Tarnished Sidekicks
Chance Meetings: Xander and Hermione
by Mhalachai

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer belongs to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling. No profit has been made from this fic, and the only benefit to me is personal satisfaction and the creative process.
Note: Post Order of the Phoenix by several years, and a few years after Chosen as well.
Summary: A chance meeting between two strangers in a pub forces Hermione to reconsider exactly who, and what, a hero can be.

~*~

Hermione Granger took another sip from her fourth cup of tea and grimaced slightly at the cold liquid. Placing the cup back on the table, she tried to turn back to her book.

The noise in the overly full pub proved too much, however, and she finally closed the book with a snap.

Some things never change, Hermione thought as she picked her cup up again with her left hand and stared into its porcelain depths. The Muggle pub, in London near her parents' house, had always been noisy and crowed, even at lunchtime on a Tuesday. She'd been coming here since she was a child, first with her father for dinner while mum was out late at work, then later by herself when she was home on hols from school.

And now... now, school was out, and all the lessons she'd ever need were burned into her mind like a brand. Now, she needed the noise. She'd had enough of silence.

A movement caught her eye, like everything did these days, and she glanced up over her cup. A young man was standing in the middle of the pub, his back to her, a mug in his hand. His head was moving as if he was looking for a place to sit.

Good bloody luck. The pub usually didn't clear out for another half hour, when the office workers needed to go back to their busy afternoons. Hermione was about to return to her book when the man turned around, and she got a good look at his face.

The first thing she noticed wasn't the eye patch, although it ranked a close second. The first thing that she saw about him was his dark hair, a bit too long around his face, and it was so much like Harry's that her breath caught in her throat.

Then he saw her looking at him, and the similarity to Harry vanished as the man's eye focused on her. He smiled tentatively, and approached her table. "Is it always this crowded in here?" he asked her.

American. Half wanting to go back to her book, Hermione nodded.

"You came at the worst time of day," she said, raising her voice to be heard over the din. She hesitated, then resigned all hope of reading further. "If you're looking for a chair, that one's not taken."

She gestured at the empty chair across from her with her left hand, still holding the cup. A few drops of tea flew over the rim of the cup and landed on cover of her book, and she bit back sharp words as she put the cup down with a clatter. While she mopped up the spill with her napkin, the man sat down in the empty chair.

"Thanks for letting me sit here," he said as Hermione crumpled the napkin one-handed and dropped it on the table.

"Don't worry about it," she said, although she was already regretting her impulsive offer.

"Yeah, well." The man put down his mug of what looked like ginger ale on the table, and held out his right hand. "I'm Xander."

Hermione froze. It's just a hand shake, she told herself. Muggles do it all the time. He doesn't know.

The smile on Xander's face began to fade a bit as Hermione stared at his hand for a moment. Then, she lifted her right hand up off her lap and reached across the table.

If Xander thought it strange or repulsive to be shaking a hand with only two fingers, instead of the traditional four, he didn't make any outward sign. As Hermione drew back her right hand and slid it onto her lap, under the table, he picked up his mug and took a long drink.

"Thanks again," he said. "You from around here?"

Hermione let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "Originally, yes, my parents live nearby." She raised an eyebrow. "And yourself?"

Xander shook his head. "I'm from all over these days," he said. "I'm actually in town for some sort of official opening, which is kinda weird, since we've been using the place for two years. But I guess that since the last of the damage from the bombing is finally fixed, we get to slay ribbons and break champagne bottles over banisters, that sort of thing."

Bombing? Hermione leaned over the table, scarcely noticing that her hair was almost falling in her tea. "Are you talking about the large building, two blocks from here, that was damaged in the IRA bombing three years ago?" she asked eagerly.

Xander looked surprised. "You know the building?"

Hermione nodded. "My mum used to walk me past the building ever Saturday when she went to the hairdresser." The memory was a happy one, just her and Mum and a whole afternoon for themselves, an hour at the hairdresser, then tea in a cozy shop on the way home.

The tea shop had closed while she was at Hogwarts, a victim of hard economic times in the Muggle world, she supposed. A lot of things had changed while Hermione was at Hogwarts. The entire Wizarding world had been upended, and some days Hermione still felt like she was lost in the settling waves.

