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Red Summer of 19	By : bk11 Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 2142 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Red Summer of 19
- 2-part 2
- 3-part 3
- 4-part 4
- 5-part 5
- 6-part 6
- 7-part 7
- 8-part 8
- 9-part 9
- 1
- 2
Disclaimer: Don't own them. J. K. Rowling does.

Title: Red Summer of 19

Email: bkeleven11@yahoo.com

Rating: R

Spoilers: Anything goes

Summary: Boy meets Girl again during the summer of twenty-three. And they remember the summer of nineteen.
Notes: The spiders referenced below are wolf spiders. Apparently, if you're a boy wolf spider who looks kinda look "weird" to a girl wolf spider, and then try to get it awwn with her, she might start eating you before it's over. Oh, and this is NOT a standalone. It'd be very confusing if it were.

Many many thanks to the betas, Nivek and Meg. All mistakes are mine, not theirs.

- - - - -

Part 1

- - - - -

This is the story:

It�s the oldest story in the history of the world. Whoever the hell started this story was a genius. Imagine one little story permeating society through centuries, no--through epochs, periods, and eras--because of one inspired genius.

Or maybe no one invented the story. Maybe it�s natural. Maybe it�s evolution. Maybe it just is. Maybe it�s fate.

Animals are born. They eat, sleep, shit, and they procreate. Sometimes a girl spider sits idly by while two boy spiders fight over her. And when a boy spider wins (it doesn�t matter which one), the girl spider lets the winning boy spider fuck her. And sometimes, she eats his head afterwards, in a post-coital euphoria. And then the girl spider has babies.

And if she doesn�t eat them too, they also eat, sleep, shit, and fuck.

And it starts all over.

Human beings are inclined to beautify this old story. They think that what separates them from the animals (and they are serious about this) is that they don�t spend their lives looking for the next meal. They don�t squander life away in dreams. They don�t dirty each other with filth. And they don�t fuck. Rather, it�s less carnal and much much more poetic. Food is art. Dreams are hopes. Filth exists so that purity can be recognized. It isn�t fucking; it�s �making love.�

And the result is this old story, disguised and reincarnated many times over.

The story usually starts in a place. A lovely place. Not matter what, it has to be a lovely place. It could be palm trees silhouetted against a sunset. It could be crisp mountains and the sharp smell of pines. It could be the pits of hell. With fire and stones and redness. But it�d be lovely anyway. Lovely because hell is hot. Hell is intense. Hell is unexpected and exhilarating. Hell is beautiful in its tragic otherworldliness.

Maybe perhaps the story takes place in the hot heat of June.

The story starts off with a girl. She meets a boy. And then the boy spends half of the story chasing the girl. And the girl runs. She runs real hard, but with the intention of being caught. Boy runs, too. Faster. No matter what, he�s faster than the girl. And the girl knows this. So, she slows down. And she allows herself to be caught. And then it just ends. They ride off into sunrise, into oblivion.

And then live happily ever after.

It�s a nice story. It�s a familiar story. It�s a fancy way of eating, sleeping, shitting, and fucking.

But what if another story takes place in the hot heat of June?

What if this story starts off with a girl meeting the boy she hates. What if the boy doesn�t chase her, but wants her dead? What if, when she�s running, she�s running for her life, not love? What if he doesn�t chase her? What if he only runs to save himself (only himself)? What if, when they run, they get nowhere?

�Maybe I�ll tell you the whole story,� she�ll say. �You�ll hear about green sponges, onion-ring striped lavender sheets, yellow halter tops, broken Christmas ornaments, dented blue Corollas, vomit-inducing green houses, flying neon sandals, microwaved burritos, sharp purple toothbrushes, girly pink Cosmopolitans, Prozac concoctions, floating purple dots, and San Diego.�

�And I�ll tell you how the story ends.�

- - - - -

She sees in color:

Brilliant blues, sky mirroring the ocean. Orange, white-hot sand that blisters skin and hardens heels. Her hands, arms, feet, and nose had been sensitive to the heat a week ago. But the sun has singed her nerves, so now it's hard to tell if it actually hurts or if it's just habit to think it hurts. The heat is starting to become comforting. Slick moisture, a second skin, gloved over the first.

