AN: My apologies if there are formatting inconsistencies. I've gone through to tidy things up and tried to give it time to update, but I'm seeing some changes didn't take even 24 hours later. Well, I hope you enjoy the content, at least!

Thursday, breakfast

Hermione didn't wake up until nearly nine when there was a knock on her door. Her chest hurt again, and she was more tired than she'd been the day before. She threw her lime green robe over her Hello Kitty pajamas and headed for the door.

The couch was empty. The duvet she'd lent him was folded neatly on the cushion. There was no trace of him.

It was Harry and Ron at the door, naturally, and she had to put a hand up to keep them from embracing her. "Nope. Sorry. I'm not feeling up for it yet. Come see me again in 3 days and I'll owe you both hugs. Come in already, I hope someone brought coffee."

Ron held up the drink carrier that held three cups from the shop across the way and smiled. "Yeah, figured you didn't feel up to your usual domestic goddess self yet," he scoffed. "There's sandwiches too. Hope you still like gravlax."

"Starving. I couldn't get through much of dinner last night. Thank you very much," she said, taking a coffee as she cleared off her tiny coffee table. "I don't know what it was, I had three bites and nearly doubled over. Put that right over there, please, Harry, thanks," she said pointing out a place he could put her work bag. They all settled into her couch and started opening bags and handing out noshes.

Harry frowned at her mention of her dinner troubles. "Doubled over? Hermione - ?"

She waved a hand. "Perfectly fine, just pushed myself too hard. Severus was here, I was back to normal in minutes." Technically that was true, anyway.

Harry distributed the breakfast things around the table and asked, "Is Snape still giving you the same cold shoulder he usually does when you're hurt?"

"Yeah, I heard from George he was a right prat while you were in hospital," Ron said.

"No more than usual," Hermione replied neutrally. But, she realized, he had actually been more of an old grump than before. Fussing over her, every minute, insisting on staying the night. The latter of which she vowed not to tell Harry or Ron. All she needed was for them to kid her - or him - about such a thing.

"Well, he's just going to remember he's not your teacher anymore," Ron warned mightily.

"Or family," Harry added pointedly.

"Oh, I'm sure he knows," Hermione said quietly, thinking about that small, far away look he had on his face when he realized she was walking away from him. "Well, anyway, what are we all doing this weekend? I'm sure that's why you're here, to insist that I do something immature and foolish with you- to which I will absolutely say yes, so long as it doesn't injure me further," she added.

The boys laughed, but Ron's turned into a groan. "We're doing anything we can to avoid the invitations we both got sent - Ginny too."

"Invitations?"

"To Slughorn's soiree," Ron replied snootily.

"Didn't you get one?" Harry asked.

"Not that I know of. But my private owls tend to pile up at the office," she admitted. "But if you're declining, it doesn't sound very promising.

Harry wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and looked disgusted. "Yeah, it's obscene. I heard from Malfoy it's nothing short of human trafficking."

"What?" Hermione gasped.

"He wants to marry us off," Ron snorted with disdain.

"He invites eligible, single, rich witches and wizards," Harry explained, "then introduces us around. If a lovematch is made, Slughorn gets the credit -"

"And the rewards!" Ron spat.

"For ages. And then people trust him to do it again for them." Harry dropped his bagel into its wrapper with finality.

"It's disgusting," Ron said. "That's my sister he's talking to!"

"That's my fiance," Harry added with a dumbfounded look at his friend.

"This is too much," Hermione sighed, spreading her hands out in front of her, wanting them to stop. "Disgusting," she repeated quietly with a shudder.

Harry pulled the lid from his coffee and poured a creamer in. "I'm surprised he hasn't requested an answer from you. He knows damn well Ginny and I are engaged. She'd only had the invitation twelve hours before he followed up with her. Honestly, I think if he hadn't been of use against Voldemorth, I'd punch him."

"No need to look for loopholes when there's such a good reason otherwise," Ron encouraged.

