Disclaimer: I didn't invent Harry Potter and I most definitely did not invent the Regency period. And does this look even remotely similar to something JKR is capable of writing, since the woman can't write romance to save her life?
Any characters whose names you don't recognize are mine, however, but that's all I own.
Author's Note: I always said I could never write a real AU that transported the HP characters and world into a different place or time. I should have known better than to say 'never' (since I once said that I could never write smut or angst or an affair fic and we all know how that turned out…) So this is a completely AU fic, in the Regency period.
For my dear Amethyst_J-who started this with her fic, 'A Most Advantageous Match' and whom I blame entirely for this fic's existence.
Will be rated R/NC-17 for future "fun parts." ;-)
Enjoy!
The Truth About Love
Chapter 1: For Honor
Every young lady, once she reaches a marriageable age, must have a Season.
It was an unwritten law of their Society and one which she had always known, always been prepared for.
She only wished she could look forward to it with more anticipation and not with dread.
Miss Hermione Granger suppressed a sigh. She was not expecting a pleasant evening.
"You look like you're about to go to the guillotine," she heard a familiar voice say in her ear and she turned to smile at her best friend.
"That's about what I feel like."
Harry Potter gave her a teasing smile. "Never say that the young lady who helped me face the Dark Lord feels more trepidation at the thought of entering a ballroom than she did in fighting a war."
"Very well. I won't say it."
His eyes sparkled down at her and she smiled at him, feeling immeasurably more cheerful.
But not even the comforting solid-ness of his arm beneath her hand could keep her from swallowing hard when she heard their names announced by the footman in stentorian tones.
"Mr. Harry Potter! Mr. Ronald Weasley. Miss Hermione Granger."
She had known they were going to be announced like this.
This ball, the one that officially marked the start of the Season for wizarding Society, was being hosted this year, by the Minister of Magic himself, Lord Westerfield, and was, as everyone knew, in their honor. (Lord Westerfield had, she knew, wanted the ball to simply be in Harry's honor but that, Harry had flatly refused, saying that if Ron and she were not also included as the guests of honor, he would not attend. Lord Westerfield had not been best pleased but with the victory over Voldemort barely two months old, no one was in any hurry to displease Harry over anything, and Lord Westerfield had given in, with as much grace as he could muster.)
They greeted Lord Westerfield first, thanking him for the honor of the ball, and Hermione strove desperately to sound sincere in her thanks.
At some point during the evening, Hermione had no doubt that everyone at the ball would be introduced to Harry-and to herself and Ron, by extension-but for now, at least, they only needed to greet a select few.
Hermione smiled and curtsied to their hostess, Lady Westerfield, not missing Lady Westerfield's look of hastily-concealed surprise at the simplicity of Hermione's gown and her lack of adornment with jewels and wondered if she were being spiteful to imagine Lady Westerfield thinking it surprising that Hermione wouldn't seek to distract attention from her unremarkable looks with a fortune in jewels.
After Lady Westerfield, they greeted the French Minister of Magic, who had come from Paris just to meet Harry, followed by a few of the most important heads of Ministry Departments (and the one person Hermione was sincerely glad to greet, Mr. Weasley, Ron's father, who had recently been promoted to be the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement).
From Mr. Weasley, Harry turned towards Lady Danvers, who was one of the self-acknowledged leaders of wizarding society, partly due to her age. (Lady Danvers was nearly a contemporary of Headmaster Dumbledore himself and, reportedly, had known Headmaster Dumbledore well and was, moreover, a member of the Board of Trustees of Hogwarts, the only female Trustee at that.)
"Mr. Potter, it's about time you've come to pay your respects," Lady Danvers barked in her characteristically direct fashion.
"Lady Danvers," he greeted her politely with a correct bow. "I don't believe you've met my friend, Mr. Ronald Weasley."
Lady Danvers nodded to Ron in the perfunctory manner made acceptable by her age and her status. "Mr. Weasley."
"Lady Danvers," Ron greeted her with the respectful tone he reserved for Hogwarts professors.
"And may I introduce my other dear friend, Miss Hermione Granger?"
Hermione dipped into a curtsy. "Lady Danvers."
And then to her utter shock, Lady Danvers pointedly ignored her, addressing Harry. "You may not."
"My lady?" Harry asked confusedly.
"I have heard of Miss Granger and find I do not care to make her acquaintance at this time," she stated coolly.
Hermione gasped.
Harry's eyes narrowed dangerously as he stepped forward, edging slightly in front of Hermione in a distinctly protective manner. "I beg your pardon?"
