Once Ron and Lavender had departed, Draco suggested that they should sit down to talk. Since Draco and Hermione's table was still laid out with the picnic they had been enjoying only moments earlier, the two couples settled at the table Harry had reserved, as their picnic was still sitting undisturbed in the basket.
"I'm not sure where to begin," Hermione said, still trying to get her head around all the accusations Ron had just thrown her way. Even when she'd tried to correct his mistakes he hadn't seemed to want to know the truth, and part of her wondered if in the end, Harry would follow his lead.
"I think the beginning would be the best," Draco advised, well aware that if Potter and his wife simply asked questions they could be on all day explaining everything, but if Hermione explained things chronologically it would cut down on a lot of back and forth.
"I guess the beginning would be the summer between sixth and seventh year," Hermione said, her focus on Harry and Ginny as Draco already knew how her life had changed course. "When I went home, I expected everything to be the same as always. But nothing was the same. I quickly saw that something was wrong between my parents, and they informed me that my dad had been having an affair and the woman he'd been seeing was expecting his child."
"Oh my," Ginny gasped. "That must have been a shock and a half."
"It was," Hermione admitted. "Even more so when I learnt the affair had been going on for several years, and my parents had been having problems for even longer. It totally rocked my world as up until that point I'd always believed they had a solid relationship. By that point, Dad's affair was apparently over and he and Mum said they wanted to work things out, although he was still going to support his other child. And while I was happy about that, I was also feeling pretty guilty for not spotting that they were having problems. I even blamed myself for their problems, and wondered if they had happened because I wasn't around. I'd ran off to live this new life at Hogwarts, and all but abandoned my parents."
"And that's why you never visited that summer," Harry surmised. "I'm sure none of this was your fault, Hermione."
"It wasn't, and I can see that now," Hermione replied with a slight smile. "But at the time, I tortured myself over the fact I hadn't been there when my parents had needed me. Even when they assured me I wasn't to blame, I still felt responsible. And then right before we went back to school the woman Dad had been seeing had a little boy, my little brother, and once again I was abandoning my parents when they needed my support. I even considered not returning to Hogwarts, but Mum and Dad wouldn't have it. They insisted I'd worked too hard to throw it all away."
"And they were right," Harry said with a firm nod. "But why did you never tell us this when we went back to school? All you said was that you were having family problems. You could have talked to us, Hermione."
"I know that, and I came close so many times," Hermione admitted with a sigh. "But I was still beating myself up over the part I may have played in my parents problems. I don't think I was ready to admit that to you or Ron in case you agreed with me that I was to blame."
"We wouldn't have," Harry insisted, positive that he and Ron would have supported Hermione had she chosen to confide in them.
"I found it easier not to talk about it, and as you know I buried myself in school work and head duties," Hermione said. "I never set out to pull away from you and Ron, and I never meant to keep secrets from you. I always thought I would tell you what was happening when the time was right. Maybe when I'd gotten my head around it myself."
"But you never did," Ginny remarked, and Hermione couldn't quite tell if she was being judgemental or simply stating facts. "Does that mean you didn't get your head around it?"
"Every time I thought I was coming to terms with it, something seemed to change," Hermione admitted. "I went back home for Christmas, and even though Mum and Dad tried to keep things normal, it was clear everything had changed. I came back to school pretty sure they would end up splitting up, and sure enough at Easter, they confirmed they'd tried to make it work and they hadn't succeeded. That would have been the time to confide in my friends, but exams were right around the corner, so I threw myself into school work instead."
"But you did tell us your parents had split up just before we left school," Harry said. "Why didn't you tell us the whole story then?"
"If you remember, things weren't exactly great between myself and Ron at the time," Hermione reminded Harry. "I know I had created the distance between us, but he wasn't in the mood to listen to anything I had to say. Instead, I planned to tell you everything once we'd left school and had been apart for a few weeks. But when I went home, I found Dad had moved in with his new family and Mum was off to make a fresh start in France. Suddenly, I had a chance to be there for my Mum when she needed me. I saw a chance to support her."
