A/N: Thank you for your reviews, favorites and follows after last chapter! You can find me over on tumblr (nauticalparamour).
Please let me know what you thought of chapter fourteen and be on the lookout for chapter fifteen soon!
Although sneaking around the castle for stolen moments had been fun, being in an official relationship with Marcus was even better. After spending a weekend together holed up in her flat, they had cleaned themselves up and made an appointment to talk about it with Minerva the following Monday.
To their amusement, it seemed that they really hadn't been fooling anyone, and Minerva already knew. With assurances that the relationship would not get in the way of their work, she gave them their blessing. "You know, I just had a good feeling about you two," she revealed, looking awfully pleased with herself.
Afterwards, they rolled up to the Great Hall holding hands while they walked to the Head table, leaving a wake of whispering children behind them. They had already been the topic of considerable gossip, apparently, but now that it was confirmed, it seemed that Hermione Granger and Marcus Flint were all anyone could talk about.
It was nice to be able to go on actual double dates with Neville and Hannah — well, not actual, Neville had still not confessed his own feelings — and not have to pretend like they weren't flirting with one another. It was nice that Marcus was able to fire call his friends and actually introduce Hermione as his girlfriend. (Cassius still promised not to go blabbing to the press, so long as they told him all of their major moments instead of having to learn about them from the paper).
Hermione had even made plans to introduce him to her friends when term ended. She thought about writing a letter, but she knew that it would be better to smooth things over with Ron in person. "Of course, they will be happy for us eventually," she'd told Marcus, pressing a kiss to his lips. "But, it will take some... finesse to tell them it's you. I am sure they would think it was a joke if I just wrote to them."
They spent the weeks together, basically inseparable every weekend, exploring every fantasy they'd had between the two of them. Hermione was certain that she'd never get tired of looking at him. He was really too handsome by half, in a rugged sort of way, all strong arms and jaw. He looked like he could just pick her up and throw her over his shoulder so that he could have his way with her. And, he'd done just that at her request.
That wasn't to say that all of their time was spent doing more amorous activities. Seeing as term was rapidly coming to an end, Hermione had a lot of preparation to do for exams, and Marcus was happy to sit with her while she graded papers and read over pop quizzes before trying to persuade her they were too difficult for the students. They'd also taken a handful of broom rides together, over the greening landscape of the Hogwarts grounds.
It was nice to get away from all the observant students for a little bit and have a snog on the far end of the Black Lake where no one could see them.
It was nice. More than nice, really. Hermione never wanted it to end.
But, all good things had to come to an end, she supposed.
On a particularly chilly mid-May morning, Marcus extracted himself from her bedroom and pulled the covers off of her, reminding her that they had to make an appearance at breakfast, mostly because he was starving and she detested asking the House Elves to do any special favors for her (like breakfast in bed with her hunky boyfriend). He quickly pulled on his own clothes, before Hermione cheekily transfigured them just enough so people wouldn't realize that they were the same that he'd worn the day before.
Then, she shoved him out the door so that she could get dressed by herself without his "help" (which would undoubtedly end with them missing breakfast entirely). After pulling on a new set of robes, she quickly checked over her appearance in the mirror, making sure her hair was appropriate and she didn't have any rogue love bites — something that had caused her some embarrassment in a lesson before when pointed out by a student).
When she came out into the sitting room, Marcus was on her settee, paging through something with an extremely concerned look on his face. A piece of paper slipped out of the book and landed in his lap and he picked it up, reading the scrawled words quickly.
"What are you looking at?" she asked, thinking that she didn't own any book that should concern him this much.
His head snapped to the side so that she could look at him, holding the handwritten note in his hand.
"Hermione — Congratulations! Some of your best work yet. The flying storyline was so refreshing and new. And the love scenes never disappoint. Clementine's readers will be thrilled at this work. Whatever you are doing for inspiration, keep it up."
Marcus read the words out loud, his voice dripping with disdain the further that he went.
She could feel her cheeks heat up when she recognized the shiny cover of her printed manuscript. It wasn't in the final bound version yet, but it did show her two lead characters on the cover in a passionate embrace on one broom. She'd only just received it the morning before and she hadn't had a chance to tuck it away in her office for further review later. She'd been so completely distracted by Marcus the night before, she'd completely forgotten that it was there.
"I can explain that," she said, swallowing thickly, a nervous laugh bubbling up in her throat.
"What's there to explain?" he demanded, throwing the manuscript down on her coffee table and standing up. He ran his hand over his face, looking exhausted. "I think it's very clear about what's going on here."
