To Love Life Again
Chapter Three
Turning Around
She fished for her tea canister in one of her bags and went back to the little kitchen. Andrei was seated hunched at the little table, seemingly too big for the little room. Hermione was amused at all the ‘little’s’ in her mind. Well, it was a little house. A doll’s house. Perfect for solitude. Already, she was regretting her hospitality. That deep armchair in front of the fire in the living room called her name and told her to hurry up and cuddle up with one of her books. But she smiled at Andrei, who was now her guest. He looked away.
This man piqued her curiosity. Morose persons had that effect on her. She wanted to know what they wouldn’t say. She knew only one other person who acted like this, and that was… Malfoy. But he was so foul-mouthed she had cringed at the mere thought of meddling with him during that time they’d been around each other.
“It hasn’t steeped yet,” she heard herself say as Andrei made to pour the teapot.
“I know.” He removed his hand from the pot and looked around the room again, everywhere except at her.
“Haven’t you been here before?”
“I have. Jack had me help him hook up the electricity and the phone again when we heard you’d be coming over to stay.”
“Thanks. Before that, the house was empty, then?”
He looked at her this time, and sneered. “I would have thought that was obvious.”
Hermione’s eyes grew wide. Andrei looked stricken. He stood up.
“Where are you going? You haven’t had your tea yet.”
The stern command in her voice made him look at her again. She dared him with her eyes. He sat back down.
“You just reminded me of someone I knew.”
“Oh?” he asked.
“Yes, a close friend.”
He just looked at her. Hermione smiled. His eyes were glinting.
“From school.”
“Really. Where did you go to school anyway?”
“I think you know.”
“Why? Did you go to school hereabouts? I thought you grew up in England.”
Hermione was beginning to feel ashamed again. But she carried on. “My school’s name was Hogwarts.”
Andrei laughed, but it was a nervous laugh. She used it so often herself. The laugh you used to cover up your humiliation or anger. Hermione glared at him, prepared for the confession. Oh, she got him”
“That was funny.”
Hermione opened her mouth but no sound came out at first. He was wiping tears from his eyes. “What was funny?” she demanded, feeling her face growing warm.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You mean, that’s indeed what your school is called? I thought you were joking.”
Hermione groaned inwardly. She poured the tea and tried to smile and stop her blush at the same time. “No, I wasn’t joking.”
He turned his eyes back to the window. “Well, I haven’t heard of that school ever. Exclusive, is it?”
“Oh, yes, very. A boarding school for…for arts.”
“That’s nice. I went in Wicklow.”
“Oh,” Hermione nodded dumbly, and then scalded her tongue on her tea. Her eyes stung, but she looked right back at him when he stood up to leave. He was now positively grinning.
~ * ~
Hermione licked a healing paste for burns from the palm of her hand, rinsed her mouth with water, and then scowled at her reflection in the carved mirror. Why was she being so insistent that Andrei MacElroy was Draco Malfoy? It was ridiculous, and just what would she gain from it if she was right?
“What, indeed, huh, Crooks?” she said to Crookshanks, as she picked him up from the tile floor of the bathroom. They went to the bedroom, Hermione’s feet denting the thick carpet. This bedroom was also in pink and white. No wonder Maude Alice and Kathy got along so well, Hermione thought amusingly.
She threw Crookshanks on the bed and looked out the window at the beauteous night. The moon was so big and so near it looked like she could reach out and scoop it into her hand. The stars were winking at her. The sky itself was perfect velvet, no clouds marring it. The rain had left diamonds of dewdrops to sparkle in the leaves of the trees. It was on a night like this when…
With a jolt, she realized what day it was.
February twenty-ninth.
She clutched the window sill as if she was drowning. Her knees have unlocked. She slid onto the floor.
Crookshanks leapt off the bed and came to her as she sobbed there by the window of Faerie Hill Cottage.
It was February twenty-ninth”the anniversary of the night Ron proposed to her.
And tomorrow, it was his birthday.
~ * ~
“Dear Hermione,
How are you settling in? I know it’s too early to write, but Ginny pushed me into this. She’ll write you herself later in the afternoon, because mornings are the worst for her. Nights aren’t so much better either. Wait ‘til you see my bruises. Don’t tell Ginny I told you this: she tells Mum it’s because I always bump my head in the bathroom door at night, but Ginny somehow likes thunking me in the forehead with her fist nowadays. It’s so weird. When I refuse or dodge, she cries! Merlin.
Anyway, we’re having a party today as usual. Are you coming? Of course, you can, and of course, we’re expecting you, Ginny just says to tell you that we’re sorry we’re not there with you right now, but you need this time alone. And that place is perfect.
Hermione, we love you.
Harry.”
