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The Burrow; 2004
Hermione tried the floo connection to Ron for the thirtieth time, it seemed. Just like before, it came back spitting ash in her face, indicating to her that his floo network was currently shuttered.
She sighed in frustration; he was supposed to meet her an hour and a half ago to go to a family celebration at the Burrow, but he was surprisingly absent. He always made seeing his family a top priority and expected Hermione to view them as so too, so to be just missing was bizarre.
And Hermione did love his family. She had no one of her own anymore to claim, and the entire Weasley Clan had welcomed her with open arms. She often thought she enjoyed the Weasleys as a whole more than Ron as an individual person; as to say, breaking up with Ron might make her lose this replacement family, and that was almost enough to convince her to remain.
There were no calls from Harry, meaning Ron hadn't just forgotten about his girlfriend and gone over himself. Harry also had no idea where Ron might be; all he knew is they'd gone out for dinner at the pub yesterday, but he'd seemed fine then.
"It's just Ron. You're the one with a good head on your shoulders," Harry had shrugged it off, "Probably forgot."
Seemed unlikely. They were celebrating Percy's engagement to Audrey today, and Ron had been happy about it for months. Audrey was nothing like he expected, nor anyone to be frank. Whereas Hermione thought Percy would find a meek and quiet bride with her nose in data, Audrey was a fashion queen that made everyone want to be around her. Yes, she was whip-smart, but she focused on so many other parts of her too. Plus, she had more Quidditch trivia stored away than anyone Hermione had ever met, making Ron an instant buddy to talk to at family dinners.
So why was Ron not here?
As it was, Hermione hadn't been looking forward to this, not after all that had occurred. But she knew that everyone was looking forward to seeing her too (it had been months since she'd been on English land again) and she'd feel horrible for not going.
So finally, two hours past when she was supposed to have left, she gathered her bags. Her Floo rang just as she was walking out the door.
"Blimey, Hermione!" Ron sounded frantic, "I didn't realize the time."
"Ron, where are you?" Hermione tried to hold back her frustration and annoyance.
"I got handed a case last minute. It's a doozy, 'Mione, and I tried to say no but-,"
Hermione bit her tongue, "Are you on your way?"
"Ah, sure, yeah," Ron hedged, "I mean, I will be, err...soon. I'm not that far from the Burrow. You should go. I'll wrap it up shortly, swear it. See you there?"
Hermione tried not to be disappointed, but she found that she was somewhat grateful. She hadn't seen his face and she was terrified the secret would bubble out if she saw him.
"I mean, it will take a bit to get through the Floo Gates without your international port, but sure," Hermione sighed.
"Awe, bloody hell, I forgot. Erm, I'll get Harry to grab you." Ron sounded frazzled, "Okay! I have to go."
"Right, of course," Hermione said, "I lo-,"
She began saying it out of habit, but before she could finish, Ron cut off. Which was strange...he always said that he loved her, no matter what. He was demanding of it sometimes, which irked Hermione. She tried to say it when she meant it, but Ron needed that constant reassurance, leading to the knee-jerk reaction to say it at the end of calls. He usually wouldn't hang up until they'd exchanged it.
She didn't have long to linger on these thoughts, for Harry was at her door within fifteen minutes.
"You know what this new case is?" Hermione asked as Harry ducked them into the fireplace and used his specially colored powder to take them through custom checks.
"Beats me," Harry looked bewildered, "I believe him. We're always getting handed the shite stuff, being the newest Aurours and all, but Ron couldn't say much."
Hermione pulled her arms across her chest, "Think he'll make it here tonight?"
Harry chuckled, "And miss his mother's famous cooking? He's been excited for weeks. Naw, usually it's just some stupid paper-trail we have to organize, nothing too bad." Harry assured, "I'm sure he'll show. It's been...how long since you saw him?"
Hermione gnawed on her lips, "A month. You know, things just get busy and we had plans two weeks ago but-,"
"You don't have to explain to me. I live with Ginny and hardly see her! Ron's proud of what you're doing right now, even if he doesn't say it."
"Try never," Hermione huffed, her frustrations about her boyfriend surfacing with his current state of absence.
