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Books » Harry Potter » White Lace Robes

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Author: Euripides

Rated: T - English - Angst/Romance - Reviews: 21 - Published: 07-21-08 - Updated: 09-21-08

id:4411943

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Title: White Lace Robes

Fandom: Harry Potter

Pairings: Hermione/Ron, Ginny/Dean, Harry/?

Rating: T (for swearing)

Summary: Ron and Hermione have been together ten years, and everything but one facet is perfect. Will it break them apart when Hermione makes it clear that she doesn't want children, Ron is angry, and Harry is trying to bring them through it.

A/N: Hope you all enjoy!

Even though it was her weekend off, Hermione made her way into the Ministry to collect some paperwork. She would go mad without something to do, without something to occupy her mind. The Aurors were a fairly small group, shrunk from the ranks that had swelled in the aftermath of war to hunt down fugitive Death-eaters, to a core group that only dealt with Dark Wizards, not with every crime that came along. Cases were rarer and rarer these days, only the odd demon summoner, occasional Death eater in hiding, and spell-deviser who overstepped the limits. She was currently looking into a small time Love Potion operation- and from what she had observed, the runner appeared to be exceptionally stupid- stupid enough maybe not to realise that Amorentia was classified as a Dark Potion, in the Grade 3 category of Dangerous Devices. She shook her head again.

The wizarding world was a very strange place, she had decided long ago. Half the time magical ability was not dependent on how clever you were- some of the brightest people she knew had only a veritable dribble of accessible magic- enough to get them through Hogwarts, but not enough to ever give their spells the force and power needed to truly succeed, while others like this woman were thick as two planks, and yet had the skill and magical ability to concoct these sort of things. Even Crabbe had been able to cast Fiendfyre she remembered, and Lord knows he'd never strung two words together.

An hour or two later, when she had completely lost herself in the neat flowing writing that she always used for official reports, she was brought back to earth by a polite cough. Kingsley, although he was Minister for Magic, always seemed to gravitate towards his first love- the Auror department, and he was looking at her now with raised brows. "Miss Granger," he said with none of the informality he used outside the office. "I thought it was your weekend off." He knew very well that it was, he'd been at the party last night, and had told her specifically to take some time off. In her dual capacity not only as Auror, but representative of Magical Law within the department she was hideously overworked sometimes, something both Ron and Harry worried intensely about. Hermione was adamant that she could cope though. It had always been a given that Harry would become head Auror- he was simply too good at his job, and Hermione hadn't resented that. Instead she had taken on a second role- one that guaranteed the advancement she'd told Ron about, and raised her profile within the Ministry itself.

She smiled at the Minister. "I was a little behind," she said with a rueful grimace that fooled neither of them. His eyes took in her bedraggled hair, and wrinkled robes, and he raised an eyebrow. Both of them knew perfectly well that Hermione was never behind on work, but unless it interfered with her work, Kingsley was far too much of a gentleman to inquire into her personal life. He might have freshly discovered his inner martinet on becoming Minister, but Hermione was widely considered to be his protégé, and in twenty years time of perhaps succeeding to his position. She was unsure of whether what the other employees thought of as blatant favouritism pleased or annoyed her.

Kingsley smiled back, and dropped a folder on her desk. "Take a look at it when you're ready," he said drily, and paused for a second. "Hermione," he said carefully, "the case is... a little gruesome. Just be warned," then he strode off towards Higgins desk. Hermione stared after him. Many of the things she had seen since the war had been sick, usually twisted versions of every day spells. This case must be pretty bad if he felt the need to warn her. Curiously she flipped open the folder, and fought the bile that rose in her throat. She had privately always disliked wizarding photos, the way they moved- acting out one action over and over again, and this struck her as obscene. The first photo showed a man in the final moments of his life, limbs twisted grotesquely in a parody of life. The final seconds of his life had obviously made a severe imprint on the surrounding magic, and she watched sickly fascinated as his face melted and the skin literally slid off his bones. She took a look at the notes accompanying it, and sat back with a frown on her face. This case was months old. There was no body.

