Chapter 2

Hermione lay awake in their bed, alone, trying hard to remember the last time they had slept apart. It must have been that time when he went on a business trip to France, Hermione thought, the one where he was supposed to be staying away for three nights. She loved France and would definitely have loved to go with him, but she had the children to think about. With them, she could go nowhere, and they had said a reluctant goodbye. When she had gone to bed that night, it had felt weird. Beyond weird. There had not been a single night before that one for the past five years that they had not slept together in their generous kingsize bed. She had fallen asleep around midnight, exhausted, and been awakened again at half one.

Draco had sneaked down under the covers and snuggled up to her, causing her to stur in her troubled sleep, and with a soft kiss on her ear she had been wide awake. "Draco!" she had breathed. "What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be in France!?"

The sweetest smile had curled his lips. "Nobody said anything about having to sleep there. I'll be back in the morning, before anyone realises I've been missing."

This time was different. This time he did not come to her in the middle of the night, snuggling down like a lovesick little puppy. This time the house remained quiet, except for the frequent creaks of the settling wood, like a heartbeat for the whailing wind-beast outside.

This time she was left to herself, and that's when she realised that it might not be temporary - that this might be just a preview of an imminent future in which she would be all alone, and her husband would be forever lost to her. If that happened... she didn't how to go on. What about the children? What would they do about the children? Would they separate them, take one each? Or would he leave them in her responsibility, to take care of and provide for? She didn't even have a real job! Or what about the complete opposite? He could take the children and move out of the house, and she may never get to see any of them again.

The thought of it made Hermione squirm with distress and deathly fear, and she tossed and turned in the bed for almost an hour, her fear rising steadily until it had grown into a paranoid, desperate terror. When the digital clock on her nightstand glowed a green 02:43, she abandoned sleep and went down to the kitchen, where she took down a huge box of cauldron cakes from a cupboard. She sat at the table, determinedly chewing down cake after cake, staring out into infinity. It was all a blank to her. The future was as indescernable as the crystal balls in Professor Trelawny's classroom had always been. And she hated it.

A small bitter and self-loathing laughter escaped her. I'm sitting at the kitchen table wolfing down cauldron cakes in the middle of the night, she thought to herself. That's a first.

Tears welled up in her eyes, but she stubbornly bit her lip. She would not cry.

But then she did. And all went black.

"Mummy? Mummy, wake up, I'm hungry."

"Yeah, me too!"

The tiny voices woke her up, but she felt as if she was still asleep. So tired... The children were standing beside her at the table, their faces a cute anticipation. She just had to laugh at them. "Oh you!" she said, getting up from the table despite the pain in her back, neck, shoulders, and rear end. She caught them in her arms and hugged them. "I love you guys, do you know that?" she murmured in their hair.

They giggled nervously. "Mummy," Thomas said with embarrassment. He was seven, so he was starting to get aware of the fact that parents were good to have around the house, but that they should stay at an armslengths' distance if there were other people around. His playmates had apparently taught him that it was embarrassing to hug one's parents - or anyone else for that matter. But Hermione didn't care - she hugged him anyways.

"Where's Daddy?" Hermione asked them.

"He went to work," Thomas told her matter-of-factly.

"Said he was in a hurry," Judy put in imortantly, "but that he would be back for dinner and bring me something nice from Diagon Alley on his way back."

Hermione jerked involuntarily when Thomas said that Draco had already left, but immediately hid her discomfort from the children. They need stability, she reminded herself. Stability. Right. "Okay," she said, "who wants breakfast?"

After clearing the table, Hermione decided to go out. Getting out of the house might help her sort out her thoughts. And she knew exactly the place to go.

"Mummy, where are we going?" Judy asked when Hermione promptly dressed her children for the chill, wind-swept landscape outside.

"We're going to visit Uncle Harry," she told them as cheerfully as she could manage. "Would you like that?"

"Yeeeeey!" both the children shrieked. "Uncle Harry!" Judy exclaimed and set off for the parlour fireplace. She had almost reached it when Hermione said, "No, we're not using the fireplace. I thought we'd go out into the lovely autumn day and walk there, it's not that far. We can play in the puddles of water on our way there. How does that sound?"

"Yey, playtime!" Judy cried out. She was such an easy-to-please child, five years old and perfectly happy with anything thrown to her. Like a dog. It was one of the things that Hermione loved most about her daughter, and it always made her smile. Thanks to that little girl, she had a wonderful time walking the half mile to Harry's house, and she didn't once think of Draco and their swiftly crumbling marriage. She was happy, and she was young again. The marvels that children could present you with...

Harry was surprised to see them all standing on the porch, their hair on end because of the occasionally hooting wind, when he opened the door. "Hermione," he said, taking in her wind-blown appearance. "Um, come in." A great Woof! sounded through the parlour adjacent the hall, and an equally great black dog followed. Overly excited, as always, it ran along the slippery wooden floor in happy desperation and leapt upon them in seconds. Upon touchdown, it began to lick their faces with its enormous pink tongue. Thomas and Judy laughed and tried to push the dog away from them.

"Frolic!" Harry said admonishingly, and the dog immediately retreated.

Frolic was the spawn of Fang the boarhound, Hagrid's meek but merry beast.

They sat in the dining hall, Hermione opposite Harry and the children beside her. Harry treated them to tea and homemade biscuits, probably made from one of Mrs. Weasley's recipes. Hermione carefully sipped her hot tea and looked around.

"Where's Luna?"

"Oh, she's outside. Catching Nargles with the kids." He gave her a wry, knowing smile.

