Chapter Text
The Last Place She Had
The key stuck.
Hermione closed her eyes, rested her forehead against the cool wood of the front door and tried very hard not to cry over a key.
It was ridiculous.
She had been travelling all day, an international Portkey from Sydney to Paris, another from Paris to London, endured over an hour at the Ministry while an officious little man from Magical customs questioned why she had been carrying medical documents pertaining to muggles and two empty vials with traces of experimental memory restorative in her luggage, disapparating to her road and then walking up to her front door with a bag intending on dislodging her shoulder.
She was not going to be defeated by her own front door.
Hermione pulled the key out, shoved it back into the lock and twisted harder. Living in a muggle apartment building meant no spells in the corridor.
The door opened.
‘’finally’’ she muttered.
Her bag landed in the hallway with a heavy thump.
Home
Two weeks.
Two weeks in Australia. Three healers. Two experimental charms, two potions and one spectacularly useless Muggle hypnotherapist who had assured Hermione that the subconscious mind remembered everything.
Apparently, her parents ‘subconscious minds’ hadn’t received the memo.
Nothing had worked.
Again.
Hermione kicked off her shoes not bothering to spell them away and leaned back on the closed door.
She’d known before she left that it probably wouldn’t work. Every healer she had contacted had warned her. Memory charms were not designed to be reversed years later, particularly not ones as extensive as hers had been.
She had known.
She had gone anyway.
Because that was what Hermione Granger did.
She researched.
She planned.
She tried.
And when trying failed, she found something else.
Except she had ran out of something else.
The flat was quiet.
That, at least, was a relief.
Ron must have gone out.
Good.
Hermione loved him.
She did.
She was simply too tired to talk to him.
Too tired to admit that her latest attempt had also failed. Too tired to have the same argument where he tells her to be happy they are alive. Too tired to believe he may be right and its hopeless.
She didn’t want to fight tonight.
She wanted a shower.
She wanted to sleep until well after the sun had risen.
She wanted to wake tomorrow morning and, for perhaps thirty seconds, forget that the other side of the world lived two perfectly happy people called Jean and Robert Wilkins who had absolutely no idea they had a daughter.
Hermione headed left towards the bathroom, flicking her wand at the lights.
She made it three steps.
A noise came from the right.
She stopped.
Another noise.
A muffled laugh.
‘’Ron?’’
Silence.
Then hurried movement.
Something hit the floor.
Hermione stared at her bedroom door.
Her exhaustion disappeared.
Not gradually.
One second it was there, dragging at every muscle in her body.
The next it was gone.
Her hand closed around her wand.
‘’RON?’’
The door opened.
Ron appeared barefoot, shirtless and very very pale.
For several seconds neither of them spoke.
Hermione’s eyes travelled from his face to his chest and then to the bedroom door.
‘’who is in there’’
Ron swallowed.
‘’Hermione…’’
‘’WHO’’
‘’I thought you were coming back tomorrow’’.
Something inside her went completely still.
Not there’s nobody here, not you’ve misunderstood. I thought you were coming back tomorrow.
Hermione lowered her wand.
‘’who is she?’’
‘’mione, just…’’
The bedroom door opened wider.
A woman stepped out.
She was clutching Hermione’s dressing gown around herself.
Her dressing gown.
Hermione looked at the woman, at Ron, back at the woman.
‘’oh’’ it was the only word she could find.
The woman flushed scarlet.
‘’I should go’’
‘’yes’’ Hermione said.
‘’Hermione…’’
‘’not you’’
Her eyes never left Ron.
The woman disappeared back into the bedroom, Hermione could hear frantic movement.
Ron took two steps forward.
‘’can we just talk about this’’
Hermione laughed.
She hadn’t meant to.
It just escaped.
‘’Talk? About what Ronald?’’
‘’I fucked up’’
‘’You fucked her’’
Ron flinched.
Good.
‘’don’t’’
‘’don’t what Ronald’’
‘’don’t make this worse’’
Hermione stared at him.
And there he was.
Ron.
Her Ron.
The boy she’d met on a train at eleven years old.
The boy who’d sacrificed himself on a giant chessboard.
The boy she’d screamed at, cried over, fought beside.
The man she’d come home to after failing, once again, to give herself her parents back.
Standing there half naked blocking her bedroom door from view asking HER to not make things worse.
‘’How long?’’
‘’It’s not like that’’
‘’How. Long?’’
‘’Hermione…’’
‘’HOW LONG RONALD’’
‘’It’s not…’’
The woman appeared again, dressed now, eyes firmly fixed on the floor as she hurried towards the front door.
Hermione moved aside.
She didn’t even know her name.
That struck her as absurdly funny.
There was a stranger leaving Hermione’s bedroom, after sleeping with Hermione’s boyfriend and she didn’t know what to call her.
