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Victim of the Fall	By : PrettyDesdemona Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 32726 -:- Recommendations : 5 -:- Currently Reading : 7
Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter universe or any of its characters. I do not make any money off this story. Only love!

Chapter List
- 5
- 6
- 7
CHAPTER 6

BOTH HANDS

“I am drawing the story of how hard we tried.”

Over the next three days Hermione tried her best to remain busy. She did not want to sink back in to the same hole she’d had to drag herself out of the morning after her first night. She occupied herself by stocking up her flat with all the essentials. She was pleased to see that her vault at Gringotts wasn’t quite as empty as she’d originally thought which enabled her to splurge a little. Soon her cupboards were full of pots, pans and crockery, she had stocked up her bathroom and even added a throw rug to her couch.

It also made it possible for her to buy an owl. Now that she wasn’t staying at the Burrow, she could no longer borrow Pigwidgeon when she needed to and she couldn’t very well be running backwards and forwards from the wizarding post office all the time.

She’d emerged from Eyelops Owl Emporium after half an hour interrogating the clerk about the pros and cons of different breeds, carrying a grey owl with feathers that looked like the bark off a tree and was no taller than her forearm. She took him home and quickly decided that she rather liked the look of him perched in his overlarge cage in her living room. He had a soft, evil sounding kind of hoot which was far more comforting that Pigwidgeon’s mad squeaks.

She stared at him through the bars of his cage. “So what should I call you?”

The owl hooted patronisingly. Hermione held it’s gaze and gave him shrewd look. “I originally thought of Caspian, but I don’t think it suits you. You’re too much of a hard ass for that aren’t you?” She paused to think and, after a moment, giggled. “What about Napoleon?”

The owl looked at her for the briefest of moments before turning it’s little body away from her dismissively in a way that strongly reminded her of someone else.

“I know what to call you, little owl. I’ll call you Sev.”

She held out a treat for him and he turned back towards her to take it through the bars.

Having acquired Sev and left him sitting regally in his cage with a few owl treats, she had taken up her quill and devoted an hour to writing to all the people she had put off over the summer. She wrote Andromeda Tonks to ask after Teddy, and Bill Weasley to see how him and Fleur were going with Victoire. She wrote to Neville and Luna to see if they were repeating the year and even to Aberforth Dumbledore, thanking him for his help. They were all, again, letters of polite formality but Hermione felt a little better for reconnecting with people.

The last three nights had been hard, not as hard as the first but she still fell asleep crying. And she still woke up every morning afterwards feeling pathetic and useless. But Hermione was nothing if not tenacious and she committed herself to living a normal looking life regardless of what happened when she turned the lights out at night. She had left the Burrow to get out of her funk and, though she realise her problems were mobile, she didn’t want to sink back into it again. And she certainly didn’t intend to allow it to get worse.

She left her flat again the next day to finally go in search of food. Wandering down to the Leaky Cauldron every morning and night had proved too draining; both because of the attention she would get walking the streets and also because the food at the Leaky Cauldron tended to make one feel worse rather than better. Her first big shop left her pantry stuffed almost to capacity with every different type of chocolate she could lay her hands on, the most succulent and exotic fruit the markets in Diagon Alley offered and an array of other wizarding and muggle delicacies. She had never really had to shop for herself before and found herself alarmingly overwhelmed by the selection of food her local markets offered, and so she had compromised by buying everything. It didn’t occur to her while she was shopping that perhaps one person didn’t need quite so much but when she stood, hours later, in front of her overstuffed pantry, she realised she wasn’t going to be able to eat all of it on her own. Even with the stasis charms she put on it to keep it fresh.

It was this, and the desire to spend one night without her head stuffed in her pillow, crying, that persuaded her to answer George’s note.

Hey George,

Sorry it’s taken so long for me to reply. It was just nice to be alone for a few days.

I’d love to have dinner with you though. How’s tonight? Around seven?

Hermione

She stared down at her note for a moment before using her wand to replace love with like. She walked over to Sev’s cage and tied the note to his leg.

“This is for George. He lives a few doors down in the shop with the ridiculous decor, ok?”

Sev hooted indifferently and took off through her open balcony door.

She looked at her watch and noticed with a start that she’d given herself only an hour to get ready to receive company. After a quick shower wherein she fought in vain to comb the tangles from her hair, she donned tights and a quidditch jersey and began tidying up her flat. The thought that perhaps she should wear something a little more attractive gave her pause for only the briefest of moments before she shrugged it off. This was George after all.

At ten past seven Hermione was startled by Sev landing on her shoulder, a note attached to his leg. It had a single line of writing.

Hermione, how the hell do I get up to your flat?

She rushed out onto her balcony to see George standing in the street, grinning up at her.

