** This is a series of drabbles, ficlets and one shots following our dear Fred and Hermione from June of 1995 (shortly before the third task of the Triwizard Tournament) to an as-of-yet undetermined point post-war.**
oOoOoOo
A/N: This story officially has a playlist! If I did it right it should be on Spotify as "Fred & Hermione (TTWW)."
I'll still note when there's a song that speaks to/inspires a particular chapter, but they are all on there along with a bunch of others.
oOoOoOo
2 November 1995
"What on earth is going on down there?" Hermione heard Parvati ask Lavender, who was leaning over the railing to look down at the quidditch pitch. Hermione had been speaking to Padma, who was seated beside her sister, but at Lavender's remark her head snapped back in the direction of the field.
It had been a dreadfully ugly match with Slytherin's taunting and Ron's utter failure, and she had a knot in her stomach over the ordeal. Just as she shot forward to look down herself, inadvertently sending a first year tumbling backward between the rows of benches, she heard Lavender say back, "Looks like a fight."
"Oh no," Hermione breathed, spotting two red heads and one messy black one across from an easily identifiable platinum blonde in emerald robes. She took off running down the stairs but after two flights she stopped to lean over the railing and determined she was far too late.
"Harry! HARRY! NO!" Angelina shouted, having dismounted her own broom.
Given that Hermione was several hundred meters away and they were turned so their numbers weren't visible, she couldn't tell which twin was which, just that one of them was restrained while the other was running alongside Harry directly toward Malfoy.
"No!" she screamed, just as Malfoy was brutally tackled to the ground.
oOoOoOo
Hermione was pacing the corridor outside of Professor McGonagall's office, having finally chewed her thumb nail past the point of bleeding. Angelina, Alicia, Katie and Ginny were lined up along the wall beside her, displaying their own anxious ticks, all of which had been amplified ten-fold when Umbridge waddled past them moments before.
"It's bad, it's going to be really bad," Katie muttered for the third time to nobody in particular, her voice hollow. "They had to take Malfoy to the hospital wing."
"Shut up, Katie," Alicia snapped, running a hand through her already disheveled hair, which had long since escaped from its elastic.
Whatever had happened they were about to find out, because the door opened and Umbridge walked out. She paused to wrinkle her nose at the assemblage before turning with a little "hmph" and striding down the corridor. It's a good thing she didn't look back because Ginny made an exceptionally vulgar gesture in her direction.
They had a better idea of just how bad it was when they heard Professor McGonagall say quietly from within, "I'm sorry boys, you brought this on yourselves." She strode out a moment later with all three of them tailing her, looks of shock on their faces.
"What happened?" Alicia asked immediately, stepping forward.
Professor McGonagall just shook her head solemnly and walked toward the stairs. Harry muttered, "I need to find Ron," and followed her.
George was the one that finally opened his mouth to explain, though he looked like he was about to vomit on his shoes.
"Banned. All three of us."
"Banned? What do you mean banned? Like suspended? How many games?" Angelina asked in rapid secession.
"She used the words, 'lifetime ban,'" George elaborated, his voice dull and detached. Angelina's legs gave out and she sank to the floor like she'd been shot. Ginny swore colorfully, as did Alicia, and Katie burst into tears.
Hermione's eyes were on Fred though; he'd been absolutely silent since they'd emerged from the office. Suddenly, he turned on his heel and took off down the corridor. She only thought about it for a second before she followed him. Nobody was paying the least bit of attention to her anyway.
She thought he might head back to the locker rooms in the stadium, or perhaps Gryffindor tower, but he took an abrupt left into what she knew to be a vacant classroom beside the entrance to the dungeons.
The door was still swinging shut when she put a hand out and caught it, slipping inside behind him. Fred was standing perhaps twenty feet away near a window that faced the quidditch pitch, the stands of which were still emptying. His head was in his hands, and it only took her a second to ascertain that he was crying.
"Fred?" she entreated quietly, sliding her bag off her shoulder and letting it fall to the floor beside her.
He didn't react to her presence other than to squeeze his eyes tightly shut.
"Fred, are you…?" she trailed off, because finishing that sentence with the words "all right" or "okay" seemed monumentally stupid.
"Please leave," he requested after a moment, tone uneven and thick.
"I just wanted to –"
"Hermione, leave."
She shoved down a flash of righteous indignation that threatened to bubble to the surface and stepped toward him, reaching out to place a hand on his shoulder. His eyes flickered open and he pulled away from her. She felt like she'd been slapped.
"I was worried about you," she attempted, her voice so tentative that it hardly sounded like her voice at all. Her hand fell back to her side, dangling limp and useless.
"Worried about me," he scoffed vindictively, licking his lips.
"Yes, worried about you," she shot back, a little of her anger at the situation beginning to seep through.
"That's great. So, you've decided that rather than yelling at me today, you're going to take my side?"
"How could you – I am always on your side, Fred!"
"It sure doesn't feel like it! Half the time I see you you're smiling at me, and the other half you're telling me off! You just did it yesterday!"
"I only tell you off when you're breaking the rules and being a stupid git!" she yelled back, matching his volume and balling her fists at her sides.
"Oh, lovely. That's really charming. Will you please just give me two bleeding moments of peace!?"
