A/N: Remember me? Sorry that this isn't an update for "Powers of Persuasion," for all twelve of you that are reading, hehe, but I needed to try a little something new. I will hopefully be working concurrently on both fics, but I'm a little short of inspiration for PoP, so any thoughts you have might help! And without further ado…
Disclaimer: I own nothing, nada, nicht.
The Littlest Things
Chapter 1-How Different Could It Be?
Most stories have a beginning. But mine starts somewhere in the middle, after I'd already defeated an evil wizard named Voldemort (with the help of many others of course) and begun trying to create something of a life for myself free from the taint of violence and darkness.
When the war ended, I floundered a bit as I struggled to find my new identity in the wizarding world. There were some offers by a few commercial companies to be the 'face' of their product, but I really couldn't deal with being the spokesperson for toothpaste for the rest of my life. My accumulation of titles up to that point-The Boy-Who-Lived, The Chosen One, The Vanguisher of V-V-Voldemort (just kidding on that last one)-didn't exactly make me eager to add Mr. Wiz-Lax-"For when you've got to run!"-or the Broomstick Expert-"Ask him anything!" There was even talk of a wizarding condom contract involving some clever spin on the title "The Chosen One."
That was how I got into my current line of work. It hit me one day when I was walking with Hermione around Muggle London that the opportunity to do some real good was right in front of me. Grimmauld Place was completely cleaned out and recently vacated by the Order, so I pitched the idea of setting up an orphanage there for those who lost their parents in the war to Hermione and she got that whole SPEW look in her eyes, promising to support me entirely when I got the plans in motion.
So now, four years later, I am the silent benefactor of the first wizarding orphanage, and I spend a lot of time with some of the older kids who are preparing to go to Hogwarts just telling them about school life and teaching them some, er, useful spells. You know, petrificus totalis, muffliato, the Curse of the Bogies, standard stuff really. That all backfired once when Hermione and Ron were visiting and the little buggers teamed up and did a tickling charm on me when I wasn't looking. They were all in hysterics and Ron made some smart-ass comment about my lack of constant vigilance or whatever until someone took pity on me and cancelled the charm.
So back to Ron and Hermione. Ron of course went the conventional route and became a Keeper of international acclaim for the, you guessed it, Chudley Canons, who are actually having a pretty good year and might even make it to the play-offs. Technically he lives in the second bedroom of my London flat, but he's usually on tour and tends to sleep, er, elsewhere when actually in town.
Hermione, however, pulled a fast one on all of us and announced at dinner one night that she had enrolled at a Muggle university in London to earn a degree in medicine. She explained to a rather shocked group of us that she intended to bring her knowledge of the Muggle practice of medicine to the wizarding world and hopefully integrate the two methodologies at St. Mungo's "to everyone's benefit, really." She lives not too far from me with her boyfriend of two years named Connor, who to Ron's annoyance is actually a pretty nice guy. The only problem is that he's a Muggle who goes to school with Hermione, so we have to sort of filter all of our conversations so that we don't mention anything we shouldn't. (In short, she hasn't told him she's a witch and I have no idea when or if she's going to).
All caught up? I hope so, because this is where the real story starts.
Sunday is the perfect day to catch a few extra hours of sleep, and in a way it makes up for those sleepless nights right before and during the war. I was in that state of half-sleep, enjoying what was probably some weird amalgam of all of my Quidditch matches at Hogwarts in dream form, when I heard loud pounding. I sat straight up in bed, sweating slightly as one with an active subconscious is apt to do and blinking away the images of the Quidditch pitch and roaring fans. I rubbed blearily at my eyes until I was reminded of what so callously ripped me from my perfectly good dream: the pounding was actually someone's rather forceful knocking on the front door of my flat.
My Quidditch-induced euphoria having evaporated promptly at waking, I rolled myself out of bed and grabbed a t-shirt from the floor so that I wouldn't be answering the door in just my boxers. The knocking grew louder and more persistent as I made my way down the hall and I could feel myself becoming proportionally grumpier with each step. What was so important that someone had to come charging down the door of my flat so early in the bloody morning? Everyone knows that Harry James Potter does not see the light of day in hours of only single digits on weekends-unless those hours follow noon of course.
I wrenched open the door with a not so cheery morning greeting for whomever was unfortunate enough to be on the other side, but my best friend, Hermione Granger, breezed past me before I could open my mouth.
"Good morning, Harry, I'm glad you're up, I brought breakfast," she said brightly, scarcely drawing breath and holding up a paper bag for my inspection. She immediately whisked off to the kitchen, a room only slightly partitioned from the rest of the flat by a counter top.