“Oh! Sorry! I’m sorry!” she cried, “I’ll be down in a sec!”

She scooped her keys up off the coffee table and heaved open her door. She flew down the spiral staircase, through the cavernous storage space and into the darkened shop. She opened the front doors and George stepped in.

“Sorry George! I completely forgot about that!”

He grinned at her and threw an arm around her shoulders familiarly as she led him back through the shop.

“You’re looking better already, Hermione.”

Her stomach churned and a sweat broke out on the back of her neck for reasons that she couldn’t at all identify. She giggled nervously. “Thanks. I feel better.”

She led him back up the spiral stairs. “I should set up some sort of apparating point out on the landing. I mean, that can’t be that hard can it? I’m sure lots of other places do that, I’ve seen plenty of shops with flats above them around here. How would the people who live there get up to their houses without going through the shops all the time?” she rambled nervously as she heaved open her front door and led him into her flat.

George was nodding and looking around. “Yeah that’s what we’ve got for the flat above the shop.” he said absent-mindedly.

She noticed his use of we instead of I.

“Wow, Hermione, this place is so you.” he smiled and she couldn’t help smiling too.

“Thanks, George! I’m going to make some tea, so feel free to look around! The bedroom’s just through there.” she pointed down the little hallway and began to move into the kitchen as he nodded, still moving his head this way and that, taking in her space.

As she set about making the tea, Hermione’s mind was abuzz. She was perplexed. For one, why was she suddenly nervous? She’d seen George four days ago and she’d felt fine around him then. Now, there was just something about him that felt really obvious but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was.

Secondly, George seemed happier, almost normal. What the hell had happened to the blank faced phantom from the Burrow? The one she couldn’t get two words out of? George had practically beamed when she’d seem him down stairs. But she hadn’t seen him smiled in over three months!

“Maybe he’s on drugs.” she said to herself with a wry grin. “Maybe you should ask him for some.”

When she returned to the lounge room she found him thumbing through her record collection. He glanced at her over his shoulder.

“This is a really neat collection, Hermione. I didn’t know you liked half this stuff.”

She sat down on the couch. “I don’t. Well, I mean, I don’t know yet. I haven’t listened to most of it. It was Remus’. He left it to me.” George didn’t respond. “You can put something on if you like.”

He nodded and pulled a record out of the pile. He rubbed his sleeve over the disk before placing it on the player. Bob Marley began to filter out of the gramophone.

George turned to her and smiled. “I hope you don’t mind this? I love Bob Marley.”

Hermione shook her head as he sat down on the couch and picked up his tea, taking a sip.

“So why’d Remus leave you these?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I sort of thought if he was going to leave me anything it would be his defence books. But Harry got those.”

“I guess he figured there’s probably not much in them that you don’t already know.” he smirked cheekily.

She laughed. It was probably true.

“So you’re going back to Hogwarts for this year?”

She nodded. “Yeah. But the start of term feast isn’t for another three days. My patience is wearing thin.” she looked anxious at the thought.

“Three days of holidays left? Only you, Hermione, would be able to see that as a bad thing!” George chuckled. “Where’s your shiny prefect’s badge anyway? Shouldn’t it be displayed in a crystal cabinet?”

Hermione swatted his arm playfully. “No! I’m not a prefect anymore.”

“Oh ok, so where’s the safe you’re keeping your Head Girl badge in? Is it behind the bookcase?”

Hermione giggled. “No, I’m not Head Girl either. I told McGonagall I didn’t want any of it.”

George assumed a mocking expression of abject horror and Hermione swatted him again. “Shut up! I just wanted to focus on my studies this year.”

“Yeah like you’ve ever had a problem with that!” He grinned at her again and she felt a growing unease. Why was he so happy? The conversation was nice and it was refreshing to laugh with someone without feeling guilty but it was so drastically different from what he’d been like at the Burrow that she felt a little wary and nervous. She leant forward and placed a hand on his forearm.

“George, are you ok?”

He frowned, confused. “Yeah, why?”

Hermione clutched at her cup of tea despite the fact that it was burning her hands. “It’s just... At the Burrow, you seemed so down. And now, you’re fine. I don’t get it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re ok. Really glad. But I have to admit I’m a bit confused.”

He shrugged. “Being there makes me depressed. Reminds me of stuff. When I’m not there, it’s a bit easier. It’s not easy. But it’s easier.”

She nodded. “I can understand. It’s been easier for me since I left too. But I feel kind of bad about that.”

“Don’t feel bad. I wouldn’t have wanted to stay either with everything that was going on. At least I could get away, go back to the shop. You were there twenty four seven. And what with the way Ron’s been and everything, no wonder you wanted to get away.”

She nodded and swallowed the lump in her throat. So they had arrived at the subject of Ron.

George looked at her sideways. “What’s going on with you two anyway?”