His voice was cold and carried a wealth of warning but Lady Danvers was either oblivious or, more likely, indifferent to any veiled warning he could make.
"I will bid you and Mr. Weasley a good evening," was all she said, in a tone arrogant enough to put even a Malfoy to shame.
And with that, she turned and swept away, leaving Hermione in a state of shock and Harry furious.
He was angry; she could sense the anger practically coming off him in waves and, oddly, that served more than anything else to break through her shock and hurt.
There was a fleeting moment of unnatural silence that was broken by the sound of Professor McGonagall's voice, greeting them with an unusual and uncharacteristic enthusiasm. "Mr. Potter, Miss Granger, Mr. Weasley, how good to see you."
Numbly, Hermione curtsied to her former professor, aware of Professor McGonagall's concerted effort to make her feel welcome after Lady Danvers' cut, but quite unable to respond.
She had been snubbed, given the cut direct.
Harry turned to her in some concern, feeling the added pressure of her hand on his arm. "Hermione? Do you want me to call your carriage?"
She shook her head, stiffening her spine. "No, thank you, Harry. I'm fine." To leave now would be to implicitly admit guilt and would only add to the scandal and that, she would not do. She could not do that.
"You're sure?" Ron inserted. "I can make your excuses to my mother, who will let Lord and Lady Westerfield know."
She struggled and manufactured a brittle smile, although she knew it wouldn't fool Harry for a moment. "No. I'll be fine."
"I can't believe the bloody hag said that," Ron muttered.
"Let's not talk about it," Hermione responded. "It's not important. This is our first ball; we should enjoy ourselves."
With that resolution in mind, Hermione deflected all of Harry's looks of concern and tried, gamely, to act completely unaffected by the insult.
It helped that nearly everyone followed Professor McGonagall's lead in welcoming her, a faint hint of defiance in their smiles as if to say that they, at least, didn't believe whatever slanderous stories Lady Danvers might have heard, but Hermione sensed the added whispers, the curiosity in people's gazes, and shrank from it as she would from a whiplash.
She could see, too, the sympathy and the pity in some people's gazes and that was even worse than the curiosity. Her pride rebelled at being an object of pity because of one woman's unfounded insult.
She clung to the consciousness of her innocence, using it as armor to deflect the curious and the occasionally spiteful, calling on every fiber of pride and self-control in her to survive the evening.
She knew she succeeded because Harry stopped giving her concerned glances and relaxed his attitude of protective vigilance against anyone else who might think of insulting her.
Their first ball was not an unmitigated disaster, given its beginnings, but she had never been so glad for an evening to be over in her life as when she was finally in the carriage with her chaperone, Miss Chittister, thankfully silent.
~
She wasn't surprised when Harry was announced the next morning, at the earliest possible hour for callers.
He had the look of someone who'd been pacing the floor for much of the night, his hair even wilder than usual. He disregarded the usual conventional greeting to blurt out, "I'm sorry," the moment she stepped inside the drawing room.
Her step faltered slightly but she strove to sound calm as she answered, "Good morning to you too."
He had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. "Good morning," he said in a perfunctory manner and then continued immediately, "We have to talk."
He didn't wait for her response, only went on, looking distinctly ill-at-ease and not quite looking at her. "About what Lady Danvers said last night-I don't know how but somehow, someone told her or hinted at those few times you came to see me and Ron-or about what happened after the last battle."
Hermione felt herself blush out of a mixture of self-consciousness at the memories and also in outrage. "But it's ridiculous! You were fighting a war; we all were! How could they think-it's ridiculous!" She swallowed back the rest of her protest, that Harry would sooner think of killing Prinny and mad King George than he would of compromising her in any way. He would never-he didn't even consider her to be a young lady, as far as Hermione could tell. It was what had allowed them to become such good friends from the first, that he treated her like an equal and a rational being, with no qualms about her "feminine weakness" or "delicate nature" or any of the other reasons which were often given to explain why girls were not permitted to take Defense Against the Dark Arts or to learn some of the more advanced potions or were even permitted inside certain sections of the Hogwarts library.
It had been one of the biggest disappointments she had suffered when she'd arrived at Hogwarts eight years ago. She had been so excited to receive her letter, so excited to think of a whole, new, magical world to discover, so hopeful that the wizarding world would prove to be more open than the society into which she'd been born, that she might finally be respected for her intellect and treated as an equal and not some delicate, empty-headed doll.
