The Small Tree
July 18th, 2023
July 18th. Right in the middle of the summer. A very dry summer, it hadn't rained since June 14th. This time it had nothing to do with Hermiones tears. She hadn't cried since Christmas Eve.
She could feel the warmth from her kids, desperately clasping their hands. Maybe it was awkward for nearly seventeen Rose and fifteen year old Hugo. Their mother didn't care, didn't think of that, she needed to feel them, needed their support.
Only Hermione knew where they were going. As they walked up the tiny hill, she searched for her tiny oak. Surely something must have popped up during a years time. A little, tiny leaf, or just anything. She needed the oak to be there.
The sun stood high. Making itself shine even brighter and let the warm weather get even warmer. Making Rose's red hair shine and glitter, and making Hugo's pale skin look even paler.
"Mom, why are we here?" asked Hugo, who were awfully bored of the walk to nowhere. He was just about to move his feet – as you do when you walk – when his mother cried out a 'stop'.
His foot froze just over something which might look like nothing, but for Hermione it was everything. She had found her oak, tiny it was, but it would become an oak. Later on.
"What is that?" Rose watched the green leaves curiously, not to mention with wonder. How come this teeny tiny tree meant so much for her mother, that Hugo couldn't even place his foot over it?
"That is why I brought you here", answered Hermione, falling to her knees beside the tree. She studied it for a long time, gave it some water that she produced with her wand and then watched it again. She sighed – but it was a lucky sigh, a sigh that let out all the nervous feelings she had been holding back about the tree.
"I planted it here, a year ago. As a memory of your father."
"Oh." Hugo took his almost-man body and curled up beside the tree. A tree that weren't a tree, but he wouldn't say something that would destroy for his mother. A closeness like this they hadn't had since … since that day.
Rose sighed as well, and sat down beside her mother and brother. Not a day went without missing her father, but he wouldn't want them to grief so much. He most likely would want them to keep living – but one day a year wasn't forbidden, and for her mother, who likely hadn't grieved for a year, certainly deserved it.
"Next year, will grandma and grandpa come too? And all of our aunts and uncles?" She asked her mother instead, who was putting her head against the dry mud and watching the soon-to-be-oak.
Hermione didn't have an answer for that. She hadn't even thought about it yet – because you gotta live in the present, not the future and certainly not the past. She sighed once again and then looked at her children.
"Of course. They're his family too."
"Can we bring food next year?" asked Hugo, who had gotten his fathers appetite.
Both Rose and Hermione laughed. "Yes, we can", said his mother and rubbed playfully his red hair.
Sometimes kids got to be kids, not have to have all the responsibilities that grown ups have. They don't have to mourn all the time, but it did not hurt to hear them say that they missed Ron or that they either loved him or Hermione.
They laid there in the grass, watching the oak. They didn't talk – there was no need to talk. In that moment they could feel whatever the others felt, and there were happiness and there was many thoughts about how, yes, lucky they were that at least had each other.
After a long time, presumably two hours, Hugo and Rose decided to go back to the Burrow, to have lunch. Their mother weren't ready to leave quite yet, and she needed some alone time with her former husband.
"Hi, Ron."
It was only a tiny oak, for anyone except for Hermione. For her this teeny tiny not-even-an-oak-yet represented her husband, and therefore she told that little tree everything that had happened the past year.
She told it what the kids had gotten for Christmas gifts and what Rose would receive next month at her birthday, but she also told him about the grades Rose had gotten last summer in her OWL's and how excited she was that Hugo would do his this year.
Hermione talked about Harry and Ginny, Molly and Arthur, all of Ron's brothers and sisters-in-law, about Teddy and Victoire's new born baby. She even talked about the weather when there was nothing left to talk about.
She was so calm while talking, she didn't need to hear an answer to continue on, the feeling that Ron listened to her was good enough.
Then finally the time came. The time when she would return to the Burrow as well, ready or not. But Hermione thought she was ready. There hadn't been any tears this time – there had been no need to.
Another year, and then she would come back. Come back with a daughter who was a woman and a witch by that time, a son who had done his OWL's (and Hermione didn't doubt it would go well for him), with both her and Ron's best friend Harry, Ron's little sister and other family, with all the nieces and nephews that normally came with the Weasley family.
And next year, they would have a picnic.