Hermione ran a hand through her hair anxiously. “I don’t know.”

“He’s still ignoring you?” She nodded. “And you tried to talk to him before you left?” She nodded again. “And he didn’t try to stop you leaving?” She shook her head. “Well, I say fuck him then.”

Hermione’s head snapped up to look at him, wide eyed.

“What? I know it hurts but you deserve better than that. No matter what he’s going through, it’s the same as the rest of us. Just because the war was fucked and now life is fucked, doesn’t stop me being nice to people. Especially girls.”

Hermione felt saddened by his cynical attitude. But in essence, he was right. So many things made her sad or anxious now. Why add Ron and his behaviour into that mix? She had enough to worry about. Being perplexed about why he didn’t seem to want her anymore wasn’t helping her get over her pain and feeling rejected and abandoned was just adding to it. He would tell her why one day, if he wanted to. Until then, what was the point of torturing herself over it?

She felt a little lighter.

“So George, what’s your secret?” She asked with a smile.

He grinned wolfishly, “My secret? I’ve discovered women and drugs.”

Hermione rolled her eyes, deciding she’d rather not get invested in whether he was joking or telling the truth. She suspected it may be a little of both. “Oh that sounds healthy.”

He laughed, “Oh, it is. So what’s yours?”

“My secret?”

“Yeah.”

She frowned and thought for a moment. “I haven’t got one yet.”

“Well, that sounds healthy.” he laughed.

Hermione grinned. “Oh, it’s working out brilliantly. Speaking of healthy though, have you been around the Burrow at all the last couple of days?” she asked him.

“Yeah, I was there last night.” His happiness disintegrated a little. But he didn’t look sad, he looked worried.

Hermione frowned. “What? Has something happened?”

George looked unsure. “Well... I don’t know. Sort of.”

“George, what is it? Is Molly ok? And Ron?”

“Yeah, yeah, everyone’s fine. It’s Harry, I guess.”

“What do you mean ‘you guess’?”

George looked uncomfortable. “I don’t want to worry you Hermione, but he’s just gone a bit... odd.”

Hermione chuckled bitterly. “What’s new? When I left he hadn’t come out of his room in three days. He’s been ‘odd’ since the final battle.”

George narrowed his eyes and stared fixedly at the cup of tea in his hands. “Hmm. I don’t know if that’s quite true though. If you think about it, he hasn’t. He was pretty ok for a couple of weeks after the final battle. In fact, if you remember, he’d started to actually get better.”

Hermione thought for a moment. “Yeah, you’re right. He was talking about going in to do Auror training, wasn’t he? And then suddenly he started getting those episodes and couldn’t leave the house anymore. So what’s happened now?”

“He’s started leaving the house.”

“Oh ok.” she paused, “But isn’t that a good thing?”

“Well maybe... But he’s leaving in the middle of the night. And he won’t tell anyone where he’s going. Not even Ginny.”

“Ah.” Hermione felt the familiar concern for Harry bubble up into her throat. She’d once accused him of ‘playing the hero’ and she assumed that’s what he was doing now. It seemed ridiculously like Harry to deal with his pain by getting himself embroiled in some dangerous quest for justice. Yes, that must be it.

‘Well,” she said with a sigh, “There’s not much I can do about it. They made it pretty clear they don’t want me around.”

George grimaced.

Hermione got to her feet, muttered something making a start on dinner, and disappeared into the kitchen.

A mantra was looping itself in her head.

He’s fine. He’s fine. He’s fine.

He had to be. She couldn’t do anything!

She slammed a cupboard door closed with unnecessary force.

For all she knew he could be saving small children from the clutches of escaped death eaters, but he could also be suicidal or hurting himself or indulging in a drug habit every night. Next time she saw him, she swore to herself she would throttle him. How dare he put this on her! How dare he cause the people around him more pain and worry than they were already feeling. He knew what people would do. It was so typically Harry to assume he was the only one hurting.

He had always been like that.

In her first year she and Ron had helped Harry through the protections surrounding the philosophers stone. What most people didn’t know was that Hermione had had to sit alone in a chamber full of 12 foot high chest pieces, with no way out, for hours before Dumbledore showed up. Ron was unconscious and so cold Hermione thought he was dead. So she’d been locked in a chamber for hours with what she thought was the dead body of her friend.

To say she was traumatised after that would have been an understatement.

In her second year it had not been Harry who was likely to be murdered, but her. Some unknown entity was moving through the school attempting to off muggleborns.

To say she wasn’t terrified for an entire year until an attempt was made on her own life would have been untrue.

