A/N: Thank you all so much for your reviews, favorites and follows! Rodolphus is definitely hot and cold right now, but he's definitely working through some stuff right now. I am still working on reviewer responses from last chapter, but hopefully get to it today! You can follow me on tumblr (nauticalparamour) where I post sneak peeks, story updates and answer questions!

Please let me know what you thought of chapter twenty and be on the lookout for twenty-one soon!

June 1968

The owls started a week after they were back from school. Hermione was just getting settled into life with three boys once again, enjoying messy breakfasts with Will, Arthur and George. Will typically left early to go to his job, and Arthur always snuck off around mid morning to visit Molly, so that mostly left Hermione and George alone to the whims of Cedrella.

George wasn't a terrible companion. He mostly spent his summer indoors, catching up on reading for fun. Apparently, he had quite the taste for thriller novels and limited himself during the school year keep himself focused on his academics. He had quite the healthy pile of books that had accumulated.

This left Hermione with a startling amount of free time on her hands, and she found herself not enjoying it as much as she would have in the past. Cedrella had already dragged her along to two teas and a shopping trip seeing as Hermione had "nothing else to do" in the words of her foster mother. It wasn't that she didn't like spending time with Cedrella, just that it wasn't her ideal way to spend the summer.

So, the first day that she got an owl delivered to the Weasley home over breakfast, she had jumped for joy, thinking that it was from one of her girlfriends with a promise of a temporary freedom from the Weasleys. To see that it was actually from Rodolphus, a man who couldn't even be bothered to say goodbye to her in person, had her feeling annoyed and upset.

She ignored the first letter.

But then a second came, and then a third, and fourth, until he had sent her one every day and showed no signs of stopping. Cedrella was far too nosy not to say anything when an unknown owl dropped off a letter over one of their family breakfasts. "I must say, Bunny, you have grown exceptionally popular over the last few months," she said with a proud sort of tone. "Who has been writing to you so much?"

Hermione was flustered, unsure of what she should say, reading over Rodolphus's note asking her to please come meet him for lunch in one of the smaller restaurants in Diagon Alley.

Arthur must have noticed her inability to formulate a good enough lie, likely knowing exactly who it was really from, piped up. "Hermione made really good friends with a couple girls in her year. Fawn Fawcett, Lottie St. Clair and Elna Honig," he said, giving Hermione a small smile. "They were really close, so I am sure one of the girls has just been inviting Hermione over. Right?"

"Yes," Hermione said, feeling grateful. "Lottie is in a very serious relationship and wants to have some girl chat about her future," Hermione added, giving Cedrella a bright smile.

"Oh, Charlotte St. Clair - I believe her mother is Georgia Rowle...such a good family. They were shocked when she ran off with that St. Clair boy, but he has plenty of money, even if he is a muggleborn," Cedrella said with a gleeful tone that could only be had when she was sharing a bit of gossip. Then her face fell when she realized she was talking to Hermione. "Oh, no offense, Bunny."

"None taken," Hermione said with a tight smile.

"Well, of course you will go and visit her," Cedrella insisted. "I am sure that she is such a sweet girl. Give her my well wishes. You are of age, Hermione. You don't need to ask my permission to go and visit your friends for the day if you want to."

It appeared that the decision was made for her, and so Hermione wrote Rodolphus a quick response, agreeing to lunch with him. Then she retreated to her room to get ready for the day, realizing that this was one of the first times that Rodolphus would be able to see her in something out of the uniform. As she took the time to make sure that she looked her best, she could at least see the positives - Rodolphus was not trying to hide her away in some secret location. Instead, he was willing to go to lunch with her in the middle of Diagon Alley during the day, when tons of people might see them together.

Before she knew it, she was apparating away to Diagon Alley, and stepping into the restaurant. Rodolphus was easy to find, leaning back into his chair looking bored and utterly handsome. The second that his blue eyes found her form, he lit up, his face transformed by a slow smile. He stood from the table when she got to his side, wrapping her in a hug.

But, he quickly realized that she wasn't returning it. Slowly, he pulled back, noticing her frowning face. "Hermione? Is everything alright?" he asked, searching her face looking for something to give him a hint of what was wrong.

"Let's just sit down, shall we?" she answered, before taking the seat across from him. Suddenly, their public setting did not seem like such a positive. How was she supposed to be able to yell at him and be furious with him when there would be so many people watching? Was this the real reason why he had planned to meet there?

A waiter was by to take their drink orders, but then there was nothing to keep them from talking to one another. "What's the matter?" he asked, reaching across the table to squeeze her hand.

"You can't just be sitting there pretending like you don't know that I'm upset with you," Hermione said through clenched teeth, utterly baffled about why Rodolphus would be acting like there was nothing wrong. "You didn't even try to say goodbye to me before you left Hogwarts and then you just pretend like nothing is wrong."

