A/N: So... I started this over a year ago and thought I could get in done in time for New Years. Clearly, I could not. But it's all done now :)

This was very ill-advised.

Everything leading up to this moment had also been ill-advised, but this, this felt especially ill-advised.

George was kissing her neck, with one hand traveling up and down her torso, and the other holding tight on her hip with a possession that said "it doesn't matter that this is ill-advised, you aren't going anywhere".

Not that she could, anyway, when he bit gently at her neck and her knees went weak. The hand on her hip was suddenly saying "don't worry I won't let you collapse into a weak-kneed puddle on the ground" and she was grateful to it.

She could still hear the noises from the party downstairs until his roaming hand slipped under her dress, discovering her own ill-advised decision from earlier in the day to forego knickers in anticipation of this very moment.

And then it all disappeared, and it was only him.

She could go back to the ill-advised beginning and try to trace their story to the beginning, but honestly, it was still a blur. There were things that she could remember, that she knew, distinctly. Fred had died. Ron had broken up with her via owl and retreated to Romania. Harry and Ginny had eloped suddenly and taken a month long honeymoon abroad.

Basically, they had both found themselves bereft of the most important relationships they had ever had in their lives, in the span of about 3 months.

She had ended up sitting next to him at Harry and Ginny's belated wedding reception and then he had found her as she hid in the garden when Ron became unbearable. He hadn't actually been looking for her, but rather, for his own hiding place, and almost left, except that she had an extra drink to share and they had ended up talking and suddenly the reception was over, and Ron had already left, and she went home without thinking of him again anyway.

There was lots of drinking and talking in a corner at mandatory shindigs after that. Harry and Ginny's housewarming party. Ron and Charlie's back-for-a-week-see-you-next-year party. Most of Mrs. Weasley's Sunday night dinners, to the matriarch's great chagrin.

And then somehow it was sometimes just talking. On his way to his monthly meeting with his accountant, he'd bring her coffee to the library. On her way home on exceptionally boring or difficult days, she'd stop by his joke shop for a laugh. They understood without asking that there were things that didn't need to be discussed. And after everything with Ron, there was something very oddly comfortable in having a relationship with someone she both had a limited history with, and someone whom she could leave first.

That sounded cold. She enjoyed his company. But she had no expectations of him, nor, as far as she could tell, he of her. She was not the just Brains of the Golden Trio. He was not just the Funny One. She was not just Ron's Ex-Girlfriend. He was not just Fred's Surviving Twin Brother.

And she could leave him. She didn't feel a sense of obligation to him, despite their fledgling friendship. She was not 11 and lonely and desperate for friendship anymore- she was 18 and had some friends in various states and honestly needed some alone time. She could take time alone if she needed, and knew if he left her first, it still wouldn't break her.

Although, to be fair, she wasn't sure that there was much that could break her anymore. She had already endured so much. And there wasn't much left to break, anyway. Not enough to left to muster any real relationship.

She found it easy to be friends with someone under those circumstances. If she were being more accurate, she'd say easy to be friendly with someone under those circumstances. Probably those circumstances precluded an actual friendship. That was fine.

And that was how it was for several months. Talking sometimes, drinking and talking sometimes at uncomfortable formalities.

And then the Hogwarts Reopening Ceremony.

It was a terrible idea. Hermione would have burned the rest of the school down and rebuilt the school in a different location. Why did they need a whole castle for a few hundred people, anyway? Why all those stairs? And why Scotland? It was so far and so cold. Poppy had constantly been fighting students' hypothermia. Altogether, very impractical for a school for children.

Also now it housed all sorts of terrible memories. Even the good memories on the grounds were tainted by the knowledge of what would happen later. She couldn't think of the courtyard where she had punched Malfoy without also remembering that she had seen Lavender die there. The Great Hall was the worst, a juxtaposition of great memories in school poisoned by memories of walking the rows of dead and finding the bodies of Tonks and Remus.

She could have burned the rest of the school down.

But she didn't. War heroes did not commit arson. They did not skip official events. Especially when their program's heads were going too. Especially when she was supposed to give a short speech.

Bollocks. Of course she cared about education for the children. Of course she supported the school's plan to extend its muggle studies programs. Of course she was a fan of more arts and fitness programs and a new dedicated school therapist and counselor and of course she understood those things cost money and of course it would be a great opportunity to seek financial support from potential donors.

