This was written for Blue, on the GGE.
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Word count: 1812
let's keep our story quiet baby
(they'd say it's a tragedy)
Later, when they're asked where they first met, Hermione always redirects with 'you'd never guess's or 'it's not that important's. She spins tales of libraries and coffee shops, and as time passes everyone learns that this story is one the couple keeps for themselves.
Besides, everyone just assumes that she likes to tell stories because she writes books – never mind that those she writes aren't exactly 'story books'. It suits her just fine for this though, even if it's annoying most of the time.
The truth is though, she first met Charlie in a cemetery, and those aren't exactly the places you'd use for a great love story, and she rather thinks that theirs is one.
.x.
No matter how many times she comes here, Hermione always finds the place too dreary. She supposes it makes sense, seeing as it is a cemetery, but it still feels wrong. It's her mother's last residence, the place where she chose to be buried. It should reflect at least some of her mother's traits, and her mother had never been so grim.
Then again, her mother was dead. Perhaps it made sense that visiting her should bring her no joy or relief.
Still, that doesn't stop her from coming every week, if only to get away from the oppressing loneliness of her own apartment. After all, dreary though it is, at least this cemetery is outside, and it is a quiet place where she can be alone with her thoughts if she so wishes.
Lately though, she hasn't been alone in her grief. A man comes too – at least as often as she does – and the grief painted on his shoulder speaks of such loss and pain that she wishes she could go to him.
He spends his time kneeling in front of a recent headstone. From where she is she cannot see the name on it, and she dares not wait for him to leave to go have a look. It seems inappropriate.
She feels almost ashamed to spend so much time thinking about that red-haired man, dreaming up life stories for him when his loss is clearly still so recent, but her mother always loved listening to her stories, and Hermione thinks she might have had a smile for these ones.
Besides, it's not like she intended to ever tell anyone living about it, so it should be safe.
Or well, it should have been.
.x.
They actually meet several months after she first sees him. And by meet, what she really means is 'nearly collide with each other at the entrance of the cemetery'.
He's taller than her and he looks kind, but from up close she can see the shadows under his eyes, and they tell tales of sleepless nights haunted by ghosts. She knows this, because she sees them every day in the mirror too.
She blurts out her name and what seems like half her life story – how she's here to visit her mother because she died last year but still is the only family Hermione has left, how most of her friends have moved out of Scotland and left her behind, but she doesn't mind, because she had what she wanted here, a nice life if a bit lonely, and she had seen him months ago, that she had noticed he came as often as she did but she didn't watch him creepily. She wasn't into stalking, thank you very much.
By the time she finally manages to stop talking, her cheeks are burning, but the man looks only half-stunned, and he seems more amused than offended, so she doesn't count it as a total loss.
This is why she doesn't have a lot of friends, she remembers – because she's awkward around strangers, and never really understood how to interact in informal settings.
Her mother had been amazing at it though, and they had been close – closer than in most mothers-daughters relationships, Hermione knows – but she had never managed to pass that skill onto her daughter.
She's dragged back into the present when the man introduces himself.
"Charlie Weasley," he says, extending a hand.
"Hermione Granger," she answers, shaking it. His fingers are cold but his grip is firm, and she spares a thought to wonder as to what he does in his life.
"Yes, I heard."
He doesn't let go of her hand immediately, and his eyes roam across her face until she arcs an eyebrow.
"I-" he begins, apologetic. "I'm sorry, it's just, you remind me of someone. This may seem a little bold, but have we met before? Other than from the other end of the cemetery, I mean," he adds, realizing from her pointed look that he might have to be more specific.
"Bolder than me admitting to watching you from afar for months? Because I don't think that's possible." She pauses for a moment, smiling. "But no, sorry. I don't think we've ever met. Officially, anyway."
"That's a shame."
He smiles, and his face is transformed. She thinks she might finally get all those stories she read when she was younger, because they always talked about other people's smiles being a thing of wonder and she never understood, never saw this before.
