Title: The Taste of Victory
Characters/Pairings: Hermione Granger, Lily Evans Potter
Forum/Challenge: QLFC Round 12 (Beater 2, Ballycastle Bats)
Prompt: Write about two characters who are enemies.
Opt-Prompts: (dialogue) "I've forgotten what it's like to feel young", (object) blouse, (word) fix
World: Post-Hogwarts AU
Word Count: 2,520
Fabulous Beta: crochetaway
A/N: There are always so many parallels drawn between Hermione Granger and Lily Potter. This would make them best friends, right? Maybe… Also, this is in no way a reflection of my relationship with my MIL, who is lovely.
"Hermione, are you ready?" Harry leaned on the doorframe and smiled at his wife, who was fixing the collar of her silk blouse.
"Just a sec," she said, making brief eye contact with him in her vanity mirror while she reached for her pearl studs, which she then fastened in her ears. She gave herself a final once-over, anxiously fiddling with her wedding ring, and then stood.
"OK. Checklist?"
Harry strode forward and put his hands on her hips, grazing the soft wool of her skirt. "Checklist. Wedding ring?"
She held up her left hand. "Check."
"Manicure?"
Her right hand joined her left, where her nails were very short but neat. "Check."
"Hostess gift?"
Hermione rolled her eyes, still put out by her mother-in-law's latest critique, and gestured to the nightstand by the door. "Check. A lovely potted rosemary bush. Who brings a hostess gift to visit family? She's really started to reach."
Harry leaned in and nuzzled his wife, dropping a small kiss under her ear. "A husband who loves you more than anything in this world?"
She smiled and felt the tension in her shoulders relax a bit. "Check. You know I wouldn't put up with this for anyone else, right?"
He pulled back and took her hand in his and led her to the parlor, grabbing a tiny plant with a festive bow on it on his way out of the room. "I know. And I promise it will get better. My mother is… she's a Gryffindor, good and bad. She's fierce and more than a little brash. She's also incredibly protective, and in her mind you are the threat to the perfect life she had planned for her little cub."
Hermione huffed. "I'm not sorry I'm not Ginny Weasley."
Harry laughed and pulled her hand to his mouth, kissing it and gently leading her toward the Floo. "I wouldn't have married you if you were. Mum and Molly may have had plans for Ginny and me when we were toddling around at the Burrow, but I've always thought of Ginny as a sister. Besides"-he grinned at wife with a smile that spelled trouble-"I think this Yule Molly is going to discover that Ginny never thought that way about me either."
Hermione's eyebrows raised. "She's taking Luna to the Burrow?"
Harry nodded. "Saw her in the Ministry the other day; she's nervous as hell but you know Gin, her nervousness is only making her more stubborn. The real question is how does she react after Molly's inevitable meltdown: by leaving family dinner altogether or snogging Luna in full view of everyone?"
Hermione chuckled. "Probably both," she admitted, before she threw a handful of powder into the fireplace, called out "Potter Manor!", and stepped through still holding her husband's hand.
Lily Evans Potter sat at her vanity, tapping her long, perfectly manicured nails against the glass tabletop. Her bright red hair was coiffed in a perfect French twist, leaving her pale neck bare. Lily scowled at the thinness of her skin, the lines starting to form at the corners of her mouth and eyes, the subtle but evident signs of age that were manifesting on her once-beautiful face.
"Lils?" called James from the hallway. "They'll be here any minute!"
"Coming, James." She stood and smoothed the imagined creases out of her maroon shift. She turned and found her husband waiting for her in the doorway to their dressing room, grinning foolishly.
"How'd I ever land a bird as pretty as you, Lils?"
Lily rolled her eyes. "Toe-rag," she muttered, though there was no heat behind the invective.
James came up behind his wife and lightly rubbed her shoulders. Lily closed her eyes and sighed.
"I don't like her."
"I know."
"I don't see how you can humor him. She's no good for our Harry. She's not a proper wife; she forgot to wear her wedding ring last Yule, James! What if we'd had guests? What would people think?"
James raised an eyebrow but stayed silent. Lily rolled her neck, trying to relieve the tension that settled there every holiday season.
"She's too interested in the theoretical side of magic, James. What magic can do, not what it should do. That's the problem with Ravenclaws. They want knowledge for knowledge sake, and pants on the consequences. Who knows what kind of unethical experiments she's running down in the DoM."
