-If you hate Michael, you will deffo hate his grandmother! SHE'S A BITCH. And she was really fun to write. :D
Chapter 15
"Come on Hermione! You have to! She's only going to be in town for a few days!" Michael exclaims from the bathroom.
"I can't! I have to work and I can't randomly take a day off!" Hermione declares crankily from her side of the bed where she has a book in her lap.
Michael comes out from the bathroom wearing a pair of plaid pajama pants, slung low on his hips. Even in the heat of an argument she couldn't resist taking a long look at Michael, his chest was toned with thick pecs and broad shoulders tapering off into long muscular arms, a memory of Charlie's arms wrapped around her body pops into her head. There were no scars on Michael's arms. Hermione smiled at Michael imaging Charlie in his place. Her heart began to thunder in her chest; no matter how hard she tried she couldn't get him out of her mind.
"You're the boss! I'm sure that you can take ONE day off!" At the voicing of Michael's argument she shook the image of Charlie from her mind and responded.
"I don't want to meet your grandmother." Hermione moans.
Michael feigns hurt. "But you'll love her! She's a feisty old lady!"
"Michael that was an image I did not need to see in my head." she says seriously, and then moans. "And I really don't want to meet her."
"Please?" he pleads.
He looked so pitiful, standing there, pouting. She caved, she couldn't say no to him when they were finally on such stable ground. "Fine, I guess I can call in sick once."
"Great! I'll call mum and tell her!" Michael says jogging out of the room to find the phone.
Hermione gets up early like she's going to work, but instead of dressing and heading for St. Mungo's she goes to her owl's cage and ties a couple of notes to her leg, the owl nods at her and takes flight out the window. She begins to make breakfast for Michael and herself when a knock comes at the door...
"It's open!" she hollers to the person on the other side of the door.
The door swings open, and Ginny bursts through looking charmingly tousled.
"Hey Hermione!" she chirps.
"Hey Ginny, what's up?"
"Not much, Harry went on a trip last night."
"Really? Where?"
"Dunno, wasn't listening, I told him not to tell me things late at night." Ginny shrugs.
"Oh. Want some French toast?" Hermione offers a plate of French toast in reply.
"Sure!" Ginny accepts the plate happily and douses the bread with syrup.
"I'm meeting Michael's family today." Hermione says nervously.
"That must be rough, but I don't know because I've never had to, because his family is dead!" Ginny giggles
"Ginny! That's an awful thing to say!" Hermione gasps.
"What? It's true and it's not like I'll ever say that to Harry." Ginny scoffs.
"Hello, sweetheart! Breakfast smells awesome." Michael looks at Ginny. "Hi Ginny." Michael amends lamely.
"Howdy." Ginny waves, her mouth full of French toast.
Hermione places Michael a plate of French toast with a pile of whipped cream sitting on top. Hermione looks up at him in his starched blue striped collared shirt and carefully pressed khakis, a black leather belt and new Italian loafers, for a brief moment she wonders why he never dressed up to see her family but does not address her concern for fear of his condescending professor voice.
"Hi Cutie, should I get dressed up too?" she says fiddling with his collar and stroking his cheek.
"It would be a good idea." Michael says leaning down and kissing the top of her head in between words.
Ginny looks at the couple and frowns. "Shouldn't you start to get ready?" Ginny says waving her fork around. "C'mon I'll be your fashion advisor."
The two women head up the stairs gossiping about old friends of theirs, Ginny rifles through Hermione's extensive closet and pulls out the dress that Hermione had worn on Charlie's birthday.
"No." she says quickly.
"Of course! It's perfect!"
"No, it's not."
"C'mon you've only worn it once..." Ginny trailed off. "Oh."
"Yea."
Ginny pulled out another dress and handed to her, it's a shimmering blue fabric that perfectly compliments her complexion, Hermione nods and Ginny hands it to her, smiling and pointing towards the bathroom.
