Disclaimer: I am not, nor will ever be Ms. J. K. Rowling, therefore will never own the rights to this beloved series and her amazing characters(This applies to this entire story). What I am might surprise you youngins to the bone, so it'd be best to just skip the rest of this disclaimer, and read on… Enjoy!
Hermione's POV
"Come on Rose! What's with you? You know, you've been acting strange ever since we got back! Ever since February actually…" Hugo and Rose were outside. They had just gotten home from Hogwarts earlier today. I had to agree with Hugo, Rose didn't say bye to any of her friends as we were leaving King's Cross and she was relatively quiet at dinner.
"Shut UP! I'm- I'm just stressed is all," I heard Rose say. "What with OWLS next year! I'm in fifth year now Hugo! I've stopped playing chess with you almost a year ago, get used to it!"
"Fine! Then I'll just see what dad's up to, and ask if he can play!" Hugo stormed inside and ran to his father's office. Rose still sat outside looking at the darkening sky.
The summer between fourth and fifth, we were all forced to live in and clean Grimmauld Place. I got the title of prefect, with Ron, Ron. It was the summer after the Yule Ball and his terrible choice of words. The summer I learned that no matter what, he'd be permanently marked on me, and I didn't mind it so much. I muttered a spell to wash the dishes and walked outside to sit by my daughter.
"Beautiful night isn't it Rose?" She jumped out of the lawn chair she was sitting on and looked at me with this sort of awkward gaze that was never well known on her face. She was always out there and brave and confident, well except on her first day in Kings Cross. "Anything on your mind dear?" I sat down in the swing across from her. She had a battle raging on inside of her and I could see it.
"I…um, can we talk?" she said softly. I patted the seat next to me and hugged her close.
"What do you want to talk about sweetie?"
"Well, it's more of a question. How d'you know you were in love with dad?" she was very shy about this, even though we've told them the story countless of time.
"Well during the war…" Maybe it wasn't exactly the truth, but it bought hours off the actual story.
"Come off that mum! You knew each other since first year; you didn't just magically fall in love with each other during the war." My daughter certainly had been growing up.
"Well the real story is a little complicated-"
"So you mean you've been lying to us!"
"No, we just haven't been saying the whole truth, there is a difference. Once you hear the story you'll know why we shortened it," she nodded for me to continue "I guess I started feeling things for your father around third year. Harry wasn't allowed to go to Hogsmeade, so Ron and I were always together then. It was the first time it'd be just the two of us. That's when I started questioning my sanity,"
"Questioning your sanity?" she laughed
"Oh yeah, haven't you heard the old stories about your father. I still wonder to this day what caught my eye and made me think he'd be a good choice for me. He was nothing I'd imagine being with, just one of my best mates. When Sirius bit his leg, I realized that I cared for him a lot more than I thought I did. It was never like that when I'd seen Harry fall off his broom, and it got me questioning why. Fourth year came around-"
"The Triwizard Tournaments," Rose said with a sly smile on her face. Harry had told her all about this around last year.
"Yes, but before that, your father took me to see The Quidditch World Cup,"
"But mum, you hate Quidditch,"
"I do, but the crazy thing about love is that you'll give anything a try-"
"So you loved dad in fourth year?" she asked immediately.
"Not necessarily, at that time I still told myself I didn't need a bloke to make my day. But the fact that he asked me meant a whole lot to me, so I went. Now for The Triwizard Tournaments, Harry and Ron had gotten into a huge fight about whether or not Harry was the one to submit his name into the goblet. You've heard this before right?" she nodded "That meant more alone time with Ron, but he'd mostly be fuming about how he was right. The Yule Ball came from that and your father oh so bluntly stated that I was a girl after asking your Aunt Fleur to the Ball,"
"Dad asked Fleur! What did Uncle Bill say about that?"
"Oh they weren't together back then. Well, he tried to ask me from there, but I told him I already had a date,"
"With whom?"
"Viktor Krum," a single smirk appeared on my face.
