On Teenagers & Love
a story by anamatics, beta'ed by HyperCaz
Chapter Five - On Summer
Author's Notes: You guys are amazing! Thank you to everyone who reviewed. :) This story is complete as of now! I wanted everyone to enjoy it. Part two will be complete sometime in the near future. It's currently about as long as this section and I'm about halfway done. It takes place during Order of the Phoenix.
A word of warning for the story - there will be a good but of underage sexual content over the course of the story. Hermione is fifteen during Goblet of Fire and Fleur is seventeen, while they age up over the course of it, I feel it is necessary to warn the readership who might find such sexual situations triggering.
There are also some mentions of general World War Two history and aspects of the Holocaust.
"Put it on my life baby
I can make you feel right baby
I can't promise tomorrow
But I promise tonight"
-"Give Me Everything Tonight"
"Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string." – Self Reliance
Over the summer, Fleur writes Hermione. The letters are long, languid like the record heat of the summer and full of sinful words and descriptions of what Fleur longed to be able to do to Hermione's body. Fleur's grasp on the written form of the English language is fantastic, and the way that she weaves her words together makes Hermione moan into her pillow late at night. She feels foolish, curled around her pillow and a shirt that Fleur had loaned her after Hermione's got ruined in one of their misadventures, reading the letters by the light of her bedside table.
Her parents tell her to go to bed, knocking gently on the door to Hermione's bedroom at one or two in the morning as Hermione has yet to turn off her light. She can't. She can't turn away from Fleur's words. They're driving her wild, making her long to see Fleur again.
Her parents don't think much of it when she tells them that she wants to go to France. They tell her that they can't afford such a trip right now, and that's that. She can't visit Fleur, even if she goes by wizarding means. She doesn't pout, or feel sad, because that afternoon Fleur writes her telling her that she's going to be coming to London in two weeks for a meeting and a job interview.
I did not do this for you, Fleur's letter says, but rather for myself and for Cedric. You are the added bonus and incentive for me to get this job.
Hermione tells her that that is fantastic and she'll look forward to seeing her.
She's just sent Fleur's owl off when an owl arrives from the Weasleys inviting her to spend some time with them for the next few weeks. Ron is vague on the details in his letter but he calls Hermione from a payphone at the local drug store a few hours later and explains that they're not actually going to be at the Burrow, but at a different location that needs some serious help cleaning up and stuff and if she could please come as he needs the moral support as his mother is a right terror.
Hermione agrees to go, and resolves to simply tell Mrs. Weasley that she has to floo to London to see Fleur when the time is right. Mrs. Weasley of all people should be alright with her wanting to see Fleur. After all, Hermione being gay meant that she was not trying to sleep with Harry, or Viktor, or (certainly not) Ronald, and proved that everything Rita Skeeter had written about her in the newspapers had been falsehoods.
It sort of slips out that she is seeing someone over dinner one night before Mr. Weasley and Bill come to fetch her. She tells her parents that she can't help who she loves and her mother hugs her close. "We always knew," she says quietly, and Hermione is flabbergasted. She's only just become really sure of it herself – how could her parents have known?
When she asks her father says that she had simply never been interested in boys as anything other than friends and that Harry and Ron are clearly her heterosexual life partners (in crime and all other unmentionable things). Hermione sticks her tongue out at her father and he proceeds to ask her a lot of very awkward questions about Fleur.
Hermione is bright red and stumbling over her words when the smiling face of Bill Weasley appears at the door and she practically throws herself at him to escape. He laughs when she tells him to get her out of there and helps her father carry her trunk down from her bedroom. They set it down in the living room and he tells Hermione that he'll be right back for her as he vanishes with her trunk.
"I'll never get used to that," Hermione's father says quietly and Hermione nods her agreement.
"It's rather alarming, but I can't wait to learn how to do it," she says. She got her pillow under one arm and her book bag slung over her shoulder. Her father has given her far too many books to read (as usual) and she's resolved to at least attempt a few of them before the summer's out. "I've read all about it, but it sounds like the sort of thing you have to just do to learn, you know – like driving."
Hermione's father nods his agreement and Bill and Mr. Weasley return, the latter offering up some pumpkin bread that his wife had baked that morning. Hermione's mother takes it and Bill extends his arm. "Shall we?" he asks, and Hermione nods.
"I'll call you," she says to her parents. "Or write if that's easier, not entirely sure where we're going."
