Brick by Brick

Brick by Brick

War changes everything. It changes history. It changes maps. Nations disappear. Whole civilizations are obliterated or assimilated. War changes language and landscape. People disappear. Win or lose everyone loses. Innocence is lost. Friends and family are lost. Some die. Some are lost in other ways. Memories, body parts, the illusions of sure footing decades of peace create... these things too are lost. War changes everything.

***

Hermione Granger had lost a lot in the war. War had changed things for her. She had lost her two best friends. One dead, the other as good as. Private room. Fourth Floor. Closed Ward. St. Mungo's. Spending his days painting disturbing images of flames and beasts and broken bodies. He had not spoken a word since the day the Dark Lord was killed. Since the day his best friend died. Since the day he had facilitated their deaths. Since the day the world was saved.

Hermione Granger had lost a lot in the war. War had changed things for her. She lost her nerve. She lost her brilliance. She had not lost her mind, not in the way Harry had, but her mind had changed. She still loved to read and learn new things, but she could not hold on to this knowledge. Vague facts, names, dates, formulas, equations floated around in her head. She could not form them into coherent patterns. She could not remember what connected A to B or how that related to C.

And then there was her arm. Hermione had lost her arm, her wand arm, in the war. It was lost in a battle. The battle really. A battle where so many curses and hexes and spells of all kinds had been flying through the air that no one could sort out what had actually happened to her arm, much less repair it. So they had taken it away. Whatever damage had been done also made all attempts to grow a new arm useless.

She had been fitted with a Muggle prosthesis that had been charmed by wizard healers. Anyone who had not known her before, had not known how she talked with her hands, had not seen how she twisted her curls around her index finger when she was reading, would not even notice that her right arm was not the one she was born with. But she knew, and those who knew her best knew. Those who knew her best and were still here knew.

She had been in St. Mungo's for 6 months. Slowly learning to use her new arm. Slowly learning to adjust to her faded mind. She had spent the next six months in the Muggle world with her parents. By the end of that year of relative isolation she began to feel like she needed to start building her life again. There was a certain kind of comfort to be found in her childhood home, but the magical world seemed to be pulling at her heart and mind. She dreamed of Chocolate Frogs and Floo Powder. She found herself reaching for her wand rather than the light switch when she entered a dark room. She convinced her mother to take her on shopping trips to Diagon Alley.

She attended the second post war reunion of Dumbledore's Army at the Hog's Head Inn in Hogsmeade. While that was hard, it was also good. She could remember the days before the war clearly. She remembered that first Hog's Head meeting before the war had begun in earnest and although she could remember charming the sign up parchment, and the results of that charm, she had no idea now how she had done it and would not be able to repeat the feat. So it was bittersweet. But more sweet than bitter.

She knew that she would have to return to the wizarding world.

It had been hard to convince her parents that she was capable of living on her own. She had sounded very much like the old Hermione when she explained in her crisp know-it-all tone that while she may no longer be the brightest witch of her generation, she was also not a child or an imbecile. Eventually they had agreed that she could take a small apartment on Diagon Alley, above Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Shop.

They had come to know many of the shop keepers over the years and quietly asked the ones they knew best to keep an eye on their girl. Of course the shop keepers were willing to help. They remembered the days before the war. They remembered watching her, and her friends, grow up over the years. They knew that they all owed their lives to her and to those like her. She was one of the few that they could do something for -- that they could in some small way repay.

The manager at Flourish and Blotts gladly gave her a job. He worried it would be painful for her, given her loss. But she still delighted in the books, even though those she most enjoyed were those she would have thought below her long before the war.

She had a job. She had a place to live. She was finding a new life in the rubble of the old.

***

Fred Weasley had lost a lot in the war. War had changed things for him. He had lost his other half, his mirror, his twin. He had lost his little brother and his little brother's best friend who was almost a brother, an honorary Weasley. He had lost his mother, and his oldest brother. He had lost his middle brother in the worst way of all.

The Traitor. The one who now lived in Azkaban. His ambitions had made him lose his way. Fred always tried to think of him as the fussy brother who did not want to get dirty playing quidditch and would rather spend the afternoon degnoming the garden than flying. He tried to keep that image in his mind rather than the later ones. The first time he saw the Dark Mark on his brother's arm. The bitterness in Percy's eyes at the trial. The hollow look that met Fred the one and only time he had visited him in prison.

Fred Weasley had lost a lot in the war. War had changed things for him. He had lost his sharp wit. For a time he had feared he had completely lost his sense of humor. But bit by bit that had returned. He could still make people laugh. He could still make things that made people laugh. And now and then he could laugh himself. But the sharp wit, the ability to pull off the big joke, the perfect "gotcha" was lost. His had been a duet, not a solo act.

And then there was the business. There had been plans in the works for shops all over the country and even some interest in going international. There had been plans to build a factory, replacing the small workshop adjacent to the Diagon Alley store. But Fred had scraped all of these ambitions plans. The shop at Diagon Alley and the one opened after the war in Hogsmeade were all he could handle. All he wanted to handle. He kept his staff small and worked long hard hours. It was easier that way.