She had always known she didn't fit in to the world in which she'd been born. In a world where girls were brought up to be ornamental and frivolous, she was serious. In a world where beauty was the most important attribute a girl could possess and where fairness was considered the ideal, she was dark and not a beauty by any standards. In a world where a girl's primary concerns were supposed to be clothes and jewels and girls were not encouraged to read anything other than La Belle Assemblee or the society pages in the newspaper, Hermione had read everything, from philosophy to the Classics, to novels, to political works.
But she had hoped that in the wizarding world she might finally find where she belonged. Only to be disappointed in that hope. At Hogwarts, she had been introduced to so many new subjects that had fascinated her, yes, but there too, she'd found that girls were expected to study things like Household Magic and not permitted to study Defense Against the Dark Arts. Potions classes were divided so that girls learned things like the Headache Potion and the Sleeping Potion and the boys learned things like the Polyjuice potion and other, more interesting things.
And, once again, she'd found she was a pariah, ridiculed by the other girls as being a bluestocking, ignored by the boys as being plain and putting on airs.
Only Harry, she'd found, had been willing to accept her as she was. Only Harry-amazingly as, from the moment she had learned about the existence of the magical world, she had pored over books on it and come across his name as the boy hero, who had somehow managed to defeat the Dark Lord when he was only a baby. Then she had met him, only to discover that the hero was just a boy, after all, skinny and wearing clothes that were clearly cast-offs from someone considerably larger than he was, with messy hair and cracked glasses.
But Harry had been different; Harry, alone, hadn't laughed when he found her in the library, staring at the shelves of books which girls weren't permitted to read and-when she had been caught with one of those forbidden books which she had snuck into the boys' section of the library to get, in one of those infrequent times when Madam Pince, the librarian, wasn't looking-Harry had been the one to take the blame, insisting to Madam Pince that he had been the one to take out the book and it was his fault for carelessly leaving it out on a desk where anyone could read it. Madam Pince had grumbled but the Boy Who Lived, was entitled to a certain amount of indulgence, even from Madam Pince, who looked as if she had never so much as smiled in her life. Hermione had smiled at him, a little tentatively, and he had smiled back-and from that moment, they had been friends.
It had taken longer for Ron to accept her as a friend, taken longer for Ron to stop laughing every time she made some sort of serious suggestion. But Ron had learned to accept her too after she had proven her worth in saving them several times and now Ron was one of her dearest friends as well.
But she had retained an added affection, an added loyalty, to Harry, for being her first friend, for being the first person who'd accepted her for who she was and never made her feel like she didn't belong. So when Lord Voldemort had returned and it had been Harry's task to face him, she hadn't had to think twice before she knew she would do anything she could to help Harry. She hadn't been able to go with Harry and Ron to the remote locations when they had been in hiding and hunting out Voldemort; not even she had been able to overlook the proprieties to that extent. And she had decided that she would help them more by staying at Hogwarts to do all the research which they could not do; with special permission from Professor McGonagall and Headmaster Dumbledore, she had willingly spent nearly every waking hour delving into the history of the dark arts and Voldemort's past, in order to find some spell which would allow Harry to defeat him.
There had only been a few times when she'd ignored the proprieties-twice, when she had discovered a new spell and had Apparated to where Harry and Ron were staying and had ended up falling asleep and then after the last battle, when Harry had been brought back to Hogwarts, bloody, bruised and unconscious, she had refused to move from her chair by his bed in the Infirmary until the healers had told her he would be fine.
And now, some scandal-minded people-or one scandal-minded woman in particular-had found out.
She felt some embarrassment, yes, but she refused to regret it-she didn't regret it. She could not have done anything different and she refused to be made to feel ashamed for the honest friendship and affection and loyalty that had prompted her actions, especially when she had not done anything remotely improper, no matter how it might look.
"I know but you know that doesn't matter when it comes to things like this," Harry finally said. "It's a scandal and scandals don't usually wait for the truth." He sighed. "I'm sorry, Hermione. I should have thought-I never meant-I shouldn't have let you--"
"Don't, Harry. I refuse to feel guilty over this and I refuse to let you feel guilty when we didn't do anything wrong or even remotely improper."
He didn't look reassured and in an attempt to make him smile, she added, half in jest, "I will take as my motto, 'Honi soit qui mal y pense,' and defend it against all comers."
The ghost of a smile curved his lips. "What?"
"It's the motto of the Order of the Garter. The shame be upon him who thinks evil where there is none."
He let out a short laugh. "Fitting."
She smiled and for a fleeting minute, things were restored to their usual comfort between them.
But all too soon, he remembered why he was there and the smile faded from his eyes. "The motto is all well and good but, Hermione, you know it won't make a difference to some people. You've been compromised in their eyes."
