Chapter Text
There’s a bend in the last stretch of coastal road - a curve, close to a corner, severe - that seems to stretch on for miles. Infinite, illusory. Just one more push and you’ll be round, seeing the swells fall behind you, great fizzing flotsam swallowing the rear view mirror.
It goes on that way for too long. As a child it would make her sick. Not so much physically - she never once vomited despite the urge that would come sometimes - but rather mentally. Somewhere beneath the skin, thrumming in her blood. The marrow. Her soul, she supposes. An unease that would drive her to the brink of silent hysteria. Will it end? What if it never did? What if it did end? Something daunting, almost menacing about its trickery. Malice in the great sloping smirk of the route.
The first time that inspired something beyond that insipid doom, far above the endless dread. Grey, grey, pebbles on the beach, clouds in the sky, flotsam on the shore and silt in the sea.
Grey, except the blue of her eyes. Slate, except the pale gold, flaxen spun silver of her hair. Something rare, precious. Seventeen, just turned. Her parents letting her drive the jeep across the acres of their land since fifteen. Well prepared by the time she finally got her licence.
“Let’s go anywhere. Everywhere.”
Her voice of honey, poured atop more honey. How it ribbons.
Windows down. The air frigid, snatching away their laughter, their great roaring screams of delight with greedy hands. Heat from the car blasting, abating the chill. That already nostalgic golden hue of the sun catching her hair, whipping around. Sunbeams, knotting and threading them together with each strand that hits Hermione’s face, painting the moment with the pain of the passage of time before it’s begun.
Wishing only that the road would never end. That the bend would never straighten off. That she could be on this road - salt laden seas on her right, the music of her laughter to her left - forever. Winding, a great circle, forever, and ever and ever. Like a round, stacked harmonies, layered atop until it’s impossible to know whether the moment is ending or beginning.
And now. Eleven years later, that same road, the first time since. Since.
She pulls out of the final bend - the real final bend - satisfied that the gnashing brown waves tearing up great chunks of sandy flesh are behind her.
The sky in her mirrors is mockingly grey.
*****
A cottage. A shack, really. It used to be derelict, the stuff of local ghost tales, its presence a haunting. The white washed walls, exterior bleached by salt laden air that would omit a ghoulish glow in the summer evenings. A phantom.
Perched atop the cliff’s edge. At some angles seemingly suspended, teetering over the precipice. Ready to be claimed by the dull roaring waves below.
“You could just stay with us if you wanted to darling.”
Recoiling slightly at the offer, glad for the phone for hiding her grimace. Her mother’s words imbued with kindness, genuinity. She means well.
How to explain that she’d rather toss herself to the sea, that she’d prefer to inhabit the so called phantom cottage than return to her childhood home?
One is more haunted by memories than the other.
So, the cottage it is, courtesy of the University. A place to observe and be - hopefully - unobserved in equal measure.
It’s unrecognisable from the inside. Where there used to be smatterings of graffiti - “Fred and George were here…or George and Fred” and “Neville’s Nan is a GILF” the most notable - now pristine walls. Cream, brush strokes felt beneath her fingertips as she runs them across the walls.
Traces the modest living room with her gaze, until she finds it. Or where it should be. Used to be.
The corner, where the wall met the floor. New carpet hastily laid down. Edge already peeling away from the tacks. Nudges it further back, with tentative hands. Poised to recoil, as if something lurks beneath to lunge upwards at her.
And it does, in a way. The cement beneath laid bare. A lopsided and scrawled etching. A feeble attempt at a heart, endearingly wonky. The “F&H” within it charmingly sincere, carved with reverence. As if the cement were marble. Something exquisite. Something prized.
She balks, lurches upwards as if scolded. Stamps the carpet back down, as if by sheer force it could shatter the past.
“Haunted. This place is haunted you know.”
A shuddering breath. Then action. Hauling the closest piece of furniture - a sturdy looking end table, knotted walnut - over the heart burning a hole through the carpet. Through her feet, singeing her stomach, up her throat until she feels raw.
Leaning against it she spots the flowers, silent and looming on the dining room table. A note attached, the blooms bending from the weight of it. Dusted with pollen, the fallen lily anthers staining where they land.
A buzz at her hip. Retrieving her phone, walking cautiously towards the bouquet like it might explode, like the spectre of the past might also reside here too.
Where doesn't it reside in this town? Anywhere, really; she carried it with her.
“Professor McGonagall.”
“Hermione, please. It’s Minerva to you now.”
Their conversation is clipped. Fond, but stilted. She never was good at navigating the changing course of her life. The way that people moved and morphed as she became older, as she moved and morphed herself. How to reconcile the past with the present. She wonders blithely whether it will ever stop being strange that the woman who once was her own Professor is now a colleague of sorts, whether the changing roles will ever make sense in her mind.
They talk. The syllabus, mostly. Until-
“I presume you received your welcome gift?”
She fixes her gaze more firmly on the bouquet. Her eyes momentarily glazed, unseeing before she focussed them once more. “The flowers. Yes. I’m looking at them as we speak. Thank you, they’re beautiful.”
A slight groan, the creaking of chair springs down the phone. She can almost picture the woman shifting in her seat, adjusting her ageing frame. “From the department - and some other familiar names from elsewhere I’m sure - a small token.”
“I’m glad to have you here.”
The sincerity takes her by surprise. The unpromptedness of the comment rendering her shy. A girl of eighteen once more, preening under the hard earned admiration of her teacher.
She responds equal measures embarrassed and proud, that most delectable mixture of praise and shame. “Thank you. I’m…it’s…I’m eager to get started.”
“I’ll let you settle in. You know where I am.”
As the phone cuts off, the staccato beeps still thrumming next to her ear, she brushes away the fallen flower debris. Picks up the note, at arms length. Brings it slowly closer, suddenly voracious as she scans the names, studies the looping signatures of her colleagues. Friends, in a past life, trying to re-familiarise herself with their handwriting, as if it may impart clues as to their character all these years later.
There’s Daphne’s spindly hand. Tight and succinct, cramped as if trying not to take up too much space, but audacious somehow nonetheless. Smiles, slow and languid when she spots Neville’s ink blotted scrawl, like his pen exploded mid sign. Surprised - a little sickeningly so, the past clawing at the base of her throat - to see Bill’s name, looping and wild, spilling over onto the next signature of-
It’s her name. Not written in her hand - she’d know her handwriting without sight, could identify it through touch, through tactility alone - but there.
