A/N: It's the last chapter, guys! This one is a bit more mellow and introspective, as things are settling down for our favorite characters, but I do so hope to enjoy it! The epilogue will be along very, VERY soon, at which time I'm sure I'll pour out all my feelings in the author's note. In the meantime, on with it!
P.S. Re: that bit about Ron carving the initials into his bedpost, I actually wrote a little fic about the day he did that. It's on my tumblr (remedial-potions) titled "one last golden day of peace", in case you'd like to check it out! Search the tag "eit universe" and it should come up.
P.P.S. The title of this chapter is indeed borrowed from the song "One Last Time" from Hamilton :)
June was the month during which all of the post Hermione received became exceedingly important. Gone were the days when she merely looked forward to a letter from Ron, or perhaps a small care package from her parents. Now that she had sent out her CV and applications to every job opening at Ministry of Magic, she felt on tenterhooks every time the mail owls swooped into the Great Hall.
"I don't know why you're worried," said Ginny airily to Hermione over toast one morning. "You'll have your pick of jobs once you've gotten perfect scores on your NEWTs."
Coming from her, however, the words were rather unconvincing: she spent most of her breakfasts watching intently for her own owl from the British and Irish Quidditch League, and had been known to shove aside correspondence from her own parents in disappointment.
"You don't know that," Hermione replied as a barn owl circled low over the Gryffindor table. "I'm an entire year behind everyone else."
"Extenuating circumstances, remember?"
"I suppose." She intended to explain that those circumstances were exactly the issue - she didn't want special treatment just because she had gone on the run with Harry Potter for a year and she suspected it might actually work against her - but then the barn owl above their heads dropped a thick scroll of parchment directly into Hermione's cup of tea, and she lost her focus a bit.
After drying it off with a tap of her wand, Hermione unfurled the scroll and felt her stomach flip at the sight of Ron's untidy scrawl.
Hey Hermione,
Here's the lease for the flat. The landlord said we've got until the end of the month to have it signed which is good because I know you'll want to read it about five times through before you sign it. And then it's ours! For a year! With the option to go month-to-month after that! (See, I read it too!)
And this is also your daily reminder to take breaks from your exam revision to eat and sleep. Don't worry yourself over them, you're brilliant and you're going to do great on them.
Love you! Can't wait to see you!
Ron
With a faint smile, Hermione flipped to the last page of the document, where, indeed, Ron had signed his own name on the dotted line. There was something a bit daunting about signing a year-long lease when neither of them was technically employed yet, and she wasn't sure where she would come up with the five-Galleon fee associated with keeping Crookshanks in the flat, not to mention that she still had to find time to read the thing between classes and exam revision.
But it would be fine, she told herself, tucking the envelope into her rucksack. She would find a job - even if she hadn't received any interview offers yet - and Ron would have his Auror assignment by the end of the summer. All they had to do was make it through this month and they'd be fine.
It sounded a lot easier said than done.
"I'm going to class early," Hermione decided aloud, taking one last sip of her tea. "There's a book I was hoping Professor Slughorn would loan to me - it's on medicinal potions, I'm sure they'll be on the exam. If you'd like to borrow it when I'm done-" Hermione looked up to see Ginny, ashen-faced, staring at a sheet of parchment in her hands. "Ginny?" When she only blinked in response, Hermione tried again. "Is everything alright?"
"Dear Miss Weasley," Ginny began to read aloud in a soft, quaking voice. "On behalf of the British and Irish Quidditch League, the Holyhead Harpies would like to an extend a formal invitation for you to join the team in training for the upcoming season-" She broke off then, a wild, delirious look in her eyes.
"Ginny!" Hermione exclaimed, "that's so fantastic-"
"Keep your voice down," Ginny hissed back. "I don't want anyone else to know in case it doesn't work out - but I'm going to go write to Harry really fast. I'll see you in class."
Hermione gawked after her, a stunned half-smile frozen on her features. Pieces were falling into place, little by little, for everyone around her, and she just had to believe that they would fall into place for her too. The month was still young, after all.
And in the meantime, she had a Potions lesson to attend.
