Chapter Text
Hermione had never been less pleased to see the Hogwarts Express at King’s Cross. She knew Harry and Ron would be waiting for her inside, but somehow, she just couldn’t muster up any excitement. Instead of hearing the train’s whistle, she kept hearing, I don’t want to date a girl in boarding school rushing around her head like heavy metal music, and instead of feeling her parents’ gentle hugs, she felt the way Stuart’s hand had pressed into her own the first time he’d gotten the nerve to tell her he liked her.
“You’re going to be all right, Hermione,” her mum told her, squeezing her shoulders reassuringly. “Breakups are hard, but you’re a strong girl.”
Hermione nodded, plastering a small smile on her face. It took everything she had.
“All right, cupcake, best get on the train before you miss it,” her dad said, bending down slightly to kiss her cheek. “Write us, please.”
“I always do, Dad,” she said, her voice falsely cheery. Her mum seemed to suspect that her happy façade was just that, a façade, but all she could do was frown slightly and hug her only child goodbye. After all, she had a train to catch.
“We love you!” her mum called as Hermione stepped onto the train, heaving her trunk in behind her.
“I love you too,” Hermione said back, this being the only thing she had meant wholeheartedly. She waved for a moment, and then she turned the corner into the aisle of the train, losing sight of her parents, losing sight of the last bit of the Muggle world.
Stuart’s world.
She walked down the aisle, trunk in tow, looking in each compartment for Harry and Ron. She knew that she and Ron would have to head to the prefect’s compartment rather soon, but she wanted to find their compartment first to drop her things. Finally, about halfway down the train, she spotted Ron’s telltale red hair and slid open the glass door.
“Hermione!” the boys said at the same time, jumping up. Ron took her luggage from her immediately and put it on the luggage rack with ease. Hermione smiled at him. He was always eager to help her these days.
“Feels like it’s been ages,” Harry said, giving her a quick hug. “I’m not used to not seeing you over the holidays.”
“Nor am I!” said Ron, shaking his head. “How was your time in France with your parents?”
Hermione’s stomach squirmed slightly. She felt guilty about the lie she’d told the boys. Truthfully, she’d stayed in London all summer, only about twenty minutes away from the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, but they didn’t know that. She’d told them she’d gone on holiday with her parents in the south of France to avoid having to tell them about Stuart and to avoid telling them that she was skipping out on time with them for Stuart, especially considering the fact that Harry was grieving Sirius’s death. It really had been quite selfish of her, she knew.
“It was lovely,” she said. “To be honest, I’m still pretty exhausted from it.”
“You do look a bit tired,” Ron said.
Hermione fought against rolling her eyes. Even if he’d become more helpful as of late, he was still classically tactless.
“You don’t have much of a tan either,” Harry said. “Did you actually spend any time outside, or did you keep your nose in a book the whole time?”
Latching onto Harry’s ready-made excuse, Hermione said, “Well, I did do quite a bit of reading…”
Harry snorted, and Ron said, “Figures.”
“Listen, Ron, we’d better get to the prefect’s compartment. I expect the meeting will be starting soon,” she said.
“Right,” Ron said, stepping out into the hallway. Hermione, who’d barely entered the compartment anyway, followed him back out.
“See you in a bit, Harry,” Hermione said, smiling weakly at her best friend.
She followed Ron’s lanky form down the aisle to the front of the train, where she knew the enlarged prefect’s compartment was. Once they were there, Ron slid the door open and gestured for Hermione to go in first, smiling goofily at her. She walked in looking at her feet to avoid his smile. It seemed he’d resolved to be much flirtier this year than in years past, and Hermione just didn’t think she could return the sentiment.
She took her seat. It seemed they were a bit early. Ernie McMillan and Hannah Abbott were there, but the new Hufflepuffs and all the Ravenclaw and Slytherin prefects had yet to show up.
“See, Hermione, there wasn’t really a rush,” Ron said, taking the seat next to her.
“Yes, well, I didn’t want to be late, Ronald,” she said, trying to keep the hiss out of her voice. After all, it wasn’t Ron’s fault she was in such a poor mood.
Once most of the prefects had filtered in, the Head Boy and Head Girl started their briefing. It was the same sort of stuff they’d been told last year. Hermione found herself unusually disinterested. Normally, she’d be sitting on the edge of her seat, never mind the boring nature of what was being said. Instead, she was gazing out the window. It looked like it might rain. Stuart loved the rain, she remembered.
One day, they’d been walking home from a park after a lovely day spent reading, her head in his lap, and it had begun to pour. She’d screamed, trying to cover her head with her hands, which was, of course, useless, and Stuart had laughed, grabbing her hand and running with her.
She couldn’t help but laugh once he pulled her under an awning. His dark skin was glistening with wet, and her hair was dripping. He pulled her in and kissed her, breathing in deeply. Her stomach turned over and over, just as it always did when he kissed her. She was consumed by him.
The noise of the compartment door sliding open pulled her out of her reverie. It was Malfoy. Late, of course. Typical. She rolled her eyes.