In her fifth year she had thought Harry too overwhelmed with his own emotions to be able to handle what she was going through. What she didn’t tell him was that she had devoted a considerable amount of time and energy into trying to get the Order to do something about her parents. Voldemort had risen again, he would know Hermione was not only one of Harry Potter’s best friends, but also a muggleborn. It was only a matter of time, right? But the order had done nothing.

She had fought beside Harry in the Department of Mysteries, she had attempted to protect the school from death eaters the night Dumbledore had died, she had camped with him for a year trying to find Horcruxes, stuck by him when Ron left, saved his life from Nagini in Godrics Hollow, been tortured for forty excruciating minutes by Bellatrix Lestrang, and had ridden on the back of a dragon out of Gringotts with him.

She had stood next to him in the final battle.

For him, she had sent her parents away. She had purposely damaged their minds in order to stop them being added to the list of people who died for Harry Potter.

She could see Thestrals now.

Resentment was boiling through Hermione’s body. Harry had slowly broken down after the final battle and all Hermione could feel was guilt and concern. After all she’d been through with him, for him, she could think only of how to help him. But when she finally did something for her, when she finally cracked a little, she got yelled at and pushed away.

Well, he was on his own. Whether he was injecting heroin into his eyeballs or trying to save the world by killing one evil death eater at a time; he could do it without her. She’d had enough of running around after a man child who couldn’t keep his temper in check and treated his friends like inconvenient lackeys.

She was furiously chopping onions when George appeared in the kitchen behind her and deposited their tea mugs into the sink.

“Hermione?”

She didn’t trust herself to speak. Her hands shook with anger.

Fuck panicking every day as a result of what she’d been through for her best friend. Fuck crying over Ron and hoping, pathetically, that he’d come around eventually when he hadn’t noticed her swift decline anymore than what Harry did. Fuck feeling guilty about what she said that day in the kitchen. Fuck them. Fucking fuck fuck FUCK Harry!

George leant past her and carefully took the knife out of her quivering hand. She let him.

“Hermione, don’t be like them. Don’t let the pain damage you like that.” He began wiping the sticky juice from the onions off her hands with a wet cloth he’d retrieved from the sink. “You need to talk. That’s it. That’s the secret. Otherwise you’ll end up the same way. Mad like mum, bitter like Ginny and cold like Ron. Don’t be like that.”

“I don’t know what to say.” she said through gritted teeth.

“You probably don’t right now, but that’s ok. Just when you do, don’t hold it back. Alright?”

Hermione ducked her head and took a breath to calm herself. “Alright.” She looked back up at him. “Thanks George.”

“No problem.” He held his arms out, inviting her in for a hug.

She moved in and pressed her cheek against his chest as he embraced her. Her stomach inexplicably lurched again.

She inhaled and almost choked.

His smell.

She stepped away from him quickly. “I’d better start cooking or we’ll never eat.”

He gave her a confused look.

She handed him a head of garlic and a bunch of coriander leaves before he could speak. “Make yourself useful then.” she said with a grin, trying not to look at him.

He laughed and bent over her kitchen bench to dice the garlic.

With his back turned to her, she could see his shoulder blades shifting through his shirt every time he brought the knife down. He had always been George Weasley to her, Ron’s older brother, prankster extraordinaire. Suddenly, now, he was just a man. Just George.

She felt slightly giddy as what seemed like an entire army of emotions tried to clamour for prime position in her mind. Was she feeling angry, still, about Harry? Was she scared of what might happen to him? Or, because it was rare these days that she had a moment when she didn’t feel edgy, was it panic? Had George’s smell triggered her into more heartache over Ron?

Or was it morbid, unquenchable, profane curiosity?

Yes. That was it.

Hermione was so curious, her whole body was itching.

Oh, how deliciously fucked up. She couldn’t have Ron anymore, so why not the next best thing? Or maybe George would be better than Ron. It was like an upgrade.

And as an added bonus, how was she suppose to cry herself to sleep every night if she was sharing her bed with someone else?

“Hermione?”

“Mmm?”

“You’re staring at me.” said George with a raised eyebrow.

“Yes.” she said vaguely, “I am aren’t I?”

He smiled slowly. “Are you going to tell me why?”

She narrowed her eyes in thought. “I’m just curious.”

He put the knife down and leant against the bench. “About what?” His voice was low.

Her head tilted to the side. “You said earlier you had discovered women. I’d like to know how you went about doing that.”

Deathraven - Thanks for the love! I understand what you're saying about her parents, what do YOU think Hermione would do??

dh_reader - Aw! I'm glad I have you hooked. That makes me feel special :D

Tori - I was thinking of a sequel. It's rolling around in the back of my head. So don't despair! Thank you so much for your beautiful review again, lovely :) xx

The quote at the beginning of this chapter is from Ani Difranco's song Both Hands. Her music has served as a huge inspiration for this piece. I own nothing. Thanks Ani!
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Victim of the Fall