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When he visited Hogwarts in Ron’s fourth year, he only had wanted to make it a short visit.
Then he met her.
Oh, he had met her before, during the summer just before this school year. And he had known about her long before that, Ron spoke a lot about her, but he had not been paying nearly enough attention, it seemed.
Wasn’t she supposed to be a stuck-up bookworm? A goody-two-shoes?
Instead he met a girl that was by all accounts perfect.
Just bloody perfect.
Her smiles, shy but as though there was a hidden joke she hadn’t told him, her laugh when he made a joke that was probably not appropriate for her ears yet.
Bill Weasley was quite fascinated with Hermione Granger.
Not that he acted on it, after the summer her fourth year of school would start, she was just a child.
But admittedly a bloody perfect one.
She was still perfect.
For heaven’s sake.
The way she stood over him, angrily waving her wand after bloody Fenrir Greyback had ripped his face to shreds.
He couldn’t make much sense of it, he was just lying there, trying to concentrate on her face instead of the pain in his.
She was a warrior, shouting jinxes and curses, one foot standing on each side of him.
And he could only lie on his back and stare dumbly at her while trying to not lose consciousness or bleed out.
Figures.
It was the summer after her sixth year, shortly after she had protected his shredded self from being killed by the Death Eaters that had stormed Hogwarts.
It took him watching her practise her magic every single morning for a week until he noticed that she was doing magic outside of Hogwarts.
When he asked her how old she was, she blinked and smiled a shy smile.
“I’m turning 18 in September.”
At least now he was not feeling like a lecherous old man anymore, with her just being 9 years younger than him and being off age for almost a year now.
Then she had smiled at him, honestly smiled, and he was instantly reminded that even if she was maybe entirely too young for him, she was still bloody perfect and he was decidedly not.
He had worried when she had disappeared with his brother and Harry, but he was sure she would make it through. She had to.
While they were away, she heard stories from Ginny about her friends and learned about Hermione’s vicious streak.
She had kept a woman in a jar for the better part of a summer. Though that woman had been Skeeter, so his sympathy was severely limited.
She also had led Umbridge into the forbidden forest and had apparently not been sorry when she was dragged off by the centaurs – but who would’ve felt sorry for Umbridge either way?
She had been tortured by Bellatrix Lestrange and lived to tell the tale.
Afterwards Hermione, Harry and Ron had ended up in Shell Cottage, the safehouse he currently lived in.
He would have loved to help her, but she seemed to sleep it off, not wanting to talk about the ordeal at all.
But this was the first time he had seen how much anger there was in the small person that was Hermione Granger. She seemed to simmer with it, it was under the surface, always there but never quite getting out.
She still smiled the smile he liked so much on her, but it was different, even then the anger was there. Lurking under the surface.
He still thought she was perfect. Looking out for Harry and Ron, putting her friends first.
Bill would like to say that he was trying to be as perfect as her, but he didn’t. He wasn’t sure he could ever be, so he never tried.
It was not too long after that when he realised, he had been mistaken.
She was not perfect.
He had seen her during the battle of Hogwarts, had seen her fight, cut down men and cry for her friends. The things he had seen in her over the years broke free, all the anger he had suspected her to have, her viciousness. So many emotions that had been pent up for years.
And suddenly she wasn’t so bloody perfect to him anymore. Perfect was artificial. Perfect wasn’t real.
She was so much more than just the perfect picture he had wanted to see.
“Hermione?” He asked one evening when she had come over to visit him in Shell Cottage, almost half a year after the fateful day of the Battle of Hogwarts.
“Yes?”
“When you were younger, I always thought you were perfect,” he stated.
“…Thank you?” She replied, clearly confused and took a sip from the water glass that was standing next to her on the counter.
“You always seemed like it. So smart, clever, always kind,” he elaborated.
He continued before she could find an answer to what he said.
“But I realised I was a bit off in that assessment, wasn’t I? Keeping Skeeter trapped in a jar for more than a month?”
A smile actually tugged on her lips. Of course, she knew she shouldn’t have done that, but even years afterwards a deep feeling of satisfaction cursed through her when thinking about the trapped journalist.
“But you know what else I realised?”
Hermione shook her head.
“You are still thoroughly good. No matter what you’ve done, be it with Skeeter, Umbridge or when you cursed that girl from Dumledore’s Army, it was never for yourself. It was to protect others. Because that’s what you do. And, to me, that means so much more than perfect.”
Hermione just stared very intently in his eyes, then took a step closer.
She didn’t acknowledge his words, but put one of her small hands on his scars and pressed her lips gently to his.
She might not have been perfect, but her kisses certainly were.
Figures.