Attached to the end of Bill’s; an afterthought. The ‘F’ is too soft. Hers were always harsh. A door, banged open and swung the wrong way on its hinges. The surname too clear - she always wrote it prideful, but rushed, her hand tripping over the page in its eagerness to be onto the next word. To the words that really mattered, her name a given.
Fleur pressed up against her, the front of her body flush to Hermione’s back. A house party, Neville’s maybe, his grandma gone for the week.
Her voice ghosting against her ear, her neck. The imprint of her smirk branding her skin as she leans further into her. The supple incline of her neck, the exposed skin coloured by the changing light from the karaoke machine.
“I could ruin you.”
The tightening of her arms around her waist. Hermione’s nails digging into flesh, limbs sluggish and warm from the alcohol.
Whispered back, head tilted and neck exposed. The sweet tang of Fleur’s breath so close to her mouth. Close enough to taste. “I wish you would.”
She knows he meant it as a kindness. That there was no malice seeping from the ink of his pen. But it cuts her nonetheless.
The pen a knife. Her name the incision. And Hermione, the wounded.
It’s discarded with haste, only the sticky and pungently tart pollen coating her fingertips evidence that the note was there. That her name was there, in Hermione’s house of the living dead. The cottage of haunted memories.
*****
She’s not sure whether to go. Even when she’s stood outside the Arts building - the specific red brown of the brick making her stomach twist uncomfortably, knowing how it hasn’t changed since she was here, a student herself, a lifetime ago - hearing the chatter from the open windows above she hasn’t decided.
It’s perhaps the fear that she’ll see her that makes her move. That pushes her up the stone steps, through the glass entryway and along the familiar path to the Lounge. It’s always been that way; the fear, the bizarre thrill of it that used to keep her tethered here. That eventually allowed her to become unmoored from it. The rope fraying, wearing down and twisting until it’s no longer twined. A singular strand, splitting.
Buoys her, into the room. Already crowded, late as she is. Scanning it feverishly, that same fear of finding a familiar face more pervasive than not finding one.
A drink, first. The rest later. Skirts around the fringes of the room as if she might blend into the wood panelled walls.
She considers, hovering by the makeshift bar - two tables pushed together, a lace tablecloth that smells like packing dust and, oddly, like Christmas draped atop - how long she can nurse each option before she can excuse herself. Already exasperated, her feet willing her to leave.
One drink. Say hello, show her face. Then leave.
Scans the assortment, pondering a line she’d written earlier. Turning it over in her head, the words jarring uncomfortably. That rising frustration that comes when the right word has become slippery - soap between wet palms, ice under her feet, trainers skidding helplessly - when it dances just out of view.
An innocuous conversation, two characters, women, having traversed childhood together. A scene of no note beyond attempting to signify the chasm forged between them across decades of silence. Small talk, painful and awkward, the silences between them, the gaps in their speech more laden with words than the ones that leave their mouths.
A line. Inserted between rounds of dialogue. Short, something to break it up. That conveys nothing and everything all at once.
When the lambs stop their bleating and baying, stripped from the fields of their childhood on the way to slaughter, that’s when she thinks of her most; this happens all the time.
Grimaces at the words in her head, runs a hand across the closet bottle of wine in front of her. Perhaps it’s the punctuation. She favours the semi colon, despite her consistent criticism for it. Better than the em dash, she argues, futilely, anytime it’s brought up on a panel. At readings.
Something so neat, so clean. Tidy. A pause, yes. Separate, yes, more so than a comma. Connected in ideas, but not in essence.
No. The semi colon stays. The metaphor then, maybe? Clunky, too…forced? Not forced enough?
Starts to peel the lifting wine label. The glue no longer tacky, thrusting itself away from the glass. Tries again.
When the lambs stop their bleating and baying, stripped from the fields of their childhood on the way to slaughter, that’s when she thinks of her most; in the village of perpetual slaughter, there is no escape from her.
A presence at her shoulder, her brow furrowed in concentration. Hands reaching for the luminous looking punch in lieu of the cheap and room temperature wine on display.
“I wouldn’t if I were you. Not unless you intended to spend tomorrow bent over the porcelain bowl. Nasty stuff.”
The peace that comes from hearing his voice is fleeting, and warped with a strange lurching sensation in her belly.
Strange that familiarity can make her ache so deliciously. Is she destined to be both sickened and thrilled by her own past?
When she turns he is already smiling, face split open with a childish grin. So easy, to still see him that way, as a flaming haired boy.
“Hello Hermione.”
Swallows, trying her best to smile back. “Hi Bill.”
His mildly amused expression does nothing to mollify the writhing concoction of guilt, embarrassment and something tender slithering around her stomach. Up to her chest, fisting around her heart.
It’s the closest she’s been. To her. Even by proxy, her circle strategically widened with the distance. Small as the world of academia on the south coast of England may be, she’s managed. For eleven years she’s managed.
And she refuses to fail at the first hurdle. Dipping her proverbial toe back into the past. Bill. She can cope with Bill.
At least, she can, until he opens his mouth. All languid smiles and roguish charm. It would be infuriating, maddening, if it wasn’t so familiar. Conspiratorial, when he knocks his shoulder into hers, joining her in surveying the room. “Come. You’re making this awkward.”
“I am.”
Her voice inclines upwards slightly, the suggestion of a question, though she knows it to be a statement. She is making it awkward. Doesn’t know how not to do so.
Bill’s demeanour placating and docile. A dog, exposing its belly in submission. Movements purposeful - the shifting of his leg, crossing one over the other, his hands gripping the edge of the table behind them - and lazy.
He bumps her again, his leg this time. Nudging her shin to draw her attention.
That impish smile. Gleaming eyes. Her shoulders relaxing, even as she tries her best to roll eyes at him.
“Hmm. It doesn’t have to be…”
Rewarded with a laugh - from the chest, rumbling, a balm - and a squeeze to her shoulder. His hand lingers, the weight of it grounding. The warmth welcome. “It doesn’t.”
It’s grievous, his kindness. The way he gives it without expectation. The way he always has. A comfort then, that not all familiarity has to be painful. That it can stab but not twist. Can sew along raw seams in an attempt to mend, heal.
