FIC: "Filthy Habit," Hermione gen, PG-13
Title: Filthy Habit
Rating: PG-13
Words: Roundabout 1150
Warnings: Background character death.
Author's notes: Written for _cheshire as part of springtime_gen. Tons and tons and tons of love to jessicacmalfoy, who pulled beta duty in between classes and is generally awesome, and to fourth_rose, who did not kill me when I turned this in a month late.
-
Sometimes Hermione smokes after she's given up trying to sleep.
She shakes a fag from the pack and lights it with a word, leaning out of the open window to blow smoke into the still night air.
It's a filthy habit, she knows.
She had laughed, nervous and incredulous, when Fred (or maybe it was George) had pressed her first cigarette into her hand. These are terrible for you, she'd said, throwing it out and preparing to deliver a long tirade about the dangers and evils of tobacco use. George (or maybe Fred) had only given her another, lit this time, with threats of a Permanent Sticking Charm to keep her from binning it.
Calm down, Hermione. Yes, we know Mum will kill us. But you need it. Come on, one will hardly kill you.
They had laughed as she'd coughed and sputtered and promised them dire consequences, and then they'd taught her to ash and given her the rest of the pack.
She never asked them how they'd gotten started on Muggle fags, and she wishes now that she had. It was probably a good story.
A breeze ruffles her hair, and Ron turns over in bed. She flicks her cigarette, and the ash settles on the windowsill. Filthy, indeed.
Harry had been shocked and Ron had been appalled, and Ginny had taken to lifting her fags when she thought Hermione wasn't looking. Molly, as expected, had thrown a fit, absolutely livid that a young woman as bright and sensible as Hermione would engage in such a deadly, disgusting practice.
Thank you for your concern, Mrs. Weasley, but I am of age and you are not my mother.
Her own parents would have added something about the horrors of nicotine stains and oral cancers, but after the Mark went up over their house at Michaelmas they weren't really up to delivering parental sorts of lectures anymore.
Hermione visits them once a week, now. They don't usually accept Muggles for long-term treatment at St. Mungo's, but the hospital administration made a special exception for them (or really, for Hermione Granger-Weasley, War Heroine, Ministry Insufferable Know-It-All In Residence).
Sometimes she runs into Neville as she's leaving and they make awkward small talk in an attempt to forget why they're there. He always has recent pictures of Ginny and the baby to show his mum, and she usually ends up taking one home just so he can be sure that someone appreciates the effort.
Idly, Hermione wonders what Harry would say if he knew that Neville had married his girl. Nothing good, likely, although Harry had changed so much by the end that Hermione had quite lost the knack of knowing what he'd do before he did it.
They all changed, really, in that strange, short year.
Hermione had certainly never expected to spend most of her eighteenth year holed up in Twelve Grimmauld Place's library, poring over obscure Dark Arts tomes and chainsmoking to stay awake. But strength of conviction can only push someone so far, after all, and nicotine is a far more reliable fuel than righteousness.
She takes a long drag and holds her breath, feeling the rush of the drug hitting her system as the smoke curls into her lungs.
After Harry died, she had quit. It didn't feel right, somehow, to engage in such an unapologetically self-destructive practice when one of her best friends had sacrificed himself to something so much nobler than a petty addiction. She had embarked on a rigorous program of self-improvement, taking up yoga and throwing out her fags. She’d even graciously allowed Molly to plan most of the wedding.
That last had been more than a little selfish, though. Hermione hadn't really been up to arguing hydrangea versus stephanotis when she knew Charlie would be standing in Harry's place, and Molly had needed a distraction lest she go completely mad and take it out on everyone else. Hell, even with the distraction, Molly had still left Hermione craving a smoke more often than not.
She'd lasted midway through the rehearsal dinner before ducking into the loo, guiltily conjuring a cigarette from thin air and nearly setting her hair aflame in her haste to light it.
