all characters belong to JKR
Chapter 2: The Path of Righteousness was Never Straight
She stood alone, in a void, unable to go farther, unable to go back. Clutching the ruby amulet in her hand, the choice was already made, long before she made it.
One Year Ago:
"Mum, have you seen my red scarf?" A gangly teenage girl ran past Hermione as she walked through the foyer toward the stairs. The girl had deep red hair, long and curly, which flew behind her when she ran up the stairs.
"I think I put it in your closet, where it belongs," Hermione said wearily. Her daughter, Rose, sixteen years old, ran back down the stairs, red scarf firmly in her grasp, and almost knocked her mother down the stairs in the process. "Rose, please!" Hermione sighed and stopped walking up the stairs. She sat on one of the stairs and watched as the whirlwind, aka Rose Beatrice Weasley, ran from the living room back to the foyer, then back up the stairs.
Ron walked in the front door. "Is she ready? We're going to miss the train."
"She's running around like a mad woman," Hermione explained. "Is Hugo in the car?"
"Yep," Ron exclaimed. He walked up several steps and placed a hand on Hermione's stomach. "Does this one feel like a boy?"
"It feels like an elephant, Ron," Hermione laboured, pushing Ron's hand off her ever-expanding stomach. Rose started back down the stairs. Hermione looked up at her and asked, "Are you ready? You're going to miss the train for Hogwarts."
"All set," Rose exclaimed. "I'm so excited this year!" She leaned over on her way down the stairs, kissed her mother's head, and rushed out the door. Ron laughed.
He looked back up at Hermione, sitting halfway up the stairs, and he quizzed, "Are you still set on staying behind, even though it's tradition that we meet Harry and Ginny and see the kids off every year?"
"Ron…" she began, not wanting to explain again. "I'm not feeling well," she lied. The truth was she didn't want to go. She wanted to be alone.
He shrugged, winked at her and said, "I'll be late tonight. I'm going to the Burrow after I drop the kids off at the station. I'll see you later. Don't wait up, since I'll be late."
As her husband's figure retreated, Hermione said, "Tell the kids I love them." He was already gone. She stood up and watched out the front door as the car drove away from the house. Rose was going to be in sixth year and Hugo was in fourth. Her children were growing up. She thought she was finally going to have some time for herself. She looked down at her belly and said, "Fate had other plans, huh?" She slammed the door shut with a resounding thud.
She hadn't planned to get pregnant again at thirty-eight. She didn't want more children. She loved her children dearly, but she had been looking forward to the day when she could live for herself.
She was looking for the day when she could leave her husband.
Now she would be stuck with him for at least another eighteen years. She felt a weight descend upon her chest, a tear form on her cheek, and just as she was about to give in to the tears, the doorbell rang. She almost let it ring, but it could be Ron. It would be just like him to have forgotten something, like his brain, and to ring the bell instead of opening the door with his key, or heaven forbid, his wand.
She walked with a slow gait back toward the door. She pulled aside the small covering over the peephole. The sight of the man on the other side caused her to pause. Why was HE here, of all people? She let the little covering over the peephole slide back into place, scraping against the door. Opening the door a crack, she peered outside.
"What?"
"Nice to see you, too, Granger," Draco Malfoy said with a bored tone. He leaned his long body against the doorframe, placing his foot with its shiny black shoe inside the door as he did.
"Really?" she asked, incredulously, pointing down at his foot. "Do you think your foot in the door will gain you entry? I have my wand. I'll hex your foot off if I want to, now what do you want?"
"Where's your husband?" he asked briskly.
"He just took the children off to catch the train to Hogwarts. Shouldn't you be taking Scorpius there today?" Hermione opened the door wider. Draco looked at her pregnant stomach, made a disgusted noise, and then back up at her face.
"You're letting him breed you again?" he asked.
"Stop being an arse," she leveled. "And I asked you a question. Your son. Why aren't you taking him to school today?"
"Why aren't you with the husband and kiddies yourself, Granger?" He slammed the door closed and walked into the foyer of her old, Victorian home.
"Do come in," she said sarcastically. "And its Weasley now," she corrected. "Ron took the kiddies without me. I wasn't feeling very well," she lied.
"Yes well, my son is sixteen. He doesn't need his old man to hold his hand at the station these days, Granger," he explained. He walked right into her home and began to look at things intently.
Under her breath, she said again, "It's Weasley now, actually, and has been for a long time, as you well know," but then she stopped talking when she noticed that he picked up a picture from the hall table by the stairs. It was a picture of her children.