"Anyway," Hermione said, shaking off reminiscences, "Can you tell me something?"

Xander nodded, but his gaze was now cool, appraising. There's something about the building he doesn't want me to know. But what?

"I've always thought, I mean, I wondered... Is it a library?"

Xander blinked. "A library?" The honest surprise in his voice made Hermione wonder what he had been expecting her to ask. "No. Well, by 'no' I mean yes and no."

"Yes it's a library and no it's not a library?"

"Yes, it's got a library, but that's not all that's in there. More like a school," Xander clarified.

"Ah." Hermione looked down at her cup, thought about drinking the rest of the ice-cold tea, then decided against it. She dropped her other hand to her lap and ran her left fingers over her right hand, where once her hand had been perfect but now was just another outward scar. "It just always felt like a library when I walked past, books and words and knowledge leaking out from inside."

Xander sat back in his chair and regarded her. "You like books?"

Hermione couldn't help the sigh that escaped her lips. "Oh yes," she said with feeling. "I've always liked books, telling you thing that you could never have known."

"You sound like a friend of my mine," Xander said. "She's all about the books."

"I'm the one who's the book fiend," Hermione said. Her tentative good mood withered and died as she thought of her friends. Friends she hadn't seen in months, and some she never would again.

"What are you reading now?" Xander asked. He pointed at the battered book on the table. "Old favourite?"

With her left hand, Hermione turned the book over so Xander could see the battered cover. "A book I've been meaning to re-read for several years."

"Return of the King? Cool," Xander said. "What did you think of the movie?"

Hermione frowned. "There was a movie?"

Xander frowned back at her, as if he wasn't sure if she was kidding him. "Yeah, won some Oscars." He shrugged. "This is some sort of coincidence. I just watched it last week, in fact. Been thinking about it a lot."

"What about?" Hermione asked. It had been her favourite book for almost a year when she was a child, even if she tended to skip over certain parts.

"You know, sidekicks." Xander hitched his chair closer to the table and leaned in so Hermione could hear him without shouting. "Sam, for example. Could Frodo have done it alone, the ring and all? Nope."

Hermione traced the edge of the book. That was what she loved about the book, that even though people were hurt, the good guys still won and no one important died. It wasn't real, but reality wasn't worth the paper it was printed on some days.

But ever since Voldemort had held her down and ripped her fingers off to send to Harry as a present, Hermione couldn't bring herself to read the part in the book where Gollum bit off Frodo's finger. They were only words, but words held a power to hurt nearly unrivalled by any action.

"What would you want to be?" Hermione asked. "Hero or sidekick?"

"Sidekick," Xander said immediately. "I thought about being the hero once. Didn't work out. I mean, as a sidekick, the pay's crap, plus danger and death at every turn."

Silently, Hermione agreed with him about the side benefits. "So why do you still choose being a sidekick?" she pressed.

Xander stared at the book for a moment, then met Hermione's stare. "Because there's a chance at a normal life," he said. "If you're the sidekick, you can stop being the sidekick at some point. If you're the hero, that's what you are until you die. Sidekicks can hang up their spurs at some point. Heroes are heroes until they die, but sidekicks can dream of a white picket fence, couple of munchkins running around, a dog, maybe a minivan, without betraying the cause."

Hermione thought about the heroes she had known. Harry, of course. Dumbledore too. But there were other heroes that no one heard about, heroes that died in the dark, doing what was right, not because they thought they could survive, but because it was right.

Like George.

It had been two years, and she still missed him, wished she could have said thank you, and that she was sorry. Sorry he died rescuing her with Fred and Harry, sorry that she had yelled at him and Fred over their pranks at school, sorry she hadn't told him what a good friend he was.

Fred hadn't blamed her. He'd blamed the Death Eaters. After George had died, blocking Hermione from the killing curse, Fred had gone insane. Hermione didn't know how he had done it, but when the screaming had stopped and she'd crawled out from under George's limp body, there weren't any Death Eaters left alive.

He hadn't been quick enough to save his twin, Fred had confided in her during one of their drunken evenings together more than year after it happened, but he'd made damned sure that George's death was avenged.

