Getting Over It

Summery: Hermione's finally found the man of her dreams, but will he want a twenty-nine year old divorcee with two children? And will he be able to bury the fears brought from his old relationship in order to keep her? HG/OW. PG-13/T.

Disclaimer: for whole story: I do not own any of the Harry Potter characters, events, objects, places etc.

A/N – Seeing as how my other story seems to be bombing right now I thought I would write something that I hope people will actually read and possible review.

Chapter 1
Hermione's Life

She picked up the book that had fallen to the floor and placed it on the coffee table then she walked over to the sofa and placed her hand upon his shoulder and shook him lightly.

"Piss off." He snapped and rolled over on the sofa so his back was to her.

Hermione was glad that he had kept his eyes closed, as she didn't want her husband to see the tears in her own. She stepped out of the living room and very slowly climbed up the stairs to her's and Mark's bedroom. She made two stops on the way down the hall to look in on her two children; Millie and Sam.

An hour after she had lay down in the cold double bed Mark came in and crawled up beside her, lying close but not close enough so he would actually touch her. But still, Hermione allowed herself the smallest of smiles, at least now she knew where he would be all night.

When she woke the next morning the bed was already empty, she looked across at the clock and saw that it was only six-thirty. With a loud, drawn-out groan she pushed the blanket off her body and swung herself into an upright position.

After she had dressed in loose jeans and a baggy, pale pink jumper she went down to the kitchen to start preparing breakfast for her two children before they actually got up. Millie and Sam were ten and six respectively and had yet to appreciate the fun of lie-ins. And sure enough at quarter past seven Sam came creeping quietly down the staircase, his thumb jammed firmly into his mouth, sucking loudly on it. He was only allowed to do this when his father wasn't home as the noise got on Mark's nerves.

"Mummy!" He squealed happily when he saw Hermione.

That was one of the good things; Hermione thought happily, her son was still young enough to see his mother as his idol. She bent down and collected him up in her arms to smother him in kisses until he dissolved into a fit of giggles.

"What type of eggs do you want for your breakfast sweetheart?" She asked as he climbed up to sit at the kitchen table.

"Scrambled!" He shouted happily, banging his hands on the shiny wooden surface. Hermione grinned and quickly obliged.

Twenty minutes later Millie joined them, asking for her eggs to be fried.

As her two children tucked happily, and very noisily, into their breakfast Hermione watched then with a smile. Bother had brown hair and green eyes like her but got their smooth pale complexion from their father, Mark Walker. She thought that they were the most beautiful children that she had ever had the luck to set her eyes upon. But then, she guessed, her opinion may be a little bit biased.

They hardly look like their daddy at all, she thought sadly, he could leave now and pass by them in ten years and have absolutely no clue that they belong to him.

This thought scared her the most, the prospect of Mark leaving her and the children.

She had met Mark in the summer that she had finished Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, when they were both just seventeen years old. Mark hadn't been at Hogwarts, his father was a retired Headmaster of a private magical school, so Mark had been taught by him. They had spent the whole summer in each other's company, hardly ever parting at all, so it was inevitable that their relationship became physical.

It wasn't long before they were being introduced to each other's parents and friends. Harry and Ron told her that the relationship was moving way too fast but Hermione didn't care, she was in love.

In a few short months Hermione found out the shocking news that she was pregnant. She went to Mark, with a heavy heart, to tell him to news and wait for him to completely freak out or break up with her, but surprisingly he didn't do either. He did, in fact, visit a high priced jewellers any buy an engagement ring to make an honest woman out of her. Out of fear of being alone and delight of still being wanted Hermione happily accepted. Two months to the day after Hermione's eighteenth birthday Millie was born.

For the first few weeks everything was great, life was good, Mark helped out with the baby and they all got along fine. But then it changed, like good things always seemed to have the habit of doing. Mark got himself a job; he had to, to pay the mounting bills.

All the time that she had known him Hermione knew that Mark had wanted to travel, to see the world. He had been strongly opposed to the rules and being trapped in a job that he didn't want to do. He didn't like things to be repetitive, he liked to be free and have spontaneity in his life. Hermione had found this a thrill, all her life she had been a 'good girl', to keep to as many rules as she could, although with Harry and Ron she had broken many rules, but with Mark it felt new and exciting.

He changed when he began his new job, he was in an office, and it was all extremely competitive. He lost his wild, reckless side and began to let his serious side take over and rule his mind.

His messy hair was cut to short back and sides, outrageous clothes were pushed to the back of his wardrobe and exchanged for sensible robes in dull colours, even his sense of humour seemed to have changed from a loud, lairy one to a conserved, quiet one.

Hermione watched in horror as he changed and hated herself for the fact that she couldn't do anything to stop it.

Many times she thought wistfully about how they had met –

It was the very first week out of Hogwarts and Hermione was happily sat in Hogsmade Village with Harry, Ron and Ginny; who was moaning about having to go back to school in just six short weeks. Ginny had placed her hands over her eyes and threatened to start crying if Harry and Ron didn't stop teasing her so Hermione got up to but them all ice creams from the small shop on the other side of the square they were sat in, to raise Ginny's spirits.

As she walked to the door after buying the ice creams somebody pushed it with great force, causing Hermione to drop the four cones that she had been expertly carrying down her front.

