It is two in the morning when the phone rings. The sound is foreign at first; she has only heard that phone ring maybe twice, and that was years ago. She nearly can't find it in time because it's so buried beneath crap in her bedside drawer. But she does find the cell phone, and she does answer it.
"Hello?"
"Hello, may I speak to a Miss Hermione Granger please?" American accent, the timbre of a middle-aged woman worked to the bone. Hermione can think of no one she knows that fits that description.
"This is she. May I ask who's calling?"
"Miss Granger, this is Nancy Babbit at Our Lady of Mercy Hospital in Hunt County—"
"Hunt county?"
"Yes, Miss Granger, Hunt County. In Missouri."
"Missouri?"
"Yes. Now Miss Granger, your father is John Winchester, correct?
Silence, because she can't deny it.
"Were you aware of your father's current situation?"
"situation." She is incapable of uttering anything but what was last said by the nurse. She knows nothing about her father's situation. She wishes that she did.
"Miss Granger your father was in a very bad car accident. When he was first brought in he was treated for very minor injuries and his prognosis was entirely positive, but about two hours ago he suffered severe cardiac arrest—"
"severe cardiac…" She doesn't understand, doesn't want to understand. What she wants to do is hand the phone off to someone else so that she can curl into a ball and cry. But there is nobody to take the phone. There is no one else for Nancy Babbit to speak to. So she does exactly what she's become good at ever since the war began. She tells herself to pull it together. Details first, emotions can wait.
"Miss Granger your father has passed away. I'm sorry for your loss." Nancy Babbit sounds sorry to have to be the one on the phone.
"What needs to be done?" Do what needs to be done. Break down later.
"Well Miss Granger, your father did leave the hospital with very specific instructions. You are the only person that we are allowed to release the body and affects to. This means that you will need to come to the hospital to sign papers and you will need to make arrangements for your father's remains. Now, I can set you up with several highly recommended funeral homes if you—"
"No. No thank you. When will you be expecting me?"
"You can drop in any time and we can scrape together all of the details then."
"Right. Thank you." She hangs up the phone before she has to listen to that woman any more. And when the phone is put safely back in its drawer and there's no one left to hold herself together for, Hermione Granger curls in on herself and tries her very hardest to weep for her lost father.
^^^AFTER THE WAR^^^
Ron Weasley finds her exactly this way almost three hours later when he gets off of his shift. Neither of them says anything to the other. He knows the look on her face, knows that it's covering up heartache. This is the look she gets when she thinks about the war, about the past. This is the look that says she's thinking about all of the people she'll never see again. Ron Weasley knows this look; it's a look he has on his face most nights. So instead of pestering her for details he sheds his uniform and crawls in next to her, wraps his entire body around hers and holds her as if he's holding the pieces of the world together. His world. She is his world and he will never let her go.
Finally she whispers to him, "My father is dead."
And he doesn't say a thing back, just waits for her plan. There is always a plan, this time is no different.
"My father is dead and I need to go to America to collect his body."
"When do we leave?"
(((AFTER THE WAR)))
It is nearly four hours later that they are ready to go. Harry sits sleepily at the breakfast table, called home early from what would have been a 36 hour shift patrolling the streets. Two years after the war and the Order is still sending armed patrols out at all hours of the day and night. He can't complain though. He'll do whatever it takes to keep history from repeating itself.
Before him stand Ron and Hermione. "We'll be back as soon as we can."
He already knows this.
"Owl us every day."
He'd already planned on it.
"We love you."
He knew that too, but it's still nice to hear it. "I love you both."
For years now they have lived together, apart from everybody else, creating their own little family. Connected by more than blood. The ridges in their hands fit each other and their feet fall in in rhythm. This is how it has always been and this is how it will always be.
Now as Hermione and Ron grip each other tight, prepare to leave their brother, they can't help but feel anxious. Seconds later though a hook is pulling them out of the kitchen of Grimauld Place and they are ripping through the air, spinning crazily towards Hunt County in Missouri. She grips his hand and he grips back and their wedding bands, simple and thin, clank together and mold themselves around each other.