"Your daughter looks like you, thank Merlin," Draco accused. "Scorpius said she's a pretty little thing and smart as can be." He continued further into the foyer. He looked at a painting that was hanging on the wall by the living room entry. "This is good," he clipped. "Who's the artist?"
"I am," she said unabashed. He turned to stare at her.
"Really?" He seemed genuinely shocked. "Huh." He turned back to the painting. "I never would have thought that you had an artistic bone in your body."
She was going to say something scathing as a reply, but decided against it. Truthfully, she never considered herself very artistic either. She usually believed in science and structure over poetry and art. "It's a new hobby of mine," she commented.
She came to stand beside him. Their shoulders touched. Hermione radiated warmth. Draco craved warmth. He had been cold for so long. "It shouldn't just be a hobby. You're very good." He closed his eyes for a moment, inhaled deeply, and said, "I'm a sick son of a bitch. I shouldn't have come here today, especially, well," he turned back and pointed at her stomach.
He stormed toward the door, threw it open to leave.
"Malfoy!" she shouted, to stop his retreat. He stopped, and with his back still to her she asked, "Please, why did you come here?"
Without turning to face her he said, "Your husband and my wife are having an affair." When he turned to face her, she was facing away from him. Her hand was on the scrolled balustrade at the bottom of the stairs. She clutched it so tightly that her knuckles turned white. She felt overwhelmed, lightheaded. She started to swoon.
The next thing she knew she was on the sofa in her living room. Draco Malfoy was walking toward her with a wet rag in his hand. He placed it over her forehead. She tried to sit up, but he urged her back down. "Stay down," he ordered. He kept his hand on the cloth, on her forehead. She took the cloth from his hand, batting his hand away. Sitting up, she stared at him, numbly.
"Repeat that again."
"Stay down," he said, obtusely.
She threw the wet cloth at his chest. He recoiled; the cloth hit his dark blue button up and then landed on the floor. He bent down to pick it up and tossed it toward a planter by the fireplace. She placed her head in her hands. He sat beside her. "Did you know?" he asked.
She shook her head no.
"Gee, Granger, I'm sorry, really. I shouldn't have let it out like that."
"It's Weasley," she repeated, though she lacked the conviction this time. "I think I suspected something was going on, and have for a long time, but I had no clue with whom." She looked up at the ceiling. The morning sun was coming in the front window, shafts of light broke off into pieces as it played around the lead glass of the windowpane. She stared at the uneven squares on the ceiling until her vision blurred.
He reached into his trouser pocket, pulled out a black, velvet pouch, and emptied its contents on her lap. She looked down slowly. Fingering the strange looking necklace, she held it up. The sunlight bounced off the large, ruby in the middle, prisms of light shifting around the room. She sat at attention when realization hit her like a lead weight.
"Where did you get this?"
"I think you know where," he said. "And I know you know what it is. My question for you today is - can we use it? Can we use it to change things?"
"What do you want to change, Malfoy?" she asked, her voice raised an octave when she stood with the heavy amulet still clutched in her hand. She threw the precious antiquity at him. Unlike the wet cloth, which merely grazed his shirt before slipping on the floor, the heavy artifact hit him square on the chest, causing him to wince in pain.
"Damn, Granger, that hurt like hell!"
"IT'S WEASLEY YOU BASTARD!" She shook all over in fury. He stood. He let the amulet fall to the carpeting.
"Fine, Mrs. Weasley, whatever, do you think we can use this and change the course of things!"
"Even if I believed you, which I'm not sure that I do, no, I don't think we can use something as powerful as The First Stone to change something like my husband's supposed infidelity with your wife!" She sunk back on the sofa, hung her head, and rubbed her face with her hands.
Sitting beside her slowly, he said, "I'm not lying. I have proof, if you want it."
She shook her head some more. "I don't need proof. Hell, I believe you." Furthermore, she did. She hated that she did, but she did. She looked at the precious piece of their magical history lying on her floor and asked, "How did you come to have something so valuable and rare?"
He shrugged for a moment. "I'm sure someone in my family stole it many eons ago," he said truthfully. "It's been in our family vault for years. It had a charm in place over it. It only appeared in its true form to my mother and me."
She sunk down to her knees on the floor. Picking the stone up by the heavy chain, she stared at it intently. "I've always wanted to see it in person. Tell me, Malfoy, why would you want to use it for this? You know everyone can only use it once within his or her lifetime. Why waste your one and only chance for this?"