"It wasn't like that -" Rodolphus insisted.

"And don't try to pretend like you didn't see me on the train," she hissed, knowing that they had made eye contact.

Rodolphus reached across the table to give her hand a squeeze. "I didn't mean to hurt you, but I was just...I got scared, thinking about us out here in the real world," he explained, his voice low. "I mean, you are insistent that I tell my family about you, and I know what my father would do not only to me, but to you, too...and I just panicked."

Hermione softened a bit. Although he certainly wasn't blameless, she could acknowledge that maybe she had pushed Rodolphus too far when she mentioned that he should tell his father about her. "You could have just told me that," she answered, keeping his eye contact.

"It is different, being out of the safety of Hogwarts," he said, his eyebrows pulled together. "Suddenly, I've got so many more people pulling me in different directions. But you are right - I should have told you and I should have said goodbye to you. I was a fool."

"I don't want to pull you in a direction that you don't want to go," Hermione said, biting at her lower lip, worrying that she was putting him in an impossible position. Yes, of course she really liked Rodolphus, much more than she cared to admit, but she didn't want to hurt him either. "Maybe it's better if we just go our separate ways," she continued, feeling a knot form in her throat. "This isn't sustainable."

"No!" Rodolphus squeezed her hands tighter, showing that he wasn't able to let her go. "I'm not ready to let you go, Hermione. These last few weeks without you haven't been torture."

"But what if someone finds out?" she asked, nervously looking around the restaurant, wondering if anyone would be reporting back to his father. She wondered just what Rodolphus had been thinking, bringing her here.

He frowned. "I want to be able to show you off," he explained. "But I don't think that I am ready to go completely public. Someday…someday I will be ready to stand up to my father and tell him to shove it, but, for now...I just want to keep you to myself."

Hermione swallowed, wondering what she should do about it. She didn't want to be with someone who was ashamed of her, but she also didn't think that Rodolphus was ashamed of who she was. Just, the timing was inconvenient. She wondered if she should tell him about Bellatrix's instructions on the train ride home…

"If you can't...if you can't put up with me and all my sneaking around, I would understand if you don't want to see me again…" he trailed off, shoulders visably drooping when her silence stretched on, perhaps certain that she was going to reject him.

But...she could admit that she was happier seeing him now than she had been in the last miserable week, wondering what had gotten into him. Maybe she could be content with just a summer fling, one last great romance before she returned to school and he relented to family pressure and married Bellatrix? Or, maybe he would really surprise her and actually choose her in the end.

Hermione really felt like she was setting herself up for failure, but at the same time she wondered what she had to lose. She was growing increasingly frustrated with Dumbledore's progress on getting her to her correct time, and it was making her feel reckless - wanting to throw all caution to the wind.

"I want to see you again," she confessed. "So much more than I should, Rodolphus. I feel like this is the worst decision that I could be making, but… I'm not ready to let go of you either. I just ask that you don't hurt me too badly in the end."

He shook his head. "I will do everything in my power to make sure that I don't hurt you again," he promised - so earnestly, that Hermione found herself actually believing him. "As I see it, I've got all summer to make it up to you for acting like such an idiot these last few weeks."

Hermione blushed, unsure of what he was suggesting. "That's not necessary," she told him.

"I don't know, you might enjoy it - nights and weekends at my flat…" he said, enjoying the pink color of her cheeks. "Sneaking away to France. I know that you won't be impressed by a shopping trip, but who doesn't want to bask in the sunlight on the beach?"

She could admit that all of those things did sound wonderful. "Maybe a trip to a museum, too?" she asked, imagining whiling away the day with Rodolphus's hand in hers while she looked at statues, spending their evenings talking about what they'd seen in a little tucked away bistro. She wondered if he'd be willing to venture into the muggle world with her.

With their relationship at least decided for the moment, the young couple spent the rest of their lunch talking about all the possibilities that summer held for the two of them. It wasn't long before Rodolphus had talked Hermione into coming over to visit his flat the next week - something she eagerly agreed to, all the while wondering how she was going to convince the Weasleys to let her go. Somehow, she didn't think Arthur was going to be so helpful a second time.

The bill finally came and it was time for Rodolphus to head back to his job at the Ministry, which he insisted was as utterly boring as he'd predicted it would be. He lead her outside the restaurant, before pulling her down a near alley. Pressing her back against the cobblestone, his lips found her as easily as ever, coaxing her lips open so that he could deepen the kiss into something nearly too indecent for public. Hermione rubbed against him like a cat, wondering how she was ever going to give him up.

When he pulled away, he gave her his signature half smile, half smirk. "I don't know how that's meant to hold me over until I see you next, Hermione, but it will have to do," he said. "See you in a week."