1. one-shot by Susan05
It’s Snowing in London
It was a silent evening of late December; Christmas was over, but New Year had not yet come. 17-year old Hermione Granger was sitting on her bed in a small London apartment. The door to her room was closed and she was clutching a thick book in her hands. She wasn’t reading though, as the lights in her room were turned off, curtains were drawn open, and instead of the tiny letters on paper, her eyes were watching the snow fall outside. Hermione was lost in thought.
“Hermione, darling,” Mrs. Granger asked, knocking on her door.
“Come in, mum,” she answered, quickly turning on the lights and opening the book at a random page.
“We’ve run out of milk and you know how your father hates it if he can’t have it in the morning,” Mrs. Granger said, looking apologetic.
“He hates it when I don’t drink it in the morning,” Hermione muttered just loud enough for her mother to hear while making it seem as if she had tried to hide the thought from her. Inwardly she was smiling; she had been searching for an excuse to go outside and now her mother had unknowingly provided her with one. The older woman was still looking at her as if expecting her to argue that if it was so important her mother should go herself.
“I’ll go,” Hermione said, making her mother smile.
“I knew I could count on you. Make sure you dress up warmly,” she said in a much more relaxed way, putting some money on her table.
Once her mother had left, Hermione closed her book and shoved it aside. She dressed as quickly as she could; a long dark red skirt, the warm jumper Mrs. Weasley had knitted for her for Christmas, her black overcoat she had bought specifically for an occasion like this “ she loved to watch how the snowflakes landed on its dark cloth; every tiniest nuance of their lacy beauty differentiated on its blackness. She felt she could spend hours just comparing them.
Wrapping her red-and-gold Gryffindor scarf around her neck, she stepped out into the snow. It wasn’t as cold as she had feared; the snow was soft and refreshing as it melted on her cheeks and entangled in her wavy hair. The streets were empty; she seemed to be the only person in this white dreamland.
The shop was just as empty. It wasn’t often she visited this place; usually the Grangers bought their week's supply of food at the mall. But Hermione liked small shops. People seemed so much friendlier there. Maybe there weren’t as much goods to choose from, perhaps it was more expensive, but there was a kind of warmness in this small low room.
The required milk safe in her handbag she exited the shop. It was too close to her home; she decided to stall getting back, and started off in the wrong direction, towards the white streets and silent alleys which she knew so well from the times she had strolled there as a child on her way home from school or library.
Suddenly she noticed a man in a long black cloak on the other side of the street. It seemed to Hermione that he was watching her; he was leaning on a lamppost so that he seemed somehow familiar to Hermione. Maybe it was his fur cap that looked so out of place next to his respectable-looking black cloak. Maybe the familiarity was in his face; a long crooked nose, a strong large chin covered with a short dark haze of beard, cheeks too pale and sallow for the face, eyes too deep under the black low eyebrows.
Hermione put her hand casually in the pocket of her cloak and clasped her wand. There was something wizardly in the man; he seemed so strange in the Muggle world, so incompatible with the electric light shining down on him.
Hermione carefully turned into a side alley, not wanting to pass the man, to turn her back to him.
“Her-my-oh-knee!” he suddenly shouted.
Hermione froze. She remembered the voice, now she recognized the face. The only question was what he was doing there.
I must be careful, she thought, turning to face him. “Viktor!” she shouted with false cheeriness in her voice, her right hand still holding her wand, and with a smile still glued on her face, she walked to the man.
“You should’ve owled and told me you were coming to London,” she said, stopping some steps away from him.
“I couldn’t. Owls may be interpreted. It’s not safe.” He stepped up to Hermione and hugged her. Still holding her, he whispered, “I’m on run.”
Hermione shook his hands off her and took a step back, eyeing him suspiciously. “Viktor,” she said in a shivering voice.
“You don’t trust me, do you?”
Hermione shook her head, Viktor nodded. Their eyes met.
“I would never hurt you,” he said severely.
Hermione nodded, thinking back at the time they were sitting side by side at the shore of the lake at Hogwarts. “I know,” she whispered and nodded again, “but...”
"Let’s just be friends,” Viktor said, taking her hand. “May I walk you home?”
“Of course,” Hermione said, finally releasing her wand and pressing herself into Viktor’s side, so that the man was forced to release her hand and put his arm around her waist.
They started walking down the street in silence. Most of the time they had ever spent together had been wordless. It was different with letters though; those had sometimes been too long and heavy for one owl to carry, especially as the distance separating the two was not a short one.
Hermione felt good in the warm manly embrace, even if it was only just a friend holding her. She knew he could never become any closer to her as he was now, they were too different. But she cherished those moments of silence when she could feel protected; in this soft pure snow surrounding the silent couple it seemed impossible that this country was currently in war.
“This weather reminds me of Durmstrang,” Viktor suddenly said. “I hate this snow.”
Hermione looked at him inquiringly. “What happened? Why are you here?”
Viktor didn’t answer. He only shook his head and looked away from Hermione. They continued walking in silence.
After some minutes Hermione stretched out her arm so that they could both see it. A snowflake landed on the black sleeve, then another, and another.
“I love snow,” she said, stopping in front of her house and watching intently the little crystals on ice on her arm. She felt Viktor releasing her and turning to face her.
“What’s so special about them?” he asked.
Hermione raised her eyes to his level, but the man was not looking at her face; instead he was staring down at the black sleeve on which a little pile of snow was forming.
“They come, each and every one of them different from all of the others, white, pure, flawless. And then they melt,” she said, taking the mitten off her other hand and placing her palm on the thin white layer of snow on her sleeve.
Viktor started. He was watching Hermione turn her palm around. It was wet. Droplets of water ran down the lines on her palm, dripping off the tips of her fingers.
“They melt, and become common water. Little tears that are inseparable, clones of each other. And never again can they resume their old flawless, unique beauty.”
Viktor looked up to the brown eyes searching his. He saw Hermione shake the water off her hand and put the mitten on again.
“It was nice meeting you,” she said and turned to go.
“Wait!” Viktor crabbed her shoulder and she turned around. Their eyes met again.
“Can you hear the music?” he asked.
Hermione could not hear anything. Still, she joined hands with Viktor and let him take her waist. She put her other hand on his shoulder and leaned on him. Viktor took off his cap and threw it into the snow, just next to Hermione’s forgotten handbag. She saw the snowflakes entangle in his dark hair now, as they started dancing in the snow where no one else was walking.
She turned her eyes back to his face, but instead of Viktor’s deep eyes hiding under his bushy eyebrows, she met the blue pools and red hair of Ron Weasley. Hermione smiled and rested her head on his chest. She felt Ron gripping her tighter to himself as they swayed gently in the rhythm of the music. She could hear it now.
Hermione closed her eyes and hugged the pillow closer. She was glad the lights were off. Her book lay abandoned on the floor; she couldn’t even remember it falling down. Tears were falling from her eyes, though a genuine smile was playing on her lips.
She dried the tears off, smiled a smile of love, listened to the music in her head, and watched the snowflakes falling outside.