“The sauvignon is safe enough.” He’s already pouring her a glass, topping up his own. A generous pour, one that nearly spills when he raises his glass to hers, knocking them together.
“Thank you.”
“So.”
It’s his smell that has her fumbling for words to fill the years between them. That has her rendered non verbal. The floral scent of his soap, still camomile, melding with musky cologne. Cleansing her as he moves, the bittersweet tang of laundry detergent clinging to his clothes that smells like…Weasley.
Muscle memory that has her leaning sideways, shifting until their hips are aligned. His right, her left.
There was a time where they’d sleep like dogs in the sun. All of them, limbs entwined, piled atop one another with the grainy sand beneath them at the end of a summers day. After school, when they’d share hot chips wrapped in newspaper, licking grease and salt from their fingers, washing them in saltier sea. Never quite rid of that greasy residue, remnants, sticking to them like memories. Sharing a can of Coke between them, passed between fingers slippery with condensation from the can, salt from the air and the lingering oil from their chips, arguing over who has the last sip. Collapsing sated and full, after playing football, rounders, frisbee, anything that had them running along the coastline. Dodging incoming swells before they struck the shore.
Collecting their discarded layers as the sun threatens to be swallowed by the sea. Golden yellows, making way for ambers and flaming orange, bloated with the promise of lilac and navy. Identical school jumpers lifted from the sand, identifying them by scent. Ginny’s somehow sweeter than Ron or Bill’s, her vanilla body mist clinging to the inherent Weasley smell. Ron’s sharp deodorant identifiable on his, Harry’s always smelling vaguely of cinnamon.
And hers. Honeysuckle. Something citrus, lemons. Sun baked paper, the smell of meandering evenings spent lounging across the many acres of land her family owned. Grass, earth, rain spattered sun soaked tarmac, fizzling. The fields being fallowed, the lambs rotated to the east of the house. Earth left to bloom, great fronds of grass hiding them from view.
Before. All of it, before.
Bill interrupting her reverie. A welcomed reprise from picking her own wounds. “Are we doing the pleasantries or can we skip straight over to the… seven? Yes, seven years it’s been since I last saw you. Pansy’s-“
“-her launch party.”
A rather dramatic affair, as is to be expected from an academic specialising in 20th century Theatre. Between Pansy’s meandering speech-slash-performance-art-piece that involved telling the most outrageous fictions that she could conjure about almost everyone in the room and Ginny tossing her drink at Millicent Bulstrode after mishearing her call George a “cunt” as opposed to a “runt”, it was certainly an event that Hermione hadn’t rushed to forget.
The night ending with Bill under the flickering streetlight, both lingering on the curb, sharing cigarettes and stories like they were one and the same. Debriefing as they so often had in years past. Pointedly ignoring the gaping absence of her.
The flu, Bill told her. Sheepishly, his cheeks reddening with his own lie. Eyes creased in discomfort. A hard job, for one man. To form a rickety bridge between a chasm so large. A canyon so great.
The lie swallowed like nails, ferrous and pointed. Only fair. In a world of black and white she was not the wronged. She didn’t deserve to grieve a loss she could have prevented. One that she caused.
“Quite the party, as I remember it. A shame the book was awfully trite.”
A shared smirk, shirking off the years passed between them. Shrugged off, like a winter coat. She almost expects to see her there with them, to her right if she turns.
Instead of looking, checking, she sips the warm wine. Speaks around the rim of her glass. “Sold thousands though. Which in our world may as well be millions.”
“Precisely. She’s not lecturing here anymore, in case you hadn’t heard.”
She knows he knows that she hasn’t. That she has in fact, avoided all information pertaining to anyone connected to home. To anyone that might have her racing back to everything that she wants back.
“I hadn’t.”
He shrugs, leaning closer, nodding politely at someone across the room. Voice lowered, talking quickly, as he was always want to do when gossiping. “Yes. Well. She went for your job though. Appealed to her father and everything. Kicked up a rather foul stench about it at the summer faculty party.”
Swallows her smile. Lest it engulf her face; she wouldn’t want to give Bill the satisfaction.
She needn’t have worried - he notices anyway, his smug amusement turning softer, more sincere as he squeezes her shoulder once more.
“I’m glad it’s you.”
“Me too.”
He leans back, as if to see her better. His eyes quizzical, no less piercing in their assessment of her.
She forgot; he always saw too much. Could pierce her proverbial veil with ease, doing it so softly, with such care that she felt bad for prickling at the motion. It was always uncomfortable to her, to feel seen. To be known and for people to stay regardless of what they saw.
“Are you?”
And what could she possibly say? How could she succinctly respond. To say that yes, she took the job. Despite it all, all the before she took it. But that ever since she agreed she’d felt nothing but dread. Cold and slippery, down her spine. Gripping her chest, her ribs, locking her in a state of mortal fear. Having to face the rare and yearning thing that she killed with her own hands, that she killed for the simple certainty that she was the reason she could no longer have it.
Are you? Like it’s that simple. Like it’s as easy as are you glad you’re here? That you’re back?
Ever since she left she’s been in mourning for it, wanting nothing more than to come back. Knowing that she couldn’t, that she’d made it an impossibility through her choices. That now she was here, now that she was back, she was shocked that it had changed. Or that she’d changed, or both. Reconciling the past with the present proving farcical.
An inevitability that only she ever seemed to see. That somebody must leave first. She always knew this; she goes first.
Tries for sharpness, beneath her airy tone. Deflection- to deviate from an intended purpose. “So what’s new in the Middle Ages then Bill-“
It must strike him somewhere tender. His great patience - wide and generous as it is - exhausted. Bill had always operated as such; a Great War between honesty and infinite kindness. “I suppose that the metaphorical and very physical Fleur shaped elephant in the room isn’t to be addressed? That we’re to continue to ignore that?”
Her name is like a slap, sudden and harsh. Relief, too. That finally she has been mentioned so openly. Perhaps now she can relax; the waiting has been half of the anguish.
She almost winces - maybe she does, judging from the way Bill’s eyes soften in apology despite the set angle of his jaw - at his casual use of it.
Somewhere in the middle, that great gulf between the beginning and the end.
Fleur’s hand upon her stomach. Flesh bare, somehow vulnerable beneath her fingertips. Maybe it’s the reminder, that she is human. Skin, bone, a beating heart that pulsates. Thrums beneath Fleur’s palm as it skirts up her ribs, raising goosebumps wherever she trails her touch.
