The Affair

Chapter Twenty: The Real Truth







We are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect. – Henry David Thoreau







Harry Potter walked into the small pub at the corner of Knockturn Alley with a heavy heart. He had followed his best friend and brother-in-law from work after watching him send an owl to Hermione claiming he was working late again. While he did work a lot of overtime he wasn’t working nearly as much as he told his wife. Harry had kept silent, not wishing to cause any more problems for them by revealing Ron’s perfidy.





More often than not when he said he was working he could be found sitting in this same, skanky little pub nursing a bottle of ale and staring out the window. Harry saw him immediately sitting in a booth, his head bent, his hands wrapped around a bottle peeling the label. He wouldn’t pretend to understand what Ron and Hermione were going through, he couldn’t imagine how it must hurt to lose their child.





The night Oliver was born Harry had sat in the nursery of his own house, cradling his one year old son James to his chest all night long. He had tried to imagine life without that little boy but the pain was unbearable. He had watched from afar as they slowly pulled apart, the bond that the couple once shared slowly unraveled beneath the weight of their loss.





Hermione had chosen to shut out the world and grieve. For nearly a year she remained holed up in the house crying, mourning, getting it out of her system while Ron turned to work and alcohol. He chose to pretend like it never happened, like Oliver had never existed. Now, as Hermione was emerging, having gone through the range of emotions one would expect, Ron was withdrawing deeper, his grief still festering inside him.







“Can I join you?” Ron looked up to see Harry and his shoulders slumped as his friend slid into the bench across from him.







“You followed me?” Ron continued to peel the label from his bottle.









“I did. I’m worried about you, mate.” Harry looked up when a barmaid approached and ordered himself a pint.







“Don’t be. Go home to your family, Harry.” He said, reaching into his robes and withdrawing a pack of cigarettes.





“You should do the same.” Harry said. “Hermione would kill you if she knew you were smoking.” Ron lit up and took a deep pull off the fag before exhaling slowly.







“She doesn’t care.” He said, turning to look out the window.







“That’s not true, Ron. Mione loves you; she’s hurting too you know.” He said.







“Have you seen her lately?” Ron asked. “She went back to work recently.”







“I know, she said she is working for Lucius Malfoy. She looked like she was enjoying it.” Harry eyed Ron curiously, wondering what was going on inside his head.







“She is. She’s happy. She smiles a lot now. I come home and she’s in the kitchen making dinner singing to herself like she used to.” He emptied his bottle and waved towards the barmaid for another.





“That’s a good thing, Ron. You want her to be happy, don’t you?” Harry watched his friend with a heavy heart. He wished he knew what to do for him.





“I do, but I want her to be happy with me and she isn’t.” He took another drag and a derisive smile tugged at his lips. “She says that she and Malfoy are friends. Oh, I’m sorry, she calls him Lucius. He is the one putting the smile on her face.”







“There is no reason why they shouldn’t be friends. He has been through a lot in his life, seen things, done things that change a man. She wouldn’t befriend him if he wasn’t a changed man.” Harry knew Hermione well enough to know she would never make friends with Lucius unless he was a better man.





“Yeah, well I’m not so certain that they are just friends.” Ron sneered, tilting back his bottle and chugging the ale.





“Oh for fuck’s sake, Ron! Surely you don’t think….Hermione and Lucius? Why in the world would you ever think that?” Harry found the idea laughable but he could see that Ron wasn’t amused.





“Call it a hunch. Since she’s been working for him she’s changed. She fixes herself up; she’s been going out shopping and doing things around the house. She looks so damned beautiful, Harry, I had forgotten how beautiful she was.” Ron sighed wistfully. “She won’t let me touch her.”





“She’s been through so much, Mate, maybe she’s just not ready.” Harry said softly, a bit uncomfortable.





“No, it’s me. She cried…she looked….I felt like…I felt like some kind of rapist or something.” He ground the cigarette butt into the ashtray roughly, an agonized grimace on his face. “I’ve lost her. I lost my son and now I have lost my wife.”