"He is, I know it," Harry said, much more sure than Hermione wished she could feel. From her point, it seemed Ron was always bemoaning their distance, which she understood to a certain extent. Long-distance wasn't easy. She just wished, sometimes, he would try to be a bit more chipper about it.
"Could you remind him to remind me sometimes?" Hermione winced. Harry chuckled, sighing, as they ducked into the bright morning sun. Hermione was immediately greeted by what felt like a whole sea of people; everyone cheering her arrival and offering her food or drinks.
"Where's Ron? Why isn't he here?" Charlie asked as he popped the lid off Hermione's butterbeer. She was tempted to snap and say she wasn't his keeper, but that would be her own annoyance about the situation and not fair, and certainly not Charlie's problem.
"Work," She said quickly, "Unavoidable...I guess."
"It's Perc's engagement party, though!" Charlie raised his eyebrow. Hermione shrugged as though to say 'I know, I know, but he's not here, 'kay'. Charlie maybe had a few more opinions about Ron's absence, but read Hermione's face and slithered away from her.
Hermione spent most of the time working her way through talking with everyone present, nursing her butterbeer, and forcing smiles. Everyone asked her the same rotation of questions; how is Paris? What are you doing? When will you be home? Is long-distance hard like this? It was getting irritating. Hermione half-wished she could march to the front of the dining room, make her wand a speaker, and have a FAQ session just to get it out of the way.
Her answers were well-rehearsed, if not tiresome, by three hours in. She hadn't had a unique question since George had asked her a volley of bizarre ones, but then again, he was George.
However, the conversation about Hermione soon shifted, and Hermione sorely wished they would return to asking her twenty questions about France.
Everyone was gathered outside in a big circle, oohing and ahhing at Audrey's engagement ring. It was beautiful. Understated, not flashy, but beautiful all the same. Audrey was beaming and Percy's face was bright red. Harry and Ginny had gotten married right after the war and of course, Bill and Fleur were already hitched, so after they'd exhausted the topic of wedding questions, Molly turned to the rest of her brood with excitement in her eyes.
She was riding the high of Percy's happy news and she got a certain glimmer in her eyes when they talked about weddings, akin to a child stuffing their face in birthday cake. It was a bit much, almost laughable, but still sweet.
Of the other Weasleys, Hermione should have known that attention would turn to her. Charlie was perpetually unmatched, a thorn in Molly's side at her numerous attempts to get him married. George was dating Angelina, but it was new and not worth talking about weddings just yet.
The only other person that Molly logically could start pre-planning a wedding for was Hermione. She herself saw it coming, didn't she? Hadn't that been what she'd told-
She couldn't even think that through without wincing at what had happened.
"Hermione, dear, when is it your turn?"
Molly had been badgering Ron and Hermione about an engagement for years now. Hermione always politely laughed and said 'they would get married when they were ready', and that seemed enough to temper the Weasley matriarch.
Until today.
Perhaps Molly was running on full-Wedding fumes, or perhaps it was everyone else gathered, but she...nor anyone else, was going to let this go.
"Yeah, 'Mione, when are you really joining our family?" Bill said, which did admittedly hurt a bit. Hermione thought she was already part of it. Luckily, Fleur hushed Bill and sent her husband a dirty look.
"Well, err…" Hermione played with a strand of her hair, "You know, we're just-,"
"Taking it slow, yeah," Ginny finished, "But come on! You two have been together longer than Harry and I, basically. It's no wonder that we're all just so excited!"
None of the Weasleys, or gather of friends, were asking with malice. They were all just so bloody thrilled about the idea that no one had stopped to wonder why Hermione paused or why it hadn't happened?
"And vh'll be 'ust as eek-cited when zhey do get engaged," Fleur said to Ginny with a long look, seemingly the only one not bound to get a dated answer out of her, "Everyone 'as their own timeline for zees zhings."
"Right, exactly," Hermione said, but her agreement was lost in the crowd of people asking and chuckling and stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that this was perhaps something to leave alone.
Maybe she should have expected this. Right after the war, things were fine. No one was rushing anyone to get married, if anything, they were encouraging couples to slow down. The marriage and subsequent divorce rates were predictable and out of the usual for the previous years.
