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And They Didn\'t Live Happily Ever After	By : ElizabethStump Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Snape/Hermione Views: 90306 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
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
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- 2
- 3
"And They Didn't Live Happily Ever After"
Chapter Two
“A Life More Than ‘Mione”

Disclaimer: Rowling owns it all, lock, stock and barrel full of pickled dragon spleen. I bow humbly to her and the universe she has created. Not a brass farthing nor a single Knut is being made off of this.

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"What?" Hermione still couldn’t believe what she had heard. It seemed an implausibility, and wholly against Ginny's nature.

Harry closed his eyes, hoping that the rising tide of despair would abate enough to let him answer Hermione's questions without completely breaking apart. He could barely admit it himself, and having to repeat it a third time would surely rent his heart in two.

Flustered and shocked, Hermione blurted out, "Are you sure?"

Harry nodded morosely. A torrent of tears began trailing down his cheek, and splashing on the heavily varnished tabletop. Even during the tenebrous days of the war, Harry never looked so fragile and on the verge of shattering into infinitesimal shards.

She wanted to hug him, but the table that was between them hindered the action. Instead, she reached across the table and grasped his hand, offering some solidarity with that simple gesture.

The logical part of Hermione's mind took charge, while her emotional side kept chanting, 'Please, let it not be true.'

Swallowing down the growing lump in her throat, Hermione slowly said, "Tell me what you know. Start at the beginning."

Harry sniffed and grabbed a pile of napkins from the dispenser on the table, blew his nose and cleared his throat.

"It was a couple of months ago," he began, his voice gravelly and thick with emotion. "You know that Ginny is always working of some sort of committee or another. And you know how Molly has been nagging us, or Ginny rather, for kids."

Hermione nodded, encouraging him to continue.

"Well, Ginny has been reluctant to get pregnant, saying we have years ahead to start a family. She wants to travel and do things. I told her we could still travel with kids, like Bill and Fleur do, but she doesn't want to do that. She says the kids will stop us from having spontaneous fun like young couples have when they don't have to worry about arranging a babysitter..." Harry licked his lips nervously. "Or other things."

Hermione remembered that Harry was always a bit uncomfortable when talking about sex, even engaging in "boy talk" with Ron when she wasn't around.

"Well," Hermione paused, trying to think of how to word it delicately. "She has a point. You have years to start a family; you're both very young. You're almost twenty-three and she's just twenty-one. My parents didn't get around to having me till they were in their late twenties. Just because she doesn't want to get pregnant right now doesn't mean she's having an affair, Harry."

"But I want kids now. I've always wanted a family of my own. And there's other things," he added quickly, an inflection of anger in his tone. He took a deep breath and straightened his spine before continuing.

"A couple of weeks ago I had to stop by home after lunch to pick up a few things I forgot. It was Thursday, so Ginny has her weekly board meeting with the Magical Beast Preservation Society. Or so she said," he finished darkly.

Truly intrigued, Hermione leaned closer to Harry as he continued his tale in more discreet tones, "When I was in the study looking for a file I needed, a head popped into the fireplace. It was some witch from the board asking if Ginny was there. I said I didn't know where she was. The witch said that there were a few questions they had for Ginny. It seems she resigned from the board six months ago, without telling me, and that they needed to follow up a few things since they were currently in a meeting."

Sighing, Harry sat back and closed his eyes, "I just knew something was up then. When I came home at the end of the day, I asked her how her board meeting at the Preservation Society went and she just said, 'Oh the usual stuff. Nothing much happened, just business,' and left it at that."

Harry opened his eyes, and the anger in them made Hermione a bit worried. Before she could open her mouth with possible reasons as to why Ginny might be deceiving her husband, he growled, "She lied to me. She bald-faced lied to me. So next Thursday comes around and I decided to follow Ginny using my invisibility cloak. Well, I should have said something to the witch about not mentioning talking to me, because when I was following Ginny, she kept stopping and looking over her shoulder. At one point, I noticed she used a locating spell and her wand was pointed directly at me, though I was half a block from her. She knew," he said, shaking his head, "she knew I was there. Next thing I know, she Apparates and when I try a locating spell on her, it won't lock. She blocked me. Can you believe that?!?

"That night, I asked her about the board meeting and she casually replies–" Harry coughed to clear his voice before switching to a mocking falsetto, "'Oh, I'm so busy and I got tired of some of the politics involved; I decided to resign this week. It wasn't like they really needed me anyway.'"

Furrowing her brow, Hermione gently replied, "Maybe it's just she didn't want to disappoint you. After all, you did found that society in honor of Hagrid after he died."

"NO!" Harry looked around, leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner, his eyes darting around to see if they had anyone eavesdropping on their conversation. "There are things Ginny used to constantly ask... things... in the bedroom. There are some acts I just won't do; I'm just not 'into' certain things. And about six months ago, she just stopped asking."