"It is?" Hermione squeaked in surprise. She had never told anyone except her editor about being Clementine Dearly and it seemed almost too fanciful to think that Marcus was the first person to discover the truth. Not to mention, the look on his face seemed to suggest that he was almost... disgusted with her. Which was the thing she'd always feared about anyone learning that she was a romance novelist.
"Yeah," he said with a bitter laugh. "You've just been using me for this stupid book!"
"What?" Hermione asked, thinking that it was a rather silly accusation to make. Unable to stop herself, she laughed, thinking of how ridiculous this whole thing was. "That's not—"
"Salazar, I was so bloody stupid," he said with a groan. "I knew that you weren't actually interested in me. I knew it from the beginning, but I let myself get carried away. All so that you could do what? Write some smut with a dash of Quidditch player mixed in?"
She could feel her cheeks red hot and her heart hammering away painfully in her chest. "I am interested in you," she said, her voice croaking as she resisted the urge to cry. "As much more than just a Quidditch player. I haven't been using you, I swear."
He laughed bitterly, as he shook his head. "I should have known, all those questions about what Quidditch players get up to in dressing rooms, all the little questions here and there," he continued on his diatribe. "And once you were all done with me, what was your plan? Were you just going to toss me to the side?"
Hermione tried to swallow the lump in her throat. "I don't want to throw you to the side," she insisted, though it didn't really seem like he was hearing anything that she was saying. "I just want you."
"Yeah, now, when your — oh, I'm sorry, Clementine's — fans are clamoring for more," he said. "I knew that you thought that you were too good for me, right from the outset, but you flirted and batted your eyelashes until you got what you wanted."
She wasn't sure what to say. "That's not true, Marcus. I—"
"But what about my feelings, huh?" he asked, staring at her with those stormy grey eyes of his. "Didn't you ever think about what it was going to do to me? I fucking love you and you just don't even care."
The brunette was stunned. She never expected that Marcus might return the feelings that had been bubbling up inside of her for weeks now, let alone to have him proclaim that he fucking loved her. He just dropped it on her, in an argument of all things, and she had no idea how she was meant to respond to it.
"Marcus, I—I love you, too," she said, trying to take a step closer to him, only to have him rebuff her advances.
"Don't—don't lie just to try to make me feel better now," he insisted. "I have feelings, too, you know?"
"This is all just one big misunderstanding, Marcus," she whined, wishing that he would give her a chance to explain her side of the story, but he wasn't willing to hear it. Instead, he was already stalking towards the door, shaking his head. "Please, give me a chance."
"I think it's best if you just... just leave me alone," he said, sparing her a final look, before he left her flat, slamming the portrait door behind him.
Hermione sank into the settee, finally feeling her tears running down her cheeks, wondering how it could all go so wrong in an instant. She was sure that if she could just get Marcus to see her side, the two of them would be laughing about it later.
Only, would they? She started to think about the deplorable way that she'd behaved at the beginning of the year. She'd broken into the dressing rooms to get a better look at Quidditch equipment and even smelled his clothes, making him think that students were getting in. Then, she'd asked him all sorts of questions about what it was like to play Quidditch. That was... half for research and half because she was interested in him. It would be a lie to say that she hadn't scribbled down everything she could remember when she returned to her rooms after they would talk. And then, she'd asked him for flying lessons so that she could make her writing seem more realistic.
Maybe she had been using him to make her book better.
Not to mention that seeing him shirtless was what had set her mind off on this route anyway. Was that really so bad?
A large part of her wanted to say that no, it wasn't so bad! He should be flattered, if anything. And, it wasn't as if her feelings for him weren't genuine. She hadn't been lying when she told him she loved him. It was just an added bonus that he had a particular skill set that she lacked... one that she needed to write her novel.
But, another part of her knew that she should have told him about this a long time ago. This was just about the worst way for him to figure out that she was Clementine Dearly. How could she say she loved him when she couldn't even reveal this large part of her to him?
Whether she was right or wrong, Hermione couldn't deny how much this hurt. Pain started gnawing away in her gut as she thought of a million scenarios of how she could make it up to him. But, mostly, they devolved into ways that he could hurt her more than she already did.
Godric, this is what she'd been worried about when she first realized just how attracted she was to him. She knew that she shouldn't have acted on her desires. She should have just walked away when he told her he wanted to spend more time with him. It was going to be so terrible to tell everyone that they were not together anymore. If the whispers were bad enough now, she could only imagine what the speculation was going to be like.
It was best for her to just give him some space. Pretend like Marcus Flint didn't even exist. Get through the busy exam season and then it would be summer and she would have a break and she would be alone and she would get over her feelings. She'd go on holiday and by the time she returned to Hogwarts in the autumn, this would all just seem like a horrid dream.
