Work Text:
roses are red
violets are blue
dating’s confusing
but I very much like you
Hermione crumpled the parchment into a ball and set it on fire. Then she hastily doused it before it could set her entire desk aflame.
Although, now that she thought about it, the idea of setting her office on fire seemed kind of appropriate for Valentine’s day.
Fucking Valentine’s day.
Happy couples wafting around the Ministry, talking about their plans for romantic dinners slash romantic walks slash romantic shagfests with little pink hearts practically streaming out of their eyes.
It wasn’t that Hermione was against romance, exactly. It seemed to make people happy, and Hermione liked happiness. Happiness was good.
It was just, why were people so obsessed with it? What did it even mean? Hermione was twenty eight years old and somehow nobody had ever been able to explain the concept of romance to her in a way that made sense. Mum just smiled and said, when you fall in love, you’ll know. Well, Hermione had never known, so she supposed that meant she’d never been in love. Ron looked baffled and said, I mean, it’s just someone you really like and want to be with all the time and have sex with and stuff, isn’t it? But there were several people Hermione would be happy to be with all the time. She’d had sex with a few of them. Did that mean she was in love with them?
She didn’t fucking know.
Harry, who had only recently started dating Draco and was one of the incomprehensible people going around with hearts in their eyes, smiled at her dreamily and said, I think it just means you love the person with your whole heart and soul and would do anything to make them happy, before getting out his phone and showing her approximately sixty photographs of Draco asleep on the sofa, most of which were identical.
But there were quite a few people, including Harry himself, who she loved with her whole heart and soul and would do basically anything for. Was she in love with Harry? Was she in love with half her sodding friends? It didn’t seem likely, but how was she supposed to know? Either she was in love with everybody, or with nobody.
She thought it was probably nobody.
Which was fine. She’d dated a few people, but it had never gone particularly well. There’d been Viktor, but although she’d enjoyed talking to him and learning about the different kinds of magic they taught at Durmstrang, and the dancing and kissing at the yule ball had been fun, they’d never done anything really romantic. It had been different with Ron, who liked going on dates and making sweet gestures. She’d enjoyed spending time with him, but looking back she could see that it was because he was one of her best friends, not because she was in love with him, and so she’d broken up with him.
And then there’d been Pansy. They’d only officially dated for four months, but it was easily the best relationship Hermione’d been in. They’d done things together, going out and staying at home, given each other little gifts, cuddled and kissed and had a lot of excellent sex, but it hadn’t been weird the way it had with Ron sometimes. It had felt like doing stuff you liked with a friend, and it being special and wonderful and the sort of thing that Hermione wanted to do with Pansy forever. Hermione had liked it. She’d liked it a lot.
She still didn’t think she’d been in love with Pansy, though. She didn’t think she ever would be.
Anyway, Pansy had ended the official relationship, but they’d stayed friends and they still had sex sometimes, and in some ways it felt like not much had changed, and in other ways it felt like something precious had been taken away from her.
The only other relationship she’d been in had been a very short lived dalliance with a boy called Douglas who’d soulfully informed her, a fortnight after they’d met, that he felt like he’d known her for years. Hermione hadn’t liked to puncture his romantic flight of fancy by saying that she felt like she’d known him for, well, roughly two weeks, but she’d put an end to the thing soon after, trying to push away the dejected certainty that she’d never have what other people seemed to fall into so effortlessly.
And now here she was, sitting in her office, trying to come up with a way to ask Pansy if they could try again. Not, perhaps, as girlfriends this time, but… something. Clearly, however, poetry wasn’t the way. Between the two of them, Pansy was the creative writer and Hermione was the academic one. That wasn’t going to work.
Perhaps she should make a powerpoint presentation instead. Eleven Reasons Why You, Pansy, Should Agree To Have Some Sort Of Official Type Relationship Thing With Me, Hermione. She stifled a little snort of laughter at the thought. Pansy would love it, though; she’d be able to use it to mock Hermione for years to come. It might be worth doing it just for that.
Reason Number One, she thought. I Like The Idea Of Belonging To Someone. Not In A Romantic Way, Although If You Wanted To Call It That It’d Be Fine, That Concept Just Doesn’t Really Mean Anything To Me. But Just To Belong. You Know?
God. That was maybe the least appealing way to ask someone to be in an official relationship with you.
Maybe she should just try being honest with Pansy, except that the problem with that scenario was that it would involve actual, well, honesty. Doug was the only one she’d told the truth, and that had gone horribly even though they’d only been dating for eighteen days. Who called somebody else broken after eighteen days? Or at all. Pillock. Anyway, Pansy would never do that. Pansy was her friend.
But it was Pansy who’d called a halt the first time. Would it be weird to bring the whole thing up again? Getting together and breaking up hadn’t ruined their friendship. If anything, it had made it stronger. But what if this was a step too far? What if Hermione crossed some boundary she hadn’t even been aware existed?
She should just leave things be. She liked what she and Pansy had, and really, what difference would the thing she wanted actually make? Not much, probably. (Everything.)
Someone knocked on her office door, and, before she had time to answer, opened it.
“Oh!” Hermione said, getting up quickly. “Pansy, hi! Er, what… shit, did I forget we were going to meet up again?”
Pansy, all glossy red lips and smoky eyes, closed the office door behind her and stood there for a moment. Anyone else might have thought she’d come for a bit of sneaky office sex, with her perfectly made up face, one blouse button too many open to reveal the edge of a lacy bra, and her sky-high heels, but Hermione knew better. This was armour.
“What’s up?” she said, suddenly nervous.
Pansy took a deep breath and moved forward. “Sit down,” she said. “There’s something I want to tell you, and then something I want to ask you.”
“Er, okay?” Hermione sat down.
Pansy didn’t. She clasped her hands in front of her and took another breath. “I’m aromantic. That means I don’t experience romantic attraction to anyone. Ever. I just… that’s not something I want. That’s why I broke up with you. Being someone’s girlfriend feels wrong. But… you’re special. I love being your friend, and I don’t want to be your girlfriend, but I… have you heard of queerplatonic relationships?”
Hermione was realising, all in a rush, that this was something she should have done a whole lot of research about long ago. She would have, if she’d known it was an actual thing and not just her being weird. She shook her head mutely, and Pansy went on.
“Okay. Well. It’s a… a close, or an intimate relationship that’s not romantic, but isn’t just friendship either. Two people who are special to each other. Like us. Or, at least, like I would like to be that with you, if you’d like it too.” She paused and looked at Hermione for a moment. Then her lips quirked up in a quick smile. “Oh. You can talk now.”
“Oh, thank god,” Hermione said. “Because me too, and me too, and I would love to be in a queerplatonic relationship with you.” She laughed, happy. “I’ve actually spent the last two hours trying to work out how to ask if you want to be, not girlfriends, but something.”
Pansy’s face lit up. “Really? Merlin. I’ve been so nervous about this.”
Hermione got up and kissed her. “Well, you don’t have to be nervous any more. It’s perfect. So, dinner?”
“Dinner,” Pansy agreed.