Fallen from the Sky

He couldn't understand it.

The morning after the rainstorm that had literally washed him up on the outer shores of her life, he had found himself standing across from Jasper and Sons, staring blankly up at its wooden sign, trained to follow it like a hypnotist's watch or a ticking metronome as it swung idly in the summer breeze. Embarrassment flash-flooded him from all sides as he reflected on the events of yesterday, as he recalled the blinding pain, the astonished look he must have worn at the sudden recognition of her face, the way his brain had momentarily abandoned ship; he hated that he envisioned with remarkable ease the appraising look on her face as he fumbled clumsily for literacy, literacy that had danced despairingly out of reach like a pair of fallen glasses from their hapless owner. Even more so than this, he regretted the sheer cowardice that had taken hold of him, the fight-or-flight instinct that had him bolting out the door the next second he got, the subtle crestfallen look her features adorned as she bid him premature farewell. Granted, for all the waking hours he had spent at school, dousing himself with the sport, little to no room had existed in his teenage years for much practice when it came to matters of the opposite sex - but this was that Granger girl he was talking about, the prodigious student of witchcraft, Harry's godsend; she had been so young when he first glimpsed her, barely thirteen, charming Potter's eyewear with a charm that repelled water. The memory was distant, foggy, leaking away from him like water encased in cupped hands. There was a flash of her chestnut hair and the air of an insufferable know-it-all, her honey eyes and the triumph that had glittered there at the acknowledgment of her own brilliance.

To get tongue-tied in front of her - the very idea of it all was ludicrous: he couldn't seem to shake the cherubic image of her as a child. But the way she carried herself now was something to be noticed and, perhaps, lauded. She was a young lady now - one who, if the aim of her wand at his chest was to anything to go by, could disembowel him at a moment's notice if he so happened to reach one toe out of line. She was capable of a lot of things, he was sure, and it was most unnerving. She was a Muggleborn, yet her grasp on the intricacies of spell work long outstripped the greater portion of the wizarding population. By birth, magic was supposed to be his cup of tea. But not unlike his general coordination on solid ground, his skill with a wand was dwarfed by a certain deftness in the air.

Oliver couldn't make heads or tails of which was more damaging to his ego: being vaguely attracted to Hermione Granger (but no, that couldn't be the right terminology... perhaps reasonably intrigued?), or being strangely intimidated by Hermione Granger.

All speculations aside, however, his mind seemed to have one thing decided for him. That day, he had crossed the cobblestone street and walked headlong into a cloud of coffee aromas, cooling pies, and aging paper in the magazine bins. And he would return, day after day for the remainder of the week, never to speak with the girl who had lured him here in the first place, only to watch her from afar as he experienced his first taste of espresso. Though there was no viable reason for it, it seemed imperative to Oliver that his presence at the beanery go unnoticed whenever she was in. She was unfailingly reliable and prompt, silver bells chiming her arrival at no later than nine o'clock every morning; she always bid the shopkeeper hello, and if it wasn't Jasper smoothing over the mahogany with a damp cloth, she would address one of his many sons: Henry, Casimer, Macauley, and Turlough. She very well could have been one of the family, the way she was treated, and for all the effortless charm she possessed, Oliver had to wonder why it was the younger sons did not deign her fit enough to court. In his eyes, she was seemly. And, by the looks of it, apparently alone.

An arsenal of literature accompanied her at all times. With the spine of one particularly well-thumbed volume cracked and her coffee steaming on its saucer, she painted the deceiving portrait of a young lady perhaps waiting to be joined at her table. But half an hour or so would pass, cold dregs would bering the porcelain of her cup, and with a snap she would close her book, gather the rest in her arms, and traipse her way out the door where he would lose her through the window into the commuting crowd.

He was starting to feel increasingly stupid. Although he had gotten quite good at hiding his face behind the Prophet each time her head would lift itself, looking suspiciously as though she might turn in his direction, he was beginning to wonder where the boldness of his character had gone.

He needed an analogy. He needed to strategize this. He needed to think of this as another play.

This wasn't a girl, this was Quidditch.

But on the morning of the sixth day, the day that he had seated himself at his usual table with a newfound sense of resolve, Hermione had purchased her beverage, made a slow line for her seat, then turned abruptly on her heel, managing to pivot without spilling so much as a drop. Oliver wasn't quite sure just when he realized the jig was up but figured it had to have been around the time he'd been feigning interest in an article about Gringotts accounts with the shadow of her figure bearing down on him.

And then she started.

"You've been coming 'round for the last five days. Do you ever plan on popping by for so much as a hello, Oliver?" Her tone was hard to decipher and the expression on her face proved to be of no helpful key, either. He guessed at one part curiosity, one part humor, and three parts downright exasperation.