I remained in the entryway, my hand still on the doorknob. "Hello, Hermione won't you come in?" I grumbled moodily as I turned to shut the door. I didn't care if I was being rude and took no trouble to keep my voice down, not that Hermione showed even the slightest attention to my irritated tone. I reckon that by this point in our friendship, I should be used to Hermione's bursting into my flat at ungodly hours like 9 AM, but my work takes a lot out of me and I figured that I at least had the right to sleep away the weekend days without someone barging into my strangely realistic dreams. Besides, wasn't she supposed to be on holiday with her parents?
Shuffling my feet and generally being as indolent as possible, I watched as Hermione made herself at home by unloading the contents of the paper bag onto the wooden cutting board on the counter. She took no notice of my behavior and chatted away cheerfully without even glancing at me. But even through my moodiness, I couldn't help but see the hint of strain in her smile and how her eyes darted all over but never focused on anything. She was babbling somewhat incoherently but maintaining that jollity that seemed just a little too overdone, a little too forced. Her movements were exact and mechanical and I could tell that all of her energy was put into them. I have only seen her act like this a few times in our nearly eleven years of friendship, and none of them had good causes.
"Er, Hermione? Is there anything the matter?" I asked, testing the waters and hoping that my concerned expression was hiding the wince I felt at the words.
"Of course not, Harry. Cream cheese or jam?" she answered, one hand waving my question away dismissively and the other toasting a sliced bagel with her wand.
"Jam," I replied automatically, not wholly convinced but not probing further. If I was correct, and given my somewhat inadequate knowledge of women I wasn't so sure I was, she would bring up whatever was bothering her when she was ready.
My guess was confirmed when Hermione moved the opposite side of the kitchen so that her back was now to where I sat watchfully on a stool. A few moments of silence were punctuated only by the sound of Hermione spreading jam over the surface of the bagels. Then, in the same merrily conversational tone, she said, "So, Connor and I broke up."
At the mention of Hermione's boyfriend's-or apparently, ex-boyfriend's-name, my stomach muscles tightened uncomfortably. Hermione has never been one to talk about relationships with Ron and me, mostly because Ron's emotional range doesn't permit it and I make a daily practice of burying mine so deep even I don't know what I'm feeling sometimes. Of course, I follow suit and do not discuss my relationships either, but this is mostly since there've been so few in the last four years since the war ended that there is not much to talk about.
So I figured that if she was reaching out to me of all people, then whatever happened between her and Connor to make them break up must have been pretty bad. I just hoped it wasn't bad enough more me to have to kill him.
Good sense would have told me to make some sympathetic noises and excuse myself from the room if I wanted to avoid a potentially awkward emotional scene, but I couldn't just abandon Hermione if she was coming to me with this. Plus, I've never been accused of having good sense, so the decision was really made for me.
I got up and moved around the counter so that I could help her put jam on the bagels-and take the knife away from her if it got to that. "What happened?" I asked sympathetically.
Despite my inexperience with relationship stuff, I remembered how horrible I felt after Ginny and I broke up the second time (and no, I don't want to talk about it), so my sympathy in this case was genuine. She was really happy with the guy, and who knew if the break-up was just a momentary slip in sanity on his or Hermione's part (Ron would probably put his money on the latter)? Maybe I was supposed to talk her into getting back together with-
Hermione began to explain in an oddly mechanical voice. "I was supposed to be gone for the whole weekend with my parents, but my trip ended early, so I decided to go home and surprise Connor with breakfast. But when I got there- " here her voice broke and she made a valiant effort to compose herself. "But when I got there, I found him-in bed-with another woman." She broke down into sobs launched herself into my arms, clutching blindly at my shirt as I recovered my balance.
Never mind talking her into taking him back, Connor was a freaking dead man. Not only was he dead, but he was possibly one of the stupidest soon-to-be-dead men ever. Anyone idiot enough to cheat on someone like Hermione-a fierce and loyal friend, not to mention maybe the cleverest person in existence and the most talented witch I have still ever met to this day-has got to be missing a few vital brain cells. Frankly, I was surprised that Hermione didn't do the job herself.
At first I was too distracted by my anger at the situation and concern on her behalf that I didn't notice Hermione was speaking muffled words into my shirt.
"It's not as if I didn't expect it. The long nights out 'studying' with his lab partner-oh, and there just happened to be someone smoking right next to him, that must have been the reason he always came home smelling like a bloody ash tray. And the perfume? Well, that was someone's idea of a joke, to spray him with floral scent, repeatedly," she said bitterly.
I patted her back and made the kind of cooing noised I had often heard Fleur use on her kids when they were upset, but I couldn't help feeling helpless at the sight of my best friend's tears. She was definitely entitled to them but I had no idea how to comfort, despite the many times she's had to comfort me.
