Hermione sat in her kitchen, drinking her tea in a mug her parents had given her when she moved out.
She had a foot on the chair, elevating her knee to rest her chin on it. It was silent and she would sometimes sit like this before heading to bed. It had been a long day. It was always hard to make it through a day when you were one of the best and most asked for Healers in St. Mungo’s.
She sighed and took another sip of tea. Her conversation with Luna Lovegood that day was swimming in her head. She was wondering how honest she had been when she’d told Luna they were moving on.
Flashback
“You look good, today,” Luna told her and Hermione smiled.
“Thanks,” she replied. “I think I’m going to see him tonight and apologize.”
Luna nodded in response. “Good idea. You have to let him know.”
Hermione and Luna had become friends when Hermione became a Healer two years ago, three months before Harry and Ginny had passed. Luna was there for her when Hermione had finally started to open up about loving Ron and leaving him. She’d told Luna her deepest secret and Luna had been there the entire time, giving her support and being the best friend Hermione could ask for. She’d immediately told Luna about Ron coming to her with the letters and she’d even let Luna read the letters and the gifts that each letter held.
“How about you? Is today a good day?” Hermione asked her friend. Luna nodded with a satisfied face.
“So far, so good. Neville Longbottom asked me to dinner with him last night after your shift ended.”
“And you replied with…?”
“Well, I said I’d go, if that’s what you’re getting at. It’s no big deal, just dinner,” Luna explained.
Hermione broke out into a huge grin. “Neville is one of the best guys I’ve ever met, and, if I might say so myself, he is quite a looker now-a-days!”
Luna shrugged. Her long blonde hair hadn’t changed since school and it hung loosely to her back. She grabbed it with both hands and started to put it up into a complicated twist before wrapping a rubber band around it to keep it in place. Hermione saw the many pictures of Luna’s patients formed into a necklace wrapped around Luna’s pale neck. They worked in the children’s ward together.
“Hey! We are both moving forward, right? You move on from the stupid scumbag prat that admitted he used you, and I’m moving on from…I’m moving on as well,” Hermione said as she lifted her head in fear of touching that subject.
“You’re right.” Luna patted her back and they left the locker-room of St. Mungo’s to tend to their patients.
End Flashback
Hermione smiled. How had things been screwed up again? She was trying to move on, but then Ron had appeared at her doorstep with letters from her past. The letters contained more of a roadblock to moving on. She had it easy, if she thought about it. She left Ron before he could dismiss her. But Luna had had it terribly.
After Hermione had left Ron, she went into hiding. She still went to work but never really talked to anyone, only ‘hello’s’ and ‘goodbye’s’ and it took her three months to open up to Luna. Meanwhile, Luna is getting thrown away by some prick and she grieves the same way Hermione does: silently.
She got up from her seat with a sigh and put her mug in the sink. Before she could wash it, a loud knock ruptured her door. She jumped, aware of a little boy in the other room asleep and she raced to the door, taking a glance at the clock, which showed that it was nearly midnight.
She saw a very relaxed and dozed Ron standing on her porch and gasped.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“HERMIONE!” Ron shouted in triumph.
“What the bloody hell?! Ron, are you drunk?” Hermione said in an exasperated tone, as she glared at the red-head in front of her.
He laughed giddily, confirming Hermione’s question. “No, ‘Mione, I just had a couple drinks,” he stuttered.
“Yeah, I’m sure. Damn it, Ronald Weasley!” She sighed, thinking of what to do next. “I can’t take you back to your place, Ron, I’m babysitting for a friend for the night. It’s way too late to call your mother. No “ Ron what are you “ NO “ what in the hell are you doing?” she hissed before grabbing his hand away from the light above her door.
“It could be a light for the dark! I can’t see where I’m going, I don’t know where my wand is,” he said, as his voice went from happy to sad in his one statement.
Hermione took a deep breath before grabbing his hand and leading him into her house. Ron looked around curiously at the place, he’d visited it once before. She led him over to her sofa and sat him down.
