13.

THE YEAR THEY WENT BEACH

July 2nd, 2013.

"Did you know you're the most beautiful woman in the world?"

Hermione giggled. "Shut it. You're only saying that so I'll get up and make the coffee."

"No," said Ron, grinning as he pushed himself out of bed with pained grimace, "I'm just telling you that before I get up to make the coffee."

She feigned disbelief. "Really? Ron Weasley making coffee at half eight in the morning? Say it isn't so!"

"Believe it, my love," he smiled, pulling on a t-shirt.

She watched as he flashed her a wink and limped from the room before she rolled over and grinned into the pillow. There was no denying they were on a high that weekend. Yes, the past year had been hard, one of the hardest of their marriage but she couldn't help hope that maybe, just maybe, they'd come through the other side of it.

Could she really be blamed, after all? For giving in? It was so much easier, so much less dramatic and intense. There was, had always been, a sort of quiet happiness to their relationship, outside of the painful parts. It was obvious that Hermione had just been too stubborn to see it, to give in to it and let it move through her. She didn't understand why she was always so determined to butt up against her reality. She'd been doing it her entire life. Chronic dissatisfaction her mother called it, the propensity to always wish for something bigger, something better than what she was experiencing, always thinking that she was being cheated out of some ultimate happiness that everyone but her had found and embraced.

Now, she was replete with acceptance, was entirely happy to sink into the warm, comfortable sleepiness of her marriage. Because she'd realised it was up to her. Up to her not to snap, not to get caught up in the little things, not to fight with her husband.

Of course, there was a sort of distant, quiet space of her mind that told her she was dabbling in denial, but for the most part she'd become quite adept at ignoring that voice. What else could she do? She was being pulled in two different directions, and the future she saw for herself should she allow that voice to pull her over to its side wasn't what she wanted for herself, wasn't something she felt she could face.

She just wasn't strong enough. And that was a hard reality to face, that she couldn't bring herself to listen to that deeper instinct because it was too terrifying, too hard, because she was too weak.

Hermione did not like to think of herself as weak. Who did? So she ignored that part of herself that knew, that perceived her weakness. Because it was easier. Because she really did think that ignoring it was in her best interests.

The way her mind worked really was fascinating though. When she stopped to think of all she'd done in the past thirty four years of her life, the way she'd been, how her character had unfolded, there were times when she could not help but fall silent in awe. There was nothing else for it.

The experiences she'd had were huge compared to how she watched other people live their lives. Other people seemed breezy, seemed contented with their own special brands of normality. But she'd never been like that had she? In fact, without realising it, she'd always sort of gone out of her way to keep her life as exciting and intense as possible, a nastier side effect of that being that whenever it became something that she might have considered dull, she grew restless and sad. And she couldn't decide whether she thought this was a bad thing or a good thing, to always seek excitement and intensity. Nonetheless, it had been a revelation she'd come to in the past few months, she'd begun to realise certain things about herself and how she operated. And she was glad to have come to that, but she'd begun to have a sneaking, irksome feeling that she really didn't have as much control over herself as she might have thought, which made things a bit hard seeing as she was so driven by her need to control everything in her life.

Perhaps that's what her lesson was with Ron, she'd had to learn to give in, to go with the flow, to allow life to take her where it wanted to without fighting the pull.

And Ron was a pull.

There was no denying that they were nicer to each other now than they had been before. And there was a sense of fun in that too, because every single time one of them did something particularly affectionate or considerate, such as Ron had just done by getting up to make the coffee, the other was always surprised and delighted. Hermione tried to ignore some of the darker implications of that situation and instead allowed herself to go ahead and feel as delighted and surprised as she wanted to.

It felt easier that way.

And it was easy to ignore it for the most part. That wasn't a task that had proven difficult. She'd had too much to distract her.

