Hermione groaned at the letter in her hands and wordlessly summoned a quill and parchment. "A rain check on the take-out, Spencer?"

His head popped up from his book, and ever agreeable, he said, "Sure, sure. What came up?"

"Mrs. Weasley wants the family together for dinner tonight," she said dully, "says it's been too long since she's seen everyone." She looked up from the reply she was scribbling out and locked eye contact with him. "You know she's counting you as family, right?"

Spencer's eyes widened a bit. "No, I did not. I'll go, uh, put on a nicer sweater then."

Hermione laughed, but it sounded tinny, and there was a pang of something in Spencer's chest.

It wasn't that he minded the plans shuffling around; he liked the Weasleys, and they welcomed him into their home with open arms. He really didn't mind, but it sometimes seemed that Hermione did.

He wasn't sure if she even realized the ways that she was sabotaging her own healing. He could see that she was trying to move on, but every day was a struggle. It should have been two steps forward, one step back, but so much of the time it seemed like there were never any steps forward. The war was over, but she was continuing to sacrifice herself.

Only a week prior, they'd been ready to walk out the door for a matinee showing of Lost in Space when the familiar sound of the floo flared and out came Harry's voice, small as it echoed from the living room out to the hallway. "Hermione, what are you up to?"

Her face fell only briefly, but Spencer saw it. Then she'd bitten her lip and glanced apologetically at him before doubling back and kneeling in front of the fire. "I was about to head out, but if you need-"

"Oh, if you have plans, I-"

"Harry, it's fine," she'd insisted. "We can go another time; what do you need?"

He had needed her to keep Luna company while the others played a pick-up game of Quidditch.

She was biting into her lower lip again as she'd looked up with resignation. There was a small sore there that she'd given herself that hadn't healed in weeks. "Do you want to come, Spencer?"

"Sure," he'd said, not knowing how to suggest otherwise.

Her friends were good people, but sometimes Spencer wondered if they knew what they were doing to her.

Staying with Hermione had started as a temporary thing. He was on her pull-out couch, neither pressing the attraction that they both knew the other felt. They knew that some people - Mrs. Weasley, namely - were concerned about two people so young (and so unmarried) "shacking up", but they also knew that it hardly mattered what other people thought. They knew that nothing untoward was happening (and that even if it was, it wouldn't be anyone else's business).

Back in June, when she'd started talking about signing her own lease on a little flat in Northwood Hills, he'd thought it was time for him to get a move on. Then one night, sitting alone together under a birch in the Weasleys' yard, she'd whispered a very brief Please don't leave yet, and he hadn't.

He'd told her that if she wanted, he would take a leave of absence for his fall classes. She'd told him that she didn't know what she wanted. The registration deadline for the fall came and passed without either of them saying a word about it.

She'd been trying to take care of herself, he could tell.

She'd bought herself a dress that he thought accentuated every beautiful thing about her. It draped over her like a waterfall, all silky fabric and sensual curves. Weeks later, she wore it on a cloudy Sunday afternoon while they wandered around Muggle London, Spencer showing off his encyclopedic knowledges of the coffee shops and bookstores in the area.

"You look beautiful," he said, and she blushed prettily.

They were due at the Burrow at five o'clock for tea and dinner, and she'd planned on changing, but they lost track of time and had to go as they were.

They walked in not quite hand in hand, although the backs of their hands were lightly touching.

"Hermione, what are you wearing?" Ron guffawed, and Hermione's hands flew away as she crossed her arms in front of her.

"A dress, Ronald," she seethed. "In case you've somehow forgotten, I am a woman."

She hadn't worn the dress since.

She tried painting, even though she was terrible at it. He learned what a "House Elf" was through her ranting while she painted a careful portrait of one, and then he was startled at the difference when a real one showed up when she called what may have been a name.

"I made this for you, Winky," Hermione said with a completely straight face. Spencer gathered that there was something happening under the surface here.

The House Elf, apparently called Winky, sucked in a huge breath and promptly started bawling. "M- M- Miss Grangey!" it stuttered through its sobs. Hermione was still, but her brows drew together in worry. She wanted to do something, he could tell, and he wasn't sure why she wasn't. This was a stark contrast to her impassioned words from before.

"Miss Grangey would very much like if Miss Winky took this portrait with her," Hermione said slowly. "Miss Grangey will stop knitting hats and threatening clothes if Miss Winky will accept this… peace offering."

Winky only sobbed harder, but threw herself (for now that Hermione had gendered her, it did seem obvious that she was a female) at Hermione and hugged as much of her as her tiny arms could reach. Hermione moved slowly, but wrapped her arms around the small House Elf and gave several small pats.

"Winky is being so very grateful," Winky cried. "Will Miss Grangey do the same for the other elves at Hogwarts?" she asked hopefully.

"I can't make them all portraits," Hermione admitted, "but I promise not to try to free them, either. Unless they want to be, like Dobby," she added hastily.

"This is being enough for Winky," the little elf promised. "Is this all Miss Grangey is wanting?"