"Last I heard they were trying to cure Dragon Pox," James said, chuckling.
Lily glared at her husband in the mirror. "Some Muggle scientists invent new diseases and plagues, just in case of biological warfare. You can't tell me that's not a possibility."
"You think Hermione is inventing biological weapons?" James cocked his head and looked long at his wife.
"Maybe!" she cried, throwing up her hands. Lily stood and turned, placing a hand on her hip-a sure sign she was ready to launch into a diatribe.
"She's a Ravenclaw. At least with Slytherins we know we're getting evil gits. Ravenclaws are sneakier, and they'll pull an Albus Dumbledore and try to mask their grey and dark magic as the pursuit of knowledge for the 'almighty greater good!'"
"You were almost a Ravenclaw," James chided her.
"But I wasn't! The hat saw me for who I truly am-a Gryffindor. Harry deserves a Gryffindor woman. At least then we know she'd be a Light witch, and certainly not inclined toward blood purity."
"Lily." James rolled his eyes. "Hermione is Muggleborn. I'm fairly positive she's not a blood purist."
Lily hmphed. "No, you're right. But that still doesn't mean she's a good match for Harry. She'll certainly never make it as a political wife if he decides to take the seat on the Wizengamot. That hair… I just don't see why he couldn't have married Ginny. They're perfect for each other."
James bit his tongue. He could explain to his wife that after seeing little Ginny Weasley with her tongue down Xeno Lovegood's daughter's throat, but Muggles were weirdly conservative about same-sex relationships and Lily had come from a family where such couplings were verboten.
James took his wife's hand and led her to the hallway. "It's too late, Lily. They're married. They're happy. Harry glows when he talks about Hermione. Watch him tonight, Lils. Watch how he looks at her and try to remember what we were like at that age."
Lily rolled her eyes and plastered a fake smile on her face as she rounded the corner to the parlor and heard the Floo flare.
Hermione, wearing an equally fake smile, embraced her mother-in-law, touching the woman as little as physically possible in the process.
"Lily, James, it's so nice to see you. Happy Yule." She offered her father-in-law a genuine smile, which he returned in kind. She turned back to Lily and offered her the small rosemary bush she'd brought. "Thank you for having us. I know hosting guests isn't easy."
Lily's smile faltered at the small bush-it really was the perfect hostess gift, which meant her final barb last Yule had struck home-but she recouped quickly and returned the volley of social politesse. "Oh, posh. Our Harry could never be a guest here-he's family!" She turned before the younger witch could make a retort and started muttering about 'where will I find a place for you' and 'rosemary does certainly take an awful lot of time and care to cultivate'.
Hermione allowed for a moment of hurt-it was apparent while Lily considered Harry family, Hermione certainly was not-before she turned back to James and offered him a big, genuine hug. Afterward, Harry took her by the waist and squeezed. It was comforting, and she knew it was a show of solidarity, but a small part of her wished he'd call his mother out on her snideness.
She pushed that feeling down. She knew what she was getting into when she married Harry. She knew, despite her youthful hero worship of Lily Evans Potter, that she would never get along with the witch. She knew that, though the two witches shared many traits, Hermione would always be lacking in Lily's eyes, and Hermione would always see Lily's inability to let Harry live life on his own terms as contemptible.
It was a quiet, cold war between the two witches. There was no bloodshed, but that didn't make the scars they carried from their battles any less palpable.
Hermione knew she was at a disadvantage. The primary weapon in the war-namely, wizarding social etiquette-was something she was only just mastering, while Lily had over twenty years of navigating the nuanced world of pureblood culture. It didn't hurt that witches were valued as much for their looks as their magical prowess, and even twenty years her senior Lily had Hermione beat in that regard.
Harry, of course, would have been the ultimate weapon, but both women were loath to use their influence with the wizard, lest that plan backfire and he side with the other for being 'forced to choose'.
As always, dinner was polite, if a little cold for the forced conversation between Lily and Hermione. The former always asked about Hermione's work in the Department of Mysteries, and Hermione always reminded the redhead that she couldn't discuss ongoing projects, as she was under a vow of secrecy, which always then led to a debate over the purpose and value of experimental magic.
James and Harry spent this part of the evening drinking firewhisky and throwing each other sympathetic looks.
