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The last time they’d spoken, she’d been wearing that vibrant red color he loved on her. She’d just turned eighteen then, already a woman and beautiful, though she still smiled up at him like she was still the timid, brilliant fifteen-year-old girl fumbling with her identity behind books she had been when they met. He remembered thinking that she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever had the honor of conversing with, all understated grace and power, and the most beautiful woman he’d ever met besides his mother.
If there was no other reason for him to be here, that had been enough. He owed that fifteen-year-old girl his heart, she’d kept it close he thought. He owed her his sanity as she had been there to help him make sense of the insanity of being a teenager burdened with such fame and expectations.
He’d owed her even more as she’d helped put together the pieces of his broken honor after the Imperious Curse.
More than his debt to her, he loved her, so here he was in London looking at a letter from Harry Potter and no understanding of how that vibrant young woman could be gone.
I’m sorry, Viktor. Please come to the memorial service. I know she would have wanted you there.
The war was over. Well and truly over with Voldemort’s death and the rounding up of the Death Eaters. From their conversations, he knew that she would go back to her life. Perhaps marry the sniveling, spineless boy from the Yule Ball who had made her cry. He wondered if perhaps he had grown up over the course of the war. Perhaps he had. Perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps she had as well… but he would never know now.
That didn’t matter now as he carried himself and the letter towards the appointed meeting place. Wizards didn’t have memorial services unless there was no body to bury. Even if there was only a mangled corpse, wizards buried their dead. Harry looked up as he entered. The congregation wore solemn black. Viktor was no different with the exception of the tie he wore, a marble-like blue, a souvenir from the muggle world.
It had been her favorite color and a precious gift.
I was out with my parents when I saw this tie and thought of you.
“Viktor,” he greeted, making Ron turn around and glare at him.
No, he hadn’t grown up, even now that she was gone and death courted her, the bastard hadn’t grown up. He wanted to punch his face in, wanted to punch Harry too and ask him why they were alive and she wasn’t. He wanted to ask how she could love these two so much that she had sacrificed her life for them.
“Thanks for coming,” Harry said with a smile, patting his shoulder. “I know it would have meant a lot to her.”
Viktor nodded slowly and took his seat among the others, behind the group of redheads as Harry and Ron walked to the front to start the service. There is something off about it, something off about it all that he just can’t put a finger on. It’s Harry, he decides, his instincts telling him that something was off. Something about Harry, his letter, and maybe the service itself.
Why was there no body?
What had happened to her?
How is it that Harry had not seen fit to tell him what had happened? He knew that she and Harry were close, as close as siblings because neither of them ever really had the chance to experience that. They'd clung to one another as mutual outsiders of the wizarding world. Thus, he knew that Harry knew what Viktor had meant to her.
Perhaps he really didn’t mean as much to her as he thought...
He swallowed and stuck his hand in his breast pocket to pull out a different letter. It’s a different hand, one that he doesn’t recognize, but the words are for him, came to him at his home by air it seemed.
I miss you. Wait for me, I will explain everything.
The note had come a week before Harry’s letter, the day that the sky could have fallen, and Viktor would have never noticed.
The service is short as it seemed more fitting to weep than to speak about her. Viktor stayed for the reception, greeting other people that were there when there was just the trace of something familiar in the air. A scent that seemed to come from his past. She’d been awarded a posthumous Merlin of the First Order which Harry had accepted on her behalf as her wizarding next of kin.
“Viktor,” Harry said, licking his lips and approaching him. “I know this is… a pretty big shock for you.”
Viktor let out a shuddering breath, hunching forward in a way he hadn’t done in a long time. Maybe it makes him feel a little better like he was protecting his internal organs? He isn’t sure. They’re all a mess at the moment with instincts and facts.
“Is… hard.”
“She had a bunch of letters in her bag,” Harry said shuffling through the stack. “For a bunch of people, there’s one for you as well. Clever Hermione spelled them so only the intended person could open them and they’d come to me when she…”
He sighed and shook his head, offering him the letter and the Order of Merlin with it, “She would have wanted you to have it. God knows I have enough of her things… to… well… if you want anything, I can send it to--”
“To write letter before… is to… plan. She plan to die?”
Harry shook his head and shrugged, “I… I don’t think she planned it so much as planned for it. Hermione always had ten back-ups for every plan.”
Viktor smiled remembering her frantically pouring over books, searching for backup upon backup for everything. He remembered teasing her that she didn’t even go to dinner without a backup plan.
Just in case things go wrong, which knowing those two they most certainly will…
“Da.”
Harry gave him his letter, the box, and gave him a nod, “Thanks for coming, Viktor.”
Viktor nodded, holding the items in his hands and letting out a breath before tucking them both in his pocket. In the hours he spends speaking with the people who were so very important to Hermione, he wonders if any of them knew her as well as he thought. He’d assumed that the people she spoke about so much knew at least as many details as he did.
“She loved red,” one of the men said, almost sighing. “She used to wear it all the time.”
Hermione’s favorite color was far more complicated than that. The color of the marble countertops in her grandmother’s kitchen: a cracked and misty blue with shocks of darker navy through it. The countertop she’d learned to cook on as a little girl. He smiled remembering her standing in the kitchen at Hogwarts, commandeering a small space at one of the counters to make pita bread while he watched because it just helped her not freak out after the Dragon challenge.
She wore red because it was the closest she could get to secretly cheering for him and remaining in line with Gryffindor’s color scheme. He remembered her swiping his scarf one winter day in Hogsmeade and never regretted not getting it back. He wondered if she’d been wearing it when she died.
“Perhaps we should have buried Hogwarts: A History , or got the next edition dedicated in her memory?”
Someone laughed, “She would have loved it.”