She nodded. "I see. Well, I guess some things never change."

Harry had married Luna when he was nineteen, two years after defeating Lord Voldemort. Their sudden and violent love had surprised everyone - especially poor Ginny, who had believed that Harry and she would get back together as soon as that whole ordeal with the Horcruxes was over, but she had been wrong. By a twist of fate, Luna had been a vital part of the completion of Harry's mission, and apparently Harry had been immensely impressed with her amazing magical skills. He'd also claimed to be inevitably intrigued by Luna's mystified personality and the many odd things she said and did. Somewhere between awe of Luna's abilities and amused interest in her many quirks of personality, he had fallen in love. When he first told her and Ron about it they thought he was kidding. They had had to change their minds on that one when they started dating, though.

Ron had said with conviction that they wouldn't last a month once they had got married, but they had lasted thirteen years yet. And Harry seemed happier than ever.

Suddenly the patio door was opened and Luna entered, followed by the three boys that she had together with Harry. When she noticed Hermione at the table, she stopped dead and gave the guest a misty gaze. "Oh, hi Hermione. How nice of you to stop by. Would you like a Nargle?" She proffered a wicker cage that she had obviously made herself, and which was just as obviously empty. But as Hermione did not want to make Luna seem crazy or anything, she said nothing about it and simply shook her head. No, thanks. No Nargles in this home.

Luna put the cage on the end of the table farthest from Harry and Hermione and then sat down next to her husband, a dreamy and utterly solemn expression on her face. The boys were running around the room, shouting and brandishing toy wands, lost in play. Luna turned to them. "Boys, why don't you take Judy and Thomas up to your room and show them your new Pygmy Puffs?" she suggested, and the children immediately ran off for the stairs. She calmly turned to Hermione. "So, what's wrong?" she asked straightforwardly.

Hermione was baffled by her excellent perception. She must have seen something in her face, must have recognised it as distress and come to the conclusion that something was up. How could she look so distant and still be so clear-sighted?
Harry, on the other hand, being the man that he was, had not perceived that anything was wrong with her - other than the fact that she had lost her sense of calling before coming to visit. Now he leant forward in his chair to have a better look at Hermione. "Something's wrong? What's wrong? Hermione, are you all right? Are you hurt or anything?"

She felt warm inside when she heard the worry in his voice. There was nothing else that she appreciated more in this world than his deep care for her because their friendship was so special. At the same time a twinge of pain temporarily seared her heart when she thought of Ronald. He had never been able to accept her relationship with Draco Malfoy, and he had declared war on them the very first moment Hermione announced that they were a couple. For years and years he had fought for her - in his own troll-like way - and finally, some years ago, cut off all contact with her. Their friendship obviously meant nothing to him at all.

Shaking off that painful memory, Hermione forced herself to focus on her current problem. "It's Draco," she said at once, forthright as she had always been.

A dark shadow settled over Harry's face and was quickly followed by a deep scowl. "Did he hurt you?" he asked fiercely, his old enimosity for Malfoy on the uprise anew.

Hermione shook her head. "Oh no. Well, at least not in the sense you mean. It's... It's our marriage. I think it is coming to and end."

She felt indescribably nervous when she peered at him.

He seemed taken aback. "Oh. Alright. I mean... that's sad." He nodded unconvincingly to himself.

Hermione smiled wrily. "Yeah, I know. Can't say I didn't anticipate it, though. Our relationship has been... tested... a number of times during our ten years together. There have been some hard times... and... and there has been some..." She searched for a neutral word. "... opposition amongst our friends..." At this, Harry winced and displayed remorse at how he had first opposed to her relationship with Draco. In the beginning, he had taken the same side as Ron, though not as strongly as his ginger-haired friend. Knowing the emotional circus Draco had gone through on the night that Dumbledore had been murdered, knowing the utter terror that the Malfoy boy had showed and knowing his incapacity for murder or anything of the like, he had soon come to see what Hermione had seen in him. Hermione continued, "But I never thought it would end like this." Tears were now streaming down her cheeks, her face screwed up in pain. "And I never wanted it to end at all. I just knew..." She stopped abruptly. Sobbed drily. "I just knew."

Harry rose from the table and pulled her into his arms. He gently stroked her back. "There now, you're okay," he whispered in her ear, "you're okay. Don't worry about anything. I'll talk to him, see what he has to say about this. It might be easier for him to talk to someone else than to talk to you. He might not want to hurt you."

Hermione nodded. Yes, Draco would not want to hurt her. Harry had definitely understood what type of person Draco was. "Thank you," she said in less than a whisper. "Thank you."

Suddenly she became aware that Luna had also risen from the table to come to her side, because she was now standing right beside Hermione, an understanding smile on her dreamy face. "You should stay overnight, Hermione," she offered. But Hermione understood that it was less an offer and more an acknowledgement of something already agreed. "We can sit down and write a message for Draco in a while, tell him where you are so he won't worry. I can have one of my Nargles deliver it, although they do tend to tear any parchment to shreds if they come too close to it. Ah, well, he'd know the care you took in thinking about him once you get back home," she concluded with a small shrug of her shoulders.

The other two stared at her for a moment or two. Then Harry said to Hermione, "You can use Hedwig. She's upstairs."

Hermione thought she might just prefer that second offer to the first.

A/N: I just want to say that this was written before I read the seventh and last book, so it is a post-halfblood-prince-story. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did writing it.

I would also like to thank the people who have added this story to their favorite stories, and who have added me to their list of favorite authors. I feel so honored! Thanx:D