Everything felt like farewell, Hermione thought as she made back her way from dinner to her room. She had been late for the meal and so it had almost been as in her little vision only that she'd answered Ron's "Where you've been" with a question herself: "Harry, Ron - could you come to my room later? I've something to tell you." Ron, not exactly Mister Sensitivity 2006, first had not reckoned that the matter was serious. He'd babbled about the f****** potion essay he'd to write - but then he'd at least noticed Hermione didn't lecture him about his language and he'd seen Harry's gaze, grave and seriously laying on Hermione's.
"Oh blimey!" he's said then. "It's about the ma ..."
"... tter we shouldn't discuss in public!" Harry had finished the line for him.
Afterwards the trio sat in silence - if one could name Hermione and Harry only picking on their food 'eating'. Hermione had lost her appetite, instead of eating she'd let her eyes wander in the hall. Would she sit here again for dinner? Tomorrow at this time she'd already be Hermione Dumbledore - or could she perhaps keep her name? She didn't know - and this probably was a pretty good description of her condition in general: She did not know - not how her name would be tomorrow, not how the headmaster ('Albus!' she corrected herself for probably the 143th times) intended her to keep up with her education, not how he would or would not inform the teachers and/or students of their marriage, she didn't know how and when she'd move from Gryffindor tower to the main tower and she even wasn't entirely sure what would become to her head girl-badge. The year before as she'd got it she'd been very proud of it. But certainly she wasn't to keep it as the headmaster's wife - it would smell like nepotism. So as she now polished it - as she'd done a thousand times before - it felt like another farewell.
Now, by arriving in her chamber, she got the next. Looking around she knew, she'd only sleep one night more in this bed. And what was to become from the evenings she liked to share here with Ron, Harry and a cup of hot chocolate? Probably it was farewell to them too - or could she invite them both to the study in the main tower? Another point of Hermione's 'I don't know'-list - and actually not worth crying about, but she couldn't stop the tears now.
*****
"Actually," Hermione told her cat, meowing around her feet, "it wasn't so bad." She stood in her pajamas at the window in her room, but this time she couldn't see the main tower. The night had fallen, the main tower lay entirely in the dark, not a single gloom made it even possible to see the gray form in the stormy darkness. Hermione actually felt very tired, but her mind worked in overdrive, running through the events of the evening. As she had said: It wasn't bad. Good, Ron first hadn't got it. He'd been pretty insulted as she'd told him that marriage with him or with one of his brothers was entirely out of the question. Grumbling something like "A Weasley's obviously not good enough - okay, okay, I got it, I got it." He'd been treated to leave, but Harry had stopped him, telling him "Doesn't it get in this thick head of yours, that this isn't about you, your family or your silly pride?" Hermione didn't choose Dumbledore because she prefers him over you or one of your brothers!
Admittedly Hermione had to admit - at least to herself - that this wasn't entirely true. Comparing Dumbledore's calm and the courtesy he treated her with Ron's rambling, grumbling and nagging, Hermione wasn't so sure she wouldn't have chosen the old headmaster over Ron when asked - but she hadn't been asked. Instead Ron had shown once again his outstanding talent in hitting the wrong nail exactly on the head - he'd cried: "But Harry, don't you get it? Hermione will have to shag the old dodderer!"
This had led to a row even exceptional in the row-filled history of Hermione, Harry and Ron.
Hermione had - on the top of her lungs and furious as rarely before - probably because she'd just managed to push the thought of Dumbledore as an old man away? - thundered: "Don't you ever dare to name my soon-to-be husband an 'old dodderer' again!", only spoiling the effect a bit in lecturing Ron about all dodderers being old and this being the reason why one should never use 'old' and 'dodderer' in one line.