Melanie, the Head Girl, a Hufflepuff, said, “Really, Malfoy? Thanks for taking the time to join us.”
“My pleasure,” he said with his signature smirk. He plopped down in the seat directly across from Ron. Hermione groaned internally, knowing it wasn’t good that they’d be in such close proximity.
Sure enough, it only took seconds for Malfoy to say, “Weasley, tuck in those grotesquely long legs, would you? I don’t want your filth touching me.”
“Sod off, Malfoy,” Ron responded.
Hermione found herself rolling her eyes, not at Malfoy’s remark, which had been expected, but at the lack of creativity in Ron’s comeback. Didn’t he have anything better to say to someone who was obviously trying to give him a hard time?
“What are you looking at, Granger?” Malfoy said. Hermione was pulled out of her thought process about Ron’s lack of creativity.
“Nothing, obviously, since I’m looking at you,” Hermione said coolly under her breath.
Malfoy narrowed his eyes but uncharacteristically said nothing, just as Melanie said, “All right, you three, settle down,” and started back in on her boring spiel on banned objects and curfews. Hermione resumed looking out the window. It had started to rain, just as she’d thought it would. With every tiny water droplet that slid down the compartment window, she missed Stuart more and more. She was trying to recall his cologne when she felt that creepy sensation when someone is watching you. She whipped her head around, tearing herself away from the water droplets, and found Malfoy’s cool gray eyes staring at her.
She raised her eyebrows, not wanting to interrupt Melanie for a second time but wanting to ask him what he was looking at.
He shrugged, clearly deciding he didn’t want to derail the meeting either.
What has gotten into him? Hermione wondered. First, he had chosen not to respond to Hermione’s insult to him, and now he was staying respectfully silent during a meeting? What’s more, she’d caught him staring at her. Why?
When the meeting ended, Ron and Hermione headed back to their compartment and met up with Harry.
“How’d the meeting go?” Harry asked. He didn’t seem like he cared that much about the answer, but all the same, Hermione thought, it was polite to ask.
“Just Malfoy being a git as usual,” Ron said. Of course that’s all he’d taken away from the meeting. Then again, Hermione realized, she hadn’t taken much away from it either given the fact that she’d spent most of it staring at the rain.
“No surprise there,” Harry said.
“Hermione was pretty quiet,” Ron said, and Hermione’s eyes darted toward him.
“I wasn’t asked any questions, Ronald,” she said. “What would I have had to say?” What a time for Ron to choose to be observant.
He shrugged. “You normally rattle off a list of questions every time we meet with the prefects. You didn’t even really seem like you were paying attention.”
“Hermione Granger not paying attention at a prefect’s meeting?” Harry said. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right? Maybe you caught something in France?”
Hermione glanced down at her hands in her lap. They were folded together, her fingers intertwined the way that she and Stuart’s had been only a couple of weeks ago. She didn’t know if she could bring herself to tell the boys about Stuart. Ron, for one, had clearly decided to try being nicer to Hermione. Maybe he had hopes for a relationship. And Harry…well, she knew Harry would do his best to be helpful but ultimately be unhelpful, and she just didn’t want to deal.
“Maybe so,” she said. “I’ll see Madam Pomfrey about a Pepper Up potion tomorrow, once we’re all settled in.”
The boys took that as a good solution to the problem, never once imagining that Hermione might be dealing with something bigger, with heartbreak.
She and Stuart had known each other since they were children. They’d lived on the same street in London forever. When she was little, though, she hadn’t gotten much attention from anyone, Stuart included. After all, she was just the bookish girl in braces with dentists for parents who didn’t let her have any candy.
When he’d seen her this summer, though, she was sixteen and, he’d told her later, had really filled out nicely. Hermione had blushed hard when he’d said that.
She sighed, listening to the boys talk about Quidditch and remembering the way Stuart had once attempted to count all the freckles on her nose, giving up and kissing her instead.
“I think Malfoy is up to something,” Harry said, his tone sinister. This snapped Hermione back into the present.
“Why do you think that?” she asked.
“Well, Ron and I saw him this summer heading into Borgin and Burkes,” he said, as though this solved it.
“Going into a store doesn’t mean you’re ‘up to something,’” Hermione said, using her fingers to mime quotation marks.
“I’m going to keep an eye on him anyway,” Harry said, patting his pocket. She knew the Marauder’s Map would be in there.
“Suit yourself,” she said, shrugging. “Personally, I think that’s a great load of wasted time.”
Hermione didn’t want to think about Draco Malfoy and whatever illicit behaviors he might be getting up to. She wanted to think about the deep brown of Stuart’s eyes, the way his eyebrows thatched together when he was trying to figure something out, and the security she felt when she was wrapped into his dark, toned arms.
She decided, then and there, that she wouldn’t be getting a Pepper Up potion tomorrow at all. No, instead, she would write a letter to Stuart and send it through the post in Hogsmeade. She had to make him see he’d made a mistake, that distance wasn’t that big of a deal for a relationship like theirs. She had to make him see reason. She missed him too much not to.