•••
Hermione was more than accustomed to distractions whilst trying to revise - she had spent six and a half years in school with Ron and Harry, after all - but Ginny was in a league all her own. Where Harry had often pestered her for guidance, and Ron had stolen her attention merely by existing, Ginny had turned NEWT revision into a social event. Suddenly, the Gryffindor common room was filled with students of all ages (and Houses - Luna Lovegood became a regular fixture) quizzing each other, copying notes, and tossing textbooks back and forth. And Hermione, despite spending the better part of her magical education flanked by her two best friends, was really the sort of person who studied best alone.
The library, naturally, was her best source of solace. During her third year, she had discovered a small nook, hidden behind a bookcase, and it was there that she found herself more and more as her time at Hogwarts raced to a close. The more she revised, the more she realized how much she truly had to accomplish, and she often found herself rising at dawn just to squeeze in a few hours before breakfast.
It isn't forever, she reminded herself on the days when her eyes crossed from fatigue and her fingers ached from scrawling out notes. It would be worth it when she aced her exams, and she could sleep all she wanted once she was back in London with Ron. In a matter of weeks, he would be waiting for her at King's Cross station, ready to welcome her home, and all of this - the exhaustion, the loneliness, the overwhelming sense of being caught between two lives - would be a thing of the past.
With the examiners due to arrive at Hogwarts in exactly eight days, Hermione tucked herself away into her favorite nook one evening after class, accompanied only by a rucksack stuffed with textbooks. As she went to retrieve a heavy, yellowing tome on Human Transfiguration from within its depths, another scroll of parchment tumbled out, and Hermione felt her stomach flip.
She had embarked upon reading the lease so many times, usually right before bed, and every time it resulted in her waking up with a pile of parchment on her face. There was a voice in the back of her head (and it sounded just like Ron) that kept saying that the lease was probably just fine, that she didn't need to read every single word, that her Arithmancy exam was far more pressing, and late at night, she couldn't help but listen.
But Ron was waiting for its return, and she knew how impatient he could be, so she picked up the lease, smoothed it out on the table before her, and began to read. This agreement, it began, made this fifth day of June, 1999...
"Hey."
Hermione lifted her gaze to see Ginny, bag slung over one shoulder and a tray of food balanced on the other hand, edging her way around the corner of the bookcase.
"Hi," replied Hermione as Ginny dropped into the seat across from her and set the tray of sandwiches and fruit down on the small wooden table. "Have you come to study?"
"I'm here to make sure you eat something." A beat, and then, "Ron writes to me too."
"He doesn't have to do that-"
"He does it because he loves you," said Ginny, "and he doesn't want you to waste away." She helped herself to a chicken sandwich and peered curiously at the document on the table. "What is that?"
"My and Ron's lease for the flat."
"You found a place?"
"Yes - well, I think so - I do want to check and make sure we aren't signing our lives away - and what if the parchment's jinxed somehow?" she suddenly wondered aloud with a jolt of horror. "Ron's already signed it-"
"I'm sure it's fine," Ginny said with a touch of exasperation. She nudged the tray of sandwiches toward Hermione. "Now eat something."
As Ginny had just forcibly reminded her of Mrs. Weasley, Hermione felt she had no choice but to select a sandwich of her own and take a compulsory bite.
"And besides," Ginny continued on, "Ron's an Auror - or, almost one, anyway - and he grew up with the twins, don't you think he'd have already checked for a jinx?"
"Oh, you're right," said Hermione, tossing the sandwich back down. "I should just trust him - I do trust him - and I know he wouldn't have signed this if he didn't think it was the best thing for us, these exams just have me a bit - well-"
"Mental?" Ginny supplied around a bite of her own sandwich.
"Apparently."
"I don't know why you're so stressed out-"
"Oh, easy for you to say, isn't it?" Hermione snapped, eyes quickly narrowing in contempt. "The Holyhead Harpies don't exactly care what kind of marks you get in Charms."
Ginny opened her mouth as if to retort, then slowly closed it again. "Fine," she said, clearly making a concerted effort to keep her voice even. "I was going to be nice to you and explain why you have nothing to worry about, but maybe I'll just take my sandwiches and go-"
"I didn't mean it like that." With her nerves already on edge, the last thing Hermione had the mental capacity for was a petty spat. "I just can't make any mistakes, all right?"
"Not one?"
"No."
