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They could be considered an odd pair. Actually, they are quite the odd pair. The last time the Prophet wrote an article about them, the headline was Star-Crossed Houses! or something terribly cheesy like that.
“Apparently,” she greets, upon entering his office, “you’ve decided to drink without me. What are you, two drinks in? Three, maybe.”
Harry Potter nee Boy Wonder, current Head of the Auror Department and her former partner practically glares from his desk at her. He shakes his head. Raises his hand, glass gripped between his fingers in a salute. “Happy divorce day,” he replies, swinging his wrist. He downs his drink. Whiskey, she assumes. “It’s official. At least, it’s been official as of eight this morning.”
“Congratulations,” she murmurs, studying him. Everyone knows his timeline is off, but she says nothing. There are a few things that she knows to be true about Harry: he is terrible at hiding his emotions, they are written straight across his face, into how he folds his mouth into a low frown, or the way his shoulders hunch tightly as if he were to restrain himself. All these things are present. She feels sad for him. She did like Ginny Weasley. Hermione is the only one with the better poker face.
“You don’t have to lie.”
Hermione rolls her eyes, moving to stand by the edge of his desk. “Okay. It’s quite a bore to be you, Harry Potter. People get divorced all the time. She’s moved on, but so should you. Pity parties are for children. You have an entire fan club waiting for you.”
“Your pep talks are still on point.” Harry pours her a whiskey, neat. He pushes it to her. The glass is already sweating. “Missed them,” he says dryly.
“You don’t have to lie,” she mocks him.
She tips her glass into his too. The sound clinks and she draws it into her mouth, swallowing the whiskey back with ease. It burns a little and she leans against his desk, stretching her legs out. He watches her, leaning back into his chair.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and maybe not to her, more to his kids, his ex-wife, and everyone else in between. This is how he’s always worked, even when they were back in school. She tries not to frown; normally, she has more patience for this sort of thing. Only for Harry, of course, and their odd relationship. It did not start back in school like everyone assumes it did; or maybe it did and she doesn’t remember, origin stories are overrated.
It’s just that today, she was expecting today, and living in the present, watching him wallow in himself does nothing short of irritating her. He is allowed to be sad. She is just not made for being an emotionally supportive wing woman, or whatever they call it these days. I am terrible at this, she wants to tell him. Her hand rises and she almost pats his back. No, no, she thinks. Not that.
“All right.” She gives him an exaggerated sigh. The irritation is only brief. “I’m here to possibly listen, I suppose,” she says.
Hermione Granger does not want to pat Harry Potter’s back.
He knows how she takes her coffee. No cream, brown sugar. They have breakfasts on Thursdays, a standing date. These are all stupid, mundane things but they exist and haven’t stopped for years.
The lights in his office are off now. Harry lies on the floor, his arms skewed over his face. She is now sitting in the large, leather chair that he has suddenly become associated with, almost as if he were some sort comic book hero. On a lighter day, she might tease him about it.
“I don’t know how to not be married,” he tells her, and it feels a little sharp. “That’s pretty shit, if you ask me. My entire life I’ve always held some sort of title.”
“Potter,” she sighs, “I’d really rather not listen to you wax poetic about the life you no longer live. I don’t remember you being a depressing drunk. There was that one time you forced me to go to a karaoke bar and you –”
“Stop,” he groans. “I’m not drunk enough.”
“Apparently.”
She is now three drinks in, probably three more behind him, and she gets oddly sentimental about all of this too. Maybe it’s four drinks. She’d never tell him. Instead, she watches his arms drop from his face and how his eyes flutter close. It’s sometime after eight, she remembers, and the light that comes in from the window is purely superficial. The window view belongs to the Minister and, of course, the center of the department, an open skyline that exposes nothing but blue skies during the day and scattered, seasonal constellations at night. But she pays no mind to that, instead watching the long line of his jaw and the way he wears the tension along his throat. Her eyes narrow, straining against the lack of light. His collar is opened and from underneath his shirt, she sees a swarm of small stars that form one of his larger tattoos. She forgot he has tattoos. And that she likes them.
Minus the alcohol though, divorce certainly looks good on Harry Potter.
She clears her throat. “Should I catch up?”
“Aren’t you working on a case,” he asks, sort of slurs, and she shifts, moving to sit on the floor. He doesn’t open his eyes to look at her. “Oh wait,” he answers himself, “you’re not – that finished last week. You were consulting for that Curse Breaker bloke. The one that was in your house that no one talked to.”
“Theo?” Hermione swallows a laugh. She shifts and crosses her legs underneath her. Harry stretches his arms back and his shirt starts to rise, taunt over his stomach. She doesn’t look away from it. “Theo is lovely. In fact, I’d venture to say – he’s the only housemate that I can tolerate in a social setting and enjoy it.” She frowns. “And I really like him.”
“Didn’t you date?”
