Chapter 10

Telling Jamie

Hermione shut her son's bedroom door and breathed deeply. She'd kept her promise to Harry and told Jamie all about him, that Harry was here in Paris and why he'd never been there before. Thinking about it all beforehand, when she was racing to pick him up from school, she was dreading it. She wasn't sure how she was going to explain it to him. She didn't know how she could tell the little boy she loved more than life that she'd kept him from knowing his father, in such a way that wouldn't make him hate her or even Harry.

So she'd fed him. And bathed him. And then... told him. She just told him why things were the way they were. Why he'd never met Harry. How Harry wanted to meet him now he knew. Jamie was very grown up about it all. He asked her questions – mostly about Harry, but some about her life at Hogwarts because she'd never felt she could talk about it before. At times when she was talking to him she felt like wailing, but she managed to control herself and had explained everything to him, as one day she always knew she'd have to.

They were still talking about Harry and herself when Hermione had noticed his little eyelids dropping. She checked her watch and realised it was nearly three o'clock in the morning. She picked him up-

"Mummy I'm not tired – I want to know more..." He'd whined sleepily.

"I'll tell you lots more tomorrow. And besides – you can ask Har- Daddy – you can ask Daddy questions tomorrow."

"Will he be a real Daddy, like Jonathan's got?" Jamie asked her, not helping much as Hermione got him into his pyjamas. "Will we go to the park and things?" She'd laid him down on his bed and his emerald eyes looked right into hers.

"Your Daddy is going to be the best Daddy in the whole world. He's going to do loads of things with you."

Jamie smiled a very Harry-like smile at her "will he explain Quidditch to me?"

Hermione smiled. She tried a dozen times but was never sure he understood. "He'll even teach you how to play" she said softly.

She lay his head on the pillow and watched him for a few minutes, smiling but now totally asleep, looking perfect before she silently retreated. Then she went downstairs, got a bottle of finest French Firewhisky and a mixer, put the fire on and some classical music and cried until dawn.

She'd always wondered if she'd got it wrong – if keeping Jamie from Harry was the best thing, and now she knew it was wrong. Her grief flowed as fast as the alcohol and before she knew it, it was six o'clock. She pulled herself together and got a coffee – Jamie would be up in an hour or two and Harry was coming around later in the day and she would not be in anything other than a totally calm state for either of them. She drank her coffee and then another and decided to take a shower.

The running water soothed Hermione's tense muscles. She stayed in the shower for a long time because it made her feel slightly better. Slightly calmer. She thought about the day ahead when her Son would meet his father for the first time, when Harry would meet Jamie. She cursed herself into oblivion for never considering how much he'd wanted a family but decided that this would achieve nothing. She shouldn't dwell, she just had to make it up to them both.