"Take these shoes." Ginny says brandishing a pair of black stiletto heels.
"Summoned them." Ginny replies in response to Hermione's unasked question.
A few minutes later, Hermione comes out of the bathroom wearing the dress and half jacket with the stilettos on.
They walk down the stairs and Hermione says in amazement, how comfortable the stilettos are.
"Hello, Michael!" she says posing at the base of the stairs. Michael smiles at how beautiful she looks, Hermione laughs flirtingly at Michael, blowing him a kiss.
Hermione walks over to the coat rack and pulls on a pea-coat and walks out to the car, for some reason she has to overwhelming feeling that she's driving to her doom.
"Hello Hermione, how are you?" Mrs. Desmond grins and hugs her future daughter-in-law. "Sweetie, I apologize in advance for my mother, she's a..." she says but trails off as a tall perfectly coiffed woman walks into the room, her hair is brown with long gray streaks and cut into a fashionable bob. Her eyes were sharp and a turbulent gray that held no warmth. She was wearing a taupe pantsuit and matching pumps. Everything about her screams: 'Money! Money! Money!' (Or Snob)
"Hermione Granger, please meet my grandmother Eleanor Marie Fairchild. Grandma this is my fiancée and..." Michael pauses. "... Love, Hermione Jean Granger." Michael says.
Hermione holds out her hand politely, Eleanor looks at her, at her hand then pointedly looks away. Hermione, painfully, notes this gesture and tries to fix the awkwardness of it by tucking some of her hair behind her ear.
A second passes "Michael! How are you?" Eleanor says throwing her arms around her grandson. This gesture seems very uncharacteristic, as even Mrs. Desmond, Eleanor's daughter seems surprised.
"Hi Mom." Mrs. Desmond says, hugging her mother. But it is not the same type of hug Eleanor gave to her grandson.
"Eleanor." Mr. Desmond says coldly. Hermione, as an outside observer notes that Eleanor and Mr. Desmond just barely can tolerate each other.
"Oliver." She replies just as coldly.
In a twisted way, Hermione feels completely left out, until in an alarming conversation shift, Eleanor sets her frosty gaze onto Hermione. It feels like the other woman is judging her and for once in a long time Hermione wished that the floor would swallow her whole just to get away from that horribly cold glare.
"Drinks?" Eleanor says. "Laura, Gin Martini?" Eleanor waits for Laura's reaction. Mrs. Desmond nods.
"Scotch, neat." Michael chips in.
"Sounds good, make that two! Ellie." Mr. Desmond says laughs. Mrs. Desmond glares at her husband.
"Hermione? Would you like a drink?"
"Wine?" Hermione says.
"Here's your, wine?" Eleanor says in jest, but the mocking tone in her voice is thinly veiled in the humor.
"So Hermione, what do you do for a job?" Eleanor gets right to heart of the matter.
"I'm a doctor, though I practice mostly in alternative medicine. A healer, if you will." Hermione says using a lot of half-truths, for instance leaving out her schooling, and where she worked, it was slightly easier than lying outright.
"Really? Where? One of my friend's daughters is trying alternative medicines for cancer treatment."
'Fuck' Hermione thinks, improvising she says" Oh, kind of a low key place, Mallory & Smithers." She improvises quickly.
"Excellent, I shall look you up sometime." Hermione is big time panicking in her head. Because obviously there is no Mallory & Smithers, she shoots a panicked glance at Michael, this does not go unnoticed.
"Hermione. Such an unusual name, not heard that much anymore. Hermione. Do you intend to give my grandchildren such freakish names?" Eleanor asks coldly. Even Michael's mother, Laura looks startled by the harshness in her question.
"We-We don't know about kids yet. We're not even married, yet."
Eleanor scoffs, "Well, things happen dear, Michael came before Laura and Oliver's marriage." she says looking at her daughter. "Quite disappointing actually I had hoped that she would look higher than..." she made a gesture towards Oliver. "Such high expectations for Laura and yet she throws it all away."