He stood up, paced in front of her, and said, "Well, gee, Granger, perhaps because I love my wife and I would rather that she didn't sleep with your fucking husband!"
Hermione flinched slightly. How could Ron cheat on her, and with Astoria Malfoy of all people? He claimed to hate people like her. "You love your wife?" she asked softly, palming the heavy stone, placing her palm with the stone on her chest, closing her eyes. That was more than she could say in regards to her husband.
He sat on the couch near her. "No," he answered. "I…I just said that," he said sincerely. "But she's my wife, and I can't abide this, Granger, I can't."
"Once the magic of the stone is unleashed it can't be changed. And the course it sets isn't always what people expect," she said. "You know that better than anyone. You helped me research it, back when we were in school, remember?"
"Yeah," he recalled. "Sixth year, History of Magic, Professor Binns put you and I together on a project. Uncover the history of the myth of The First Stone. Fact or Fantasy. You were such a little twat, insisting that we study at all hours, when I frankly had better things to do that year."
She wanted to say something crass like - 'What? . . . killing the headmaster' but she kept quiet. "I remember when we were done with our research; you were amazed by its proposed powers."
He slid down on the floor beside her. He reached over for the stone. His fingers grazed hers. He placed it back in the velvet pouch and put it in his pocket. "I wanted to use it that year, but I didn't know how. There were so many things I wanted to change, but I knew, from our research, that if I didn't use it just right, pick the right thing to change, that we could make everything worse."
"I wanted to find it the year Harry, Ron and I searched for the Horcruxes," she admitted.
"Yeah? Why?" He let his long legs go out in front of him and crossed them at the feet.
"I thought I could use it to go back and kill Voldemort when he was still Tom Riddle, but then I realized that might change things too much. Harry Potter might not be who he was. Who knows, his mum and dad might not have met and married, or whatever, or maybe he wouldn't have been the boy that he was meant to be. You're right, there were just too many variances, too many 'what ifs' and the magic of the stone is permanent. Also, since it could only be used once per each person's lifetime, as long as they are in possession of the stone, I didn't want to waste it."
He laughed. He stood up, looked down at her and said, "Plus, you didn't have the ruddy stone anyway, so using it was a pipe dream for you, in other words, a moot point. It's not for me. I have it. I always did. My own father didn't know we had it. It was one secret my mother never shared with him, thank goodness."
She struggled to stand. It wasn't easy, being eight months pregnant. He reached his hand down to her. She looked up in his eyes first, and then gave him her hand. He still had to use both hands to lift her up. "You're the size of a hippogriff," he teased. In truth, he thought she looked lovely. He had always heard that pregnant woman glowed when they were pregnant, and Hermione was glowing. His wife, having only been pregnant once, and hating every second of it, look nauseated the entire time she was pregnant with their son.
She walked from the living room. He was confused. He heard her voice from another room as she said, "Are you going to follow me, or what?"
He found her in a room full of books. Now here was the Hermione Granger, or Weasley if she'd rather, in which he was familiar. She was reaching up for a large, ancient looking tome. He sighed in disgust, and pushed her from the shelf, reached for the book in her place, and then handed it to her.
She mumbled a small thank-you, opened the book on her desk, and when he started to ask her what she was doing, she had the gall to say, "Sh…I'm reading."
He glared at her, and just at the moment when he was about to level an insult her way, she closed the book and said, "Right, here's the thing; we can't waste such an important piece of magic as The First Stone to keep our spouses from cheating on us. We just can't. It would be sacrilegious, or something. However, what we can do is to see what might have happened if we had used it previously, as we mentioned. If we find out that things wouldn't have changed for the better, if we had used it before, I might have a suggestion of what we can do with the stone today. There might be a way to use it in the past, that will change this particular bit of the future, anyway."
He waited a moment. "How do you propose we find out if we should have used the stone before, when we were younger?"
"There's a bit of magic in regards to this stone that I never even shared with you, even when we were doing our research, Malfoy," she admitted. "After all, I was fairly certain you were a Death Eater back then. You always acted a bit too eager about the stone, and you seemed to be a bit too knowledgeable in regards to how it looked, even though you had supposedly only seen it in painting in books. I suspected you had it, or at the very least, that you knew where it was."
"You sneak," he accused. "Fine, amaze me with your hidden knowledge, Granger."
She was going to correct him again, and tell him, "Weasley," but instead, she said, "Come here, Malfoy. Let me show you what I mean."