Sorry it took so long. Inspiration strikes sparingly. YESTERDAY WAS MY BIRTHDAY! HEEHEE! so happy. please review.
"Granger…" Hermione did not appreciate Hopkiss's tone. If he expected her to greet Malfoy with open arms he was sadly mistaken.
The two of them stood at polar opposites of the room, both with their arms crossed and their eyes evading the gaze of the other. "Hello." She said coldly, every letter dripping with open hostility. He just nodded before turning away.
"Well, this is awkward," Hopkiss said aloud, hoping to break the ice. He might as well have said absolutely nothing for all the good it did. "I'll leave you two to it, then. I'll be back in a few moments. Why don't you reacquaint yourselves?" The two of them were far too uncomfortable to point out the blatant stupidity in his comment so he vacated the premises without reprimand.
Hermione collapsed stiffly into a hard-back chair, sighing as she massaged her temples. He eyed her warily before seating himself and turning away, fiddling with an abandoned quill he'd found on some desk.
"How is life after Hogwarts?" Hermione was first to break the silence. He stopped fiddling and looked up, an expression of pure irritation on his face as though she had interrupted something quite important and fascinating.
"Fine, that is until now. You had to sully it up, didn't you?" He narrowed his eyes in her direction, though he never looked at her directly.
She snorted in a rather unladylike manner. "Yes, and having you here has been a building block to fulfilling my dream of killing myself before the age of thirty," she snapped back at him without missing a beat.
"Neither of us want to be here, Granger so you can join the bloody club or kiss my…" She raised a stiff hand while she raised her head into the air in a dignified manner.
"I will never kiss anything on you, Malfoy. You couldn't even Cruciatus me into it," she said snidely. He did not appreciate her cheek.
"As if I would ever let your dirty little lips anywhere near me." He was coming dangerously close to losing his cool.
"You do not have to worry about that because I would rather eat a vat of Bobutuber pus than touch you. Unless it's to slap you silly," she added quickly, recalling the choice instance in third year where she did just that.
For a moment it seemed as though he had nothing to say on the matter. However, before satisfaction could set in he opened his trap, "You've got a superiority complex, Granger. Always holding your nose in the air, acting like your…your…lineage is something to be proud of." She came dangerously close to leaping out of her seat.
"Oh really, Malfoy? Can you really say that I act like my lineage is something to brag on when throughout all seven years of school you did positively nothing but brag about your bloodline? A bloodline, which by the way is only the result of generations of incestuous relations! Maybe that is where you got that nose," she replied hotly, feeling the color rise to her cheeks slowly.
He turned a slight shade of pink. "I believe that you have crossed the line, madam!" he stated, his voice oddly calm.
She glanced up in amusement. "Since when is there any line with you?" she asked in cold contempt.
He mulled over this for but a moment, "It's invisible." He was amused by the thought.
"Nonexistent, more like."
"It's there!" he cried indignant and childishly.
"Really? I don't recall it ever being enforced during our school days."
"Well, I resisted the urge to knock you flat, Granger. You may be…you, but even I have my standards."
"This, of course is presuming that you would've possibly caught me, which is insufferable conceit indeed," she snapped.
"Oh, please. You may have been slightly superior with a wand in those days, but you could never beat me in hand-to-hand."
"Slightly superior? I wiped the floor with you during OWLs and NEWTs, and let us not forget when you ran away when I punched you in the face and I did not have so much as a scratch to show for it." This affected him.
"Well I…uh, ahem, didn't…want…to…hurt a…girl. Yes, that would have made me seem a coward, would it not?"
She nodded sensibly. "Oh, alright. So the whimpering uncontrollably and flailing you skinny wrists like a little girl was all part of the plan to take the higher ground?" she deadpanned.
"You just don't appreciate the favor I did you in sparing you the embarrassment of seeming like a fool in front of your friends."
"Yes, they it's not as though they would have tackled you to the ground and pulverized you beyond repair if you had laid a finger on me." Tears welled in the back of her eyes, though her appearance did not show it. She missed them both so much that it was hard to think back on their golden trio days without a grimace.
He seemed to find this reason enough. "Yes, yes! They would have hurt me!"
She spun this around in record time, "And you were so much of a coward to do anything about it, 'say teach that dirty mudblood a lesson,' especially since you were accompanied by two of the most ridiculously large thirteen year olds I ever laid my eyes on."
"They were fourteen at the time, thank you."
"You're quite welcome."
"You can't even allow me a small victory?" he asked sardonically.
