A/N: okay, I'm really really sorry that I haven't posted all summer...my laptop's internet access has been down since I started writing this chapter, but it's fixed now so updates should occur MUCH more frequently...sorry again!

Thanx a bunch to everyone who's given me ideas for this fic...Persephone, Joan, Rachel, Leah...and to everyone who has reviewed...especially people who have reviewed more than once!! Mwah!

Ch. 6

It began raining halfway through their return trip, which turned out to be a nice way to break the silence in the car. Hermione was quiet because she was thinking about the red haired man she had seen on the bleachers, whom she knew was Ron but had difficulty comprehending that in her head, and Jane was thinking about how she should approach her mother to ask the necessary questions.

Once they had pulled into the driveway, Hermione transfigured her keys into an umbrella and the pair of them huddled under it as they made their way up to the house. Once they had entered, Hermione completed a quick drying spell on the both of them and turned to talk to her daughter.

"Jane, honey? Do you want to order a pizza or something? I'm feeling kind of tired, so is that ok?"

"Uh...yeah, sure mom. Number's on the fridge?"

"Yes. I'll just be upstairs reading, call me if you need me."

Jane watched the back of her mother as she climbed the steps of their charming old house, and then proceeded to the kitchen to order in. She dialed the correct number, was put on hold, and then decided to break the connection.

She moseyed around the house for awhile before calling again, successfully ordering a medium mushroom, onion, and green pepper thin crust pizza that apparently would arrive in half an hour. Jane was like her father though, in that when she was hungry, which was often, she was starving. She spent the next few minutes rummaging around in the pantry, looking for a snack to tide her over. It was amazing, Jane discovered, what one could find if they really looked hard enough. Way in the back, there were boxes of stale, probably year old cereal, amongst half eaten crumpled up bags of chips with binder clips that used to hold the openings closed laying beside them. The pantry really was so very different from the rest of the house. Which of course was kept up to Hermione's standards.

Reaching around in the back blindly, her eyes useless in the dark depths of the area, her fingers came across a flat paper like thing, which she promptly took off the shelf out of curiosity. As she flipped it over, Jane saw that it was one of her parents' wedding pictures! There was her father, in dark blue robes, holding her mother, dressed in an elegant white gown, around her waist. They both were smiling, laughing even, and occasionally looked at each other with thrilled eyes. Jane didn't know why, but as she stared at the picture, she let a tear slide down her cheek. How could something so wonderful break apart so easily?

"Jane!" Hermione walked into the kitchen, carrying a pizza. "Jane, the pizza delivery guy must have rang the doorbell at least twice, I can't believe you didn't hear him! You ready to eat? Jane?"

The daughter looked up from the photo, startled as she realized she had gotten lost in the image.

"Honey? What's wrong? What's that?" Hermione asked, when she saw that Jane's face was tear stained. Hermione strode over to take a look. Before Jane could stuff it in her pocket and pretend it wasn't anything, her mother saw the photo.

"Oh," she said, before sighing heavily. "Jane--"

"—Can we talk?" Jane interrupted.

Hermione sighed again. She took the pizza over to the dinner table and sat down across from where she motioned Jane to sit.

"Okay."

Jane didn't quite know what to ask first. She settled with, "Why did you divorce dad?"

Hermione paused to collect herself and replied. "He had been gone a long time, Jane."

"So? What's that supposed to mean? He was just on a mission, right?"

"Well, yeah..." the sound of Hermione's voice faded and disintegrated into nothing. Jane decided to prompt her.

"Yeah...?"

"It wasn't really a very good situation." Jane was losing patience. She was tired of this whole let's evade the heart of it thing.

"Mum! Just tell me, please! Dad told me you didn't want him going, but nothing else! Why not? Wasn't he going to come back? Why was it such a big deal? He was an auror, hadn't he been on missions before?"

"He might not have come back," Hermione answered, as if she were on some sort of distant planet.

"I mean, that's why I didn't want him going." A little of the color on Hermione's face returned, and she took out a slice of pizza and began chewing.

"That, Jane, honey, was the mission to vanquish Lord Voldemort. Your father was accompanying Harry, and it was a trip that they took alone. I-I had wanted to go, but he wouldn't let me."

"You had wanted to go? Why?"

Hermione sighed yet again. "Jane, back at Hogwarts, I'm sure you've been told, Harry, your father and I were the best of friends. And while Harry was always the one who chiefly had all those dealings with the dark lord, Ron and I always went along on the adventures, unless, of course, it was one of the years where one of us was...unable."

Jane nodded, understanding, having been told the stories and circumstances of their dangerous adventures.

"I-I didn't want to be left out this time. It was like—I had been there all the times before, and with Harry and Ron going off to fight alone, I didn't feel safe. I wanted to be there, with them.

"Ron, argued of course, that it was too risky for me, and that besides there was you to take care of. I knew that I could leave you with your grandparents, either of them. He argued that it wouldn't be fair to have the chance of having both your parents die."

Jane nodded, thinking that this was a perfectly fair argument on her father's part.

"But I felt—I knew that they would be safe only if I was there...that if we both went, we'd all certainly survive, but that if I wasn't there, Ron might do something rash and pay with his life."

"He said that him going with Harry was the most important thing in the world.

He said that nothing else mattered, that this was his one chance in life to prove himself.

He didn't even think--"

Hermione looked away for a moment, blinking furiously, before facing her daughter again.

"Maybe we can—talk about the rest of this later. Don't worry about all this," she said faintly, gesturing towards the pizza box and dirty dishes, "I'll clean it up later."

Jane just sat there and nodded, watching her mother disappear from the room with weary steps and shaking her head from time to time, almost as if she were trying to rid water from her ears. She hadn't gotten up from her chair yet when Hermione poked her head back into view.

"Go to bed early, Jane, okay? I'm taking you to Hogwarts tomorrow."

A/N: longer chapter to follow (for real, yes, if you were wondering) and...reviews, reviews, reviews!!