For one, she now owned Flourish and Blotts, and quietly, she ran it quite a bit better than Graham ever had so business was, as they say, booming. She'd worked at it up to the point that she could hire other people to work at it for her. Which is what she'd done. Now, she allowed other people whom she trusted to run the shop while she worked at the counter, which is really what she'd always wanted to do anyway. She didn't want to deal with printers and suppliers and advertisers. She just wanted to read and talk to people about books. Which is what she did.

She had also spent a considerable amount of time helping Ron with his recovery. The previous year's battle that had taken Ron, Harry, Draco, Bo and Blaise away from their families for a week had not had any particularly unfortunate consequences aside from Ron's injury. He'd taken a curse to his upper thigh that had essentially killed his leg. Hermione had thought they would have to take it off but luckily, she was underestimating wizarding medicine.

But, even after just under a year, it still wasn't quite right and still pained her husband most of the time. However, Ron seemed happy to have a war wound and wore it with pride.

Her children were also absorbing a fair amount of her time and energy as children are prone to do. Hugo had discovered walking and nouns and how fun it was to pull things and prod things and break things. He was an inquisitive sort of child who needed to test out the things he was told. For instance, it wouldn't work for Hermione to tell him not to touch the fire because it was hot and would hurt him, no, he absolutely had to discover it for himself. There was no two ways about it. She just had to make sure he didn't do anything to seriously injure himself in the process. Rose, on the other hand, was much more of a handful if that were possible. She seemed almost unusually over emotional and naturally, Hermione blamed herself and only herself for this deficit in her daughter. Aside from that though, Rose was growing and developing beautifully and her intelligence was almost tantamount to the level Hermione's had been at when she'd started at Hogwarts. Her daughter had a quick, sharp mind and Hermione couldn't help thinking that that sharpness, that propensity towards cunning, might land Rose in Slytherin. Hermione was trying hard to consider this as a good thing.

But she wasn't supposed to be thinking of all of that. Not on her holiday.

As she lay there in bed, her legs sprawled out and twisted in the sheets, she began to hear the rest of the house stirring. No doubt because the sounds of Ron in the kitchen were beginning to permeate the downy sleepiness that had previously quieted all the rooms.

They were in Torquay, in the south of England. It had been Ginny's idea, to enjoy the summer by renting an expansive and luxurious house by the beach that year. Hermione had felt sceptical at first, not knowing how she felt about being sequestered into a house with a fair hunk of the tovarasi and their children for a week. But after they'd bundled the kids and all their relevant paraphernalia across the floo network and into their new, temporary home; once they'd settled in and unpacked and been down to stand with their feet in the sand and grin dopily at each other about the breathtaking beauty of the ocean, she'd relaxed.

Of course, she was disappointed that their group had ended up being so small. When the idea had first been raised, they'd wanted to have the entire tovarasi present, make it a proper holiday for all of them. But only Harry, Ginny, Bo, Isobel, Ron, Hermione, Draco and Astoria had been able to get time off work.

It was a strange combination. Somehow the group that had gathered there that week had ended up being comprised of only the most fiery personalities of the tovarasi, the most emotionally volatile. Hermione felt as if the air around the house was buzzing with intensity of all their combined personas. She knew that the holiday could only go one of two ways, either they'd all fall into each other's gleeful, jovial moods and spend the week on a manic sort of high, or they'd descend into heavy handed drama.

But she'd just have to wait and see. And until either eventuality unfolded, she was happy to simply lie, sweating and sighing, twisted in the sheets of the queen bed in her and Ron's room.

Perhaps, if she could summon up the motivation, she'd go for a walk along the beach later, or collapse on the sand with a book. Right then though, there was no way she was getting out of that bed.

Hermione sighed contentedly and closed her eyes.

Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud. "MUM!" Thud, thud, thud. "MUM! Wake up!"

Thud, scuffle, bang, crash. Silence…

Knock, knock, knock.

Hermione pressed her face into the pillow, fighting the urge to hurl it at the closed door on which Rose was knocking.