Ron had looked at her knowingly when she'd returned, and between his hand under the table squeezing hers reassuringly and the nicotine zipping through her bloodstream, she'd felt a little less awful.
Smiling fondly, Hermione turns her head and watches him sleep for a moment. He never has to say a word for her to know that he misses Harry just as much as she does, which is just as well, really, because Ron never grew out of the habit of saying exactly the wrong thing.
He doesn't begrudge her the smoking, although he doesn't like it now any more than he had when she first started. She doesn't even like it herself, really; the taste is alright, but now that she's reasonably certain she'll still be alive next Tuesday, the potential damage to her health is much more difficult to ignore than it had been when she started.
Yet she continues to do it. Every three or four nights, sometime between midnight and dawn, she leans out the window with her elbows propped up on the sill, tasting the smoke and the stillness of the night. It's almost routine.
No. It is routine. And in the early morning hours, when she’s alone with her cigarettes and the faint glow of the streetlamps, Hermione knows that her filthy habit is just part of the larger routine of her grief.
She dangles her cigarette between two fingers, watching it burn almost to the filter before she takes the last hit.
It bothers her that she’s gotten used to missing him, gotten used to the sympathetic smiles and the sleepless nights and the fights with Ron that never would have started, had Harry been there to stop them. The pain isn’t any less, but it feels counterfeit, fake, like she’s reading from a script of how her sorrow should play out instead of actually feeling it.
But the burn in her lungs, the racing of her heart - these things remain real and tangible as time increases the distance between the girl she had been and the woman two years of outright war and Harry’s death had made her. Smoking doesn’t make her miss him less, any more than it could make her forget were she to lose a limb, but she would rather be ruled by nicotine than by grieving.
Hermione stubs out the fag on the brick of the eave and blows the accumulated ashes off of the windowsill and into the night.
She shuts the window, latches it, and pauses a moment to look out at the street.
Ron grumbles. “Come back to bed, Hermione. S’cold.”
“Yes,” she says, and draws the curtain.
-
Feedback cherished.
Rating: PG-13
Words: Roundabout 1150
Warnings: Background character death.
Author's notes: Written for _cheshire as part of springtime_gen. Tons and tons and tons of love to jessicacmalfoy, who pulled beta duty in between classes and is generally awesome, and to fourth_rose, who did not kill me when I turned this in a month late.
-
Sometimes Hermione smokes after she's given up trying to sleep.
She shakes a fag from the pack and lights it with a word, leaning out of the open window to blow smoke into the still night air.
It's a filthy habit, she knows.
She had laughed, nervous and incredulous, when Fred (or maybe it was George) had pressed her first cigarette into her hand. These are terrible for you, she'd said, throwing it out and preparing to deliver a long tirade about the dangers and evils of tobacco use. George (or maybe Fred) had only given her another, lit this time, with threats of a Permanent Sticking Charm to keep her from binning it.
Calm down, Hermione. Yes, we know Mum will kill us. But you need it. Come on, one will hardly kill you.
They had laughed as she'd coughed and sputtered and promised them dire consequences, and then they'd taught her to ash and given her the rest of the pack.
She never asked them how they'd gotten started on Muggle fags, and she wishes now that she had. It was probably a good story.
A breeze ruffles her hair, and Ron turns over in bed. She flicks her cigarette, and the ash settles on the windowsill. Filthy, indeed.
Harry had been shocked and Ron had been appalled, and Ginny had taken to lifting her fags when she thought Hermione wasn't looking. Molly, as expected, had thrown a fit, absolutely livid that a young woman as bright and sensible as Hermione would engage in such a deadly, disgusting practice.
Thank you for your concern, Mrs. Weasley, but I am of age and you are not my mother.
Her own parents would have added something about the horrors of nicotine stains and oral cancers, but after the Mark went up over their house at Michaelmas they weren't really up to delivering parental sorts of lectures anymore.