"No, in a war of wits I am the witch who wins," She shot back with surprising speed. There was a moment of smooth silence before the clock overhead began hooting most irritably. A small, animated figurine emerged from the depths of the clock, shrieking her name.
"Oh, it's break time." Thank Merlin. "Hopkiss!" she called, knowing him too well to doubt that he was behind the door.
"Yes?" He appeared, poking his head through the side of the door.
"I'm going to see Ginny, I'll be back in an hour," she promised, summoning her purse and heading toward the fireplace. She said not a word to her new partner as the two of them parted.
"Bloody irritating woman," he grumbled as she disappeared into the green flames, unfazed.
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX
"Your hands are shaking."
Hermione shook her head and withdrew her hands tentatively, taking in a sip of her bitter coffee. "No, they aren't," she argued feebly as she spilled the piping hot substance down her milk-white scrubs.
Ginny quirked an eyebrow mockingly before returning to her Pumpkin Pasty, "Oh, alright. I must be seeing things. I'm quite sorry for the accusation."
Hermione rolled her eyes and stood up from the table, tucking her skirt in beneath her legs.
"I've got to go, Gin. My hour's almost up and you know how Hopkiss can be…" Ginny reached out and took her friend's arm, pulling her back down to the plush seats that had been provided for them.
"Are you still wearing it?" she asked in a hushed tone, glancing cautiously at Hermione's white gloves. When she didn't answer immediately, Ginny continued, "It's been almost two years. You've got to get over all this." Hermione wanted to bark something hateful back, accuse Ginny of disloyalty to her late brother, say that she had not wholly gotten over Harry's abandonment, why she should she feel any differently about Ron?
Instead she removed her gloves quickly, slapping them down on the coffee table harshly. The "smack" resounded through the room and a few people turned their heads. Hermione spread her fingers apart and pushed them to her friend's face with a look of fierce satisfaction. They were bare. "No, are you happy? Now I've got to go," she mumbled, turning toward the gigantic fireplace situated conveniently near their table.
"I'm sorry, Hermione," Ginny called after her hollowly. After all of this time she was sorry about being sorry, and Hermione knew this well enough. With a dramatic pause she stepped in after the Floo powder, her strong voice clearly booming the words "St. Mungo's." Only she and a few other choice employees had access to the Floo Network.
She still had twenty minutes before her shift resumed, but she could not have spent another moment in Ginny's company. Her laughing friend had turned all of her own concerns on her. Instead of using that great magnifying power on herself she judged Hermione, though she too was still reeling from the loss of the one she'd loved so dearly.
But it was all so different. Harry was selfish, brooding in the dark corners of his life and using his pain as an excuse. Everyone else had moved on, healed their wounds and allowed them to form into scars so that they could eventually let it all fade to black. He, of course, was to be the only exception to this rule.
She walked briskly into the loo, most certain that she was still shaking uncontrollably. She turned on the faucets manually, forgetting that a password would start them magically. Taking a handful of the piping hot and bubbling water Hermione splashed it on her face, shuddering as the droplets trickled down the cheeks.
She could not stand it. Seeing Ginny always made her extremely apprehensive, all of their visits seemed to be cut miraculously and mercifully short. She could no longer face the family without extreme nausea and nervousness, and the feeling did not seem mutual. Mrs. Weasley insisted that she was far too thin for her own good, Fred and George tailed her for three weeks, making sure that she ate at every meal and Ginny insisted on meeting regularly, though over one quarter of the time Hermione would cancel without explanation. They all wanted her to forget the pain, to move on, but she couldn't. Now that Ginny was a mother to her, Ron dead and Harry exiled, she was alone.
She reached tentatively into the front of her blouse; pulling up the concealed chain to reveal the engagement ring that Ron gave her. It was simple enough, the diamond not large but still enough to dote upon, and she could not bear to have it removed from her person. Over the past few months she concealed it upon meeting with Ginny, knowing that she would receive quite a scolding and an hour-long discussion of "moving on," as though she were the chief person to issue this advice. She hadn't dated anyone for more than two weeks total after Harry's abandonment and Hermione suspected that she was still involved in the search for the boy-who-lived.
Luckily no one came into the restroom during her brief stay, for they would have been most alarmed to find her racked with sobs. It was not that she did not have a chance to say goodbye, she didn't need closure, and she just wanted an opportunity to save him. She deserved that at least, didn't she? She felt like a coward, like a fraud. She used the façade of being able to handle anything, and two years later she still locked herself in the girls' room, crying on her lunch break?
She wiped her eyes and did a quick concealment charm before strutting out of the bathroom and back to work, ignoring Malfoy most efficiently.