"Let's change the subject," Hermione sighed, "I beg of you. What should we do this weekend? I'll even see a Quidditch match. Take me out, both of you, show me what it's like to go somewhere besides the Ministry and St. Mungo's."

Ron brightened up. "Well, if you've got the energy for it, we can always get the lot of us together for a night at the Leaky Cauldron. A few pints and darts?"

Hermione winced. "Oh, somewhere Muggle would be nice, so we don't run into anyone we know."

"Anyone, or someone?" Ron asked, his eyebrow raised in a very unsubtle manner.

"Anyone," she replied, fiddling with the sleeve on her coffee cup. "I can't stand it when I'm fawned over. I'm an Auror; we get hurt sometimes."

"You've gotten hurt about fourteen times," Harry reminded her. "The only one you should be worried about running into is Kingsley."

"He knows the risks," she replied crisply. "Besides, what was I supposed to do - Oh, dammit, you've got me talking about work. This won't do! Someone tell me something interesting."

The morning's conversation took an abrupt turn from work to Quidditch, to Ginny and Molly getting a row over wedding plans, to Ron running into the Patil twins in the Underground and how they pointedly ignored him. "I'm a war hero, you know," feigning indignation.

Hermione rubbed at her chest as she laughed, and Harry looked concerned. "How's it, your badge of honor?" he nodded over to her.

"Yeah," said Ron with a morbid eagerness, "let's see, Hermione?"

"It's between my breasts, so, no, you may not," she answered with a touch of prudishness. "It's a four-pointed isotoxal star, and it's blue and purp-"

"A what, now?" Ron asked, his eyebrows knit. "Don't remember Sinistra mentioning those!"

Hermione sighed and shook her head. "Oh, piss it," she whispered, opening her robe wide. "Here. Try not to look too closely." She pulled the neck of her tank top down to the bottom of the wound, careful to keep the majority of herself covered. She looked down at it herself and both the boys made sounds of surprise and discomfort.

"That looks right nasty," Ron admitted, shaking his head and backing up a bit. "Never seen a spell that does that!"

Harry put his hand over his mouth and shook his head. Looking her in the face, he said, "What curse was it again?"

"Something neither Snape nor I heard it well," she mused, covering herself back up again. "Something like 'stella corde.' It's in the report, Potter!" she scolded.

He spread his hands defensively. "Hey, I'm busy with whatever fresh hell Kingsley sees fit to throw at me. I know you almost died, but Ron and I spent three days in a bog talking to merpeople trying to hunt down Corbin Twain. I haven't had much time for reports."

Hermione's fingers returned to the edges of her wound and she traced the rightmost edge gently. "Well, I haven't much to tell about the spell, just that it hurt, knocked me out, nearly bled to death, and now I'm alright," she shrugged. "Thanks to Snape," she added with a smile.

Ron raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure you're in any shape to go out tomorrow? The last thing we need is you collapsing in a heap in a Muggle pub."

"I'll be perfectly fine, thanks. I know my limits. Besides, I'll have two very capable Aurors at my side who will whisk me away at the slightest sign of medical malady. My healer said I ought to stay home from work; she did not say I couldn't go out with some friends."

"Fair enough," Harry nodded. "But if you start looking peaky, I'm pulling rank and bringing you home."

She gave him a bit of a withering look, but he seemed so serious that she decided to accept it as concerned friendship and not Snape-like judgement. "Right, fine." She put up her hands. "I won't argue any more."

Ron and Harry, who still needed to get to work, left at quarter past ten with the promise to retrieve her the next evening barring any emergencies while Dark Wizard hunting.

Hermione tidied for a minute before she slugged herself back to her room to find her medicine. She gestured vaguely to the phonograph in the corner of the room, the only musical device she owned as CD players and radios were often confounded by the presence of magic. Ringo Starr's Magic picked up where Grow Old with Me left off. She dropped her robe lazily behind her on the foot of the bed and pulled her shirt up to look at her injury in the bathroom mirror. It was like an exotic flower, blue and purple, knut-sized magenta splotches here and there. It was tight when she breathed in deeply. Her heart still beat and her lungs still worked, so she didn't mind the pain while it healed. The medicine helped and the zingermint picked up the slack. She slathered on a generous palm of the cold gel, took a swig of her two potions, washed her hands, then cupped some water in her mouth to take her Muggle vitamins and rinse the taste of her medicine out of her mouth.

