Hermione hurried along the path to Tomes and Scrolls. As she was leaving the Owlery, it had started to rain, forcing her to hurry back to Gryffindor Tower and retrieve cloak. A quick glance at her watch told her she had half an hour to browse. She looked around as she pulled her hood off. The shop was quiet, with only a few students here and there. Hermione nodded to them as she browsed the shelves.
She pulled a book with an emerald green cover from the shelf and read the title. Wizarding Britain in the 1940s was quite heavy, but Hermione was intrigued by the title. She hadn't covered either of the world wars in school because she would have been at Hogwarts already, but she had discussed it with her parents many times and also with Annabel. Just because she was a witch didn't mean she was going to forget her muggle heritage nor two of the darkest events in human history. Making up her mind she made her way to the counter and placed the book on the counter.
The clerk peered at the book, then up at Hermione. "That's an interesting choice you've made, we don't get a lot of students interested in history," she commented as she rang up Hermione's purchase.
"I'll read just about anything I can get my hands on, I've been that way since I was a little girl," Hermione chuckled as she passed over some money to the clerk.
"Well that's good, books are wonders, and we find ourselves in them. If you're interested we'll be getting a shipment of books in from Germany next week," the clerk said as she put Hermione's book in a bag.
"I'll keep that in mind, thank you," said Hermione. Waving good-bye, she pulled her hood up over her head before venturing outside. The rain had gotten worse while she had been in the bookstore; Hermione clutched her book against her and bowed her head as she ran to The Three Broomsticks. As she pulled open the door and stepped inside, she crashed right into someone and fell backwards.
"Oh I'm so sorry!" She exclaimed as she landed on the floor.
"Are you okay, Hermione? And what are you apologizing for, you're the one on the floor," Parvati Patil pointed out as she held out a hand. Hermione grasped it and let Parvati pull her to her feet.
"I'm fine, thank you. I just wanted to get out of the rain and I didn't look where I was going. And I'm late to meet Ron and Hermione and Ginny for lunch," Hermione said as she lowered her hood and unclasped her cloak.
"What time were you supposed to meet them?" Parvati asked. Hermione glanced at her watch and saw it was only five after twelve.
"I was supposed to meet them at twelve. You haven't seen them have you?" she asked. Parvati shook her head.
"No, I've been here for an hour and I haven't seen them. Why don't you come and sit with me and Padma and Lavender and Katie and Cho while you wait for them?" Parvati offered. Hermione nodded.
"I'd like that, thank you." Hermione followed Parvati back to her table where the other girls were sitting.
"Look who I ran into at the bar," Parvati announced as she and Hermione stopped at the table. The other girls smiled at Hermione.
"How are you, Hermione? Been to the bookstore I see," Padma said, eyeing the bag as Hermione took a seat. Hermione nodded as she unfastened her cloak and draped it over the chair.
"Yeah, it's something I just prefer to do on my own. Harry and Ron and Ginny don't really enjoy waiting for me to pick a book because I can take a long time so I finally just told them I would go on my own. And I'm good, thank you," Hermione said. Just then one of the servers approached Hermione and asked what she would like to drink. After asking for a hot tea with lemon and honey, Hermione checked her watch. It was now 12:30 and she couldn't see any hide or hair of her two best friends and closest girlfriend.
"Are we keeping you?" Lavender asked. Hermione shook her head, trying not to feel as though she had been forgotten.
"Not at all, it's just, um, I was supposed to meet the boys and Ginny here at 12 and they're half an hour late," Hermione confessed as the server came back with her drink. After thanking her, Hermione took a sip of the hot tea, feeling its warmth seep through her.
"Oh! Well, since its half past noon, why don't we all order some lunch and maybe they will turn up," Lavender suggested, feeling bad for the girl sitting opposite her. The other girls nodded and all picked up a menu. After ordering their food, Cho, who had been quiet since Hermione joined the group, sidled her chair over to her. Hermione looked over at her and gave her a friendly smile.
"So, Harry and Ginny are still going strong then?" she asked quietly. Hermione nodded. Cho gave a sad smile. "I really blew my chance with him, didn't I? I shouldn't have been so emotional," Cho said, referring to the brief relationship that she and Harry had shared the previous year. Hermione shook her head as she swallowed her tea.
