Double Take
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter including characters, places, and other stuff.
It was four years after the Great War between Harry Potter and the Dark Lord, the epic battle of good verses evil. All the men and women who had a place in this battle had since moved on with their lives and have started working in the now safe world. This included Hermione Granger, who now lived with her boyfriend Viktor Krum and worked as a healer at St. Mundago's. She tended her patients with every respect and soon became a favorite amongst the staff and the patients.
Hermione had not seen her old friend's for quite some time now and she thought her life was pretty good with Viktor, who was a full time Quittich star now. She went about her day in a querulous routine and at night spent time with her boyfriend. She always felt like something was missing in her life, and yet she could never place her finger on it.
One day Hermione was going around and checking the patients when she was called by an emergency signal, which proclaimed the incoming of a particularly unfortunate victim had arrived at the hospital. Hermione jogged to see what all the commotion was about and saw a man laying on a gurney moaning in pain.
His face had a large cut that slashed from his forehead to his chin, and his clothes were shredded to pieces. She ran to the doctor standing near by to ask what had happened to this man.
"He is an auror, he was in a special case and was attacked by a dragon, he is lucky to even be alive. The dragon slashed across his face, some dragons had poisonous claws, he is in a very critical condition." Hermione covered her mouth in shock and stared down at the remains of this poor fellow.
She suddenly looked at his face and noticed something familiar about his, but she could not quite place it, she would have to wait until the wounds in his face had healed. She quickly helped push him into a room and gave him a potion to ease the pain. The doctor then gave him another potion to knock him out and using his wand he stitched up all the wounds while carefully directing the needle and thread.
Hermione looked at the face once more, but still could not place it. She asked the doctor his name and they said all they knew was he was Auror 39. Hermione made sure everything she needed to do at the hospital was complete and with one more check on the mangled man she apparated to her and Viktor's apartment.
The town house sat off a major street in Diagon Alley and as she walked to it, Hermione waved to neighbors and other wizards who she knew before entering. She walked into the foyer and placed her jacket and purse down on a coffee table, still thinking about the man in the hospital.
"Hello my love, how was your day?" Viktor walked over to her and gave her a kiss on her cheek.
"Oh the usual, but we got an interesting case toward the end of my shift." Hermione continued to tell him about the Auror and how she knew there was something so familiar about him.
"Maybe an old face from Hogwarts?" He suggested.
"Hhhmmm… maybe?" She walked into the kitchen and leaned against the counter with a confused look on her face. Viktor walked up behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist, and whispered in her ear.
"How about you let me take your mind off that right now?" Hermione turned around with a smile on her face and wrapped her arms around his thick shoulders. "Sounds perfect," the twinkle in her eye directed strait at him.
Viktor responded by giving feather light kisses starting at her neck and worked his way to her mouth. Hermione smiled to herself. Viktor could always make her feel better, well mostly. Suddenly she was pulled away into a distant memory of when Ron would kiss her like this.
It had been a year and a half since she had last seen her best friends. After the war Hermione and Ron had tried to make it work, they lived together for a while very happily, but then Hermione was forced to move closer to the hospital and Ron had started auror training, slowly fading from Hermione's life and becoming obsessed with work and training.
Hermione also was in healer training, after much deliberation she had decided that making people happier and saving lives was what she would be good at. Harry was also in auror training and when he wasn't he spent every moment with Ginny, soon she was going weeks without talking to either one of the two.
Hermione found herself lonely and depressed one night at the Leaky Cauldron when who should step in but Viktor Krum. He noticed her right away and after a couple drinks and some catching up Hermione accepted an invitation to a date that weekend with him. One thing led to another and she was spending most of her time with Viktor. She soon asked him to move in and they had been happy ever since.
Hermione still wondered about her old friends and was tempted to write them a letter right then, but she was scared they would think she had abandoned them after the years because she never tried to capture their attention once again.
Her life had seemed to come to a stop when she was around Viktor and she loved the way he made her feel, she knew it was not the true love she had never admitted to herself she had with Ron, but it was the next best thing.
Although he was shy, he sure had a way with words when he spoke and how he always reminded her of her beauty made her feel amazing inside. He was a strong and loving man who was capable of supporting her and caring for her.
Anyone who saw the look Viktor gave Hermione knew he was deeply and truly in love with Hermione and he showed it in every way possible, even little things like making her her favorite breakfast or smelling her hair to make sure she was even there when her back was turned. He always thought she was too good to be true and if he looked away, she would be gone.
Hermione snapped back to reality and looked upon the man who held her so tight and called her his love. She knew he was more in love with her then she with him, but at the moment that didn't matter and she knew in the long run she would return the feelings with as much force as he wanted.
She wrapped her legs around his waist and he carried her into their bedroom, gently laying her on the bed. From pleasure came sleep and sleep came awakening with Hermione entangled with Viktor. She smiled at herself and thought of how she never wanted to leave this moment right now, wrapped in a man's arms who made her feel like she was the most important thing in the world.
Suddenly she remembered the man lying in the hospital, wrecked to pieces. She hoped he had felt this way before, now in his greatest time of need she hoped their was a woman sitting by his side telling him he was as handsome as ever and she would always love him.
Hermione knew now that if she had been maimed by a dragon Viktor would be sitting by her telling her it was only a scratch and she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, because to him she was the most beautiful thing in the world even with a shattered face. He would care for her long into his late years and let her know that someone still saw her as a human and not just the woman attacked by the poisonous dragon.
The image of the poor man popped into her head and she thought of something that didn't really occur to her before, the man had the reddest hair that she had only seen on one person ever in her life.
Hermione flew up like a bullet with a hand covering her mouth, she had just realized how she had known this person. She had gone to school with this man for seven years, he had been her best friend, her lover, and totally Ron Weasly…