"Mum?" came her daughter's voice timidly.

"Yes, darling?" Hermione answered after a moment's pause.

The door opened a crack and Rose's little face peered through carefully.

"Have you got clothes on?" asked Rose in a stage whisper.

Hermione chuckled and threw back the sheets to reveal her pyjamas. Rose had learnt a rather valuable lesson about knocking a few weeks previously when she'd burst headlong in on Ron and Hermione entangled in a rather intimate position. Hermione had been mortified, Ron had been embarrassed and Rose had thought the whole thing was hilarious and now made a show of knocking before she entered any room be it the kitchen, the living room or the garage, much to her parents humiliation. This was humiliating because their daughter had also seemed to feel it was necessary to tell anyone who would listen why she did this.

Rose bounded into the room and hurled herself onto the bed, wrapping her arms around her mother's waist.

"Harry says we can go to the beach when you get up," said Rose.

"Did he now?" Hermione replied lazily, making a show of relaxing back into the pillows and closing her eyes.

"Mum!" her daughter pouted dramatically, "If we don't go now we might miss the sun!"

"It's nine thirty in the morning!" Hermione exclaimed indignantly with a glance at the clock by the bed.

"I know that!" Rose responded, using a tone meant to convey just how stupid she thought the person she was speaking to was that she'd learnt directly from Hermione. "That only gives us…" her face screwed up in concentration for a few seconds, "Seven hours before the sun goes down! Seven hours!"

"Alright. I'm beginning to grasp the urgency of the situation now," said Hermione wryly, "I'll get up."

Rose gave a cry of delight and leapt off the bed to careen straight back out into the hallway. Hermione heaved herself into a sitting position and had barely swung her legs over the side of the mattress when Rose's face appeared yet again in the doorway.

"Mum? Can you make French toast for breakfast?"

Hermione laughed as Rose disappeared again without waiting for her answer.

A few minutes later she trudge downstairs and into a kitchen alive with her friends and family.

She was surprised, it wasn't like her to be the last one up.

"Behold!" cried Harry in mock horror, "It has emerged! Watch out kids, she can be as unpredictable as a wild hippogriff when she's just woken up! The proper procedures must be observed!"

The gathered throng of children that comprised of Rose, Hugo, Scorpius, Nikki, James, Albus and Lily, all giggled along with Hermione as Harry approached her tentatively, hands held up in a placating gesture.

"First," he told the kids, "You must bow low. I know it's scary but you've got to show her the back of your neck otherwise she'll get offended and you don't want that."

Harry bowed low, making a show of shaking in his boots in apparent terror. Hermione continued to giggle.

He slowly raised himself back into an upright position. "Now, she if you've caught her on a good day, she should bow back and you can approach carefully. If she doesn't… well… we'll take a leaf from Hagrid's book and deal with that when it comes to it."

Harry looked at her warily, waiting.

Hermione took a second to make a show of considering whether she should bow or attack him. She was heavily feeling the latter.

"Mum!" cried Rose happily, "Come on! Bow!"

Hermione rolled her eyes and swept her body into a low, extravagant bow.

That had been a mistake.

Within moments, all of the kids and Harry were on top her, giggling, tickling and pulling her hair.

By the time she finally managed to fight them all off, Astoria strode into the room and laughed at Hermione, sprawled on the floor with her curls dangling all about her faces in odd peaks and horns.

"What's all this?" she asked.

"Oh nothing," said Harry matter-of-factly as he attempted to catch his breath, "Just teaching the kids here how to deal with an angry hippogriff."

Astoria chuckled. "That's a little unfair. Hermione's far worse than an angry hippogriff."

Hermione glared jovially up at her friend from the floor.

"My dad," said Scorpius suddenly, his voice laced with worldly pride, "Once fought off a hippogriff!"