Hermione could have been knocked over with a feather. She was flabbergasted and utterly speechless. She hoped it wasn't true, but the evidence strongly indicated otherwise.

"She's getting her 'needs filled' by someone else," Harry said sarcastically, with emphasis on the euphemistic phrase. A sneer was flitting at the corners of his mouth.

Before Hermione could find her tongue and speak, she felt something brush her legs under the table.

"Here, take my Invisibility Cloak. I need you to follow her. I'm ninety-nine percent sure there's someone else, but the one-percent in me is begging that it's something else. Anything but this."

She gathered the silky material into her lap, her fingers nervously clutching the cloak. "I... I... Harry," her mouth gaped, searching for words. "I don't–"

"Please, Hermione. Please. I'll go mad if I don't know. The idea of her with another man would torture me. I'm not sure what's worse, knowing or not knowing. Do this for me," he begged and the tears returned, threatening to fall.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

She didn't remember her walk back to the Ministry, but somehow Hermione found herself sitting at her desk. She still clutched Harry's Invisibility Cloak.

Finally coming to her senses, as it would not do for a Ministry official to come into her office with an Invisibility Cloak rumpled in her lap, she cleared out her bottom right drawer and deposited the cloak in it. She triple locked the drawer before donning her work robes and heading off to the lab.

Stepping into the room, she could tell from the malodorous scent that the latest shipment of Chupacabra bile had arrived from Mexico.

"Hello, Marge."

Hermione's lab partner, an elder witch whose indeterminate age was somewhere between a hundred and eighty and death, grunted in acknowledgment. It was considerably more than she did most days when the young witch greeted her.

'Why do I have to have a partner who's as sociable as Filch?' Hermione allowed herself a quick inner grumble before she began her task.

Sighing, she sat on her stool and measured out a small amount of the odious bile for testing. Hermione knew that there was a backlog of orders for this item, what with all the apothecaries around Britain; however, she wouldn't let this shipment clear through customs until she was sure that its quality met Ministry standards.

Hermione Weasley took her job at the Department of Standards & Regulations very seriously. It was a thankless job, but a vital one. Before the department was created over three hundred years ago, ingredients poured into the country with varying amounts of potency and consistency. Some ingredients weren't even what they claimed they were on the box!

Upon a rather unfortunate accident, involving the Minister’s wife, her cat, and a potion that was designed to correct the animal’s digestion distress (made with faulty ingredients), the Department of Standards and Regulations was founded.

Since then, the Department of S&R, as it was known within the Ministry, ensured that no other catastrophic incidents would occur with the import of potion ingredients. The department letterhead still carried the crest of the cat's exploded carcass to remind the employees of the seriousness of their task.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

After the entire shipment of the Bezoars from Greece was finally tested, Hermione looked up at the clock on the wall. It read, 'Time to Go Home.' She was sure it was later than that, as both her and Marge had a habit of staying later than most Ministry employees.

Hermione shucked her work robes and put them in the hamper for the house elves to clean. The diurnal act of leaving her uniform for someone else to clean nightly always bothered some small part of her, but her mind was elsewhere that evening. Instead of focusing on the continuance of elf slavery after the war, another item in her long list of regrets, her thoughts were on the cloak in her bottom drawer and her conversation with Harry.

Tucking Harry's cloak under her robes, she exited her office and headed towards the elevator. Harry's words were continuing to replay themselves in her head when the elevator opened and she stepped inside.

"Main floor?" asked the elevator operator.

"Yes, please."

It killed her to say 'please' to him, but she figured that she should hold herself above reproach in her manners. The Muggle-born witch figured that if those pure-blood bigots ever rose up through the ranks of society or the Ministry ever again, they could never accuse her of being rude.

Antonin Dolohov closed the door, and the two figures stood silently as the elevator hummed and then came to a slightly jerky stop.

"Have a good evening."

She nodded in reply. Hermione wasn't sure if he had finally been broken with the humility of such a low-level job or that he was just becoming a better actor. Regardless, she always kept her wand at the ready, just in case. The first time she had come face-to-mask with him was in the Department of Mysteries and her impression of him had been firmly set from then on.

Walking through the main lobby, she glanced at the mass of canvas that hid the new fountain. It was going to be unveiled next week, on the fourth anniversary of Victory Day.

The answer to the questions of what the new sculpture would be was kept a big secret. Only a few top Ministry officials, and the artist who conceived and created it, knew what the fountain looked like.

A betting pool sprung up around the Ministry as to what it would be. Top odds were for a magical beast menagerie, with mostly dragons, unicorns and phoenixes. The next pick was a sculpture of Dumbledore and other prominent wizards, odds running at four to one. The long shot, at a hundred to one, was a sculpture of Harry Potter vanquishing Voldemort.

Harry made it be known in the few interviews he gave after the final battle that he didn't want statues raised in his image to glorify him. He said during one of the few public speeches he ever gave, that people should look to themselves to find the hero within. Some people claimed to have never understood what he meant by it, but Hermione thought it was some of the most eloquent and humble words ever spoken.