He converted the rooms above the Diagon Alley store into an apartment. That way he could work late without worrying his father. That way he could forget for days on end that The Burrow, its soul and spirit anyway, had been lost in the war as well. He visited his childhood home almost every weekend. Charlie and Tonks had moved in to be with Arthur. Ginny... well Ginny came home when she could. She seemed to have lost her roots in the war. She jumped from job to job, working in exotic places all over the world. Never in one place for more three months or so at a time.

Bit by bit Fred could see a new world forming in Diagon Alley. What would become the post war world was slowly being built brick by brick, day by day. Fred began to realize that he was a part of this new world. That he was in fact helping to build that world. Some days he actually spent more time thinking about he future than the past.

***

Both of them ate out two or three nights a week. Every couple of weeks at least one of those nights overlapped. The first few times they had seen each other having dinner at the Leakey Cauldron they had simply said hello and asked after one another's families.

After this had happened a few times Hermione invited Fred to join her. He had. They had been oddly shy for two people who had known each other for so many years, and been through so much together. It was as if they were becoming friends rather already being old friends, and in a way that was exactly what was happening. The war had changed things for them.

Was it Hermione or Fred who first started to pay attention to which days the other usually ate out, and planned their own week to match? Which had first suggested that they take a short walk in Muggle London after each shared meal? It had definitely been Fred that first suggested a night cap back at the Leakey Cauldron after their strolls.

As these nights became more frequent Fred realized that he could always make Hermione laugh. She delighted in the stories that would have made her narrow her eyes or scold during their school days. Hermione realized that she could keep Fred entranced with stories and information from the books she read during the day. During their school days the things she found interesting would have bored him, he would not have understood most of it and he would have mocked her. But the things she was excited about now were interesting to him too.

The first time Fred had reached across the table and taken her left hand in his she had blushed and looked away. But she had not pulled her hand away. She had let it entwine comfortably with his. The next time he had reached instead for the right hand, the artificial one, and caressed it with the same affection as the left. Her eyes had filled with tears that threatened to spill, and so again, she had looked away.

Hermione had been the one to first slide her arm around his waist as they walked on the streets of London one particularly foggy evening. He had responded by draping his arm across her shoulders and pulling her in close to his side. They both felt each others bodies relax, rather than tense, at the contact.

Before long old Tom had to kick them out of the bar at closing time more than one night each week. He hated to do it. Seeing these broken war heroes falling in love before his eyes was such a joy for him, but he needed sleep and the breakfast crowd started pounding on the door early each morning. It also occurred to him, being the experienced barman that he was, that he may be helping them move this relationship forward by requiring them to leave this safe, public place.

He was, of course, right.

Fred had come close to asking her to his place for one last drink on more than one occasion. But he hesitated. His memory of his little brother's devotion to her was one reason. His concern that her war injuries had somehow made her vulnerable, that he would be taking advantage of her, was another.

It was finally Hermione that invited Fred up to her place over the ice cream shop so that they could continue whatever conversation they had started in the streets of London, continued in the Leakey Cauldron, and still managed to be engrossed in at her door forty-five minutes after leaving the bar.

Hermione made tea while Fred built a fire. They sat on the sofa, facing each other, both sitting on one foot, knees touching, and continued their conversation. As the light danced on the walls of the room a warm glow enveloped them and time seemed not to exist.

Fred listened patiently, gently stroking her artificial arm as Hermione struggled to explain the complex interconnectivity of Muggle technology and rarely used magic. Hermione laughed herself to tears as Fred described a mishap that had occurred in the workshop that day involving a new candy product, an umbrella, and a coworker whose skin had temporarily become the color of Fred's hair.

As she laughed a strand of her wild unmanageable hair fell into her eyes and without even thinking about what he was doing Fred reached out and tucked the rogue strand behind her ear. Hermione, without even thinking about what she was doing leaned into his hand as it brushed back her hair so that her lips gently grazed the inside of his wrist.

The touch of her lips to this sensitive spot took Fred's breath away. He leaned in and kissed her, gently sucking her lower lip before pulling back to look into her eyes, to see if this was what she wanted, to see if this was what he wanted. Hermione pulled back from his kiss to look into his eyes. To see if she could see if this was real, to be sure this was not a dream. Both saw their own desires reflected in the eyes of the other. They kissed again. This time with abandon.

Was it Fred or Hermione that unbuttoned the first button of the other's shirt? Which one was it that first touched the bare skin of the others chest? It had definitely been Hermione that suggested that they move into the bedroom.

***

It was some time before Hermione completely moved into the apartment above Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. When she turned in her keys to Florean Fortescue she realized that she had lived there for just over a year.

She kept her job at the bookstore, but she also helped out at the joke shop from time to time. Fred hired more help so that he could work less hours. The Drs Granger and Arthur Weasley asked now and then if they should start planning a wedding, but Fred and Hermione just laughed. Their parents were old fashioned. They had been affected by the war, of course, especially Arthur. But for the most part they still clung to a vision of the world before the war.

Fred and Hermione were not clinging to that vision. They did not live in the past. They were building the new world. Because...

War changes everything.