Bugger Minerva. The former headmistress might as well have been in Slytherin.

Hermione took a shot for courage before leaving home (was she drinking too much? Who knows?). On a whim, she apparated to George's first.

"You look nice," he said. She supposed she did. She had shirked all school colors and was wearing a deep purple floor-length dress. She wouldn't have been able to afford anything remotely as nice on her meagre stipend if she hadn't gone shopping with Ginny, who had a sharp eye for finding sales, and a silver tongue for requesting extra discounts, for the War Hero, who was giving a speech at the Opening, and everyone was going to be there, you know.

Hermione was too poor to be embarrassed at her friend's antics and accepted the final, absurdly small price.

But she didn't acknowledge his compliment. "Do you have an extra flask I could borrow?" She asked instead. She waved her half-full handle. "I can supply the sustenance if you do."

Ten minutes later they left together, each hiding a flask full of whiskey.

Her speech was short and sweet and awful and afterwards she made polite small talk with sycophantic "potential donors" for the goddamned children before deciding that the 11 year olds would have to make do with maybe just arts and no fitness programs or counselor and she disappeared outside.

It was chilly out by the lake, despite being the middle of summer (again- why Scotland?) and she pulled out her flask for a little liquid warmth.

She heard him approach and briefly hid behind a tree to avoid having to smile and say "really, any support would make such an impact" until she realized it was just him.

"Hey," she said.

He had also pulled his flask out and raised his for a toast. "To your everlasting eloquence".

She made a face and raised her flask. "To there being enough whiskey left in this flask to get me through the rest of this nice."

There was at least enough to get her drunk. At some point they laid on the grass on the lake shore. Her flask ran out, and then his, and they stood.

"I don't think we have to go back," he slurred.

The mixture of alcohol and standing too quickly made her head spin. "I don't think we should go back in this state anyway," she said, and maybe most of the words were right.

"How much more do you need to drink to not remember this terrible night?" He asked.

She tried to think about it. More, definitely. She was not yet to black out but definitely drunk. "At least a few more."

He offered his hand. "Would you care to join me to promptly forgetting this party ever happened?"

They went back to his flat above his shop and finished her bottle of whiskey and vowed to never go back to Hogwarts again.

She laughed. "I will say though-" she hiccupped "-I will say, it is nice, that my last memories of Hogwarts are no longer That."

He did a cheers to her for that. "I think, it's nice, that now my last memory of Hogwarts is Hermione Granger in that purple dress getting sloshed by the lake. There's something deeply ironic about that."

She laughed. "Ten points from Gryffindor for public intoxication!" she squeaked in a joke. "We could get detention, or worse, expelled!"

He laughed so hard his face turned red and that made her laugh in turn. "But also," she added, after catching her breath again. "I think you misused the word "ironic"." She was drunk. But she was serious.

That only made him laugh harder. "Shuddup, Granger," he choked between laughs.

And maybe it was laughing and maybe it was drinking and maybe it was because everything else was so awful but suddenly he was kissing her.

She wouldn't remember the rest later, because of the drinking, and how fast it all happened, but would remember that it was definitely not awful after that.

They didn't talk about it after that. But it did become a thing. Sometimes they would just talk. And sometimes they would drink and talk. And sometimes they would drink and talk and fuck.

Midnight had passed by the time they were done and left. She emerged back into the sad remnants of a party she knew Harry and Ginny would clean up lazily over the next few days. Cups and streamers littered the floor and Neville was slumped over in an armchair, snoring heavily with his silly party hat still on.

She cleaned most of it with a simple charm and the cups were dive-bombing themselves into a trash bag when George came down the steps. They'd been careful, staggering their departure from the attic, and him taking the back stairs to the kitchen before cutting across the house to the living room. Much more careful than they needed to be, they realized now.

The streamers were falling to their own efficient disposal when he kissed her cheek. "Happy New Year, Granger," he whispered in her ear. Somehow this gesture, despite everything else they had done in the past few months, everything they had literally just done upstairs in the attic, made her blush scarlet.

"You too," she muttered, not turning to face him to try to conceal her flushed face.

She heard the crack of disapparation behind her as he left, and she continued on the streamers.