%%%AFTER THE WAR%%%
Hermione does not want to deal with the nurse at the front desk. This one is named Lavirne and she talks about Jesus and after a few seconds Hermione finds herself so ridiculously frustrated that she walks away, lets Ron take over.
She perches on the edge of a vinyl chair and lets her head sink into her hands until she is pulling at curls, trying to wake herself up. Focus. Focus. Minutes later Ron walks back to her, clutching a clipboard and a pile of papers. There's somewhere the nurses want them to go to fill them out. A private waiting room for the bereaved. Briefly Hermione wonders if the muggles think bereavement is catching.
Back in the newer, smaller waiting room they sit together in the corner. No one else is in the waiting room and it is quiet, the kind of quiet that makes whispered words sound like hissing shouts. Ron holds Hermione's hand as she carefully reads through all the papers and signs on the pages with sticky notes. He wishes he could do this for her, keep her away from all the cold hospital talk because this is something very hot and real. He's not so good with the legal jargon though, and she deals with it every day. He settles for a hand on her knee. That seems to help.
The more of the papers Hermione signs the hotter the room gets. This is only the second Muggle hospital she has been in and she can't remember what the other was like. St. Mungo's is always freezing though, she remembers that. She sheds her jacket moments before the last paper is signed, sighing as the hospital air raises gooseflesh on her arms.
"Miss Granger?" The voice comes from the other side of the room: a young man with sandy hair and wire glasses.
She looks up in response, and Ron tightens his grip on her waist. This is when she remembers what she's forgotten to tell all of the other hospital personnel she's talked to. "It's Hermione Weasley actually."
The sandy haired man straightens his glasses and approaches. And then says something completely unexpected. "I'm Doctor Benjamin Creevy, the doctor in charge of your father's case. I am so… sorry." His shoulders slump and he sits down in a chair across from them.
Ron and Hermione are still hearing what was said moments ago though. "Are you of any relation to Collin and Dennis?" Collin is one of the faces she sees in the middle of the night when she can't sleep and she can't stop thinking. Collin you brave, brave, stupidly brave boy. She desperately wants this young man to say no, never heard of the boys. But he looks just like the Creevy brothers.
"My brothers, why?"
"We were at school together." It's Ron that says it, because at the moment Hermione is two years ago in a castle, watching Collin's body being carried away by Oliver Wood.
The young doctor starts, and then re-checks his charts. Then, "You were at his funeral. I remember. The three of you sat in the back and at the very end you hugged my mother and father. I saw you cry for him." And that is the miracle Benjamin Creevy can see: that three of the greatest wizards and witch of all time would cry for his mudblood little brother.
"Collin was an amazing boy." Hermione speaks now. She has to tell Benjamin that she's sorry she ever thought his brother was annoying. She has to let him know that his little brother was the bravest. But she can't say anymore before her throat closes up.
"Yeah, well." Pause "From what I hear there were a lot of amazing people there that day." He takes off his glasses and polishes them, squinting in a different direction. "I really am sorry about your father Miss Gran- ah Weasley."
"Is there anything more I should be doing?"
"We have a box with the things he was brought in with. It's not much, but we weren't able legally to turn it over to your brothers—"
"Brothers?"
"Uhh Yes" another glance at the charts, "Samuel and Dean Winchester. They were causing a ruckus earlier when they found out they weren't allowed to take the body."
"Ahh." It is a short sound, one that is often used to convey understanding, but from Hermione Weasley nee Granger-once-Winchester it is a sort of hurt sound. A hurt from long ago being stirred around.
"The vehicle has already been towed by a family friend, so you won't need to worry about that. Messers Winchester have already made it clear that they have made funeral arrangements. Really, you just needed to sign all the papers and escort him from the premises." He waits for her to say something and then, "If you would like to view the body, I can take you to see him."
