Work Text:
This isn’t like her. This isn’t her. She wasn’t raised this way, she doesn’t approve of this behavior, and she isn’t this sort of girl.
Indeed, she isn’t, Hermione thinks. She hasn’t done anything wrong. Her thoughts are only that; actions are what count, and hers are beyond reproach. Wanting isn’t having; thinking isn’t doing, she tells herself firmly.
“Her-MY-nee! Lookie!”
Jolted from this train of thought, she turns toward a shrieking Victoire, hoisted on her uncle George’s shoulders and sporting brand-new reindeer antlers with pride.
“Oh my goodness!” she says, smiling. “Very... becoming.”
It’s clear from George’s wicked expression that it’s he who worked the spell that sprouted them from her unblemished forehead. It’s equally clear from the look on Fleur’s face that it’s much to her mum’s dismay. But no one ever criticizes or tries to stifle George’s Christmas cheer when it makes an appearance; some years it’s an all-too-rare sight.
But she’s not thinking of George and his grief, as the two gallop away and she turns back to trimming the Christmas pudding. The kitchen is always the best place to hide at such gatherings; Molly is always too busy to bother her, and even if she did, she would surely blame the flush of Hermione’s cheeks not on guilt, but on the overheated room.
What Hermione is thinking is that she has been wrong, or at least very naïve. She’s spoken at length and with great passion through the years about integrity in relationships and about how intention is everything. She cringes now at the self-righteous girl who believed that it’s simplicity itself to end a relationship when things aren’t working out. Of course, ‘not working out’ to a silly, little, teenaged girl meant anything less than the rush of lust and infatuation which was all she knew of boys.
She’s a woman now, one who understands compromise and day-to-day living and the complications that come with blending worlds. To act with what she’d have called integrity, for no other reason than that maybe she didn’t feel the same as she had at the start... Well, that could lead to many people getting hurt. And hurting people can’t be noble or good, can it? Where are the good intentions in something like that?
This grown-up Hermione understands that it is one thing to realize your boyfriend and you are fundamentally incompatible and going in different directions in life, but it’s quite another to tell him so in the middle of the holiday season. Or six months ago when Ron started thinking about finally doing what he wants to do with his career instead of keeping it on hold for another year (and another, and another) to be sure that George and Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes are really okay. Much less when her father was having health problems, Percy started fighting with the family again, or when Harry and Ginny were expecting.
Or at any point before the sectional sofa they bought together is paid-off.
Hermione is reminded that crowded rooms are not the best place for such ruminations as she feels Ron move in close behind her, making only a halfhearted attempt at stealth as he reaches under her arm for a candied walnut on the plate she’s garnishing. The swat she aims at his hand to chase him away is equally indifferent.
But she turns suddenly and wraps her arms around him, pressing her face into his chest. He’s warm. Ron is always warm. The arms that squeeze back are comforting as always, and she feels a rush of affection and a momentary need to hold onto him. His jumper is a bit scratchy under her cheek and still has that new smell. It’s the Chudley Cannons Championship jumper (World Cup 1998, against the Wimbourne Wasps) that was her Christmas present to him. She’s never been a fan of professional Quidditch, but it’s a reminder of their first date, and he was touched by the memory when they exchanged gifts that morning before they left. She was thrilled with her new, expanded (and limited) edition of Spellman’s Syllabary that was exactly what she hoped to get.
Ron always gives her exactly what is on her list. He always gives her anything she asks for. Hermione wonders abruptly when she stopped asking for anything important.
An ear-curdling shriek and a squeal of “Now, Daddy? Stockings! Pwease?” again from Victoire, and Ron is pulling away, already turned and walking back toward the parlor before Hermione can look up. The little Weasley may be over-excited, but she’s not wrong; it is time for stockings.
Every year she’s amazed anew with magical stockings and how convenient they are for gift-giving. A rather simple spell sends a gift to its intended recipient, somewhat like how they’re distributed at Hogwarts. Bloody godsend it is, after all the shopping and wrapping, to send each one on its way with a flick and a swish (and the proper password). With the size of her ever-growing network of friends and work colleagues, Hermione couldn’t make it through the holidays without it.
At the Burrow, presents amongst the closer family members and friends are opened on Christmas Day, but on Christmas Eve, they always get their stockings, which are gifts from less intimate friends and acquaintances as well as some gag-gifts. It’s a raucous free-for-all with everyone digging in at once, and no one pays anyone around them much mind.
It’s already well underway as she pauses in the doorway, watching it unfold. George is now sitting in a far corner, his head tilted toward his wife Angelina as she whispers in his ear. Arthur lets out a whoop at the gift from his Ministry office mates. Bill and Fleur are oohing and ahhing at what must be appropriate moments as Victoire plucks toys and candy from her stocking, holding each up briefly before tossing it aside and digging in again. Penelope is laughing at something Charlie is saying, Percy’s pinched face signaling he’s again the butt of a joke. Ginny is conked out, asleep, sitting up on the settee with a few gifts on her lap and her hand still inside the stocking.
Without warning (and without permission), her thoughts again head toward treacherous terrain.
“What is it about the Weasleys?” Draco said absently, looking around the tea room, admittedly a bit shabby in the late afternoon light, with an expression that was not quite fear, much less revulsion. He was getting better at dealing with Muggle London.