"Mother!" Laura hisses.
"Are you pregnant, Hermione?" Eleanor asked, turning to Hermione once more.
"No." Hermione answers. She has figured that the shorter replies are better.
"Well, I don't know about you, but I think that all these children having sex outside of Our Lord's heavenly commitment, marriage I mean, is absolutely disgusting." Eleanor says shortly. You know that Eleanor thinks her word is law.
"Mom!" Laura whispers harshly.
Hermione's inquisition is, however, far from over. The questions continue.
"So, Hermione, why did you and my grandson break up in the first place?" The question seemed harmless enough, but venom lurked behind those simple words. Hermione knows that she cannot tell this woman that she is a witch, because that would violate wizarding secrecy laws, and Eleanor would have had her committed.
"Oh, things just didn't work out." Hermione says evasively.
"Well, that couldn't possibly be it; Michael said it was entirely your fault."
"Well, kind of." Hermione says, glaring at Michael.
"Really?" she says through tightened lips.
"Yeah." Hermione drinks her wine. Hermione purposely evades the question. "Not fault, really though."
"So you're saying that you cheated on Michael?" Hermione (very unladylike) spits her wine into her glass in shock.
"WHAT?!" Hermione squeaks in shock. In outrage she continues "frankly, I don't think that's any of your bloody business!"
"So, you cheated on Michael. Did you sleep with anybody else while you were separated?"
"It doesn't matter if I slept with anyone or not! Charlie..." she starts then looks at Michael. "It's none of your business!"
"Charlie? Is he this man that you traded my Michael for?" Hermione stares at her, in horror. "Well, it certainly is what I would expect from a slut like you."
"Excuse me? It's not a crime to have sex, for Christ's sake!"
"HOW DARE YOU?!" Eleanor screams. "It is most certainly a crime! You weren't married!"
"I can't believe I'm taking this! Michael and I weren't dating, I got drunk after HE dumped ME so viciously and had a one night stand, It was MY mistake and I don't care what you think! Besides it's difficult to judge me when your grandson and I have also had sex... yeah, that's right, Michael and I had sex OUTSIDE of marriage!"
"You admit it to my face!" Eleanor yells, her face turning red. "Get OUT of my house! You filthy slut! I never want to see you in this house again!"
"Michael..." Hermione turns to see Michael sitting stock still, looking at her through unreadable eyes. "...let's go."
"Go, Hermione. You're just causing more trouble by being here." Michael said angrily.
"You don't deserve to be with my grandson." Eleanor yells.
"Michael?" Hermione asks, helplessly.
"I'll meet you later." he said through clenched teeth.
"GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!" Eleanor was still yelling insults; Laura and Oliver were trying to calm her down to no avail.
"Mother..." Laura begins to try and calm her mother down.
"You're no better than her." Eleanor said coldly to her daughter, Laura was stunned.
Eleanor walked across the room in wide quick steps that Hermione didn't notice until she was so close to Hermione that she could have smacked her. "GET OUT!"
"Eleanor! SIT THE FUCK DOWN!" Oliver boomed.
Hermione left the house quickly, not wanting to be in that house any longer, Eleanor's words plagued her as she dashed away from the house and into Michael's car, she cranked the car and slammed on the accelerator into reverse, she had to get out of there, had to go somewhere where she knew she wouldn't be judged.
"My fault?" Hermione said to herself, still outraged with Michael "Mine?!"
She pulled onto the side of the road and clicked on the hazards.
Her thoughts were running in circles and tears were welling up in her eyes, she had no idea what she was going to do, she thought that maybe she had made a mistake by picking Michael over Charlie, maybe this whole thing was just a mistake. It was when the first tear rolled down her cheek that she burst, her chest ached badly from the force of the burst, and tears began streaming down her face in earnest.
"It's not fair, it wasn't my fault."