The front door slammed shut.
Silence filled the flat.
‘’I’ll ask again how. Long?’’
He rubbed both hands down his face.
‘A few months’’
Hermione stopped breathing.
A few months.
While she’d been writing to healers.
While she’d been researching memory theory magic until three in the morning.
While she’d been saving every spare Knut because international portkeys weren’t cheap.
While Ron told her give up and just be happy they’re alive.
‘’A few months’’
‘’It wasn’t supposed to happen.’’
‘’Repeatedly?’’
Ron said nothing.
Hermione nodded.
‘’Right.’’
She moved towards the door and picked up her bag.
‘’Where are you going?’’
‘’Out’’
‘’You’ve only just got home’’.
‘’And remarkably, I find myself already wanting to leave’’.
‘’Hermione, for fucks sake.’’
She turned.
Something in her expression stopped him.
‘’I have spent two weeks, sitting in rooms with people telling me there is nothing they can do for my parents. I have spent two weeks watching my mother look at me like I’m a pleasant stranger. I came home because I thought…’’
Her voice broke.
No.
She won’t cry.
Not here.
Not in front of him.
Hermione swallowed.
‘’I thought I was coming home’’.
‘’You are home’’.
She looked around, at their photographs, the furniture, his jumper hanging over the back of the sofa.
In her bedroom, her bed smelled of another woman.
‘’No’’ she said quietly. ‘’I’m not.’’
Ron eventually fell asleep on the sofa.
Hermione didn’t.
At half past two in the morning she stood in the bedroom.
She had changed the sheets.
She didn’t know why.
Perhaps because leaving them felt unbearable.
Perhaps because some pathetic part of her didn’t want Ron waking tomorrow and being able to smell the woman he’d chosen over her.
Hermione grabbed her beaded bag from her side table she didn’t take it to Australia.
She packed underwear.
Two pairs of jeans.
A couple of t-shirts.
Three jumpers.
A handful of toiletries.
Grabbed her wand.
She stopped at the photograph on the dresser.
Harry, Ron and Hermione.
Seventeen years old.
Filthy and exhausted but alive.
Then she walked out of the bedroom and right out of the apartment not giving Ron a second glance.
Her parent’s house still recognised her, that nearly broke her more than Ron had.
The wards she had placed shimmered as she approached, brushing over her magic before allowing her through.
Welcoming her home. The porch light flickered to life, the first sign of life since before the war.
Hermione stood on the path her beaded bag in her hand and stared at the house she hadn’t lived in, hadn’t seen the inside of since she was seventeen.
Nothing had changed.
Of course nothing had changed.
She’d made sure of that.
She unlocked the door and stepped in, the smell hit first, the dust, old books, the faintest trace of the lavender washing powder her mother used to buy.
‘’Mum?’’
Hermione’s hand flew to her mouth, there was nobody else here, she knew that her parents were in Australia.
She closed the door.
She went straight up to her childhood bedroom, a sob broke out of her, her bedroom was empty, completely empty, of course it was she had to remove everything before she removed herself. Turning around she stopped at her parents’ bedroom door, but that would be harder, the sofa will do.
Back downstairs she lay on the sofa, used the blanket thrown over the back and cried herself to sleep. Alone she could cry.
By the third day, the reporters had found her.
Hermione didn’t know who told them.
Perhaps Ron had spoken to them.
Perhaps someone spotted her buying food.
It didn’t matter.
The first knock came shortly after nine. Her wards allowed people to knock if she was home.
‘’Hermione! Hermione Granger?’’
She froze.
‘’Hermione, can we speak to you about your separation from Ronald Weasley’’.
Another voice
‘’Is it true you’ve left him’’.
‘’Hermione, the Prophet would like to give you an opportunity to respond to...’’
She grabbed her wand and flicked the curtains closed, throwing up a silencing charm for good measure.
The living room disappeared into darkness.
She avoided moving, laying on the sofa. The sofa faced the front door. That mattered.
Hermione didn’t examine why.
She slept there with her wand beneath the pillow.
Sometimes she woke convinced someone was trying the handle.
She ate toast. Sometimes.
She drank tea. Frequently.
Anything requiring more effort than opening a packet went untouched.
Owls arrived through the kitchen window. Harry, Ginny, Ron, Molly, The Prophet, Ron again, Rita Skeeter.
She stopped opening those too, throwing them instead into the fire and watching them burn.
There was only one correspondence she continued to read.
Andromeda Tonks wrote every few days.
Never asking for explanations.
Never telling Hermione what she ought to do.
Mostly she wrote about Teddy. Sweet little Teddy who she missed dearly.
Teddy has decided carrots are an infringement upon his human rights.
Another arrived two days later.
He has now discovered that if he turns his hair black and cries, Harry gives him biscuits. Your influence would be appreciated before I accidentally raise a criminal mastermind.