"Cho, you were going through a really rough time. If you weren't so emotional after Cedric's death, I would have been concerned," Hermione said.
"I know, I just . . . well I wish I hadn't acted the way I did. I was actually really jealous of you, I thought that you and Harry seemed really close and I guess I saw you as a rival for his affections," Cho admitted.
"Don't worry, it's in the past. And Harry and I have always had more of a brother-sister relationship. He started liking you in third year, when Gryffindor and Ravenclaw played each other. Um, I hope you won't be offended by this, but maybe it's a good thing the relationship didn't work out. I know you were having a really tough time with Cedric's passing and then your feelings for Harry complicated things. I think you needed some time to grieve and let your heart heal. I hope that didn't sound too harsh," Hermione finished. To her relief, Cho didn't look offended at all, in fact she seemed thoughtful.
"I never looked at it that way. I think you're right though; I shouldn't have jumped into another relationship so soon after Cedric, I should have given myself some time. And maybe Harry and I would have been together and happy now," Cho said as their food arrived. Hermione smiled sympathetically at the other girl and squeezed her hand.
"Don't dwell on the past, you can't move forward if you keep looking back," she said.
"Wow, Hermione, everything you said was really insightful. How did you get so good at talking about feelings and relationships?" asked Katie. Hermione and Cho both started, they had been so engrossed in their conversation they hadn't even noticed that the other girls were paying attention. Hermione blushed, they were all looking at her expectantly.
"Um, well, my Mum has a bunch of psychology books from some of the courses she took in university, and when I became a teenager, she gave them to me to read. She knows that the adolescent years can be rocky and challenging, so she hoped by giving them to me they would be less so. Plus whenever I read something and had questions she would talk about it with me," Hermione explained. She took a bite of her fish. Lavender opened her mouth to ask another question, but Padma stopped her.
"Girls, if we keep asking Hermione questions, all of our food will be cold. Why don't we hold the questions until after lunch?" she suggested. The other girls nodded and dug into their food. As Hermione was finishing the last of the chips on her plate, the door to the pub opened. Twisting around in her seat, Hermione saw that it wasn't her friends. Disappointed, and now a little angry, she turned back to face her companions.
"They're really late, aren't they? It's after 1 now and they said they'd be here at 12," Lavender said. She'd caught the look on Hermione's face and was starting to feel angry on Hermione's behalf.
"Yeah, I don't know if they're just running behind or if they've head back to the castle already," said Hermione. The other girls looked sympathetic.
"Well, I think this calls for a round of chocolate fudge sundaes," Cho said as she raised her hand to signal the server. Hermione smiled gratefully at Cho. She would deal with her friends later; right now she was going to enjoy the afternoon.
While Hermione was sitting in the Three Broomsticks, Harry, Ron, and Ginny were in the Quidditch Shop.
"Do you think Dumbledore and McGonagall gave Hermione permission to go to the cheerleading thing?" Ron asked as they browsed through the store.
"I hope not, she shouldn't get to leave school for the Easter holidays, she's supposed to be staying with us," Ginny said.
"But if her cousin needs her for the competition . . ." Harry started to say.
"So? They can't find another girl for it? Hermione's a witch, not a muggle and she belongs in this world. Also don't you think it's weird that this is the first we've heard about a cousin or any of her family other than her parents?" Ginny argued.
"Gin, come on. Hermione's allowed to have contact with her muggle relatives and may I remind you that she has muggle heritage? Don't you think it's important that she stays in touch with that side of her?" Harry said as he checked his watch.
"Blimey, its 1:00 already, we were supposed to meet Hermione an hour ago!" he said. The three of them bolted out the door and hurried down the road to the pub, hoping Hermione would still be there.
Hermione and the other girls had finished their sundaes and were getting ready to leave. As Hermione clasped her cloak around her, she was surprised to find that she was enjoying herself in the company of the other girls. While they had been eating their sundaes the girls had asked her to explain what psychology was and wondered why they didn't have a class like that at Hogwarts.
"So let me see if I get this right. Psychology is the study of people and what makes them tick? Why they act the way they do?" Padma checked as they exited the pub. Hermione nodded.
