Chapter Four
Hermione woke up and for the second day in a row, she couldn't figure out where the hell she was. She sat up, rubbed her eyes and looked around. Oh. Yeah, she was at her house, the one that her grandfather left her when he died. She was sitting on her couch. She twisted around and heard her back crack.
"Breakfast." She grumbled to herself. She went into the kitchen. Hermione was cracking some eggs when she saw the man on her couch. Holding back her urge to shriek. She went over to the couch, holding an egg as a defense. Hermione realized this was completely retarded but she continued on anyway.
She was nearly upon her couch when she saw the familiar red hair, muscles and facial features of Charlie Weasley.
"What are you doing here?" She demanded of Charlie, after she shook him awake. He blinked at her blearily.
"Ginny had to leave, she forced me to come here, so you wouldn't be alone." He said.
"Fantastic." Hermione said sarcastically. "Do you want some breakfast?"
"Yeah." Charlie responded, rubbing his eyes.
"You have a beautiful house." Charlie remarked.
"Thanks, it was my grandparents house, my grandpa left it to me." Hermione said placing strips of bacon on a cast-iron frying pan. Immediately the smell filled the air, and the crackly noise of the bacon cooking made the silence between them seem less like a silence and more like a pause in conversation.
Hermione scrambled the eggs and then divided them between them. Then she turned her attention to the bacon.
"So how's Becky?" Hermione asked him.
"She's good, but I should be asking you that question." Charlie says.
"Becky's recuperating nicely. A dragon injury, I wonder how that happened." Hermione mocks, in a friendly manner.
"Well, I was taking her to visit the reserve and we sort of… ahem… got distracted and then before we know it she's bleeding a lot and Becky's being rushed to the hospital." His voice fades out after a while.
"You really love her don't you?"
"Yeah, I suppose." Charlie says munching on bacon he snagged from Hermione's plate. During their conversation she has been plating the food.
"Hey what's this?" Charlie gets up to walk around he sees the application.
"My boss wants me to take over her position." Hermione says sheepishly.
"Hermione, that's fantastic!" he cheers.
"I know!" Hermione screams. She starts jumping up and down, she feels so exuberant by the mention of her possible promotion.
Hermione has stopped jumping long enough to wolf down her eggs and bacon. "I really need to shower. Watch the TV if you want." She says, pointing to the wall where a flat screen TV is mounted.
"That's my dad's personal touch. He loves watching his football on the big screen." Hermione says smiling at the memory; of when her father arrived at the door with the TV with a smile and said: your housewarming gift, bud.
"TV?" Charlie asks.
"Television, right I forgot you're a wizard. This is a remote control, it turns it on and you watch it." Hermione says tossing the remote over to Charlie, who with Quidditch quick reflexes catches the remote.
Hermione hurries upstairs and gasps at the face in the mirror; her hair is tangled and a rat's nest (for lack of better adjectives to describe the horribleness), her eyes are puffy, and the eyeliner has smudged, raccoon eyes. Her nose is red, which happens to her if she cries too much. Mascara streaks down her cheeks. "Oh my god. I'm hideous." Hermione steps into the shower and feels the cold water trickle over her skin. She rubs her face roughly with the loofah and shampoos her hair after using a number of detangling spells she learned from Lavender during their 7th year.
She slips into a pair of jeans and a blue cashmere sweater with belled sleeves. Hermione goes back downstairs to find Charlie sleeping on the sofa. She sees the chance as a bit of fun. She sneaks over to the couch and pushes him off the couch.
By the time Charlie is realizing that he's on the floor, Hermione has silently ran back to the stairs and is pretending that she is just coming downstairs
"Oohf" Charlie says standing up.
"What happened?" Hermione asks.
"Musta rolled over in my sleep." Charlie concludes. "Where are you going?" he asks.
"No where. I'm on-call today, so I'm here. Or going to be free labor for my parents at their dentistry practice."
"Ok, cos I have to work." Charlie said holding out his hand for Hermione to shake. They shake. And he goes to Disapparate.
"Charlie! Don't!" Hermione exclaims, suddenly.
"Don't what, go to work, leave?"
"Apparate, unless you want to splinch your legs off."
"I think I'll save that for another day. Where can I safely disapparate from your house."
"My closet and my back porch. How about you use the back porch?" Hermione smiles as she leads him toward the back of the house.
"I'll talk to you later, Hermione Granger." Charlie says charmingly then he disappears.
Hermione slips the Protean charmed coin into her pocket it heats up when she's needed at the hospital.
But first she grabs her application and she apparates to Carrie Worley's office at St. Mungo's to drop off the application.
"Impressive, Hermione, you're the first to return the application." Carrie smiles and shoos Hermione from her office.
"Hey Emily."
"Hey Hermione. How come you're here, you don't have a shift today." Emily asks.
"I'm on-call. Just dropping some stuff off. And now I'm gone." She shouts to Emily as she steps into the Apparition zone and disappears from the hospital, she lands in the storeroom of her parent's practice.
"Hello honey!" Hermione's mother, Jennifer chirps when Hermione walks into one of the cubicles. "I'd hug you, but we're doing a root canal here. Go find your father." Jennifer instructs.
"Hi Daddy!" Hermione says running up to her father and hugging him.
"Hi princess!" he exclaims. "Want to work? You have the best patience in organizing things than any of my other damn secretaries."
"Well, thank you. I'll be your receptionist as well."
"That's what I meant. Possibly." Dr. Granger says pointing at the mahogany desk and the smooth and supple leather chair where Hermione sits.
She works for hours without the coin heating up. Finally at the end of the day, she says goodbye to her parents and goes off to one of her other homes. The Burrow.
Molly likes to gather all the family together on Wednesdays and Sundays.
She sits between Ginny and Ron. Ron is paying more attention to his new girlfriend of the moment, the divorcee of Seamus Finnegan, Parvati Patil.
Everybody is well into the dessert, when Hermione notices that one member of the Weasleys isn't at the table.
"Hey, where's Charlie?" Hermione whispers to Ginny.
"He went back to Romania for a week and a half." She replies, carefully watching Hermione's reaction.
"I talked to him this morning, I can't believe he didn't tell me." Hermione huffs.
"Well, it was kind of sudden." Ginny replies.
Hermione and Ginny go up to Ginny's old room to have a bit of privacy while they girltalk.
"How's the Michael thing going?" Ginny asks hesitantly.
"Fine. Although I talked to his parents today. They work at my parent's practice. It was a bit awkward. I've decided not to call him anymore."
"Yay Hermione!" Ginny says enthusiastically. After all last night wasn't the first night Ginny had spent at Hermione's house after she had called Michael with bad results.
"Ouch!" Hermione says, digging out her hospital coin. "Shit, I have to go!" Hermione says taking out her wand and disapparating to the room for the emergency.
Hermione smashed onto the floor, and before she stood up she was nearly flattened by an approaching healer.
Author's Notes:
- please read & REVIEW!
-if you feel like it go read Wasted, the companion to this ficcy (it doenst really spoil anything except for the fact that i have a happy ending tendency and charlie & hermione end up together)
oxox brooke-ella1790