It wasn't until she had recited the facts out loud to him that the potential creepiness of the situation dawned on Oliver. He wanted to tell her that whatever bad could be insinuated from his actions (or lack thereof, really) had not truly been his intention, that in all honesty he had been biding his time, trying to muster up what little courage in this department he owned, but before he could get a single word out she was at it again, speaking so fast he couldn't blink for having to read her lips instead.

"Really, one would think by the third day you would have said something, but oh, no, it's always been you in that corner, and you're probably wondering how I noticed, aren't you? Because yes, Oliver, I noticed. You're rather hard to miss, aren't you, when you're reading your paper all the way up here?"

Speechless, that's what he was. Speechless.

Eventually he was going to have to come to terms with the fact that he would never appear wholly intelligent in front of her, but hell be damned if he wasn't going to at least try.

"Hermione. Hello."

His voice sounded almost mechanical, as if he had just woken from a proper Stunning hex, but from it came two small words. It was speech! Signs of life! Merlin's beard, it was progress!

She stared at him, hard, still clutching that turquoise cup and saucer in her set of hands. She seemed to be on the verge of fuming, tongue preparing itself for yet another angry tirade, impatiently shifting her weight of her body from one foot to the other. Then she realized that the tables had turned since their last exchange and that it was he, Oliver, tentatively joking to save face. This was immeasurably lucky for him. Unbeknownst to her, he hadn't meant to be both coherent and witty at the same time.

It was a little like watching the ice caps thaw. He looked up at her, feeling almost shrunken in her overwhelming presence, but that brand of uncertainty seemed to fade as her eyes shone with a different kind of resilience. Smiling, she said, "Hi," swaying ever so slightly on the spot before adding, a touch hopefully, "May I sit here?"

A beat, and no longer than that. "You wouldn't rather - by your window?" He would be a certified pro at this yet.

She turned her head over her shoulder to gaze at the circular table she usually occupied, the one nearest the door. Then she met his eyes and lifted her shoulders in a shrug. "Why would I when yours has the better view?"

As if on cue, Oliver leaned forward to observe the outside world. From the window he could see rolling hills in the distance preceded by winding cobblestone paths that forked and split, trees that blazed a brilliant shade of chartreuse in the sunlight, grass that appeared lush and inviting, dimming black lampposts that stood up from the pavement, elegant as rose stems, elaborately wrought from iron, or so he guessed. All of this his eyes seemed to drink in deeply, having never noticed the full picture before.

He reverted his gaze back to her, nodded his assent, but as she moved to sit, found himself desperate to apologize and tell her that this wasn't what she thought, that he wasn't a creepy old git, but whether she had anticipated this or not, she glossed over any potential pleas for forgiveness nonetheless. As she fanned out three novels in front of her, spreading them gingerly across her half of the table and him struggling to decipher the titles upside-down and backwards, she asked, rather pointedly, "So what's going on with you these days?"

His head tilted most curiously to better examine the furling covers, Oliver didn't find his mind stalling as it previously had done so in front of her - whether or not this was because the angle he was currently holding his skull in had jogged his brain back into automated thinking or because there was no room for language faux-pas when his mind was simultaneously trying to decipher three individual books, he was not sure, merely thankful for. He rattled off to her his graduation from Puddlemere's reserve team into Puddlemere's first Keeper, trying to suppress the swelling excitement of it as if it had happened just yesterday, though the enthusiasm looked to have compressed into that tell-tale glimmer of Quidditch fanaticism his brown eyes often wore. He explained to her the consequential reward of a custom broomstick, his coffee cooling and forgotten the longer he overcame his initial conversational impediment. It, however, did not take long for it to become unflinchingly clear that Hermione understood not the momentousness of such an event, could not comprehend fully the elated feeling of a realized dream that had visited him at the nascent gravity of the news. But she smiled and nodded all the same, offering a sincere, "That's really great, Oliver! Really great," and for all he knew she was trying for him, wanting to appear schooled in perhaps the one aspect of the magical world she had previously and yet adamantly shown the least amount of interest in. She probably didn't even like to fly. He wasn't quite sure what tipped him off. She just didn't seem the type.

As he finished relaying the last few months of his life to her - well, the interesting bits, anyway, which came in few and far between - he was beginning to wonder what it was that had him so nervous about her from the start. Whereas the circumstances of their years before had kept them from properly hitting it off, the longer they spoke, the more like old friends they seemed. And before either of the two knew it, a half hour had whittled itself effortlessly away - only this time Oliver needn't have wondered about a young man coming to join her and rescue her from her fortress of books. Hermione, in her own clever, imposing way, had sought the lad out herself.