All in the Name of Research

“I just don’t get it.” Hermione made herself laugh, for fear of crying instead. “Everyone around me has what I want. A real relationship. There’s Bill and Fleur, Percy and Penelope, Fred and Angelina, George and Alicia, Ron and Lavender, and in two days, you and Harry will be married. Why can’t I find someone who treats me with the respect I deserve?”

“Love happens when you least expect it,” Ginny responded, trying to comfort her best friend. Ginny was worried about Hermione; she had never seen her act this way. While Hermione had been a bit hysterical back in her sixth year at Hogwarts, when she had found out about Ron and Lavender, her attitude had been totally out of character and had never happened again, not even when she had taken her N.E.W.T.s after not attending Hogwarts at all in what should have been her final year of school. Now, to see her four years later, sitting on the porch at the Burrow, disheveled and teary, nearly drunk from the amount of Firewhisky she was consuming, no one would have thought this was the Hermione Granger who had helped the Boy-Who-Lived save the wizarding world by defeating Voldemort.

“I haven’t been expecting it, not at all. I’m so sick of hearing that phrase. I’m twenty-two, for Merlin’s sake. I’m turning into an old maid,” she cried.

“Stop being so dramatic, Hermione. You are most certainly not an old maid. You just need to get out more.”

Hermione laughed bitterly. “Every Friday night, I leave the dragon colony and head to the pub in town. I mingle, I talk to men, but all they are thinking about is taking me into the back alley for a shag up against some filthy wall. I’m worth more than that.”

“Yes, you definitely are,” Ginny agreed, rubbing her hand over Hermione’s back.

“Ginny,” Harry called as he came out the back door of the Burrow. “Your Mum needs you to do a final fit on your wedding robes.”

Ginny looked back and forth from her fiancée to her best friend. “I’ll be right there,” she told Harry. “Let’s go in and get you to bed, Hermione. You’ve had enough to drink.”

“No, it’s okay. I want to calm down before I come inside. I don’t want your Mum to see me this way and worry about me. She has enough to worry about with the wedding.”

“If you’re sure,” Ginny demurred, taking Hermione’s hand and squeezing gently. “Don’t stay out too much longer, it’s going to get quite chilly,” she warned as she headed in the house.

“Chilly, frosty, cold, it’s all relative. It’s the expression every man I’ve ever dated has used to describe me. Why can’t I find someone who wants more than a shag up against a cold wall in a back alley?”

“Maybe you’re dating the wrong blokes,” a voice said as a figure stepped out of the shadows from around the back of the house.

Hermione was surprised to see it was Charlie. She had assumed that after dinner he had headed off to the Leaky Cauldron for drinks, just like he had the last three days he had been home.

“How long were you standing there?” Hermione asked him, clearly embarrassed.

“Long enough,” he revealed, taking a long swig of the bottle of butterbeer he was holding.

Hermione dropped her head into her hands. She was mortified that Charlie had overheard her whining and crying to Ginny. She and Charlie had a unique relationship, to say the least. They had never really known each other very well until Hermione had undertaken a project from the Ministry to continue researching uses for dragon’s blood. When she had started, there had been twelve. Now five months into the project, she had twenty-one valid uses and was working on more every day. When she had been given the assignment, she had been informed that the Ministry wanted her to work at an actual colony so she could work with fresh dragon blood. She had chosen to transfer to Romania because she would have at least one acquaintance there already. Molly had arranged for Hermione to move into the second bedroom of Charlie’s tent at the colony, and while at first it had been uncomfortable, a close friendship had blossomed between the two.

When they had started spending their evenings together, having discussions on a vast range of topics, it hadn’t taken long for the feelings that Hermione had suppressed in her fourth year of Hogwarts to resurface. She had fancied herself in love with Charlie after being with him at the Quidditch World Cup and then seeing him at Hogwarts, helping out with the first task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament. She had thought it had been just a girlhood crush, especially when Viktor Krum had come along to make her forget about Charlie. Being back living with him had just brought all the old feelings rushing back. The problem was that Charlie saw Hermione as a little sister and not a woman.

She knew that was the fact that had her the most upset, being back in a setting where it seemed everyone was in love. The one man she wanted to notice her was oblivious to the fact that she had developed feelings for him. As depressed as she had been about her love life in Romania, she had always managed to keep her true feelings hidden from him, but now it was all for naught. He had heard every bloody word out of her mouth.

“You don’t give yourself enough credit, you know,” Charlie mused, pulling Hermione out of her thoughts. When she caught his gaze, he offered her his hand. “Let’s take a walk.”