“Sit here, please, I’ve got to get you a glass of water. Don’t move, Ronald! And shut your damn mouth, I have a baby in the other room.” She went to the kitchen and picked up her wand from the table where she’d been sitting. She shot a silence spell toward the room that the baby was sleeping in and grabbed a glass from a cabinet. She turned on the baby monitor and heard his breathing.
“Wassat?” Ron asked pointing to the monitor in her hand as she handed him the glass of water.
“It’s called a baby monitor, Ronald. My friend and her husband are Muggles and this is a devise that lets you hear what’s going on in the baby’s room.”
Hermione remembered the Firewhiskey potion in her nurse cabinet in the bathroom. She’d brewed it around a month ago when one of the girl’s from work had thrown an engagement party. It put the drunk to sleep for a while until the alcohol had worn off, but it only worked for those who’d had Firewhiskey.
“Ron, why were you drinking?” she asked softly. He sighed and looked over at her, now settled at the end of the sofa.
“I always muck it up. We were doing alright again, I think, but I always muck it up.”
“You didn’t muck it up, Ron.”
“Yes, I did. I did “ I always do. She hates me.”
“Who?”
“I think she used to love me. That was a long time ago. She hates me now. I ruin everything.”
“Who?”
“Her,” he took a deep breath, “She was mine a while back. I was goin’a marry her. She loved me then.”
Hermione had caught on and figured out that he was talking about her. She closed her eyes tight for a moment before sucking in a long breath. “Did you love her?”
Ron snorted. “She knew that! She knew that she was the only person I could love, EVER. But I ruined it. She left me. And then there was Luna. I muck everything up.”
“What about Luna?”
“I used her. I didn’t mean to. She’d been gone for two months and Luna was there to help me. She didn’t want me to be sad anymore. I didn’t love Luna, though. I loved her, ‘Mione.”
“Wait a moment, that was you?”
“It was “ wait “ what was me?”
“You hurt Luna! You’re the prat,” Hermione whispered in realization. Ron nodded and involuntarily started crying.
“I didn’t mean to. I didn’t love her. But Hermione didn’t love me! I’m not good enough for her. I’m not good enough for anyone. I ruin everything.”
“Ronald,” she whispered through the silent waterfall erupting from her face. “I would tell you what I think of you and how big of a cockroach you are, but I won’t waste my effort. You won’t remember anything tomorrow.” She pointed her wand down the hall and silently called for the Firewhiskey potion, knowing from how strong his breath was that it would work quite effectively.
She shoved the flask into his hand and he drank it with one gulp. He handed her the empty flask and lay down along the sofa as she got up from it. She gave an exasperated huff before flying down the hall to her room and into her bathroom for a towel to catch her everlasting tears. The thought of her best friend being heart broken because of the man she was so in love with had taken a needle and made the hole in her heart a little bit bigger.
**********
“Good morning,” Hermione said wearily as she handed Ron a cup of coffee. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, trying to remember where he was and how he got there. The last thing he really remembered was getting kicked out of that bar in Diagon Alley. He looked around the room after taking a sip of the coffee which Hermione had handed him. He recognized where he was, now. He looked up, searching Hermione’s face for a trace of emotion that would inform him of his actions the night before. She remained calm and emotionless, but also she was drained, as if she hadn’t slept all night.
“I’m sorry for whatever I did last night,” he told her. She smiled weakly. It was a fake, forced smile, Ron could tell, but he let her speak.
“You are apologizing for nothing. You didn’t do anything wrong. I just gave you some water and Firewhiskey potion and you were out,” she explained quietly.
“Thanks,” he motioned around the room, “for everything.”
She got up from her seat on the coffee table. “It’s early. You probably don’t remember me telling you that I’m babysitting. My friend and her husband should be here later to pick up…their son.” Ron noted that her voice was soft and he took the hint, heading toward the kitchen to put his cup in the sink.
“Don’t worry about it, Ron, I can do it,” Hermione told him. She walked over and grabbed the cup from him. She wouldn’t look him in the face.
“Did I say something last night that-“ Ron started.
“No, just leave. Please, Ron, just go home.” She shook her head but wouldn’t look at him or touch him.
