Their New Lives

Disclaimer: I do not own anything in the Harry Potter world. Will is mine; everything else belongs to J. K. Rowling and various publishing companies. Please don't sue.

Summary: Harry and Hermione have not seen each other in four years, since Voldemort's defeat. What will happen when they forget about the past and emerge themselves in the Muggle world?

Prologue

"Hey Hermione, wait up!"

"Sorry, can't. Have to get to the library."

"Hermione I need to talk to you."

Hermione halted and turned around cautiously. She looked at Harry. His face seemed paler than normal which caused his lightening bolt shaped scar to stand out drastically on his forehead. His dark, scraggly hair was standing up in the back and his eyes did not seem to hold their usual sparkle.

"Is something wrong?"

"No, I just didn't want you to walk to the library alone," he said, as his eyebrows scrunched in worry.

"I can take care of myself, Harry. You don't need to baby-sit me."

"I know, but I'm just worried about you walking alone in the empty hallways, especially since the attack on Colin and Nick. Won't you just let me walk with you and maybe sit with you while you study, just so I don't have to keep worrying about whether you're safe?"

Hermione's face softened and she let a smile creep onto her sad face. "Alright Harry, you can join me if you like."

Suddenly Harry's hair began to lengthen and his hands started to grow. He stretched taller and his eyes grew greener. His face changed from the pale one of worry, to the strained one of pain and realization. Suddenly there was Harry as she remembered him; his seventeen-year-old self. Just a few months before the final battle that would change their lives forever.

He reached out to grab Hermione's petite hand, but she pulled away.

"Hermione?" he looked at her questioningly as her eyes became glassy, and his eyebrows wrinkled in worry.

"Hermione, what's wrong? I don't –"

"Don't! Don't pretend that you're innocent. You know what you did- what you've been doing!"

"Hermione, I- what-"

Then his face began to fade....

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Hermione woke up in her bed with cold sweat on her face. A breeze was playing across her face from the open window. As she slid out of bed to close it she noticed a faded picture of her thirteen-year-old self on her nightstand.

Oh gosh, I can't believe I used to look like that.

The Hermione in the picture had bushy, brown hair, large front teeth, and dull brown eyes. Her nose was stuck in the air in a know-it-all fashion and she was hunched over from the large book bag she carried permanently on her shoulder. There was a gold chain barely visible beneath her robes and she wore a look of annoyance on her face, most likely because of her picture being taken.

Hermione used to be concerned about her schoolwork and grades at that stage in her teenage years. Later she would mostly be concerned with Harry's safety and the future prospect of facing Voldemort.

But that's all behind me now, she reminded herself. Harry had defeated Voldemort at the end of their seventh year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Hermione and Ron had been unable to be with him at the final moment, and when they finally found him, he had changed; he was a different person.

Well now I'm a different person, too. She quickly closed those memories by putting the picture away in the small drawer on her nightstand. She did not want to think about the past. She had made her new life in this Muggle town without the help of the evil of magic. She had quite a wonderful job that she loved working at every day, and had a few friends that made her happy.

But there seemed to be something missing.

She had dreams at night of a past that she had tried to forget. It had been four years since she had seen her best friend. She missed him, of course, but she never thought that missing someone would hurt this much. She missed his unruly hair, his glassy, emerald eyes, his smile, his bright laugh, his smell, his hands, and his...scar.

She sighed deeply, freeing her mind of him as best she could. She walked across the wooden floor to her window and looked out at St. James' Road. There was only one dim streetlight, but as her hands lay on the window sill, she could make out the faint outline of a man entering a recently sold house a few down from hers.

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Harry was sitting on a stool at the bar in this small town. He and Hermione had always talked about living in a small Muggle town, away from the magic that had almost cost them their lives on several occasions. Now that he was in this town, however, he was unsure whether it had been a wise idea after all. He was homesick for Hogwarts, even though it had been almost four years since he had last been inside its cold, stone walls, and he knew no one in this unfamiliar place.

A man was dancing with a rather pretty woman. She was laughing at something he had said and was glowing with sweat from the lively dance. Harry looked away as his heart started to ache.

As he was starting to feel depressed, the man walked over to the bar. He sat in the stool next to Harry and ordered a couple of drinks for him and his…girlfriend? The man turned and noticed Harry.

"Hello, I'm William; Will for short," he said, as he reached out a sweaty hand. Harry took it in his firm grasp. "Are you new in town, or just passing through?"

"I just moved here yesterday. I don't know anyone in town," he said, a little nervously.

"Well I would be happy to show you around," Will said with a welcoming smile on his round face.

"Oh, thank you, but that won't be necessary," Harry replied politely.

The man seemed nice enough, but Harry was too depressed to socialize. He had lived in six various towns across England in the last four years. He just could not seem to get settled. After living in a town for a few months, he would suddenly decide that the town was not the right one, that something was missing.

So now he was here in Emsworth in southern England on the English Channel. The town's main economy was based on fishing and other nautical industries. It was a little odd that Harry had chosen this town, since he had never been fishing in his twenty-one years of life.

The man was staring at him with a funny look on his face, probably caused by Harry's unfocused attention. "Are you sure? Do you need a job or anything? If you like sports, there is a job opening at the local newspaper for a sportswriter. The last one lost his arm playing rugby," Will said, as he chuckled at the thought.

"Actually, that does sound like a job that might just be exactly what I'm looking for," Harry replied, with a smile spreading across his face.

Bill smiled back. "That looks much better on you than the depressed look you had a minute ago. Glad I could help and I hope you apply for the job because I work there as a social photographer. Here's my phone number," he said, as he took out a pen and wrote some numbers on Harry's napkin. "Why don't you give me a call and we could get together some time and have drinks."

"That sounds nice, thank you."

Bill grabbed the two drinks and walked back over to where the woman was standing. They started talking and the woman looked over at Harry. He figured they were discussing the conversation he had just had with Bill.

Harry felt much better. He felt like he had a purpose in this town now. Tomorrow he would find the press building and apply for his first job. He had been living off his parents' money for the last four years; it was definitely time to start living his life.

There was just one thing missing, someone to share his newfound life and happiness with.

Author's Note: This is my first fanfic and I do not have many more chapters written. I am posting the prologue for now just to see what kind of response it gets. More chapters might be posted at a later date.