Summary:
She has spent every night for the past two years hoping and believing despite any evidence, that he would return – that the ministry was wrong in their assumptions. Because to her, that's all they were – assumptions.
When the ministry called off the search for Ron Weasley over two years ago, everybody fell apart. Dealing with the guilt she felt over that fateful battle, Ginny's reality has spiralled out of control. With the arrival of their daughter whom he'd never get to meet, Hermione was forced to pick up the shattered pieces of her life, but that didn't mean she had moved on.
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As he pulled out the spare key she'd given him months ago, he looked to his side at his lanky cohort who was looking awfully serious for having been doing nothing but cracking jokes fifteen minutes ago.
"George, what's that face for? It looks like you've just had a round or two with mum."
The young man suddenly looked up towards his older brother, startled out of his thoughts, as he tilted his head looking even more pensive.
"I'm telling you, Bill, you haven't been here. You haven't seen her."
"Well let's get on with it then, shall we? Ladies first," he said as he quickly unlocked and opened the door in a swift graceful motion that only Bill could have managed.
Secretly he had been more than a little stung by the comment. He didn't need to be reminded of how he had practically abandoned the only important thing in his life when times got tough – his family.
He just couldn't handle it, or so he had justified to himself at the time. All the walls were collapsing and he couldn't stand to see the look of complete and utter devastation cross his mother's face one more time - first it had been her only grandchild and first daughter-in-law, and then it had been her youngest son.
All thoughts turned to his little sister as he stepped into the London flat, which was immersed in complete darkness due to all the closed blinds.
Her reaction was the first he'd attempted to gage once the awful news had been broken – all the Weasley children knew that she and Ron had an impenetrable bond. The look of horror crossing her delicate and seemingly innocent features was the last straw for Bill - he'd left the next day.
What seemed ages ago for him appeared to be a reality here for Ginny. As he squinted into the living room where he thought he'd heard some noise, he realized that whatever she had been doing last night had left her incapable of even making it to the couch.
George was shaking his head as they walked up to her sleeping form, and he looked away as Bill bent down to gently shake her awake.
"Wake up sleeping beauty, come on… up and at 'em."
"Mmmphh – bugger off. I didn't need pillow talk last night - I sure as hell don't want it now. You know where the damn door is." With eyes still closed, she absentmindedly waved somewhere above her head that, Bill noted, was nowhere near close to the direction of the door.
Ignoring the implications of her sudden outburst, he leaned down to try again.
"Come on Ginny, you'll feel better once you're up and dressed," Bill said as he shook her shoulder with a tad bit more force than necessary. This startled her out of whatever dormant state sleep had seemingly rendered her in. But as George looked down at her – her hair in a state that would give Harry a run for his money, sleep still glazing over her tired eyes, and her forehead displaying a state of absolute confusion as she looked up at her two older brothers – he realized that Ginny's entire personality, everything that made Ginny… well, Ginny, had been in abeyance since she'd heard the news.
The 'news' George thought bitterly to himself, as if it was nothing short of some sort of report on a recent or new event. It wasn't as if there was a word to use in situations such as that - when someone told you something that would completely and permanently alter your and your family's lives.
"I'm almost offended, Ginny… I've never been stood up for a lunch date before."
Realisation crossed her features as her mouth silently formed a small 'o'. She looked up at Bill in what at first seemed to be an apologetic manner, but immediately turned into a countenance that had become all too familiar to those who loved her – cold and indifferent.
"Well as much as I love being apologised to in the dark, I'm afraid I'm going to have to settle this time…" as he muttered something under his breath while jerking his wand towards all the blinds, which immediately shot up to immerse the room in what Ginny could only describe as dirty sunshine.
Bill was looking at her expectantly, and she knew what he wanted. But just as with all the things in her life lately, she refused to give in. She knew they all wanted her to stop drinking at pubs until the early morning; a 'destructive lifestyle' was the term she believed had been tossed about quite a bit lately. But rather than dwell on things that could be changed, she had settled for dwelling on things that couldn't.
Ron. She thought as she felt her insides constrict painfully.
George knew what, or rather who was crossing her mind at the moment ; she had this look in her eyes whenever it did. He was never sure why this seemed to occur so unexpectedly with her, but he had resigned himself to the fact that he hurt more during these moments, watching Ginny deal with her reality – their reality, than he ever had when he'd first heard of his younger brother's fate two years ago.
"Well, there's only one thing for it then – you two put on a pot of coffee, and I will be back here, showered and ready to go, faster than you can recite Hogwarts, A History."
She grabbed Bill's offered hand to pull herself up and disappeared to her room as Bill and George headed towards the pathetic excuse for a kitchen.