It had been pure accident that it was discovered. A pyschometry expert had tripped in the building, and when his hand hit the floor he had been swamped with the memory. They'd used an invention dreamed up by an Unspeakable- a camera that took magical impressions within a certain time limit of traumatic memories that had left a distinct mark upon the magical fabric of a building, and it had shown up as a trapped loop. She shook her head, faintly disgusted. The spell screamed Dark Arts, and the fact that it had gone so totally unnoticed was worrying. She bought the paper closer to her face, seeking to see if she had any idea of who the victim was. She didn't recognise the face at all, but that meant nothing. The killer could have polyjuiced his or her victim. She stared at it pensively, tapping the desk. There was something wrong about this. It took four or five minutes of solid thinking, and three pieces of Honeybee chocolate before she realised what was nagging at her subconscious. Someone had to have made the memory. The emotions and anguish had obviously been the victims, but for a visual recognisance to have bled into the fabric of the air, someone had to have witnessed the crime- either the killer was horrified at what he had done himself, a third party was present, or even crazier the victim had been reflected and able to see himself.

On further examination she sat back triumphant. Their first clue. The entire photo had the faintest shimmering haze over it, and she was fairly sure that the entire thing was a reflection. She resolved first thing to ask Kingsley if the room was mirrored. The second clue was the person cowering at the back of the memory. A tiny huddled heap with the slightest bit of wheat blond hair sticking out that could have been missed a hundred times if you weren't looking for it. Obviously the size of a child, and Hermione's heart twisted as she thought of a child having to witness that. That part of the photo didn't move at all, and thus nothing more of the child's features were revealed.

It was at least lunchtime now, but she didn't feel like lunch. Since she was in outside of normal hours, most of the people she shared shifts with were not in the room, and she sighed and leaned her head back, hands fumbling absently for a bit more chocolate. She always forced herself to not think of work during breaks, realising she needed a rest in order to work effectively. Unfortunately that left her mind wide open to her more personal troubles.

The picture of Ron's anguished face swam in front of her, and thinking of her conversation with Harry this morning, she stood abruptedly, and shoved the file into a bag. She wouldn't leave Ron moping at home all day. It was time they talked this through- without throwing things (as she remembered with a cringe of embarrassment) or swearing. When she walked in through the front door, she heard the wizarding wireless blaring out Penny the Pyromancer's dulcet tones, and her heart sank. Ron only listened to her, when he was really down- when the Chudley Cannons had lost yet another match, when he'd lost out to another player or he'd had bad news. She shouldered her hesitation aside, and strode into the kitchen. Ron was cooking himself lunch. As a Quidditch player, and a Keeper at that he kept to a protein heavy diet, and was allowed to eat almost as much as he wanted, whereas Hermione had always had trouble keeping the pounds off and thus made her own dinners. She vowed silently that she'd cook tonight.

Truth to tell she'd always felt bad at being such a hopeless wife. She and Ron had married quite young she knew, and though she'd had two years living with both Harry and Ron, she'd never had to take on the caring role in the way people seemed to expect of her being the only female in the trio. Harry and her had always been too busy with Auror training, to ever do more than grab hasty snacks, and the cleaning had been sadly neglected. It was a constant mystery to Hermione and her friends that while she was almost obsessive compulsive over the care of her books, and the organisation of her schedule, that when it came to food and housework she was so out of her depth. She'd barely mastered the simplest of household charms, and Molly had come by on a weekly basis with a severe look of disapproval on her face, and wand at the ready.

When they'd married she had started off with plans of being the perfect couple- she'd make sure that they always ate good meals on time, that the house was immaculate and that they could do all of the couple things that secretly she'd always dreamed of doing. That had crumbled in a couple of months of course- her crazy schedule had ensured that she never knew when she was in the house, and both of them were too tired to throw dinner parties, or anything other than the most casual get-togethers. Her mother had been worried though she had never expressed her worries in anything except the vaguest ways, that they were too young- merely twenty one after all, both with high powered jobs that came with intrinsic problems- in Ron's case travel, and in her own the gruesome nature of the cases that she handled.

They had been so utterly in love though, that they had disregarded all the helpful, well meant advice, and gone blithely their own way. Hermione had never regretted it, the marriage she had shared for the last nine years had maybe not been perfect, but it had been utterly wonderful in its own way. If only they had agreed on children. That brought her back to the present, and she walked nervously into the kitchen, studying the broad back of her husband. His red hair was as vibrant as ever, tied back now in a ponytail that had Molly itching to take her scissors to it. He was gorgeous, and had only become more so as the years passed- time finally enabling him to grow into his body, and be happy with it.

