This chapter baked in my head for a while before I finally thought to take it out. This story is almost finished; all it needs is the frosting and the candles and we're ready to celebrate. (Mm, cake is good.) I don't know where the cake analogy is coming from. Read, review, and enjoy.

WARNING: Mild assault.

Unexpected

Chapter Eleven: Ruined Tongues

Hermione arrived at the train station with resolutions hanging like bells in her heart. She pulled her trunk behind her and started walking swiftly towards the car the Weasley's had rented from the Ministry; the cold was biting, and she could feel the raw pinkness of her cheeks from the wind beating at her, cutting into her warm wool parka. But despite the cold, Arthur and Molly were still waiting for her, leaned up against the door, smiling and rubbing their hands together. Her eyes glanced through the windows and didn't see another head of red hair. Where was everyone?

"The children are decorating for New Year's Eve," Molly explained, picking up on her confusion as if Hermione had spoken aloud. The brunette could understand why it was so hard to lie to the female leader of the Weasley clan. "Come, Arthur, take the girl's trunk."

Arthur beamed at her as he took her trunk from her, heaving into the back of the car with some difficulty, but he didn't complain. Once he had the large carrying case securely in place in the trunk, he leaned onto the top to close it and gave the women an inquiring look. "All right, everyone? Shall we go?"

They piled into the car. The heat was shotty, but it was enough to return the feeling to Hermione's toes and fingers. She answered their questions about her holiday with her family, and when that topic was exhausted, the merry couple spoke lightly to themselves and Hermione stared out the window - first at the concrete buildings of the city, then on the tamed but still mystical countryside, buried in snow. She let her mind wander as her eyes took in the brown and grey and white landscape to Fred, his red hair, and how she was going to tell him that she didn't love him. That she had never loved him. That she was cheating on him. That they needed to break it off. That she needed to be with Ginny.

The bare basics, she had decided on. He didn't need to know that when they had made love, she had felt awkward and dirty, but had tried to make the most of it by thinking about his sister. He didn't need to know that she didn't like kissing him because his lips were always slightly chapped, and the dead skin would rub roughly against her mouth and make her think of kissing a blister. He didn't need to know that his hand got too sweaty when he held hers, as if he were nervous about holding another girl's hand in general. He didn't need to know that she had never paid attention to a word he had ever said to her when Ginny was in the room.

No, that would only hurt him. Hermione only hoped that these truths would reflect in her eyes, would somehow sneak their way out of her mouth along with the basics. She sighed, loudly, and noticed Molly's eyes look back at her via the side view mirror. She smiled lightly in response, and Molly returned back to her and Arthur's conversation about winter storms.

Hermione went back to her thoughts. Her cool and reasonable mind set up a plan on how to do it: make a clean and neat break, little mess, little clean up. No hearts scattered across the floor. She would wait a few hours, make small talk with the rest of the family, help them decorate. When everyone else was occupied, she would take him aside and ask to talk to him upstairs in his bedroom. They would sneak upstairs, she would repeat this phrase: "Fred, I'm really sorry, but this isn't going to work anymore. I'm not in love with you; I'm in love with Ginny. I'm so sorry… She and I… We've been going behind your back since the start of school. I was just too much of a coward to do anything about it. I don't deserve to be your friend, but I would still like to be." She would let it sink in; she would answer any questions that wouldn't require more heartbreak. She would wait until they were okay enough with each other to walk back down together, and life would right itself again.

Life would right itself again, she repeated to herself in her head, before nodding off into a gentle sleep.

…

Hermione awoke again to see the Burrow looming in front of her. It was just past twilight, and the sky was a musky shade of blue. Arthur turned the car off and retrieved her trunk, while she and Molly approached the house and went inside.