Hermione visits them once a week, now. They don't usually accept Muggles for long-term treatment at St. Mungo's, but the hospital administration made a special exception for them (or really, for Hermione Granger-Weasley, War Heroine, Ministry Insufferable Know-It-All In Residence).
Sometimes she runs into Neville as she's leaving and they make awkward small talk in an attempt to forget why they're there. He always has recent pictures of Ginny and the baby to show his mum, and she usually ends up taking one home just so he can be sure that someone appreciates the effort.
Idly, Hermione wonders what Harry would say if he knew that Neville had married his girl. Nothing good, likely, although Harry had changed so much by the end that Hermione had quite lost the knack of knowing what he'd do before he did it.
They all changed, really, in that strange, short year.
Hermione had certainly never expected to spend most of her eighteenth year holed up in Twelve Grimmauld Place's library, poring over obscure Dark Arts tomes and chainsmoking to stay awake. But strength of conviction can only push someone so far, after all, and nicotine is a far more reliable fuel than righteousness.
She takes a long drag and holds her breath, feeling the rush of the drug hitting her system as the smoke curls into her lungs.
After Harry died, she had quit. It didn't feel right, somehow, to engage in such an unapologetically self-destructive practice when one of her best friends had sacrificed himself to something so much nobler than a petty addiction. She had embarked on a rigorous program of self-improvement, taking up yoga and throwing out her fags. She’d even graciously allowed Molly to plan most of the wedding.
That last had been more than a little selfish, though. Hermione hadn't really been up to arguing hydrangea versus stephanotis when she knew Charlie would be standing in Harry's place, and Molly had needed a distraction lest she go completely mad and take it out on everyone else. Hell, even with the distraction, Molly had still left Hermione craving a smoke more often than not.
She'd lasted midway through the rehearsal dinner before ducking into the loo, guiltily conjuring a cigarette from thin air and nearly setting her hair aflame in her haste to light it.
Ron had looked at her knowingly when she'd returned, and between his hand under the table squeezing hers reassuringly and the nicotine zipping through her bloodstream, she'd felt a little less awful.
Smiling fondly, Hermione turns her head and watches him sleep for a moment. He never has to say a word for her to know that he misses Harry just as much as she does, which is just as well, really, because Ron never grew out of the habit of saying exactly the wrong thing.
He doesn't begrudge her the smoking, although he doesn't like it now any more than he had when she first started. She doesn't even like it herself, really; the taste is alright, but now that she's reasonably certain she'll still be alive next Tuesday, the potential damage to her health is much more difficult to ignore than it had been when she started.
Yet she continues to do it. Every three or four nights, sometime between midnight and dawn, she leans out the window with her elbows propped up on the sill, tasting the smoke and the stillness of the night. It's almost routine.
No. It is routine. And in the early morning hours, when she’s alone with her cigarettes and the faint glow of the streetlamps, Hermione knows that her filthy habit is just part of the larger routine of her grief.
She dangles her cigarette between two fingers, watching it burn almost to the filter before she takes the last hit.
It bothers her that she’s gotten used to missing him, gotten used to the sympathetic smiles and the sleepless nights and the fights with Ron that never would have started, had Harry been there to stop them. The pain isn’t any less, but it feels counterfeit, fake, like she’s reading from a script of how her sorrow should play out instead of actually feeling it.
But the burn in her lungs, the racing of her heart - these things remain real and tangible as time increases the distance between the girl she had been and the woman two years of outright war and Harry’s death had made her. Smoking doesn’t make her miss him less, any more than it could make her forget were she to lose a limb, but she would rather be ruled by nicotine than by grieving.
Hermione stubs out the fag on the brick of the eave and blows the accumulated ashes off of the windowsill and into the night.
She shuts the window, latches it, and pauses a moment to look out at the street.
Ron grumbles. “Come back to bed, Hermione. S’cold.”
“Yes,” she says, and draws the curtain.
-
Feedback cherished.