if Ron had told Harry and Ginny yet.
Even so, I'll have to talk to Ginny, she supposed. That's what people did after their relationships ended, right?
All the children had gone home and there was no sound in the now desolate park, not even the rustle of leaves or the rumble of car engines and the silence reflected the abyss in her heart. Unable to take the silence any longer, Hermione jogged to a pair of swings and sat in one, the hinges squeaked as she kicked off the ground.
As determined as she was to not dwell upon the lonely hole in her heart, she couldn't stop the vision creeping from the corners of her mind. And the visions—flashes of recollection grew like a cancerous plant, taking root and soon the glimpses became whole sequences.
Hermione swung higher and higher on the swing as she recalled when she first met Ron. When she first realised she couldn't get him out of her head. How her heart broke when she saw him with Lavender Brown.
When they first held hands.
The days they hunted Hocruxes together.
The first time they kissed.
Hermione's eyes blurred and a soft sob erupted from her throat. She swung back and forth, her sniffles growing louder each time until her sobs disturbed the quiet of the night.
Crying let Hermione release all her frustrations and emptiness. It was like pulling down the lever in the lavatory. Her tears were cathartic, it flushed the negative emotions, she felt light-headed from crying so hard and soon her sobs died down to a few hiccups. She wiped her eyes and her nose with the edge of her sleeve and waited until the swing stopped swinging.
First thing's first: Harry and Ginny's house. Break the news if Ron hadn't, then ask if she could stay there for tonight. She'd have to find her own place…
Bright lights shone out of Harry and Ginny's house. A soft glow fell out of the window and she saw Harry and Ginny slouched on the couch together, watching TV. She gulped, feeling like an intruder. Taking a deep breath, she rang the doorbell.
A few pounding footsteps later, Harry opened the door. "Hermione," he said, his eyes wide. "I heard about it… from Ron. Come in."
Hermione could only nod and she slipped inside the dwelling. Harry led her into the house as though she was a fragile piece of pottery. Perhaps he was being attentive or it was a matter of habit due to Ginny's pregnancy but Hermione's eyes filled with tears as they made their way towards the living room. Ginny enveloped her in a warm hug.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered. Harry scratched his head, uncomfortable with what to do. Ginny sat Hermione down on the sofa and turned to Harry.
"Go to Ron's place and bring back all of Hermione's things. Get Ron to help you out," she ordered him.
"All of it?" Harry asked, his eyes growing wide. "How would I carry everything?"
"You're a wizard, silly." Ginny sat down on the couch placed a hand on Hermione's shoulder. "Do you still have that handbag?"
Hermione nodded. "It's the purple one hung on the left door of our wardrobe."
"Which wardrobe?" asked Harry.
Hermione looked down. "We only have one."
"Oh," he said, feeling somewhat guilty. "I'll get right to it then."
"Thank you," said Hermione. Harry apparated away out of the living room with a loud snap and Ginny sighed.
"I've told him so many times it's bad manners to Apparate in and out the living room… do you want to tell me about it?"
"We broke up." Hermione bit her lip, even though Ginny was her best friend, she was first and foremost Ron's sister. "We just don't want the same things. There's nothing we can do," she said.
"You didn't try to talk things through?" she asked.
Hermione shook her head. "No, it wouldn't be fair on either of us. We shouldn't have to give up how we want to live our lives for each other. And… it makes no one happy to compromise in between. I thought it would be okay at the start of a relationship, but it turns out it wasn't okay. I wasn't being very fair to Ron. I'm really sorry about this."
Ginny shook her head. "At least you gave it a shot. Until you find your own place, Harry and I will always make room for you here."
Hermione stared at Ginny's hair and tears threatened to spill, she blinked them away. "I can't," she choked.
"You have to," Ginny insisted. "Plus, you can see it as keeping me company. Harry's been held up at work so often I'm alone at night."
Hermione shook her head again. "Thank you, but I can't, Gin."
Ginny put her hands on her hips. "Why not?" she asked. "Even though Ron's my brother you're my best friend."
"Your hair reminds me of Ron!" Hermione confessed, feeling ashamed. "And I need time away from him. I-I don't want to be reminded of him. I-I can't stay here."
"What if I wore a shower cap around the house?" she asked, trying to crack a joke.
Hermione tried to give her a smile, a few tears slipping from her eyes. There was a loud snap and Harry appeared before the two.
"What did I tell you about Apparating?" Ginny sighed.
In Harry's hand was a bag. Its beaded tassels clinked together when Harry placed it on the coffee table in front of the couch before taking a seat. "Ron had things ready," he said, trying to gauge Hermione's reaction. When she didn't turn into a screaming banshee or start weeping or start bruising their fruit—Harry didn't know which was worse—he continued speaking, "You can sleep on the bed with Ginny, I'll take the couch. I would offer our guest room but we're in the process of turning it in a nursery for James so nothing there's anymore."
"Harry, it's all right. I've decided to stay somewhere else," Hermione said. "And don't try to argue with me. Ginny couldn't convince me so I don't think you'd fare much better."
Harry looked over to Ginny to confirm if this was true. After seeing her nod, he gave Hermione a hug. "Where are you going to live then?"
Not her parents, their relationship had been shaky at best over the last few years. After they found out about the Memory charm, she sensed a sort of wariness from them, and to put it in blunt terms, they were afraid of her and no amount of apologising could remedy this.
"Luna's?" Ginny asked.
Hermione cracked a smile. "That wouldn't have been a bad idea if it wasn't for the fact that Luna's in Germany right now. I'm going to find a nice place and set up a camp under the stars."
"You're going rogue?" Harry asked, his eyebrows lifting.
"Yup," Hermione said in force cheerfulness. "Imagine being under the wide expanse of the stars. That's the best kind of spiritual replenishment I can get. And it's free as well. Also, there's that bylaw with a time limit on how long I can camp in one spot before it's a permanent dwelling so… I'll find a place soon. Don't worry." With that, she stood up and gave Harry and Ginny a hug. "Don't worry about me and enjoy your evening."
"Are you sure you don't want to stay… even to talk?" Ginny asked.
"Later," she replied and she grabbed her purple pouch from the coffee table and apparating out of their living room. In the wake of the aftermath, Harry and Ginny looked at each other as though a storm had just torn through their house.
"Is she all right?" Harry asked.
"As good as anyone can be after that," Ginny replied.
"But you think she'll be all right? Out there by herself I mean," he said. "Or worse, what if she decides to live off in the mountains forever or something?"
Ginny snorted and giggled despite the situation. "Hermione's not stupid. She can take care of herself. Besides, she knows people are anxious about her and expecting her to come back."
I've been experimenting with a non-chronological format. Hope it wasn't too confusing!