She smells the sharp twang of citrus mixed with human sweat wafting in the air and brushes at the dampness behind her own neck. The scenery stirs around her at breakneck speed while she is stationary with her travel bag clutched in two slippery hands.

Someone runs into her arm and her duffle bag drops with a dull thump.

A gray-haired man with a beard smiles and hastily picks up her back, handing it back to her with a polite smile. "'Scuse me, miss," he says in an American accent. �So sorry about that.�

The corner of her mouth quirks up slightly and she takes her bag back, nylon handles once again in sweaty hands. "It's all right."

�Can you take it from here?� He grins.

She nods. �Sure.�

He waves �goodbye� and melts into the blur of gray suited business travelers and yellow and blue shirted tourists.

She heaves her light bag onto her shoulder and scrapes her feet against smooth airport tiles. She heads towards a breakfast bar, and pays for her pancakes and toast with cash. Her father had always warned her not to carry around cash in foreign countries, but she had always replied that he was just paranoid and that he was always around to give her traveler's checks anyways. Except this time, she travels alone.

She never traveled alone before. It came from a fear borne from the vulnerability of being lost in Briar Park at dusk, across the street from her parents' house, when she was six and still in pigtails. That fear was reinforced later on nights where the rain would beat on cement and distant--perhaps imagined--laughter reverberated from somewhere behind her.

Her last real vacation was San Diego, a Disneyland vacation with Polaroid cameras and scenic postcards. It was the summer of fifteen, when dad was too preoccupied with aunts and uncles and cousins to notice that Hermione had started standing with a straight posture, had started wearing shiny lip-gloss. It was the summer of rebellion and hip huggers and low-neck tops. When the old boys stopped asking her about Arithmancy and Potions, or Keats and quadratic equations and new ones started asking about kissing amidst flirtatious smiles and coy touches.

There was one such boy, with bleached blond hair and straight teeth, who was so normal, and who showed her his brand new '84 Datsun, and took her hand in his, lying on white sand. She wore a black two-piece, illuminated by an appropriately red-tinged sunset with surround sound waves breaking a mere ten feet away. He gestured to the golden rays, looked deeply into her eyes, and waxed appropriate poetics, a myriad of odds things like, "You're so beautiful" and "I think I love you." She smiled and blushed and kissed him like he wanted.

And in September, a maybe a thousand miles away from San Diego, she donned on her robes and faded back into Arithmancy and Potions.

And now, Hermione can't remember that boy's face.

She slices into two layers of pancake. She regulates her speed, as to not look out of place in a restaurant full of moms and dads and nine year olds. It falls into her mouth unconsciously, and she automatically chews with a tense jaw. Hunger skitters on the edge of her mind like an old Audrey Hepburn black and white film, along with other rose-colored things like thirst and anticipation and-happiness-and-excitement-and-ambition and love--a nebulous cloud of things she used to know, but is no longer familiar with.

Time pauses. She peers over her shoulder to steal a moment before her gaze meanders off onto more interesting matters. She checks her watch and leaves her empty plate alone on the table.

She pays the cashier quickly, and when the young lady with red hair and familiar freckles smiles at her, Hermione blinks. She leaves the dive, slightly unsteady, forgetting to smile back.

The moment she pushes open the glass door, moist heat swallows her body whole in its fist. She gasps and feels her lungs warm up. She clutches her bag tightly and starts walking north.

- - - - -

Ask a question:

�Do you believe in God?�

�I believe in Godlike infallibility--in that it doesn�t exist.�

�That doesn�t make sense.�

�Think harder.�

�You can quote scripture.�

�Any ninny can memorize random passages to whip out at parties.�

�Fate, then. Do you believe in that?�

�Destiny. Predestination. Kismet. All that drivel?�

�Yes. All of that.�

�Funny how if the ending�s happy, they like to attribute it to Fate. But if the ending�s a burning field, well, it�s the luck of the draw, isn�t it?�

�Do you believe in Fate?�

�Fuck it. I�m not about to let some destiny-bitch take credit for all my hard work.�

�Well, I do. Believe in it.�

�I know you do. I don�t hold it against you.�

�If only you could see what I see. See it all from my beginning.�

- - - - -

She stands in a bus terminal:

Her duffle bag is smeared all over with dust, and she hasn't had a shower in two days. She's melting in the sun. She feels her oily skin and decides that she wasn't made for this heat. No human was made for this heat.

