The Gralfoy Affair (or, The Oblivious Ones) - Dramione

Chapter One

One

"Ronald, please." Hermione Granger was tugging on the long chrome handle to let herself out of the muggle car. "There's no need for you to check me in."

Ron Weasley was slower operating the door on his side of the car. The thing was made of a long, heavy rectangle with a sharp metal corner that lodged itself in the turf beside where he'd parked, on the wrong side of the long, curved lane in front of St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. The car door sank deeper into the ground as he tried to force it closed, and all the while she was walking farther away. This car--he never would have taken it if there was any way to talk while apparating. And they still needed to talk. He cursed the door shut and chased her toward the hospital doors.

"There is all kinds of need," he said. "You are sick. And I'm responsible for you."

She almost laughed. "Romantic."

"Well, if you had a broken leg I wouldn't ship you off to the hospital on your own. If you had some kind of pox--"

"Yes, yes," she said. "You are a darling. You've done nothing wrong."

He caught her hand, gripping hard, the diamond he'd had set in a gold ring for her cutting into the undersides of his fingers. Ridiculous thing--this ring she wanted, demanded, before she'd say yes to a wedding day. It was made to her specifications, a copy of the ring her father had given her mother, as well as she could remember it. The original had been made before she was born, before her parents knew she would exist. He didn't complain as the stone cut into him, and he didn't let go of her either, which was sweet enough to stop her walking.

She turned to face him on the paving stones outside the hospital, kissed his cheek, dewy with the morning fog. "A little time," she said. "A little time on my own, somewhere quiet and safe, under the care of professionals. A little time to see what's left of me when the plaster that is your family is peeled back from my war wounds."

"They're your family too. This June, after the wedding, we'll have the parchment to prove it. But it's all just a formality. You belong to all of us, always, already."

He didn't know why she laughed at that. He just went on. "And I know they can never replace the family you had before, not your parents. I know. But I--forgive me if I'm having trouble understanding what any of that's got to do with--this." He waved an arm toward the stone porticoes and balustrades of the hospital.

Another kiss, on his opposite cheek. "I know," she said, impressed and surprised at her power to sound so conciliatory as she told him again, "Thank you. Thank you for trusting me to know I need to try this. Even if it doesn't make me better, I need to know that I tried everything--I tried everything I could to properly heal from losing my parents. The nightmares, the panic attacks, the--pain. I can't take it. And though I adore your parents and they've been so good to me, I can't just keep all of this bandaged out of sight. I need to know what me looks like without us."

His arms were around her neck, mashing her face into his shoulder, pressing his mouth against her hair, and her eyelashes into the knit of his muffler.
She turned her head so she could speak. "Just for six weeks."

He nodded against the crown of her head. "At least let me walk you inside."

The admission papers were signed and a beaded bracelet spelling out her name was clasped around her wrist. It would serve as her identification while she stayed here: G-R-A-N-G-E-R. "We do recommend that personal valuables be stored in our safe and not kept in patient rooms," the clerk explained. "Do you have any valuables you wish to leave here? Money? Jewelry?"

Ron looked away as she wrenched the awful diamond ring from her finger and closed it inside a manila envelope.

They followed a hospital porter upstairs, to the topmost floor, level seven. The staircase ended in the middle of a long narrow hall. The porter turned right, toward the west where a door propped open by a potted plant led to St. Mungo's psychiatric ward, white light from the foggy morning outside falling through the skylights in the high ceiling. The corridor to the left was dark, barred by a door reinforced with steel in spite of being charmed shut. There was one small window in the closed door, and one word written on it in straight black letters: "Forensics."