A/N: I would like to point out that this particular oneshot is messed up even for me. Rated for mature themes and implied character death. Implied HermionexRon HarryxGinny and HarryxHermione. Post-war semi-AU.
Something
She had lost a lot during the war. She had lost her family in a muggle raid. She had lost her best friend and sister, Ginny. She had lost the one person she cared for above all others, even though he infuriated her to no end, Ron.
He had lost a lot too, or as much as he could lose, since he really didn't have that much to begin with. He had lost his mentor, Dumbledore. He had lost his godfather and his father's other best friend, Sirius and Remus. He had lost his surrogate family, the Weaselys, and his best friend and brother, Ron. He had lost the one person that he cared for above all others, even though he knew that they could never be together because it was far too dangerous, Ginny.
Yes, they had both lost a lot. So perhaps it wasn't too unusual that once they had lost everything else, they each turned to the one thing that they had left, sought solace in the one person who could possibly understand the deep, heart-rending pain that they were both feeling-
Each other.
And perhaps it wasn't too unusual when that deep understanding evolved into something more, something that held a hurt even greater than the initial pain of loss, but that somehow they needed more than anything, no matter how much it tore them apart and ripped them back together again.
They had told themselves it was only once.
But a skinned knee doesn't always stop hurting after one 'kiss better'. Sometimes it needs to be kissed three of four times. And somehow, three or four times had turned into three or four times a week, and it hurt so much, but it was the right time and the right circumstances and both of them just needed it.
Until she got pregnant.
But that was okay, she mused, as the days and weeks passed and her stomach got big and her ankles swelled. It was okay, because she knew what it was like to have everything and to suddenly have nothing, and what it was like to want that everything back. She knew what it was like to realize that you would never, could never, have everything again and to settle for something, because even if something wasn't everything, at least in the end, something was better than nothing.
And it was okay that she didn't love something as much as she had loved everything, she thought, because when you got right down to it, she was his something, and he would never love her the way that he had loved his everything, either. But that was okay, because it was still love, of a sort, and the child would have a family and grow up in a world free of Voldermort, and that was something.
Because after all, something was still better than nothing.