She needed someone to call and quickly, she needed someone to talk to, someone who wouldn't judge her, still watching the road and crying she pulled out her cell phone and dialed the Ginny's number, someone picked up and Hermione cried harder when she heard Charlie's voice come over the line.
"Hello?"
"Ch-char-Charlie? Can you ge-ge-get Ginny? I n-n-nee-need to talk to her."
"Are you okay, Hermione?"
"Yea, I j-just need to talk to her."
"Ok, hang on a second."
"Hermione?" Ginny's concerned voice came over the phone.
"Ginny, something awful happened."
"Hermione, honey, where are you?"
"Side of the road, somewhere."
"Where?"
"Um, there is a London, 3 km sign right next to my car."
"Alright, I'll try to be right there." Seconds later, a flustered red-haired girl appeared in the car. In fact, she apparated right onto Hermione's lap. Hermione screamed, Ginny screamed. If Hermione hadn't been so upset she would have started laughing at her hysterical reaction.
"Hon, let me drive the car."
"You don't know how to drive!" Hermione moaned hysterically.
"I can learn." And so she did, the car wavering into the wrong side of the road more than a few times. Enough to ensure the thought that Ginny should NEVER learn how to drive, (or drive at all for that matter.)
"Ok, sweetie, we're at my flat, what's wrong?"
A combination between Ginny's frightening driving and the disasterous afternoon with Michael's grandmother plunged Hermione into more hysterics, tears, sniffling, sobbing.
"Michael's grandmother." Hermione started.
"His grandmother?"
"His grandmother is an awful person, horrible, horrible."
"How horrible?" Ginny asks, while handing Hermione tissues.
"Very." Hermione says then the rest of her words are dissolved by sobbing.
A crashing comes from the kitchen.
"CHARLIE! WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO MY KITCHEN!" Ginny shrieks.
"NOTHING!! JUST A TEA SET." He bellows
"WHICH ONE?" Ginny demands.
"THE ONE MUM GAVE TO YOU FOR YOUR WEDDING PRESENT."
"Ok, THANK YOU!" Then to Hermione she says "I hated that tea set, it was butt ugly"
Hermione giggles a bit, then blinks through her tears to see Charlie standing in the doorway of Ginny's kitchen.
"Are you alright?" Charlie says.
Ginny replies. "She'll be fine, can we have some alone time."
"Ok." Charlie walks off into the kitchen. Where he quietly repairs the teaset. Although performing magic always kept him occupied, he can't help but to overhear Hermione and Ginny's conversation.
"Michael didn't stand up for me. He sat there, letting his grandmother insult me. He didnt say a single goddamned thing to stop it." Hermione whispered. Charlie felt his anger build towards Michael and this bitch of a grandmother.
"That asshole." Ginny says.
"No, I don't know, he was probably just in shock." Hermione says defending him.
"Hermione! why would he be in shock?"
"I may have blurted out about Charlie." Hermione says.
"May have? Or you did, blurt out about Charlie?"
"I did." She confesses.
"What'd you say."
"About our one-night-stand and how when I said I was at your house, I was at Charlie's." Ginny gasps.
"What? You told her about that!?!"
"I didn't mean to!"
"Just like you didn't mean to sleep with me!" Charlie's rage at Michael, has boiled over and he is unconsciously taking it out on Hermione. He stands in the doorway to the kitchen, pissed.
Hermione blinks wildly through her tears. "What?"
Charlie takes her response and gets angrier, he apparates out of the room, angrily.
"What the fuck?" Hermione says, (she's still processing what just happened.)
"Honey, I think I'd better go talk to Charlie now. Are you alright?"
"Yeah, I'm fine now, I'm going to come get my car later." Hermione says, collecting her emotions and then apparating.
At her house, Michael is now waiting for her.
"Michael, What the fuck?!? Why did you let Eleanor yell like that?"
"Hermione. you should know that there is no interupting my grandmother. I love her, but she's kind of a bitch."