Hermione smiled through her tears and continued stroking Hedwig, who seemed to understand her current state and tolerated the long petting. From where she was still huddled by the window (she had cried herself to sleep right there), Hermione summoned a quill, an ink bottle and a little square of parchment and wrote a short reply on her lap.
After Hedwig flew off, Hermione dragged herself to bed and burrowed deep under the covers. If she was lucky, she could pass off this day sleeping.
Knocks came from downstairs.
Well, why did she even think she’d be lucky, anyway?
With a groan, she threw off the blankets. She groped for her wand in her dressing table and groomed herself by magic. As she passed a mirror in the hall downstairs, she saw her eyes. She pointed her wand at them. She couldn’t welcome visitors looking like an axe murderer. She pasted a smile on her face and opened the door.
Oh, how lovely to start a day with Andrei MacElroy falling on top of her.
He sprang back upright in an instant, muttered a curse, and then held out a hand to help her up. When she was steady on her feet again, he retreated back outside the door. They stood there facing each other, panting a little, blushing a lot. Mortification and surprise and annoyance, mutual.
“You opened the door just when I pushed it open myself, I’m sorry for squashing you.”
“Apology accepted. Good morning, Andrei.”
He looked at her for several moments, as though searching for something in her face. And then he shrugged. “Aunt Patty told me to get you. You’ll breakfast with us”if you like.”
“I like, but I’m sorry; can you tell Aunt Patty I’m not feeling alright this morning? Nothing to worry about, I always get these bilious attacks every now and then, but particularly when I travel.”
“That’s rather belated, isn’t it?”
“Yes, quite.” And there’s no need to look as if you’re disappointed or worried.
He looked at her garden, at her, at her garden, and then back at her. “Should I stay with you?”
Hermione’s hand flew to the jamb in amazement. Really, this man seemed to always jar her. She smiled and shook her head. “Thank you so much, but I’ll be fine; in fact, I want to be alone for today.”
He nodded at her stoop. “The telephone’s right there. And our number beside it in the little book. If you need anything, just holler.”
He went back down her front walk. Hermione closed the door with a sigh of relief. And then she bolted to the window and peered through the curtains. Yes, he walked. He had walked miles to her cottage and was now walking back to the village.
~ * ~
Since she was out of bed, she didn’t go back. Instead, after annoying Crookshanks by moving from chair to chair in the living room and the kitchen, she went out the cottage and drank in the morning.
Some very early flowers were already flaunting their beauty in the beds; Hermione wished she knew their names. She hadn’t been that keen in gardening. As she walked to the little gate, she saw more green points sprouting out of the rich black soil, coaxed into coming out by the warmth of the bright sun. Hermione turned her face up to the sunshine and swung the gate open.
With pleasure, she realized this hill was all her own. The cottage was the only building on site, and around it was endless greenery, laced by the stream and dotted with tiny ponds and copses of trees.
A bird flew close overhead, twittering a song, and though the robin was a redbreast, she remembered another little bird, gray and noisier and naughtier.
An owl named Pigwidgeon. A bird that molted and never regrew its feathers. A bird now dead.
The landscape blurred. Tears came again and fell.
~ * ~
She never knew how far she wandered, but the next she knew, she was sitting in Mr Waterbut’s bar, holding a new glass of sour buttercream again.
“Why do I have the feeling your pub is following me around. Mr Waterbut?”
“Perhaps it is.” The old man grinned.
Hermione looked down at her glass and toyed with the orange umbrella Mr Waterbut had stuck there. Without warning, a lump rose in her throat. She hastily gulped down some of her drink, and surreptitiously dropped the umbrella to the floor, where she couldn’t see it. “Aunt Patty invited me for breakfast, but I declined. I wanted to be alone today.”
Mr Waterbut nodded and patted her hand. “Solitude never harms us most of the time. You can sit here all day. I shan’t bother you, don’t worry, mavourneen.”
“Have you ever experienced grief before?”
Even Hermione was surprised when she heard herself ask that. Mr Waterbut looked up and his face softened even more.
“Ah, my dear, no race is spared from grief. It passes over us all, like time. And like time, it goes on. Sometimes, though, we clutch it to us.”
“What do you mean? It’s what clutches us, not the other way around.”
Mr Waterbut smiled. He put down his rag and came around the bar, tugging off his apron as he went. He was wearing a maroon sweater. Hermione looked away and glared at the window. She shouldn’t have come here.
She gave a little jump when she felt Mr Waterbut pulling her by the waist to her feet. Reluctantly, Hermione left her stool and allowed the old man to steer her to the back of the pub, where he opened a door.
They went out to an open meadow, with wild grass and honeysuckle. Directly in front of them was a pond, large and curiously shaped, tapering at one side and big at the other where a stream fed it. But Hermione had no interest in the landscape at the moment; she just gave her host a petulant look, reproaching him for not leaving her alone in her stool as he’d promised. He smiled again and led her to sit down on a rock by the pond.
