Hello, dear readers …
Some of you may be aware that I'm in the midst of updating two other stories — "Fate or Fortune" and "The Way We Will Be." So you can hardly be blamed if you're wondering what the heck I'm doing updating a story that's been complete for literally years.
Well …
This idea entered my head last night and I just couldn't rest until I'd written it. So here it is. An epilogue to the mighty "All In."
I hope you won't mind that it's not written in the first-person present — in Ron's voice — as the rest of the story is told. Somehow that didn't seem right for this aspect of the story.
Anyway, I do hope that you like it. Please review, won't you — and check back for updates on the other stories that are still trundling their way toward completion.
Many thanks …
Holly.
oooOOOooo
EPILOGUE
It was a memory he had relived time and again for decades in his dreams as he lay sleeping alone in the four-poster bed there at Vine Cottage:
She had been stretched out in their bed, her ragged breathing barely lifting the duvet covering her chest, as rays of late-afternoon sunlight shone across her silvery-white curls. He had watched her from the chair beside the bed, feeling a flutter of dread rise up to his throat every time it appeared she wouldn't inhale again. And then, as had happened just minutes before, she would draw another shuddering breath, and his anxiety would subside somewhat. At least until the next pause in the rhythm of her respiration. In the meantime, he fiddled with the embroidery on the snowy white duvet, having let go of her hand earlier for fear of disturbing her rest.
His lower back had ached, but he tried to ignore it. He absent-mindedly rubbed his knee now and then to ease the throbbing which sometimes came on during chilly afternoons such as this, the result of an old Auror injury.
Every now and then during the previous 12 hours or so, she would awaken and speak with him in a remarkably lucid way for someone who was, as she was, slipping away … and she was indeed slipping away. He had known it, and he'd somehow trained himself to stop fighting it, for her sake mostly. His inability to accept the inevitable had caused her a fair bit of anxiety in the previous few weeks, and he had become determined to cause her anxiety no more — but rather, to ease her passage. Even so, he had still prayed for more opportunities to speak with her, if nothing else because he still loved the sound of her voice and still marveled at the depth of her thoughts.
It had cheered him, then, when her eyes fluttered and finally opened, heralding the beginning of yet another conversation, however brief. He couldn't help but wonder, each time, if this would be the last.
"What time is it?" she had asked, her eyes squinting toward the window.
He had taken her hand, the one nearest to him, in both of his and checked his watch. "About 4:30."
"Mmm, I'm losing track of time," she had murmured, eyes closing — though he knew she was still with him.
"That's all right," he had said. "It's not as if either of us has any appointments to keep."
She let out a little huff that was as close as she could come, in her weakened state, to a laugh. "True." The smile had remained on her lips.
They were both silent for a moment, the sound of the clock ticking on the mantlepiece at the other end of the bedroom punctuating the quietude. Outside the window, a bird sang out and then was mute. A log in the fire popped, which had seemed to rouse her and she spoke again.
"I'm sorry, you know," she had said softly, opening her eyes slightly before closing them again.
"No, don't say that," he replied, tightening his grip on her hand.
She had smiled and her eyes opened again, a bit wider than before. "I mean it," she said. "You deserve better than this, Ronald."
"Don't be daft."
"You do," she had said, a hint of her old scolding tone rising in her shaky voice — and he couldn't help but smile at it despite the tears that constantly threatened to choke him. "The Ministry of Divine Health reckons that wizard life expectancy nowadays is 137 and three quarters years," she added, sounding mildly cross though he knew she was really only joking — something his younger self wouldn't always have realized. Closing her eyes again, she continued: "That means you shouldn't have counted on being a widower for at least another three decades, darling."
He couldn't help it: He laughed. It was so like her to make a barmy point like this, and with such mathematical precision. Blinking back the tears welling in his eyes, he made a scoffing noise and raised a hand to her forehead, brushing back the wayward curl that always resisted being pinned down.
"I wouldn't trade the decades we've had for anything," he'd managed to say once he had calmed himself enough to recover his voice, though it still creaked with emotion. "I'll miss you, Hermione Jean Granger Weasley, and I still can't quite imagine how I'll get along without you …" He grimaced as he fought to gather himself, then pressed on: "But I won't regret choosing you over anyone else, no matter how long or how short the time."
She lifted the hand farthest from him and dropped it atop his. He noticed how cold and clammy it felt, and a shudder overtook him momentarily.
"You'll carry on because they need you — all of them," she whispered, her eyes meeting his. He had known instantly what she meant, and he knew she was right. Leo, Rose, Hugo, Clare, Robert … and all of their own children … they were the light of his life, each of them. And, though it still amazed him on occasion, he had become the pater familias of a very large household indeed — the center of a clan all his own in much the way dear old Arthur had done years and years before. When he'd retired from the Auror service, she had remained active, clocking in at the Ministry each day, rain or shine, and he had taken up the slack at home, becoming the proverbial keeper of the hearth for the entire extended assemblage of them, including Ginny and Harry's household.