Hermione, Harry, Ron and Ginny all turned slowly to look humorously at Draco who was sitting at the dining table, Daily Prophet in one hand and a cup of tea, half way to his mouth in the other. There was a moment of loaded silence.

"Did he now?" said Harry, eye brows raised at his friend, looking as if he was trying very hard not to laugh.

"Yeah!" said Scorpius, oblivious to the predicament he'd just landed his father in, "In third year at Hogwarts!"

"And did your Dad land himself with any long lasting injuries from this gruesome encounter?" asked Ginny drolly.

"Yeah," said Ron wryly, "Any vicious, puckered scars?"

Scorpius thought about this for a moment before stating, "Nope. I don't think the hippogriff got a hit in."

The whole room exploded in raucous laughter as Draco took a delicate sip of his tea and nodded at his son. "Thanks mate."

July 5th, 2013.

It was so difficult to concentrate on her book with the swell of the waves in her ears, the afternoon sun beating on her legs and back as the salt of the water dried her skin smooth and her hair swept lazily across the exposed flesh of her shoulder blades in the wind.

All was silent bar the sounds of the elements and her own voice narrating in her head as her eyes devoured the words in front of her.

Finally silent.

After only three days spent in a house full of screaming, laughing children, Hermione had begun to feel as if she might go mad. Of course, none of the adults were getting enough sleep, considering that every night after the kids had gone to bed, they'd seize the opportunity and while away the balmy hours of the night sitting on the deck consuming copious amounts of red wine. Then, they'd be woken up in the morning at the crack of stupid after having only snatched a few hours' sleep by hungry, excitable children who wanted to begin their days of yelling and playing and breaking things. There was no hope of having a quiet one either, no hope of disappearing in the late hours of the afternoon for a cheeky nap or wander up the beach. No, the day had to be filled with activities and day trips and food preparation.

That day though, Hermione had seized the opportunity to have some respite. The others had all decided to go and check out a beach a few kilometres away. They'd begged her to go with them, spouting prose about stunning, gleaming sand, turquoise blue water, cliffs peppered with veins of iron and quartz lining the beach. But she'd simply stated that it was a beach with water and sand and wind, just like the one they were currently sitting on and that she'd rather have the time on her own. Even in the face of Rose's clear disappointment and Ron's chilly reassurances that he was totally ok with her staying behind. She just didn't have another day trip in her.

She didn't even have it in her to read her book really, she just wanted to lie there and smile at the brilliant blue of the sky.

So she did.

Hermione whiled away an enjoyable hour doing this. Her mind was blank, she wasn't thinking or planning, she was simply being, meditating on her own existence in that very moment.

She had to remind herself sometimes to do that, to simply enjoy exactly where she was. Because no matter what problems arose in her life or what stresses were waiting for her at home, it didn't matter whether she thought she was too crazy or too fat or a bad mother or a terrible friend, none of that could change the fact that the ocean looked particularly breathtaking in that moment.

And it was important for her, she thought, that she take a moment to really notice it. Properly. To let go of the future and the past and see exactly where she was.

To do that felt like a release, a relief.

But her peace could not continue unabated and it was not long before a crack of apparition rent the air around her, making her jump.

She sighed and groaned, waiting for the sounds that had drilled through her head for the past three days to drift down to her position on the beach from the house behind her.

But the sounds did not come. Instead, a few minutes later, a body dropped onto the sand beside her with a contented sigh.

Hermione held up her hand to shield her eyes from the sun so that she could ascertain who her new companion was.

She discovered it was Draco.

"Hello," she said with a surprised smile. "Are the others following you?"

He shook his head and sank back onto his back gratefully beside her. "Nope. They've found a restaurant they want to have dinner at. I said I'd come back and see if you wanted to come along."

"Absolutely not," Hermione responded, grinning.

"Yeah, didn't think so."