Her voice at her ear, the sweet sound of her twisted grin.
“You’re trembling.”
Anticipation, she supposes. Groans as much. Her impatience worn upon every inch of exposed skin that Fleur lavishes greedily. Engorges herself upon.
Barely a murmur. Not heard, but rather felt through the vibration of her lips pressed against her neck. “It’s okay. It’s only me. Just me.”
Except it’s never just Fleur. It never has been. And that’s the problem.
Gasps, back heaving from the bed when that same hand finds her where she needs it most. As if tethered. As if Fleur is conducting her body, contorting her limbs at will. Strings attached to fingertips, Hermione helpless to stay still beneath the orchestration of her puppeteer.
Sighs, swallows Fleur’s answering desperate little breaths against her mouth. The gentle impulsion she has harboured for years; to give her entire self over to Fleur.
A swig of wine. Swallows great ashy embers of the past. “If it’s alright with you then yes.”
Bill, his tone lofty and removed, but not unkind. The voice of a scholar; astute. Assured in his dissection. “Rather hard to ignore, I imagine.”
“Eleven years is a lot of practice time.”
Straightens. Hopes to avoid his scrutiny by letting her eyes dart unseeingly across the room.
Sighs, exasperated, when she feels his dogged gaze regardless. “Yet you’re here anyway.”
“I am.”
Accepts his quiet surrender, one that he signals with an upturned hand. A wry grin fighting with a pained grimace. “Hmm. No Fleur, alright. The syllabus then. I heard you had…notes.”
Revels, in the fondness that has his voice so entrenched, despite the teasing incline of his eyebrow. A wonder, really. To be seen, to be known so well. The act is almost akin to love.
Sniffs delicately. Meets his gaze head on. “It’s a combined module. It makes sense to have an equal split of texts between us.”
His smile is slow. Lopsided and languid, made crooked with nostalgia. “Ah, sense. Fleur never had much of that when it came to you. Or you to her, in fairness. For the sake of equality.”
“Well. We’re older now. Mature.”
Has the good nature to smirk along with Bill, to meet his gaze of amused doubt.
Sips her wine in the comfortable silence. Let’s the wash of voices swallow her up for a moment. Watches Bill survey the room in that observant way of his, as if sifting through records at a charity shop, hoping to strike gold.
Can’t suppress the grin that she feels split her face in two when he turns back to her instead, eyes gleaming. Struck gold.
“I read your latest by the way. The Extinction of the Carrows.”
She’s bothered by how much it surprises her. Bill never was a man of fiction truly, preferring only to use it as a tool to contextualise history. Fact, truth. Much like Fleur in that way, she thinks, with a twist of her gut. That familiar body ache that surfaces when she recalls even the smallest detail of her.
“And?”
Poised to receive his critique. Always delivered with kindness, over the years. A fair judge.
Is taken aback by his fervour, words punctuated with his gesturing hands. Wine swilling in the glass as he moves. A twister, like the one that lives inside her. “It stuck to me like treacle. No, something more painful to remove. Tar. I think of it often. It’s the best you’ve ever written. So far, anyway. I don’t doubt there’s another in you.”
Traces the rim of her glass with a forefinger. An excuse - she’ll take any - to not have to look at Bill, blushing as she knows she is.
Compliments always did mean more when it was Bill giving them. Well, Bill and…
Glances back up tentatively, unsurprised to find Bill’s waiting gaze. Amused and fond. Sincere.
“Thank you Bill.”
Waves his hand, as if by doing so he can alleviate her embarrassment. He can, she supposes, feeling herself relax, her shoulders descending.
Until he speaks once more.
“That dedication was…interesting. It almost read like an-“
Gets there first. As if by laying name to it before he can, it will somehow lessen the sting of the thing. That the blow won’t split her quite so unevenly.
I’ll always love you even after death and the rest. And the rest, the rest.
“Epitaph. Yes.”
Hears the strain in her own voice. Grateful, that even after all these years - even after it all, the before, the before - Bill knows her well enough to let her reply stand as a full stop. Nodding solemnly, eyes creasing. Empathy, not sympathy, for which she is glad.
“Can I say one more thing about it, before you become so insufferably bashful?”
Rolls her eyes. Attempts a scowl. Fails. “You’ll say it whether I say yes or no anyway.”
“I’d be more offended if it weren’t true.”
The tablecloth blooms. Condensation droplets from Bill’s discarded glass - now empty - spreading themselves outwards. Seeping circular.
“I think it’s made all the more beautiful precisely because it’s in the past.”
She chooses to look at him. Forced to, almost, in the silence left after his proclamation.
Fleur’s voice floating above her with the heat, kestrels trilling their distant excitement. Mice, in the fields. The warmth of her thighs where Hermione rests her head. Dappled sunlight through the branches of the towering oak tree at the far end of the Delacour farm shimmering across Fleur’s skin. Bathing her gold, God rays painting her luminescent. Hermione awash with green shade. “The Things that never can come back, are several-“
Bill imploring, his hand half reaching for her forearm. Stopping, flailing in the unbridgeable space between them instead. “Carrows that is. Your first two were surprisingly…present. Rigid, almost unfictitious with how sombrely realistic they were. Rooted so firmly in the now.”
Tries for humour, lest she suffocate beneath the weight of… his words? Bill’s very presence? The past? All three. Somehow all three. “Not everything has to be set in the Middle Ages to make it worth your attention, Bill.”
“So I’ve been told. But seriously, Hermione. Carrows. The past. The fictional. You write it so…dreadfully solemn, paint it so dangerously awful. Filmy, like a sort of… magic. You cradle it to your chest even when you’re writing it for others to read. So…real I guess, despite the looming falsity of it. It echoes.”
How could she not? The past. It’s where all the people she has ever loved live; they beat beneath her ribs like a second heartbeat. Where her mistakes lie too, her ghastly choices made laughably absurd by the passage of time.
Eyes glassy. Fogged, like steam long since dissipated from the tea in front of them. Warm breath against cool window panes. Tears, like condensation droplets. Mournful disappointment tarnishing her face.
Hermione feels it too, about herself; disappointment. At her hands, the inherent willingness of them to relax her grip until she grasps only air. “Would it make it easier or harder if I said I loved you? Would it matter?”
The lie coming so easily that it barely feels like a lie at all. “No. It doesn’t matter.”
