Hi Everyone! This is my first HP fic and I really hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think, good or bad comments, either way I'd like to know so I can learn =D

- I do not own Harry Potter or anything to do with it -

It was a regular Wednesday night when Hermione Granger, sitting at the kitchen table, realized that something was missing in her life. She had a flat in London, which, if a tad small, was quite nice. Her career as a journalist at the Daily Prophet was going great, and going to work was never something she dreaded, as some people did. Every day she strived to bring the magical world fact based stories, as if to make up for some of the garbage the paper had put out in earlier years. While she and her parents had had a bit of a rough patch after Hermione brought them home from Australia, they had all moved past it. Harry and Ron were still her best mates, though they didn't spend quite as much time together as they used to. This was owing to the fact that Harry was happily married to Ginny, and Ron had gotten quite serious with Lavender. All things considered, at twenty-six years old, Hermione Granger seemed to have it all.

However, that night as she moved around the kitchen cooking dinner, she glanced at the recipe for the chicken she was preparing. At the top of the page read "Serves 2". Though she must have looked at it many times before (it was one of her favorite meals), this time the phrase stuck out in her mind. What would it be like, she wondered, to not have to pack up the extra serving to have for lunch the next day? To have somebody seated across the table from her, who she could talk about her day with, and later laugh at some silly joke they had heard from a coworker and repeated for her? Hermione sighed as she thought of the two of them, her and this mystery man, this figment of her imagination. The one thing she was missing.

It was not as though her lack of companionship was crushing her – she got on just fine. It would have been nice though, she thought, to have somebody other than her cat to love her. Crookshanks was wonderful, but a pet and a man were just two very different things. Sighing, she stood to do the dishes, opting for the old-fashioned muggle method, as it would take more time. After all, it wasn't like there was anybody to rush back to. As she washed, Crookshanks wrapped himself around her ankles, and purred as she reached down the scratch him.

"You love me, don't you," she remarked to the cat, receiving a look that seemed to mean that he would if she continued scratching.

"Now if I could only find somebody who would love me for me, not just because I feed and scratch him."

Turning back to her dishes, Hermione didn't realize that the man she was looking for was much closer than she could possibly imagine. He was also one of the last people she ever thought she'd want to spend time with.