Finally she pulled away and sagged against my side, deflated. She looked sideways at me and said with some embarrassment, "I'm sorry I woke you up, Harry, I know you like to sleep in on Sundays."
A wave of guilt washed over me for being such a jerk. I opened my mouth to tell her she was ridiculous to apologize, but she continued on in a voice thick with emotion, "I just didn't know where else to go…I can't go back, not the flat we shared. I can't even look at it, it's too raw. She was in our bed, Harry! The one he and I had bought together!" She sighed heavily, staring ahead blankly. "I don't know what to do, and that hardly ever happens," she joked with a small smile.
I couldn't help but smile back and the solution seemed to come to me immediately. It wouldn't make sense for Hermione to go back to her parents' since she was still in school and even for a wizard a daily commute from Devonshire is a bit much. The next thing I knew, the words were coming out of my mouth before I really thought of the consequences-sound familiar? "Why don't you move in here?"
For a moment, Hermione looked surprised that she hadn't thought of that. Then her face brightened with the first true smile I had seen on her since she arrived. "That's brilliant, Harry! In Ron's bedroom then?" she asked, already two steps ahead of me of course.
I nodded vigorously, becoming excited at the idea of having a flatmate that was around more than just a few days a month. "Sure, why not? I'm sure he won't mind. We can just store his stuff at the Burrow or something." Unconsciously, I was steering Hermione by the hand down the hall and pushing open the door to Ron's room.
"Good God," Hermione swore, pinching her nose to ward off the smell of what was probably weeks of Ron's laundry piled up in the corner. I pulled out my wand to try and neutralize the stench, not looking forward to the packing and moving this job would require. Hermione was scrutinizing the room as though sizing up the task in front of her. With a nod to herself, she turned and threw her arms around me. "This is perfect, Harry, thank you!"
After about fifteen years of friendship with Hermione, I was pretty accustomed to being on the receiving end of her boa constricting hugs, so my lungs only protested mildly as they were denied oxygen for the duration of Hermione's embrace.
During breakfast, Hermione was deep in thought and didn't say much but she seemed to be pleased with the new living arrangements. It was when her face fell that I thought I suck up all my feelings of discomfort and be there for my best friend. I reached across the table to where she was sitting and grasped her hand. "Hermione, you all right?"
She looked momentarily surprised by the fact that I had initiated contact, and smiled at me sadly. "Well, I've already thought through some of the legal obligations, in terms of removing my name from the lease and everything, but I'm just not looking forward to going back to get all of my things." She pinched the bridge of her nose as though fighting off a headache, a habit she must have picked up from me at some point. With a sigh, she continued, "It just feels as though the whole flat has been tainted by what he's done. Do you know what I mean?"
I nodded. Strangely, I did know what she meant, because that was exactly how I felt about Grimmauld Place after Sirius died. I suddenly had an idea of how to help. "I'll go get your stuff if you want."
She was torn between apprehension and relief. "No, that's okay, Harry," she said hurriedly, "but thanks."
"Why not?" I asked a little indignantly. Did she not think I could handle just going to her flat and retrieving her clothes and books? I've been carrying her books for years-if anyone could do it, it was me.
Having caught on to my annoyance, she squeezed my hand and replied in a calming voice tinged with amusement, "No, Harry, you misunderstand. Honestly, I'm just worried that you might kill him."
I laughed, voicing my thoughts from earlier. "I'm surprised you didn't."
I realized that this was probably the wrong thing to say when her smile faded and she spoke dejectedly. "I really wanted to."
She looked away from me and seemed so hurt and forlorn that I was tempted to just reach over and hold her-something I'd never thought to do before. This struck as odd, but there were more important things to dwell on at the moment. "Hermione, just me help. I promise I won't hurt him-I won't even talk to him if you don't want me to. Just-I'd like to help," I said, eager to be of some use.
For a long moment she seemed to stare right through me as she considered my request to do this favor for her. Finally, she relented. "All right, I doubt he's still there anyway. I definitely owe you one, Harry." She gave me a small smile and I finally took my hand away to finish breakfast.
An hour later, I was armed with several bin sacks and a list of everything Hermione claimed as her own as well as where to find it. I reached her flat in about twenty minutes and knocked soundly on the door. If Connor was there, he'd definitely be receiving something from me, whatever I promised Hermione. He was just lucky that legally I was prohibited from educating him with my wand on the foolishness of cheating on my best friend. But really, when have I ever been one to follow the rules?
When I heard no footsteps approaching, I cast a furtive look over my shoulder before pulling out my wand and unlocking the door. I didn't visit Hermione's former flat very often because our schedules were so hard to coordinate. Hermione had really taken a lot on by going to Muggle university, and the only chance we usually got to see other was at lunch between classes or maybe dinner out at some local pub.