Hermione turned her head away from the mirror and her self-pity when she heard a knock on the door. She was expecting no one and had been hoping to crawl back into bed for a few hours, but she pulled her robe back on and walked into the living room. She opened the door to find George Weasley standing there, a large gift box in his hands and a smile on his face. "All right, 'Mione?"

"All right," she beamed. "What a surprise, come in," she waved. "You just missed Harry and Ron. Sorry about the pajamas," she frowned, looking down at herself and pulling her robe a bit more closed.

"Not at all! You're still recovering." He seemed to realize what time it was and asked hastily, "Sorry, is this a bad time? You probably want to rest, especially after seeing Harry and Ron."

"No," she assured. "I haven't got a single plan until tomorrow. Come in, sit down. Is that for me, or are you teasing?"

George handed her the gift box, purple and glittery with spangles and ribbon, and flashed a smile. "For you, a get-well-soon present."

She grinned and took it from him with a tiny excited squeak. Hermione went to the couch to sit and he joined her. She wiggled the lid up and off and out flew two tiny pink Fwoopers, their long tail feathers trailing behind them. In an explosion of sparkles, they flew up, away from each other, then dived to the center, and landed back in the box making the shape of a shimmering heart. Hermione laughed in delight. "However did you get them to do that?" she exclaimed. "Fwoopers are terribly stubborn."

"Oh, ten weeks and a lot of wand prodding will convince even the most surly of birds to do as they're told," he joked.

"It was beautiful, George, very impressive. Though it doesn't seem like much of a joke." She put the lid back on before the birds began to sing, as the Fwooper's song could cause the listener to go quite mad if left to go on for more than a minute or two.

"No joke," he assured. "This one's been a personal project of mine."

"It's really lovely. Thank you."

"Of course."

There was a brief moment of silence that went on a heartbeat too long, and Hermione laughed and asked, "Did you have breakfast yet? The boys left me so much food this morning."

"Oh, I'm alright, thanks. I just wanted to stop by and see if you needed anything. But you seem to be doing fine."

She smiled. "Well enough. Lots of pain potions. You know, I'm making Harry and Ron take me out tomorrow. The Hook and Swan, we decided, down the way, towards Notting Hill. It's Muggle. Do you know it?"

He nodded, "Oh, yes, I know it."

"Well, come by there tomorrow, around eight? Against my wishes, I think they're going to try to rope some of our work friends into coming out as well."

"Sounds good. You, er, probably are going with them, from here, I mean?"

She shrugged. "I suppose so. We hadn't really worked out the details."

"Right, well, I'll try to meet you all there. Thanks."

She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. "George, are you quite all right? You don't seem… You don't seem like yourself today. Sorry," she added, shaking her head.

He laughed, but not his usual amused laugh. He seemed to her to be holding back just a bit, but she couldn't discern why. "No, I'm fine, honestly. Listen, I'll leave you to your recovery and whatnot, right." He stood quickly, but turned back to her. "I'm glad you liked your gift," he smiled.

Hermione set the box down on the low table as she stood and she reached out to give George a hug. "Of course I did, it was so thoughtful." His arms came to rest gently around her so he would not squeeze her too tightly.

"I'll see you all tomorrow," he said, and let her go. She walked him the short distance to the door, let him out, and watched him walk halfway down the alley before apparating out of sight.

Hermione wasn't sure what seemed so off about her friend that morning, but thoughts of it came up the whole day. She decided she definitely needed a nap after all the mild excitement of the morning. She wondered about George as she drifted off to sleep on her couch, and when she woke she realized, much to her surprise, that he was still on her mind.