He had felt a pang of guilt at that moment — not for the first time — because the children, particularly Rose and Clare, had wanted very much to be at her bedside when her time came. Harry, too, had wanted to be nearby. But Ron had quietly resisted their entreaties. The Ingenitus in him knew, deep down, that this was it — that she would leave his side on this very day — and he also knew, almost as if they had agreed to it at some point though they actually hadn't, at least out loud, that this was a moment to be shared alone, just the two of them. He had wanted it that way and, though she hadn't said it in so many words, he understood that this was exactly what she had wanted as well.
Over the previous year, she had received the very best medical care that she, as a former Minister for Magic and member of the Order of Merlin, First Class, could ever expect but, in the end, no Healer's intervention could keep the ravages of time from taking their toll on a body that had endured such degradations during the war. She had overcome the effects of the Crucio on her reproductive system all those years earlier, but the internal damage still came at a cost — and one of those was that even the mildest of viruses would lay her flat. If the household came down with a sniffle, she would be utterly bulldozed by it. Looking at her tiny frame stretched out on the bed before him, he had marveled anew at her strength: For one so petite, she packed a punch, and no one to his knowledge had survived as many Crucios as she had done and lived to tell the tale.
"If you so much as dare to follow me too soon," she had said, interrupting his thoughts, "I'll be very cross with you, Ronald." Her eyes were still closed, but her lips were curled upward slightly.
He chuckled in response, unable to speak, and they fell again into another extended silence. He wasn't sure if she was sleeping or not.
"Are you afraid?" he had heard himself say then, not entirely sure whether he had spoken that thought out loud.
She shook her head slightly, eyes still closed. "No," she whispered. Her brow furrowed briefly before clearing. "I had expected to be afraid, but I find that I'm actually not."
He pressed both of her small, chilly hands within his larger, warmer ones. He noticed for the hundredth time how soft and smooth her hands were despite her age, contrasting markedly with his bony fingers, somewhat mangled by the effects of arthritis and years of Auror-level wandwork.
"To be honest," she continued slowly, "I'm more curious than anything."
He let out a little puff of air and choked back a sob. "That's hardly a surprise coming from you," he was finally able to say.
She smiled again through closed eyes. "On to the next adventure," she sighed.
When she did indeed pass away — quietly and peacefully in her sleep, hours later that night, under his watchful eye — he vowed through his tears that he would carry on as she had commanded. She had expected him to watch over the children and grandchildren, the siblings, the nieces and nephews and cousins, the dogs and cats, the owls, the plants, the neighbors, Dobby and, most important, Harry.
And so it was very much to everyone's astonishment that Ron carried on doing just that for decades, despite Hermione's departure. His children had half expected him to lose the will to live when Hermione left this Earth, but he had done just the opposite. He relished living. He poured his energy and affection on his many, many grandchildren. He reminisced with Harry. He beat his sons in law at wizard chess. And when his age became so advanced that he could no longer care for himself at Vine Cottage alone, Clare and her husband Josiah and their children moved in with him. Though he repeatedly insisted that Clare and Josiah take over the master bedroom that had been his, they resolutely refused, and he was inwardly glad. This room had been his sanctuary, the place where he felt nearest to his long-lost Hermione. In his dreams, he would often relive that last conversation, the one that had taken place so many years earlier in the warmth of that very room … the one in which she had taken her final leave of him while also admonishing him to keep on living.
She was always in his dreams, every night — sometimes standing, trembling, in her oversized white terrycloth robe, looking up at him expectantly by the hearth in their Grimmauld Place bedroom ... sometimes bobbing Baby Victoire to and fro in the odd position she had discovered would stop the babe's bawling ... sometimes wearing his Weasley jumper there on the Common Room sofa ... but more often than he would have expected, he relived this scene in his dreams — their final conversation, and he found he took comfort in it, in its familiarity, in its uncanny hopefulness, in the knowledge that she wasn't afraid. This particular dream never altered.
He was mildly surprised, therefore, to find the dream continuing one night, well past the point where it usually ended — where he would cross her arms atop her chest and lean down to plant a final kiss upon her lips. This time, his eyes were drawn to the french doors opposite the bed, which had rather unexpectedly opened to the springtime chill. The sun, he noticed, was descending toward the green and gray hills on the far bank of the lake beyond the boundaries of the back yard. Looking behind him at the bed, he noticed that it was now empty and tidy, freshly made as if neither he nor Hermione for that matter had just been sleeping in it, but he didn't think to question it. He merely looked again toward the horizon and stepped out onto the balcony and then, opening the railing as if it were a gate — though it most definitely never had been a gate — he alighted toward that distant hill that had drawn his eye and strode along, not noticing that his feet weren't touching the ground.
