Chapter Text
Hermione Granger was exhausted.
Not just the kind of tiredness that a good night’s sleep would fix. It was the sort of exhaustion that sank into her bones, settled behind her eyes, and dragged her shoulders lower with every passing day. The end of the year was drawing near, and she’d spent the last two months with her head down, buried underneath a mountain of legislation so vast she was sure she might drown in it.
The House Elf Welfare Bill was supposed to be a success. Her triumph. A legacy she could leave behind. It was the sort of work she’d dreamed of, even when she was a student at Hogwarts. But now, in an office surrounded by towers of parchment that threatened to fall apart every time she sneezed, she wondered if that was a naive dream. Was she built for paperwork? For legalese? The jargon was endless, swamps of clauses, subclauses and amendments that all contradicted each other. Her quill hand ached constantly. If she had to handle one more rewrite, she may as well fling herself off the top of the Ministry building and be done with it.
As if work wasn’t soul-crushing enough, last week life had to twist the knife too.
Ron was moving on.
The knife shouldn’t have cut as deep as it did. She’d been the one to end it, after all—properly, this time—after two long years of fighting, then reconciling, falling back together again out of sheer habit. They’d limped along, until Hermione finally called it quits for good three months ago. It wasn’t like she wanted him to sit around pining, but Merlin, couldn’t the man have a grieving period?
Apparently not.
Harry had awkwardly come into her office at the tail end of a horrendous day. She’d already spilled coffee all over her blouse in the afternoon and no amount of scourgifies could get the stain out. Then, her boss had dumped a heap of paperwork on her desk and told her to rewrite everything. She could have wept.
Enter: Harry.
Ron has a girlfriend. Not a date. Not someone he’d just met and was seeing where things went. A fucking fully-fledged girlfriend. Just in time for Christmas. Lucky him. Bastard.
Maybe she did want him to sit home and pine for her instead.
Hermione had done the classic thing, stiff upper lip and all that, and said she was happy for him. She’d told Harry she was far too busy to talk properly. Once he’d left, she’d crawled under her desk and cried into her coffee stained blouse.
It was pathetic. Everything was pathetic. She was pathetic.
She needed to get away. Life was too difficult, too complicated, and a well-earned break was long overdue.
That night, she went online and found a holiday cottage available in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands. A cute little whitewashed one-bedroom pet-friendly sanctuary. Best of all, it was available over Christmas.
She booked it immediately.
No friends. No family. Just her, Crookshanks, and sweet, glorious silence.
She wouldn’t have to sit through an awkward Christmas dinner at the Burrow, watching Ron’s new girlfriend dazzle everyone while Molly cried into her wine because she missed Fred. Nor would she need to endure stilted conversation with her parents, who hadn’t quite forgiven her for erasing their memories of her. She didn’t blame them. But she also didn’t regret it. They were alive to be angry with her, that was what mattered.
For once in her life Hermione was going to stop performing for everyone else, stop wearing a mask where she pretended everything was fine, and just be.
Alone.
For two whole weeks.
It was perfect.
Christmas had lost its magic years ago anyway. The war had stripped away the nostalgic magic about it, leaving only hollow traditions behind. The empty chairs nobody could bear to fill. Wistful glances. Tears. Every year was a reminder of all they’d lost rather than a celebration of what they had.
This year, she was saying no to all of it.
And it felt… fantastic.
********
“Are you sure about this?” Harry asked, walking into her office without knocking—again.
He had an infuriatingly healthy glow. She glared at his annoyingly well-rested face. Marriage suited him, Auror work suited him, his entire bloody life suited him. She, on the other hand, looked like a walking cautionary tale.
“Yes,” was all she said. It was all she needed to say.
Harry tilted his head, as if he noticed the bags under her eyes that were so big they had their own bags, her pale skin, gaunt cheekbones. “I don’t know if being alone over Christmas is the best thing for you, you don’t look—”
“What?” she snapped. “I don’t look what, Harry? Like I’ve been buried alive under this—” She gestured wildly to the paperwork around her, “For months? Like I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since October? You’d be right.”
Harry winced, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I just meant you don’t look well.”