The living room was alight with Ever-Burning Candles in a rainbow of colors, twinkling from the rafters and the crease between the walls and the ceiling. Harry and George were charming confetti and balloons to stay suspended in the air above them, while Fred and Ron were coaxing a blue banner magically counting down the time until the new year up to hang from the ceiling. Hermione looked around the room, trying to find a particular head of crimson, and found it by the fire, transfiguring Christmas decorations back into their every day forms. The youngest of the Weasleys looked up when the door had opened and smiled softly when she saw Hermione, but otherwise avoided her gaze. Hermione felt a stirring of confusion of her heart, but tried to push it away - Ginny was probably just anxious for her to tell Fred everything that was going on.

The door opened again; Hermione moved carefully out of the way to avoid Arthur, who was struggling slightly with the trunk. He smiled broadly when he saw the New Year's decorations, and proclaimed his enthusiasm. "Wonderful, simply brilliant," he praised, moving to where Molly stood supervising from the kitchen to wrap his arm around her waist. "Fred, when you're finished, would you help Hermione get her trunk to Ginny's room, please?"

Hermione's heart sank a little, but she tried to muster, again, the courage she had built up during the car ride. The moment was going to happen a lot sooner than she had expected, but wouldn't it be better to get it out of the way?

Fred looked away from his work to his father, and then to her. Their eyes locked; there was a coldness to his blue, and they were dark with turmoil. Her heart began to beat wildly in her chest and fear. Had Lavender and Parvati done something before she had been able to act? But they wouldn't have - she mentally shook herself, finding herself taking large gulps of air. Fred's eyes let hers go and he shrugged, before flicking his wand to fix one corner and coming towards her. She was afraid he was going to make a scene right there in front of his family, but he simply walked past her and charmed her trunk to levitate, and started going up the stairs.

Hermione once again tried to catch Ginny's eyes, to give her some sort of sign that it was finally going to happen and things were going to be the way they had always wanted them to be like - but the girl was avoiding her, her back turned, and after a few more moments of trying, she hopelessly pulled herself up the steps to follow Fred to Ginny's room.

The steps creaked in the rhythm of her terrified heartbeat; every contact of the old wood with her feet sent jolts of panic throughout her body. This was going to be harder than anything she had ever tried to do, and there was no Harry or Ron to back her up. There was no Ginny holding her hand. She was completely vulnerable to her own words, to the surroundings and the circumstance. The door was looming in front of her, half shut. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and stepped through the doorway.

She was just opening her mouth to draw breath when she felt a pair of warm, wet lips on hers and strong arms wrapping around her body. Surprise and panic shot through her, made her eyes open wide and her larynx to attempt to make noise, to let someone know that this intrusion wasn't welcome. But nothing came out - nothing could come out, not with that searing mouth on hers, tongue lashing across hers trying to coax it to a duel to the death, but her mouth was a lover and not a fighter, and refused to take the taunting bait.

She was struggling; she had her hand on his chest, clutching at the fabric of his wool sweater, trying to tear or rip or simply push him away - anything to get him to let her go. But he was so much stronger than she. His arms had wielded a large bat to beat away bludgers for years, creating muscle, creating strength. This wasn't how it was supposed to go - he wasn't supposed to be acting like this. Why was he acting like this?

Her panic rose when she felt him gripping her with one arm while his free hand was fumbling with the buttons of her pants. Hermione could feel herself separate from her body, watching everything from a bird's eye view while she could still feel his fingers brush against the elastic of her panties as the first button came undone, feel his clumsy dealings with the second...

But then Fred let her go, released her mouth and her shaking body. His eyes were dark and husky and his lips were bruised red from the force of his kiss. Hermione was too shocked to do anything. Her hands still clutched at the fabric of his shirt and refused to unlock from their grip.

Silence enveloped them and the room. He was staring into her eyes, the blue deep and impenetrable, and she realized through her foggy-headed state that he was searching for something in her. Something that she couldn't give him. She wished she could tell him. She wished she could open her mouth and explain herself. But no sound would come. Her courage was gone. She wanted him to do the talking, to do the explaining. To force her to talk with his demanding questions.