Before she stepped into the cool summer evening, she spotted Jugson with his push broom. He had his wand out and was cleaning up the last of the cobwebs on the high ceilings of the Ministry atrium. As a custodian, it was one of the few spells he was allowed to perform with his wand. The young witch instinctively tightened the grip on her wand and kept it that way until she was well clear of the Ministry's front steps.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Illuminated in the watery evening light, she could see Ron's pile of Quidditch robes as she lay in bed.

'If I have to pick up his clothes one more time...' Hermione contemplated how to finish the thought. She wasn't sure if she would scream, hex him or boycott the laundry again. Instead, she just began to cry silently.

It was just all too depressing at the moment. Ginny and Harry's marital problem, her less than promising job, her small flat, Ron's prospects. Where was the life she had dreamt of after the defeated Voldemort?

'Maybe life is just as mundane and anticlimactic for wizards and witches as it is for Muggles.'

As practical as she was, there were times she thought her life would be more satisfying when she "grew up." A job that commanded a bit more respect and challenged her mind. There were days she could feel her mind atrophy under the same mindless repetition of testing one box or jar of ingredients after another. Perhaps if the pay was better, it would compensate for the sheer boredom of it, but she knew money would not solve her sense of dissatisfaction.

It was an amalgamation of all the little things. And with the news of Ginny's possible infidelity, it all came to a head.

While wondering if "the old Crone was coming for a visit" soon (a common witch euphemism for menstruation) was the reason for her maudlin attitude, Hermione heard Ron come home from his night shift at The Listing Broom. She shut her eyes and pretended to be asleep. The nagging about his housekeeping habits could wait until morning.

After listening to him shed his clothes, she felt him settle into bed behind her. Right when she allowed herself to relax a little, Ron nudged up against her, his cock pressing up against her, where her thigh met her arse.

He was in the mood again. Hermione figured if she feigned arousal, he might be done with his business quickly.

She shifted her legs to allow him access, and he slipped inside of her from behind. Thankful that he at least lubed himself up before trying to penetrate her, she pretended to stir from her sleep.

Giving a fairly convincing drowsy groan of amorous delight, she arched her back to allow him deeper penetration. He took this as a cue to begin jack hammering his body against her.

Just as she could count on properly preserved Bubotuber Pus to turn the right shade of green when rapidly boiled for two minutes, she could predict Ron's orgasm by the rising pitch in his keening grunts. Hermione moaned a little louder to help push him over the edge.

Ron shuddered and deposited his sticky semen inside her.

Once he corked off, Hermione slipped from his sweaty embrace. How he could work up a sweat that easily she could never quite figure out.

She turned the shower on as hot as she could stand, washing away her husband's leavings before she began to stroke herself.

Though Ron seemed an adequate lover, she only had a sample of one in which to judge. She wondered if turning Viktor down for sex when she was fourteen was a bad idea after all. At least she would have a basis for comparison.

Remembering how Victor made her insides squirm, when he would whisper deliciously naughty and forbidden ideas into Hermione's ear, she felt a small orgasm ripple through her. It was enough to take off the perpetual edge of sexual frustration that constantly coursed through her body.

Perhaps if she had been a few years older, Hermione would have taken up Viktor's offer on many of those things that he had suggested in the dark and private corners of the castle they hid themselves away in a few hours at a time. Such simple and mild acts when compared to intercourse: A little petting, a hand slipped into her knickers, his mouth on her nipples.

It was too late to even explore those things. She was married now, and Viktor was an even bigger Quidditch star.

She sighed, remembering she just wasn't emotionally or mentally equipped to handle such sexual activities at the time. Hermione was not one to live in the state of buyer's remorse. She was married, so she would just have to make the most of it.

'All those trashy bodice ripper Ginny loves to read are full of crap. Heights of passion and blinding ecstasy, my arse,' she thought bitterly.

Hermione knew she had settled for a mundane life, as well as a mediocre sex life.

After toweling off, she slipped back into bed and looked at her husband.

‘At least he has a decent body,’ she thought; glad for some small concession fate had thrown her way.

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A/N: The Chupacabra ("goat sucker") is a mythical animal known for killing animals in places like Mexico and the very southern part of the U.S. Southwest (Texas and New Mexico).

In societies where artificial light has not disrupted the natural rhythm of the human body that has evolved over tens of thousands of years, most women ovulate during the full moon and menstruate during the new moon or waning phase. So, my reference to the waning of the moon relates to the "Crone" phase of the moon cycle and the onset of menses.

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B/N: Any misspellings in this chapter are mine. For those of you who eagerly awaited this chapter and find yourselves in a foaming frenzy, my apologies. Life has been increasingly busy, and therefore, a bigger pain in my lily-white ass than intended. Betz has been graciously patient with my timetable – Thanks much, doll!!!
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And They Didn\'t Live Happily Ever After