"No, really?" Hermione says sarcastically.
"Why are you angry at me? I should be angry at you! You cheated on me!"
"Yeah, I cheated, the first time ever in our relationship, and I regret it, so much." She felt her stomach flip over at the last part. The thing was, she didn't actually regret anything. Regret anything about Charlie. And the fact that they weren't even in a relationship at the time, helped a bit.
"Why did you tell your grandmother, I cheated was the reason we broke up."
"Well, it sorted of blurted out. I mean I couldn't tell her the real reason. That you're a witch. She would have had me committed to an asylum. and I didn't say anything. She assumed. and I went along with it." Michael confesses.
"You let her destroy my character. You just sat there. You didn't tell her to stop so we could have it out in private. Instead our personal business has been paraded in front of your father and mother." Hermione screams.
"Sorry. Hermione. I'm sorry."
Hermione stays silent.
"I brought you some ice cream and apple pie."
Hermione's heart thaws toward him and she smiles.
0 0 0 0
Why did she forgive him so easily? In theory she was still pissed, but every time she looked at his crinkly smile or his brown eyes, and she could have melted. She was thinking of this as she perused bridal magazines, looking for the ideal dress for her shape. Hermione was pretty tired, she and Michael had been pretty busy last night, and for the rest of the night Hermione was thinking.
I think i'm starting to get too old for all-nighters Hermione thinks to herself. as she leans back into her chair.
She wakes up and topples out of her chair, Hermione was unaware that she had even fallen asleep until she was woken up, a folded paper airplane bobbed in the air above her. Hermione snatched the pink airplane out of the air and read the note.
"Hey. department head, what's up? feel like I haven't seen you in ages. meet after work for coffee and various junk food that we will feel guilty for eating later? Emily Garmin, Welcome Witch"
Hermione laughed, it did indeed seem like a long time since she had seen Emily. She wrote a reply and sent the memo back down to the lobby.
0 0 0 0
Andreea Saguna, one of Romania's esteemed lawyers (of the magical variety), was having several irritating interviews with Charlie's family. Mrs. Weasley held no useful information but wanted to help so desperately she would hover during other interviews and unintentionally poke enormous holes in stories.
In an attempt to get Mrs. Weasley to leave her alone so that she could do effective work. She asked for a repeat interview.
"Molly, what were you doing earlier on the day in question?"
"Well, I had been preparing for Charlie's 27th birthday party. chilling various alcoholic drinks, yelling at my sons Fred and George, preparing several appetizers. Cleaning."
"What did you do when Charlie arrived home?"
"Well he arrived a bit late, so there were already some people here, so i kept the greeting to a minimal, just a loud happy birthday and a hug then I went off to the kitchen because something was burning."
"When do you remember seeing your son next?"
"Probably about 10 minutes later, when some more guests arrived."
"When was this 10 minute interval, about"
"Probably around 7:30 to 7:40."
"Do you remember anything about 10:30 onward."
"Not really." Mrs. Weasley says, shamefully.
"How come?"
"Because I drank too much champagne, and was quite tipsy by 10, and I had probably already passed out by 10:30, which was when the party ended."
"Do you know anybody who could vouch for Charlie from 10 onward?" Andreea asked, barely concealing happiness, this was the most useful information she had gotten from Mrs. Weasley in a while.
"Either my daughter Ginny, my husband, my daughter-in-law Fleur, or" She hesitates "I think Hermione Granger. " Mrs. Weasley says. Mrs. Weasley wrinkled her nose "Excuse me, I think I may have burned dinner beyond repair."
Andreea smiles. With no time wasted, she begins writing out notes to the people Mrs. Weasley mentioned.
A/N: I actually edited it this time and got most of the tenses right (I think), sorry if I missed any I am only human and not robot. (I should really look into a BETA reader) lols
-credit to my pally TheCountess6680, who gave me some insane ideas for this chapter.
-thank you very much to my reviewers :D love you all!