Beckoned back from the clutches of the past by Bill turning, his name called from across the room by a tall, bespectacled man that Hermione is sure she must know somehow. “Ah. I’m being summoned. Presumably to settle the age old debate of which great William would triumph in hand to hand combat.”
“Shakespeare or Fowler?”
Equally pained and delighted by his hearty laugh, the way the force of it seems to ripple through his every crevice. So rich, full bodied; Bill never did know how to not feel with every inch of his body. “Too modern for me to weigh in on unfortunately. Mine is Marshal or Wallace.”
“So Middle Ages of you Bill.”
It’s the way the humour remains held in his eyes that has her extending her hand. Grips his elbow. Squeezes just once. Unsure of exactly what she’s trying to say, just that it’s important that she does it regardless.
Where the trees bend low, that bizarre and almost alien expanse of beach that houses a copse of sun bleached branches.
Bill’s grasping her hand, contorting it to his will. Playing aimlessly, the ebb and flow of the meaningless game following no rules. Fingers wrestling with one another, bending them back to the point of pain, just to test the boundaries of the other.
Fleur’s hand stilling them both. Gripping, fingers a vice. Face stern. Eyes twinkling regardless, that latent and as yet unnamed look that sets Hermione ablaze nestled there when she glances at her.
The swipe of her thumb, across the parts of her that ache, that burn through Bill’s careless contortions. Set aflame under Fleur’s ministrations. “Bill don’t hurt her. You hurt her, you hurt me.”
Now, here, he shrugs. Let’s his hand momentarily envelop her own. “It’s all I know for my sins.”
Releases. Leaves her unmoored. Lost, somewhere between here and there. Present and past.
Recedes slowly, still half turned towards her, as if she might cease to exist if he looks away entirely. “Don’t be a stranger, okay? There’s plenty of Weasley’s that still…that…”
Can’t help the sheepishness that warps her staccato laugh. “Don’t abhor me?”
“Something like that. I was going to say are fond of you. Or admire you. Or both.”
“Thank you.”
Another step. Smooths his hair back down, tucks some longer strands near the front behind his ears. With the distance, he could be twenty one still. They all could. “I’ll see you around. I’m over in-“
“The Flamel Building?”
A boyish wave. All gangly limbed somehow. Awkward in his height. Or is it just time, the memory of him that mars the gesture so? “Speak soon, okay?”
Says it to his back, quietly, when he’s far enough away that she can be certain he hasn’t heard it at all. Saying goodbye was for her always easiest done that way. “Bye Bill.”
He doesn’t find her again, but then again, she doesn’t seek him out either. Instead spends her evening on the sidelines, somehow always on the fringes, removed from the life happening in front of her.
Leaves, when she knows she isn’t coming. When the eternal just a few more minutes, just wait in case she comes has become unbearably sad, laughably desperate. When her dress - simple, navy so deep it’s almost black, that she picked up with her heart in her throat, sharp and full when she sees not a dress, but widened eyes in half darkness; reached out in the middle of the store surprised to feel silk and not the velvety cavern of Fleur beneath her fingertips - becomes suffocating.
Leaves, when she realises that what she has ran headfirst towards - the past, everything she wants back - isn’t there to greet her anymore. That despite clenching white knuckled onto it, the claw marks left on everything she’s ever touched, ever loved, has been futile.
Greeted by the bellowing silence of the cottage. The rumble of the waves below, far away, reverberating through the cliffs. Mournful whistle of the wind bleeding its way between cracks.
Opens her emails with a held breath. Seeing her name, staring at it until it ceases to have meaning. The syllabus changes she’d suggested. The removal of that text.
<from:[email protected]>
This is fine.
F
This is fine.
It hurts in a way that helps. The simplicity of it. The hidden barb barely concealed. When she closes her eyes she pictures Fleur, writing it.
Did she type more? Then delete? Did she spend hours labouring over the reply the same way that Hermione figuratively and literally sweated over her initial email? Did she run her fingers through her hair, sweeping it out of the way as she bent over the keyboard, like she used to when the throes of complete concentration. When deeply troubled.
This is fine.
Eleven years of silence broken by something so innocuous. Something so bathetic in nature.
Mouths each word, tastes each syllable as if to better understand them. To better understand how they came to be so. How this - this is fine - is where they have ended up. The real ending a falsehood, one that she has made false with her revival of it. Exhumed it with her return, thrashing against the corpse chest of it, demanding a pulse.
Traces the letters, watching her laptop screen blur and pixelate like blotted ink under her fingertips. Feels her eyes turning weighty, bleary. Fighting sleep, forcing herself to stay awake, to stare at those three syllables in an attempt to transform them into different ones.
This is fine.
I love you.
She sleeps, fitfully. Yearning for a moment that she knows has long come and gone. That is years passed. That has no promise of coming again.
The knowing doesn’t stop the yearning. It never does.
*****
It’s a Tuesday - rainy, the characteristic mizzle somehow drenching her more completely than if it were a downpour. Campus saturated in clouds, the sky collapsing.
Head bowed, heading to the campus coffee shop. The one closest to the Arts building. Not the usual haunt, the one that marked the border between the Arts Building and the unreachable blocks of “science”. Fleur turning right out of the campus station, Hermione always left.
She sees her under the cover of rain, blurred. A multitude of colours, muted. The browns of the brick buildings. The rusted steel of girders. Fleur somehow a halo, always, a harbinger of light that she carried herself.
A suckerpunch to the chest. Winded, gasping for air as the door screeches open, complaining against the floor it drags across.
She sits, head turned halfway to the counter. Angular and unknowable. Painfully known. Her face half hidden behind a curtain of hair, the curve of her jaw somehow more devastating with age. The lines around her mouth - ones that Hermione would trace with her fingertips when Fleur would smile beneath her, like brushing velvet, the skin of a peach, something precious - ever so slightly deeper set.
A metre between them. Eleven years, too.
The protest of the chair as she drags it outwards. The drip of water from the drenched ends of her hair.
“You always look so real in the rain. Smell so real. Like I could touch you forever. Have you forever.”
Fleur speaks without looking at her. Shivers, recoils. Jaw tensing, clenched as she gazes stoically towards the milk being steamed, the great screech of it as its burned in a jug.
“You’re late.”
