Hermione stood across the street from the house, a soft drizzle caressing her skin and playing havoc with her hair. It was late, around dinner time. The lights on the street were already on, casting dark shadows on the buildings. The amount of passers-by had slowed down to a trickle of people who rushed past her without so much as a glance, in a hurry to get home and out of the rain.

The house was just an ordinary house — white, two-storey, with potted plants in one of the windowsills. Hermione wondered briefly which of them cared for those. There was something incongruous about the idea of Pansy Parkinson gardening, for all that she was named after a flower.

Hermione was stalling.

This was ridiculous. The great Hermione Granger, war hero twice over, rooted in place at the thought of ringing a doorbell. Some hero.

She wasn't sure what it said about her, that it took liquid luck or large amounts of alcohol for her to make a move. Bravery indeed.

They had been back in the present for two days and she hadn't seen either Pansy or Daphne in almost that long. They had technically only been gone two minutes, but that had been enough to ring some pretty big alarm bells up and down the Ministry, and teams of Unspeakables had interviewed all three of them separately, going over everything that had happened, making sure they gave a thorough and detailed account of everything that had happened — dates, places, things they had changed, big and small.

When they had finally let her go, Hermione had felt no small amount of relief. None of the Unspeakables had looked terribly impressed at their "reckless disregard for the laws of time, put in place for very good reasons and by far smarter and wiser minds than yours, Miss Granger," and she had half-expected her brain to end up floating around in a jar somewhere, deep in the Department of Mysteries.

Her relief had been short-lived, however, because no sooner had she got out of one interrogation, she had run straight into another. Harry and Ron were waiting for her outside, and Hermione would have blown them off — because she was exhausted, and her nerves were shot, and she badly needed her bed — except that Ginny was right there, alive and well and looking at her.

So she had gone with them, and told her story, and burst into tears at the sight of Molly Weasley bringing her a cup of tea.

There were many people who had not made it despite their best efforts — Fred, Tonks, Lupin, many others — but Hermione did not dwell on those. She was grateful for the ones who had made it. She would be grateful for that for as long as she lived.

"I'm sorry," Ron said when she was done telling her story. "Can we go back to the part where you slept with Pansy Parkinson and Daphne Greengrass? 'Cause I'm still trying to wrap my head around that one."

Ginny let out a snort of laughter, and Harry threw a cushion at his head, and Hermione rolled her eyes at all three of them, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. Merlin, it was good to be home.

That had been the night before, and today she had spent the better part of the day fussing and fidgeting and going crazy, because apparently unless she was in mortal peril she did not know what to do with herself. And it wasn't even that. She had been there before — the adrenaline crash, the struggle to make herself climb down from that state where her fight or flight response was constantly on. It wasn't that.

It was the fact that they were back and she had barely had the time to say two words to Pansy and Daphne, and she didn't know where the three of them were, if anywhere. She didn't know what that thing between them was, or if it even existed anywhere but inside her own head, and part of her didn't even want to find out for sure, in case she didn't like the answer.

But not knowing was driving her crazy.

And that's how she had ended up outside their home that rainy evening, nervous and awkward and frozen in place. Just standing there. Like a stalker. A creepy, creepy stalker.

"Get a grip, Hermione," she muttered under her breath. All the things she'd been through, and this was what scared her? A little rejection wouldn't kill her. Might sting a little, but she'd live.

She forced her legs to cooperate, crossed the street and rang the doorbell before she had time to think better of it. The thirty seconds it took for someone to come to the door were more than enough time for her to regret ever coming here, realise she should at least have been wearing something more flattering, and what the devil had she even been thinking, standing in the rain for so long? Her hair did not need any more incentives to rebel than it already had.

Merlin, she was pathetic.

When Daphne opened the door, the startled look she gave her was enough for Hermione to start regretting several of her life choices, and this one in particular, but then relief spread across Daphne's face and she smiled.

"Thank god," she said, pulling Hermione in for a hug tight enough to hurt, and Hermione wasn't worried anymore.

Pansy was standing on the other end of the corridor, a fond smile on her lips.

"Took you long enough, Granger."

The End