"Yes. There are different sides of it, a technical side and a people side. The people side is definitely easier for me to understand than the technical, actually," Hermione admitted.
"Why don't we head back up to the castle and find a quiet place to talk more? I don't know about you guys but I'm enjoying this," said Parvati. The other girls voiced their agreement and they set off towards the castle. Five minutes later Harry, Ron and Ginny skidded to a stop in front of the pub. After taking a moment to catch their breath, they entered the pub and looked around to see if they could see Hermione.
"She's not even here, maybe she stayed at the bookstore and lost track of time?" Ron suggested. The other two shrugged as they surveyed the room.
"We might as well sit down, she'll turn up eventually," said Ginny. The three of them settled at a table and Madame Rosmerta came over to take their drink orders.
"You haven't seen Hermione have you?" Harry asked as the landlady finished writing down their orders.
"You just missed her, she left about ten minutes ago with a group of girls from the school," Rosmerta answered, raising her eyebrows at the trio. She'd overheard part of Hermione's conversation with Parvati and had seen the young girl's disappointed and angry look earlier when she turned around to see if it was her friends at the door.
"She was supposed to wait for us! How rude," Ginny huffed. Rosmerta looked at her.
"She showed up here right at twelve when the three of you were supposed to meet her. I'd say the three of you were the rude ones; knowing you were supposed to meet her at noon and showing up an hour late. If anything you should be happy that she had people to have lunch with," Rosmerta admonished them before walking away.
Harry and Ron looked at each other uncomfortably while Ginny just looked miffed.
"Who does she think she is? Telling us what to do," Ginny grouched as their drinks arrived.
"No, she's right. We should have been here at noon like we said we would. We'll apologize to Hermione when we get back to the common room," Ron said. Harry nodded in agreement.
"Well what about the fact that she had lunch with other people, who were they anyways?" Ginny questioned, refusing to let the topic go.
"Ginny, for God's sake, Hermione is sixteen, almost seventeen. She can have lunch with other people if she wants. In fact if she's hanging around with other people in our year, that's a good thing, having more friends is never a bad thing. Especially if you didn't have any like I did before I came to Hogwarts," Harry snapped. While he'd put his past behind him for the most part, he couldn't quite shake the feelings of loneliness and sadness he'd felt when he had been in primary school and no one wanted to be friends with him because they were all too terrified of Dudley's gang.
Fortunately his rant seemed to have taken some of Ginny's bluster out. She stared down at her hands. Their food arrived then and they spent half an hour longer in the pub before settling their tab.
"Is there anywhere else we want to go? Or should we head up to the castle?" Ron asked as they left the pub.
"Let's go back to the castle and find Hermione and apologize," Harry said. The other two nodded and they made their way back to Hogwarts. Once they'd arrived back at the castle and put their purchases in their dorms, they met back downstairs in the common room.
"I don't see her anywhere; maybe she's in the library?" Ron suggested. Neville, who was passing by them, shook his head.
"I figured she'd be with you lot. I haven't seen her all afternoon," he said. Puzzled, Harry and Ron turned to Ginny.
"Any ideas where she might be?" Ron asked. Ginny shook her head as she settled down with a magazine.
"Let's just leave it; she might be in Hogsmeade still. We can apologize to her at dinner," she said flippantly as she opened the magazine and settled down to read. Harry and Ron exchanged a look, from what they could tell Ginny was still stinging from the reproach that Rosmerta had given them and was a bit jealous that Hermione was spending time with her fellow students. As they sat down and began a game of wizard's chess, they couldn't have guessed that Hermione was in the Room of Requirement and laughing her head off.
Author's note: Boom! Chapter 2! I apologize for the wait, I've had some stuff going on and I just didn't have the time to sit down and write this. I'm hoping to have Chapter 3 up by Friday. What did you guys think of Hermione's lunch with the girls? Her conversation with Cho? I've always felt that Harry and Cho could have been a couple eventually, or at the very least could have stayed friends. Thanks so much for all your support, I'm glad people are enjoying this story Till next time, Xoxo. P.S. I'm sorry for the lack of Draco, but don't worry, he'll make an appearance in the next chapter ;)