Combative. Oh good god how it hurts. How it feels so wondrously correct for Fleur to speak to her like she’s nothing. Like she’s everything. How she always laboured over keeping her tone just so; Hermione, ever the inconvenience, Hermione ever the world’s greatest delight.
She sits, loudly. Clumsily. Making a scene of it, if only to get Fleur to look at her. It’s what Fleur demands, always. Some great scene, some great challenge. Keeps her voice clipped, close to her chest as she fiddles with the black coffee still steaming in front of the empty seat. “Observant still then. I got collared by Professor Longbottom.”
Not a lie. He’d caught her coming out of the station, a warm hand on her elbow.
“I missed you at the party. Bill mentioned you were there but left early.”
Frazzled, a copy of the university newspaper disintegrating in the rain, held above his head. The oncoming breeze cold, Neville’s toothy grin achingly warm.
“Yes. It was…” Trails off, let’s any semblance of a response be taken by a particularly noisy bluster of wind.
It was awful. It was fine.
This is fine.
Neville, all soft reassurance and unequivocal compassion. Eyes eager and wide. “They’re terrible, I know. I don’t blame you, I left not long after I arrived, when the free wine had already been drunk dry.”
A perfunctory laugh, taking a step back to try and signal her departure because she can sense that he’s about to bring her up. It’s bizarre, that she can always sense it before someone does. A metallic tang at the back of her throat. Like tasting lightning in the air; dangerous. Electric.
Almost laughs, feels her mouth pull up at the corner, twitching when he does.
“How are you anyway? I spoke to Fleur, she seemed-“
“I’ve actually got to go. I’m meeting her now. But we-“
Body already half turned, hoping she seems more apologetic than she feels. Wishing that the past would leave her alone despite knowing that she’s the one who sought it out.
A wave, Neville dodging oncoming students passing by. Standing on his tiptoes to watch her retreat. “Yeah yeah, I’ve still got your number. Catch up soon? It’s good to have you back.”
She looks at her, finally, as she says it.
It’s something with teeth. Something that fissures deeper than hurt, past betrayal. Those eyes - her fucking eyes - the envious rock pool clear blue of them at once both stifling and endlessly freeing. Pinning her there. Where she isn’t sure. Pinning her here, now? The past, eleven years ago? Or before, further. Before.
Dizzying hatred, a flinty vitriol that nearly steals the breath from her lungs. Fleur, taking it from her. Fleur taking and Hermione giving, willingly.
“Take the air I breathe. Replace it with your own. Take the blood in my veins, the sinew between my bones until there’s nothing left that’s me. Until it’s only you. Only you.”
The full force of her. It’s overwhelming. It’s too strong in its venom.
It’s perfect.
Derision. A snarl, lips curling with cruel distaste; Hermione always did think that Fleur looked unfairly beautiful when angry. When defensive and pained, backed up into a corner until the only place left to go is through the person in front of her.
Delivers it with a huff. Teeth bared in a saccharine smile.
Slurring words, chewing on them around her own tongue, grown thick with alcohol. Jabbing a forefinger into her clavicle.
Something about Ron, about the way his hand lingered clumsily on her hip. Maybe. Or the way he’d turned his torso away from Fleur, blocking her from the conversation. Isolating himself and an already too-inebriated Hermione.
Always something about Ron. Something about Fleur not liking Ron. Not liking the way he’d started to…look at Hermione. How he’d started to touch Hermione.
Unspoken; how it was too much like how Fleur looked at Hermione. How Fleur touched Hermione.
Fleur’s smile - the nasty, glinting one, luminous and lush with jealousy - swimming in her vision. Her biddable skin yielding beneath Hermione’s stabbing fingers. “I fucking hate when you look at me like that.”
“It’s fine.”
And she knows she was in the wrong, and she knew this was to be expected but it still has her bristling. Fingertips up her spine, a tingling through her jaw from clenching down upon her teeth so hard.
That smile. That infuriating, unfair, cruel fucking smile.
Forces the tepid coffee through clenched teeth. Arranges her face into the best estimation she can muster of a returned smile. A marred grimace of sorts, gifted to Fleur straight on.
“I know.”
Pleased, that it’s Fleur who looks away first. Who is the first to bow under the weight of the past, staunch and inescapable as it sits between them. Two mugs of lukewarm coffee and eleven formative years nestled between the complimentary plastic wrapped custard creams and teaspoons.
Always a game. With scores, and rules, that Hermione never felt like she completely understood. Playing blindly in the early years. Amateur, to Fleur’s professional.
By the time she knew the rules, comprehended enough to find loopholes, to find simplicity in the supposed complexity of Fleur, she was forfeiting. Or letting herself lose. Or Fleur lose.
She never was quite sure who won. It never felt like it was her. Certain it wasn't Fleur either.
Cheeks flushed, the only sign of Fleur’s supposed defeat. The game continuing with the clearing of her throat, the languorous manner in which she sips on her espresso.
“So. You suggested this.”
Hermione, nodding. “I did.”
A twitch of her eyebrow. The forced casualness of the motion surging white hot fury through Hermione. “For any reason in particular? Or were you just eager to enjoy the famous Hogwarts University in house roasted coffee beans once more?”
“The syllabus. The schedule-“
A dismissive wave of her hand. Like swatting a bothersome fly. Her eyes rolling dramatically, tone patronising.
“Emailed. You’ll find I chose to keep some of your recommended ‘removes’. Removed some of your ‘keeps.’”
“She’s being purposefully pedantic.”
Phone sandwiched between her cheek and shoulder, opening yet another box of books that arrived from her storage locker the week prior.
“Of course she is. It’s Fleur.” Ginny’s tone exasperated and dry, muffled slightly by her own cheek.
“It’s not like her to jeopardise the syllabus…”
Pushes an old Henry Miller collection, grimacing.
Ginny’s breath loud, but cautious. Words measured when they come. “Then maybe just…let it go? Trust her?…”
Sighs. Pauses her rifling when her hand finds a familiar texture. The worn down softness of the cover wrenching her to somewhere long gone. Long since past.
Willow tree sap and sticky hands. Rinsed in the small river, running ceaselessly to the sea. The warmth of Fleur’s head in her lap, hair tickling behind her crossed knees.
Opens a page at random, curiosity of the kind most morbid. A breath held, the pain already welting against her chest.
“A great hope fell
You heard no noise
The Ruin was within”
Hermione swallows the burnt coffee. Hopes Fleur doesn’t notice the way her voice wavers despite willing it not to. “I saw.”
