Hermione skateboarder fic
Title: All Too Sweet To Last
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG (Hermione, gen)
Length: 2000 words
Summary: Sixth year ended abruptly when Hermione blew up Hogwarts, forty-five Death Eaters, and Harry Potter in a blast of blue magical flame that could be seen at a distance of thirty miles.
AN: In this story, Hermione becomes a skateboarder. Blame for this lies at the feet of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
snarkhunter and flowery_twat for this post and subsequent comments. Hope you two enjoy this one. Also, thanks to moireach for the beta.
***
Sixth year ended abruptly when Hermione blew up Hogwarts, forty-five Death Eaters, and Harry Potter in a blast of blue magical flame that could be seen at a distance of thirty miles. For this she was awarded the Order of Merlin, First Class; a thousand galleons; the grateful adoration of the wizarding public, including an article in the Daily Prophet declaring her "The Girl Who Ended the Second War"; and the honor of identifying Harry's charred body.
Hermione's plan had gone off with only two hitches. First, she had apparently not managed to lure Voldemort to the castle, despite using Harry as bait. (You-Know-Who's body wasn't in the wreckage, although the Ministry of Magic officially considered him missing, presumed dead. No one really believed the dead part, though.) Second, she had severely underestimated Harry's suicidal tendencies, and had not anticipated that instead of leaving Hogwarts after the Death Eaters were assembled, he would purposefully stay and get blown up too. Small miscalculations, but she should have known better on both counts.
Her parents accompany her to the award ceremony, conspicuous in their Muggle Sunday best, and the wizards in attendance keep looking at them sidelong, intrigued and a little afraid. Her parents look awkward and out of place, small and gray and irrelevant in the room full of colorful robes. The wizards, on the other hand, look childish and ridiculous. As Cornelius Fudge shakes her father's hand, Hermione is suddenly, brutally embarrassed for everyone present.
Mrs. Weasley won't stop watching Hermione, concerned and motherly, and under her gaze Hermione feels guilty, naked and exposed. Ron, on the other hand, won't look her in the eyes. He hasn't really spoken to her since the explosion - after all, he and Harry may have helped, but it was her plan. She is the one who gets the medal, first class. Ron got second class. (Harry got first class, but posthumously. After Hermione refused to accept it on his behalf, it was placed in a display case in the Ministry of Magic.)
Cornelius Fudge pins the Order of Merlin to the front of her robes, and she almost can't stand it. As soon as she and her parents get into the car to go home, she unpins it and puts it in her pocket. She wishes she had the nerve to throw it away entirely, into a river or an ocean or something, but she's not really the type for big dramatic gestures.
Instead she finds herself carrying it around with her all the time in the pocket of her jeans, now that she's switched back to Muggle clothes. She fingers its sharp edges absently as she walks, or holds the metal so hard that a mirror image of the words "First Class" becomes embossed in the palm of her hand. This summer there is no trip to the Weasley's planned, no working to save the world, no birthday present for Harry. Just a long Muggle summer stretching ahead of her, and she is so very tired that this is a relief. No owls come, and she doesn't feel like writing anyone back anyway. Her parents, at least, are happy to have her around. Even if they are working most of the time.
She begins to spend her days at the park, reading. Muggle books, because reading about magic is too... well, she doesn't want to. She is tired of being a witch, tired of arithmancy, even tired of reading her dog-eared copy of Hogwarts: A History. (New edition forthcoming in September, detailing the castle's final destruction at the hands of one Hermione Granger.)
There's a group of Muggle kids about Hermione's age always there in the park in the afternoons, dressed in baggy clothes, practicing tricks on their skateboards. She watches them out of the corner of her eye, glancing up from her copy of The Great Gatsby occasionally to see them fall off.
Two weeks go by like this. Hermione reads to keep from worrying about where Voldemort is, and whether Ron will ever speak to her again, and whether Harry's death is completely her fault or only partly. She watches the skateboarders and almost wishes she were just a Muggle kid, skating in the park. She tries to stop herself, but every day she sits a little closer to them.
The day that she starts Franny and Zooey, the tallest of the boys flops down on the bench next to her. "What're you reading?" he asks without preamble. Taken aback, she shows him the cover without saying anything. He nods. "I liked Catcher in the Rye better, but that one's okay."
"Yeah," she says. He has curly blond hair that hangs in his eyes, and is sort of cute, in a Muggle kind of way. When he skates his jeans hang so low that sometimes she can see his underwear. Not that she's thought about this much, just an observation. "I like it so far."
"So what's your name?" the boy asks, pushing his hair out of his face with one hand.
"Hermione," she says apologetically.
He laughs. "That's weird."
"I know," she says.
"I'm Will," he volunteers.
"That's not," she says. "Weird, I mean." She doesn't know how to talk to Muggles anymore, she notices, as she stumbles over her words. This is troubling. If she said, 'You-know-who', he wouldn't know who.
Maybe that's kind of nice, actually, now that she thinks about it.
"You skate, Hermione?" he asks.
