Frayed (Fireworks Series #9)

One kiss followed on from another, some passionate, some frantic, as if together they might find the answers to heaven and earth if only they tried hard enough. Some were teasing, there and then gone, some so slow and tender that Hermione was torn between losing herself in the moment and memorising every instant. When the couple pulled apart as if by some invisible mutual cue, their breathing was ragged but it wasn't because of any lack of oxygen.

Hermione used one hand to push George over onto his back in their nest of cushions and insinuated herself against his side. Tucking her shoulder under his arm and resting her head on his chest, she listened as his heartbeat gradually slowed to a normal rate.

"I thought you said this wasn't about the snogging," she teased.

"I said it wasn't just about the snogging," he corrected, each word a rumbling vibration against her ear. "What do you want to know?"

"Everything," Hermione admitted, returning his 'I should have known' smile, "but we can start with your favourite colour, since you managed to skip that one last time."

George pursed his lips slightly, tipping his head from side to side a couple of times before he replied with a tentative, "Pur-ple."

"Purple?" Hermione couldn't help repeating.

"That sort of pinky-purple colour."

"Lavender?"

"No!" George replied, aghast. "None of that pastel sh— stuff."

"Magenta?" Hermione guessed.

George shrugged. "Do I look like I read colour charts for a hobby?" he asked. "Anyway, there's that, or I quite like a nice bright green or maybe yellow or orange."

Hermione tipped her head back to give him the full benefit of her quizzically raised eyebrow. "You're not taking any psychedelic drugs you haven't told me about? No plans to invent time-travel and go back to the sixties?"

"Cheeky bint!" George accused, softening his words by briefly tightening the arm around her back and brushing his lips against the tip of her upturned nose. "Favourite subject?" he enquired.

"Arithmancy," Hermione answered, without even the tiniest hesitation. "I like the elegance of it, the way you start off with something complicated and reduce it down into its simplest terms... and it's precise, no grey areas. You work it out and you get an answer and you know that it's right."

When George didn't respond immediately, she prodded him in the ribs with an impatient finger. "You?"

"Hermione," he replied.

"No-o-o. Me, Hermione," his girlfriend pointed out, rolling her eyes. "You, George."

"Nope, you're my favourite subject," he clarified. "If there was an NEWT in Hermione Granger then I'd be aiming to get an 'O'."

Hermione opened her mouth to give a suitably flippant and witty riposte, but none came. Instead, her face seemed almost to crumple in on itself and she lashed out with an open-handed slap on George's bare chest. Using the hand for leverage, she pushed herself away from him. "Don't! Just stop doing that," she told him, shocking herself both with the vehemence of her initial response and the way her words died away to a whisper.

"Hermione?" George asked, sitting up and sliding the knuckle of one finger under her chin, trying to get her to look at him.

Hermione resisted the pressure, making it clear that she wouldn't be coaxed.

George let his hand drop, not stopping her when she backed away.

She clambered onto the couch, tucking her skirt up behind her upraised knees and wrapping her arms tight around her calves.

"Don't what?" George tried again. "I wasn't making fun of you. Maybe I wasn't a hundred percent serious, but I meant every word. I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it."

"Don't you get it?" Hermione spat out. "If you didn't mean it, if it was just some line, then it wouldn't matter." She barely managed to stop it coming out as a whine, but only at the cost of what she suspected were some of her least attractive facial expressions. "You say these things and I know you're telling the truth and my stomach ties itself up in knots and I forget to breathe and it's not fair. Not when any day now you're going to take it all away and, right here, right now, I hate you for doing that to me."

"What do you want me to do?" George demanded. "Make promises I can't keep? I don't know how long I've got before I get kicked out of here, but do you really think it would be any easier if we were here till the end of the school year?"

"I don't know!" Hermione admitted. "But what I do know is that it feels like we're ripping each other apart. It's... It's like... eating chocolates when you know they're laced with rat poison. They taste like heaven when they're melting in your mouth, but you know there'll be hell to pay later."