A man, pretty with curly blond hair, offers her half of his sandwich. He screams Good Samaritan. She thinks this:

Too bad this is a loss cause. Too bad you don't know why you are standing there, or why I'm standing here, or why on this particular day both of us are standing opposite each other. Too bad it makes no sense. Too bad that nothing ever makes sense.

Instead, she smiles and says, "No, thanks."

The man folds up the sandwich in plastic wrap and hides it in the front pocket of his denim backpack. Then he points to her and says, "You're . . . British?"

She nods an affirmative.

"Where you going?"

"I don't know," she replies simply. "Wherever the wind takes me, I suppose. Isn't that how it's supposed to go?"

"Of course." He laughs. "You heading north?"

She frowns.

He apologizes for being so inquisitive. "Usually, tourists stay in Sydney, or head to Melbourne."

She shrugs. "I'm not really a tourist."

They make small talk for a while and then she subtly closes the conversation up. He smiles and bids her farewell and good luck on her journey. He was blond with straight teeth.

She can't afford a charter, so she takes the city bus into Sydney. It's a shiny metal bus with air conditioning, and contrary to what she has seen in movies and television shows, kangaroos don't hop around in the foggy diamond speckled dust as tumbleweeds roll by. Instead, bicycles and imported Hondas whiz by, trailing clouds of dark dirt behind.

She has learned long ago that when you don't make eye contact with anyone, it makes it hard for them to talk or smile or notice you. So she never lets her eyes wander above anyone's neck. A minute goes by unnoticed, and then another. She remembers that when she was seven, she marveled at the idea that a person can stay on the metro as long they wanted for a few dollars. And now she is thankful.

She finds her throat dry and swollen. Don't drink the water? Was she . . . could she? She remembers all the signs near the Mexican border during that summer of fifteen. Was that the case for every foreign country? And speaking of . . . she did rush off without getting any vaccinations or . . . anything. Suddenly, don't drink the water isn't a piece of advice anymore. It feels like a fucking warning. And that comforting old fear resurfaces in an irrational thought: Death by typhoid fever, from micro bacteria, bred in Australian water.

No. No, that cannot be. Shut up, she tells herself.

Chain reactions start out small. A raccoon crosses a dark highway, a tiny Volkswagen brakes on the slick asphalt, and a ten-car pile-up makes the news. Or a barrel of liquid glycerin gets jostled in the back of a truck, then a speck of near microscopic dust gets jarred from the inside of the barrel, catching in the glycerin. Millions of molecules link together and tiny crystals expand and take over. And then, a small exploding stick called dynamite crumples a two-ton boulder. Australia started out on a whim. Something her dad had said. "Maybe you can use a vacation. . . ." She found herself thinking about it. And then she found herself digging in an oak drawer for her passport, and then taking a cab to the nearest plane out of London. She found herself buying an expensive ticket to Sydney. Sydney, because she couldn't speak any other language other than English. And America was too much like home.

And now she is thankful to be riding a bus for as long as she wants.

She gets off at two PM, in the middle of a gray street. She heads into the first promising building with a wanted ad.

- - - - -

There was another blond with straight teeth:

His name was John Thomas. He was a practical non-magical man who worked diligently in the DA's office as mail cart pusher for four months before they promoted him to copywriter. They met under the neon glow of Christmas lights and mistletoe at one of her Dad's conventions. Funnily, John had arrived there with an ex-girlfriend.

"Giv'er a wet one!" said Gil, a man with receding hair and a charming older wife.

"Yeah!" said Cindy, an orthodontist who had developed some special wire.

John ended up giving her a chaste kiss on the cheek.

They exchanged numbers. She didn't expect anything to really come of it. John was sweet and nice and a perfect gentlemen. So naturally, he'd never call her.

