Seven

Always trying

To have one and one make two,

And even though it never worked

I still feel love for you.

Hermione stood at the kitchen sink, looking out of the window at the street below. She liked these lazy Sundays. Ron sat at the kitchen table reading the Daily Prophet. Occasionally he would snort and read out something funny or irritating. Hermione would comment appropriately, and then go back to her thoughts. When Ron did the washing up he used magic. Hermione did too when she was in a rush, but she always did it the old-fashioned way when she had time. Ron always let her wash up on Sundays. He knew she liked it. He had thought it weird at first but he was very used to it by now. Hermione liked the feel of the hot water and suds on her hands and the slow, methodical task of washing each item.

They had been 'living in sin', as her mother called it, since they left Hogwarts four years ago. Thankfully, Hermione knew that her mother didn't object to the arrangement. It was just one of her funny little phrases. She said it with a smile. She understood that they would not be separated after all they had been through and quite liked their little flat on Diagon Alley. Molly didn't understand why they refused to 'make it official', but she had stopped pestering them about it after the first two years. She had accepted it with an air of resignation and not a little confusion. The poor woman just could not get her head around the fact that a couple who had been in love for so long and wanted to live together did not want to marry. To her it was the logical thing to do, but to Hermione and Ron it was not. It was Ron who had tentatively broached the subject after several months of harassment from his mother. Hermione smiled as she remembered the way he had nervously asked her:

"You don't want to get married, do you?"

He had looked so relieved when she had said no. They had talked more easily then and discovered that while they wanted to live together, neither of them had any desire for fancy ceremonies and declarations of love. It was all so much hassle and paperwork. It didn't seem to fit with their relationship, with their kind of love.

They had fought together in a war and won. Well, in theory they had won. They had also lost a great deal. They had spent their school years fighting dark wizards. They had also spent their school years fighting each other. They fought differently now than they had then. Much of their anger had been fuelled by the general imbalance of teenagers with raging hormones and teenage angst. And their pent up attraction of course. Now they fought with the practiced ease of old friends and lovers. Much of the vitriol was gone and the fights weren't so frequent.

Ron and Hermione were also a rather practical couple. They didn't do grand romantic gestures. Ron never bought Hermione flowers. He bought her chocolate sometimes, but not expensive fancy chocolates in nice boxes. He bought her big bars of the Muggle chocolate that she liked or chocolate frogs. They didn't have pet names for each other or a song that was somehow 'theirs'. They didn't really want any of those things. It seemed far too slushy. They curled up on the sofa together to watch TV. Sometimes they held hands in public or kissed one another on the cheek, but anything more physical than that was saved for the bedroom.

Hermione placed a dish on the rack next to the sink as she watched people milling about lazily in Diagon Alley. She liked living above a shop. She liked being surrounded by what her dad referred to as 'magical folk'. She thought it made her sound like a fey little pixie or something equally twee. She smiled, remembering her father's attempts to understand the world his daughter now lived in. Her parents tried hard to understand and accept a world that they could only glimpse occasionally but never really be part of. It had hurt to tell them that there were people in her world who hated non-magical people, and hated her for being of non-magical descent. It saddened her to know that she was no longer part of the world she had been born into, and it was easier for her to embrace her new world if she was right in the heart of it.

Hermione was gazing out of the window, lost in thought and absentmindedly cleaning a spoon that it hit her. It seemed strange that something so important could strike at such a trivial moment. But really that was how it had always been with them. Everything happened when she least expected it. She had made the discovery that she loved Ron one day during a particularly dull History of Magic lesson. He had told her he loved her for the first time when they were hiding from Filch and Mrs Norris one night when they should have been in bed. Separately.

She turned away from the washing up, her hands still covered in bubbles and looked at Ron as he sat reading the Sports section of the newspaper.

"We're not in love anymore, are we?"

Ron looked up from his newspaper.

"No. No, we're not.