“You did? And no arguments about it?”
The same conclusion she came to with Ginny. The reasoning sound, delivered to Fleur with a shrug. “You’ve taught the syllabus before. I’m sure you know better than me how it best operates.”
An offer. Not for friendship, but for…peace. Even the most fragile and delicate kind. Civility, even.
Squandered as soon as it is held out in Hermione’s open palm. Fleur shaking her head as if in disbelief, eyes wide and scanning Hermione’s face frantically.
A laugh, starting breathy and small. Rising in volume, sardonic and symphonic.
“Right.”
“What?”
She can’t help the exasperation that bleeds into it. Can’t help but rise to it. She never could, not when it was Fleur.
Perhaps it’s why it aggravates her so deeply - somewhere carnal, somewhere private and inexplicable that only Fleur ever seemed to know how to reach, that only Fleur knew existed - when Fleur grins. When she rocks backwards slightly, before encroaching forward, leaning across the table.
The condescendingly knowing glint. Alight, in her eyes.
She almost whispers it around her smirk. “Nothing.”
Snaps, before she can tell herself not to. Before she can remind herself to be pliant. To be docile. Apologetic and controlled.
Lurching her body, palms connecting with the tabletop with a startling slap. “Really. This is how you…”
Fleur, already there to meet her. Hands achingly close. Irritatingly far. The twitch of her index finger in Hermione’s periphery, fixated as she is upon Fleur’s delighted eyes. Joyous, as Hermione feels her own eyes burn, her scowl deepen like bruised fruit.
Her tone feigned naivety. Her words, her eyes a dare. Begging her to speak. To say it. To be the first to bring up what is squatting at their table, that great gnarled beast - not a spectre, too solid, too real - of the past.
“How I what, Hermione?”
It’s foolish really. Embarrassing. That the sound of her name coming from Fleur’s mouth disarms her. That it’s as simple as a girl, a woman, this woman, saying her name, that has her deflating instantly.
Almost gasps it, as she sits back. Curling her hands into fists, burying them beneath the table. Flexing them against her knees. “Nothing. It’s…it’s fine.”
Smug in her victory, Fleur reclining against the chair. Unrelentingly keeping score. “Good. Is that all?”
Reminds herself that she asked for this. For Fleur to be here. For herself to be here. The past. The syllabus. The course. How she howled for it.
The course. The syllabus. Questions. She has questions about it. Valid ones.
Asks them, with renewed placidity. Control. As a co-worker. As an esteemed colleague.
“For office hours, for seminars and the ad hoc tutorials. How have you run them previously?”
Detached frustration. A performative yawn in return, Fleur tapping her nails against the tabletop. Looking somewhere behind her head instead of directly at Hermione. “Emailed. You really should speak to the IT department prior to the first lecture. It sounds like you’re missing quite a few important emails there.”
That thing again. Writhing within her, the twang of a taut rubber band. Taunting before it is released, the vibration a threat. “From your PA.”
“Don’t worry Hermione, I’m sure if you’re here for seven years you’ll also get one to do your mindless emails and admin too.”
Plunders past the stabbing jibe. Refuses to look away from her despite the supercilious pout she wears, the false kindness of her softened eyes that fail to hide the toxicity behind them.
“So no joint office hours?”
“We have two hours on a Thursday. I checked your schedule; it works for both of us.”
Nods curtly. “Thank you Fleur.”
Tilts her head, eyes tentative and narrow. Laden with suspicion. “Whatever for, it’s quite literally my job.”
Opens her mouth, closing it just as quickly. The cafe door opening off to her left, the breeze carrying the scent of Fleur. Stirring it until it's suffocating her. Assaulted by the past.
Honeysuckle, sun baked and salty on her neck. Knowing finally, how to see without her eyes. How to know another body so completely that she could be senseless and it wouldn’t make a difference.
Fleur’s eyes, the jagged cruelty of them dulling, turning genuine. Inquisitive. Chasing Hermione’s, asking. Questioning, despite the obvious effort not to.
Hermione responding in kind, with her own.
Thank you for being here, she supposes. Thank you for loving me, all those years ago. Thank you for all of it, even this, even now. I’m sorry and I hope that time will forgive me even if I won’t. Sorry and thank you.
“If there isn’t anything else then…”
Speaks, if only in the hopes of clinging onto the memory of before. To keep the Fleur that lives in her mind - the one that could never despise her, that loves her with bottomless hunger - alive.
“You’ve chosen some…controversial texts.”
Fleur, doubling down. Her momentary lapse in loathing reignited. “You mean not boring? Of course you’d think they’re controversial. I would pass judgement on your text choices but I’d have had to have spared them more than an idle glance to do so.”
Laughs, despite failing to find any humour in the situation. Maybe it is funny; that she’s returned in the hopes of finding a woman that doesn’t exist anymore. That resides only in her mind. That loved a version of herself that also doesn’t exist anymore.
It’s that idea, that has her saying it, between hysteric sounding giggles.
If I don’t know you anymore, then you don’t know me. And you know me. You know me.
“I find it hard to see how you’d have any opinion on what I would and wouldn’t find controversial.”
“Oh really? And why is that, Hermione?”
“Don’t pretend that you haven’t read every single text on that list. I’ve watched you.”
Wills Fleur to feel it. To see it. To remember it. I’ve watched you. I know you.
Tallies a point when she sees it land. Sees her throat move as she swallows. The barely there dusting of heat atop her cheeks. Clench of her jaw as she lies through her teeth.
The signs, the language of Fleur coming back to her slowly. Dormant, muscle memory when returning to the land of her mother tongue.
Deceives with a shrug. Toys with the handle of her teaspoon, a temporary aversion for her gaze. “As an infant perhaps. A teenager. My tastes have matured.”
You knew me.
“I’ll have my lecture notes sent over today. I trust yours will align with the themes I set out?”
It’s a dismissal. The full time whistle. One that has her scrambling for more time, fumbling for the rules and throwing the dirtiest tactic she has at her.
Adjusts her voice just so. Dry, arch and taunting. “No, I thought I’d entirely balls it up actually. Make a right arse out of myself and you as well.”
Sickeningly gleeful, when it works. When Fleur shifts in her chair, the scratch of metal on wood drawing curious eyes to their table.