Fred pulled away farther and Hermione's fingers finally pried free, fell limply to her sides before she mustered enough strength and steadiness to rebutton her jeans. She realized he was looking past her, and a glimmer of something else was in his eyes - guilt, or shame, or the mistake of his actions weighing on his body like a heavy cloak. She didn't understand why until she thought to turn her head, and finally did so - to see Ginny silhouetted by the hallway lights in the doorframe, a look of utmost pain and betrayal shining on her face as if it were written there in black letters across her irises.

"Ginny -" Hermione gasped out, breathing for the first time in years. But she didn't know what else to say. "It's not what you think." She regretted those words as soon as they tumbled out of her mouth. That's what guilty women said when they were caught cheating on their lovers. And that's exactly what Ginny thought of Hermione.

"For old time's sake, was it?" Ginny asked, bitterness biting in the air, slashing into Hermione's sensitive skin and making her cringe. "Thought you'd tell him and try to make things better with a kiss?" Hermione stared helplessly at the redheaded girl, disbelief and horror and a million other emotions racing through her veins at lightning speed for the finish line of what emotion would rule her body for the next five seconds. "You both should have fucking known better," Ginny continued, flicking her gaze briefly to her brother, then back to Hermione. "I'd already told him, you know. I told him the day we came home for holiday."

Hermione could tell that Ginny was waiting for her reaction. But she couldn't feel anything past the ice that was consuming her skin, the blackness that was invading her brain and keeping her from thinking. She didn't know what to say because she was too shocked, too surprised, too far into her panicked state. She could feel the heaviness to her lips and the lack of saliva in her mouth from Fred's forced kiss. She could feel the bruises on her upper arms from where his had squeezed into them, where his fingers had grabbed her roughly. Her rational mind told her to speak up and tell Ginny that it was all a lie, that it hadn't happened like that at all. But her rational mind was being beaten down by the plethora of emotions rejoicing in their big win of consuming her, and she couldn't think past the situation, past Fred's eyes burning into her, past Ginny's tense form and balled fists in the doorway, past the tears coursing down her face and burning her icy skin.

Her reasonable calculations had fallen to pieces. Fred refused to speak. He stood by the bed, silent and aloof, and she could tell he was watching the story unfold with his own confusing emotions. She tried to imagine what he was feeling: guilt for hurting his sister and then assaulting his girlfriend; anger for being hurt by his sister and his girlfriend; bitterness for being fooled; exasperation for not seeing it sooner. She could understand why his tongue was stilled, but she couldn't help but scream at him with her mind to help her, to defend her, to explain himself.

But he didn't. And she didn't know how to. She didn't know how to explain anything without sounding foolish, without sounding like a liar. The tension of the room was making her head spin, and she felt the overwhelming urge to leave, to disappear, to run away and not come back, to hide in the cold until it was safe to come out again -

Before she understood what she was doing, she was pushing past Ginny and flying down the stairs. She was throwing the door open and letting it slam shut behind her. She was cutting across the yard to the snow-covered field, and as she broke into the open ground, snow began to fall around her.

Something told her to stop. Her breath came out in heaves from her excursion and her body was warm despite the cold. Hermione looked around wildly and took it all in, trying to imagine it without the snow, and realized it was their makeshift Quidditch field. The same place Ginny had kissed her the first time. She was back to the very beginning of this mess.

Her body began shaking from the cold, all her body heat gone. She groped for her wand in her sweatshirt's pocket and stuttered out a warming spell on her clothes and bare skin. A gentle heat spread throughout her body, but it wasn't the comfort of another. It wasn't the warmth she felt when she was with Ginny.

Ginny. She was slipping away from herself. Her mind played over the last few moments in her head, the sound of Ginny's voice accusing her of betrayal. "For old time's sake" repeating itself like a record pin unfortunately caught on a scratch. It was like how her life had felt for the past few months. Her constant faltering, then apologies flowing out of her mouth, just for her to falter and screw up again. Like now.

Her unblinking eyes became blurry and the falling snow just became a constant stream of white as for the billionth time in the last few months, Hermione Granger began to cry, and for the first time in a long while, there was no one to make them stop.

Swimming through sick lullabies.