“This is fed by the stream from Faerie Hill, the stream of Maude’s tears.” He put a hand to his collar and touched something there, but he didn’t take it out. He just looked far off as if seeing something in the distant mountains.
“I did experience grief, Hermione. And it was so great that I walked on this earth for chiliads, but everything passed me by. I did my work, I did my share, but I wasn’t really present. I chose to nurse my grief; I refused to let it go, so that even Lilias I nearly lost before I came to my senses.
“There is no grief greater than the grief brought by love lost or love unanswered. But the heart is not meant for grieving. It is meant for living. We can’t do the two at the same time. You will have to let go of one or the other.”
Hermione was crying freely now, though she never looked once at Mr Waterbut as he spoke, but at the pond, which reflected the sky and everything around it like a mirror, including herself, and she saw how forlorn and dead she looked.
Mr Waterbut lowered himself on the grass beside her and placed an arm around her shoulders. “You don’t like what you see, do you, Hermione? You want to live again, don’t you?”
“It’s so hard,” Hermione choked. “H-he’s been gone almost five years, but I loved him so much. It’s not fair””
“I know, colleen. But neither is it fair that you pine away like this for him forever, is it? Do you think he is happy seeing you like this from wherever he is?”
“I’ve had those same words from Harry and Ginny.” She laughed shakily.
“It’s about time you listen then.”
Parchment, quill and inkbottle appeared in his hands. Hermione was too exhausted with crying to even be amazed at this wandless magic, however. She just accepted the things when Mr Waterbut handed them over.
“Write down everything. Talk to whomever you want, even Ron, if you like, but mostly you must talk to yourself, and tell it everything. Sometimes we don’t even realize what we are bottling up.” And he touched his collar again. There was a small bulge there, like an elongated locket of some kind. “And then, toss it into the stream. So that your grief, like Maude’s, will flow away, go on to the sea and leave you free.”
~ * ~
“Where have you been? Darcy’s away, isn’t she?”
Draco rolled his eyes at Aunt Patty’s matchmaking. Darcy was a neighbor, a beautiful neighbor he sometimes flirted with, but he’d never gone near her door. He had no interests in such things. But when he went on his ramblings, he let Aunt Patty and Kathy think what they liked.
“I don’t even know Darcy’s away, Aunt Patty. I’ve been to Faerie Hill””
“Aha, I thought so,” Kathy grinned, wiping her mouth and surfacing from the sink, where she had been venting her morning sickness. “I like Hermione for you. Darcy’s sweet, but she has nothing but air in her beautiful head compared to a Fitzgerald.”
Draco sputtered in his black coffee. Jack thumped him in the back. “Katherine, the girl hasn’t been here a week and you’re already launched on your naughty thoughts. Give Draco two weeks at least. He’s that slow.”
Indignantly, Draco pushed Jack off him while Kathy and Aunt Patty laughed. When will they ever get tired of setting him up with every girl that lived and breathed in, or walked into, Ardmore?
At least, they paired him with a witch this time. But still, she’d be the last witch who’d ever consider him, if at all, he laughed inwardly. And he only went up there because of Harry’s letter. Scarhead’s bloody crotchety white owl had woken him up at three in the morning with a note.
Draco,
How are you? It’s been a long time.
Well, I’ll go straight to the point. Sorry for waking you up at this hour, it’s urgent; I clean forgot what date it was. Ginny remembered just now, too, and nearly wet the bed in anxiety. It’s February twenty-ninth, Draco, the anniversary of Ron and Hermione’s engagement.
I don’t know if she forgot, too. We place hope in her preoccupation about settling in at the cottage, but could you look in on her later this morning? She may forget about February twenty-ninth, the date hasn’t befallen us before anyway; but she won’t forget March first. It’s Ron’s birthday and this is the first time we won’t be with her since what happened.
Just be with her for a bit if that’s what she needs, but don’t push yourself on her either, Ginny says. Anyway, there you go. Just do what you can, this is a big favor.
Thank you so much. I owe you. I’ll give you a whole cake when my child is born. We’re expecting in July. Hope to see you some time then.
Harry”
Of course, Draco hadn’t gotten back to sleep. Instead, he’d rambled around again. He was also looking forward to seeing Harry, so Draco could give him a punch in the nose for disturbing his peace a lot lately. He’d made it to the foot of Faerie Hill and saw everything calm and silent in the little house.
He’d been walking back to MacElroy’s, thinking longingly of his bed, when he met the old man again, who’d ranted about fate again and Draco’s place in it and how everyone had a part, whether good or ugly. We just had to accept that and get on with life.