"Alright," they said, and Hermione feels a tug much akin to a Portkey pulling her by the base of her stomach towards a destination far away.
Number 12, Grimmauld Place, is a truly ghastly piece of architecture somewhere either in London or very close to it. There's a Tube Station just down the road and a convenience store that Hermione has already taken Ron to at least twice to sample muggle chocolate. Sirius Black is there, and Remus Lupin on occasion. She's even seen the real Mad-Eye Moody and Professor Snape once or twice. She's met more Aurors than she can count in the past few days, one of whom is Sirius' cousin, Nymphadora Tonks. She's an odd sort of person, but Hermione takes an instant liking to her sense of humor and easy smile. It makes it easier to know that to some of the occupants of the house at least, the world is not filled with doom and gloom. Still, it is very surreal, honestly, staying there, at the center of the resistance against Voldemort.
Bill tells her that back in the day, during Voldemort's first rise to power, the Order of the Phoenix had been the organization or record fighting against the Death Eaters. Hermione has read about them in books and thinks them fascinating, but finds the close-lippedness of the rest of the household with regards to the subject infuriating. Even Tonks seems to want to keep her mouth shut about things, which is odd because she will happily talk about anything under the sun with Hermione and Ginny. Mrs. Weasley says that they are far too young to be hearing about such things and Hermione points out to her than in less than a month and a half she'll be sixteen and that she is certainly mature enough to know at least some of what's going on, thank you.
That doesn't go over too well and Hermione spends the day hiding on the fourth floor with Buckbeak.
Hermione wants to write to Harry with all the details of what they're doing, but Dumbledore makes them promise to not tell him where they are or what they're doing. Ron protests and Hermione tries to see the logic in it and can't, but they both know that Dumbledore must have a plan or else he would not have asked.
Still, she hates the silence, hates lying to Harry. She helps Mrs. Weasley, Ginny and Sirius clean out bedrooms as a lot of people are staying in the house, and she plays chess with Ron in the evenings. He's getting so good now that she hardly sees the point any more – he can beat her in under five minutes and yet cannot apply this dedication and forethought to his schoolwork at all. She wants to shake him to sort out his priorities.
Ginny still goes to bed relatively early, and Hermione lights a candle and reads Fleur's letters late into the night. They are still full of the same sinful words that have been driving her to release since the beginning of summer, but Fleur has also become more closed-off about certain things that Hermione asks in her responses. Fleur won't tell her where the job interview is, but says that she's going to be staying with some friends for a few days in London after the interview. Hermione is annoyed at how vague she's being, and tells her so in her response.
Fleur tells her to wait and see.
Hermione can't really say that she is all that surprised when Fleur turns up at the next Order of the Phoenix meeting. She's watching from the second floor landing with Fred and George, while Ron has gone off to get something from his room, when the door opens. First Snape comes in, looking dark and menacing and generally unpleasant; they all back up so that he can't see them. Hermione knows that he has when he shoots a dirty black-eyed glare in their general direction before slamming the door to the kitchen behind him.
"Git," Fred mutters.
Dumbledore comes in a few moments later, with someone following close on his heels. Hermione peers forward, hoping it isn't Mad-Eye Moody (she doesn't think the footsteps sounds like his unique gait though), and sees a flash of pale blonde hair. Her face erupts into a smile and she's halfway down the stairs before George grabs her and tells her that she can't go down there – that Mrs. Weasley'll tear her head off and he doesn't want to be responsible for her untimely demise.
Hermione does not care, and she twists out of his grasp and continues down the stairs and into Fleur's arms. Dumbledore seems mildly taken aback, but nods to them both after a moment and sweeps his way into the kitchen, leaving the door open behind him. "Come along when you're ready, Ms. Delacour," he says. His eyes are twinkling like nothing Hermione has ever seen before and there's a wide smile on his face.
Fleur grins down at Hermione who is grinning right back at her.
"I can see why you were so vague," Hermione says quietly.
Fleur laughs at that, and kisses Hermione on the forehead. "'ou were not all zat forzcoming in 'our letters eizer, 'ermione."
She can't deny that, but she can't deny much of anything when Fleur spins her around and presses her up against the wall. There's something in the air now, full of pent-up longing and frustration, and when Fleur's lips crash down harshly on her own, Hermione cannot help but feel as though she's finally come home.
FIN