But within the last year, if Hermione had a galleon for every time someone asked her or Ron when he was popping the question or if Hermione planned on doing it herself, well, they'd have quite the little nest egg. So yes, more people were seemingly not okay with the pair of them trudging their way through, and if anything, it seemed everyone at the gathering had forgotten about the actual future Bride in favor of bothering Hermione.
She wished Ron were here to help her navigate and keep her position firm, but then again, he faltered about whenever someone asked him.
She had a frustrating thought; Ron knew that an engagement party would no doubt turn on their relationship and had purposely decided to come late with the hopes of avoiding the altercations at all.
Though by this point, it had been five hours into it, and Ron still had not made an appearance. By the second, as illogical as it was, Hermione was more sure Ron had left her to sink or swim.
So Hermione removed herself from the conversation.
The conversation followed.
No matter what secluded part of the Burrow Hermione found to hide away, someone was there with another question about her lack of a ring on her finger.
The first few times, Hermione tried to be polite about it.
"It's really a personal topic, you know, and I'm not sure I want to answer."
Well, people walked right over this, so okay, plan two.
She tried to pin it on Ron next, the bugger, the escape artist.
"You'd have to ask Ron, because I'm surely not proposing, so I really can't answer anything more," Hermione offered with a fake sweet smile. Though Hermione taking the initiative to ask did seem like something in her wheelhouse, she also appreciated traditionalism sometimes.
This equally failed.
"But Ron's not here," Michael Corner said slowly, as though Hermione somehow was unaware her boyfriend was MIA, "And you two are a couple, so I imagine, you must have talked about it...right?"
"Well, sure, fine," Hermione waffled. They had! Sort of...maybe not really.
What Corner was probably expecting was Hermione to know that she and Ron had talked definitely about getting married and perhaps have a timeline, but they hadn't. It was hard to do when one was on a continent and someone else another. They made vague references, such as 'oh, and one day when we're married' and Hermione had a feeling it was heading there, but in terms of literal and tangible conversations? Uhm, not so much.
"So?"
"I guess, soon?" This was the best Hermione could say. She had a feeling it was going toward there soon, despite no conversations to indicate otherwise, because...because they'd just been together so long. That's what people who had been together for as long as they were eventually did. They got married, right?
But was Hermione stressed about a lack of proposal or indication otherwise?
Or, a better question, was she concerned she wasn't?
Finally, about the thirtieth person asking, the thirtieth person seeking her out after she'd specifically left that circle of conversation, she rather...lost it.
Ginny would say it was 'bloody epic', Harry would say she could have had more tact, and George would have a film of it in case she ever wanted to relive it.
She blacked out, to be honest, so she wasn't sure she wanted to experience it via magical documentation the first time.
She'd come down on poor Dennis Creevy, who really didn't deserve it, and some jokes said she'd terrified him. Or maybe they weren't jokes, she was unsure.
There was some name-calling, some words no one knew what they meant, there was some screaming. No, there was a lot of screaming. And at the end of it all, she grabbed her coat and jacket and floo'd away before realizing she needed Harry to help her get back internationally.
Overall, a ruddy mess of a time at Mrs. Weasley's for someone else's party, though Molly had it coming. Hermione wouldn't have been surprised if she hadn't sicced the party guests on Hermione for more intel.
She felt awful in retrospect and had sent Dennis a very nice bottle of French wine and a long-winded apology, which she was still waiting for a reply from.
If she had to be honest, part of her explosion came back to Theo. Because whenever someone asked if Ron was going to propose soon, it wasn't Ron's face kneeling, but Theo's. Damn him! Damn him to the lowest pit of whatever he'd done to her mind, her logic, and her good sense!
And she wanted him to go away. She wanted to scrub her memory of her attraction to him and for one very stupid moment, she considered Obliviating any trace of their friendship from her own mind...until she thought it through and recognized how reckless that would be. Even enlisting Hannah could go horribly wrong.
But it said something. It said something that she was almost at that point.
She curled up in her bed, sure as Godric Gryffindor was brave that Ron would be furious when he heard how she'd made a scene at his family's party.