Hermione chuckled, a horrible, rusty little noise that startled her.
She wrote back.
You’re asking the woman who helped Harry Potter break hundreds of school rules before the age of sixteen, I don’t think I’m the influence you’re looking for.
Andromeda replied.
And Hermione replied again.
Until she didn’t.
The first letter went unanswered because Hermione slept almost an entire day.
The second because she’d started writing a response and couldn’t think of anything to say.
Dear Andy,
She stared at those two words for over an hour, then gave up and lay back down on the sofa.
The third arrived while Hermione was sitting on the floor beside the sofa. She didn’t pick it up, the owl waited, eventually she fell asleep, the owl left at some point in the night.
The next morning, she woke to the sound of someone hammering on her the front door.
She opened her eyes.
‘’Hermione’’
Not a reporter.
‘’Hermione Jean Granger, I know you’re in there.’’
She dragged herself off the sofa, the curtains remained closed, she opened the door a couple inches, Andromeda Tonks stood on the other side, her eyes travelled over Hermione’s face, her hair, the oversized jumper she’d been wearing since she arrived, then past her into the darkened lounge.
‘’Hello, Andy’’
‘’Three letters unanswered’’
Hermione blinked
‘’I’ve been…’’
‘’Don’t’’
Andromeda pushed the door open, Hermione stepped backwards allowing her entry, she looked around taking in the closed curtains, the blanket on the floor, mugs on the coffee table, a single plate with a half-eaten slice of toast, and finally at Hermione. Her expression changed, not pity, Hermione couldn’t have borne pity, something worse, Love,
Andromeda walked over and opened a curtain.
Hermione hissed as daylight flooded the room.
‘’For fucks sake’’
‘’When did you last eat?’’
‘’I ate yesterday’’ Hermione muttered.
‘’What?’’
Hermione frowned
‘’That isn’t the point’’.
‘’It became the point when you couldn’t answer’’.
‘’I had toast’’.
Hermione crossed her arms, Andromeda started at her and pointed at the toast, Hermione looked away.
‘’Thought so’’.
‘’Andy, I’m fine’’.
‘’No, you’re not’’.
‘’I just need some time’’.
‘’You’ve had time’’.
‘’I need more’’.
Andromeda’s face softened ‘’Then more you shall have. At my house’’
Hermione stared at her ‘’What?’’
Andy began collecting Hermione’s sparse belongings.
‘’Andromeda…’’
‘’you may call me andromeda when you stop behaving like this’’.
Despite herself, Hermione almost smiled. Almost.
‘’I can’t just leave here’’.
‘’why not’’
Hermione gestured vaguely around them.
‘’This is my house’’.
‘’And it will remain your house.’’
‘’The reporters…’’
‘’Can stand outside of an empty building until there legs fall off for all I care’’.
‘’Andy…’’
Andromeda stopped, she crossed the room and stood directly in front of Hermione, her voice softened ‘’you don’t have to tell me what happened’’.
Hermione’s throat tightened,
‘’you don’t have to tell me what happened In Australia, you don’t have to tell me what happened with Ron, you don’t have to talk at all if that’s what you need’’.
Hermione stared at the floor.
‘’But you do not get to disappear in here’’.
‘’I haven’t’’
‘’Hermione’’
Her eyes burned, Andromeda reached for her, Hermione didn’t realise she was moving until her forehead hit Andy’s shoulder, gentle arms wrapped around her, she broke, not prettily, not one cinematic tear, a horrible, gasping sob tore out of her, followed by another.
‘’I couldn’t fix them’’.
Andy held tighter
‘’I know’’.
‘’I tried everything’’.
‘’I know’’.
‘’they looked right at me and they didn’t…’’ her knees buckled, Andy went down with her, Hermione clutched handfuls of her robes.
‘’And then I came home and he’’.
‘’you don’t have to’’.
‘’there was someone else, another woman, in my bed’’.
Andromeda went completely still.
Hermione laughed through her tears.
‘’Apparently, I wasn’t there enough’’.
Andy muttered something into Hermione’s hair.
‘’what’’
‘’I said I’m considering murder’’.
A laugh escaped Hermione before turning back into a sob, they stayed on the floor for a long time. Eventually Hermione’s breathing slowed. Andromeda pushed tangled hair from Hermione’s tear-stained face.
‘’There you are’’.
Hermione sniffed
‘’I look dreadful’’.
‘’yes, you do’’.
‘’thank you’’.
‘’you’re welcome’’.
Andromeda stood and held out her hand, Hermione looked at it, then towards the sofa, the dirty mugs, the front door she’d spent days watching.
‘’what happens now’’.
Andy squeezed her fingers.
‘’now?’’
She picked up Hermione’s beaded bag.
‘’you’re coming home with me’’.