"You went on a date with Viktor Krum! Why didn't you say anything like that before?" I leaned in closer
"Your father is most certainly the jealous type. He'd throw a fit if he ever heard me say his name in the house. Anyways, your father didn't believe me. He ended up making a fool out of himself showing up with a date Harry picked out for him and brooding the entire time. We had a blazing row that night. My night was ruined, not only because of the row, but because I hoped that Ron would've asked me first. He still regrets it to this day," I gave her a smile, looking back on these memories made them feel so real and I could still feel the pain that I felt that night. It took me some time to get back to the present.
"Now we go to when I was your age. We were stuck in Grimmauld Place and I saw him everyday. This was different from Hogwarts because he was actually sleeping in the room next door. We could have easily done stuff and no one would really know. Not that we were comfortable with those things yet. At that time I still thought I was crazy for liking him, and I had no idea what he thought about me. We cleaned that entire place up and we would get breaks, sometimes alone. I would catch glimpses of his hair or his eyes and they just made me smile, it felt really good to be by his side. We were both named Gryffindor prefects and had prefect duties and meeting together. More time alone with that bloke. The more and more I was with him, the more I realized that I couldn't be without him. I really liked being around him,"
"But mum, Dad always said how much you bickered while you two were in school?"
"Oh we did. All the time!"
"How could you feel all that while having rows with him on a regular day basis? And how do you just leave that out of the story?"
"Well, the small rows we'd have were always about stupid little things, like leaning a little too much to the right or him stuffing his face at dinner. As you get older sweetie, you realize that the little things don't really matter anymore. Besides, bickering was our childish way of flirting with each other without being too forward on anything," I looked down at Rose. She was trying to work out everything that I had to back then. It wasn't until after the war that I realized that I loved bickering with Ron because I saw such a raw side to him. It was so open, and sometime he'd let things slip. "Then, before Christmas break we kissed,"
"Really? I thought your first kiss was during the battle!" she was shocked and amazed at a confession I've never told anyone, absorbing every detail I've been telling her.
"Well, as you probably know by now, there are different types of kisses. The one during the battle was a kind that finalized our shaky relationship; our first one was a bit uncalled for. It was during prefect duties and whilst walking around, we were caught under mistletoe. Since we were in fifth year at the time, we had to have an actual mouth-to-mouth kiss to get out. So we just kissed, it was brief and we didn't talk to each other the rest of the night after that," I giggled, looking back at my ignorance.
"Howdufel?" Rose mumbled something,
"What dear?"
"I um, I asked… how d'you feel when he kissed you?" she was looking down and fiddled with her hands.
"I felt like the butterflies in my stomach were going to explode. I wanted it to last a little longer because, once I got a taste of him, I just wanted more," I remembered with a smile on my face.
"So did you get together in fifth year?"
"Oh no that's not until the end. I actually thought we were though, but your grandfather was attacked so that put Christmas break as a bad time to get together. He did give me perfume that Christmas though, and I thought it was the sweetest thing he's ever done. I wore it everyday at Hogwarts until the bottle finished. Unless we were in a fight, then I'd hide the bottle so I wouldn't be tempted to wear it. It smelled really sweet and reminded me of my family, and somewhat of him. It made me feel okay and back at home when I'd wear it.
"When school started again, I had no time to think of him, or us more like it because of OWLS and Harry being Harry. We fought at the ministry and Ron got attacked pretty bad, might still have some scars from then. When I saw him just lying in his hospital bed, I felt something deep hit me and I realized that I truly loved him. I couldn't bear to see him all messed up, and would be shattered if he were to have died in battle. I didn't tell him so because I had no idea how he saw me, and I wouldn't mind wasting sixth year flirting with him until I was sure how he felt. I went to the burrow that summer and I had two days with him before Harry showed up. Those were the strangest two days of my life"
"How strange?"
"Oh Rosie," I slung and arm around her "That's a different story for a different day. Now, I only had about four months with him before everything changed,"
"What happened mum?"
"Lavender Brown,"
A/N: Why hello there readers! What d'you think of this little number? Bit of a cliffy, but I'll update soon, I promise. Same time next week? This'll probably just be a two maybe three part thing, unless you'd like me to continue with more mother-daughter-talks about the woes of growing up. Bye, bye for now ;D
~Writer of Time