The cold ice cream started to liquefy and run down the black blouse she was wearing and leave a white stain. She let out of small startled scream as the freezing cold ice seeped through the material to her skin. By this time the person who had knocked her had walked through the door and seen the havoc he had caused.

"Oh my goodness, I am so sorry Miss, please forgive me!" He exclaimed.

He quickly grabbed a pile of napkins from a nearby table and handed them to her so she could wipe the mess off of her top.

"I am so sorry." He said again.

"Don't worry about it, the stain will come out." Hermione reassured him as she threw the crumpled up paper towels into a nearby bin.

"Well at least let me buy you replacement ice creams," he offered, then chuckled to himself and added, "as cliché as that may sound and as corny as all this may be."

Hermione joined in his laughter as she walked back to the counter to buy more ice creams.

"Thank you very much, erm, sorry I didn't catch your name." Hermione said as they walked out of the shop into the village square where her friends were waiting for her.

"Oh, it's Mark, Mark Walker." He replied, "And you?"

"Hermione Granger."

They both stopped and Mark handed her the two ice cream cones that he had been carrying for her.

"Well those are my friends, I better take them these before they melt all over my hands or I drop them again." Hermione said, finding herself blushing.

"OK, well, again I say I'm sorry. I'm not usually that clumsy, in fact sometimes I've even been described as graceful." He joked.

"I'll take your word for it." Hermione laughed. "Well goodbye then."

With a smile Hermione turned and walked over to where Harry, Ron and Ginny were waiting for her.

"Where have you been? You've been gone for ages!" Harry said as she sat down.

"Who was he?" Ginny asked whilst eyeing up Mark.

"Where's my ice cream!" Ron demanded, thinking about his stomach, as usual.

Hermione quickly told them what had happened in the shop, and while Harry and Ron laughed at Mark's clumsiness, Ginny swooned at the romance of it all.

A few minutes later there was a small cough from behind her and someone tapped lightly on her shoulder. Hermione turned and came face-to-face with Mark.

"I'm sorry, but would you like to go out with me sometime?" He asked her nervously.

Trying to ignore the giggles coming from Ginny, Hermione broke into a broad grin and nodded happily.

"Great! I'll owl you sometime in the week." He grinned happily and walked away.

His spiky blond hair and eyes; brown with flecks of yellow, so in the sunlight they looked almost golden, stayed in her mind as she fell asleep that night so she was delighted when his owl arrived at her window the next afternoon.

--

The shouts of her children brought her back into the present, eleven years after she had met him; stood in the large house that his countless late nights in the office had brought them. They had finished their breakfast and now the kids wanted to be taken to the friends' houses that they had arranged to go to. Hermione quickly lit a fire so they could use the Floo network to quickly get them to the various destinations that they wanted to go to.

Stepping back into the living room Hermione looked around her, now empty, house and sighed sadly. She picked up the few things that the children had littered the floor with and tidied them away. She hated her time alone, it gave her time to think about things and she always managed to start thinking about upsetting things and, then, not be able to push them from her head again. She was a lot better when she was busy; she was a lot better when she didn't have time to realise that in actual fact she wasn't happy. When she didn't have time to remember all of the horrendous arguments that had taken place, all the times her marriage had almost come to an end –

"How long are you going away for this time?" Hermione asked, watching Mark pack clothes into a duffle bag without folding them.

"Just a week." He answered her as he searched the closet for his broomstick servicing kit.

"A week," Hermione exclaimed "But you will be back on Saturday night right? I'm meeting up with Harry and Ron that evening, remember?"

"Again? You see way too much of those two! You're always out with them." Mark moaned.

"They're my best friends and I only see them once a month!" Hermione snapped, "And that's the only time I only get to go out, all the other time I'm home looking after our children, unlike you who is always going to see Quidditch games and not coming home for a week."

"But that's different, this is for work, I'm almost certain that I'm going to get that promotion, if I don't go Jackson will weasel his way in and buddy up to the boss and jeopardise my chance. I can't let that happen, I'm doing this for all of us."

"Well these are my friends and they have been since I was eleven years old! Millie and Sam are your kids too; you can look after them for just one night."

"Oh yeah use the guilt card on me that's really mature!" Mark snorted. "I'm bloody glad that I'm going if you're going to be like this."

"Well if you don't like it then why don't you just not come back?" Hermione yelled, finding that she had reached then very end of her temper.

"Fine I damn won't!" He yelled back, finally finding his broomstick kit and yanking it from where it was lodged between a box of books belonging to Hermione and the cat basket that had belonged to Crookshanks.

Once he had stuffed that in his bag also, he stormed out of the front door, slamming it so hard behind him one of the glass panels fell out and shattered into tiny pieces on the wooden floor.

It was two weeks before he came home. The argument wasn't spoken about again, nor was where Mark had been or what he had done in the two week that he had been absent from the family home.

It seemed to be a constant thing; over the ten years that they had been together they had many raging arguments, usually because Mark was going away on some sort of trip for 'work', he would leave and come back a few weeks later as though nothing had ever happened.

It worried Hermione a little as everyone always said, 'the key to a good relationship is communication' but she tried to push those thoughts away with all the other doubts she had. As long as he comes home, I'm happy, she told herself; as long as he doesn't divorce me, I'm fine.