She breathes in and stands to follow him from the room. Hermione doesn't really notice the lost look on Benjamin Creevy's face as they walk side by side down the corridor to her father's hospital room. Ron sees it though, and he knows that look as well. "Benjamin, perhaps we could all meet for dinner together somewhere. Talk about Collin and what he was like at school."
"That would be… good."
###AFTER THE WAR###
The room is quiet and white. Very very white. In a bed in the center of the room is a man, hollow and pale, who is not hooked up to any machines. The staff has cleaned him up since the code hours ago. They've clothed him and taken away all of the equipment so that he looks… better. Hermione muses to herself that it's the calmest she's ever seen him.
Ron seats himself on the empty bed in the room. He's tired: about to fall asleep, half delusional, but he can stay awake for a bit longer. He's gotten used to having less sleep since the war. He watches his wife seat herself carefully in a plastic chair next to the bed and he worries for her. Because none of them have been quite right since the war and now her father is dead and her other parents are dead too and this was the father who had been so horrible to her when she was younger in the first place. Ron watches Hermione and he remembers eleven-year-old her who came to school lonely and trying to prove herself. And he remembers thirteen-year-old Hermione who helped a convicted murderer escape from death and he remembers how she helped teach the DA how to defend themselves and he remembers first loving her in fourth year when she kissed the quidditch player he had always idolized. He remembers walking away from her cries in the middle of a forest when they were seventeen and he remembers feeling so ashamed of himself and missing her more than he missed his mother's cooking. And then coming back, when she beat him up and broke his nose and he let her because all he could think was thank god I'm with her again. In the final battle he remembers kissing her and her kissing him and knowing absolutely knowing that he was meant to belong to her. And looking at her now, sitting next to her dead father's hospital bed, Ron remembers getting married one month and six days after the final battle. In St. Mungo's , standing in Neville's hospital room surrounded by the DA and the Order. His mother crying eighteen and married and him thinking I want the rest of my life with this girl.
Hermione's remembering her father, the American father that she hasn't seen since she was eleven years old and getting her Hogwarts letter. She remembers all the summers she spent in the back seat of a Chevy impala, wind gusting through hair because the AC was broke. Days upon days of traveling and sightseeing and gas station food and exorcisms. And possessions, and hauntings and creepings and days of thinking to herself it can't get any better, I've got the best dad and the coolest brothers and we go on the greatest adventures I'm living in an adventure novel. And every fall when she flew back into her mother's arms her mother laughed and asked if she had fun and Hermione answered yes. She remembers a time before Ron and Harry when she was part of a family that was unstoppable. A family of superheroes.
She chooses to not remember the day her letter arrived. July 31st. She chooses to not think about the way her father looked at her when she was done reading the letter out loud. And the way he made her bathe in holy water and eat a spoonful of salt that stung the inside of her mouth and scraped down the back of her throat. She has also purposely forgotten his chanting Latin and his harsh words as he tried to take the witch out of her. The way she screamed No, Daddy it's me, Hermione for hours on end, she has forgotten that also. She will never forget the looks on her brother's faces as they huddle in a corner of the motel room. And she will never forget Minerva McGonagall flying into the room with a fury like she had never seen before and taking her away, back to England within the blink of an eye.
John Winchester's corpse lies before her, and Hermione is trying her best to cry for the loss of him, but really she is crying for the loss of her childhood so many years ago. And she is crying for the family she lost because of his hatred and she is crying for the loss of another family because of another man's hatred. But she is not crying because he is gone. And that's the most important distinction of all.
***AFTER THE WAR***
Ron and Hermione are both by the dead man's bedside when the door of the room opens. She is still sitting in that stupid, uncomfortable plastic chair and he is standing beside her, holding on to her like if he lets go they will both fly away (he holds her like that a lot these days).
Neither of them turn around at the sound of the door, or at the clumping of boots that suddenly stop when their owner realizes that there are people in his father's room. They do however turn round when the boot wearing man speaks. "What the Hell?"
AN: And this, dear readers is where I leave you. Hope you enjoyed. Questions? Comments? Concerns? Doubts about the legitimacy of Pluto's dethroning? Feel free to review or message.