“What do you mean?” Hermione said, startled at being interrupted in her description of her holiday plans. She hadn’t thought he was listening.
“You just seem overly attached to them, is all.”
“Attached? They’re family! How should I feel about them?”
“Well, you should realize that I, of all people, would argue against the designation of ‘family’ as reason for attachment,” he said wryly, and she couldn’t help but grant him the point. “Why are they family, then?”
“They’re— I mean...” This topic was making her uncomfortable. She swallowed and said, “I’ve known them over half my life. Their home was the first place I felt like I really belonged.”
“Do you though? Belong to them?”
Draco’s tone was casual, but there was an edge of meaning with which Hermione wouldn’t engage. She may have grown close to him over the past couple of years, but there were certain topics they just didn’t tackle. Anything to do with the war, for one. Likewise, his parents, Harry, and the politics of the wizarding world were handled rarely and with delicacy. In their work in Magical Law Enforcement, they were perfectly suited for partnering and had plenty of other things to talk about, anyway.
However, Hermione never brought up the subject of her relationship with Ron. Because she knew just how insightful Draco was, she suspected that silence was growing ever more deafening.
But she and Draco were friends, and there was nothing wrong with that. She didn’t go looking for it. It isn’t her fault that they have similar taste in books, a complimentary world-view, and the same aversion to crowded places. Still, that didn’t mean she would ever use Draco as a sounding-board for the serious doubts she had about her relationship. It wouldn’t be appropriate. She couldn’t go there with him.
“You asked me why I feel attached to the Weasleys,” she said instead, deflecting. “That’s sense of history is something I value after all these years. It’s... not something I would just walk away from.”
“That sounds more like obligation than belonging, Granger. And you should know they’re not the same thing.”
His voice was kind and his gaze soft, but Hermione turned away from the unspoken between them. Mercifully, the tea arrived then, and with it, a change in topic.
The pattern on the antique set was familiar to her; well, more than familiar, it was beloved. It was the same as her great-grandmother’s set: bone china, so delicate as to be nearly see-through, a pattern of blue flowers interlaced with vines of real silver. When she was a child, she would sit, fidgeting, watching as the adults took their tea, and long-fingered hands touched what was forbidden her clumsy, pudgy ones. She was devastated along with her mother when the set was inherited by a distant cousin.
Transported, she eagerly told Draco the tale of her forebear, who, in the 1920s, made the scandalous choice to divorce her husband and strike out on her own to live and raise their newborn. She never stayed in one place for very long; she wanted to see as much of the world as possible and share it all with her daughter, and that meant family ties suffered. That daughter was Hermione’s grandmother, and as a result of this unmoored upbringing, she stayed firmly put when she married and had children. Great-Grandmother became famous for blowing into town unannounced, bringing presents and chaos along with her, and leaving as quickly and unexpectedly as she came. The china was a wedding present; one she never used. It gathered dust in a cabinet for years while she made off for the next and the next unchartered territory. There were parts of Hermione’s family who still only spoke of her in hushed tones.
“Now... that sounds right,” Draco said with satisfaction. She sounds like your family.”
Hermione could tell he meant that as a compliment, but she was not sure she shared his view. “Well, I never knew her, actually. Besides, she didn’t want to be anyone’s family. That was the problem.”
“I don’t see that. The problem, if there was one, that is, is that she didn’t do what was expected of her.” He finished, softly, “You’ve probably got more of her in you than you know.”
Again, Hermione shrugged this off without a response. He was always doing that to her; challenging her opinions, making her see other sides of issues, turning her logic in on itself. It was mildly infuriating. It could be intoxicating.
Thinking of it now, Hermione reminds herself that Draco is more than a great partner: he’s her even match. He’s a great friend.
And it is actually ‘friendship.’ She hasn’t crossed any lines, she hasn’t made any declarations, she hasn’t done anything wrong.
“There you are. Here,” Harry says shortly, pushing her stocking at her as he shifts a very plump baby James in his other arm. He glances at his sleeping wife with barely concealed envy and pushes past Hermione toward the kitchen, baby bottle in hand.
Hermione never thought she could feel alone amongst so many people.
She takes a deep breath then and lets it out as slowly and evenly as possible. Even if she feels like she doesn’t know how to be happy (and that’s probably too dramatic a thought for even Hermione right now), she knows how to fake it well enough. Anyone who can’t fake cheer amongst the Weasley clan should just give up entirely.
Stocking in hand, she makes her way to the space in front of the fire where Ron is and sits next to him. He’s finished, his presents abandoned to one side of him as he jokes with Bill and Charlie to the other side. She takes another look around the room and feels the comfort of routine, of tradition.
Hermione clings to this as she pulls the presents from her stocking. There are the usual books, Kneazle treats, and chocolate frogs, and the comfort of the familiar enfolds her like a blanket.
In the very bottom of the stocking she finds an antique tea cup with saucer: bone china, so delicate it’s nearly see-through. The pattern is blue flowers interlaced with vines of real silver. There’s no card attached, but it’s clear who it’s from. It’s her great-grandmother’s pattern.
Hermione hasn’t done anything wrong.
But she might be about to.