A/N: Hello everyone! Guess who's back? So this was intended to be a one-shot that I started at 2 in the morning last night. But, as often happens when I'm writing at 2 in the morning, I realized "Oh, wait, this could actually be interesting if I really do things with the plot!" So. Here we go.

Everyone has that one crush, right? That one person that you feel like you'll always have a slight interest in, even after they've been out of your life for years. Even after you've given up on them, found someone else to fill the void, you'll still think about them every once in a while. You'll be sitting, having your morning coffee, and all of a sudden, you'll wonder how they are now. What they're like. What they're doing with their life. What they'd be doing if they were with you.

Now, if you're lucky, you'll never see this person again after that dreaded day when you give up on them. It will be a nice clean break, they will walk out of your life, only to be seen in the occasional memory or picture, a pleasant reminiscing experience. You'll be able to truly move on with your life. You'll find someone else, someone who not only fills the void, but takes over your thoughts so completely, you have no reason to dwell on the other person.

I have had that crush. I have had that ill-fated day when, in my school girl naivete and foolishness, I admitted to this boy that I had a crush on him. He took it well enough, ruffling my hair and telling me "maybe when you're older." I have had the several years of continuous pining, until he was gone. He left. Dropped out. And I took that as my cue to leave well enough alone, move on, take control of my life again. I turned my attention to other prospects. I accepted that I would never be old enough, never be enough for him, and gave up. I shed my school girl innocence and grew up for myself, not for him.

Then I saw him again. I avoided it unless was absolutely necessary, but unfortunately, when you're staying with his family for the summer, it becomes difficult to avoid. And the first time that you see them, there is that pit fall in your stomach; that awful, sinking feeling where you think to yourself, "How could I have given up on that? He's perfect, wonderful in every sense of the word." And then you have to excuse yourself from the dinner table and step outside to take a few deep breaths and remind yourself why you gave up.

But then the summer ended, and I was back to school, and he was back to work, and there were things bigger than my school girl crush that I was most certainly over. Things that I needed to understand so that Harry would understand them, things that I had to be three steps ahead of so that everything could seem normal. And, truly, he was out of my thoughts. I didn't need to worry about what would happen if I heard someone mention his name, or if someone bizarrely compared Ron or Ginny to him. It became less painful when I saw him at Christmas, it was normal to have him throw an awkward one-armed hug around me when he'd had too much to drink. And by the time summer rolled around, the gravity of the situation that surrounded me had consumed my life so much that not even seeing him all dressed up for the wedding could have made my heart beat any faster.

The worst part about this type of crush, however, especially when it is someone that you can't completely avoid seeing, is that no matter how much you feel you've gotten over them, as I've said before, you don't really ever do. They're always in that little spot of your subconscious. You will always care about them, there is nothing that you can do to avoid that. So when I walked back into the Great Hall with Harry and Ron and saw the Weasley's standing around his seemingly lifeless body, it was as if the floor had collapsed from underneath me and I would never have any hope of moving from that spot. The horror movie that had become my life ended. Because if Fred Weasley could never utter another word to me, there was no point in my living any longer.

A/N: Now, I'm going to be honest here...I haven't decided if I want this to be a "Yay, Fred actually lives!" story or not. So if you feel particularly strong one way or the other (I think it would be interesting to write from Hermione's point of view piecing her life back together, but I do find it difficult to write from Hermione's point of view in the first place), leave me a message or a review and I'll tally things up.