"That was all, Winky," Hermione said. When the elf disappeared without a sound, she gave a great, heaving sigh. She looked up at Spencer, whose eyes were the size of saucers. "Have I ever told you about the time I tried to free an entire species from millennia of indentured servitude?"

She took many baths, something that she freely admitted she had never done before. "I never put much stock into anything girly, but it really does wonders for stiff muscles," she explained over Indian take-out one day. "I also like using the scented candles," she added after a pause.

"I don't mind you leaving me alone to think for a while." Spencer realized that had come out wrong when she narrowed her eyes at him. "It gives me time to process all the strange things I'm learning," he was quick to explain. "Sometimes I look over the notes that I've taken, try to organize them and relate things to one another. This is… stretching the limits of my capacity to learn. It doesn't help that every time I expect something to have a reasonable Latin root, wizards just abandon that concept entirely." He scoffed. "What kind of magic spell is 'point me', anyways?"

A small smile pulled at her lips. "A helpful one."

It was one such night when it finally happened.

Hermione was in a bath. She had been for quite some time, but this was nothing unusual. Spencer was reading at the dining room table, papers spread about him like a tornado had gone through a library, when he heard a strange sound and froze. He listened for a moment longer before he recognized it for sure, and then jumped up, flinging papers off the table in his haste to run to the bathroom door.

He practically held his breath as he listened to her sobbing. He'd seen her cry before, small tears of frustration or when she remembered something that she didn't want to talk about (she never wanted to talk about it), but he hadn't seen, or heard, her like this ever before.

He steeled himself for what could possibly go from bad to worse. He knocked on the door with three quiet raps.

He could hear her trying to stop; her heaving breaths turned into staccato gasps, and his chest hurt knowing that he was trying to hide this kind of pain. "Are you okay?" he asked, temple leaned against the cool wood of the bathroom door.

There were another few shaky gasps, and then a shaky, "I'm fine."

He closed his eyes in frustration. "You don't sound fine, Hermione."

She was silent for a moment. He mentally decided that if she didn't speak shortly he was going to go in, damn the consequences, and -

"I'm not," she called. "Please come in."

The door wasn't locked, and he noted dimly that he wasn't sure if she left it unlocked all the time or if she had unlocked it for him from the bath. Her wand was on the floor next to the tub, next to a neatly folded towel. It could have gone either way, he decided.

He shut the door behind him, unsure why.

Her hair was dry and large and frizzy, like she'd been running her hands through it the entire time she'd been in the bath. Her face was puffy and streaked with tears, and her eyes were calling out to him with something raw that he wasn't sure he could identify beyond need. The tops of her breasts were peeking out from below bubbles that had to be magical, as they moved up and down without breaking as she breathed, sustaining her modesty. He decided she had unlocked the door with magic.

He went to the side of the tub and sat on the floor, offering her a hand. She took it gratefully, and they sat in silence for a little while, her hand hot and shaky in his.

"I don't know what to do in the fall," she admitted softly.

"What are your choices?" Spencer asked, noting the evenness of her breath once she started talking.

"I can be a student," she started, "like Mrs. Weasley and Minerva want. Or I can go into the Auror academy, like Harry and Ron and Kingsley all want. I could go to the Ministry," she added, speaking more and more quickly, "and work in Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, like Ron and Malfoy keep teasing and how Remus probably would have said I should, or-"

"What do you want?" he interrupted.

Her eyes scrunched shut, and she took a few deep breaths to steady herself. "I don't know."

His other hand came up to rub the top of hers thoughtfully. "If you didn't have to worry about what anyone thought," he began carefully, "and you didn't have to worry about organizing or planning anything, what would you do? With your free time, not just in the fall?"

Eyes still closed, she hummed wistfully. "I just want to read." What a surprise, he thought.

"What kind of book?"

Her eyes opened, and there was something new there, a fire that had been missing. "Arithmancy. Spell development. Theories of magic."

"Which choice will let you do that most freely?"

She squeezed his bottom hand. "Going back to school. Maybe being an Unspeakable someday."

He smiled tightly. "I don't know what an Unspeakable is, but it sounds like you know what to do."

She slouched deeper into the water, her knees coming up and out to compensate. "It's not that simple."

"It can be," he assured her. "You are a strong woman, and you have more than earned the right to make a future for yourself, on your own terms." His voice was laced with frustration that he hoped she knew wasn't directed at her anymore. "If people can't understand that, we can make them understand that."

"They're still hurting," Hermione said, "it's understandable that they want to build out of things that they're familiar with, that bring comfort."

"They're not building," he insisted. "They're using you to heal with no attention for how it affects you. Why does everything have to be understandable? Why can't some things be unacceptable, and we just say that?"

"I suppose I can set some… limits," Hermione murmured. "But the first time I have to tell Molly Weasley that I can't make it to dinner on short notice, you're the one telling her it's unacceptable."

He squeezed her hand in his again, smiling at her half-joke. "I'm more than happy to be made into the villain here."

As usual, prompts follow.

HPFC's "Are You Crazy Enough to Do It?" Challenge - Feeling, #207: Lost

BBC Sherlock Challenge - #27: "Why does everything have to be understandable? Why can't some things be unacceptable, and we just say that?"