Draco scowled at his coffee now and growled mockingly at little Ron when the toddler greeted him good morning by throwing his favorite, drool-covered rubber banana at his favorite uncle.
I am getting on with life. Everyone just seems to be poking their heads into it lately.
He remembered how Hermione nearly had him yesterday. Nearly. As always, he’d been perfect with evasion. He grinned.
But then he remembered her face when she opened the door to him this morning. She hadn’t even changed her clothes. And her eyes had that stretched look of having been magically refreshed, which he knew too well, having done it countless times.
His grin was replaced by a grimace. And he rolled his eyes at the ceiling in frustration.
“You’re making a lot of faces today, Andrei. You have been meeting up with some lass.”
“Yeah. Yeah, Aunt Patty. Some lass.”
~ * ~
Hermione watched the thick roll of parchment darken as it absorbed the water from the stream, and then it began to sink, until it floated away with nothing but a shadow in the surface denoting its journey.
The sun was about to sink, and the sky was tinted gold and mauve. Hermione retraced her steps backwards to the rock she had sat on, not taking her eyes away from the sky. She lowered herself slowly, thinking that if she made any sudden moves or sounds, she might dislodge this peace she had suddenly found within herself.
Yes, at last, she felt peaceful.
Beside her on a little cloth in the grass, the food Mr Waterbut brought her lay untouched. She had never once paused in her writing. She looked at the stream, but the parchment bearing her last five years and the years before that was long gone. Curiously, her heart felt even lighter because of that.
Robins twittered at her from a nearby tree, and Hermione smiled. She held on to her hair as a breeze teased it out of its band. She didn’t bring her eyes away from the sky, which was now red. Bright soft red like Ron’s hair.
“I’m turning around now. I’ll always look back to you and smile and cry, but I’m turning around now, Ron.”
She said that aloud. And though her voice shook, she made it to the end without breaking down. She nodded to herself, convincing herself that she could do it and that she meant it.
One of the robins shrieked very much like Pigwidgeon and flew off merrily.
Oh, Ron. With another smile”this one the brightest she had ever had in years”she picked up her food and went back inside the Green Dragon.
~ * ~
With quick long strides, Draco made his way through the darkening sunset, and if the cursed old man chanced to accost him now, he will have to bear being brushed off like a fly whether he liked it or not, but Draco would ask to use his fire. He had to Floo Harry. Their precious Hermione was missing.
He had gone back to the cottage after lunch, even bringing a hamper of sandwiches as an excuse for being there. After knocking for half an hour and still not receiving an answer, he had entered the house, to find all the rooms empty.
He had fought down panic and the urge to bolt and examine the cliffs. He had sat by her stoop and waited for her to return. If she was only rambling around, she would go back to eat soon enough. But now, dinnertime would soon be past, and he had seen neither hair nor hide of her.
Draco stopped in the middle of the road, gritting his teeth. Just when you were looking for him, he wouldn’t appear, the old bastard. He waited some more, chanting the old man’s name in his mind, but nothing appeared, not even a twig.
He looked around. He would have to use an owl.
But there was no owl in sight.
Resignedly and cursing a certain old man in his mind for not being there when he was needed, Draco turned to go home. His stomach growled and he scowled more darkly as he remembered the sandwiches he’d made; now hardening in Hermione’s stoop.
He opened the door.
“Where have you been?”
At his bellow, Aunt Patty dropped her knife, Kathy jumped, and then giggled to Jack, and Hermione only stared up at Draco. He froze there by the door of the dining room, stunned by the look on her face. She wasn’t wearing the lost-puppy look.
“Where have you been, Andrei?” Aunt Patty asked, barely stifling her wide, mischievous smile.
“I’ve been to Faerie Hill. You weren’t there. Where were you?” he asked Hermione.
She looked bewildered. “I’m not there because I’m here.”
“She’d come this evening to dine with us. You must have missed her. So stop looking like you’re about to kick and scream worse than Ron, Andrei.”
He scowled at Kathy, who was still giggling. Before he could escape to sulk in his room, Aunt Patty pulled him down on the chair beside her, which was beside Hermione. She shifted to give him more room and smiled timidly.
He looked away, seething that he’d allowed her to worry him. What did he care about her whereabouts? She had only come this evening, which meant she was Merlin-knows-where in the afternoon. She could have been with some Irishman, for all he knew.
“Andrei!”
“What? Oh, sorry, sorry.”
He hadn’t realized he had been ladling the stew so violently that dollops had flown to Aunt Patty’s hand.
Author’s Note: Though I made my own twist for it, the ‘throw it into the stream’ scene is adapted from Paulo Coelho’s “By the River Piedra, I Sat Down and Wept”, a gut-wrenching, deep love story.