Hermione sighed, pressing her fingers to her temple. “I’m not.” She laughed slightly hysterically. “I need a break. I need to get out of here before I start hexing everything in this room. I just need… some space. I’m going to a cottage. Alone. I’m not going to die. I won’t even be that far from Hogwarts.”
“I know but—” He shook his head. “Over Christmas? Alone?”
“Yes.” Hermione rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Harry. I will be fine. I can send you a patronus if I’m not. Or apparate away. I’m a bloody witch.”
Harry sighed, silently admitting defeat. “Alright, well, will you please let me know you’re alright?”
She gave him a curt nod. “Of course, if you don’t hear from me, I’m fine, if you do—I’m not.”
“Hermione—”
“Harry,” she cut in, face softening. “I am barely holding it together, I feel like a piece of string wound up so tightly I’m about to snap. I need some time to get away, to rediscover the things I love in life. I am fine. I am not going to be in any danger, I’m going to a bloody cabin in the middle of nowhere—”
Harry opened his mouth like he wanted to interject and Hermione kept talking, refusing to give him a chance.
“I’m probably not going to speak to anyone for the entire two weeks. Which is what I want. As a woman who is nearly thirty, I have the right to choose how to spend my holidays. And this is how I want to do it.”
He swallowed, giving her a slow nod. “Alright. I understand, I just wish—I wish you weren’t going. We’ll miss you. It won’t feel like Christmas if you’re not there. It’s practically tradition—”
“Traditions come to an end,” she reminded him, smiling sadly and shaking her head. “They end, Harry. A lot has changed this year and I…” She sighed. “I need some time to get my head around it.”
“I get it,” he sighed. “Next year?”
She nodded more enthusiastically. “Yes, next year, I promise. And I’ll be at your stupid New Year party anyway. You’ll barely miss me at all.”
At the rate she was going, she didn’t know if she’d make it to next year in one piece.
******
Three days later, she set off.
This was a Muggle holiday, and she intended on doing it right. She could hardly show up to the cabin with a load of bags and her cat looking like she’d walked there. So, her little Toyota Yaris was stuffed to the brim with luggage, Crookshanks’ enchanted carrier, and enough tea and wine to last her through an apocalypse.
It was set to be a long drive. Ten hours, at least, if she was lucky.
She wasn’t lucky.
By Birmingham, the traffic was crawling. Everyone in the UK had obviously planned to drive home for Christmas on the same day. At Manchester, it started raining so hard she could barely see the road. She stopped for fuel somewhere past Carlisle, grabbed a coffee that tasted like ash, and told herself this was all part of the adventure.
Around hour eight, the further north she got, the adventure started to lose its shine.
Her shoulders were stiff, her back ached, and Crookshanks started yowling every time she hit a bump. Her car's heater had packed in, so her teeth chattered as she drove, she could hardly start casting warming spells on the motorway. How would she explain that to the police if they pulled her over?
It was pitch black by the time she passed Stirling. The motorway thinned to a main road winding through thick pine forests, headlights cutting narrow tunnels through the dark. Snowflakes started to fall, a light dusting at first, before they came down thick and fast. Her windscreen wipers were going so fast she thought they might fall off.
Somewhere a little north of Pitlochry, she pulled to the side to check her map again, cursing herself for not printing clearer instructions. The cottage host hadn’t been particularly helpful either, Hermione imagined when she gave these instructions she imagined her guests arriving in broad daylight. Not in the middle of a blizzard at night.
Drive to Carrbridge.
Take a left at the church.
Drive until you go past the red phonebox.
Turn right at the sign for Brackenlea. If you run out of houses you’ve gone too far.
Follow the road into the hills until you come across Fernbank Cottage (there will be a wooden sign and it’s hard to miss!)
The key is under the third flowerpot.
She scanned the map with her finger, but it was hard to make out the locations in the dim light of her car. Finally, she sourced Carrbridge. It looked like she still had another ten miles or so to go, but it was a straight road to get there. She breathed out a sigh of relief and got driving again.
Carrbridge came into view, a small picturesque village with houses clustered together as though they were sheltering from the icy cold. There was indeed a church—albeit one so small she barely missed it were it not for the sign.
