A/N: Includes either a naturally aborted pregnancy or a phantom pregnancy. You decide.
Dedicated to Kitty132383. Happy birthday!
)O(
They come back, years later, not exactly sure what to expect.
He takes her by the hand, more protective now than he ever was then, and leads her into the forest that was once forbidden. Once, before more dangerous things crept out of the areas surrounding it and made the forest seem like a cosy hideaway.
They walk through the trees. There are more of them now than there were on that fateful night, when everything fell together, but not more than there were before the falling started. The autumn leaves crunch under their feet. Tiny, fragile bits of bark break off as she puts her hand out to touch the trees as she walks past them. Everything looks old, here.
They come to a clearing where the sun shines on a patch of flowery grass. The spot looks as if it was just waiting for them to come here. It could not have looked more perfect if it had known they were coming.
He didn't know they were even leaving their house that day, at least not until she grabbed him by the arm and Apparated him here. She told him there was one more thing she needed to do.
And so he obeyed. How could he not, when she was carrying the miracle of life inside her?
They sat in the clearing, he with his arm over her shoulder and she staring idly at the blades of grass, fiddling with them. He waited patiently for her to make up her mind. If he rushed her to do something again, she would only get angrier than she had got before.
He didn't think it was a good idea, coming to the place where it had fallen. Oh, Harry had told them he didn't know where it was, where he had dropped it, but it didn't take a brilliant witch much time to figure out the exact coordinates.
This was a bad, bad idea. He thought she had gotten over it when she had become pregnant again. He thought she had forgotten the baby that had been conceived on one mad night of passion soon after the consummation of their relationship.
But, as if turned out, a mother never forgot. Even if she had only been a mother for a few months and never actually held the baby in her arms.
"Ron…could you give me some privacy?"
"Are you sure you'll be all right—?"
"I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself in a deserted patch of forest, Ronald. Now kindly leave me alone."
He had no choice but to wander off to where she couldn't see him anymore.
When he had left, she picked her hand up off the grass. It was holding a smooth stone, engraved with unreadable markings that would probably mean nothing to anyone who didn't care to decipher them.
To her, they offered a gateway. She had to see her again, before she had this child. It wouldn't feel right otherwise. She hadn't been able to say goodbye, so she might subconsciously assume that this new baby was a replacement for the one she had lost.
No. She wouldn't let her child go through life being compared to a dream of what might have been. This needed to happen now.
She turned the stone thrice in her hands, her eyes open eagerly for any sign of a form appearing in front of her.
But nothing happened. Frantically, she turned the stone again. And again. And again.
Nothing happened. It had failed her. This, the stone that promised to bring back the dead, had failed her utterly.
She threw it down in frustration and started to sob. Ron took this as his cue to come back to her and comfort her.
"There, there, Hermione, it's all right. Shh."
"She didn't come."
"I didn't think she would."
"What? Why not?!" She turned her tearstained face to glare at him. How dare he make assumptions about her daughter. It was she who had known her best, though briefly.
"Darling, she was never more than hopes and dreams. She was always a part of you, up to the moment when she died. There was no 'her' to come back."
The stone can only do so much. It might bring back a part of you that was missing, but it could never bring back a part of you that had only existed in your mind.
Babies are totally dependent on their mothers. Mothers are totally dependent on their families. It was lucky she had Ron, and the child she was carrying inside her.
There's nothing like a fresh memory to paint over an old one.
)O(
Fin