Hermione felt a chill in her spine as she grasped his hand, allowing him to help her up off the porch stairs. She swayed a bit, unsteady on her feet from all the alcohol, but Charlie grasped her waist and pulled her close, restoring her balance.

“Aren’t you happy in Romania?” Charlie questioned.

“Of course I am,” Hermione vowed. “Sometimes it just gets so lonely at the colony.”

“Hear, hear,” Charlie agreed. “So you go to the pub to get away, to try to relax. Don’t you realize what kind of men you find in a pub, Hermione?”

“Not all of them are drunken bastards,” Hermione recalled. “Of course, the ones that aren’t are already married with the required 2.5 children.”

Charlie laughed, glad to hear some sarcasm back in Hermione’s voice. He didn’t like when she was melancholy. “You need to find a bloke that suits you. One who can handle your domineering attitude, one who knows how to treat a woman, who makes her feel like a lady, one who knows what the important things in life are, like family, love and respect. That’s what kind of man you need.”

“Unfortunately, those kind of men don’t grow on trees,” Hermione pointed out. “I guess I could run an ad in the Daily Prophet for a man. Lonely, Know-It-All Woman seeks Single Man who knows more than two words, isn’t interested in sex on the first date and has a close relationship with his family. I could see that getting loads of replies.”

Charlie chuckled. “You’re being just a wee bit sarcastic, aren’t you? I really don’t think you need to run an ad like that.”

“If I don’t run an ad, how do I meet men? It’s not as if I have them beating down my door.”

“Maybe it’s because you never close the door to your bedroom,” Charlie disclosed, as he stepped in front of Hermione to face her. “You never close the door to your bedroom in the tent because you don’t feel you have anything to hide, going to bed the way that you do. You go to bed every night with your hair in a bun and your flannel nightgown covering every inch of your pale skin. You don’t close the door because you mistakenly believe you have nothing to fear from me. You believe I see you like a little sister. The fact of the matter is, I haven’t seen you as a sister since you came to Romania. I saw a woman who I had tried to get out my head for many years. I saw a woman who had intrigued me so long ago, when she was so young that I shouldn’t have even considered those feelings.”

Hermione didn’t know what to say or do. She knew she was drunk, but she hoped she wasn’t hallucinating. Had she just heard Charlie admit to having feelings for her? “I didn’t know,” she finally stammered.

“Of course you didn’t,” Charlie responded easily. “You never tend to see what’s right in front of your eyes. I tried to get you to realize it, subtly at first, but when you didn’t pick up on it, I had to be a little more risqué. You walked in on me stripping in my room, remember? I planned that little show for you. You never put two and two together that I had just asked you to bring the mail in to me. It was an obvious set-up, but you didn’t catch on. You just blushed, apologized and ran out of the room like I had jinxed you. You hid your feelings so well that I didn’t know what to think anymore. I convinced myself you weren’t interested, so I stopped trying to get my point across to you.”

“I never said I wasn’t interested. I just never thought that you would see me as anything but Ron’s little friend,” Hermione admitted, the alcohol loosening her tongue. “I noticed you that day. I couldn’t help but notice you. You scared me, Charlie. I could barely get any work done that day, I was so frustrated. My knickers were so bloody wet all day thinking of you,” Hermione muttered. She groaned in embarrassment and hung her head as she realized what she had just admitted.

Charlie was grinning. It was strange to hear Hermione say such words as knickers and wet. It was damn arousing to hear the prim and proper woman in front of him say those words with a slight slur in a raspy voice. He could feel part of his body already reacting to her confession, but he closed his eyes and willed his body to cooperate. He didn’t want to scare her off or think he was like every other man she had met in the pub who was only interested in a shag.

“So, Hermione, you always seem to know all the answers to everything. What ever are we going to do about this attraction between us?”

Hermione could hear the teasing in his voice, even in her lulled state. “When in doubt, it’s always best to research something. You won’t know how something will turn out until you do thorough research on the subject.”

“I’ll be happy to assist you in that department,” Charlie offered, cupping Hermione’s face in his hands, rubbing a thumb over her cheek. “Now, Miss Granger, I really should get you back to the house before Mum wonders where you are. I believe one of the first things we should research is how compatible our dancing skills are. You’ll save a dance at the wedding for me, won’t you?”

“A good researcher doesn’t only do one study on something. A good researcher needs to make multiple comparisons. I believe we’ll have to dance a few times to come to an informed conclusion,” Hermione noted, feeling better than she had in months.

“I suppose that could be arranged. All in the name of research, of course,” Charlie stipulated with a smile as he led Hermione back to the house. “All in the name of research.”