This is Why I Need You

New Beginnings

A/N: No idea where this is going but I guess we'll find out together! Idk what I'm doing so please bear with me <3

Suggested music for this chapter:
The Last Song On Earth by Adam Melchor & Emily Warren
Morning is Made by Hush Kids.

xoxo

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2004 - Five Years Post-War

Hermione Jean Granger was never one to divert from the expected. All of her life she had strived to be the best she possibly could: at school, at home, and at keeping up her long-standing reputation of being the smartest witch of her age.

Throughout school, she had always done what was needed — what was right. Even during the hardest parts of the war, she acted her part and did her best for her friends and for the countless other people who counted on her, Harry, and Ron to lead the way and stand as pillars for strength and justice in the face of the tyranny and violence that was Voldemort and the Death Eaters.

After the war, the normality of life returned once more to the wizarding world. She and her other classmates graduated; some began new careers, some started families, but most, above all, tried to find meaning in the mundane. For Hermione, life became less black and white: there was no longer a villain to slay, no high-risk problem to solve. She was finally granted the opportunity to do what so many other witches and wizards of her age had not been allowed before the start of the war: she was going to live.

Really, fully live. Hermione Jean decided it was time to hunker down and find out what her true passions were; what really made her tick, what she truly enjoyed about life. After many (many) failed attempts at finding what she did like, the only thing Hermione managed to do was decide what she didn't. The list she compiled went as follows:

Things I do not like:
Baking
Yoga (what a bloody waste of time)
Ron.

After the countless years of build-up and the final release of her kissing Ron Weasley during the battle, Hermione had determined she was better off with Ron as just a friend. She knew deep down that they could never work together as a couple: she was too stubborn, too obsessed with knowledge and learning to ever entertain the thought of being with someone in that way, and he was equally brutish, unappeasable, and desperate to hold onto the threads of their old life together before the war.

Ron, as expected, did not handle the news well. Over the years, though, they learned how to forgive each other, to rekindle their friendship, and to say goodbye to their childish fancies and naive desires of being together. Their life together as a couple, Hermione knew now, would have only contained heartbreak, discomfort, and lots of arguing.

It was time to move forward, to hold tight, and to remember the foundations of her old life and friends. She now had to attempt to piece together a new version of herself after the fallout of it all.

Needless to say, the past five years of her attempt at rediscovering herself had been fruitful in many ways, disappointing in others; such was the way of life. She nurtured her love of fairness and justness, choosing to become an activist helping to defend underrepresented magical groups at Wizengamot. She slowly learned what her other passions and enjoyments were throughout the few precious years of peace and freeness she had had the pleasure of experiencing. She took up writing in her spare time, as well as collecting muggle records for her little record player her parents had purchased her years ago.

For Hermione Granger, life was starting to become something she could make sense of again, something she could enjoy without worrying about what was to come next. She was finally beginning to enjoy the expected and sometimes mundane, beginning each day like she was opening up a crispy wrapped package made just for her, inside of which contained all of the ingredients needed to thoroughly enjoy the life she had made for herself.

Although, Hermione thought, there was always one thing in her life constantly forcing her to keep herself on her toes; one thing she had gotten used to its being around, even though it was sometimes unpredictable and flighty, which kept her more adventurous side engaged and constantly excited. That thing, though, was really rather more of a person. And his name was George Weasley.