As she sits in front of her desk, writing a letter to Harry, and listening to music, she can't help but think about everything she's been through. Everything she wants to experience still. She looked away from her desk and looked at her carpet. Her mind tugged her away from the now. She knew what was happening. She didn't bother stopping it. It was better when she just let the images they had painted come to her.
---Image---
"I'm going to get you, Eddie!" an older version of herself yells after a little boy that seems to be about two or three. He screams as he starts running away from his mother.
"No, you won't, Mommy. You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man!" he said while laughing.
She lightly tackled him to the couch and began tickling him, sending him into a fit of giggles. "Mommy…stop…can't…breathe…" the toddler said through laughs.
A little girl comes down the stairs, a book in hand, and asks, "Why are you tickling, Eddie?"
"He threw flour in my face while helping me bake. This tickle monster is not giving up on her revenge," she said while laughing.
"What is my sweet wife going on about now?" a man said entering his living room.
"Hi, Daddy!" the little boy screamed, squirming away from his mother, as his sister leapt toward their father.
---Stop Image---
'That's a bit less than ten years from now. I wish it would be like that,' she thought. 'He and I could have been great together.'
---Image---
"He looks like you, you know. He has your hair, and facial structure," a twenty-three year old version of the girl says to her lover as she holds her three month old baby boy in her arms.
"But he has your eyes. And besides, our daughter looks just like you. I've seen your baby pictures. You can't deny that," her lover tells her looking at their daughter fondly as she lies in his arms.
"No, I cannot, but I can say that our son looks more like you."
"And I can agree."
"I like having one of each. And them being twins helps a bit, does it not?"
"It does," he said as he kissed her forehead.
---Stop Image---
The girl breaks out her ravine once more and sighs. "Things aren't getting easier," she said to her cat. "At least I still have you," she said looking toward her couch.
---Flashback to the night before---
The girl sat on her bed, singing to her stomach like she was singing to her unborn child. She couldn't help it. It soothed her to run a hand over her stomach and pretend he was there lying next to her.
---End flashback---
The girl sighed as she put her hand to her stomach. She can feel something there, but she doesn't know what. She is so confused.
Her cat looked at her, purring all the way. A 'meow' came from the animal in a questioning way.
"I know," the girl said to her cat while thinking 'I really need to get out of here. I'm talking to my cat, for Merlin's sake.'
---Flashback to yesterday afternoon---
"Did you ever feel hollow, Ginny?"
"What do you mean?"
"Like you are not whole, but more like there's something inside of you, trying to make you whole, but it makes you feel empty instead."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. I feel like I'm pregnant, but I get my period, so I know I'm not."
"I used to feel that way. It was before he and I were physical." Ginny doesn't have to say who the 'him' is. Best friends know who you are talking about without using names.
"But this feeling, well, it got worse after he and I broke up. It was subtle before he and I were that way with each other, but it's worse now. It's getting worse every day, and I hate it!" the girl screamed in exasperation. It had been over a year since she was with him. She was done with him. So why did she feel so hollow?
---End Flashback---
Hermione sighed again. She missed the sandy haired man that had held her in his arms as he whispered 'I love you' in her ear. But that's all she could do: miss him. It didn't matter that she loved him. He was with another woman, and wasn't leaving her any time soon.
She got up and went to her window. She had to send her letter to Harry before it got too late. She had received a letter from him, and she responded to it as soon as she could, like she always did.
She reread the letter he sent her.
Hermione,
I haven't heard from you in a while. Ron told me he heard you and Ginny talking about something, but he won't tell me what. I'm worried about you. Things have been different since the end of sixth year. Why is that? Is it something I need to worry about?
With love,
Harry
---Harry---
In a London flat, an owl pecked at a window.
Harry got the owl, and read Hermione's response to what he sent her.
Harry,
As much as I would love to confide in you, I can't. It's too difficult for me to verbalize the way I feel right now. I have someone in my life, as you know, but I feel empty.
For me, though, it's not that simple. You are not a female, so you can't possibly begin to understand what I am feeling right now. What it's like for me, and how hard it is for me to deal with things.
Harry, I am only seventeen years old, and I shouldn't feel like this. I should be able to go on as I wish, and not feel empty. It's been over a year, and things keep happening to make the pain come back. Days that only he and I would find significant and images of a family with him that I try to keep at bay, but never stay away for long.
I am frustrated with a lot of things at the moment. Its early fall, and our last year at Hogwarts ended, along with the war, at the beginning of the summer.
Too bad the pain didn't end with everything else.
Love,
Hermione
'Who was the he she speaks of?' he pondered.
---Hermione---
Hermione sighed.
She knew that Harry would be getting her letter about now. She didn't really care. Everything was getting to be too much for her, and those images from things in her past, and what she hoped for the future, haunted her as she lay on her couch.
Her hand was at her stomach once again that night. She couldn't help it. She felt like she had to protect whatever was there. She closed her eyes. It was happening again. They wouldn't leave her alone.
---Image---
Hermione is standing in the doorway of a room painted green and yellow, just looking in on it. A pair of arms comes around her waist and settles on her stomach, which is bigger than usual.
"What are you thinking about, love?"
"What things are going to be like, and how I'll get even less sleep then I do now, after I give birth," she said chuckling.
"You sleep in to all hours of the day as it is. Any amount of sleep that is less than twelve hours is going to be less sleep than you get now, you know," he said mock-scolding her, only raising his voice a bit higher then it would have been usually.
He was a calm man usually, so his slightly raised voice wasn't much. But he was a bit annoyed. He sighed.
"I don't sleep that much. I stay up and read most nights, so I don't know what you are talking about," an innocent smile playing on her lips, knowing what he was talking about, but loving the banter that they had going.
It was one of the things that she loved about him. They could go back and forth. He was intellectually equal to her.
"You may read the night away, but you sleep the day much the same: away. You waste it, and you know it," he countered.
"Oh well," Hermione said as she shrugged her shoulders and she turned to meet his gaze. "You know you don't mind sleeping in with me."
"Never said I did, love," he said leaning forward to kiss her forehead lovingly.
"I love you," she stated simply.
"And I you," he said as he pulled her as close as he could without feeling like he was going to hurt her and rubbed her back.
---Stop Image---
'It would be like that if I hadn't messed up royally,' she sadly thought as she started to drift.
---Flashback---
"This isn't working, Mya. We need to take the break, like you suggested," her lover of almost a year said to her one day after a minor fight. He was the only one who was allowed to call her Mya.
"Yeah, that's fine. It's no big deal, right," she said like it was just a casual conversation, but she was keeping her breathing calm, and her voice steady as she held back tears she knew were going to fall.
"Right, I'll see you later, love," he said as he kissed her cheek and walked away, slowly.
She watched him walk away thinking about the one song that describes this moment perfectly.
"So I let you go, and I watch you leave, and I hold my breath, so you don't hear me scream," she sang softly and thought, 'I should have said something, but now it's too late. He's leaving, and he doesn't want me.' She continued singing, "When you walk away. But the words are only in my head, it's not what I said, it's what I didn't say…"
---End Flashback---
"It's not what I said that's keeping me away, it's what I didn't say, what I didn't say…" she sang a bit louder than in her memory as she drifted off to another place as tears fell down her cheeks.
---
Hope you enjoyed that. Just another one of those things that just sort of came to me. It might become a short multi-chapter story, but for now it's staying just as is.
~Tori