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Link is the stong, silent type (heroingreen) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2013-02-16 16:18:00

I’m Hermione. Here with cocoa.
Who: Link and Hermione Granger
When: After this conversation
Where: Link’s farm in the middle of nowhere
What: Hot Chocolate Delivery! (Paying it Forward)
Rating: Low
Status: Complete



It was a good thing Link was instinctively brave, because he’d just invited a stranger to his house. Well, technically she’d invited herself, but he’d given her his address. Hopefully she was as nice as she claimed to be, because it was going to be a challenge to defend himself with a broken ankle if she had ulterior plans to rob him or worse.

He’d been off his feet for less than a day and already he was going stir crazy.

Hermione pulled up to the house in her car. It was a long ways away from everything else in the world, no wonder he’d given her that warning! She had hot chocolate powder ready to go--the kind you mix with milk instead of hot water--and had texted him about ten minutes before so that he could put some on the stove. She didn’t know if that was possible with his ankle injured, and if it wasn’t, she was more than willing to fix it for him while she was there visiting.

After climbing out of her car and walking up the steps, she clicked the button that locked her car doors, then raised her hand to knock on the front door.

Putting milk on the stove hadn’t been easy, but Link had gotten it done. The key was taking his time, because spilling milk as this point might have been enough to make him cry. He wasn’t used to having physical impediments and he was really starting to feel like he’d taken walking for granted all these years.

Just as the milk started to simmer, there was a knock at the door. Link hobbled away from the kitchen on his crutches. It was an old house and all the spaces were narrow, meaning he bumped into every corner and door frame along the way. Opening the front door took a full minute -- which really was a long time for a simple lock when you thought about it.

Hermione wondered if she should have offered to come in? Or if he could make it on his own. If his ankle was really broken, she was sure he’d need extra help around the place. She shrugged those thoughts away, though, as the door opened and he was there in front of her. She held up the packet of hot chocolate mix and broke into a grin.

“I’m Hermione. Here with cocoa.” She gave it a little jiggle in the air.
What the internet consistently failed to do was warn a shy young man if the girl he was chatting with was unreasonably pretty. Link’s mouth immediately went dry, though he’d never had a gift for words anyway. For a few seconds, his mind went buzzz and then, finally, ...crap.

Somehow he managed a “Hi” as he hopped backward and gave Hermione room to come inside. Also a “Thanks for coming. Did you find the place okay?” Meanwhile, his mind went buzzzz.

“Hi.” Hermione repeated after him, wearing a bright grin. She hadn’t really noticed the silence, she was more concerned with how long it took him to get to the door, and the idea that he was out here all on his own with a broken ankle.

“It wasn’t that bad. Thanks to Google.” Hermione said, then gave a gentle “thank you” as she stepped through the doorway and into the hall. “Are you on your own here?”

Link was only twenty years old, but his parents had died three years ago, leaving him the farm. He’d actually left school a few months beforehand, preparing to take over one day. He’d had no idea that day would come so soon. It was a sad story, but he wasn’t one to talk about himself right off the bat. “Yep,” was all he said, and he was pleasant about it. He’d had a long time to heal.

He kicked the door closed with one of the crutches. “I have hands who work a few days a week, but they don’t live here. The milk’s on the stove, by the way. Kitchen’s this way.” He hobbled into the lead.

Hermione was the same age, and she’d been alone, too. Except her parents were in Australia, not dead. And now she was married to Jim. She was starting to build her own family here, starting to feel like more of an adult. Probably too early on, but everyone had to grow up sometime.

She nodded, then followed him to the kitchen and moved straight to the stove to make his hot chocolate. It was a powder in a little packet, which she poured into the simmering milk and stirred in quickly with a spoon, cutting off the heat. “I think you’re gonna love this. Do you have a mug handy?”

Link was happy to take a seat at the kitchen table while she worked, setting his crutches on the floor, out of the way. Hermione seemed able to figure her way around without much needing much direction, but he did point out the cabinet with the mugs to the left of the sink. “So you came from... school?” She had mentioned a library, after all.

Hermione probably shouldn’t have made herself at home in a stranger’s kitchen, but she was like that. She was friendly and generous, and more than willing to go out of her way to help a friend in need. And Link was nothing if not a new, potential friend. She gave him a smile then tugged a couple of mugs out of the cupboard, dished up the hot chocolate into his (putting just the little excess into the second) and held his mug out to him.

“I think you’re going to like it. It’s real, not like the watery stuff.” She said, then turned to wash the pot quickly in the sink.

Link wondered if there was a reason why she’s ignored the question, so he decided against asking again. It was around the same time that he noticed there was a ring on her wedding-ring finger. Maybe she was married. Being married and in school at her age was a potentially complicated situation.

But if she was married, that meant Link could relax a little. He wasn’t used to having pretty girls make him hot chocolate. “Wait until you taste the milk. It’s from my own cows,” he said, accepting the mug.

Hermione was, in fact, married. And possibly off in her own little world, considering she’d completely missed his question. She inhaled sharply with pleasant surprise. “Really? Your own cows here on the farm?” She asked while wiping out the pot. She set it back on the stove, clean, to dry, then joined him at the table with her own mug.

“I can’t wait. It’s just a bit hot yet,” for her, anyway. She’d give it another minute. Something clicked in her head.

“School! Yes, school. I came from school. UCLA. Pre-Law.”

Maybe he wasn’t used to women in his kitchen, but he had to admit there was something nice about it. It was totally not politically appropriate to think so, but Link spent so much time alone that he could hardly be blamed for it. It felt quite natural, really. He’d lost his mother, he had no luck with keeping a girlfriend. It was... nice to be looked after.

But aha! So Hermione was in school. “Wow. You want to be a lawyer?”

“Environmental law, I think,” Hermione responded, grinning and nodding. “I want to give nature a voice. It’s sad how human beings treat other animals and plants simply because they’re not like us.” She wasn’t a vegetarian, or anything, but she did care a lot about wildlife and animals. It showed on her face and in her voice that she had a lot of passion for the subject.

If it wasn’t the Environment, Hermione would probably be going crazy promoting equal rights to all human beings.

Link had left high school when he was sixteen, so he hadn't technically completed his schooling. The idea of a law degree, let alone college, was enough to make him feel intimidated by Hermione's intelligence. "Gosh," he said lamely, with a light chuckle. "Wow. So you want to make sure the animals aren't getting abused? Like that kind of thing?"

“Yes. Well, yes and no. Not just animals. The environment as a whole. I want to make sure that the drilling doesn’t go crazy, that people aren’t dumping things into the ocean that they’re not supposed to be. I want to make sure to give a voice to those flora and fauna that don’t have one.” And rocks and minerals, and air... all sorts of things didn’t have voices and were being abused by the humans on this planet.

“Oh. Okay,” Link said with dawning comprehension. He had a narrow frame of reference for things that existed beyond his farm, but he had read stories about things like this on his new-installed internet. Still, he thought the way Hermione phrased it was a little silly. Speaking for plants? Protecting them was nice, though.

He brought his mug to his lips and gave the residual steam a blow. Then, he gave the hot chocolate a sip. “This is really good. You weren’t kidding.” He smiled. He had a handsome, innocent smile.

“Right? So much better than making hot chocolate with water.” She lifted her mug and sipped from it as well. Good stuff. And the milk was obviously special. Sweet. Hermione brightened a bit at the sight of his smile. It was handsome. He was a very nice guy.

“Thank you for letting me share it with you.” She added, gently.

“Thank you for driving out to the middle of nowhere to bring it,” Link replied.