But he did.

After another two months, he finally asked her out on a date, except he still called it "courting." And she liked that about him. It was the change she needed from curses and escape-and-evade tactics. Her father, Harry, Ron, Ginny, and the rest of the world, had been thrilled.

It didn't last long enough with John.

They broke up when he realized that she had "issues".

And she didn't need hindsight to figure out that she had pushed him away from the moment they had met.

- - - - -

She steps inside that first building:

It's a family restaurant, with a pinball game in the corner, and one of those things that spit out gumballs with every fifty cents. McGuire's, says the sign in front. The McGinty's next to her apartment in London was Irish-themed and had yellow walls with white trim. This place has white walls with yellow trim. And sold hamburgers and French fries. Decidedly not Irish.

Reversal though, she thinks, interesting.

A few framed pictures of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe in a Norman Rockwell style sits on the walls next to the restrooms. Harry had once told her that James Dean and Marilyn Monroe actually hated each other, despite the fact that they were always pictured together.

She orders fries and a Coke.

When the girl behind the counter asks her if that was all, she nods yes and deposits a five-dollar bill on the counter. She waits patiently for the fries and fingers the ketchup packages absently. When the girl comes back with a brown bag, Hermione takes it and chooses the table in the corner.

The one with a five-foot radius isolation zone.

She finishes off the food and drinks with a mechanical kind of ease. When she's done, she asks the girl behind the counter for a job application. She takes the proffered white bic pen and writes her name in the field.

Well, she writes Sally T. Hayes.

And then when she gets to the address line, she frowns. She hastily fills in the other boxes in a bold feminine script and places the job application on the counter.

"Is it okay if the address field is blank for now? I just moved here, so I don't really have a permanent place yet," she explains.

Bouncy red hair with freckles purses her red lips and says, "Sure, I'll pass that along to our manager and if you get the job, you'll fill that in when you can, alright?"

Hermione smiles, "Thanks."

A scant four hours later, her cell phone rings, and it isn�t her father. She starts work in the morning. Two minutes later, the phone rings again. She flicks open the top and sees the name �Ginny Weasley� on caller ID. Her fingers dig lightly into the back of her neck, and she thinks. She thinks about mundane things, about whether she has emptied out her garbage can, but that's irrelevant because her father will be by to take care of her place later (take care of, not sell, or lease, or burn down. Take care of, because he still thinks she'll be back in two weeks). She thinks about the empty leather chair in her cubicle at work, and wonders if her hydrangea will die or if Cathy will water it from now on. She thinks of her cat, Crookshanks, and the laundry room chatter she�ll miss. She thinks of oranges, coffee tables, bills, and quitting.

No, shut up. She doesn't think of that.

I'm out. For good.

Shut up, Hermione.

The phone shrills again and she creeps in between two buildings, one an Italian restaurant, and the other, a convenience store. She drops her black plastic phone. It drops a meter and bounces on the ground two quick times, coming out completely unscathed. It rings again.

Her boot slams down on it.

Silence.

She throws the broken pieces into the dumpster that the Italian place owns, but not before a wire filament catches on her dry skin and makes the tiniest sliver of a cut.

She blows two hundred dollars on a new cell phone. And then:

"Daddy? Hi, it's me . . . I'm okay . . . Yes, I'm really okay . . . Listen, I have to go soon, find a place to stay for the night . . . yeah . . . but can you do some things for me? . . . Can you take Crookshanks home with you, his kennel is in my closet, and his food is under the sink . . . and the oranges are going to rot if someone doesn't eat them . . . my coffee table is broken right now . . . yes . . . you've seen it? . . . you can guess what happened . . . be careful with the broken glass . . . and you should talk to the landlord about cutting water and electricity for the time being, so I don't keep getting billed . . . Dad? . . . I'm going to give you my new number . . . yes, the other one broke . . . don't give this one out, alright? . . . three nine four . . . two five six three . . . one eight two one . . . okay, I have to go, now . . . and Daddy? . . . I love you, and don't worry about me."

She remembers, and goes back to the diner to tell the girl her new cell number.

- - - - -

(05-30-04)
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Red Summer of 19