"They can't hold you here! It's nonsense! Hermione, you helped me win a war. This is an outrage!" Harry was pacing angrily outside the small cell in the deep underbelly of the Ministry. His bright red Junior Auror robes swirled around him every time he turned. His hands were fisted in his hair, he was breathing heavily, his eyes scrunched tight as he tried to think. "Damn! They cleared him and everything! How could this be?"
The boy who lived stopped pacing and leaned against the stone wall, sliding down it until he sat on the ground. Harry had been the first in her circle to hear the news. He had stormed into Kingsley's office demanding an explanation and then used his war hero- 'defeater of Voldemort' card to get a visitation. Apparently, there had been a lot of swearing involved.
Hermione shrugged, sitting across from him, behind the wrought iron bars. "It's just so wrong, isn't it?"
He rubbed his face. "Gods, I wish you would have never saved him." He groaned.
"Harry Potter!" It was a sharp command, her jaw set and her lips pressed into a thin line.
The young Auror leaned his head against the wall, looking up toward the dark ceiling. "I'm sorry," he mumbled, a long sigh leaving him as he looked back at her. "He's only brought you trouble. First with Ron, now this."
He cared. Her idiot friend cared and he was trying to find a solution to her sorry situation. He was angry for her. Despite all that had transpired, there was still an injustice in his heart. He still did not fully trust Snape. He was not certain he ever would. There was still an uneasy twist in his stomach when he thought back on all the times the man had been terrible toward them. Toward his friends. He simply could not understand how Hermione had forgiven him so easily.
She had had it the worst of all of them.
She had cried for days after that comment on her teeth after Malfoy's beaver-tooth jinx.
Hermione shrugged. "Ron and I were terribly unsuited, Harry. Everyone knew that. It was never going to last. Master Snape just deduced it before anyone else was ready to admit it."
His voice was small when he spoke again. "I thought it would be the four of us, you know?"
She offered him a sad smile. "Me too." And she had, honestly. Though, Ron was too consumed by his fame and all the opportunities it had presented him with. Hermione was comfortable with her books in front of the fire after a long day of trying to change the world one asinine and chauvinistic law at a time. He had wanted their relationship all over the tabloids, to be so very public.
And she was ready to give that to him, to keep him happy if it meant marrying the boy she had loved for years. However, that Ron, dirty nose Ron from the train armed with little more than his mother's sandwiches was long gone. He was the brawny Ronald Weasley now, a war hero and best friend to Harry Potter. It mattered more than what she wanted. What she needed from their relationship. And still, she was prepared to settle and set aside her needs.
All it had taken for him to turn on her was another man's fleeting interest. Said man had been toying with her, she knew that. She had not expected to enjoy it. Just as she had not expected her fiancé to feel threatened by something so... ephemeral.
Well. It had not been that short-lived. She had appeared on his arm for two separate events after her separation. Not that she was entirely saddened by it. Ron had seen to the media, ensuring there was every sort of slander about her possible. And of him. The tall, dark, oh-so-taciturn reformed Deatheater.
But then there had been that other woman. He had stopped contacting her. She was older than her, closer to Snape's age than her own. She was graceful and elegant and mysterious. All things Hermione was decidedly not.
Plain but ambitious is what Skeeter had called her at the tender age of 14. Plain and ambitious she still was.
Her heart squeezed. He really had caused her a world of trouble, hadn't he?