As he opened one cabinet after another and found nothing but half-empty boxes of cereal and a couple instant something-or-others, he turned his head toward George, who was looking at him as if he found it funny he'd even entered the kitchen with expectations to begin with.
"You know… I'd say I told you so, but you shouldn't have to've even been told in the first place. I mean 'go put on a pot of coffee' is really just her euphemism for 'do anything to occupy your time but psychoanalyse me while I'm gone'. Really, Bill, your naivety is almost cute," George said with a trace of humour evident in his tone, as he looked around the neglected kitchen.
"You know, I think you were quite right…" he told his younger brother in a very serious voice. "Early at the café, that is." he elaborated while looking towards the hallway, brow drawn together, and biting his bottom lip in concentration.
George realised he was referring to what he had told him of Ginny's ever spiralling out of control behaviour earlier, as they had both come to the realisation that she wasn't going to show of her own volition. He had nothing to say back; humour had always been his first reaction, and the increasingly serious mood that this conversation was taking on left him at a complete loss as to how he could respond.
Ginny saved him from that particular responsibility, however, as she bounded down the hall, hair still completely wet. She grabbed her wand off the counter separating the kitchen from the doorway entry, and with a quick spell dried it instantly. Looking up at her brothers, one whom she hadn't seen in months, she quirked her head expectantly.
"Why are you in the kitchen? There's absolutely nothing in there," she said as if she was stating the obvious to toddlers. Grabbing her cigarettes off the counter and then reaching for her purse, she looked back towards the two men.
As Bill headed towards the door, he wrapped one arm around her shoulders as he pulled her alongside him saying, "I've no idea - you need to go shopping so badly that it seems you've even run out of tap water. No wonder you're so thin lately, wait until mum gets a good look at you!"
-
She was putting the finishing touches on her report as she glanced at the clock, silently cursing to herself, realising that she would be late for Molly yet again. She knew she shouldn't become so immersed in work, but it had become her only outlet. Most people thought she'd gone crazy with the rabid energy she devoted to her work, but she knew she was doing it for the same reasons that she did everything else these days – Veronica.
"Hermione, I swear to Merlin if you don't put that quill down right now I'm going to come over there." Her co-worker Macy said from the doorway. If Hermione wasn't mistaken, she detected a bit of an edge to her voice – and that was never good.
"Eh… screw it. I'm coming over there anyway." She shrugged her shoulder as she walked across the respectably sized office towards Hermione's desk, carved with ornate embellishments along the side facing whoever was lucky enough to sit on the opposite end of the Ministry's unofficially designated workaholic.
Lucky, she thought humorously as she sat down putting the stack of papers on Hermione's desk. Lucky to be alive for disturbing her while she works.
"Well I've come bearing news – but don't get too excited, because although it will inevitable result in more work on your part, as soon as I finish relaying it, I plan on kicking you out of this office to go pick up the love of your life from your mother-in-law."
Hermione's eyes instinctively darted towards the solitary picture frame sitting atop her desk and the beautiful curly red headed girl that it displayed.
"Thanks… I think. So what's this so-called news you have for me?" she sighed leaning back in her chair devoting her full attention to Macy.
"Well, the negotiations went exactly as you expected, and so Monday morning you get to draw up the Treaty."
"That's wonderful!" Hermione responded with a half-hearted smile "I knew if they put Devlan at the table they were bound to get somewhere faster – Bruce owes me ten galleons, I mean the negotiations ended by the end of the business day I'm assuming…?"
"Well, I'm not sure if it was official by five, because nobody left the room until around six, but I'm sure that you can find a loophole somewhere in the terms of your bet. I mean, if Bruce were to ask someone… say, me for instance… I could probably twist the language around to suit a few purposes; assuming you'll split the winnings, of course!" Macy ever so effortlessly suggested.
"Eh… I probably won't collect anyway. The look on that smug arse's face when he's told that my suggestion led to the cessation of all these negotiations will be priceless enough for me." Hermione smiled, as she could imagine it right now in her head.
"And although I would normally sit here and try to convince you to do otherwise, you're already running half an hour late, so go… be gone! I mean it this time! You yourself told me I could resort to violence if necessary." She watched as it dawned on the seemingly composed woman that their conversation had only served to make her even more late.
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A/N: Hey guys! This is the first piece of work I've actually had the guts to publish, so I would really appreciate any feedback. I have it pretty well planned out through the 5th chapter, and I'm expecting it to be about 13 chapters total. They say that what goes around comes around, and I ALWAYS review stories I read so… hopefully you'll be nice enough to take the time to review! (Not that I'm hinting at anything of course…)
And I owe a huge thanks to my beta Vera for fixing all of my disgustingly American spelling! Why do they even include 'z' in the alphabet in England?