“Red phone box… red phone box…” she muttered under her breath, frantically looking around. Another thing about Carrbridge: no lampposts. The only light she had was the ones from her headlights, shining like beacons in front of the car but offering little visibility to the pavements.
Just as she was sure she must have accidentally driven past it, she glimpsed it. “Okay, now just the sign for Brackenlea,” she told herself. “We’re almost there Crooks.”
He yowled plaintively in response.
The directions didn’t say the sign for Brackenlea was so weatherbeaten she could barely read it. Hermione went careening out of the village and had to turn around and come back, this time crawling along the road at snail's pace while she peered out the side windows. Finally, she saw it. A ramshackle sign that looked like it wouldn’t last the next storm. The wood was so rotten it was almost falling over.
The road to the cottage was even worse. It was a small dirt road, with a grass verge between the wheels that started to brush against the bottom of the car. Hermione drove slowly, her tyres crunching under the loose stone as she navigated puddles and potholes winding ominously into the mountains. Snow fell in earnest.
By the time she reached the cottage, she was one wrong turn away from a heart attack. Screw doing things the muggle way, she was never doing that again.
Fernbank Cottage was a small whitewashed house nestled among leafless trees and tangled hedgerows. Warm golden light spilled out from the windows, welcoming her in. It was like something from a painting. The tension melted from her shoulders. Her ordeal of a journey was over, and she was here. Safe for the next two weeks.
She parked out front, climbed out into the cold, and stood for a moment, just breathing in the icy air and the quiet. It was crisp, and so silent. Nothing like the city’s constant hum she was accustomed to. Snowflakes caught in her curls, melting against her cheeks.
Inside it was everything she could have hoped for.
It was tiny but impossibly cosy. The front door opened into a small sitting room with a stone fireplace, a sagging sofa covered in tartan throws and a tiny dining table with mismatched chairs. Around the corner, under the stairs, a kitchen was snugly fitted in, old crockery stacked in the open cabinets. Upstairs, she bent under the sloped roof and found a bedroom with visible wooden beams and a freshly made double bed.
She took a while gathering all her things from the car, unpacking her supplies for the next two weeks, and getting Crookshanks settled in. He walked around the place as though something might jump out of any shadowy corner and bite him, but he soon curled up in front of the fire once Hermione put a few logs on it.
She tucked her feet underneath her on the sofa, pulled out a fresh book, and poured herself a large glass of wine. Her phone had no signal, and she didn’t care. This was all she’d wanted.
Outside the snow fell harder, blanketing the world around her in white, and she felt like she could breathe for the first time in months.
********
She woke with a start to the sound of a clatter downstairs.
Hermione sat up in bed, suddenly alert. It had to be Crookshanks, and the fact that she was in an unfamiliar home. Shaking her head, she lay down to go back to sleep, when another sound made her freeze.
Footsteps. Unmistakable.
Her heart kicked into overdrive and every nerve went rigid. All those true crime documentaries she watched in the dead of night played over in her mind. A woman. In a cottage in the middle of nowhere. Alone for two weeks. She was basically asking to get murdered. Nobody would even know, who would think to check? She was booked in for two weeks, and she’d specifically told everyone they wouldn’t be hearing from her.
So fucking stupid.
She sat up, grabbing the nearest object—a pillow—and held it like a weapon as she crept toward the stairs in her fluffy Christmas pyjamas. She tiptoed down the stairs, pulse thundering in her ears louder with every step, and rounded the corner into the living room—
Her eyes fell on the man sitting at the dining table, a Daily Prophet covering his face. At first she was furious, wondering if Harry had followed her all the way up here to give her one final plea to come to the Burrow.
He put the paper down and Hermione’s jaw dropped.
No. Not Harry.
Draco Bloody Malfoy was sitting at her dining table.
Hermione froze and stared at him, blinking a couple of times as though that might make him suddenly vanish. This had to be a nightmare, some kind of twisted, horrific nightmare.
He had the audacity to smirk at her. “Are you going to murder me with a pillow, Granger?”
She opened her mouth and screamed.