Yet all she can see is Fleur. Dazzling in her contempt, her face as close to Hermione’s as the table between them will allow.
Feels each word against her cheeks. The whisper of shared breath between them like petals upon her lips. She can almost taste the incline of her mouth, the sharpness of her teeth. The sweet yet acrid tang of her words.
Hissed, slow and deliberate. “Well then thank you for the forewarning. No shame in it, it’s not easy being so fucking- Daphne.”
The agonising loss. Aching and hollow, concave when Fleur moves back. Expression serene. Unmoved, her smile polite and easy.
“Professor Delacour. Hermione Weasley.”
She barely looks up at Daphne. Instead watching the corner of Fleur’s eye twitch, her fingers grip the edge of the table tighter.
Hermione Weasley.
Barks it, aims it as Fleur as if it were her who spoke. “Granger, actually.”
Tries not to dwell on the fact that it’s the Weasley part that insults her more than the absence of Professor. Fails to tamp the heat rising to her face, annoyance visible - at herself, for giving Daphne the satisfaction of a reaction, at Daphne for just existing really, but more so for interrupting whatever cruel and satisfying jibe Fleur was about to hurl at her, and at Fleur for…being Fleur - set, embedded in the clench of her jaw.
Daphne. Disingenuous, bringing up a hand to cover her mouth. “Oh! Dear, foot in mouth or what? I heard you got the job. Pansy was very surprised.”
She always did have a punchable face. Hermione trying her best impression of a smile. Settling for a marred version of a grimace.
“Well it doesn’t take much to surprise Pansy now does it.”
Risks a sideways glance at Fleur. Chest, heart fluttering and seizing, skipping ahead of itself when she notices her gnawing her own cheek. Furiously swallowing a smile. The bowed position of her head, turned slightly away.
Willingly oblivious, Daphne lingering. Hip resting against the table, body angled with her back to Hermione, effectively removing her from the conversation. “Are you done or…should I wait?”
“No it’s okay. Hermione was just leaving actually.”
Sobering. A slap, harsh and grounding. Any passing fondness, any semblance of nostalgia painting her pretty having fled as soon as it arrived. The coldness of Fleur’s eyes not two steps back but rather eleven years.
Speaks from hurt. From the fragile place of hope that refuses to wilt. That denies any pleas to let it wither and die. “Yes. It sounds like I have some extremely enlightening emails buried in my inbox beyond ‘this is fine’ and the latest ‘k.’ which I personally cannot wait to read. You have a leaf, in your hair Daphne. Just thought you should know.”
Allows herself one look back, as she leaves. Just one last one. One more.
“Bye Fleur.”
A mistake, as soon as she turns. One she is destined to always make it seems, that she will never learn not to make. For Fleur, she will always turn.
Those eyes that she used to see behind her own. That used to linger behind her eyelids as if burned on, that she would wake up to. Tender and dazed, blinking like a new born. Clear blue that she would sleep beneath, the weight of them mortally familiar.
Now closed and unreadable. Gone, somewhere she can no longer follow. The present, she supposes. The place where the Fleur that loved her does not exist.
“Goodbye Hermione Weasley.”
Revels in the screech of her chair against the floor. The way it bangs against the table as she tucks it in, shaking her abandoned, cold coffee.
Forces herself through the door. Counting paces, timing them. An effort to make them remain even. Wrestling against the bizarre yet familiar urge to run.
Fights with her breath, her lungs. Battering them into submission, into compliance through measured inhales. Sucking deeply, mindless of the rain painting her sodden.
The thing about endings, she supposes, is that in fiction, the way is paved. A good ending, a really good one, is fated. Inescapable. Words, signs placed like bricks until the house is built. The house of satisfying endings.
In real life it’s rarely like that. It wasn’t like that with Fleur. Perhaps with the gift of hindsight, it was there, it was always going to be like that. Fissures evident, slathered with duct tape and glue, only visible with time. Distance.
But to live it. She was so certain they were in the middle, in that great gaping space between the beginning and the end, and next it’s been eleven years and Hermione doesn’t know the lines of Fleur’s body anymore. The emotions that used to flit across her face no longer legible to her. Fluency abandoned, lost somewhere along the way, only apparent when she is faced with her now foreign features again.
Maybe once there is a beginning, the rest is only endings.
When she is far enough away, shielded from view by the suffocating mist, she looks back just in time to see Fleur’s eyes alight, head thrown back in laughter at something Daphne has said. Daphne in the seat she had just occupied, erasing her presence with her own.
At the start of the divorce - the official start anyway, paper filed, solicitors contacted, after the long months of frozen malaise and stifling stalemate of a relationship in ruin, stuck together only by words swallowed and unspoken admissions of “this isn’t working” and “I’m not in love with you anymore, maybe I never was” - outside a half empty cafe. Beneath a small gazebo, weathered, the green stripes of it faded to teal.
“I’m letting you know before you hear it from someone else.”
Her stomach already surging upwards, sheeted dread lining it. Something about Ginny’s expression, the way it warped into equal parts sympathy and trepidation. The way it always did whenever they skirted dangerously close to the topic of Fleur.
Places her tea back on the table. Cupping it, for something to do. Taps her fingers against porcelain, watching it create ripples across the surface of the liquid for somewhere to focus her eyes. “Just say it.”
Ginny, tone even. Clear. Like explaining the concept of death to a child, all soft edges, truth shrouded in pretty tales. “She’s with Daphne. Nothing serious, from what I hear from Bill and I mean it’s Daphne for fucks sake, nothing is ever serious with her. But I just thought you should know.”
Nodding gently, almost imperceptibly, as if it might dull the pain of a clamped fist seizing around her heart. As if by signalling she heard, she can also understand.
When she looks up, finally catches Ginny’s flighty gaze over the rim of her tea, she hopes she left any remnants of pain hidden beneath the too milky tea. Under that filmy layer of milk just on the wrong side of turning.
Swallows around a too tight throat. Liquid scalding, memories burning down to her stomach, her chest. “I don’t see why I’d need to know about that. But thank you, anyway.”
In the cafe now, Fleur, a hand, flung out thoughtlessly, steadying herself on Daphne’s forearm.
Her own arm burns, for the touch she used to know all to well. As if it were her own, Fleur’s body an extension of hers. Perhaps it is the nostalgia, that will be the end of her.
Somewhere, in the middle, she still resides. Bellowing at the clocks for more time.