Ginny took another bite of her sandwich and chewed pensively. "Is there any point in telling you that's unreasonable?"
"No."
Silence fell between them as Hermione reverted her attention back to the lease in front of her. Tenant agrees to pay Landlord the sum of one hundred Galleons per month, due and payable…
"You really should eat something, though-"
"I will when I'm done."
"Can't you read and eat at the same time?" asked Ginny, a rather Fred-and-George-esque grin twitching at the corners of her mouth.
"Ginny, honestly-"
"Okay, fine. I'll leave you be. Just promise me that you'll take a break for a few minutes, because there's still life after exams are over."
Standing up from her seat, Ginny took another enormous bite of her sandwich and dusted her fingers off on her robe.
"That's exactly the thing," Hermione found herself saying just as Ginny was turning on her heel to leave. "School's almost over, but once it's done… I want it to be perfect," she admitted. "I want the flat with Ron to be perfect, I want to get the job that I want - and maybe it's naive, to think that it'll work out that way, but it's what I want. I'm tired of feeling like… like I'm constantly on my way to something, I just want to get there. I want it to be settled, and, and calm. And if I get the right grades, and I make sure this lease is right, I'll be that much closer to it."
Hermione knew that, were Ginny a less kind person, she would have, and could have, identified one by one all of the flaws in Hermione's logic, all of the things she couldn't control. She wouldn't know, really, until she got there, if the flat had noisy neighbors or a leaky faucet or ambulances driving by all night. And her desired job at the Ministry could easily leave her feeling unfulfilled within a matter of months. So much was out of her grasp, but the things that were not, she felt she had to clench them tightly in her fists lest they, too, somehow went awry.
"Well, it's just a couple more weeks," said Ginny gently, pushing her ponytail over her shoulder. "You're almost there."
•••
It took two eagle owls to carry the parcel into the Great Hall, and still their flight path grew evermore erratic under the weight of the swaying, paper-covered box. When they finally released it, it dropped with a dramatic thud onto an empty stretch of the Gryffindor table, the force of the impact toppling Hermione's glass of pumpkin juice.
"Is that for you?" asked Ginny, intrigued as she absently siphoned up the juice with her wand.
"Actually…" There was no mistaking it: Ginny Weasley and Hermione Granger, Gryffindor Tower, Hogwarts School was penned onto the front of the box in Harry's handwriting. "It's for both of us."
Without further ado, they ripped through the packing paper to find a cardboard box absolutely stuffed to the gills with everything their revision-addled brains could desire: two large tins of Mrs. Weasley's homemade fudge; brand new Self-Inking Quills; different varieties of tea; the newest editions of Quidditch Quarterly and Transfiguration Today, the former for Ginny and the latter for Hermione; a pair of crisp, fresh notebooks; Fever Fudge (in case you need to get out of an exam, read the label handwritten by Ron); tiny flasks of Pain-Relief Potion; an unmarked bottle filled with amber liquid. At the bottom of the box lay two envelopes, one bearing Hermione's name, the other Ginny's.
Ron's note inside was short and sweet, but even as she read his words, drinking in the strokes of ink on the parchment, Hermione felt as though he could well be seated right beside her. She could almost hear in her mind the Ron of exam seasons past, the one who used to retrieve her from the library at closing time and fix her cups of tea with too much sugar. For a fleeting instance, she was closer to him than she had been in weeks, and the obstacles between them suddenly felt trivial at best. She had seven exams to take - just seven - and a journey home on the train to endure, and her career as a student of Hogwarts would officially come to a close. Everything she wanted was so, so brilliantly close.
Beside her, Ginny had already cracked open a tin of fudge, an expression of pure bliss on her face as she chewed. "You have to try this," she said, thrusting the tin under Hermione's face. "Mum's best yet."
"It's eight in the morning."
"Yeah, and?" Ginny licked the remnants of chocolate from her fingertips. "The sugar'll help us study."
Hermione's retort died in her throat as another, smaller owl soared gracefully over the table and landed gently on the bench beside her, a thick envelope clenched in its beak. All discussion of morning's sweets forgotten, Hermione accepted the envelope, turning it over to see a red wax seal bearing an ornate M on the back.
"Oh, no," she lamented at once as the owl took off again. "Oh, no, they've rejected me already-"
"You're barking," said Ginny. "Just open it."