"No!" she declared, knowing even as she said the word that it was a non-sensical response. His face was red, and his eyes were puffed, and he looked like he was on the verge of completely losing it. Fred made to step around her toward the door and she turned, dexterously slipping her wand from her pocket and slamming it shut, putting locking and silencing charms on it for good measure. The last thing they needed was to draw Umbridge back.
"Have you lost your bloody mind?!" Fred shouted, rounding on her with an outraged expression.
"Maybe!" she countered. "I came here to make sure you were okay because I know how much you love quidditch and you attacked me."
"It's not about the quidditch, Hermione!"
"Then what the hell is it about?!"
"Everything!" His voice cracked and he turned suddenly, kicking a chair and sending it sailing into a nearby wall. One of the legs broke off with a loud snap and clattered against the stone floor. "It's about fucking everything. This year, Percy, the ministry, the Prophet, that frog-faced bitch! I am furious about everything, all the time, and there's nothing that I can do about any of it!"
His chest was rising and falling rapidly, breathing ragged and cheeks flushed. She opened her mouth to speak but bit her tongue sharply when he carried on.
"I just wanted one year, one more year to be reckless and play quidditch and plan stupid pranks, because you know what's waiting for me out there? A fucking war! Having to constantly check over my shoulder, constantly worry if someone I love is going to be murdered or tortured or go missing, and I'm not going to get it. I'm not going to get any of it. It's unfair and terrifying and I just – I just – FUCK."
He screwed his eyes shut and wrapped his hands around the back of his neck, interlocking his fingers and angling his head harshly toward the ground.
She considered what he'd said and realised that, though they shared many of the same concerns, their situations were simply different. Hermione had two more years of school, two more years until she would be expected to truly take part in the war. Two more years of studying and going to quidditch matches and being concerned over who liked who, and who was dating who. Fred didn't, he had months. Months until he was meant to be an adult and join The Order alongside his parents and his brothers.
It painted his being banned from quidditch, the pranks even, in an entirely different light. A much harsher, far less forgiving light.
Hermione debated doing as he'd asked. Unlocking the door and leaving him to brood on his own, but the fact of the matter was that she was angry too. She was angry for him and for George and for Harry and for herself. She was angry for every single one of them that had lost their childhoods, if not the people they cared about, because of a snake-faced megalomaniac on a power trip. Because their world was a merciless, unjust place.
And in that moment, Hermione was struck with the overwhelming urge to break something.
Fred's eyes were still closed, so he didn't see her conjure the heavy glass orb, roughly the size of a small apple. She'd whispered the spell, so he didn't hear it either, but he certainly heard it when she threw it as hard as she could at the expanse of grey stone wall across the room.
His eyes flew open, pupils blown wide and lips parted in shock, just in time to see her conjure another and repeat the process, showering the floor with thousands of tiny jagged shards.
"What the hell are you –?"
"Here," she said tersely, conjuring another and shoving it roughly toward him. She then made herself one and whipped it so that it smashed just beside a window. She paused, chest heaving, and turned to him expectantly. "Well?" she demanded.
He looked between her and the sphere in his hand twice before stepping forward suddenly and hurling it at the wall so hard that the pieces almost flew all the way back to where they were standing.
She had another ready to go for each of them by the time he turned around. This went on for some time until finally they were both sweating and out of breath, and the floor on the other half of the room was so heavily covered in broken glass, there was hardly any actual floor visible.
The only sound was their panting until she turned to him rather than making another, swallowed the emotions that had bubbled in her throat, and said what she should have said at the beginning, voice no longer hesitant. "I'm sorry."
Fred turned and looked at her, the frustration and anger on his face having mostly disappeared; she supposed it was shattered on the ground along with everything else.
"I'm sorry," she repeated, pulling in a breath and ignoring the sharp twinge of a stitch blossoming in between her ribs. "I'm sorry about quidditch and about Umbridge and about Percy and about how fucked up everything in our lives is. And I'm sorry if you ever feel like I'm not on your side, because I am. I swear that I am."
"I'm sorry too," he said hastily, shaking his head and looking contrite. "That wasn't fair of me. You treat me the same way that you treat everybody else."
"But you're not everybody else."
His eyebrows hitched up in surprise and the words hung heavily between them, suspended in the air until she broke away, not at all in the right frame of mind to psychoanalyse that particular confession. She crossed the room, crunching glass beneath her shoes, and then breathed in, focused, and vanished every last piece until it looked like it had never been there. She repaired the leg on the chair for good measure as well, levitating it back to where it belonged.
Then she spun and sank down with her back against the wall, facing Fred and the door. He hesitated only for a moment before joining her, close enough that their knees bumped together. Hermione sighed heavily and let her head fall sideways onto his shoulder, which was still clad in his dirty, grass-stained quidditch uniform. She was emotionally and physically drained, and she reckoned she wasn't the only one.
Despite all of that though, despite everything that had transpired, she felt her tension ease when a large, warm hand wrapped around her own, fingers lacing together and thumb gently circling along the back of her hand.
"Well," Fred finally said, breaking the silence and blowing out an enormous exhale. He paused before continuing. "I'll admit that I've had better games."