“Are you mad?” Hermione hits him. Her palm catches his stomach and her throat burns. She draws her hand back but her fingers curl, just slightly, as if to curb her desire. “Theo is a good bloke,” she murmurs, “and when you live in a house of snakes, particularly the ones that are covered in glitter and gold, you find the strangest of friends.” Her nose wrinkles. “I need to stop drinking. I’m going to start sprouting Professor Snape’s greatest hits.”
He snorts. The alcohol is making her head buzz a bit though.
“Just leave Theo out of your divorce day celebrations,” she adds.
His eyes open slowly. “So you did date,” he says, catching her hand. His fingers are warm around hers. “I’ve always wondered. Particularly with the fact –”
“Yes, yes. Muggleborn in the Slytherin. I remember I was there, you know.” She tries to twist and wave him off, but he doesn’t let go of her hand. “They remind me every day I see them,” she says dryly.
“Sorry,” he says, and she’s not entirely sure he means it, given that he’s always seemed to find the odd moment to press about her school days. What was it like? Did they really treat you terribly? She never quite answered that last question, always pushing with smaller ones, especially with the one that always went unsaid: why were you left alone for the most part. “Nott is an ass,” he mutters. “Even Malfoy says.”
“Because he’s certainly the pinnacle of truth.”
Harry laughs, like actually laughs, and the sound is low and heavy. His fingers lace through hers and it’s entirely too intimate for her to process. His laugh stops though and his smile sobers almost immediately as he looks at her for what feels like the first time.
“I’m divorced,” he says softly, his thumb stroking the back of her hand. “I’m not sad. Well, that’s the lie. I’m sorry to my kids. Although, suddenly they’re older and well-adjusted and Lily straight looked at me and said something to the effect of yeah dad, we know, it’s better this way since you’re married to your job and mum does not like to be tied down. What does that even mean? She’s thirteen.”
There is a point, of course. She really wishes she had something wise and simple to say. This could be her moment. But her head is a mess and she stares at him, her eyes moving to his mouth and then along his jaw and she thinks something stupid like I could kiss him but stops herself because there is no advantage and that would be really, really stupid.
“I really wish you’d let me on what you’d expect me to say.” It still tumbles out of her mouth and yes, of course, there is that fourth whiskey. It’s stopped burning in her throat. Remember, her body doesn’t say. You are a lightweight. “I mean,” Hermione barely bothers with her recovery, “you seem to expect me to say something and I really don’t know what. If I continue drinking, I’m going to stop being eloquent. Or whatever you think you need me to be.”
He was always such a strange guy – he has these moments where he’s completely readable, unable to hide anything from her, from her specifically, and moments where his mere existence chases her in circles. They have always been like that; it’s a modern marvel that they worked well as Auror partners, a universal feat that she will never understand. But, Hermione thinks, she couldn’t see herself with anyone else. This is only a small part of the problem.
His hand moves to her jaw. She’s startled, almost instantly, out of her thoughts. His fingers spread over her skin and he is right in her space. When did he sit up, she wonders, and his eyes are that strange, impossible green that she cannot look away from. She smells the alcohol. The air is a little heavy. It doesn’t matter at this point if it’s from him, or even, if it’s from her.
“I don’t know what I want you to say,” he says, softer this time. His mouth hovers over hers. “But I might kiss you,” he says.
Of course, it’s bound to escalate from here.
A side note:
Harry Potter has kissed Hermione Granger before. This belonged to their school days; no one knows. That is Hermione’s role.
He will say, however, with the utmost seriousness, “She is the only one that I have ever been able to say, thoughtfully, that been a constant in my life. I can’t understand it, I won’t question it, but I do need her there.”
She won’t say a thing. Slytherins never tell.
They listen.
“Why are you so damn heavy,” she growls, dragging Harry through his flat door, and okay, admittedly, she has drank more than three, maybe four, and it’s a marvel that she even apparated correctly. Brightest witch of her age, after all.
He chuckles, favors his knee, and leans into her, pressing his mouth into her forehead in one, large sweeping motion. She could swoon; she does not.
“Why did you let me drink more,” he grumbles, and honestly, honestly she could just hit him. Instead, she clumsily guides him into the foyer and leans them against the wall so that she can kick the door shut.
He stumbles forward, into a table, and she grabs him awkwardly, gripping onto fistfuls of his jacket to steady him. Neither of them had any sort of sober-up potions at work and while she could care less, being at work, late at night, drunk is something she’d rather not explain. Of course, she is also drunk and Harry Potter is also drunk and not in the fun ‘the lads stole me away’ kind of drunk that she would also probably find irritating too.
“I wanted to love my wife!”
His declaration is loud and she winces, pushing him forward into the living room. How he finds the couch is a marvel, but she follows, for lack of any other thing to do, dropping into the seat beside him. Her head hits the pillow and her eyes close.
“You’re not good at wallowing,” she tells him. “And you’ll be just fine. You have work. You have your family and health. Only minor psychopaths are trying to kill you, I guess.”