As I walked from room to room, it wasn't hard to see Hermione's decorative influences. There were several pictures of the three of us-Ron, Hermione, and I-magically stilled of course, in the living room and several books on the shelf with modified titles that I recognized from our Hogwarts days. I wondered how she and Connor had managed to last this long while Hermione hid away such a substantial part of her life. I mean, her entire flat was Muggle proof!
I decided to start there in the living room since most of her stuff was in plain view and I was not looking forward to rifling through dresser drawers. The list she made me was appropriately Hermione-like, with a room by room breakdown of the flat and key descriptive details to help me identify what was hers. For the next half hour or so I filled the sacks that I had brought with books, picture frames, quills that had been secreted about the room, and other various knick knacks that she desired to keep. I shrunk down her writing desk and the chair and ottoman pair that she had inherited from her grandfather and put them in one of the sacks.
Then came the kitchen, which thank Merlin had almost nothing of Hermione's in it. She had never really been one for cooking, so I assumed that Connor must be the resident chef.
I tackled the bathroom next, mistaking Hermione for one of those girls who didn't have a lot of beauty stuff. Clearly Hermione had become one for hair products, which explained the dozens of plastic and metal cans I was putting into the sack as well as why her hair seemed to have calmed down a bit since Hogwarts. I smiled as I grabbed a bottle of Sleakeasy's, which she hadn't bothered to disguise, and remembered the time she confessed to having used almost an entire bottle of it for the Yule Ball fourth year.
And finally came the room I dreaded the most, for obvious reasons: the bedroom. A quick peek at the list revealed that most of Hermione's things were in here in the form of clothes, shoes, and her Hogwarts trunk.
I walked in the room and felt a surge of anger that I'm pretty sure was the reason why the glass holding change on Hermione's dresser shattered-the bed wasn't even made. The sheets were still rumpled probably from after Hermione had walked in and out of the flat. Connor must have left shortly after because I couldn't think of any other reason why someone wouldn't have the decency to clean up after something like that. What if she had come back and seen the room like this?
Part of me hoped that the jerk would come back so that I could deal with him personally, which surprised me, since it's usually Ron who's the overprotective one.
Eager to get going, I moved systematically about the room collecting what belonged to Hermione. I had a feeling that the duvet and sheets were also hers, but she had omitted them from the list and I doubted she'd ever want to see that flowery print again anyway.
I was instructed to remove Connor's crap from the dresser and shrink it down as well, but as I began to toss his socks and things out onto the floor, I heard an unexpected dull thud. I look down to investigate the noise and just stared-there on the floor with his stupid tube socks was a black velvet box. I reached down gingerly, already knowing what was probably inside but unable to keep from opening the box just the same. Inside was a brilliant diamond ring, impressive even to bloke, but it only succeeded in filling me with more anger. Here was evidence that the idiot was going to ask Hermione to marry him when he was going behind her back with another woman for who knew how long. I walked over to the crumpled bed and placed the opened box right in the middle so that he would realize just what he had done with this one selfish act.
Ten minutes later I was finished and only slightly weighed down by the shrunken bags in my coat pocket with the majority of Hermione's worldly possessions. As I walked back to my flat-to the flat that I shared with Hermione-I stopped in a restaurant to get us some takeaway lunch. On a whim I took a detour to the nearest department store where I bought Hermione a new duvet cover, since I doubted she would want to use Ron's.
I called out to her when I got home, liking the sound of it, but I grew worried when I didn't get an answer. Maybe she had changed her mind and left? For some reason the thought hit me like a bucket of ice water. "Hermione?" I called again, setting the food on the table and meandering about the flat.
There was still no answer, but now I could see why. Hermione was asleep on the living room couch, and while I was glad that she was getting some rest I could also see what appeared to be fresh tear tracks running down her cheeks. Without realizing it I had bent down next to her and was smoothing her hair away from her forehead in an oddly familiar gesture. She stirred slightly and I stepped away, not wanting to wake her.
When I opened the door to Ron's room, I hardly recognized it. In my absence, Hermione had made full use of her wand and probably had covered the entire room in cleaning charms. All of Ron's stuff was shrunk down and put in a box in the closet and I made a mental note to send Hedwig out to get his official permission.
I put Hermione's things on the bed but left the unpacking to her since she was pretty particular about that kind of thing. As I closed the door to Hermione's room behind me, I couldn't fight this feeling that things were going to change. But I'd lived with four other guys before in Gryffindor tower, and with both Ron and Hermione in what would have been our seventh year, so how different could living with my female best friend be?
I was about to find out.
A/N: What do you think? Like it, hate it? Let me know!