"No, I can't-"
"Then I'll do it-"
"You're getting chocolate on it!" Hermione yelped as Ginny snatched the letter from her hands.
"Shouldn't matter if it's just a rejection letter," said Ginny with a smug grin as she neatly tore open the envelope and extracted the parchment within. Hermione watched, her heart pounding in her throat. "There's like, six different letters in here - they're all from different departments-"
"Oh, for God's sake-"
Already out of patience, Hermione grabbed the letters back. Her eyes darted so frantically over the printed words that she retained none of it in her first attempt to read, and had to take a breath to steady herself. Her incessant brain had already formulated hundreds of reasons that she would be unhirable, the most prominent being that she had once assisted in a bank robbery, and she squinted at the page as though that might somehow shield herself from it.
"Here, let me help you," said Ginny, her tone now softened as she pulled a few sheets from Hermione's trembling hands. "This one's from the Department of Magical Transportation… they want to interview you! Apparition License Coordinator, that sounds - erm - fun-"
Hermione's shoulders sagged in relief. A job pushing paper was better than no job at all.
"You applied for the Department of Mysteries?" Ginny continued, faintly awestruck at this revelation. "Oh, but it says here the only job opening is as an assistant to the actual Unspeakables."
"Really?"
"Yeah, and it says you can join the Unspeakables training program if you'd like - oh, but it's six months in an 'undisclosed location' - that sounds awful if I'm honest-"
"What else is there?"
"Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures…" Ginny's eyebrows shot up toward her hairline. "They want to interview you for their House Elf Liaison position-"
"You're joking."
"No, I'm not, see?" Ginny held the parchment out in front of Hermione's face. "That's a good thing, right?"
"Yes, it's - it's-"
It was, Hermione felt in the darkest, most insecure recesses of her mind, much more than she could have hoped for. Given that she had taken a year off from school to go on the run and do things like break into a bank vault, she had expected that her first year or so of employment would consist of a lot of paperwork and proving her own worth.
Her next seven exams couldn't pass quickly enough.
"I have to write them back right away! Give me that."
Retrieving a Self-Inking quill from the box, Hermione set instantly to work.
•••
Upon completing her final exam - the practical portion of Herbology, of all things - Hermione had expected to feel a sense of relief, or great accomplishment, or perhaps just a wave of exhaustion. She did not, by any stretch of her imagination, expect to find herself choking back tears.
If anything, she should have been happy, overjoyed, delirious, even (and she was the latter, admittedly, due to a lack of sleep and an excess of caffeine more than anything else). She had been desperate for this moment since she returned to Hogwarts in January, eager to just hurry up and be done with it already, to finally set her goals in motion. But as she strode from the greenhouses to the castle in the bold summer sunlight, the nostalgia rushed over her with such force that her knees nearly buckled. Every inch of the castle grounds was saturated with memories of the past eight years, some wonderful, some gut-wrenching, all formative, and she didn't even know when or if she would ever return.
It was a strange thing to reconcile, the bittersweetness of her final days at the castle, and those days were filled with goodbyes in every possible form. She made one last visit to Hagrid in his hut, recalling the hatching of Norbert the dragon, Ron belching up slugs, all the tears she had cried into an enormous mug of tea during the great Crookshanks-Scabbers fight of their third year. And the Great Hall: how many times had she dined there with her friends, studied notes over hurried meals, lamented over the Daily Prophet, read letters and opened presents. Every classroom overflowed with memories, every corridor reminded her of a history she would always carry with her. She could barely even look at the common room as she levitated her trunk down the stairs lest she begin bawling at the thought that she'd never sit in front of that particular fireplace again. Everything she did was for the last time: her last visit to the library, her last trip to the owlery, her last patrol as Head Girl. She traversed the castle alone that night, memorizing the corridors, welcoming the deluge of memories, even the bad ones, because she was lucky to have them at all.
There was no graduation ceremony at Hogwarts; rather, each seventh-year student was presented with a small scroll certifying the completion of his or her education on the morning of their departure. Hermione was grateful for the lack of fanfare; rather, she appreciated that her final breakfast in the Great Hall took place just like any other, sitting across from Ginny at the Gryffindor table while last-minute post owls circled overhead.