But after one too many Yules of being subjected to her mother-in-law's derisive barbs and dismissive attitude, after one too many digs at her Hogwarts House and her work, and after the third implication that night that she practiced Dark magic, Hermione Potter had had enough.
In a last-ditch effort to win the battle, to end the war, she turned to Harry. Her brown eyes bored into him, pinning him down. "You do realize your mother just called me a Dark witch, right?"
Harry's mouth gaped. The unspoken rule was that the two women never brought him into their little snits, so he had quietly been talking Quidditch with his father. He'd completely missed his mother's comment.
Lily, of course, knew this, and she hid the smirk on her face as she waited for Harry's defense of her. Here was a crack that might bring down the whole fortress, that might be the beginning of the end of her son's unfortunate marriage.
Harry recouped. "I'm sure you just misunderstood, sweetheart," he said softly, putting his hand on hers. "Mum wouldn't say that."
James shot a look at his wife, knowing she'd implied that very thing in the privacy of their bedroom earlier that night.
In a feat of emotional check that would have made a Slytherin proud, Lily's face registered hurt and shock, while internally she was crowing in victory.
And Hermione, in that moment, saw her future-a lifetime of uncomfortable Yules, of pushing down her own feelings to appease her husband, of children caught in the middle of this cold war of witches-and she did what she'd sworn not to do.
She waved the white flag.
Perhaps it would have been different if she'd been a Gryffindor, but as the token Ravenclaw at the table, she was removed and rational enough to realize that to win the war, she'd have to lose the very thing she was fighting for: Harry. She'd destroy his relationship with his Mum, and he'd grow to resent her for that.
So she did the only thing she could do.
Letting all her emotions show-the hurt, the anger, the fear, the frustration, the incredible exhaustion-she turned to Lily and admitted defeat. "You win."
Then she turned back to Harry and quietly-almost too quiet for James and Lily to hear-said, "I can't do this anymore. I'm sorry."
And she took off her wedding ring, sliding it over her too short nails that she'd bitten to the quick in her anxiety over the Yule season and dealing with her mother-in-law. She placed it on the table in front of him, where he looked at it, dumbfounded.
"Hermione, what…"
"Thank you for dinner, but I'll see myself out now." She turned before the tears started falling from her face, the Occlumency shields that had been holding them back all but gone after the emotional tumult of the evening.
And she was gone.
And not a moment later, Harry was running after her, discarded wedding ring clutched in his hand.
Lily had but a moment to enjoy her victory before her husband turned to her, fire in his eyes.
"You have to fix this, Lily."
She turned to him, shocked. "Excuse me?"
He frowned. "You will apologize to Hermione, and you will end this ridiculous war between the two of you. It's time to make peace."
"She's the one that left James-she's the one that just walked out on our son! How can you blame me?"
He narrowed his eyes at her. "Because it's your fault she left. Even if you didn't call her a Dark witch, Lils, you've been on her case from the first moment he brought her home. Enough is enough."
"If she can't handle a little criticism…"
"She's taken far more than she should be expected to. You wouldn't have lasted nearly this long if my mother had treated you the way you treat her. I think you've forgotten what it's like to be a newlywed building a family. What it's like to be that young and to be looking for solid ground and a safe place to land. You could have taken her under your wing like my mother did with you. You…"
Lily blew up, interrupting him. "You think I've forgotten what it's like to feel young? To be young? You're right, James, I'm reminded of my age every time I look in the mirror. I'm reminded of it after every faux pas I make at society events, because twenty years later I still can't make up for not being born into a wizarding family. And I'm not sorry for wanting someone better than me for my son!"
Her chest heaved at her outburst. She glared at the dark haired wizard, the love of her life, who looked back at her sadly.
"I didn't want anyone else, Lils. I just wanted you. I've always only wanted you, and sod everything and everyone else. And I've been happy."
She pursed her lips. She'd been happy too-mostly. Except for the stupid society dinners, where she never quite felt like enough a witch. The inadequacy tore at her, ate her alive.
James shook his head and stood. "Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the problem isn't that you don't remember what it's like to be young. Maybe the problem is you don't remember what it's like to be willing to face down Dorea Potter for me, to defend me against blood purists who called me a traitor for marrying you. Maybe you don't remember what it's like to be so in love with someone that you'd face any battle for them."
He walked out of the dining room then, leaving Lily with a thousand retorts dying on her tongue and the taste of victory turning to ash in her mouth.