"And Ron threw it back in your face," Harry sighed, recalling the ugly scenes that had taken place between his friends when Hermione had said she was off to France with her mother.
"He did really overreact," Ginny said, shaking her head at the thought of her brother's hot-headedness.
"To be honest, I wasn't too worried," Hermione confessed. "I knew what Ron was like. I figured once he calmed down and I returned from France, we would be able to talk and sort everything out. Maybe that is what would have happened, had I only been gone the few weeks I'd planned. Or even if it had only been a few months."
"What changed?" Harry asked.
"My Mum," Hermione answered with a sigh. "Things with Dad had affected her even more than I thought, and she really struggled to start a new life for herself. I saw really quickly that I would need to stay longer than a few weeks, so I got myself a job at the French Ministry of Magic. But even then, I still thought it would be a few months and then I could simply transfer back to the British Ministry."
"I can remember your early letters saying that," Harry said. "I have to admit, I found it a relief as it meant I didn't have to worry about writing too often as you would soon be back."
"I did mean it," Hermione assured her old friend. "I had every intention of coming home. But time passed, and by the time I realised Mum was moving on and finally living her life again, I'd fallen in love with France. I liked my job, I had friends. I had a good life. I think deep down I had known my heart was settling in France, and so I avoided writing to you as often as I should have. I kept making excuses to myself, about how I was too busy but would do it another time. I think I was just too scared to admit I wasn't coming home."
"And maybe I was too scared to press you into giving a return date," Harry admitted. "I think I could see from the letters we did exchange that you were happy over there, so I think deep down I never expected you back. And maybe that is why it was easier to just let our correspondence die a natural death. I never made a conscious decision to stop writing to you, I want you to know that."
"It was the same for me," Hermione assured Harry. "Things just happened naturally. I just wish I'd known earlier that I wasn't coming home, so I could have sorted things with Ron and told you both what was going on. If I could go back and do things differently, I would have told you."
"But you figured you had time," Harry said with an understanding smile. "I can see you didn't keep us in the dark because you didn't trust us."
"Of course not," Hermione confirmed. "I just wasn't ready to deal with it all at the time it was happening. I coped by dealing with it alone and throwing myself into my schoolwork. But I always knew you and Ron would be there when I was ready to talk. Things just never turned out that way."
"Until now," Harry retorted. "You're telling me now."
"And you have no idea how good it feels," Hermione said with a small laugh.
"So what happened with your parents?" Ginny asked, figuring she could turn the conversation back to the original topic now her husband and Hermione had cleared the air. "And your brother? Have you ever met him?"
"Yes, I met him over Christmas in seventh year," Hermione answered. "Dad had always said he wasn't going to abandon Jackson, and he hasn't. I just didn't expect him to go and set up home with him. These days Dad is quite happy with his new family, and I see him and Jackson every few months. I can even tolerate his partner, although I don't think I will ever be able to forgive her for the role she played in ending my parents' marriage."
"And your Mum?" Harry checked.
"Mum is happier than ever," Hermione confirmed with a grin. "She got remarried last year, and she and her new husband moved back to Britain six months ago. That is one of the reasons, Draco and I are finally coming home."
"So you're back home for good?" Harry asked.
"We are," Hermione replied with a nod. "And I had always planned on getting in touch with you and Ron when we were more settled. I at least wanted to see if we could mend some fences."
"I think it's safe to say we've done that," Harry said with a smile.
"I'm glad," Hermione said softly.
"Me too," Harry agreed.
"Okay, so now we've gotten all that out of the way, maybe we can focus on the most blindingly obvious question," Ginny remarked.
"Which is?" Draco asked.
"How on earth you two got together," Ginny answered, gesturing to the couple sitting opposite her and Harry. "Last I checked, you hated one another."
"Actually, that's not true," Draco corrected. "We learnt to get along in seventh year."
"Yeah, they did," Harry confirmed. "To be honest it was another thing Ron wasn't happy about. He thought that Hermione was getting too close to Malfoy, and confiding in him, not us."