"No," she says.
"You want to try it? You can use my board."
"Oh, um. I don't know. That's okay, really. Thank you, though."
"C'mon," he says, getting up and extending his hand to help pull her up. "It's fun. You sit here watching every day, you should give it a try."
She is surprised, again. "I don't watch," she mumbles, but he just shoots her a crooked smile and grabs her hand.
Will shows her how to push with her foot, but she can't even stay on long enough to make it go three meters. "Keep trying," Will says, and holds her arm to help.
After ten long and embarrassing minutes, she can do it on her own, and Will goes to sit in the shade of a tree next to a boy called David. At first she feels self-conscious as she practices making it go, but then she realizes nobody is really watching her. She begins to focus on making her muscles do what she wants them to, and before she knows it, an hour has gone by when she hasn't thought about Voldemort or Harry or Ron or magic at all. That's a new record.
She lets Will have his skateboard back, and sits in the sunshine to watch some more. One of the girls sits by her, a Walkman in one hand. "What're you listening to?" Hermione asks tentatively.
"Oh," the girl - Jude, Hermione thinks her name is - says, "just Green Day. You like them?"
Hermione shrugs. "I don't know. I don't listen to a lot of Mu-... popular music."
Jude laughs. "Um, okay. You want to listen?" She holds out her headphones, and Hermione puts them on, and after that they're friends.
Two days later Hermione changes some of her award galleons into pounds and buys a skateboard, a Green Day tape, and jeans a size too big. She starts coming home for dinner with her knees scraped and clothes torn, and her mother gives her that look, the disappointed one. (What are you getting yourself into, Hermione?) But she's too tired to care anymore, and anyway, ever since she started at Hogwarts, her parents haven't really known what to make of her. There is that bit of fear, that bit of strangeness every time they look at her, and in a way, they at least understand the skateboard propped outside their front door better than the wand she keeps in her back pocket.
She wears more eyeliner and buys some black t-shirts. When Jude asks her if she wants to bleach their hair together, she says yes, and afterwards she doesn't quite recognize herself in the mirror. Which is maybe the point, but maybe not. For once she is trying not to think too much.
She spends hours and hours making her body do what she tells it, first just steering the board. After a couple of days like that she learns to do a body varial, jumping while she's moving and coming down facing the other direction. She takes some bad falls, but has never felt more accomplished than the day she can finally land it, every single time. More accomplished than the first time she made a feather move (Wingardium leviosa!) or transfigured a match into a needle.
Will smiles at her, and starts to teach her how to do an ollie. In the hottest part of the afternoon, he buys her an ice lolly at the corner store, and when they're leaning against the hot brick and she's concentrating on keeping it from dripping on her hand, he kisses her. He tastes like summer and artificial cherry and surprise; nothing like Ron, she thinks, and kisses Will back.
The days pass like this: she practices skating way too late under the streetlights, kisses Will outside her front gate, and puts antibiotic ointment on her skinned knees. She plays MxPx and The Offspring at full blast when she's home, and Jude is trying to talk her into starting a girl band together. Hermione is slated to play bass. One day when she puts her hand in her pocket, the Order of Merlin has fallen out and is nowhere to be found. She doesn't miss it.
It's a Thursday when she finally masters the ollie, jumping over Will's skateboard, lain on its side. She lands it over and over, and can't stop beaming, even when Will's tongue is in her mouth. "Did you see?" she murmurs, and he grins at her.
"I saw."
He walks her home in the cool darkness, skateboards dangling from their hands, his arm draped over her shoulders. She feels like summer, skin salty from dried sweat, grass stains on her clothes, elbows scabbed over.
When they turn onto her street, Will says, "What's that?" and stops walking abruptly. Hermione looks at him first, his face and hair colored green in the light coming from whatever it is. And she knows before she looks, but turns her head to see the Dark Mark anyway, hovering over her house. The familiar green skull with the snake coming out of its mouth, bright and menacing. "Is that fireworks or something?" Will asks. "Why isn't it fading faster?"
Hermione has her wand in her hand, without noticing how it got there. She turns it in her fingers and feels like she wants to cry.
"I don't like it," Will says. Then, in a plaintive voice, "Hermione?"
She looks at him and stands on tiptoes to touch his face. "Obliviate," she whispers, and watches his face become slack. As he ambles in the direction of his house, she sits on the curb to wait for the Aurors to arrive. She cannot bring herself to approach the house.
My parents are dead, she thinks, and picks at a decal on her skateboard. My parents are dead and Harry is dead and I can ollie and the summer's over and I don't want to do this anymore, I'm done.
Moody apparates beside her with a pop. "Merlin's beard," he says quietly, looking at the Mark. "Are you all right, Hermione?"
"Not really," she says, and he looks at her like he would say something if he were someone else. He puts his hand on her head, large and warm, for just a moment before he heads toward the house with his wand at the ready.
Ten minutes ago I was sixteen, Hermione thinks, and hugs her knees.
***
END
melancholy
