Harry Potter One Shots

Hopeless Romantics and Realists

All rights belong to the author, ChickyGirl

Hermione remembered when she first asked her mother what love was, and it was a confusing answer. It has puzzled her since the day she asked it, all the way up until she was eighteen years old.

"Mummy? What is love?" The little girl with the bushy hair and the slightly buck teeth asked her mother who sat beside her on the couch.

The girl's mother looked up from the book about a princess waking from a deep sleep as the gift of true love's kiss was bestowed upon her, smiling at her little girl who was so intelligent, but knew nothing of the world just yet. Smoothing a hand over her head, she said, "Well, my love...There are two kinds of people in this world: Hopeless Romantics, and realists. A realist just sees that face and packs it in with every other person they've seen before. A hopeless romantic becomes convinced that the Gods put them on earth to be with that one person they find themselves wanting to spend their life with."

"Which one are you Mummy? A hopeless romantic, or a realist?" Little Hermione was frustrated, it all sounded like a complicated riddle that years later she would only know the answer to.

Her mother smiled softly, biting her lip to stop her chuckle at seeing her daughter's irritated bush she always got when she couldn't figure something out. "I would say I'm a hopeless romantic." She glanced down into eyes twinkling at her from her lap as her husband, who had been pretending to be asleep during the book, now abandoned the pretense as she wound fingers through his thinning hair. Finally letting out the chuckle that had been wanting to escape as her daughter moaned... "What does love even mean?!"

She had always had a good grasp on anything intellectual, but on something as abstract and intangible as love, she drew a blank. Ultimately, this blank eventually caused problems when she and Ron had made a go at a relationship.

"I love you!" He had told her, only months after they had been together.

Hermione sighed in frustration, he had told her this before, but it still didn't make sense. "Where?" She questioned.

"What?" His face twisted in confusion even though they had had this argument many times before.

"Show me! Where is this love? I can't see it. I can't touch it. I can't do anything with your easy words. What does love even mean? I need a meaning!"

He never gave her an answer, walking away exasperated and defeated as he still hadn't gotten the three words he had wanted back from her.

She had thought things were finally back to normal, without him all the meaningless words that she still didn't understand. She was wrong.

The words "I love you" came back to haunt her once again.

He tried again as he bent down on one knee, holding up a beautifully simple ring.

She sighed once more, tears forming in her eyes. "No you don't."

"Yes I do! Why can't you just tell me it back for once, Mione?" He was defeated, he knew what was coming next as her head bowed down, covering her face with her wild curls he thought made her look so much like a fierce lion when she was mad.

"I can hear it. I can hear some words, but... I don't understand it!" She sobbed, covering her mouth with her hand, "I don't think I can do this anymore." People aren't meant to be together forever, she thought. What happened? Why didn't it work out? What always happens I suppose... life.

Life did happen, Hermione smiled to herself in a room full of people, drawing odd glances as she wasn't talking to anyone. She stared into space and thought of words like love, and how she had once thought they didn't mean anything.

She had once thought... There's no such thing as love, it's just a fantasy to give our lives meaning so that we spend them looking for something you can't even understand in the first place.

How wrong she was.

If you're looking for the word that means caring about someone beyond every rationality and wanting them to have everything that they want no matter how much it destroys you... It's love! And when you love someone you just, you don't stop. Ever. Even when people roll their eyes and call you crazy, especially then!

She had found the man that finally made her believe. A man that made her feel crazy and happy at the same time, and not care about anyone else's opinions except how she felt herself deep in the pit of her stomach. She met his black eyes from across the room, smiling even wider as his own thin lips turn up into a involuntary curl at the sight or her. I think you know when you feel it. Love is always patient and kind, and dumb and blind.

She got up from her spot in between Harry and Remus, ignoring their looks of confusion as she stepped up to the professor they hated with a passion. The man who had shown her what it was like to feel with every fibre of her being, and that outward appearances and opinions mean nothing when you're with the person you love. Love is totally nonsensical, but we have to keep doing it, or else were lost, and love is dead and humanity should just pack it in.

There was a question in his eyes... are you ready?

She stepped up to him, the chattering around them dying down as their chests brushed... I'm ready.

She wrapped her hands up in his frock coat underneath the robes she loved seeing him in, his went around her waist, and their lips met as the silence turned into a roar. Love is what we do darling, there's no stopping it.

Hermione later asked her mother after several hours of contemplating, "Did Daddy make you a hopeless romantic?"

"Yes, he did, little love," was her answer.

"So you can't control it? It just happens?" She yawned sleepily, snuggling more into her warm parents.

"It just happens. Love knows no bounds, it is a crazy ride with no end."