“Ron, you haven’t lost her. She is at home waiting for you every night and where are you? Here, drinking to all hours.” Harry saw him cringe but knew he had to take a hard line with Ron, he had to be brutally honest or he just wouldn’t get it. “If you want to make her happy, if you want back in her bed then you have to be home with her.”





“I can’t stand it there, Harry. Ol…Oli…the baby’s room is still just as it was the day we went to the hospital, like it’s still waiting to welcome him home. The house feels wrong…empty.” He shook his head as though trying to shake the thoughts free but no matter what he did they wouldn’t let go.





“Do you love her?” Harry asked softly.







“Yeah, I love her.” He answered. “But I don’t think I can make her happy, Harry. Lucius has made her smile more in the last month than I have in the last year. All I do is make her cry or make her angry.”







“Look, I doubt very seriously that anything is going on with Hermione and Lucius. I’m sure they just talk about books and the like, from what I understand he loves books nearly as much as Mione. Besides, he would never look at Mione that way.” Harry took a drink of his beer to hide his amusement at the thought.







“Why not? What’s wrong with her? She’s beautiful, smart and funny…why wouldn’t he look at her that way?” He looked affronted.





“Yes, she is all those things. But its Lucius, no matter what they have now, they have a past. Not to mention the fact that he’s married and Hermione IS muggleborn. She isn’t his type.” Harry said. “Go home, Ron. Go home and talk to your wife. Watch a movie, hold her hand, go for a walk…just do something before doing nothing costs you everything.”









~@~











Draco settled into one of the thickly padded Queen Anne chairs inside the Malfoy’s theater box. His mother arranged her gown artfully around her chair and angled herself towards the stage making sure that her profile was flattering to anyone who might look her way. Draco had to admit that his mother was vain. Appearances were important to her and she took great pains to keep them up.





“We should have invited father, Fiddler on the Roof was always a favorite of his.” Draco said conversationally.







“He wouldn’t have come. No doubt he is holed up in that dusty old library of his with his nose stuck in a book. Assuming he’s not cavorting with that mudblood librarian he is so fond of.” She sniffed.







“Hermione Weasley?” Draco didn’t look at her, he was afraid that if he did she would see his own suspicions regarding his father’s relationship with Hermione.







“Yes, spends all his time with that muggleborn bookworm. He doesn’t think I notice him smiling all the time, whistling to himself.” She rolled her eyes and curled her lips in disgust. “I see them all the time walking on the back lawn down by the lake. He takes his lunch with her every day and half of the time he is late for dinner. He thinks he is getting away with it, but I am no fool, I know what’s going on there and it’s nothing good.”







“They are but friends who share a common love of the written word, mother. There is nothing to get yourself worked up over.” Draco lied. He adored his mother and saw her as being delicate and easily wounded.







“Is that what he told you?” She asked. She had sent Draco to speak to his father previously but he hadn’t said much about it.





“It is, I also had the opportunity to observe them. They are simply two bibliophiles who enjoy debating and conversing about literature, nothing more.” The lies came easily thank goodness. He couldn’t tell her the truth, that when his father looked at Hermione the air fairly sizzled with sex magic. Seeing them together it was clear that they had feelings for each other but he opted not to think on it too hard, it was too disturbing.







“I suppose you are right, it is just disturbing to see your father so….cheery.” She said, her chin lifting haughtily in the air.







“Are you more troubled by the idea of him possibly having an affair or is it him possibly being happy that bothers you?” Draco asked. Narcissa looked over her shoulder at her son, her lips pursed smugly. She refused to answer and that was answer enough for Draco. His mother really could care less whose bed his father shared, she just didn’t want him to be happy.





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Updating tonight because I have to be in early tomorrow and working late on top of that…will update again on Sun….









So…are you shocked? Ron isn’t cheating, he’s just deeply depressed and drunk all the time…and Draco is beginning to see the truth of things…..







Thanks for all the well wishes, everyone is well once again, lets hope it stays that way! And thanks again to everyone who is reading and for such wonderful comments. You make me blush and make me feel very very proud to have tackled such a difficult subject and more willing to explore other, riskier plots I have toyed with but haven’t been brave enough to explore. So thank you all!!!!