"But nothing ever happened!" she protested hotly.
"I know that and you know that and everyone who knows us knows that but that's not important. Some people will listen to what Lady Danvers said; she might be an old harpy but she's still a force to be reckoned with in society."
Cold was beginning to seep into her heart, apprehension at Harry's uncharacteristically reasoning tones chilling her. And she suddenly knew that, no matter what the truth was, Lady Danvers' cut last evening had changed her life forever.
"What-what are you saying?" she asked, though she had a terrible feeling she already knew the answer.
He sighed, running a hand through his hair as he tended to do when he was worried or distressed. "We have to marry."
She had never thought that four words, spoken in such a tone, could hurt so much. Her heartbeat was suddenly roaring in her ears, filling her head with a dull, echoing Be careful what you wish for…
"No!" she burst out in unthinking denial. "I can't marry you!"
"Think about it, Hermione. We don't have a choice."
"But you don't want to marry me."
"And you don't want to marry me," he responded.
Hermione flushed and bit her tongue on the answer that sprang to mind and turned her gaze away, suddenly terrified of Harry for the first time since she'd known him-terrified not of him but of his eyes, of what he might see in her eyes, the truth she'd only just acknowledged to herself. She'd never thought it, never dared to think it, but in that moment, she knew that somehow, in the most secret corner of her heart and mind, she had hoped… She had dreamed… Somehow, impossible as it might have seemed-impossible and yet almost inevitable too… He was the only person, aside from her parents, who accepted her for who she was and who'd never wanted to change her, the only man, aside from her father, who had never even hinted at wanting her to be anything less or different than she was.
How could she marry anyone who couldn't accept her for who she was or who would want her to be someone she wasn't?
How could she not hope, dream-somewhere in her most secret heart-that one day, she might marry him, the best friend who had always accepted her?
God help her, she did want to marry him. She had wanted to marry him. But not like this. Never like this. Not when he didn't want it too. Not so he would feel trapped. Not when he would spend the rest of his life looking at her and wishing she were someone else.
Be careful what you wish for…
Fortunately, Harry took her silence for agreement that she didn't want to marry him, and Hermione allowed herself a fleeting moment of relief that she still possessed some pride.
"But what about Miss Weasley?" she persisted, finally saying the name that had leaped to mind the moment he had suggested marriage. Miss Ginny Weasley, Ron's younger sister. Beautiful Miss Weasley. Vivacious, popular, lovely Miss Weasley. Miss Weasley, whom she knew Harry admired, cared for-loved? She flinched away from the thought that Harry might actually love Miss Weasley. "You were… going to court her."
She knew, as no one except for him, Ron, Miss Weasley herself, the Weasley family, and a few very select friends, knew, that Harry had wanted to start courting Miss Weasley, except the war had intruded and all thoughts of courtship and marriage had been pushed aside. But it had always been a tacitly-acknowledged belief that, now that the war was over, Harry would pay court to Miss Weasley.
He sobered, something flickering across his face and looking at the floor at the mention of Miss Weasley's name, as if the sound of her name, the sound of what he would be losing, hurt him, before he looked back up at Hermione, met her eyes unflinchingly. "I never made any promises to her. I am not bound to her by honor."
Not bound by honor but what about by inclination? She bit back the question. He was doing the honorable thing, the only thing he could do-but, oh God, she hadn't wanted this. She'd never wanted this, for everyone to think she had trapped him.
"Is it so terrible to think of being married to me?" he asked, in a rather feeble attempt at humor.
She gave him a small smile in acknowledgement but couldn't bring herself to respond in a like manner. "I didn't want this," she finally settled for saying, lamely.
"Will you please stop acting like marriage to me is such a tragedy?" he pleaded teasingly. He sobered as he met her eyes. "It's not so terrible, you know. We're already friends and we know we can coexist peacefully. That's more than most couples can say at the beginning of a marriage."
She met his eyes-the clear, green, steady, affectionate eyes of the best friend she already knew so well-the best friend she was terribly afraid she might fall in love with all too easily.
She let out a breath and in that moment, Hermione Granger took the metaphorical leap off a cliff and did so with open eyes. "Yes, I will marry you, Harry."
"Thank you." He smiled and took her hand in his, bringing it to his lips to kiss it with an odd mixture of awkwardness and gallantry.
She watched his dark head bend over her hand and the roaring in her ears, that had quieted somewhat in the last few minutes, returned louder than ever, thundering in her mind and heart.
Be careful what you wish for… You just might get it.
~To be continued…