Her eyes wandered back to her book when Draco did not seem moved to say anything more. For a while he stayed silent while she read and they were happy there. Simply to be in one another's company without pain or drama or confusion. Of course, neither one of them realised this. To them, it was the peace and quiet that was slowly but surely lifting their spirits, not the presence of the truest friend they'd ever had.

Draco and Hermione never did spend one on one time together nowadays. It wasn't that she avoided it or him, it just never came up. There was always someone else there.

But it was nice, laying there like that. Not exciting, not arousing or stimulating or nerve wracking, just nice. To be doing something as innocuous as lying together on a beach, she reading while he dozed. It felt so natural, so normal. It made her feel content. It made her feel calm.

But, she had to remind herself, past experience told her not to let herself settle into a false sense of security whenever Draco was around.

"I wish they'd never come back," said he quietly, after a lengthy period of silence.

Hermione inclined her head slightly in his direction.

"Oh?" she responded.

She was too tired now for the dramatic reaction, too tired to muster the energy to be shocked or scared or hopeful over his words. She'd learnt now that Draco was prone to this, prone to occasionally spouting a single sentence that would communicate to her just how much the two of them were not over and never would be. Sometimes she hated him for it. Sometimes she lived for those little sentences. Sometimes she dreaded the moment she would realise she hadn't heard one in years and that maybe, just maybe, that meant he'd moved on properly from her for good.

Draco did not seem about to elaborate on his one sentence and so Hermione pointedly closed her book and set it down in the sand. She looked at him. He kept his eyes closed, his face partially obscured by his arm which was thrown up over his eyes to shield them from the sun.

"Are you alright?" she asked after a moment.

"I'm always alright," he responded without looking at her.

She rolled her eyes and resisted the urge to scoff derisively.

He noticed the subtle shift in her demeanour and finally turned to rest his gaze on her face.

"What would make you think I'm not?"

Hermione shrugged and attempted to keep the sarcasm out of her tone. "Well, you just told me you 'wished they'd never come back'. By 'they', I'm assuming you mean Astoria and Ron. Astoria is your wife and Ron is one of your best friends. If you're sitting here wishing they'd not come back, I'd guess there was a problem."

Draco chuckled lightly. "You always have to talk about it don't you?"

"Sorry, but I just find it hard to maintain a sense of clarity when you keep throwing these tantalising little one liners at me every few months. Sometimes, Draco, sometimes I just need to talk about it. Don't you?"

He thought about this for a second. "I don't know. I think talking about it makes it far more real than I'd like."

Hermione nodded slowly. "That's fair enough. I can understand that feeling."

"But I can see why you'd want to talk though. I can see why you'd need that sometimes."

"Good."

They fell silent.

Hermione didn't know how they'd even gotten into that conversation so casually. Like it was nothing. Like they were two lovers having a minor disagreement. It had caught her slightly unawares and had left her feeling a little too much like she was standing on shaky ground and didn't know where she could turn to find something to hold onto.

"So you and Ron seem to be going well," said Draco after a few moments, clearly fishing for something.

Hermione wasn't going to bite.

"Yeah," she responded flippantly.

"You guys seemed like you weren't going to make it there for a while."

"Well, that's marriage for you. Or our marriage anyway."

"It's… it's good to see you're trying to make a go of it," said Draco gruffly.

Hermione giggled without thinking.

"What?" asked Draco, a slight defensive edge to his tone.

"You and I both know it isn't good. We both know it's shit."

"Is it?"

"Of course it is! Ron and I… we just don't work, do we? We don't treat each other particularly well, we aren't particularly happy and we don't particularly want to be together. We're just very, very good at pretending to each other that we do."

Hermione didn't know where these words were coming from. She'd didn't think or feel any of those things. Did she? Wasn't she supposed to be happy? They'd been through a bad patch, they were just coming out on the tail end of that bad patch, stronger and more in love that ever. Weren't they? Wasn't that how the story went in her mind? Wasn't that how it went when she told it to other people?

If so, then why couldn't she say as much to Draco? Why was she being so negative all of a sudden?