When he smiles, Charlie's face is different. He looks healthy and unburdened, and his eyes sparkle with a kind of hidden light that can only come from happiness.
It makes her want to smile back, and that's when she realizes.
Her parents did always say that she fell too fast.
.x.
They somehow end up getting coffee every Saturday after leaving the cemetery.
Charlie has a big family, but he likes his independence. He used to live abroad but came back a couple of years ago for one of his brother's wedding, and he kind of never left since then. He works as a veterinarian in a nearby zoo that she hadn't even known existed, and she somehow got roped into visiting him at some point.
His younger brother Fred died around the same time her mother did – there was a fight, he tells her, and Fred tried to be a hero. He died before he could reach a hospital, and Charlie should have been there, but he hadn't been, and his brother died because of it.
She can sense that there's more to the story, but he likely won't tell her, won't tell anyone, and she knows better than to push.
In return, she tells him about her life – or what she didn't blurt out awkwardly during their first meeting.
It's nice, and the rare friends she's kept in contact with and told about this approve. Harry tells her it's good that she has someone to talk to but that she should be careful, because Harry always worries, and Luna takes one look at her face and tells her that she wants to meet her new boyfriend, never mind that she has only talked with Charlie a couple of times then.
.x.
She introduces Charlie to her mother on a sunny August day – the kind of day her mother would have hated, unusually warm and too damp at the same time, the kind of heavy heat that comes before the rain.
She takes a deep breath and holds tight onto Charlie's hand for a second, feeling as though she's trying to absorb his strength for this.
She kneels in front of the headstone, her bare knees hitting dried grass in what has become a familiar gesture in the last year. This time though, she's smiling.
"Hi mom. This is Charlie. He's a good friend of mine. I think… I think you would have liked him. You and dad, and God knows dad had problems liking my friends." She lets out a half-chocked laugh that sounds more like a cough.
She licks her lips, trying to find the right words for what comes next. It may be the hardest thing she's ever done, but she thinks – no, she knows – that it's time she let go of this grief before it ate her up.
"I won't be coming back next week. I'll never forget you, and I'll still visit, but I can't keep spending so much time here. It's not healthy, and I want to be more than the woman who can't let go of her mother."
She says other things too, and she only realizes she's panicking a little when her muscles cramp. She stops then, and gets up.
They leave flowers on their way out, the beautiful white roses her mother loved so much.
("She always hated chrysanthemums, you know. She said they were morbid, and I've seen so many of them here that I kind of have to agree with her.")
.x.
She meets George before she's introduced to Fred, and if the man was anything like his twin, then she understands why Charlie grieves so much for his loss. George radiates life in a way that she's rarely seen, even after his loss of who he says was his 'other half'.
She likes him though, even if his jokes are a little too crass and his laugh comes a little forced. He's trying, and that makes her realize that she hasn't been trying to get over her mother, not really.
He's the first one to ask how Hermione met his brother, and one of the rare people they tell the truth to.
She doesn't really know what kind of reaction she expects, but his booming laugh is not it. George clasps his brother's shoulder hard, and he smiles more truthfully.
"Using him to pick up chicks in cemeteries? Fred'd be so proud of you, big brother."
It's the first time she sees Charlie blush. It's a good look on him, she thinks.
They spend the rest of the day talking about nothing and laughing, trading jokes and stories of high school pranks – Hermione might have been first in her class and mindful of the rules, but Harry had been a bit of a troublemaker (he still is probably) and he had often dragged her into his schemes. Or at least that's what she always says.
No one needs to know that she enjoyed troublemaking more than she let on, but she always had her suspicion that Harry wasn't fooled.
That evening, she kisses Charlie for the first time, and it tastes a little bit like coming home.
.x.
In her wedding vows, she writes 'I love you, Charlie Weasley, even if you do pick up chicks in cemeteries'.
They have to pause the ceremony because they both laugh so much they can't stand on their feet.
Molly, Charlie's mother, says that it's a great sign.
Hermione just thinks that it proves she's in for a very lively 'rest of her days', but that suits her just fine.