The wall clock ticked out several disproportionately loud long seconds while George wordlessly pushed both hands through his hair, shaking several strands free of his fingers when he finished. Then, he levered himself to his feet, kicking cushions left and right, a couple bouncing off the mesh fire guard, until he had cleared an area about a foot wide where he could pace.

After half a dozen passes in front of the fire, he stopped dead as he pivoted for the turn, his attention fixed on the miserable huddle of girl. "You're right!" he told her, making the concession sound more like an accusation. "We've got maybe a day, maybe a week, maybe even a month before I go and when I do there won't be a day goes by where I don't miss you. Just the idea of a day without you in it hurts, but I'm not about to give up on this because I think you're worth it."

Hermione refused to lift her eyes to his, not able to meet the challenge implicit in his words.

"I'll miss you and it'll hurt and I think that's a good thing. That's what tells me I don't want to let you go. That's why I'll be waiting for you... When you're finished with Hogwarts, when neither of us need to answer to the Order any more, when you and Harry and Ickle Bro' have finished trying to worry me into an early grave doing whatever the hell it is you heroes will no doubt have to do on your own... When it's all over and the two of us can be together."

"You can't know that!" Hermione argued.

George responded by hunkering down in front of her, resting his hands on the front edge of the sofa, one either side of her feet. This time there was no avoiding his gaze. "I know me. I know how I feel about you. I know you, not as well as I want to, but well enough to know that once you call someone your friend you'll stand by them, even if they act like complete gits. I know I can't be by your side in a physical sense most of the time but I also know that I'll do whatever I can so that you know I'm there in spirit.

I can't know any of the rest of it," he conceded. "That's true. The Ministry might not be willing to admit it, but there's a war on and neither one of us is the kind to stand back and let someone else do our fighting for us. But if I don't believe that, some day, when the dust settles, there'll be a little cottage by the sea, then what the hell are we fighting for anyway?"

"That's my cottage," Hermione answered, trying to sound mildly aggrieved and offer a conciliatory smile at the same time. The death-grip around her legs gradually loosened and she let her feet slip to the floor.

"Well, I was hoping that by the time you got around to getting a place of your own that you might let me stay over..." George offered by way of explanation, as he stood up enough to scoop her into his arms, "or if the shop takes off, then maybe I might have my own cottage and you could stay over." Cradling her close, he took a seat at one end of the settee and swung his legs up so that Hermione was almost back in her former position, only with him sitting lengthwise on the sofa beneath her.

"Maybe, on one condition," she bargained, draping one arm around his neck. "I get right of veto when it comes to decorating the shared rooms. I don't think I could sleep in a fluorescent green bedroom."

"Bossy wench!" George protested. "Who says I planned to let you sleep?"

"Well, if you don't, I'll be ratty and bad tempered and I'll make what just happened here look like... the ravings of a hysterical, mentally-deranged, hormonal teenager." She gave him a half-hearted smile that didn't reach her over-bright eyes and paused for a second or two before she continued. "I promised myself I wouldn't do this. I told myself that I had to enjoy whatever time we have and do all the bitching and crying or whatever after you'd gone, but it's just..."

"Impossible," George finished for her. "You can't have something like that hanging over you and just pretend it isn't happening. You're not hysterical and you're not mentally-deranged. As for that last part, I know better than to touch that one with a dragon keeper's pole. You're human... like the rest of us. You probably are tired. You're stressed and just maybe you're a little bit scared about what's going to happen after I'm gone... and you're not the only one. If it makes you feel any better, I wanted to wring Ron's neck when he set up that fifth game of chess. I probably would have done if Fred hadn't been there."

Hermione gave her first genuine smile since the argument began. "It shouldn't help, but it does," she said, resting her head on his shoulder and wriggling around until she found the comfiest possible position.

"Glad to hear it," George replied. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "Still hate me?" he whispered.

"More than ever," Hermione answered as she let her eyes drift closed.