Kenmare Kestrels
Prompt: write about a character who celebrates small moments in life.
WC: 1030
Hermione looked back on her youth with a memory coated with the kind filter of rosy retrospection. Everything moved so quickly then, even though each year had felt like an eternity. All of the exams, the battles, the trolls, the horcruxes, the dances, the arguments… all of it had happened in lightning speed. Yet, at the time each moment had felt like it would never end. So was the effect of war.
But here, sitting in the garden at the back of her and her husband's cottage, she could not help but feel like life had moved too quickly. Running through her memories like a film roll, all the months flew by too quickly for her to catch all of them. So many things had slipped her mind over the years; she wondered what she'd have left at the end of her life. What would still remain if the people around her didn't?
The breeze eternally pushing the wind chimes hanging on the side of the house made time seem to flow differently here. Hermione wished that were true. She just wanted more time. With Rose's diagnosis, she wished time turners actually could change time, and not just her place in it.
Jolted out of her thoughts, she called after her daughter with that perfected Mom-stare. "Rose, I see what you're doing."
"I'm doing what I want to," Rose retorted, using the line that Hermione had drilled into her kids ever since realizing so many of the people of her generation were never given the option to have a normal childhood or a normal future. Hermione desperately wanted the goals of her children to be self-actualization, and not simply survival like hers was. With a twist notching in her heart, she wished that Rose would be able to make that goal at all.
Rose looked back with her little eyebrows raised, defiance painted all over her features. And what are you going to do about it? was what that little stare said. Hermione fought back a smile; her daughter was so much like her, in both the good and bad ways.
"If you pull out the flowers now, they won't be able to feed the bees," Hermione explained patiently, "and we won't get to enjoy their beauty later. It's not kind to pull them out. It kills them."
Rose reluctantly stopped ripping out grasses and flowers. "But… flower crown." Her head was covered in grass not even vaguely resembling a flower crown.
Hermione waved her wand and transfigured one out of a piece of mulch lying on the stone patio. Still sitting on her comfortable bench, she floated the flower crown over to her daughter and set it on her head with a smile. "Mom wants you to be happy," she said, "but only if it's not at the expense of others."
Rose didn't show any sign that she had heard, as she was touching the flower crown on her head in delight. "I can't wait to do magic like you, Mama!"
Hermione hummed back at her daughter, bemused. She was sure she'd have even more of a handful to take care of when her daughter could actually do more than the little puffs of accidental magic. She pitied her Muggle parents who probably thought their house was possessed before a letter had come from Hogwarts, but she also envied that they didn't have to deal with a child doing magic in the home after that child had come back from Hogwarts for the summers.
When she was younger, Hermione had thought that she would only be happy if she had done something great. Many long nights in her dormitory were spent thinking about her legacy, her grades, whether or not she was brilliant enough to do something truly good. Now that she had all of that, she would give it all away if it meant Rose could live a normal life.
Reflecting back on her life, Hermione found bliss in the fragrant trees blooming in spring, in the honeysuckle wafting on the breeze, in the tulips they planted last fall finally growing from their bulbs. A deeply settled peace filled her every time she heard a giggle bubble out of her children. The universe felt so big, and yet her world felt just the perfect size. The little moments mattered so much when they slipped through the neck of an hourglass at an unknown speed.
"What's the little monster doing?" Ron stepped out onto the back porch, bed-hair ruffled and wild. He laid his warm hand gently against Hermione's back.
"Just ruining the garden we put so much effort into," Hermione said wryly. "I don't think she knows what the weeds are and what the actual plants are."
Ron chuckled before a somber expression crossed his face. "You know, 'Mione, I keep thinking about how I wish that the flowers and how her friends are the biggest tattlers were her biggest problem right now. But, seriously, for a person who has such a problem with tattlers, she's a big tattler herself."
Hermione turned to her husband. "Feeling pensive on this Sunday morning, huh?"
"I know! Me, thinking? Surprising to you, I bet."
Hermione pushed his side playfully as Ron sat next to her. She put her arm around him, knowing that he would understand that she felt the same way without her having to say a word. "Love you," she murmured. Then she added, "You know, as far as she knows, the flowers and her snitch friends are her biggest problems."
Ron hummed. Rose was too little to understand why they went to the healers so much. It had become her normal. "So, what about some bacon? I'd love to hear that sizzle right about now."
Hermione raised her eyebrows at Ron. "You have hands, don't you?"
"Yeah, don't you?" Rose chimed in, having toddled over from her spot in the dirt to come be a part of the action.
"Hey!" Ron protested. "Are you ladies ganging up on me?"
"Maybe," Rose said as she climbed into her father's lap, "maybe not."
Hermione laughed and leaned over to kiss Ron and Rose on their cheeks. "I've never been happier."