"D'you know what he told me?" Fred had asked her, while he unsteadily refilled her glass with fire whiskey. "'Course you don't," he continued before she could answer. "He told me, that we needed to save you. Not because you were Ron's girlfriend back then, or because it was right or any of that stuff, but because you'd do the same for either of us."

Those words had stayed with her through her alcohol and grief-induced fog, almost a year later. She knew that she would have gone in after either twin, if they were being held hostage by Voldemort, in an attempt to draw out Harry.

That didn't take away her guilt. And it hadn't stopped Ron from blaming himself, either.

Harry had told her that Ron didn't blame her; he blamed himself for not being there when George died, for not being the one to save her. Hermione, still in the hospital, trying to learn how to eat with her left hand, her right leg still in pain where the bones were knitting, had snapped at Harry that she really didn't care what Ron thought, that he wasn't dead.

It had been monstrously unfair and hurtful, and Harry pretended to have forgotten her words. But she couldn't. Her first love had died, not when Ron hadn't been there to save her from having half her hand ripped off, not when Lucius Malfoy had used her alleviate his boredom, but when Ron hadn't come to see her in St. Mungo's. Ever.

Love couldn't survive everything.

Hermione realized that Xander was still watching her, and she pulled herself out of her memories with an almost physical jolt.

"I'm sorry," Hermione said. She picked up her cup and knocked back the cold tea. It didn't clear the bitter taste in her mouth.

"It's okay," Xander said. "You seemed lost in thought."

"That's one way to put it." Hermione ran her thumb one more time over the ruined part of her hand, and deliberately put both hands on the tabletop. Xander didn't even look down.

"We were talking about heroes."

"True," Hermione said. "But I think you're wrong."

"Oh?"

"I think that who we think of as sidekicks, they're the heroes. No one wants to admit it, though. When the hero dies it's a tragedy, but when the sidekick dies, it's collateral damage. People can't deal with dead heroes. It's easier to let the sidekicks die, than realize that a lot of the people who die are the real heroes."

When she dared to look up, there was a strange expression on Xander's face. I wonder if he knows what I'm talking about, Hermione thought.

When he saw her looking at him, Xander tried to smile. It didn't work, but the twitch of his lips prompted Hermione to ask.

"What happened to your eye?" she asked quietly.

Xander reached up and touched the edge of the eye patch. Instead of answering her, he asked, "What happened to your hand?"

For the first time in two years, the question didn't bother Hermione. She just smiled slightly. "Cooking accident." It was the lie she'd given most people since it happened. Somehow, she didn't think that "A raving insane wizard with delusions of world domination decided to rip my fingers off on a whim" wouldn't go over well in polite company.

"Huh." Xander finished off his ginger ale. "I was running with scissors."

Right.

Xander stood up. "Thanks again for letting me sit with you. I think I'm fortified enough to go back and deal with the estrogens horde."

"It was..." Hermione's voice trailed off. She didn't want to lie. It hadn't been fun. In any way. "Enlightening."

"That it has been." Xander stood up and smiled at her widely. "Maybe I'll see you around."

Hermione looked up at him. He was handsome, in spite of the missing eye, or maybe because of it. But she knew that with all his outward appearances, he was too much like her for her to ever be comfortable around him. But maybe... maybe.

"Good-bye. And good luck with your not-a-library."

She watched as Xander threaded his way out of the crowded pub, until the door closed behind him. She looked back down at her book, going to take up reading again, but suddenly she was sick and tired of being here. Of hiding. Of pretending she was nothing more than a sidekick.

She stood up and shoved her book into her bag. Maybe I can catch a taxi back to the Leaky Cauldron, she thought as she wound her way amongst the pub's patrons to the door. She was already wondering what bad shape her flat in Diagon Alley was, after spending over a month at her parent's place. I can drop off Crookshanks and scour the place of dust...

She came to a halt on the sidewalk. Then what?

Her friends were probably busy. She'd read all her books, and spending time with strangers in the Leaky Cauldron wasn't what she wanted.

An idea sparked in her mind. Maybe... She licked her lips and looked up at the sky. It was early enough. Maybe I can stop into the shop and see Fred.

The anonymous crush of people around her, Hermione began to make her way home.

-fin