When they stepped outside, the day was cool and grey, a slight fog hanging over the Black Lake. Instinctively, Hermione began leading the way toward the thestral-drawn carriages, only to find herself intercepted by one Rubeus Hagrid.
"Seventh years," he called, waving an enormous hand at the crowd of students. "Seventh years, over 'ere, please."
Hermione and Ginny exchanged glances, but then followed him to the edge of the lake, where several small boats bobbed in the murky water.
"All righ', now, 'Ermione," said Hagrid. "As yer Head Girl, yeh've got firs' pick of the boats."
Hermione stared up at him, perplexed. "We're taking the boats?"
"Well, sure," he grinned behind his scraggly beard, "yeh've got ter leave the same way yeh came, don' yeh?"
"Right," she nodded, surprised she hadn't thought of it herself. Beckoning to Ginny to join her, Hermione selected a little wooden vessel and made herself as comfortable as possible inside; it was so much smaller than it had been when she was eleven.
Away they sailed across the lake, the castle shrinking as they drifted toward Hogsmeade station.
"Who did you ride with the first time?" Hermione asked Ginny as something splashed below them in the water, likely the giant squid.
"Colin Creevey," said Ginny with a hint of wistful sadness. "And I spent the whole time bragging to him that Harry Potter had stayed at my house over the summer."
"Of course you did," Hermione smiled. If ever there was an example of how things had changed, it was Ginny and Harry's relationship.
"Let me guess, you rode with Ron?"
"And Harry and Neville," Hermione confirmed. And even then, the gangly boy with dirt on her nose had taken hold in her brain, even if it was simply because everything he did drove her crazy. "And this is strange, they'll never get to do this."
"Yeah, but Ron's legs would have to hang over the side," Ginny laughed. "He'd need his own boat."
"He'd still share with me, though."
"Knowing him, he would."
So they'd missed a term at Hogwarts together. And she would be riding the Hogwarts Express for one last time without him. They still had so much more beyond that. And it wasn't that she couldn't do things on her own, but she wanted to walk through life with him by her side… and it was only a matter of hours now until she officially could.
Given that she was still, officially, Head Girl until the train pulled to a stop at King's Cross, Hermione did one last patrol of the train corridors, peeking fondly in at the students chattering excitedly about the summer hols. The trip at once was painfully long and startlingly brief; one second the landscape was dark and wild, the train cutting through mountains and curving around lakes, and it seemed she would never be out of Scotland, and the next, the countryside had turned to suburbia, with tidy rows of well-kept houses; and then London, busy and bustling, the sunlight glinting off the skyscrapers.
As the Hogwarts Express pulled into the station, Hermione spotted two figures standing at the far end of the platform, one tall and lanky, one a bit shorter. Immediately, Ginny began to gather up her things, and the second the train rolled to a stop, she was dragging her trunk loudly down the aisle, dodging around younger students in her haste. Hermione felt compelled to do the same, but the one last shred of responsibility inside her meant she made a final trip through the compartments, ensuring that every student had safely disembarked before doing so herself.
And she really didn't care anymore if she made a spectacle in the middle of the train station, if the gaze of surrounding parents and students fell onto her as she rushed up to Ron, setting down Crookshanks in his basket and letting her trunk drop to the ground with a heavy thud; she flung her arms around his neck with unparalleled fervor, the solid warmth of his muscles beneath his clothes like a tonic for her frayed nerves.
"Hi," he half-laughed into her neck, hands on her back. "God, I thought you'd never get off that train."
"So did I."
It was here, finally, and she could hardly believe it. Some days, it had seemed like a life away from Ron, one filled with stolen weekends and lengthy letters, was just her new reality and she would never really be out of it, but she was. The life that had once seemed a distant fantasy was starting today - it was starting right now.
Hermione slackened her grip just enough to press her lips to his, letting one hand slip around to the side of his face. The feel of his skin, the prickle of his unshaven jaw beneath her fingertips, the taste of his lips, it simultaneously thrilled and comforted her, and she let herself sink into it, pulling back only to take a breath.
"Hey, Hermione?" Ron's forehead dropped against hers, the corner of his mouth tilting up.
"Hmm?"
Welcome home."
Thanks for reading! Please review :) Epilogue on its way soon...