She pulled out a chair and sank down into it, her hand almost by reflex picking up one of the hundreds of books she left abandoned around the house, both wizarding tomes, and Muggle fiction. This was a copy of her favourite play Hamlet, and she gave a faint smile as she remembered how Harry had bewitched it for her, so the book read itself out aloud- in the dulcet tones of Sir Laurence Olivier. Shaking her head, she put it aside. Now wasn't the time for reading. Pondering her hands, her head shot up in surprise when Ron slid a perfectly toasted sandwich towards her- ham and cheese, a treat she allowed herself only rarely since discovering that despite all her activity she was still gaining weight as her metabolism slowed down. Of course her boys always assured her that she looked gorgeous- but they would still say that if she weighed twenty stone. She picked it up and bit in, needing the small comfort especially when she knew Ron's eyes would be so sad.

He sat down in front of her with his fry-up, and they both ate in silence for a few minutes. He broke it first- true Gryffindor courage, thought Hermione idly, though she had long since learned that Hogwarts categorisation rarely worked in the real world. "I'm so sorry Hermione. I shouldn't have raised the subject again," he hunched his shoulders defensively, and her heart lurched with self-hatred for making him feel this way. "I understand you need time, and I'm willing to give you as much of that as you need."

Hermione bit her lip, and felt her fingernails dig in deep with self-reproach. How could she do this to him? Part of the problem was their undoubtedly different backgrounds. Hermione was an only child, whose mother had gone straight back to work a year after she was born, though to be fair it had been only part time until she was five. Half of her time was spent with her mother, and the other half with her Russian au-pair Olga-Maria. It was where she had learned her basic stumbling Russian- one of the reasons she had got on so well with Viktor (and still did) was that their common language was Russian, only quite basic in her case, and badly accented in his, but enough to seal a common bond. Ron on the other hand had grown up in a riotous family of seven children, with a constantly present, almost suffocating over-protective mother, and he and each one of the Weasley children thought back to it adoringly as the ideal of family life.

Fleur had been pregnant within months of being married, when Charlie had finally got his act together and married Gertrude they'd almost immediately had twins, and it seemed that every other Weasley spouse was bloomingly fertile. Even Ginny had three children, though she had made it quite clear that Dean was happy to be a house husband and look after them, while working from home. Harry and Hermione shared an unspoken depth of feeling about the subject. Only children from backgrounds that had forced them fairly early on to rely on themselves, they had been bewildered at just how important procreation was within the Wizarding world. It had been what caused Ginny and Harry to break up, though they'd never been so crass as to say it. They had loved each other, but when they'd discovered how fundamentally incompatible their aims were within life, it had been a difficult but necessary decision to break up before they got truly serious. Harry had confided in Hermione that he didn't want children, though for entirely different reasons. He was afraid that he would live to see his child suffer and die, in a world that could never be entirely fixed.

Inhaling a deep breath, she looked at Ron and took his hand in hers. "It's my fault," she said quietly. "I said some pretty unforgivable things last night I know. I love you, and I want desperately to make things work with you, but I'm not having a baby just to fill a gap. If our relationship needs cementing with a child, then it's not a good relationship for that child to be born into." She bent her head, unable to bear the pain in his eyes.

"Hermione," he breathed, as he reached across and stroked her hair out of her face. "It's not filling a gap- don't you want a baby, one with your brains, and my flying skills, with bright blue eyes, and your brown hair?" His voice sounded perilously close to breaking with emotion, and Hermione made the hardest decision of her life.

"I can't lie to you Ron," she said softly. "I don't want children. I love them, and maybe we should think about adopting, especially a child with problems perhaps who doesn't have a home. But you know how important my career is to me. Isn't it good enough to be the favourite uncle?"

He shook his head slowly. "It isn't," his voice was sad. "I love you Hermione. But should we be together if we can't agree on something so fundamental?" He had voiced the words Hermione was too frightened of, to say.

She sat there frozen, with his hand still in hers. "Tell him you'll have a baby," her heart screamed, "tell him anything to make him stay." But her head, that always logical part of her, the part of her that felt like Minerva McGonagall stopped her. She didn't want to build her relationship on a lie, just to save her marriage. Slowly she got up. Ron had been brave enough for two of them today, now it was her turn to hold her head up high, and not let the tears glazing her eyes fall. "I love you," she said, and was proud of her voice for not trembling. "I will always do so." Silently she moved to one spot of the house you could Apparate in, and stood there indecisively. Ron sensed her need, and moved forward as he always had done- to catch and comfort her.

"I love you too," he whispered. "This is merely a trial." He kissed her once, firmly and then she Apparated away, the tears at last beginning to fall.

Reviews welcomed. Reviews especially on whether the characters are OC or not. I'm striving to have them mature and grownup, but still recognisable from Hogwarts days.