Viktor turned from the conversation, remembering the book of wizarding poems she’d bought while they were in Hogsmeade, how much she’d marked the copy up, and how she put several protective spells over it. He’d read some of them to her in their original language as they sat together by the fire. Her grandfather had taught her a love of poetry and the romance of it, the art of science, the thrill of math, and the written word. It had been how she’d started her long life of reading. He walked outside towards the floo point and pulled the letter out to open it. Inside was a book of poems he recognized and the letter tucked into it.
“Krum!”
He turned at the sound of Ronald’s voice, placing the letter and its contents in his robes.
“Da, Weasley? You have need?”
He swallowed and extended his hand, “I just wanted to say thanks for coming, even though you hadn’t been speaking for a while.”
Viktor decided to shake the man’s hand despite the fact that Ronald was clearly misinformed. Even while they were on the run, they had never stopped writing. Her letters were a bit sporadic, but she always wrote, and he’d always written back whenever she’d given him a place to write to.
“It’s crazy,” he huffed. “Thought she was finally going to come around. We had a chance then… She’s gone like this.”
Ronald held the letter in his hand, his own opened and already read.
“To think she’s scolding me even after being gone.”
Viktor’s lips twitched, “Is of love.”
Ronald smiled and nodded, “You think so?”
Viktor nodded, “She loved you, would want you to not be sad. Be happy. War over.”
Ronald nodded, “Yeah… that sounds like, ‘Mione.”
His lips twitched again thinking of how much she hated the nickname, turning and walking into the pub. He flooed home where he could open his letter in peace. A new book of poems, marked up in her familiar handwriting though the letter was in the same hand that had sent him the note before Harry’s letter had arrived.
Dear Viktor,
There are things that I can’t explain in a letter. Things that I’ve done and you may never forgive me for--I accept that. I only ask that you let me explain. Harry knows. He didn’t understand it fully when I explained it, but he respected my decision.
If you’re reading this it means he’s done as I’ve asked and we will see each other soon.
Please hear me out.
Love,
Hermione.
He contemplated the note, confused, and licked his lips, turning in place trying to understand. A dead woman was coming to visit him? How? He knew of no means by which a spirit could traverse so much space.
A knock sounded on his front door and he went to answer it. The wards sensed no danger, but that meant nothing really as he peaked through the peephole and saw her.
Hermione was wrapped in a blue summer dress and wore a wide hat and sunglasses. She looked nervous. She’d gotten a bit darker from the warmth of wherever she’d been. Her skin was a deeper brown than he remembered, but no less glowing. He opened the door and stared at her not understanding how she was standing there from her covered hair down to her dainty, painted toes.
“Hello Viktor,” she said with a smile. “May I come in?”
“You are dead,” Viktor choked. “Vent to memorial service… How…”
She took off her sunglasses and gave him a sad smile, “It’s… a rather long--”
He pulled her close, into the house, crushing her against him.
“Is… not true… you are… here?”
She nodded, “Da, I’m here.”
He took a shuddering breath, closing the door behind her and backing her against the door as she looked up at him.
“Mila… you…”
“I will explain, I just…” she licked her lips, warm, luscious, and looked up at him with her dark brown eyes.
“Come,” he said thickly, leading her into the house and ushering her to sit down wherever she pleased. She decided to sit on the couch and watch him warily as he came to sit beside her, taking her hand and listening as she forced the words from her mouth.
It was selfish, she knew that, but after losing her parents, after losing what felt like everything, she just didn’t want to deal with it anymore. She didn’t want to look at Ronald or Harry every day for the rest of her life, the Weasleys, the streets of London and remember everything she’d lost. She just needed to be free of it.
“I wanted to start over,” she said looking at him. “No longer the Mudblood, no longer one of the Golden Trio. I just wanted to be Hermione.”
She looked at him, “Somehow, Viktor… I’m only every Hermione with you.”
He swallowed and licked his lips, taking her hands. He understood. Harry, while not pressuring or asking for anything, would inspire the kind of anxiety, worry, and need to research that she didn’t need if she meant to be healing from the war. She needed time away from all of it.
“You will not go back?”
She shook her head, “It’s better for everyone if i just stay missing. In the muggle world, I’ll soon be presumed dead.”
She'd write to Harry, check in with him every once in a while because he would worry if she didn't, but eventually, that too would fade she was sure. Harry would call if he needed her. Within the Weasley family’s embrace he would be fine, or he'd follow her advice and disappear to live quietly too.
“What will you do?”
She smiled, “Get a job, live life… apologize to you.”
He frowned, “Apologize?”
She looked at him, “I wasn’t… ever fair to you Viktor… I was too young, too confused and so very insecure that… that I was cruel without even meaning to be.”
“Was not cruel, mila,” he said with a smile. “You cannot hold all the blame for yourself.”
He let out a breath and pulled her close.
“Will you forgive me?”
Viktor kissed her head, “Da, one condition.”
She looked up at him and he grinned.
“Let me take you out for dinner, yes?”
Hermione smiled and nodded slowly. Despite himself, he leaned forward, pressing his lips to hers. She sighed with relief and wrapped her arms around his neck, grateful. The last time she’d tasted sweet, innocent, and a little uncertain. There was no uncertainty this time. She wanted him, and he had never denied wanting her. It had been enough to be driven crazy.
“Where will you stay?”
She smiled, “My grandfather’s old house in Greece. He left it to me before he died.”
“You work there now?”
She nodded, “Lead curse breaker for a private archeological department. They needed someone to start with the books.”
He smiled and nodded, “You are happy?”
“Yes,” she said. “Are you?”
Viktor smirked, “If I win World Cup, will be happier.”
She laughed, somehow she’d expected that response.
“If beautiful girl would let me date her, would be more happy.”
He smiled the way she squeezed his hand.
“I can do that.”