Eventually, the Earth rose to meet his feet at the base of that faraway hill he had felt compelled to climb, and he strolled upward, remembering that the summit of this very hill had been a favorite place to play mini-Quidditch with his brothers, and had been the place where he had later helped Hermione to brush up her flying skills, such as they were. She'd never improved much, he remembered with a grin. As he crested the summit, he found, to his further surprise, a young man standing there who looked oddly familiar, though he could have sworn they'd never met before.
Drawing closer, he perceived that the young man was tall and lanky, much as Ron himself once was, but with remarkably curly ginger hair. He lacked Ron's abundant freckles. He could easily have been a Weasley, Ron thought, but who? Two steps closer and Ron noticed something more unusual about this young man: He wasn't entirely there. Meaning he was slightly — Ron struggled to find the words in his own mind — erm, slightly transparent. Just visible enough to be seen, but only that. Ron could see the trees behind him and the valley below him — straight through him.
"You don't know me, but I know you," the young man said with a warm smile. "I've been waiting for you."
Now even more puzzled than he had been before, Ron rubbed his jaw. "You … what?"
The young man's smile broadened. "It will all become clearer soon. Come."
With that, the young man turned, Ron followed, and they descended the opposite side of the hill and made their way toward a broad meadow that was glowing in golds and greens and browns in the rays of the setting sun.
Eventually, the young man slowed down enough for Ron to catch up — and it dawned on Ron that his balky knee didn't hurt as it normally would on a hike this long. The young man then answered Ron's unspoken question.
"My name is Seth," he said, turning to gaze at Ron with eyes that looked — suddenly and shockingly — very much like Hermione's eyes.
Ron's jaw dropped as they walked on, searching his mind for clues. "Seth," he repeated.
"Yes," said the young man. "I am — or would have been — your son."
Ron stopped abruptly in his tracks, though Seth continued two paces before turning to face him.
"Wait," Ron said slowly, staring off into the distant meadow and putting the pieces of the puzzle together — but then, it clicked. The miscarriage. In a whirl, the images came back to him — years before Leo, before any of the other children — that ill-fated pregnancy that proved it was possible, despite the Crucio damage, for Hermione to perhaps have children. The lost child they had mourned. The lost child who had given them hope for the future.
Drawing his eyes back to his companion, Ron felt a wave of tears rise in his eyes, and the young man raised his hand almost as if to say, "please, don't be sad." He didn't say it, but Ron understood it somehow nevertheless. "It happened as it was meant to happen," the young man said. "I have stayed with you. I was here for her, and now I am here for you."
"But —" Ron said, not entirely understanding.
"Listen."
Ron obeyed, but he wasn't sure what he should be listening for. The wind picked up, rustling the grasses around them.
"Listen," the young man repeated. Ron realized then that his forehead was tense, his jaw set. He willed them to relax, and then, the realizations came to him — the messages he was meant to understand, the things the young man was meant to convey, and these realizations somehow seeped into his mind despite his confusion.
Seth. His name was Seth. He and Hermione hadn't named him — he was hardly more than an idea to them back then, for that brief flicker of time when he had been among them — but he'd had a name nevertheless. And Ron understood then, without being told, that Seth was more or less his eternal name, the name he had chosen, and though he hadn't lived more than a few weeks within Hermione he had indeed lived, and what Ron was perceiving now wasn't so much him as the memory of him, the potentiality of him, the son they might have had and would have had if things had been different.
And it was then that Ron understood why Seth was there.
"Where is she?" Ron asked at a whisper.
Seth turned and pointed ahead at something Ron should have noticed before then but simply hadn't. Across the golden meadow, which now looked remarkably like the grassy plains beyond The Burrow in the early evening light, stood the treehouse.
Ron took two steps past the young man, stifling the urge to take off at a run — but then stopped himself. Turning toward the young man — sweet Merlin, my son, he thought — he stood and took him in. He was a handsome lad indeed. So like his mother.
"Will … will you be all right?" Ron asked.
The young man smiled. "Yes. I am all right. I have been all right. I will be all right. Now that you are here, I can move on."
"On?"
Ron's mind flashed on what Harry had once told him — something about what Dumbledore had once said to him, and it echoed in his mind. On. He remembered thinking that it had been so like Dumbledore to be so opaque. But then, this young man used the same word. Maybe that's just what it was. Maybe there was no other word for it.
On.
"Will I see you again?" Ron asked.
The young man, still smiling, shook his head.
"I love you, you know—and she so would have loved you, son," Ron replied.
The young man nodded. "She told me."
"Oh."
They fell silent, the only sound the rustling of the tall grasses in the breeze.
And then Ron remembered. The treehouse.
"Go," said the young man. "Go and find your next adventure."
oooOOOooo
Please review, dear readers, take care ... and a special thank-you to chemrunner57, who has given me so much support and love over the years.
One last request: If you like this story, please share it with your fellow Romione lovers. Many thanks ...
Holly.