Hermione was beginning to notice that sinking feeling in her stomach, one that was so familiar now, that she'd come to know so well. It was a sinking feeling or realisation, usually coupled with the sudden understanding that she'd been dabbling in denial.

But of course, she was determined to be in denial over the fact that she was in denial.

Draco was looking at her intently, his expression halfway between shocked, confused and concerned.

"I didn't know…" he started but didn't seem to be able to articulate to her exactly what he didn't know at that moment.

"Neither did I," said Hermione cryptically, trying to convince herself that she didn't either.

Draco sighed and sat up, resting his forearms on his bare knees.

"You know… Astoria and I aren't all that perfect either."

Hermione put her head in her hands.

"Why are you telling me this?"

Draco frowned. "Because sometimes I think you believe yourself to be the only bad partner in the history of marriage. I can see you blame yourself for all this crap with Ron, right? You think you treat him like shit, don't you? And you think you do that because you're just a shitty person, because you're crazy. Everyone else seems to just… get it. They just seem to be so natural at doing marriage when for you it's just so fucking hard all the time. Sure, I mean, they all have problems in their relationships but those problems don't really look like the big, messy problems that you have to deal with on a daily basis. I'm talking about ugly shit, you know? The sort of stuff that makes you feel really ashamed of who you are, that makes you feel like you'd rather die than face the consequences for your own flaws, your own bad behaviour…"

Hermione was looking at him with unconcealed awe as inexplicable tears began to well up under her eyelids.

"That's exactly how I feel," she confessed quietly.

"I know," he told her, "I feel like that too. I treat Astoria like shit, Hermione. I really do. I mean, I don't rough her up or anything. But you know me, I can be an acidic, condescending, cold bastard. Look at Scorpius, for fucks sake. Ever wondered why he's such a quiet kid? It's because he's seen too much, heard too much already. Rose is the same and you know it. She's desperate for love from you and Ron, from the rest of the tovarasi too. I know how fucked that feels to be able to see your own child's issues growing out of something you yourself are doing and you just don't know how to stop it… Especially when you're not quite sure whether the problem is really you… But I think… I think the problem is… Well, you could always handle me, couldn't you? Every time I got like that, every time I got cold and acidic and vicious you'd just fire right back at me, you'd meet me right in the middle, toe to toe. I never felt like I was preying on someone weaker than me with you because you're… well you're not. But… But Astoria just breaks under it. When I get like that, she just loses herself. She takes it personally, she blames herself, she hates herself. And then I get resentful with her because I feel like I have to stop being angry about whatever I'm angry about just so I can go and make her feel better about herself again."

Draco was staring hard at the horizon but Hermione could not take her eyes off him. Finally, someone got it, finally someone understood everything she felt about her marriage. It made her feel safer, calmer. She felt more human.

"And it's the same with you and Ron, I think," Draco continued after a moment, "I could handle your crazy. Because it's all just… out there. It's big and dramatic and loud. I don't have to bury into you to try and find it because you can't hide it. You're just so honest. Or you were anyway. And I reckon Ron can't hack that. He wants to push it down, he wants it to be quiet… It looks to me almost like you've spent most of your marriage trying to do that for him, Hermione, trying to be quiet for him. It's just that it doesn't work like that, does it?"

Hermione shook her head mutely.

After a few seconds silence, Draco turned to her and smiled. It was a real smile, one that was properly happy, properly together. It was a sane, loving smile.

She'd never seen that smile on his face before. There was always a cracked sort of brokenness to it. But that was gone now.

And through that smile, he said this: "You know what I think the bottom line is, Hermione? I don't think it's about whether or not you and I are bad people, we shouldn't blame ourselves. And we shouldn't blame Ron and Astoria either, because they're pretty fucking awesome as far as people go. I think the bottom line is just that you and I fell in love, fell into children and marriage and mortgages and family dinners with two people whose crazy we can't handle and who can't handle ours in turn. There's nothing wrong with us, or them, we just don't fit that's all. It's as simple as that."