Harry snorts. “You’re trying too hard.”
Hermione feels her mouth twitch. She claps her hand on his leg, misses the spot above his knee, and full on grabs his thigh instead. She doesn’t mean to. Instead, the air between them becomes smaller and her eyes are open, suddenly open, her face warming as she realizes that he is looking right at her. Oh no, she thinks. No, no.
His fingers brush over her mouth. “You’re pretty when you smile,” he says, probably means – Harry has always had this innate ability to change the air of the room. It’s a curse, if anything, to be the one he looks at. She hates that she knows that. Hates that she likes it. It’s always been their dynamic, one way or another.
“Moving a little fast,” she counters, her lips parting under the pad of his thumb. When did that get there, she thinks. She kisses it lightly, watching as his eyes darken. “Should I ring one of your friends? Weasley is probably out of the question. Longbottom? How about Dean Thomas? I like Dean Thomas.”
He shakes his head. “No, you’re fine.” His hand does not move from her face. His fingers stretch over her mouth, then slide to the crux of her chin, moving back up her jaw and along her cheek. “I’m glad you’re here,” he admits.
“Now who’s the liar?” She’s breathless and doesn’t know why.
Harry kisses her first.
The realization hits her slowly: first, she thinks, this is a terrible idea and you know better, a string sentences that she has always held onto around him. See dynamic is dynamic and while the two of them are the odd pair, they have always gravitated towards each other. She will tell you about the memory of their first kiss – it’s hers, you see – but suddenly, as his mouth opens hers, hot and sticky with alcohol, it all comes rushing back to her and she moans, oh god, does she moan.
Her hands frame his face next, her thumbs sweeping along his cheek as he takes a fist into her hair and she slides her tongue into his mouth. He moans too; she tastes the whiskey and the sweetness of a candy, a dumb piece of candy that they stole off of someone’s desk on their way out of the office. Something shifts and then she follows, slowly lifting herself to settle into his lap with her hips dropping into his own. She’s kissing him fiercely then, somehow stumbling to her feelings as his fingers twist her hair and he pushes his hips back into hers. His mouth becomes warmer, impossibly so, and she’s growing with her obsession in needing to taste him –she likes sweet things, always has. She also likes that he growls into her mouth when she bites or the fact that his hand snakes around her hip, then lower to cup her ass and keep her into place. They’re still clumsy; her hips grind, stumble, and she listens to the fabric of her trousers rustle against his jeans. What would he feel like, she wonders, underneath her fingers.
“This is a terrible idea,” she murmurs, nipping at his lip. Her forehead rests against his. “Actually, more like astronomically awful.” And she tries not to imagine pulling his jeans down to touch him. “You know it is,” she says.
Harry pouts. “But I like kissing you.” As if to prove a point, he leans in and catches her mouth lazily. We’re not sixteen, she wants to say but kisses him back, snagging his lip between her teeth and sucking lightly. “You’re excellent kisser.” He’s breathless too.
“You, Harry Potter, just got divorced.” Her hands frame his chest. “I have work tomorrow morning, you know.”
He sobers quickly. There’s a slight pang of guilt that comes with the change in his expression too – she is, after all, in his lap and her hair is a mess, her clothes dipped into that warm, whiskey smell. He sighs.
“I did,” he murmurs. His chest rises and falls. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I should probably go sleep off all of this. And apologize to you in the morning. Because you’re probably going to hold it against me and use this at a later date.”
Hermione snorts. “Probably,” she agrees dryly. “House rules,” she manages too. Her expression changes into something a little more serious. Her fingers brush against his forehead, pushing some of his hair back. “I’m sorry,” she says slowly. “I’m sorry you’re sad. I’m sorry you have to mourn the loss of your relationship. I’m sorry you feel whatever it is that you’re feeling.”
“Like a failure.”
“Gryffindors are insanely dramatic.” She rolls her eyes, grinning a little. “Although, I still maintain that Malfoy gives you a run for your money.”
Harry laughs and she feels a little better, drawing back and ignoring the way her mouth burns and how her insides more than sort of ache. She can feel her heart clench and she ignores it, twisting away from quiet, buried feelings that she hasn’t thought about in a very long time.
“But,” she adds, “you have to remember that this doesn’t define you – you’re still irritatingly handsome and a fantastic kisser, I guess.”
Hermione doesn’t wait for a response. She stands, smoothing her hands over her skirt and stepping back to leave. She grabs a blanket from the arm chair she passes, throwing it at Harry’s face and waving a goodbye. She’ll check on him tomorrow, she thinks. Maybe out of habit. Maybe not. This part has never changed.
There is coffee on her desk in the morning.
Theo looks offended as she picks it up, drinking it without hesitation.
“What?” She asks, but doesn’t mean. “Just because you put an insane amount of cream in yours, doesn’t mean you get to judge me.”
It’s not an apology; that’s not how this goes. Even Theo can guess who this it’s from.