"I didn't confide in him back then," Hermione said with a shake of her head. "Draco found all this out after we got together. Back in school, we simply learnt to work together and not hate each other."
"So how did you get together?" Ginny pressed.
"About eighteen months after moving over to France, I was out with some friends I worked with and one of them had arranged for us to meet up with her boyfriend, and some of his friends. Draco was in that group of friends, and once everyone realised we knew each other, they kind of left us to it."
"More like they pushed us together and practically ignored us," Draco snorted.
"I guess it was a consequence of being the only two Brits, and ones that knew each other at that," Hermione said with a shrug. "Unless one of us was going to leave, we were stuck together."
"And we were both too stubborn to be the one to leave," Draco said with a chuckle.
"So what did you do?" Ginny asked, sensing there was more to the story.
"I figured I could get her drunk enough for her to decide to go home," Draco admitted.
"Only he underestimated how well I can hold my drink," Hermione added with a smirk. "By the end of the night, I was still standing and he was the one slightly worse for wear."
"I wasn't drunk," Draco protested. "Just a bit merry."
"That would explain how you ended up collapsing onto my sofa and falling asleep," Hermione retorted. "He was supposed to be escorting me home like a gentleman, so I let him into my flat so he could use the floo to go home, only to pop to the bathroom to return to find him flat out on my sofa, snoring his head off."
"You could have woken me up and sent me home," Draco argued. "Instead, you were perfectly content to let me sleep on your sofa, while you went to bed."
"Maybe I wouldn't have been so nice if I'd known you would end up in my bed in the middle of the night," Hermione chuckled.
"I was lonely," Draco protested with a pout. "And you didn't argue. In fact, you were the one who insisted I couldn't get into bed with my clothes on."
"You didn't have to take everything off," Hermione retorted with a roll of her eyes.
"I didn't want to be overdressed, after all, you didn't have anything on," Draco shot back, his grey eyes glittering with mischief at the memory. "It was like you were just waiting for me to arrive."
"It may have crossed my mind," Hermione admitted. "Or I may have just been planning on wandering out of my bedroom the next morning, pretending as though I'd forgotten you were there."
"She seduced me, you two can be my witnesses," Draco declared.
"You certainly seem like a good match," Harry chuckled. "And you seem happy together."
"We are," Hermione confirmed. "And you two also seem pretty happy together. And Ron seems content with Lavender."
"I think we've all been lucky enough to find our perfect partners," Ginny said with a grin, as conversation drifted into generally catching up with one another's lives.
Half an hour later, Harry and Ginny announced it was time they were getting off to find Ron and bring him up to date on what was truly going on with Hermione. That of course led to the question of meeting up again, and properly renewing their friendship.
"I don't want to sound mean, but I think we should play it by ear and not make any firm plans," Harry said. "I don't want to sit here and make promises, only to find we can't keep them, and we end up hurting each other."
"And we do have Ron to consider," Ginny added with a sigh. "I would love to say my idiot brother will calm down and apologise once he knows the truth, but we all know what a stubborn arse he can be. There is a good chance his mind is set against Hermione, and there will be no changing it."
"I don't want you to jeopardise your relationship with Ron, or anyone else," Hermione assured the couple. "I agree we should just wait and see what happens."
Saying their goodbyes, Harry and Ginny gathered their jackets and the unused picnic, and headed off to find Ron and Lavender, while Hermione and Draco returned to their table, and their romantic picnic.
"Are you okay with leaving things like that?" Draco checked once the Potters were well and truly out of earshot.
"I think it's the best course of action," Hermione admitted. "Harry's right, it's foolish to commit to anything and then find we can't keep those promises. I'd rather wait and see what happens. If it's meant to be, then we'll stay in touch, but if it isn't, then at least I've made my peace with Harry and I know we've parted on good terms. We've got too much going on in our lives right now for me to worry about restarting an old friendship. Let's just wait and see what fate has in store for us in regard to Harry."