He looked at her sideways. "Doesn't that feel just a little bit lighter than all that self-loathing you've been trying to pretend you're not doing?"

Hermione nodded dumbly, the urge to throw herself forward and fling her arms around him crashing through her body. In a few short minutes, he'd been able to muster the exact words for her that could make her feel less like a monster. After years of therapy, years of talking and analysing and thinking and listening, Draco had come along and fixed such a large and damaged part of her mind in one sitting like it was nothing. He'd just fixed it.

Hermione threw herself forwards and flung her arms around him.

The both clung to one another, laughing madly as they rolled around in the sand. They did this because they recognised in each other the one person who would always get them. It seemed amazing to Hermione that she could keep on forgetting Draco, how she could forget that he understood her better than she understood herself most of the time. Even though they'd loved each other a long time ago, almost fifteen years ago now, and their relationship had been relatively short lived, there was a depth of understanding between them that defied explanation.

And for once, she felt happy, overwhelmingly exultant that that understanding was there. She was so used to it being a drawback, a reminder of everything she did wrong in her life, everything she was still doing wrong. She couldn't help but laugh at how beautiful it really was in that moment.

Because, in that moment it was beautiful. It wasn't about the past or the future, it wasn't about who they were as people or the things they'd done. It was just about that connection they had that just didn't seem to want to go away no matter how much it was ignored or abused or taken for granted.

After a minute, they managed to push themselves into sitting positions and hiccough themselves to silence. That was when the weightlessness swamped in and Hermione really felt it.

"You want to go for a swim?" Hermione asked, feeling lighter and freer than she had in years.

"Sure," Draco responded, meeting her energy and grinning at her.

They leapt to their feet, tore off their clothes and ran gleefully into the water, laughing at themselves and their reckless abandon for their usual dour nature as it disappeared.

That was the thing with Draco and Hermione in the end.

They were serious, scholarly people really. And everyone else got that side of them, everyone bar their children. The rest of the world got their sarcasm and cynicism, it got their gravity and solemnity. But they gave each other the real lightness of their hearts and souls. They gave each other what was important.

And there was nothing wrong with that unless they were to step back and look at the larger picture of their lives.

In the context of their lives, a context which they steadfastly ignored that afternoon, there was a lot wrong with that.

Just as the sun began to set, Hermione and Draco finally emerged from the waves for the last time and collapsed grinning and exhausted, onto their towels on the sand.

The house behind them remained quiet. They were still talking, still giggling, still light, still happy.

But because they were who they were, because their interactions with one another could never stay easy for long, the bubble of happiness and contentedness they'd built had to be popped at some point.

Hermione couldn't really pin point later which one of them had done it. All she knew was that she'd started it. With one question.

Her laughter had died slowly as they stared out at the horizon and she'd found herself in silence for what felt like the first time all afternoon.

That's when she'd turned to him, her brow knitted and her eyes searching his face.

Then, she'd asked: "So… what do we do?"

He'd frowned sadly and said, "I don't know. I really don't know."

Her lightness had gotten heavier and heavier and died with his. The storm clouds rolled in.

By the time their friends and families returned that night, grinning, with red, sun drenched skin, they were both back to normal, back to their usual, sombre, sarcastic, cynical selves.

But Hermione couldn't bring herself to forget that for one, shining afternoon, the sun had shone on her and she'd felt its heat.

A/N - I know, I know, this was a really short chapter compared to what I usually give you guys but that's just the way it panned out. Sorry for such a long time between updates... Again... Life happened a bit.
Also, I'm not going to reply to your reviews at this time as I'm feeling pretty inspired to sink my teeth into chapter 14 and don't want to waste the motivation! But know that I love and adore all of you always for your lovely reviews and endless support.

xx

Desdemona