He knew by her response that he had said something last night. He always spoke too much when he was drunk, Harry used to tell him that. He headed toward the door, and stepped out onto the porch before Apparating home.
**********
“What’s wrong?” Luna asked Hermione as they sat in Hermione’s kitchen eating a late breakfast later that morning. Hermione had called her by fire after Ron had left. Luna had gotten there at half ten.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Luna?” Hermione asked softly.
Luna looked up, bewildered. “Didn’t tell you what, Hermione?”
“Ron slept over here last night. He got drunk and showed up on my doorstep around midnight. Ron talks when he’s drunk, Luna.” Hermione still spoke softly and Luna understood right away; she hadn’t been a Ravenclaw for nothing.
“I know,” Luna whispered. There was a long silence and Hermione noticed that Luna’s face matched her own in its need for something to dry the tears.
“You tell me everything. Why did you never mention this?” Hermione tried to keep her voice even as the tears began to chase each other down her face.
Luna took a deep breath in attempt to calm herself.
“You and I were never close in school. Out of the four of you, I was closest with Ginny and most distant from you. I always had a hunch that you were with Ron, but when you started at St. Mungo’s you never spoke of your home life. You worked there for three months when you stopped talking altogether, for the most part. Two months after Harry and Ginny passed,Ron showed up at my house completely drunk. I never found out how he knew where I lived. He was mumbling a lot that night. Saying he’d lost his three best friends and he didn’t know what to do with himself. I didn’t understand. I knew that he’d lost Harry and Ginny, but I saw you every day. Hermione I was in love with him from the fifth year on. When he finally wanted me, I was so happy. But then you finally opened up and started telling me everything. The moment I found out that it was you that he loved and you were the reason why he used me, I was speechless.
I saw the hurt in your eyes and the regret of leaving. I knew you were still in love with him as well. I wasn’t about to tell you that it was him who’d done it to me. I didn’t want for you to hate him. I could never do that to you. I didn’t want to hurt you, Hermione! You must understand!”
Luna shrunk into a ball of weeps in her chair and Hermione got out of her own seat to kneel next to her friend. She held Luna in her arms and patted her back. Luna was calming down slowly and Hermione could lightly make out the sound of the little boy and girl in the front room.
A tiny baby girl crawled in the open doorway. She was just learning how to walk. Hermione got up and took the little girl in her arms. She was the spitting image of her mother. Luna used the tissues to wipe her face and blow her nose.
“She’s Ron’s, then?” Hermione asked, referring to the blonde, silvery-eyed chub in her arms. The baby clapped her hands with a coo, making Hermione grin.
Luna shook her head. “I’m certain she’s not his. I hadn’t been with him for a month when I got pregnant with her. I was upset when he left me.”
“If she’s not his, then whose?”
“Hermione, it’s not that I don’t trust you, but only my father knows Star’s real father. Like I said, I was upset. Just like Ron, I needed someone to comfort me.”
“Who is it, Luna?”
“Oliver Wood.”
Hermione was stunned. She didn’t know what to say. “Luna he got married two years ago. I remember seeing you at the wedding.”
“I know. Oliver helped The Quibblertons when he made a spot on the Cannons team. Oliver invited my father, but he couldn’t attend and I went in his place.”
An uncomfortable silence settled over them at this point. Hermione had nothing to say. She was disappointed in Luna, but so relieved that the baby she was holding wasn’t Ron’s.
Luna continued to cry for a while.
Hermione decided that she should put an end to the awkwardness. “Why did you never tell me?”
“That entire part of my life is just a time I don’t particularly fancy revisiting. I know the part of yours that you feel the same way. Now you know mine.”
There was a knock at the door and Hermione prayed it was her two friends, there to pick up the baby boy in the other room. She knew that it wasn’t, though, and went to see who would come to call for her before noon.
A/N: Here is chapter three! I hoped ya’ll liked it! Who do you think is at the door? Let me give you a hint: His hair isn’t orange. Thanks for reading now please, REVIEW! And while waiting for the next chapter, check out my other fic, Never What it Seems! Shoutout to Luna Obsessed and leah3467, my brilliant beta's!
Manda*